by Val Wood
The stone spire of All Saints church guided her down the hillside towards the lanes of Hessle and she strode out singing, Charlie yapping at her heel or running ahead once he caught the familiar scents of home.
But as she approached the town square she slowed down and called Charlie to heel. The church bell was tolling a death knell, and a small crowd of people were gathered about near the cottages where Robin lived. She didn’t want to intrude on anyone’s grief by her sudden appearance. She was dishevelled and dirty, she knew, her hair tangled and her cloak muddy and wet around the hem and her boots fit only for the fire.
‘Annie?’ Robin, his face thin and white and his eyes red-rimmed, stood in front of her. ‘We’ve been that worried about thee. Master Toby’s had search parties out looking for thee.’
She glanced towards the cottage where Robin lived. ‘I got stranded.’ The door was open and a group of people, including Josh, were standing in the doorway. A horse and cart stood outside, the sides of the cart draped in black. ‘What’s happened, Robin? Who’s died?’
His eyes were full of grief. ‘My sister’s bairn. He was sick in bed wi’ me, does tha remember? He got took worse, poor little lad. We did what we could, but it were no use.’
She put her hands to her mouth to stifle a sob and felt hot tears welling behind her eyelids. Aye, she did remember. He’d reminded her of her own Ted, and she again wondered how her children were surviving without her. She must decide what to do about them. Now that she was fit and strong she should perhaps be brave and go back. Now, Annie, she told herself – boasting, tha was, about how tha can face life. Well now’s thy chance to put it to ’test.
‘Robin,’ she said, her voice thick with emotion. ‘Could I come with thee to church? To see ’little lad off? Would tha sister mind?’
‘She’d be right glad, Annie.’ A tear trickled down his cheek. ‘This is ’time when we need all ’support of friends we can get. Come stand by me and we’ll follow him to God’s acre.’
* * *
After Toby had chastized and scolded her for going away on her own and then hugged her to death in delight that she was safe, he said that he would settle with the Trotts about their old donkey and get them another one.
‘You’re just in time, Annie, the Breeze is due in next week, so you can take over the distribution list and check with Josh over the lookout men, while I ride out and collect some money that’s due.’
When the ship drew up river, Annie rowed with Toby in the coggy boat towards it and climbed on board. Matt was civil enough at first, though they didn’t pass more than a few words as they exchanged papers. Then he complimented her on her foray into the Wolds under such terrible conditions. ‘There’s many a brave man wouldn’t have attempted it,’ he said with an ironical smile. ‘Let alone a – lady.’
‘Well, sir.’ She flushed as she retaliated. ‘That wasn’t a problem I had to deal with, for as we all know, I’m neither a brave man nor a lady.’
‘He makes me that angry.’ She took an oar from Toby as they rowed back and pulled hard towards the bank. ‘Why is he so disagreeable? He seems to take a delight in insulting me and reminding me of what I am. I know I’m only from ’gutter, but there’s no need for him to act so high and mighty. He’s certainly no gentleman, even if he was born one.’
‘I don’t know, Annie. I’ve never known him act this way before.’ Toby helped her out and they stowed the boat beneath the rushes and hid several ankers of brandy beneath some bushes. ‘He can be kind and benevolent.’
‘How can two brothers be so different? Why does he hate me?’
They climbed onto Sorrel’s back and cantered back to Toby’s cottage. ‘I don’t think he hates you, Annie.’ Toby spoke in only a whisper, keeping his voice down so that it wouldn’t carry, though there had been no sign of soldiers or customs men. ‘He’s never met anyone like you before, I don’t think he understands you.’
She put her head against his shoulder and her arms about his waist and squeezed. ‘Not like you do, eh, Toby? Not like my friend, Toby.’
‘I want to ask thee a favour, Toby,’ she said the next day. ‘I’ve been thinking about it since I was up on ’Wolds.’
He built up the fire with logs: there had been a sharp frost and icy patches covered the lanes and tracks, making it difficult to walk or ride.
‘Don’t ask me to go out, that’s all. If we want bread, then we’ll make it. It’s freezing out.’
