Angel Meadow (42 page)

Nancy knew she looked her best. She wore an elegant day dress of cinnamon-coloured silk with full white undersleeves, the colours repeated in her “chip” bonnet which was lined under its brim with white ruched muslin and decorated with a flowing knot of ribbons of cinnamon-coloured velvet. The skirt of the gown, which measured a full six yards round the hem, was held out by her crinoline. Her cream kid boots, new and the first she had ever had that were not a sensible black, peeped from beneath it as Josh led her across the lawn.

“Josh, dearest, at last,” the elderly lady called out. “We did not know what time to expect you so we have had lunch. Could you not have said which train you were to take? Really, dear, we are not mind-readers, though I suppose I should expect nothing else from you. I know you mean well but you are so—”

“Never mind that, Emma.” The elderly gentleman interrupted her gentle rebuking flow of words. “He is here now and I suppose we should be glad of that.” The shadowed sunlight that fell through the leaves of the tree beneath which the party sat was not kind to him. Not very long ago Edmund Hayes had been a rotund gentleman with a high colour. Now his face had slipped away into folds of slack, putty-coloured flesh, his eyes, which were heavy-lidded like Josh’s, were underscored with shadow and even his grey moustache drooped sadly about his thin-lipped mouth.

“Yes, I’m sorry if you were expecting us for lunch but the first-class train did not run until eleven fifteen so . . . But please, let me introduce Miss Brody to you. Mother, this is Miss Nancy Brody. Nancy, my mother and father and sister, Millicent.”

“Mrs Hayes, Mr Hayes, Miss Hayes.” She smiled just as Jennet had said she should. No more. There was a polite bend of the head from both Mrs Hayes and Millicent, though Mr Hayes continued to stare suspiciously, or so Nancy thought, up into her face.

“Miss Brody, do sit down and perhaps you might care for a cup of tea. You must be thirsty after your journey.” Just as though they had come from some far-flung corner of the world. “See, Primrose, get Madge to help you fetch out some more chairs and bring fresh tea. Or might you prefer coffee, Miss Brody?”

“Tea would be lovely, thank you, Mrs Hayes.” She sat down in the basket chair the maid placed for her beside Mrs Hayes, smiling to herself as the girl, Primrose, sketched a polite curtsey, thinking to herself the maid was possibly a shade better bred than she was herself.

“This is a lovely house, Mrs Hayes,” she ventured, after sipping her tea for a moment. “The garden and the proximity of the sea and sands, and I must admit to finding the air quite wonderful after what we are forced to breathe in Manchester.”

“Indeed, Miss Brody. Your home is in Manchester then?”

“Oh, yes, I was born and bred there.”

“Mother, before you begin to grill Nancy . . . Miss Brody, there is something you should know, all of you.” Josh looked round the faces of his family, his mother’s enquiring, his father’s narrow-eyed and watchful, his sister’s openly hostile for some reason. He leaned forward and took Nancy’s hands between his own and Nancy knew that really, after that gesture, there was no need for him to say another word. He was looking into her eyes with that look of loving tenderness and desire that no one could mistake. The way a man looks at the woman who is the centre of his world, the core of his heart, his strength and saviour. She knew, for she recognised it in herself. Love was something that must grow slowly and sweetly, so it was said, and so it was with Josh and herself. All the years between their meeting in the mill yard and that moment behind the Grove Inn it had been growing, barely recognised, some gentle force that had drawn them together against all the forces of their different backgrounds and their circumstances which, though dissimilar, were strangely alike.

“I . . . we, that is, have come to tell you that we – Miss Brody and I – are to be married in four weeks’ time. I meant to let you get to know her a bit before I said anything but . . . well, I find I cannot keep it to myself.” His boyish enthusiasm was disarming, but it seemed they were not disarmed; at least Mr Hayes and Miss Hayes weren’t, though Mrs Hayes was ready to smile and lift a wisp of lace handkerchief to her eyes if her husband would allow it.

“Oh dear,” she said tearfully.

“Well, this is a pretty kettle of fish,” Mr Hayes said stonily.

“This is rather sudden,” Miss Hayes said suspiciously.

