If someone had told me that that was how a woman came to have a baby I’d have said they were having me on. Anyway, how would you begin to describe something like that, there weren’t any words – well, I suppose I knew there must be some words somewhere, but I certainly didn’t know what they were. I thought: that must be the cause of babies and of course I started to worry in case I suddenly got one. I kept looking in the mirror to see if I was getting fatter, because that was the only way I knew to tell. It scared me, because they’d put you away if you had a baby and no husband. That used to happen all the time and with some of them, they never let them out again. The way they treated those girls, as if they were dirt – which a lot of them were, I don’t deny it. But not me. Yet there I was, one of the good girls at school – that was before my father took me out of it to put me to work – worrying that I might have a baby from a man who’d never said so much as one word about marrying me! I was far too scared to say anything to William. It sounds daft now, but I was more embarrassed about saying it to him than I was scared of the baby coming. William left Dennys within a couple of weeks. He’d been polite enough after, but nothing special, no more kisses when no one was looking. And I wasn’t going to go making up to him, not likely!
Well, that was that and I didn’t think any more of it. I was too busy worrying in case a baby came. I thought it took about six months before you had the baby, so I kept checking, but my waist got thinner, not fatter, and in the end I said to myself this can’t be right, so I didn’t bother with it after that. I had no idea there were other signs. If I’d known that, I could have put myself out of my misery in a couple of weeks. It might seem funny enough now, but it wasn’t at the time. But there was William, all prepared to go off to his new situation, baby or not, or so I thought at the time. The last thing he said to me was, ‘You’re a pal, Ada.’ And I thought, well, thank you so kindly, I don’t think.
When he left, that was the time when they found out that Miss Georgina’s nurse wasn’t looking after her like she should, so she was sent away. Miss Georgina was very ill after that; for a time they thought she wouldn’t live, but she’s always been stronger than she looks.
Ellen and I weren’t getting on at all. She’d cried her eyes out when William left, but I never tried to comfort her – I had enough troubles of my own. So then she used to say, ‘You don’t care, Ada, you’re glad he’s gone,’ and ‘You were always jealous,’ and that sort of thing. It got on my nerves. There’d be times when I’d nearly burst out and say something, but then think better of it and stop myself; and she’d start up again and it was like that day after day, the moment we were alone she’d start up saying these things. I felt so needled with it I didn’t know what to do and, of course, one night it had to come out. I was so tired I’d barely managed to drag myself up the stairs and as soon as I’d shut the door she started with William this, William that, William the other, sitting there with her hair all over her shoulders looking like a tragedy queen. Well, I just turned to her and said, ‘Don’t talk nonsense. William wasn’t ever gone on you, you dreamed it all up by yourself.’ The moment it was out of my mouth I wished I’d never said it, but it was too late.
She never said a word, just blew out the candle and got into bed. Then she said ‘I know,’ and I heard her give a little gulp, like she was crying.
I felt like such a devil, I leaned over and patted her shoulder and said, ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that.’
She was turned away from me, but she said, ‘No. I wanted it to be true about William, but it wasn’t. So don’t say you didn’t mean it when you did.’ I didn’t know what else to say and after a minute she said, ‘Get back in bed, Ada. Go to sleep.’ Not in a nasty way, but like she was suddenly dead tired. Of course I never had a wink; I was turning it over and over all night, whether she’d ever speak to me again.
But I needn’t have worried because the next night we had a good old talk, the first we’d had for months. I felt bad because I didn’t need to say what I had. If she wanted to believe William liked her, where was the harm? It was pride that made me say it, because really I wanted her to know that William was keen on me. But I was too much of a coward to tell her that, so I said the other thing. Ellen told me, ‘I’m not going to stay here much longer.’
I couldn’t think what she meant. ‘Why, where are you going?’
‘I’m leaving here. My mother’s written and told me she’s poorly so I’m going home to look after her.’
I said, ‘Oh. that’s terrible.’ I didn’t know much about Ellen’s family, except that she had a lot of brothers and sisters, more than I did.
She said, ‘I’m glad I’m not staying here.’
I said, ‘Is it because of William?’
‘No, it’s because of Mr Lomax. Drinking.’ Because Ellen had spotted it right away and at first I thought she was making up a story, but when it turned out to be true she never once said ‘I told you so’, which she could have, easy.