‘No, it’s not that. In fact if tha’ll do what I ask, then we’ll have to stay in.’
He stretched and yawned and then came over to her and put his arms around her. ‘Annie!’ His brown eyes were soft, yet humorous. ‘What are you going to ask?’
She pushed him away. ‘Stop fooling, Toby. I’m serious!’
He held her gently by her shoulders. ‘So would I be, Annie, if you’d let me.’
‘Please don’t, Toby. Tha knows I care for thee. Don’t let’s spoil things.’
He turned away from her, but she saw a look of hurt cross his face. He’s different from any man I’ve known, she thought, so tender and gentle. He deserves better than me.
‘Go on, then.’ He stretched out on his bed. ‘What is it you want that is so important?’
She hesitated for a moment and then went and sat at the foot of the bed. ‘I want thee to learn me to talk proper.’
He grinned. ‘Teach you to speak correctly?’
‘Aye. That’s what I said. And to learn me – teach me, I mean, to read and write, and to do numbers. I can add up in my head, but I can’t write ’numbers down. Will tha, Toby? Please.’
‘Ask me again properly, and then I’ll think about it.’
She took a deep breath and gathered her thoughts together. ‘I want you to teach me to speak proper.’
He sat up. ‘Almost right. But why, Annie? Your accent is part of you. You don’t have to change. Is it my brother? Is it Matt who has made you think this way?’
She considered for a moment. ‘Partly. I don’t think of what I am when I’m with thee, but with him – well, I know that he thinks I’m nowt – nothing, and it makes my blood boil, ’cos I know I can be better.’
He looked wistfully at her. ‘I see,’ he said quietly.
‘But it’s not just Matt.’ She got up and paced the floor. ‘No. It was them two bitches up on ’Wolds. Them two she-cats. It was them that made me think.’
He laughed at her. ‘Bitches are dogs, Annie. Cats are cats. What are you talking about?’
‘Where I come from, bitches are spiteful women, and that’s what them two so-called ladies were.’
‘Those two, Annie. Not them two.’
‘Tha’ll teach me then, Toby?’ She grasped him excitedly. ‘Have we started already?’
‘Tell me about the two ladies who have so disturbed you.’ He looked enquiringly at her. ‘And where have you been to meet such ladies?’
‘Well, I didn’t take ’usual route, not the one that Robin showed me.’
Toby raised his eyes to the ceiling in exasperation. ‘No wonder you lost your way, silly woman.’
She ignored him and continued. ‘I saw a big house, and I thought that I would take a chance and knock, and ask ’housekeeper if she wanted owt – anything. And as luck would have it, the housekeeper took me up to see her mistress, Mrs Burnby, who was entertaining two ladies, her nieces, I think they were, and they bought several lengths of stuff. Jane, that was one of them, said to Mrs Burnby, that she ought to buy the length of grey satin for a party they were going to.’
Toby sat forward and watched her, his teeth biting his bottom lip.
‘But it was the other one, Clara, that was so-so – !’ She shook her fists. She couldn’t find the word that would fit the disdainful, haughty young woman who had laughed at her.
‘Patronizing? That would fit, I think,’ he said quietly.
‘Aye. That’s it. And that’s when I started to think I could learn to talk better. I know my place, don’t think I
don’t. I know I can’t change what I am, but I can at least try, even for my own sake to pull myself out of ’sewer and not let folk despise me as soon as I open my mouth.’
‘It wasn’t just you, Annie.’ Toby sighed and Annie looked at him curiously. How pale he seemed and melancholy. ‘That’s just how she is. It’s her nature to be contemptuous and derisive. I know. I’ve felt the sharpness of her tongue. Even when she was very young she was the same.’
‘That’s not ’young woman you loved?’ How could it be? She wasn’t worthy of him. ‘But you said she loved you too!’
‘Huh. She said she did. But I was very eligible. I realize now that it was father’s estate and name that she was after. If Matt had been around she would have set her cap at him instead. However, she seems destined to be an old maid for no-one has carried her off yet. Rumour has it that she’ll have no-one that her father has chosen for her.’ He shrugged. ‘And so she gets more and more bitter and vindictive.’
