Our Lizzie

by Anna Jacobs

  Sam came to lean against the door of the scullery. “I’m doing pretty well so far at keeping you here.” He looked across at Percy with a grin. “I tie her up when I go out. They taught us all sorts of useful skills in the Army. She won’t get away from my knots.”

  “Eeh, lad, is it worth it?”

  “Aye. She’s my wife. An’ she’s not leaving me.” He hesitated, then said, “I don’t hit her any more. Nor I won’t. Whatever she does. So she’s got nothing to complain of now. And when we start a family, she’ll have to stay.”

  Lizzie let out a breath rough with irritation and stared into the fire, leaving the two men to make stilted conversation.

  Percy looked from one to the other of them, at a loss for words to bridge the gaps that yawned between them all. His sister looked older, more sure of herself somehow, and the determination emanating from her was so fierce, he had to wonder if Sam would ever win her over. She seemed like the old Lizzie again, the defiant young lass who’d walked on the top of the wall and done a dozen other stupid, daredevil things, tossing her head at the world like an untamed young animal.

  When he’d finished his tea, he stood up, feeling awkward, and went over to kiss his sister. “Can’t you make the best of it, love? You are his wife.”

  Lizzie turned her head away. “No. And I don’t feel like his wife any more. I belong to myself now.”

  Sam stared at her through eyes burning with suppressed annoyance, but his words were controlled, as were his movements. “Let yourself out, lad. I have to keep my eye on Tiger here.”

  Percy hesitated. “You won’t—hurt her again?”

  “I already said I wouldn’t.” He saw the doubt in Percy’s eyes. “Look, I promised my mate as he lay dying that I’d not beat her again, an’ I’ll keep that promise whatever it costs. But I’ll not let her go, neither. She’s mine.”

  Lizzie spoke suddenly. “Would you write to my friend Peggy in Murforth for me, Percy? Tell her what’s happened? She’s a supervisor at the munitions factory. You can send a letter there.”

  He looked surprised. “Why can’t you do that?”

  Sam grinned. “She can do it as soon as she promises not to run away.” Then he scowled. “So don’t bother about writing to anyone, Percy lad. I left a note for her landlady. They’ll know nothing bad’s happened to her.”

  But when Percy got home to the quiet little house, he decided to do as Lizzie had asked. So he wrote, explained the situation as well as he could and addressed the letter to “Peggy, Supervisor,” at the munitions factory. As an afterthought, he added Lizzie’s address.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Two days after Christmas, the postman brought a telegram to James Cardwell’s house.

  “Sorry, Mrs. Cardwell,” he mumbled.

  Edith didn’t move, just stood there staring at it in horror as he turned away and walked off down the street.

  “No,” she whispered. “No!” She walked slowly into the house and sat down in the unheated front parlour, but it was several minutes before she could bring herself to open the telegram. She didn’t want to be a widow. When she read it and found the news she had dreaded, she began to scream.

  The two maids came running in, and behind them the children. For a few minutes it was a flurry of fuss and sobbing and explanations, with the children mostly ignored.

  Young Frank saw the telegram and picked it up, his face wooden with the effort not to cry for he had already guessed what it contained. He read the short message and put an arm round his sister, who was reading it beside him.

  “Daddy?” she gulped.

  “Don’t cry!” he hissed, giving her a little shake. “She cries and cries, but it doesn’t mean anything.” He scowled at his mother, who was lying back letting the maids fuss over her, then turned away and put his arm round his sister’s shoulders.

  “What’ll we do, Frank?”

  “Nothing. What can we do?”

  When Edith at last looked across the room, she murmured, “Oh, my poor children, how am I to tell you?” This was a line straight out of one of her favourite pictures, one she had coaxed no less than three of her admirers to take her to, so she knew the screen captions off by heart.

  “You don’t need to tell us. We’ve already seen the telegram and heard you crying.” Frank’s voice was gruff, angry-sounding, more like a man’s. “We know Father’s dead. It doesn’t say how he died, though.”

