Pure as the Lily Read Online Free Page A

two. The more you do in this house the more you might, you get no help. Do you hear me? “
    Her voice was shrill now.
    “Put that away and get on with your homework!”
    Jimmy rose from the fender, folded the comic, and was about to push it into his pocket when it was grabbed from his hand and Alice bawled at him, ‘how many times have I to tell you you’re not to stuff your pockets with things! It puts them out of shape. God knows your clothes are hard enough to come by. Take your coat off and hang it up. I’m tired of tellin’ you. “ She sighed deeply and, her voice dropping, she said, Aw boy, It’s for your own good. Don’t you realize that? “ She bent towards him, and he answered sullenly, “ Aye, Ma. “ At this she closed her eyes, gripped her hands togetheYand pressed them to her breast as she said,
    “Aye, Ma. Aye, Ma. What good is the secondary school to you when you cannot get away from the common jargon of the street? Aye, Ma. You can’t even learn to say yes.” The boy stood with his head bent staring down at his feet, and as she went to push him towards the little table in the corner of the room there came the sound of the bottom staircase door opening, and her chin jerked, then her head moved in a half-circle, nodding in its passage from one shoulder to another.
    “They’ve arrived,” she said and marched across the room, pulled open the kitchen door that led into the scullery from where the back stairs dropped, and glared at Mary who was ahead of Alee and demanded,
    “Where do you think you’ve been, miss?”

    “With me da.” Mary was taking off her hat and coat as she spoke.
    “I I met him and went to the allotments with him.”
    Went to the allotments! “ Alice retreated back into the room, her hand thrust out towards the table that was set for tea.
    “This, madam, is what you are supposed to get ready. You’re supposed to be home here at three.
    There’s a pile of ironing. It’s been lying there three days, and’—she now turned her face in the direction of her husband but did not look at him as she ended ‘not a drop of water up. And no coals either. Am I supposed to do it all?”
    Alee never spoke. In the scullery he took off his coat and cap, hung them on the back of the st airhead door, went to the table under the little window on which stood a tin dish and an enamel jug of water and, pouring some water in the dish, he washed his hands, rubbed the back of his clean hand over his mouth, then rubbed his damp palm over the surface of his hair, after which he went into the kitchen and silently took his place at the table.
    The table was well equipped for a mid-week tea in these
    time^. There was a large loaf of new bread, a big square of marge on a glass dish; another glass dish holding plum jam, and a plate on which there were some thin slices of pale brown paste, their edges rimmed with yellow fat.
    The tea poured out, the meal continued in silence for some minutes; then Alice, as if there had been no interval in her haranguing, exclaimed. Three times a day, every day in the week, I have to go out, and do I get any hell. “
    The crash of Alec’s cup into the saucer startled them all. The tea spilled over on to the clean cloth, and it was this that Alice looked at as he jumped to his feet, crying, “There’s nobody makin’ you go out three times a day! It’s your own bloody choosin’. You break your neck to go out. A ... w!” The sound of his teeth grinding caused Mary to hunch her shoulders and she did not look up as he stalked from the room; she did not look up until she heard the staircase door bang. At the sound, Alice, who for the moment had seemed taken aback by his sudden attack, now got to her feet and yelled in the direction of the scullery, “No need to go out, you say? No need to go out? Bad lookout for everybody in this house if I didn’t go out. Bare legs and empty bellies it would be for the lot of you!... And you’—she turned on Mary who was rising