Elizabeth and Lily

by Hilary Bailey

  Lily had known from the outset how this would be. As the one-sided row went on, she poured a cup of tea from the pot on the table and cut a doorstep of bread from the loaf in the bread bin.

  ‘Watch how you go with that bread,’ Queenie screamed automatically. ‘How can you eat, with what you’ve done, you silly little bitch?’

  Lily sat down, drank her tea and ate her bread, and, blocking out as much as she could, waited for Queenie to die down.

  ‘That was a good job. A good job,’ Queenie said for the sixth time. ‘They don’t grow on trees, you know.’

  ‘Making uniforms for poor soldier boys what are going out to South Africa to be killed,’ Lily said.

  ‘Well, that’s why it was a good job. There’s plenty of work making uniforms these days. Don’t start telling me it was your sentimental feelings about poor soldier boys which got you the sack. And don’t even dream of going to the Rose and Crown and getting Jack Cunningham to help you. You know, Lily, you’re nothing but a lazy, dirty little cow. You’d be only too happy to hang about at home and let your father keep you. Well, let me tell you.’

  As Queenie raged, Lily’s mind drifted, resentfully, to the spectacle of those two girls, in their clean dresses, with their clean hair and fresh hair ribbons, standing, shocked, in the workshop door, looking at the employees as if they’d been taken to the zoo to see the animals and didn’t like what they saw. Old Warren kept them, she thought resentfully. They weren’t sent to work in a sweatshop, neither did they have to hand all their wages to their mother at the end of the week. She stared fiercely at Queenie, who had fixed up the job for her, negotiated the wages, who took her unopened wage packet each week, handing her back only one shilling. The other coins she tipped into her worn purse. Lily could hear the chink of the vanishing money now.

  I’m not having any more of that, she thought. Hadn’t that girl, the red-headed one, gone pale, though, when she saw the women in riot like that. Lucky bitch, thought jealous Lily, given the best of everything, the profits from Lily’s own work – sick or well, freezing in winter, half boiled in summer – never having to do anything herself but read books and play the piano and wash her hair. Snooty, red-haired bitch, thought Lily. She’d like to give her a clout now, a good kick, a slap in the face, a scratching.

  Meanwhile, Queenie’s voice went on, and Lily grew more tense.

  ‘It isn’t fair. It isn’t fair,’ Queenie was saying now. ‘Why me? Why does all this have to happen to me? If any one of you, just one of you, had any thought for me at all – that’s all I ask. Just one minute’s thought. But no – it’s I, I, I all the time, from all of you, and you’re the worst, Lily.’

  Lily stood up and said, ‘Ma, I’m fed up with this. I’m going out.’

  Queenie’s hand smacked her across one side of her face, then the other. ‘Going out? You’ll go out when I say so—’

  But Lily, brushing away the tears caused by the blows, mumbled, ‘I’m going – you can’t stop me.’ And she left. Her mother ran after her and called down the street, ‘Lily Strugnell! Come back! Just you come back!’ But Lily went on walking down the narrow street in the sunshine, knowing that Queenie was housebound. Rose and the boys would be back from school soon. Charlie’s dinner had to be made. But she, Lily, though her face still stung from the blows, was free to go where she pleased, do anything she liked. As for Queenie, Mr Warren, his sour typist and his bullying forewoman, not to mention those two snooty girls in their clean dresses with their clean faces – she’d show the lot of them.

  Lily sniffed, told herself the future was hers, and headed for the Rose and Crown.

  Chapter Eight

  Of course, one of the snooty girls Lily envied and dearly wished to kick in the behind had never been as lucky as she imagined. In fact, because of that day’s events, Elizabeth was destined to face even more trouble.

  Cora and Elizabeth walked back to the carriage, accompanied by Miss Bennett, Elizabeth trailing slowly through the weed-choked garden. One small red apple hung from a branch of an old toppled apple tree, planted perhaps fifty years ago by the occupants of the house in more prosperous times.

  As she walked, Elizabeth tried to work out what she’d seen, what it meant. She had seen her uncle yelling at a girl of her own age, ignoring completely a woman who had collapsed. No one had reproved him.