  “What does it matter how?” Edith buried her face in her hands again, but made no attempt to comfort them.

  Doris pressed against her brother’s shoulder, feeling comforted by his arm holding her so firmly.

  “I’ll take my sister up to the nursery,” he said, still in the same wooden voice. “We’ll leave you to recover, Mother.” He had talked to his father on his last leave about his mother, about how she never spent any time with them or seemed to notice what they were doing, and his father had said that wasn’t the children’s fault, simply that some women didn’t make good mothers.

  “It’s no use being rude to her or shouting,” James had concluded. “It’s not in her to do it. It’s like hitting a puppy for barking at a stranger. It’s born in the puppy to bark and it’s born in your mother to let others rear her children.” He had hesitated then added, “But I love you both. Very much. You’re a fine lad. I couldn’t want a better son. And I’m relying on you to look after your sister if—if anything happens to me.”

  So now, Frank sat Doris down and held her while she wept, dashing away his own tears when they would fall. Later, he went down to the kitchen and asked the maid how his mother was.

  Kath, who had nieces and nephews of her own, looked at him sympathetically. “I think she’s sleeping, Master Frank. She’s taken some of that medicine she got last year and she’s lying on the sofa.” She wanted to hug him, but he was so stiff and grown-up that she didn’t quite like to. “I’m sorry about the master, I am indeed. He’ll be sorely missed.”

  Frank gave a quick nod, changing the subject. Nothing anyone said could help, but at least Kath’s tears were real, not for show like his mother’s. “Could we have some breakfast, do you think?”

  “Yes, of course. But before I get it, I have something for you.” She went into the pantry and reached up to the top shelf.

  He stared at the envelope with his name written on it in his father’s heavy black writing.

  “The master gave it to me before he left. He said if anything happened to him, I was to give it to you, but not to say anything about it to your mother. And I’ll bring you a tray up to the nursery directly.”

  Frank took the envelope and nodded his thanks. When he went upstairs, he decided to open the letter in his bedroom. What he read made more unmanly tears run down his cheeks, but softened the hard knot of anguish in his chest at least. He’d always treasure this letter.

  * * *

  Later that afternoon Edith Cardwell dressed in black, grimaced at herself in the mirror, because it definitely wasn’t her colour, and went down to the builder’s yard, bowing her head like a queen at the condolences offered by people she met in the street. She was filled with fiery satisfaction at what she was about to do.

  She walked into Emma’s office without knocking and said with immense relish, “You’re fired.”

  Emma could only gape and wonder if Mrs. Cardwell had gone mad. “I’m afraid you can’t—” she began.

  Edith interrupted. “Oh, but I can fire you now. My husband is dead, you see, so I’m the owner of this business and I’d like you to leave my premises immediately.” She leaned across the desk, her face a twisted mask of viciousness. “And if you think I don’t know you were carrying on with my husband, you must be even more stupid than you look.”

  Emma gasped and sat down. “James is dead?” She couldn’t control her voice, which wobbled. “How?”

  “None of your business, you trollop! Just get your things together and leave.”

  Too shocked and upset even to weep, Emma began
to gather her possessions. When she went out to the storeroom for a box, she found Edith dogging her footsteps.

  “I’m making very sure you don’t steal anything. And hurry up, will you?”

  Just as Emma had finished clearing the desk of her things, Walter came in, staring from one of them to the other. “What’s up?”

  Edith turned to him. “My husband is dead and now that I’m in charge, I’m not having his whore working here.”

  Walter swallowed hard. “James is dead?”

  “I just said so. And I’m warning you now that you’d better pull your socks up, too, or you will be out of a job as well.”

  He folded his arms. “I wouldn’t work for you if you paid me double, missus. Nor will any other self-respecting tradesman if you talk to them like that. Who the hell do you think you are?”

  Edith gasped and drew herself up. “I’m the widow of your late master and now I’m your employer.”

