by Sarah Waters
Indeed, I should have hated to have had to abuse her, in any way. When she worked so hard and grew so weary, it made me pace about the room and wring my hands, and want to shake her. It was not her job at the girls’ home that so exhausted her, it was the endless guild and union work - the piles of lists and ledgers she would place upon the supper-table, when the supper-things had been cleared off it, and squint at, all night long, until her eyes were red, and creased as currants. Sometimes, since I had nothing better to do, I would take a chair and sit beside her, and make her share the chores with me: she gave me envelopes to address, or other little harmless tasks I could not muddle. When, in spring, the Guild set up a local seamstresses’ union, and Florence began visiting the home-workers of Bethnal Green - all the poor women who worked long hours, alone, in squalid rooms, for wretched pay - I went with her. The scenes we saw were very miserable, and the women were pleased to be visited, and the Guild was grateful; but it was for Florence’s sake I really went. I couldn’t bear for her to do the dreary task, and walk the East End streets, at night, alone.
And then - as I have said, a housekeeper will look for any little thing to liven her day - I began to labour for her, in the kitchen. She was thin, and the thinness looked wrong on her: the sight of the shadows at her cheeks made me feel sad. So, while the Women’s Cooperative Guild made it their cause to unionise the home-workers of East London, I made it mine to fatten up Florence, with breakfasts and lunches, with sandwich teas, with dinners and suppers and biscuits and milk. I had not much success with this, to start with - for, though I took to haunting the meat stalls of the Whitechapel Market, buying faggots and sausages, rabbits and tripe, and bagfuls of those scraps of flesh we had used to call, in Whitstable, ‘bits and ears’, I was really rather an indifferent cook, and was as liable to burn the meat, or leave it bloody, as make it savoury; Florence and Ralph did not notice, I think, because they were used to nothing better. But then, one day at the end of August, I saw that the oyster season had started up, and I bought a barrel of natives and an oyster knife; and as I put the blade to the hinge, it was as if I turned a key which unlocked all my mother’s oyster-parlour recipes, and sent them flooding to my finger-ends. I dished up an oyster-pie - and Florence put aside the paper she was writing on, to eat it, then picked at the crust that was left in the bowl, with her fork. The next night I served oyster-fritters, the next night oyster-soup. I made grilled oysters, and pickled oysters; and oysters rolled in flour and stewed in cream.
When I passed a plate of this last dish to Florence, she smiled; and when she had tasted it, she sighed. She took a piece of bread-and-butter, and folded it to mop the sauce with; and the bread left cream upon her lips, that she licked at with her tongue, then wiped with her fingers. I remembered another time, in another parlour, when I had served another girl an oyster-supper, and accidentally wooed her; and as I was thinking of this, Florence lifted a spoonful of fish, and sighed again.
‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I really think, that if there were one dish, and one dish only, that had to be served in paradise, that dish would be oysters - don’t you think so, Nance?’
She had never called me ‘Nance’ before; and I had never, in all the months that I had lived with her then, known her say anything so fanciful. I laughed to hear it; and then so did her brother, and so did she.
‘I think it might be oysters,’ I said.
‘It would be marzipan, in my paradise,’ said Ralph: he had a very sweet tooth.
‘And there would have,’ I said then, ‘to be a cigarette beside the dish, otherwise it would be hardly worth eating.’
‘That’s true. And my supper-table would be set upon a hill, but overlooking a town - there would not be a chimney in it; every house would be lit and warmed by electricity.’
‘Oh, Ralph!’ I said; ‘but only think how dull it would be, to be able to see into all the corners! There wouldn’t be electric lights, or even houses, in my paradise. There would be -’ Pigmy ponies and fairies on a wire, was what I wanted to say, thinking back to my nights at the Brit; but I was not up to explaining it.
And while I hesitated, Florence said: ‘So, are we all to have a separate paradise?’
Ralph shook his head. ‘Well, you, of course, would be in mine,’ he said. ‘And Cyril.’
‘And Mrs Besant, I suppose.’ She took another spoonful of her supper, then turned to me: ‘And who would be in yours then, Nancy?’
