It is September now. I cannot believe I have been here for over a month already. The heat of the summer has passed and the days have taken on a steady pattern. Beth and I wake early, before the sun has quite risen, and we stumble down the stairs by the grey light of dawn. The first task of the day is to clear the ashes and sweep the grates clean, before we lay the fires in the cottages and the mansion. Then we fetch water from the well to fill all the coppers, and the kettles are put to boil. We lay out the breakfasts for the others, who rise much later than we do, and then, after all these things have been attended to, we go to the kitchen with the rest of the Parlour to eat our own breakfast.
I cannot imagine life without Beth now. If I had ever wished for a sister, I would have wished for one exactly like Beth. It is such a comfort to lie next to her every night and fall asleep to the sound of her steady breaths.
The work is hard and I have done things I would never have thought possible. The worst of these is the black leading of the grates. It is a task I loathe; the hours on my knees, the aches in my fingers and wrists as I rub and rub and rub. The black lead stains my hands and I have to scrub them raw to clean it off. I have hands like Beth now. They are cracked and bleeding. Sometimes I look at them, turning them over and over in wonder. It is strange to think they belong to me. But I am proud of them all the same. They make me feel even closer to Beth; it is something else for us to share. Sometimes, if a goose has been slaughtered for Our Beloved, Beth will bring some of the fat with her to our room and we will rub it into each other’s hands. It soothes our chapped skin, but we have to laugh and wrinkle our noses at the terrible stink.
Of all the things I have learned to do, it is the bread making I like best. Beth has taught me well. Every evening after chapel we dust the kitchen table with flour and thump and stretch piles of billowing dough, before shaping it into loaves and pressing it into tins. I imagine the flour comes from Papa’s mill, and I am glad to think that maybe Eli has kept it running. I mentioned this to Beth one evening as we clapped our hands together and sent clouds of flour flying into the air.
‘You should not think such things,’ she said. ‘The world outside these walls should not concern you. Everything we have in here is given to us by Our Beloved. We are the chosen ones, Alice. Have you not understood that yet? When the day of reckoning comes, we are the only ones who will be saved. Our Beloved has blessed us with this flour, no one else.’
She said all this with a smudge of flour on her nose and a smile on her lips. But I knew at once that I had done something wrong. I bit my lower lip and carried on pummelling the dough. It was the first time since coming to the Abode that I had put a foot out of place. I did not want the old Alice to come back and ruin anything. So I promised myself I would not speak of those things again. I would shut my words away in a box inside my head. I would not talk of Eli or Papa, or even Mama. They were part of before, they belonged to the outside and as Our Beloved told us every night in chapel, those who were outsiders and did not believe in him were destined for the Devil.
Beth laughed at my sullen face. ‘Don’t look so vexed, Alice,’ she said. ‘Be happy. We are in Paradise after all.’ Then she threw a sprinkling of flour over my head and soon we were hooting and squealing and chasing each other around the kitchen table throwing handfuls of flour until we both looked like pale ghosts of ourselves.
It is a pleasant, early autumn morning, and I am happy to be sitting polishing boots on the front step of the cottage. I like it that I am able to take a muddied boot and with a few strokes of a brush and a few wipes of a cloth, I can buff the leather to such a shine that I can see the blur of my face. There is something pleasing about the work, and it feels good that I can do something well and that I can make a difference, even if it is only to a dozen pairs of dirty boots.
The children are playing in the gardens with Beth. It is her turn to mind them today and I smile as I watch how she chases them and catches them and then tumbles around on the grass without a care. She is good with them.
I still do not know if the children belong to the women of the Parlour or to the others. I have learned not to ask too many questions. It seems that the children belong to all of us, and I cannot decide whether that is a good thing or a bad thing. But I suppose it is better to have a dozen or more mothers to love you than to have only one who hates.
The children stop in their play to watch the horses and brougham as they are brought around from the stables. Every other day Our Beloved leaves the Abode and travels to nearby towns and villages to spread his teachings. Beth comes to sit next to me. ‘He has not asked me to go with him today,’ she says. ‘He is taking Glory and Ruth.’
Her voice is flat and when I turn to look at her I am surprised to see tears glinting in her eyes.
‘I think I have displeased him,’ she says. ‘It is weeks now since he has taken me with him.’
‘I am sure you have not done anything wrong,’ I say. ‘How can you have?’
She doesn’t answer. Instead she turns to me and grabs my wrists. ‘Look at me, Alice,’ she pleads. ‘Look at me and tell me truthfully … Am I pretty?’
It is a strange question, but before I can answer her, Our Beloved appears from the mansion. He is wearing his long black travelling cloak lined in purple silk and he looks magnificent as he sweeps along the pathway towards the carriage. I feel the familiar stirring in my stomach that happens every time I am near him. I cannot decide if it is fear, excitement, expectation or love. But I am nauseous with it, and when I stand, my legs almost betray me.
Everyone gathers to send him on his way and I am caught up in the feeling of belonging to something that is much bigger than anything I can explain. He climbs into the carriage and Glory, her face flushed and glowing, climbs in after him. Ruth climbs up to perch next to Agatha, who is holding the reins as well as any driver I have ever seen. We follow the carriage as it is pulled towards the main gates. Some of the women place their hands on the retreating rear of the brougham, needing a final touch of him. For a brief moment, I see through the open gates to the lane beyond and I am reminded how close we are to the outside. I am glad when the gates are closed and bolted. I turn back to Beth, remembering that I have not answered her question yet, but she is not behind me. I look amongst the gathered faces but I cannot see her anywhere.
I find her eventually, lying face down on our bed. ‘What is the matter?’ I ask. ‘I thought the outside world did not concern us? Why are you upset not to have gone?’ She doesn’t answer, so I try again. ‘Beth,’ I say. ‘Please tell me what is wrong.’ There is silence still, so I reach out my hand and stroke her hair. ‘You are pretty, Beth,’ I whisper. ‘You are the prettiest thing.’ But when she still does not answer me, I give her hair a final stroke and leave her to her woes.
Our Beloved does not return in time for chapel, so we sit around the kitchen table instead. The women of the Parlour seem at a loss without him and they fidget with their sewing and their darning. He must have travelled to Bristol or Bath, they guess. He will be tired when he returns. We must have something hot waiting for him.
I look around at them all. Because they never talk about a life before here, I have made up their stories in my head. There’s Lizzie with the jutting collarbones, who I decide was once a seamstress in Bristol with a brood of children who all died, one by one, of cholera. Then there is Polly who is careworn but pretty still, and I decide she was once a painted lady that Our Beloved found on the streets and taught to change her ways. Then Esther: maybe a governess who fell on hard times and was rescued from the poorhouse. May is easy. She has coarse features, pale watery eyes and meaty arms. When she talks her voice is loud and sharp. I decide she sold fish from a barrow at Bridgwater market. I think of Agatha and Ruth who are still with Our Beloved somewhere in the outside world. Agatha is pleasantly plump but has a livid scar on her face that runs from the corner of her eye to her ear lobe. She had a wicked husband, I think, and she ran from him before he could murder her in her bed. With Ruth, I cannot make up my mind. She is like me, I think, not used to hard work. She has a way about her and she holds herself upright as though she was once tight-laced.
She has her secrets, as all the others do. The air is thick with them, all those lost sorrows and joys. But I am glad the secrets are not told. For then I would have to tell my own.
I wake in the night to the sounds of carriage wheels crunching on gravel and voices muffled by darkness. Beth is standing by the window with her face pressed to the glass. ‘He is back. He is back,’ she is saying over and over again. She turns from the window and by the light of her candle, I see the tears streaming down her face.