House of Angels (16 page)

She was heading for the bridge and that part of the river where the waters would be running deep, due to recent rains. Ella saw his bag first, lying abandoned on the bank, neatly fastened and with his rod leaning against it, his old jacket in a crumpled heap beside it. She hesitated. Was he done with fishing already? Had he changed his mind and gone off to see to the sheep after all? In which case he could be anywhere. A sweeping glance of the panorama of mountains all around her revealed no sign of him. And then Ella heard a splash, and there he was.

He was in the river, lying on his back in the fast flowing current, his head thrown back as he gazed up at the blue arc of sky. And he was naked. Flustered to find him thus exposed, Ella stepped quickly back behind a stand of spindly pines, yet couldn’t resist peeking out around the side of one. Even as she watched, he sank his head back under the water, then rose to shake the water from his hair, laughing out loud as the dog, Beth, did the very same thing. Laughing, he threw a stick and the old dog bounded into the water to fetch it, a game that looked as if it had been going on for a while.

Ella was entranced. Man and dog seemed to be having such a good time. Amos looked happy, relaxed, quite different from the serious man who scowled and quoted the scriptures at her.

Before she had time to realise what he was about, he rose from the river like some sort of water god, and for the first time Ella saw the man she had married. She was stunned. In his shabby farming clothes he was nothing
special at all. A spindly thin, tired farmer who worked too hard and didn’t have time for fussing over clothes and appearance.

He was standing with his back to her, thank goodness, but she could see that he wasn’t thin at all. He was lean and hard, his shoulders broad, and with muscles rippling in arms that could easily lift a full grown sheep. His body narrowed to slim hips and long, strong legs. He was, without doubt, a fine figure of a man, and something very like desire started somewhere deep inside her, spreading outward like the ripples in a tarn.

He wiped his face with the flat of his hands, stood for a moment with arms outstretched to the sun as if in quiet homage, then rested his hands on the top of his head as he gazed at the mountains above, perhaps savouring their beauty. Ella stood enthralled.

Remembering that kiss, and looking on this man, this demi-god who was her husband, for the first time Ella thought that perhaps she might not object to sharing her bed with him after all.

Josiah had scarcely given the girl a thought since he’d dispatched her to the workhouse, though it did cross his mind that perhaps he should pay a visit to the workhouse, to make sure there was no question of her ever being allowed out. If the girl were set free to gabble her tale to all and sundry, then his carefully built reputation would be in tatters.

It was wrong of Florrie to tell the child that he was her father, and to take it into her silly head to send the girl along to him, seeking favours. He certainly didn’t in any way feel obliged to concede to the request. The very idea of offering his by-blow employment in his own store was ludicrous.

They’d had their little fling, and what fault was it of his if there’d been an unfortunate result in the shape of a baby? He’d pretended an interest, for a while, but once Florrie herself had begun to bore him with all her conversation taken up with teething and milk jellies, he’d been glad to walk away. She should have taken more care
to avoid such accidents, as others had done before and since.

He was hoping to be made mayor by next year at the latest, and later taken up as a member of parliament, ultimately a knighthood no less. And why not? Didn’t he deserve it for all he’d done for this town? For the annual treat he helped to fund for the poor souls in the almshouses if nothing else. He certainly had no intention of allowing it to become generally known that he had a love child, a bastard, for goodness sake!

Josiah’s reputation was everything to him, and he would not allow it to be tarnished by some fly-by-night whore, which is what Florrie had turned out to be despite her claims that he’d taken a sweet virgin and used her for his own ends. Utter nonsense! All that talk about her
being in love
was just so much tosh. What young woman doesn’t know what she’s letting herself in for when she lifts her skirts?

Right now, though, he had more important matters on his mind.

Josiah stared down at a letter spread out on his blotter. It was from the bank manager, dated a week ago, asking him to call in to discuss the state of his account. He hadn’t obeyed the request, which was tantamount to an order, although he couldn’t ignore the problem for much longer. The situation was growing serious and the bank could easily decide to call in his loans, an outcome that didn’t bear thinking about.

