Page 41 of Guardian
“I think I can,” I managed, the flush starting up my neck again.
“Good.” She gathered up the organza remnant into a tidy pile, and went to her desk, pulling out a drawer. “I found something the other day. I kept it out for James, but you might like to see it.”
Emma handed me a cardboard folder embossed with the name of a photographic studio.Another picture, I thought.
This one was yellowed at the edges, sepia toned, and again, all four people in the photograph were unsmiling, even grim. A man and woman, seated. To the left of the woman stood a girl of about ten, with her skirts still short, and a boy of about four sat on his mother’s lap. His small plump hand was wrapped around his sister’s index finger.
“This is you and James with your parents?” I asked. James’s face was round and soft, with large dark eyes, feathery hair that lay flat against the top of his head, and a rosebud mouth. If I looked, I could see the beginnings of the handsomeness he had now.
“My father died about six months after this was taken,” Emma said. “Mum was afraid for his health. She wanted a picture to remember him by, in case.”
“Was it cholera?” It had swept through Southwark when I was too young to remember, but I’d heard about it plenty.
“Influenza,” she replied. “He had black lung ’cause he worked in the mines up north as a child, so his lungs were too weak to fight it off. Or at least, that’s what the doctor told us.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Mum’s heart was broken something fierce,” she said. “I know marriages aren’t always happy, but Mum and Da loved each other.” Her voice dropped. “They were kind. She always said he was a good man.”
I handed the photograph back. “It’s a nice picture.” I didn’t have a photograph of my father. My ma certainly hadn’t wanted something to remember him by; after he left, she found everything in the house that reminded her of him—down to the glass mug he used for his shaving soap—and took it to Mr. Ardle’s shop. Not to mention we wouldn’t have had the money for a photograph.
With the corners of her mouth buttoned down, Emma replaced the folder in the drawer. “Well, then.”
It seemed we were finished talking. She resumed her place at the table. I finished the buttonhole, slipped the button through to check it, and moved on to the next, all the while wondering why she’d showed me that photograph. The best I could guess was that Emma wanted me to see that she and James were close from childhood, like Sarah and me. Or that she knew what my parents’ marriage was like—Ma was more likely to scream “bloody eejit” out the window at Da than call him a good man—and she wanted me to know James would expect something different.
We worked in silence for another hour, until Emma snipped her thread, put away her needle, and draped the skirt over a table. “Some fabrics came in this morning. I’m goin’ to fetch them.” She took her coat down from its hook. “When you finish the buttonholes, can you baste Mr. Nichols’s shirts? I’ll be back in less than an hour. There are no appointments.”
“Of course,” I said. The door clinked closed behind her.
Three buttonholes left. My hands worked them of their own accord, my mind busy with my thoughts.
I wasn’t sure I was ready to admit even to myself how the thought of James privately caring for me softened my heart. It wasn’t the sort of secret I usually discovered, with the truth better than I imagined.
It took me two hours to baste the seams on Mr. Nichols’s three shirts with red thread and long stitches that showed on both sides of the cloth. I’d barely finished when Emma returned, her eyes sparking with annoyance and her mouth tight.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
She unbuttoned her coat, her fingers quick with irritation. “Three bolts of cloth I ordered went missing. And I need them for Mrs. Tompkins’s new dresses. She’ll be fit to be tied.”
“They didn’t arrive?”
“No, they arrived. The duties were paid, and they were logged and shelved. At first, the clerk thought they were just mislaid.”
“Not surprising.” I’d been to the warehouse once with Emma, to help her carry some bundles of woolens and notions, and it was enormous, a cavern of shelves and boxes and narrow aisles, people bustling in and out, fetching and carrying all manner of goods. I’d nearly been knocked over by a man hurrying through with a wrought iron fireplace grate over his shoulder.
“But when we looked at the book, there was anXinstead of my signature.”
“Oh,” I said, dismayed.
“We asked one of the clerks in that department—a brainless gob—and he couldn’t recall anything, but a different clerk said he remembered a woman coming in to fetch them and givin’ my name.”
That was straight-up thieving.
I wasn’t a fool; I knew the damage stealing caused, but I rarely saw it firsthand. I was always already gone by the time it was discovered. “Who knew you were picking them up?”
“No one but you.”
I blinked.
