Gypsy - Lesley Pearse [18]
Sam’s wages were spent on food long before Friday came round, and once they’d eaten all the preserves and stores of sugar and flour their mother had so frugally tucked away in the pantry, they were down to bread alone until pay day.
Maybe Sam should have held out for a better price for their mother’s prized round mahogany table and matching chairs, but they needed the money to pay for the coal and the bill from Dr Gillespie. There was no doubt they were swindled when the grandfather clock was sold. But neither of them had any idea of the real value of these items, or that second-hand furniture dealers could smell desperation.
Although Beth loved caring for Molly, she hadn’t reckoned on the loneliness of being home all day alone with a baby. She never seemed to have a minute for herself to read, play her fiddle or take a bath. Sam wasn’t interested in hearing about Molly when he came in from work, she had no one other than Mrs Craven she could talk to, and she was continually worried about money.
By the middle of March Sam could see no alternative other than to find lodgers to make ends meet.
One of the more senior clerks in his office suggested his cousin Thomas Wiley and his wife Jane, who had been staying with him and his family since Thomas moved from Manchester to take up work in the Liverpool post office. The couple were in their mid-thirties, and Beth took an immediate dislike to Jane. Everything about her was sharp — her eyes which darted around the room as she spoke, her nose and cheekbones, and even her voice had a sharp edge to it.
She showed no interest in Molly and she looked Beth up and down as if pricing up the value of her clothes. When Beth tried to suggest they figured out a plan when each would cook their evening meal, Jane dismissed her by saying she wasn’t one for cooking.
Her husband, Thomas, was easier to take to, a jovial, ruddy-faced man who appeared very grateful to be offered the parlour and Beth’s old bedroom up on the top floor above the kitchen, for she and Molly were now in her parents’ old room. Thomas said he had begun to despair of ever finding anywhere decent, or even clean, for he had been to view rooms that he wouldn’t even keep a dog in.
Sadly it soon transpired that Thomas liked the drink more than he did his wife or home. Most evenings he didn’t roll back till after ten.
Beth tried hard to get along with Jane, but it was clear from the start she thought a lodger should be waited on. She ordered Beth to fill the tin bath in the bedroom for her on her second day there. When Beth said she and Sam always had a bath in the kitchen as it was far warmer and more convenient, and anyway Jane must fill it and empty it herself, the woman flounced around indignantly, declaring ‘she’d never heard the like’.
As it was, she spilled water all over the kitchen floor and made no attempt to clean it up. She complained that the sound of Molly crying in the night woke her and that the mattress on the bed was lumpy. Beth rushed to feed Molly if she woke in the night, and she spent a good hour shaking the feather mattress outside to make it fluffier, but Jane didn’t reciprocate in any way. She could make a mess even making a cup of tea, and never cleared it up. She would fill the sink with washing and then disappear, which meant Beth had to do her washing for her or was unable to use the sink.
Day by day Beth saw the comfortable and orderly life she’d been brought up with, and had struggled to maintain, eroding away. As she was bathing Molly in the sink, Jane would come in and start frying bacon, knocking the clean nightgown, vest and napkin from where they were airing by the stove to the floor. If Beth wanted to sit in the armchair to feed Molly, Jane was already sitting there. She helped herself to their food; she didn’t wash up her plates or pots. Beth soon gave up hope of her ever offering to take a turn cleaning the