  “Nay, that you’re not. I’m not sunk so low I have to work for a nasty bitch like you. You made him miserable for years, which is why he turned elsewhere, but you’re not spoiling my life.” He turned to Emma, who was trying not to sob as she crammed the last of her things into the box. “I’ll carry that for you, love, then I’ll come back for my tools.”

  And he put his arm round her shoulders and led her out without a backward glance at Mrs. Cardwell, standing in solitary possession of a business she knew not the first thing about.

  * * *

  The morning after his father’s memorial service, Frank didn’t go to school but hung around in the back yard of the builder’s, which stood empty and forlorn-looking. He couldn’t understand where Walter was. Or Miss Harper. And why was the front door shut? The yard was never left unattended during business hours.

  When his father was alive, Frank had loved coming down here—sawing bits of wood, helping Walter clear up. He wasn’t sure what had happened on the day the telegram had arrived, but his mother had come back from the yard in a raging fury and he had overheard her talking about “that woman” in such tones of anger that it had been a while before he realised she was talking about Miss Harper. And “that nasty old man” seemed to be referring to Walter.

  What had Miss Harper and Walter done wrong, then?

  The short memorial service hadn’t seemed right, somehow, or the absence of a coffin. It had upset Frank that there was no body to bury. He’d have liked his father to lie in the churchyard with his grandfather and his great-grandfather and all the other Cardwells. He was going to lie there himself one day.

  At the service, his mother had leaned against Major Gresham all the time, fluttering her eyelashes and letting him support her. That had sickened Frank. And the Major—who was in charge of a supply depot and had never been to the Front, so didn’t count as a real soldier in the boy’s eyes—kept saying he’d come round whenever he could to comfort her, help her with the business.

  Today Frank was supposed to go back to school and carry on as if nothing had happened. His mother wouldn’t even talk to him about the future of the yard. But he wasn’t going to school yet. He was going to do as his father had asked first.

  When the school bell rang faintly in the distance and he knew there’d be no teachers out on the streets, he left the yard and walked to the rooms of his father’s lawyer, prudently taking the back lanes to get there.

  He went into the front office and said firmly to the lad, “I need to see Mr. Finch. It’s urgent.” The lawyer was going to come round to his house to read the will that afternoon, but his mother had said it was no concern of Frank’s, so he might as well go back to school. But his father’s letter said differently.

  At first they didn’t want to let him in, but when he told them about his father and showed them the last paragraph of the letter, they got pitying looks on their faces and changed their minds. He hated people pitying him, absolutely hated it!

  Mr. Finch was sitting behind his desk, but he got up and came to join Frank in the big leather armchairs in front of the fire. “Sit there, lad, and warm yourself a bit. Eeh, I’m sorry about your father. He was a good man.”

  “Yes.” Frank was learning not to answer such comments, just push them aside in his head, because they made him feel like weeping and he was the man of the family now, so couldn’t let himself be weak.

  “I believe your father left you a letter asking you to come and see me?”

  “Yes.”

  “I was going to see your mother this afternoon, then send for you tomorrow. Your father made certain provisions under his will and I promised him I’d tell you about them myself if—if necessary.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “The main thing is that he has left the business and everything he owns to you, my boy, except for a small share that’s left to Miss Harper.”

  Frank sat and thought this over for a moment. “Not to my mother?”

  “No.”

  “Miss Harper wasn’t at the service today. Or Walter.”

  “Yes. I’m afraid your mother has dismissed Miss Harper. And Walter left with her.”

  Another silence. Then, “But if I own the business now, I can ask them to come back to work for us, can’t I?”

  “Yes. You can, indeed. Though it’d be better if I did it. I hope you don’t mind, but I’m now joint guardian of you and your sister—together with your mother, of course—and trustee of the business till you grow up?”

  “If the business is mine what will Mother do, sir? For money, I mean.”

  “Well, she already has an inheritance from her father, besides which your father arranged that the business was to pay for household expenses and servants. Your mother will have enough money to live on, believe me. But he expected you to look after her as you get older—unless she remarries. He—um, seemed to think you would want to work in the business when you left school.”