  The ‘factory’ owned by Robert Warren was this nasty building in the poverty-stricken East End. There was another factory, of course, making gloves, but there was no reason to believe that that was any better than this one. They were not like the places Elizabeth had imagined from pictures in the papers – factories where healthy and cheerful-looking women worked in proper buildings, wearing neat overalls.

  This place was terrible: the workers looked poor and tired; even the young ones were mostly sallow and worn. Did they have children? That rude girl had talked about them. Who looked after the boys and girls while their mothers were working? It was all horrible. Only the girl, Lily Strugnell, seemed to be putting up a fight, and she had been sacked for it.

  Harriet was leaning from the carriage window. ‘Hurry up, Elizabeth,’ she called. Elizabeth got in. Frannie was leaning back inside, fanning herself with her straw hat. She made a face, saying, ‘I shouldn’t wonder if you haven’t caught something nasty in that place, and you’ll give it to all of us – scarlet fever, and fleas.’

  Harriet told her to be quiet, for she had spotted Robert coming from the office door, his face as black as thunder. He sat down heavily in the carriage, and Harriet ordered the coachman to go back to Linden Grove.

  Robert said nothing as they clopped through the mean streets, over which hung a sultry and storm-laden sky. Inside the carriage no one dared to speak to him for fear of an outburst of rage. He was, Elizabeth knew, embarrassed by the scene at the factory. He thought that it showed him to be a man who could not control his place of business. His response to the embarrassment would be to get angry.

  Elizabeth turned her gaze upwards. A girl in a camisole leaned out of a shabby window. A birdcage hung beside her, over the street. Below, a woman in black boxed a child’s ears. A boy hurried along the pavement with something in a basin. They turned into the high street, where the trams ran. Stalls were selling fruit, vegetables, cooked food. One was piled with battered boots and shoes. Women clustered round another stall, picking through what looked like heaps of old clothes.

  When they reached St Paul’s, Robert came out of his silence and said, ‘Well, at least you now know the kind of thing I have to put up with.’

  Harriet and the girls did not reply. Any response might be the wrong one and cause more trouble. Elizabeth looked out of the window.

  ‘Hysterical fainting women, impudent girls, a clerk whose administrative talents are negligible – that is what I’m faced with day after day. That, my dear,’ he said to his wife, ‘is what keeps the household in decency.’ There was a further silence. Then, ‘I hear no cry of “thank you, Father”.’

  ‘Thank you, Father,’ Frannie and Cora said meekly. Elizabeth still looked out of the window, and saw Fleet Street, men in top hats, a flower seller, a boy filching a loaf from the back of a bread van.

  ‘Nothing from you, Elizabeth?’ Robert asked her.

  ‘I’m sorry, Uncle Robert,’ she said. ‘I didn’t hear you.’

  ‘I should like some acknowledgement of my labours from you – from you in particular, as a dependent. Acknowledgement, I say; I am too realistic to ask for thanks.’

  ‘Thank you, Uncle Robert,’ murmured Elizabeth.

  ‘Since every morsel of food and every thread on your back comes from my efforts, perhaps a little more is due?’ He was working himself up into a rage.

  Harriet and the girls sat still, willing Elizabeth to meet his eyes and give a more satisfactory answer. If not, Robert’s rage would break out, like a river bursting its banks. Elizabeth, however, knew that he would get angry whatever she did. Her uncle was a bully. She had always known this,
but the scene in the factory was the final proof. The action of the girl, Lily, in standing up to him, stayed with her. Meanwhile, the atmosphere in the carriage thickened with Harriet’s and the girls’ apprehension and Robert’s suppressed rage. Elizabeth’s demeanour was quiet, though her hands were clenched in her lap.

  Harriet attempted to avert trouble. ‘I’m quite sure, Robert,’ she said, ‘that Elizabeth, like all of us, appreciates everything you do for us.’

