BooksBarbecue
Back Sisters of Gold Save as PDF
Chapters (64)
  1. Cover
  2. Title page
  3. Dedication page
  4. A Week’s Work in Birmingham
  5. I
  6. One
  7. Two
  8. Three
  9. Four
  10. Five
  11. Six
  12. Seven
  13. Eight
  14. Nine
  15. Ten
  16. Eleven
  17. Twelve
  18. Thirteen
  19. Fourteen
  20. Fifteen
  21. Sixteen
  22. Seventeen
  23. Eighteen
  24. Nineteen
  25. Twenty
  26. Twenty-One
  27. Twenty-Two
  28. Twenty-Three
  29. Twenty-Four
  30. II
  31. Twenty-Five
  32. Twenty-Six
  33. Twenty-Seven
  34. Twenty-Eight
  35. Twenty-Nine
  36. Thirty
  37. Thirty-One
  38. Thirty-Two
  39. Thirty-Three
  40. Thirty-Four
  41. Thirty-Five
  42. Thirty-Six
  43. Thirty-Seven
  44. Thirty-Eight
  45. Thirty-Nine
  46. III
  47. Forty
  48. Forty-One
  49. Forty-Two
  50. Forty-Three
  51. Forty-Four
  52. Forty-Five
  53. Forty-Six
  54. Forty-Seven
  55. Forty-Eight
  56. Forty-Nine
  57. Fifty
  58. Fifty-One
  59. Fifty-Two
  60. Fifty-Three
  61. Acknowledgements
  62. Further Reading
  63. About the Author
  64. By the Same Author

‘What can possibly be wrong with me reading George Eliot?’ Annie argued. ‘You couldn’t find a more moral storyteller if you tried.’ She would sneak off to hidden corners to indulge in the novels she loved while Margaret felt duty bound to stay in with The Pilgrim’s Progress or Foxe’s Book of Martyrs.

‘How does he always know what God wants?’ Annie often grumbled. ‘I can pray just as well as he can.’

As they grew older, Annie’s clashes with their father increased by the year.

Eight

Eight

When Margaret was fifteen, she fell ill, an ordinary sickness at first, a fever and bad chest. But even once the worst had past and she should have been fresh and on her feet again, she could not seem to reach a point of feeling well.

‘I’m so tired all the time,’ she kept saying. ‘But I just can’t sleep.’

School became a torment of headaches, of a cloudiness in the head making it impossible to think or remember things and a desperate struggle to keep awake over a page of arithmetic or a reading of Greek myths. The slightest exertion exhausted her. Eventually she had to stay at home. Day after day there was the same dreary sense of unwellness and aches and pains, of fogginess, of being unable to sleep while being bone tired, so that she would lie there, wide-eyed, for hours while the rest of the household slept, then be unable to wake in the morning.

Her father came and prayed at her bedside, trying to exercise patience. But she also remembered lying in bed, the curtains drawn as the light hurt her eyes, and being so limp that she could barely move. Her father was pacing her and Annie’s room, still in his outdoor boots. He had come in from some errand in the village and the sight of her shrouded room had sparked rage in him.

‘We’ve all had quite enough of this, Margaret. It’s not like you to be so self-indulgent! I don’t want to see you lying in that bed again. Renew your prayers! Ask for God’s help, and strength will be granted you. Come along –’ He stripped back the bedclothes, baring her legs which she found mortifying, and seized hold of her hand, his eyes blazing at her in the gloom. ‘I say to thee – pick up thy bed and walk!’

He hauled her to her feet and she did her very best to obey him, her legs shaking.

‘Now get yourself dressed and come downstairs. Discipline yourself. I don’t want to see you languishing up here again.’

Through her fog of unwellness, she managed to dress painfully slowly and get down the stairs. When Annie came in from school at dinner time, she found Margaret collapsed on the couch, fast asleep again.