Pit Bank Wench
Page 26
‘To be sure they will, seeing as theirs be having nowhere near the taste of Hollington’s, nor will they be cheaper. Now add to those kidneys these pieces of underbelly and you’ll have a meal the little people themselves would cross the sea for, and all for no more than threepence.’
Reaching across the stall, he took a piece of paper, wrapping the meat in it and handing it to the woman who took it gratefully.
‘Sure and Samuel Hollington don’t be needing your thanks.’ Liam brushed aside her gratitude. ‘But he will welcome your custom, and if you come tomorrow I guarantee there’ll be sausages.’
‘You shouldn’t have told her there’d be sausages tomorrow,’ Emma said as the woman turned away, trailed by her three small children. ‘Samuel can’t make them and I don’t know how.’
‘Since when was that a problem?’ He gathered the knives, slipping them into the large wicker basket.
‘Since now. You told that woman a lie.’
‘Did I now, or was it yourself told the lie? I did not say the sausages sold out this morning.’
Emma turned to gather up the chopping board, feeling a flush rise to her face. ‘Yes, I said that, and it seems tomorrow I’ll have to say the same.’
‘No, you won’t.’ He lifted the basket on to the hand cart then turned back to her. ‘I will make them.’
Chopping block in hand, Emma stared at him. ‘You!’
‘Me!’ He grinned.
‘But you’re not the son of a butcher.’
‘Ah, now there I lied.’
‘You lied?’ Despite her weariness, Emma responded to the infectious grin. ‘And wasn’t it your very own mother taught you always to be truthful?’ Running a hand through his hair, he looked at her with laughing eyes. ‘Me mother now, God bless her, was a good teacher but her son didn’t always learn the lessons he should. But the making of sausages and the butchering of animals I did learn. A lad learns many things living in a small village where every family does for itself.’
‘So was your father a carpenter as you told Daisy and me?’
‘Wouldn’t I swear as much before the Holy Father himself! Now stop your blethering, woman, and blow out them candles and let’s get you home. We have sausages to make!’
The moon was high and silver when at last Emma and Daisy climbed into bed.
‘Liam Brogan’s a good friend, Emma,’ Daisy said softly. ‘But he would be more than a friend if you let him.’
‘That’s ridiculous. He hardly knows me.’ Emma turned down the paraffin lamp until it was barely a glow.
‘Know you or not, he’s in love with you.’ Daisy turned on to her side, pulling the covers up to her chin. ‘Given half a chance he’d marry you . . . and you could do worse than accept him.’
‘You could do worse than accept him.’
The words rang in Emma’s mind long after Daisy’s rhythmic breathing told she was asleep.
But how could she do that, even should he ask? How could she ask any man to take on the child of another?
‘. . . he’s in love with you . . .’
It seemed Daisy’s words came back to her for answer. But that was not enough, surely? A man needed to be loved in return.
Beyond the narrow window the sky turned from black to grey.
But a child needed love too, the love of a father as well as a mother. Liam was kind and thoughtful, and what was more he was honest. Once he knew the circumstances of the child’s conception, that Emma was not married, he would tell her honestly whether or not he could become that father.
But would she come to love him?
In the shadows shrouding the room it seemed the face of Liam Brogan with its tiny Z-shaped scar smiled at her, but as she watched a darker, more brooding face appeared at his shoulder; one whose pitch dark eyes haunted her every night. The face of Carver Felton.
It had been more than a month since Samuel’s accident. Emma packed away the last of the knives. A month in which she had looked after the business alone.
Though that was not altogether true. She glanced up as the clock of St Bartholomew’s chimed a quarter to nine. She had not been entirely alone. Davey Porkchop had helped her choose her meat every morning, and Liam Brogan had taught her how to make sausages. He had come to the stall regularly for the first few nights and then . . .
She lifted the basket on to the cart, gasping as a pain streaked across her back.