  ‘I should like her to say so,’ Robert said. Elizabeth looked at his reddening face and straight into his angry eyes. She thought: He’s mad. He spends his life bullying women. He can do as he likes. Everyone’s afraid to stand up to him. She thought of Lily again. She’d stood up to him. Meanwhile Robert looked at her fiercely. He disliked her gaze. ‘I repeat – I should like some proper thanks, Elizabeth.’

  ‘I’m sure she will…’ murmured Harriet.

  ‘Will she? Why doesn’t she?’ he demanded. Elizabeth felt as if she would go mad herself if she couldn’t leave the carriage. Trembling now, she said, ‘I want to get out. Please stop the carriage. I must get out.’

  ‘Pull yourself together,’ Robert instructed. ‘Answer me.’

  ‘No,’ cried Elizabeth. ‘No, no, no! No, I cannot thank you. I don’t think you should have that factory at all. It isn’t a factory, it’s a shed. The women who work there faint, they’re weak – they don’t get enough money. Why should I thank you? I’m ashamed. You should be ashamed—’ And she burst into tears.

  Robert had his cue, now, for a rage. His wife and daughters sat transfixed as he burst out, ‘Ah! An ignorant girl, for whom I provide, tells me my business – reproaches me about my business, about which she knows nothing. Trade! Trade! How disgusting! The lifeblood of the nation, but no, Elizabeth, you despise it, do you not? It has not gone unnoticed that at school you create difficulties for Frannie and Cora by pointing out your own dubious superiority as a doctor’s daughter.’

  Elizabeth did not, but Robert was in full flight now. ‘You give yourself airs, Elizabeth,’ he went on. ‘You have no respect for me or my efforts, no thankfulness for my provision of a home for yourself and your mother. Just bear in mind that without my efforts you and your mother would be very little better off than those women in the factory – and by the way, their wages are as much as they deserve and as much as the business will support. I work hard enough, God knows, and in return you do nothing but criticise. You lack emotional control. You’re a continual source of disruption in the house. You upset me, and your cousins.’ He paused. ‘I don’t know what to do about you.’

  There was a silence in the carriage. ‘Well?’ he said loudly. ‘Well? What have you got to say?’

  Elizabeth sniffed. She felt unable to speak.

  ‘Well? Well?’ he boomed at her. ‘Where’s the tongue ready to complain and criticise? Not so quick when it comes to apologies.’

  ‘I – I – I can’t,’ was all Elizabeth could say.

  ‘Can’t,’ repeated Robert in a vicious tone. The argument was becoming more and more serious by the minute.

  Harriet intervened. ‘Can we not end this scene; at least postpone it till we arrive home?’ she pleaded.

  ‘I feel faint,’ Cora announced.

  ‘Can’t apologise?’ repeated Robert. ‘I think you’ll have to.’

  ‘Elizabeth suppressed her tears. ‘I can’t. I do think those women are ill-used.’ She raised eyes which should have been downturned, and went on, ‘And Mother, too, is ill-used. She seems like those women you employ. She does a servant’s work and she has no money, and you sent away her only friend.’

  Robert banged on the ceiling with his stick. ‘Stop the carriage,’ he shouted. Almost before it halted in the crowded street beside Trafalgar Square, he seized Elizabeth by the shoulder, opened the door with his other hand, half lifted her from her side of the carriage and bundled her out on to the pavement. ‘Drive on!’ he shouted, slamming the door.

  Elizabeth, with no money, was obliged to walk the three miles back to Linden Grove. She knew that the row would go on when she got back, and that her mother would be involved, but she had nowhere else to go.

  Chapter Nine

  Less than a month later, dressed in her tight black shoes, a bottle-green coat and a matching green hat with a band of school colours on it, Elizabeth was on a train going to Yorkshire, where a school had been found for her.

  When she’d arrived back at Linden Grove after Robert had bundled her out of the cab, she had gone to the dining room, where the others were eating tea. Her uncle had raised his eyes from his plate coldly, had asked again for an apology. Elizabeth had stood mute, not knowing what to do. Robert then sent her straight to her room without anything to eat.

