The Travelling Man (39 page)

For a second – a tiny fraction of time – she hesitated, fighting to get a hold on herself, to make sense of what was going on. To steady herself she took a deep breath. Edith Morris, Miss Morris, with the hatchet face and prissy ways, was married to Mick Malone, the town’s drunk, an Irishman with a tongue on him like the floor of a pigeon loft! It was incredible, but it was true. There was a wide gold ring on Edith’s finger, and for the first time Annie noticed that the table was set for two. The last time she had seen Mick he had been clomping in loose pit clogs across Barney Eccles’s filthy yard. She had seen him blow his nose through his fingers on to the greasy cobblestones. She remembered turning away in disgust.

‘Go through and have your wash, sweetheart,’ Miss Morris was saying, laying a hand on her husband’s arm. ‘It’s lentil soup, then tatie-pie, and pineapple chunks if you can still find a corner to fill.’

‘Then I’ll say goodbye, Annie, seeing as you’ll be gone when I come back like a nice clean boy.’ Mick was talking to Annie, but his eyes never left his wife’s face. ‘I expect you’ll be wanting to be away before dark sets in, won’t you, lass?’

With a squeeze of Edith’s shoulder he left the room, king of his castle, monarch of all he surveyed. Annie could hardly bear to look at the tall woman cringing in embarrassment in front of her.

‘It’s all right,’ she said quickly, getting up from her chair. ‘He’s right. It’s best I go now.’

Edith was actually wringing her hands. ‘He doesn’t like company.’ She lowered her voice. ‘Having visitors in the house threatens him.’ Her eyes were pleading with Annie to understand. ‘This is the first home he’s ever had, the longest he’s ever kept a job …’

She was so bitterly ashamed she hardly knew what she was saying or doing. Her mother had kept open house
for
anybody who happened to drop in. Another potato would be popped into the pot, another chair set at the table. No fuss, no bother at all. For Annie Clancy there had always been a special welcome. ‘That child is treated something shocking at home. If ever a man deserved to go to hell when he dies, that man is Jack Clancy. I could watch him dangle from a rope without batting an eyelid.’ Edith could hear her mother saying it now.

It was terrible having to walk by on the other side, terrible knowing that Annie Clancy had nowhere to go. Showing her to the door just the same.

Florrie saw Annie pass the window on her way up the street. She had a hand over her mouth as if she was crying. Florrie went to the door for a proper look.

She tut-tutted into her chins. The poor little beggar had her bag with her, so she hadn’t managed to get her feet under next door but one’s table after all. Fat chance of that happening now. Edith Morris might have been lagging behind when it came to the wicked ways of men, but she was catching up with a vengeance. With Mick Malone, too. There was no accounting for tastes! Personally, Florrie wouldn’t have touched her distant cousin with a barge-pole.

All the time she was chunnering to herself Florrie was down on her knees in front of the cupboard under the slopstone, rummaging behind the pans set on a rickety shelf. The parcel was there where she’d hidden it when it first came, knowing it was the one spot in the house safe from prying eyes. Cursing and groaning at the discomfort in her swollen knees, she turfed out two grease encrusted meat tins, a broken pie funnel, a rusted vegetable slicer, a heavy pair of iron weigh scales with cushions of dirt growing on them like black moss, a bent toasting-fork and a goffering iron. They made an almighty clatter on the floor but Florrie was in a hurry. If Jack came in from the backyard and caught her he’d kill her as likely as not. An’ he’d
take
his time about it as well if he knew what she was about to do.

Florrie got to her feet with even more of a struggle than it had taken her to get down. She opened the door, closed it quietly behind her, and set off up the street.

‘Annie?’ If she hadn’t been frightened to death that Jack might hear her she could have let rip. With the wind in the right direction she could have been heard four streets away, but she daren’t risk discovery. ‘Annie?’ Her slippers were that thin she could feel every nick in the flags through them. Her heart was thumping fit to bust, and there was a woman across the street mopping her window bottom for the second time that day, the silly beggar, staring with her gob open as if she was catching flies.

