by The Castlefield Collector (Watch for the Talleyman) (retail) (epub)
‘Nothing. It’s not important.’ She began to back slowly away, her feet dragging as if reluctant to leave. ‘I’d best be off. I’m in a bit of a muddle this morning. As you say, there’s nothing to worry about. He’ll come round. Thanks for listening.’
‘I’m always ready to listen, Dolly. You know that. And Dolly…’ He took a step towards her, rested a hand on her shoulder and she felt the reassuring warmth of it flow through her veins.
‘What?’
‘I’m really pleased you’ve started something of your own. It’s a good thing for a woman to have a bit of independence, and money of her own. You never know when it might come in handy, and if…’ He paused, as if considering what more he might say, but apparently thought better of it, thrust both hands back in his pockets and nodded. ‘I just wanted to say that.’
‘Right, well, thank you. Bye for now, Matt. Nice talking to you.’
‘And you, Dolly. Mind how you go.’
She was aware of his eyes following her the full length of the wharf but she didn’t turn and wave as she reached the corner and headed off towards Dawson Street Bridge. For some reason she didn’t dare.
* * *
Dolly collected two more clients the following week, both of whom seemed likely to be good payers but despite Matt’s consoling words, she was deeply worried about Sam. Could Aggie be right for once? It was true that he had been behaving oddly of late. Did he really know this girl, this Evie Barker? If so, how well did he know her? Dolly struggled to damp down the sour taste of jealousy, telling herself Aggie was feeding her foul gossip simply to upset her. Even so, she had to find out for sure. She couldn’t seem to help herself.
The next night when Sam turned to her, clearly in the mood for a bit of a kiss and cuddle, Dolly instinctively turned away.
Sam let out a heavy sigh. ‘What is it now?’
‘I don’t feel like it.’
‘You never do these days.’
‘That’s not true, only I think it’s time we had a little chat.’ Dolly pushed him off and sat up in bed, a pool of moonlight that should have been romantic but somehow wasn’t, encompassing the pair of them.
‘I’m surprised you’ve time to even notice I’m around, you’re that busy dashing here, there and everywhere.’
‘Oh, Sam, don’t start. At least I’m working and making money at last. I think this little business might be our salvation. I’m being careful, going slowly and taking advice.’
‘You didn’t take my advice not to work for Nifty Jack, so how do I know what you’re up to? Everyone is talking about how you’ve taken over their debts. They seem to think you’ve won this money on the horses or something but you and me know different, don’t we? We know you don’t approve of gambling, and that you can’t afford to borrow any more money, not with that great big debt hanging round your necks. All this talk of a money roll, wages from some old dear you once worked for is a load of codswallop, isn’t it? I don’t believe a word.’
‘It is not codswallop. And I suppose by everyone, you mean Evie Barker. Word is you know her very well.’ Dolly saw him flinch, an expression of surprise and guilt on his face that he hastily tried to disguise. A wave of sickness hit her. ‘So Aggie was right. She says you and she are getting quite cosy. Is that the way of it?’
Face flushed scarlet, Sam wagged a furious finger at her. ‘Your Aggie is the biggest troublemaker on earth. If you believe her, rather than me, then I reckon you’re just trying to offload your own guilty conscience.’
‘What?’
‘Aye, I know what you’re up to. You’re working in cahoots with Nifty Jack. Not just as his housekeeper or go-between, but sharing his bed too. It’s him what’s funded this enterprise, isn’t it?’
Dolly gave him a look that should have nailed him to the ground for even entertaining such a thought. ‘You think I’d sleep with that nasty piece of work?’
‘I don’t know what to think, Dolly, or who to trust, except this is not how I imagined it would be between us. You and me started off well, now it’s all ruined by money.’ Reaching for his clothes he pulled them hastily on, grabbed his cap and scarf and headed for the door. Dolly tried to stop him, leapt out of bed and ran after him, begging him not to go.
‘Don’t go out, love, not tonight. Let’s talk this through sensibly and calmly instead of just shouting at each other and making stupid accusations. Can we do that please?’
