Angel Meadow (29 page)

“Rosie? Is that you, Rosie?” Nancy called out, standing up and going to the foot of the stairs, smiling as her sister began to descend them. Rosie’s feet were bare as though she had just come from her bed and she wore nothing but her shift.

“Rosie, what are you—?” Nancy began then her voice shrivelled in her throat and her hand went to her mouth. Every vestige of colour left her face, for coming down behind her, grinning triumphantly, was Mick O’Rourke.

16

Rosie was flushed and defiant, Mick wickedly elated, his handsome face split in a wide grin. Jennet and Mary were open-mouthed, wide-eyed, stunned and speechless, then they both turned as one to see what Nancy was going to do. She didn’t at first know herself, for the shock was so great it took her senses, her thoughts, her ability to function, froze her quick mind and rooted her to the spot at the foot of the stairs, blocking them so that Rosie and Mick could not come down further. Mick lounged indolently against the whitewashed wall, his shirt open to the waist to reveal his broad, hairy chest, his hands on Rosie’s shoulders as she stood on a step beneath him, proprietorial, challenging, sneering as though provoking Nancy Brody. If she thought she could do anything about it she was mistaken, for it was all too late.

The silence went on and on, for the shock had taken the voices, the power to move, the ability even to think coherently, of the three young women who had just come in and it needed something electifying to fetch them out of it.

Rosie provided it. She stepped forward boldly.

“Well, I suppose you had to know about it some time, our Nancy. Me and Mick’s been going steady for a while now. Nell was only a cover-up. And let me tell you I think it’s disgraceful the lies you told about being raped. Mick said you were always willing—”

Mick interrupted hastily. “Hush now, mavourneen, are we ter stand ’ere for ever chewin’ the fat or will we sit down an’ ’ave a cup o’ tea? To be sure, let’s be civilised about it, fer are we not ter be related as soon as may be. Now, if I’m not mistaken, that kettle’s about ter boil, Rosie, me love, so will yer be making us a brew. I’m thirsty after . . .” He winked and leered at them over the top of Rosie’s head, leaving them in no doubt as to what had made him thirsty, putting his brawny arms about her, one hand coming to rest familiarly on her breast.

Nancy stepped back from the horror of it, the horror of him, inclined to shudder and twitch as the shock raced through her, wanting to turn away and run screaming out of the house, wanting to get away from it, for it was obscene in its shame. Her sister, her little sister for whom she had had such high hopes, for whom she had worked so hard, to be caught like some helpless fly in the web of Mick O’Rourke’s clever charm. Oh, yes, there was no doubt about it, he had charmed and tricked Rosie and he had done it for only one purpose: to get back at
her
. He was a devil, beastly, evil, loathsome and if she had a knife handy she would have killed him then and there.

But strength was returning to her. She was beginning to recover and with recovery came a rage, a loathing so great it gave her strength so that she felt she could do ten rounds in the prize-fighting ring with this brute of a man and emerge victorious.

With an oath she sprang forward and tore her loudly protesting sister from his arms, throwing her with such violence across the room she fell to the floor by the front door where she crouched, dazed. He was next, though it made her stomach heave to touch him.

“Open the door, Mary,” she screamed, “and let me get this filth out of my house,” and Mary leaped to do her bidding, pushing aside her sister who still lay in a heap on the floor.

“Now then . . . now then, yer daft bitch, what d’yer think . . .” he began to splutter but, despite himself, Mick O’Rourke, six foot two and fourteen stone of hard muscle and bone, probably carried more than anything by the momentum of his own weight down the last few stairs, was propelled across the room and through the door into the street where he staggered like a drunk come from the beer house which, from the look on his face, enraged him even further. Mick O’Rourke was proud of himself, of his strength and obvious manhood, of his reputation as a fighter and a lover of women and to be bested by a woman, to be thrown out of a house by a
woman
, was more than he could bear. He was incensed to madness to have his masculinity mocked by this shrieking virago, and in front of his friends and neighbours, but she would not let him speak.

“You filthy sod . . . you bastard. You’re the scum of the earth, that’s what you are and if I catch you hanging about my sister again I’ll kill you. I’ll stick the bread knife in you and gladly hang for it.”

