The Best of Sisters by Dilly Court Read Free Book Online

Eliza?’

Chapter Three
    In the hellish working conditions of the lodging house, Eliza kept sane by focusing her mind on returning home at the end of a hard day’s toil. Ted was so convinced that he had found her a suitable position with a kind employer that Eliza did not want to disappoint him. The Pecks were so good to her, so kind and loving, just like real parents: she would have cut off her right arm rather than upset them. And so she said nothing about the reality of working for Mrs Tubbs, keeping the bullying and beatings with Stinger to herself. At least, when she handed over her wages at the end of the week, she felt she was contributing to her keep.
    Although Eliza went off cheerfully each morning, putting a brave face on things, she slowed her pace as soon as she left Hemp Yard. She had to force her bare feet to walk in the direction of Old Gravel Lane. Each day, she suffered the taunts and bullying of Maisie Carter, who was usually drunk and always vicious. Mrs Tubbs was a sadistic slattern who cheated her gentlemen lodgers, gave them rotten food,watered-down small beer, and kept them sweet by giving them free access to the favours of her chambermaids. Eliza got to know Gertrude, Flossie and Meg when they came down to the kitchen for their meals. They were all workhouse girls, taken on by Mrs Tubbs when they were ten or twelve, ostensibly as chambermaids but, as Eliza soon realised, making the beds and emptying the chamber pots were the least of their duties. Mrs Tubbs picked only the best-looking girls and then she groomed them, feeding them up and dressing them in a manner that accentuated their physical charms; painting their faces until they looked like wax dolls and forcing them to submit to the lodgers’ demands. Eliza wondered why they put up with such treatment, but Meg told her in confidence that to go against Mrs Tubbs was a one-way ticket back to the workhouse or, even worse, ending up on the streets with the myriads of other forlorn prostitutes risking disease and sudden death.
    Eliza was truly thankful that she was too young and skinny to qualify for Mrs Tubbs’s attention and she did her best to fulfil the almost impossible task of keeping the establishment clean. At night, when she went home, she hid her chapped and work-worn hands beneath her skirts and, although she was always exhausted to the point of dropping, she somehow managed to keep awake long enough to satisfy Dolly’sclose questioning about her duties and the people she met during the day.
    In the privacy of her bedroom and by the light of a single candle, Eliza wrote long letters to Bart giving thumbnail descriptions of the lodgers: portly Mr Tully, who could eat two dozen oysters at a sitting and, no doubt as a result, suffered from dreadful wind. He had not forgiven her for calling him a pig and had complained bitterly to Mrs Tubbs, telling her that Eliza was rude, clumsy and in need of severe chastisement, but she left that bit out of her letters. She went on to describe Mr Benson, a clerk in a law firm who had a habit of saying ‘Ah, dearie me’ for no apparent reason, and whose black suits were shiny at the elbows and frayed at the cuffs. Then there was noisy Mr Jack, who styled himself as a dealer in fancy ware and went round with a barrow, door to door, selling cheap jewellery, cufflinks, studs, lockets and combs for the back hair, for a penny apiece. Mr Jack, who was young and cheerful, always wore a cherry-red velvet waistcoat and nankeen trousers, and was quite Eliza’s favourite – until Freddie Prince arrived, and then her whole life seemed to change.
    The other lodgers came and went, most of them being commercial travellers who stayed for just a night or two and then moved on, but Freddie Prince was different from anyone shehad ever met. He insisted on being addressed as ‘doctor’, although Mr Jack said that he was a crocusser, a phoney medical man who plied his trade from a suitcase, selling pills, potions and