Our Lizzie (29 page)

Lizzie got her breath back. “Well, you can just unmake that appointment! There's nothing wrong with my teeth, nothing at all.” She'd seen old women without their teeth and the thought of having only pink gums filled her with horror and revulsion.

“I'd rather you had them out,” said Sam, mildly for him.

“Well, I'll not do it.”

Veins swelled in his forehead. “You'll do as you're bloody well told!”

She bounced away from him on the couch. “Not when it's something daft, I won't.” Suddenly she felt afraid. “Sam, don't,” she quavered. “Don't look at me like that.”

He snorted angrily. “I want to do what's best for us.”

“But—but why spend money on having my teeth out?”

“I told you—to save money later.” As Lizzie opened her mouth to protest again, he held up one hand. “I'll call for you at the shop tomorrow and come with you. You've no need to be afraid. I'll be there with you all the time.”

Even through her fear, she could not agree. “You'll go there on your own then, Sam Thoxby! I'm not doing owt so daft, for you or for anyone.”

He took hold of her and shook her. “We're doing things properly!”

Percy came in, holding the newspaper. “Sam, I just read—” He stopped in astonishment, for it was obvious they were quarrelling. And he didn't like to see Sam lay hands on his sister, either. That was no way to settle an argument.

“Tell her not to be so daft,” Sam said, trying to hold on to the remnants of his temper but not letting go of his intended's shoulders.

“Lizzie?” Percy's tone sounded a warning as well as asking a question.

She glared at them both. “He wants me to have my teeth out.
All my teeth
. Like an old woman! And I'm not doing it, and nothing he can say or do will make me. It's just plain stupid, that is.”

“Sam, lad—” Percy frowned at the black anger on his friend's face. “Why? I mean, false teeth are expensive and—and our family has good strong teeth. There's nowt wrong with mine and I doubt there's anything wrong with our Lizzie's, either. Even Mam's got most of hers still. It's a waste of good money and—”

“Sid Barnes said—”

Lizzie stood up and stormed towards the door. Men sticking together as usual. “You two can discuss it all you like. They're
my
teeth and I'm keeping them.” She reached the door just as Sam stood up, and turned to say loftily, “I'm going upstairs. If you can't talk any sense into him, Percy, the wedding's off.”

But Sam strode across the room, caught hold of her skirt and dragged her back inside. “Stay here, you! Leave us alone, Percy, will you?”

Lizzie looked pleadingly at her brother, who shook his head and went out. You didn't interfere between man and wife, which was what these two nearly were.

Feeling betrayed, Lizzie turned to Sam, lips tight with determination. “I won't do it.”

“I'll think about it,” he said. “But if I decide it's right, you'll do it—this and anything else I tell you to.”

She looked at him with that new, mature expression on her face again. “I can never do something daft just because someone else tells me to do it, Sam, whether he's my husband or not.” She wished her voice hadn't wobbled, but he looked so big and angry. “So if I'm not going to be the sort of wife you want, you'd better say so now.”

Too fast, a voice said inside his head. You pushed it too fast this time. “You're exactly the kind of wife I want. Only, you must learn to mind what I say. It's a wife's duty to obey her husband. That's what they make you promise in that bloody church.”

Lizzie laid one hand pleadingly on his chest, “Oh, Sam, you wouldn't want a wife so stupid that anyone could persuade her to do anything, whether it was right or not? Surely you wouldn't?”

“A man is master in his own house.” He saw her lips set stubbornly and for a moment was reminded of the little lass who had walked along the top of that wall, so long ago.

She shook her head again. “Well, I'll still not do something stupid, not even to please you, Sam.” She tried to pull away, but he wouldn't let her go.

Admiring the fire in her eyes, he drew her slowly towards him. “Eeh, lass, you'd try the temper of a saint, you would. And I'm no saint.”

The air between them was suddenly charged with tension and his mood changed, breathing quickening and that familiar feeling of need tugging at his loins.

She opened her mouth to protest again, but he closed it with his own, kissing her till she could hardly stand upright. He laughed then, all temper gone.