“No, it isn’t, Milly. Nancy and I have known each other a long time, years, but it was only recently that we—”

“A long time? Where did you meet? We have never heard of Miss Brody, or any Brodys, have we, Mother?”

“No, dear, I don’t think so. Brody? Do you know the Brodys, dear?” turning to her husband.

“You would not know my family, Mrs Hayes,” Nancy began, lifting her head a little higher and straightening the aristocratic curve of her back and beside her Josh sighed and, though he still held her hand, for he meant her to know he would support her in anything she wanted to say, he leaned back in his chair with an air of resignation.

“Our circle of friends is very wide, isn’t it, dear, but I can’t remember any by the name of Brody.” Emma Hayes did her best to fill the hostile quiet that had come about and that even she sensed but her voice tapered off gently into a whisper and she put her handkerchief to her mouth.

“No, Mrs Hayes, I don’t suppose you will have.” Nancy’s voice was gentle. She was no longer nervous, if she ever had been. She wanted more than anything for Josh’s family to accept her, not for her own sake but for his. She did not care one way or the other if his mother’s friends did not care to drink tea with her, an activity she had heard they favoured on most afternoons, having nothing better to do, she supposed. She would not have time for it, anyway, since her new venture would take up all her time, but her heart was heavy at the thought that there might be a split between Josh and his family because of her. Josh was hoping that after they were married an apartment at Riverside House might be made available to them, a prospect that dismayed her, but as the house would be his when his father died he seemed to see no reason why they should not live in it at once. It was certainly big enough from what he had told her, with bedrooms by the score, parlours and drawing-rooms, studies and libraries, breakfast-rooms and dining-rooms and a whole floor of nurseries, with more than a dozen indoor servants and half a dozen outside to look after three people, four if you counted Freddy. His brother Arthur, who was on a walking tour with some school friends in Europe, was to take up his duties at Monarch Mill as soon as he returned and would live at home, which seemed to Nancy to be more than a houseful, especially with two small children.

“Perhaps you would care to tell us something about your people, Miss Brody,” Millicent Hayes declared coolly, already sensing that Nancy’s “people” would not be their sort of people, getting ready to enjoy Nancy’s embarrassment. Nancy smiled.

“Of course, Miss Hayes.”

“Darling . . .” Josh warned, but she turned to smile at him.

“I can only speak the truth, Josh. Would you have me lie?”

He relaxed and smiled lovingly at her and his mother, who was watching closely, smiled too, letting out her breath on a small sigh. Her son loved this woman, whoever she was, and that was enough for her.

“Go on, Miss Brody,” Edmund Hayes told her, his voice stern, but there was something in his eyes that reminded Nancy of Josh and it gave her courage.

“I was born in Angel Meadow, Mr Hayes. You will have heard of it, I’m sure.”

Though he winced, Edmund Hayes’s gaze was steady.

“I have, lass.”

“My mother left us when I was about nine years old.”

“Us?”

“I have two sisters younger than me.”

“And your father?”

“I knew of no father, sir.”

“Oh, dear,” Mrs Hayes whispered, feeling for her handkerchief.

“So, what did you do, Miss Brody?” Millicent Hayes’s voice had a sneer in it, for what else could three young children do but apply to the workhouse.

“I found us work, Miss Hayes. In your father’s mill. I was put on a spinning frame with no experience of how the thing worked but I learned, oh, I soon learned, Miss Hayes. My sisters were taken on as a scavenger and a piecer and between us we managed to pay our rent and feed and clothe ourselves, though it was damned hard . . . begging your pardon, Mrs Hayes.”

She felt Josh’s hands grip hers, warm and strong and comforting. He had heard it all on the night he had asked her to marry him, for she would not agree until he knew everything about her. His grip told her she was amazing, that he loved her and that he was proud of her and whatever his parents decided he and she would be married in four weeks’ time. She turned and her eyes were a pure gold, deep and filled with her love, so that none of the three watching could doubt her feelings.

She turned back to them. “I took my sisters to Sunday school where we learned to read and write. We spent any spare time we had at the Manchester Free Library at Campfield, reading the newspapers and periodicals and became members of the library so that we might bring books home with us. We became different people and because of it we were scorned by our neighbours. I swore that I would get us out of Church Court, that I would make my family decent and respectable. I was determined to . . . to
be
somebody. Oh, not famous but worthy of the regard and respect of any man or woman in Manchester. And I have,” she finished simply.

