“Where was it from?” she asked, her disapproval of modern practices forgotten.
“Walker’s . . . oh, but they had a real bag, Ma. Morocco with a gold chain handle. Three quid!” Ivy rolled her blue eyes. “By God, wait till my twenty-first . . .”
Flo did not speak but she watched her sister’s expressive face and her mother’s slow eating. How many teeth her mother had Flo did not know, but it was not many. Mrs. Royer continually shifted her food from one side to the other trying to get it to where she could deal with it.
“Three quid for a bag! I’d never pay that.” She took a slow drink. “If I had it, I’d buy a costoom as I saw in Dickie’s; green, with a kind of speck, darker than what the rest were.”
“I saw it. Gosh, Ma, but you’d look like a mountaineer,” Ivy exclaimed. “But did you see . . .?”
For ten minutes they talked like that while Flo sat quiet. She had not seen the things, though ordinarily she would have joined in, but now she did not feel like it. Then the meal was finished and she began to side. Ivy said she’d help to wash up, only then she went upstairs and apparently forgot. When she came down she had a bundle of clothes on her arm and at once asked where the kettle was.
“I washed up with it, of course,” said Flo.
“You would. What the hell do I do for a wash?” asked Ivy.
She began to change on the rug, stripping to her vest while Mrs. Royer sat and watched and drank more tea and asked her about the sailcloth works.
“Jenny got a needle through her finger . . . put her finger right underneath, the mug.”
“Jenny who . . . not Bob Milsom’s girl?”
“Yes,” said Ivy. “I wish they’d put me on a machine instead of the damn rope job. But they sacked three more to-day, so what a bloody hope . . .”
“What happened to her?” asked Mrs. Royer.
“Oh, pulled the needle right through, so they said, an’ sent her off . . . infirmary, I suppose. She fainted.”
Mrs. Royer said “Oo!” and lifted her hand and stared at it, as though afraid that there might be a steel needle through one of her fingers. “I must tell Mrs. Dower; she knows Milsom’s wife. Went to school together.”
She stirred on her chair. Flo sat on the fender and Ivy in a brown creased cotton petticoat went to the washing-up tin and ran a little cold water into it and dabbed gingerly with her finger tips.
“Uh, I’ll not bother; I’ll get a wash when I get there . . . they’ll have some hot water. Not like this hole.”
Mrs, Royer did not seem to hear.
Ivy dried her fingers and then with the damp place of the grey-looking towel rubbed round her neck. Her dress was a deep red velvet, paler where she sat and where the insides of her elbows rubbed. But it suited her, and when she had brushed her hair, which was fine and stood out with a natural waviness, she had a distinct, though rather untidy, attractiveness.
“I think I’ll come with you,” said Mrs. Royer all at once. “I could do with a bit of a jollification.”
“You . . . you’ll only spoil it. I thought you said you were goin’ to tell Mrs. Dower about Jenny,” said Ivy. “They won’t want you at a twenty-first. And you’ve not had an invite.”
“I don’t suppose Ted’s ma would mind. It’s usually the more the merrier at those doos. I’d see that you didn’t get too gay, then, my girl. You’d do with a . . .”
Flo, who had been hoping that her mother would stay in for their last Saturday night together, was about to add her protest to Ivy’s when the thought occurred to her in time that if her mother learned that both of them were set against her going, there was nothing more likely to make her determine to go.
“Well, I’m off,” Ivy announced. “You can do what you like. But I hope to God you don’t come.”
She snicked the door latch decisively and they heard her steps die away up the pavement.
“She hasn’t taken any of the daffs and I’m glad. I thought you’d like them,” said Flo, to take her mother’s thoughts off the party. “It was good of Mrs. Mawson; I hope Mrs. . . . what is it? Mrs. Nadin’s like her. What a funny name, isn’t it?”
“Who?” asked Mrs. Royer vaguely.
“Nadin, isn’t it? You know, where I’m going . . .”
“Oh, ay. She’ll be all right. They wouldn’t send you if they didn’t know that. Missis said . . .” But the sentence stopped there, as if she had forgotten what it was.
Flo sat on the little three-legged wooden stool on the right by the fire and looked up at her mother’s face which was pink in the glow.
“I don’t know. . . . Mrs. Mawson says it’s just a way of getting girls to go cheap. D’you really . . .?”
“Oh, that’s what she give ’em you for, is it? To upset you,” said Mrs. Royer. “Well, tell her to mind her own business and keep ’er flowers next time.”
“But I’m sure she didn’t. . . . It was just because I’m going,” protested Flo, turning to see the flowers which also were caught by the fire light. The wavering of the flames made the daffodils appear to flicker as if being disturbed by a gentle wind.
“It’s likely,” commented Mrs. Royer scoffingly. “I know Milly Mawson. Ah, well, I think I’ll go and see Mrs. Dower. Fancy Jenny doing that. She must have been careless some’ow. Though I’ve heard tell as them machines is pretty awful.”
With an unexpected gush of energy she got up and turned to the door where her things had been hung.
“Oh, but,” protested Flo. “My things came this morning after you went. I thought you’d stay.”
“What things?”
“Clothes,” said Flo, standing up. “I didn’t want to say while Ivy was here. I was afraid she’d want to borrow . . .”
“Where are they?” asked Mrs. Royer, turning back. “Have they all come? Why didn’t you say?”
“D’you think I might wear them to-morrow? It wouldn’t matter one day beforehand.”
“It’s what they’re for,” said Mrs. Royer. “Course you wear ’em. Where are they?”
Flo opened the door in the end wall by the fireplace and ran up the closed-in stairs to the bedroom where the three of them had to sleep in one bed. The box was under the bed at her own side by the window and all the time that Ivy had been up she had been nervous. But the box was as she had left it with the string in a loose bow. She carried it gently as though the contents were brittle, and lowered it on to the table in the manner of putting down a tray. Mrs. Royer stood by while the bow was pulled, the lid taken off, and the tissue paper was put back. On top with arms folded was the neatest costume jacket that Flo had seen. It was blue serge with narrow red braid on the collar, reveres and cuffs. She picked it up by the shoulders and held it over her bust, too eager for her mother to see how it suited her even to have time to put it on.
“Isn’t it lovely?” she exclaimed, turning sideways to get the best light.
Mrs. Royer stared, and then reached for the cuff to feel the soft ribbed texture, and finally she stroked it, unable to take her hand away.
“You’ve never had anythin’ like that,” she managed to say at last, as if only just getting her breath.
Flo laughed and looked down again.
“Does it fit?” asked Mrs. Royer suddenly.
Flo began to get into it, but her thick tartan frock was a nuisance.
“I’ve got to let you see everything; I must take my frock off,” she explained, stopping unexpectedly.
She tried to drag her frock off without undoing the belt, and had to let it down and start over again. Her green petticoat was off in a jiff and then her flannel knickers and she reached into the box and drew out new knickers and a petticoat of pale blue cotton.