Alley Urchin (20 page)

Of a sudden, Molly sat bolt upright as the twine tightened about her toe. ‘Ssh now, gal,’ she told herself, moving with the utmost care as she slid her toe from the loop and put her two hands around the willow-stick, which began bending towards the canal, as the twine was pulled tighter and tighter. In a minute it was all-out war! If Molly hadn’t whipped the stick from the ground and taken charge, the entire lot would have gone flying into the water. Unable now to contain her excitement, Molly began whooping and hollering, giving the line its head, then drawing it back again. Inch by inch she shortened the line and wound it round the stick, bringing her struggling quarry nearer and nearer until she could see the fish-tail thrashing furiously in the water. ‘It’s no good you arguing, you old bugger!’ she yelled. ‘I’ve got you, and I ain’t letting you get away!’ At the right moment, she flicked the stick in the air, bringing both line and fish out of the water. With a soft thud the exhausted fish fell to the grass. ‘You little beauty!’ cried Molly, reverently collecting it up in her hands and gently easing the small bent nail out of its mouth. ‘Oh, you’re a
real
beauty!’ She gazed in wonder at its small sleek body, its silver colour speckled with gold, and the sheen in its tail and fins almost translucent in the light of the sun. ‘Oh . . . you really
are
lovely!’ gasped Molly, and she knew in her heart that she could never take its life. She was held fascinated for a moment longer, then, when its mouth gasped frantically and its eyes began popping, she knelt down by the water’s edge and lowered it back in. When it moved away, slowly at first, then in a rush of excitement, Molly was not sorry. She had caught a fish, and her only thought was to tell the world.

‘I
caught
him!’ She stood up and yelled at the top of her voice, ‘Sal . . .
I caught a fish!’
Without stopping to collect her precious fishing tackle, she sped along the bank like the wind. ‘Sal . . . Sal, I
did
it!’ There was a fever in her, and the greatest need to tell the only person who mattered in her young life.

When Molly saw the hut in sight, she was spurred on, her whole being alive with excitement. ‘Sal! . . . Sal!’ she was calling as she flung open the door. Then she was cruelly silenced by the scene which greeted her. Sal was there, and so was her fellow. But they were both stark naked, the small wiry man bending over the bed where Sal was lying, and Sal lying so still that Molly’s heart shrank inside her. At once the man swung round, his eyes large and terrified as they stared at Molly. ‘’T’ain’t my fault,’ he said in a trembling voice, ‘we were having a good time . . . a good time, I tell you! Then she couldn’t breathe.
Look
at her, oh God in Heaven . . . ’tweren’t
my
fault!’ He began shivering limb from limb as Molly came further into the room, a look of confusion and horror on her face. All the while he was scrambling into his clothes the man kept repeating in a tearful voice. ‘Tain’t my fault! We were having a good time, I swear.’ When he was fully dressed, he came to where Molly was stooping over her beloved Sal, and touching her gently on the shoulder he promised, ‘I’ll fetch help, I swear . . . I’ll fetch proper help.’ Then he was gone in a great hurry.

‘Let ’im go, Molly lass.’ Sal made no move other than to raise her eyes to Molly’s face. There was the twinkling of a smile in them, but only a twinkling, and to Molly it seemed as though somewhere deep inside those bright merry eyes a light had been switched off. ‘Oh, Sal . . . what shall I do?’ Molly felt torn two ways, because part of her wanted to rush out and find help, but a deeper instinct kept her there.

‘Don’t do nowt, lass,’ murmured Sal, as Molly reverently drew up the blanket to cover Sal’s nakedness. ‘Yon feller’ll get ’elp. But it won’t do no good, darlin’ . . . ’cause old Sal’s gone past being ’elped. ‘She made an effort to laugh, but it seemed to cause her pain, as she brought both her arms up and clutched them across her chest; then she smiled a toothless smile, softly chuckling as she went on with difficulty, ‘The bugger were right, y’know. We
were
‘aving a “good time”. Best good time I’ve ’ad in bloody years! Only . . . me old ticker let me down, sod an’ bugger it.’ Every word was an effort. ‘Oh, but it were
grand
ter feel a feller’s weight atop o’ me after all these years, lass. Pity it’s fer the last time, eh?’

Molly didn’t think it was such a ‘grand’ thing. And she wanted Sal to stop talking that way, because it frightened her.

