Mrs. Engels (7 page)

All this sort of science, he talks, and more besides, but what's stayed with me—what my mind lingers on oftenest—is what he says about the way we talk. At this stage, we've all imbibed a fair amount, and most of the neighbors are already sleeping: Seamus is on the ground away from his straw, the children are in their different spots, only the wife, Nan, is still with us. It's late, and I'm trying to signal to Mary to put an end to it. We all have work to get us up in the morning. But she'll not break in on him, not in his stride, and what he's saying is interesting to her, or so it seems from the way she has her chin in her hands and is staring at him, tranced.

What he's talking about is the old language. He says he has heard it spoken in the thickest of the slums, as if this is something to wonder at. From there, he gets to talking about the English as it sounds in the Irish gob.

“I can read and understand twenty-five languages,” he says. “But I admit to being tested by the English spoken by you and your people.”

Then he gets us to say a few things, and he laughs and repeats what we say, and then we laugh.

“
Grand
this and
grand
that,” he says. “Everything is always so splendid for you! Through it all, you manage to stay so cheery and optimistic!”

At this, Nan near on falls off her stool for the laughing. “I'll tell you something for naught, girls,” she says. “These foreigners are shocking queer!”

Then we all roll around, and Frederick does too, though he's only allowing himself to be taken along, for he doesn't really know what we're laughing at.

Mary takes it on herself to let him in. “For the Irish,” she says, “
grand
doesn't mean more than
middling.
”

Nan sees Frederick's muddled arrangement. “We'll need something strong to get us through this,” she says, and goes to get the bottle she keeps safe for the priest.

Meantime, Mary goes over and sits down on his lap—right there in plain sight—and scratches his whiskers and plucks his cheek. “Listen now, Foreign Man. If a thing is
grand,
it's holding together. If a situation is
grand,
it's tolerable good. If a body is
grand,
she's alive and likely to do. No more and no less than that.”

Nan can barely get the spirit into the glasses for all her snorting and shaking. I'm just mortified and want the pageant to end so I can face the mill tomorrow with some of my honor intact. Frederick, for his part, takes to pondering what he's been told, and when he's over with that, he looks about our little room.

“And a house?” he says, being the type who wants to know the in-and-out of things precise. “If a house is
grand
?”

Mary stops smiling then, and puts down playing with his necktie, and turns to us, and takes us in—stunned-like—as if remembering us from a distant past. And then she says, “If a house is
grand,
my love, it comes with a rent that will leave you enough to go on.”

Now, awake, Frederick gets up and dodders about for his clothes. He's having another cock-stand. I watch him muffle it into his breeches. In his room he keeps a tin, lozenges meant for sustaining your piss and vinegar, though I can't see the use of them myself, it being a fine and thirsty animal God's made of him.

“Are you well, Lizzie?”

“Well enough.”

He puts on his shirt, leaves it tucked out to hang over the stubborn article. “I've missed the morning. Why didn't you wake me? I'll have to skip my walk and work late to make up. Can you bring my meals up?” He picks up his shoes and puts his coat over his arm. “Lizzie, did you hear me?”

I nod. I heard you.

I put onto my side, haul the covers up. “Frederick?”

“
Ya?
”

“Jenny thinks it's a good idea to get another maid.”

“There's one coming on Sunday.”

“Another one, I mean, over and above her.”

“Oh? Jenny thinks so? And what do you think?”

“I think it'd be a good way to get Pumps out of Manchester.”

“Pumps?”

“My niece. Half-niece. Thomas's eldest.”

“Oh, him.”

“Aye, him. He has her in a bad way. When she's not locked at home looking after her nine brothers, she's on a corner selling bloaters till all hours. It's only a matter of time before she gets into trouble. She could come down and help me here. It'd be a chance for her.”

“Let me think about it.” He goes for the door.

“Oh, and, Frederick?”

“What now?”

“Can you open the curtain before you go?”

He looks at me like I've just asked to be fanned.

VI. Capital

Not shy of the curtsies. Round-boned. Clean-cuffed. Plainness of a good human sort. Frederick sits her in the morning room and reads us through her character.

“It says here that you can read and write. That will be helpful. And you can milk a cow. Interesting.
And
make butter. A country girl?”

“Devon, sir.”

