“Please, Tilly, where may I wash?” Emily asked, certain that Tilly had forgotten about that, too.
Tilly jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “Two doors back down the passageway that way. And see you doesn’t take all day ’bout it!”
The cold, damp, stone washroom would hardly give anyone the desire to “take all day ’bout it.” Emily was happy to escape it as quickly as possible, her fingers still stinging from the icy water provided by the cracked enamel pitcher. When she returned to the room, however, Tilly no longer had the hat on her head. Instead she was holding it in one hand and with the other stroking the fur as if it were a small animal.
“It’s nice,” she said dreamily. “Where’s it come from? A rabbit?”
“No,” replied Emily.
“What then?” Tilly persisted.
“An—an ermine,” Emily said. Then she promptly wished she had thought to say weasel, which didn’t sound nearly so royal.
Tilly’s pale eyelashes flew upward. “Oooh!”
“You—you may borrow it any time you like, Tilly,” Emily said quickly.
“Mights as well,” Tilly replied. “It don’t look too good on you with y’r hair all hanging ’round in strings.”
Emily thought this a remarkably ungracious acceptance speech, but decided it would be best to say no more about it. She simply remained perched on the edge of the cot until Tilly should be ready to leave.
Tilly continued stroking the hat a moment longer, and then looked up at Emily slyly. “I bets you has lots o’ pretty things in that bag. Ain’t you going to open it now?”
Emily hesitated. The key to the bag was hanging on the gold chain around her neck, along with her locket, where Mrs. Leslie had put it so she would be certain not to lose it. She would have loved right then to open her travelling bag and pull out her warm pink shawl. She was shivering in her silk dress. But the look on Tilly’s face, together with the sudden recollection of what else lay in the suitcase, made her settle instead on telling a lie, the first she had ever told. She drew a deep breath. “I—I haven’t the key, Tilly. My—my aunt has it.”
To Emily’s relief, Tilly never noticed the hesitation. “You is going to let me look at ’em some time else then, ain’t you?” she said, stroking the fur. Then without waiting for a reply, she went right on, smooth as syrup, into, “Us ought to be friends, Emily. I means, us both being orphings, and all that.”
Emily had already determined that she would try to be as friendly to Tilly as possible, but she was not at all certain that they could actually be friends, even if they were both “orphings.” A friend was someone she could trust, like Theodora, who had been her best friend and with whom she had shared all her confidences. How could anyone share a confidence with Tilly? Emily was greatly relieved, therefore, that Tilly did not seem to expect a lifelong pledge of devotion at that moment. Instead she thrust the tam-o’-shanter into her apron pocket (making Emily wonder if she would ever see it again), and started for the door.
Emily hurried after her as she stumped back down the passageway. “Tilly?” She shuddered as she glanced back over her shoulder. “What—what about the Remembrance Room?”
“Well, what ’bout it?” snapped Tilly.
“When is the person going to be let out?”
“Oh, it,” said Tilly indifferently. “Depends on what it done. After dinner most likely. But if it done something terrible, like snitching two peppermints, then it gets to spend the night.”
Spend the night in the Remembrance Room! The thought was so horrifying that Emily failed to notice Tilly stopping at the top of the stairs until she felt a sharp pinch on her arm. The squeak she let out was cut in half by Tilly’s hand clapped tightly over her mouth.
“Shhh! That’s to remind you us is to be equals. Mrs. Meeching says so. So no nanky-panky from y’r aunt, or else! You gets that?”
The hand remained over Emily’s mouth until this entire message was delivered, so that when she felt another even sharper pinch on her arm, there was no squeak heard at all. This seemed very odd behavior from one who had so recently proclaimed she wanted the two “orphings” to be friends, but gave one more reason why Emily felt she had to be wary of Tilly.
They entered the bleak grey kitchen, which seemed surprisingly cheerful after the trip below. Perhaps this was because one of the two tables had been covered with gold-rimmed china bowls and platters heaped with green lettuces, red strawberries, and orange and yellow jellies, all making the room look as if a garden had sprung up suddenly in its midst. Aunt Twice stood at the table busily decorating the platters with frilly bits of parsley and wafer-thin slices of lemon. Was it possible that this beautiful food was for them after all? Emily wondered.
