Down Weaver's Lane (7 page)

‘You haven’t the money to get back to Manchester,’ George sneered. ‘Think I don’t know how much you spend on gin?’

‘I’ve only to go to my brother and he’ll pay me to leave Northby.’

There was the sound of footsteps dodging around the floor and then more furniture being knocked over and her mother’s voice, shrill with fear, ‘I won’t change my mind about this, George, not if you beat me to death I won’t.’

There was dead silence for a minute or two, then he said more quietly, ‘Look, you know she could make us a fortune later if we handle her right. I want her somewhere I can keep an eye on her. Men are looking at her already. I don’t want anyone spoiling her for my better customers.’

‘I’m not having her going into this sort of work, George. Never.’

More silence. Emmy sat with her shoulders hunched and her arms tightly clasped around her knees, fear shivering through her.

‘Look,’ Madge said in a soft, persuasive voice, ‘let me find her a job somewhere she’ll be safe. I’m sure I’ll be able to come up with something.’ Her laughter was suddenly very harsh. ‘Believe me, no one is going to take more care that my daughter stays away from the lads than I am.’

‘You’d better, you daft bitch. You’ve got something worth good money in that child.’

‘Leave it till later, George. She’s too young yet.’

‘Ah, have it your own way. But make sure you keep her safe. I’m not having her giving it away for nothing.’

‘I knew you’d see it my way. Ah, don’t frown at me like that, my lovie. Come to bed. I haven’t been with anyone else tonight. Let’s enjoy one another a bit. There’s no one gives me pleasure in bed like you do ...’

Emmy sat hunched in a tight ball, listening to the familiar sounds of a man’s pleasure, hating this life.

When the noises showed that George was getting ready to leave the girl went along the landing towards the rear, playing shadows again. She waited in the darkness till he’d clumped down the stairs. Only after the front door had banged shut and his footsteps faded away into the distance did she go back into their room, where she found her mother lying on the bed staring out at the moon.

Madge didn’t even turn her head. ‘Is that you, Emmy?’

‘Yes, Mother.’

‘Lock the door, lovie. We don’t want anyone else disturbing us tonight.’ She sat up and reached for her wrapper. ‘We need to talk, you and I.’

Emmy went to pick up one of the fallen chairs and sit on it. ‘I heard what you were saying to George. I won’t work for him, not in that way. I won’t do that sort of thing for anyone, not even if
you
ask me, Mother.’

Madge’s eyes filled with tears. ‘I wouldn’t ask you to. That’s why I said you were only ten. Things are different for those who have a rich man to look after them, but I never found anyone who wanted me for a regular mistress.’ She sighed.

‘But saying I’m ten will only put George off for a while. He hasn’t given up, you know. And you said “later”,’ Emmy finished accusingly.

‘That was just to buy us some time. If we can find you a job somewhere safe, we’ve got a year or two before we need worry and by then I’ll have thought of something else. It’s a good thing you’re not a big strapping girl.’ Madge began to pace up and down the room, her voice low, her expression distraught. Several times she paused to take a sip of gin, pouring it carefully into the glass she always insisted on.

Once she stopped to say in anguished tones, ‘I didn’t mean to bring you to this, lovie. Oh, if only your father had lived!’

She wept a little, then in one of her lightning changes of mood, dashed away the tears. ‘No use getting maudlin, is it?’ She went to pour herself another gin, saying coaxingly, ‘Just to warm my bones, lovie. Then we’ll think about finding you a job somewhere safe.’

When Emmy went to sit beside her on the bed, her mother put an arm round her, so they were cuddling close. Emmy loved these rare moments when her mother showed her love. ‘I’ve already got an offer of a job,’ she said.

‘What?’ Madge grasped her daughter’s arm tightly. ‘What have you been doing? Who is this with?’

‘It’s the lady who lives in that crooked cottage just before the bend. Mrs Oswald her name is, only she says I’m to call her Mrs Tibby. She’s been ill and needs help in the house and garden.’

‘A maid’s job? Mmm, that might do for a while. Is she a lady or a rough sort?’

‘A lady. Her husband died. He lost most of their money, she said.’

Madge nodded slowly and thoughtfully. ‘Yes, that might do it. They like to keep their maids respectable, ladies do. How much is she offering?’

‘She didn’t say, wants you to go and see her. And she says to use the back gate.’

Madge grinned. ‘She’s definitely respectable, then. Ah, don’t look like that. I don’t mind using the back entrance. I’ll go and see her tomorrow morning. Wake me early. We’ll wash our hair. We want to make a good impression, don’t we?’ She yawned. ‘You’d better get to sleep now, lovie.’

‘Aren’t you coming to bed?’

‘No, I’ll just sit and have a think. I’m not tired.’

Which meant, Emmy knew, that her mother intended to drink the rest of the bottle. And it was no use trying to stop her because that only made her worse. So Emmy took off her top clothes and lay down on the bed in her shift, sure she’d have trouble falling asleep, but waking to find that it was light and that her mother was snoring on the pillow next to her.

Lena Butterfield was furious when she found out that Isaac’s sister had returned to Northby to shame them. She was so furious she forgot to guard her tongue and as a result their two daughters heard every word of their parents’ quarrel. Well, there had been rather a lot quarrels in the past year or two, and they’d learned to tread carefully around their mother’s chancy temper.

Lal, who was thirteen and considered herself almost a woman, listened shamelessly at the door, even though Dinah, who at eleven was definitely still a child, tugged at her arm and tried to persuade her to come away. In the end Lal cracked her sister about the ears, Dinah set up a loud squalling and their parents came rushing to see what was wrong.

‘We couldn’t help overhearing what you were saying,’ Lal said when Dinah had been calmed down. ‘I thought your sister was dead, Father.’

