Down Weaver's Lane (24 page)

‘When I get another place, I’ll not be on my own. You said you’d find me one.’

The mistress’s hand patted hers firmly. ‘Well, what we’ve decided will be better. Your uncle has kindly offered to take you into his own home.’

Emmy gaped at the stern man on her other side. ‘But why?’

Isaac looked at her in surprise. ‘Because I’m family. The only family you know now.’

‘But I
don’t
know you! And your wife won’t want someone like me living in her house.’

‘My wife knows her duty to the family, I hope.’

‘And there are your daughters ... they hate me, too!’ Everyone stared at her as if she were telling lies, so she added desperately, ‘They say nasty things to me in the street. I can’t go and live with people who hate me.’

‘She’s overwrought,’ Mr Reynolds said.

Emmy answered for herself. ‘I’m not! And I won’t do it.’

‘You have no choice, dear,’ Mrs Bradley said quietly. ‘You’re under age and they
are
your family.’

‘Then where were they when we didn’t have enough to eat? I don’t want a family like that.’

Isaac looked at her in shock. ‘Didn’t have enough to eat?’

‘Many a time!’

‘All the more reason for Mr Butterfield to look after you now, young woman,’ Mr Reynolds said firmly.

‘What do you know about it?’ she flung at him. ‘It’s none of your business what I do, you’re only the lawyer.’

Everyone looked at Mr Reynolds as if expecting him to say something else, but he didn’t.

Emmy felt as if her head would burst with the anguish of this day.

‘I think you should go with Mr Butterfield, dear,’ Mrs Bradley urged. ‘It really is the best thing for you.’

‘No, it isn’t. People in Northby will know about my mother and say I’m like her. I need to get away, make a new start.’

Parson spoke, his voice sharper than usual. ‘That’s ungrateful, Emmy. They’re your family.’

‘They still hate me.’ Why could he and his wife not understand that?

Mr Butterfield looked at her and for a moment his face softened. ‘I don’t hate you, Emmy. I hate what my sister became, but that isn’t the same thing at all.’

Then Mrs Bradley said in that no-nonsense tone of hers, ‘Emmy, that’s enough! We’ve found you a good home and it’s all settled. Besides, Mr Rishmore himself wants to make sure you’re properly looked after. He’s taking an interest in your welfare and you would be foolish to go against his wishes. His support offers you excellent protection from the other things you fear.’

Emmy looked from one to the other and closed her lips on further protests. But she knew this wouldn’t work out. And she was afraid of going to share a house with Lal Butterfield. Terrified. Lal was so much bigger and stronger than she was.

‘Why did that man come to my mother’s funeral?’ Emmy asked suddenly as she and her uncle walked slowly up the hill from the church.

‘Mr Reynolds? Well, um, on behalf of your father’s family.’

‘The Carters should have come themselves. I hate them. It’s all their fault my mother had to earn her living like that. Why could they not look after her when my father died?’

‘Because she had lived in sin with him before they were married. They never forgave her for that. And I think you should know: your father’s name wasn’t Carter. Your mother changed her name after he died, because of what she was doing.’

She stopped walking to stare at him in surprise. ‘What was his surname, then?’

‘His family would rather keep that secret. They don’t wish her shame to be known.’

‘Their shame, too. She didn’t like doing it, you know.’ Anger warred with tears and she fell silent as she fought for control.

Isaac sighed. ‘It’s our fault as well, I’m afraid. The Butterfields didn’t help her, either. I shall always regret that.’ After a few more paces he pointed ahead, ‘That’s where we live.’

Emmy stared at the Butterfields’ comfortable villa, four stories high if you included the attics above and the cellar below, one of a pair of semi-detached houses at the upper end of Weavers Lane, where the better class of folk lived. Only a hundred yards north of the church, it felt like a hundred miles away from the bottom end of the street with its squalor and tumble-down houses, its seedy inhabitants and furtive passers-by.

Here folk walked sedately, nodded to one another, called greetings or stopped for a leisurely chat. They spoke to her uncle and stared at her in curiosity when he simply nodded back without stopping to introduce her. He was carrying her bag of clothing and personal possessions while she held her mother’s box in her arms, clutching it to her chest as if it could protect her. Only it couldn’t. Nothing could protect her now that they’d forced her to stay in Northby where no one would ever quite trust her. She breathed in deeply and slowly to hold back the tears that still threatened to overwhelm her.

Her uncle opened the front door and led the way inside, calling, ‘We’re here, my dear.’

There was the murmur of women’s voices from the front room. The door opened and Lal stood there, looking scornfully at Emmy before closing the door carefully behind her and saying in a low voice, ‘Mother says to take her up to her bedroom because Mrs Moston has called.’ She stared at the box in Emmy’s hand as if trying to assess its contents, then went back into the front room.

Isaac looked helplessly at Emmy then gestured towards the stairs. ‘I’ll lead the way, shall I?’ Not waiting for an answer, he strode up stairs so thickly carpeted that his feet made almost no sound. Emmy looked down the long narrow corridor also covered in a carpet runner that led towards the back of the house then followed him, feeling strange and cut off from everything she knew.

He stopped on the first landing to say, ‘You’re in the attics because all the bedrooms on this floor are occupied’ Opening a door, he disappeared through it.

Emmy followed him in silence up another set of stairs, narrower and steeper, with a worn carpet on them. Here the walls were in need of painting and it was much colder.

‘This is your room, Emmy.’ His tone was apologetic.

She went reluctantly inside. The bare boards were unstained but clean - well, bare boards were no hardship to her. The room was larger than any she’d had before, but no effort had been made to make it feel welcoming and the bed was narrow and hard-looking. The only other furniture consisted of a rickety chair and a tin trunk.

