Ragamuffin Angel (2 page)
‘Aye.’ The twins spoke in unison as they mostly did. Along with Dan they were still living at home, John having married a year after Mavis, and Art the year after John. The twins were bright enough to know on which side their bread was buttered however – you didn’t argue with their mother and get away with it, nor John if it came to that.
‘Right.’ John’s eyes flicked over them all again but he avoided direct contact with Art’s steady gaze. ‘Let’s get on with it then, we’re turning into blooming snowmen out here with all this jawing.’
John’s first knock at the gnarled shabby door of the cottage went unanswered, but as his hand was lowering for the second time the door was wrenched open and Jacob himself stood framed in the aperture, minus his coat and cap and muffler. John watched his brother-in-law’s eyes narrow, and after a quick, ‘Stay where you are, I’ll deal with this,’ to the occupants of the room, Jacob stepped down into the snow, pulling the door shut behind him whilst keeping his hand on the latch.
‘Evening, Jacob.’
John sounded as though he was enjoying himself, and his small stocky frame seemed puffed up with importance, but it was to Art that Jacob said, ‘Aye, well what’s all this about then, man?’ after he had glanced at them all in turn.
‘You know damn well what it’s about so don’t play that game.’ John cut in before Art could open his mouth.
‘Is that right?’
‘Aye, it’s right.’ John was fairly bristling now.
‘And if I say I don’t?’
‘Look, Jacob, don’t make this any more difficult than it needs to be.’ There was a conciliatory note in Art’s voice. ‘We’ve come to talk to you, that’s all.’
‘Oh aye?’ Jacob’s narrowed eyes swept over the five men in front of him before coming to rest on Dan, and he continued to look into Dan’s worried face as he said, ‘And you had to bring the lad with you, did you? I thought better of you, Art.’
‘He’s old enough to work and he’s old enough to be here.’ Again John’s voice brought Jacob’s gaze his way. ‘And who are you to say what’s right and wrong anyway?’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning you stand outside your fancy woman’s cottage and then have the gall to criticise us? You’re a cool one, I’ll give you that, Jacob Owen, but your days of visiting here are over.’
‘I work for your father, John, and when we’re there you have the authority to give me any orders he tells you to, but outside is where it finishes. When I step out of those doors of an evening I’m me own man. I don’t interfere in your marriage and I don’t expect you to interfere in mine.’
‘I don’t keep a whore on the side.’
He was spoiling for a fight. Jacob looked at the small man in front of him, who had all the aggressive tenacity of a bull terrier, and something in the other man’s eyes told him how this was going to end. Whatever was in Edith Stewart had been passed down in the genes to her eldest all right, and he’d bet his last penny it was his mother-in-law who had instigated this little visit. She controlled John, she controlled them all, even the old man. His thoughts prompted him to say, ‘Does Henry know you’re here the night?’
‘You leave our father out of this.’ Gilbert had summoned up the courage to speak, and the answer and the manner in which it was spoken told Jacob his father-in-law was ignorant of the nocturnal visit. He was glad of that. He had always liked Henry Stewart and he knew Edith’s husband liked him; indeed, he had always suspected that Henry had almost anticipated his daughter’s marriage being a troubled one in view of the fact that Henry had lived with her mother for nigh on thirty years.
Thirty years
. And from what Mavis had sobbed at him on their wedding night regarding her mother’s instructions to lie perfectly still and endure what had to be borne, Henry’s married life could not have been easy.
Thirty years
. And from what Mavis had sobbed at him on their wedding night regarding her mother’s instructions to lie perfectly still and endure what had to be borne, Henry’s married life could not have been easy.
‘Go and get your coat and cap.’ John thrust his chin forward as he spoke. ‘You’re coming with us, and you can tell her’ – he jabbed towards the cottage with a fierce finger, his eyes screwed up – ‘that you won’t be back.’
‘Over my dead body.’
‘And that can be arranged an’ all.’
