The Poor Relation

by Susanna Bavin

  ‘Thank you, Dadda,’ Mary murmured.

  ‘Here he comes, the wealthy landowner. We weren’t expecting to see you again, Rawley, now you’ve gone up in the world.’

  Others glanced up from their cards and nodded at Greg through the cigar smoke. He nodded back. Wealthy landowner, indeed. If only they knew. Well, let them believe he was rolling in it.

  ‘You know how it is,’ he remarked. ‘Mustn’t forget the fellows I used to know way back when.’

  ‘Before you struck it rich,’ Bertie Maxwell quipped and there were one or two chuckles, but only one or two. Play was serious at this table, tucked away in a private room where the evening clobber was of the highest quality and the collar studs were twenty-two carats, and some of the stuff had even been paid for.

  Greg waited while the hand finished, watching closely without appearing to. The atmosphere was tense, expectant, taut with concentration.

  When he was dealt in, he felt an unexpected pang. He had gone to Manchester with hopes riding high, more than hopes, downright expectations, certain he had left this life behind, and that if he ever sat down at a card table again, it would be purely from choice. Yet here he was, back where he started, needing money, having just one way to get it, and surrounded by men who were as keen to take everything from him as he was to take it from them. Damn Uncle Robert.

  The bitterness didn’t linger. Nothing did, nothing could, once play started. You couldn’t afford to let anything distract you. More drinks arrived discreetly, and empty glasses were whisked away by invisible hands.

  He didn’t do badly. He won some, he lost some, but he won more than he lost and that was what counted.

  ‘I’ll call it a night. Must leave something for those in greater need.’

  There were a few good-natured jeers, though he took note of those who stayed silent and drew his own conclusions about their likely financial straits. Sliding his winnings into his Italian leather pocketbook, he let his gaze skim across the pleasing number of banknotes. Not a bad trawl for a few hours of effort, though nothing compared to what was needed to drag him out of the mire.

  He shrugged himself into the edge-to-edge evening overcoat the manservant held for him, thrust his fingers into white kid gloves and clapped his black silk topper on before accepting his cane from the man and flipping him a half-crown. He believed in tipping. It made you look affluent and guaranteed you good service next time.

  He tapped his cane on the step outside the club, feeling its rounded top fill his palm. The top gleamed like any ornamental cane top, but someone who picked it up – not that anyone ever did, aside from the occasional servant, he was careful about that – would have been surprised by its weight. A good, solid weight that could deliver a socking great blow. Just in case.

  He took a cab to his rooms in Mount Street. Might as well enjoy the money while he had it.

  He unlocked his door. The gas lamps were burning. That telltale stench smote him – and there, seated in his armchair, sat Mr Jonas, blowing smoke rings.

  He couldn’t keep the edge out of his voice. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘You disappoint me, Mr Rawley. Is that any way to greet an old friend?’

  ‘How did you get in?’

  ‘Through the keyhole, down the chimney, or maybe I materialised in a puff of smoke.’

  Mr Jonas took another drag of his foul-smelling Turkish cigarette, closing his heavy-lidded eyes as he breathed out a stream of smoke through his nostrils like a contented dragon.

  ‘Come in, Mr Rawley, please do.’ He waved his cigarette expansively. ‘Make yourself at home. Oh, I was forgetting – it is your home, isn’t it? An interesting point. I suppose it depends upon whose funds pay the rent.’

  Growling beneath his breath, Greg removed his outdoor garb. He went to the sideboard and pulled the crystal stopper out of the Scotch decanter. He waved the decanter at Mr Jonas, who shook his head.

  ‘Now then, Mr Rawley, I thought you knew my tastes better than that after our long acquaintance. Our long and profitable acquaintance.’

  Bitterness twisted in his guts, but he said affably enough, holding up the port, ‘Top you up?’

  ‘I don’t mind if I do.’

