“You’re not from London, are you, Mrs. Burns?” Westpot says, impatient to be getting on.
“Nay, from down Manchester way. But my kin, they’re from across the water.”
“France?” says Leech, making Stone and Halls giggle.
“The other way.”
“Ah, of course.” She looks at the other three. They twitch their faces back at her.
“So you and your family,” Westpot says, “you are, um, shoppy people, then?” She talks to her nails, as if abashed by having to bleed this personal vein.
“We were in the cotton, if that’s what you mean. But we’ve stopped with that. Now we’re in something else entire.”
“Well, that’s a relief,” says Stone.
“A relief, indeed,” says Halls.
“Shoppy people are bad enough,” says Leech, “but the Manchester ones are supposed to be a whole grade down, if that’s possible.”
“Always behind the counter, even when they’re not,” says Stone.
I can’t gainsay what they’re saying about Manchester and the rest, but I don’t like how they’re saying it, so I says, “If the Manchester men have a bad name, it’s their own doing and they deserve it, but they’re not all the same, there’s good eggs between them.”
“Good eggs?” says Westpot. “Like Mr. Burns, you mean?”
“Mr. who?”
“Why, Mr. Burns, woman! Your husband!”
When you’re called a missus, oftentimes you forget yourself, and it’s a good idea to have a story to tell, to cover over. But I have no such story ready. “There’s no Mr. Burns,” I says.
“Oh, my dear woman.”
“Oh, Lord.”
“No Mr. Burns?”
“Where is he?”
I clear my throat. Scratch an itch that takes hold of the scalp under my bun. “He’s in his grave,” I says, undressing the lie by thinking of my father.
Stone allows herself a gasp. Leech takes a napkin from the tray and offers it to me. Halls gives me a Protestant “Bless you” and looks down, virtuous-like, at her clasped hands.
I nod my thanks and reach once more for the sandwiches, happy to be off the hook as light as that. But Westpot has drawn back her lips and is thirsty for the truth. For that’s how they bite you: smiling.
“But I’ve seen a man,” she says, “I’ve seen a man coming in and out.”
“You have?”
“Yes, Mrs. Burns, a man.”
“Oh, aye. Now that I think of it, there’s a man who lives here.”
“But he’s not Mr. Burns?”
“Nay, he’s not Mr. Burns.”
“Oh?”
“Oh!”
“Oh.”
“Who is he, then?”
“He’s Mr. Engels.”
“Mr. Angles?”
“Engels. Mr. Engels.”
“Is he here now, this Mr. Engels?”
“Nay, he’s away from the house on business.”
“And who is he? A lodger?”
“Nay, not a bit of a lodger.”
Westpot simpers, understanding. “You’re not married, are you, Mrs. Burns?”
“He’s my husband, I just haven’t taken his name.”
“You can’t take a man’s name unless you’re wedded to him.” She turns to the others. “She’s not married.”
“I’m his helpmeet is what, Mrs. Westpot.”
“You’re his—?”
“She said helpmeet.”
“Shh, ladies, let’s try not to be rude.”
They suck themselves in. Leech’s stays creak. Halls, so fascinated by the proceedings, forgets herself and takes up a slice of cake. Her eyes darting around for the next move, she feeds the whole thing in.
“Mrs. Burns,” says Westpot, “if you don’t mind me asking—” She hesitates.
I meet her gander full force. I’ve naught to hide from no one. “Aye, Mrs. Westpot?”
“What I was going to ask was, what business is Mr.—?”
“Ah!” Halls lets out a splutter, and now a gullet-bursting cough, and now the contents of her gob drops out—pat!—onto her lap. “Pepper!” she yelps. “There’s pepper on the cake!”
Pumps—I could hear her ear scratch against the door the whole time and now I know why—shimmies in, calm as a cucumber. “You all right, ma’am?” she says. “Can I help you there?” She walks around, positions herself behind Halls, and serves out four slugs to her back.
Stunned, I watch the scene, the perfect horror of it. And I’m still sat here, unable to move, while the women file out, crinolines crumpled, bunches bounced; and still now while Pumps fettles up the tea things.
“Those were some bitches,” she murmurs to herself as she makes a pile of the plates. “They got what was coming.”
Her behavior is a credit to those who brought her up. For she was raised in thoughtlessness. Reared to be someone who’d have none of the advantages. Just one more of the poor tattery children of Little Ireland. Like all of us, she would’ve seen much brutality within the circle. A crooked look would’ve caught her a larruping at the hands of her slack-spined father and rag-and-scram brothers. Her face and the bent of her back bear the marks of this ill usage. I can’t blame her for feeling angry and wanting to defy the laws of the wide world. I’ve been her. I am her.
My punishment, so, is not the belt or the starvation. Nor is it the water pump or the locked door. Rather, it’s the needle.
“Come and help me with the stitching,” I says to her. “Come, please, and salvage my efforts.”
And she comes. And she looks at my work: a bundle of botched and broken thread like a wild shrub. And she bursts out. And I can’t help but join her. We hang off each other now and laugh till we’re sick.
X. A Free Education
I’m not clever with the needle. I can’t keep my mind full on it. When it comes time for it—this hour after lunch is the usual, though I’m told some ladies can’t stop and have to have it torn from them at bedtime as a babby from the breast—but, aye, when the lunch is cleared and way is made for the buttons and patches, I’m hindered from settling into it by a draft that, no matter what the weather outside, comes under the door and cuts into me like a knife.
Over my shoulder, it does blow, and into my ear. Then, whirling in my head, it swings my weathercock round and points it backwards and northwards, and sets me to believing that because I’ve done my time spinning cotton, I ought be handy at this fancywork too. “Lord bless us and save us, Lizzie Burns,” the wind roars. “All those years at the mill and you can’t do a simple cross-stitch?”
I