They were staring at each other now, and although the rage in Jacob was high there was fear there too. John was a belligerent individual and could be vicious, and he was never so nasty as when his mother had stirred him up about something or other. John by himself he could possibly handle – at five-foot-ten he was a good four inches taller than his wife’s eldest brother – but all five of them . . .
‘Jacob, come back with us now.’ Again Art was the peacemaker. ‘You’re our brother-in-law, we don’t want bad blood between us any more than you do, but Mavis is our sister. Surely you can understand how we feel? And when all’s said and done you’ve only been married six years come next month.’
‘I know how long I’ve been married, Art,’ Jacob said heavily, and there was such bitterness in his tone that it caused the five faces in front of him to stretch slightly. ‘If anyone knows, I do. And I’ll tell you something else an’ all while I’m about it; if it wasn’t for that woman in there – the woman you call a strumpet and a trollop and worse – there might have been murder done before this day. I was reeled in by your mam, do you know that?’ His angry gaze took in each man in turn but no one said anything, not even John.
‘When I came to work for your father as his accountant and chief clerk she looked me over, although I didn’t know it at the time, and decided I was eminently suitable as her future son-in-law. I was an educated man, and with my father being a schoolmaster and my mother involved in various good works, I was a darn sight more suitable in your mam’s eyes than some of the lads who were sniffing about. Oh she reeled me in all right, same as your sister did, although with Mavis she was only following orders. Your mam thought I’d be malleable, that once I became part of the family and had my security and daily bread tied up with Henry Stewart & Co., Oil Merchants and Importers, I’d be happy to take orders, keep my mouth shut and feather my own nest.’
‘What are you griping for, you’ve done all right,’ John challenged roughly. ‘There’s not many as well set up as you and Mavis in your own place, and bought and paid for at that. Granted it’s not Ryhope Road but me and Art aren’t complaining and our places are no bigger than yours.’
‘This isn’t about the size of the house, man.’ Jacob swore softly, shaking his head before repeating, ‘It isn’t about that, that’s nothing. Dammit all, what do you take me for?’
‘What then?’ Art’s voice was low and steady and he took a step forwards. ‘What’s really eating you?’
‘You want to know, Art?’
‘I’ve said, haven’t I?’
‘Aye, you’ve said, but it strikes me the lot of you just want to hear what you want to hear.’
‘I’ve had enough of this.’ John’s glare took in Art as well as Jacob, and the smaller man’s hands were bunched fists at his side. ‘The plain facts are that that whore in there has two brats already and a stomach full of the next one, and she’s making a fool of all of us –’
‘You shut your filthy mouth!’ Jacob’s face was drained of colour. ‘You don’t know the first thing about her. She’s a good woman, a warm woman, and meeting her helped me keep my sanity after I’d lived with your sister for two years. I was ready to top meself when I met Sadie and I tell you that straight.’
‘You –’
As John’s fist struck out, Art caught his brother’s arm and held on to him as Jacob continued, a spate of words flowing out of his mouth now. ‘I should have known on the wedding night how it was going to be but I thought she was just frightened, being a young lass of nineteen and all, and that she’d come round. Come round!’ He made a guttural sound in his throat. ‘Your mam had done too good a job for that, damn her. How would you feel if your wife was physically sick with fear every time you came near her, eh? You answer me that. I’ve taken Mavis five times in six years of marriage and each time I felt I’d raped her. The things your mam had drummed into her . . .’ He swore again. ‘She’s not normal, she can’t be, and she’s made her daughter worse than she is. You don’t know how many times I’ve thanked God the rest of you were lads.’
‘You dirty liar.’
The blizzard was ferocious now, whipping the snow into a mad frenzy, but it was nothing on John as he wrenched himself free of Art and flung himself on the man in front of him, Gilbert and Matthew adding their weight to his as the three of them began to rain punches on Jacob’s tottering form.
The speed with which the cottage door opened indicated that the inhabitants within had been listening to the proceedings, but as Sadie Bell, heavily pregnant and screeching like a banshee, made to hurl herself into the mêlée, Art caught hold of her, shouting for Dan, who was standing transfixed by the violence in front of him, to help hold the distraught woman.
