Dancing in the Moonlight

by Rita Bradshaw

  He stopped her gabble by putting a finger on her lips. ‘Don’t, lass,’ he said quietly, ‘Everything’s goin’ to be all right, I promise. Mebbe it needed somethin’ like last night to open me eyes. These are different times we’re living in, an’ different laws apply. You either sink or you swim, that’s the truth of it, an’ no beggar’s goin’ to help you unless you help yourself. Right and wrong don’t come into it no more.’

  Lucy stepped back slightly and looked up into her father’s tired face. This didn’t sound like him. These were not his words.

  ‘Here, lass.’ He reached into his pocket and drew out some notes, stuffing them into her hand. ‘Go an’ buy the bairns some grub, good grub, all right? An’ coal for the range and lamp oil. We’re nearly out, did you know? There’s nowt but a few drops left.’

  ‘I know,’ said Lucy dazedly, looking down at the money. Raising her eyes to his, she murmured, ‘Where’s this come from, Da? What have you done?’ He looked so much older this morning and it frightened her.

  ‘Done?’ He gave a strange bark of a laugh. ‘I’ve done nothin’ yet. This is on account, as you might say. There’s a little job me an’ the lads’ll do tonight, lass, but I’ll say no more about it. For now’ – he flexed his shoulders – ‘I’m goin’ to get some kip.’

  ‘Da, please take this back to wherever you got it.’ She caught his sleeve. Whatever this job was, it wasn’t legal if it had to be done at night and he wouldn’t tell her any details. ‘We’ll manage, we will. I’m sorry for what I said, but I was tired, that’s all. I shouldn’t have taken the bread knife to the pawn without telling you.’

  Walter put his rough callused hand over hers, but he was staring into the red coals of the fire again when he murmured, ‘It was a bonny day when we bought that knife. We’d gone to the Michaelmas Fair on the old town moor, we’d only bin wed but a week or two. Your mam spotted it an’ she said’ – he shook his head, his eyes rheumy – ‘she said it’d make the house a home, a fine bread knife. So I bought it for her, although it took every penny we had an’ we couldn’t go on any of the rides or buy a bag of chestnuts like we’d planned. But your mam didn’t mind. I can see her now, walkin’ round that fair clutchin’ the knife wrapped in brown paper an’ lookin’ so beautiful she fair took my breath away.’

  Lucy felt worse than ever. ‘Oh, Da, I shouldn’t have taken it.’

  ‘No, hinny, no.’ Walter came back to the present and smiled gently at her. ‘You did what you had to do, lass, that’s all. An’ it’s time I started doin’ the same, high time.’

  ‘Da, this job—’

  ‘No, lass.’ He patted her hand resting under his. ‘Ask no questions an’ you’ll be told no lies, cos it’s better you don’t know. That way, if owt should go wrong – not that it will, mind, but if it did – you can say hand on heart you knew nothin’, all right? I’m off to me bed, but I wouldn’t say no to a nice bit of cod when you go shoppin’.’

  Lucy stood staring at the notes in her hand for a few minutes after her father had left the kitchen. She wasn’t cold and yet she was shivering inside and it had caused a sickly feeling. Her da had been nice to her, the nicest he’d been in a long time, and yet she would have given the world to go back to yesterday before she had pawned her mother’s bread knife. There was something about him this morning – she didn’t know how to explain it to herself, except that he seemed smaller somehow, kind of defeated. She walked over to the deep stone sink set under the kitchen window and stared out into the back yard. The sky was low and grey and even as she watched, it began to rain, a solid icy sheet that came straight down and bounced on the stone slabs. She bent her head and began to cry soundless tears.

  An hour or two later, when Ernie and Donald roused themselves, Lucy heard her father call them into the front room. When they eventually made an appearance in the kitchen they were as noncommittal as her father had been about the impending job and she could get nothing out of them. It remained the same for the rest of the day. She did the shopping and got the bread knife out of pawn, along with two or three other things, returning home to begin her housewifely duties, but with a heavy heart.

