Eve and Her Sisters (4 page)

‘You’d better sit yourself down and have some then. Eve will pour you a cup of tea now it’s mashed.’

As Eve did as she was told, she breathed out a silent sigh of relief. Mrs Finnigan was different to how she had been the night before and Mr Finnigan’s face had shown he was relieved too. Everything was going to be all right.

 

By the time Eve left the house later that morning for her appointment with the vicar, her stomach was churning with nerves at the forthcoming interview. It didn’t help that the day was dull and bitterly cold, the sky so low it seemed to be resting on the rooftops and the whole world grey. It had snowed on and off for the last few days, thawed, frozen, then snowed again, but overnight the frost had been severe and now the ground beneath her feet was a sheet of ice.

Mrs Finnigan’s mother opened the door immediately when Eve walked round to the back of the vicarage and knocked on the kitchen door as had been arranged. ‘Come in, lass, come in.’ Mrs Preston was as small as her daughter but much older than Eve had expected, she must have had Phoebe late in life. ‘By, it’s treacherous out, isn’t it? I won’t be sorry not to have to turn out of a morning after the weekend, I tell you.’

The kitchen was large and well furnished and everything was spotlessly clean. Eve rubbed her boots carefully on the mat as Mrs Preston went on, ‘The vicar is in his study. Mrs Cunningham, his wife, is out. She’s often out. In fact she’s rarely in.’

The sniff that followed this suggested Mrs Preston did not approve of the vicar’s wife’s absences but she said no more on the subject before continuing, ‘The vicar said to show you over the house and explain what your duties would be, should you suit. You’ll see him after.’ Moving her head closer as though someone might be listening, she added, ‘He’s a grand man, the vicar. A scholar, you know? He likes everything just so and why not?’

Eve nodded. She didn’t know what else to do.

‘She, Mrs Cunningham, won’t interfere with the running of the house so you’ll have no worries on that score. She’s chairwoman of umpteen different goings-on and a leading light in the town. A real do-gooder, you know what I mean?’

Again Eve nodded. She wondered why Mrs Preston didn’t like the vicar’s wife. Her tone had been quite different when she talked about the vicar, reverential even.

Ten minutes later they were back in the kitchen and Eve’s head was swimming with the list of dos and don’ts Mrs Preston had impressed on her. The house was beautiful.Three of the five bedrooms were not used; the vicar occupied one at the front of the house and his wife one at the back overlooking the grounds. But the drawing room, dining room and breakfast room, along with the two bedrooms and the vicar’s study - the only room Eve had not seen yet - had to be dusted and cleaned daily. She would be responsible for the laundry, ordering and buying food from the tradesmen who called at the vicarage every morning, and the cooking and serving of all meals apart from the late supper the vicar and his wife liked before retiring. This always consisted of cold meats, cheese and pickle and a light pudding which Eve must leave on covered plates on the cold slab in the pantry.

‘The tradesmen?’ Eve’s voice was low, almost a whisper. ‘How will I know what to buy? I don’t know what the vicar and Mrs Cunningham like.’

‘Don’t worry your head about things like that. I’ll tell you everything before you start.You’ll soon pick up what you don’t know.’ Mrs Preston patted her arm. ‘I’ve told the vicar he might have to be a little patient at first.’

This was clearly meant to reassure her. It didn’t. Eve was feeling utterly overwhelmed.

‘Now you must make sure you’re here in the morning by six thirty, lass. You’ll need to light the fires in the drawing room, the breakfast room and the vicar’s study, and see to the range. The dining room you can leave till mid-morning.The house has to be warm by the time they come down for their breakfast at eight o’clock. They don’t stand on ceremony when it’s just the two of them but occasionally one of the married children come with their bairns and then they breakfast in the dining room. Everything has to be in covered dishes then, like the gentry do.’

And so the instructions went on.

When Mrs Preston eventually knocked on the study door and ushered her into the vicar’s presence, Eve was half hoping she wouldn’t be offered the job. She felt sick with agitation and fear, and now she had to face this paragon who was barely human, if Mrs Preston was to be believed.

Half an hour later when she left the study, she felt a little more reassured. She had found the vicar to be a nice man, kindly. He had a funny, precise way of speaking and no northern burr to his voice, but he had smiled at her and had seemed concerned when she had related what had brought her here.