Why did events always conspire against him? Horses that fell at the last fence, profits that failed to materialise,
property that cost more than he’d bargained for and never got completed because he couldn’t make the final payments to an over-demanding builder. Even the land he’d acquired from his new son-in-law had not proved to be the investment he’d hoped for. Josiah no longer had the money to build on it, and so far had failed to find a buyer willing to take it off his hands. Everything was going wrong for him in this difficult market, and he really had neither the time nor the patience right now for obstinate daughters. He was up to his neck in problems, the pressures upon him mounting daily.

Josiah felt again that familiar tight breathlessness in his chest, which he experienced whenever he allowed things to get on top of him, as he was doing now. He really shouldn’t worry so much. This would all be resolved once the girl was safely married, which it looked as if she was about to be, praise the Lord. He just had to hold tight a little longer and all his troubles would be over.

What bothered him the most, of course, was that Lavinia was a sly little minx. Unlike Ella, whose protests had soon buckled once he’d ratcheted up the pressure, his eldest daughter was quite capable of saying one thing and doing another. Or of changing her mind at the last moment. Josiah was no fool and didn’t trust her fervent assurances, not for a moment.

What he needed to do was speak to Henry Hodson, man to man. It should be possible, if the two of them worked together, to ensure she carried out her promise with all speed. The sooner the pair were wed, the better.

Josiah recalled how fortuitous it had been the day he’d
met Amos Todd, quite by chance, at the County Hotel. The two men had become engaged in conversation over lunch, and he’d very soon discovered that while the farmer was in need of a mother for his three children, having recently been bereaved, he was also in possession of a choice piece of land on Sedbergh Road suitable for building purposes. Josiah had invited him to a function he was holding that very afternoon at Angel House, and it had been remarkably simple to come to terms, once the farmer had seen Ella handing round canapés.

Later, on the day of the wedding itself in fact, Josiah had felt duty bound to enlighten the fellow as to his daughter’s faults as well as her many attributes. He’d pointed out that the girl was somewhat lazy and vain, scatter-brained and empty-headed

‘She might prove to be a bit skittish at first, but keep her on a tight rein and she’ll soon come to heel,’ Josiah had advised. ‘I wouldn’t recommend you let her out of your sight for a while, not until she’s grown used to her new harness, as it were.’ Thereby sealing his daughter’s life as a prisoner at Todd Farm for the foreseeable future.

Lavinia, however, was far less malleable and nowhere near as foolish as her younger sister. Nevertheless, she too had her head in the clouds with nonsensical dreams about becoming a ‘modern woman’, whatever that might mean, and could easily take it into her head to do something daft. But she wasn’t nearly so tough when the happiness and health of her dear sisters were at stake. And although he might no longer have any power over
Ella, Livia would soon come to heel if she thought her precious Maggie was at risk.

All he had to do, with Hodson’s help, was get her to that altar. Surely not beyond his ingenuity? The moment their union was achieved, all his debts would be settled, and the loan the younger man had made to him considered void. He could then pay off the bank and all would be right with his world.

Josiah lit up a cigar and leant back in his chair to consider his options, savouring his dreams for a prosperous future once this current cash-flow crisis was over.

A tap on the door, which opened immediately, interrupting his thoughts and Miss Caraway marched in without him even giving permission for her to enter. He really should sack the woman, she was far too full of her own importance. A real busybody if ever there was one. Very nearly insubordinate. He would dismiss her, if only she wasn’t so damned efficient.

‘Sorry to interrupt, sir, but it’s the bank manager. He says he’d like a quick word if you’re free, and I see that you are, so I’ll show him in.’ Before he could protest that he was actually extremely busy, let alone extinguish his cigar, the man himself came marching in as if he already owned the damn place.

Maggie was once more vomiting up her breakfast in the water closet, yet it was her sister she was worrying about. Livia ached to find a real purpose in life, something she’d been fretting over for months, and dreaded being married off to anyone, Henry in particular.