  A lesser mortal would have held out his glass, but not Mr Jonas. Greg gritted his teeth as he filled the glass that stood on the small circular table beside the armchair. His armchair, and his table, where he placed his nightcap. He imagined smashing the decanter on Jonas’s head. Or there was his cane. What satisfaction there would be in hammering that face to a pulp, in shattering the skull and exposing the brain, making all those dastardly calculations and percentages come spilling out all over the carpet so he could stamp on the little blighters, grinding them to powder beneath his heel.

  ‘So, Mr Rawley, here I am enjoying your hospitality and feeling a mite surprised that you haven’t sought me out, you and I enjoying such a long association, and you owing me what you owe.’

  His jaw clenched. He was damned if he was going to crawl to this bastard. ‘I knew you’d find your way here sooner or later, though I imagined you’d wait to be let in.’

  ‘But such is my eagerness to congratulate the new landowner. I’m your greatest well-wisher, Mr Rawley. I flatter myself that I’ve anticipated the rise in your fortunes – and your fortune – no less eagerly than you have yourself. May I offer my heartiest congratulations on the demise of your relative?’

  ‘You’ll get your money.’ Bloodsucker.

  ‘But will I?’

  ‘What the devil d’you mean? I’ve inherited, haven’t I? Naturally it’ll take time for everything to come through. Red tape, you know. That’s always the way with these things.’

  ‘Quite right too. I like to see my own affairs handled with that kind of care. Everything signed and sealed, as it were. The trouble is, Mr Rawley, when you say it’ll take time, how much time might that be?’

  ‘Well, you know how lawyers are,’ he hedged with a hint of joviality.

  ‘It wasn’t the lawyers I had in mind, Mr Rawley. It’s Miss Helen Rawley I’m thinking of, and how long she might live.’

  Greg chucked back some Scotch. It burnt his throat. Jonas knew. Christ, Jonas knew.

  ‘How the deuce did you find out?’

  ‘Come now, Mr Rawley, you can’t expect me to divulge professional secrets. Suffice it to say that I know and I extend my sincere sympathy.’

  ‘You know I’m good for that loan.’

  ‘I wasn’t suggesting otherwise. We trust one another, don’t we? You trust me to provide the readies when you’re in need and I trust you to pay me back – plus a little consideration.’

  ‘Plus a bloody great consideration.’

  Mr Jonas spread his hands, evil-smelling cigarette in one, port in the other. ‘I’ve always done my best to accommodate you, Mr Rawley, even to the extent of lending you a generous sum in anticipation of your inheritance.’

  ‘You’ll be the first I pay back. Can’t say fairer than that.’

  ‘No need to trouble yourself as to who gets what and when, my dear Mr Rawley.’ Mr Jonas took a moment to blow a lazy smoke ring. ‘I’ve bought up all your debts, so now you owe everything to me.’

  Chapter Seven

  Mary’s last day at the town hall couldn’t come quickly enough. Mr Treadgold bade her a disapproving farewell, which made her all the more glad to leave, and the next morning she walked to work, smiling to think that when Emma left school, they could walk together, as the agency was a few doors down from Constance and Clara.

  Miss Kennett and Miss Lever made her welcome and left her to get on with it, which suited her perfectly, but when she called Josephine ‘Miss Kennett’, she was immediately told not to.

  ‘Call me Miss Kennett in front of clients, but the rest of the time we’re Angela and Josephine, and you’re Mary.’

  She had noticed that Angela and Josephine called one another by their surnames, which seemed very modern, but she was glad not to be Maitland. That
would have been too rum.

  She asked about the sofas and chairs at the other end of the room.

  ‘Meetings,’ explained Josephine. ‘We have friends round, like-minded people, and they bring their friends, and occasionally we have a speaker. We discuss women’s matters. Now that we know what a wizard you are on that infernal typewriting machine, we’ll have you bashing out letters and leaflets, pages of facts and figures, too.’

  ‘There’s a meeting next Tuesday,’ said Angela. ‘You’re welcome to come.’

  Mary couldn’t commit herself without permission.

  ‘I don’t want you embroiled in anything inappropriate,’ Dadda warned her that evening.