But Tilly stumped right past this table to the second one, which bore only a large, sickly brown basket of bread lumps, not too recently baked if slight tinges of grey-green here and there were any indication. Emily felt a strange, sinking feeling arrive suddenly in the pit of her stomach.
“What has kept you girls so long? You know you must be on time for serving, Tilly.” Aunt Twice wiped her hands nervously on her apron.
“Oh, ’tweren’t me! Emily took such a long time washing,” replied Tilly blandly as she wheeled a serving cart from the corner and hoisted the bread basket onto it.
Knowing the washroom down below as Aunt Twice did, Emily thought, she must surely have had some doubts about the truthfulness of this statement, but she pressed her lips together and kept silent. So, for that matter, did Emily, for if she had not learned already what was and what was not expected of her, a stinging spot on her arm was now there to remind her.
“Well, hurry, do hurry please! Oh dear, Emily, darl—” Aunt Twice caught herself. “Emily, you’ll need an apron. Tilly, do let her borrow one of yours, will you? Then come, please, and help me with the pot.”
Glowering at Emily, Tilly thumped to the wall and retrieved from a nail an apron as greasy as the one she had on. “Why can’t she help with it?”
Aunt Twice sighed. “Tilly, compare the size of Emily to the size of the pot. We would have soup all over the floor, and then what would we do for dinner?”
“Well, she can very well clean it then!” grumped Tilly. She wheeled the serving cart to the stove with a sour look on her face.
As Emily struggled to tie on the too-long, ugly apron, Aunt Twice and Tilly laboriously lifted from the stove to the cart both the huge grey pot and a steaming teakettle. Next to the kettle Aunt Twice set a small green china bowl containing a white muslin bag not much larger than a postage stamp. Attached to one corner of the bag was a short length of string. Emily wondered at the purpose of this odd little bag, but any question she might have had about it was cut off by a sharp sniff from Tilly.
“All right, you can come ’long now. Ain’t too helpless to push the cart, I trusts!”
Her long apron dragging on the floor, Emily quickly placed her pale hands next to Tilly’s rough red ones on the serving cart, and they pushed it through the swinging door into the dining room. The first thing Emily noticed was that a crockery bowl, plate, tin cup, and spoon were ominously missing from one place halfway down the long table. She tried not to think about it.
Tilly darted a quick look at the cheerless grandfather clock ticking mournfully in a corner. “Us hasn’t no time to shilly-shally. Mrs. Meeching likes ’em served ’fore they enters. So if you thinks you has the muscle”—this with a heavy note of disgust—“you holds up the bowls whilst I pours.”
Emily picked up a bowl promptly and managed to hold it steadily as Tilly ladled the unappetizing soup into it. She looked grudgingly pleased that Emily might actually be of some use after all.
“You knows,” Tilly said, almost cheerfully, “ ’fore you come, it were y’r aunt what poured, whilst I done the bowls. Pouring ain’t easy. It’s a step up in life, you might say.”
Emily tried to give Tilly a friendly smile over the soup bowl, although it was difficult for her to imagine anyone
being pleased about such a promotion.
“O’ course,” Tilly went on, “I done it once or twice before when y’r aunt were ailing, and Kipper stuck ’round to help.”
“Who is Kipper?” asked Emily.
“He’s a boy. His pa owns a fish shop. Kipper delivers the fish and helps ’bout the place.” Tilly paused to give Emily an appraising look. “ ’Bout y’r age, I’d say. Anyways, you’ll see him.” She snickered into her hand. “Can’t miss him much!”
The nature of this reply gave Emily another sinking feeling in the middle of her stomach. She suspected that this boy might be just one more horror she had to deal with. Did he specialize in nasty tricks? Can’t miss him much—it sounded ominous!
“There, soup’s done,” Tilly said. “Now us pours the hot water into the cups.”
It seemed to Emily that they had really just finished pouring hot water into the bowls. She has never before heard of a meal that was so awash in hot water.
“Did Aunt Twice pour for that, too?” she asked.
Tilly’s eyebrows rose. “Is that what you calls y’r aunt, Aunt Twice? What kind o’ name is that?”