‘You’re going to be fine and dandy,’ Molly said in a choking voice, ‘you
are
Sal . . . you are!’ The thought of losing Sal was more than she could bear. As hard as she tried to hold back the tears, they would not be held, and as they flowed down her sorry young face, Sal reached up a grubby hand to wipe them away. ‘No, Molly lass . . . don’t do that on my account.’ Her fingers touched the tiny delicate watch that Molly always wore about her neck. ‘An’ don’t yer
dare
to sell that there trinket! It don’t belong ter you, y‘see . . . it belongs ter the little people. You promise me now, lass . . .
promise
ye’ll never sell it!’ Molly promised, but with Sal’s next words, she wished she hadn’t. ‘Let the buggers put me in a pauper’s grave,’ she told Molly, ‘it meks no difference ter me, ’cause I’ll be past carin’.’ Again she would have chuckled, but was gripped with such a fierce pain that it took her breath away.

‘Lie still, Sal . . . please.’ Molly was also racked with pain, but it was a different kind of pain . . . a sort of terror. ‘I’m going to get help for you, Sal,’ she said now, beginning to move away.

‘No!
Don’t leave me
. I want yer next ter me when I go . . . I’m a coward, yer see,’ she finished with a tight little smile. ‘You stay aside o’ me, Molly lass.’ Her smile faded into a look of sorrow as she softly added, ‘You an’ Marlow . . . yer all I’ve got. An’
that
bugger’s gone afore me, I’m thinking . . . ’cause if ’e ain’t, then ’e’s deserted me . . . an’ I’ll
never
believe that of ’im. Never!’ She had Molly’s small hand secure in her own, and she had no intention of letting go.

‘Sal,
please . . .
let me get help,’ pleaded Molly. But then something happened which riveted her to the spot, because Sal uttered three words to her that she had never said before, ‘I. love you,’ she whispered. Then she closed her eyes, and her hand fell back on the bedclothes. She never heard Molly’s terrible cry of anguish as the distraught girl threw herself into Sal’s lifeless arms.

When the man came back, just as he had promised, together with an old gypsy-fellow who was renowned for his knowledge of medicine, they saw the child still cradling the woman who had been the only mammy she had ever known. They heard her crying softly as she murmured a prayer, and they knew there was nothing left to do but notify the authorities to fetch old Sal away to her last resting-place. As for the young ’un, well, she’d have to fend for herself, because times were hard and folks had enough mouths to feed.

Word spread quickly that very day about how poor Sal Tanner had gone. ‘In the arms of a feller,’ said one, ‘enjoying herself right up to the very end,’ and everybody agreed whole-heartedly that, if Sal had to go, ‘the old bugger wouldn’t have wanted it any other way’. All the same, it was a pity about the young lass, they said, and an even bigger pity that old Sal led the girl to believe she’d never had no parents and was ‘left by the little people’ because where were ‘the little people’ now, eh? Well, nowhere else but in Sal’s twisted, merry mind, that’s where! But then where were the lass’s proper parents? For all anybody knew, they might just as well be the little characters dreamt up by old Sal. The top and bottom of it all was that young Molly had nobody. She was on her own, and it was hard enough to survive in this world even when you were a grown-up fellow and had a companion to watch out for you. When you were a lass though, not yet twelve years old,
and
all alone in the world, surviving could turn out to be a nightmare. But everyone had more than their fair share of troubles, and had to work through them the best they could.

‘You
cheated
me! And you cheated Sal!’ Molly’s tear-stained face was raised to the sky and her small fist was clenched and held up as though to threaten some unseen thing. ‘I hate you! D’you hear me . . . I
hate
you!’ She continued to look upwards, as if waiting for a reply, and when the sky remained unchanged, she crumpled to the ground, sobbing as though her heart would break. ‘Give her back to me. Oh, please . . . give me back my old Sal.’

For a long while Molly stayed still on the grass, her heart so filled with grief that she didn’t care whether she herself went the same way as her darling Sal. In fact, she would have preferred it to being left all on her own.

