Winter Roses by Amy Myers Read Free Book Online

your training?’
    Myrtle, well used to such criticism, bristled, which was unusual for her. ‘I answer to Mrs Thorn about my cleaning, thank you, Mrs Dibble.’
    ‘And to me. You’re the tweeny here, not the housemaid.’
    ‘I may not be that much longer.’
    Margaret stared at her in amazement. Myrtle was slow, clumsy, but good-hearted. And most of all, she was part of the Rectory. As well expect the Rector to say he was leaving.
    ‘I’ve been meaning to tell you,’ Myrtle continued with pride. ‘I’m thinking of giving in my notice.’
    ‘You?’
    Myrtle took umbrage at this patent disbelief that anyone else would want her. ‘Harriet said I should go into munitions like her. The pay and hours are so much better.’
    ‘And the work so much more dangerous, my girl.’
    ‘Not at East Grinstead, it isn’t. Mr Swinford-Browne takes every precaution, that’s what Harriet says.’
    ‘You watch what you’re doing, Myrtle.’ Margaret was alarmed for the girl’s sake, as well as the Rectory’s. ‘Don’t be led by the nose by that Harriet Mutter. You think twice before you give up a nice safe job here, with the Rectory and Mrs Lilley, to go to work in a dirty factory.’
    ‘The hours aren’t so long, Mrs Dibble.’ Already Myrtle’s will was beginning to crack under the onslaught from old Dibble Dabble.
    ‘You young people are afraid of hard work, that’s your problem. You take my advice, Myrtle, and stay where you are.’
    ‘And that’s what I’ll be doing all my life, if I don’t take this opportunity.’ Myrtle’s courage had returned, and she marched out carrying the blacklead.
    To Margaret’s way of thinking, she was set for disaster. What was the world coming to with tweenies talking above themselves? The Rectory had always been good to Myrtle. It had given her a roof over her head, and she had a room to herself; in her parent’s cottage she shared one with her four sisters, and the work was a lot worse there than the Rectory. Of course housework was hard; no one said it wasn’t. But it was rewarding. You could look at a scrubbed oak table and say, ‘I did that. I made it clean.’ Margaret could look in her stillroom, full of bottled plums, and say: ‘They wouldn’t be there but for me’. And no need for the government to keep telling her how important it was to preserve food. She had been doing it all her life, and she was hardly likely to stop now.
    She forgot about Myrtle and the government as she was promptly recalled to her family problems. The tradesmen’s door was flung open and Lizzie came in, panting heavily from the exertion.
    ‘Well I never did. It’s Lizzie,’ her mother said unnecessarily. ‘You look all in. Sit down. I’ll put the kettle on.’
    ‘I’m all right.’ But she sat down all the same.
    ‘You’re doing too much. It’s bad for the little ’un.’
    What was all this about? Margaret wondered. Lizzie hadn’t been here in a month of Sundays. It had been left to her and Percy to pop up to Hop Cottage. Mrs Lilley had suggested she come here to be confined but no, Madam Lizzie wouldn’t have it. She’d be all right at home with Mrs Hay the midwife – and her mother, if she could spare the time. Margaret, greatly hurt, had not committed herself.
    ‘Don’t fuss, Ma,’ Lizzie snapped, as a cushion was put between the chair and her daughter’s back. ‘It’s another two weeks yet. I can count.’
    She and Lizzie had never got on like mother and daughter should. Somehow, however much she tried, Margaret could never understand the girl. Nevertheless, she made an effort. ‘Why don’t you come here, Lizzie, like Mrs Lilley said, and have a bit of home comfort?’
    ‘I am home at Hop Cottage. Anyway, this is a rectory and I’m an adulteress.’
    Margaret swallowed, sensing Lizzie was deliberately challenging her. ‘You’re in need, that’s all I know, and that’s all Mrs Lilley cares about. After all, Agnes Thorn had her baby here, and she weren’t wed