Alley Urchin

by Josephine Cox

  Alley Urchin

  JOSEPHINE COX

  headline

  Copyright © 1991 Josephine Cox

  The right of Josephine Cox to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

  First published as an Ebook by Headline Publishing Group in 2012

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  eISBN : 978 0 7553 8436 5

  This Ebook produced by Jouve Digitalisation des Informations

  HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

  An Hachette UK Company

  338 Euston Road

  London NW1 3BH

  www.headline.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  About the Author

  Also by Josephine Cox

  Dedication

  Foreword

  Part One - Australia 1870

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Part Two - England 1874

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Part Three - Australia 1876

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Part Four - England 1877

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  The story of Josephine Cox is as extraordinary as anything in her novels. Born in a cotton-mill house in Blackburn, she was one of ten children. Her parents, she says, brought out the worst in each other, and life was full of tragedy and hardship – but not without love and laughter. At the age of sixteen, Josephine met and married ‘a caring and wonderful man’, and had two sons. When the boys started school, she decided to go to college and eventually gained a place at Cambridge University, though was unable to take this up as it would have meant living away from home. However, she did go into teaching, while at the same time helping to renovate the derelict council house that was their home, coping with the problems caused by her mother’s unhappy home life – and writing her first full-length novel. Not surprisingly, she then won the ‘Superwoman of Great Britain’ Award, for which her family had secretly entered her, and this coincided with the acceptance of her novel for publication.

  Josephine gave up teaching in order to write full time. She says ‘I love writing, both recreating scenes and characters from my past, together with new storylines which mingle naturally with the old. I could never imagine a single day without writing, and it’s been that way since as far back as I can remember.’

  Also by Josephine Cox

  QUEENIE’S STORY

  Her Father’s Sins

  Let Loose the Tigers

  THE EMMA GRADY TRILOGY

  Outcast

  Alley Urchin

  Vagabonds

  Angels Cry Sometimes

  Take This Woman

  Whistledown Woman

  A Little Badness

  Don’t Cry Alone

  Jessica’s Girl

  Nobody’s Darling

  Born To Serve

  More Than Riches

  Living A Lie

  The Devil You Know

  A Time For Us

  Cradle of Thorns

  Miss You Forever

  Love Me Or Leave Me

  Tomorrow The World

  The Gilded Cage

  Somewhere, Someday

  Rainbow Days

  Looking Back

  Let It Shine

  The Woman Who Left

  Jinnie

  Bad Boy Jack

  Dedication

  For all their steadfast love and support, my thoughts go out to my two lovely sisters, Winifred and Anita.

  Life hasn’t been easy for them, but they can always find a smile, bless their hearts.

  Not forgetting my seven brothers, Sonny, Joseph, Bernard, Richard, Billy, Harry and Alec.

  They could never be described as angels, but our late lovely Mam would have been as proud of them all as I am. (Keep the meat an’ tater pies hot, lads!)

  Foreword

  The research for this book took me to Australia and Singapore, where I travelled many miles and talked to countless numbers of people. As a result, not only did my research prove to be fruitful, but became a labour of great joy. Everyone went out of their way to help, advise, and ‘dig up’ relevant documentation and information which have proved invaluable.

  My husband, Ken, and I spent many long hours browsing through material under the artificial lights of libraries, and in museums and archives. We also traipsed many miles on foot in the tiring heat of Australia, a magnificent land. We saw wonderful buildings which were built by the convicts themselves in the Port of Fremantle, the most striking (and ironic) in my opinion being the prison which was to house them. One particular building which will live forever in my nightmares is the formidable Victorian-style lunatic asylum. This has, fortunately, been preserved as an arts centre and museum. But a one-time padded cell is kept almost exactly as it was, when the inmate might be dragged, screaming, into its dark and grim interior.

