Eve and Her Sisters (18 page)

By the time the reality of a bloodbath at the French town of Mons hit the newspapers, followed by the Russian army suffering a terrible defeat on the Eastern Front at Tannenberg and the British army calling for five hundred thousand more men, the war had taken a back seat in Eve’s eyes. In the middle of September, Mary didn’t return from her half-day off with Kitty. When Caleb knocked the family up at eleven o’clock, he discovered Kitty hadn’t seen Mary all day. Furthermore, Mary hadn’t kept her company for some weeks. Kitty thought Mary had a beau but she had been very cagey about him. At midnight Eve found the letter Mary had left for her on the bed in their attic room. It was short and to the point.

‘But where could she have gone?’ Eve looked at Caleb. He had come running upstairs when she had called his name and had just finished reading the note she’d thrust at him. ‘We have to find her before she gets too far.’

He remained quite still for another moment and then lifted his eyes to hers, his face chalk-white. His voice deep and bitter, he said,‘This is no sudden decision, Eve. She’s thought this through. She’ll be long gone.’

‘But we have to try.’ Eve’s heart was pounding like a drum and she felt sick. For a moment, just the merest fraction of a second, she’d felt a bolt of elation shoot through her as she’d read the scribbled words. Now the guilt was crucifying. Her own sister, her baby sister. How could she be glad she’d gone? What sort of a person was she? But she wasn’t glad, she told herself feverishly. She would do anything to get Mary back.Anything.They had to search for her until they found her.

After a sleepless night Eve and Caleb knocked on Nell’s door first thing in the morning to impart the news. Nell and Toby were having breakfast, and when Nell revealed the conversation she’d had with Mary after the first fiasco, Caleb and Toby nearly came to blows when Caleb shouted at Nell for not speaking sooner.

‘And what good would that have done?’ Nell rounded on Caleb as she pushed Toby down in his seat at the kitchen table. ‘I told you, she was determined to go. It was just a matter of when, you couldn’t have stopped her. What were you going to do? Treat her like a prisoner the last couple of years? Lock her in a room? Not let her leave the house? Eve would have been worried sick the whole time if I’d said anything and it wouldn’t have made any difference.’ She stepped closer to Caleb, her voice harsh as she said, ‘You have never seen her for who she is. Oh aye, she’s as pretty as a picture and charm itself when she wants to be, but she’s selfish through and through. She always has been. But you’ve never seen that, have you?’

Caleb stared into the angry face of Mary’s sister. He wanted to shout at her that he knew exactly what Mary was like, that she was everything he had ever wanted and always would, but he did not. Neither would he admit to himself that Mary going like that, without a word to him, without even mentioning him in the letter she had left for Eve, had been a body blow. She had walked away from him without a second thought and it had left him feeling like murder. If he could get hold of this man she’d flown off with he would kill him. He would kill them both. No, no, he wouldn’t hurt a hair on her head, would he? Suddenly he didn’t know himself and it was frightening.

‘Nell, all that doesn’t matter now. We have to find her.’

Nell looked at Eve and for a moment she wanted to shake her until her teeth rattled. Her voice still harsh, she said, ‘Why, Eve? So she can run away again in a month or six or a year? When are you going to wake up to the fact that she is as she is and not as you would like her to be? She was born wayward and you know it.’As Eve made a movement of protest, Nell continued, ‘Oh, I know all that with Josiah wasn’t her fault but, that apart, she’s got a way with her and you know it. That man, Nicholas whatever his name was, he was old, Eve. Too old to be satisfied with a kiss and holding hands from a young beautiful lass like Mary.You know it and I know it.’

Caleb stood up suddenly and as he did so Toby rose too, but Caleb did not speak or turn to Nell but walked straight out of the house.

Her voice quiet, Nell said, ‘He doesn’t want to hear the truth because he’s under her spell too.You do know that, don’t you? That he only ever had eyes for her?’

Eve looked at her sister. There was a question in the words that she pretended not to understand.‘He’s always looked after her,’ she said flatly. ‘He’s looked after all of us.’

