Snow Angels (21 page)

‘I was deceived in him,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘When he was young and I thought then that he was … that he was capable of doing ill, I was right. I was fooled. I thought he had changed. People don’t change. I’m old enough to know that. There was a time when I wished that I had let you marry him. You did want to marry him. I’m so relieved now that I didn’t allow it. I can’t sleep for relief. I thought I didn’t like Robert but he’s good-hearted and kind and—’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Abby said.

‘I’m talking about that bastard, Gil Collingwood. He left his child here.’

‘His child?’

‘Yes, his child. Matthew is Gil’s. Newcastle is thick with scandal.’

Abby couldn’t believe it. Then she did, and coldly. Gil had loved Helen, he had always loved her. Why should it be any surprise that he had fathered a child on her? That was just the kind of thing he would do. But his own brother’s wife …

‘Helen is dead, and Rhoda and he—’

Abby couldn’t take this in. She held her father’s hands while he explained haltingly the things he had heard. They ended her love for Gil. She knew that she had always had a caring for him but, that teatime over the fire, she stopped loving him. How could anybody love somebody who had done such things and how could he possibly expect her father to keep his child there? Henderson was worried and upset about the child and Abby knew that worry and upset were the very last things he needed.

‘Where is he?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know. He’s been back to the house with money, but only when I’m at work.’

Abby’s heart banged with anger against Gil that he should do such a thing, that he should take advantage of a man like her father, who had been his friend. It played on her mind. When she went to bed she didn’t sleep, thinking of Rhoda and Helen and what Gil had done. The shock went round and round in her mind and got louder and louder. She questioned Kate and learned that Gil looked different, that he looked like a workman. She asked her father where he might have been taken on, but Henderson said that nobody would do so. Mrs Wilkins came to Abby and said shamefacedly, ‘I know where he is.’

Abby stared.

‘How do you know?’ she said.

‘I just do. Found out. He stands out, even like he is. He’s working at Collingwood’s.’

Abby was amazed.

‘But the men would know.’

‘Wouldn’t know their own mothers some of them. Don’t care neither, labourers.’

‘Labourers?’

‘He’s living in Hope Street.’

Hope Street. The very name was laughable, Abby thought. It was a broken-down place right beside the docks. Nobody respectable would ever go there. All the next night she couldn’t rest and on the Monday evening, when her father was lying down, she ordered the carriage and to the driver’s consternation insisted on going to the very worst area of the docklands. Abby tried to take comfort that she was not alone, but he was a small, slight figure who had worked for them for several years and never spoken unless he had to. Luckily it was a vile night, bitterly cold and sleeting, so nobody was standing around outside.

She told him to stop and then she knocked on several doors, had no answer from three and did not know what to say to the
others since Gil was unlikely to be calling himself by his own name. She persevered. Seven doors later, she enquired of a short, fat woman whether she had a lodger and the woman laughed.

‘Half a dozen of them. Anybody in particular?’

‘He’s tall and dark and about my age.’

‘Down the pub, pet.’

‘Which pub?’

‘Over yonder,’ she said and shut the door.

Abby told herself that she could not possibly go into a pub. If he was not there, anything might happen. Even less than respectable women didn’t go into pubs. It was predictably called The Ship. Abby walked up to it and went inside. It smelled. It smelled of sweat and dirt and beer and bad breath. The men, in a cloud of smoke from both tobacco and the fire, were indistinguishable from one another in their caps and suits. There was a tremendous noise but, as Abby made her way from the door towards the bar, it began to die down and she could see the man behind the bar, his eyes getting bigger and bigger. By the time she reached him, there was silence. He flipped up part of the bar top and came out from behind.

‘Eh, pet, you can’t come in here,’ he said.

‘I’m in,’ Abby said.

There were calls and cries.

‘I’m looking for somebody.’

‘You can take me home with you, petal,’ some wit yelled and there was laughter. Abby looked around her for sight of Gil and admiring eyes met hers everywhere.

‘Has he got a name?’ the barman asked.

‘No.’

