Far From Home: The sisters of Street Child. Berlie Doherty

Lizzie broke into howls of grief. “Ma! Ma! Don’t leave us behind!” she sobbed. “Don’t go without us!”

      She tried to wrench open the door, but her sister put her arms round her, holding her tight. “It’s all right. It’s all right, Lizzie,” she whispered.

      “We might never see them again!” Lizzie shook her away and covered her face with her hands. She didn’t want to see anything, didn’t want to hear anything.

      “I know. It’s just as bad for me,” Emily said. “I didn’t want her to go. I didn’t want Jim to go.” Her voice was breaking up now; tiny rags of sound like brave little flags in the wind. “But Ma had no choice, did she? She wants to save us; that’s what she said. She brought us here so Rosie can take care of us.”

      Rosie, their mother’s only friend in the world, came over to the two girls and drew them away from the door. “I’ll do my best,” she told them. She sat them down at the kitchen table where she had been making bread for the master of the house. She started smoothing flour away with the wedge of her hand, then tracing circles into it with her plump fingers. It was as if she was looking for words there to help her. All that could be heard were the shivering sobs that Lizzie made.

      “Listen, girls,” Rosie said at last. “Your ma’s ill. You know that, don’t you? She ain’t going to get better.”

      Lizzie stifled another sob. This time she let Emily creep her hand into her own, and squeezed and squeezed to keep the unimaginable pain of those words away.

      “And you heard what Judd said? She’s the housekeeper, and what she says, goes. She’s the law round here, she is. She said she’d let you stay a bit, if you keep quiet and hidden, but not for ever. She can’t be feeding two grown girls on his lordship’s money, now, can she? She’d lose her job if he found out you were here, and so would I. I’ll do what I can for you, I promise, but I really don’t know what it is I can do. But at the very least I’ll save you from the streets, or even worse than that, from a life in the workhouse.” She shuddered, rubbing her stout upper arms vigorously as if the thought of the workhouse had chilled her bones. “Never, never. I’ll never let you go there, girls.”

      She flapped her hands along her sleeves to try to dust away the flour.

      “Busy, let’s be busy! Em’ly, you’ve got bread to make. See if it’s as good as your ma used to make. Lizzie, you’ve got a floor to sweep because I can’t touch flour without getting it everywhere I turn! And I’ve got a fire to mend. For pity’s sake, look at it! It’s crawling away like a rat down a hole.”

      She lifted a pair of bellows from the side of the range and knelt in the hearth, working them into the dying embers to coax the flames back, then threw some knuckles of wood onto the glowing ashes. She sat back, watching the dance of the flames, and listened to the girls behind her. She could hear Emily standing up at last from the bench and starting to knead the dough on the table, popping the air out of it with a sure, firm touch, and at last settling into a rhythm, breathing with a slow kind of satisfaction as she did so. Rosie smiled to herself. She sounds just like her ma, she thought. And nothing ever calmed Annie Jarvis down as much as making bread. I’d enjoy working with Em’ly in the kitchen, if only Judd could find a way of letting her stay. Annie’s daughter, working alongside of me. What a pleasure that would be.

      She lifted coals onto the fire, one by one, taking time over her task, not wanting to disturb the girls. At last, she heard Lizzie push the bench away and stand up; heard her gently sweeping the floor with the kitchen broom, scattering drops of water as she went so the dust didn’t fly. Rosie turned and saw that tears were still streaming down Lizzie’s face, burning her cheeks. “Ma, Ma,” she whispered as she worked. “I want you, Ma.”

      As soon she had finished that task Rosie asked her to help with setting a tray to take upstairs, and with sorting out clean knives, forks and spoons to be locked away by Judd in the silver cabinet. The cutlery jittered in Lizzie’s hands, she was so scared of making a mistake, but at last the job was done and Rosie smiled her satisfaction.

      “We get along very well in this job, don’t we, girls?” she said. “I think I can even sit down for a minute now.” She eased herself onto the bench, slipping her boots off, wriggling her toes.

      There was the sudden pounding of feet down the stairs, the kitchen door was flung open, and there stood the housekeeper, lips pursed, grey eyes sharp and cold as points of ice. Rosie jumped to her feet, as though she’d sat on a cat.

      “His lordship has come in early from his afternoon walk,” Judd announced. She jangled the keys that were hanging in a bunch from her belt. “I want you to get these girls out of my sight.”

      “But he never comes down here, Judd,” Rosie said. “And the mistresses are away.”

      “I said, out of my sight.” Judd took in the blazing fire, the clean floor, the dough rising plump as a chicken in the bread tins, and sniffed. “Now! I’ve never seen them in my life.” She turned her back, arms akimbo, so her elbows stuck out sharp and angled in her tight black sleeves.

      Rosie took the girls by the hand and hustled them into the pantry. “He never comes down to the kitchen,” she muttered. “Judd’s behaving like a mother goose watching out for the fox. I’ll let you out when I can.”

      She closed the pantry door quietly. The glow of the fire disappeared, and the sisters stood in complete darkness. Lizzie moved, and something thumped against her face. She stifled a shriek of shock, and nervously lifted up her hand to feel what it was, her other hand grasping Emily’s arm.

      “Ducks!” she whispered, feeling a brace of the birds hanging above their heads. “Dead ducks!” and for some reason all the emotions of the day, the need to be quiet, the strangeness of everything, the knowledge that Emily was standing next to her breathing the same ducky air, and that Judd was watching out for his lordship, the fox; everything about the day welled up in her, until a pent-up explosion of sound burst out of her mouth.

      “Are you crying?” Emily whispered.

      “No,” Lizzie whispered back. Her voice was shaking. Her whole body was shaking. Tears of pain and laughter burnt her cheeks. “I am a bit. But I can’t stop giggling, Emily. Can’t stop.”

      

      It seemed as if hours were passing while Emily and Lizzie stood in the dark pantry, listening to the to and fro of bustle in the kitchen: food being scraped off plates, pans being washed, the fire being raked. All this time they daren’t move, except to lower themselves away from the dangling ducks and squat down on the cold stone floor. Eventually the door opened a crack, the glow of a candle warmed the darkness, and Rosie’s face appeared.

      “Me and Judd have finished down here,” she whispered. “I’ll put some cold meat out for you, and you must eat it before the mice do. There’s a water closet in the back yard for your necessaries, and a couple of rugs by the fire, so you can curl up there. Out you come.”

      She helped them to stand and they stumbled out, stiff and cold, into the cosy firelight of the kitchen. Rosie rubbed their numb hands to warm them up. Her face was creased with concern. “His lordship’s eaten his supper, and he’s dozing in front of the fire like he always does when the ladies are away. He’ll totter off to bed any time now, so you’re quite safe till morning.”

      “Is his lordship really a lord?” Lizzie asked.

      “Heavens, no!” Rosie laughed. “We’d be in a much bigger house if he was, and there’d be servants all over the place. No, he’s a barrister or something like, and he can be as grumpy as I don’t know what if we get things wrong by mistake.” She led the girls over to the table and pushed the plates of meat and potatoes in front of them.

      “He