by Martina Cole
Mother Jones was ensconced by her fire with Rosalee on her lap. She stroked the downy hair and shook her head. This was a child meant for the angels if ever she saw one. Abel watched her and smiled.
‘Poor little thing. Must be hard for that Molly like, Mum. Having one like her. She’ll never be able to earn.’
Mother Jones sniffed. ‘No, true, but she’ll never leave home either, so she’ll never be lonely if she loses her man.’
Abel nodded and looked towards the dividing wall. He had taken a fancy to Molly Cavanagh.
On the other side of the wall, she was busy scrubbing the floor and watching Bernadette and Kerry at their task of cleaning the windows. She had eaten two slices of bread pudding and drunk two cups of hot sweet black tea and it had fortified her for the job in hand. Mother Jones had sent Abel in to show her how to get the fire going in the range, and now she had steaming hot water as often as she wanted it. This thrilled her to bits, though coal was being burnt like nobody’s business. Still, it was only for today.
‘Mum, our Briony’s arrived in a cab!’
Molly sighed and opened the front door. Briony got out of the cab and the driver took down a small hamper and placed it beside her on the dirt road. Molly watched her pay the man and gritted her teeth. As the horse set off, clip-clopping down the lane, Molly walked out of the cottage.
‘Hello, Mum. Mrs Horlock sent you a hamper, to help you get settled like.’
Briony’s voice was wary as she spoke and Molly felt a moment’s sorrow for her coldness towards the child.
‘Come away in, Briony, it’s freezing out here.’
She smiled and followed her mother inside the cottage. Kerry and Bernadette crowded around her as she opened the hamper and showed them what was inside.
‘Where’s Rosalee then?’
‘Oh, she’s with the lady next-door. She’s really nice and gave us bread pudding and a cup of char, and her house smells really funny and she ain’t got no teeth...’
‘Shut up now, Kerry.’
Briony laughed. Trust Kerry to go too far!
She took off her coat and hat, rolled up her sleeves and, taking the chamois leather from Kerry, set about the windows.
Molly watched her as she worked away, and closing her eyes she prayed to God to give her peace of mind where her Briony was concerned. They depended on her wages, far more than they ever had on Eileen’s. It was Briony who was going to keep them in Oxlow Lane, and as Paddy had pointed out, Molly didn’t want to kill the goose that was laying the golden eggs, did she? Forcing herself to move, she walked to Briony and embraced the girl. Briony cuddled her back, joyful that her mother wasn’t cross with her any more. For her part, Molly closed her eyes and swallowed down the disgust that touching Briony always made her feel.
Letting her go, she resumed washing the floor of the cottage and Kerry and Bernadette sorted out the bedding and curtains into neat piles on the table.
‘Give us a song, Kerry.’
‘What do you want, a happy one or a crying one?’
‘Whatever you like.’
Kerry stopped what she was doing and thought for a second, then she began to sing. It was Paddy’s favourite and Briony smiled as she began. Kerry sang this song like an angel.
‘Oh Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling, From glen to glen, and down the mountainside ...’
Next-door, Mother Jones and Abel heard the singing and both laughed as Rosalee started to clap her hands.
‘They’re a funny family, Mum. Another girl just arrived by cab, dressed up like a kipper. Only about ten and in a cab mind, not on foot. Where are they getting the money for cabs and the like?’
‘How the bloody hell would I know! They seem nice enough, Abel Jones, so don’t you go snooping round there and put them off us.’
‘I’m only saying, Mum...’
‘Yeah, well, just you say it to yourself then. It’ll all come out in the wash anyway. People’s business rarely stays between four walls. You’ll find out soon enough, son, and when you do I hope it’s what you want to hear!’
‘Here’s Dad and Eileen with the beds, Mum!’ Kerry shrieked out the words at the top of her voice, making Molly, who was upstairs getting the bedroom floors swept, cringe. The child thought she was still in the basement where you had to shout to be heard above the din coming from the other families.