‘Well, that’s a fresh one. Howay, out of here.’

He put a hand on her arm. Abby pulled away, knocked into somebody and fingers grabbed her bottom. Fury sent the blood into her face. She turned and there was further laughter. The barman started to drag her towards the door and another man said, ‘Don’t fret, I’ll see the lass home.’ He put an arm around her
waist. Abby panicked, tried to get away and couldn’t. The laughter was louder now and unfriendly, jeering, and he had a good hold on her. The barman, who suddenly seemed a friend, let go and retreated.

From the darkness of the corner to one side of the door a man who had been leaning against the wall straightened in the shadows and Abby recognised something about him even before he levered himself away from the wall and began to come to her across the room. His height declared it to be Gil so she didn’t know what she had seen first, just that she knew, because in their lives he had walked across a good many rooms towards her. Some angel of mercy he made, she thought cynically, but her heart knew it for deliverance. The panic which had claimed her almost ceased, but when he got close and she saw him better, she was afraid of him for the first time in her life. His cap was pulled low over his eyes, his face was pale beneath several days’ growth of beard and his eyes were narrow slits of black light. He was very thin, wearing the same kind of clothes as the other men, dark. He moved slowly and carefully like a watchful cat and Abby was not surprised when the man let go of her without being asked. All the man said was, ‘Yours?’

‘Aye.’

Gil walked out of the pub, leaving her to come after him and the men parted and let them through. As the pub door closed behind her the conversation started up again like a full tide. Outside it was snowing. Abby glanced up the street. The carriage was quite a long way from her.

He didn’t even turn around. He looked the other way up the street as though something interesting was happening there in the darkness. Even at his worst, Gil had usually had manners. He didn’t seem able to manage that now. Abby took a deep breath.

‘I want you to take Matthew,’ she said.

Gil turned. He looked her up and down and said nothing.

‘I want you not to involve my father in your … business. You had no right to ask him to take the child and less right to
leave him there. Do you want his friends and business associates to think that he has anything to do with you?’

Again his eyes took in the street. Then he looked her straight in the eyes and she wished he hadn’t. She stepped backwards.

‘I’ll come for him in the morning,’ he said in a low voice and then he walked away. Abby breathed deeply once or twice, then ran back to the carriage as fast as she could and went home.

*

To say that her father was not pleased at what she had done would have been an understatement. He had not often lost his temper with her, but he did so then.

‘You had no right to go to him. Did you think about the danger in such a place? Did you think about what he could be like? Did you even consider me?’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘I like having the boy here. I don’t have much in my life any more. I like him.’

‘And when Gil comes to you and asks you for other favours?’

‘He won’t,’ Henderson said quickly.

‘How do you know?’

‘Because I know him.’

‘You like him still,’ Abby declared in wonder.

‘No! Yes. I don’t know. I just … I shouldn’t say this to you. Having Gil around me was like having a son. I’m horrified at what he has done, but I miss him. I miss him a great deal and having Matthew here was like balm to the wound. Gil has let me down, he’s let us all down but the child … the child was a link with him and he was something I had not known before.’

This hurt Abby. Firstly because she was a daughter and secondly because she had not produced a grandchild. Thirdly she felt as though she should have been around her father much more, not gone jauntering around the continent for no reason but pleasure. Her father was a lonely man and she had not helped and he had gone to people like Gil to make up for her neglect.

‘He can’t take the child,’ Henderson said.

‘He must.’

‘And what is he supposed to do with him when he’s at work? Leave him with some slut in Hope Street?’

‘He said he would come.’

‘You had no right to ask him.’ Her father regarded the fire for a while and then said, ‘How does he look?’

‘Thin, poor, his nails are all broken and his hands are ingrained with dirt and—’ She stopped. Henderson’s body twisted in denial of what she was saying to him. She only hoped that when Gil arrived the next morning her father would either not be up or be at work. She didn’t want them to meet. She had deliberately described Gil as he was so that there would be no shock if they did meet. ‘He doesn’t deserve your sympathy,’ she said briskly. ‘He doesn’t deserve anybody’s help. He doesn’t have to come into the house and you don’t have to see him.’

