She was telling how first she went to work before she was twelve.
“But I thought the board schools——” said Lady Harman.
“I had to go before the committee,” said Susan. “I had to go before the committee and ask to be let go to work. There they was, sitting round a table in a great big room, and they was as kind as anything, one old gentleman with a great white beard, he was as kind as could be. ‘Don’t you be frightened, my dear,’ he says. ‘You tell us why you want to go out working.’ ‘Well,’ I says, ‘somebody’s got to earn something,’ and that made them laugh in a sort of fatherly way, and after that there wasn’t any difficulty. You see it was after Father’s Inquest, and everybody was disposed to be kind to us. ‘Pity they can’t all go instead of this educational Tommy Rot,’ the old gentleman says. ‘You learn to work, my dear’—and I did....”
She paused.
“Father’s inquest?” said Lady Harman.
Susan seemed to brace herself to the occasion. “Father,” she said, “was drowned. I know—I hadn’t told you that before. He was drowned in the Lea. It’s always been a distress and humiliation to us there had to be an Inquest. And they threw out things.... It’s why we moved to Haggerston. It’s the worst that ever happened to us in all our lives. Far worse. Worse than having the things sold or the children with scarlet fever and having to burn everything.... I don’t like to talk about it. I can’t help it but I don’t....
“I don’t know why I talk to you as I do, Lady Harman, but I don’t seem to mind talking to you. I don’t suppose I’ve opened my mouth to anyone about it, not for years—except to one dear friend I’ve got—her who persuaded me to be a church member. But what I’ve always said and what I will always say is this, that I don’t believe any evil of Father, I don’t believe, I won’t ever believe he took his life. I won’t even believe he was in drink. I don’t know how he got in the river, but I’m certain it wasn’t so. He was a weak man, was Father, I’ve never denied he was a weak man. But a harder working man than he was never lived. He worried, anyone would have worried seeing the worries he had. The shop wasn’t paying as it was; often we never tasted meat for weeks together, and then there came one of these Internationals, giving overweight and underselling....”
“One of these Internationals?”
“Yes, I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard of them. They’re in the poorer neighbourhoods chiefly. They sell teas and things mostly now but they began as bakers’ shops and what they did was to come into a place and undersell until all the old shops were ruined and shut up. That was what they tried to do and Father hadn’t no more chance amongst them than a mouse in a trap.... It was just like being run over. All the trade that stayed with us after a bit was Bad Debts. You can’t blame people I suppose for going where they get more and pay less, and it wasn’t till we’d all gone right away to Haggerston that they altered things and put the prices up again. Of course Father lost heart and all that. He didn’t know what to do, he’d sunk all he had in the shop; he just sat and moped about. Really,—he was pitiful. He wasn’t able to sleep; he used to get up at nights and go about downstairs. Mother says she found him once sweeping out the bakehouse at two o’clock in the morning. He got it into his head that getting up like that would help him. But I don’t believe and I won’t believe he wouldn’t have seen it through if he could. Not to my dying day will I believe that....”
Lady Harman reflected. “But couldn’t he have got work again—as a baker?”