Mary's Child (10 page)

He shrugged. ‘Maybe this is how she is all the time.’

‘I thought she was starting to turn to me. You couldn’t expect it when we first brought her home because she’d need time to get used to us, but after the funeral I thought we were getting on together. Not now, though.’

‘She’s a quiet little lass. And polite.’

Bessie shook her head, ‘Too quiet and too polite. I can’t get on with her. If I put my arm round her it’s like she was a block o’ wood, straight and stiff.’ She sighed. ‘It’s got me worried sick, I can tell you.’

On Saturday morning a small boy, in layers of ragged jerseys and wearing a pair of cracked old boots handed down from his brother, knocked at the front door. He asked Bessie, ‘Can I see Chrissie Carter, please, missus?’

Bessie stared down at him. ‘Who are you? I haven’t seen you round here before.’

‘Frank Ward, missus. We lived next door before Chrissie came over here.’ His dark hair was cropped like a convict’s with only an inch-long tuft left at the front, and his face, hands and knees needed washing. But he grinned up at Bessie and she found herself smiling back.

She asked, ‘Did you walk all this way?’ It was a distance of three or four miles by road.

He answered innocently, ‘I got a ride on the ferry.’ That cut the journey down to two miles.

Bessie said, ‘Oh, aye.’ She could guess at the nature of that ride, sneaking aboard behind the ferryman’s back without paying. She had seen it done many a time. ‘Well, now you’re here you’d better come in.’ And she led him along the passage to the kitchen, calling, ‘Chrissie! Here’s your young man come courting!’

Chrissie had been peeling potatoes for the dinner but Bessie took over that job and told her, ‘I expect he’d like a cup o’ tea and a bite.’

So Chrissie poured him the tea, cut him thick slices of bread and spread them with dripping. Frank stuffed himself and chattered happily. It was only with reluctance that he refused Bessie’s wry offer: ‘You might as well stop for your dinner.’

‘Ta, missus, but I can’t. Ted’s getting the loan of a barrow this afternoon and we’re going round the doors selling sticks.’

Bessie knew about that one as well. The sticks would come from empty boxes bought for a penny each at the market, chopped up into firewood and sold on to houses in the better parts of town. She said, ‘Well, come and see her again. You’re always welcome.’ Chrissie had shown more life while talking with Frank than she had all the week. ‘Go on, lass, see him as far as the ferry.’

So Chrissie walked with him through the streets winding steeply down to the river. They stopped on the landing stage and Chrissie fell silent. It was only then that Frank thought to ask about the least important area to him: ‘Do you go to a school over here?’ And Chrissie burst into tears.

He did not know what to do, looked around him helplessly, then asked, ‘What’s the matter?’ And because there was no one around to hear, and because he came from another world on the other side of the river, she told him.

On Monday dinnertime she left school and started to run home to escape Victor Parnaby but he caught her round the first corner. He swung her by one arm so her back thumped against the wall and she cried out. He demanded, ‘Give us your money!’ And then the bombshell hit him.

The boy crashed into him running, hurling all of his weight into Victor Parnaby, sharp little fists driving agonisingly into the small of Victor’s back, cracked old boots kicking at his shins. Victor staggered and tried to step away but the fists were now flailing at his face, his legs tangled and he fell. His head cracked on the pavement and the boy dropped to land on Victor’s chest with a thump, driving the air out of Victor’s lungs. He lay helpless, with the boy squatting there on his chest, bony knees pinning his arms to the ground. And the fists kept pounding.

When Frank finally stood up Victor lay still and wept. Frank was out of breath, his arms ached and his knuckles were cut and bruised. Now the anger – and the fear – had left him and he was appalled by what he had done. But then he remembered why he had done it, and that in spite of his apprehension at tackling a boy older, bigger and heavier than himself. He panted, ‘You leave her alone from now on or I’ll
murder
you.’

Frank walked with Chrissie to the end of her street. She said, ‘Aunt Bessie’ll give you some dinner.’

He shook his head. ‘She’ll want to know why I’m not at school.’

