As for Livia, her beloved elder sister fondly believed with absolute certainty that she’d successfully protected her from their father’s brutality, as she’d promised their mother she would. Maggie knew that it would hurt her badly to discover that she’d failed. She was even now planning some miraculous escape, which they both knew to be impossible. Their father would never let them go. She would be deeply distressed if she ever learnt the truth about what Maggie had suffered for years at Josiah’s hand.
And the shame Maggie herself would feel if it all came out would be too much to bear. No matter what the cost, this was a secret she must somehow manage to keep all to herself.
Chapter Eighteen
Mercy had come to loathe Nurse Bathurst, hated everyone in fact, in this dreadful place. The woman insisted on absolute discipline at all times, would poke the boys with a stick if they didn’t jump to it when she issued an order, or stop their noisy banter when she told them to shut up. Batty Brenda liked peace and quiet in her ward, and would make them stand with their hands on their heads for hours on end, until they were whimpering with distress, or until the air was rank with the smell of urine leaked during the overlong restraint.
All that pain just to teach them the value of obedience.
Mercy saw one young boy locked in solitary confinement for two whole days for taking a handkerchief that didn’t belong to him.
‘I think he took it by mistake,’ she protested, as always coming quickly to her charge’s defence. ‘He couldn’t read the initials in the corner. Maybe I could teach him his letters, would that help?’
‘There’s no point in wasting time and money on teaching this lot anything,’ came the predictable response.
‘You should learn to keep your mouth shut, or it’ll get you in worse bother,’ her friend Prue would warn her.
Mercy couldn’t deny it. It was her big mouth which had got her shut in here in the first place. What had possessed her to make those demands of Josiah Angel? She must have been mad. He’d abandoned her lovely mother, so why should he care a toss about her?
‘I’m sorry, but I can’t just stand by and say nothing when that woman intimidates and ridicules those poor patients,’ Mercy objected, as the two girls made their way back down the corridor. ‘Them lads don’t understand and get upset when she makes jibes at them. They’re just a bit young and daft, that’s all. It’s so unfair.’
‘Huh, life is unfair,’ Prue snapped. ‘Haven’t you learned that by now? Just keep out of the woman’s way in future.’
Easier said than done.
One of the boys, not much younger than Mercy herself, had a bad squint. Batty Brenda called him ‘squint-eye’, or ‘cock-eyed Jamie’ and never let up badgering the poor boy over his deficiencies from morning till night.
Sadly, his handicap made him clumsy and one morning while trying to set down his mug of hot chocolate, he missed the table altogether and it fell to the floor, smashing the pot mug to smithereens, the dark milky substance pooling across the clean linoleum.
Nurse Bathurst came marching over, fury in her voice as she berated the hapless boy. ‘Now look what you’ve done, you squint-eyed idiot,’ and she smacked the lad across the back of his head, making him even more cross-eyed.
Mercy was on her feet in a second. She wished with all her heart that Jack were here. He’d soon sort out this Batty Brenda person, but since he wasn’t, she’d tackle the woman herself. ‘Don’t you dare smack him, and don’t call him names neither, it’s hurtful. It’s not Jamie’s fault his eyes wander all over the place so that he can’t properly see what he’s doing. Why can’t you leave the lad alone, you great bully!’
There was an awed silence, even those who paid little attention to what was going on around them stopped giggling and gossiping to take in the full import of her words. Nurse Bathurst’s gaze was one of outraged fury that this strip of a girl should dare, yet again, to cross her, and in such a way.
Mercy could feel her cheeks growing all hot and red, and wondered what devil possessed her to keep constantly putting herself in such jeopardy? When would she ever learn to keep her lip buttoned? She tried to redeem her mistake by running to grab a cloth to mop up the mess. The woman waited until the floor was mopped clean and every shard of broken pottery swept up before fixing Mercy with her gimlet gaze.
‘My office, Simpson. Now!’
This time the punishment wasn’t scrubbing the floor twice over, or being deprived of her supper. Nor was she sent out into the yard with shaming words chalked across her breast, which much later Mercy thought would have been far preferable. She was stripped of her clothing right down to her birthday suit, then dressed in a large coarse potato sack, thrown into a small dark cell, and left in solitary confinement for four days and nights on plain bread and water.
At first she sang to herself, or recited the poems and stories her mother used to tell her. But in the end the silence won. She curled up like a hibernating animal, and simply waited for the time to pass. Mercy was of the firm belief that during this period she gradually began to lose her mind, which perhaps accounted for what happened later.
Mercy would watch the visitors arrive on the first Saturday of every month, but none ever came to see her. She would read the diet sheet on the wall promising untold delights, and then eat the thin porridge or the bread and gruel without comment. And then one Wednesday in late September the patients were instructed to put on clean shirts or aprons and present themselves with clean hands and faces for inspection, as they were expecting an important visitor that afternoon.
As they lined up in the hall to greet their visitor, Mercy’s heart leapt into her throat as she saw who their esteemed guest actually was. None other than Josiah Angel himself was standing before them, smiling and nodding at all the upturned faces before him, scanning the lines as if looking for one face in particular. Mercy thought she might be sick with the excitement of it.
