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 naïve to figure out “unknown” could also mean “unnamed.”
Mum had said Emmy was to think of herself as someone who had only one parent. Just a mum. There was no one else. In more recent years, Mum had explained that there had been a party and she’d had too much to drink. A man she barely knew told her she was pretty on a night when she felt ugly. It was as simple as that. Emmy wasn’t to give that man another thought.
But how could Emmy not think about the man who was her father? He had made Mum what she was—an unmarried mother and a kitchen maid who, as near as Emmy could tell, would struggle the rest of her life to make ends meet.
“Don’t you ever take on blame for something you had no control over,” Nana had said, and Emmy had sensed in her tone that she’d given herself the same counsel often enough. That advice came back to Emmy now as she stood there, watching Mum make tea; then the years blended in Emmy’s mind and the last words Nana said to her filled her head.
You work on those stitches, Emmeline. It will give you something constructive to do while your mother is out earning her keep.
Those words had embarrassed Emmy when Nana said them. At thirteen, Emmy knew what Nana was implying. But Mum had been so angry, and the charge so appalling, Emmy had kicked the notion away. Nana and Mum had often said terrible things to each other. Things that weren’t true.
But now it was as if a bright light had been switched on and the blackout curtains had fallen from their rods.
Mum had thrown Nana out of the house because her mother had accused her of sleeping her way to a job in a rich woman’s house.
Emmy now watched as Mum poured water into a chipped Royal Doulton teacup, a castoff from Mrs. Billingsley. She stirred in the sugar with a spoon that had also been a Billingsley hand-me-down. Emmy took in the small kitchen, with its pretty tile floors, reliable plumbing, and cabinets of hardwood. Their dining table was nothing special but it was not a rickety tumble of sticks, either. The sofa, just a few feet away from Emmy, was not moth-eaten and the rugs were not threadbare. She and Julia had warm blankets in the winter and comfortable beds to sleep in. Mum had her own bedroom. They always had food in the cupboards and shoes on their feet and clothes on their backs. Their existence was not extravagant, but they never lacked for the basics—and all this on the paycheck of an unmarried kitchen maid.
A kitchen maid who’d landed the job with no experience.
How could she have not seen it before? How could she have been so stupid to think a kitchen maid with no husband and two children could manage to afford this flat and its modest but adequate furnishings?
Someone had arranged for Mum to get the job at Mrs. Billingsley’s house when Neville left. That was why Mum had been so confident the day of her interview. What kind of person would do that for a woman like her mother? Emmy suddenly understood why Nana had been so fearful when Mum came home with the uniform over her arm. Surely Mum was being compensated for something else besides boiling water for tea and shopping for hams.
“How could you do that?” Emmy whispered to Mum’s back.
Mum turned around, the teacup poised for a sip and her gaze on Emmy defiant. “How could I do what?”
“How could you dothat?”
Her mother lowered the cup. “You don’t know anything about anything, Em,” Mum said calmly, “so shut your mouth.”
It was almost as if she were admitting to Emmy outright that someone was paying her for sex. Emmy looked at her with revulsion. “Is it Mrs. Billingsley’s butler? Her chauffeur?”
Mum laughed but without mirth. “Really, Em. Is that what you think?”
“Tell me I’m wrong!”
She lifted her cup to Emmy in a salute. “You’re wrong.” Mum walked past her daughter and Emmy followed her into the living room. Mum parted the blackout curtains covering the window by the front door and a sallow sun seeped into the room. She took a long drink of her tea.
“Then explain all this!” Emmy yelled. “Explain how you can afford this flat and the clothes in your wardrobe! Explain how you got a job as a kitchen maid when you hadn’t ever been one before! Explain where you were last night!”
Mum whipped around and hot tea sloshed out of the cup and onto her hand. She didn’t even flinch.
