Angels at War (17 page)

The girl’s face fell. ‘But it takes ages to make porridge, and the oats won’t have been soaked, and I still have to clean the milking parlour and see to the dairy. I can’t do everything on me own, can I?’

It had to be admitted that she couldn’t. Ella longed to get out of bed and go and do the task 
herself, but dare not. She felt tired and weak, and her back still ached, and she really must not risk losing her baby because of this silly girl.

‘All right then, I’ll settle for a couple of slices of toast, if you please. I’m eating for two, after all. But tomorrow when you make the porridge, remember that I like mine sweet.’

In due course, when the tetchy patient had quite despaired of ever getting any breakfast, a dish of hot buttered toast and coffee was brought up to her. And at least Ella got her honey, however grudgingly provided.

Mercy had never felt so miserable in her life. She’d expected things to get better once she’d found her father. But Josiah Angel hadn’t wanted her, had simply had her locked up and beaten. Even though he was long gone now, having earned his just desserts, she still didn’t feel a part of this family. Why was she so eaten up with bitter jealousy? She’d been nursing Ella for near two weeks now, doing all the work in the house and dairy, and she was heartily sick of it. But Ella was her sister, and Mercy was aware that she did all she could to make her feel wanted. If only she could accept the love she offered. If only she could feel as if she truly belonged.

‘Give these to the missus with my felicitations.’

She hadn’t heard George come in as she’d 
been so busy with her thoughts, and with scrubbing the kitchen floor.

George made a play of peering into her eyes by bringing his face down to hers as she knelt on a mat on the wet floor. ‘Cheer up, you could be scrubbing the imbecile ward in the workhouse instead of this nice warm kitchen.’

‘Does nothing ever get you down?’ she snapped. Mercy stared at the bunch of bright yellow daffodils in his hand and felt a hot surge of jealousy tighten her chest and almost suffocate her. No wonder she hated Ella so much. She’d stolen the one person she had left, her precious husband. George barely seemed to notice her these days, and it was all Ella’s fault.

He laughed. ‘Not so’s you’d notice. Can we have rice pudding for us tea. I love your rice pudding.’

As he strode away cheerfully whistling, Mercy threw the scrubbing brush after him and shouted, ‘That’s all anyone wants me for, cooking and cleaning.’ Then she burst into tears.

Later that afternoon the heavens opened and Mercy had to dash out to bring in the washing as the rain came down in torrents. She had her arms full of towels and was running back to the house with her head down against the rain when she saw a light on in the loft. Oh, what a treat! George must have finished work already, 
though it was only five o’clock. Usually he was in the cowshed or kept occupied cleaning tools or machinery in one of the outbuildings in bad weather. Perhaps he’d been let off early today because he’d worked such long hours recently. Lambing was like that, constant vigilance round the clock. Whatever the reason, Mercy made an instant decision that she too deserved to finish work early. There was a cottage pie doing no harm in the bottom of the oven, along with the requested rice pudding, and if she hurried they could enjoy an hour alone together before supper.

She dumped the pile of still damp towels on the kitchen table, quickly washed her face and tidied her hair, then holding her coat over her head against the rain, dashed across the farmyard to surprise him.

Upstairs, Ella woke from a doze in some discomfort and cried out as the ache in her back sharpened to a new intensity. To her horror she realised the bed was soaking wet.

‘Oh God, my waters must have broken. Mercy! Mercy, where are you? Come quickly, I think the baby is coming.’

Mercy didn’t hear her cry. Mercy was letting herself quietly in through the barn door. To her immense disappointment she realised that 
George was not alone. She could hear voices coming from above, and instinctively knew there was something wrong. He was talking to Tom Mounsey of all people. Why would he be doing that? Why would he even invite Tom into their private quarters? Were they quarrelling? Was there some sort of problem? Tom had certainly been behaving oddly lately, very silent and moody, not even bombarding her with his usual silly questions.

Very softly, she climbed the open-tread wooden staircase that led up to the loft, and poked her head in sufficiently far to see what was going on. Her heart seemed to stop beating and Mercy thought she might fall as a dark red mist swam before her eyes. She felt dazed, frozen with disbelief as she stared at the writhing naked bodies on the bed. Lithesome, beautiful, and erotically entwined, they were so absorbed with each other they weren’t even aware of her presence, of her scorching gaze upon them.

This was the reason George was no longer interested in her. Her first suspicions about him had been right all along. He did prefer men to women. The dress he’d worn in the workhouse hadn’t been pretence at all, nor a means to make himself appear a fool. It was a real need in him to dress and behave like a woman, a necessary and essential part of his nature. 

