“D’you want to see our bedroom?” she asked.
I turned to Mummy, who was hovering in the doorway with Aunt Polly, their arms linked together as they looked on in silent maternal delight. She nodded in encouragement and mouthed, Yes, please.
“Yes. Please.”
Aunt Polly beamed. “Go along, then. Off you go. Tea in ten minutes, mind, so don’t be getting settled into any of those daft games of yours, Elsie Wright.”
Elsie said she wouldn’t, and as we walked out of the room she whispered to me, “Don’t mind her. We’ll have plenty of daft games.”
“What games?” I asked.
“Pretend expeditions. Like Shackleton at the South Pole. Do you know about him?” I nodded. Daddy had told me all about the polar explorers. “Sometimes I’m so far away I don’t make it back in time for tea. Then Mummy gets vexed.”
I giggled as I followed Elsie’s black boots.
“And don’t slouch, Elsie,” Aunt Polly called after us. “Walk tall.”
Elsie tutted, and held her head up and her shoulders back, making herself even taller. Daddy said good posture was the sign of someone who knew their own mind. I copied as I followed Elsie up the creaky stairs to the bedroom we were to share at the top of the house.
“It’ll be a bit poky, what with there being two of us in it,” she said, stooping to avoid a beam as we entered a small bedroom. “But I suppose we’ll make do.”
As she walked over to a narrow window that looked out onto the garden below, it struck me that Elsie wasn’t the sturdy Yorkshire lass I’d imagined. Being so tall and slim, she was a rather dainty girl. She gave the impression that there was too much life inside her, fighting to find a way out through the long teenage limbs she couldn’t quite control. She wasn’t entirely unlike Alice, after all.
As Elsie chattered on about it probably being too cold to play out tomorrow and perhaps we could play rummy instead, I looked around the room. The narrow bed took up most of the space. A wardrobe stood under the eaves on one side. An oak chest sat at the foot of the bed and a ewer and basin stood on a washstand behind the door.
“We’re to share the bed,” Elsie said as she noticed me taking in my surroundings, unaware that I’d been thinking of little else for the past few weeks. “So if you’ve cold toes, keep them to yourself, and I promise I’ll try not to snore. You can keep the chamber pot on your side if you like.” She glanced at Rosebud, who I was still holding in my hands. “Who’s this, then?”
My cheeks flushed. “Rosebud.”
“Suppose she’ll want to share the bed an’ all?”
I stared hard at my feet, certain that Elsie was too old for dolls and must think me a silly little girl. “She’s a favorite.”
Elsie placed her hand on my shoulder. “I’m only teasing. You’d best get used to being teased if you’re to live here. Daddy’s always teasing me.” She took one of Rosebud’s floppy hands in her fingertips and shook it. “Very pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Rosebud.”
I giggled at Elsie’s put-on accent. “You sound like I imagine Queen Mary to sound.”
“Well, I am terribly posh. I hope you have a very pleasant stay, Miss Rosebud.” She placed Rosebud on the pillow, tucking her in beneath the counterpane. “See? She likes it here. She’s asleep already.”
Elsie’s kindness was a balm to my troubled mind. She was a bright splash of color in Yorkshire’s palette of gray. Perhaps with Elsie, it wouldn’t be so bad living here, after all.
“What else did you bring?” she asked.
“Just Rosebud. And two books. The Water Babies and a picture book. We didn’t have room for anything else. Only our clothes.”
“The Water Babies makes me sad.”
“Me too. I’ll show you the picture book if you like. It’s ever so nice. Princess Mary’s Gift Book. It was sold as a fund-raiser for the war effort. It has lovely pictures and . . .”
Elsie laughed and grabbed my hands. “Stop blethering on, will you! I can’t understand half of what you’re saying, anyway. You talk funny.”
“So do you. What’s blethering?”
“Talking too much! You can show me the book later, and I’ll show you my watercolors.”
I’d always been a dreadful artist and admired anyone who could paint or draw with any skill. “What do you paint?”
“Scenery around Cottingley, mostly. And fairies.” She saw the reaction on my face and grinned all the way up to her eyes. Something about her smile made my skin burst out into goose bumps.
“Why fairies?” I asked.
“Why not? Everyone loves fairies.” She stood up and walked over to the doorway. “Come on. I’ll show you the lavvy. You must be bursting.”
I followed Elsie back downstairs, through a small scullery, down narrow steps that led to the cellar, and out through the cellar door to the outhouse. I didn’t like being in there in the dark and told Elsie I was too nithered to go and would use the pot instead.
Over tea, I tried to follow the conversation, but kept losing it among the unfamiliar accents and funny words. Everything was new and peculiar—the taste of the water, the smell of the smoke from the fire, the prayer Aunt Polly said before we ate—but I felt warm and comfortable and there was a lot to be said for that after weeks at sea. I spoke only when spoken to and did my best to remember my manners, needing to be prompted only once by Mummy to say thank you. There was plenty of laughter around the table that evening, and although I wished Daddy could be with us and that I could have second helpings of Aunt Polly’s delicious stew and dumplings, I remembered what Mummy had told me about war rations and tried to be grateful for what I’d had.
At bedtime, Elsie and I sat up for a while in our nightdresses and nightcaps while I showed her the photograph of Daddy, and she told me about her job as a “spotter” at Gunston’s photographers in Bradford, where she filled in the holes in the gelatin on the photographic plates. “Otherwise you get black spots on the finished print,” she explained. I thought her clever to know so much about it, but she said it was boring work, and she wished she’d been clever like me and had stayed on at school. She took out her paintings, which she kept in an old biscuit tin beneath the bed. They were very good: scenes of the village and landscapes of the hills around. I especially liked her paintings of fairies dancing beside a woodland stream.
“How do you make them look so lifelike?” I asked.
“It’s to do with shading, mostly, adding shadow and light so they look less flat on the page. The rest is imagination.”
After I’d admired them, I showed her Princess Mary’s Gift Book. “You’ll think the stories a bit babyish, I expect,” I said. “But the pictures are nice.”