Mulligan's Yard (6 page)

‘If you iron, I shall pay for that, too,’ he stated.

‘Naturally,’ said Tilly, standing as tall as she could manage.

‘There’s nothing free in this life, is there?’ he asked.

Well, blood and stomach pills, thought Tilly. He had made a remark, expressed a level of opinion, of judgement. ‘We’ll do you proud, Mr Mulligan,’ she conceded. If he was
prepared to make an effort, then so would she. ‘There’s no finer laundry in all England. We’ve been up to our eyes in soap and water since we could walk, me and our
Mona.’

‘A hard life,’ he remarked. ‘And a damp one.’

‘It’s not been easy,’ agreed Mona, completely oblivious to the man’s small quip. ‘Especially when we first started and our Tilly mixed starch that thick –
why, you could have plastered a full ceiling with it.’

Tilly bridled. ‘Now, listen here, you,’ she barked at her sister, ‘that were nowt. What about you and that red scarf? Pink sheets, pink tablecloths. Mam went mad.’

A strange sound assaulted the women’s ears. He was laughing. And, Mona decided after looking at him, he was the most beautiful thing she’d seen except at the pictures on a Saturday
night. So, he had a sense of humour, then.

‘By the way,’ he said, his face settling back into its normal expression of hard, implacable lines, ‘I am not in the habit of instigating litigation.’

Tilly’s mouth fell open. ‘Eh?’ she said, before she could help herself.

‘I don’t sue gossips.’

The sisters avoided his eyes, Tilly going back to her Oxydol and chlorine, Mona shuffling off to help a woman pack her washing.

He turned, made his farewell, then left the building.

Tilly righted herself, a box of Dolly Blue still clamped in a rigid fist. So, he had heard the three of them discussing the mystery of his cellar up at Pendleton Grange. What had they said? She
rooted about in the canals of recent memory. Photos of naked women. Experiments on living creatures, both human and animal. Oh, heck.

Mona was in a flat spin. Supposedly helping a woman to pack wet washing, she got towels mixed up with underwear, colours tangled with whites. ‘Sorry,’ she told the bemused client.
What was he going to think of her at all? Mind, he didn’t seem one to carry a grudge, because he had laughed and said something about not suing folk for gossip.

Tilly put down her Dolly Blue and began the business of cashing up. She kept an eye on Mona, who, once the stragglers had left, was making a bad fist of cleaning up. She was a bit on the
hysterical side, was Mona. If she got herself overexcited, there might well be tears before bedtime.

When the money was safely tucked away in canvas bags, Tilly breathed her way across the floor, lungs struggling to take in enough oxygen to fuel her huge body. She swept, mopped, pulled some odd
socks from behind a sink. There must be loads of men walking about Bolton with one brown foot, one black.

Mona polished the windows. She could see him across the way, seated at his desk, bending over, probably writing. He had such a lot of hair, unruly, it was. She experienced a sudden urge to run
across with scissors and a comb, but she knew she daren’t. There was something about him, as if he’d been hurt and had decided to clad himself in armour, all tough shell covering a
broken heart. The hand clutching the wash-leather slowed. Why, if she’d been married, and if she’d had a son, he could have been about the same age as James Mulligan.

‘Mona?’

‘What?’

‘Watch yourself. You’ll be coming off that ladder in a minute. We don’t want you getting a leg broke, do we?’

That night, as they sat by their range in the kitchen, each with her skirt raised to welcome the heat, Tilly carried on where she’d left off before Mulligan’s visit. ‘I still
wonder who he thinks he is,’ she said, the words echoing into an almost empty cocoa cup.

Mona was looking at pictures in the flames, was dreaming dreams of what might have been had she been thinner, younger, prettier.

‘Mona? Are you listening to me?’

‘Of course I am.’

‘Well, what did I say?’

Mona drained her cup. ‘Something about who does he think he is.’ She continued to stare into the fire. ‘I don’t think he knows who he is, or what he is.’

‘Eh?’

Mona blinked slowly. ‘He’s got a lot on his mind.’

‘Oh? And which crystal ball did you see that in, Mona Walsh?’

‘His eyes,’ replied the younger woman. ‘I saw it in his eyes.’

‘Rubbish.’ Tilly clattered off to the scullery.

Mona dozed in her chair. She saw a little lost boy running round in circles. He had black hair and brown eyes and his clothes were torn. His father was drunk and his mother was dead. She saw a
fine man with a frown and a load of responsibilities. These two were the same person.