So that night I asked her, ‘How did you know about Mr Lomax before anybody else could see it?’
She said, ‘Because my father was a drinker.’ You could have knocked me down with a feather – I’d never heard anyone say such a thing before, a secret thing about themself or their family. I felt it was a great honour for me that she was telling me about it, because with those things, nobody ever talked about them. Ellen said, ‘He used to come rolling home every night and clobber my mother, and if any of us young ones got in the way or made a noise, we’d get it too. When I sent my wages home I used to pretend it was something else, because if he got to it before my mother did, it would be straight off to the pub and she wouldn’t see a penny.’ Then she said, ‘I was so frightened when I saw him hit my mother, but I knew if I did anything he’d start on me. When he died I was glad, because he couldn’t hit her no more. Honestly, Ada, I’ve seen too much of that, drinking, and I wouldn’t stay here if you offered me double the wages.’ And she meant it. ‘I may not be much, but I won’t stand for that.’ To this day, I remember her saying that. Because – and this may sound queer – that was the first time I’d ever heard someone talking as if they had a choice. I mean someone like me, not some important person. I mean, for people like me, working people, well, you went where you were put and if you didn’t like it you could lump it. I don’t know if Ellen married, or what sort of man it was, but I’m sure it wasn’t a drinker like her father.
I said, ‘I’ll miss you,’ and I meant it. She was my best friend, and I never saw her again.
I’d never come across any drinking before, but it wasn’t long before I got my first experience. It was the little things at first with Mr Lomax, slurring the speech, seeing the extra brandy and wine on the side every night, on the tray, well, even the slowest could put two and two together. Then there was the business of serving dinner. Mr Lomax had been home a couple of weeks and some of the girls said to me, ‘Oh, you’ve got to go in and serve the dinner.’
I said, ‘But I don’t know what to do.’
‘Oh, don’t worry, in you go.’
Well, I’d never served the dinner, it wasn’t my job and no one ever showed me how. The other girls brought all the dishes and things, and one of them gave me a shove through the dining-room door. Well, I suppose I should have guessed why none of them wanted to do it. Mr Lomax was sitting on his own at the end of this great long table and his eyes were glazed from drinking. The fire was glowing out behind him and I thought he looked like the devil, sitting there in his big chair like a throne. It was just him and me in the room, no one else. I was shaking, frightened I’d drop something or do it wrong and, of course, that made me shake even more. There was no one to help me and Mr Lomax looked as if he might go roaring out at me any moment. I nearly turned round and ran straight out again, but I thought: I can’t do that. I knew the others were waiting outside and I was sure they’d report it.
I put the food down on the table. I was tiptoeing about, trying not to knock anything, but he didn’t seem to know I was there. To be honest, I don’t suppose he would have noticed if an elephant had come and passed him the dishes with its trunk, he was in such a state, poor man. He never even took a mouthful, just reached out his hand – to get his glass I suppose, but he knocked all the drink into his plate. I rushed forward to mop it up and he barked at me, ‘No!’ Then he said, ‘Take it away, I shan’t want any more. Go on, get out!’ The plate was swimming in brandy, all over the meat, and he hadn’t even eaten one mouthful. My hands were shaking so much that when I took the plate the liquid was shooting out everywhere, on the cloth, on me, on him. I never dared ask if he wanted anything else, I thought he’d just shout at me again. I fairly ran out of that room and I said to them outside, ‘I’m not going back in there, so don’t you say nothing.’ They didn’t, they knew they couldn’t make me. I kept well out of the way after that, but I saw the food come back to the kitchen every night, barely touched, and the bottles always empty.
Well, you can’t stop people talking and there was a fair bit of gossip in the village about Mr Lomax. One or two even suggested he’d killed Master Freddie himself in an accident when he was drunk, but it was sheer malice because Mr Lomax wasn’t even at Dennys when it happened. Some of them said, ‘Oh, he should marry again,’ thinking that would cure him of his drinking. He never did marry again. I don’t know why, but he grew to hate women with all his heart. If he saw something in a newspaper against women, even if it was just a joke or a comic drawing with some little remark, he would tear it out and save it up in a big box in his study. I suppose it was harmless enough, but seeing a whole box full of stuff about how bad women are, it wasn’t very nice. I never used to lift it up or touch it, I just got the cloth and dusted round. In any case, he’d roar and shout if you moved anything. Because he’d got so he wouldn’t throw anything away – Miss Georgina has that from him, hoarding. None of us girls dared go into his study when he was there, we’d be on our tiptoes outside. ‘Is he in there? Can you see him in there?’ It was like that all the time. Then, if the coast was clear, we’d rush in and out again, it was dreadful.