For the first time Lizzie had felt a surge of physical longing and she didn't know what to do. With her usual candour, she gasped, “Sam—you make me feel—funny.” She indicated her belly. “Inside.”

“Good. I'll make you feel even funnier before I'm through, lass. Right inside you.”

And seeing the white teeth gleaming in her soft pink mouth, he decided abruptly that Sid Barnes had been wrong. His gran had had no teeth. Her sunken mouth had looked horrible.

Mind you, that didn't change the fact that Lizzie had defied him.

But now wasn't the time for a lesson in obedience, it was a time for lessons in love. He pulled her towards him again, rejoicing that she was at last showing signs of responding as he wanted her to. He knew she was a virgin, and she'd be one till their wedding night, he was determined on that. It was part of his plan to have a wife as unlike his mother as possible. But afterwards, he'd have Lizzie in every way he wanted. And he'd train her to be so tame she'd stand on her head if he told her to.

“Come here,” he said huskily. And this time she did as he told her.

Chapter Sixteen

December 1913

On the Wednesday before she stopped working at Dearden's, Sam came to collect Lizzie after work and she rushed out to meet him. “Mrs. D says you're to come in. She wants to drink our health and give us our present.”

“But—” The protest that he wouldn't even stop to piss on Peter Dearden's floor died in his throat. Mrs. D was already waiting just inside the door, so he couldn't refuse without giving offence or putting himself in the wrong.

“Mrs. D, you haven't really met my Sam,” Lizzie said brightly, tugging him through the doorway.

His smile became a sneer for a moment because they had met once when he was a lad. Sally Dearden had clouted him round the ears in the school yard and told him to stop fratching with her Peter. She'd clouted her son, too, and said the same thing to him, which had made Sam snigger afterwards.

A quick glance around revealed there were other people in the shop looking at him so he held out one hand. “Glad to meet you properly, missus. My Lizzie's been happy working here.”

“She's a good little worker. If ever she needs a job, she's got one here.”

“Oh, she won't need to work again. I can keep a wife in comfort and,” he patted his belly suggestively, “I hope my lass will soon have other things to keep her busy.”

Lizzie blushed and stared at the ground, wishing he wouldn't say things like this. But he seemed really eager to start a family and had refused even to consider using the preventive methods that Mrs. D, in a motherly talk, had told her about. Lizzie would rather have postponed that side of things for a bit.

Sally turned and said brightly to Peter, “You remember Sam from school, don't you, love?”

“Oh, yes. I'll never forget those days,” he said. “Never.” Not even for Lizzie, of whom he had grown really fond, could he force a genuine smile to his face.

Sam turned to stare at him. “Neither will I, lad. Neither will I.”

Sally intervened again, sensing the undercurrents of antagonism. The two of them should have forgotten those childish quarrels by now! “And you know my other son, Jack?”

He nodded indifferently to the younger lad. “We've met before. How do?”

Jack nodded, his bearing as stiff as his brother's.

“Well, I'd like to drink your health and give you your present,” Sally said, abandoning the attempt to include her sons in the celebrations. “I have a nice bottle of port upstairs, if you'd like to follow me, Mr. Thoxby? My husband can't get about much at the moment, so he's waiting for us up there. Peter—I can leave you to lock up, can't I?”

He nodded. But he stood and watched them cross the shop and go out at the back before he returned to work. Lizzie looked so small against Sam's bulk, so bright and alive against his heaviness. It was like—like sacrificing a virgin in the old days, offering her to an evil god. How could she ever be happy with that lout? And she deserved to be happy, because she was a plucky lass and always had been. He'd never forgotten the incident of the shoes.

He liked to see her serving in the shop, too. His father could talk about men making the best grocers, but Peter reckoned the customers enjoyed being served by Lizzie, with her wide smile and clever suggestions. He was sure most of them went out with more stuff than they'd intended to buy. And she didn't do it just to sell, but because she took an interest in her work. As Jack never did. He was going to have to have another word with his young brother, he was that. Mooning about, thinking of aeroplanes, when he should be giving the customers his full attention. He'd got some orders mixed up the previous day—again—which had upset their mother.