‘Shall I let them in?’
Briony laughed out loud.
‘No, Kerry, let’s leave them out there ’til the morning. Of course you should let them in!’
Kerry opened the door grandly. She had been locking and unlocking it all afternoon, and the novelty of the key had yet to wear off.
Briony stamped down the stairs and, after kissing Eileen, began to help while they unloaded the beds and boxes.
Abel Jones watched the proceedings from his window, studying Paddy closely. Then a cab pulled up, and the little one with the red curly hair was kissing them all and getting inside.
He shook his head. There was something funny going on with that family, he’d lay money on it. There was only one place that child would be going in a cab and that was Nellie Deakins’ house.
Rosalee sat at the table and drank her broth, Kerry and Bernadette were putting the finishing touches to their room, and Eileen was making up her parents’ bed. Paddy looked at his wife in the glow of the kitchen fire and, sober for once, he felt a stirring in him. As she tended the fire he saw the roundness of her large breasts, caught a glimpse of creamy skin. She wasn’t a bad looker wasn’t Molly, for all the childbearing. He pulled her down on to his lap, and she laughed as the chair creaked under their weight.
‘Isn’t this a grand place, Moll?’
She smiled and nodded. It was her dream come true. The kitchen was also their living room, but Molly didn’t mind. It meant only one fire. The table and chairs were scrubbed and clean, the mats were down, and the new chair was by the fender for when she wanted to sew or just sit and drink one of her never ending cups of tea. Briony said she was going to get Mrs Horlock to let her have some of the old curtains packed away at Mr Dumas’. She’d fit them to the windows and the place would be like a little palace. She frowned as she thought of Briony.
She allowed Paddy to nuzzle her neck. He pulled her face round and kissed her long and hard, forcing his tongue into her mouth, and Molly, for the first time in over a year, responded. In her happiness at being in the house, she wanted everything to go well.
‘Oh, Mum!’ Eileen, who had walked downstairs, saw them kissing and all the revulsion she felt was in her voice. Molly pulled away from Paddy just as Eileen got to the sink and threw up, retching and hawking with the illness that engulfed her at the disgusting sight.
‘Eileen. Eileen, girl.’ Molly put her arm around her shoulders gently, trying to pull her into her arms.
‘Don’t you touch me, Mum!’ Eileen pointed a finger into her mother’s face. ‘Don’t you ever touch me after you’ve touched him. Not after what he’s done to me and Briony. And who’ll be next, that’s what I want to know? Bernie, Kerry, our Rosalee?’
Rosalee, hearing her name mentioned, clapped her hands together and upset the broth.
‘Bri... Bri.’
Bernadette and Kerry, who had come down the stairs at the sound of Eileen’s voice, stood like statues staring at their mother and father, fear in their faces as they realised that something bad was going to happen, and maybe even to one of them.
Molly looked from her daughter to her husband who was sitting in the chair, his head in his hands. Then Paddy got up, took his coat from the back of the door and tried to open the front door. He rattled it hard, trying to force it open, until Kerry ran to him and unlocked it with the key, all her excitement gone now as she watched her father leave the house.
Molly pulled Eileen towards her and cuddled her tightly.
‘Oh Eileen, my baby, my lovely girl. What did he do to you?’
She didn’t say we - what did we do to you? - because
the knowledge that she had eventually condoned what her husband had done would not allow itself to surface. She held Eileen while she cried and Kerry cleaned up the mess made by Rosalee’s broth.
Henry Dumas stroked Briony’s hair. It was like stroking silky springs. Briony lay beside him and let him cuddle her. She liked this bit. After all the other business was out of the way, he cuddled her and whispered things to her. She didn’t always understand what he was talking about, but the tone of his voice always sent her off to sleep. She watched drowsily as he got dressed, saw him push his fat little legs into his trousers, and smiled to herself. He always looked funny undressed. But when he was dressed he was like a different person. Briony respected him when he was dressed, and didn’t answer him back or make as many jokes as she did the other times.