  ‘It’d be nice for her to go out,’ said Lilian. ‘I’d rather she put the world to rights in a respectable place than that she gave her time to a soup kitchen in the slums.’

  ‘There is that. What’s this meeting about, Mary?’

  ‘To discuss putting working-class girls into service with middle-class families, so they learn better habits of behaviour and hygiene.’

  ‘That smacks of socialism to me. There are good reasons for social differences.’

  ‘It’s so that when they have families of their own, their children will be cleaner and healthier.’

  ‘That sounds reasonable. Mind, I’m not having you turning into a socialist.’

  ‘No, Dadda.’

  ‘Or one of these newfangled feminists.’

  ‘No, Dadda.’

  As far as Mary was concerned, there was just one disadvantage to her new job: she didn’t earn as much, while the only decrease in her outgoings lay in no longer paying fares. She still had to fork out for housekeeping and the Hospital Saturday Fund, as well as her share of the burial insurance and the money for her bottom drawer that she had been handing over to Lilian ever since she opened her first wage packet.

  When she suggested her keep might go down, she didn’t get the words out before Lilian cut her off.

  ‘That’s your lookout. You chose to work there.’

  They were folding sheets. Lilian increased the speed, a sure sign of vexation.

  ‘You don’t like my being there.’

  ‘No, I don’t. I don’t like you working for those toffee-nosed females.’

  ‘They aren’t toffee-nosed.’

  ‘They’re posh, you can’t deny that, and they’re taking advantage of you – oh yes, they are. They could have helped you get a job with the same salary as before. They’re taking advantage, paying you less, and now you’re trying to fob me off with less keep. Well, I’m not having it, and you wouldn’t either if you had the sense you were born with.’

  ‘But I love my job. I don’t mind earning less.’

  ‘Fancy ideas don’t buy much coal. You can’t have it both ways, love. What about your future? You’re twenty-three, not a young lass any more, and they’re not exactly queuing up outside the front door, are they? What if it never happens to you? It doesn’t to some. Look at Miriam. You’re welcome to stop here with Dadda and me, but we won’t last for ever, and what will you do then? Live with Emma? She’ll get wed and no mistake, a softy like her, and there you’ll be, spinster sister, spinster aunt, living under another woman’s roof, and all because you didn’t earn as much as you could when you had the chance to put it by for later.’

  ‘If that’s what you think, you’d better give me back my bottom drawer money and I’ll put it in the savings bank.’

  ‘Nay, I won’t give that back. That’s like saying you’ve no chance.’

  ‘Now who wants it both ways?’

  ‘A good mother believes her girls will marry, whatever her private worries. I’ve been a good mother to you and no one can say otherwise.’ Lilian held the folded sheet to her, her expression changing from vexed to anxious. ‘You do think I’ve been a good mother, don’t you?’

  Mary hugged her, the sheet between them. ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘That means the world to me, and after I’ve just had a go at you an’ all.’

  ‘I don’t understand why you’re so against the agency when you helped talk Dadda into letting me attend the meetings.’

  ‘I want you to meet a young man, of course, one who’ll appreciate a clever lass like you. I want you to be happy and by that I mean happily married, and that means meeting the right chap. A marriage of convenience is all very well, but I’d like you to marry for love.’

  Dare she ask? ‘Is that what you and Dadda have – a marriage of convenience?’

  ‘Nowt wrong with that. I was a widow at the end of my savings and your dad needed a wife. Granny had her foot jammed in the door, and he wasn’t best keen on that. It wouldn’t have ended there, neither. Candle Cottage is a grace-and-favour house for Granny, but the Kimbers have no obligation to Miriam, so goodness knows where she’d have ended up – some grotty little bed-sitting room. Dadda wouldn’t have allowed that. He’d have brought her here. Can you imagine the whole lot of you squeezed in, and Granny ruling the roost? So he married the widow next door.’

  Mary had never heard her speak so frankly. Did this mean Lilian saw her as a confidante and friend as well as a daughter?

