The Trespass by Barbara Ewing Page B

After a moment Mary gently disengaged herself, but still held her sister lightly.
    ‘Dearest, you have only been away three weeks. I have only been twice.’ She took a deep breath and went on. ‘Harriet, it is not enough just to be. I cannot think that God has allowed us to come into his world just to be. We are the lucky ones—’ she felt Harriet stiffen, ‘—I mean by that that we do not starve and suffer so, the way many people starve and suffer not a mile from Bryanston Square. It is money only that separates us. Our mother taught me – and perhaps I have not taught you well enough – that it is our duty to help people less fortunate than ourselves, to think of people other than ourselves. My darling, I would stifle if I had to live like Alice or Augusta. I have been extraordinarily lucky in some ways. But I must live my life and now, in some way, be useful. ’
    ‘What do you do?’ said Harriet in a small voice.
    ‘Simply taking chloride of lime into some of those dreadful, dreadful places is something – although it is hard to know if it is any use. Everything is so – so absolutely filthy, everything smells so poisonous. There are water standpipes in some of the alleys but they are only turned on for a few hours and it is a penny for three buckets and so often they cannot even afford that. It is shameful, shameful. No wonder people seem so worn down, so hopeless. Often I do not think they even take in what we are saying – I believe they think of us as intruders. But sometimes there is someone who will listen, one of the women. Maybe it does a tiny piece of good.’
    ‘But the cholera!’ Harriet’s voice rose again wildly. ‘All those terrible smells, those odours, those diseases – they cover you, you could so easily be infected.’
    Mary sighed. ‘I was almost sick the first time I went, but I stopped myself. I would have been so ashamed to be sick because of the smell in someone’s home. And we don’t know that it is the smell of everything that carries the disease. Many people believe that it is the water, not the smells.’
    ‘But how can you take that risk? How could you, at this time above all others? What if something happened to you? Yes, yes, I know I am thinking of myself too,’ she said, her voice muffled in Mary’s shoulder. ‘But you are my life. I could not have gone on without you.’
    ‘Ssssssh.’ Mary rocked her sister for a moment and then gently pulled away and took her hand.
    ‘Harriet, we take precautions of course. Some of the men who come are doctors – even though they are so busy some of them give half a day a week to be in these terrible places, and I am sure they are not foolish. I am thirty years old and so far all I have ever done is take some disinfectant and a few cakes of soap to poor people, that is all! I suppose it is a little more use perhaps than the gestures we make as Ladies of the Church. But I want to be properly useful. That is not only my duty, but what I believe in. I cannot believe that my life forever is to be looking after Father!’
    ‘And the Godfrey’s Cordial,’ said Harriet finally.
    ‘They give it to their babies to make them sleep, and who can blame them. If they give the babies enough, they are no longer hungry. If they give them a little more, sometimes the babies – do not wake.’ She saw her sister’s horrified face. ‘We live in a different world, Harriet. But after all, Aunt Lucretia has her laudanum.’ And Mary began the long, smooth brushing again, and for a while that was the only sound in the room.
    And then there was a knock at the door. The knock they knew. They glanced quickly at each other. Mary saw the colour drain from her sister’s face as the knock was repeated, more insistently.
    ‘Come in,’ said Mary pleasantly. As long as Mary was there Harriet would always be safe. This was their pact.
    Their father stood in the doorway. They saw at once that he had been drinking. His handsome face was flushed and his