Crooked Pieces (2 page)

When it was time to go Ma busied herself with the plates and when I went to kiss her she looked all flurried and said her hands were wet and I should mind not to get water on my dress. Since it already had mud and apple and Evelyn’s spit from choking, I did not think a drop of water would harm it greatly, but she turned her face away, so I just said, ‘Goodbye then, Ma. I will come again soon, I hope.’ And she said in a crackly sort of voice. ‘God bless you, Maggie.’ As she doesn’t go to church, I thought this strange.

Miss Sylvia wants to paint me. She said it when I was fetching back her breakfast things. I still had my Sunday dress on as it was so dirty from going home I thought it better to save my other for after I had cleaned her room. Though I like her now and we are friends (she says) she is still quite fearful dirty with her oils and things and it is a great chore to clean them all up, knowing full well it will be back again as bad an hour after I have finished. I was just putting her cup on the tray when she said out of nowhere, ‘Maggie, would you be willing to let me paint you, do you think?’ I was so shocked I nearly dropped the tray.

‘Not now, I don’t mean.’

‘I don’t know, miss. I’ve not been painted before.’

‘All the more reason, then. You could sit for me on Saturday afternoons for an hour or so. I promise not to keep you long. I could get some cake for us. How would that be?’

Cook says I may as well as I am free then. She has given me
some bicarbonate for my spots because we do not think they would look well in a picture.

Miss Sylvia is very strange. I had put on my Sunday dress (clean now, but it took much scrubbing) and brushed my hair a hundred times so that it sparked and Cook said she would roast a chop on it and when I knocked on Miss Sylvia’s door she said, ‘Oh, Maggie, you look far too clean.’ I did not know what to say. Reverend Beckett and, more particular, Mrs Beckett told me God hated dirty people. I know this to be true for he certainly hates the people of Stepney or why would he let them die so, and be ill and hungry?

‘I’m sorry, miss.’

She smiled. ‘No, don’t be sorry.
I’m
sorry. I didn’t mean it to sound like that. I just meant… No, never mind. Come in. I’ve got the cake. It’s ginger. Do you like ginger?’

I was not sure that I would, as it is what Ma gives my nan for down below and she is prodigious smelly after.

Miss Sylvia does not talk when she is painting. She wears a smock which makes me wonder how she gets so much paint on her clothes. First she held up a pencil and looked at it till she was goggle-eyed, then she started to scratch away at her canvas like a mad thing. I sat as still as I could but my spots were troubling me, although they are better than they were and Cook says if I leave off the sugar bowl for just one day they will go like magic. She had dressed my hair so that it sort of slops over my brow and you cannot see them. I asked Cook if she had ever been married and she said, yes, she had but that her husband had died very soon after. She didn’t say why. I think she is lucky because if a husband dies you do not have to keep having children and being hit.

Miss Sylvia will not let me look at the painting till it is done. I would dearly love to see it, if only to tell if she has put my spots in.

Today I told her how I am teaching Alfie his numbers. She says she has a brother, too, called Harry, and she loves him very much. I said I love my brothers much better than my sisters, and she looked right up at me over her brush as though she understood. Maybe I will tell her about Frank next week.

To stop me fidgeting she asked if I would like to look at a book. I said I should like it very much and she gave me one with only pictures and them very silly. After a while she asked if I did not like it and I said I thought it very fine but where were the words? She looked a lot surprised and said, ‘Do you read then, Maggie?’

‘Yes, Miss. And I know nine psalms.’

She looked mightily ashamed and went immediately to choose me a book with words. It was fat and dull, about what I do not know and after a while I was back to shifting about. Miss Sylvia set down her brush and fetched me a beautiful book full of animal drawings, with words under of where they lived and what they liked to eat.

There is a big stripy cat called a leopard that can eat a whole man, and another with spots that lives in trees and can run faster than a locomotive. Miss Sylvia had two times to ask me to sit up for I was so bent over the book I had forgot why I was there.

