Despite the Ingrams’ reservations about Freda, they nonetheless tolerated the companionship because, without her, Florence would have had no friends at all. “She’s a little slow, I’m afraid,” Freda had overheard Mrs. Ingram say to someone. It was true, Florence wasn’t the speediest of girls and she was pretty tardy at catching on to some things—playing cards, for example. Freda had tried to teach her Rummy, but to no avail. She enjoyed Snap because Freda always let her win, although sometimes the wait for Florence to recognize a pair and excitedly yell “Snap!” was tortuous.
“Cards?” Mr. Ingram said. “You’re not gambling, are you?” Of course they weren’t! Freda would have emptied Florence’s blue-glass piggy bank a long time ago if they had been playing for money.
“Hm,” Mr. Ingram said. He never seemed to believe anything Freda said, even though she made every attempt to be truthful with the Ingrams.
I am damned by the court of public opinion, Freda thought, which was one of Duncan’s sayings.
* * *
—
One day, Mr. Birdwhistle caught Freda off-guard, sneaking up behind her in the scullery when Gladys had popped to the butcher’s to comply with her paramour’s request for polony sausage to fill his lunchtime sandwich. Freda sensed a double entendre at work but was unclear on the details. Despite her appearance—the womanly bosom, the “cheek,” the aplomb—if you drilled deeply into Freda’s heart you would find only innocence.
This particular day, Freda had been charged with the task of washing the breakfast pots and, in an attempt to mitigate the dreariness of the task, was trying to do it while en pointe. She was concentrating so hard on staying on her toes while wielding the dishcloth on the porridge pot that she didn’t realize Mr. Birdwhistle was there until his bristly moustache was prickling her neck and his plump little hands were everywhere on her body, so that it felt as though he had taken a leaf from Zeus’s book and an octopus was sizing her up.
“Come on now, Freda, be a good girl for Uncle Lenny,” he panted, his breath hot against her ear.
He gave a gruff little gasp of ecstasy when one of his tentacles found the womanly bosom and then a less ecstatic gasp when Freda’s sharp little elbow found his ribs. She pirouetted professionally and brought a nimble knee up into his “dangles,” as Vanda called them. Vanda had explained the male anatomy to Freda when she was still a tender age but the words she used were more of a hindrance than a help to Freda’s understanding, already muddled by swans and ants. Duncan’s preferred term—fishing tackle—was even less helpful.
Mr. Birdwhistle, jackknifed with pain, hissed, “You little bitch” at Freda, just as Gladys made a timely entrance, announcing the arrival of the polony, like someone walking on stage in a poorly written farce. The octopus gave his side of the story—Freda had attacked him for no reason, like a mad cat with all claws out. Freda was not surprised when Gladys showed no interest in her own daughter’s version of events, but instead scolded her and told her to go to her room and think very hard about her “future in this house.”
As Freda lay on her bed, as tidily as one of the recumbent statues on tombs in the Minster that she had seen, gazing at the peeling whitewash on the ceiling, she wondered why her mother, usually so indolent, had not sent her to the butcher’s for the much discussed polony. Why had she left her alone with Mr. Birdwhistle? Had she been a lure, a temptation for his flagging appetite? Like a sweetmeat or a trifle, a misshapen orange cream plucked off Rowntree’s production line. A slow tear rolled from her eye. She dabbed at it with Vanda’s handkerchief. It smelt of Habanita and conjured the spirit of Vanda.
Freda sighed and sat up and took out Duncan’s cards from the drawer in her bedside table. Riffling the pack soothingly, she did, as instructed, consider her future in this house. She dealt from the bottom, a cheat’s trick Duncan had taught her. The Queen of Clubs flipped out of the pack and Freda slipped it back in. She didn’t regard it as a fortune-telling card. Cards were nothing beyond their face value.
As to her “future in this house,” Freda decided that perhaps she didn’t have one.
* * *
—
Running away to London was not the first idea that Freda had when considering her future. Her first idea actually had been to join a circus. She had no circus skills, but could it really be so difficult to hang from a trapeze or walk a tightrope or even stand on the back of a horse while it ran around the ring? After all, she had excellent balance. It was, perhaps, the sparkling, glittering costumes that attracted her more than the acts themselves, but it didn’t matter as, alas, there was no circus in town and nor did Freda have any idea how to go about finding one. Failing the circus, she had to fall back into the unsatisfactory safety net of family.