Miss Georgina lay upstairs for five whole months with her illness. She was so sick and bad that no one thought she’d live above a month, but Mr Lomax never went near her. Some of them – the servants – said it was because he was only fond of the bottle and didn’t care about his daughter, but I could never believe that. I used to think, he’s lost his wife, he’s lost his youngest child, if Miss Georgina dies, it’ll break his heart. I thought that was why he never went to her, that he couldn’t bear to see her because he thought she was dying, but I don’t know if it was true. Let’s just say that Mr Lomax was a very unhappy man, because there’s no doubting that and, in any case, Miss Georgina was so poorly she probably didn’t know who was in the room. In all my life I never heard her mention her father once, except for a conversation we had during one of the air raids. It was a very nasty one, and she and Master Edmund had come down to the basement to sit it out. We were in my little sitting-room and Master Edmund had a bottle of gin, but he never brought the proper glasses. He wouldn’t let me go upstairs to fetch them, so we were sitting there drinking it out of teacups. Well, I don’t know if it was the gin or the raid or what it was, but I started telling her about my father, how he never took me on his knee or cuddled me as I saw other fathers do with their children. Then I saw her face and I thought, oh, I shouldn’t have said that. She stared into her cup for a moment and then she said, ‘At least he didn’t break your heart. My father broke my heart.’ Then she said, ‘Perhaps I deserved it.’
Well, I looked at Master Edmund, but he was asleep, which was a mercy. ‘That’s a terrible thing to say, Miss Georgina. You mustn’t say things like that.’
She laughed it off. ‘Well, I always think children are like dogs, wanting to be stroked all the time. Can you imagine anything more tedious?’ Typical! She’s never said another word about it, at least not in my hearing. But I think it was very hard for her, because she was always his favourite when she was small and then he turned right away from her when he started his drinking. She married Mr James to get away from him, I’m sure of that.
If you were taking up a tray for Miss Georgina, you always had to make sure Mr Lomax never saw you. You could slip up the stairs with no trouble, but then it had to be got across the landing. You’d try to be ever so quiet, but there was always a floor-board that creaked and he’d just appear from nowhere: ‘Where are you taking that?’ You had to make an excuse and not let on it was for Miss Georgina. Nobody told us to do this that I recall, we all just understood that we must do it, because Mr Lomax didn’t want to hear anything about Miss Georgina. Well, no one wanted to put up with that sort of treatment and quite a few started talking about getting another place.
Then Mr Lomax accused the butler, Mr Vincent, of stealing his brandy. He was shouting it out in front of some of them and Mr Vincent couldn’t have that, especially with his staff there to hear it. So he left and three or four went with him, and a couple of others soon after. Mrs Mattie couldn’t do anything, but she didn’t begrudge them. They got a good character, provided they deserved it, of course, and within the year they were all gone except the two of us, Mrs Mattie and me. We did our best, but we couldn’t keep up the old standards. I used to miss Ellen so much. I’d got used to having somebody to talk to, even if it was just to say ‘good-night’, and our little room felt ever so lonely. I thought, well, she’s gone now and I’d better make the best of it. I’ll have a decent bed for a change, because hers was more comfortable than mine. I used to lie down on that bed so tired I thought I’d never get up again, and sometimes William would come into my mind. I never thought about him when I was worried about the baby coming, only afterwards, because I didn’t want to remember all that nasty stuff. But once I knew I was safe from that, well, I wasn’t trying to think about him, he just came into my mind, and it was nice to remember his face and the things he said. I didn’t expect ever to see him again.
