by Anna Jacobs
When Lucy went into labour, it was Bridie who came in to sit with her, leaving her own children with Alice Butterworth in Number One. It was Bridie who sent her Danny for the local midwife and shooed John out to work, for what man would dare to lose a day, just because his wife was having a baby?
And after all, it was not until the middle of the afternoon that an exhausted Lucy at last produced the child, to her disappointment only a girl and not very big.
“An’ what’re ye lookin’ so glum about, woman?” asked Bridie softly once the midwife had gone. “ ’Tis a fine, healthy daughter you’ve got there!”
“I wanted a son,” admitted Lucy, in a tired voice.
“More fool you! It’s best to have a girl first, as I should know havin’ had three boys in a row. That way, she can help you look after the others. That Danny of mine is a little devil, so he is, and I can’t trust him to look after any of ’em, not even for a minute.”
Lucy couldn’t help smiling. Bridie could always cheer her up.
“Now what’ll you be callin’ the little darlin’?”
“Annie, after my mam,” said Lucy, leaning back tiredly. She fell into a light doze and Bridie, keeping an anxious eye on her, was pleased to see some of her colour returning. Lucy dozed on and off for the rest of the afternoon, waking occasionally with a start to check that the tiny creature in the box next to her bed was still alive. Reassured by the baby’s soft, snuffling breaths, she would drift off to sleep again, relieved that her ordeal was safely over.
John came rushing home from work at seven that night and Bridie only just managed to grab his arm and stop him from pounding up the stairs.
“Whisht now, do ye want to wake them up?”
“Them?”
She smiled warmly. “Aye, them. Your wife an’ daughter.”
He gulped and swallowed hard. “Lucy – she’s all right?”
“Sure, she’s fine. They both are.”
“Thank God!” His eyes were bright with tears. He sniffed and swallowed again. “A daughter, you said?”
“Aye. Pretty as a flower, she is, with red hair like her mam.” Bridie frowned at him. “Now, ye won’t be after upsettin’ Lucy because it’s not a son, will ye? She’s tired out, poor thing.” Doesn’t give birth easily, she thought to herself. I’m glad I’m not that way. Sure, it’s a cruel hard world for us women!
“It’s my Lucy as I care for,” said John. “So long as she’s all right, I’m not mithered whether it’s a boy or a girl, though I’d like to have a son one day.” He pulled away from her and moved purposefully towards the stairs.
Annie Gibson was the first child to be born in Salem Street. Bridie’s fourth son followed her into the world three months later and after that the babies came thick and fast.
Lucy never did go back to work in the mill. Before Annie was even weaned, she found herself pregnant again, though she lost that baby in the fourth month. Another pregnancy, hard on its heels, produced the lusty son she’d longed for, but somehow it was Annie who remained her favourite. By the time Annie was ten, there had been two further miscarriages and one more living daughter. And Annie, young as she was, had become her mother’s right hand.
* * *
Twenty-five years before, the town of Bilsden had been a small village, nestling in a narrow Pennine valley to the north-east of Manchester. In the early days, small mills had been built along the river, their machinery driven by its rushing waters. Then steam power freed the cotton men from so close a dependence upon the whims of nature and they bought up nearby farmland to build larger and larger mills.
As the mills proliferated, housing had to be built for the operatives and the village developed into a town that grew bigger each year and soon swallowed up half the neighbouring farms. Within a decade, the Rows had crept out across the valley floor like living scars. Before its former inhabitants knew where they were, Bilsden was a bustling town, its streets teeming with the stunted bodies of those who served the Great God Cotton.
Fine new houses were built on the slopes above the town by those upon whom the Great God had smiled, for the moors around Bilsden were beautiful still, in their own stark way. But the valley of the Bil grew steadily filthier, the river polluted by the effluent from the processing and dyeing of cotton, and most of the greenery stamped out of existence. Now, day after day, the steam engines burnt up offerings of best coal and covered everything around them with a pall of black smoke and smuts, all in the name of Cotton. And not even the rich could escape from this dark rain.