‘Mona?’

She woke with a start. ‘What?’

‘Another drink?’

‘No thanks.’ It was time for bed. Mona stood up and stretched. Who was he? And what was in that cellar?

For the first time in her short life, Sally Hayes had a bedroom all to herself. It was high up in the roof, its dormer window overlooking the rear gardens and yards of
Pendleton Grange, property of Mr James Mulligan, a silent, broody man of whom most people were terrified. He never shouted, never threatened anybody’s job, but he seemed to have so much
power, so much quiet strength, that everybody kept out of his way whenever possible.

But Sally Hayes wasn’t frightened of him, not any more. He was one of the kindest, gentlest people she had ever encountered in her fourteen years. Brought up in an orphanage after the
early deaths of her parents, she felt at home here. The room wasn’t huge, but it was hers. There was a rule in the house about privacy, so every servant had a
PRIVATE
sign on his or her door, with
PLEASE KNOCK
printed underneath. Mr Mulligan set a lot of store by a person’s privacy. On the cellar door, there was no sign inviting a
knock: on the cellar door the notice read, do not enter.

She snuggled down under the patchwork quilt, enjoying the luxury of being in bed during daylight hours. Her room had yellow check curtains, a wardrobe, a little table with drawers underneath and
a mirror over it, a pine chest with a padded lid, a straight chair, an upholstered armchair, pictures on the walls, even on the wall above her bed. It was the pictures that made it homely, she
decided.

Sally dozed, remembering the day when he had chosen her. Just another ordinary morning it had been, make your bed, dress the little children, do your chores. There had been no cruelty, no abuse,
no whip to keep the orphans working. On that Monday morning, they had gone off to school, where Sally had been employed to help with lessons, teaching infants their letters, mixing ink for the
juniors, giving out milk, making cups of tea for the six kind teachers.

And he simply materialized, like a ghost that drifted through walls. One minute she was on her own in the cloakroom, picking up shoes, hanging coats and wiping sinks, then there he was, tall, so
big that he almost had to stoop to enter the inner room where the ten washbasins stood. He asked her about her future. She told him she liked to keep busy, that she enjoyed reading and drawing,
that she could sew, knit and do plain meals.

He nodded a few times, asked her would she like a job in a big house, left her alone to think about it.

Sally hadn’t needed to think. Miss Purcell, the headmistress, had shed a few tears, then everyone had clubbed together to buy Sally a beautiful handbag and some gloves, both gifts made out
of the softest kid. They lay now in white tissue, wrapped safely and kept in Sally’s top drawer with her underwear.

Someone knocked at her door. ‘Come in,’ she called, expecting to see a member of staff.

James Mulligan entered the room. He carried a little vase containing a few freesias. ‘They smell nice,’ he explained.

Sally wished she had brushed her hair properly. ‘Thank you, sir.’

He placed the vase on the windowsill. ‘Two more calves,’ he told her, before sitting in the armchair. ‘Both well, both feeding.’

‘Lovely,’ she replied.

‘And I’ll take the washing to the laundry at the yard until your ankle is well again. The others have enough to do without tackling laundry as well.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ she repeated.

He sat for several minutes, seemed to be deep in thought.

It was his silences that frightened people, Sally decided. He was just one of those types whose brains were busy, the same as a painter or a writer, a bit absent-minded. He had picked her
because she looked weedy, as if she needed feeding up and keeping warm. He had never said that, but Sally knew that there were better and hardier specimens in the Chiverton Children’s
Home.

‘Are you happy here?’ he asked suddenly.

‘Oh, yes. I’m very happy, Mr Mulligan.’

‘Is the work too much?’

‘No, sir. If you mean my ankle, like, it could have happened to anybody. I just kecked over on a cobble.’

‘Kecked over?’

She smiled. A lot of the Lancashire expressions were still mysteries to him. ‘I think the right word might be “keeled”, sir. Keeled over.’

‘Ah.’ Once again, he stared into space for at least two minutes. ‘You’re well-read,’ he pronounced eventually. ‘Don’t hesitate to use the
library.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

He sighed. ‘No need to thank me, Sally. The written word is for everyone, not just for those who can afford the paper on which it’s printed. Like music and paintings – for all
of us, you understand. When you read Shakespeare, or look at a Constable, when you listen to Mozart on the crystal or the gramophone, you are hearing a piece of a departed soul, a slice of his
being. Those sights, sounds and ideas were bequeathed to the whole of mankind, because they were gifts from God, gifts to be shared.’

