Free Mrs. Engels by Gavin McCrea Page A

frilled shirts. The women are in clothes above the ordinary but not showy. I feel in tune, glad to have put my foot down at the dressmaker’s. Tussy introduces me to everybody, even to those I’ve met and know.
    â€œThis is Mr. Engels’s wife, Mrs. Burns. An Irishwoman and a true proletarian.”
    The strangers bow. The familiars wink and smile along. There’s more women than I expected to see. One sitting beside Karl on the couch. A pair by the window, looking foreign and bored. And by the chimneypiece, in a circle around Jenny and Janey, several gathered. Frederick—no surprise—has dug out the one with the lowest neckline.
    â€œI’m not going to remember all these new names,” I whisper to Tussy, mortifying of the fuss.
    â€œDon’t worry,” she says. “What’s important is that they remember yours. ”
    From where he’s sat, Karl makes a big act of twisting his monocle in to show he has it tied on a new ribbon. Janey’s wearing the Celtic cross I sent her. Jenny has made more of an effort than anyone else to draw attention onto herself: a feather in the hair, yards of a color not found in the wild.
    â€œOh, ladies, please,” she’s saying to her audience, the lush sending her voice up a pitch. “Before the illness, I had no gray hair and my teeth and figure were good. People used to class me among well-preserved women! But that’s all a thing of the past.”
    Loud protests.
    â€œCome now, ladies, I am not looking for your reassurance. I speak from a place of solemn awareness. I can see the reality. When I look in the glass now I seem to myself a kind of cross between a rhinoceros and a hippopotamus whose place is in Regent’s Park Zoo rather than among members of the Caucasian race!”
    Reddening for her, I busy myself with the only bow on my bodice.
    â€œNow, Lizzie,” she says when the required objections die down, “I’d like you to meet some extraordinary women. Mrs. Marie Goegg, chairman of the International Women’s Association. Mrs. Anna Jaclard, writer and Communist. Mrs. Yelisaveta Tomanowski, thorn in the side of every Bakuninist, real or suspected. And Mrs. Elisabeth Dmitrieff, Karl’s own private reporter in Paris. Elisabeth is just here for a few days before going back into the mêlée . And what exactly are you going back to do, Elisabeth?”
    â€œWell, I certainly won’t be sewing sandbag sacks, that is for sure!”
    They cackle and clap and swat the air with their gloves and fans. I drink and look around. Nim is by the door ordering one of the hired men down to the kitchen. Her hair is looped and she’s put earrings in, but apart from that, she’s the selfsame: sensible petticoat, two pleats in her dress. It’s said she’s had many suitors and could have made a good match more than once, even with the shame of Frederick’s bastard hanging over her, but here she has stayed, devoted and constant, both when the wages have come and when they haven’t. She sees me looking and comes over.
    â€œYour glass is empty, Mrs. Burns,” she says, taking it from me and replacing it with a full one from a passing salver.
    â€œThanks, Helen,” I says, for that’s her real name; I know it to be so.
    â€œLizzie!”—Jenny is calling—“I was just about to give the ladies a tour of the upstairs. Do join us.”
    â€œWell, thanks, Jenny, that sounds nice, only—”
    Laughing, Tussy takes my arm. “Don’t be such a bore, Mohme. Lizzie is going to stay here with me. The band is going to start soon, and the men aren’t nearly drunk enough to dance, so I’m relying on Lizzie to be my partner.”
    Tussy leads me to the bay window where the band has set up. “Music, please!” she cries, and they start up. She spins me from one side of the empty floor to the other till, three songs later, I start hacking and