Five
AFTER securing the blackout curtains and then gently shaking Julia awake, Emmy made toast for them and shared her news. Julia seemed happy, but was clearly unsure what Emmy’s new job meant for her: Emmy saw the uncertainty in her eyes. Emmy had always known that the age spread between them meant that she would be out on her own long before Julia would. It likely hadn’t occurred to Julia until she was sitting there licking marmalade off her fingers that Emmy had plans for the sketches that had very little to do with her. But Julia could see it now. She and Emmy were to be parted and it was the brides that would take Emmy from her. Emmy didn’t treasure for a moment the thought of leaving Julia when the time came. The sisters washed and dried the dishes in silence.
After Julia got ready for bed, Emmy read to her from a volume of fairy tales that was Julia’s favorite, and the girls waited for Mum to come home from work.
With no sign of their mother by ten o’clock, Emmy tucked Julia into bed. She held the drawings Emmy had given her like a storybook.
“Do you like their umbrellas?” Julia fanned the brides out on her blanketed lap.
“I like them very much.”
“Polka-dot umbrellas are my favorite. I want a red polka-dot umbrella. With a curly black handle that looks like licorice.”
“That sounds splendid.”
Julia pointed to one of the brides. She had drawn cartoonlike features onto the blank face, including a toothy smile and curling eyelashes that extended past the bride’s hairline. That particular drawing was Emmy’s second attempt at anything bridal. The skirt resembled a lacy lampshade that someone had stepped on. Julia’s embellishments made it look even more amateurish.
“If it rains on her wedding day, she’s going to need an umbrella,” Julia said.
“You’re smart to think ahead like that.”
“So where will I go when you are working at the bridal shop?”
This was a detail Emmy had not wanted to ponder, though it had crossed her mind several times since she’d returned to the flat. She reminded herself that Julia was her sister, not her daughter. This was Mum’s complication to work out, not hers. Emmy had a pretty good idea it would not take much persuading for Thea from the flat next door to look after Julia for the few hours Mum and she would be gone every week. Thea, a quiet, unmarried recluse who spent her days taking care of her senile mother, doting on her cat, and reading books about the sea, adored Julia. Emmy would suggest it if Mum hadn’t a better idea.
“Mum will make sure you are looked after, Jewels. That’s what mums are for.”
Julia looked at Emmy, an unspoken question in her eyes. Emmy didn’t want to know what that question was, so she did not ask.
“Why aren’t you coming to bed?” Julia asked a moment later.
“I want to wait up for Mum and tell her about my new job.”
“But why do you need a job, Emmy? You’re not a mum. Only mums need jobs.”
Emmy took the drawings Julia held in her hands and set them on the little table in between the beds. “Mrs. Crofton is going to teach me how to sew, Jewels. And she knows somebody who might be able to help me take my drawings and make real dresses out of them. Real dresses. That’s why. Say your prayers now.” Emmy rose from the bed and turned out the light. Darkness swallowed the room.
“Don’t close the door all the way,” she said.
“I won’t. Sweet dreams.”
Emmy settled onto the sofa with a magazine and waited for Mum but she fell asleep. Hours later in the gray light of dawn, the lock turned and she startled awake. Emmy sat up quickly and Mum, equally startled, half fell against the door frame.
“Good Lord, Emmy,” Mum said as she caught herself. “You scared me. What are you doing there on the sofa like that?”
Emmy smelled pipe tobacco on her, even from ten feet away.
“Where have you been?” Emmy said, knowing how ridiculous it sounded that she was asking that question instead of the other way around, as she had heard other mothers do.
Mum pushed the door shut and smoothed a curl that had worked free of her white maid’s cap. “It got late last night and it was too dark to walk home. It wouldn’t have been safe.”
Mum strode into the room and then into the kitchen, clicking on the light above the table. She set her handbag down and pulled the hairpins from her cap. Emmy joined her. In addition to the stale aroma of tobacco, she now smelled men’s cologne.
Not Neville’s. Wherever she’d spent the night, it wasn’t with Julia’s father, whom they hadn’t seen in months. Emmy was both relieved and disgusted. She didn’t like Neville but at least she knew who he was.
“So you had to spend the night at Mrs. Billingsley’s?” Emmy said, only minimally masking her sarcasm.
Her mother tossed her cap onto the table. “I told you. It was too dark to walk home.” Mum turned to the sink, grabbed the teakettle, and began to fill it with water. That was her standard practice when she didn’t want to be bothered by anyone or anything. She would turn her back on whatever the nuisance was and make tea.
Emmy crossed her arms in front of her chest. “So Mrs. Billingsley’s taken up smoking, then? And wearing men’s cologne? Must drive you all batty.”
Mum switched off the tap and just stood with her back to her daughter, holding the kettle by its handle. A few seconds later she plunked the kettle down on top of the stove. She switched on the burner and then turned to Emmy. “Let’s get one thing straight. I don’t report to you. You’re not in charge here. I am.”
“So you don’t deny it? You weren’t at Mrs. Billingsley’s last night?” The volume of Emmy’s voice doubled but she didn’t care if she woke Julia.
“I don’t have to explain anything to you.” Mum swung around to the cupboard to gather the tin of tea and a cup. Emmy saw her slender build under her maid’s uniform, the fullness of her bosom, the shapeliness of her legs and thighs, and the graceful curve of her neck. Emmy saw how pretty Mum was, but how broken. She was only thirty-one, with not a wrinkle or blemish or so much as a strand of gray hair. Emmy didn’t know what her mum had wanted to be at this stage of her life, but it came to her with crashing clarity that surely she hadn’t dreamed of becoming a rich woman’s kitchen maid. Emmy was never more aware of how much her very existence had marooned Mum to this scrabbling life than at that moment, though it wasn’t the first time she had contemplated how her birth changed the trajectory of Mum’s life. On truly terrible days, like when Neville left for good, or when her mother ran into someone she knew who lived a carefree life of normalcy, Mum would stare at Emmy and she would feel the weight of those lost years. Nana had told Emmy when she was ten that it was not her fault she had been born. It was Mum who, at sixteen, let herself get carried away by smooth talk. That was as much as Emmy knew about the man who had fathered her. He was a smooth talker. Nana had known more than that, Emmy believed, although she had acted as if she didn’t. Emmy’s birth certificate read that her father was unknown.
“How can you not know who my father is?” Emmy had asked Mum once, when she was old enough to know how babies were made but too na?ve to figure out “unknown” could also mean “unnamed.”