Angel Meadow Read Online Free PDF Page A

the kettle in the bosom of the fire.
    Rosie shivered, her bony frame cringing from the coming ordeal, but bravely she allowed her sister to begin the process that she had decided upon.
    “We’ve got to be clean an’ I mean all over.”
    “All over? Why? Nobody can see under our clothes. Can’t we just do our faces an’ hands? The rest’s hidden.”
    “It doesn’t matter, our Mary. We’re starting summat new tomorrow: a new life without . . . without Mam and I’ve decided we must begin as we mean ter go on. Besides, there’s bound ter be others after jobs and we’ve gotter be different, look different, ter get noticed. Ter be picked.”
    “I don’t know what yer mean, our Nancy.” Mary was plainly perplexed and Rosie just wanted to get it all over and done with and get her clothes back on. It was strange wearing nothing at all, seeing her sisters’ bodies which were exactly like her own, grey and peculiar-looking with the bones all sticking out, and when Nancy began to rub vigorously at her chest with a cloth wrung out in the water she was absolutely astonished at what it revealed. From some hidey-hole of her mam’s who, she supposed, to please her customers had now and again washed her face, Nancy had found a sliver of soap. It smelled quite horrible but when it was applied to the cloth and then to her body something quite lovely began to appear. They were all mesmerised as the smooth white skin gleamed through the muck, the firelight warming it to a rich cream. Their enthusiasm intensified and so did their vigour, for by now both Nancy and Mary were polishing Rosie as though she were made of a precious metal and she began to squeal.
    “’Ere, ’old on. Watch where yer rubbin’, our Mary. That ’urts,” but she was as delighted as they were not only by the wonder of her lovely skin but by the magical feeling of lightness, of freshness, of stepping out of something nasty and letting it fall away. She stood on a bit of rag in front of the fire and tried to peer over her shoulder at her own back, running her hand over her chest and stomach as though she expected to feel different under her own hands. She smiled and smiled and so did her sisters, for they’d no idea that skin could be like this. They had trouble with her feet, though, for the layer of horn on the soles was thick and the filth was deeply encrusted and, short of shaving it off with one of those razors they’d heard men used, it had to remain.
    “Now yer hair,” Nancy ordered, picking off a couple of lice that had had the effrontery to fall out of Rosie’s curls on to her immaculate little body.
    “Oh, bloody ’ell,” Rosie began to groan as, tipping her up, they put her head in the bucket of water. When it was thoroughly wet they stood her on her feet and began to rub at the mass with the soap.
    “Be careful with it,” Nancy warned Mary. “We want ter save a bit for you an’ me.”
    It is doubtful that if they’d knocked on their neighbour’s door they would have been recognised. Their hair was quite glorious, standing out in an abundant rippling mass of rich curls, a soft brown but with paler streaks in it. In fact, Nancy said worriedly, it had created another problem, for what were they to do with it all? She had no idea that hair could be so thick, and so much of it. It hung, since it had never been cut, to their buttocks, a springing cloak that would have to be tied back with something or they’d never get taken on at the mill with all that machinery about. She’d heard that if you weren’t careful it could whirl at you like a demon, catching your hair or your hands and indeed Bridie Murphy’s mam’s little brother had had such a thing happen to him and had died of it. Perhaps they could bind it up with a bit of cloth from the scraps they had hoarded upstairs and which she’d known would come in useful one day.
    Suddenly her face cleared and her two young sisters watched in astonishment as she leaped up the stairs.