House of Angels

by Freda Lightfoot

  She groaned as a wave of homesickness struck her. It already felt like days rather than hours since she’d last seen them, her wedding day having gone by in a blur.

  Why had she ever allowed herself to be bullied into this match? Why had her father turned on her, the one daughter who had always been his favourite, or so she’d believed? And all because she’d fallen in love with a groom, a working man instead of a man of property. Why was it that he valued land, money, his business, everything in fact, above his three daughters’ happiness? It was so unfair.

  Amos made no comment on her defection from her duties, perhaps because it was a Saturday, and her first day at the farm. Ella read for a while and worked on her list; she ate bread and cheese with Mrs Rackett and three silent children at lunchtime, then took a walk as far as the clapper bridge in the afternoon, desperate for a breath of fresh air.

  A flock of pink-tinged grey clouds chased each other across the blue sky, as if lining up to take turns crossing Lingmell Fell. Perhaps they were heading for Scotland via High Street, the old Roman track that traversed the tops of the fells. Ella longed to go with them. Better still, she wanted to go home, to Livia and Maggie. She so longed to keep walking, on down the valley through the village of Staveley and beyond to Kendal, that it took every ounce of effort to turn around and walk back to Todd Farm.

  Her courage was further tested that night as yet again she lay in the cold marital bed, waiting for her husband to come to her. The click of the latch was like a gunshot in the quiet of the night.

  Dear God, what had she done?

  He looked smaller and thinner by the light of the candle he carried, like a cadaver rather than a living, breathing man. Setting the candlestick down on a washstand he poured water from the jug into the basin and began to wash his hands. Ella was surprised by this, knowing Amos had already washed and shaved in the outhouse before supper, using the cut-throat razor and strop that hung behind the scullery door. Whatever he had found to do since then, which would necessitate this further thorough scrubbing and washing, Ella really couldn’t imagine.

  When he was finally done and towelled dry, he sat on a bentwood chair to remove his boots and socks. Shadows loomed as he moved about, but she was grateful for the semi-darkness as he began to peel off his clothing. Seconds later she saw a white nightshirt billow over his head, and fear clutched at her stomach.

  Ella’s heart beat slow and hard in her breast. What would he do to her? Would he be gentle and patient? Or had Father given the impression that she was no virgin, that she was very much a woman of experience, which was not at all the case. Should she remind Amos of that fact now? Ella opened her mouth to explain but as quickly closed it again. How could she possibly discuss anything so intimate with this man, this stranger?

  Once ready for bed, she expected him to extinguish the candle and climb in beside her. Instead, he took his time smoothing out the towel, hanging it to dry on a wooden rack that stood close by. Next, he knelt beside the bed and began to pray. His prayer was largely silent, little more than a mumble with few words distinguishable beyond the obvious, such as ‘Father in Heaven’ and ‘cast your eyes upon a poor sinner’.

  There must have been several prayers for he took an interminably long time over the task before finally he blew out the candle and climbed into bed beside her. The flock mattress sagged beneath his weight but he brought no warmth with him, and precious little comfort. Still without uttering a single word, he turned towards her, tugged up her nightdress, and lay on top of her.

  Ella stopped breathing. Was this how he intended to go about it? Were there to be no preliminaries, no soft kisses such as the kind Danny would shower over every glimmer of silky bare flesh he could find: her mouth, her eyelids, behind her ears, even the inside of her wrist, oh so deliciously sensitive.

  She really mustn’t think of Danny, not right at this moment.

  Ella could feel something soft and warm against her thigh, which surprised her. She might lack experience with regards to the actual act itself, but she was by no means totally ignorant, and well accustomed to the hardness of Danny’s manhood, as well as the way he struggled to control his need after all those sweet kisses. Amos seemed to have an altogether different problem.

  There was much grunting and gasping, pushing and shoving. He indicated that she should part her legs for him, and obediently she complied, although still he didn’t speak. Ella could feel the heat of him through the thick stuff of his nightshirt, and prepared for the worst as her husband began to sweat.