Old Tom Hallam boasted in his declining years about the part he had played in such progress. He had been the first man to build a cotton mill in the district, in the days when Bilsden was only a cluster of farm workers’ cottages around the parish church of St Mark. Folks had thought him mad with his great water wheel and had counselled him against the venture, but he’d proved them wrong, by George! In the library of his large new mansion on the very top of the hill they called the Ridge Tom had a window specially built to look out over the valley for, unlike his wife, he loved its smoky bustle. He did not enjoy the view from the windows which looked out across the grey-green stretches of moorland or across his well-tended gardens, but he saw that his family was protected from the cold moorland winds above and the unpleasant sights below by high stone walls topped with broken glass to keep out intruders.
By 1830, Tom Hallam was dead and the houses in Salem Street were showing distinct signs of wear and tear, though its inhabitants still considered it a cut above most other streets in the Rows. Only seven out of the eight houses were occupied in March, for Grandpa Burley at Number Seven had died suddenly the previous week and his wife had gone to live with her eldest daughter over in Rochdale. The house wouldn’t stay empty for more than a day or two, though. There were many families living in one or two rooms down at Claters End who’d give their eye-teeth to move in, if only Mr Frederick Hallam’s hard-eyed rent agent would let them.
Annie Gibson, skipping solemnly up and down the paved pathway in front of the houses with a piece of rope her dad had brought home for her, made a game of counting the number of people who lived in the street. Her thick red plaits bobbed against her back and her skirt flew up and down in time to her jumping, showing a pair of thin legs covered with coarse black stocking that her mam had knitted for her. Five people in Number One, she said to herself, five Butterworths. She wrinkled her nose distastefully at the proximity of the privies. Six people in Number Two – George and Polly Dykes and their three young children, and now Grandpa Dykes as well. She didn’t like George and Polly, who often kept the whole street awake on Saturdays with their drunken singing and shouting. Her mam didn’t like them either. She said Polly was a slattern and should be able to manage on George’s wages, instead of spending half her time at the pawnshop.
Annie waved to her mam as she passed Number Three and nodded at Widow Clegg who was coming out of Number Four, because her mam always told them to be polite to the neighbours. Widow Clegg was at least a hundred years old. She was tall, with a bony face and straight black hair dragged back in a tight bun. She took in lodgers and she also laid out dead people and helped women who were having babies. She’d helped Annie’s mam when Lizzie was born. Annie wished she hadn’t bothered, for their Lizzie was the bane of her life. She was for ever making a nuisance of herself and tagging along when she wasn’t wanted.
The children of the Rows were in a constant state of feud, with territory strictly marked out between the different groups, which were usually based on the streets in which they lived. The Salemites and the Bosties had clear lines of demarcation along the ginnel between their two rows of backyards. You were allowed to walk along your side of the ginnel to get to your own house, but if you crossed over, you were in for trouble.
Lizzie was always transgressing such rules, and then Annie or Tom would have to rescue her, because you couldn’t let anyone bash your little sister, however much she deserved it. Tom was only eight, but he was a
good fighter, able to beat lads older and bigger than himself. He couldn’t play out much with Annie, though, because he had to go to Sergeant Brown’s day school. John and Lucy wanted to make sure that their only son had a better start in life than themselves.
Annie had begged to be allowed to go to school, too, but her dad said it wasn’t worth it for a girl, because she’d only go and get herself married. Besides, she was needed at home. The schooling caused a lot of bickering between Annie and Tom, though not in front of her dad. He wouldn’t stand for any quarrelling in the house, her dad wouldn’t.
As she came to Number Five, Annie stopped frowning and smiled. The O’Connors lived here, a whole house full of them. Her lips moved as she counted them up, still skipping in time to the numbers. Danny was nearly twenty now, a man grown. She liked Danny, who always had a cheerful word for everyone. Most folk as old as him were married and too busy to talk to their neighbour’s children, but Danny had told her that marriage was not for him. He was going to make something of himself and he didn’t want a wife and children keeping him poor. He was taking lessons in reading and writing from the priest and, until he saw his way forward, he was working at Hallam’s. She knew that he’d been fined the previous week for arguing with the overseer, because she’d heard her dad telling her mam about it in bed one night. Mr Frederick himself had said that it was not to happen again, or else Danny would be out. Her dad said Danny wouldn’t last much longer if he didn’t mind his step.