  At six o’clock they all sat down to dinner – cod, as her father had requested, with plenty of mashed potatoes and vegetables and rice pudding to follow. The youngsters’ eyes had nearly popped out of their heads when they’d seen this feast, and her father and Ernie and Donald had eaten with every appearance of enjoyment. Lucy had finished her food, but it had tasted like sawdust in her mouth. At seven o’clock she’d sent Ruby and John and the twins to bed, and at eight her father and the lads had left the house.

  She was sitting with her head in her hands at the kitchen table when Jacob’s knock came at the window. He came round most nights, ostensibly to play cards with Ernie and Donald, but she knew this wasn’t the real reason, although nothing had been said. Lucy’s heart leapt as it always did when she heard his rat-a-tat-tat.

  On leaving school, Jacob had gone to work for the blacksmith in Southwick, with whom he’d had a Saturday job since he was a young lad, and although the pay was poor and the hours were long and hard he knew he was lucky in the present climate. Abe Williamson and his wife were childless and had always had a soft spot for him; furthermore Jacob always worked diligently and quickly, and stayed on when necessary until the job was done. But tonight he had made sure he got away on time; it was Lucy’s birthday.

  She stood up when he entered the kitchen and he glanced round, saying, ‘All alone?’

  Lucy nodded, and he tried to keep the elation from showing on his face. It wasn’t often he had her to himself; in fact he couldn’t remember the last time. ‘Happy birthday, Lucy,’ he said softly, reaching into his jacket pocket and bringing out a small velvet box.

  She stared at him, utterly taken aback. Everyone had forgotten it was her birthday, everyone except Jacob. ‘You remembered.’

  ‘Of course I remembered. Open it then.’

  It wasn’t so much what he said, but the look in his deep-brown eyes that made her blush. Shyly she took the little box and opened it. ‘Oh,’ she breathed. ‘It’s beautiful, Jacob. Really beautiful.’ The thin silver chain with a tiny heart hanging from it was not of the best quality, but to Lucy it was the most exquisite necklace in the world.

  ‘It’s not much,’ he said gruffly. ‘By the time I’ve paid my board to Mam and what-have-you there’s not much left and—’

  ‘Jacob’ – she put her hand on his arm – ‘it’s beautiful and I love it. Will you help me put it on?’

  She turned after handing him the box, lifting up her thick plait so he could fasten the necklace in place.

  Jacob gazed at the pure slender line of her neck, white against the burnished brown of her hair, and his heart began to hammer in his chest. He felt all fingers and thumbs as he struggled with the tiny clasp of the chain. Her soft skin was warm and silky as his fingers brushed it, and his mouth was dry by the time he’d mastered the delicate little catch.

  The heart lay snugly in the hollow of her throat and she put her hand to it as she turned, saying, ‘Thank you, Jacob. I’ll wear it always, but you shouldn’t have spent your hard-earned money on me.’

  He wanted to say he would buy her the moon if he could, that nothing was too good for her, that she was the most beautiful girl in the world, but her eyes playing over his face made him drunk with feeling and no words came. Instead he drew her to him, gently, worshipfully, and did what he’d ached to do for a long time. The kiss was sweet and as he felt her lips, tightly closed, beneath his, he began to tremble inside. For a mad moment he wanted to crush her to him, but not wanting to frighten her he controlled himself. Raising his head, he said softly, ‘I love you, Lucy. I always have.’

  When she made no reply, but blinked her eyelids rapidly, he kissed her again; the reward for his forbearance in the fact that her lips were not as tight as before.

  She smiled as his lips left hers and he stood looking down at her, her voice breathle
ss when she said, ‘I – I love you too.’ It was the first time she had been kissed on the mouth by anyone. They rarely kissed as a family and, if they did, it was always on the cheek. She had liked it and she’d liked being in Jacob’s arms. In the last two years he had shot up and now he was a full head taller than her. His work in the blacksmith’s forge had developed his chest and arms, his muscles as powerful as those of any of the wrestlers in the travelling fairs.

  He took her hands in his, drawing them to his chest, his eyes and mouth smiling. ‘I’ve been waiting until you were fifteen,’ he said, and it didn’t strike either of them as strange that he was talking as though he was a full-grown man rather than a youth who’d only had his own fifteenth birthday a few weeks before. ‘I want to ask your da if we can start courting now. What do you think?’