‘None of us need looking after, Eve.’ Nell sat down with a little thud in the chair next to her sister. Signalling with her eyes for Toby to make himself scarce, she waited until he had left the kitchen before she said, ‘Mary said something else that time, something I couldn’t say in front of Caleb. She said you were in love with him. Are you, lass?’

Eve remained completely still for a full ten seconds. Then she lifted her face to Nell. Nell read what was there and her voice was soft as she muttered, ‘Oh, lass, lass.’

‘He mustn’t know, no one must know. Promise me, Nell.’

‘They won’t from me, lass. I’d as soon cut out me own tongue. But I wish from the bottom of me it weren’t so, lass.’

‘Nell, I felt . . . When I knew she’d gone, when I read the letter I felt . . .’

‘Relieved? Pleased?’

Eve nodded, her face awash with tears. ‘Only for a moment but it was there. How could I think like that?’

‘Oh, lass, don’t take on so. If you want the honest truth, I feel like that meself and I’m not in love with Caleb.’ Nell grimaced but Eve couldn’t smile. ‘Look, lass.’ Nell took her sister’s hands in her own, squeezing them as she said, ‘She was always going to go. Like that letter said, she could never be happy here. She wants - well, I don’t know what she does want but it’s not here. Bright lights, nice clothes, living in a grand house, that’s her. And likely she’ll get it an’ all, looking like she does.’

‘Nell, she’s working class. Her voice will always give that away as soon as she opens her mouth. Lassies, even ones as beautiful as Mary, don’t marry into the gentry.’

‘There’s working class that have pulled themselves out of the gutter and rub noses with the nobs. Look at the Jefferson chemical works, he had nothing to start with but now he owns half of the town and his wife’s the daughter of a miner.’

‘And for every Jefferson there’s a hundred men who’ll just take advantage of her. If . . . if what we suspect is true and she allowed that Nicholas man liberties, she’ll probably allow this other one the same thing.’

‘You can’t do nowt about that.’ Nell shook Eve’s hands. ‘You can’t, lass. Like I said to Caleb, you have to see her as she is, not as you’d like her to be. The thing is you’ve been part sister, part mam to her, to both of us. It’s been harder for you to accept that side of her because of it.You’ve not been able to see the wood for the trees.’

Eve smiled shakily. ‘You’re a wise old bird on the quiet, Nell.’

‘Aye, that’s me. Like my mother-in-law said the other day, I’m sixteen going on sixty. But she meant it as a compliment. I think.’ Nell made a funny face again and this time they both laughed.

‘I like Toby’s mam.’

‘Aye, so do I. She’s not as straight-laced as the menfolk, I don’t have to watch me ps and qs with her in the same way I do them. Mind, they’re nice enough, I’m saying nowt against them. They’re just a bit stiff and proper what with Toby’s da being a lay preacher an’ all, and one of his brothers being a deputy at the pit. They feel there’s things to live up to, I suppose.’

‘But Toby isn’t straight-laced.’

‘Oh no, my Toby’s all right.’ They were simple words, but the look on Nell’s face as she spoke her husband’s name told Eve there was nothing wrong with Nell’s marriage. And she was glad, so glad for her sister, even as she wondered what it must be like to be adored.

When she left Nell’s house a minute or two later, Caleb was nowhere to be seen. On the way back to the inn in the warm September sunshine, Eve made up her mind on a number of issues.

She would leave no stone unturned in trying to find Mary, but if it was to no avail then she would have to accept the wisdom in what Nell had said. Mary had been determined to go, that much was for sure, and perhaps they all had to come to terms with the fact that Mary had chosen her own path. It was just that fifteen was so young. Eve bit down hard on her lip, sighing.

She would continue as she was at the inn, she could do nothing else. And maybe, now that Mary had made it so clear she could not live in Washington, Caleb would begin to accept there was no hope in that direction.Time healed and changed things. Didn’t it? Aye, it did, and that’s what she had to believe over this.