He was looking for her! He’d come for her at last. Why else would he be here? Filled with hope that he’d suffered a change of heart, Mercy pushed back her shoulders and stood up very straight, knowing that at any minute he would see her, and all would at last be right with her world. He must regret sending her off with a flea in her ear that day, and had come to make recompense by rescuing her. She could hardly believe her good fortune.
She nudged Prue, standing in line beside her. ‘It’s him, my dad. Didn’t I tell you he’d come?’
Prue cast her a quick glance of anxious disbelief, clearly thinking she’d lost her marbles, before quietly shushing her. ‘What are you talking about? That’s not your father, that’s Mr Angel. Mr Josiah Angel from the big department store.’
‘I know who he is,’ Mercy insisted. ‘And I tell you he is my father.’
A hissed whisper from behind. ‘I thought you said your da were the prime minister, or was it Baron Rothschild? Or happen it’s King Edward himself. How about that? Why didn’t we realise we had a princess in our midst?’ A fit of stifled giggling broke out, quickly silenced by a fierce glare from Nurse Bathurst.
Josiah was drawing nearer, moving along the lines as if he were a major general inspecting the troops. Without pausing to consider the consequences of such an action, Mercy stepped out in front of him.
‘Good morning, Father. I’m so glad to see you’ve come for me at last.’
You could have heard a pin drop. The silence in the great hall was profound.
Mercy was looking up into his face and didn’t see how Mr Cardew, the master of the workhouse, and Matron, who stood beside him, positively seethed with fury. But the silence was beginning to make her feel uncomfortable. It had this affect upon her ever since that spell in solitary, the longest four days of her entire life. She could see that Josiah Angel didn’t look quite so pleased to see her as she might have hoped. His face was changing colour, from ruddy red to ashen white, and then a ghastly purple. It was at this point that Mercy came to her senses and, too late, saw the mistake she had made.
‘What did the girl say? Are her wits addled?’
Panic and anxiety was almost palpable as Matron said something about her being a problem from the first day she’d arrived; that the girl did not appreciate how fortunate she was to have a roof over her head, food in her belly and regular employment.
Mr Cardew was almost falling over himself in his eagerness to agree with his wife’s assessment. A large hand reached out to snatch Mercy by the collar and she found herself being roughly shaken as phrases such as ‘ungrateful child’, ‘rude and obscene’, ‘a cheeky little troublemaker who leads men on’, were being bandied back and forth.
‘The chit is certainly a fantasist and a liar,’ said Josiah, speaking as if from a great height. ‘Such insubordination must be dealt with.’
Now he was bending his head to engage in a whispered conversation with the master, his eyes boring into hers as he did so. Mercy was beginning to shake with nerves. He hadn’t come for her at all. He’d come to check that she was still safely locked up. Or more likely he’d completely forgotten about her existence until she had stupidly reminded him.
‘Yes, indeed, sir,’ the master was saying. ‘I do so agree. An example must be made.’
Seconds later, Mercy was being frogmarched out of the hall.
To be branded a liar by your own father for speaking nothing less than the truth was bad enough, but what followed was harsh beyond even Mercy’s imaginings.
Much later she learnt that it was at Josiah’s suggestion she be given a dozen lashes instead of the more usual six. Mercy stared in wide-eyed disbelief as the master reached for the birch. She was held down over a chair by two assistants, her skirts lifted, her drawers pulled down and her bottom bared. She soon realised that, wriggle and protest as she might, there would be no escape. The pain of the first lash was excruciating and she cried out, the thin sharp sticks of the birch cutting deeply into her flesh, and her body jerking violently with each new stroke. Four more of these and Mercy was beyond pain, aware only of a red mist forming before her eyes in which furious faces leered at her then faded away, mouthing words she couldn’t hear. On the eighth stroke she blessedly passed out, and when vinegar and water failed to revive her, Matron judged it best to proceed no further, for fear they might have a dead girl on their hands.
Instead she was thrown back into solitary and left to lie in a pool of her own blood, fading in and out of consciousness for what felt like an eternity.
It was her dear friend Prue who was finally permitted to take her back to the dormitory, although not till the following morning. She bathed Mercy’s wounds and staunched the bleeding with cold water, since she had nothing else. But by then it was too late. The lashes and the dark solitary hole had done their work. Mercy felt completely numb, as if they’d finally broken her spirit and robbed her forever of that vital spark of happiness and faith in the world that had been a natural part of her personality.
Chapter Nineteen
Maggie was becoming increasingly morose, almost falling into a depression, yet could offer no explanation for her black mood. At least the sickness seemed to be passing, which had saved calling out the doctor.
Even more worryingly, they still hadn’t seen Ella, not since her wedding. Whenever Livia wrote and urged her to visit, she would give some excuse or other: the weather, the work in the dairy, or not being able to leave the livestock. Livia sighed. Ella’s letters were so vague, so unlike her sister’s usual chatty nature that she did wonder if Amos censored them. A chilling thought!
How easy it had been to make that promise to Mama to protect them, and how difficult to carry it out.