  She had dreamt about this moment, prayed it would happen, but now the mention of her da brought back the worry.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  Seeing the look on his face, she said hastily, ‘I want to, of course I want to; it isn’t that, but Da and the lads have gone on a job and I don’t know when they’ll be back. And—’

  ‘What?’ He was still holding her hands.

  ‘I’ve got a feeling on me, a bad feeling. Oh’ – she shook her head – ‘I’m being silly, that’s all.’ Pulling her fingers free, she shook her head again. ‘I’m tired, I suppose. I didn’t get much sleep last night. There was a’ – she shrugged her shoulders – ‘not a row exactly, but me an’ Da had words about the bread knife.’

  ‘The bread knife?’

  Now a smile touched her lips for a moment at his tone. She made a pot of tea while she told him what had transpired, bringing out the fruit cake she’d baked that afternoon and cutting Jacob a generous slice as she poured out her fears and concern along with the tea.

  ‘Don’t worry, Lucy.’ Sensing a need for reassurance rather than more kisses, Jacob reconciled himself to the fact with good grace. Now things were out in the open, they had all the time in the world after all. ‘I’ll keep you company till they get back, all right? An’ don’t put too much store by this “feeling”, either. Mam has plenty of those, and nine times out of ten they’re nowt.’

  But what if this was the tenth time?

  Lucy’s face must have spoken for itself because Jacob reached across the table, taking her hand in his. ‘Didn’t they tell you anything about this job?’

  ‘Nothing apart from it’s better that I don’t know.’

  Jacob kept his expression noncommittal, but his mind was racing. He was suddenly sure Tom was behind this, although he wasn’t about to say that to Lucy. Tom had been looking for a way to inveigle himself into Lucy’s family for years and he knew why. Oh aye, he knew why, all right. He looked into Lucy’s lovely face and his guts twisted. He’d see Tom dead before he’d let him lay a hand on her. His brother thought himself the big ‘I am’ with his fine house on The Green in Southwick, and he certainly had his da and the others licking his boots, but underneath the gentlemanly exterior that Tom liked to project these days he was still the same vicious, conniving bully he’d always been.

  Becoming aware Lucy was waiting for him to say something, he forced a smile. ‘Everyone’s doing a bit on the side these days to get through, and your da and the lads are big enough and ugly enough to look after themselves. They’ll be all right.’

  ‘You’re not. Doing a bit on the side, I mean.’

  ‘No. Well, perhaps I’m the stupid one.’

  ‘I don’t think you’re stupid,’ she said softly.

  ‘Oh, Lucy.’ Forgetting his noble intentions of a minute or so before, Jacob stood up and moved round the table, taking her into his arms for the second time. When he felt her return the kiss he pulled her closer and they stood swaying together in the dim light from the oil lamp for endless moments.

  It was Jacob who broke the embrace. He was finding that although the spirit was willing, the flesh was weak, and a certain part of his anatomy had a mind of its own. Fighting against the desire that threatened to make him lose control, he raised his head and took a step backwards, catching hold of her hand as he did so. ‘It’s a beautiful evening. Come and look at the stars.’

  ‘The stars?’

  ‘Aye, come on.’ He took her shawl from the back of a chair and wrapped it round her shoulders before pulling her into the scullery and opening the back door. The rain of the morning had cleared and now the sky was high and devoid of the merest cloud, a sharp frost already scattering the flagstones with diamond dust, and the blackness above alive with twinkling stars and a crystal-clear white moon.

  ‘Grand, isn’t it?’ Jacob kept his arm round her. ‘When I can’t sleep I spend hours looking at the sky. That’s the Milky Way up there – see that faint band of stars spanning the sky? And there’s hundreds of millions of stars in the universe; even the sun is a star, although people think it’s a planet, whereas a shooting star isn’t a star at all, but dust particles that get burned up in the atmosphere.’

  Lucy stared at him, amazed. ‘How do you know all this?’

  He grinned sheepishly. ‘I bought myself a book about astronomy a while back. I was never much of a reader at school, but I like to find out about things. I got Jules Verne’s book From the Earth to the Moon out of the library, and I reckon one day people will go into space for real in a rocket. There’s men who’ve been looking at liquid-fuelled rockets for years and—’ He broke off, smiling at the expression on her face. ‘You don’t believe me.’

