Aunt Hatt led them up to ‘Georgie’s room’, where they were to sleep, in the bigger of the two attics at the front of the house. She had prepared hot water for them to wash with and Margaret enjoyed the warm weight of the basin as she carried hers up the narrow stairs.
‘There we are, dears,’ Aunt Hatt said, rather out of breath as they entered the low-ceilinged room. ‘I think you’ll find it comfortable. It was Georgie’s room – and then his and Clara’s.’ She sounded wistful, Margaret thought. She could see that Georgie had been a much-loved boy, and now Jimmy, his son, would be surrounded by loving family as well. ‘You can put your things in the chest of drawers and that little cupboard.’ These two items were squeezed along the back wall.
A window, lined with deep red curtains, looked out over the street. Aunt Hatt – for already she had become that, not Aunt Harriet – drew them together. There was tan-coloured linoleum on the floor covered by a small rug each side of the enormous bed which took up most of the room.
‘There are towels for you, look – and a po’.’ Delicately she added, ‘You can bring the water and so on down to the yard in the morning. By the way – we have our baths in the scullery. When we get to the new house, we’ll have a bathroom!’ Joyfully, she clasped her hands together under her chin. ‘Hot water from taps – can you imagine! But for now, I have mine on a Sunday morning – and we’ll make sure you each get your time.’
Aunt Hatt came and kissed each of them and Margaret smelt her lavender scent again. Tears filled her eyes at this motherly gesture.
‘Just get your heads down, girls. It’s a nice comfortable bed. Goodnight, dears.’
Margaret and Annie unpacked their modest number of belongings. A light coat and spare dress, a skirt, blouse and underwear, a face cloth and a nightdress each; a cake of soap, and for cleaning their teeth strips of willow and a little pot of salt.
‘We look very down-at-heel compared with Aunt, don’t we?’ Margaret said, wistfully holding up her grey dress with its frayed hem. Their boots were quite literally down-at-heel. There were so few occasions when they could go and buy cloth or find time to get their shoes mended. Life at home was full of the stern purpose of God’s work, with no fripperies.
Annie glanced round. ‘I s’pose so, yes,’ she said, shrugging. Clothes had never been high on Annie’s list of priorities.
Margaret had brought letter-writing things and her little Bible with onion-skin pages. Annie had brought her favourite book, The Mill on the Floss. Modestly they turned away from each other to wash in the candlelight. The familiarity of the bedtime ritual was soothing in this strange place, the feel of the warm water against their cheeks, the folding back of the sheet . . .
Yet the room seethed with things unsaid: a continuation of the atmosphere that had grown between them during these last days.
Margaret stood plaiting her thick hair. Annie could never be bothered. The brass bedstead creaked as each of them climbed on to it. Margaret started to pull the heavy bedclothes and gold-coloured eiderdown over them.
‘What’re you doing?’ Annie threw them off irritably. ‘You can’t put all that on us – we’ll cook!’
‘Oh, yes,’ Margaret said. ‘Sorry.’ She sounded dazed. Annie, lying with her hair spread on the pillow, looked sorry for being so sharp.
‘We should say our prayers,’ Margaret said, an edge of desperation to her voice.
‘Just the Lord’s Prayer,’ Annie said. ‘We haven’t got Father breathing down our necks here.’
‘Annie,’ Margaret said in a desperate tone. ‘Don’t talk like that, please.’
They recited it together, but it brought neither of them peace or stillness. A moment later Margaret, staring up at the cracked distemper on the ceiling, said crossly, ‘What on earth were you talking about getting a job for?’
‘That’s what I want to do!’ Annie sprang up to lean on one elbow. Her eyes blazed at Margaret as they had so many times in their lives. ‘I must go out and work! Lots of women have jobs here – didn’t we see them, in the street? And anyway, if we’re to do the Lord’s bidding, we have to be fearless as lions.’
‘But I thought . . .’ Margaret sounded amazed. Annie was always the rebel at home, the one chafing against their father’s rigidity. It was Margaret who had been his disciple. ‘I thought you didn’t want . . . You were always talking about getting away.’
‘Away from the village,’ Annie said. ‘That small life. I want to get out and see the world, God’s wide world!’ She swung her arm as if to paint a vision. ‘There’s so much more to see and do – and I want to do something great. Not like Father, all those years with farmers and sheep . . . Why was he there? Instead of in London or . . . or here in Birmingham, at Carrs Lane?’
‘Father couldn’t help it,’ Margaret said stiffly. ‘You know that. It was his sensitive nature.’ She knew they were circling round it all, round everything that had happened.
‘Sensitive?’ Annie raged, so that Margaret shushed her. Annie sat fully upright and went on in a fierce whisper. ‘All this talk about him being sensitive! Who was he ever sensitive to? Hardly ever anyone but himself – and him! His protégé. Bringing him into our house like that – after what he’d done!’
‘But Annie . . .’ Margaret sounded tearful again. Her tears were only a blink away these days. ‘You know what it was like for him, losing John, then Mother . . .’
As the elder of the two she had a clearer memory of the father they had known before his infant son succumbed to fever, followed four years later by his wife.
‘I know – but we lost them too,’ Annie said furiously. ‘And just because someone keeps saying they’re sensitive doesn’t mean they are. What sensitivity has he shown to you? You’ve got to stop believing everything he says.’
‘You can’t just think you can do what you want.’ Margaret desperately wanted to move the conversation away – from home, from Father, and from those last days – and nights – when she and Annie had resolved together that they had to get out of there. All this was the source of her agony. ‘Aren’t you frightened of what it would be like, working here? And you’d cause Aunt and Uncle all sorts of worry . . .’
