The Sister's Tale by Beth Powning (e reader for manga .txt) 📕

Her eyelids thickened and she felt herself on the point of sleep.

She felt his hand on the back of her head, pulling it down onto his shoulder. She sat up, not acknowledging that this had happened. Perhaps it had not. She pressed her forehead against the cold window to keep herself awake.

—

“Wouldn’t you like to go to college, Flora?”

The narrow room smelled of beeswax, its ceiling decorated with scrolled friezes and medallions. Side windows faced the harbour, where blanketed horses lined the wharf, icy rigging drooped against a white sky.

“I’m learning to better my reading,” Flora murmured. “So I can help.”

Carrie sat straight-backed, alert, hands folded in her lap. On the desk beside her was a stack of books in Italian, German and French. Neat piles of paper, clipped together. She smiled at Flora’s answer.

“That’s wonderful to hear. You know, you can be anything you want.”

Flora wondered whether Carrie remembered that she was speaking to a girl who had foraged in the frozen remnants of gardens and stolen milk from cows’ udders.

“Look how many mills and factories there are here in St. John that employ women. Like Lucy. Soon, women are going to realize that they’re working as hard as men, if not harder, and being paid far less.”

Words came from her mouth in a sleek tumble, like polished stones. Flora held one hand against her cheek, feeling the need to brace herself against the outflow. She strove to understand their meaning—socialism, political economy, pecuniary.

“We have such stimulating meetings, Flora. I wish you could come. We talk about all the places women should be serving, and you know, when we imagine such a world, a world of equality between men and women, it is as if it has already happened, and were we to walk out into the city we would find women supervisors in women’s prisons, serving as school trustees or on public health boards. In government.”

She paused, her face rapt with the vision, and Flora, trying to think of a suitable response, found it hard to imagine Carrie the way Ellen had described her; her that went around the world as a child and was almost killed by pirates.

“Last night we agreed that popular government is founded on the principles of representation by population and taxation. Well, you know the women of New Brunswick form at least half of the population. Many of us already have the required property qualification. And the rest contribute to the public revenue in one way or another.”

She took a long breath and sat back in her chair.

“We read a satire in the paper, written by a man. Imagine a stout lady, Honorable Mrs. Jemima this or that, holding the office of the Provincial Secretary…Imagine the speaker addressed as ‘Mrs. Speakeress’…Some of us said that we should fight back with our own ridicule of men. Others said we should maintain our dignity.”

Flora could hear the quiet, absorbed chirpings of caged budgerigars and a clatter coming from the back of the house; a cook, she thought, in the kitchen—where I should be. She thought how childless women bore a slight wariness, as if they were in the midst of something which they had abandoned and expected to be asked about.

Carrie’s eyes cleared of the things of which she had been speaking.

“Oh, Flora,” she said. “I do apologize. I start on this topic and I am a runaway horse.”

She rose, brisk. “Let’s walk to the market. I told my cook I would buy some fresh halibut. And we can deliver that parcel to Lucy’s boarding house. You can tell me about Josephine and Ellen and your boarders.”

They lifted coats from the hall rack, worked buttons into holes.

Carrie opened the door and they stepped down onto the street. Flora heard the searing shriek of gulls, smelled salt on the winter air.

“And who is this man who makes miniature houses?”

—

On the train coming home, Flora struggled to stay awake. She had not slept the night before; the day spent in Carrie’s energetic company, meeting women in the market and in the shops and on the streets, hearing their bold words, seeing their intelligent, forthright eyes shining beneath fur hats, had left her exhausted.

Flora is from England. She works with my cousin Josephine, they run a boarding house together. She’s studying at home.

Carrie had prompted her to recite the names of her textbooks and to tell about “her” tenants; in response, the women had asked her if she had brothers or sisters, and so she had talked of her search for Enid. Encouragement, advice, kindness. One of us. Come to the next march. All day long, she felt as if she were a suffragist, a member of the sisterhood, not a servant but Carrie’s friend. Now, in the train, she returned to herself in her brown wool coat and red scarf, a brand-new basket in her lap filled with gifts of cheese, butter, maple-cured bacon, pamphlets.

Mr. Tuck was watching her.

“Slept on the way down, now you’re sleeping on the way back.”

“Sorry. Did you have a nice day?”

“Nice enough. Got my stuff. Got some bits of carpets for you to cut up.”

“Me to cut up?”

“You’re my helper, aren’t you?”

“Sometimes.” She yawned. “When I have time. Which isn’t much because I am busy taking care of the likes of you. Your sheets. Your dinners.”

“You’re a sassy one.”

A chill in his tone, a warning. She wondered if he knew that she had crouched on the other side of the barn wall, watching him fondle his money. She wondered why he was no longer working at anything other than making the houses.

“That’s why I like you,” he added. His eyes slipped away from her, rested on a strand of blonde hair lying against the wool coat. His finger touched the hair, stroked it, moved it gently from side to side.

“Take your hand off me,” she whispered.

He picked the lock of hair up between finger and thumb, rolled it thoughtfully, set it behind her shoulder.

“I wouldn’t hurt you,” he murmured. A