  Lucy looked up into the velvet-black sky. ‘It’s not that I don’t believe you exactly, but . . .’

  ‘Would our grandparents have ever dreamt men would build aeroplanes that would fly, but it’s happening.’ He was glad he’d taken her mind off her father and brothers for a few minutes. ‘And now the talkies have come in at the pictures, and more and more folk are getting a wireless in their homes.’ He paused again – this was a sore point. Tom had made a great show of buying his mam and da a wireless for Christmas, and his mam was over the moon. Not that he begrudged his mother the pleasure the set gave her; it was just galling to have Tom held up as akin to God Almighty.

  As though his thoughts had conjured it into being, he became aware of the strains of ‘Among My Souvenirs’, a hit of the previous year, filtering out from next door. He glanced down at Lucy. She looked tired and he knew she was thinking of her father and brothers again. The back yards were still and quiet, everyone was indoors on such a cold and frosty night, but the moonlight cast a silvery glow that injected magic into the air. Acting on an impulse that later amazed him when he thought about it, he turned her round to face him. ‘May I request the pleasure of this dance?’

  Before she had time to answer, he took her into his arms and began to whirl her round the yard, one arm at her waist and his other hand holding hers.

  Lucy gazed up into Jacob’s face, and she was laughing. It seemed as though they both had two left feet. But then, as Jacob grinned at her, they began to flow into a natural rhythm and she felt as though she was floating as her laughter died away.

  The crisp cold air, the warmth of Jacob’s breath on her face, the thrill of being held in his arms after all the times she’d imagined what it would be like, and not least the way his dark eyes were devouring her and sending the blood coursing through her veins – all this caused a strange kind of happiness that was almost painful.

  She wouldn’t be able to bear it if anything should happen to separate them, she told herself dazedly. If he stopped loving her, she’d never love anyone else. But this was Jacob; he’d told her he loved her and he wanted her to be his lass. They were meant to be together. Feeling the way they did, nothing could come between them . . .

  In the back lane beyond the yards and concealed by the privy next door, a pair of burning eyes stared at the couple dancing in the moonlight.

  Tom Crawford had thought he’d timed his visit perfectly. When Walter Fallow had come to him cap in hand the night befo
re, he’d barely been able to conceal his delight.

  Lucy’s father begging him to put some work his way. He’d long since given up hoping that day would come, in spite of the way the family had struggled over the last couple of years. Walter was as stubborn as a donkey and try as he might – and he had tried, over and over – he’d been unable to persuade the brothers to go against the father. But now he’d been handed entry into the Fallow household on a plate, or he thought he had.

  He ground his teeth, his hands clenched into fists at his side, as he watched Lucy in Jacob’s arms.

  With the father and brothers in the palm of his hand, he’d known Lucy would do as she was told, and he didn’t intend to play silly beggars, either. No, he’d do it the right way with Lucy because she was the one he’d chosen as his wife and the mother of his children. She stood out from the other lasses in these parts like a rose on a dung hill, and her shyness and the way she kept herself to herself had only increased his determination to have her. He could think of any number of lasses who’d jump at the chance to become Mrs Tom Crawford, but none of them could hold a candle to Lucy. When he rose to where he wanted to be in this town, she had the beauty and natural grace to rise with him and not be an embarrassment.

  He’d come here tonight to start the process without her father and brothers looking on. He’d intended to charm her and begin paving the way. He’d been patient, the devil knows he’d been patient.

  He heard Jacob murmur something or other and then Lucy’s breathless laugh, and it was all he could do not to leap out at them. He’d always known Jacob liked her, but he’d thought she had more about her than to bother with his pipsqueak of a brother, looking like she did. But then Jacob had changed. Tom’s gaze narrowed. It had been more than twelve months since he’d laid eyes on his youngest brother. When he called to see his mother it tended to be a morning visit, for his business in the docks and brothels and gambling establishments mostly took place later in the day and evenings. At fifteen, Jacob had the appearance of a fully grown man, and the way he was holding Lucy had none of the fumbling awkwardness of a callow youth.