“’Ere, don’t you be talking ter me like that, Nancy Brody, fer yer as bad as yer sister.” He shook his fist, wanting to use it on her, that was very evident, wanting to hurt her, to knock her down as she had almost knocked him down. “A hot little bitch, that’s what yer are, liftin’ yer skirts fer any man what wants it. ’Aven’t I had a taste meself and that kid in there ter prove it. Oh, aye, ’tis mine all right,” feeling better now that he thought he had scored a point or two, turning to grin at the rapturous onlookers who had gathered to witness what promised to be a right old ding-dong, and involving, of all people, Lady Mucky Muck herself, the stuck-up Nancy Brody. Oh, they all knew about her bastard, for hadn’t she flaunted it for the past year and some had privately thought that it might have been Mick Brody’s get, but, since he’d said nothing and took no interest in her or the child, the gossip had died away. Now here he was shouting to the world that he’d stuck it in not one sister, but two. A right devil with the women, was Mick O’Rourke and you had to hand it to him, he had style.

“If you come within a mile of any member of my family again I’ll have the law on you, you filthy bugger,” Nancy hissed. She stood like any common street woman on her own doorstep, arms akimbo, face contorted with fury, her hair wild about her face and was ashamed, but was powerless to stop herself. “You’re saying that child in there is yours but are you man enough to tell these . . . these friends of yours how you got it on me?” she snarled, a vixen showing her teeth, defending what was hers, gasping for breath, her self-control, on which she prided herself, totally gone. “Do you think they’d like to hear how you dragged me into the churchyard and—”

Mick’s face was contorted with his rage and his voice shook. “Yer lyin’ bitch, yer were as eager fer it as that one,” pointing a shaking finger at Rosie, who was fighting with Mary and Jennet to get out to him and in the background the baby wailed in terror.

The audience was enchanted. Men and women and children edged closer, forming a semicircle almost at Mick’s back, for he was one of them and this hoity-toity bitch, though she had been born in this very alley, was not. They were elated to see her getting what they thought of as her comeuppance. But they did not really know Nancy Brody, any of them.
Really
know her, that is. They thought she was bested, but she wasn’t. Not by a long chalk!

“Do you honestly believe I’d be satisfied with a piece of trash like you, Mick O’Rourke? You’re the dregs of the earth, scum, riff-raff” – there were not enough words to describe what she felt about him – “and it makes me shudder and want to be sick when I think of what you did to me.” She looked over his head at the open-mouthed faces of her neighbours. “He wanted to marry me, did you know that?” she asked them. “Oh, yes, and when I refused, for I mean to do better than an illiterate, feckless, workshy Irish bucko, he took me anyway. Now he’s sniffing round my sister—”

“More ’n sniffin’, Nancy Brody. You ask ’er. You ask ’er what me an’ ’er’s bin up to this last few months. Go on, tell ’er, Rosie,” even though Rosie had already confessed. “All this time when yer were serpossed ter be wi’ that mate o’ yours, tell ’er ’oo yer were really with, so. An’ tell ’er ’tis yerself I want ter be marryin’, not ’er. She’s jealous, that’s what’s up wi’ ’er.”

With a screech Nancy launched herself across the cracked cobbles at him and, since he had not expected it she had scratched both his cheeks almost to the bone with her clawed fingers before he could defend himself. The blood sprang forth and he screamed a curse before lifting a fist, a fist that could fell a man as heavy as himself and smashed it against her cheekbone. She fell like a stone.

They stood like pillars of frozen ice, every man and woman in the street. They had been enjoying the spectacle and had been rooting for Mick, since there was not one of them who had not felt Nancy Brody’s contemptuous eye upon them at some time since her mam vanished, but this was just a bit too much for even them to stomach. They stared at her crumpled figure, so pretty in her rosy pink frock, her hair falling like a living curtain across her face, her arms flung every which way, her legs the same. They began to shake their heads and as though at a signal her sister, Mary that is, not Rosie, and that friend of hers, flew out to her, crying her name, for surely he had killed her. The blow she had received had been enough to fell an ox. They watched in silence as the pair of them struggled to lift her, one at her head the other at her feet. The hem of her frock fell back to reveal her legs almost up to her thighs and one woman moved forward and compassionately pulled it down, then helped them to carry her across her own doorstep, placing her on the bit of carpet of which they were so proud. The baby hiccuped broken-heartedly on the settle but was, for the first time in her young life, ignored. The woman emerged and walked down to her own front door, shutting it quietly behind her. They all began to drift away then, turning back to look at Mick, and there was not one there, rough, uneducated, brutalised as they were, who did not believe that what Nancy Brody had said, much as they disliked her, was the truth.