‘She is a bitch, then?’
‘Absolutely.’ He suddenly laughed. ‘And a she-cat. What a lucky escape I’ve had, Annie.’
They spent every day for a month working on Annie’s letters as she called them; and outside the wind howled and then it snowed, and after that it rained and rained, and the river rose and burst its banks and flooded the path and deposited its turbulent muddy water into the cottages which sat by its side beneath the low chalk cliff.
The lessons were not easy for her and Toby got bored, but she persisted, and soon she grasped the rudiments of reading. Numbers she had no trouble with at all, for, she said, she thought of the figures as shapes and she seemed to have a natural talent with a pencil to depict the figures in her head.
‘You’re amazing, Annie. You’re so quick at adding up. Much quicker than I am.’
‘It’s because I had to be sharp, living on the wharves. We did so much bartering that we had to know ’worth of everything and convert it into money. And when I was married to Alan, I never had any money, he always spent it on grog or dogfights and I had to manage with what was left. Everybody thought I was a poor housekeeper, but it’s hard managing on nothing.’
She put down her paper and pencil and gazed reflectively into space. I could manage now. I’d know how. I’ve got money of my own that I’ve worked for. I could feed my children. She turned towards Toby and found that he was watching her, his face soft and sympathetic.
‘You’re a very brave lady, Annie. You deserve to be happy.’ He took her hand and kissed it gently, then he turned it over and kissed the palm.
She had never been kissed like that before. Never really been kissed so that she would like it. She had had her lips probed open by searching tongues and rough hands on her body. But never tenderness such as this. This was no brotherly kiss.
She gently stroked his face. He was such a boy. Untouched, somehow, by life, in spite of his daring adventuring spirit. She smiled at him and leant forward and kissed his mouth. ‘I am happy, Toby. You have made me happy. You’ve taught me so much, and I don’t mean letters and numbers. You’ve taught me that there are some kind folk in this world, and you are the kindest, bestest man in it.’
He smiled back at her, a crease showing around his eyes. ‘Best, Annie, if that is what I am, not bestest.’
The spell was broken as they laughed and they hugged each other.
‘I’ve thought of something that will make you really happy, Annie.’
‘What?’ She packed up her books and pencil. ‘I told thee – you, I am happy, just being here. I did think I’d go to York, but I don’t think now that I want to.’ And, she thought, I can’t go anywhere until I’ve paid back that proud brother of thine. I’ll make him eat his words. I know what it is with him. He thinks that I’m using Toby. Probably thinks I’m getting money out of him. He won’t know that there’s such a thing as a loving friendship.
‘Your children,’ he said. ‘Why don’t we fetch them here?’
She turned pale. ‘How? I can’t go to Hull. I’ve told thee before, folks’ is after me.’ In her anxiety she slipped back into her old dialect. ‘And where would we all live?’
‘That wouldn’t be difficult. We can build another room, there’s plenty of timber. And Mrs Trott would help to look after them, they could even go to school.’
She stared open-mouthed. He must be going mad. Mrs Trott look after Jimmy? And go to school? Her lads? Ted would like that, he was a bright little lad, and Lizzie was a good girl, she could go into service. But no, no, it was impossible.
‘I’ve told thee. I daren’t go back.’ She started to cry. Her fears multiplied as she thought of Francis Morton lying in the mud, and the gallows creaking as a body swung, its eyes pecked out by crows. She sobbed and sobbed. ‘I can’t go back. Don’t make me. Please don’t make me. I’ll swing. I’ll swing!’
16
‘I won’t make you, Annie. How could I? It has to be your decision. But why won’t you tell me why you are so frightened? You can trust me; you surely know that?’
She took a square of linen from her pocket and blew her nose. She gave a sobbing laugh. ‘Look at me, Toby. Wiping my nose on a hanky and not on my shawl!’ Should I tell, she thought wretchedly. Is it better to share my misery or keep it to myself. Some compassion in his face made her weep again. He told me his story; about his terrible father and his mistress, and that dreadful Miss Clara. He shared his sorrow with me.
‘I killed a man.’