But most of the time I was too busy to think about William. I was trying to do five people’s work. I thought: I’ll go on working like this until I drop down dead. I could have just said ‘enough’s enough’, but it never occurred to me. Perhaps it was because I’d been so happy at Dennys before that, I couldn’t imagine leaving. But that’s when my aches and pains started, from that time, and I wasn’t twenty-two. Mrs Mattie begged Mr Lomax to let her take on more staff, even one, but he wouldn’t have new people in the house, said he couldn’t trust them and she’d have to do without. I suppose I stayed as much for her as for anyone. She’d worked her way up to be housekeeper and now she was back cleaning up, sweeping up, things that no housekeeper would dream of doing in a place that was half-way decent, but she had that much loyalty … I couldn’t leave her to run the whole house by herself. And you could say she took me under her wing, really. I can picture Mrs Mattie stood at the kitchen table, making pastry with the big range behind her. It’s not quite dark outside, the sun is nearly gone, but you can still see the tops of the trees above the hedge and the room is so bright, with a lovely smell of cooking. I used to sit by her and have my cup of tea and a piece of bread and dripping. I’m not saying she was like a mother to me, or anything like that; she was still very much the housekeeper even though it was this queer situation we were in. But she did used to talk to me – mostly it was about how to run a house and look after things, and I learned more cooking from watching her and what she told me than I ever did from my mother. Looking back, I know it was done on purpose … I said, I wouldn’t have left her, but of course it was her left me in the end.
Remember what I said about Ellen talking like she had a choice? Well, that’s what I mean, because it wasn’t a matter of whether I decided to stay with Miss Georgina and her father, it was decided for me when Mrs Mattie retired and went to live with her married sister in Plymouth. She wasn’t married herself, but it was always ‘Mrs’ for the housekeeper and for the cook. She wrote to me once, and reading between the lines I’d say the two of them didn’t get on; but she was like me, she never had any choice. There she was – fifty-five, sixty – and Dennys had been her whole life; she’d been there since she was a girl. She should have been able to look back and be proud of a position like that, because it was quite something to have been the housekeeper in a place like Dennys, but how could she, poor woman? And she never approved of Miss Georgina, the way she was just left to run wild. Miss Georgina was always tearing around and leaping out of corners, as if she thought she was a fairy – perhaps that’s what she did think. I’ve never known what goes on in her mind. I didn’t know then and I don’t know now. Nor should I want to, I might add. Mrs Mattie used to watch after Miss Georgina when she was running around and the look on her face! She’d squeeze all her mouth up like the top of a duffel bag when the string’s pulled and she’d go, ‘Oooh … Oooh, I don’t know what’s going to become of her.’ Lucky for her she never lived to see, I say, because that would have broken her heart even if the other didn’t.
The night before she left, we were sat up in the kitchen with our cocoa and Mrs Mattie said to me, ‘I’ll tell you something, Ada. When I saw those children standing round Master Freddie and him bleeding on the ground like that, my first thought was it was a game gone wrong. Even when Miss Childers told me how they’d come there, I still thought they must have run away and left him, and only come back after, when Jenny fetched them. I didn’t know what to do … and the things Miss Georgina said to me.’ I asked her what they were, but she wouldn’t tell me, only that Miss Georgina said queer things. She said, ‘I never suspected it was Jenny till the policeman said it must be. Because it wasn’t like her, Ada. She was a gentle little soul.’ That was it, really, what she said. But I thought: Well, then, I wasn’t the only one.
Anyway, there I was, all on my own. Holding the baby, as they say. Mrs Mattie said, ‘You’re a good girl, Ada, mind you take care of yourself.’ She looked across at the study window, where Mr Lomax was, and she said, ‘There’s nothing to do for him, poor man, he’s beyond saving, but you look after Miss Georgina. She’s never had a chance, poor lamb.’ She said it like it was her own family, not her employer: ‘You look after her, Ada.’ We were both stood in the driveway with her trunk, waiting for the station cart and I was thinking: Oh, please don’t cry, whatever you do, don’t cry, because she was looking up at the house and I could see her eyes were a little bit pink. I knew that if she cried I wouldn’t be able to stop myself. When the cart come, she reached out and touched my hand: ‘God bless you, Ada.’
I was blinking to stop the tears coming. It was a sunny day, so I told her, ‘The sun’s gone in my eyes.’
