Eliza's Child (11 page)

‘Lie still! Do as I say,' he hissed at her. She tried to shake her head but he held it clamped to the pillow. Beside the bed, Thomas whimpered then lay still.

‘You don't want to wake the lad, do you?' he asked. Carefully he removed his hand, ready to clamp it back should she shout.

‘Get out of my bed, get out,' she grated at him. She could hardly breathe for the weight of him and her breasts hurt with the pressure.

‘No, I will not,' he said and smiled, his face so close to hers she could see hair up his nose. She tried to bring her knee up between them but he was too strong for her. She managed to curl her fingers into his hair and tugged as hard as she could and he slapped her roughly.

‘Jack will kill you!' she hissed and he laughed.

‘He will not, he knows I am here,' he said.

‘You're a liar, a rotten, bloody liar!' Eliza was sobbing now.

‘I tell you he knows I am here,' said Jonathan. ‘Now come on, be nice to me or it will be the worse for you and your brat too.' For Thomas had woken and was whimpering again, obviously frightened at the strange voice in the room.

‘Let me go to the bairn,' said Eliza.

‘You think I'm a fool? Let him scream as loud as he likes, there's no one to hear,' said Jonathan. ‘I told you, Jack won't come. I won this night with you at cards. Oh, it was all fair and square. Your precious Jack put you up against the pot.'

‘I won't do it, I won't be passed around like a whore!'

Jonathan had hold of her hands as he sat up, still astride her. The dawn was becoming brighter and she could see his face properly now. ‘It is, after all, a debt of honour, my dear,' he said. ‘You know I don't like to use force but that's not to say I won't.'

‘It's not my debt!'

Thomas was sobbing now, no longer screaming but sobbing hopelessly. Oh dear God, she thought, how could Jack do this? She felt utterly betrayed.

‘You might like it,' said Jonathan and leaned forward and kissed her hard on the lips. Eliza stopped struggling. She gave in not because of the man and his attempt to make this an act of love rather than sex alone but because of little Thomas, still sobbing in the cot by the bed and because of the terrible shock of Jack's betrayal.

Afterwards, when he fell to the bed beside her, still panting with the effort, she got up and went to the cot and picked up the little lad. ‘There, now, hinny, there, my bonny,' she murmured as she hugged him to her. She couldn't bear to give him suck with Jonathan in the same room so she went down the rickety ladder into the cold, grey kitchen. She raked the ashes from the fire and added sticks and coal so that it smoked and then blazed up and sat down in the rocking chair and fed the boy. She was not thinking of anything. She didn't allow herself to. Only of the warmth from the fire and the feel of Thomas at her breast.

Jonathan came down the ladder some time later. He looked quite normal, not ashamed, nothing. After the first quick glance Eliza couldn't look at him. She pulled her shawl further over to cover the boy's head and her breast.

‘I'll be off now,' said Jonathan. ‘I'll see you later on.'

‘You will not,' Eliza replied.

‘Look, I know the arrangement with Jack was for only one night, but it is not enough. I want you to leave him, I want you for myself; I will protect you.'

Eliza's head shot up at this astonishing statement. She laughed. ‘It's a pity it's not going to happen then, isn't it? I'd kill myself first!'

‘Eliza, don't say that. I promise you, I won't let you down, not like that man of yours. I never wanted anyone as I want you. I thought once we'd – well, I thought I'd be over it but I'm not and I never will be. Eliza, I'll give you anything, anything you want, just tell me, please!'

Eliza took the boy off the breast, wincing a little for her nipple was sore, not just from Thomas's vigorous suck now he was bigger but also from the man's attentions. She buttoned up her dress and turned to him. She had made up her mind.

‘Come tonight if you like,' she said.

EARLY ONE MORNING,
a few days after she had found Jonathan Moore in her bed, Eliza set out from her temporary lodging in the Gilesgate area of Durham city. She had left the cottage and gone to Gilesgate as she thought that neither Jonathan nor Jack would think of looking for her there. Besides, she needed to be near the city so she could get the best possible price for the necklace.