She smiled, and I had been smiling; but even as she asked her question, I felt my smile begin to waver. I gazed at my hands where they lay upon the table: they had grown white as lilies at Felicity Place, but now they were red at the knuckles and split at the nails, and scented with soda; and the cuffs above them had frills, that had got spotted with grease - I hadn’t learned the trick of pushing ladies’ sleeves back, there seemed never enough material to roll. Now I twitched at one of these cuffs, and bit my lip. The fact was I didn’t know who would be beside me in my paradise. The fact was, there was no one who would want to have me in theirs...
I looked again at Florence. ‘Well, you and Ralph,’ I said at last, ‘I imagine will be in everybody’s paradise, instructing them in how to run it.’
Ralph laughed. Florence tilted her head, and smiled a sad smile of her own. Then, after a moment, she blinked and caught my gaze. ‘And you, of course,’ she said, ‘will have to be in mine...’
‘Really, Florence?’
‘Of course - else, who will stew my oysters?’
I had had better compliments paid me - but not recently. I found myself pinking at her words, and dipped my head.
When I looked at her again, she was gazing over into the corner of the room. I turned, to see what it was she was looking at: it was the family portrait, and I guessed she must be thinking of her mother. But in the corner of the frame, of course, there was the smaller picture, of the grave-looking woman with the very heavy brows. I had never learned who she was, after all. Now I said to Ralph: ‘Who is that girl, in the little photo? She don’t half need a hairbrush.’
He looked at me, but did not answer. It was Florence who spoke. ‘That’s Eleanor Marx,’ she said, with a kind of quiver to her voice.
‘Eleanor Marks? Have I met her? Is she that cousin of yours, who works at the poulterers?’
She gazed at me then as if I had not asked the question, but barked it. Ralph put down his fork. ‘Eleanor Marx,’ he said, ‘is a writer and a speaker and a very great socialist...’
I blushed: this was worse than asking what cooperative meant. But when Ralph saw my cheeks, he looked kind: ‘You mustn’t mind it. Why should you know? I’m sure, you might mention a dozen writers you have read, and Flo and I would not know one of them.’
‘That’s true,’ I said, very grateful to him; but though I had read proper books at Diana’s, I could think, at that moment, only of the improper ones - and they all had the same author: Anonymous.
So I said nothing, and we finished our supper in silence. And when I looked at Florence again, her eyes were turned away from me and seemed rather dark. I thought then that, after all, she would never really want a girl like me in paradise with her, not even to stew the oysters for her tea; and the thought, just then, seemed a dreary one.
But I was quite wrong about her. Whether I were in her paradise or not, she wouldn’t have noticed; and it was not her mother she hoped to see there, nor even Eleanor Marx, nor even Karl Marx. It was another person altogether that she had in mind - but it was not until a few weeks later, one evening in the autumn of that year, that I found out who.
I had begun, as I have said, to accompany Florence on her visits for the Guild, and on this night I found myself in the home of a seamstress at Mile End. It was a terribly poor home: there was no furniture, hardly, in the woman’s rooms, only a couple of mattresses, a threadbare rug, and one rickety table and chair. In the chamber that passed for a parlour, a tea-chest was upturned and had the remains of a sad little supper on it: a crust of bread, a bit of drippi
ng in a jar, and a cup half-full of bluish milk. The dinner-table was all covered with the paraphernalia of the woman’s trade - with folded garments and tissue wrappers, with pins and cotton reels and needles. The needles, she said, were always dropping on the floor, and the children were always stepping on them; her baby had recently put a pin in his mouth, and the pin had stuck in his palate and almost choked him.
I listened to her story, and then watched while Florence spoke to her about the Women’s Guild, and about the seamstresses’ union it had established. Would she come to a meeting? Florence asked. The woman shook her head, and said she didn’t have the time; that she had no one to mind the children; that she was frightened that the masters at the outfitters for whom she worked would hear about it, and stop her shillings.
‘Besides that, miss,’ she said at last, ‘my husband wouldn’t care for me to go. Not but what he ain’t a union man himself; but he don’t think much of women having a say in all that stuff. He says there ain’t the need for it.’
