Angel Meadow

by Audrey Howard

  Josh Hayes stood at the edge of the churchyard of the little chapel in Pendlebury where Evie Edward was laid to rest. He had not loved her, not as a man can love a woman, but she had left something of herself, beside her son, in his heart which no woman would ever dislodge. He stood almost hidden by the broad trunk of an ancient oak tree, for he did not wish to distress her family, but if they had turned and spat at him he knew he must be there to pay his last respects to the girl, she was no more than that, who, if he had not loved her, had loved him.

  When they had all gone he moved slowly through the steady drizzle to stand beside the raw earth of her grave, his head bowed, his face drenched with what could have been rain but was not. For several minutes he stood, then, raising his head, he let the rain wash across his face before turning towards his mare whom he had left tethered in the lane.

  12

  They called her Kitty. Well, Jennet and the girls did, for Nancy said they must do as they pleased since she was far too busy to be bothering with christenings and the like. Of course she’d be there, she said impatiently, if Jennet wanted to arrange it, Jennet being quite horrified at the idea of the child not being made known to God, but with the journey to Oldham to be fitted in and the machines they meant to hire to be installed she was run off her feet as it was. It took up time she could barely spare just to feed the infant, which she felt compelled to do, since she had enough milk to nourish every newborn in Angel Meadow, she said, somewhat bitterly, but it was not long before Kitty Brody and her feeds were determined by the needs of her mother and not the other way round. If Nancy could not be there she drew her milk from her breasts with a pump, the milk then being put into an infant feeding-bottle with an india-rubber teat, all purchased from a good druggist in Deansgate, and one of Kitty’s other “mothers” fed her. She was not what you would call a placid baby, but she took the teat or the nipple with great forbearance, which astounded her mother in view of who her parents were, in particular Mick O’Rourke who had a temper on him that could turn nasty, as Nancy knew to her cost, and she herself was no shrinking violet.

  For a moment, when the name of Kitty was suggested, Nancy had looked quite haunted as though the ghost of her poor mam had come back to grin drunkenly at her, then she shrugged, for it was as good a name as any, she supposed.

  From the first she could find nothing in her to give to her child, except the sustenance of her milk, that is. How could she, she asked herself, when she remembered the way in which the baby had been conceived and who her father was. She hated Mick O’Rourke with a venomous loathing that grew inside her, blocking the way along which her maternal and protective love might have flowed. She knew she was damaged in some way by it. She knew it was not normal for any woman to feel the total indifference for her child that she felt towards Kitty. Even her own mam, drunken whore that she had been, had loved her and Rosie and Mary, protecting them as best she could from the filthy hands of the men who had grabbed for them, doing her best to feed them and clothe them and warm them in the depth of the dark Manchester winters. Not that Kitty would suffer as she and her sisters had suffered, for she was petted and pampered like a little princess by her Aunt Mary and by Jennet. They adored her and fought with one another over who should pick her up if she cried – which was often – and she thrived on it, not really caring who her mother was, since she had two others. A child needs love to grow. It needs nourishment and that Nancy gave her in abundance but the love she received came from elsewhere.

  Rosie was not quite so obsessed by the charm of the infant as the other two and Nancy was beginning to notice a certain restlessness in her sister, an inclination to prowl about the house and peer from windows as though outside there might be something more exciting than what was to be found in a house with four women and a child. She was a mature thirteen, two years younger than Nancy and very pretty, which she knew, of course. She had always been bolder, more wayward than Mary, more difficult to lead in the way Nancy wished her to go but Nancy put that down to the fact that she was longing to get away from Church Court, as they all were, and would settle down when they did. Not that she ever totally rebelled against the bridle Nancy put on her and Mary but she was often surly and muttering and now and again, for a whole hour, she would be missing and when questioned would say vaguely she had gone for a walk. Where? Nancy had asked her. To look at the shops in Deansgate, the answer came and though Nancy didn’t know whether to believe her or not, it did sound the sort of thing that Rosie might be interested in. Lovely shops, fashionable ladies, impeccably dressed gentlemen, shining carriages pulled by shining horses. It had worried her, but short of tying her to the bedpost there was nothing much Nancy could do about it except work all the harder and strive all the quicker to get them all out of Church Court.