Why did he not come any more? She glanced the length of the Shambles. Hers was the only stall with the candle jars still lit. Mrs Hollington had often said there was no need to stay at market so late, but Samuel had always stayed; not because he wanted to garner the last penny, Emma had long realised that, but to almost give away the last of his meat to those so poor they came looking for scraps left at the end of the day. And to leave earlier would seem like breaking faith with the man to whom Emma owed so much.
The cart loaded and the stall brushed down with a screwed up sheet of paper, she glanced again along the narrow street. Why did she have this feeling, this wish almost, that Liam would come?
Blowing out the last of the candles, she collected the burned out stubs, putting them in the little wooden tray that Samuel had fixed to the side of the cart.
Weary from the day, her body clumsy with the burden it carried, she took up the handles of the cart, clamping her teeth as a fresh pain darted across her back. How much longer would she be able to keep this up? Half-bent, she shoved the reluctant cart over the uneven cobbles, the bitter wind that had blown the whole day tearing at her shawl.
Samuel had sickened, that was to be expected after such a terrible accident, but there had been virtually no recovery since and each morning Sarah Hollington’s eyes grew a little bleaker.
Catching her breath against the sharp stabbing in her back Emma blinked against the strands of hair whipping across her face. What if he did not get well? And what of when her baby was born?
‘One day at a time,’ she whispered into the wind. ‘One day at a time.’
‘I guessed you’d be the last to leave . . .’
The words mingled with a sound like rushing wind and a thousand pin-points of light dancing in the blackness as a blow to the back of her head sent Emma stumbling to the ground.
‘Emma! Oh, thank God!’ Daisy rushed into the yard. ‘You’re so late, I couldn’t think what . . .’
Then, as Emma-half fell into her arms, she gasped, ‘Oh, Lord, what happened?’
Leaving cart and basket in the yard, she helped Emma into their little house. Sitting her close to the stove Daisy knelt down, taking cold hands into her own.
‘Someone struck me.’ The nagging throb in her head added its own pain to that which winced across her back. ‘They took the cash box. Daisy, what will Samuel say?’
Pushing herself to her feet, the girl took down a dish from the dresser, filling it with broth from a pot on the stove.
‘Don’t think about that now. Drink that broth and then let me get a look at your head. We can talk about the cash box later.’
‘No, Daisy.’ Emma pushed the dish away. ‘I must tell him now.’
‘But somebody hit you, Emma, you can’t go ignoring a bump on the head. Let me at least . . .’
‘I’m all right, Daisy, really I am!’ Emma stood up on legs still quivering from the effort of pushing the cart. ‘I’m going to see Samuel, to tell him what’s happened.’
‘Won’t do no good.’ Daisy returned the broth to the pot. Holding the empty dish in her hands, she stared down at it. ‘He won’t be bothered about no cash box.’
‘Of course he’ll be bothered. It was robbery, it has to be reported to the police. Mrs Hollington must send for a constable.’
‘Mrs Hollington ain’t here.’ Daisy’s voice faltered. ‘She’s gone to her sister’s house.’
Already at the door, Emma turned. ‘But Samuel . . . she wouldn’t leave him alone!’
‘There was no choice given her.’ Daisy continued to stare at the dish. ‘Samue
l died early this morning.’
Samuel was dead! Emma clutched at the table for support. Samuel was dead!
‘Happened soon after you left. I ran to get the doctor but it were too late. I heard him as he came out of the bedroom, I heard him tell Mrs Hollington he’d been expecting it. A poisoning of the blood so he said. Poor Mrs Hollington! She never said a word, not even after her sister come. A sharp one she was, a right bossy bitch! Sent me straight along to Webb’s Funeral Parlour. Ordered that the body was to be moved straight away. I told her it weren’t right, it weren’t the way things is done round here, but she said it would be done the way she wanted it and so would a good many other things now she were in charge. But I still don’t think it’s right. A man should lie in his own house and Mrs Hollington would have wanted that an’ all.’