Maggie felt sure she’d made this promise only to protect her. If only she knew the truth. She could only hope that she would find some way to wriggle out of it before it was too late.

Their father was a difficult man to fool when it came to pulling the wool over his eyes, and if ever he discovered that Livia had tricked him, there would be all hell to pay.

He never considered the feelings of anyone but himself, not staff, servants, or even the happiness of his own children. Poverty, bereavement, ill health, all left him entirely unmoved. His own needs were paramount. He hadn’t shown the slightest sympathy when she’d been too sick to eat those dratted kippers, a malady which seemed to have lingered on ever since.

Now Maggie wiped her mouth, retrieved her diary from its hiding place and crawled back into bed. As she began to write, filling in the commonplace day-to-day happenings, a butterfly she’d seen, or what they’d had for tea, she worried over what illness it was that plagued her. What could she have eaten to upset her stomach so badly and produce this dreadful bilious attack? At first she’d put it down to the late summer heat, but it had been going on for weeks now and was getting no better.

As always, the nausea seemed to go off a little during the course of the day, which was something of a relief, although she still felt generally below par, not at all herself. Then every morning Maggie would find herself once more with her head in the bathroom sink, throwing up the contents of an empty stomach.

Unable to concentrate on her writing, she lay back against the pillows and closed her eyes, utterly exhausted, recalling how often this had happened over the last week or so.

This was the moment when reality struck.

Some memory of her mother being sick in exactly the same manner seeped into her mind. It had been during one of the many pregnancies that had ended in tragedy, yet another miscarriage in her efforts to present her husband with the much longed-for son. Now the truth seemed to strike Maggie as if she’d been shot between the shoulder blades.

She leapt to her feet and ran to stare at herself in the dressing-table mirror. Her own shocked eyes gazed back at her in horror, and she knew without a shadow of a doubt, despite there being no visible signs to prove it, exactly what was wrong with her. She was pregnant. Dear God in heaven, she was carrying her own father’s child.

Oh Lord, now what was she to do?

She knew instinctively that this was one problem she could never share with her sisters. Ella was too far away to be of any help, and was in any case completely
scatter-brained
with no experience of such things. She was also far too selfish and wrapped up in herself, so very like Father in that respect. The silly girl was, at times, her own worst enemy. It would be useless asking Ella.

As for Livia, her beloved elder sister fondly believed with absolute certainty that she’d successfully protected her from their father’s brutality, as she’d promised their
mother she would. Maggie knew that it would hurt her badly to discover that she’d failed. She was even now planning some miraculous escape, which they both knew to be impossible. Their father would never let them go. She would be deeply distressed if she ever learnt the truth about what Maggie had suffered for years at Josiah’s hand.

And the shame Maggie herself would feel if it all came out would be too much to bear. No matter what the cost, this was a secret she must somehow manage to keep all to herself.

Mercy had come to loathe Nurse Bathurst, hated everyone in fact, in this dreadful place. The woman insisted on absolute discipline at all times, would poke the boys with a stick if they didn’t jump to it when she issued an order, or stop their noisy banter when she told them to shut up. Batty Brenda liked peace and quiet in her ward, and would make them stand with their hands on their heads for hours on end, until they were whimpering with distress, or until the air was rank with the smell of urine leaked during the overlong restraint.

All that pain just to teach them the value of obedience.

Mercy saw one young boy locked in solitary confinement for two whole days for taking a handkerchief that didn’t belong to him.

‘I think he took it by mistake,’ she protested, as always coming quickly to her charge’s defence. ‘He couldn’t read the initials in the corner. Maybe I could teach him his letters, would that help?’

‘There’s no point in wasting time and money on teaching this lot anything,’ came the predictable response.

‘You should learn to keep your mouth shut, or it’ll get you in worse bother,’ her friend Prue would warn her.

Mercy couldn’t deny it. It was her big mouth which had got her shut in here in the first place. What had possessed her to make those demands of Josiah Angel? She must have been mad. He’d abandoned her lovely mother, so why should he care a toss about her?

