The Travelling Man (38 page)

Seth gave a short laugh. ‘He won’t believe a word of it!’

‘I shall tell him you embarrassed me so much that I never wish to see you again. I shall remind him of the times you flirted with me, and how in innocence I flirted back. I shall tell him that I had no choice but to terminate the arrangement he has with you about the medical care of the animals.’

‘You wouldn’t do that. You’re not serious, surely?’

‘Perfectly serious. Harry will believe me for the simple reason that I can make him believe anything.’

‘What is to stop me telling him the truth?’

‘Your perfect English manners, which will tell you that no gentleman would dream of compromising a lady, even if his loyalty costs him a friendship.’ Her lip curled. ‘I though you were more of … how do you say? … a sophisticate, Seth. I know you have a paramour in Manchester. I also know that you don’t live alone. I thought you were a man who knew exactly what he was
doing
, but I was mistaken. By the time we come back from France you will have left my mind completely. As easily as that!’

She snapped her fingers in his face, turned her back on him and swept from the room, flounced skirts billowing, small heels clicking across the tiled floor of the hall.

Seth’s horse was visibly tiring so reluctantly he dismounted and led it over to a trough set outside a low-thatched inn, kept clean and replenished by a kindly landlord.

His anger with Margot Gray had cooled a little, but the fear for Annie was still in him. It was a sickening dread of what might be happening to her, a helpless feeling deep inside him that harm was coming to her.

As he climbed back into the trap he saw the bent figure of a woman shuffling along in the shadow of a hedge bright with elder flowers. An old tramp woman, from the look of her. Seth caught only a fleeting glimpse, but she seemed to be cursing him, shaking her fist, a witch-like creature obviously riddled with madness. And yet there had been something familiar about her.

Seth shook his head and drove on, forgetting her in the same instant.

‘Your Annie’s come into money,’ Florrie said, when Jack had calmed down a little. ‘An’ she’s giving it to us for Timmy’s schooling. So he can be a teacher one day.’

‘Where is it?’ Jack’s beetle-brows drew together. ‘Where’s the money?’

Instinctively Annie clutched her draw-string purse to her, too late to prevent her father leaping from the chair in one bound and snatching it away from her.

Tearing at the string, thrusting his hand deep inside, not finding what he was after straight away, he upended the purse over the table, scrabbled among the contents and found what he was looking for. Five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten … ten gold sovereigns rolled in all
directions
, to lie among the unwashed pots, the greasy plates, the jam jar with its scraping of red plum jam in the bottom.

Jack stared at it in disbelief, rubbing one hand over the dark stubble on his chin. ‘Ten bloody pounds!’ He gathered the coins up and thrust them deep into his trouser pocket. ‘Now then. Where’s the rest?’

‘There’s no more.’ Annie backed towards the door, but again he was too fast for her. ‘Hold her, Florrie!’

Annie screamed. Just once, but the sound of it brought her father’s rough hand up to the side of her head, striking a hard blow that dislodged her hat so that it hung loosely, tethered to her head by the long hat pin.

‘Where’s the rest?’ Jack was beside himself with pent-up rage. ‘You dare to come back, flaunting yourself at us in your finery!’He hit her again, so that her head rocked back, sending a sharp shaft of pain through her ear. ‘You’ve been nothing but trouble since the day you were born!’ His hand came out again. ‘Now where’s the rest? D’you hear me?’ This time the pain brought her teeth down onto her tongue, so that she tasted blood, then suddenly he stopped hitting her to twist her arm high behind her back. With his other hand he tugged at the hat, tearing it from her head, bringing a bright tuft of hair with it.

‘Feel round her skirts, Florrie. The hem of her skirts.’ His face was no more than an inch away. ‘That’s where she used to hide her money from me. Feel round her skirts, woman! Not like that! Down on your knees, so you can see what you’re doing.’

It was a long, long time since Florrie had been down on her knees and the hard discomfort of it made her draw in her breath sharply. As much as she disliked seeing Jack hit out at Annie like that, money was money and never to be sneezed at. Moving awkwardly, wincing at the sound of Annie’s moans of pain, she fumbled round the machine-stitched padded hem of the blue-grey dress.

‘There’s nowt here, Jack.’ She sat back, puffed.