Henderson was still angry when he went to bed but he said nothing more and Abby knew how disappointed he was. Not only that his judgement had been wrong, but that he felt he had lost Gil and Gil had been a valuable part of his life. Gil had made him happy. All that was finished now. Abby was sorry to deprive him of Matthew’s company, but she knew it was for the best. It could do no good for any of them to have Gil connected with the house, coming there. A clean break was best, she thought, but when she lay down to sleep she kept remembering what he had looked like and she couldn’t rest.

The following morning Henderson was thankfully still in bed when Gil came to the back door. Kate came through, saying briefly, ‘He’s here.’

Abby would have thought Matthew would be reluctant. He did not know Gil as his father. Gil didn’t look as he had. It was surely all too different for a small child to take in. She thought he might even be afraid, but the child went readily to the door and looked up trustingly into Gil’s face. Gil got down beside him just
like a workman did, a neat balance for a tall man, and smiled and spoke softly and confidingly to the child.

‘Hello, Matt. Are you coming with me?’

Matthew put his fingers onto Gil’s face.

‘Yes,’ he said instantly. Gil stood up and swung the child up into his arms, a long way for him, and Matthew smiled in delight.

Neither Kate nor Abby said anything and Gil didn’t acknowledge Abby. He took the child, walked away down the yard, out of the gate and down the back lane without a word. Abby followed him and stood by the gate, watching. There was something that troubled her. She didn’t know what it was and it was only a tiny bit of her that was concerned. Most of her was glad to be rid of him once and for all, she thought, and it would have been feckless to have kept the child here. She went back into the house, glad for what she had done. Her father didn’t mention it or Matthew’s absence. He ate little and went to work and Abby debated what to do. She didn’t want to go back to the house in the country where she would be alone and at least if she was here when her father came home to dinner, she would be there for him.

All that day she put Gil and Matthew from her mind. Every time she did so, she saw the image of them walking away down the back lane and something niggled at her. She was ashamed to have done such a thing to a tiny boy and from time to time her cheeks burned with guilt. Her father duly came home at half past five and he had nothing to say. He pushed the food around on his plate at dinner and afterwards went to his room. The house was silent. Abby went to bed and slept, but she awoke in the depths of the night and couldn’t get back to sleep. She saw the cold autumn day in and when it was a respectable hour and her father had gone to work she ordered the carriage and once again made the journey into the docklands.

It was a different world from anything she knew and so busy during the day. The carriage jolted seriously on the uneven
streets; the roads were filthy and the houses the same. She got out and made her way along the street. She thought of Matthew alone in that house with that woman. Gil would have to leave him there. She thought of the small child in among the dirt and God knew what kind of people. She knew that she couldn’t leave him there. She hurried along the street, banged on the door and after a short while it was opened.

‘You again? Owes you money, does he? Or are you married?’

‘Is the child here?’

‘The bairn? Upstairs. Him an’ all.’

Abby stopped.

‘He’s not at work?’

‘Nay, he didn’t go. I told him, he doesn’t pay for the bed during the day, it’s needed for others.’

Abby trod straight up the grimy, uncarpeted stairs. The dirt crunched under her feet. At the top of the stairs were two doors. The first door that she opened showed half a dozen people in bed, sleeping. The other room was tiny and had in it a small child standing at the window. She thought Gil had left him there while he slept next door until she noticed the bed in the shadows across the room. She closed the door. It shut out the snoring from the other room, though she could hear other noises from the street below, people walking and shouting and machinery grinding somewhere. Matthew watched her carefully, silently.

Abby couldn’t believe that Gil could sleep like that while two people were in the room. He must be exhausted. The covers on the bed made Abby’s hands itch to take them off and wash them. They were beyond dirty. He didn’t wake up, even when she sat down on the bed. It was bitterly cold in the room. He didn’t move when she said his name. He opened his eyes. The light had gone from them; they were dull smudges. She stood up and moved back.