‘So you’ve decided to come back home at last. It’s four o’clock.’
‘We ain’t late, are we?’ asked Ellie, seeing no need to apologize.
‘Well, you’re not early, that’s for certain! You just about made it.’
‘It was our day off.’ This time Ellie did not sound so polite.
By the look on Mrs Jenkins’s face she was in danger of overstepping the mark. But she felt confident. Yesterday Doctor Lowe had paused in the front hall as she was about to take a pail of dirty suds back to the kitchen to empty.
‘How are you coming along?’ he had asked.
She’d given a little bob. ‘Very well, sir, I think.’
‘Good,’ he had said and continued on his way upstairs to find his wife. He hadn’t spoken to Ellie since, but it was a start, she thought. And her wages had risen to five shillings a week – better than some in her position, she had found out, and without her asking, proving he must be thinking about her. Dora had been given a sixpence rise, bringing her wages to three shillings. It left both feeling almost wealthy. Ellie was making her sister put a bit away each week, while she was putting nearly every penny she earned into a little money box to start her on her way, one day, to seeking her father.
‘Now, don’t be cheeky!’ came Mrs Jenkins’s sharp retort. ‘There’s an ocean of difference between being back early and being back at a respectable time. Your supper’s waiting, then off up to bed. You’ve had a full day. It’s up bright and early in the morning, as usual. No lingering, saying you’re tired. Now, get on with supper. I need to clear the kitchen ready for the morning.’
Supper was leftovers from their employer’s dinner: a slice of cold lamb and bubble’n’squeak – potatoes and cabbage mashed together and fried – a slice of bread and a mug of cocoa. Food in this house was good and plentiful, far better than some Ellie had heard about. She wondered if she might not end up as plump as the rest of them here. But her thinness came from her mother. She’d never be fat.
‘Who, may I ask, gave those two girls permission to take their day off both at the same time yesterday?’
Mary Lowe’s small round face was contorted with fury as Mrs Jenkins stood before her in her sitting room.
Facing the smaller woman’s wrath, Nora Jenkins’s reply was respectful but dignified. ‘I thought you were aware of it, madam.’
‘I was not aware of it! I was not told. As cook/housekeeper you have full charge over the staff here. We do not have enough staff as it is without allowing two of them to have time off together.’
‘Well, it wasn’t me, madam!’ Mrs Jenkins began to feel piqued. She wasn’t accustomed to being spoken to as if she was a servant of the lowest order. She was housekeeper as well as cook. She ran this place. Each week she came to Mrs Lowe and went over the accounts with her. She was entirely honest in her management of the house, not like some, who craftily fiddled a bit of cash here, a few provisions there, and did nicely out of it. She was not prepared to have her honesty questioned.
‘I wasn’t told neither, madam,’ she said huffily. ‘I’d no idea – not until they both paraded past me all dressed up to go out. When I confronted them they said they’d been given the day off together. I assumed it was you who give them permission, being that the younger girl is mostly in your charge, so to speak, or I would’ve come and told you. But I can assure you, madam, it weren’t me!’
‘Then who?’
‘All I can think of would be Doctor Lowe himself.’
‘He said nothing to me. Are you sure he mentioned nothing to you?’
‘Quite sure. They was off out before I could find him to ask. Anyway, he was in surgery and couldn’t be disturbed – not by me any rate.’
Nora Jenkins’s reply was terse. Being asked if she was sure indeed! She wasn’t pleased and she made certain Mrs Lowe knew it.
She obviously did. ‘Very well, Mrs Jenkins,’ she sighed. ‘I’ll have a word with my husband. If it was he who sanctioned the two girls’ day out, I will make very sure it will not happen again. We cannot have two absent at the same time with such a small staff. But thank you, Mrs Jenkins; I am sorry to have troubled you.’
Nora did not acknowledge the polite observance of her position in this house. Turning on her heel as abruptly as her bulk allowed, the cluster of keys, that housekeeper’s badge of office, at her waist rattling sharply as if to emphasize her indignation, she left the room, closing the door firmly.
Mrs Lowe’s annoyance was justified. She, too, was annoyed. Her authority had been undermined and she intended to have a strong word with those two young people.
‘Mrs Lowe is very upset by the both of you taking your day off together,’ she said after summoning the two girls to the little parlour off the kitchen reserved for her. The room was quite small, with hardly space enough in it to swing a cat, but she adored it. It was her home, her retreat after a long day. No one else came in here unless in need of a dressing-down, like today.
Hidden from view by a folding screen were a single bed, a wardrobe and a washstand with an oval mirror above. Her living area was cosy, with a rug in front of the little fireplace, a small table for meals, two chairs, one upright, one reclining, with arms and cushions for comfort – all of it given by Mrs Lowe
