Gypsy - Lesley Pearse [37]
‘His eyes made me think of a fish, so they did,’ Kathleen blurted out. ‘And I touched his hand and it was cold as ice.’
‘That’s enough now, Kathleen,’ Mrs Bruce said sternly. ‘I know it was a shock to find him but we must all show respect for him and support the master and mistress.’
Beth’s eyes filled with tears. She had been scared of the old man when she was first asked to sit with him. His face was distorted because he was paralysed all down one side and he was so thin that he looked almost skeletal. When he tried to speak his mouth was all over the place and the sounds that came out were unintelligible and frightening. But she had grown used to it and after she’d read to him a few times she began to understand what he was trying to say. He could convey pleasure with his eyes, irritation with a wave of his good hand, and sometimes she could make out real words in his grunts, and if she repeated them to him he would nod.
She sensed his delight when she came to see him, knew when he was enjoying a story, and the more time she spent with him, the more she felt for him. She thought it must be the worst thing in the world to have a keen mind trapped in a body you couldn’t control, to suffer the humiliation of being fed and changed like a baby, and to have no real way of showing that you knew what was going on all around you.
‘Don’t cry, Beth,’ Mrs Bruce said, picking up Molly who was looking anxiously up at her big sister. ‘He’s gone to a better place, his suffering is over and he can join his wife again.’
A pall of gloom descended on the house, which seemed to grow heavier daily as the master and mistress made the arrangements for the funeral.
For Beth the atmosphere was all too familiar, and on top of disturbing reminders of her parents’ deaths and funerals, there was the niggling worry of what might become of her now. Without all the old man’s laundry there wasn’t going to be a lot for her to do. Mrs Bruce, Cook and Kathleen ran the house like clockwork between them. Would Mr Edward want to pay wages for someone he no longer needed?
Beth’s seventeenth and Sam’s eighteenth birthdays came and went that week without celebration. Beth was kept busy helping Cook prepare cakes and pastries for the funeral wake, and making minor alterations to the mourning clothes their mistress had worn when her mother-in-law died.
On the morning of the funeral, Beth woke when it was still dark, but there was enough light outside from the lamp at the end of the mews to show it had snowed during the night. She sat up in bed for a minute or two looking out of the window. Everything looked beautiful, grime, rubbish and ugliness hidden under a thick blanket of pristine, sparkling white. It brought to mind the snow just over a year ago when Molly had been born. Beth remembered standing at the kitchen window with the baby in her arms, marvelling that the back alley and the rooftops beyond had been miraculously transformed into something magical.
Just a few days later her mother was dead, and rain washed the snow away. She had looked out of that same window and seen that everything had become grey, bleak and ugly again. It had seemed significant at the time, a warning perhaps that happiness and beauty could only ever be fleeting.
So much had happened since then. Such despair, hurt and worry, then finally the loss of their home in the fire. Yet the fire had been fortuitous in as much as they came here to live and found a measure of security and happiness again.
Both she and Sam had been forced to grow up fast, but perhaps the most important thing Beth had learned was that she couldn’t count on anything. Not on the Langworthys’ kindness continuing, nor that this job and home would last for as long as she needed it. She couldn’t even rely on Sam staying with her for ever.
The only thing she could be absolutely certain about was her own self. But that was a lonely, chilling thought.
Sam wasn