“How, lass?” Mr Hayes wanted to know.

“I began my own business. We saved hard and did without, my sisters and me. We learned machine sewing and when we were able we hired sewing-machines and began to make garments, baby clothes, shirts, things like that. I had a stall on the market and sold to decent shops in Market Street and Deansgate. We did well. We expanded. We moved out of Angel Meadow and rented a house on Bury New Road on the corner of Broughton Lane. Then . . . then the American civil war began and we . . . Mr Hayes, you will know what happened to our supply of cotton.”

“Aye, I do that, so what . . .”

“Josh let us have as much as he could.” Again she turned to Josh, giving him her dazzling, loving smile. “We were . . . we were not really acquainted then,” meaning they were not in the state they were now, “but he did his best to keep my one remaining machine working. I could not have managed without him.”

“No, I can see that,” Millicent Hayes drawled nastily and at once Nancy turned on her, cementing the first brick in the wall that was always to stand between them.

“I had no more cloth than any other manufacturer, Miss Hayes, and certainly not enough to keep four women and a child.”

“A child?”

“Yes, I have a daughter. I was forced to take work as a scrubber of floors to support her, while my sister and the lady who befriended us, my partner, in fact, worked to keep food on the table. Then Josh and I—”

“And your husband? The child’s father? Where is he? Dead, I presume or . . .” Millicent broke in, determined to extract every nasty and debased exploit she was sure the woman who hoped to marry her brother had got up to.

“I have no husband, as I am sure my use of the title ‘Miss’ tells you.”

“Then . . .”

“My daughter has no father. He – the man – left me.”

“And did he give you that scar you carry on your cheek?”

Josh exploded with such force from his chair even Nancy, who had been expecting it, almost jumped out of her skin. Mrs Hayes squeaked in alarm and Mr Hayes sighed loudly.

“Now then, lad.”

“No, Father, I will not sit idly by while my sister insults the woman I am to marry. You might as well know that whatever comes of this visit, whether you accept her or not, I shall marry Nancy Brody. She is the bravest, most courageous woman I have ever met and I love her
and
may I say I consider myself lucky that she loves me. The banns are being called at St John’s Church and I have sent invitations to every person of our – what was the phrase you used, Mother? – our wide circle of friends. This is to be no hole-in-the-corner affair, believe me. I want the world to see the woman I am to marry.”

“Josh, darling, it’s all right, really. There is no need to give us all the rounds of the kitchen,” Nancy declared mildly.

“Oh, yes there is. They must be made to see how much you mean to me.”

“I think they might by now.”

“Good, then that’s settled then.” He glared about him, his lean face hawk-like in his rage. “And you might as well know that when we are married Nancy is to start up again in a business of her own. She is not the sort of woman to sit at home and twiddle her bloody thumbs.”

“Joshua, that is enough, my lad. I will have no language of that sort spoken in front of your mother.”

“I’m sorry, Mother, but I really—”

“We know, lad. I think we’ve got the picture. Now, shall we ask Primrose to bring us another tray of tea?
No
, you sit down and button your lip, Millicent Hayes,” to his daughter who, it seemed, had more she wished to say. “I want to ask this young lady a few more questions.”

Though his face was set in a mould of stern, unbending resolution, there was a gleam in Edmund Hayes’s sunken eyes that appeared to say he might just take a fancy to this woman who was to be his daughter-in-law. She had spunk and Edmund Hayes was an admirer of spunk.

24

She wasn’t a fanciful woman. Life had knocked that out of her years ago. Even as a child in her mam’s careless charge she had been practical, seeing things as they were and not as she fancied they could be, facing up to whatever the world chucked at her, and it was usually something nasty, something that would have knocked a fully grown woman to the ground, let alone a child. And if it knocked her down then she bit her lip, rubbed her bruised knees and the scraped palms of her hands, and got up again. She had suffered and survived, but now she had come through, and brought her family through with her, she could not truly believe that such happiness, such luck, such a haven of refuge she had found with Josh could really be hers. Could it be real, could it last, this great good fortune, this knowing that she was totally and limitlessly loved by this good man?