Chapter Two

To call Luella Wainwright a taskmaster would be gilding a vaseful of lilies. After two days of skinny meals and little sleep after Papa’s death, Mary was certain of one thing: there might be food. Beyond that, she didn’t care.

She saw actual drawing paper in the shop, which contained random bits of nearly everything of modest price. It was as if a cosmic hand had scooped up a wad of this and that, jiggled it a bit, then tossed it on the shop like dice on a green felt cloth.

But first things first. “Can you cook?” Miss Wainwright asked.

“Aye,” Mary said. “If there is food.”

“Follow me.”

The kitchen was spartan, at best, but there were pots and pans, which suggested food. “I’ll fix you a nice porridge,” Mary said, seeing oats in a glass jar. “Is there milk?”

“A farmer delivers it twice a week, plus eggs,” Miss Wainwright said. “Check the pantry. See what you can do. I’ll be in the dining room.”

Mary couldn’t help herself. One egg went down raw, apparently liked her famished stomach, and stayed there. Soon there was porridge and two boiled eggs to take into the dining room, a grandiose name for a little alcove off the kitchen. The tea was a nameless brand, but it was tea.

Miss Wainwright surveyed her efforts. “Two eggs is too much for me,” was her only comment.

“One is for me,” Mary said firmly, “and half the porridge.”

Miss Wainwright ate in silence, yawned, and took herself to bed somewhere in the back of the shop. Mary let out a sigh she had been keeping inside her for a week at least. She took up the lamp from the kitchen and returned to the shop itself. She surveyed the dusty shelves with sewing notions, skeins of yarn and knitting needles, stationery, and other bits and pieces of what ladies probably shopped for.

“Underneath this dust is a genteel business, Miss Wainwright,” she said, looking back to the rooms beyond the kitchen where the old lady had disappeared. “Now, I wonder…”

She traveled the narrow corridor, please to see a little sitting room. She sat on the sofa and decided it would do for the night. She knew better than to plan much beyond a night’s sleep, but at least she wasn’t out of doors, hungry, and wondering what wild beast––man or animal––might grab her in the darkness.

She began work in earnest in the morning after breakfast, which was more porridge and eggs. Mary had no idea what Miss Wainwright thought, but she launched her campaign. “I can tidy your store and get it ready for customers,” she said.

“No one ever came,” was the grim reply from Miss Wainwright. “Or will.”

“I can change that.” How, she had some ideas. As uncomfortable as the sofa was, Mary knew it was better than anything in the poorhouse, a place she devoutly wished to avoid. “Let me tidy up the shop and see what happens. In the meantime, I will cook for you and run any errands you like.”

“How do I know you won’t cheat me?”

She already knew that Miss Wainwright liked her conversation straight up, with no bark on it. “You don’t,” she said quietly. “I can tell you that I am desperate for a place to sleep. I don’t eat much, and I expect little.”

She noticed a softening of Miss Wainwright’s expression. It was brief, but she noticed it. She knew better than to rush into plans she hadn’t even hatched yet. “You tell me what you like to eat, and provide me the money to buy it, and you will never be disappointed in me.”

“You seem sure of yourself.”

“I’m not,” Mary replied, “but I plan to stay alive.”

Tying up her hair in a length of cloth and finding an all-encompassing apron, Mary tackled the shop after Miss Wainwright retired to the sitting room, a book in hand. A mop and a broom plus something that smelled like cleaning powder stood at attention by the back door. She carefully dusted all items that looked like merchandise and set them in two pasteboard boxes. They went into the hall, as she swept, mopped, sneezed, and rubbed dust from her eyes all morning.

By noon, the results were gratifying and so Miss Wainwright told her when she looked into the shop. “I have some wood oil for the counters,” the old lady said, “and ammonia for the display glass and window.” Mary listened, and there it was: a thawing of Miss Wainwright’s unhappiness, slight but there.

After a sparse lunch of buttered bread, cheese and tea, Miss Wainwright opened a door off the kitchen. “I keep more merchandise in here. I have a lot of yarn and knitting needles.”

In addition to yarn, the storeroom yielded buttons, thread, pins and needles, yards of ribbon, and lace to sew onto hems and camisoles. It was all of good quality, but simple. Liddiard was not London, after all.

Miss Wainwright chose not to return to the sitting room, which both surprised and pleased Mary. She seemed to enjoy finding forgotten treasures in the storeroom. She exclaimed over the pin cushions, which she must have forgotten. “They are silk and they came from China,” she said, taking them from a box and setting them on the counter.

“My, that was a long voyage,” Mary said, as she finished mopping her way out of the dusted shop.

“My nephew in Plymouth sailed aboard a merchant vessel then,” Miss Wainwright said. “It was before the French stopped maritime commerce and Napoleon made everyone dance to his tune.”

“I imagine your nephew has changed professions now,” Mary said, happy to pause for a moment in conversation, happy that Miss Wainwright wasn’t looking at her with suspicion. Why the change? She was too shy to ask.

“Now he builds warships in Devonport,” the lady said. She sighed. “What has the world come to?”

It was a good question. Mary thought about it as she put the final touches on the shop, finishing with ammonia and water on the window and buffing it with old towels until she was satisfied. She considered how little she knew about world events, and realized her major concern had been another meal, and not the dealings of tyrants and kings that she could do nothing about.