And Tom Mounsey had flirted with her simply as a means to get close to George. She should have guessed how things stood between them.

Mercy could hardly bear to watch yet couldn’t seem to tear her eyes away. All she could think was that neither of them had wanted her, only each other. But then wasn’t that the story of her life? Nobody loved her. Not her father when she’d eventually found him, not her
half-sisters
for all their feigned politeness, and now it seemed, not even her own husband.

She half stumbled back down the stairs, and, blinded by tears, fell the last few steps onto the barn floor. The wind was knocked out of her but she wasn’t seriously hurt, her fall broken by a heap of straw.

She heard movement above, the sound of footsteps and George calling to her. ‘Mercy, is that you, love?’

The last thing she wanted was for George to discover that she’d been spying on him. Mercy didn’t pause to answer or even to think. She picked herself up, flung open the barn door and ran out into the rain. She didn’t run back to the house and the drudgery of caring for a pregnant sister, but out into the darkness of the empty dale. Mercy neither knew nor cared where she was running. Nor, she thought, would anyone else.

It took Ella some time to appreciate that Mercy wasn’t going to answer her calls for help. As the pain intensified she shouted louder, with increasing desperation and fear. Panic threatened to overwhelm her. She managed to get out of bed, stagger to the top of the stairs and call one last time. But Ella could tell by the quality of silence seeping up from the kitchen below that she was quite alone in the farmhouse. No one could hear her.

She began to weep as she crept back to bed, but then slapped the tears away. What good would crying do? She had to think, to plan. She was about to give birth to her baby, and she was alone. How would she manage? Who knew when Amos might come down from the hills, and she
had no idea where either Tom or George were. Oh, where was Mercy? Where was that silly girl?

For the next several minutes Ella could do nothing but lie on her bed and deal with the excruciating pain. She’d never experienced anything like it before in her life, not even when she’d had to go to the dentist to have a tooth drawn. It was all-encompassing, utterly terrifying. Shouldn’t she boil water, and find sheets and towels to cover the bed? There was no time for any of that, even were she capable of doing it.

She screamed as a fresh spasm of pain gripped her. It was like giant claws tearing her apart. Ella brought up her knees and began to push. First she was on her back, then on her side, then she rolled out of bed and got down on her haunches on the rug. Instinct seemed to take over, time ceased to exist, sliding by in a rush so that she had no time to even think. She heaved and strained, desperately striving to rid herself of this painful burden. At long last, with awe and fear, she could feel the crown of the baby’s head coming. There seemed to be blood and water everywhere and her belly felt as if it might burst at any moment.

‘Oh, dear God, someone help me!’

She cried out one last time, something between a scream and a shout of triumph as
her muscles expanded, her body seemed to split apart, and the baby slithered from her. Ella fell back, too exhausted to move for a second.

The baby was silent, which she knew wasn’t right, and she pushed herself up to examine it. This was her child, a tiny girl lying between her knees looking very cross, and perhaps equally exhausted. Ella’s heart pounded like a mad thing in her breast as she crouched low over the tiny scrap that was her daughter. She saw the cord was still attached and took care to do nothing to dislodge it. With one trembling finger she wiped the blood and fluid from the baby’s nose, from her eyes, and cleaned out her mouth, then picked her up and gathered her gently in her arms. The baby sneezed, then opened her eyes wide in startled surprise and began to cry. Ella laughed out loud.

‘Hello, my little love. Welcome to the world.’

Ella cradled the precious bundle against her breast, the pain forgotten as she was now overwhelmed by love. The pegged rug was ruined, the bed sheets and mattress may never be quite so pristine again, but she no longer cared about the mess. She was concerned only for her child.

Somewhere in the depths of the farmhouse she heard a door bang, and she called out. ‘Is someone there?’

‘It’s me, George. Is Mercy around?’

Ella heard his step on the stair. ‘George, thank God! No, she isn’t, but I need Amos. I need a doctor. I’ve had my baby. It’s all over.’

But she was wrong. As George ran out across the yard in a panic to do her bidding, the pains started all over again. This must be the
afterbirth
, Ella thought, and wrapping the baby in a shawl she laid her carefully on a dry part of the bed, managing to crawl up beside her as the pains began again in earnest.

Then everything seemed to happen all at once. There were shouts and cries, footsteps pounding up the stairs, then soft hands tending her, Mary’s sweet face swimming before her eyes, telling her to be very calm as she was here now and everything was going to be all right. But Ella wasn’t listening. She was too busy screaming. Either she was about to die, or there was another baby coming.

