“I got to go,” she said, winding the excess thread back onto the spool. “I got to clean the upstairs.”
“My plan,” he said, beginning again with the compass, “is for you to go to Hilltop. Talk to them ladies. In your posh accent.”
“It’s not posh.”
“They will not look at the likes of me coming up their path, but if we dress you up in some fancy clothes, they’ll open the door to you.”
“And then what?”
“Then you tell them all about the houses I make and why they should buy my miniature of Hilltop. You’ll have samples of them little carpets, curtains, a bed, say, complete with quilt and pillows. All the fixings. Everything but the people. I suppose I could make people if they wanted. Like you suggested.”
“I don’t have time. I got too much spring cleaning. I’m fixing on getting another cow. There’s the garden. And could be I go to Nova Scotia.”
“Yuh. Your sister. You and Enid going to want to set up housekeeping.”
He moved his chair back, reached down and pulled open the drawer. She averted her eyes. It seemed an intimacy, his savings. The flush had not entirely subsided from her face.
“Look up, Missy Flora.”
He was holding a handful of bills. He leaned forward and laid them on her table.
“Count them. That’s a start. Once we start selling houses there will be lots more. I’ll be employing other girls. To sew all them little things. Your sister, I’ll wager she’s a hand with the needle. Once we get things going, I’ll set up a big workshop. Not here. Down in the town. There’s your job for life. You’ll go to them fancy houses and show off the merchandise. You’ll manage the girls; I’ll manage my men.”
She touched the money with one finger.
“Count it,” he said. “It’s yours if you say ‘Yes, Mr. Tuck, I’ll go up to them ladies at Hilltop.’ ”
The bills were soft as flannel, as if they had been held, caressed, smoothed, passed from hand to hand. Their creases were like the wrinkles in weathered skin.
“I’ll have to tell Mrs. Galloway that I’m getting paid for my work on your houses. Otherwise she won’t like me spending so much time out here.”
“You can tell her. Just don’t say how much.”
She should ask him what he would pay her beyond the bribe, but did not, stunned by more money than she had ever seen before, a wild prelude to her changing fortune. She murmured, yes, yes, she would do it, and looked up, glimpsing how his small, square teeth had been revealed but quickly covered, his face assuming its usual cold watchfulness.
—
Maud sat on a chair in the hall, reading a letter. Flora, smelling of wood shavings, hair blown and cheeks reddened, sat beside her, unlacing her boots. The ticking of the parlour clock was like a shore against which the moan and whistle of the wind dashed, was rebuffed.
“George,” Maud said, violently clutching the letter to her breast and closing her eyes. “Oh!”
“What?” Flora said. Maud amused her sometimes. She was so often outraged on behalf of someone else, often disproportionately.
Maud’s voice dropped to a loud whisper. “He thinks he’s looking out for Mother. Truly, Flora. It makes me wonder if he can see himself. He is treating Mother like a child.”
Flora wrenched off the boot. It was too small and she massaged her toes. “How?”
“He is still trying to get Lucy and me to see that as soon as we turn twenty-one we should sell the house.”
“Well. That’s a long way away.”
“Yes, but you see, he wants me to start dropping hints. Make Mother see that she would be better off in a smaller house. Even get her to consider remarrying. He says to me in this letter that he is strictly…wait, I will read it to you. Believe me, Maud, when I say that I look at this in a strictly utilitarian fashion. We would incur a fair amount of money from the sale of the house. If Mother relinquished her dower interest, she would be given her share. We would all be able to get ahead with our lives. Then he even describes the little house Mother could buy. Apparently, he has spotted just the place. On Queen Street.”
Flora noticed the banging of pot lids in the kitchen. She was late, and Ellen was annoyed. Still, she sat with her foot in her lap, her skirt hitched. Indecorous, but it was only two girls, in the cold hall, on a March afternoon.
“We have the power to force the sale, George says. You know, Flora, I truly believe he is thinking only of himself, even though he pretends to be thinking of Lucy and me and of Mother. I believe he’s begun to think of this house as his. I believe he’s begun to think of himself as head of the family.”
Flora said nothing. Josephine, living in a small house. With no need of servants. Pictured herself and Enid, standing on a railroad platform, heading for a destination she could not imagine.
“I think of this house as Mother and Father’s house,” Maud continued, not noticing Flora’s sudden stillness. “The house they built with dreams of a long, happy life. Even after we children were grown and gone, they saw themselves living here together.”
Flora pictured her own parents. The wretched straw-thatched cottage. Yet they had made dolls for their little girls. They may have bolstered one another’s courage with the same kind of dream.
She put her hand on Maud’s, knew not to speak.
“I won’t do it,” Maud whispered. She stuffed the letter back into the envelope without properly folding it. “I will resist his idiotic plan. Lucy and I will stand up to
