Eve and Her Sisters Read online

  Eve stared across the room at the sleeping children, the flickering candle throwing shadows on the walls.

  Was it because of the twins, because it was such a crush in the bedroom now? To get to the cots you had to scramble over the double bed and there wasn’t an inch of spare space to walk. Edging in through the door was difficult enough. She could understand Mrs Finnigan wouldn’t like this, and her expecting another bairn and all.

  Should she say something? Slowly, as if her thoughts were impeding her walk, she moved out on to the landing. But if she did and Mrs Finnigan said she didn’t want them, where would they go? And Mr Finnigan was acting as though everything was fine; in fact he had been as skittish as a bit lass when he’d helped them move in when he was home from the pit, joking with them and teasing Mary until she’d laughed so much she’d been in danger of wetting her knickers. No, Mr Finnigan didn’t mind having them there, you could tell that.

  She had to get downstairs. Mrs Finnigan was about to dish up the evening meal. When she reached the kitchen door, Eve took a deep breath before opening it. She would try to make Mrs Finnigan like her and she would tell Nell and Mary to do the same. They had to be allowed to stay here until Nell was old enough to start work, then they could find a room somewhere. If they all did their bit in the house and took the load off Mrs Finnigan, that would help, wouldn’t it?

  Eve had lain awake most of the night but when she awoke to a still dark room, she realised she must have dropped off eventually. She lay for a moment wondering what had woken her and then realised it was someone going downstairs, probably Mrs Finnigan. No doubt she rose first and saw to the range and such before she started getting Mr Finnigan’s breakfast.

  Remembering what she had determined the day before, she roused her sisters without waking the twins who were snuggled under the blankets in their cots. The three of them struggled into their clothes, no mean feat in the cramped conditions and with the merest gleam of light from the street lamp outside the window to light their fumblings. Mary was as uncooperative as normal, trying to slide back under the covers and complaining about the cold the whole time she dressed. But Eve was resolute they were going to start as they meant to carry on, and this involved Mary doing her bit for once. Mrs Finnigan had looked very tired last night, not that that was anything unusual for a miner’s wife. In any pit house, come bedtime you would find a banked down fire, a kitchen table set for morning and an exhausted looking woman.

  Mary was still grumbling about being woken up as the three of them reached the kitchen door. Eve caught hold of her sister’s arm in the dark hall and swung Mary round to face her although she could hardly make out her features in the blackness. ‘One more word from you and I’ll skelp you, you hear me?’ she whispered angrily. ‘I told you yesterday you were going to pull your weight here, and you will.’

  ‘I never had to get up so early at home.’

  ‘This isn’t home and everything’s different, and you ought to be thanking your lucky stars you’ve woken up here and not in the workhouse.’

  ‘You’re nasty, our Eve.’

  ‘And don’t start blubbing, it won’t work with me, not like it did with Da. You’ll do whatever Mrs Finnigan asks you to do and you’ll be cheerful about it.’ Then she sighed deeply and, her voice dropping, she said, ‘Come on, be a good girl. I know you’re missing Da and the lads but so are me and Nell, have you considered that? We’ve all got to make the best of things. We want to stay together, don’t we?’

  ‘Aye.’ It was sulky.

  ‘Well then. Stop acting like a baby.’

  She sensed rather than saw Mary’s flounce. Her fingers itching to slap her sister, Eve opened the kitchen door. The slight figure of Mrs Finnigan was standing at the range stirring a pan of porridge, and like yesterday it struck Eve that Mr Finnigan’s wife didn’t look old enough to be married in spite of having two bairns and expecting a third.

  Mrs Finnigan turned at their entrance, her small heart-shaped face expressing her surprise. ‘What are you doing up so early?’

  ‘We wondered if we could help, Mrs Finnigan.’

  ‘Help? How?’ Mrs Finnigan’s voice was flat.

  ‘I don’t know. Getting the coal in, seeing to the breakfast, anything.’When Mrs Finnigan said nothing, Eve continued, ‘You and Mr Finnigan have been so kind letting us stay but I know it will mean more work and we don’t want you to have to look after us. We’ll all help in the morning and Nell and Mary will do any chores you want doing once they’re home from school and at weekends, and me too once I’m back from work. I can help with the twins if you like, I’m used to bairns. Mary was only four when Mam died.’

  As Eve had been speaking Mrs Finnigan’s face had relaxed a little but her voice was still stiff when she said, ‘There will be more to do, that’s for sure.’ She turned back to the stove.

  ‘I know and we want to help, don’t we?’ She turned to Nell and Mary, the former nodding vigorously and the latter less enthusiastically. ‘We’ll do anything. Before’ - she had been going to say Mr Finnigan but changed it to - ‘you said we could come here, I was at my wits’ end, Mrs Finnigan. I couldn’t see a way out, everything was black. But now, well, we’re so grateful.’

  Again Mrs Finnigan looked at her, a long look this time.Then she said, ‘If you’re going to be staying here I don’t think we can stand on formality, do you? My name is Phoebe. And the porridge bowls are on the dresser.’

  Ten minutes later Josiah Finnigan came downstairs, and Nell had just finished telling them a funny story about something that had happened the day before at school and they were all laughing. Eve’s face was soft as she looked at her sister. Nell was very good at acting the clown when the occasion warranted it, and she had a way of drawing out the comedic in the most ordinary happenings. Their father had always maintained Nell could make the devil himself laugh if she put her mind to it.

  Eve saw Mr Finnigan’s eyes go to his wife who was still smiling. Their gaze held for a moment and then Josiah said softly, ‘This is nice, everyone having a crack in the morning. I can think of worse ways to start the day.’ His eyes still on Phoebe, he added, ‘That porridge smells good, lass.’

  ‘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 ju
st 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.

  Chapter 3

  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.’