The Travelling Man (36 page)

He coughed, glanced sideways, saw a hint of colour creeping back into the young lass’s cheeks and nodded, well satisfied.

An hour later they drove over the crest of a hill and Ed pointed with his whip.

‘Well, tha’s home, lass. I’d forgotten how mucky it all is – all them rows of houses, and that black smoke. You’d never get me back there.’

Chunnering away he helped Annie down, then standing by the horse’s head he watched her walk away from him. Her back was straight and her head held high, as if she was frightened of her hat slipping off. Silently Ed wished her well. He’d heard them talking about the gardener’s girl in the kitchen at the house. Saying she was man-mad and that she would fleece Adam for every penny he possessed.

Ed climbed back into the trap. He’d always been good at summing folks up, and there was nowt much wrong with that little lass. He’d stake what was left of his life on it.

‘Nay, it’s never Annie Clancy?’ The woman standing at her open door, arms crossed over the front of her flowered apron, stared with mouth agape. ‘Nay, never!’

‘Good afternoon, Mrs Isherwood.’

Looking neither left nor right, Annie acknowledged the greeting with a slight nod of her head, and kept on walking down the familiar street. Because it was a Friday the women would be busy indoors cleaning up for the coming weekend. Blackleading grates, whitening hearths with a scouring stone, scrubbing floors with hard yellow soap, polishing fire-irons with Brasso, and bringing up the shine on steel fenders with emery paper.

Grass sprouted from between the cobbles of the street, stunted blackened grass, hardly worthy of its name. The houses looked smaller somehow, the pavements narrower than she remembered. She stopped at the only unmopped step in the street, half raised her hand
to
the iron knocker set high in the shabby door scored and marked with the boys’ clog irons. Changed her mind, lifted the sneck and walked straight in.

The shock and surprise slid over Florrie Clancy’s fat face like butter slipping from a warm dish.

‘Annie! May the saints preserve us!’

She wiped her hands on a rag looped over the front of the sacking apron tied round her thick waist, and sat down with a thump in the rocking-chair. Her small eyes bulged from their nests of puffy flesh, and when she found the breath to shout the noise she made caused Annie to widen her eyes in surprise.

‘Jack! I know you’re out there at the back. Come in here for a sken at what the wind’s blown in!’ She levered herself up from the chair and waddled across the room. ‘Jack? Have you gone deaf all of a sudden?’

‘What the ’ell?’

Strange that she had forgotten how small her father was, and yet since the last time she’d seen him he’d altered little. He was still whey-faced with the familiar cuts on his cheeks standing out like blue tacking stitches. His back had been so crippled by his years spent crouching in the mine that he seemed to be having difficulty holding his head up to stare in amazement at his daughter.

He’d been having one of his coughing fits in the privy out at the back. Annie could tell by the way his brown eyes watered, and by the way his voice seemed weaker than she had remembered. The mine was killing him. His destiny was written plain on his face. In that moment Annie saw it clearly. He looked, she thought, at least sixty years old.

Controlling her instinct to go to him and put her arms round him, she held out her hand. ‘Hallo, our Dad. How are you?’

But the hand was dashed away with a swift swiping motion. There was no welcome in his eyes; no welcome and no love, either.

‘Where is it, then?’ he wanted to know in his croak of a voice.

‘Where’s what?’

‘The little bastard! What have you done with it? Left it with your fancy man? Because dressed like that there’s bound to be some man financing you.’ He seemed to swell. ‘Look at her, Florrie.’ He stabbed a finger at Annie. ‘Dressed up like the dog’s bloody dinner! Thinking to impress.’ His insulting glance swept upwards then downwards, taking in the blue-grey dress and matching hat trimmed with pink roses rescued from a hat thrown away by Margot Gray. ‘I was right about you, madam. I knew what I was doing the day I gave you a leathering for wanting – nay, demanding – a new dress. I had your measure right from the start.’ He nodded at his wife. ‘I’ve kept telling you the sort she was an’ now here’s the living proof, because never in a million years could she have found a job of work that paid enough to put clothes like those on her back.’ He moved a step closer. ‘An’ there’s no ring on her finger under them fancy gloves. I’d stake me life on that.’ His voice was giving out, but his tone was so menancing it was as if he shouted the words aloud. ‘There’s no husband you could find who would have the brass to dress you up like that. I wasn’t born yesterday.’