  To stand inside that cell, to see the narrow iron bed and the high beamed walls, with the only light coming in through a tiny barred window, is to feel real terror. it was the most unnerving experience of my life. The atmosphere seems to have been absorbed into the very fibre of the walls – to touch those walls is to feel the presence of those wretched souls.

  When, quite shaken, I emerged from that dank and dismal place, it was to be told by the curator, ‘If the poor convicts weren’t insane when they locked them in . . . they certainly were when they let them out!’ (I, for one, was not about to argue with that.)

  Below are mentioned a few of the many people who went out of their way to help in my search for the human story of what might have taken place there so many years ago. Australia is a vast and beautiful land, whose people rightly feel a great sense of pride in it. But picture the unfortunates who are wrenched from home and family, then taken on a long harrowing journey across the oceans to the other side of the world, not knowing whether they might ever again find freedom, or be returned to the bosom of their family. What paradise for them?

  Lorraine Stevenson (Archives), Town Hall, Freemantle WA

  Sunita A. Thillainath (Librarian), Fremantle WA

  Mary Faith Holloway (Custodian), Prison Museum, Fremantle WA

  Ralph of Ralph’s Cafe, Fremantle WA

  Gloria McLeod, Daglish WA

  The Port Authority Officials, Fremantle WA

  Chamber of Commerce Officials, Fremantle WA

  The old Darwin fella in the Cafe – Good on yer, mate!

  My love and thanks to Ken who, as ever, gave me constant support and was a wonderful companion.

  Part One

  Australia 1870

  Ambitious Dreams

  When night moves in

  To hide the sun,

  When enemies rally

  And your strength is done,

  When your weary heart

  Longs to be free

  Think of me, beloved,

  Think of me.

  J.C.

  Chapter One

  ‘If it takes a lifetime and if I am driven to follow
you to every dark corner of the earth, I mean to have you. And I will. Mark my words, Emma . . . for you’ll find no escape!’ Though delivered in barely a whisper, the words struck deep into Emma’s heart. The half-smiling, taunting mouth was so close to her face that she could feel the warm breath fanning her skin. ‘You will learn to love me, Emma, I promise you.’ The voice was trembling with passion and, as before, it was charged with a deal of arrogance. There was something else besides. Some deep, dark obsession, something akin to desperation. Or insanity.

  ‘Love you!’ Emma’s stout heart was fearful, yet her grey eyes glinted like hardened steel as they bore defiantly into the leering face above her. Even though she would have denied it to the world, Emma could not deny to herself that she was afraid. Ever since that fateful day some seven years before when, along with other like wretches she had stumbled from the convict ship, Emma’s every instinct had been disturbed by the covetous manner in which Foster Thomas had brought his gaze to rest on her.

  As always, Emma put on a brave front. Drawing her trim form upright and squaring her small, straight shoulders, she told him, ‘I could never love you, Foster Thomas. Never! The only emotion you raise in me is one of disgust.’ Yes, of repugnance and loathing too, thought Emma, being painfully aware of his close proximity as he stood his ground, determined that she should not pass. She saw him as everything vile in a man. Oh, it was true that he had about him the compelling quality that might easily turn a woman’s head. He was a fine figure of a man – tall and lean, with wayward sun-bleached hair atop a bronzed handsome face. There was a certain attraction in the coarseness of his manner, yet when the occasion suited him, he carried an air of elegance and devastating charm. But those eyes: only the eyes betrayed the truth of his nature. Small they were, and calculating; murky-blue in colour as the ocean, yet more deep and dangerous, and ever watchful, like the quick, darting glance of a lizard.

  For what seemed an age, he made no move. Instead, his smile grew more devious, then, raising his hand, he made as if to stroke Emma’s long chestnut hair. But, being somewhat startled by a sudden intrusion, he angrily lowered his arm and swung round to face the intruder. ‘You!’ he snapped, glowering hard at the homely young woman silhouetted in the barn doorway. ‘Haven’t you got work to do?’