Mercy was found huddled on the doorstep of Angel’s Department Store the following morning when Mr Tolson, the chief floorwalker, unlocked the main doors. She was shivering with cold, soaked to the skin, and his first reaction was to shoo her away. ‘This isn’t the place for waifs and strays to sleep. Be off with you before I fetch the police.’

But she refused to budge, begged to speak to Livia, and after an argument the man finally went to Miss Angel and told her there was some bit of a girl on the doorstep claiming to be her sister.

‘Mercy, what on earth are you doing here?’ Livia quickly ushered her into the warmth of the stock room, gently scolding her all the while. ‘Foolish girl, what are you thinking of to be out in this weather without even a coat on? Oh goodness, is it Ella? Has something happened to the baby?’

‘No, she’s fine, considering.’

‘Considering what?’

‘Nowt, we just had words, that’s all.’

Livia sighed. ‘Not again, why you two can’t get on defeats me. You haven’t run away, have you?’

‘I need you to give me a job. You promised me once that you could. I hate that farm. I hate pig swill and cow muck, and scrubbing out the dairy. I don’t want to spend my days beating and churning cream into butter, then doing the same thing all over again the next week. And never having no one to talk to.’

‘What about George?’

‘Never mind about him, it’s me I’m thinking of now. I’m going mad out there.’ Mercy had no wish to discuss with this so-clever half-sister of hers how she had in fact left her husband because
he’d rather make love to another man than his own wife. It was too shaming for words. Instead, she complained of being overworked, and told the tale of how Ella had decided to clean the kitchen cupboards and then fallen off the stool.

‘She blames me, says it were all my fault because I didn’t offer to do the job for her, but I can’t do everything. I never have a minute to meself from dawn to dusk. I’d only gone for a short walk. I just needed a breath of fresh air. I can’t be with her every minute of the day.’

Livia was at once concerned but attempted to sound sympathetic. ‘No, of course you can’t. I’m sure Ella realises it was foolish of her to attempt such a job on her own. But you can’t just run away. Shouldn’t you at least go back and collect your things, explain to Ella, and to George, how you feel?’

‘I don’t care what job you give me, only I’m not setting foot on that farm ever again.’

‘Oh, Mercy, what are we to do with you?’ Livia sighed. ‘We must get you out of those wet clothes before you catch your death.’

As Livia hurried Mercy towards the stairs she was blocked by Miss Caraway’s sudden looming presence. ‘It is not the business of this store to offer sanctuary to refugees in some supposed family crisis or other. I appreciate in your case, Miss Lavinia, there might well be
special circumstances to allow that to happen, but you did ask to be treated like any ordinary shop girl.’ There was a malicious triumph in the older woman’s tone, as if she’d caught Livia out in some grave misdemeanour.

Livia paused, trembling with anger while doing her utmost not to show it. There was some logic in the older woman’s remarks, if little sign of compassion, but not at all what Livia wished to hear right now. ‘Pray tell me, what would an ordinary shop girl be permitted to do in similar circumstances?’

Miss Caraway sniffed her disapproval. ‘In extremity, she may be allowed to take time off to go home and sort the matter out. Without pay.’

‘Thank you, then that is what I shall do.’

Livia took Mercy to the cottage where she bustled about boiling water for a bath, heating soup, since the girl claimed not to have eaten since yesterday, and finding dry clothes to lend her. When Mercy was finally warm and dry and fed, she sat huddled on a stool by a roaring fire with her arms wrapped about herself, refusing to even speak let alone answer any further questions. Livia could only hope that Ella had recovered from her fall, although she had taken the precaution of dispatching a boy on a bicycle to the farm at Kentmere to enquire after her sister’s
health and assure them that Mercy was safe and well.

The moment Jack arrived home, Mercy instantly leapt up and ran straight into his arms.

The pair had been friends long before Livia knew either of them, as Mercy had lived with her mother, Florrie, in the loft above that of the Flint family. The young girl had looked upon Jack almost as an elder brother. She might, at one time, have wanted him to be much more than that, but then she’d been locked away in the workhouse where she’d met George. Now she poured out all her troubles in one great gush of emotion, a garbled tale of how hard she had been made to work on the farm, how cruel Ella had been to her, and how unappreciated she was.

‘I could never do owt to please her.’

‘Perhaps Ella thought you weren’t quite pulling your weight, particularly now she’s expecting a baby,’ Livia suggested, by way of her sister’s defence.