‘Not in her dress, woman! Her petticoat!’ With his free hand Jack gathered a fold of Annie’s skirt in his hand and yanked it up above her waist. ‘There’ll be a pocket somewhere. There! I knew it! Old habits die hard, especially for whores.’

The sound of the petticoat being ripped from her released Annie from the numbed horror of what was happening to her. In Adam’s cottage, tied to a chair, she had been helpless, but now … The anger at what her father had done to her all her life, was trying to do now, broke from her in a piercing scream.

‘Give that to me!’ Like a wild cat she flew at Jack, wrenching the torn white petticoat from him before he could react. ‘I’ll give you the money of my own accord, of my own free will!’ She pulled the thread from the pocket. ‘Here!’ Before their astonished gazes she tossed a chamois leather bag on to the table. ‘Take it! Take it as payment for bringing me up, as payment for all the times you reminded me how much it cost you to feed me.’ She lifted her chin. ‘Take it so I can walk free from this house and never ever feel the need to come back again. And remember I gave it to you, not the other way round. It belonged to a man who was prepared to see his wife die rather than use it to buy medicine for her and care for her, so it’s tainted already. May you both have joy of it, because it’s brought none to me!’

Tears flooded her heart, but she would not let them fall. The carefully arranged hair was slipping its bun, her hat lay in a corner where her father had tossed it away. She looked desperately ill with her white face marked by red patches, showing clearly the imprints of Jack Clancy’s stubby fingers.

‘I tried to love you, but I failed,’ she shouted. ‘I’m not going to try any more, because I don’t care! You’re my family, our Dad, and I had need of you, but not any more.’ She gestured towards the money on the table. ‘I know you’ll drink all that away and there’ll be none to spare for Timmy.’ She rubbed her eyes with a fist.
There’s
nothing I can do about that, neither.’ She went to pick up her hat. ‘As soon as I can I’ll be gone from this town and you’ll never see me again.’ She turned at the door. ‘Do you know what you do to someone when you withhold love from them, our Dad? You kill them inside so that they no longer trust, because always, every minute, they’re expecting to be let down. You make them more ready to see the worst in folks than the best!’

It was a long speech for someone who had never been taught to express herself, but Annie knew she felt all the better for the saying of it. The two she’d left inside, gawping at her with blank faces, would be quarrelling about the money even now. Florrie, who wasn’t all bad, would be wanting to put some aside, but her husband would have different ideas.

Annie leant against the wall and with trembling hands pinned her hat back on her untidy hair. The men were coming up from the early shift, clogs and heavy boots clattering on the cobblestones, bait-tins slung round stooped shoulders, jacket pockets bulging with their water bottles. One or two of them stared curiously at Annie, the whites of their eyes gleaming from dust grimed faces, but they were tired to the point of exhaustion, with pinched-hard apathetic expressions. They were going home to a tub of hot water, to a bowl of stew with a dabbing of shin beef in it if they were lucky, and to sleep till it was time to get up and begin all over again.

Annie could smell the thick meaty stew the minute she got inside the house two doors down. It was like stepping back into her childhood, with Edith Morris, neat as ever in long black skirt and high-necked blouse, bending over the soot-blackened pan to stir what looked like a full bodied lentil soup. The only thing missing was the bed in the window, the commode by its side, and Grandma Morris sitting up and listening, bird-small head on one side, eyes as shrewd as if she guessed exactly what you were going to say long before you said it.

She would have known at once that Annie’s father had
been
laying about her again, but her daughter seemed not to notice that her visitor was swaying on her feet, with her hair coming down, almost on the point of collapse.

The usually self-possessed prim woman was so agitated that she let the spoon drop into the hearth, picked it up and stuck it back into the pan without washing it first. How was she going to explain to this smartly dressed young woman who bore not the slightest resemblance to the Annie Clancy she remembered that it wasn’t convenient for her to stop here, not even for the odd night? Not just inconvenient but impossible, to judge by the way Mick had carried on when the letter came.

‘She’s looking for a place,’ he’d thundered, letting Edith read the letter aloud to him because it was quicker that way. ‘If she comes through the front door then it’s me out of the back!’