  ‘Course I ’ave!’ came the chirpy reply, as the irrepressible Nelly strode into the barn, quickly dropping the wooden bucket from her arm to the floor. ‘Yer surely don’t think I’ve been sitting on me arse all morning, d’yer?’ Then, before he could lay the yardbroom across her shoulders, as she knew he would, she added quickly, ‘Old Mr Thomas sent me ter fetch yer. He said yer was ter come straight away, on account of it being most urgent.’ She manipulated her plain, kindly features into an expression of alarm. ‘The poor old thing were having a real fit about some’at,’ she said, nodding her head so frantically that her frilly cap tumbled into the dust at her feet. By the time she bent to retrieve it, Foster Thomas was gone, after first asking, ‘You say my father wants me right now . . . this very minute?’ To which she replied with suitable anxiety, ‘Ooh yes, Mr Thomas, sir. This very minute!’

  ‘You little wretch,’ laughed Emma, as she and Nelly watched him stride away, both knowing full well that he was being sent on a fool’s errand. That rascal Nelly, thought Emma, as she lovingly put an arm about her friend’s shoulders; she knew every trick in the book. Brought up in the East End of London, she was a Cockney through and through. Since an early age, Nelly had been forced by circumstances to fend for herself, and she was a past master at it. It wasn’t the first time she had made a timely intervention on Emma’s behalf. Though Emma knew only too well that Nelly could take care of herself, she was constantly afraid that, one of these days, Foster Thomas might take it into his head to get rid of Nelly once and for all.

  Emma knew it would be an easy thing, because all that was necessary was for the Governor to receive a formal complaint against the prisoner Nelly, and she would be punished, assigned elsewhere, or both. So far, Emma had stalled such a move by appealing to old Mr Thomas, Foster’s father, who was after all the employer to whom both she and Nelly had been entrusted since being brought to these shores. With his wife in ailing health, Mr Thomas senior had been thankful for the labour supplied by the two female convicts, and was never too mean to say so – both to them, and in his regular reports to the Governor.

  Emma respected and liked him. He was a hard-working and shrewd man of business, having built up his trading post from selling the few items he brought with him when he first arrived in Western Australia as an early settler many years before. He was a good man, and his wife a good woman. Emma thought they deserved a better son than Foster Thomas.

  ‘Oh, Nelly . . . I wish you’d be more careful.’ Emma hoped this little episode wouldn’t bring trouble down on their heads. ‘You know what a vicious temper he has, yet you will keep going out of your way to infuriate him.’ Much as she understood Nelly’s unselfish motive and her first instinct was to thank her, Emma thought that better purpose would be served by showing her disapproval: ‘I’m quite capable of looking after myself, you know.’

  ‘Yer bleedin’ well ain’t!’ came the indignant retort. ‘I saw him . . . with his filthy paws all over yer. What! The bugger’s lucky I didn’t clap him on the back o’ the neck wi’ a shovel!’ Her angry brown eyes twinkled at the thought. ‘Randy bleeder,’ she went on, at the same time retrieving her wooden bucket and leading the way to the inner recesses of the big barn, where she proceeded to gather up the numerous eggs which had been laid here and there. When Emma pointed out that Foster Thomas was her problem and said, ‘He’s sure to cause trouble for you, when he finds you sent him on a wild goose chase,’ Nelly was quick to assure the concerned Emma. ‘Old Mr Thomas’ll cover up fer me. He’s done it afore.’

  Exasperated, Emma shook her head, rolled her lovely grey eyes heavenward and laughed out loud. ‘What will I do with you, Nelly?’ she chuckled. Whereupon, Nelly laughed heartily, ‘Send me back ter England.’ She added with some gusto, ‘The sun don’t cook yer brains there, and there’s more bleeding pockets ter pick.’

  Quickly now their laughter subsided, when a shadow came between them and, looking up, they saw the large, ungainly figure of Mr Thomas. His face was unusually stern and, as he stood unmoving with his two large hands spread one over each hip, Emma saw the frustration in his dark, round eyes which were usually kind and smiling.