  On the day after Kitty’s birth Jennet, Rosie and Mary had gone down to Brown Street and Earnshaw’s Fine Shirts and presented themselves for work to Mr Earnshaw, who had looked at them as though they were beings from another world, his coarse face working in spluttering indignation.

  “Oh, yer’ve condescended ter come back then, ’ave yer? Yer ready ter work are yer after yer two days’ ’oliday? Bin anywhere nice? Blackpool, ’appen. An’ where’s her ladyship if I might be so bold as ter ask?” Mr Earnshaw was the picture of injured sarcasm, turning round to the rest of the girls and women in his employ in order to assess their reaction to his heavy-handed wit. “She ’avin’ another few days, like, or is she . . .”

  Jennet drew herself up, her small figure looking as though it were doing its best to protect the tall, well-fed frames of the Brody sisters, one of whom was totally intimidated by Mr Earnshaw. Mary was so used to Nancy defending them, standing up for them, speaking out for them, she was at a loss on how to face Mr Earnshaw. Not so Rosie! In a sense, though the sisters were working girls who had been flung into life at the deep end, so to speak, at a very early age they had led a remarkably sheltered life, dominated by their older sister in all things. Since they had left the mill where there had been young men to tease and flirt with they had come into contact with no man but Mr Earnshaw and so their development in that area had been halted temporarily. But Rosie Brody had seen the way the lads in Church Court looked at her, one in particular, and she was well aware of her own charms in that direction, and her worth as a machinist, and if this old bugger thought he could look her up and down as though she were something one of the girls had brought in from the street on her shoe, then he was sadly mistaken.

  Lifting her head in a fair imitation of their Nancy she gave him a withering look of contempt, since she did not have her sister’s ambitions nor the intelligence to realise that at the moment they were still beholden to a man like this and must therefore be polite to him.

  “Well, you’ve only to say the word, Mr Earnshaw,” she began, but before she could continue Jennet had her arm in a grip like a vice, halting the “mouthful” Rosie was just about to let loose.

  “Nancy had her baby yesterday, Mr Earnshaw,” Jennet said in her courteous way. “A little girl. She had a hard time of it and so will be unable to return to her employment with you.”

  “Is that so? Well, yer can tell ’er she’s not wanted anyroad. I’ve replaced the four o’ yer so yer can sling yer ’ook an’ all. I can’t run me business wi’ girls comin’ an’ goin’ ter suit theirselves so yer’d best—”

  “You knew Nancy was with child, Mr Earnshaw, and she worked for you as diligently as any other girl here, despite her condition, right up to the day before the birth. Now, obviously she can’t return but we can and so—”

  “Did it tekk three o’ yer ter act as bloody midwives, then? An’ it’s bin three days since—”

  “We’re here now, Mr Earnshaw and we are all three willing to work without pay for two days to make up any losses you might have incurred.”

  Rosie muttered sullenly at this but she kept her mouth shut.

  Mr Earnshaw was quite taken aback, but he was not a man to turn down an offer
such as this one, since the Brody girls and Jennet Williams were his best workers. He told a lie when he said he had replaced them and the chance to make up what he had indeed lost was too good to miss. Besides, though Nancy would be missed the three of them standing before him looking suitably chastened were as good as any four or even five others.

  “Well, I dunno . . .” He pulled on his lip and pretended to hesitate.

  “Very well, Mr Earnshaw, we will take our labour elsewhere,” Jennet told him politely, beginning to turn away and at once he began to bluster.

  “’Ere, there’s no need ter be like that. I ’aven’t said I wasn’t willin’, ’ave I? No. Right then, get on them machines an’ no messin’ about, d’yer hear?” just as though they were about to sit down and engage the other girls in gossip.