“Mama was Aunt Twice’s sister, and Papa was Uncle Twice’s brother,” Emily explained. “That made them my aunt and uncle two times over.” She wondered how Tilly would act at this mention of an Uncle Twice. So far not one word had been mentioned about him. Emily would have questioned Aunt Twice, but her aunt had been so preoccupied and so distraught, she had not dared. Besides, wasn’t it up to Aunt Twice to tell her? She watched Tilly’s face anxiously for a sign.
Tilly’s brows knit together over pale, blank eyes as if straining Emily’s explanation through her brain was far more than she could manage. Then, to Emily’s terrible disappointment, she skipped right back to the first question.
“Well, y’r aunt done the hot water, too. You couldn’t, howsumever!” Tilly accompanied this pronouncement with a disdainful wrinkle of her flat nose. “Not just ’cause it’s heavy, but it ain’t easy not to slosh it over the edges and all. You gets to deliver the bread lumps, one to a customer.”
Emily began setting the hard, moldy bread on the tin plates. “What about the little bag?” she asked.
“Oh, that’s their little treat. You’ll see,” Tilly replied mysteriously, and placed the small green bowl at the head of the table. Just then, the grandfather clock began to toll the hour, and she sucked in her breath. “Us has to hurry, or us’ll get caught!”
Emily quickly set a bread lump on the last plate and started at once for the kitchen.
“Sssst!” Tilly clamped a firm hand around her arm.
“Us has to stay in the dining room case they wants more. Quick, over here!”
Tilly had no sooner spoken than the doors from the parlor flew open and Mrs. Meeching entered the dining room, gliding silently across the floor as if she had no legs at all. Her black skirt hissed faintly around her ankles. Behind her appeared the cozy Mrs. Plumly, her knitting needles clicking away busily.
Emily began to shiver as if a draught of cold air had blown across the floor. But Mrs. Meeching never even glanced in her direction, as if she were nothing more than a parlor shadow. Mrs. Meeching went at once to the head of the table, where she stood, hands folded, like a pillar of black frost. Mrs. Plumly placed herself at the chair across the table, needles clicking at full speed.
Then the old people began to drift through the doors. Eyes dull, hands shaking, legs trembling, they shuffled unsteadily across the floor in shabby shoes and carpet slippers. Their poor, sad, wrinkled faces were as lifeless as when they had stared at Emily across the parlor. Silently, each one found a place at the table.
As soon as the scraping of chairs, chillingly noted by Mrs. Meeching, had ended, she picked up the small green bowl containing the tiny muslin bag and raised her eyes heavenward.
“For what we are about to receive, let us be truly grateful.” She allowed a few moments for this thin blessing to arrive at its destination, and then went on. “Today, Mr. Figg will start the tea bag. If you please, Mrs. Quirk?”
A little muslin bag filled with a few tea leaves— so that’s what it was! With wide eyes, Emily watched the green bowl handed to Mrs. Quirk, and then on down the line of old, trembling hands to Mr. Figg. Carefully as his frail, thin hands would allow him, Mr. Figg lifted up the string and dipped the tea bag into his tin cup of hot water. A second passed. Two seconds passed. Mrs. Meeching sniffed audibly, and bowl and bag were handed to the next old person at the table.
Around the table travelled the tea bag, dipped into a cup at every place, except where Mrs. Plumly and Mrs. Meeching sat. And, of course, the place where no one sat at all. Long before the bag reached the last person, it must have left not the slightest shade of color in the cup, much less any taste of tea.
Even beyond this pitiful sideshow, it was the most dismal, silent dinner that Emily had ever witnessed. There were no sounds of laughter, no conversation of any kind. All that could be heard was the tick, tick of the clock, the click, click of Mrs. Plumly’s knitting needles, and an occasional weak ping of a tin spoon hitting against a bowl. No one finished any soup, and no one so much as tasted a bread lump. So, of course, when Mrs. Meeching asked if anyone cared for more, no one raised a hand. Thus the meal ended. Preceded by Mrs. Meeching and Mrs. Plumly, the old people shuffled silently out of the dining room.
