“It makes you humble,” said Peterkin.

There was the crossing sweeper who had been run over and crippled—a boy of some eight years. Frances took him in and found him some light job he could do about the house.

There were women whose husbands or paramours had ill-treated them. Their wounds horrified me. I learned a little first aid; I did some of the cooking; I turned my hands to several jobs; and like Peterkin, I felt humble, and so much better.

There was one young woman to whom I took quite a fancy. Her name was Kitty. She came to the house one day when both Frances and Peterkin were out and I was the first one who saw her.

She was in a pitiful state—unkempt and near starvation.

She stammered something about someone’s telling her they’d help her if she came to this house.

I gave her some soup—there was always a cauldron of soup simmering in the kitchen. I spoke to her soothingly and told her we would look after her.

She looked lost and lonely and frightened. She was, I could see, really a pretty girl.

Frances came in and took charge and in a few days there was a great change in Kitty. She was bright and meant to enjoy life but she had had a bad time. She told us she had come up from the country to work in London. She had had a job as tweeny in a big house but the master had taken notice of her. The mistress found out and sent her packing with no money, no reference.

“It’s an old story,” said Frances.

I took a special interest in her; she seemed to like me too. She was very capable and almost took over the management of the kitchen.

The house was sparsely furnished.

“We don’t waste money on fancy stuff,” said Frances. “As much as my father-in-law has given us we still need more money.”

There was a big room with a wooden table in it; this table was kept scrupulously clean and we used to eat there in the evenings. Dinner was usually between eight and nine o’clock and was generally a stew of some sort which was kept simmering on the fire so that it was ready at whatever time we sat down. After we had eaten we would sit there, with the candles guttering, tired after an exhausting day, and we would talk about the work we were doing and life in general.

The memories of those evenings would stay with me all my life. I can still recall Peterkin’s hot anger about something particularly shocking he had seen that day, and Frances’s almost clinical approach; and the views of the other young people who had come to help. We talked far into the night, sometimes absorbed by the conversations, at others too tired to move even when the clock struck midnight.

One day I had been out shopping and when I came in Frances was in the hall.

“Oh hello,” she said. “Someone you know is coming to see me this evening.”

“Someone I know?”

“Brother Joe.”

“Joe? How is he?”

She lifted her shoulder. “He comes to London now and then and he always looks in on his little sister. Sometimes he stays for a few days and gives a hand.”

“Is he here now?”

“No. He’s been in and gone off somewhere on business. He’ll be back this evening. I didn’t tell him you were here. I wondered whether you wanted to see him.”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“I didn’t know.” I realized that she, like some others, thought that at one time there had been a rather special friendship between Joe and me which had petered out when the scandal about Joe’s father and Uncle Peter had been revealed.

I wondered what it would be like meeting Joe again.

He was there at the scrubbed wood table that evening. He had changed a little. He looked older and more solemn.

He took my hand and shook it warmly.

“How nice to see you, Annora.”

“And for me to see you, Joe. How are you?”

“Oh, quite well. It seems a long time …”

“It is.”

“You’ve been to Australia since.”

“Yes.”

“I’m very sorry. I heard, of course.”

I nodded.

“Are you staying here long?”

“I haven’t many plans. I am just spending a little time with Frances and Peterkin.”

“They are doing a wonderful job here.”

It was obviously trivial conversation. I thought, We are both a little nervous of each other. He is remembering how I caught him coming out of Uncle Peter’s study, putting those papers in his pocket. He is embarrassed about that and because I have lost my family and my home.

How different life was for both of us since our first meeting in the Park!

In the candle-lit atmosphere, amongst all the talk, the tension seemed to lessen. Once or twice Joe smiled at me at something which was being said, and I felt pleased to see him again.

One of the helpers—an earnest young woman from a county family—was saying: “I met Reverend Goodson this afternoon. He is a little displeased with us. He says no good can come of what we are doing because so much of the money we are using comes from a tainted source. Those, my dears, were his very words.”

