Mrs. Engels (20 page)

“True,” I says, “but you ought take comfort. The bourgeoisie will have good reason to remember your suffering from a true proletarian disease!”

“Ah, do not make me laugh!” He draws his legs up and splutters. “Ah, ah, it hurts, it hurts too much.” He bellows and bellows, and I'm sorry for it now, for it's a pity to watch its slow and certain turning. “Oh, Lizzie, all the muck has been thrown at once.”

I smooth back his hair, a pitying gesture, but I'm afraid to handle him anyplace else, for the aggravation it might cause.

“I thought I was properly back on my feet. I was working away gaily, but now this.” He takes my hand from where it's resting on his head and kisses it. Puts it between his palms and keeps it there. “I am being the best of patients. I am allowing myself to be soaked in all sorts of vinegars and limes, and smothered in remedies.”

“Oh, how
well
you have to be to be ill!”

He grins, ear to ear. “Now I am back on the arsenic cure, since an end must at last be put to this state of affairs.”

“I'm sure you're only delighted about that, Karl.”

“Delighted indeed. Dr. Allen laughs at my reservations, and Frederick just thinks I am being difficult.”

“Maybe you ought hearken to them.”

“Pah! If I listened to Allen, all I would take in is that poison, and if it were up to Frederick, I would be out every morning taking uphill hikes. Fresh air, his cure for every blessed thing. I would like to see
him
walk with boils where I have them.”

I laugh. He's a good man. As good as you let him be good.

“Jenny was down with us before.”

“Oh?”

“She's worried about the Girls going to France.”

“She worries too much.”

“The war, Karl. Any mother would fret.”

“Well, she need not. The war is over—she knows this—and the Prussians have prevailed. The Girls will be safe as long as they behave like good English ladies. Besides, they are grown and need some world experience. And their sister needs them.”

I touch his cheek. “You know best, Karl. I just told her I'd mention it.”

“Thanks, Lizzie. I know you are only being a friend.”

I get up to leave. He pleads an extra few minutes. “I can't, Karl. Get some rest and I'll see you soon.”

He smiles, holds on to my dress. “Why don't we see more of you?”

“It's a busy time.”

“When the Girls go away, my wife will be wanting for company. She does have Nim. And her contacts outside. The woman always seems to be running off somewhere. But it would be good for her, I think, to have a true friend to confide in. She'll be worried.”

“It won't be easy for her. All the Girls away.”

“Come and see her, please.”

“When I can.”

In the kitchen, Nim is standing in front of a bottle of beer. There's a glass set out on the table, but I suck from the neck. It's sour and old, but I'm glad of it. “Merciful hour, what's that noise?” I says, unable to ignore the screeching that's coming from the scullery.

“That?” She saunters over and, in a pleased manner, swings the door open.

A plague of rats; a gush.

I'm onto a stool before my knees can even whisper a complaint.

Nim folds her arms and sneers over at me. “You weren't expecting that, were you, Mrs. Burns?”

The kittens, as my cooling mind now understands them to be, scratch at the legs of the stool, jump up to catch the hem of my dress. I hiss them away and step down. As soon as I'm on the floor again, however, they rush back, the whole ragged pack, and climb up my yards as far as my waist. I serve them out full swing. Nim gets the most determined ones off with the broom and sweeps them back into the scullery. Those that escape her peep out from the shadows.

“Tommy?” I says.

She nods. “Eight in all.”

“Not bad for the old grimalkin.”

“We've let them grow too big. Mrs. Marx would not let me get rid of them before. She thought she would be able to give them away as pets. But now—”

“Now?”

“Now she has finally come round. But of course she doesn't have the stomach to do it herself. She refuses to help me and I cannot do it alone. There are too many of them, I have tried.”

She puts the broom away and turns to me. “It has to be done before Tussy gets home. She would not stand for it. It has to be done
now.
”

Are you ever stood wanting for speech? Are you ever stood wanting for speech while inside you're yelling out for the truth of things to be spoken?
So this is it, Jenny! This is my purpose to you! Not some silly salve, but this!

“Get a sack,” I says. “I'll put the water on.”

Our hands and wrists are left cut and scored, our sleeves and fringes frayed, but we make a bundle of the whole number eventual. We're agreed: all at once in the big basin. One-by-one and we'll lose our nerve and leave the job done halfways.

All of our hands are needed to hold them under. I'm startled by the struggle nature can make from even the smallest of its examples. Nim doesn't seem so impressed, being so small herself, and so strong.

Our arms cross. Our hips bump. The heat of the water stings. We exchange winces. “Your pinny is soaked,” I says, to keep our minds off. She looks down and nods. I'm close enough to smell her, the German hooer.

“That German hooer!” Mary screams, and I come away from my room to see what's the matter. She has come through the door without closing it and thrown herself onto the sofa with her hat yet pinned. “That German hooer! She's gone and ruined everything!”

It's our first summer in the Salford house. Frederick hasn't yet moved in, and I'm not holding my breath, but I'm not spiteful about it either. For I've changed about him. My pride has softened. The protection I didn't want from him before, I'm grateful for now. A roof over my head and everything provided, no question? Down on my hands and knees, morning and night, is where I ought be.