She glanced down at the frock she was wearing. It was a little faded, being one of two work dresses she wore in the kitchen. She would buy some nice material when she next called at the haberdashery in New Washington and make herself a couple of new frocks; it was long past time she did so. She nodded mentally to the thought. However things turned out with Mary, whether they managed to find her and bring her home or she came back of her own accord, it was time she started to take care of herself. She would never be a beauty and she wouldn’t pretend to try, but she was young. She wasn’t nineteen yet. She had got into the habit of not bothering with how she looked, feeling it was pointless, but that was self-defeating. Nell had said she’d been part sister and part mother to them and she was right, but the time for that was over.

She thought back to something Caleb had said a month ago when they had been discussing something or other. ‘An old head on young shoulders, that’s what you’ve got.’ He had smiled at her, shaking his head as though it was something to be faintly ashamed of. No, not ashamed of exactly, she corrected herself in the next moment. But to be pitied almost. Well, she didn’t want his pity. Her chin came up and her green eyes with their short dark lashes narrowed. She would prefer anything, even him actually disliking her, to pity.

When she walked into the kitchen of the inn she could hear the sound of raised voices from the direction of Mildred’s room. There had been no point in waking Mildred the night before to tell her about Mary, and when she had taken Caleb’s mother her bowl of hot water for washing that morning Mildred had merely grunted and rolled over in bed.Then she and Caleb had left for Nell’s. But it was clear he’d come back and broken the news.

She walked along the passageway and was about to enter the room, Mildred’s door being slightly ajar, when the sound of her own name spoken with some venom caused her to freeze.

‘You blame me for spoiling the lass, I know, but it wasn’t me who’s driven her away but that Eve.’ Mildred fairly spat her name out.‘I got her measure the minute I laid eyes on her. Eaten up with jealousy against the lass, she is, and is it any wonder looking like she does? One as bonny as a picture and the other like a scrag end.’

‘Shut your mouth.’ Caleb’s voice was low and deep. ‘I’ve told you, you’ll go too far one day.’

‘Me go too far? And what about her? Keeping Mary working from dawn to dusk and never a kind word, I’ll be bound.That bonny little lass was made for better things than being a kitchen maid and you know it. No wonder she couldn’t stand it. And you say
I
encouraged her? I just tried to make her life bearable, that’s all. But that, that
scarecrow
—’

‘Another word and you’ll regret it, Mam. I’m warning you.’

Eve turned and fled on silent feet through the house and into the yard. The sun was still shining, the air mellow and warm. She stood for a moment gasping, as though she had been held under water for a long time. A
scarecrow.
Was that how people saw her? Was that how
he
saw her? She felt herself diminishing, shrivelling into nothing as the world around her seemed to get bigger and she smaller.

She stood for some minutes, her hands clenched at her side as she struggled to control the desire to curl up in a little ball and die.The words Mildred had spoken whirled about in her head as she stared before her dry-eyed. And it was the fledgling individual deep inside her who had strived for life that morning, the girl who had thought she could maybe, just maybe, become more than friend to him at some time in the distant future, that she addressed when she muttered bitterly, ‘New frocks. Huh.’

 

Exactly two weeks later Caleb walked into the kitchen and told her he had enlisted. Eve stared at him, too shocked to react.

He pulled out a hard-backed chair from under the kitchen table and sat down, staring across the kitchen but not at her as he said, ‘I have to get away, Eve. I’m sorry but I have to. I know it’s not fair leaving you to cope with the inn and Mother and all, but I’ll get someone in to run things. It won’t all be on your shoulders. I’ll make sure of that, I promise you.’

She sat down too because her legs felt too weak to hold her but still she didn’t speak. She could not.

‘I’ll be in a battalion of the Durham Light Infantry alongside other lads from the north-east, so the sergeant said. Course there’s training first. That’ll be for a few weeks.’

‘When . . .’ She had to clear her throat. ‘When do you go?’

‘For training? In the next week. Apparently there’s some hoo-ha about the poor state of training accommodation and more centres are being built, but I’ve got one the other side of Newcastle. I should be able to nip back when I get leave.’