A Song Twice Over by Brenda Jagger Page B

which case – as his daughter at least could grimly acknowledge – he would put those shimmering colours out of his mind altogether. And forget.
    He would make a new life for himself without them.
    So must they.
    â€˜He was tired,’ Odette had whispered. ‘And he was afraid.’
    â€˜I’m not afraid, mother.’
    But, as they had stood close together in the gathering twilight of an alien city, her courage had been a lie. It often was.
    She had been afraid. Only a fool, she thought, would have been otherwise.
    â€˜I don’t think – Cara – that there is anything we can do.’
    But Cara’s youth, her vanity, her quite ruthless appetite for the nineteen years already lived and at least a hundred more to come, would have none of that.
    â€˜There’s always something to be done.’
    Odette, retreating again behind her veil – her shroud – had smiled gently, pityingly, and shaken her head. No. Her money had gone. Her employment had been terminated in such a manner that no one else would employ her. Unjustly? Of course. But what of that? There was money owing. A debt which never could be paid. And she too was tired. Not afraid precisely. In fact, and most oddly, not afraid at all. What would happen would happen. Perhaps she would just sit down somewhere and wait for it.
    Taking her roughly by the elbow Cara had hurried her at once and with all the speed she could muster to the Thackrays, pushed her through the door to be claimed and held fast by Liam and then, before Sairellen could stop her, had dashed off again down the cobbled street straight into the clamorous heart of Frizingley, to find Miss Ernestine Baker, dressmaker and milliner, whose arid, virginal heart had been aroused – most likely, she thought, by accident – to love and cruelty by Kieron Adeane.
    And there, in the dark, discreet shop with its odours of thread and fabric she had stood with meekly bowed head, offering herself as a new victim to appease Miss Baker’s jealous ire; her bewildered outrage that she could have entertained such sentiments about an Irish wastrel in the first place and that he – when he had deigned to notice them – had spurned her. Had preferred, in fact, his sad little foreign drab, Odette.
    â€˜I have considerable experience in the dressmaking trade,’ Cara had murmured, meaning ‘You have abused my mother until it bored you. Now – if you like – you can abuse me.’ It was almost a promise. Odette had not understood Miss Baker’s need to punish. Cara did not consciously understand it either. She simply knew that jealous old cats require to scratch and that this one might scratch as hard as she pleased if it opened the door to employment.
    â€˜What experience?’
    And Cara had not spoken of Paris, neither Miss Baker’s restrained appearance nor the discreet quality of her merchandise having much in common with the rue Saint Honoré, but of her apprenticeship in the more serious-minded city of Edinburgh, her work as a skilled journeywoman in Dublin.
    â€˜It has long been my view,’ replied Miss Baker, ‘that persons of Celtic origin are not reliable. An opinion not unshared, believe me, in this locality where you will find many doors completely barred to – Celts .’
    But Cara had merely breathed ‘I am sure you are right,’ her voice promising to be humble, to do penance for her father’s sins in any manner Miss Baker liked, for as long that is, as she continued to pay living wages.
    And Miss Ernestine Baker, immaculate spinster of the parish of Frizingley, had been tempted.
    â€˜Our hours of work in this establishment,’ she had said, tight-lipped, straight-backed, quite certain that this flibbertigibbet would never stand it, ‘are twelve daily, from six in the morning until the same hour at night, including Saturdays. That is, of course, when conditions of work are normal.