  ‘I’ll tell you summat else. It gave me the chance to have children. Having daughters is a dream come true for me. It was easy enough with Emma, her being so young when it happened, but I reckon me and thee haven’t done badly.’ Her eyes were dark with worry.

  ‘Not bad,’ Mary agreed. ‘Not bad at all.’

  Lady Kimber received Doctor Brewer in her elegant morning room. She liked the look of him. She was a great believer in first impressions. He was good-looking in a lean, rather stern way, with the firm tread and unconscious grace of an athlete. His eyes should have been darker. They were hazel, but they bore an intensity that should have rendered them black: he was focused on his mission and she respected that. But there was something else about him – maybe it lay in that brief smile he had given upon introduction, something that suggested good humour beneath the serious facade, maybe even a sense of fun. She had been fun-loving herself once.

  She was well disposed towards him – until he uttered the fatal name.

  ‘If you imagine that your having been physician to the late Judge Rawley will further your cause, permit me to disabuse you at the outset.’

  ‘It was not my intention to give offence.’

  The words were courteously spoken, but he stopped short of apology. She would have dismissed him out of hand had he tried to lick her boots.

  ‘What brings you here, Doctor?’

  ‘I’m here about a new clinic for the poor in Moss Side, which I hope you will find warrants the support of the Deserving Poor Committee.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘A colleague and I will donate regular hours and we’ll employ nursing staff. There will be a baby clinic and a nit nurse. We have a building that requires attention – repairs, whitewashing, extermination of vermin, and so forth – but which will provide waiting and consulting rooms, offices, storerooms and a teaching room.’

  ‘A teaching room?’

  ‘We’ll provide classes on nutrition and hygiene. If the women can be helped to make improvements in the home, the community will become healthier in body and mind. I trust that will make the community deserving of your support.’

  He was correct, but she wouldn’t be drawn. ‘Matters are obviously in hand. Why have you waited so long to approach me?’

  ‘We hoped not to require funding from a charity committee.’

  ‘What changed your minds?’

  ‘Unfortunately, funding from Projects for the Ignorant Poor was withdrawn.’

  ‘For what reason?’

  ‘The means test people object to our offering medical attention at a reduced cost.’

  ‘And so you reluctantly find yourself here? Very well. The Deserving Poor Committee will consider your request.’

  ‘Thank you, Your Ladyship. I have taken the liberty of bringing the relevant paperwork with me.�
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  No wonder he had wanted to be financed by the authorities. He didn’t fancy being at the mercy of upper-class females, full of hot air and prejudice. Well, if he worked alongside the Deserving Poor Committee, he would soon learn that she didn’t run her committees like that.

  Goodness, but Charlie could do with a bit of Doctor Brewer’s fire.

  Mary’s eager mind gobbled up the agency meetings; she felt modern and informed, grown-up, too, in a way she never had before. Living at home and working at the town hall had kept her under the family thumb, but now she was aware of her outlook developing.

  ‘As an agency, we’re here for the educated woman,’ said Angela, ‘but as campaigners, we have a duty to represent working-class females.’

  She learnt about the lives of unremitting toil endured by those poor creatures in the sweated industries, who earned a pittance hemming or beading, sewing buttons onto cards or fringes onto shawls, even bending corset-steels or making coffin-tassels. Her own clothes were simple enough, but when she purchased a card of hooks and eyes, she looked at it with new and painful knowledge.

  She had always known herself to be capable. Now she felt ready for independence. What would it be like to live as the others did? Angela and Josephine shared the upstairs of a house on Edge Lane, while others occasionally mentioned landladies or laundry arrangements. They talked about, what was called in Maitland parlance, their chars – only when they spoke of them, they called them their treasures. Mrs Bethell would laugh her head off if Mary called her a treasure.

  In such company, she felt obscurely ashamed of living at home. When the front door closed behind her, she resumed the mantle of dutiful, unquestioning daughter, so could she truly say she had spread her wings?

  She mustn’t let that niggle spoil her new life. She attended every meeting she could, though there were times when she had to tell barefaced lies at home. Dadda would have hauled her over the coals had he known of the discussions about votes for women.