Sally was stunned, not because of what he had said but by his having strung together so many words all at once. She felt honoured, singled out by this very clever man.

‘Sally?’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘Do they . . . talk about the cellar?’

She bit her lip. This was a difficult one to answer. Her loyalty to her employer was almost boundless, but she owed much to her colleagues, too. At the orphanage, nobody ever told tales. It
wasn’t for fear of dreadful punishment, but it was a law, like a commandment. She decided to compromise. ‘I think most of us wonder about it a bit.’

‘Mary Whitworth, I believe, has been putting stories about, in the town and so forth.’

‘Oh.’ She gulped audibly. ‘She’s young, sir.’

A smile threatened. ‘Older than you, my dear. But, then, you’ve always been old, haven’t you? Orphans are often wise.’

She attempted no answer, no comment.

‘Am I a bad man?’

The girl shook her head quickly, emphatically.

‘Do I look like your average mad scientist? Is my hair wild?’

She couldn’t resist. ‘Yes, it’s wild.’

Now, he really did laugh. ‘You should see a painting of Beethoven, then. Looked like something from Greek or Roman myth, a head covered in snakes.’

‘And if you looked at the snakes, you went blind, or died,’ she said. ‘You had to cover your eyes, then cut their heads off, but you couldn’t see where they were,
’cos you were blindfolded.’ She hung her own tousled head. ‘I read about it somewhere.’

‘Ah, did you, now? Well, I must be off and about my business. Keep the weight off that foot, whatever.’

‘Yes, sir.’ It was because of her that he had bought the car. He’d told her at the time that he had no intention of taking any poor soul to the hospital in a cart ever again,
because the journey had been unnecessarily painful for the patient. This was definitely not a bad man. ‘Sir?’

‘Yes?’

‘I don’t care what you’ve got in the cellars.’

‘Thank you, Sally.’ He stood up and approached the bed. ‘We all have a cellar, you know. Mine’s made of bricks and mortar, but the cellars of the human mind are deep and
invisible. Each man has his secrets and his fears.’

She didn’t know anything about all that, so she stayed quiet.

‘Life’s a battle,’ he told her now. ‘Gird yourself, be strong, read all you can and know all you can.’

‘Yes, sir.’

He turned and left the room. As he passed Mary Whitworth’s door, he noticed that it was closing very slowly. ‘Mary?’ he called.

With her face beetroot red, the copper-haired girl crept out on to the landing. ‘Sir?’

She had been listening at Sally’s door, of that he felt certain.

‘The yard in town is full of talk. Now, I don’t want to gag anyone, but do you really need to discuss my arrangements with your family and friends? Don’t be speculating about
the cellar and its contents. Whatever goes on down there is my business, mine alone. Let me reassure you that I am breaking no law, Mary. Do you understand?’

She nodded quickly.

‘And there’ll be no more gossip? Did you know that gossip can hurt people? Is this an end to it, so?’

‘Yes, sir.’ She waited until he had gone downstairs, then pushed open Sally’s door. ‘God, I thought he was going to kill me. If I got the sack, it’d be my mother
killing me and all.’

‘You shouldn’t talk,’ said Sally. ‘It’s not fair, going behind his back. If you’ve anything to say, say it to him.’

Mary laughed mirthlessly. ‘Oh, but I’m not his favourite, am I? I didn’t get picked by him, so I’m not special. He doesn’t come into my bedroom for cosy little
chats. You want to watch yourself, girl. Some of them like scrawny bits of gristle on their plate.’

Taking into account a bad sprain and an overstretched ligament, Sally moved very quickly, jumping out of bed, feeling very little pain except for the fury in her chest. ‘There’s a
sign on my door that says “Private”. Get out, shut the door, and next time, knock.’

‘Ooh,’ exclaimed Mary, the syllable stretching through a couple of seconds and varying in pitch. ‘Touchy, aren’t we? Did I come a bit too near the truth?’

‘You wouldn’t know the truth, Mary Whitworth, if it hit you across the chops like a pound of cod. Well, just you listen to me for once. I might be quiet, but I take it all in. I used
to wash four tablecloths a week, but there’s only three now. Who’s in charge of the table? You are. Well, I’m in charge of washing and it’s time I counted his
sheets.’