  Cora and Frannie had both sneaked up after tea to plead with her. They dreaded the consequences for all of them of Elizabeth’s continued defiance. Perhaps they had not been her friends, but this argument between their father and their cousin transcended that; this was serious. ‘He could throw you both out on to the pavement,’ Frannie said fearfully. She was perched on the bed, where Elizabeth lay, stretched out. ‘Then where would you go?’

  ‘Aunt Bella’s in a terrible state,’ Cora said. ‘She went on her knees…’ She paused. ‘Honestly, on her knees to Father, to ask forgiveness for you. If it’s only for her sake…’

  ‘I can’t go on doing things for her sake,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Why can’t she do something for her own sake?’

  ‘Elizabeth!’ reproached Frannie. ‘She’s your mother – she’s a widow, she’s got no husband.’

  ‘She could stop carrying up coal,’ Elizabeth said sulkily. ‘She could stop me from having to carry up coal. You don’t carry any.’

  Frannie winced. Cora, who was sitting with her back against the door, said, ‘We know that. You have to do things because you’re poor. You have to put up with it.’

  ‘Only because this is such a rotten house,’ Elizabeth said.

  ‘Ooh,’ Frannie said, outraged. ‘How can you say that, Elizabeth? That’s the same thing as saying Father and Mother are rotten.’

  Elizabeth flinched. She had been told so often that her uncle and aunt were saviours. But she drew a breath and went on, ‘So they are. Uncle’s like the Tsar of Russia, and we’re just serfs, Mother and me. And it’s no good saying “Oh, oh” as if you were shocked, because you get the best of it.’

  ‘I know we do,’ Cora admitted. ‘But be fair – what can we do about it?’ She stood up. ‘Anyway, I came to be nice to you, not to hear Father called the Tsar of Russia.’ She added acutely, ‘In my opinion you’re only standing up to him because that common girl in the factory did it. Well, she’ll starve in the streets probably, and serve her right. So will you, if you’re not careful.’ She turned to her sister. ‘Don’t stay and reason with her, Frannie. You’ll only get into trouble. She’s mad.’

  On her feet now, Frannie said, ‘If you won’t think about yourself, Elizabeth, at least think about your poor mother.’

  Lying quietly on her bed after her cousins had gone, Elizabeth thought fearfully that there seemed to be two Elizabeth Armitages. There was a good one, who was polite and patient and who, above all, would never do anything to upset her mother. And then there was the bad one, who had shouted at Uncle Robert, caused her mother pain and anguish and, worse than all that, didn’t care. Didn’t care if they threw her into the street. Didn’t even care if they threw her mother into the street. The good Elizabeth, if she’d done what the bad one had done (which of course she never would), would now be filled with remorse. In fact, the good Elizabeth would be downstairs now, apologising. But the bad one still seemed to be in charge. Was she mad? What would she do next? Also, she was hungry, having had no food since the lunchtime picnic. Nothing she did now could make matters any worse, so she thought she would go to see Mrs Macfarlane, who would give her a glass of milk and a slice of cake. She got off her bed, tidied her hair and slipped quietly downstairs, through the hall and
out of the front door. She heard a conversation going on in the drawing room. It was probably about how bad she was. She didn’t care.

  Mrs Macfarlane, in her little dining room, studied what she could see of Elizabeth’s face as she bent over her plate, eating a huge piece of meat pie, a glass of milk at her side. She felt very upset for the fatherless child. Her friend Mrs Warren, Elizabeth’s grandmother, would never have allowed her daughter to be used as a skivvy in her son and daughter-in-law’s house. But Mrs Warren, alas, was dead. Now Christina Macfarlane tried to comfort Elizabeth, and to persuade her to go back to the house and make some kind of peace with her uncle. Elizabeth refused the comfort, and the idea of apology. Away from the battlefield, she collapsed. ‘I’m a bad girl, so that’s that. I might as well be bad.

  Mrs Macfarlane had said, ‘My dear, you are not a bad girl. You have been sorely tried. You began only by taking the part of those unfortunate women in Mr Warren’s factory. That is not wrong. Many good people these days are trying to improve the condition of the poor. You only said what they are saying. Naturally it upset your uncle. Those women are his living, regrettably.’