Eve and Her Sisters (11 page)

‘Oh, it’s you, is it?’ Mildred was sitting up in bed, a white linen cap on her head. ‘Where’s Caleb?’

‘He’s not well, he’ll be along later.’

‘And Mary?’

‘It’s a Saturday. I’ve let her sleep in for a while.’ She placed the bowl on a side table next to the bed with the bar of soap and towel she fetched from a drawer, and bent to retrieve the chamber pot from under the bed. The smell hit her and she had to swallow hard before she could say, ‘I’ll empty this before I see to the fire.’

‘Do it now. The room’s freezing.’

The room was as warm as toast. Admittedly it wasn’t at the furnace level Mildred usually insisted on but the fire had been well banked down the night before and sufficient heat had escaped to ensure that, unlike every other room in the inn, there was no ice coating the inside of the window. Eve didn’t argue with Caleb’s mother, though. Setting the pot down by the bedroom door she approached the grate and proceeded to rake out the glowing hot coals and add more wood and coal. The fire immediately began to blaze and crackle.

‘I’ll say one thing for you, you know how to make a good fire even if your pastry is wanting.’

Eve ignored this. Her pastry was fine, everyone said it melted in the mouth. Everyone apart from Mildred Travis. She dusted her hands on her apron but before she could leave the room, Mildred said, ‘I suppose there was never a shortage of coal in your house, not with it being free, but that’s not taken into consideration when they decide they’re going to strike.’

She was in one of her awkward moods. Eve looked into the red face in which all the features looked squashed by the flesh surrounding them. ‘They are striking because of round-the-clock working and—’

‘I know why they’re striking. I’m not stupid, girl. I’m saying it shouldn’t be. They do an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay and they should be content with their lot in life. What would happen if those in the inn trade suddenly decided not to open their doors, eh? You answer me that? There’d be stones through the window and lynchings but we’re all expected to put up with the miners walking out whenever they feel like it.’

What a truly stupid woman she was. Knowing she should keep quiet, Eve couldn’t help saying, ‘The two things are not comparable.’

‘Not comparable?’ Mildred hitched herself further up her pillows, her chins wobbling. ‘And why is that, pray?’

Eve’s cheeks were burning but not because of the warm room. ‘Because they are very different occupations, ’ she said flatly.

‘Oh aye, I’ll give you that. One can be done by morons but the other takes some intelligence.’

Perhaps it was the earlier thoughts of William, William who had loved books and poetry and who had been thirsty for knowledge that made her lose restraint. Approaching the bed, Eve glared at the woman now looking at her with faint disquiet. ‘You don’t know what you’re on about.’

‘
What?
What did you say to me?’ Mildred spluttered.

‘I said you don’t know what you’re on about and it’s true. My da and brothers had more intelligence in their little fingers than you have in the whole of your body.’

‘How dare you!’

‘You can’t compare the work in an inn to what my da and brothers had to do every day of their lives and you know it at heart.You’re just being nasty. You woke up this morning and wanted to hurt someone, that’s the truth of it.’

To say that Mildred was surprised by this milksop - as she had privately termed both Nell and Eve - confronting her was an understatement. For a moment she was lost for words and then her voice came like a bark. ‘That’s it, you’re out on your ear, girl.You can pack your bags this minute and be off.’
‘What the hell is going on?’

Neither woman had heard Caleb. Mildred didn’t waste a second. ‘This . . . this kitchen scut has had the effrontery to insult me. Telling me I don’t know what I’m talking about and that I’m stupid.’

‘I didn’t say that, not the stupid bit.’ Eve’s face was now as white as lint but she wasn’t going to be dismissed without telling Caleb the truth. ‘Your mother was on about the miners’ strike and she called them morons. I said’ - she took a deep breath as she recalled exactly what her temper had prompted her to say - ‘that my da and brothers had more intelligence in their little fingers than she has in the whole of her body.’

Caleb stared at her in amazement.

‘There, by her own mouth she’s hung herself.’ Mildred was triumphant. ‘To be spoken to like that by the likes of her in me own house. I want her out within the hour. Do you hear me, boy? And without a reference an’ all.’