I hate Cook. She has shouted at me all day long and now it is to come from my wages and I do not know how I can ever take money home again. I was to do the silver and she told me to take a cloth and some powdery stuff and rub it all over the
spoons and knives and forks and anything silver I could find and then to polish it off. She said it was a salmon and now no one could eat it without dying of poison and it had cost over a shilling. And when it was dinner time I had to take in the cold pie that was nearly gone from yesterday, with potatoes and a cabbage, and Mr Roe looked so grieved and made a humphing noise. Afterwards Mrs Roe came down to the kitchen and said, ‘Mrs Jenkins, did we not decide on fish for today?’ And Cook’s face went all stiff with vexation and she said, ‘Yes, ma’am, indeed we did, but young Maggie here has put an end to that, I fear.’

‘Oh?’ said Mrs Roe, looking mightily surprised.

‘The girl has only polished it.’

‘Polished it?’

‘Thinking it to be silver, ma’am. I’ve said it will come from her wages.’

Mrs Roe gave a little start and put her hand to her mouth, then hurried away back to Mr Roe, and soon we heard a great deal of laughing, though I don’t know why.

Today I made a
glace.
There was company, and Cook said we must make something tasty as it was all ladies and they might like something cooling. First we took bread which I chopped very fine, then some sugar and
two
eggs and a pint of best cream which the man said I could not have if I did not give him a kiss, but Cook heard and hit him with a big spoon so I did not have to. She said if he says that again I am to tell her and she will hit him with a copper pan, which made us laugh so much. Cook is not so bad.

The ladies were very noisy. They arrived all together, four of them, chattering like starlings, and hardly a word for Mrs
Roe who was waiting to receive them, but straight into the parlour (as the not eating room is called). There they made more noise. I was sent to tell Miss Sylvia and down she came, looking quite neat with her hair all smoothed and a big white collar and dark blue dress, although I did see she had paint still under her fingernails.

I asked Cook if the ladies were artists also and she rolled her eyes upwards and said, no, not at all, and she wondered if some of them were even ladies from how they went on, some of them. I thought best not to ask any more.

After a while Mrs Roe came down to say they were ready for refreshment so I took up a tray with lemonade and the
glace
and they all whooped and cheered and quite fell upon it like the animals in Miss Sylvia’s book.

At a little after five the ladies came rushing out and went running off down the path like the bobbies were after them. When I went into the parlour Miss Sylvia was still there. She was scribbling away at a piece of card with a stick of charcoal and, of course, had got some on her collar! I asked if I might clear and she said, ‘Of course, Maggie. I’m sorry we’ve made such a mess. We didn’t realise the time. I hope they haven’t missed the omnibus.’ I thought, I hope they haven’t, too, or they’ll be back here and there’s no more lemonade or time to make it. Then she held up the card that she was drawing on and said, ‘What do you think of this, Maggie?’ It was of a woman, just the outline, but very soft and wavy, with one arm stretched upwards and the other clasping a book with ‘Victory’ writ across it. I said, ‘It’s very fine, miss,’ not wanting to make myself foolish like the last time. She nodded. ‘It would be, Maggie, if it were so. And it will be one day.
That I’m certain of.’ Then she set aside the drawing and said, ‘Maggie, will you tell me something?’

‘If I can, miss.’

‘Do you think men have bigger brains than women?’

I stared at her, thinking she must have very little brain at all to ask me such a thing.

‘Maggie?’

‘I do, miss, yes. For they are bigger altogether so must have.’

‘Yes, but elephants are bigger by far than men. Does that make them cleverer?’

No answer came to me.

After supper was cleared and the dishes washed Cook told me that Mrs Roe says I am to have a new dress. It seems the ladies had marked that my skirt is high above my ankles now and that, owing to fatness round my chest, the bodice is frightening tight. She will speak to her niece who teaches sewing at a poor school and see what can be done. I am so excited. For best I would like it to be red with flowers all over like I saw once on a lady at the Black Prince. She was much whistled at by the men which I should not like, but it was a very pretty dress and her chest was very fat, so perhaps mine would not notice.

Miss Sylvia says I may see my picture next week. It is nearly finished. I could, if I wished, take a peek when I am cleaning, but then she might ask me, and it would be a wicked thing to lie to her when she has given me so much cake.

I told her I am to have a new dress. She said she was glad for me, but did not ask me one thing about the colour or cut or anything.

