Free In Her Mothers' Shoes by Felicity Price Page A

her new friends how squeamish she felt. She hadn’t been warned about blood. She’d imagined having a baby would be a joyous experience, the arrival of a new life, your very own creation. That was certainly the picture painted in the few books she’d managed to find at the library about babies – a rosy glow hovered around the mother’s head as she held the newly delivered baby wrapped tightly and smiling beatifically at her. There hadn’t been any mention of blood. She shuddered. She didn’t like blood.
     
    Mind you, there had also been a doting father in all the pictures and she knew there wouldn’t be one of those at the birth. What other unpleasant realities were in store?
     
    ‘It’s a bit late to be put off now.’ Meg said, laughing at her own joke.
     
    ‘I suppose so.’ Lizzie didn’t think it at all funny.
     
    Meg’s laugh turned bitter. ‘In here,’ she said, entering a room that was much warmer than the cool chill of the rest of the building.
     
    She soon saw why. Through the steam she could make out, lined up against the outside wall, a row of laundry coppers, just like the one at home that Mrs Mullen presided over every Monday and Thursday morning. Each one was steaming away furiously, and a short, stout girl was running between them, stirring the contents with a long wooden pole.
     
    ‘Here you are, Christine, I got you a biscuit.’ Jessie handed over the tea-stained biscuit she’d saved from morning tea. It’s got raisins in it.’ She gave Pearl a taunting glance.
     
    Pearl ignored her.
     
    Christine ate it at once, continuing the incessant stirring with her other hand. ‘I’ll take that over now, you have a break.’ Christine smiled gratefully and retreated to a corner near the door where she lowered herself, with some difficulty, onto a small, three-legged stool.
     
    ‘Come on, Lizzie, I’ll show you what to do.’
     
    Lizzie, being the newcomer, was put in charge of stoking the fire under each copper, adding small pieces of wood through the firebox door, making sure the fire was drawing properly and the smoke was all going up the chimneys inserted into the side wall and not blowing back into the laundry. She was told not to let the fire get too fierce, nor was it to die down too low, so the water would continue to boil in the big vat above. Fetching and carrying the wood from outside, carefully opening each firebox with a thick cloth and feeding the flames took up the rest of the morning. It was hot work down by the fireboxes and she had to wipe her forehead all the time to keep the sweat from trickling in her eyes. 
     
    If the next month or so was going to be like this, she doubted she could cope. Were these the wages of sin the vicar used to talk about in his Sunday sermons? You committed a sin – like sex out of wedlock, she realised – and you paid for it stoking the fires of hell for all eternity. Or at least it seemed like eternity stretching out before her on day one. How would she make it to day thirty-one? A whole month of this before they got moved onto gardening.
     
    She’d never been as relieved as when Jessie said she could let the fires go out it was time for the final cold-water rinse.
     
    ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been so hot in my life,’ Lizzie said.
     
    ‘You get used to that,’ Jessie said.
     
    ‘And not caring two figs for how you look,’ Meg said, wiping her brow with her wet hands.
     
    ‘My hair must look a fright,’ Lizzie said, quickly rubbing a hand across it. ‘It goes frizzy just at the sight of water.’
     
    ‘It looked lovely when you came in. You’ve got nice hair. Nice and thick. Not like my thin, stringy strands.’ Jessie said.
     
    ‘I’d rather that than a frizz.’
     
    ‘I wouldn’t worry now,’ Meg said. ‘It’s plastered to your head. That’s what happens to you in the laundry. You end up looking like a wrung-out tea towel.’
     
    ‘I certainly feel like one.’
     
    ‘Then you can get to work on