When the new baby came, there would be thirteen O’Connors in the little house. Annie had asked Bridie if she hadn’t got enough children now, but Bridie had just laughed and said that babies were the Lord’s will. Annie’s mam was expecting another baby, too. Women were always having babies. Annie just hoped that the Lord wouldn’t send them another girl. One sister like Lizzie was enough for anyone!
She skipped quickly past Number Six, because she wasn’t supposed to play in front of that house. Her mam said Sally Smith wasn’t respectable and when Annie had pressed for an explanation, she said that it was because of Sally’s gentleman friend, who came to see her every Tuesday and Thursday. Annie would have liked to press for further explanation of this, because the gentleman friend had a nice smile and so did Sally, but her father had said that was enough of that, thank you, just remember to keep away from Number Six.
Number Seven was empty now. Poor house! It looked sad. Poor Grandpa Burley, too! What did it feel like to be dead?
In Number Eight lived Barmy Charlie, only her dad said they had to call him Mr Ashworth, which wasn’t fair because no one else did. And he was barmy! He had funny turns. He talked to himself as well, and sometimes he even started singing at the top of his voice as he walked down the street. You couldn’t help laughing at him then. His clothes were funny, too. He liked to dress in bright colours and he wore the daftest things! Annie had seen him once with a red and yellow woman’s shawl wrapped round his shoulders.
Charlie traded in junk of all sorts, and he had the biggest yard in the street, over twice the size of Annie’s back yard. Charlie’s was piled high with things and he’d built a lean-to along one wall. There were clothes, pieces of broken furniture, papers, rags – he collected just about anything. When folks got wed, they often bought stuff off him for their houses. She’d love to have a good look round his yard, but he didn’t allow children inside it and he had a big dog that barked at you and showed its teeth if you went too near. Every now and then, Charlie would take a pile of stuff away on his handcart to sell, but it didn’t seem to make much difference to the piles in the yard.
On his bad days he stayed home and drank, mourning his lost manhood, he said, lost in that damned mill. On such days the women kept their children away from that end of the street and everyone tried to ignore Charlie’s drunken singing, crying and shouting. Sometimes he sang all day, till his voice was hoarse and all that came out was a croak. It made Annie’s throat ache even to think of it. She’d asked her dad what lost manhood meant and been told to mind her own business. It wasn’t fair. No one ever explained anything interesting!
So, she said to herself as she skipped back down the street in a complicated pattern of movements, that made thirty-one people living in Salem Street, with three more babies on the way. And she knew all of them. Hers was a nice street. She’d hate to live somewhere like Claters End, where whole families were crowded into one room and rough drunken men shoved you aside as they walked past. In Salem Street each family had a proper house and its own yard. It was the best street in the Rows, her dad said, and she didn’t want to live anywhere else.
2
Brighton: 1826 to 1830
Jeremy Lewis stared listlessly out of the window of the lodgings he had just taken in Bedford Square, Brighton. The attack of influenza had left him so weak that the five-hour coach journey down from London had exhausted him.
“Time for the dining-room ordeal,” he said aloud and began to straighten his cravat and tidy his short light brown hair. As he looked in the mirror, he laughed and said, “Physician, heal thyself!”
At the door, he paused, then his eyes widened. Sitting at the large central table was a young woman, not strictly beautiful, but exquisitely dressed and coiffed. She was flanked by a plump elderly woman in black, to whom she was listening with an appearance of interest, but when her eyes met his across the room, she gave him just the tiniest of smiles. Encouraged by that, he went across to join them.
“Is this seat taken?”
Mrs Graham, the proprietor, bustled over to introduce them. “Mrs Parton, Miss Parton – Dr Jeremy Lewis. Pray take a seat, sir. We stand on no ceremony here.”