It was with some effort Caleb dragged his eyes away from Eve. He would have bet good money she didn’t have it in her to stand up to his mother like that, but perhaps he should have known. Beneath that quiet, gentle exterior she had guts, did Eve. Look how she’d stopped him in his tracks that day at the Michaelmas hirings. He had had no intention of taking her and her sisters on but somehow she’d accomplished making him do just that. They said still waters ran deep and it was the case with this lass for sure.

Bringing his gaze to his mother, he said, ‘We will discuss this later.’

‘Will we, by blighty! We’ll discuss it now, not that there’s anything to discuss. I’ve said my piece. She’s out where she belongs, in the gutter. That’ll give her something to think about.’

‘Eve, go and help Nell in the kitchen.’ He didn’t look at her as he spoke but kept his eyes on the furious woman in the bed. It was only when he heard the door click shut that he moved, coming to stand close to his mother. ‘You have to open your mouth to wound, don’t you? Always to wound. That little lass has worked her socks off since the day she stepped foot in this place and all for a measly half-crown a week. Well, I tell you something, Mam. If she agrees to stay after what you’ve said the day, she’ll be getting more than that.’

‘You’d do that? You’d take the part of a kitchen scut against your own mother?’

‘Can’t you see beyond the end of your own nose? She does the work of two women. Oh, Nell is willing enough but she needs to be told, directed. It’s Eve who runs the kitchen.And you might not like to hear it, Mam, but things are running smoother than they have for a good few years.We both know you should have got someone in there a long time ago.You weren’t up to it and the result is this.’ He gestured at the bed.

‘Listen to me, Caleb Travis.’ Mildred’s voice came slow and deep. ‘You take the part of a skivvy against your own mother and I’ll never forgive you. Never. And you know I don’t make idle threats.’

‘That’s up to you, but aren’t you forgetting something? If Eve goes, the other two go with her and that’ll be the end of Mary keeping you company. You thought of that?’

It was clear from his mother’s face she hadn’t.‘The bairn would stay here with me if it was put to her.’ Mildred recovered immediately. ‘She’s not daft, she’s as bright as a button.’

‘You’d do that? Purposely split them up after everything they’ve gone through to stay together?’

‘Don’t you look at me like that.You wouldn’t be taking this stand if I was on me feet.’

‘Oh aye I would. This has been coming for a long time and you know it as well as me. And let me make it absolutely plain for you, Mam. If that little lass goes, I go. And, like you, I don’t make idle threats.We both know my feet have been itching for a while now but you’re my mother and you need me here and so I’ve stayed. But enough is enough. And if I stay it will be as master in my own home. No more “boy”. You hear me, Mam? Now I’m going to see if I can talk her into staying and you’d better pray she agrees.’

Mildred said nothing but her face spoke volumes, the pupils in her colourless eyes black pinpoints of fury as her son left the room, quietly shutting the door after him.

Eve was sitting on one of the hard-backed chairs at the kitchen table, Nell patting her shoulder ineffectually when he entered the room. He could see immediately she had been crying but she rose to her feet, her face white and strained but her voice steady when she said quietly, ‘I’ll go at once of course but please don’t dismiss Nell too. She and Mary need shelter this weather.’

‘I’m coming with you. We both are.’ Nell looked at Caleb. ‘And your mam asked for everything she got.’

He made no comment to this, indicating for them to be seated. ‘You’ve been here over four months now, is that right?’

Her green eyes huge, Eve nodded.

‘Then I think it’s high time we looked at your wages again. I’d like to pay you more but how about if we double it for now? Five shillings each a week.’ His gaze included Nell for a moment. ‘You both earn it, I’m well aware of that.’

‘But . . .’ Eve couldn’t go on, waving her hand helplessly.

It was left to Nell to say, ‘But your mother? She won’t stand for it. She don’t like me and Eve, it’s only Mary she’s got time for.’

‘My mother is aware of the offer.’

‘I . . . you . . .’ Eve tried to articulate what she was feeling but all she could say was, ‘You don’t have to pay us any more money. We don’t expect . . . You’ve been so kind.’

‘Five shillings a week each or nothing.’ A small smile touched Caleb’s mouth. ‘Deal?’

‘Deal.’ Again it was Nell who spoke when Eve couldn’t.

