Free Inherit the Skies by Janet Tanner

this time she had not been right.
    Oh why didn’t I tell someone? Sarah wondered fearfully. Even Miss Keevil … But Miss Keevil would not have done anything. Miss Keevil never helped anyone and certainly not Sarah or Sarah’s mother. Miss Keevil seemed to reserve a special dislike for her, Sarah had noticed, and thought it probably had something to do with the fact that while Rachel was so pretty and full of life, Miss Keevil really was so dreadfully plain.
    â€˜Mum, shall I fetch the doctor?’ she asked again.
    Rachel’s head moved feebly against the pillow and she whispered something unintelligible. Sarah leaned closer, struggling to understand.
    â€˜What is it, Mum? What do you want me to do?’
    With a tremendous effort Rachel gathered her remaining strength. Her hand, cold and clammy, found Sarah’s arm and closed around it in a convulsive grip.
    â€˜Tell Mr Morse,’ she managed breathlessly. ‘Do you understand? Tell Mr Morse.’
    Sarah managed to nod but she was puzzled.
    She knew Mr Morse, of course – Mr Gilbert Morse of Chewton Leigh House whose family had owned the whole valley for generations and who had factories in Bristol besides. Everyone in Chewton Leigh knew Mr Morse though Sarah felt with a slight sense of superiority that perhaps she knew him better than most for her mother was seamstress to his second wife, Blanche. In fact before that she had also been seamstress to his first wife, Rose, except that in those days she had been not so much seamstress as assistant seamstress for she had been apprenticed to Madame Dupont who had a dressmaker’s shop in Bristol and a list of clients with impressive sounding names and even titles amongst them. Sarah never tired of hearing about those days and though she had begged the story so often that she could relate every detail by heart she still pestered her mother to tell her yet again of how she had first come to Chewton Leigh House as a girl of seventeen, charged along with Madame Dupont with making a new season’s wardrobe for Mrs Rose Morse. Sarah loved to hear about the elegant dresses with their leg-of-mutton and puff sleeves and taffeta linings which rustled when they moved and which Mum and the exotic-sounding Madame Dupont had created together, making copies from the two or three models Mrs Morse had ordered from the Paris couturiers and staying in the big house for several weeks until the work was done. Sometimes when Mum was relating the stories she would delve into the treasure chest she called a ‘ piece box’ and fish out odd-shaped remnants of the very fabrics they had used – the velveteens and satins, the silks and cashmeres and tulles, all in vivid shades of scarlet, magenta and electric blue.
    There were more up-to-date scraps in the box too, of course, but they were in the quiet tasteful colours which were now in vogue and it seemed to Sarah there was less romance in them. Mrs Rose Morse was dead now and the second Mrs Morse – a widow with a son of her own – was not nearly as pleasant to work for as the first one had been, or so Mum said, for she was picky and complaining, forever changing her mind about this alteration and that, and keeping Mum working at the house long after she should have been at home with Sarah. Mum did not sleep at Chewton Leigh House now, of course. Since she lived in a cottage on the estate there was no need for that. And Madame Dupont had long since retired, her sight ruined from the years of close work. ‘It will happen to me one day, Sarah,’ Mum had said and the thought filled Sarah with dread.
    â€˜Why do you do it then?’ she had asked and Mum had laughed.
    â€˜How do you think we would live if I didn’t?’ she had asked. ‘Anyway it’s better than washing clothes and ruining my hands or scrubbing floors and getting fat knees.’
    Sarah had been doubtful. Eyesight seemed far more precious to her than either