VIII
“F
ie! Hell
is murky!” said one of the actresses we saw at the Royal Theatre that winter, ’Lijah and me. Yet I could not bring myself to agree with her! My personal form of hell was becoming less and less murky, more and more comforting and warm! Indeed, so much a part of The Railway was I now that Blue-eyed Annie had offered me a job behind the bar-counter should I ever wish to break away from Tom and earn my own keep!
“There’s always a good future for a well-kept young lass like thee,” she said. “Why, you’d get a good place at somewhere like The George in Walsall if you had a bit o’ training here first. Think about it, Susie love. You don’t want to give up the best years of your life to that stuck-up brother of your’n.”
I pretended to consider it. “But Elijah would never agree,
