the weight of their fruit;
they’d had loads of strawberries, gooseberries, raspberries and black currants the cellar had shelves full
of preserves and jams, and in the house they’d eaten their own fruit every day for weeks, besides which
they took for granted a three course lunch and a four-course dinner every day.
Sometimes, as they sat eating their fill, he would find it difficult to keep his mind off Fellburn and the
villagers; yet she had just said they wouldn’t starve down there. Would she ever
understand them?
Would she ever fit in?
Yet she seemed to fit in upstairs well enough with his father, and with Marcus and Lena Levey too.
Marcus thought she was great fun, and Lena had said she was beautiful, while Doris, their daughter, had
a schoolgirl crush on her. It was strange, but it seemed to be only in the kitchen quarter of the house
where she didn’t fit in; and, of course, at The Cottage, for she had taken a strong dislike towards David
and Hazel, most openly towards David. It wouldn’t have been so bad, he thought, had she detested all
the rest of them, even his father, if only she had taken to David.
Still with his back to Elaine, he spoke David’s name now: saying stiffly, “David has my permission to
give all the surplus vegetables and fruit to the miners. I’ve told you this before; and you’ve no right to
interfere with that arrangement.”
He sensed she was on her feet now and he could gauge the expression on her face from
the tone of her
voice: “And I told you I didn’t agree with it, at least not in the quantity he gives away, and always to that
man Egan, who’ll likely go and sell it and drink the proceeds.”
Swinging round to face her now and his voice loud, almost on the verge of a shout, he cried at her, “For
your information, Clan Egan doesn’t drink. This might seem strange to you, but he’s a man of high
morals. He’s got a big mouth and he uses it, but he uses it for a cause. Everything Clan Egan gets from
my garden is taken to the club house and shared out.”
“You should have been a miner.”
“Yes, perhaps I should.”
“That gentleman in the railway carriage was right: you’re in one class but you belong to another.”
“Be careful, Elly; I don’t want to fight with you.”
“It appears to me we have done little else for weeks. You thwart me at every turn. You should allow
me my place in this house. Your father respects my wishes more than you do: you would never have
allowed me to change that girl’s name, but he did; he understood the situation.
He doesn’t kowtow to the kitchen; you, I am sorry to say, have no sense of the fitness of things and
your place in society, nor do you understand people. You have never given me credit for having a brain.
You saw me at Polly Rawlston’s dance as a gay, bobbed-haired, Charleston-swinger with just enough
brains to enable me to chatter entertainingly, to tinkle on the 63 piano, to dribble French in restaurants
and .. “
“I’ve told you to be quiet, Elly; you’re going too far.”
“There, you see, when I bring up something of importance, such as my ability to think, you tell me to be
quiet, that I am going too far. I understand that the men in the village and town down there still treat their
wives like serfs; they don’t seem to know that women have the vote.
There’s one life for the master of the house, which includes his freedom to do as he
wishes and go where
he likes without question, and another for his wife, whose duty appears to be to rear children by the
dozen, such as happens in Egan’s house, and to cook and slave for her lord and master. “
She stopped abruptly and her face stretched in surprise as Joe turned from her and threw his head back
and laughed loudly. When he put his hands on the head of the couch and leant over it, she cried at him,
“I’m glad to see that I amuse you, although myself I see no humour in what I have said.”
“No?” He
they’d had loads of strawberries, gooseberries, raspberries and black currants the cellar had shelves full
of preserves and jams, and in the house they’d eaten their own fruit every day for weeks, besides which
they took for granted a three course lunch and a four-course dinner every day.
Sometimes, as they sat eating their fill, he would find it difficult to keep his mind off Fellburn and the
villagers; yet she had just said they wouldn’t starve down there. Would she ever
understand them?
Would she ever fit in?
Yet she seemed to fit in upstairs well enough with his father, and with Marcus and Lena Levey too.
Marcus thought she was great fun, and Lena had said she was beautiful, while Doris, their daughter, had
a schoolgirl crush on her. It was strange, but it seemed to be only in the kitchen quarter of the house
where she didn’t fit in; and, of course, at The Cottage, for she had taken a strong dislike towards David
and Hazel, most openly towards David. It wouldn’t have been so bad, he thought, had she detested all
the rest of them, even his father, if only she had taken to David.
Still with his back to Elaine, he spoke David’s name now: saying stiffly, “David has my permission to
give all the surplus vegetables and fruit to the miners. I’ve told you this before; and you’ve no right to
interfere with that arrangement.”
He sensed she was on her feet now and he could gauge the expression on her face from
the tone of her
voice: “And I told you I didn’t agree with it, at least not in the quantity he gives away, and always to that
man Egan, who’ll likely go and sell it and drink the proceeds.”
Swinging round to face her now and his voice loud, almost on the verge of a shout, he cried at her, “For
your information, Clan Egan doesn’t drink. This might seem strange to you, but he’s a man of high
morals. He’s got a big mouth and he uses it, but he uses it for a cause. Everything Clan Egan gets from
my garden is taken to the club house and shared out.”
“You should have been a miner.”
“Yes, perhaps I should.”
“That gentleman in the railway carriage was right: you’re in one class but you belong to another.”
“Be careful, Elly; I don’t want to fight with you.”
“It appears to me we have done little else for weeks. You thwart me at every turn. You should allow
me my place in this house. Your father respects my wishes more than you do: you would never have
allowed me to change that girl’s name, but he did; he understood the situation.
He doesn’t kowtow to the kitchen; you, I am sorry to say, have no sense of the fitness of things and
your place in society, nor do you understand people. You have never given me credit for having a brain.
You saw me at Polly Rawlston’s dance as a gay, bobbed-haired, Charleston-swinger with just enough
brains to enable me to chatter entertainingly, to tinkle on the 63 piano, to dribble French in restaurants
and .. “
“I’ve told you to be quiet, Elly; you’re going too far.”
“There, you see, when I bring up something of importance, such as my ability to think, you tell me to be
quiet, that I am going too far. I understand that the men in the village and town down there still treat their
wives like serfs; they don’t seem to know that women have the vote.
There’s one life for the master of the house, which includes his freedom to do as he
wishes and go where
he likes without question, and another for his wife, whose duty appears to be to rear children by the
dozen, such as happens in Egan’s house, and to cook and slave for her lord and master. “
She stopped abruptly and her face stretched in surprise as Joe turned from her and threw his head back
and laughed loudly. When he put his hands on the head of the couch and leant over it, she cried at him,
“I’m glad to see that I amuse you, although myself I see no humour in what I have said.”
“No?” He
Similar Books