Chrissie, fearful for him, asked, ‘Will you get the cane for being off school?’

He lied, ‘It doesn’t hurt.’ And left her then.

Chrissie did not see Victor Parnaby again until the middle of the week. He returned to school then but his face was still bruised and hatched with healing cuts. When she started home she met him and he gave her a sullen glare, but she met that with a bold stare, told him, ‘His brother’s bigger,’ and saw his gaze fall.

She ran home and into Bessie’s arms, laughing.

A month later Bessie told Daniel, ‘That little lass is a Godsend. She sits in my pocket every minute she’s here, and whatever there is to do, she’s in it. She was up first thing this morning, knew it was my washing day and had the boiler filled wi’ water and the fire lit underneath it afore I got down here. She’s a real little worker.’

But life was not all work for Chrissie. Bessie talked to her and taught her – to knit and sew, wash and iron – but she also bought a cheap bathing dress for the serious little girl who was learning how to smile again. Bessie took her down to the sea, taught her how to swim and found her an apt pupil. So she told Daniel, ‘She’s like a fish in the water!’ And on a weekend she would take Chrissie out of the town and into the fields, show her the flowers and give her their names.

Chrissie was happy, content that this life should go on for ever.

But it would not.

Chapter 7

September 1907

‘He’s coming down the street now, Dad!’ Ronnie Milburn called from where he kept watch at the open front door.

Daniel answered him, ‘Right! Good lad!’ And shoved up out of his armchair, picked up the whip and headed for the street.

Chrissie came running down the stairs. She was just into her teens now, leggy and awkward, still slight, but a burgeoning young woman. She was ready to go out, in a loose-fitting dress reaching just below her knees that she had made herself. She carried her coat over her arm and in one hand her wide-brimmed straw hat. She halted on the last step with a hand to her mouth, scenting trouble, as Daniel stamped by.

Bessie came after him as far as the kitchen door and called after his retreating back, ‘Now you go steady! You should be in bed wi’ that cold, anyway. And we don’t want the pollis round here!’

Daniel did not pause but turned his head to growl, ‘Steady on? Be buggered to that! He’s been shooting his mouth off down the Ship, saying how he sold me a dud.’ He shoved past Ronnie and stepped out into the street.

Chrissie asked, ‘What’s going on?’

Bessie replied, ‘That horse Charlie Trembath sold him, it’s got a worse cough than Dan has hissel.’

‘Who’s Charlie Trembath?’

‘A feller that lives two or three streets away. He’s not lived long around here.’

‘I don’t know him.’

Bessie said grimly, ‘He doesn’t know Daniel.’

‘What’s Uncle Daniel going to do?’

‘Talk to Charlie about it.’

‘What does he want the whip for?’

‘He thinks Charlie’ll understand him better wi’ that.’

‘How?’

‘You’ll see.’ Bessie sighed and went back into the kitchen to go on with her ironing.

Chrissie hesitated a moment, then ran along the passage to halt behind Ronnie. He was a grown man now, twenty-one years old, tall and slim. He had just completed his engineering apprenticeship at Ballantyne’s yard. Daniel had been persuaded to let him take up the apprenticeship soon after Chrissie had gone to live with the Milburns.

Chrissie peered around Ronnie’s shoulder. The street was busy late on this autumn evening. The gas lamps flared and children played their games of rounders or ran races, rolled hoops. The women sat or stood on the doorsteps, braving the cold wind coming up from the river for the chance to talk together. The men clustered on the corners, hands in pockets.

Charlie Trembath walked along the pavement opposite Daniel Milburn who called out harshly, voice lifted, ‘Where d’you think you’re going, Charlie?’

Trembath paused and grinned at Daniel. He was younger, taller and running to fat. He wore a shiny old serge suit with a watch-chain looped across the front of the waistcoat. He answered, ‘I’m on my way home.’

Daniel said flatly, ‘Not this way.’

Charlie blinked as he saw the children scattering out of the way, the women retreating to peer from behind their front doors, so that the street lay empty between Daniel and himself. He said uneasily, ‘I’ve got a right to walk along the street—’

Daniel cut him off there. ‘Not this bloody street, you haven’t.’