The pain settled to a dull ache but Emma remained leaning on the table. ‘Didn’t Mrs Hollington say anything?’
‘Not a word. Like somebody dead herself she was, not that she had much chance against that woman. Eh, I wouldn’t want her company for long!’
‘Be you Emma Price?’ The wind catching her skirts as the door was flung back on its hinges, Emma turned around to face a tall angular woman, hands crossed over her stomach. ‘I asked, be you Emma Price?’
‘Yes, I am Emma Price.’
‘Then you be the one has Samuel Hollington’s cash box. I’ll take it.’
‘This be Mrs Hollington’s sister.’ Daisy stepped forward.
‘No need for explanations.’ The woman’s small eyes glittered. ‘Just hand over the cash box and then you can leave.’
‘Leave?’
‘You heard me, girl, you ain’t deaf!’ the sharp voice snapped at Daisy. ‘The both of you will leave this house tonight.’
‘But we don’t have no place else, and Emma is . . .’
‘I can see what she is! But that be no concern of mine. ‘Twould have been better to have thought of the consequences afore indulging in the act! But you be all the same, trollops the lot of you, follow your own evil ways and leave the paying for ’em to other folk. Oh, I know your game. You thought you had yourself well in here, thought you could go on living off the backs of my sister and that husband of hers; always was too soft was Hollington. Well, he ain’t here no more, and your well-laid little plans be no more either.’
‘Daisy and I lived off no one’s back.’ Emma touched the other girl’s arm, holding back the anger she saw in her face. ‘We both worked hard from the moment of coming to this house.’
‘Worked hard . . . worked hard? Her a bit of cleaning and you sitting in the market? I’d expect harder work from a five-year-old.’
‘You would, and you’d get it too, you hard-faced old cow!’
Her mouth thinning with satisfaction, the woman looked at Daisy. ‘How right I was. I told my sister you were nothing but guttersnipes, the lowest of the low, and your language proves it.’
‘Arr missis, p’raps it does,’ Daisy flashed. ‘And while we be on the business of sayings, here’s one for you. Low I might be, but I reckon a worm with a top hat on couldn’t crawl underneath you.’
‘Like I told Sarah, guttersnipes! No more, no less.’ The little eyes glittered venomously. ‘Well, you can take your foul mouth somewhere else . . . if you can find a place that will take the likes of you. Not everybody is as soft as Hollington was.’
‘Mr Hollington was very kind.’
‘And you was very quick to take advantage, try to take over even. No sooner had he suffered that accident than you stepped in. Thought you’d have the lot, no doubt. But you reckoned without me!’
Beside her Emma felt Daisy bristle but still she answered quietly. ‘I had no thought to take advantage, I thought only to help keep the business going until Mr Hollington recovered.’
Fingers clasped together, Sarah Hollington’s sister pressed her hands more firmly across her stomach, her thin lips turning a little further inward as she stared at Emma.
‘Helped yourself more like.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You knows well what I mean.’ The words spat from the tight condemning mouth. ‘Wouldn’t be every penny that you took for meat would finish up in that box, there’d be more than a few went in your own pocket. You knew Hollington was too sick to reckon the takings and Sarah would have little time or thought for doing so while her was busy with looking after him. But I be neither daft nor too busy and I can count as well as the next, and believe me, I will. If there be a penny short . . .’
Indignation dulling the ache that nagged at her back, Emma held those glittering little eyes with her own steady stare. ‘I am not a thief.’
‘That has yet to be proved!’ The woman snorted, her hands held out. ‘Now, the cash box, if you please.’
‘Emma don’t ’ave it!’
Eyes widening, her voice almost a squeak, the woman demanded, ‘What . . . what did you say?’
‘I do not have the cash box.’ Emma’s voice was firm as she looked into the furious face. ‘I was robbed on my way home.’
‘Robbed . . . robbed!’ The woman snorted. ‘The only thief be you. If that money’s gone then you have taken it!’
‘That’s not true!’ Emma gasped at her accusation.