  Frank’s face brightened. “Oh, yes! I love going down to the yard.” After another silence, he added, “My mother won’t like how things are left, will she, sir? She’ll get upset.” She’d probably start screeching and wailing. He hated it when she got like that.

  “I dare say she will. I’ll go and explain things to her while you’re at school.”

  The boy wriggled uncomfortably. “I should have gone there this morning. I’ll be in trouble.”

  “I’ll write you a note explaining you had to see me first.”

  “Thank you very much, sir.”

  Mr. Finch sighed as he watched the lad leave. What a fine young fellow Frank was, a real chip off the old block. He sighed again at the thought of what lay ahead. It was not going to be pleasant. Edith Cardwell was a nasty piece and always had been.

  And after dealing with her, he’d have to go and see poor Miss Harper. A pleasant young woman, that. But it was going to cause talk James leaving her a share of the business, and they could all guess why he’d done it.

  * * *

  A few days later, as dusk was falling, there was a knock on the front door of number one Maidham Street. Sam dragged Lizzie along the hall to answer it because he had found he couldn’t even leave her in the kitchen alone without her trying to run out of the back door—good thing he’d got that padlock on the gate. It was wearing, though, keeping an eye on someone all the time, bloody wearing.

  Blanche Harper stood on the doorstep with a parcel in her hand. “This came for your wife earlier, Mr. Thoxby. No one was in, so the postman left it with me.” She hadn’t been able to get along to deliver it earlier because Emma was still prostrate with grief and shock.

  “Here!” She pushed the parcel into his hands, nodded a greeting at Lizzie and turned away. She felt sorry for that poor girl, who looked pale and unhappy, but she had her own troubles, for her sister seemed to have lost the will to live.

  Sam stared at the parcel, hefting it in his hand, then turned and pushed Lizzie back into the kitchen, muttering in exasperation, for he’d just about reached the limit with her. He’d have to think of some way
to settle her hash, because he wasn’t putting up with this much longer. The house was a pigsty and she refused to touch it. He had to force her to eat, to do anything.

  “Fine bloody wife you are!” he grumbled as he reached the kitchen. He stared at the parcel again, then noticed the postmark. “Murforth. One of your dear friends sending you a present, eh?” He weighed it in his hand, wondering whether to simply toss it on the fire, then went to get the scissors. Might as well see what it was.

  Lizzie stared at the parcel, wondering what it could be and how her friends in Murforth had got hold of her address. Then suddenly a dreadful thought struck her. It was just the same size as—it couldn’t be—surely it couldn’t be her letters from Peter? The breath caught in her throat, for she could think of nothing else it could be.

  Once Sam saw those letters, he’d kill her. She had no doubt about that. Her writing to any man would be enough to send him into a fury, but writing to the man he hated most in the world would surely push him into murder. Her heart began to thump in her chest. Fear curdled her stomach. For all her assertions to Sam, for all her defiance, she didn’t want to die.

  * * *

  When Blanche left Lizzie’s house, she almost bumped into Percy. “Oh!” Her hand fluttered to her chest. “Oh, I didn’t see you.”

  “Are you all right, Miss Harper?” She looked so white and worried, he stopped for a moment.

  “Yes. I just—you startled me. I was miles away.”

  “And how is Emma? I heard about Mr. Cardwell. It’s a sad loss.”

  Blanche’s face crumpled and she couldn’t hold back the tears. For a moment the world spun around her and she swayed dizzily.

  He put an arm round her instinctively. “You’re not well. Let me help you back home.”

  She clung to him for a moment, then tried to pull herself together. “It’s not me—it’s Emma who’s not herself. I’m so worried about her.” She didn’t dare let go of him because if she did, she might faint right away. There was something warm and solid about him, and he had such a kind face she found herself confiding, “Oh, Mr. Kershaw, what am I to do? She just lies there, weeping, and she’ll lose the child if she goes on like this. Oh!” She clapped a hand to her mouth as she realised what she had said, then buried her head in his shoulder, sobbing incoherently.