‘It’s too late for talk. You don’t need me. You only want my flipping wage packet.’ The sound of the door slamming reverberated in her heart.
* * *
Nifty Jack hadn’t taken her threat too seriously, not at first. But it gradually dawned on him what she was up to, and the cheek of it quite robbed him of breath. He’d make that little madam rue the day she’d ever dared to cross swords with the talleyman.
His chance came when he discovered that she’d taken over the debt of the Shuttleworths, a feckless crew if ever there was one. But they had two plump daughters. Pretty and round, sweet and rosy, like cherries ripe for the picking. He’d been encouraging daft Annie Shuttleworth to spend, and not to worry her empty head about interest rates, or ever paying the debt off.
‘I’ll see you right,’ he’d always assured her, whenever she’d whined about the amount she still owed him, which naturally never got any less, rather the reverse. ‘Why doesn’t your Cherry – sorry, young Sally here – come and do a few jobs for me now and then. I’m short of a housekeeper at the moment, since my last one upped and left.’
Annie Shuttleworth wasn’t half so stupid as he imagined, well aware of who that housekeeper had been, and the goings on which had taken place at his house in the past. She was also most protective of her precious daughters. She went at once to see Dolly and asked for her help.
‘You must do something or that nasty piece of shite will do to our Sal what he tried to do to you.’
‘Nay, Annie, we’ll not let happen, I promise you.’ Dolly went round to Nifty’s that very night and paid the woman’s debt off with a crisp, new five pound note. ‘Keep the change but stay away from Annie’s house in future. She’s not of the brightest, but she’s pure gold and loves them daughters of hers to bits, so you can keep your mucky hands of them. Do I make myself clear?’
Dolly thought she’d won because he made no comment, simply looked at her calmly, unmoved and unprotesting. Two nights later, a frantic Annie Shuttleworth came hammering on her door. ‘He’s done it, he has. He grabbed her on her way home from work, like that other girl, Betty Deurden. It was dark but I swear it was him, it must have been, the nasty, no good…’
The rest of her words were lost in an incoherent babble of tears and recriminations but Dolly got the message, loud and clear. Nifty was making it perfectly clear by this latest assault that he was still in charge. He was still the one with the power and she’d best watch her step.
Chapter Twenty
Sam was waiting for Evie, not at the mill gates where he might be seen by Aggie or Harold, or any of the other girls who knew Dolly, but round the corner in the ginnel. He couldn’t help himself. Didn’t he deserve a warm, loving woman? Not that he had ever been short of women before he married, but this one was a cut above the rest and a challenge he had to conquer. He’d no idea whether the accusations he’d thrown at Dolly were justified or not. He might have been a touch hasty accusing her of sleeping with Nifty Jack, when he knew she loathed him with a venom, but she must be working hand in glove with him to have all that money. Anyroad, he was angry with her. She’d scarcely been in the house lately and there was something she wasn’t telling him, he could sense it, smell it on her.
She’d started this money lending business and he was the last to know. Now why was that, if it was all perfectly innocent? He’d handed over his share of the housekeeping regular as clockwork, most of it going to pay the flaming talleyman. What did she do with the rest? Could he trust her, or did she want his blood as well, not to mention shaming him in front of his m
ates? She’d not get another penny out of him. He had his pride and his feelings, and all she could think of these days was money.
‘Were you waiting for me?’
And Evie was looking as beautiful and tempting as ever. Sam cleared his throat, lost for words now that she was actually standing before him. She took hold of his arm and the warmth of her body pressed up close against him. She didn’t smell of oily cotton waste as many of the other girls did, but of some flowery perfume Sam couldn’t identify.
‘I’m glad you came,’ she whispered. ‘I’ve been so lonely without you this last week. Where shall we go, Seedley Park or a spin in my trusty motor? Oh, do say yes, Sam. I’m desperate for you, sweetie.’
Just the pressure of her slender thigh against his was making him ache with need. He lifted the hem of her frock, sliding his fingers under the lacy edge of her cami-knickers and she didn’t protest. He could take her here and now in this back alley if he’d a mind. Then, as luck would have it, he spotted Aggie walking by with a crowd of girls on the opposite side of the street and he quickly ducked into a doorway, pulling Evie with him, fearful they might be seen.