She’d turned on her side and closed her eyes to sleep when there was a loud banging on the front door. She sat bolt upright in the bed and stared at Mr Dumas. Then she heard her father’s voice, loud in the hallway, and her heart sank. He was drunk, she could hear it in every word he said.
‘Where’s me girl? I want me girl this minute!’
Briony heard Cissy’s and Mrs Horlock’s voices trying to quieten him. As Henry Dumas walked towards the door, Briony was off the bed and in front of him.
‘Stay up here. I’ll see to me dad.’ Instinctively she knew that as her father was, if he saw Henry Dumas, all hell would break loose.
Paddy looked up and saw her walking towards him. She looked beautiful. In the white lawn nightdress and with her spectacular hair unbound, she was like a vision. Through his drink-crazed mind he realised exactly what he had done to her and to Eileen, and it made him sick inside.
‘I’ve come to take you home, Briony, my baby.’ His voice was drenched with tears.
She flicked a glance at Mrs Horlock and then back at her father.
‘Come into the warm, Dad, you’re freezing.’
She opened the door to the morning room and he followed her inside. Mrs Horlock lit the gas lamps and Briony pushed the poker in the fire to get a blaze.
‘What’s all the noise about then, Dad?’
Paddy settled himself in a chair and stared at his daughter.
‘I’ve come to take you home, lovie. This is all wrong. Eileen’s been ... she’s accusing me something terrible... Your ma ...’
He couldn’t get the words out to explain himself, but Briony understood him well enough.
‘But, Dad, I like it here. I don’t want to go home.’
Paddy blinked his eyes as if to reassure himself he had heard right.
‘It’s lovely here, Dad. Mr Dumas is really nice to me and I’ve got Cissy and Mrs Horlock looking after me, and I go out to Barking Park every day ...’
Her voice trailed off. Her mother must have caused all sorts of trouble for her dad to be here now. Even with a drink in him, he was aware of what the money meant each week. Now they’d all moved into the new house, how the hell did they think they’d pay the rent?
‘Why don’t you let Cissy get you a cab home, Dad? In the morning, when everything’s all right with me mum, everything will be better.’
Paddy finally understood what Briony was saying. He hadn’t left her here like Eileen to make the best of it. She actually wanted to be here, and the knowledge hurt him far more than anything else she could have said. Even losing the house wouldn’t have hurt as much as what his daughter had just said. No wonder Molly was dead set against her. Here was a whore in the making all right.
‘You’re coming home with me now.’ His voice was harsh, and he was surprised when Briony shook her head.
‘I’ll not leave this house, Dad, I’m staying here whether you like it or not. You couldn’t wait for me to get here not three weeks since, and if you think that I’m going back to Oxlow Lane with you, you’re wrong. Dead wrong. If you take me home, then I’ll just keep coming back.’
She stared into his face earnestly. ‘Can’t you see, Dad? I love it here. I’m happy here. And best of all, everyone benefits by it. Especially me mum. She might want me home now, but she won’t when we’re back in the docks, will she?’
Paddy knew when he was defeated, but at least he could tell Molly and Eileen the truth now. That he’d come to get her and she’d refused. A little while later, as he made his way home in the cab paid for by Briony, he realised something. For all the trouble he was having with Eileen, he’d rather that than have her thinking like his Briony, and that was a turn up because Briony was their golden goose. Yet Eileen, it seemed to him, was more of a decent girl than ever, for all she’d been through with that scumbag. Whereas Briony, who’d taken to it like a duck to water, had broken his heart.
Chapter Four
It was thick snow and Briony had had to brave the freezing weather to get a cab. Even in her thick coat and dress, fur hat and muff, she was still frozen. Her face was stinging with the cold and as the horse moved slowly through the icy streets she waggled her toes in her boots to stop them from going numb. It was her second Christmas at Henry Dumas’ house and she was a different girl altogether to the one who had arrived there fourteen months earlier. At eleven, she had grown. Her breasts were forming and the good food had put flesh on her bones. Her face had rounded, giving her a look of a young woman already. Her hair was still a fiery red, only now she wore it in a neat chignon pinned to her head with expert precision by Mrs Horlock.