“Oh, and look, how about that! You can do the scales on the piano.”

Aye, with her feet. Blindfolded.

“Listen here now, Miss Barton,” I says. “Do you know anything?”

“I beg your pardon, ma'am?”

“About keeping a house?”

“Well, as it says there—”

“I don't care a whit for what it says on that bit of paper. I want you to use your voice and tell me out. Can you cook?”

“I can.”

“Good. Because it's for the kitchen I want you. My niece will be joining us in a few days, and she'll look after the hearths and the upstairs. You're to tend to the cooking.”

“Aye, ma'am.”

“I don't know what you're used to from your last place, but here there'll be fish on Fridays.”

“Course, ma'am.”

“You're to keep the counters and pots clean, I won't stand for mice. And most important, you're to look after the kitchen store. Groceries for the day, the week, and the month are to be put in the book. You must keep a check on what's lacking and you must do the writing yourself, do you hear? I won't do it for you. I'll count what comes in and you'll cross it off the list. Not a penny is to be spent that does not have my approval. Breakages must be mentioned within the day or they'll be made good from your wages.”

She nods a biddable nod.

“Now come with me and I'll introduce you to the kitchen range.”

I lead her downstairs. “Don't be shy now. Get familiar.”

She makes her way around, opening into cupboards and checking for what she'll need.
Naught much to her
is what I think.
Improvable
is what I think. She'll do, she'll do. But she has another think coming if she thinks I'm going to spend my days calling hoity up the stairs.

Nim. Skim. Spin. Spiv.

“Spiv,” I says. “We're going to call you Spiv.”

“What's Spiv?”

“It's your name from now on.”

“What does it mean?”

“Naught, only I like the ring of it.”

Once I've taken her on the full round, I go up with his middle-p.m. cheese and beer. I come in on him pacing. He freezes and turns from where he's stood, feet outspread in the center of the carpet. “Lizzie, I must ask you to knock.”

“Oh, I would, Frederick, I would, only I'm holding this”—I nod down at my burden—“and I would have kicked, only I saw the door half-open.”

“Excuse me, Lizzie, I'm a brute. Come in, come in.”

I put the tray down on the sideboard and take up the old one.

“Thank you, my love,” he says, not moving from where he is. Then, as if a brilliant idea has just occurred to him: “Why didn't you let the maid do it?”

“Sure if I gave it all to her, I'd never see you.”

He laughs. “And how is she settling in?”

“Early yet,” I says. “We'll see.”

“
Ya.
Indeed. Good.” He claps his hands, rubs them together, now strides over to his desk, lifts the moneybox out the drawer. “Actually, I'm glad you came. I wanted to talk to you. Karl and Jenny are giving a party in our honor.”

“Oh, aye?”

“Tomorrow. To celebrate our arrival and to introduce us to some of the London-based comrades.” He rummages in the box and comes out with four sovereigns. “I want you to take this and buy yourself something nice to wear. We're dandying up, making a bit of a fuss.”

I give him a stern look.

“Come, Lizzie,” he says. “It's all right to spend a little to look good.”

“Where would I go?”

“Well, to the dressmaker's. Have something pinned that will leave their jaws hanging.”

“What dressmaker's would have anything ready for tomorrow?”

“Go to Barrow's”—he speaks like a man who knows—“they will be able to help you, I guarantee it.”

I crinkle my brow on purpose. “Barrow's?”

“It's not far, in Camden. You won't find anything here in Primrose Hill. Get a cab. Give them my name and pay them off a few extra shillings, you'll see. A new place recently opened opposite them and they're begging for the business. They'd have it sewn while you waited, if that was what you wanted.”

He comes and puts the coins on the tray by his dirty plates. Seeing them there, twinkling among the pork rind, I feel a fresh lightness in my heart. “You might be right, Frederick. I wanted to get abroad of the house anyways, and a run round the shops might be just the ticket.”

“That's the spirit, Lizzie.”

“I'll go right away.”

“Ha!” he laughs. “No time to lose.”

“And I might have something out.”

“Of course,” he says, and searches his pocket for an extra guinea. “Good idea.”

I leave as I am, only a light shawl and a reticule as excitements, and I leave the house as it is too, shambled with unfinished tasks, the new girl with the dinner yet to prepare, and I can't say I'm bothered about it.