Evie snuggled up against him, wrapping her arms about his waist beneath his rough fustian coat, tugging at his shirt and seeking the warmth of his flesh. ‘This is more like it. I’ve never done it in a back alley before but why not? I’m all for a little originality. Could we balance on a dustbin do you reckon?’
‘Be serious, Evie, this isn’t the moment for jokes, nor the place for a girl like you.’ Just seeing Aggie walk by had set his mind in a whirl. She’d been his girlfriend for as long as he could remember, the one he’d fully expected to marry one day. Yet she’d gone and chosen po-faced Harold instead, no doubt for his money. So why did he still fancy her when he was about to have his wicked way with sexy Evie Barker, the gaffer’s daughter? If he had any choice in the matter he’d much rather be up an alley with Aggie, not this little tart, classy though she may be.
‘I understand that you loved your little wife. Poor Sam. She doesn’t at all appreciate you, or why would she go with other men?’
Sam blinked, dragging his attention away from Aggie’s swaying hips and pert backside as she vanished down the road, scenting something not quite right in Evie’s last remark. ‘Other men, what are you talking about?’
Evie smiled with false sympathy trying to judge his reaction. ‘Oh dear, what have I done? Forget I spoke. Of course, she may have stopped and I shouldn’t have said anything. I could be entirely wrong now.’ She began to walk away, quite slowly so that he had no trouble at all in catching her up.
He grabbed hold of her arm and yanked her round to face him. ‘What other men? For God’s sake, Evie, you can’t say such a thing and simply walk away. Tell me what’s going on.’
She told the whole sordid tale, or at least her version of it. All about how she’d happened to be close, quite by chance, and saw Dolly talking to that strange looking woman she was apparently working with, who made women available for men’s needs. ‘It was perfectly obvious who she was talking to just by looking at her. But once Dolly was safely out of the way, to make sure I checked with a nearby stallholder I then approached that woman. We had a small chat and I asked for a bed for the night, feeling the need to check up on her. She said that she didn’t have the kind of beds on offer that would be suitable for a decent girl like me.’
‘You’re lying! If you’re making this up just to get your own back on me in some way, I’ll have none of it. Dolly may be obstinately independent but she’d never sink so low.’ Like most men who casually took their pleasure with many women, Sam was not in favour of his wife enjoying similar freedom.
Her revelation, rather than making him hate a betraying wife and decide he might as well do likewise, didn’t seem to be having that effect. He was practically defending her, insisting Dolly was a decent girl that he’d known all his life and she would never do anything so cheap and nasty.
Evie pressed her hand to her lips and attempted a whimper. ‘It’s very hurtful to accuse me of telling lies. It’s true that I do fancy you like crazy, and I’ll admit that I can’t get you out of my head. But if you love Dolly more I’d give you up, I swear I would.’ She squeezed a tear, slanted a sideways glance up at him, hoping he would be convinced by this show of her contrition. But Evie was beginning to wonder if he was worth the winning. These facts were meant to excite him, not put him off. ‘I’m sorry, Sam, but I’d say that was where Dolly spent those missing months, doing tricks for Cabbage Lil, which was apparently her name. If you don’t believe me, ask her and see what she has to say.’
* * *
‘Who is Cabbage Lil?’
Dolly felt the blood drain from her cheeks and a wave of nausea hit the pit of her stomach. She’d been boiling some milk for their bedtime drink when Sam burst in upon them like a whirlwind, eyes blazing, every fibre of his being poised for a fight. For an instant, Dolly had felt cold fear, and then remembered that this wasn’t Calvin, this was her Sam who, for all his faults, would never hurt her. But he might leave her, and then where would she be? Hadn’t Aggie warned her that this moment would come? Shouldn’t she have been prepared for it, have avoided it by coming clean from the start?
‘Here’s your Ovaltine, Mam, take it up to bed, if you please. I think Sam and me need to talk.’