A mulish expression came over the other girl’s face, and turning her back on Livia, Mercy leant possessively against Jack’s knee as he sat in his chair, quietly listening. She continued with her tale of woe, all about her neglectful husband, her attempts to make George jealous, and finally – the revelation that it was really Tom he preferred and not his young wife at all.

Livia was so shocked she felt a huge sense of relief that Jack was the chief recipient of this confidence and not herself, for she hadn’t the least idea how she would have handled it. He, bless his heart, could find no words either. He just pulled Mercy onto his lap as if she were a child still and not a young woman of nineteen, and let her sob out her misery on his shoulder.

Later, when Mercy was tucked up in bed, exhausted from her long journey and emotional turmoil, they talked, and Jack was adamant that she not be sent back to Kentmere. ‘She never liked the country, anyroad.’

Livia nodded. ‘I’ll make sure she’s given employment at the store. It’s something she should have had from the start when she first came asking my father for a job. I’m more than ready to see that Mercy is taken care of, with or without the dragon’s approval.’

‘Good, she deserves all the help we can give her. She already feels unwanted. Now this terrible thing has happened to her, it only increases her sense of rejection.’

‘I never made her feel unwanted or rejected,’ Livia protested. ‘I’ve done my utmost to make her feel part of the family, although she’s resisted my efforts at every turn.’

‘I know that, but you just need to exercise a
bit more patience,’ Jack said. ‘Both you and Ella should show more understanding and give Mercy time to adjust.’

‘I thought I had been patient, and very understanding. No one knows better than I how ruthless my father could be. She was a victim of his cruelty, as were we – something Mercy has never quite accepted. And of course she still carries this great chip on her shoulder about her birth. But I promise I’ll do everything in my power to help her overcome her problems.’

Jack spent half the night getting up to comfort the weeping girl, and although Livia meant every word, she couldn’t help feeling just a little jealous of the attention he was paying to her half-sister.

Amos was beaming from ear to ear as if he personally had given birth to the babies and done all the work himself. He kissed his wife for the hundredth time, hardly able to tear his proud gaze away from his brand new son and daughter. ‘How clever of you to have one of each.’

‘With precious little help from anyone else, as usual,’ laughed Ella. ‘Has anyone found Mercy yet? Why does that girl always manage to go missing when she’s most needed?’

‘It was most fortunate I asked Mary to come, wasn’t it? With Mercy being particularly difficult
I sent word that she might be needed, and bless her, she came at once.’

Ella reached out to grasp her stepdaughter’s hand and give it a little squeeze of gratitude. ‘I really don’t know how I would have found the strength to go through it all over again on my own. I daren’t think what might have happened had you not been here, dear Mary, to help me.’

‘I hadn’t the first idea what I was doing,’ Mary said.

‘Neither had I,’ laughed Ella.

It was the following morning, the doctor had been and gone, having pronounced mother and babies both fit and remarkably well, considering they were three weeks premature. Not uncommon for twins, apparently.

‘But I didn’t even know I was having two babies. Why didn’t you tell me?’ she accused the doctor, who looked suitably shamefaced.

‘I can only think one was lying behind the other and their hearts were beating as one. I’m sorry, but it happens sometimes. They are perfectly well, and you, and Mary, did a splendid job delivering them. Now you must get plenty of rest.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Mary assured him. ‘I will take good care of her.’

Tilda and Emmett were there too, cooing over the babies and asking when they might get up and play hoopla or ball with them.

‘That will take a little while,’ Ella explained with a smile. ‘But they’re going to need a big brother and sister to protect them and see that nothing terrible happens to them, and to explain how things should be done. In the meantime, you can help me to look after them. I’m going to need lots of assistance to feed and care for two babies. Will you do that?’

‘Ooh, yes please,’ cried Tilda, and Emmett gravely nodded, taking his role of elder brother very seriously. The excited pair were happy to run errands up and down the stairs all day, fetching and carrying trays of delicacies for their stepmother, picking her flowers, and sharing their sweets with her. They made such a fuss of her that Ella was delighted and highly amused.

‘I’m not sure how long all this attention will last, but I mean to make the most of it while it does. But where is Mercy?’ she asked again, a plea that was repeated throughout the day till at last Amos was able to tell her they’d had word.

A boy had called, puffing and blowing after his long ride up the dale on his bicycle. Emmett read his stepmother the note from Aunty Livia explaining how Mercy had arrived at the store, and promising to come to see Ella just as soon as she could get away.