I cross the road to the lamppost at the bottom of the Hill and flag a cab from there. On the journey, I watch out the window and put the roads to memory so I can walk back and save the fare.

The bell in Barrow's brings two girls beetling out from the back room. They're got up in identical silk dresses with short sleeves and lace caps, but to look at, they couldn't be further apart: one tidy and pinched, the other large and dusky-skinned and curled about the face.

“I need a dress,” I says.

“Um, certainly,” says Pinch, leading me over to a counter so polished you can see yourself in the black. “Is it for a special occasion, or do you require something useful?”

“I suppose you could call it special.”

“Oh. Well, in that case might I recommend our antique
moiré,
which we have on special offer at the moment, nearly half price?” She throws a length of rippled silk over the counter; gold so gold it glows. “We have this in a range of shades. Unfortunately, one cannot see its full effect here. It's most becoming at candlelight.”

“Half price you say?”

“Half price, madam.”

“So how much would a dress of this cost, at half price?”

“Four pounds, eighteen shillings, and sixpence.”

I splutter. “You must be barking. I won't be spending more than a pound.”

She purses. Beside her, Curly laughs an appeasing laugh and whips the gold silk away, replaces it with another, this one a high-shining blue. “Am I right to say that madam is of the more sensible sort? Less interested in the novelties of fashion than in value for her spend?”

“Well, you wouldn't be wrong anyhows.”

“In that case, we have this plain
glacé
silk in over thirty shades of color, commencing at only two pounds, fifteen shillings, and sixpence for the extra full dress.”

I give an impatient cluck. “Maybe I didn't make myself clear—”

She shakes her curls. “Madam, you made yourself perfectly clear.” She rolls away the blue silk and puts out a green muslin. I touch it. Stiff as a board. “This is French organdy, one of last year's designs, which we are giving away at the very reduced price of one pound, six shillings, and sixpence for the extra full dress.”

I put my hand under my chin and tap my lip with a finger, as if considering. “Do me one without the frills and I'll give you a pound for it.”

“Without the frills, madam?”

“None of those ridiculous trimmings you have in the window there. All that unnecessary bib and tucker.”

“We have other models we can—”

“I want it plain, plain as can be.”

“You don't want to see—?”

“Do you understand the word
plain,
young lass?”

“Of course.”

“Well, that's what I want. And I want it for a pound.”

“I shall have to speak to—”

“Speak to whomsoever you like. Mrs. Engels is the name. One-two-two Regent's Park Road. I'll be here.”

Curly curtsies and goes into the back room. Pinch forces a smile into her cramped little face and goes to busy herself with the show dummies. I turn my gander to the carpet to keep from catching myself in the looking glasses that leer from every side.

“All right, Mrs. Engels,” says Curly when she comes back, “that should be fine. If you would like to come this way, we shall get you measured up.”

“That won't be needed, I can tell you straight off what I am.”

“I do not doubt it, Mrs. Engels, but at Barrow's we like to measure all our customers to ensure the best style and fit.”

“Listen, chicken, do you have a book to write in?”

“Of course.”

“Well, put this down.”

Flushing, she picks up her feather. Dips it.

“Bust thirty-four, hips thirty-six, length-to-foot just as you see me.” I step back to give her a full view. She frowns at me and scribbles down. “I'll be back at five tomorrow to pick it up.”

“Tomorrow?”

“That's right.”

“Madam, I'm sorry, but we usually need at least three working days. We could have it ready by close of business Monday.”

I pick a sovereign out of my reticule and put it down on the page of the book.

She waves her hands over it as if to magic it away. “No, madam, please, you can pay when you come to collect it.”

“Take it now and be done with it. And I'll be seeing you tomorrow.”

I find a cookshop a little up the road and order a chop and a pint of Bass's ale, and now a slice of plum pudding and a cup of ready-made coffee with cream and sugar. I take the table in the window, for I like to look out.

Passing by, streams of people with bags and boxes: gone out for a ribbon and coming home with the stock of an entire silk mercer's. These places, they do it on the cheap and make their capital out of pressure and high prices. It takes cleverness and steel for a woman to get her fair portion.

Exhausted, I look into my cup and try not to feel like the only one fighting.