‘Aw, it ain’t so terrible, Molly,’ said a kindly voice immediately above her, and when she looked up, blinking her dark unhappy eyes against the bright sunlight, Molly saw that it was one of Sal’s drinking cronies, a small, shrew-like creature with pointed features and a narrow body almost completely shrouded in a long, dark cotton shawl. In a minute she was seated on the grass beside Molly, her tiny pea-like eyes swallowed up in the great rolls of puffy flesh which surrounded them. ‘None of us can live for ever, y’know . . . ’specially not the likes o’ me and Sal, who don’t gi’ a cuss for nothing and nobody.’ She went on, ‘Anybody as enjoys their tipple, like me an’ Sal, well . . . they’re on their way out a sight quicker than most folks, ain’t they, eh?’ She inclined her head to one side and took a while regarding Molly’s slim, taut, little figure, with the promise of great beauty emerging; she looked into the dark oval eyes and saw something unusual and lovely there, and a look of cunning came over her face. ‘No, you forget Sal Tanner,’ she said, edging a little closer, ‘she’s laid out in that cold place now, waiting her turn to be put in the ground. Poor old sod . . .
she
won’t be knocking back any more jugs of ale . . . no, nor bedding any more fellers neither, unless o’course it’s a free-for-all up
there.’
She kept her prying eyes on Molly’s unhappy face, while she jerked a thumb heavenwards.

‘I’d be obliged if you’d please leave me be,’ Molly told her. She didn’t care much for the woman, she never had done, and she didn’t like the things that were being said now. On top of which there was an awful ache in her heart, and she wanted to be left on her own.

‘Oho . . . want rid of me, do you? Well, I expect you’re not too keen on company just now . . . and it’s only to be understood, in the circumstances, what with poor Sal not proper cold and all.’

The woman watched while Molly went to sit by the water’s edge, where she absent-mindedly began to skim small clods of soil into the canal. ‘They wouldn’t let me go in where they took Sal,’ murmured Molly in a forlorn voice, the tears still tumbling softly down her face. ‘I wanted to stay with her.’ She brought her two small fists up and scraped the tears away. ‘But they wouldn’t let me.’

‘Well, o’
course
they wouldn’t let you!’ The woman was astonished that anybody should want to stay in a parish mortuary, unless of course they were stretched out and had no option. ‘You don’t want to go upsetting yourself any more than you need,’ she told Molly, who made no response other than to lean forward, fold her arms across her bent knees and drop her dark head into the cradle there. She felt utterly lost, and she knew in her aching heart that nothing would ever be the same again.

The woman sidled closer, all the while regarding the trim attractive figure: all manner of unsavoury thoughts ran through her mind. She was well aware that there was a ready market for young virgin girls, because hadn’t she already fattened her purse from it time and time again?

‘It comes to us
all,’
she went on, attempting now to move the subject away from Sal, when there might be an opportunity to lead on to other, more profitable matters. But first she had to deal with the girl’s hostile attitude towards her. ‘Don’t take it too much to heart,’ she said, ‘Sal had a fair old innings. Why! . . . Look at the poor little bugger who got crushed unrecognisably under a coach and four in the early hours of this very morning . . . and not a spit too far from this very spot neither! Came dashing out of an alley they did, two o’ ’em . . . the bigger one scarpered when a bobby blew his whistle, but the young ’un, well . . . after the wheels and hooves had gone over him, there wasn’t much left, so they say. Funny thing, though . . . y’see, the undertaker is a cousin of the Navigation landlord . . . an’ the word is that the little feller as was mangled, well . . . he were a
gentry
! What d’you think of that then? And if that don’t top it all, it seems that he was Justice Crowther’s own grandson! Well! . . . It don’t bear thinking about, does it, eh? What would a young gentry like that be doing out at all hours . . . tell me that, eh? If you ask me, they’re no better than
any
of us.’

She dug deep into her shawl, drew out a clay pipe and proceeded to light it, puffing away until her face grew an uncomfortable shade of pink. When it was firing nicely, she peeped at Molly, who up to now was too steeped in her own thoughts to pay any heed to the old woman’s mutterings. ‘Well, as I was saying . . . Justice Crowther’s grandson no less! They do say as how he went wild when he was told . . . and the mother, she just passed right out in a faint. The boy’s father’s away on the high seas, and can’t be contacted. I expect it’ll break his heart, because the lad were an only child . . . happen he ran away or some’at, it’s hard to say, ain’t it? Got some fine and dandy togs on, by all accounts, except for his boots . . . which looked like they’d trudged for miles, according to the undertaker. And it was said how the lad had big coarse feet for a young gentry. Still . . . they don’t wear boots in Heaven, I don’t suppose, eh?’ She gave a little laugh, before nudging Molly and saying slyly, ‘What have you done with Sal’s boots? I’ll give you a pretty penny for ’em . . . her shawl too, if you’ve a mind?’