House of Angels (3 page)

Had she possessed one jot of Livia’s courage, she might still have fiercely repudiated his argument. She longed to maintain her obdurate stand, to scream at her father that he’d only agreed to this match because it suited him financially to do so, all too bitterly aware that the marriage was nothing more than a business transaction. Yet she could not find the strength to resist.

Ella had once been considered her father’s favourite, the only one who called him by the pet name ‘Dadda’, and the one least likely to suffer from his unpredictable temper. Yet she knew that even she could not win this time. Her cause was lost. Everything had changed the day he’d discovered her in the conservatory with Danny Gilpin. Her young lover had been dismissed without a reference from his job as groom to the family, and arrangements
were at once put in place for Ella’s hasty marriage.

She shuddered at the prospect of marrying a man she barely knew: apparently a religious fanatic with three young children already from a previous marriage. It was like something out of a cheap Victorian melodrama. They’d entered a new century, and already the emancipation of women was reaching new heights, with some daring ladies embarking upon golf and cycling, tennis and even wearing bloomers. Yet she was to be allowed no say even in a choice of husband.

Josiah strolled over to his two trembling daughters, and as Maggie instinctively shrank from his touch, he dropped the key in her lap.

‘When you’ve let your sister out of the cage, see that the key is put back on its hook in my study without delay, then return to your duties. I want no more histrionics. I trust this episode will serve to reinforce the importance of obedience, something you all seem to have forgotten. Ella, you come with me. We have arrangements to make.’

Ella cast her sisters one last anguished glance before trailing from the room in her father’s wake, shocked into silence as she contemplated her fate.

The moment the door closed, Maggie rushed to release Livia, tears rolling down her cheeks as she rubbed and massaged her sister’s numbed wrists and hands, fetched warm water to bathe the fresh wounds on her back made by the shining leather strap.

They did not engage in any discussion over what had just taken place. Nor did they allow themselves the luxury of bewailing their lot. Much as both girls loved
their sister, they were only too bleakly aware that further resistance was fruitless. Their tyrant father had won, getting the better of them all as he had done so many times in the past. Livia might now be allowed out of the cage but there seemed to be no escape from the prison he’d erected around all three of his daughters.

Nothing changed in Fellside in the weeks following her mother’s death, save for Mercy being faced with the
day-to
-day reality of living without her. She still rose every morning at five to riddle the clinker left in the stove and make herself a brew from the leftover tea leaves in the pot. She would empty the slop bucket down the privy out in the alley, then wash her hands and face using the bit of hot water left in the kettle, mixing it with a splash of cold from the pail she kept in the corner. There was no running water up here in the loft, a tap being a luxury enjoyed only by those who lived on the lower floors. If she was lucky, she’d nibble on a heel of bread, or Jessie might bring her up a bowl of porridge left over from her own family’s breakfast. She was generous that way.

Once she was dressed, Mercy made her bed every morning exactly as her mother had taught her, emptied the night soil bucket out in the yard, then got on with the weaving. The clack of the loom at least filled the deafening silence. How she missed her mother’s lively chatter, her
laughter, and Florrie’s cheery certainty that tomorrow, or the day after that, things would get better.

But Mercy knew things could only get worse now that she was alone. And how she would find the rent each week, let alone food to fill her young belly, was still a mystery to her. She’d have starved already if it hadn’t been for Jessie and her family.

There was talk of change in the neighbourhood, of buildings being threatened with demolition. ‘Slum clearance’, they called it. A proud town like Kendal didn’t much care to have any part of it described in such a way, although finding the money to make the necessary improvements always took second place to the needs of the wealthy, to men like Josiah Angel, who ran this town. It could be years before they ever got round to the task.

Little, in fact, had altered in the district over the last two centuries beyond some necessary attention given to the sewers and water supply, which had originally come from the Tea Well at the top of Fountain Brow, and had been closed almost half a century ago because of the risk of typhoid. Overall there still hung the sweet-sour stink of mouldy decay, shared privies, household refuse, and the waste and sweat of too many bodies crowded into too few dwellings.