  For a long, awkward moment, no one spoke. Feeling uncomfortable beneath his accusing glare, Nelly cast her eyes downward. Emma however met his gaze with an equally forthright one, until, seeing that there was no immediate explanation forthcoming and that, as always, he was hopelessly outnumbered two to one, Roland Thomas took his hands from his hips, plunged them deep into his pockets and allowed the whisper of a smile to creep over his craggy, kindly features.

  ‘What a pair of baggages you are,’ he said goodhumouredly. Then, to Nelly, who had raised her merry brown eyes to smile at him, ‘You’ve got that bloody son of mine running round in circles . . . me as well!’ Of a sudden the smile slipped from his face and his voice held a warning: ‘You’re playing with fire, though. Be careful, Nelly, because though I say it as shouldn’t . . . that son of mine is a bad lot!’ His eyes were now on Emma, as though willing her to convince Nelly that she was putting herself in danger, ‘Be warned. Don’t antagonise him.’

  ‘But he were pestering Emma again!’ protested Nelly, afterwards falling quiet when Roland Thomas stepped forward, his concerned eyes never leaving Emma’s face.

  ‘Don’t worry about me, Mr Thomas,’ Emma promptly assured him, ‘I can look after myself.’

  ‘Look here, Emma’ – his voice was quiet now, and on his face a look of anxiety as he told her – ‘I’m no fool and I’m not blind.’ His gaze lingered on her face for a moment. ‘Stay out of his way as best you can. Keep a good distance between you.’ Having said that, he turned away to leave them to their duties.

  It was
a moment before both Emma and Nelly recovered from the seriousness of the warning they had just been given. The first to speak was Nelly who said, in little more than a whisper, ‘Well, I’m buggered! I ain’t never seen old Mr Thomas so harsh.’

  Neither had Emma, and her every instinct had been aroused. Was there something going on that neither she nor Nelly was aware of? An idea wormed itself into her troubled mind, and swiftly, Emma thrust it out. No. Surely to God, it couldn’t be that Mr Thomas was about to turn over the business to his son! No, he would never do that . . . would he? Oh, it was true that Violet Thomas’s health had gone steadily downhill these past months, and it had been a source of much anxiety to her husband. But knowing his great passion for the trading business he had nurtured all these years, Emma couldn’t believe that Mr Thomas was about to let go of the reins. And certainly not to his son Foster . . . who had never shown an ounce of interest in the business; except, of course, in the money it provided him with, to waste on grog and gambling. Yet there was something . . . definitely something: she was sure of it.

  ‘I’d best get these eggs inside . . . afore the buggers are cooked!’ Nelly remarked, at the same time slapping Emma heartily on the back as she passed. ‘Roll on three o’clock, Emma . . . and we can put our feet up, eh?’ Then, turning just once before she went from the shadows of the barn into the baking heat outside, she added, ‘The buggers don’t worry me, dearie, and they shouldn’t worry you.’ Emma smiled to herself. She admired Nelly for her fearlessness, yet she also saw it as being foolhardy. When the two of them had been exiled from their homeland, Nelly’s sentence had been less severe than her own. Now, seven years on, their roles were reversed and, while Emma had earned her ticket-of-leave through good conduct, Nelly’s rebellious attitude had put back the day of her freedom even further. Yet even though she was her own worst enemy, Nelly was a warm, loyal and steadfast friend, whom Emma loved like a sister. And, though the Governor had told Emma that her ticket-of-leave gave her at least the freedom to choose her own employer and place of work, Emma remained alongside Nelly in the Thomas trading post. While her friend was forced to stay, then so would she. Emma shook her head and chuckled softly, ‘The way she’s going on though . . . we’ll both be old and grey before we get the chance to make our way in the world.’ Afterwards she sighed, and turning her attention to the task in hand, at the same time subconsciously noted that the stock of small oil lamps would need replenishing.