‘Annie!’ Florrie stopped to catch her breath. Why wouldn’t she turn round? And why was she swaying from side to side like that? That last blow with the flat of Jack’s hand had nearly knocked the lass’s block off. He didn’t know his own strength, never had. It was to be hoped this was the end of it, because Annie Clancy was like a red rag to a bull to Jack.

Huffing and panting, Florrie set off again. It was wicked the way hate could fester inside a man without healing or even scabbing over. Florrie had always been the bottom of her class at school, but you didn’t need brains to know that when Jack landed out like that it was Annie’s real father he was punishing. The unknown red-haired man his first wife had dared to love before she met him. ‘With Jack it’s all or nowt.’ Everybody who knew Jack said that about him, and they were right. By God, they weren’t wrong.

Her big face was blood red; she held a hand over a raging stitch in her side; she was unkempt and far from clean, but as she caught up with Annie at last and pushed the parcel at her, the small button eyes brimmed over with compassion.

‘It’s yours, chuck. I hid it from him,’ was all she managed to gasp before setting off back down the long street, enormous behind wagging, tomato-red heels slipping from the shabby shoes.

It was a brown paper parcel, tied badly with dirty string. It had been at the back of the grimy shelf for so long it was covered in grease marks. Annie opened her bag and pushed it down as far as she could, too dispirited to open it or even care what it could be.

When she reached the top road leading to the open countryside she turned round to look down on the straggled rows of little houses, the tall mill chimneys, the grey slag heaps, touched to a kind of splendour by the rays of the setting sun.

Common-sense told her that the best thing would be to find lodgings for the night. All she needed was to produce one of the seven sovereigns hidden in the padded hem of her dress and she’d be welcomed with open arms. She knew of a particular row of houses where the theatricals lodged. She could stay in one of them while she looked round for a job, a living-in job at one of the big detached houses on the far side of the town. If she went back now there was the possibility of at least temporary security; if she turned her back on the town there was little ahead but moorland, beck and fell for miles.

Annie looked far out to the distant hills, purple now but green, she knew, when you got nearer to them. The leaves on the trees were already beginning to be tipped with yellow, and across a far field she could see a farmer and his men still working.

The pain in her ear, in the whole of the left side of her head, was agonising. When she moved her head too quickly the ground swayed and dipped, making her feel sick. She took off her hat to let the evening breeze lift her damp hair away from her forehead. She wished
she
could decide what to do next – what to do for the best. The only way she could contain the knife-point stabbing pain was by holding a hand over her ear, so she let her hat drop to the ground and walked on without it.

She turned into a field path and stumbled along the deeply rutted ground. The pains were red-hot now; they were bringing a mist to her eyes; they were taking her reasoning away. Suddenly the agony slicing through her head, the weight of her bag, the chill wind that cut through to her skin, were all too much. She tripped and fell, to lie there whimpering into the damp earth, all control gone.

She began to cry, and once started couldn’t stop. She cried not only with pain but because she was tired of fighting, tired of being rejected, weary of having to make her own way in the world, terrified that she would still be going on fighting when she was an old, old woman.

‘Oh, God,’ she sobbed, ‘help me now. Help me, please.’

All the time she cried she could hear a little voice deep inside her telling her that once the relief of letting go was over she would get up and walk on, in one direction or another. Lying in a field feeling sorry for herself wasn’t going to help. Nor was it dignified. She would manage, she would soldier on – she always had and she always would.

But oh, dear God, it was a relief to let go, to stop being brave and proud and quietly dignified. She could scream as loud as she wanted to, or tear at her hair, knowing no one could hear, knowing no one could see.

Ten minutes later she was walking back towards the town, making for the top road again. When she came to where her hat lay she picked it up and plonked it on her head. Defiantly.

There was nothing Seth could do when Jake Tomlinson, a farmer he knew well, stood in his path waving both arms in the air. The awful dread was still in him, but Jake’s best cow was in the middle of calving and Seth soon saw that something was badly wrong. She bellowed her anguish, straining so hard she was in imminent danger of toppling over.

The front legs and nose of her calf were sticking out, but as fast as Seth tried to get a length of baler twine round them they slipped back, making the cow sway dangerously and her heart to palpitate visibly. Seth passed a piece of wood through the loops of twine to make hauling easier, but again and again the calf’s legs and the tip of its nose appeared briefly only to be sucked back immediately. Seth took off his jacket, shouted for a bucket of water and rolled up his shirt sleeves.

