Reach for Tomorrow (21 page)
‘No, leave them, I want them.’ She clutched at the flamboyant material of the eiderdown as she spoke. ‘I want them on me bed.’
‘All right, lass, all right. You shall have ’em, don’t fret.’ Her mother indicated for Rosie to leave and after a moment she complied, but not without a feeling of reluctance. The eiderdown was undoubtedly expensive but it was garish, even vulgar, and it filled her with dread. And the dress, where had the dress come from? She had wanted to grab them off the bed and out of Molly’s grasp and rush down to the yard and burn them, that was how she felt about them, she told herself as she shut the bedroom door. But she would deal with them in the morning, there had been enough emotion for one night.
She stood for a moment in the silent sitting room which had been filled to capacity just minutes before and looked about her. Everything appeared the same. From the open fireplace the fire was glowing a deep red, its flickering flames sending dancing shadows over the dimly lit room and mellowing the age of the furniture. It gave a certain grace to the hard wood saddle and a regalness to her mother’s oak dresser at the other end of the room it could never aspire to in the harsh light of day; now the plates and dishes glinted and glowed like expensive china and everything in the room looked soft and inviting.
But things
were
different. Something had shifted in the last twenty-four hours and it was all to do with Molly’s disappearing. She had to deal with this truth about Molly that was staring her in the face, and, of necessity, try to make her mother
see
. But first, first she had to find out what was what from Zachariah. Her heart thudded and raced. And then tomorrow, no matter what, she was going to see Ronnie Tiller.
were
different. Something had shifted in the last twenty-four hours and it was all to do with Molly’s disappearing. She had to deal with this truth about Molly that was staring her in the face, and, of necessity, try to make her mother
see
. But first, first she had to find out what was what from Zachariah. Her heart thudded and raced. And then tomorrow, no matter what, she was going to see Ronnie Tiller.
For his part Zachariah didn’t know how he was going to tell Rosie the circumstances in which he had found Molly.
When he had finished talking to Nick earlier and discovered who was holding the bairn he had felt sick to his stomach, and then the other side of human nature - the good side - had warmed him briefly when Nick had refused the handful of notes he had pushed at him with, ‘Nay, not this time, man, not for this. I canna abide yon scum meself, an’ I’ve heard he uses the tawse on the young ’uns, aye, an’ worse, to keep ’em dancin’ to his tune. But you need to move fast, man. The word is he’s for movin’ her, he always does that with new ones he gets at first in case any interested parties come lookin’. He’ll skedaddle her to one of his other houses an’ that’ll be the last you see of the bairn, especially if he knows the family have bin lodging with you. He’ll look at it as gettin’ one over on you for the business with Tommy Bailey’s sister.’
Zachariah had recognized it was good advice, and once he and Mick and his brothers, along with the McLinnie lads, were standing outside Oldman’s in the filthy narrow cobbled street that stank of rubbish and human excrement, he had decided to act immediately and go straight to the docks. And the others had been with him, to the last man.
They had posed as customers at first, but once the fighting had started it had been nasty and vicious and what with the squawking from the women and the shouts and cursing from the men it had been bedlam. But once they’d bulldozed their way through the establishment below, it had just been a matter of searching the bedrooms above until they found her. There had been more than one bairn of Molly’s age and under in the fancy rooms, however, and he would never forget some of what he’d seen. By, he just wished Charlie had been around - or maybe it was better he hadn’t been. They’d all agreed they could have seen themselves swinging for the filthy rotten scum.
The knock at his door was so soft he wasn’t sure if he was imagining it at first, but when he opened it Rosie was standing in the hall, her eyes as black as midnight and her body straight and stiff. And Zachariah found himself beginning to babble.
‘Come in, lass, come in.’ He gestured into the room where the fire was blazing a greeting as he continued, with a nod at the newspaper lying on the sofa, ‘Old Stanley Baldwin’s cut sixpence off income tax, I see, an’ a penny off a pint of beer, in the budget. Fat lot of good that’ll do for the fourteen thousand men unemployed round these parts, mind you. I can’t understand--’
His over-hearty voice was cut off as Rosie, her face and manner gentle, put a hand on his arm and said, ‘I know you mean well, Zachariah, but . . . but I want you to tell me. Where did you find her?’
‘Oh, lass, lass.’ The words were seemingly wrung out of him.
‘Please, Zachariah, I have to know, you see that, don’t you? And don’t keep anything back. I want to hear it all.’
