A Christmas Promise - Anne Perry [2]
When Gracie pushed the back door open to their lodgings in Heneage Street, her grandmother was standing with a basin of water ready to wash and peel the potatoes. She looked worn-out from spending all day up to her elbows in hot water, caustic, and lye, heaving other people’s wet linen from one sink to another, shoulders aching, back so sore she could hardly touch it. Then she would have to lift the linen all again to wind it through the mangles that would squeeze the water out, and there would be some chance of getting it dry so it could be returned, and paid for. There was always need for money: rent, food, boots, a few sticks and a little coal to put on the fire, and of course Christmas.
Gracie hardly grew out of anything. It seemed as if she had stopped at four feet eleven, and worn-out pieces could always be patched. But Spike and Finn were bigger every time you looked at them, and considering how much they ate, perhaps no one should have been surprised.
The food was good, and every scrap disappeared, even though they were being careful and saving any treats for Christmas. Spike and Finn bickered a bit, as usual, then went off to bed obediently enough at about seven. There wasn’t a clock, but if you thought about it, and you were used to the sounds of the street outside, footsteps coming and going, the voices of those you knew, then you had a good idea of time.
They had two rooms, which wasn’t bad, considering. There was the kitchen, with a tin bowl for washing; the stove, to cook and keep warm; and the table and three chairs and a stool. And there was the bench for chopping, ironing, and baking now and then. There was a drain outside the back door, a well at the end of the street, and a privy at the bottom of the yard. In the other small room, Gracie and her gran had beds on one side, and on the other they had built a sort of bed for the boys. They lay in it, one at each end.
But Gracie did not sleep well, in spite of being very nearly warm enough. She could not forget Minnie Maude Mudway, standing on the street corner in the dusk, grieving for loneliness, death, a donkey who might or might not be lost. All night it troubled her, and she woke to the bleak, icy morning still miserable.
She got up quickly, without disturbing her gran, who needed every moment of sleep she could find. Gracie pulled on her clothes immediately. The air was as cold as stone on her skin. There was ice on the inside of the windows as well as on the outside.
She tiptoed out into the kitchen, put on her boots, and buttoned them up. Then she started to rake out the dead ashes from the kitchen stove and relight it so she could heat a pan of water and make porridge for breakfast. That was a luxury not everyone had, and she tasted it with pleasure every time.
Spike and Finn came in before daylight, although there was a paling of the sky above the rooftops. They were full of good spirits, planning mischief, and glad enough to eat anything they were given: porridge, a heel of bread, and a smear of dripping. By half past eight they were off on errands for the woman at the corner shop, and Gran, fortified by a cup of tea, insisting it was enough, went on her way back to the laundry.
Gracie busied herself with housework, washing dishes, sweeping, and dusting, putting out slops and fetching more water from the well at the end of the street. It was cold outside, with a rime of ice on the cobbles and a hard east wind promising sleet.
By nine o’clock she could not bear her conscience anymore. She put on her heaviest shawl, gray-brown cloth and very thick, and went outside into the street again and down to the corner to look for Minnie Maude.
London was an enormous cluster of villages all running into one another, some rich, some poor, none worse than Flower and Dean Walk, which was filled with