Our Lizzie (15 page)

He banished Edith from his mind, as he usually did at work. He was going to enjoy teasing Miss Emma Harper. So prim and ladylike, though not too ladylike to get her hands dirty. And pretty as well. It'd be a pleasure to have her around.

*   *   *

Lizzie continued to turn to Polly for companionship and the two of them often went for walks together when it was fine, just to get out of the house and away from their mam's sour comments about anything and everything. Polly never said much, but she was a good listener and Lizzie always had plenty to talk about from what had happened in the shop.

“I don't think I'd do very well in a shop,” Polly said thoughtfully one day. “I'm not quick enough at sums.”

There was no denying that, Lizzie admitted to herself. “What do you want to do, then?”

Polly stopped walking for a minute to think things over, then decided to confide in Lizzie. “I think I'd like to go into service, actually.”

“What, do housework all day? I'd go mad.”

“Women do housework all day when they're married,” Polly pointed out. “And they don't get paid for it then. I like doing housework an' Mam's told me what it was like in service. I think it'd suit me just fine. She says rich folk can't always find maids nowadays, because modern girls don't want that sort of job, so I'd have no trouble getting a place, I reckon. I think I'd like to work in a big house, though, where there were other people to talk to, not get a place as a general. I wouldn't like to work on my own all the time.”

“But you'd have to go away from home if you did that. You'd have to go and live in!” Lizzie was horrified at the mere thought of losing her sister's company.

“I wouldn't mind that—except for missing you.” Polly certainly wouldn't miss her mother shouting at her and slapping her. And she wouldn't miss Johnny, either. He was a sneaky little devil, Johnny was, and she'd caught him trying to break into her savings box the other day. Now, Miss Harper kept it for her up in the attic room and even Mam didn't know where it was.

“Well, I'd mind. I'd miss you a lot.” Lizzie scowled and walked along for a minute or two in silence before cheering up again. “But you've got a year or two before you have to think about that, Polly. Eeh, you're as bad as our Eva, for planning ahead. You're only just turned twelve now. You might change your mind when you get older.”

Polly shook her head. “I don't think I will.”

*   *   *

While Lizzie and Polly were drawing closer, Eva was feeling more and more distanced from her family. She loved school, and being with her friend and mentor, Alice Blake, but she absolutely hated the time she spent at home.

With her third year at secondary school approaching, Eva had to work out what to do afterwards. What she really wanted was to train as a teacher, but her mother had already started hinting about clerical work.

“I don't fancy office work,” Eva said one day.

“You'll do as you're told, young lady!” Meg snapped. “I don't know what the world's coming to when uppity young madams,” she scowled sideways at Lizzie, “cheek their mothers and tell them what they want—
want
, indeed. You should think yourself lucky to have a roof over your head. That secondary school has given you some very airy-fairy ideas. If I had my way, you'd be leaving this year, not next. No! I don't want to hear any more cheek from you. Just get that table cleared, then do the darning.”

“But I have some homework to do.”

“Well, it'll have to wait, won't it? Sometimes you must do things for others, instead of expecting them to do things for you all the time. I work my fingers to the bone for you children, I do that. It's a poor look-out if I can't have an hour off now and then.” And she slammed the mending basket down in front of Eva and stamped up the stairs to get ready to go out with Fanny Preston. They always sat together in the Hare and Hounds, making disparaging comments about the world and exchanging gossip. Whenever Sam came in, he'd buy them a half of stout each. Otherwise they'd make one or two glasses last all evening.

“I'll help you with the mending, Eva,” Polly said, coming in with her hands still damp and reddened from the washing-up. “I don't mind.”

Lizzie came to sit at the other side of the table. “When's the homework due?”

“Tomorrow.”

“I'd offer to help as well, but Mam would soon notice the difference between my darning and yours.”

“Go and do your homework,” Polly urged. “I like mending. It makes me feel peaceful.”

“Thanks,” Eva said gruffly. “You're all right, you two.”