Rosie was white-faced and her countenance was stiff by the time he had finished. She was sitting next to Zachariah on the sofa, her hands clasped in his, and her flesh was as cold as ice despite the heat radiating from the glowing coal. ‘I’ll get you a cup of tea, lass. It’s bin a shock.’
‘Thank you.’ It was a mere whisper, and Rosie was still sitting in exactly the same position when Zachariah returned with the tea some minutes later, but after several sips her colour became more normal and she relaxed back against the flock-stuffed cushions with a deep sigh. ‘Did she say anything?’
‘Not much.’ He was relieved the look of intense strain had lifted; for a minute he had thought she was going to pass out on him.
‘Did she cry?’
‘No.’
He didn’t add that Molly’s whole attitude had bothered him, the more so since he had had time to think about it. Of course the bairn had been in shock, he could understand that after being incarcerated in one of Cullen’s brothels, and when she’d refused to say what had happened the night before or how she’d been picked up, that could be down to shock too. But . . . when they had burst into the room and seen her lying in that great damn bed, a half-empty box of chocolates at the side of her and the remains of a meal on the tray, she hadn’t appeared over-pleased to see them. But he could be imagining things here. Everyone reacted differently to stress, and the bairn was only just thirteen, when all was said and done.
‘Where would we be without you, Zachariah?’
Her voice had been very soft with a little throb at its centre, and Zachariah rose swiftly, moving to stand with his back to her for a moment or two before he turned and said, after forcing a quick smile, ‘You’d be just where you are now, lass, copin’ with what life doles out an’ doin’ all right at it.’
‘I can never repay you for what you’ve done tonight, you know that, don’t you?’
‘I don’t want repayin’ so that’s all right.’
Rosie smiled back at him now, rising from the sofa and putting the cup and saucer on one of the occasional tables as she said, ‘I must get back, they might need me.’ And then Zachariah froze, his whole body seeming to become still, as she took his hands in hers and said, her face straight now and her deep brown eyes looking hard into his, ‘You are the one person in all the world I can rely on, Zachariah. I can see why your friend, your Janie, cared for you so much.’ And before he could bring any reply out of the chaotic whirl his mind had fallen into she was gone.
Chapter Nine
Flora knew, as soon as she stepped into the hall after waving goodbye to Sally and Mick on the doorstep, that her father was waiting for her. The awareness, which caused the hairs on the back of her neck to prickle, was unexplainable, but born of years and years of such encounters, and it caused her stomach to turn and the palms of her hands to perspire.
She made no attempt to go straight to her room to avoid the forthcoming confrontation, knowing such prevarication to be useless. Her father was quite capable of forcing the door to her bedroom and had done so on more than one occasion in the past when she had tried to escape him.
‘Well?’ Flora had barely taken one step into the sitting room before her father spoke, and it was clear he had been spying on her from behind the net curtains when he said, his tone threatening, ‘And who was that scum you came home with?’
‘If you are referring to Sally and Mick, they are friends of mine.’ Flora met his gaze without flinching, her body quite still and straight.
‘Oh yes?’ Mr Thomas was standing with his back to the fire, his hands behind him as he held the bottom of his jacket up over his large backside, and he swayed a couple of times on his heels before he said, ‘And are you going to tell me where you have been all night?’
‘I’ve been at Rosie’s.’
‘Rosie’s. I might have known she was behind this.’
‘Behind what? I’ve just visited a friend’s house, for goodness’ sake.’
‘Don’t give me that. I suppose the little trollop made sure there were plenty of lads there, eh? What was it? A party of some kind?’
‘No!’ Flora’s tone was indignant now. ‘I went there because Rosie needed me. There was a domestic problem.’
‘I don’t doubt it with the rabble she mixes with.’
He was a cruel man. A very very cruel man. Flora stared at the dark angry figure in front of her. He knew exactly how Rosie was placed, he knew the struggle she had had to keep her head and the family’s above water for the last three years, but all he had ever done was to snipe and cast aspersions. ‘That’s unfair and you know it. Rosie is a decent person, she always has been.’
‘She’s not of our class and
you
know that.’
you
know that.’
‘
Our class?
’ It was a strategy of his, this goading, but she couldn’t help retaliating. ‘What class do you think we are, for goodness’ sake! We’re working class, Da, whether you like it or not, and if you weren’t such an upstart you’d be proud of the fact.’