‘I wish she
was!’
Lena declared. ‘The woman’s come back to ruin us.’ She went to put an arm round each of her daughters and stare accusingly at her husband. ‘And how I’m ever going to hold my head up again in this town, I don’t know. No one will speak to me when they find out what she’s turned into. No one!’ She burst into loud, angry sobbing.

Dinah at once began crying again but Lal turned to her father. ‘What are you going to do about it?’ she demanded, hands on hips and square chin jutting out.

It was his wife he spoke to. ‘I’ll go and see Madge, offer her money to go away.’

Lena’s tears stopped instantly. ‘You’ll not give that harlot a penny of our money. My dowry money wasn’t meant for such as her. I wouldn’t give her a farthing, even if she were starving!’

‘But, my dear, how else can I persuade her to leave?’

‘You must go and see old Mr Rishmore. He’s a magistrate. Tell him to have her arrested and put in the house of correction. She’s a woman of low morals, isn’t she? She’d feel at home there.’

Isaac looked at her in horror. ‘I hope Mr Rishmore will never find out about my sister and he certainly won’t hear about her from me. It would seriously lower me in his esteem.’

Lena laughed as harshly as a cawing crow. ‘Of course he’ll find out. Everyone will find out in a tiny place like Northby - if they don’t know already.
Beg
him to help you. Show him you don’t care about her.’

Isaac shook his head. He knew he couldn’t have Madge put into a house of correction. It would kill her. She’d once been the pretty little sister he loved very much indeed and he’d been dreadfully upset when she ran away. ‘I shall do no such thing. It’ll be best if we simply ignore her existence.’

‘What about the daughter? Shall you ignore her too?’ his wife demanded. ‘How old is she now?’

‘She must be about the same age as Lal, if I remember rightly.’

‘She’s old enough to work with her mother, then,’ Lena said bitterly. ‘They start young in that business.’

He hated to think of that, for he was fond of children and shuddered when he saw so many of them selling their bodies in the streets of Manchester. ‘Martin said the daughter looked to be only a child still, slight and not very tall, unlike our dear Lal who is so well-grown for her age.’

‘That’s worse, then.’ Lena clutched her bosom dramatically. ‘She’ll be knocking on our door and asking to play with her cousins next.’

‘If that girl comes anywhere near me, I’ll throw stones at her or scratch her eyes out,’ Lal said viciously, for she was old enough to understand the problems of having disreputable relatives and was already dreading what other children might call out after her in the streets.

‘No, no, my dear! We shall not even speak to them and I’m sure they won’t bother us,’ Isaac said soothingly, casting a pleading glance towards Lena. ‘My sister was never a vindictive woman and I’m quite sure she won’t try to harm us. Madge was just a - a bit careless in her ways. Now, let us talk of pleasanter things, if you please.’

But when the girls went to bed that night Lal lay awake for some time thinking about the situation. She was determined to get a look at her cousin. Perhaps if she made the girl’s life miserable, her aunt would leave Northby. If her father wouldn’t do anything about these unsavoury relatives, then Lal would.

But first she had to find out who her enemy was.

 

Early on Saturday morning Jack Staley was walking back to the mill after delivering a message to a supplier for Mr Butterfield. It had rained overnight but was sunny now and that had tempted him to linger for a moment or two outside the town to enjoy the birdsong and spring flowers. He ached sometimes to get out into the fresh air, especially up there on the tops where the wind blew clean.

After a while he sighed and continued on his way. There was work waiting for him at the mill, though at least Saturday was a shorter day and they finished at four o’clock. But his mother wanted some things doing about the house, then they would be going to the market to see if they could pick up any bargains in left-over food. Since his father’s death it sometimes seemed as if he never had a minute to himself, and when his brother’s trial came up, he was sure it would bring them more misery at home as well as the stigma of having a convicted felon in the family.

His mother was now talking of finding ways to go and visit Tom in Lancaster County Gaol. Jack would also have liked to visit his brother, whom he was still missing dreadfully, but could see no way of finding the money, let alone getting time off work. They’d sold the two looms his father and Tom had used but got very little for them, and what was left after moving house to Feather Lane, one of the original streets of cottages in Northby, had been put aside for a rainy day.

He sighed. Mr Bradley said they took folk who’d been sentenced to transportation out to Australia and had shown him on the big globe where it was, right at the other side of the world. Months it took to get there, seemingly. Jack couldn’t understand distances like that, for he’d never even left Northby, except to go for walks on the tops. Neither had Tom.

He heard the shrieks and yells from a distance and at first smiled because it sounded like a group of little lasses playing. But as he got to the end of the narrow ginnel between two cottages and stepped into Weavers Lane, he realised the sound was not a happy one and hurried round the bend to see what was wrong. He stopped in shock as he recognised Mr Butterfield’s daughters pelting a third girl with dirt and stones.

The stranger was picking up the stones and throwing them back with considerable accuracy, but they had her trapped in an angle between two houses and with two against one were beginning to wear her down. It was obvious the attack was premeditated, for the Butterfield girls had gathered a pile of stones. Their backs were towards him but every line of Lal’s body spoke of anger and determination. She was throwing the stones as hard as she could as well as scooping up mud from a puddle and hurling that, heedless of whether she splattered herself.

Their victim had a cut on her cheek already and was trying to protect her face against the furious onslaught as well as throw back some of the stones. Even as he watched, Lal rushed forward and bowled the stranger over, beginning to pummel her as hard as she could and calling on her sister to come and kick their victim.

Horrified, Jack ran forward. ‘Hoy! Stop that at once, Lal Butterfield!’

The older girl paused briefly to see who it was. ‘You mind your own business, Jack Staley!’ Turning back, she slapped her victim across the face.