“Tell that to Mam,” Lizzie said sourly.

“There's no telling anything to her.”

Chapter Eight

1911–1912

Emma Harper found working for James Cardwell disconcerting. It was a while before she thought of a word that satisfied her, but that one did.

“Ah, you're here at last!” was the greeting he gave her the first day.

“What do you mean ‘at last'? It's not quite nine o'clock.”

“Well, we start work in the yard at eight o'clock, so I expect you to be here by that time, too.”

She took off her coat to give herself a moment to think and by the time it was neatly folded over her arm, had decided not to take any bullying from him. “You said nothing about hours, so I assumed it'd be the standard nine o'clock start. Perhaps you'd like to discuss the hours with me now? And am I to work in here?” She gestured around her then looked pointedly at her coat.

He looked round, really looked. “Mmm. It's a right old mess, this place. Put that coat back on. We'll have to go out.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Put—your coat—back on!” He took it off her arm and shook it at her.

“But where are we going?”

“To buy some new office furniture.”

She snatched her coat back from him and put it down on the desk. “Before we go out, shouldn't we make a list of what we need?”

He scowled. “Are you looking a gift horse in the mouth, Miss Harper?”

“I'm suggesting we work out what we need before we buy anything. I shan't know yet, since I've only spent a few hours here. But if you know what furniture and equipment to buy, that's fine by me.” She picked up a pencil and found a scrap of paper.

He perched on a corner of the desk, grinning. “Oh. I thought you'd know all that—being such a superior sort of clerical worker.”

“Sarcasm is unnecessary, Mr. Cardwell. I shall probably know a lot more by the end of the week. Though,” she frowned at the desk, “with this being in such public view, a modesty panel would be useful.”

“
Modesty
panel?”

“Yes, a board across the front, so that I don't need to sit with my knees pressed together all the time.” She couldn't help smiling at his expression.

He bent to study the desk. “I'll fit something temporary. But we'll get you a new desk—put it on your list. Item: one desk. Large and imposing, to impress clients. And you'd better put chairs for customers on your list, too. Sometimes they arrive before I'm ready for them, then the lad has to scrabble round to find them chairs from the kitchen.”

Emma picked up a piece of paper and scribbled on it. “Anything else?”

He shrugged. “A plant maybe. A picture for the wall, too.
Not
the King and Queen! Whatever we need to make this place look more attractive. You're a woman—you should have a few ideas about that.
Don't sit down!
”

She froze, wondering what on earth had got into him now.

“I've got a bit of wood panelling which'll be just right for your modesty panel.” He chuckled. “If you go and get us all a cup of tea, it'll be finished by the time we've drunk it—well, nearly. I'll give it a coat of varnish just before I go home tonight.”

“Who's ‘us all'?”

“Me, Walter, Tim—no, he's out on a job—and young Ned.”

“Right.” Emma walked through to the kitchen, which was in nearly as bad a state as the first time she'd come here. Clicking her tongue in annoyance, she put the kettle on and automatically began to clear up. She and Blanche had learned early on in their stay with the Kershaws that the only way to stay comfortable in cramped surroundings was to keep tidy all the time. Now, it was second nature to her.

When banging noises echoed from the front room, she went to peer through the door and found James Cardwell on his knees in front of her desk attaching a cross piece to the legs. A big panel of wood lay on the floor.

He looked up as she came in. “This be all right for a temporary job? Modest enough for you?”

She ignored that gibe. “It'll be fine, thank you, Mr. Cardwell.”

When she brought the tea, Walter, who seemed to be a man of few words, tasted it cautiously, then relaxed. “Good.” He took a loud slurp.

James grinned. “You'll win his heart yet, Miss Harper. Great one for his cuppa, is our Walter.”

She sipped her own tea, still feeling like a stranger. “I hope my duties will include more than making cups of tea and lists of furniture?”

“They certainly will. And when young Ned's arm is better, you can teach him to make a decent brew-up instead. Your time is more valuable to Cardwell's. Oh, and will you put an advert in the paper for someone to clean here regularly?”

