“Oh!” Maisie gulped, and stepped into the street to follow them.
Maggie took hold of her elbow. “No, Miss Piddle.”
“Why not?” Maisie seemed to ask this innocently as she tried to pull her elbow free. Maggie glanced at Charlie, who raised his eyebrows.
“C’mon, now, Maisie. They’ll be busy and won’t want you hangin’ about.”
“He must be showing her his horse, don’t you think?” Maisie said.
Charlie snorted. “Showin’ her summat, that’s sure.”
“Best leave it,” Maggie advised. “You don’t want to be spyin’ on him-he wouldn’t like that.”
Maisie turned her large blue eyes on Maggie. “I hadn’t thought of that. D’you think he’d be angry with me?”
“Yes, he would. You go home, now.” Maggie gave Maisie a little push. After a moment Maisie started up Hercules Buildings. “Nice to meet you,” she called to Charlie over her shoulder.
Charlie chuckled. “Good Lord a day, where’d you find her?”
“Leave her be, Charlie.”
He was still watching Maisie, but flicked his eyes at his sister. “What makes you think I’m goin’ to do summat to her, Miss Cut-Throat?”
Maggie froze. He had never called her that before. She tried not to show her panic, keeping her eyes fixed on his face, taking in the bristles on his chin and the beginnings of a skimpy blond moustache. He was her brother, though, and knew her well, catching the flash in her eyes and the sudden stillness of her breathing.
“Oh, don’t worry.” He smiled his dubious smile. “Your secret’s safe with me. Fact is, I didn’t think you had it in you.”
Jem appeared at the pub door and started over, walking carefully so that he wouldn’t jog the full tankard. He frowned when he saw Maggie’s tense, miserable face. “What’s the matter?” He turned on Charlie. “What’d you do to her?”
“You goin’ home now?” Charlie said, ignoring Jem.
Maggie frowned. “What d’you care?”
“Mam and Pa have a little surprise for you, is all.” In one movement he grabbed the tankard from Jem and pulled a long drink from it, emptying a third before he thrust it back and ran off, laughter floating behind him.
6
When Maggie returned, Bet Butterfield was by the fire, dumping fistfuls of chopped potatoes into a pot of water. Charlie was already at the table, his long legs spread in front of him. “Chop up the onions, would you, duck,” Bet Butterfield said, taking the tankard from Maggie without comment on its late arrival or the missing beer. “You cry less’n me.”
“Charlie don’t cry at all,” Maggie retorted. Charlie did not take the hint, but continued to lounge at the table. Maggie glared at him as she began to peel the onions. Bet Butterfield cut some of the fat off the meat and dropped it into a frying pan to heat. Then she stood over her daughter, watching her work.
“Not rings,” she said. “Slivers.”
Maggie paused, the knife biting into half an onion. “Stop it, Mam. You said onions make you cry, so go ’way.”
“How can I go ’way when you an’t chopping ’em right?”
“What difference does it make how I chop ’em? Rings or slivers, they taste the same. Onions is onions.”
“Here, I’ll do it.” Bet Butterfield grabbed at the knife. Maggie held on to it.
Charlie looked up from his contemplation of nothing and watched mother and daughter grapple with the knife. “Careful, Mam,” he drawled. “Maggie’s handy with a knife, an’t you, Maggie?”
Maggie let go. “Shut it, Charlie!”
Bet Butterfield glanced from one to the other of her children. “What you talkin’ about?”
“Nothing, Mam,” they answered in unison.
Bet Butterfield waited, but neither said anything more, though Charlie smirked at the fire. Their mother began chopping the onions just as she had done the ironing-automatically, methodi-cally, repeating an act so familiar that she didn’t have to waste any thought on it.
“Mam, the fat’s smokin’,” Maggie announced.
“Put the meat in, then,” Bet Butterfield ordered. “Don’t let it burn. Your pa don’t like it burnt.”
“I’m not going to burn it.”
Maggie burnt it. She did not like cooking any more than ironing. Bet Butterfield finished chopping the onions, scooped them up and dropped them into the pan before grabbing the spoon from her daughter. “Maggie!” she cried when she turned the meat and saw the black marks.
Charlie chuckled.
“What’d she do this time?” Dick Butterfield spoke from the doorway. Bet Butterfield flipped the meat back over and stirred the onions vigorously. “Nothing, nothing-she’s just gettin’ back to the ironing, an’t you, duck?”
“Mind you don’t scorch it,” Dick Butterfield commented. “What? What?” he added as Charlie began to laugh and Maggie kicked at her brother’s legs. “Listen, girl, you need to treat your family with a little more respect. Now, help your mother.” He hooked a stool with his foot and pulled it under him as he sat down, a movement he had perfected from years of pub stool sitting.
Maggie scowled, but pulled the iron from the fire and went back to the pile of sheets. She could feel her father’s eyes on her as she ran the iron back and forth, and for once she concentrated on smoothing the cloth systematically rather than haphazardly.
It was rare for all four Butterfields to be in the same room together. By the nature of their different work, Dick and Bet were often out at odd times, and Charlie and Maggie had grown up dipping in and out of the house as they liked, eating from pie shops or taverns or street sellers. The kitchen felt small with them all there, especially with Charlie’s legs taking up so much space.
“So, Mags,” Dick Butterfield said suddenly, “Charlie tells us you was out with the Kellaway boy when you was meant to be gettin’ beer for your mam.”
Maggie glowered at Charlie, who smiled.
“You spend all your time runnin’ round with Dorset boys,” her father continued, “while your mam an’ me is out workin’ to put food in your mouth. It’s time you started to earn your keep.”
“I don’t see Charlie working,” Maggie muttered into her ironing.
“What’s that?” Charlie growled.
“Charlie don’t work,” Maggie repeated more loudly. “He’s years older’n me and you’re not sendin’ him out to work.”
Dick Butterfield had been batting a piece of coal back and forth on the table, and Bet Butterfield was holding the pan over the pot and pushing the meat and onions in to join the potatoes. Both paused what they were doing and stared at Maggie. “What you mean, gal? Course he works-he works with me!” Dick Butterfield protested, genuinely puzzled.
“I meant that you never had him apprenticed, to a trade.”
Charlie had been looking smug, but now he stopped smiling.
“He is apprenticed, to me,” Dick Butterfield said quickly, with a glance at his son. “And he’s learned plenty about buying and selling, han’t you, boy?”
It was a sore point with Charlie. They’d not had the fee needed to have him apprenticed at thirteen, for Dick Butterfield had been in prison then. He’d done two years for trying to pass off pewter as silver, and by the time he’d come out and recovered his busi-ness, Charlie was a fifteen-year-old boor who slept till noon and spoke in grunts. The few tradesmen who might have been prepared to take on an older boy spent just a minute in his company and made their excuses. Dick Butterfield was only able to call in one favor, and Charlie lasted all of two days at a blacksmith’s before he burnt a horse while playing with a hot poker. The horse dispatched him for the blacksmith by kicking him unconscious; he bore the scar through one eyebrow from that blow.