Gypsy - Lesley Pearse [17]
‘Don’t cry, Beth,’ he said, his eyes growing softer. ‘I don’t mean to be cruel, but things are desperate now. We can’t spend money we haven’t got on her funeral. And that baby has got to go!’
Beth moved protectively over to Molly’s cradle. ‘Don’t say that, Sam. She’s our sister and I will not abandon her. You can sell the piano or anything else to get some money, we’ll take in a lodger or move somewhere cheaper, but Molly stays with us.’
‘I can’t bear to see her,’ he said, and his eyes filled with tears. ‘She’s always going to be a reminder of what Mama drove Papa to do.’
‘If Mama hadn’t been so honest and brave admitting the truth, we’d have been none the wiser,’ Beth argued. ‘Besides, Papa would turn in his grave if we turned our backs on a helpless baby, even if it wasn’t his. So you’ve got to find the humanity to accept that we have to do right by Molly.’
Sam just looked at her thoughtfully.
It was some little while before he spoke again. ‘Put like that, I suppose I’ll have to agree.’ He sighed. ‘But don’t expect me to ever feel anything for her. And don’t blame me when you find out what being poor is really like.’
It was enough for Beth that Sam had backed down. ‘Then I’ll compromise and arrange the cheapest funeral. But you mustn’t blame me either if later you find it makes you feel bad about yourself.’
Christmas was bleak; they had neither the money nor the heart to attempt any kind of festivity. They left Molly with Mrs Craven just long enough to go to church on Christmas morning, but that gave them no comfort for it only served to remind them of joyful Christmases past. A few people approached them to offer condolences, but there was no ring of sincerity in them, only curiosity.
The funeral took place two days later, and Mrs Craven’s eldest daughter minded Molly. Heavy rain had melted the snow, but an icy wind blew across the churchyard, almost cutting them in half as the cheap coffin was lowered into the grave. Apart from Sam and Beth, there were only three other mourners: the Cravens and Dr Gillespie. As Father Reilly intoned the final words of the committal, Beth glanced over to where her father was buried in unhallowed ground. She thought how unjust it was that a man who had never sinned against anyone should be there, while his adulterous wife lay in the churchyard.
By the first week in February, when Sam became seventeen and Beth sixteen, they were forced to sell the piano. Beth didn’t really care much about it, after all she still had her precious fiddle, but seeing the piano being lowered out through the window to the street below brought home to her how tragically ironic it was.
To her parents the piano was a symbol that they had succeeded in lifting their children up to the middle classes, and as such they would never suffer the hardships they themselves had endured. Yet by being protected from want and shielded from the hard facts of real life, both she and Sam lacked the resources to cope with poverty.
Beth could bake cakes, lay a table properly, starch and iron a shirt, and had acquired dozens of other refined accomplishments, but she’d never been taught to plan a week’s meals on a tiny budget. Sam might be able to haul in coal for the stove, shovel snow out of the backyard and be on time every day for work, but he had no idea how to unblock a sink or fix a broken sash cord in the window.
All their childhood there had always been a fire in the parlour, the stove in the kitchen and even fires in the bedrooms when it was really cold. The gas was lit in all the rooms before it grew dark, there was always fruit in a bowl, cake in the tin and meat every day.
The coal ran out soon after Christmas and when they ordered more they were shocked