Then the horse started up and off she went to the station. I stood there till I couldn’t see the cart any more and then I took myself back to the kitchen. I sat down beside a short little cupboard and rested my head and arms on the marble top because it was cool. That’s when I thought: I won’t ever get married. I knew it in my heart. I was only twenty-three. Not that I had time to sit and think about that or anything else, there was too much to do to try and look after the two of them. But don’t go thinking, oh, she sacrificed herself, or anything like that, because there wasn’t no Prince Charming knocking on my door. There were thousands during the Great War who lost the boys they were going to marry and they were the ones who made sacrifices, not me. I felt sorry for those poor girls, but by the time the war broke out I wasn’t a girl any more. My brother Charlie was killed on the Somme. He was twenty-nine and I’m five years older, almost to the day. Very young for a man to die, but a woman in her thirties, if she hadn’t got herself a husband by then, she was well and truly on the shelf and no chance that any man would take her off it, especially not in those times.
Anyway, you don’t want to go getting sentimental about me. But I swear it, you wouldn’t think it was possible that two people could live in the same house and never meet, yet that’s what happened with Mr Lomax and Miss Georgina. She must have been fifteen years old when Mrs Mattie left and I never saw her from one day’s end to the next. She wouldn’t come near the kitchen, so I used to take her meals upstairs on a tray. Half the time she wasn’t in her room, either, so I’d just leave the food there. She’d put the dishes back outside her door when she was done and I’d take them down with me when I went up with the next lot. She was like a wild thing, really, just left on her own apart from a woman that came in to give her a few lessons. Even when Master Edmund was home on his holidays Miss Georgina never came downstairs much. If there was something she wanted, it was always, ‘My sister says, please would you be kind enough …’ Master Edmund was a perfect gentleman, even then. He used to come and talk to me, I used to ask him about his school and he’d tell me stories about what they got up to. I enjoyed that. He had a very nice way with him, never made you feel uncomfortable. Unlike his sister. It’s a shame she couldn’t have been sent away to school too, but she might as well have been a cat for all the thought her father gave her.
But Miss Georgina was bound to get some funny ideas, really, living at Dennys all the time and scarcely meeting a soul from the outside world. I used to think: whatever will become of her? She did used to get the odd letter from time to time, from Miss Louisa, but she never saw either of her cousins – their father wouldn’t let them come, even though Master Edmund and Master Roland went to the same school. In fact, I used to wonder if perhaps Miss Louisa sent Miss Georgina those letters in secret, without her father knowing. As for me, well, I’d have had a little chat with Miss Georgina every now and then, if she’d wanted it. But when I took the trays up to her I often had the idea that she was standing in the next room, waiting for me to leave. I didn’t have time for playing hide-and-seek so I never looked, but I’m sure that’s what she was up to.
Although I’ve known Miss Georgina almost all her life, I’d never say I knew her, if you see what I mean. Some people are just more open – I don’t mean they tell you all their business, but … sometimes when you’re with them, well, the best way I can put it is: you can see into their heart. I’ll tell you who’s like that – Miss Louisa. Anyone can see what a good person she is and I’m sure that’s why Master Edmund loves her like he does. But Miss Georgina, I don’t believe even Master Edmund knows what she’s really like, not right inside. And Mr James, he didn’t know her at all. Because she keeps everything locked away, all the secrets she’s got shut up inside, she won’t let nobody see. And she’s very clever when it comes to getting her own way, there’s no denying that. That’s why you don’t want to believe everything she says. She’s as cunning as a barrel-load of monkeys. She knew she could count on me, long before I knew it myself. She knew it and she used it, too, else why would I be sat here in this dingy old basement after all these years?
After Mrs Mattie went, Mr Lomax told me to make up a bed in the study for him and he never again went back upstairs. He was all taken up with the idea that he was being cheated in his business. He never stirred from his study and of course there was no telephone then, only letters, but he brooded and brooded, and he read every newspaper he could get his hands on. He was sure that there would be something in the papers about the cheating, but there never was. He sold the London house and we never had any visitors, only folk from the village, delivering. So it was just him and Miss Georgina, and Master Edmund when he came home for the holidays. And then there was me, and I had to do for all of them.