  They had decided before Kitty was born that three of them would continue at Earnshaw’s until the new machines came from Oldham. They needed every penny they could earn to pay for the hire of them, to replace the wages they would no longer earn when they left the sweat shop, for the rent of a stall on the market, and eventually, when the time came, for the rent of a workroom in the shirtmaking district of the city. Nancy had to stay at home until she was recovered from the birth of the child, which would not be long, she promised them, and then Jennet would leave Mr Earnshaw, probably pleading her health as an excuse, for he must not as yet be aware that they were to set up in competition with him. Mary and Rosie would stay on until they were needed, along with Jennet, on their own new machines in the downstairs room at Church Court which was to be the workroom. Among all these arrangements the child had to be fitted in. Nancy was to spend four days a week on the stall in the market and on the other two do all the things that she was sure their new business would require: buying the shirting material, the thread, oil for the machines, needles, embroidery silks and, later, when her plain stuff was selling well, the lace, fans, bonnets, gloves, parasols, shawls and fancy goods which she would display in the smart little shop she meant to have in St Ann’s Square in the best shopping district of the city. Nancy Brody did not mean to be a stall holder for the rest of her life, like Mrs Beasley.

  At times in those long months of pregnancy, quite frightening her sisters and Jennet, Nancy had sworn obscenely, describing in graphic detail what she would like to do to that part of Mick O’Rourke’s anatomy that had got her into this bloody mess. Had it not been for him and his beastliness their young business would have been up and if not exactly running, then tottering on increasingly strengthening legs months ago. All had had to be postponed until after the child came but now, with Kitty’s arrival, their plans, discussed endlessly through the spring and early summer months, could be set in motion.

  Two weeks later she and Jennet took the train to Oldham to keep an appointment with a gentleman at the premises of a firm called Bradbury and Company, who had been manufacturing commercial sewing-machines, among others, for the past seven years. Both the girls – for they were still only girls – were dressed tidily and soberly in summer-weight tarlatan, the separate bodices well fitted to their breasts, Jennet’s small like a child’s, Nancy’s full and deep with her new maternity. The waists, even Nancy’s, who had regained her trim figure very quickly, were neat, flaring out over the fashionable crinoline, flounced about the wide hem. Nancy was in a soft shade of blue and Jennet in the dove grey she favoured, both gowns, thanks to Jennet’s cleverness with a needle, having been cut out and sewn over the last few months in readiness for this day. Mrs Beasley had found them the material and even a cream straw bonnet apiece with a low flat crown and a brim on which they had sewn cream silk lily-of-the-valley. It was amazing what came Mrs Beasley’s way, Nancy had murmured in an aside to Jennet when the bonnets and flowers had been triumphantly produced. Nancy’s growing bulk had elicited nothing from Mrs Beasley, not even a sideways look, for even in this, the stall holder kept her own counsel, minding her own business as she expected Nancy to mind hers.

  Nancy had not been outside the house since Kitty’s birth. It was a Saturday, planned so that Rosie and Mary could be at home to look after the baby, and Church Court was out and about in droves in the pleasant warmth of the summer’s day, the usual pastime of gossiping and spying on their neighbours occupying the women at least. They sprawled on doorsteps and even in the gutters, for more than one was drunk. Children screamed and squabbled and scrabbled about in the filth that floated down the drain in the centre of the alleyway, but the sight of the two elegant young women, their noses high, their skirts held up out of the filth, as usual brought the whole fascinated lot of them to open-mouthed silence. They had seen the Brody girls go by a thousand times since their mam vanished and they had decided to go it alone but no matter how many times it happened their appearance never failed to stupefy them.

  They came out of their trance with a start. “Bloody ’ell, it’s ’Er Majesty an’ ’er lady-in-waitin’,” screeched Mrs O’Rourke, the first to recover. “Yer dropped yer load then, I see. An’ is it all right ter ask what yer ’ad? Not that we’re interested, are we, lasses?” squinting round at those who were within hearing. “’Ave yer told its pa yet, ’ooever ’e may be or don’t yer know?”