‘Give her a chance to speak, Jack. She
might
be married.’ Florrie was all for giving young Annie the benefit of the doubt.

‘No, I’m not married.’ Annie turned to her gratefully. ‘And it’s true a man gave me the money to buy the material to make this dress. But I didn’t earn it the way you think I did.’

Her father’s snort of derision started him off coughing again.

‘I landed a good job as a seamstress,’ Annie said, when the spasm was over. ‘In a house where the pantry is bigger than this room.’

‘A seamstress?’ Jack clutched his chest. ‘I don’t
remember
you being apprenticed to a dressmaker. I don’t remember you being good for bloody owt but possing the muck out of other folk’s clothes.’

Annie began to feel sick. It was as though she had never been away. If anything, it was worse with the hate her father felt for her festering away inside him. He was never going to be proud of her, never feel glad for her sake. He would never talk about her with that tinge of pride in his voice that most men have for their daughters. He didn’t even like her, never mind love her. Why hadn’t she known that and kept away instead of coming back looking for something that had never been hers and never would be.

‘It was my own mother who taught me to sew, our Dad. You know that. She was gifted at dressmaking, really gifted – you know that, too. She set me to hem pieces of fent as soon as I could hold a needle. It was from her I got the flair. Why won’t you let me tell you how it’s been? Why won’t you even let me talk to you?’

He was making for the stairs, but Annie called after him. ‘Why must you always put me in the wrong?’

‘You put yourself in the wrong, madam.’

‘But I’m different now.’ Annie put her hand on the narrow stair-rail, looked up after him. ‘That could never happen to me now. I wasn’t properly grown, our Dad.’ She followed him as far as the third stair. ‘I lost the baby … I nearly died losing it. Let me tell you. Please.’

But he was gone, turning into the front room to the left of the little square landing, closing the door so quietly it was like a slap in her face.

‘Mrs Greenhalgh – sorry – Florrie?’ Annie didn’t know what to call her. ‘Why? Why does he hate me so much? He looks at me as if I was less than the dust under his feet.’

‘He’ll not stand for you stopping here.’ The loose jowls of Florrie’s big face quivered as she jerked her head at a chair. ‘Sit you down, and don’t moither about your dad. He’ll come down again when he’s had his bit of a sulk.’

‘I know I’m not stopping here.’ Annie sat down, her face still turned in the direction of the stairway. ‘I may stay with Edith Morris for a night or two. I wrote to her as soon … as soon as I knew I’d be moving on, telling her I was coming.’

‘An’ you’ve not heard back?’ Florrie’s boot-button eyes lit up.

Annie shook her head. ‘It doesn’t matter. I won’t be there long.’

When Florrie laughed, every spreading inch of her flesh laughed with her. Her tiny eyes disappeared completely into the loose pockets of flesh, and the chair set itself rocking as she shook uncontrollably.

‘No, you won’t be there long, I can grant you that.’

‘Is Miss Morris all right?’

‘All right?’ Florrie had laughed herself into almost a state of collapse. ‘Oh, aye. She’s all right, chuck. Like a dog with two tails, you might say.’ She winked so hard that her left eye disappeared completely. ‘Best not leave it too long or you might find she’s gone to bed.’

‘At seven o’clock?’

‘Five o’clock sometimes.’

‘Is she ill?’

Suddenly Florrie tired of the conversation she seemed to find so comical. Leaning forward, she steadied the chair by planting both wide feet together.

‘Now then, chuck. You tell me what you’ve been up to, because I’d like to hear even if him upstairs couldn’t give a toss. I might as well tell you I’ve thought about you many a time since that morning you walked up the street carrying that little cloth bundle.’ She scratched underneath an armpit. ‘I didn’t really hold with your dad throwing you out, and if I hadn’t been full of my own troubles I would have stuck up for you more. But I was too bothered about me own problems. It’s a bad job when your own son shows you the door. We’ve never spoken since, not a word. I cross the street if I see me son’s wife coming towards me and stick me nose in the
air
. She’s had a baby since you went, but she won’t give me house-room even though I’m its grandma.’

‘The boys?’ Annie took her chance as Florrie paused for breath. ‘Are they all out playing?’