His face paled at her words and he grasped her hand. ‘How? I mean – an accident?’
She took a deep shuddering breath. It was out. ‘No. Not an accident. I did it intentionally. I took a knife and stabbed him.’ She drew up her head and stared at him defiantly. ‘And I’m not sorry. I’d do it again. He deserved it.’
Toby put his hand over his eyes and shook his head. ‘No man deserves that, Annie. You can’t mean it.’
‘Aye. I mean it,’ she admitted, her conscience unburdened. ‘When a man behaves the way he did, then death is too good for him.’
‘Tell me then, Annie. Don’t spare me. I want to know what drove you to deprive a man of his life.’
‘His name was Francis Morton. I’d known of him for a long time, he was well known in all the streets and alleys of Hull. He was a thief who was never caught – he had the law in his pocket. He was a seducer, a whoremonger with bastards all over town; and when he came into my life after Alan died, I thought he was the most handsome, generous, charming man I’d ever met, and that all the stories I’d ever heard about him were just malicious rumours spread by vindictive people who were jealous of his good looks and the money he always had in his pocket.’
She wiped away a tear and got up and walked about the room. ‘It wasn’t until I’d accepted money and gifts from him, given, he’d said without pledge or promise of favours returned, that I realized that I was trapped. He did expect favours, and he tempted me with his soft talk and yearnings – and I was flattered, I have to admit it, and I thought I loved him—.’ She stopped her walking and gazed into the fire. ‘I was that desperate, Toby, to have someone care for me; but I soon came to realize that he was nowt but a cruel bully, who expected more from me than I’d willingly give.
‘I put up with that, after all, I was used to being ill-treated, it was nothing new to me, and besides, he was giving me money, so I was able to feed my bairns.’ She looked at Toby sitting so silently, pale and drawn, and now, she thought, I’ve lost him. He won’t want to know the likes of me, the scum on dirty water. ‘I don’t think I can go on, Toby. I can’t tell thee the rest.’
He drew her towards him and gently rested her head on his shoulder. ‘Yes you can, take your time, it’s best that you tell it all, then it’s done with.’
Hot tears sped down her face, spilling onto his shirt. ‘He’d hit my lads, they told me that he had, and I said that happen they’d deserved it, their Da was always chastizing them – our Jimmy was a young varmint, though Ted wasn’t.’
She took another deep breath. ‘Then one day I came home early from work. I found him in ’house with Lizzie.’ She turned a tear-stained face towards him. ‘She was eight years old, Toby – onny a bairn – and he’d taken off her apron and was unbuttoning her dress.’ She shuddered. ‘God knows what’d have happened if I hadn’t come in when I did. I didn’t say owt, just stood and stared – and then he laughed and made some excuse and left.’
She drew away from Toby and continued her pacing about the room. ‘It was then that I decided. I knew that a man with an appetite like his would be back, and I couldn’t be watching Lizzie day in, day out. And poor bairn, she was so frightened. So I locked her in the house and told her not to open ’door to anybody, and took my lads to Seaman’s Hospital – I knew they’d be well looked after there. Then I took Lizzie round to some good friends of mine and asked them if they’d look after her for me while I attended to some business.’
A log on the fire spat crackling sparks onto the floor and she jumped and watched as Toby rubbed his boot on the scorching rug.
‘I went back home and took Alan’s flensing knife from where I’d hidden it and went looking for him.’
She sank down onto the floor. She felt sick and faint as she remembered the staining on Francis’s shirt and the obscenities he raged at her in his death throes. She touched her cheek at the small scar left by the buckle of his belt as he’d lashed out at her, before she had kicked him down into the mud below the wharves.
‘Annie?’ She heard Toby’s voice from a long way off.
‘Leave me,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t talk to me. Go away. Please!’
For two days she lay in her bed, too exhausted by the trauma of her confession to even talk or eat, she merely drank the water which Toby brought her and the warm milk in which he had stirred some honey.
On the third day she got out of bed ravenously hungry and with her mind made up. She would do as Toby suggested and fetch her children here. She had to defy the demons which haunted her and return to Hull.