Lize answered the door, signed for the telegram and ripped the envelope apart. She read it and stood considering the contents for a while in the hallway. Slowly she climbed the stairs and made her way to the back bedroom where her mother was sleeping and tapped gently on the door.
‘Mum, are you awake?' She could hear her mother's grumbling, and waited.
‘I am now! What's the matter?'
‘There's a telegram from Louis.'
‘So don’t just stand out there, bring it in!'
Lize went in and crossed the room to draw the curtains, but Jessie Ross complained that the light would hurt her eyes so she left them closed and went to sit on the side of the bed.
‘Oh. I see you've opened it,' Jessie said.
‘Yes, it was addressed to me. Anyway he says the baby's arrived early. It's a girl, they've called her Eileen.' Lize held the telegram out for Jessie to read, but she just waved it away.
‘Another mouth to feed. God, they breed like pigs those Irish. As soon as one is out of the sty they're at it again for another one. No wonder she can’t hang onto them for nine months. How is he going to put food in this one's mouth as well as the other two when he hasn’t even got a job?'
Lize folded the telegram and placed it in her apron pocket. She stood up. ‘How are you feeling, Mum?'
‘I was feeling better until that piece of bad news arrived! I believed Louis had more sense; but she's really turned his head. Well they needn’t think they can come to me for help. They've made their bed and they can lie on it.' She threw off the eiderdown and covers ready to get up.
‘Mum, I don’t think you're well enough to get up yet.' Lize put her hand on her mother's forehead. It felt hot. ‘Why not have another day in bed and I'll bring your breakfast up?'
Jessie considered it for a moment, and then sank back onto the pillows coughing. ‘You're probably right. I'll give it another day and maybe by tomorrow I'll feel more like my old self. I'll just have some bread and jam today, I don’t feel like a cooked breakfast.' She pulled the covers up and shivered. ‘It's cold up here, you can light the fire before you get my breakfast.'
Lize went to the fireplace and began raking the ashes with a poker so that they fell into the ashcan below. Then lifting the ashcan out from beneath the grate, she shook them onto a piece of newspaper. She picked up a brush and swept away the dust before screwing up some paper and setting it in the grate. Next she laid some sticks criss-cross, after which she added lumps of coal. Before lighting it, she poured on some paraffin from a can. When she had finished, she moved the paraffin can away from the fire and threw on a lighted match. The whoosh of flames was instant and Lize realized she had used just a little too much paraffin.
‘Easy with that paraffin, it's got to last,' Jessie bawled from the bed and Lize, having done her first duty of the day for her mother, retreated from the room to begin the second.
As she hurried downstairs with the coalscuttle, her anger flared. She experienced a surge of self-pity knowing life would have been so different if Charlie hadn’t been killed.
She felt Charlie was to blame in some way for the situation she now found herself in. She had consented to her mother selling her properties so that she could move in with her and the children on the pretext that she would buy a shop with the money. ‘That way,’ Jessie had said, ‘you can work in the shop and won’t have to worry about getting a job.’ But so far, all Lize had found herself doing was waiting on her mother hand and foot and there was no sign of any shop on the horizon.
Lize gritted her teeth; marched along the hallway to the kitchen and slammed the door behind her. One day, she thought, I'll commit murder - I’m certain of it!
Iris was eating her breakfast and with a mouth full of toast asked if the letter was from Reggie who was working as an apprenticed butcher in London.
‘No, it was a telegram from Ireland. You have another little cousin called Eileen.'
‘Oh that's nice, isn’t it?' Iris smiled, revealing her toast-filled teeth.
‘Is it?' Lize snapped and proceeded to hack a slice of bread off the loaf then spread the hardened butter onto its surface. The fresh bread tore beneath her violent scraping, and maddened, Lize took the slice of bread, opened the back door and threw it into the yard. Let the birds eat it, she thought.
She came back in and said to Iris, ‘Put that butter dish on the range and take it off as soon as you see the butter begin to melt.' Then she began sawing the loaf again wishing it was her mother's neck beneath the blade.
Lize went out to the coal shed, shovelled coal into the scuttle; then closed and bolted the shed door. A sharp north wind blew and glancing up she saw that the sky was heavy looking with grey clouds hanging ominously overhead. She stood for a few moments breathing in the freezing air knowing that soon it would snow.
Better get more coal ordered just in case the snow lasts she thought, and lugging the coal scuttle through the back door Lize felt her mood lift noticing that Iris had buttered the bread and laid a breakfast tray for her grandmother.
Lize went to the range, lifted the boiling kettle and poured hot water into the teapot. She put the tea cosy on and trundled upstairs with the tray, wondering how many more times she would have to make the trip that day. It would be so nice she thought, if I could lie in bed and be waited on. But she knew that it was unlikely to happen.