  Would it hurt? she worried. Would there be blood on the sheets to prove her virginity? She rather hoped there might be, if only to prove her innocence. Amos pawed at her breast, squeezing one as if testing a fruit for ripeness. He sucked at her nipple, which startled her but did nothing to light any burning desire within her belly, or bring that familiar pulsating glow between her legs. And his penis, flopped against her thigh, remained stubbornly inactive.

  This agony seemed to go on for hours, yet was probably a matter of moments only. She could almost smell his anxiety, along with his sweat, which had a strong odour of farmyard about it.

  Ella could feel the anguish growing in him, a fretting frustration.

  Desperate to help him she put up a hand and stroked his hair, which felt surprisingly soft and clean. She tried to kiss his cheek but it landed clumsily on his ear instead. He made no reciprocal move to kiss her.

  Wanting this whole thing to be over and done with, she suddenly said, ‘I don’t know what Father told you about Danny Gilpin, but I swear it’s not true. We did nothing we shouldn’t, not much anyway. So if he said anything different, he’s lying.’ Rather tentatively she added, ‘Would you like me to…’ and sliding her hand down between their two bodies attempted to drag away the thick fabric of his nightshirt, searching for bare flesh.

  On a cry of horrified disgust he flung himself off her, almost leaping from the bed as if he’d been stung. ‘You’ve been with another man? You Jezebel! No wonder I can’t do my duty by you. I should have realised there would be problems marrying a pretty girl like you. Women are all the same.’

  Instinct drove her to defend herself. ‘You’re not listening to me. I’ve done nothing wrong.’

  Amos snorted his disbelief. ‘You lie! A virgin is without fault before the throne of God – “but thou didst trust in thine own beauty and played the harlot because of thy renown, and poured out thy fornications.”’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I will not have you play the whore with me, woman!’

  Ella was struck dumb, not having the first idea how to respond.

  To her horror he proceeded to again wash his hands, as if merely by touching her he had defiled himself in some way. Then he got back into bed, turned his back upon her and amazingly, seconds later, was snoring.

  Ella lay unmoving, quite unable to sleep, staring into the darkness in a state of total shock and misery. Her husband couldn’t even bring himself to make love to her, or show her the least tenderness. And when she’d tried to help, to explain, he’d called her by that foul name. Oh, how different this night would have been had Father allowed her to marry Danny. Fat tears rolled down her face, soaking into her pillow.

  How would she endure?

  At some point in the early hours, when there was still no crack of light for her to see properly, Ella was woken by a strange sound. She became aware of a shadowed figure huddled in a corner of the room, presumably that of her husband. His shoulders were shaking, which quite mystified her. What he was doing she had no idea, but he was giving odd little gasps and sobs and whimpering sounds.

  It came to her then with a new wave of shock that he was crying. She hadn’t realised that grown men could cry. But why would he? What could possibly have upset him? What had she done, and why wouldn’t he believe in her innocence? Had her own father blighted all hope of that?

  Or could he perhaps still be grieving for his first wife? Ella’s heart filled with sympathy, for him, a
nd for herself, trapped in this loveless marriage.

  The noise went on for some long moments and when finally it stopped, she again heard the sound of water being poured, and the washing ritual begin all over again. After that, he climbed back into bed on a trembling sigh. Ella turned her face to the wall, as far from him as she could get in the big double bed, and wept her own silent tears of anguish.

  Chapter Eight

  If Fellside had seemed like a hell-hole, then Mercy thought she must surely have arrived in Hell itself.

  She’d walked from the hansom cab in all innocence, not appreciating exactly what this great mausoleum of a building really was. She’d thought it was the lodging house where some of the girls who worked at the store must live, having assumed she was to be given employment.

  Now she understood how cruelly she’d been tricked. Mercy saw to her horror that she was in a worse situation than before she’d asked Josiah Angel for help, or shown him her mother’s letter. He hadn’t given her a new future at all. He’d sent her to the workhouse.