The Brodys’ front door opened once more and from it stepped their Rosie, carrying a bundle. She stood hesitantly in front of Mick who had his hands to his bleeding face. She waited submissively, as she was to wait for the remainder of their lives together, for him to tell her what to do.

“Don’t just stand there, yer daft cow,” he snarled. “Give us a ’and up ter me mam’s.”

Somehow they got her to Angel Street where they found a hansom cab who was willing to stop. The trouble was the cabbies who drove by looking for custom thought they were drunk as they heaved her along on her tottering feet, somehow carrying Kitty between them since they had no one to leave her with and had no time to fetch Annie. Kitty was whimpering in shock, reduced to an almost senseless state by the events of the past half-hour. Nancy’s face had come up like a balloon. It was cut to the bone which showed white and shattered through her grey flesh and the scarlet blood which seeped from it; and though neither of them knew
how
they knew, Jennet and Mary were aware that if they didn’t get help for her soon she might never come out of the state of semi-consciousness into which Mick’s powerful blow had knocked her. She mumbled in pain as they bundled her into a cab, the driver of which, seeing the child and the women’s decent clothing, the dreadful injury to one woman’s face, decided to stop.

“The hospital, please, and quickly.”

“Which one, lady?”

Which one? Dear God, which of Manchester’s hospitals? Several of them were no more than infirmaries for the poor and needy, glorified workhouses which, though they served a useful purpose, would have no doctor to treat the terrible injury Mick O’Rourke had inflicted on Nancy Brody. Mary was of no use, only in as much as she provided strong arms and a strong back, for the whole appalling incident had frightened the wits out of her and though she obeyed Jennet’s instructions to the letter she could not be said to be thinking with any degree of comprehension.

Then, her brow clearing, Jennet remembered an article she had read in the
Manchester Guardian
. Two gentlemen, Doctor Merei and Doctor Whitehead, had taken a lease on premises at number 8 Stevenson Square, which was not far away, where they had established a hospital specifically for women and children. The article had spoken of medical and surgical treatment of children and certain forms of disease peculiar to women: surely this fitted into one of these categories?

“Stevenson Square, please, Cabbie. Number eight.”

Nancy lay in a spotlessly clean bed for almost a fortnight, in what was known as the Clinical Hospital and Dispensary for Children, which stood between Ancoats and Angel Meadow. Her face was wrapped about from brow to chin with bandages, from which her slitted eyes glared at Doctor Whitehead and his nurses as though they were personally responsible for this catastrophe that had struck her down.

“I can’t stay here,” she told them, or at least that was what they thought she told them, for her mouth was partially covered by the bandages and the words came out in a sort of muffled gasp.

“Sip your broth, Miss Brody, and stop trying to talk,” the nurse told her briskly. “Doctor Whitehead won’t like it if you don’t take nourishment.”

“I don’t care what Doctor Whitehead would like. Let him drink the bloody broth. I must get out of here. I have a business to run.”

“So you keep saying, Miss Brody,” the nurse answered absently, not in the least concerned with Miss Brody’s business.

“If you’d just loosen these damned covers and let me up.”

“Miss Brody, will you please keep your mouth shut. I don’t mean to be rude but if you don’t relax your face and give it a rest it will never heal. Your cheekbone was fractured quite badly and you were lucky to find Doctor Whitehead here when you were brought in. He’s wonderful with bones.”

“And I’m grateful, but nurse, I have so much to do. The constable who came on the night I was admitted said I was to give a statement when I was well enough.”

“And so you shall, when you are well enough and Doctor Whitehead will decide when that is.”

“But the bastard who did this to me—”

“Miss Brody, there are children in this ward and I will not have language.”