‘But it was Uncle who suggested it,’ Annie argued. ‘That’s what people do here – they work. And I want to do God’s work. Not just in the village, but in a big city like this! All those things Mr Rowntree wrote about how poorly people live . . . How can society be improved if we don’t go and see what it’s really like?’ She was burning with impatience. ‘It’s not going to get better by itself, is it? God needs our hands; our lips to speak his word.’
She waited for Margaret to say, and why would not country people and farmers be as worthy receivers of the Lord’s word as anyone else? That was what she would have said before – Father’s words, repeated to justify his life in their small backwater. But now, in an unsteady voice, all Margaret said was, ‘Are you ready for me to put the light out?’
Annie nodded. Margaret blew and they settled down in the familiar, comforting whiff of candle smoke. Margaret turned on her side, her back to Annie, her whole being aching.
‘Maggs?’
‘Yes.’ She didn’t move.
‘Are you going to tell them?’
There was a silence. Margaret was sure she could hear her own heart thudding. ‘Tell them what?’
‘All of it. You’ll have to. They’re putting us up – and we don’t even know how long for. I mean, I’m not just going to go back with my tail between my legs, whatever he says.’
Margaret struggled to speak but her throat seemed blocked with tears. ‘No,’ she managed. ‘I can’t.’
‘How can you even think that it was your fault?’
‘I don’t know!’ She burst into sobs. ‘That’s just the trouble. I keep going over and over it all and I know that somewhere I did something terribly wrong. And Father said . . .’
‘But he was wrong, Maggs. He’s not God – he’s not always right about everything. He was wrong and cruel and ridiculous . . .’ She stopped for a second, thinking about how they could explain to Eb and Harriet Watts. ‘I don’t really think Aunt Harriet likes Father much, anyway.’
‘Annie!’ Margaret snapped, lifting her head from the pillow. ‘Please, leave me alone, will you? Just go to sleep.’
‘But we’ll have to—’
‘Not tonight,’ Margaret pleaded. ‘I can’t talk about anything tonight. Just be quiet.’
On the floor below, Eb Watts stood by the bed in his vest and underpants with a bemused expression on his face, one hand held out in front of him as if he was about to do something and had completely forgotten what it was.
‘Eb?’ Harriet was sitting up in bed, carefully fixing a net over her thick braid of hair. She wore a delicately embroidered nightgown. The room itself was a haven of ladylike pieces of furniture – her dressing table with an oval looking-glass, a little upholstered stool in front of it, and a silky bedspread in her favourite shade of light plum. Every inch of the house that was their living space, she tried to make as pretty and homely as possible.
‘What’re you doing, love?’ she said. ‘Are you coming to bed, or what?’
‘Oh – ar.’ He climbed in beside her.
‘Eb – you haven’t got your nightshirt on!’
‘Never mind – won’t hurt for once. Too darn hot for that.’ Blowing out the candle he said, ‘Come ’ere, you beautiful wench.’
With a giggle Harriet Watts snuggled up against the comforting girth of her husband.
‘Funny having those two Hanson girls here,’ he said. ‘Solemn wenches though, the pair of ’em.’
‘They seem very nice,’ Harriet said. ‘It’ll be a change to have some girls about for a bit and perhaps it’ll do them good as well. They’ve come from a very strict home, Eb.’
‘Oh, ar, I’ll say. They do seem rather strait-laced – ’specially the older one,’ Eb said. He curved a hand stealthily round his wife’s warm breast. ‘You don’t think they’ll try and convert us, do yer?’
‘Eb . . .’ Hatt said, warningly.
The hand receded.
‘Margaret’s the image of the old man,’ he said, suppressing a sigh. ‘But that Annie – funny little thing she is. Looks a handful to me.’
‘D’you think she meant it – about getting a job?’
‘Well – why shouldn’t they?’ he said. ‘Can’t have them just sitting around here. They can get weaving – see a bit of life instead of all this religious claptrap.’
‘Your sister was a good woman,’ Hatt said. ‘She believed in it, proper like.’
‘Ole Lil? Oh, ar. She was – can’t think why she married that stuffed shirt of a husband, though. Leah. Changing her name as if her real name and her own family weren’t good enough or summat. I never could get used to calling her that. Hardly saw ’er after she moved down there anyway.’
‘She changed it when she got married, dain’t she? I suppose it sounded more religious. Not many Lils in the Bible, are there?’
‘There’s nowt wrong with the name Lilian,’ Eb said, stroking his wife’s full hip, still hoping pleasantly that there might be more on offer tonight, if he was lucky. ‘And what’s gone on there, d’yer think – them coming running here to us?’
‘I don’t know.’ Harriet’s voice was troubled. ‘It seems as if it’s summat to do with him – their father. I’ll see if I can get them to talk to me. Margaret, at least. The girl looked quite poorly when she arrived and things aren’t right – I can see by the look of her. Be gentle with her, Eb.’
‘I will!’ he said, indignant. ‘What d’yer think I’m going to do?’
‘And don’t be rude about their religion. It’s important to them. There are some very kindly religious people. Just because you don’t hold with it.’
‘Well, you know what I always say,’ Eb said, pressing his body hopefully against his wife’s. ‘Too much religion can make you go off pop!’
‘I know that’s what you always say,’ she said. ‘Just don’t say it in front of these young ladies, that’s all. Oh, Eb – get off me, will you? It’s far too hot for all that carry-on.’