‘No? Well, the constables can find that out.’ The woman stepped away from the door. ‘But one thing be certain. You’ll not spend a moment longer in this place, you’ll have no more chances to rob a poor dead man. Get out! Get out now!’
Snatching her own shawl from the chair back, Daisy glared at Sarah Hollington’s sister. ‘You get the constable, missis,’ she grated, ‘and while he be sorting out who really stole your brother-in-law’s cash, get him to sort this out an’ all!’
Lifting the dish above her head, she sent it crashing at the woman’s feet.
*
‘I can’t . . . I can’t go any further!’ Pain, sharp and regular, had moved from Emma’s back into her stomach, each pang snatching the breath from her lungs.
‘Is it the crack on the head you took?’
Emma shook her head as another swift pain robbed her of speech.
‘You mean, it’s the baby! The child be coming?’ Daisy looked wildly about the darkened streets as Emma gasped again. ‘We ’ave to go on.’ She grasped her friend about the waist urging her forward. ‘I ain’t never birthed no child, I don’t know what to do!’
They had to go on. Emma forced one foot in front of the other. But where . . . where could they go?
‘No more, Daisy, no more. I can’t . . . I can’t!’
Tears coursing down her cheeks, Daisy held the half-fainting figure in her arms. Ahead the black mass of both churches rose solid against a sky beginning to give way to dawn. The Vicarages would be close by, not that she had ever been there; surely they would help Emma? But if they refused, if they turned her away . . .
Feeling hands clutch her arm as a fresh spasm of pain shot through the girl slumped against her, Daisy clenched her teeth. The risk was too great, they had to go where help was assured.
‘Not far,’ she murmured, urging Emma on again. ‘Not far now. You can rest soon.’
Turning left she led Emma slowly down a deserted Meeting Street towards the light shed by a single lantern. Reaching the low building with its pretentious pillars, she lowered Emma to the step. Glancing once at her friend’s huddled figure she tugged the iron bell pull. Then, as its clang sounded beyond the heavy oak door, Daisy lifted her skirts and ran.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Braiding her hair into one long plait, Emma fastened it with a piece of narrow white ribbon.
It was more than a year since she had come to this place, more than a year since her son had been born. Crossing to the wooden cot, she stared down at the sleeping child.
Daisy had left her there on the steps of the workhouse. Memories of that dreadful night returned in full: the pain of her labour, the bitterness of that woman’s accusation, the feeling of being utterly alone.
She touched a finger to the tiny hand curled into a fist and resting against the dark hair curled close to his head.
She had lain three days in a bed shoved against a damp wall, one window high up towards the roof offering little light and no view on the outside world, her only companion an elderly woman who shuffled in twice a day with food, her eyes on the door the whole time lest she was caught talking.
Then they had brought Emma her clothes and she had dressed under the watchful eye of a wardress. She had received no answer to her queries about the baby, merely a snapped instruction, ‘Follow me!’
Eyes closing she watched pictures form in her mind, smelled again the damp cloying air as they passed the laundry room, the strong smell of scouring soda that clung to corridors and stairs.
They had come to a halt before a door marked ‘Governess’ and waited until a voice gave permission to enter. This room had been lighter than the first, tall windows giving easier access to the pale March sunlight. Opposite them a fire had burned in the grate, its surround burnished to a silver sheen.
Black on silver! Emma had trembled as she looked at it. He had hair that was black marked with silver.
‘Is this your wife?’
Her trembling stopped at the words of the woman sitting behind the heavy desk and Emma stood as if turned to stone. Over the fireplace an ornate clock ticked, marking the long seconds of silence.
‘Emma! Oh, my dear!’ Firm hands had taken her own. ‘I only arrived back this morning. I found the house deserted, and you . . . I’ve been half out of my mind with worry.’
The hands had pulled her close to his strong body.
‘I thank you for taking such good care of my wife and for the delivery of our child. It is, I trust, in good health?’