She is very happy because her mother and sister are to visit. I wonder when I may go home. Mrs Roe says I need not pay for the fish but I must ask Cook before going my own way again. She is a lady. Mr Roe has quite taken to smiling at me and keeps asking if I have polished the sausages or the beef or whatever he is eating at the time, to which I reply, ‘Please, no, sir,’ which makes him laugh mightily.

I am teaching Cook to read. She caught me looking at the master’s paper and asked me what good staring did when there was work to be done? I said I did not stare.

‘What then?’

‘Reading.’

She laughed and said, ‘Then read me something.’

So I did. At first she thought I was making it up but then I stumbled on a funny name so she knew it must be true. ‘I’ll teach you if you want it.’

She said no, never in a thousand years. She’d got this far without. But next day she called me over and told me to read her some more, so I read her the price of currants and how to make a jelly from cows’ brains and she said it was a disgrace to charge so much for currants, but I was to read her out the brains again so she could put it to her memory. I said, ‘If you could read, Cook, you would not need to remember’, so she made a huffing noise and said, ‘Maybe. I’ll think about it.’

Since that I have read her a little every day and given her a letter to learn, though on Friday there was nothing about food, so I found a little patch about a man who wanted the men to vote for him and he would give them jobs, he said, but before they could decide two women shouted out and asked why they should not have a vote as well and the man was very
angry and would not speak to them and they were carried away by two policemen.

When I had finished I saw that Cook’s face had gone all white and pink. I thought she was vexed with me again but she just said, ‘Is it true? Are you making it up?’ I said, how could I be, for I knew nothing about such things and cared a good deal less? Then she took my arm real hard and said, ‘Do you not know who those two women were?’

‘It does not say.’

She spoke so low I could scarce hear, ‘That is the sister of Miss Pankhurst, and her mother, maybe, too.’

Mrs Pankhurst and Miss Christabel Pankhurst visited today. I was never so frightened in my life. I had my new dress on, which is the most horrible thing in the world. It is brown without so much as a stitch of another colour. Just brown. I hate brown. It is the most horrible colour in the world. The only thing I do not hate is it does not squeeze my chest and my ankles are covered. Miss Sylvia asked me in the morning why I looked so wretched but I said nothing, knowing it was wicked of me to feel so rankled when it was done from good feeling and kindness. But
brown
! If there really is a heaven I hope there may be nothing brown there. Not even sugar or sausages.

Mrs Pankhurst is the most beautiful old person in the world. She does not look old at all, but must be for she has two grown daughters and more besides. Her cheeks are high and rounded like doorknobs and her eyes are like violet jewels. She is so clean. It is hard to think how Miss Sylvia can have so much hair falling down when her mother is like a
perfect picture of tidiness. Still, I am very fearful of her. She is like a great power that is silent till roused forth like a mighty lightning.

Miss Christabel Pankhurst is the most beautiful person in the whole world. She is beyond the riches of Sheba. Her hair is dark as currants and wound round so it glows like an angel’s halo. Her skin is pale and pinky with little dots round her nose and her eyes shine like blue stars. Her voice is low and strong and she wore a most beautiful white blouse with tiny flowers in blue and yellow all over it and a black skirt. I felt like a muddy puddle beside them.

Cook had told me they were to take tea with Miss Sylvia in the parlour, and I must be sure to cover the tray with a linen cloth, and not to slop the tea. A little after three a cab drew up and out got two ladies. Cook said, ‘You’d best make haste or Mrs Roe will be there before you,’ so I ran up the stairs from the kitchen and opened the door and there they were, stately as queens. I almost thought I should curtsey but luckily Miss Sylvia came hurrying down the stairs just then and they were too much taken with greeting each other to see if I had or I hadn’t. I took their coats and that was when I saw how fine their dress was, especially Miss Christabel’s – much finer than her sister’s – and I wished with all my heart I had had on my old one which was grey and at the least did not make me look like ditch water.

I showed them into the parlour, thinking how different they were from Miss Sylvia’s lady friends that had run off to catch the omnibus. I cannot imagine Mrs Pankhurst ever running. Rather she would glide like a swan, and Miss Christabel would soar like an eagle.