on the table, beaming across at them, and then her smile changed. She reached over to Mrs Jarvis and put her hand on her forehead.
“Hot!” Her voice was soft with concern. “You’re so hot, Annie, and white as snow.” She looked at the children, and at the bundles of clothes and belongings that they were still clutching. “You’ve been turned out, haven’t you?”
Mrs Jarvis nodded.
“You got anywhere?”
“No.”
“And you’re not fit for work. You know that? There’s no work left in you, Annie Jarvis.”
A bell jangled over the door, and Rosie jumped up and ran to the stove.
“Lord, that’s for the coffees, and I ain’t done them. Anyone comes down, and you duck under the table quick, mind,” she said to the children. The bell rang again.
“All right, all right,” she shouted. “His lordship can wait five minutes, can’t he, while I talk to my friend here?”
She glanced at Mrs Jarvis again, her face puckered in frowns. “My sister, as good as. No, he can’t wait. His lordship waits for nothing.”
As she was talking she was ladling coffee and milk into jugs and setting them on a tray. She rubbed her floury hands on the pinafore, took it off and changed into a clean one, and as a quick afterthought she poured some of the coffee into a cup and edged it across the table towards Mrs Jarvis.
“Go on,” she urged. “Take it for all the good bread you’ve baked for him.” She ran to the door with her tray rattling in her hand and paused to pull a face at the bell as it jangled again. “There’s only one home left to you now, Annie. It’s the House, ain’t it, heaven help you. The workhouse!”
As soon as Rosie had left the kitchen and gone upstairs with her tray, Jim slid off his stool and ran to his mother. She sipped at her coffee, holding the cup with both hands.
“We ain’t going to the workhouse, Ma?” Emily asked her.
The children had heard terrifying stories about workhouses. Old people spoke of them with fear and hate as if they were worse than hell on earth. They’d heard that people who went there sometimes had to stay for the rest of their lives. People died in there. Some people slept out in the streets and the fields rather than go to the workhouse. The two girls sat in silent dread each side of their mother.
“Help Rosie out with her bread, Emily,” Mrs Jarvis suggested, her voice steady now, and stronger. “It’d be a good turn that she’d appreciate, and his lordship would too!”
Emily did as she was told. She washed her hands in the jug of water on the side and then poured some of the frothing yeast into the bowl of flour. A few minutes later Rosie came down. She put her finger to her lips and pointed up the stairs.
“I’ve asked Judd to come!” she mouthed.
There was the rustle of a long skirt on the stairs, and the housekeeper came in, stern and brisk. Jim tried to slide under the table, but she stopped him with her booted foot.
She came straight to Mrs Jarvis and stood with her hands on her hips, looking down at her. “Rosie tells me you’re in a bad way, Annie Jarvis,” she said. “And I must say, you look it.”
“I haven’t come to make trouble, Judd,” Mrs Jarvis said. “And I’m sorry if I’ve interrupted the work. I’ve only come to say goodbye to you and Rosie, because you’ve always been so kind to me.”
“If we’ve been kind to you it’s because you’ve always done your work well, and that’s what matters,” Judd sniffed. She looked over Emily’s shoulder as the girl dolloped her dough on to the table and pushed her hands into it to knead it. Rosie dodged behind her, her hands clasped together, her face anxious. It was as if Emily was performing some kind of magic, and they were afraid to break the spell, the way the three women watched her in silence.
“Can cook, can you?” Judd asked Emily at last.
“She can cook as well as me,” said Jim’s mother. “And she can scrub the floor for you, and run errands. She can sleep on the kitchen floor and take up no room.”
“She wouldn’t need paying,” Rosie said. “She’d be a saving, Judd.”
Emily flattened and rolled the dough with the heel of her hand, stretching it out and folding it over time and time again, listening with every nerve in her body to what the women behind her were saying.
“But I couldn’t do anything for the other girl,” Judd said.
“Judd, I’ve a sister who’s cook at Sunbury. She might give her a chance,” Rosie said. She stood on the tips of her toes like a little girl, her hands clasped behind her back and her eyes pleading. “If you just let little Lizzie sleep down here with Emily till Sunday, and I can walk her over to Moll’s then.”
“I don’t want to know they’re here, Rosie. If his lordship finds out, it’s every one of us for the workhouse. You know that, don’t you? I don’t know they’re here, these girls.”
Judd swept out, her straight back and her firm stride telling them that she had never seen these girls in the kitchen. They listened to the swing of the door and for the clicking of her boots on the stairs to die away.
“It’s the best I can do to help you, Annie,” Rosie said. “I can’t do no more.”
“It’s more than I expected,” Mrs Jarvis said. “At least you’ve saved my girls from that place.”
She stood up unsteadily. “We’d better go,” she said to Jim. “It’s not fair to Rosie if we stay here any longer.”
“I’ll leave you alone to say your goodbyes, then,” said Rosie. She touched her friend quickly on the shoulder and went into the scullery, her face set in hurt, hard lines. They could hear her in there, banging pots around as if she was setting up an orchestra.
Emily said nothing at all, and that was because she couldn’t. Her throat was tight with a band of pain. She couldn’t even look at her mother or at Jim, but hugged them quickly and went to sit down at the table, her head in her hands. Lizzie tried to follow her example, but as soon as Mrs Jarvis had put her hand on the door that led up to the street she burst out, “Take us with you, Ma. Don’t leave us here!”
“I can’t,” her mother said. She didn’t turn round to her. “Bless you. I can’t. This is best for you. God bless you, both of you.”
She took Jim’s hand and bundled him quickly out of the door. Jim daren’t look at her. He daren’t listen to the sounds that she was making now that they were out into the day. He held his face up to the sky and let the snowflakes flutter against his cheeks to cool him. He had no idea what was going to happen to him or his mother, or whether he would ever see Emily and Lizzie again. He was more frightened than he had ever been in his life.