Old women still sat on stools at their doors while
barefooted
children played hoop-la or marbles in the filth of the gutters, if they were fortunate enough to own such treasures and not otherwise employed helping to work the hand-loom, or run errands for their mothers. Yet despite this evidence of a close-knit community where
loyalties were strong and everyone knew the business of their neighbours, it was not a place to linger, nor one in which to risk taking short cuts unless you were sure of your bearings.

Mercy ventured out only to buy a few essentials. She kept herself very much to herself, wrapped in a private world of grief. She missed her mother desperately, and, despite her good intentions, would often waste hours each day just lying on her bed weeping. She might never have found the courage to carry on at all had it not been for Jessie. It was the older woman who had gently bullied her into working again by fetching her the yarn. She’d remind her to eat, insist she wash her face, even comb her tangled curls. And when the day’s shift was done, she’d fetch her up a bit of warm dinner on a plate.

Jessie Flint was a large woman with breasts like cushions that shook when she laughed, which she did surprisingly often. She had smooth white hair fastened in a knot at her nape, and dark watchful eyes, few teeth, but plenty of grit in her soul. She was the mother of nine children, all of whom seemed to have miraculously survived, no doubt due to the canny ingenuity their mother instilled in each and every one of them. They were all of them streetwise, never missing a chance to earn an easy penny, whether by holding a gentleman’s horse or sneaking off with his purse. Jessie’s view of right and wrong was tempered by the necessity to earn a crust, if not always an honest one – the needs of her precious brood coming well above any fancy law devised by the rich and the blessed.

The Flint family made their living out of weaving, and
from knitting stockings, the younger ones knitting in the thumbs. Jessie had readily passed on all she knew to Florrie when she’d first come to Fellside. Like her mother before her, from whom Jessie had learnt these skills, she would stand at her door in her old coal-scuttle bonnet, swaying or ‘swaving’ as the knitters called it, moving gently with the rhythm of her knitting sticks. There were few knitters left in Kendal now, the trade almost gone, but Jessie clung on to the old ways because she loved the work, and needed every penny she could earn.

Mercy didn’t know how she would have coped without her friend, or Jessie’s eldest son, Jack, who was yet again urging her to carry out her mother’s last wishes.

‘Damn it, Mercy, just swallow your pride, go to the store and ask for work. It’s what your ma wanted for you. That bastard Josiah Angel owes you that much at least.’

‘I want nowt from him,’ Mercy said, her small voice tight with pain. ‘The man has ignored my existence for sixteen years, why should I go to him now with me begging bowl?’

‘Because he’s your da, and as much responsible for your well-being as your ma was.’

‘No he ain’t. I loved me ma, but I hate him.’

‘’Course you do, but who else do you have now that she’s gone?’

‘I have you and Jessie. Leastways, I thought I did.’

Jack patted her head in a rare show of affection. ‘’Course you do, lass. Always, you know that. But we’re stretched as it is, and this man could give you so
much more. You deserve better than this.’

Mercy was accustomed to listening to her old friend, whom she admired and revered, turning to him whenever she was in trouble. Jack was older and wiser than herself, a man now at twenty-three, and with a growing reputation for toughness. He led a band of followers who lapped up his every word, ready to do his bidding with no questions asked. But Jack was no one’s fool, and not a man to cross. If power helped you to survive on Fellside, then Jack Flint ranked high in the pecking order; top of the tree in these buildings, although there were rival gangs down other yards and entries.

He could be as boisterous and rowdy as the rest; drink most of them under the table when he had coins in his pocket, but was also pig-headed, stiff-necked, and naturally perverse and argumentative. He was perhaps a mite too impulsive, and certainly never slow to take on a fight if challenged. But he was also a man of strong opinions with a mind of his own, the sort of person you could turn to when in trouble, always ready to take on the world if he sensed an injustice, albeit judged by a set of principles forged by the tough life he’d led. Jack Flint was impervious to danger and readily flouting all normal rules and conventions.

