The Sister's Tale, Beth Powning [important books to read TXT] 📗

enormous house loomed from the winter trees, with a tower and gables.

“The MacVey sisters live there,” the woman said. She began to lift the bearskin. “Their brother built them that house.”

They turned onto a lane almost at the top of the hill, leading to a white house set back from the street by a wide lawn, with a barn and a veranda running around three sides of the house.

“This is my home, Flora,” Josephine said. “You will live here now.”

—

They stepped into a hallway, surfaces gleaming with cleanliness. The cold, bright day shut away with the closing of the front door.

Flora set her boots on the rack. She followed the woman’s rustling skirt over slippery, varnished floorboards, then a soft rug. A babble of Irish accents rose as Josephine pushed open a door and ushered Flora into a kitchen.

Three women, suddenly silent.

Steamy warmth, a spill of flour on the yellow floor, green wainscot. Verses tacked to wallpaper, to the sides of cupboards.

“Flora, this is Ellen, my cook. Ellen, this is Flora Salford.”

Ellen was built like a goat, the framework of bones visible. Sagging cheeks, their lines compressed into riverine maps offset by sharp, percipient eyes. She wiped yeasty hands on her apron and took Flora’s hand. She did not shake it but made certain that Flora stood and returned her close look and allowed herself to be examined. Flora’s heart thickened.

“Flora Salford, is it,” she said. “Well, then.”

“This is Margaret,” Josephine continued.

Margaret was tall and raw-boned, with large front teeth that protruded. She held a bowl in the crook of her arm and braved a glance into Flora’s eyes. She nodded and turned away, stirring with a wooden spoon.

“And Mary.”

Mary was small and quick. She put her hands on her hips and stared at Flora. Her voice was flat; friendship, Flora knew, was a thing to be earned.

“You got a head of hair on you, girl. Some beautiful. Wants untangling. You can use cider vinegar rinse.”

Mr. Dougan came into the kitchen. At Josephine’s bidding, he took away the green box. Flora heard his steps, clumping up uncarpeted stairs.

Standing close to her new mistress, Flora glanced at her. She did not know if thanks should be given, or apology. Josephine returned her look, hesitating, as if she, too, did not know what to say. The lines beside her mouth deepened.

“Mary, take her up, show her to her room.”

—

Boiling hot water hissed from the spout of the claw-footed tub, with its palm-sized spigots, like metal daisy heads. Flora stared at the black grime outlining her toenails. Scraps of sock wool rose from between her toes and floated on the limpid water. She leaned forward and grasped her legs. Ribs; flat skin between her pelvic bones. The door opened just enough for a hand to drop fresh clothing onto the seat of a chair. She pushed herself up to look. Black dress with a white apron and a white cap. Black stockings. Leather shoes. Black, white, starched.

Servant’s clothes.

She slid under the water and opened her eyes.

They’d made her wash on the night that she arrived at the farm, five years ago. She was ten years old and had disembarked from the ship in St. John and been driven to the Protestant Orphanage, but no family in St. John offered to take her and so the matron hung a placard around her neck reading Flora Salford and put her on a train. She arrived at the Pleasant Valley station on a cold spring night and Henry Quigley picked her up. Utter darkness, save for a flicker of light in one window, when the horse came to a stop before the farmhouse. Smell of cows and forest, and the thin throb of peepers. On the scarred linoleum, a washtub in front of a wood stove. Ada sent Henry and their two hired men out of the house and told Flora to take off every stitch of clothing and climb into the hot water. The tired farm woman gave her a fist-sized ball of hard soap.

In the morning, Ada told her to make bread.

I never made bread.

Nor, she told Ada, when questioned, did she know how to make butter, or knit a sock or even use a hoe. At the workhouse, they had lined up and shuffled single-file to long tables, where they were fed like beasts at a trough. They were led up into high rooms—hot in summer, cold in winter—and given baskets of gloves to hem. They were told they were being punished for the sins of their parents, who were poor. They were lucky, they were instructed, to be fed and clothed, since the outside world was a place of danger and terror. Old women spent their whole lives in the workhouse. Men walked and murmured in their own yard, beyond a wall, making an unrelenting din with their hammers, splitting stones.

Flora sat up suddenly, attempting to lose her memories in a rush of soapy water. She reached forward to adjust the magical spigots.

Ada had not learned the whole of her shame. How workhouse children were made to stand in tubs while women rubbed them down with rough cloths, talking of boyfriends, insults and secret matters. How it made her feel as if her filth were intrinsic, something she had no power to remove.

In this bathtub, where fresh water could be summoned at the turn of a tap, dirt separated from her, her legs were turning pink. She leaned forward, cupping her hands beneath the faucet.

—

On Flora’s third day of work, Ellen told her to take tea to the front room, where Mrs. Galloway had a visitor.

“ ’Tis her husband’s first cousin Carrie. Her that went around the world as a child and was almost killed by pirates.” Ellen held a silver pitcher between dainty fingers, set it next to a plate of sliced cake. “Set the tray on the table next to Mrs. Galloway’s chair.”

Carrying the tray down the hall, Flora felt she had no underpinnings, might stumble and fall,