She sniffed the air, remembering that the proprietress of the tearoom brought over soup and bread for supper. They ate in silence, Mary not exclaiming over the wonderful soup, even though she wanted to. Pieces of meat floated in the broth. After Miss Wainwright yawned and retired to her room, Mary knew she could wrap up in her cloak again and sleep on the sofa in the sitting room.

Before sleep, Mary restocked the glass cabinet and wooden shelves along the wall. Miss Wainwright had already grouped the sewing supplies in the glass cabinet, with the Chinese pin cushions in a prominent spot. Mary brought out the yarn, which went on the shelves at the wall. She arranged it by colors, and stuck knitting needles here and there, liking the effect. She added a wooden bowl full of yarn to the window display.

To her surprise and delight, the next morning Miss Wainwright found a little display easel for her small sunset sketch, drawn in desperation. She set it in a prominent spot on the counter, then looked at Mary, her eyes lively. “I am having fun.”

“I am, too,” Mary said.

The lady stood a moment longer in contemplation of the sketch. She held up one finger and hurried into the storeroom, returning with what looked like a pencil box. She held it out. “For you. Open it.”

Mary did, and gasped. “Miss Wainwright! The colors!”

“Crayons. I believe they came from France, that poxy country,” the lady said. “Or perhaps Germany.” She said in a gruff voice, “Don’t be a watering pot over crayons.”

“No one has even given me anything in my entire life,” Mary said, when she could speak.

It was Miss Wainwright’s turn to struggle. “I…I think you should take that thicker paper over there––if it doesn’t look too old––and draw some more small scenes. We can display them in the window. It’ll be an artful touch.” She touched the crayons, too, and her gaze turned wistful. “I was going to give these to my nephew’s daughter, but…but…they haven’t come around lately.”

“I imagine he is busy building ships,” Mary said gently, wondering at the change in this frowning, grouchy soul who had come so close to forcing her from the store.

“It’s more than that,” Miss Wainwright said in a soft voice. “I gave up after my sister died––my nephew’s mother, and then my brother. My nephew and his little one are all the family I have remaining, and I pushed them away. I wonder why I did that.”

“Grief is a strange companion,” Mary said after long thoughts of her own in the quiet shop. “My father is gone, and I had nowhere to go.” She smiled at the sunset sketch. “I’m not a pushy person, but I so want to stay here. Did I make you employ me?”

“I believe you did,” Miss Wainwright agreed. Mary heard no rancor now. She couldn’t help smiling.

“We’ll have to make this little shop a success, then. Let’s eat.”

Miss Wainwright had an arrangement with the woman who ran the tearoom to provide food on most days. Chicken and wild rice soup with crusty bread chunks to dip in it came with its own drama. Mary ate slowly, but couldn’t help glancing at the pot on the hob. She knew there was more, but she wanted to get up to check, anyway.

She wasn’t aware that Miss Wainwright was watching her until her employer brought the pot to the table and ladled more of the soup into Mary’s bowl.

To Mary’s horror, she burst into tears, crying, “But there won’t be enough for tomorrow! We’ll go hungry!”

Miss Wainwright shook her head. “I’ll send you to the tearoom tomorrow and you can buy more soup. No one goes hungry here,” she said, giving Mary a little shake that was more of a caress. “Dry your eyes and finish it. When you’re done, there is another matter that I should have addressed sooner.”

Mary did as she was asked, trying to control her fear about the “other matter.” Maybe now that the notions shop was put to rights again, there was no need of her presence. She dipped the bread, chewed and swallowed, trying to appear calm, even as she dreaded what worse thing would come her way, now that she was warm and well fed.

Finally Miss Wainwright pushed away from the table. “Come along,” she said.

Mary closed her eyes against the next terror––eviction. Maybe she should have worked more slowly with her tidying, drawing out that time until the shop was in good order again. She headed toward the front door.

“Mary Cooper, turn around!” She did, her eyes downcast, unable to meet Miss Wainwright’s gaze. The woman was entitled to whatever she did.

“This way.” Miss Wainwright gestured toward the back of the shop. “I could kick myself for making you sleep heaven knows where the last night two nights,” she was saying. “I didn’t even furnish you with a coverlet. Here.”

She opened the door on the bed chamber next to hers. Mary peeked inside to see a small but serviceable room. True, there was hardly space to turn around, but she saw a narrow bed, a dresser to hold extra air because she had no possessions, and a rag rug.

“You’re small. You’ll fit,” Miss Wainwright said in that gruff voice Mary was coming to recognize as the prickly woman’s way of deflecting gratitude.

“I will,” she said simply. “I will.”

She couldn’t sleep that night. She sat in bed, the lamp hanging overhead, and drew a series of scenic views of their valley around Liddiard, the only place she knew. Outlining with her pencil first, she colored with the magic crayons, giving to her by a woman Mary had forced, in her desperation, to employ her.

By morning, she had six country vignettes four inches by four inches, because she had to conserve the paper. Quietly, she tiptoed down the hall and into the shop, where she propped them against carefully arranged mounds of embroidery thread. She went back to bed and slept two hours, exhausted, but with a smile on her face, her heart in tune with whatever lay ahead.

What lay ahead exceeded her modest hopes. The women of Liddiard came shopping.