Briony had also changed inside herself. She wasn’t as happy-go-lucky as she had been, and she was sensing a change in Henry Dumas as her body developed. She bit on her lip and watched the traffic in the streets, mainly pedestrians, a few ragamuffins running around offering to hold horses’ bridles or carry people’s shopping for a halfpenny. The majority of the people wore sacking over their clothes to try and keep the snow from freezing their bodies entirely.
As they approached Barking Broadway, the horse’s pace slowed even more. Briony pushed down the window of the cab and stared out. Then she saw him.
He was a tall boy of about thirteen, dressed in ragged trousers and jacket though his heavy boots were obviously new. Brand new, not second hand new. Briony was struck by his appearance because he had the thickest, blackest hair and eyebrows she had ever seen in her life. As she watched him from the cab she saw him stumble into a well-dressed man and apologise profusely before walking on. Briony smiled. He was dipping. She watched as another boy stepped by him and was given the wallet. It was all over in a split second and now the first boy ambled on again, safe in the knowledge that if he was stopped, he had no evidence on his person. Briony was fascinated by it all, and from her vantage point kept a close eye on him.
His next victim was to be a young docker, the worse for drink and also stumbling. She noticed the way that the pickpocket kept his cap pulled down low over his face; his clothes, well-pressed though old, were obviously new to him. He couldn’t quite carry himself in them properly. More used to being ragged arsed. Briony watched the boy bump into the docker, and then it all went wrong. The young man grabbed the boy’s hand like a vice. Briony saw them start struggling and banged on the wooden side of the cab for it to stop. Getting out, she ran over to where the two men were arguing, attracting the attention of more than a few people. She pushed her way through and, without giving it a second’s thought, dragged the dark boy free.
All the people there took in her clothes and assumed she was from the upper classes. She looked it, from her well-shod feet to her fur hat and muff. She looked into the dark boy’s face and in her best imitation of Henry Dumas’ voice, asked: ‘Have you picked up my purchases yet?’
The boy stared at her. She could see his brain seeking the appropriate answer. He was quick enough to know she was trying to help him. It was why she should that was the puzzle.
‘Come on, boy, we’ll go and pick them up now.’ She grabbed the sleeve of his jacket and looked at the docker.
‘You should not imbibe so much drink, young man, you obviously can’t take it. Now get o
ff home.’
She pulled the boy back to the cab and he helped her inside, lifting her arm and guiding her in as if he did it every day of his life. Once settled, they looked at one another.
‘You didn’t get to lift his wallet then?’
Briony’s altered voice was such a shock the boy started to laugh.
She frowned at him. ‘What you bleeding laughing at then? I just helped you out of a very tricky situation.’
The boy roared.
‘It’s your voice! Just now you sounded like the bloody Queen. Now you’re speaking like any other street slut.’
Briony felt herself pale and this was not lost on the boy either.
‘What did you just say?’
He hastened to make amends.
‘I didn’t mean that how it come out.’
She pushed her hands into her muff with such force she ripped the lining and the sound in the quiet of the cab was like a pistol going off.
The boy ran his hands through his hair. Realising his mistake, he tried to make it up to her.
‘I’m Tom Lane, Tommy to me mates. Thanks for helping me out like. I’ppreciate it.’
Briony looked at his handsome but dirty face, and thawed a bit.
‘I’m Briony Cavanagh.’
He grinned then, showing big strong white teeth. He settled back in the cab and Briony found herself grinning too.
‘Where do you live then?’
Briony swallowed deeply before answering. ‘I live in Oxlow Lane, but I work in a big house, just round the corner from Barking Park.’There was no way she was giving him an address, he looked the type to turn up there. The thought thrilled and frightened her at the same time.
‘Oxlow Lane, you say? That where you’re going now?’