Dan would have obeyed, but out of the comer of his eye he’d become aware of another figure, that of a slight, golden-haired child darting after its mother, and when the small girl of around six or seven tried to go towards the fight he reached out and caught her, lifting her off her feet as she began to struggle and add her cries to those of her mother.
Jacob was on the ground now and he was screaming as John’s thick hobnailed boots belted into him again and again with savage intent. Twice Gilbert and Matthew tried to pull John away, shouting the while for him to stop, that Jacob had had enough, but each time John flung them aside and returned to the blood-soaked figure on the red spotted snow like an enraged animal that, having scented blood, was determined to go for the kill.
In the end, and only when Jacob was limp and unmoving, Gilbert and Matthew wrestled John to the ground, urged on by Art and Dan’s frantic shouts, holding him down by brute force for some thirty or forty seconds as he continued to resist.
And then a silence came upon them all, even Sadie, as, Art having released her, she stumbled across to Jacob’s still form and knelt down in the snow by his side.
‘Sadie?’ A bent old woman was standing in the doorway of the cottage, her arms around a small toddler who was clinging to her tattered skirts but making no sound. ‘Is he breathin’, lass?’
‘’Course he’s breathing.’ Art was frightened; it sounded in his voice.
‘Just about.’ Sadie lifted her head towards her mother and the fruit of Art’s voice was reflected in her white face and streaming eyes. ‘But he’s awful still, Mam.’
‘Get him inside.’
‘No.’ John was standing now, Gilbert and Matthew either side of him, and unlike the rest of them his face showed no fear and his voice was cold and weighty when he said, ‘He’ll never set foot in this brothel again, I’m telling you.’
‘It’s not a brothel.’ The old woman’s voice was loud and indignant. ‘An’ you know it, I’ll be bound, but it suits you to say otherwise, don’t it, you evil-minded so-an’-so.’
‘Don’t, Mam.’ Sadie spoke to her mother but her gaze was on John, and his eyes, as hard as black marble, stared back at her through the curtain of snow. She knew this man. When she had first started work in the most menial of jobs at his father’s warehouse in William Street she had been warned about John Stewart almost immediately by the other girls. He was an upstart. The other sons were all right the girls had said, and the father, Henry Stewart, was reportedly just the same as when he had started the family business some thirty years before a few hundred yards away in Norfolk Street. But John Stewart was like his mother – he fancied himself a cut above ordinary folk. Not that that stopped him trying it on, one of the more attractive women packers had warned Sadie. Hands like an octopus he’d got, and he’d talk dirty given half a chance. You had to watch your step with John Stewart, but it didn’t do to get on his bad side either; he could be a nasty bit of work. And from day one he had wanted her- the lust in his eyes had made her flesh creep at times and she had had to repulse him over and over again.
‘That’s right, Sadie. You tell the old crone to mind her tongue.’
Again John seemed to be enjoying himself, but then his gaze snapped from the woman who had been a torment to his flesh and who’d haunted his dreams from the first day he had set eyes on her four years before, as the child still held within Dan’s grasp said quite clearly, ‘You’re a very nasty man you are, a wicked man, an’ you’ll burn in hell’s flames.’
‘Hush, Connie.’ Sadie rose as quickly as her bulk would allow and hurried to take the child from Dan. ‘Go in with your granny an’ Larry, go on,’ she implored on a hiccuping sob.
‘No, Mam.’ As Sadie made to push her daughter towards the cottage door the child resisted, and then, as Gilbert and Matthew hoisted Jacob’s unconscious body upwards and on to Gilbert’s back at a sign from John, with Matthew supporting the limp frame, Connie caused further consternation as she said, ‘Me Uncle Jacob’s a grand man, he is, an’ I’m goin’a tell of you. I’m goin’a tell you hurt him an’ that you made me mam cry.’
‘None of that.’ As John stepped forward, his arm rising and his face ugly, Dan’s voice was not the voice of a fourteen-year-old boy but that of a man, as he moved the child behind him. ‘You leave the bairn alone, you’ve done enough here the night.’
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