‘Dada?' Thomas asked and looked into her face enquiringly. ‘Dada?'

‘Dada's gone away,' she replied. ‘There's no one but Thomas and Mammy now.' He would soon forget about Jack, she told herself.

As she walked along, down the hill and up the other side of the valley towards the great cathedral just looming out of the mist, she was filled with hope for the future. The shock of Jack's betrayal was still like an open wound in her breast but at least it had made her realise she could rely on no one but herself. Her mam might rail against Jack but she believed that a woman leaving her man was beyond forgiveness. It was just not Christian. No, she was on her own now.

She wondered what her mam would have said if she had known about Jack's gambling with her favours. Or Jonathan Moore turning up in her bed. She did not wonder what Jonathan's reaction had been when he turned up at the cottage the night before last and found her gone. Not that she cared at all. She didn't want to think of Jonathan Moore ever again.

Eliza smiled bitterly to herself as she hoisted a still sleepy Thomas higher on her shoulder. By, the lad was heavy now he was almost two years old. The sun broke through the mist and lit up the battlements of the castle and towers of the cathedral and Eliza brightened. Yesterday she had taken the necklace to three pawnshops and got three different estimates as to how much it was worth. Now she had it stitched securely into the pocket of her skirt and was taking it back to the first pawnbroker's, the one who had offered her the most money.

‘Stand down, now, pet,' Eliza said to Thomas. She put him on his feet and took hold of his hand. The path was climbing now and she was becoming short of breath. Also, she was hungry; she had had no breakfast though there had been a small piece of bread left from the loaf she had bought yesterday. Thomas had needed that; he was too big now to be dependent on the breast totally. Soon her milk would dry up altogether.

‘Howay, hinny,' she encouraged him as she took his hand. ‘You're a big lad now, aren't you? Not a babby any more.' They went on up the hill, slower than before because she had to adjust to his pace. Still it would not be long before they reached Silver Street where the shop was located.

As they walked Eliza went over her plans. Some of the money would have to go on keeping her and Thomas until she had learned to read and write properly. That was the first objective. When she could do that she was going to get into a hospital where nurses were trained. For that was what she had decided to do, train as a nurse. There would be enough money to have little Thomas looked after while she trained, she was sure of that. After all, the necklace was worth two hundred and forty pounds. She had had to ask the pawnbroker twice for she could hardly believe it. Mr Timms was a jeweller as well as a pawnbroker and he had been suspicious at first and asked questions as to how she had come by it. Eliza had told him it came from her husband, now deceased, who had worked for the Duke of Northumberland. It wasn't totally a lie, Jack was dead to her, oh yes he was.

They were approaching the market place now and Eliza kept Thomas close to her skirts for there was a good deal of traffic: carts loaded with produce for the market and a couple of carriages turning to go up the cobbled street to the grand houses around the castle and cathedral. Her heart beat fast in anticipation of the moment when she would have the money in her hand and her new adventure would begin.

‘Please, sir, are the reading and writing classes still held here?'

Eliza looked at the clergyman in the black robe and white collar who was standing in the entrance to the town hall. He looked up from the papers he had been glancing through and gave her his grave attention. She looked him in the eye, secure in the knowledge that she had forty pounds (forty pounds!) in her pocket beside the bank draft for two hundred stuffed between her breasts. She felt as rich as the queen.

‘They are,' he replied. ‘A class is just starting, in fact. Go through that door on the right.'

Eliza thanked him and went into the room he indicated. There were perhaps fifteen or twenty people already there, sitting quietly at deal tables and each with a slate and stick of chalk. A lady dressed in a plain black skirt and white shirtwaister stood at the front of the room beside a blackboard and easel. She beckoned to Eliza to come forward.

‘Have you come to join the class?' she asked, and Eliza nodded.

‘I'm Miss Johnson and I will be your teacher. Is the child well behaved? I'm afraid we can't have any disruption. Can't you get someone to mind him while you are here? You realise that if he makes a noise you will have to take him out?'