Who was to eat all that delectable food Aunt Twice was preparing in the kitchen? Emily wondered. But she did not need to wonder long. A few moments later, the kitchen door burst open, and Aunt Twice flew out. Her apron whirling out around her, she rolled another serving cart laden with the food in question to a third door that led from the dining room. As she opened the door to pass through, there was just enough time for Emily to see a small, cozy room with red velvet chairs drawn up to a low table set for two before a crackling fire in the fireplace. A lace cloth covered the table, and on it were two settings of gleaming silver, china and crystal. And before the door slammed shut, who did Emily see settling themselves comfortably in the chairs but Mrs. Meeching and Mrs. Plumly!
“All right, now you knows, so quits y’r gawping,” said Tilly. “Us still has to eat and do up.”
Eat? Emily shuddered as she watched Tilly pour all the ugly, untouched bread back into the basket from the plates, not to mention pouring Mrs. Meeching’s and Mrs. Plumly’s untouched soup back into the soup pot. Surely, Emily tried to tell herself, Aunt Twice had left something good for her in the kitchen, something to tempt her appetite. But when she and Tilly rolled the serving cart back into the kitchen, all Emily found staring back at her were two bare tables, a sink piled mountain-high with dirty pots and pans, and the large icebox tightly padlocked. Every bit of lettuce green, strawberry red, and jelly orange and yellow had been swept away, and not so much as a sprig of parsley remained.
All too soon, Emily found herself seated with Tilly at a kitchen table, facing a bowl of grey, watery soup and a large lump of moldy bread. She had managed one taste of each article, and that was all.
“Sorry if the food ain’t dainty ’nough for you,” said Tilly, gulping a large spoonful of soup. But then she added in a surprisingly kind tone, “You eats the bread, leastways. What everyone don’t eat today, everyone gets tomorrow!”
“Couldn’t we throw it away?” Emily asked. She remembered that, after all, there was a garbage can in the kitchen entry.
“Not me!” Tilly flicked a patch of grey-green from her bread with a practiced fingernail. “Everything ’round here got a number on it, not just the peppermints.” She narrowed her pale eyes knowingly at Emily.
Nonetheless, Emily could eat no more. She simply sat and watched in amazement as Tilly put away two bowls of the dismal soup and at least three lumps of the ancient bread.
Any kindliness Tilly might have felt at the supper table, however, met sudden death when it came to the sink. Tilly had been promised that Emily would do the soup pot, and thus Emily did the soup pot (which she ha
d to scour and scrape from atop a wooden lettuce crate, being too small to reach the high sink), not to mention bowls and plates, tin cups and spoons, and a dozen more pots and pans, before, under Tilly’s baleful eyes, she was rescued by Aunt Twice.
It hardly seemed possible to Emily that it was only the hour of her usual bedtime when she stumbled down below to her room, her mind numbed by the mountain of dirty dishes, her hands raw from soaking and scrubbing, and one arm stinging from another pinch given her privately by Tilly as they both left the kitchen.
FOUR
A Disturbing Exphnation
Once in her cellar room, Emily collapsed onto her cot and stared at the tiny sliver high up in the wall that was to be her only window. Forever? she wondered. She was too weary to unpack her travelling bag and take out her nightdress. She was even too weary to pull off her clothes. She could not think of a bone in her body that did not ache, and she felt so empty, though not really hungry. How could she ever be hungry for the ugly food in that ugly kitchen?
Suddenly she began to shiver so hard she could not stop. She was cold and tired, but more than that, she began to remember all that had happened to her, especially where she was now, in a small dank room of stone deep in the ground, with horror overhead and horror just outside the door—the Remembrance Room with its sighing, moaning inhabitant! What kind of evil mind could invent such cruel punishment for a sad old person who had done nothing more than take a peppermint? Though still in her dress, Emily was ready to throw herself under the bedclothes and pull them up over her head to hide from the terrors of her room. Then suddenly she heard a faint knock at her door.
“Who—who is it?” she asked, frightened.
“Aunt Twice,” came the whispered reply.
Aunt Twice! Emily ran to the door and threw it open. Silent as a shadow, Aunt Twice slipped in, carefully closing the door behind her. Then, without another word, she took Emily in her arms.
“Oh, Aunt Twice!” Emily sobbed. “I thought you would never come!”
Peppermints in the Parlor Page 3