Upstairs, Sally introduced Sam to her husband, who didn't attempt to get up, just nodded his head and wheezed a greeting. She poured them each a glass of port and solemnly drank the couple's health. Then she handed them her present: a box of crystal tumblers which had Lizzie in raptures, so pretty were they.

After they'd left, Sally poured herself another glass, an unusual indulgence for her, and sipped it slowly. “That lass is in for trouble,” she confided in Bob. “Or I've never seen trouble on two legs.”

He watched her sip her port. “Eeh, you're still a lovely woman, Sally lass.”

She turned to him with a smile. “Now what brought that on?”

He gestured to himself. “What do you think?”

Her smile faded. “Oh, Bob.” She went to sit on the arm of his chair, leaning against him, hating the feel of his thin bony shoulders next to her plump softness. They both knew he hadn't long to live. But what was the use of going on about it? You just had to make the last few months as happy as you could. She forgot Lizzie for a while, just sat there with her fellow.

When Peter came up, he paused at the top of the stairs which led straight into the living room and grinned at them. “Are you two love-birds at it again?” he teased.

Bob winked. “Can't keep us apart, son, can't keep us apart.”

And the picture of his parents, juxtaposed against the picture of Sam guiding Lizzie out of the shop, showing the world who was in charge of that couple, haunted Peter's dreams that night. He wished—oh, hell, he didn't know what he wished. Just happiness for Lizzie, perhaps.

*   *   *

In a cosy cottage just outside Rochdale, Lizzie's sister Eva and her friend Alice Blake sat for longer than usual over their tea. “Two more days and Lizzie will be married,” Eva said. “I can hardly believe it.”

“She's very young to marry. And he's much older, isn't he?”

“Yes. A year or two older than our Percy.”

“Well, I suppose she must know her own mind.”

Eva wasn't so sure, but the request that she be an attendant at her sister's wedding had delighted her. It was ages since she'd seen her family, and surely her mother would be in a better mood on such a happy occasion? She frowned at the thought.

Alice smiled at her fondly. “You'll look lovely, dear. That new brassiere really gives you a good shape.”

Eva looked down complacently at her own figure. The brassiere, a waist-length contraption, called the “Sophronia,” did give her a good firm shape, without the constriction of a full corset. It was made of strong, twilled cotton with three ten-inch whalebones which you took out when washing it. And with the large button at the back and bring-round-the-front tapes, there was no worry about its coming undone by accident. She wished sometimes she didn't have such full breasts, but her mother had once said she was exactly like her father's mother in looks. Lizzie, of course, was like their mam, scrawny, without an ounce of fat, and probably always would be.

Eva twisted round to get a side view of herself, for she was still not used to the improvement, since brassieres were quite a new thing. “It was really kind of you to buy this for me, Alice.”

“You have to look smart if you're to be an attendant.” Alice Blake sighed. “I wish I could come with you, but your mother is so hostile.”

“I wish you could come, too.” Then Eva brightened. “But the weekend after, we'll go and have our photo taken together, me in my new dress and you in your Sunday best.”

Alice beamed at her. “That's a lovely idea. And I'll pay for a copy of the wedding photos for us, too. Tell Sam to order us an extra set.”

“I'll ask him.” Eva had already worked out that you didn't “tell” Sam Thoxby anything. She thought Lizzie was mad, marrying a man like him. If she had to get married, she should have chosen a gentler man, one she could manage.

Eva had no intention of ever marrying. Even after she had finished her training, she was going to stay here with Alice and have a comfortable life, instead of being a slave to some man. She got enormous satisfaction from teaching children, from helping the bright ones particularly, though there was another sort of satisfaction to be gained from taking a stubborn non-reader and forcing the child into learning its letters properly.

She yawned suddenly. “Well, I'd better get to bed early tonight, I think. I'm tired out with all these preparations. I'll have to leave straight after school tomorrow and won't get across to Overdale until ten o'clock, so it's going to be a long day.” For it was unthinkable to ask for a day off just to go to a sister's wedding.