Free Two Lives by William Trevor Page A

like.’
    Rose had just eaten sausages and bacon from the plate. About to run a piece of bread over it in order to soak up the tasty fat that remained, she noticed that a shred of cabbage leaf had remained since the last time it was used.
    ‘It’s greens all right,’ Rose said. She passed the plate to her sister, who scrutinized it in turn. It was definitely the remains of greens, Matilda said.
    Elmer took no notice. Often at mealtimes he was lost in the depths of mathematical calculations that had originated in the accounting office.
    ‘Take a look at that,’ Matilda invited, and handed Mary Louise the plate, on which the well-peppered grease that Rose had been about to consume was now congealing. The offending piece of cabbage was stuck to the rim, its presence made more permanent by the heating of the plate in the oven. Probably it was cabbage, Mary Louise agreed, since cabbage had been the vegetable at the midday meal.
    ‘I always took the mop to them when I washed the plates,’ Matilda said. ‘I used always to hold them up to see if there was anything like that left.’
    ‘I could have eaten it,’ Rose said.
    ‘You would have shifted it wiping with the bread,’ her sister agreed. ‘You’d have eaten it then definitely.’
    ‘Someone else’s leavings.’
    Mary Louise rose from the table and began to clear the supper dishes away. It could happen to anyone that a speck would be left behind on a plate. It wasn’t as though it were poisonous.
    ‘I wonder you didn’t see it when you were drying,’ she said to Matilda.
    ‘When you’re drying you take everything to be clean. You take it for granted.’
    ‘Use a mop in future.’ Rose’s tone was peremptory, and Matilda glanced at Elmer, wondering if he’d heard. It was clear from the excitement in Matilda’s face that she considered Rose had been more than a little daring to issue so direct an order, as to a child or a servant.
    Mary Louise left the dining-room without replying but afew minutes later, when she returned from the kitchen with a tray, she heard raised voices before she opened the door.
    ‘No more than a pigsty,’ Rose was saying.
    Elmer mumbled something. Matilda said:
    ‘The cheek of the creature, saying you’d see it when you were drying.’
    ‘Knee-deep in manure that yard was! With people attending a wedding reception!’
    Again there was a mumble from Elmer, interrupted by sudden shrillness from Rose.
    ‘What the sister got up to with Gargan was the talk of the town. It’s a wonder you didn’t marry a tinker and have done with it.’
    ‘Now look here,’ Elmer protested, and Mary Louise heard his chair being pushed back. His voice, too, had become loud.
    ‘Look nowhere,’ shrieked Rose. ‘We have her under our feet morning, noon and night.’
    ‘Your own sister could have eaten the dirt on that plate,’ Matilda reminded him. ‘We could be killed dead as we sit here.’
    ‘Arrah, don’t be talking nonsense,’ Elmer exclaimed crossly. ‘What harm would a bit of cabbage do anyone?’
    ‘Washed in soap it could do you harm,’ Matilda insisted. ‘And God knows what you’d find on your plate the next time.’
    ‘The brother’s a half-wit,’ Rose said.
    Elmer didn’t reply to that. Matilda said that you might make a rice pudding in a dish that wallpaper paste had been mixed in. If the dish wasn’t washed properly you’d be eating wallpaper paste. She suggested that Elmer should make inquiries as to whether or not wallpaper paste could kill you dead.
    ‘She sucks up to the customers,’ Rose said. ‘Palavering all over them. D’you want a slice of cake, Elmer?’
    There was a rattle of cups on saucers, and the sound of tea being poured.
    ‘Is it cherry?’ Elmer said.
    ‘It is.’
    ‘I’ll take a slice so.’
    There was silence then: the interlude was over. Mary Louise did not enter the dining-room, but returned to the kitchen. She was at the sink when the sisters came in ten minutes later with more of the