When she heard that Jeremy was a doctor, the old lady brightened up and began to favour him with a dissertation upon the state of her health and to enumerate the reasons her daughter had insisted upon their coming to Brighton. “Though ’tis so late in the summer that it is often too cold for me to take the air, and I’m not one for meeting strangers. It does me no good, no good at all.”
“I’ve come here to recuperate from the influenza,” volunteered Jeremy, trying to stem the complaining flow. “The fresh sea air of Brighton was strongly recommended by one of my medical colleagues.”
“Well, it’s not done me any good, especially when Annabelle goes out walking on her own, which I cannot approve of in a strange town, and leaves me to sit and worry about her. And why people should want to come here when the weather is so cold, I don’t know, but there’s no accounting for taste.” She sighed and looked around the room with a disparaging expression. “I still think we might just as well have remained safe at home.”
“Now, you know that your health has improved greatly here, Mama,” Miss Parton interrupted in a soft voice which Jeremy found a pleasure to listen to. “And I’ve come to no harm on my little outings, have I?”
“I should be happy to escort you for a walk around the town tomorrow, Miss Parton,” Jeremy said. “If your mother will give her permission. Indeed, you would be doing me a favour, for I have only just arrived and I don’t know where anything is.”
“That would be most pleasant.” Miss Parton inclined her head. “Would it not, Mama? You cannot object to my walking out if I have a gentleman to escort me.”
Mrs Parton pressed her lips together, caught her daughter’s eye and mumbled something which could have been assent.
It became plain as the meal progressed that Mrs Parton objected to many things about Brighton, and Jeremy admired the patient way her daughter bore with her grumblings. He very much liked Annabelle Parton’s restrained, ladylike air, and the smooth dark blond hair that looked so silky and soft.
“In the morning, then, Dr Lewis,” she said, as they rose to leave the table.
“I shall look forward to that, Miss Parton.” He was by now feeling utterly exhausted and so he sought his bed, to sleep better than he had in weeks.
There was a heated argument in Mrs Parton’s sitting-room before either lady retired that night.
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br /> “What do you want to encourage that young fellow for, Annabelle?”
“I think he’s very pleasant and gentlemanly.”
“You think anything in trousers pleasant since James Westby died! Ain’t this one a bit young for you?”
“Mama, Dr Lewis has only offered his escort for a walk along the sea front. In such circumstances, his age is irrelevant.”
“Well, I don’t approve of it. Doctors aren’t gentlemen and never will be, whether they’ve learned to ape their betters or not! And we know nothing about him, nothing at all! I said no good would come of this visit. What’s to become of me if you find yourself a husband? I’m not leaving the village, whatever you do. I was born there and I intend to die there. And if I had my way, we’d go back there right now!”
Annabelle’s soft white hands turned suddenly into bloodless claws that clutched at her mother’s arm, and her voice became harsh. “If you force us to go back, I shall be very upset and you might regret it later, Mama! And if you do anything to spoil this chance for me to further my acquaintance with a gentleman who is possibly eligible, then I will guarantee to make your life extremely uncomfortable!”
Mrs Parton gasped, and when her daughter let go, took refuge in her bedroom. She made no further protests and was very quiet from then on when Dr Lewis was around. She knew Annabelle too well to think these were idle threats.
Jeremy enjoyed several strolls round Brighton with Annabelle. They chatted about books and music and exchanged reminiscences of their childhoods. She was a charming companion and so lovely to look at with her fine blond hair ruffled by the sea breezes and her cheeks rosy from the fresh air and exercise. She had, she told him, never felt as well in her life, and he could feel his post-influenza lethargy improving daily.
Three days later, Jeremy invited Annabelle and her mother to join him in a carriage ride to Chalybeate Spring at the Wick, Hove, and the old lady made a silent third to their outing. Another day, he and Annabelle went on their own to the German Spa in Queen’s Park to drink the waters and grimace at their taste. Already he was feeling in much better health than he had for a long time and, as he had been very lonely since the death of his parents, he was enjoying Annabelle’s company.