‘Dreadful business, the accident. Dreadful.’ He had shaken his bald pink head. ‘And you say this neighbour and his wife have taken you and your sisters into his home? Christian charity in operation. Good, good.’

He had informed her she would begin work at a weekly wage of six shillings for a six and a half day week. She would leave the vicarage at two in the afternoon on a Sunday. She would eat her midday meal in the kitchen once she had finished serving in the dining room.

Oh, and he would review her wage once the initial trial period was over, he’d added as she left the room. He had not mentioned how long he expected the trial period to last, but Eve did not mind. She had a
job
, that was the important thing. Now she could give Mr and Mrs Finnigan payment for their board and lodging. She didn’t mind what she did, how hard she worked or how long the hours as long as she and her sisters could stay together.

It was a blazing June. Spring had been cold and wet with acres of mud, but with the arrival of the long days and short nights the essence of summer was suddenly everywhere and the temperature had steadily risen throughout the month. Now the sunshine and dry air created trembling heat hazes and by midsummer’s day everyone was longing for a good thunderstorm to clear the air. None more so than poor Phoebe. Josiah’s wife was now in her last week of pregnancy and constantly exhausted, her tiny frame dominated by her huge belly.

Eve had become fond of Phoebe whom she had found to be very childlike in spite of having just had her twentieth birthday at the end of May. Phoebe constantly needed her husband’s approval in everything she did, and the more Eve had got to know the couple, the more she had been drawn to Phoebe and the less she had warmed to Josiah. She couldn’t put her finger on why exactly. Josiah was always friendly and Mary blatantly hero-worshipped him, partly due, Eve suspected, to the little presents of sweets and chocolate he always seemed to have in his pockets for the child.

When she turned into the back lane her nose wrinkled at the stink from the privies. No amount of hot ashes could neutralize the smell of human excrement with the heat so intense. She thought of the Cunninghams’ garden, the herbaceous borders full of lemon verbena, mignonette, lavender and all manner of sweet scented flowers, and the walls thick with climbing roses and jasmine. As had happened more often of late, her mind moved along an uncomfortable tangent.Why should families of ten or twelve be living in four rooms - two, some of them - with nowhere for the bairns to play but the narrow back lanes and alleys, and people like the vicar and his wife have all that space and a beautiful garden they rarely ventured into?

She knew what the vicar’s answer would be should she put the question to him. She had got to know his opinion about lots of things over the last months by listening to snippets of his conversation with friends who called at the house.

The vicar was of the mind that God decreed one’s station in life and if one was wise, one stuck to it. The poor, she had heard him declare when a group of them were discussing the Royal Commission’s proposals regarding the workhouses, were naturally of lesser intelligence and morally and physically enfeebled. Therefore it was every good Christian brother’s duty to treat them with kindness but firmness. She hadn’t agreed with this. She was discovering she didn’t agree with much that the vicar said.

She reached the gate leading into the Finnigans’ back yard. Even after four months it still felt strange not to be going next door, into the house where she had been born. Another family were living there now, they had moved in the day after she and her sisters had moved out. McCabe was their name and they seemed nice enough, although apparently Mr McCabe drank like a fish on pay day and his wife or one of the bairns had to go and get him out of the Frog and Fiddler every Friday night.

She was about to thrust open the gate when Nell, who had been playing with a group of bairns further up the lane, called her name. ‘Eve! Eve, I’ve been waiting for you to come.’

As Nell reached her, Eve said quietly, ‘Why aren’t you inside helping Phoebe with the dinner? I told you she’s ailing, what with the baby an’ all. She looked bad this morning.’

‘It wasn’t me, Mr Finnigan said to play outside.’ Nell’s voice was indignant. ‘Phoebe was in bed when me an’ Mary got home from school, an’ her mam was here. She’s took the twins home with her.’

‘Is the baby coming?’

‘No, least I don’t think so. Phoebe’s just feeling tired with the weather an’ all, her mam said. We stayed in the house till Mr Finnigan got home. The dinner was all ready to put in the oven, Phoebe’s mam had done it. Mr Finnigan said Mary would help him see to it and set the table and everything an’ I could go out to play. It wasn’t me who wanted to go, Eve.’