Neither had Livia forgotten her promise to Jack Flint to enquire about Mercy, the young girl who was also, apparently, a sister, albeit a half one. Livia was still coming to terms with this shocking revelation, but her father had always been secretive, in many respects. He had never divulged where he went on the evenings he was not at home.
She’d begun her quest by talking to the shop assistants, particularly those who worked in the back rooms unpacking and sorting stock, or engaged in the making up of customers’ orders, sewing gowns or whatever.
They were all too busy, they assured her, to lift their heads from their work to ease aching backs, let alone pay any attention to what was going on around them. Or too wise to gossip. They made it very clear that they didn’t much care to be interrogated by the boss’s daughter, as if she were checking up on how effectively they were carrying out their own jobs. They seemed to believe that she meant to tell on them to her father, and she’d had to back off pretty quickly.
It was all becoming rather embarrassing and far more difficult than she’d hoped.
Livia left Miss Caraway until the last, out of cowardice she ruefully admitted, yet she was the one most likely to know the answer to the puzzle.
‘We have many girls enquiring after positions,’ the older woman responded in her usual tart manner when Livia finally plucked up the courage to ask her the question.
‘And have there been any lately, that you remember?’
Miss Caraway looked at her askance. ‘And why would I trouble to remember the tribe of hopefuls who trek through my door with little or no hope of proving suitable? They are generally of the lower classes with dirty fingernails and no brains.’
Livia stifled a sigh. Miss Caraway was at times even more snobby than dear deluded Ella. ‘And have you ever been approached by a girl with clean fingernails and evidence of some small degree of intelligence? One, perhaps, with fair hair and turquoise blue eyes?’
‘I do assure you that the colour of hair and eyes is quite immaterial when choosing staff, and I ceased to hope for intelligence years ago.’
‘I’m sorry, Jack, but I’m not sure how much longer I can go on. I’ve done my best, but no one seems to have seen her, and old Caraway is being stubbornly vague on the subject. I’ve quite run out of ideas what to try next.’
They generally met up by the river, as they were doing now. They’d walk from Nether Bridge along Colonel Walk past the parish church where Ella had been married, and on past the old grammar school and Abbot Hall.
Today they were sitting on a grassy bank watching the ducks squabble over crusts of bread that children were throwing to them. The sun was shining on this lovely October day, and, despite the bad news Livia had to impart, she felt curiously happy and optimistic.
Jack plucked a stalk of grass and thoughtfully chewed on the end of it. ‘Why is that? Because this Caraway woman knows what happened to her and doesn’t want to tell?’
Livia shrugged, her eyes on his mouth, wondering what it would feel like to have it pressed against her own. ‘It’s possible, I suppose, although I mentioned no names, merely the barest details, so she didn’t have much to go on.’
Jack tossed the grass stalk aside to respond with one of his captivating smiles. ‘Maybe, but she should remember that one day you might actually be running the store, then where would she be?’
Livia gurgled with laughter. ‘I very much doubt that could ever happen. Father will most certainly make sure that it doesn’t.’
‘You don’t have any brothers though, do you?’
‘No, but that doesn’t mean I would inherit, so you can forget that notion at once. Father would much rather leave it to some distant cousin, I’m sure, so long as they were male.’
Livia felt a faint stirring of unease that Jack should think in that way about her – as someone who might inherit a thriving business. But then he was probably only teasing her in that droll manner of his. She really mustn’t be quite so sensitive, and he was, after all, her friend.
At least that was all she wanted from him, wasn’t it? Friendship. Lounging on the grass with his long legs stretched out, Livia experienced a great longing to lie beside him, to feel the warmth of his body curl about hers. She tucked her arms about her knees and quickly changed the subject.
‘So what shall we do about poor Mercy then? I seem to be gettin
g absolutely nowhere by asking these questions, except to make a nuisance of myself. And I’m nervous of arousing Father’s suspicions if I push too hard.’
They sat in glum silence for some long moments, contemplating possibilities. Then Jack’s face cleared and he sat up, suddenly fired with an idea. ‘Why didn’t I think of it before? Florrie provided Mercy with a letter of introduction. What happened to that, I wonder?’
Livia frowned. ‘Father would have thrown it away, surely?’
‘What if he didn’t? What if he just left it lying about? Maybe you should look for that letter instead.’
Livia was appalled. ‘You want me to sneak into my father’s office and start searching through his papers? Are you mad? How do you imagine he’d react if he caught me snooping?’
Jack had the grace to look concerned by this prospect, nevertheless his answer brought little comfort. ‘You’ll just have to make sure that he doesn’t.’
‘Thanks!’
He brushed the back of one hand against her cheek in a gentle caress. ‘I wouldn’t want you to take any risks, so choose your moment with care, when he’s safely off the premises.’
Livia was so taken aback by the touch of his fingers against her skin that she could scarcely formulate her thoughts into any sensible order. ‘I will…of course…I – I’ll take care.’
‘He hasn’t…hit you again, has he?’
‘No.’
He frowned. ‘Sure?’
‘Absolutely. I promised to marry Henry, after all, so he has no reason to.’
He sat up to stare at her in startled surprise. ‘You did what? You aren’t serious?’
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