The winter list

An original fiction passage set in the nineteenth century.

Forty printed orders lay across the committee table. Each could be exchanged for a sack of coal, and Harriet had copied a household’s name onto every one. Outside, the last daylight had gone from the windows, but several applicants still waited on the stairs for the list to be approved.

Mr Cresswell, the chairman, drew his pen through one entry. “Mrs Pell has provided no proper recommendation,” he said. “Besides, her husband was troublesome enough while he lived.”

Harriet looked towards the door. She had seen the widow arrive with two children, the younger wrapped in a shawl too thin for the weather. “Her recommendation is beneath your hand, sir,” she said. “And there is an order here for Mrs Lenton as well as one for Ann Lenton. They are the same person.”

“They may be sisters.” Mr Cresswell began to gather the papers.

Harriet placed the application beside them. It gave both names and one address. She first explained the duplication quietly, so that only the committee could hear. Mr Cresswell continued tying the papers with green ribbon. At the far end of the table, the newspaper correspondent sharpened his pencil and glanced up.

Harriet straightened. “Then the minutes should record that one household is to receive two sacks, while Mrs Pell and her children receive none.” She spoke slowly, leaving each word clear enough to travel to the end of the room.

The ribbon stopped between Mr Cresswell’s fingers. He looked at the correspondent, untied the bundle and corrected the orders. “A matter of clerical tidiness,” he announced.

On the stairs, Mrs Pell held the order with both hands and tried to thank Harriet. Harriet replied that any clerk should have noticed the duplicate. This was not quite true. She remembered Mr Cresswell laughing at one of her calculations years before and refusing to admit, even when the figures were checked, that she had been right.

As Harriet put on her coat, she pictured the younger child beside a fire and was glad that she had spoken. Then she looked back at Mr Cresswell, whose face remained as red as the sealing wax beside him, and discovered that she was glad of that too.

“Harriet secures a just outcome, although her reasons for confronting Mr Cresswell are not entirely generous.”

Evaluate how successfully the writer presents this idea. Support your judgement with detailed references to the passage.