‘I suppose you’re meant to put your clothes in there.’ Isaac went over to the trunk and lifted the lid. ‘Yes, see, it’s empty. But we’ll have to find you a rug and a proper wash stand.’ He pulled out a silver pocket watch and consulted it. ‘Dear, dear! I really must get back to the mill. I’m sorry to leave you. Why don’t you unpack? I’m sure someone will come to fetch you as soon as Mrs Moston has gone.’

When his footsteps had faded away and the front door closed, the silence seemed oppressive. Emmy turned round in a circle, then did it again as she surveyed her new room. Mrs Bradley had provided far more comfort for her maids than these people were providing for a relative, but if you looked on the bright side, at least there was no one sharing this room with her. She went to try the bed and it felt as hard as it looked.

Something bumped against her thigh and she looked at the box of her mother’s papers which she had set down beside her, remembering the way Lal had stared at it. What if Lal took her locket away? It was the only thing Emmy had from her father. She could not bear to look at it yet, for her emotions were still raw from burying her mother and she was still angry with her father’s family lawyer for disposing of her like this. What right had they to interfere in her life now when they hadn’t helped her before?

Emptying the contents of the box on the bed she looked round for a hiding place for them, getting up to inspect the room more carefully. Nowhere in here. She tiptoed out into the big open attic space outside her room, which had some trunks and pieces of old furniture piled in corners. Not in those, either. Anyone could find things in there.

A door opened and closed downstairs and she stopped to listen, her heart pounding as if she were contemplating a crime, but there was no sound of footsteps coming up here, so she continued her inspection. The walls sloped to the ground at one end and the plaster had crumbled away near the bottom. She picked up the bag of papers left by her mother, which she would read later, when she could face what she didn’t doubt were more shameful details about the past. She slipped the locket into it and pushed it between the slats of wood showing beneath the rotted plaster. She could poke her finger through and reach it if she wanted to get it out, yet from only one step back you couldn’t tell it was there if you didn’t know what to look for.

She sighed in relief then realised she had to put something else in her box. In the bedroom she hastily fumbled in her bag of possessions and found a piece of embroidery and a few skeins of thread that Mrs Oswald had given her. They would have to do. Tears came into her eyes as she stared at the embroidery. Mrs Tibby had been trying to teach her fine needlework, but this was her first piece, clumsily done and grubby-looking because she’d had to pull her stitches back a few times.

After putting it into the box she took everything else out of her bag, folding her clothes and laying them neatly in the trunk, then setting out her soft felt house shoes beside it, ready to change into. She put the cardboard box on top of the trunk, then wondered what to do.

The front door opened, there was a murmur of voices, it shut again. Her room was at the rear of the house, so she couldn’t see who came and went. She expected her aunt or cousins to come up for her then but time passed and still nothing happened. What were they doing?

The church clock struck the hour then the half-hour. Tired of sitting there with nothing to do, Emmy wandered out into the attic again. There was a larger bedroom opposite hers but it didn’t look as if anyone used it because the bed was not made up.

At last she heard footsteps on the stairs so went back into her own bedroom, standing beside the window facing the door. No need to tell her that her aunt didn’t want her here, she thought bitterly. They were making it all too plain.

A very plump lady whom she recognised from church puffed her way across from the top of the attic stairs and stood staring at her from the doorway. Lal and Dinah were visible, smirking behind her as if expecting to enjoy themselves.

Emmy’s aunt was fashionably dressed in full skirts and her sleeves were so wide at the top that they made her look even larger. She was wearing a fussy, frilled cap on her head which had bunches of ribbons to each side of her face and did not suit her. She stared at Emmy in a chill, assessing way. ‘So you’re that woman’s daughter? I never thought I’d see the day when I’d have to give house room to someone like you.’

This open malice was far worse than Emmy had expected, but she said nothing.

‘I am
not
pleased to have you living in this house, girl, and I shall
never
regard you as a member of my family, whatever my husband says! However, Mr Rishmore wishes you to live with us so we must make the best of things. You will work hard and earn your keep, believe me, and you will behave yourself. Do I make myself plain?’

‘Yes, Aunt Lena.’

‘Show me what you’ve brought with you.’

Emmy looked at her in puzzlement.

‘I wish to make sure you are not bringing anything dirty or distasteful into this house.’

Why should she expose all her pitiful possessions to this woman and her two grinning cousins? She made no move to open the trunk. ‘I have the outfit I’m wearing, which Mrs Bradley gave me, and another like it, but my summer dresses are rather worn and too small for me.’

The slap her aunt administered took Emmy by surprise, sending her reeling onto the bed and making her head ring.

‘I said to show me what you’ve brought with you!’ her aunt cried.

Lal and Dinah tittered but a glare from their mother silenced them instantly.

‘That is your first lesson in obedience, Emmy. Now, show me what you have or I shall fetch my strap.’ The resemblance to her elder daughter, both in voice and behaviour, was striking. She was much bigger than Emmy and much fiercer, too, so the girl gave in and opened the tin trunk.

Her aunt pulled everything from it, scattering clothing across the bed and floor, poking through her spare chemises and petticoats disdainfully. ‘You’re badly equipped and I suppose they’ll be expecting us to clothe you decently on top of everything else! Still, you’re so small I dare say I can find you some of Dinah’s cast-offs.’ She took a step backwards. ‘I shall give you five minutes to put your things away in the chest then you are to come downstairs. Lal, Dinah!’ She led the way out again.

At the door Lal paused for a moment to smile at Emmy: the smile of a cat who has a bird trapped and is looking forward to tormenting it.