“Whisht, Mary,” I says, by now long used to the overactions of her heart, “you'll have the neighbors interested.”

When I look through the door she's left open, I can see the garden, and beyond that, other gardens, whole lines of them. Moss would have liked it here, on the edge of everything, where there's a quiet I've never known, a quiet that makes me wonder how I ever put up with the noise, how I ever lived in those courts without losing my wits about them. Here we have it all—the green and the air—without even the bother of the landlady, who goes to collect her rates from Frederick direct, at his own flat by the mill. This is where Mary has come from: Frederick's public chambers.

“Bitch! Bitch! Bitch!”

I close the door, walk round the sofa, and fold my arms over her. “What's wrong with you?”

She's pounding the cushion. “Bitch! Bitch!”

Sighing, I go and wet some tea. Then I sit and bide for her at the table. She comes in when she hears the rattling of the spoon against the cup.

“The Marxes have got a new maid,” she says.

“So?”

“Sent over from Germany by Jenny's mother. Helen's her name but they call her Nim.”

“Why Nim?”

“They like those sorts of games.”

“They do? And what about her, this Nim?”

“She's had a babby.”

Frederick. My inklings flock to him like moths to a lamp. I'm already counting back the nine months to October and trying to remember, was he in London or where?

She pushes back from the table to get her lungs into the wail. “She's called the bastard Freddy!” She tears at her hair, thumps at her breast. “The ugly tart has called him Freddy!”

Now, I think. Now, final, she will lose her faith in him.

I stand up. As it is when there's a death, the tasks lie clear before me. “That's it,” I says. “We're leaving this place.”

She stops her wailing sudden. Grapples at her throat. “Leaving?”

“We're not staying here a minute longer. Pack your things.”

“Lizzie, hold a moment.” She stands and reaches out for me, but I step from her.

“Do as I say, Mary.”

“Hearken to me, Lizzie.”

“I don't want to hear any more.”

“It's to be fostered out. He's going to pay its way, but he'll not have anything to do with it. We'll not ever have to lay eyes on it. It'll be like it didn't happen.”

“Did he tell you all this himself? Are these words from his own mouth?”

“Isn't it better I heard it from him?”

I feel sick. “Mary, clamp it now. I don't want to hear it.”

I go into the living room and open the window: breeze in the trees and birdsong. There's such things here. It was grand while it lasted.

“Where do you want us to go?” she says, coming in on me. “I don't know and I don't care. But it's not for us here. I don't want another penny of that man's mint.”

“But, Lizzie—”

“Sorry, Mary, I'll not do it. I'll not stand here and hearken to you defend the wrong thing again.”

“Lizzie, you wicked bitch.” She grabs my hoop with both her hands.

Pulling free, my stitches shred. “You'll pay for that,” I says.

“Jealous is all you are, Lizzie Burns. You've always been jealous of me.”

“Give it over,” I says, making to walk out.

“You've always wanted him.”

“Don't start this, Mary,” I says from the door. “You know well how I feel about him and his kind.”

“The kind that puts you up and pays for your meat and gravy?”

“The kind that puts his hand on your arse in public, as if it's the most natural thing, and then asks to be a called a gent.”

“Fine sentiments, Lizzie. But where are they when he hands over the rates?”

“That's to be no more. Things can't go on as they are. Mr. Engels is none of our sweat and blood, nor any way connected with us. We owe him naught. We can leave here now and still keep our heads up.”

“We? I'm not going anyplace. All the matter needs is time to be forgot.”

I'm gone, through the kitchen and into the yard, for I can't be doing with it.

She follows after me. “Lizzie, hearken to me, for pity's sake.”

“There's no sugaring this over, Mary. There's no forgiving it.”

“The child is to be given away. Nim is to keep her position. Naught has to change, if we just keep our cool and try not to look too long at it.”

Furious, I cross to the plot and go through the pantomime of checking on the cabbages. My hands have minds to tear them all up. “Here's what I tell you, Mary Burns. He'll not be for taking a wife, not ever.”

She laughs.
Laughs.
“You think me a dullard? You think I don't know that?”

“I think you a fool to yourself.”

“I love him.”

“You ought be ashamed, still wanting the company of such a man.”

“Did you hear me? I love him.”

“Nay. What it is, you've already built too much onto him and you can't bear to have it fall down about you. I can see the dreams he lets you have. Hag-rode you are, by visions of the high life. You'll not go back to the old way, in town, that's what's wrong with you. You're spoilt and you'll not go back.”

She takes my shoulder, twists me round. “And you, Lizzie, would you go back?”

I can't look at her but have to look over her. Over the roof to where the clear sky, the clearest blue sky, is blurring.

“Tell me, Lizzie, what's the fear in you?”

“Oh, Mary.” I look at her now, and through my tears I see her calm and composed. “What if he goes and does another flit? Back to Germany or wherever else?”

She shakes her head. “What can he ever do to me that I've not already survived?”

“Every time he'll find a new way of hurting you.”

“And me, I'll find a new way of keeping him.” She pats her belly. “My turn will come.”

Unbelieving, I watch her smile. I've never seen a lass so beaten, nor so resolved.

She kisses me and turns to go back inside.

I look down at the cabbages. “If I ever set eyes on that German hooer, I'll—”