‘But what do you think, Mrs Fryer? Don’t you think the women’s union a good thing? Wouldn’t you like to see things changed - see the masters made to pay you more, and work you kinder?’ Mrs Fryer rubbed her eyes.
‘They would drop me, miss, that’s all, and find a gal to do it cheaper. There are plenty of ’em - plenty gals what envy me even my poor few shillings...’
The discussion went on, until at last the woman grew fidgety, and said she thanked us, but couldn’t spare the time to hear us any longer. Florence shrugged. ‘Think on it a bit, won’t you? I’ve told you when the meeting is. Bring your babies if you like - we’ll find someone to take care of ’em for an hour or two.’ We rose; I looked again at the table, at the pile of reels and garments. There was a waistcoat, a set of handkerchiefs, some gentlemen’s linen — I found myself drifting towards it all, with fingers that itched to pick the garments up and stroke them. I caught the woman’s eye, and nodded at the table-top.
I said, ‘What is it you do exactly, Mrs Fryer? Some of these look very fine.’
‘I’m an embroid’rer, miss,’ she answered. ‘I does the fancy letters.’ She lifted a shirt, and showed me its pocket: there was a flowery monogram upon it, sewn very neatly in ivory silk. ‘It looks a bit queer, don’t it,’ she went on sadly, ‘seeing all these scraps of handsomeness in this poor room...’
‘It does,’ I said - but I could hardly get the words out. The pretty monogram had reminded me suddenly of Felicity Place, and all the lovely suits that I had worn there. I saw again those tailored jackets and waistcoats and shirts, those tiny, extravagant N.K.s that I had thought so thrilling. I had not known then that they were sewn in rooms like this, by women as sad as Mrs Fryer; but if I had, would I have cared? I knew that I would not, and felt now horribly uncomfortable and ashamed. Florence had stepped to the door, and stood there, waiting for me; Mrs Fryer had bent to pick up her youngest child, who had begun to cry. I reached into the pocket of my coat. There was a shilling there, and a penny, left over from a marketing trip: I took them out and placed them on the table amongst the fancy shirts and hankies, slyly as a thief.
Mrs Fryer, however, saw, and shook her head.
‘Oh, now, miss...’ she said.
‘For the baby.’ I felt more self-conscious and ill than ever. ‘Just for the little one. Please.’ The woman ducked her head, and murmured her thanks; and I did not look at her, or Florence, until we were both of us out on the street again, and the dismal room was far behind.
‘That was kind of you,’ said Florence at last. It wasn’t kind at all; I felt as if I had slapped the woman, not given her a gift. But I didn’t know how to tell any of this to Florence. ‘You shouldn’t have done it, of course,’ she was saying. ‘Now she will think the Guild is made of women who are better than her, not women just like herself, trying to help themselves.’
‘You’re not much like her,’ I said - a little stung, despite myself, by her remark. ‘You think you are, but you’re not, not really.’
She sniffed. ‘You’re right, I suppose. I’m more like her, however, than I might be. I’m more like her than some of the ladies you see working for the poor and the homeless and the out-of-work -’
‘Ladies like Miss Derby,’ I said.
She smiled. ‘Yes, ladies like that. Miss Derby, your great friend.’ She gave me a wink and took my arm; and because it was pleasant to see her so light-hearted I began to forget the little shock that I had had in the seamstress’s parlour, and to grow gay again. Arm-in-arm we made our slow way, through the sinking autumn night, to Quilter Street, and Florence yawned. ‘Poor Mrs Fryer,’ she said. ‘She is quite right: the women will never fight for shorter hours and minimum wages, while there are so many girls so poorly off that they’ll take any work, however miserable...’
I was not listening. I was watching the lamplight where, at the edges of her hat, it struck her hair and made it glow; and wondering if a moth might ever come and settle amongst the curls, mistaking them for candle-flames.