‘Aye, I do, miss,' Eliza mumbled as Miss Johnson paused for breath. Her elation at actually starting on her plan had disappeared. For two pins she would have gone back out of the door, for everyone in the class was staring at her.

‘I'll fill in this form for you, then. You have the two pounds fee?'

‘Aye, I do, miss,' Eliza said again. In fact she had two sovereigns clutched in her hand. She watched as Miss Johnson wrote something on the paper. The teacher took her name and age, raising one eyebrow at the double-barrelled surname as though she doubted it could be right.

‘To which parish do you belong?'

‘Emm—' Eliza paused, unsure.

‘Where do you worship?' Miss Johnson demanded. That was easier, Eliza decided.

‘Blue House Wesleyan Methodist Chapel,' she replied and hoisted Thomas, who was unsmiling and sucking his thumb, higher onto her shoulder.

Miss Johnson put down her pen. ‘I'm sorry,' she said. ‘To join this class you have to be a communicant of the Church of England. I'm sure the Wesleyans run some sort of literacy scheme of their own. Apply to them.'

Eliza found herself back out in the market place among the stalls loaded with fruit and vegetables and fish from Shields. She stood for a few moments, utterly crushed, then she lifted her head and stuck her chin in the air.

‘Howay, Thomas,' she said. ‘We'll have a penny dip from the butchers down Silver Street then we'll go and see if there is anyone at the Wesleyan's in Elvet. That woman was likely right about them running classes. An' it'll be cheaper an' all.'

They sat beside the Wear, which flowed under Framwellgate Bridge at the bottom of the bank and ate the penny dip. They shared it, for the bread bun was quite large and the butcher had dipped it into the brown gravy in the tin after roasting pork and not just the pork fat. Thomas munched away, totally absorbed in the food for he too was hungry. When they had finished, Eliza dipped her handkerchief in the river and rubbed the grease from Thomas's mouth and chin. Then they climbed the hill to Castle Chare and down the other side to Elvet.

She found the chapel easily enough and there was activity in the schoolroom, she could see. Hoisting Thomas higher on her shoulder once more, she went in.

‘You want to join our adult literacy class?' The elderly man who was there looked her over as she nodded and murmured she did. ‘They are held in the evening, every weekday evening in fact. Can you manage that?' He looked at Thomas, sleeping on Eliza's shoulder. ‘Can you get the lad minded?'

‘I can, sir,' she replied, though she had not even thought of how she would do that. Then, more honestly, ‘At least will try, sir.' Desperately, she hoped that adult literacy meant reading, writing and arithmetic. But the man had been standing before a group of children, all seated at wooden desks and poring over slates.

‘It will be threepence a week, can you pay threepence? You are a widow?'

‘I am, but I have a little money.'

‘Well then. My name is Mr Wood and I am a retired schoolmaster. We make it a rule that members of the class must come every weekday evening and attend a place of worship every Sunday. You can start tonight. I can enrol you now if you wish.'

In ten minutes she was back outside on the road with a piece of paper clutched in her hand. She was to hand it over to the teacher at seven o'clock that evening. At last, she thought, she was on her way, she had made the first step. The next one was to find lodgings close to the chapel and also someone to mind Thomas for a few hours every night. There would be plenty on offer this near to the gaol, she thought. People didn't like to be too close to such a forbidding place. Jack wouldn't look for her there either. It was as good a hiding place as Gilesgate.

‘I'll look in on the bairn while you're at the class,' her new landlady, Mrs Reynolds, conceded. ‘It'll cost you threepence a night, mind, and he has to be in bed before you go an' all.'

Eliza considered this. Threepence a night, but really, she had no alternative if she was to start that evening. ‘Thank you,' she said eventually. ‘Thomas goes to bed at six every night and he's a good sleeper.'

‘Aye well, I don't mind helping out a poor widow,' said Mrs Reynolds in a virtuous tone. ‘Though I suppose your husband, God rest his soul, left you something to live on?'