That was when Miss Georgina started to play her little games with the furniture, after Mrs Mattie left. She must have known that Mrs Mattie wouldn’t have stood for it. What would happen was I’d go upstairs and I’d see a chair in the corridor outside Miss Georgina’s room, and I’d think, ‘Where did that come from?’ Because it hadn’t been there that morning. Her trick was to go round all the upstairs rooms, which were shut up with the dust sheets over, and anything that caught her eye, she’d have it out of there and put it in her room. She was like a magpie, the things she’d got hoarded up. I’d keep finding doors ajar where they shouldn’t be and I’d stick my head round, and sure enough, there were all the dust sheets pulled off in a heap and the pillows gone from the bed more than likely. Miss Georgina’s always liked pillows. Pillows and cushions, all over the floor, and she had bedspreads and shawls as well, draped all over the place. When I saw that film with Rudolph Valentino, The Sheikh, it reminded me of Miss Georgina’s room how it looked then. It was downright dangerous, all that stuff lying there on the floor. If you didn’t break your neck on the shawls, you’d trip over a pile of books and come down wallop. But there was nothing I could do. She was in a fair way to being a young lady by that time and I didn’t have charge of her – Mr Lomax had never said one word to me about her. Mind you, Mr Lomax never said one word to me at all, not unless he wanted something, and then he’d just go roaring out, scaring me half to death.
When Mr Lomax got really bad, he started to wear a silk scarf around his nose and mouth – it looked how they have it in films when they’re going to rob a train only of course they didn’t have the films then. First time I saw it, I said, ‘Is there anything wrong, Sir?’ because I thought it must be the drains or something, but he started waving me away, and shouting about infections and all sorts. ‘Get away from me!’ That’s what he kept saying: ‘Get away, I know your tricks. I know what you’re up to – keep away from me!’ Well, I don’t know what he was talking about, but it was all part of his hating women the way he did, I’m sure of that, and the alcohol made it worse, made him imagine all sorts of things that weren’t there. I suppose he must have thought an infection would come through his breathing, that was why he was wearing the scarf. After that, he always had the scarf round his neck and he used to put it over his face if he saw me. But I never said nothing. What could I say?
He’d never let me have this scarf off to wash it – oh, it was the most filthy old thing you’ve ever seen. You wouldn’t have used it to wrap a dead rat in. I don’t know why he bothered with it, because the two of them were so busy barricading themselves in with jumble that you could hardly get from one end of the house to the other. Things, things, things, everywhere! It was like a great river of rubbish flowing through the house, through the rooms, down the stairs … they both used to put things on the stairs. On the ends of the treads it started, next to the wall. Books, plates, trinkets, papers, bottles, gloves, letters, and I wasn’t let to move any of it. It drove me nearly mad, I can tell you! I think it was Miss Georgina started it, but then Mr Lomax would do it too; some was his and some was hers. Then, of course, there’d be such a great pile grown up that something would slip and the whole lot would come sliding down and crash into the hall. That’s why I say it was like a river, more and more was added, so it had to burst out somewhere, like a flood.
It was like a parlour game for Miss Georgina – she’d even go lifting stuff from my room and adding it to one of her collections if I didn’t watch her. When Mrs Mattie left, I had moved downstairs into the housekeeper’s room, which was a hundred times better than my old room. But what was bad was that Miss Georgina knew where it was and she’d sneak in there while I was working. Sometimes I’d miss my hairbrush or something and then I’d find it perched on the top of a pile somewhere. Well, if I just took it back, she’d spot immediately that it was missing, goodness knows how, and she didn’t like that. She’d get upset and stop eating, or she wouldn’t dress herself properly, so I used to take the brush and show her, and say, ‘Please may I have it back?’ and that was all right – until the next time. Lucky for me I didn’t have a lot to miss. Odds and ends from the kitchen would go as well and that was worse, because I’d be cooking and put my hand out for a pan and – gone! I wish I had a penny for every time the food got spoiled while I went looking for one of the pots. Not that either of them ate anything. Miss Georgina’s never been what you’d call a big eater, she just picks, which is what comes of not having anyone to make her eat up.
Well, I soldiered on, but I can’t say I was happy, and I got into a bad habit of talking to myself, because I was lonely. You know, I used to think: I’m fed up with this, I’m leaving, but then I’d think, how can I? If I go, what becomes of them? Then I’d think of poor Mrs Mattie and I’d stay. But I suppose I was just dreaming about leaving, if I’m honest, because I wouldn’t have known where to go or what to do. So I used to pray that Miss Georgina would get married. We never had any gentleman visitors – or any other sort come to that – but I used to pray that somebody would come along. When Mr James came, I thought that God had answered my prayers. But I tell you straight: if I’d known what would happen to poor Mr James I’d have kept those prayers to myself.