‘I’m sorry, but I can’t just stand by and say nothing when that woman intimidates and ridicules those poor patients,’ Mercy objected, as the two girls made their way back down the corridor. ‘Them lads don’t understand and get upset when she makes jibes at them. They’re just a bit young and daft, that’s all. It’s so unfair.’

‘Huh, life is unfair,’ Prue snapped. ‘Haven’t you learned that by now? Just keep out of the woman’s way in future.’

Easier said than done.

One of the boys, not much younger than Mercy herself, had a bad squint. Batty Brenda called him ‘squint-eye’, or ‘cock-eyed Jamie’ and never let up badgering the poor boy over his deficiencies from morning till night.

Sadly, his handicap made him clumsy and one morning while trying to set down his mug of hot chocolate, he missed the table altogether and it fell to the floor, smashing the pot mug to smithereens, the dark milky substance pooling across the clean linoleum.

Nurse Bathurst came marching over, fury in her voice as she berated the hapless boy. ‘Now look what you’ve done, you squint-eyed idiot,’ and she smacked the lad across the back of his head, making him even more
cross-eyed
.

Mercy was on her feet in a second. She wished with all her heart that Jack were here. He’d soon sort out this Batty Brenda person, but since he wasn’t, she’d tackle the woman herself. ‘Don’t you dare smack him, and don’t call him names neither, it’s hurtful. It’s not Jamie’s fault his eyes wander all over the place so that he can’t properly see what he’s doing. Why can’t you leave the lad alone, you great bully!’

There was an awed silence, even those who paid little attention to what was going on around them stopped giggling and gossiping to take in the full import of her words. Nurse Bathurst’s gaze was one of outraged fury that this strip of a girl should dare, yet again, to cross her, and in such a way.

Mercy could feel her cheeks growing all hot and red, and wondered what devil possessed her to keep constantly putting herself in such jeopardy? When would she ever learn to keep her lip buttoned? She tried to redeem her mistake by running to grab a cloth to mop up the mess. The woman waited until the floor was mopped clean and every shard of broken pottery swept up before fixing Mercy with her gimlet gaze.

‘My office, Simpson. Now!’

This time the punishment wasn’t scrubbing the floor twice over, or being deprived of her supper. Nor was she
sent out into the yard with shaming words chalked across her breast, which much later Mercy thought would have been far preferable. She was stripped of her clothing right down to her birthday suit, then dressed in a large coarse potato sack, thrown into a small dark cell, and left in solitary confinement for four days and nights on plain bread and water.

At first she sang to herself, or recited the poems and stories her mother used to tell her. But in the end the silence won. She curled up like a hibernating animal, and simply waited for the time to pass. Mercy was of the firm belief that during this period she gradually began to lose her mind, which perhaps accounted for what happened later.

Mercy would watch the visitors arrive on the first Saturday of every month, but none ever came to see her. She would read the diet sheet on the wall promising untold delights, and then eat the thin porridge or the bread and gruel without comment. And then one Wednesday in late September the patients were instructed to put on clean shirts or aprons and present themselves with clean hands and faces for inspection, as they were expecting an important visitor that afternoon.

As they lined up in the hall to greet their visitor, Mercy’s heart leapt into her throat as she saw who their esteemed guest actually was. None other than Josiah Angel himself was standing before them, smiling and nodding at all the upturned faces before him, scanning the lines as if looking for one face in particular. Mercy
thought she might be sick with the excitement of it.

He was looking for
her
! He’d come for her at last. Why else would he be here? Filled with hope that he’d suffered a change of heart, Mercy pushed back her shoulders and stood up very straight, knowing that at any minute he would see her, and all would at last be right with her world. He must regret sending her off with a flea in her ear that day, and had come to make recompense by rescuing her. She could hardly believe her good fortune.

She nudged Prue, standing in line beside her. ‘It’s him, my dad. Didn’t I tell you he’d come?’