Maisie cast a sympathetic glance across at her son-in-law, and reaching out, gently squeezed his hand. ‘While you’re talking, lad, put in a word for me, will you? Evenings with my daughter are getting so quiet I might as well not be here for all the notice she takes of me.’
‘Mam, not now, please. Sam and me need some privacy. Go to bed.’
‘Aye, course you do. Good night, lad. Good night, love. God bless.’
Dolly did not respond. She sat at the table, all her emotions buttoned up tight, but the moment her mother had gone, words began to bubble out of her. She started with how she had run away following Nifty Jack’s attack. She told Sam of the nights in flea-bitten, cockroach-infested lodgings, how she’d been footsore and hungry on the streets, eating out of rubbish bins. She spoke about the old folk and starving families she’d met along the way, many of them screwed by Nifty Jack too, sparing him none of the details. And finally how Cabbage Lil had found and saved her.
‘She was my salvation. I’d have starved, otherwise, or been frozen to death with the cold.’
Dolly glanced up at Sam through her lashes and waited for him to say how glad he was that she had survived. But he didn’t say a word. He wasn’t even looking at her. She hoped and prayed that perhaps he was too moved by her tale to know how to react, appalled, as she had been, by the evidence of human misery she was confronted with on a daily basis. ‘Isn’t it dreadful that some people have to live like that all the time? Makes you realise how lucky we really are, doesn’t it?’ she prompted.
When still he made no comment, she hurried on and told him the rest, how she had worked as a maid and general dogsbody for the working girls, and then told how, in the depths of her misery over her mam, she’d almost become one of them. ‘Only I couldn’t go through with it, of course. I ran, like the devil was on my heels.’ She gave a half-laugh. ‘Such a pickle I’d got myself in, you’d think I’d have more sense, wouldn’t you?’
He looked at her then, his eyes cold and distant. ‘I don’t know what to think, Dolly. I’m speechless. I can’t imagine why you would willingly join a brothel.’
‘I didn’t join a brothel, willingly or otherwise. I’d no idea what sort of place Lil would take me to, not when she first found me. Once I realised, I just worked in the kitchen, but I’d no place else to go. Nifty attacked me, don’t forget, and I thought I’d killed him. How do you reckon that made me feel?’
‘So if you’re innocent, why have you never told me any of this before?’
‘You said that you didn’t need to know what had happened to me, or where I’d been that winter. You said we should put the past behind us, and that you
trusted me.’
‘But I didn’t realise things would turn out this bad.’ He was pacing the room again in that wild way he had, not knowing where to put himself. ‘You stayed in that brothel for God’s sake! Became a prostitute!’
Dolly was on her feet in a second, following him back and forth, desperate to stop him and make him listen. ‘No, no, I didn’t become anything of the sort. I’ve just explained that I couldn’t go through with it.’
‘So you imply.’
‘It’s true, I swear it.’ Her knees gave way and Dolly had to sit down to catch her breath as she went over it all again, answering the questions he fired at her, describing in painful, sordid detail, the embarrassing episode with her first and only client.
She told of how afraid and sickened she’d been, how she’d tried to do what was expected by taking off her stockings, but then had fled in fear and trembling. Stony-faced, Sam appeared unimpressed by her answers, unmoved by her halting tale. This was turning out to be even worse than she’d feared. Dolly had a strange, hollow feeling deep inside as she remembered Cabbage Lil warning her not to say a word, not till they’d been wed twenty-five years with a gaggle of kids at her knee. They’d not manage twenty-five months now.
Sam’s tone was clipped and hard. ‘You must have been willing to go through with it, for you to be alone with a man, in a bed, and him with his trousers down. I’ve only your word that nothing more happened.’ His face had gone all tight, as if the skin was being stretched over the bones. ‘Why did you agree to it in the first place?’
‘I don’t know why. Because I was angry with Mam, I suppose. I didn’t realise what it would be like, what I would be letting myself in for. It had been so frightening, so awful living rough on the streets, and terrifying what Nifty Jack tried to do to me. I just wanted some money, to set everything right, to pay for the food Lil was putting in my belly, and to give me a fresh start.’