‘All right, all right.’ Eve was frowning but not at Nell. She wished Josiah would not persist in making fish of one and fowl of the other, but it was obvious Mary was his favourite. Maybe he thought the younger one needed a father figure more but it wasn’t the case. In spite of her size and bulk, Nell was still just a bairn. He sometimes slipped Mary a Saturday penny or two too, and was forever playing little games with her like shuggy boats when he crossed his knees and stuck a foot out and Mary clambered on to his foot and he held her hands as he hoisted her up and down. Admittedly he would find it hard to do that with Nell but if he couldn’t do it for one he shouldn’t do it for the other. She was going to have to say something. What, she didn’t know, because she couldn’t afford to offend him.

‘Come on.’ She smiled at her sister, tweaking the end of Nell’s snub nose. ‘Let’s go and see what’s what but quiet mind, Phoebe might still be asleep.’

They entered the scullery noiselessly and on opening the kitchen door found the room to be empty. Thinking that Josiah and Mary might be upstairs with Phoebe, Eve said to Nell, ‘Put the kettle on, lass. I’ll just go and see how Phoebe is and then I’ll make a pot of tea.And check the oven, would you? Something smells nice.’

She was still talking as she stepped into the hall. She was conscious of a sound, a sort of a scuffle, and as her head turned to the front-room door, it opened and Josiah stood there, Mary just behind him. ‘Oh.’ Eve blinked. ‘I thought you were upstairs.’ The front room was Phoebe’s pride and joy and sacrosanct, only used on high days and holidays. The day after they had moved in, Phoebe had taken them into the hallowed interior and proudly shown them the stiff horsehair suite, walnut china cabinet and enormous aspidistra on its small table which stood in the bay, the lace curtains behind it starched into permanent folds.

Josiah smiled. ‘I was showing Mary Phoebe’s figurines in the china cabinet, they fascinate her. Don’t they, Mary?’ he added, turning his head.

Eve looked at Mary. She was standing quite still and she looked a little white.‘Are you all right, hinny?’ she said gently. ‘You look peaky.’

‘She’s got the stomach ache.’ Josiah still kept his eyes on Mary. ‘That’s why I suggested we look at the china cabinet, I thought it’d take her mind off how she was feeling. That’s right, isn’t it, lass?’

Mary nodded.

‘It’s likely the heat,’ he continued, stepping forward. Eve moved aside. ‘It’s getting everyone down. I’m all for a bit of sunshine but you can have too much of a good thing.’

He was still smiling and Eve didn’t know what had caused the odd feeling inside her, an uneasy odd feeling, but then Nell called that the cow heel pie was in danger of burning and should she lift it out of the oven. In the ensuing bustle to save their dinner, the moment was put aside.

Later that evening as Nell and Mary were getting ready for bed, Phoebe began to have pains and the midwife was called. At five o’clock in the morning Eve was woken by a baby’s cry. She had been dozing on the settle with a blanket over her after keeping the midwife supplied with hot water and numerous cups of tea most of the night. Josiah was snoring gently in his armchair in front of the range.

When the midwife appeared to summon Josiah upstairs, he put out his hand for Eve to come too, and so she walked into the bedroom with him to see Phoebe cradling her new son in her arms. He looked to be a tiny baby but he had a lusty cry and Phoebe and the midwife were smiling.

‘Another boy,’ Phoebe said softly, stroking the small downy head. As Josiah kissed her and sat on the side of the bed, she looked at Eve. ‘Josiah was hoping for a little lassie this time.’

Eve was surprised. Most mining families wanted lads who could earn good money down the pit when they grew up.

Josiah shook his head. ‘As long as you and the baby were all right I said I didn’t mind.’

‘But you would have liked a girl.’

‘Only if she looked like you.’

He kissed Phoebe again and Eve smiled at them. ‘He’s a bonny baby. Have you got a name for him?’

‘Josiah.’ Phoebe’s voice was firm. ‘With the twins we felt it would be favouring one over the other if one had their da’s name.’

Eve nodded her understanding. Phoebe looked exhausted and the bedroom smelt strongly of warm stale air and blood. It was making her feel a little nauseous and after clearing her throat, she said,‘Would you like a cup of tea and something to eat?’