Prue cast her a quick glance of anxious disbelief, clearly thinking she’d lost her marbles, before quietly shushing her. ‘What are you talking about? That’s not your father, that’s Mr Angel. Mr Josiah Angel from the big department store.’

‘I know who he is,’ Mercy insisted. ‘And I tell you he
is
my father.’

A hissed whisper from behind. ‘I thought you said your da were the prime minister, or was it Baron Rothschild? Or happen it’s King Edward himself. How about that? Why didn’t we realise we had a princess in our midst?’ A fit of stifled giggling broke out, quickly silenced by a fierce glare from Nurse Bathurst.

Josiah was drawing nearer, moving along the lines as if he were a major general inspecting the troops. Without pausing to consider the consequences of such an action, Mercy stepped out in front of him.

‘Good morning, Father. I’m so glad to see you’ve come for me at last.’

You could have heard a pin drop. The silence in the great hall was profound.

Mercy was looking up into his face and didn’t see how Mr Cardew, the master of the workhouse, and Matron, who stood beside him, positively seethed with fury. But the silence was beginning to make her feel uncomfortable. It had this affect upon her ever since that spell in solitary, the longest four days of her entire life. She could see that Josiah Angel didn’t look quite so pleased to see her as she might have hoped. His face was changing colour, from ruddy red to ashen white, and then a ghastly purple. It was at this point that Mercy came to her senses and, too late, saw the mistake she had made.

‘What did the girl say? Are her wits addled?’

Panic and anxiety was almost palpable as Matron said something about her being a problem from the first day she’d arrived; that the girl did not appreciate how fortunate she was to have a roof over her head, food in her belly and regular employment.

Mr Cardew was almost falling over himself in his eagerness to agree with his wife’s assessment. A large hand reached out to snatch Mercy by the collar and she found herself being roughly shaken as phrases such as ‘ungrateful child’, ‘rude and obscene’, ‘a cheeky little troublemaker who leads men on’, were being bandied back and forth.

‘The chit is certainly a fantasist and a liar,’ said Josiah, speaking as if from a great height. ‘Such insubordination must be dealt with.’

Now he was bending his head to engage in a whispered
conversation with the master, his eyes boring into hers as he did so. Mercy was beginning to shake with nerves. He hadn’t come for her at all. He’d come to check that she was still safely locked up. Or more likely he’d completely forgotten about her existence until she had stupidly reminded him.

‘Yes, indeed, sir,’ the master was saying. ‘I do so agree. An example must be made.’

Seconds later, Mercy was being frogmarched out of the hall.

To be branded a liar by your own father for speaking nothing less than the truth was bad enough, but what followed was harsh beyond even Mercy’s imaginings.

Much later she learnt that it was at Josiah’s suggestion she be given a dozen lashes instead of the more usual six. Mercy stared in wide-eyed disbelief as the master reached for the birch. She was held down over a chair by two assistants, her skirts lifted, her drawers pulled down and her bottom bared. She soon realised that, wriggle and protest as she might, there would be no escape. The pain of the first lash was excruciating and she cried out, the thin sharp sticks of the birch cutting deeply into her flesh, and her body jerking violently with each new stroke. Four more of these and Mercy was beyond pain, aware only of a red mist forming before her eyes in which furious faces leered at her then faded away, mouthing words she couldn’t hear. On the eighth stroke she blessedly passed out, and when vinegar and water failed to revive her, Matron judged it best to proceed no further, for fear they
might have a dead girl on their hands.

Instead she was thrown back into solitary and left to lie in a pool of her own blood, fading in and out of consciousness for what felt like an eternity.

It was her dear friend Prue who was finally permitted to take her back to the dormitory, although not till the following morning. She bathed Mercy’s wounds and staunched the bleeding with cold water, since she had nothing else. But by then it was too late. The lashes and the dark solitary hole had done their work. Mercy felt completely numb, as if they’d finally broken her spirit and robbed her forever of that vital spark of happiness and faith in the world that had been a natural part of her personality.