‘She’s tekkin her time, Mr Armstrong.’ Old Jake looked almost as distressed as his animal. ‘She wasn’t like this the last time. D’you reckon it’s a big’un?’

There was milk spurting from the cow’s udders and her eyes were rolling. Seth decided to ease her agony with his hands.

‘You’re right about it being a big one,’ he panted, trying to slide his hands into the best position. ‘Move that clean straw over here. I think … I think …’

With a gigantic push that almost toppled the cow over, the calf slithered out on to the straw, blinked and tried to sit up.

Jake was a bit put out when Mr Armstrong wouldn’t go into the farmhouse for a sup of tay. His cow was lowing with pleasure, busily licking the wet slime from her calf. Jake shuddered to think what might have happened if the animal doctor hadn’t chanced along the road. It was a miracle, that’s what it was, an’ you didn’t come across them all that often. Seth Armstrong had the gift of healing in his hands; Jake’s missus thought the world of him. Yet here he was rubbing himself dry
on
a bit of sacking and putting his jacket and shirt back on, positive he hadn’t time to stop, not even for a brew.

‘It’s my belief there was summat sorely bothering him,’ Jake told his wife.

‘Nowt a sup o’ tay wouldn’t have put right,’ she said, aggrieved.

Seth was so glad to see Annie trudging along the top road he leaned from the trap and shouted at her, all control gone.

‘For God’s sake, where d’you think you’re going? Give me that bag and let’s have you up here.’ In one bound he was out of the trap and by her side, wincing at the sight of her bruised cheek. Almost without volition he stretched out a hand to touch it, then drew back as she jerked her head away. ‘Your father?’ Surely he had the right to ask that?

Annie nodded. ‘But it’s for the last time. He tried to take Adam’s money from me, but I said he was welcome to it. As a sort of payment. I felt I needed to make it clear. Can you understand?’

Seth did understand. He knew exactly what she meant. He admired her more than he’d admired any woman in his life before, but he knew he must subdue the longing in him to put his arms around her and hold her close. There was mud down the front of her dress, her hair was coming down, and he wanted to hold her tenderly as he would an injured bird, calming her, soothing her until her heartbeats slowed and her eyes lost their aching sadness.

‘So where are you going now?’

She nodded towards the town with its slag heaps and tall mill chimneys. ‘I’m going to find a place to stay till I can get a living-in situation. I’ve got enough money to see me right for a while.’ She tilted her chin. ‘I won’t starve.’

‘I can offer you a living-in situation.’ He was very
business-like
, trying desperately not to show his eagerness. ‘Biddy is finding the house too much for her to manage on her own, and besides, people are beginning to talk.’

Her glance was sharp. ‘Is there reason for them to talk?’

Solemnly he shook his head. ‘There has been no physical contact between us at all.’

He was laughing at her again. Annie searched his face, but he was gazing ahead, apparently perfectly serious, the brim of the slouch hat hiding his expression.

‘You don’t care what people say,’ she accused. ‘You never did.’

‘I admit I am broad in the mind,’ he said, still in that pompous voice, making her lips curve up in the merest semblance of a smile which, if he noticed, he was careful not to comment on.

Annie put a hand over her mouth in the familiar gesture of self-comfort. She was forcing the tears back, experiencing again the moment when she had turned to see the black horse galloping towards her, the trap being driven as if it was part of a chariot race. For a brief second it had seemed to be surrounded by a shimmering white light.

‘You may wear a uniform if you wish,’ he was saying, ‘but the cost will of course be deducted from your wages.’

Her bag was already in the trap, she had only to say the word and she could be turning her back on the town. She could be feeling safe and protected. She could. This man watching her so carefully knew the score now and accepted it. It would be master and maid, just as he had promised.

‘You have to start trusting sometime,’ he said softly, almost as if to himself.

Annie made up her mind. ‘I accept the position, thank you,’ she said, then wondered if the surge of emotion inside her stemmed from laughter or tears.