“Well…” She looked at him cautiously.

“Spit it out.”

“There may be no need to spend money on an advert. One of my landlady's neighbours works as a cleaner. Mrs. Holden has a personal hatred of dirt, though she's a bit of a gossip.” Lizzie still hated the Holdens, but Emma thought the mother was an honest soul and struggling like many others to keep her unruly family decent. The eldest daughter had just had to get married and young Mary was boy-mad—unlike Lizzie, who was very immature still in some ways.

“Tell her to come and see me, then. Anything to save myself the cost of an advert.”

Mr. Cardwell was mocking her again. He seemed to have a very wayward sense of humour. She wasn't sure she liked that. “Very well.”

“But before you do, you'd better decide how often we'll need her services and how much I'm to pay her.”

Emma inclined her head and took another sip of tea.

Walter gave the panel a kick by way of indicating that it was firmly fixed. “Bit o' varnish tonight.” Nodding to Emma, he put his cup and saucer on the table and shambled out towards the back.

“Welcome to Cardwell's, Miss Emma Harper!” James said softly, lifting his cup in a mock toast. “I hope you enjoy working here.”

“I hope I do, too.” She wasn't at all sure about that, but she was prepared to give it a good try. “Perhaps you'll explain some of my duties now?”

*   *   *

The Kershaws celebrated Lizzie's sixteenth birthday in March 1912 with a cake made by Polly and a few presents. Lizzie felt it appropriate to put her hair up from now on, a sign she considered herself grown-up. She had experimented with hairstyles and, with Polly and Emma Harper's help, had found a way of fastening her hair neatly on the crown of her head. She was very pleased with the result.

“You look lovely,” Polly said admiringly when her sister came down to show it off on her birthday.

Meg Kershaw stared at Lizzie with a sour expression. “Who said you could put your hair up?”

“I'm sixteen now.”

“Well, I don't want you putting your hair up yet. You're too young.”

Lizzie gave her a long, level look, but said nothing.

Meg let out a scornful laugh. “And besides the fact that I haven't given you permission, it'll soon fall down and look messy. Your hair always does. Besides, it doesn't suit you like that, makes your face look even narrower. So you can just take it down and tie it back with a ribbon again.”

“I like it up.” Lizzie stared right back at her mother. “And I'm not taking it down.”

“You'll do as you're told.”

“I don't see why it makes any difference to you. You don't usually care what I do. You're just saying that to hurt me.” Fine birthday she was going to have with her mother in this sort of mood.

“How dare you speak to me like that? Who do you think you are?”

When her mother raised her hand, Lizzie stepped back and said quickly, “If you hit me again, I'll hit you back.” And had to prove that. Which made her mother shriek for Percy.

He came running in from the front room, to find Lizzie, cheeks dead white, with a fierce look in her eyes, standing rigid next to the kitchen table, Polly sobbing quietly in one corner and his mother collapsed in a chair weeping hysterically. He chose to deal with his mother first. “Wait for me in the front room, young lady,” he snapped at Lizzie.

She shrugged and walked out.

“Polly, can you go and play out or something?”

She chose to go upstairs and listen from the landing.

He sat down next to his mother, holding her hand and patting it gently while Meg told her tale. Percy was quite horrified at what she had to say.

When he found Lizzie, sitting in the front room staring stonily into the empty hearth, he burst out, “What on earth got into you? To hit your own mother. Shame on you!” even before he had closed the door behind him.

She didn't shout at him, or cry, just stared at him.

“Lizzie? Answer me.”

“I will if you're going to listen to my side of the tale. Or have you judged me guilty and sentenced me to hang already?”

“Anyone would be shocked at a lass hitting her own mother.”

“But not shocked if she hits me?”

“She's your mother. She has the right.”

Lizzie took a deep breath. “Then perhaps I'd better go and find myself some lodgings, because I'm not putting up with it any more.”