  What kind of father was he? What sort of man would condemn his own daughter, albeit one from the wrong side of the blanket, to incarceration? A devil, no less.

  What had gone wrong? How had this all come about? More importantly, how could she let Jessie and Jack know where she was and what had happened to her? They’d be so worried, although what they could do to save her was beyond Mercy’s imagining.

  The woman now searching her and stripping her of her clothes, her very identity, paid no attention to her claim there’d been some mistake and that she shouldn’t even be here. Nor did she listen to Mercy’s plea that her friends be informed of her whereabouts. Her protests fell upon deaf ears.

  ‘You’ve no right to keep me here,’ Mercy cried. ‘Josiah Angel has no right to send me here without my agreement, not even a by-your-leave. Surely I should have a say in the matter?’

  ‘He’s Mr Angel to you. Mind your manners, girl. And you’re destitute, so where else would you go?’ Her voice was weary and disinterested, making it clear she’d heard it all before. The very fact Mercy’s pockets were empty with not a penny to her name proved her parlous state.

  The woman, or Matron, as she instructed Mercy to call her, was tall and thin, her face composed of a number of planes and sharp angles that tapered to a long sharp nose. Dressed in a striped blue dress covered with a white bib apron, her tightly scraped-back hair was topped off with a fancy white cap, firmly tied under a narrow pointed chin.

  Mercy was duly stripped of the clothes Jessie had so carefully washed and pressed for her, and put through the indignities of being bathed and deloused, her hair cut to no more than half an inch all over her head before being dressed in a scratchy cotton nightgown several sizes too big for her. When she protested about this too, she was smartly informed that head lice were not welcome here, and didn’t she know that prayer, self-sacrifice and cleanliness was the way to reach the Kingdom of God?

  ‘You should be grateful Mr Angel took the trouble to find you proper care and accommodation.’ As if to emphasise her point, on the way back from the bathrooms Matron permitted Mercy to look through a window to see the long line of tramps, known as casuals, who were already queuing up for a night’s board and lodging.

  Mercy was appalled at the thought that anyone would actually volunteer to get in here. ‘Why does the man in charge send some of them away?’ she asked, curious over the way the line was being managed.

  The woman sighed heavily. ‘Because they’ve come begging a bed once too often lately. Those who are allowed in will be given the order of the bath too, just as you have, missy, but tomorrow they’ll be out on the streets again. So thank your lucky stars you’re at least sure of a bed every night. You’re a very lucky girl.’

  Mercy didn’t feel in the least bit lucky. She felt as if she’d been abducted, kidnapped and locked up, and someone had thrown away the key.

  A fracas broke out and seconds later the tramp appeared on the stone-flagged corridor ahead of them, frogmarched along by two officers and thrown into a cell. Mercy was allowed to peep through a slit in the door as they passed by, her insides turning to water at the sight that met her eyes.

  The poor man was bent double, a huge hammer in his hand, which he swung time and again to break a pile of huge stones. He was already shaking with the effort, near to collapse, probably from lack of food as much as anything.

  ‘He’ll have to break them small enough to push through that grid set in the far wall,’ Matron told her. ‘When he’s finished all the stones in the cell, he’ll be let out. Shouldn’t take him more than twelve hours or so, then he’ll be given breakfast and sent on his way. Serve him right for being feckless and quarrelsome. Not a bad bargain for a night’s accommodation, eh?’

  It didn’t seem much of a bargain to Mercy. But the point hadn’t escaped her that clean and neat though the place might appear at first glance, there were rules to be kept, and darker issues at work beneath the surface.

  With shock still blurring her mind so that she found it hard to think straight, Mercy followed the woman along endless dark corridors, and was finally allotted a bed in a large dormitory.

  The room seemed huge, the ranks of beds numbered fifty or more. Nobody spoke to her and the place stank of stale sweat, urine and vomit. Mercy curled up on the straw-filled pallet, pulled the single red wool blanket over her head and wept silently for her dead mother, overwhelmed by despair.