‘Except Georgie. He’s on the second shift.’ Florrie looked proud. ‘Timmy’s been put up at school an’ he’s holding his own with lads a full year older than him. Miss Shrubsall came round last week. She says with extra tuition and stopping on at school a bit longer he could go as a pupil teacher one day in Salford, or somewhere where they can’t get teachers. He’d only get his keep for about two years then he might be able to take a course, or he could even study and work at the same time. But he’d be a teacher at the end of it, Miss Shrubsall was sure of it.’

‘That’s wonderful!’ Annie was so pleased she felt tears fill her eyes. Now she knew what part of Adam’s money could be used for. Money was the key to everything, she’d seen enough evidence of that.

‘There’s no question of it of course,’ Florrie was saying. ‘Miss Shrubsall said he’d be expected to pay back every penny his training had cost him, so what chance is there?’

‘But there has to be a chance.’ Annie could hardly contain herself. ‘I can help in that direction.’

Florrie almost fell off her chair, and when she spoke her gruff voice was sharp and high with greed. ‘With a bit of the ready?’She rubbed finger and thumb together.

Annie nodded and bit her lips. She tried not to blush but felt the warmth spreading up from her throat. ‘A friend died and left his savings to me. A man I was housekeeper to.’

‘Oh, aye?’ Florrie winked again. ‘Left you right for life, did he, chuck?’

‘Enough to see Timmy through his teaching course, and put a stop to him going down the pit.’

‘Jack told Miss Shrubsall that there’d be no difference made with Timmy. “One son down the pit, all my sons
down
the pit,” he said. He won’t treat one any different from the others.’

‘But Timmy
is
different,’ Annie cried.

Miss Shrubsall had said exactly the same, banging her fist down on the table till the pots rattled. She had rounded on Jack, pointing at him with a finger. ‘Your daughter was different too, and you knew it. It was pure sacrilege when that clever child had to leave school. All right, I know you hadn’t much choice when her mother died – but you have that choice now, Mr Clancy. Tim has imagination as well as brains, and that’s an unbeatable combination, believe me. Timothy can do it. With my help and a lot of hard work on his part, he can make something of himself. He can be kept out of the mine!’

‘I couldn’t repeat what your father said to Miss Shrubsall.’ Florrie jerked her head up to nod at the ceiling. ‘She was away and up the street faster than if he’d set a match to her drawers.’

At the sound of her laughter Jack Clancy stopped his pacing of the narrow gap between the double bed and the window. She was a loud mouth all right, but she looked after him – him and the kids. She could feed the lot of them on ten shillings a week; though she was no cook she could slice bread and slap jam on it, and serve a tasty haddock poached in milk on a Saturday, as well as a bit of meat now and again on a Sunday.

He leaned his forehead against the grimy window pane. In a strange way he was happier than he’d been for a long, long time. Even though Florrie had insisted on going with him to the pub, threatening to follow him and show him up if he didn’t take her. An’ she would too. He wouldn’t put it past her elbowing her way up to the bar counter, getting him by the scruff of his neck and frog-marching him up the street. She certainly had the build. You had to laugh at her – his expression softened a little – as long as you never tried
to
best her. Big Florrie had to be the boss. Or at least think she was.

Because she always left the lads alone, not bothering them to keep clean, to wipe their noses when they ran, or mend their torn britches, they too seemed happier than they used to be when Annie was always on at them to do better, to try harder, to reach for the moon when he could have told her they didn’t particularly want it.

Annie … His expression hardened again. She had looked so much like her dead mother when he came in from the back and saw her standing there, he had thought he would have a stroke. Like her, apart from the hair. He closed his eyes, and held a fist to his mouth. That glossy wavy red hair, the colour of flame.

Just like before, he had wanted to hit out at her, thump her till her eyes swam. Hurt her, because that was the only way he could get even with her. Jack bowed his head. Even in drink, even in the worst of his rages, Jack Clancy had known that beating the living daylights out of Annie was the only way he could stomach her living with him, underneath the same roof.

How in the name of God could he admit the truth, when the truth would have made him appear to be less than a man? He sat down heavily on the side of the unmade bed, holding his head in his hands. Oh, aye, the truth would have given his mates a good belly laugh; it would have turned him into an object of pity. Pity? He groaned. There was nobody ever going to pity Jack Clancy. Nobody!