She didn't mind robbing a widow, either, Eliza thought savagely. Though she smiled enigmatically and didn't answer the question. The room, in the basement of the old stone house, smelled of damp and the rent was two shillings and sixpence a week plus the one and threepence for the babyminding. But still, it was in the shadow of the prison walls and not five minutes,' walk away from the chapel schoolroom. Jack wouldn't look for her here, she told herself again. Jonathan Moore, she reckoned, would not be looking for her at all for he would have found someone new to chase after.

Within a month, Eliza could sign her name and print out the alphabet. She spent her mornings practising and in the afternoons took Thomas out for fresh air and exercise whatever the weather, though luckily that summer was unusually fine and they could take the footpath behind Elvet and play in the fields there. She encouraged him to run about and tire himself out before taking him home to supper and bed.

They lived frugally and the money lasted well so that she had almost two hundred and thirty pounds left by September. Eliza counted it carefully before going to chapel one Sunday morning. She walked holding Thomas's hand as he toddled beside her. He had grown in these last few months since she had weaned him and he was turning into a proper boy rather than a baby. His vocabulary increased by the day and he played imaginary games by himself and chattered and sang snatches of nursery rhymes and songs he had learned at Sunday School.

‘We won't be long before we go to London, Thomas,' Eliza said to herself rather than the boy and he looked up at her and smiled.

‘Tot come,' he said. It was his name for himself and even though he could say Thomas now he insisted he was Tot. Eliza felt a surge of anticipation. The future stretched out before her and she was ready for it. They were turning in the gate of the chapel when she heard her name called. She froze for a moment, her heart plummeting. Grasping Thomas's hand tightly, she turned slowly round. It was Peter Collier, the union man.

‘Mrs Mitchell-Howe, isn't it? It's good to see you. But what are you doing here? Apart from coming to the service, I mean.'

‘I-I – live here,' she stammered. Thomas clung to her skirt and stared up at the strange man with large, wary eyes.

‘There now, so do I,' he said. ‘Is your husband inside?'

‘No,' Eliza replied, then in a rush went on, ‘Thomas and me, we are on our own now.'

‘Dear me! I'm sorry to hear that, lass,' Peter said kindly. ‘An accident, was it?'

‘No, it—' Just then the organ began to play as the service began. ‘I'll have to take the bairn to the Sunday School,' she said. ‘I'm sorry.'

‘I'll speak to you afterwards?' he called after her as she picked up Thomas and sped round the side of the building. He heard that she said something but her answer was lost as she went inside the schoolroom.

Later, as she crept into the back of the chapel, she saw him sitting only a few pews in front of her. His head with the dark hair speckled a little with grey was bent over his hymn book as he joined in the singing. She watched him, unable to keep her mind on the service for her thoughts were in a whirl. She realised that he thought that she was a widow. Well, she would not tell him otherwise. She thought of slipping away before the end of the service to avoid meeting him again. That was best; he wouldn't find out whereabouts she lived. Besides, he wouldn't be that interested, of course he would not.

Accordingly, Eliza slipped out as the congregation bent heads for the benediction and went to pick up Thomas from the Sunday School. But then, there he was, standing by the side door into the schoolroom, waiting for her.

‘I thought we could walk by the river along Elvet fields,' he said. ‘If you have no objection, of course.'

Eliza's normally quick mind seemed to have slowed considerably. When she didn't answer immediately he offered his arm and they walked down the bridle path away from the houses of Elvet towards the Wear. On the opposite bank the woods rose to the skyline; some of the leaves were already showing coppery and russet hues. Thomas, released now to run about as he liked, did just that, chasing after starlings and wood pigeons pecking about in the grass, and shouting, ‘Shoo! Shoo!' and laughing with delight when they flew up into the air in alarm. Eliza watched him in case he strayed too near the bank-side of the Wear.

‘I'm working from Durham now,' said Peter. ‘It's fairly central to the county and we'll have the union on its feet soon. The government and the owners must see that even pitmen have their rights.'