  She cackled at her own joke. She was leaning against her door frame and where her shoulder rested on the wood it could be seen that over the years a groove had been worn. She was dressed in her usual assortment of grubby and dilapidated garments and, incongruously, a large grey pinny – which once might have been white – as though to protect them from the filth all about her. Her feet were encased in a pair of men’s clogs, worn and encrusted with something she had picked up in the street, and on her head she wore a man’s cap. For a shuddering moment Nancy allowed herself to imagine that this woman, if Mick had had his way, would have been her mother-in-law, wondering at the same time why Mick and Marie Finnigan, who it had been rumoured was also carrying his child, were not yet married. Had she had the child yet? The horrifying, terrifying thought slipped into her mind that when she did it would be half-sister or -brother to her own. Great God above, the sooner she got herself and her family away from this place the better. None of their neighbours had seen Kitty yet but when they did, especially this old biddy, they would recognise at once who her father was, for it was there in the baby’s face even at two weeks old. Perhaps that was why she couldn’t seem to take to the child, she brooded, because of her likeness to Mick.

  As though the thought had conjured him up, Mick O’Rourke appeared from the depths of the cottage, elbowing his mother aside to lean his broad shoulders against the door frame, his mother protesting volubly. His face was closed and expressionless, his vivid, Irish blue eyes narrowed with what might have been a warning as he swept them offensively up and down her body. She gave him no more than a glance, but it was a glance filled with her loathing before she turned away as though he were no more to her than the filth beneath her feet. Just the same she had time to register that when he saw her look at him it seemed to please him, for the corners of his mouth began to curl up as if in amusement. His smile broadened into a grin and a feather of ice ran down her spine, though for the life of her she could not think why. She was not afraid of Mick O’Rourke. She had never been afraid of Mick O’Rourke, but something in that smile seemed to say he could be dangerous to her. She supposed he could still tell the world that he, Mick O’Rourke, had fathered her child. That he had laid the high and mighty Nancy Brody on the ground and taken her, impregnated her, but he must be aware that if he did she would reveal to the street, to Angel Meadow itself, that the only way he could get her was by force. Rape! That handsome, popular, charming Mick O’Rourke who all the girls loved had had to resort to rape to get what he had lusted after for months.

  She could feel their eyes like knives in her back all the way down the street, hear the jeers floating after her and though they reckoned to hate and despise her, which she knew was laced with envy, she had the strange feeling that when she left they would miss her, for hadn�
�t she and her family entertained them all for years.

  The trip was a huge success. She and Jennet took the train from Victoria Station to travel the six and a half miles to Oldham, the pandemonium of Church Court and the sneering of its occupants completely forgotten in the excitement, the exhilaration of this day for which Nancy, at least, felt she had waited all her life. At least since her mam left. This was the start of it. She could go forward now, she thought, as the train whipped them towards Oldham, her very first train journey which was thrill enough on its own. She sighed but there was no sadness in that sigh, only the sheer joy of satisfaction.

  “I do hope Mary remembers to get Kitty’s wind up after her feed,” Jennet said, breaking into her thoughts. “That bottle of hers is inclined to make her—”

  Irritation prickled Nancy’s skin and her voice was sharp, since she wanted nothing to get in the way of this splendid day.

  “Please, Jennet, can we not leave Church Court behind for a couple of hours. This is very important.”

  “And so is Kitty,” Jennet answered sharply. “Mary is not as adept as she might be with the baby though she does her best and loves the child devotedly.”

  “As you do.”

  “Of course.” No more was said, for Jennet was well aware that Nancy was obsessed at the moment, not with her child but with the start of her new venture.

  When they reached Oldham, flushed and quite intoxicated by the short train journey, they stepped out along Manchester Street towards King Street where Bradbury and Company was situated and where Mr Bradbury himself was waiting to meet them. He was quite mesmerised by the beauty and intelligence of Miss Brody and the sweet calm and courtesy of Miss Williams, not to mention their intimate knowledge of the sewing-machine. After their business was done, the contract signed for the hire of the machines, which if they kept up the payments would eventually be theirs, he invited them to take lunch with him at the Albion Hotel.