Charlie protested, ‘Aw, come on. I’ll be late for me tea.’ He took another pace.

Daniel never used the whip on a horse and said proudly that he never needed to. He carried it to give signals when he was driving a cart and as a mark of his trade. But he could use it. The lash snaked out now and cracked bare inches in front of Charlie’s nose.

He jerked back a pace and yelped, ‘For Christ’s sake!’

Daniel pointed the whip at him. ‘You cheated me. So any time you come near my door, or cross my path,
I’ll flay the flamin’ ‘ide off ye
! Any time you want to poke your nose outa your door you’d better be sure I’m not waiting for you, because I’ll
‘ave
you.’

Charlie threatened, ‘I’ll tell the pollis!’

Daniel showed his teeth in a grin. ‘The pollis won’t put you back together again, Humpty Dumpty.’ The people crowded at their doors laughed.

Charlie argued, ‘There was nowt wrong wi’ that horse.’

‘There bloody well was! And is!’

‘Well, I didn’t know.’

‘That’s not what I heard, not what’s been heard in the Ship.’

Charlie looked around him then, possibly hoping for sympathy or support, but found none. No one was going to stand in the way of rough justice. He grumbled, ‘I’ll give you your money back and fetch the horse tomorrow.’

Daniel shook his head. ‘You’ll give me half my money and I’ll keep the horse. That’s what he’s worth and I’m not giving him back to you to badly use him again.’

‘That’s not fair!’

Daniel flicked the whip again and it cracked by Charlie’s ear. He yelled and shrank from it. Daniel said, ‘It’s a lot fairer than you were going to get a minute ago. Now, what about it?’

Charlie fished in a waistcoat pocket and pulled out some crumpled and dirty banknotes, handed a few to Daniel. ‘There y’are.’

Daniel fanned them between finger and thumb, counting, then jammed them in his trousers pocket. He issued one last warning. ‘Don’t come near me or mine again. I want nowt to do wi’ you.’ Then he turned and stalked back into the house.

Charlie Trembath went on his way, grumbling and complaining but all of it falling on deaf ears. The children went back to their games, the women to their chat. The men on the corner ignored him, save for one who told him curtly, ‘Serves you bloody well right!’

Daniel pushed past Ronnie and Chrissie, walked back along the passage into the kitchen and slumped down in his armchair. He dropped the whip on the floor and wheezeed, ‘That’s left me out o’ breath.’ Then he coughed for some seconds.

Chrissie followed him, breathless from the threat of violence out in the street. She picked up the whip, stood it out in the passage and said, “‘A place for everything  . . .”’

Bessie smiled, recognising that Chrissie was quoting her. She said, ‘You two are off to night-school, then.’

Chrissie slipped into her coat and picked up her books. ‘Just now, Aunt Bessie. See you later.’ She waved, then she and Ronnie were gone.

Daniel growled, ‘Night schools! I don’t hold wi’ them for lasses. You shouldn’t ha’ let Ronnie talk her into going.’

‘
I
shouldn’t?’ Bessie banged the iron down on the fire and reached for another shirt. ‘Why didn’t you say something? Anyway, it was more like her talking him into taking her. And she was good at school, good enough to finish at thirteen instead of staying on till she was fourteen. I’m not surprised. I tell you this, she only has to be shown a thing once and she’s got it.’

She lifted the iron off the fire, spat on it delicately to test its heat and started ironing again. ‘But bookkeeping? Typewriting? What does she want to learn them things for? A waste of time if you ask me. She says she wants a good job, but a bonny lass that can cook, clean and run a house like she can will be snapped up by some lucky feller.’

She eyed Daniel and told him, ‘Chrissie did most o’ this ironing, and she’s cooked the dinner every night this week.’

Daniel’s brows lifted. ‘Aye?’

‘Aye. She could manage this place without me, nine o’ you men an’ all.’ She sighed. ‘I’m not as quick as I was. I seem to get that tired these days.’