Our class?
’ It was a strategy of his, this goading, but she couldn’t help retaliating. ‘What class do you think we are, for goodness’ sake! We’re working class, Da, whether you like it or not, and if you weren’t such an upstart you’d be proud of the fact.’
‘Flora, please.’
Her mother’s voice was low but of a quality that made Flora turn from her father - who had straightened at her words, his furious face flushing turkey-red - and say to the small, thin-faced woman in front of her, ‘I’m sorry, Mam, but I can’t help it. He’s so bigoted, you know he is.’
‘I’ll give you bigoted, my girl.’
Her father was undoing his belt as he spoke and Flora knew she had played right into his hands again in losing her temper, but she fought the fear that always gripped her in these moments and her voice was a low vehement hiss as she spat, ‘You dare! Just you
dare
try that one more time and I’ll do for you, I swear it.’
dare
try that one more time and I’ll do for you, I swear it.’
‘Is this the kind of language you’ve picked up from your guttersnipe friends, eh?’ Llewellyn Thomas’s voice was quivering with the force of his anger. ‘Well, it’s the last time you disobey me on this matter, I’m telling you. You don’t associate with the likes of Rosie Ferry again and that’s final. I’m not having our reputation sullied by your low acquaintances.’
‘Our reputation?’ Flora was glaring at her father, her back bent and her head straining upwards as she faced the man she loathed and detested. ‘
Our reputation!
What reputation? Who on earth do you think you are anyway? And Rosie is a fine person, she is.’
Our reputation!
What reputation? Who on earth do you think you are anyway? And Rosie is a fine person, she is.’
‘You’ll do as you’re told.’ His belt was out of his trousers and he stood, his feet a foot or so apart, with the leather strap held taut between his hands. ‘And I think it’s high time you were reminded of that.’
He was mad. He was, he was mad. The terror Flora had fought against all her life, and which was all tied up with the military-looking man in front of her, was drying her mouth and causing the sweat to prick in her armpits. She could still remember the first time her father had beaten her, when she’d been no older than three or four. It was burnt into her memory. And she could also recall her overwhelming bewilderment as she had screamed and cried and tried to escape the murderous belt that her mother hadn’t tried to help her, had done nothing beyond pleading with him to stop. But two or three years later, when her understanding had developed far beyond her years, she had come to recognize the significance of the sounds coming from her parents’ room some nights and why her mother occasionally wore long-sleeved, high-necked blouses on the hottest of summer days and winced if she was inadvertently touched.
He was a hateful man, a sanctimonious, harsh upstart, and yet everyone thought he was so upright, so moral, so
righteous
. He paraded his standing in the community - the fact that he owned this house, his managerial post at the Castle Street Brewery, and his authoritative position as a deacon in the little chapel in Monkwearmouth - like a row of medals across his chest, and in a way they were. Her grandfather, and her great-grandfather, had been in the armed forces, and her mother had told her once that it had been expected Llewellyn would follow his three older brothers into the army or navy. But he hadn’t. Her mother hadn’t appeared to know why, but Flora suspected it was because her father liked his home comforts too much to give them up for the rigours of army life. But he had aimed to create his own little mini-battalion in the privacy of his home, and rarely a day went by when he didn’t berate her mother, in some form or other, for the fact that she had failed so miserably in her duty to give him the quiverful of sons he had required.
righteous
. He paraded his standing in the community - the fact that he owned this house, his managerial post at the Castle Street Brewery, and his authoritative position as a deacon in the little chapel in Monkwearmouth - like a row of medals across his chest, and in a way they were. Her grandfather, and her great-grandfather, had been in the armed forces, and her mother had told her once that it had been expected Llewellyn would follow his three older brothers into the army or navy. But he hadn’t. Her mother hadn’t appeared to know why, but Flora suspected it was because her father liked his home comforts too much to give them up for the rigours of army life. But he had aimed to create his own little mini-battalion in the privacy of his home, and rarely a day went by when he didn’t berate her mother, in some form or other, for the fact that she had failed so miserably in her duty to give him the quiverful of sons he had required.
And her mother didn’t seem to have any strength to stand up against him; perhaps she never had had any and that’s why he had chosen her for his wife in the first place? She was of the old school that decreed the husband was lord of the wife, be he tyrant or saint, in all things, and that it was her duty to serve and obey without question. She didn’t seem to have a mind of her own at all.
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