  How she wished, in that moment, that she’d never gone near Josiah Angel.

  Mercy endured her first night with fortitude and no small degree of bitterness. She barely slept a wink for all the snorting and coughing and weeping she could hear going on in the other beds. It was the longest, coldest, most miserable night she could ever remember, far worse even than the Angel buildings at Fellside. How she longed for her mother, or for Jessie to come bounding in bringing her a warm barm cake and a morning kiss.

  Instead, she lined up with the other women for the lavatory and to wash her face in cold water. After that, dressed in a blue cotton dress and a pinafore that might once have been white she followed them to the dining hall, where she ate a silent breakfast of salted porridge and a mug of weak tea. She saw that the staff sat at a separate table on a platform at one end of the hall, Matron in the centre, clearly in charge. And although Mercy was aware of many sidelong glances and curious stares in her direction from the other girls, no one said a word to her.

  Since she was too old now for school, Mercy had rather assumed that she’d be put to weaving, knitting or carding, since she had skills in these tasks. But she soon learnt different.

  A large girl a few years older than Mercy, a Nurse Jenkyns with a round face, red hair and a cheerful smile, was delegated to take her on to the wards. Mercy’s task, she explained, as they set off at a cracking pace down a long corridor, would be to scrub floors, make beds, empty chamber pots, turn mattresses and other menial tasks.

  ‘We calls ’em scrubbers, since that’s what they do. Matron is very particular that everything be kept spanking clean, which includes patients’ bottoms.’ She laughed at the look of shocked distaste on Mercy’s face. ‘You won’t find it as bad as it first appears, once you get used to it,’ she told her kindly.

  Mercy was not reassured.

  ‘It’s a bit of a facer at first, I will admit. We get some odd sorts in here, and quite a few nutters. Still, the food isn’t bad and nobody knocks you around, eh? Leastways, not if you mind your Ps and Qs. Anyway, if you’ve any problems, come to me. I’ll put you right.’

  ‘Thank you, Nurse Jenkyns, I’ll remember that.’

  The other girl grinned, revealing two missing front teeth. ‘Call me Prue, and sorry about the missing gnashers; me pa knocked them out for me, which is why I come here. No place else to go.’

  ‘I shouldn’t be here at all,’ Mercy burst out. ‘It’s all a big mistake.’

  ‘’Course it is. No doubt you’ve got a bleeding palace some
where. Right, we go through here. Don’t panic, it’ll look a bit like bedlam but that’s upstairs actually.’

  Mercy looked at the other girl in horror. Where had she come to? What sort of place was this?

  The ward did indeed seem to be packed with people, many wandering about aimlessly, singing or shouting and making a lot of noise. Others were lying comatose in their beds. Prue explained that they were mostly old, or abandoned by their families in this the final refuge for the unemployed. It seemed to Mercy a cruel fate.

  A group of patients were huddled together round a mean little fire shielded by a large fireguard at the far end of the ward as the two girls passed through. They didn’t seem to have any sort of occupation, or conversation, which seemed sad, used as Mercy was to the women of Fellside who were always gossiping or busy with their knitting sticks. These people sat unmoving, their eyes dead, their gaze unfocused, as if they’d given up the struggle and were simply waiting to die.

  There were no pictures on the wall, save for one of Christ on the cross. Even the walls themselves weren’t plastered, the open brickwork painted a bluish white, and over all hung the sweet-sour stench of cloying sickness and decay.

  The next ward was the children’s, which was even more distressing. One giant cradle, filled with half a dozen babies, was being rocked by a young girl who smiled at Mercy as she passed by. Infants stood holding on to their cot rails, many of them too frail to even cry, let alone smile or laugh as children should. Prue explained that deformities were common, the result of rickets, infections, or injury.

  ‘Some have had all the sense shaken out of ’em, quite literally,’ which made Mercy shudder at the thought that anyone could hurt such small children.