In Mercy’s eyes he could do no wrong. He was deeply caring, supportive and protective; not only her best friend but her hero, and she had adored him for as long as she could remember. Even the look of him delighted her. His hair, the colour of burnished mahogany, sprang back from a wide brow, reaching almost to his shoulders, as
wild and untamed as Jack himself. His velvet brown eyes were dark and brooding beneath winged brows, the chin strong and square, the lower lip full and sensual beneath a straight, almost aquiline nose. A face that might have marked him out as an eighteenth-century gentleman, had not the set of those broad shoulders proved he was very much able to take care of himself in the tough world of Fellside.

Of late, Mercy had begun to see him in a rather different light from that of big brother, a role he’d readily adopted on her behalf, although not through any encouragement on his part. Much to her disappointment, Jack still saw her as a scrawny child in need of care and protection. But it had long been Mercy’s secret desire to alter this view he held of her, given time and opportunity. She dreamt he might one day see her as a young attractive woman. For this reason alone, if for no other, she paid heed to what he had to say.

‘You don’t have to give a toss about the greedy bastard. I’m not asking you to turn into Josiah Angel’s devoted daughter, or to love and respect him. Why should you, for pity’s sake? But you could use him, as he used your ma. Play him for all you’re worth and relieve him of some of his ill-gotten brass.’

Mercy gave a vigorous shake to the head. ‘Oh, I could never do that. I couldn’t just walk in and ask for money any more than I could ask him for a job. I just couldn’t.’

Jack let out a heavy sigh, and looking into the young girl’s pale face with bruises like thumb prints beneath those big turquoise-blue eyes, judged that she might
be right. Mercy Simpson was not nearly as tough as she might pretend, which was something she’d need to change in the months ahead.

‘How about if I make the appeal on your behalf?’

‘Oh, I couldn’t ask you to do that for me, Jack. It wouldn’t be right.’

‘Why wouldn’t it? It’s no skin off my nose. He can only say no, can’t he? Though he’d have to give me a damn good reason why, if he refused to do owt for you. Here, give me that letter, and I’ll see what I can do, eh?’

‘I’m not sure.’ Mercy glanced at the letter, which lay between them as they sat cross-legged on the dusty wooden floor. She stared at the familiar handwriting penned in her mother’s carefully rounded script, and thought of walking into Josiah Angel’s fancy store, looking like the scarecrow she was. Mercy quailed at the thought. She’d be tongue-tied. Even if his minions allowed her in to see him, she very much doubted he’d listen to a word she said, let alone read any letter she held in her filthy paws. And yet…

‘No, Jack, it’s my responsibility. I’ll do it. I’ll make an extra effort and clean mesel up a bit. Happen ask your mam if she can find me summat decent to wear. Then I’ll go and see him. Beard the lion in his den, as it were. Anyroad, I’m curious to know what he looks like. He’s me da, after all.’

Jack felt a nudge of pride for her spirit, but he also felt very slightly cheated. There was nothing he’d have liked more than to find some excuse for challenging that
man, anything to use against the bully who so pitilessly exploited folk in order to satisfy his own greed.

The cottages and lofts that Josiah Angel owned and which Jack’s entire family inhabited, along with several others, were naught but damp, rat-infested fleapits, with insufficient privies to serve all the poor souls who occupied them. People had taken to using the streets rather than face the stink of lavatories that often overflowed. Yet rents were going up time and again despite the fact that the amount of weaving work available, much of it provided by his friend and colleague Henry Hodson, was rapidly decreasing. The weaving trade was dying before their eyes, nothing was being done to save it, and yet the workers were still being screwed for every last penny.

Oh, aye, Jack had his own reasons for doing battle with the man, besides supporting Mercy.

He’d privately relished the prospect of giving him a punch on the nose for what he’d done to poor Florrie, and by default little Mercy here. Course, he could always make a few enquiries on his own account; sniff out the opposition, like, test the waters, check out the lie of the land. Jack trotted out all his favourite
catchphrases
in his head, savouring the thought of these investigations.

He resolved to keep a close eye on what went on, and if the man didn’t treat her right, he’d soon find that Mercy was not alone in her current difficulties. Josiah Angel might be able to fob off Florrie and her child, but the fellow would find that he, Jack Flint, was a very different
kettle of fish. He’d soon discover that the lass now had friends capable of protecting her, ready to stand up to bullies like him. And by challenging the evil bastard, Jack would be doing all the occupants of these buildings a favour.