I saw Joe flinch and then his mouth hardened. I knew he was thinking of the manner in which Uncle Peter was attempting to rehabilitate himself by giving so generously to charity.

She went on: “I told him how you had rescued Maggie Trent from that savage she was living with and that you had saved her life, for he would surely have killed her. I told him about little Tom, bruised and terrified, who is too big for chimneys now and was still being forced up them. He would have gone mad, poor mite. He was scared out of his wits of being burned to death. And there are others like that, I said to the reverend gentleman. I said, ‘If they can save people like that, they are not going to look twice at where the money comes from.’”

“You gave him something to think about perhaps,” said Peterkin.

“The trouble with people like him,” said Frances, “is that they are not given to thinking. Their minds run in channels laid out for them. It saves a lot of energy to follow the set rules. Happily his opinions are of no importance to us. Joe, you’ll see a lot of difference in the houses since you were last here. We’ve extended, started new projects. We’ve had luck.”

“Thanks,” said Joe rather bitterly, “to your generous father-in-law.”

Frances looked steadily at her brother. She knew that he hated my Uncle Peter and that he could not forgive him for ruining his father; but she, in her calm commonsensical manner, wanted old hatchets buried. She took the long view. Whatever had happened had brought great prosperity to her world and she had to welcome that. She was doing more good, she reckoned, than any commission for the suppression of vice could have done. Frances believed in action, not talk.

But she was fond of her brother and she did not want to spoil his visits by getting involved in arguments about which they could not agree.

She changed the subject.

“Annora has been working hard since she came here. I was going to suggest she take a day off. Why don’t you two take a trip up the river? There’s a lovely old-fashioned little inn I’ve heard a good deal about. They serve whitebait. It really is good, I’m told. I imagine you two have a lot to talk about.”

Joe was looking at me expectantly.

I said: “I should like that.”

He smiled. “Then let’s do it.”

Frances seemed satisfied. She then went on to talk about an extension to the kitchen which she was planning.

It was pleasant on the river. We rowed down towards Richmond and found the inn near the grassy bank just past Kew. It was called the Sailor’s Rest. It looked charming. There was a garden in front facing the river; tables and chairs were set out.

Joe tied up the boat and we went ashore.

Over the food, which was served by a maid in a mopcap and a Regency-style dress, I asked Joe questions about what he was doing. He was living in the North with his parents, he told me. His father owned a cotton mill up there and that was their main interest now.

“You are finding it satisfying?” I asked.

“Oh, it’s quite absorbing … in a way. I’m learning a lot about cotton and trade is good. It has increased tremendously in the last years. Hargreaves’ spinning jenny and Crompton’s mule have speeded up production and kept prices down. We export a great deal to Europe. Oh yes, it is interesting, but …”

“I know, Joe, what you really wanted was to go into politics.”

He was silent. Then he said: “It’s the reason why I don’t come to London very much. Every time I pass the Houses of Parliament I feel a terrible longing …”

“Why don’t you try to get in?”

He looked at me in amazement. “How could I … now?”

“That is all in the past.”

He shook his head. “As soon as one of us came into prominence it would all be remembered. Annora, I cannot understand Frances taking his money.”

“Frances has a very good reason, and she makes the best possible use of it.”

“To take money from the man who ruined our father!”

“I wish you could talk to Uncle Peter. I wish you knew him.”

“I’d rather know the devil.”

“Joe, you have to try to look at this coldly, calmly, without bias. You have to try to understand.”

“I understand perfectly. There was an important post almost certainly about to be bestowed on my father—a chance to do good, to wipe the town free of vice. Your uncle looked on it as a stepping-stone to his ambitions. Moreover he himself was trading in vice. How ironical it would have been to have had him on the Commission! But as I say, he saw it as a stepping-stone to his ambitions. And trying to get it … he destroyed my father.”