‘Good.’ He nodded briskly. ‘And I for one would like a cup of tea. I’ve got a mouth on me like a badger’s backside and my head feels like it’s going to explode, but at least the cold is gone.’

1912 - Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary . . .

‘And where do you think you’re off to, madam? There’s a pile of tatties a foot high waiting to be scraped over there and they won’t do themselves.’

‘Oh,
Eve.
’ Mary gave a little toss of her head which set the daisies on her straw hat bobbing. ‘Kitty and her mam an’ da are going to Girdle Cake Cottage and they said I could go with them, been’s it’s my birthday.’

‘And you accepted the invitation without a thought of asking me if it was all right you went? Even though Saturday is our busiest day, especially at the height of summer?’

‘It’s my
birthday,
’ Mary pouted.‘I didn’t think you’d mind.’

Nell’s birthday - hers too, come to it - had passed unacknowledged. Mary was well aware of that. And since she had left school for good at the end of the summer term a week ago and started work in the kitchen, she had tried to sneak off more than once. Nell was serving in the front of the inn - an arrangement which had come about through Shirley leaving to get married at the same time as Mary had begun work in the kitchen - so at least Eve was spared one of the lightning rows between her two sisters which were becoming more bitter by the day. She drew on her limited store of patience.‘You can’t take off whenever you like, Mary. You know that. How many times do we have to go over the same ground?’

‘I didn’t think you’d
mind
, not on my birthday.’ Mary’s big blue eyes filled with tears. ‘Please, Eve, please. Just this once.
Please?
I so want to go an’ I’ve been looking forward to it.’

Eve stared at her sister. She knew she was being manipulated but the underlying guilt at the back of her mind which had never gone away since she had found out about Josiah Finnigan made it hard to say no. Girdle Cake Cottage on the north bank of the river some miles away was a pretty little tea room, a very popular venue in the summer months. Folk travelled upstream from Sunderland by boat to have their tea and then returned on the tide, so there were always new faces to see and a lot happening. And Mary craved such excitement. Eve didn’t know why her sister was so restless and skittish - flighty, Nell called her - but as Mary had got older and the prettiness had turned into a beauty that even now, at thirteen, caused heads to swivel, Eve had become more anxious about her. ‘You say Kitty’s mam and da are going?’

‘Aye, yes.’ Sensing victory, Mary turned on the charm which nearly always worked with everyone, except Nell. ‘Please, Eve. I’ll love you forever.’

‘Go on with you.’ Laughing now, Eve flapped her hand.‘But you make sure you’re back by five o’clock, Mary. I mean it. I’m going to be run off my feet in the meantime.’

‘I will, I promise.’

A butterfly kiss touched Eve’s cheek and then in a twirl of ribbons and lace Mary was gone. Eve watched her sister cross the yard, calling out something to Caleb who was unloading some meat for the cold store as she went. She looked much older than her years.The ever present worry turned into fear. And she was so beautiful. Fresh, lovely. This past year Mary had shot up and filled out but it wasn’t so much this that made Eve feel she wanted to keep an eye on her sister every minute of every day. Eve frowned to herself, turning away from the scullery window and returning to the dressed crab she had been preparing at the work table. It was something about the way Mary was with people. Eve did not think ‘with
men
’. She would not allow herself to think men. Mary was gay and coquettish with everyone, it was just her way. And she had always loved plenty of attention.

‘Where’s she off to?’

Caleb had come in without her hearing him, and Eve swung to face him. ‘Kitty’s parents have offered to take the pair of them to Girdle Cake Cottage for her birthday,’ she said quickly, sensing he wasn’t best pleased. Then, as his face relaxed, she added, ‘Why? Where did she say she was going?’

He smiled a little sheepishly. ‘Her exact words were, out to tea with some fine gentleman.’

Eve shook her head, laughing. ‘You know what she’s like.’

Aye, he knew what Mary was like. And how he was going to keep his hands off her until she was sixteen and he was able to make his feelings plain, he didn’t know. But he would have to. In spite of her silliness and flirty ways she was still nowt but a bairn.Three more years. He screwed up his face against the thought of it. And her living in the same house.

‘What’s the matter?’