We reached our home at last, and Florence hung her coat up and began to busy herself, as usual, with her pile of papers and books. I went quietly upstairs, to gaze at Cyril as he slumbered in his crib; then I went and sat with Ralph, while Florence worked on. It grew chilly, and I set a little fire in the grate: ‘The first of autumn,’ as Ralph pointed out; and his words - and the idea that I had been at Quilter Street for the turning of three whole seasons - were strangely moving ones. I lifted my eyes to him, and smiled. His whiskers had grown, and he looked more than ever like the sailor on the Players’ packets. He looked more than ever like his sister, too, and the likeness made me like him all the more, and wonder how I had ever mistaken him for her husband.
The fire flamed, then grew hot and ashy, and at half-past ten or so Ralph yawned, and slapped his chair and rose from it and wished us both good-night. It was all just as it had been on my first evening there - except that he had a kiss for me, too, these days, as well as for Florence; and there was my little truckle-bed, propped in the corner, and my shoes beside the fire, and my coat upon the hook behind the door.
I gazed at all this in a complacent sort of way, then yawned, and rose to fetch the kettle. ‘Stop all that now,’ I said to Florence, nodding at her books. ‘Come and sit with me and talk.’ It was not a strange request - we had got rather into the habit of sitting up when Ralph had gone to bed, chatting over the day’s events - and now she looked at me and smiled, and set down her pen.
I swung the kettle over the fire, and Florence rose and stretched - then cocked her head.
‘Cyril,’ she said. I listened too, and after a second caught his thin, irregular cry. She moved to the stairs. ‘I’ll shush him, before he wakes Ralph.’
She was gone for a full five minutes or so, and when she returned it was with Cyril himself, his lashes gleaming in the lamplight and his hair damp and darkened with the sweat of fretful slumber.
‘He won’t settle,’ she said. ‘I’ll let him stay with us a while.’ She sat back in the armchair by the fire and the child lay heavily against her. I passed her her tea, and she took a sideways sip at it, and yawned. Then she gazed at me, and rubbed her eyes.
‘What a help you’ve been to me, Nance, these past few months!’ she said.
‘I only help,’ I answered truthfully, ‘to stop you wearing yourself out. You do too much.’
‘There’s so much to do!’
‘I can’t believe that all of it should fall to you, though. Do you never weary of it?’
‘I get tired,’ she said, yawning again, ‘as you can see! But never of it.’
‘But Flo, if it’s such an endless task, why labour at all?’
‘Why, because I must! Because how could I rest, when the world is so cruel and hard, and yet might be so sweet... The kind of work I do is its own kind of fulfilment, whether it’s successful or not.’ She drank her tea. ‘It’s like love.’
Love! I sniffed. ‘You think love is its own reward,
then?’
‘Don’t you?’
I gazed into my cup. ‘I did once, I think,’ I said. ‘But...’ I had never told her about those days. Cyril wriggled, and she kissed his head and murmured in his ear, and for a moment all was very still - perhaps she thought me wondering about the gent I said I had lived with in St John’s Wood. But then she spoke again, more briskly.
‘Besides, I don’t believe it is an endless task. Things are changing. There are unions everywhere - and women’s unions, as well as men’s. Women do things today their mothers would have laughed to think of seeing their daughters doing, twenty years ago; soon they will even have the vote! If people like me don’t work, it’s because they look at the world, at all the injustice and the muck, and all they see is a nation falling in upon itself, and taking them with it. But the muck has new things growing out of it - wonderful things! - new habits of working, new kinds of people, new ways of being alive and in love ...’ Love again. I put a finger to the scar upon my cheek, where Dickie’s doctor’s book had caught it. Florence bent her head to gaze at the baby, as he lay sighing upon her chest.
‘In another twenty years,’ she went on quietly, ‘imagine how the world will be! It will be a new century. Cyril will be a young man - nearly, but not quite, as old as I am now. Imagine the things he’ll see, the things he’ll do ...’ I looked at her, and then at him; and for a moment I felt almost able to see with her across the years to the queer new world that would have Cyril in it, as a man...
As I looked, she shifted in her seat, reached a hand out to the bookcase at her side, and drew a volume from the bulging shelves. It was Leaves of Grass: she turned its pages, and found a passage that she seemed to know.