For the first time in her life Edith was being bossed, cherished and dominated, and it thrilled her to the marrow of her big bones. The act of love had astonished her at first, then pleased her so much she was ready for Mick any time he wanted her. Which was every single day. Sometimes he would come in from the woodyard and lower her down onto the cut-rug by the fire and pleasure her even before he sat down to his tea, and by the hours of sleep she’d lost it was a wonder she could keep awake at her looms in the weaving shed.

He was so tender, so gentle, so brutal. He worshipped her. Every inch of her body, he’d said, kissing her in places she’d been brought up to think were downright rude. The red rough hands that could wield an axe or lift sacks of coal up on to his shoulders had such liquid passion in their touch that Edith’s whole being would melt with longing when he trailed his fingers down her cheeks, her throat, fumbled with the buttons of her blouse, and feather-touched her breasts, rolling her nipples round between finger and thumb till they stood out hard.

‘I know you wanted Annie here at one time,’ he’d said,
and
then gone on to explain that their sweet freedom would be all gone with a third person in the house. ‘We’d be like other folks then,’ he’d said. ‘Making love only in bed, in the dark, trying to be quiet. I couldn’t come home and do this,’ he’d whispered, his hands at the fastening of her blouse, even as he stood by the door in muffler and cap, ready for work.

Edith blushed like a young girl, turned round and looked properly at Annie for the first time since she’d opened the door to her.

‘What’s he done to you, love?’She wiped her hands on her apron, pushed Annie down into a chair. ‘He’s a wicked man. My mother, who wouldn’t have hurt a fly, always said he was a wicked man.’

Her sudden change of mood from apparent indifference to warmth was too much for Annie. Her head went down so that all Edith could see was the carefully trimmed hat with its wreath of artificial daisies and dog-roses.

‘I’m never going into that house again.’ Her voice came ragged with tears. ‘I’ve bought my freedom from him, Miss Morris, and when I’ve had a chance to get myself together I’ll start afresh. I’ve still got a bit sewed away where he couldn’t feel it for the padding, so it won’t be like the last time I was on my own. Nothing could be as bad as that.’

Edith went to sit in the chair opposite, watching Annie’s face when she raised her head. Even blotched red and wet with tears there was beauty in the high cheek bones, the curve of the generous mouth.

‘Take your hat off,’ Edith said, too loudly, wondering at the flood of resentment and jealousy rising up inside her. ‘I tried to find you,’ she said, feeling her conscience dictate that she make amends. ‘But you’d run away.’ She stared significantly at Annie’s dress with its lace frill and pearl-buttoned bodice. ‘You must have found yourself a good job?’

‘I was a seamstress in a big house.’

‘Was?’ The significance of that wasn’t lost on Edith. She began to feel hot and bothered again.

‘I lost the job.’ Annie suddenly realised that Miss Morris was frightened of something, that she was continually glancing towards the door, twisting a corner of her apron round and round as if it was wet and she was trying to wring it out. ‘The family I worked for are going to France.’

‘Oh …’

Annie knew she’d been mistaken in thinking that Miss Morris had altered. She was just the same, with her thin mouth buttoned up prissy and her eyes looking at you and finding you wanting.

‘So you’re out of work?’ Edith looked positively distraught. ‘And looking round for a place to stay?’

‘Only for a while. Till I find a living-in job.’ Annie hated to say it but felt she had no choice. ‘Your mother said that there would always …’

But the chance to remind Edith exactly what her mother had said was lost when the front door banged open as violently as if someone outside had come at it with a battering ram. Annie turned round to see a huge man with hair only a mite less red than her own, with tangled eyebrows meeting over a bulbous nose. Bagging and delivering seventy bags of coal that day had brought the sweat up on him. His face was streaked with coal dust, but the fastidious Miss Morris went straight to him and kissed him.

‘Mick! Look who’s here! It’s Annie Clancy!’ Annie watched in amazement as she simpered, widening her eyes, laughing at nothing. ‘You remember Annie?’ Tripping over to the oven she opened the door, then stood back, wafting the heat from her face. ‘She came to see her father, and now she’s popped in here to see me and have a bite to eat before getting on her way.’

‘So that’s the way of it?’ Mick was swaying on his feet, very much on his mettle, certainly not drunk. Annie had
seen
too much of insobriety to know when a man was stone-cold sober.