Daughter of the House by Rosie Thomas

Author:Rosie Thomas
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780007512072
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2015-06-02T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

At last Arthur gave way to Bella’s entreaties and Nancy’s persuasion. He invited Bella home to Waterloo Street to meet the rest of his family.

‘Is there an engagement?’ Eliza cried when Nancy suggested a tea party.

‘No, no. It’s too soon for that. They are friends, that’s all.’

Nancy did her best to reassure him but Cornelius looked unsettled when he first heard about the visit.

‘I don’t like crowds, I hate loud noises, and talking to strangers makes me anxious. I’ve already got everything I want under this roof.’

It was true that he seemed happy so long as he could plant vegetables and read his books. The damage he had suffered in France would never be fully repaired, although he didn’t seem to be suffering any longer. He moved deliberately through his uneventful days.

‘You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, Con.’

He tilted his head and peered at her through the thicker lenses he now wore. His fingernails were ingrained with garden dirt.

‘Whereas you have to carry the burdens for all of us,’ he said sadly.

Nancy was surprised. It wasn’t what she felt.

‘Actually, I go to parties and drink too many cocktails.’

‘Well and good. If that’s what you like to do, of course. Personally I would rather pull my own teeth.’

Eliza insisted that she must bake a cake for Bella’s visit.

On the day she got up early, not long after Devil had gone out to the theatre, and enveloped her skeletal frame in an apron that had once belonged to Mrs Frost. While she swept the hall and stairs and dusted the dado rails Nancy heard cupboard doors banging in the kitchen. Spoons clattered in the sink. She concentrated on rearranging the mats to hide the worst gaps in the floorboards, determined not to interfere. The parlour was not an inviting place, but she did what she could to make it look homely. When she was straightening the cushion on her mother’s chair her fingers encountered something smooth tucked out of sight between the seat and the arm. It was a small brown phial, empty, of the sort that had held Eliza’s medicine long ago when she was recovering from influenza. Nancy stared at it, wondering why an empty bottle had found its way from Islington to Waterloo Street. She put it in her skirt pocket.

‘Nancy? Where are you?’

Eliza was calling from the kitchen. Nancy saw that her mother hadn’t cleared the table before starting her preparations, and the breakfast crusts and Devil’s fried-egg plate lay in a jumble of flour bags and smears of butter. Small pancakes of dark yellowish sponge mix had appeared in two baking pans.

Nancy ran her finger inside the mixing bowl and licked up the sweet residue, recalling how she had helped Mrs Frost to make birthday cakes amidst the appetising smells of the Islington kitchen. It had been a place where scoured pans hung from hooks in descending size order and jars of jam and chutney winked on the shelves.

‘Into the oven with them,’ Eliza cried.

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