A Song Twice Over

by Brenda Jagger

  Before the dog came the water barrels had been a source of open conflict, the next-door children, a pack of sore-eyed weasels, dipping in sly hands whenever Cara was not looking, leaving off the lids so that the soot and everybody’s stray cat could get it, throwing in noxious things themselves, sometimes, to pay her back whenever she had boxed one of their ears too soundly; a rusty horse-shoe, a handful of nails, once a never-to-be-forgotten load of frog-spawn so that Odette, who never liked to be hard on anybody, had almost had a fit. Dreadful children. No wonder Liam ducked his head and closed his eyes whenever he saw them coming, refusing absolutely to play with them. And although Cara made no bones about slapping them or pinching them or pulling their hair whenever she caught them near her barrels, the dog saved her the trouble of all that.

  They feared him. Their father, when he came to complain that the dog had bitten a hole in his son’s trousers and reduced several of his daughters’ pinafores to rags, feared him too, being an undersized weasel of a man himself, ferocious only when drunk.

  ‘Your children have always been in rags,’ Cara told him, standing tall, her hands on her hips.

  ‘That is hardly their fault,’ Luke told her when the little weasel-man slunk away.

  ‘I’m not in rags, Luke Thackray.’

  ‘You haven’t got eleven children, Cara.’

  ‘No. I make very sure of that.’

  He smiled, his quiet tolerance making her just a little ashamed; a feeling which soon faded once she had reminded herself of all the many good uses to which she put her water. To wash herself, for instance, and her child. To wash her clothes, and his. To scrub her floorboards so that they never stank of urine and worse, like the house next door. To soak her bedding so that it never crawled with bed-bugs, just as her son’s head never crawled with lice like those abominable little Rattries who hung about all day, scratching and picking their fleas, rubbing their sore eyes, grinning at her and showing their little blackened stubs of teeth; stealing her water. Although for what purpose they required it she could not imagine.

  ‘Mrs Rattrie doesn’t have your good judgement, Cara,’ Luke said quietly. ‘Nor your energy.’

  No. She agreed wholeheartedly with that. For, while the next-door Mrs Rattrie lay on her mattress all day recovering from the birth of one baby or just about to produce another, she was out and about, working, coping, stirring herself. And what temptations could ever have come the way of this washed-out weasel-woman that could be compared with the invitations to sin and indolence – and eventual maternity – which were offered daily to Cara? No. The woman was a slattern. Her husband either half asleep or dead drunk. Her children withered in the bud. Not one of them at work and at least five of them over ten years old. Two of them well into their teens. A family worth no one’s trouble.

  Yet Luke Thackray took the trouble, during the sharp days of October and November when Cara’s dog first began its grudging defence of her property, to show the eldest of the Rattrie daughters – carrying water being classed as work for women – how to manage the stand-pipe. And when Mr Rattrie, maddened as he often was by cheap gin, threw his wife and children out of the house one frosty night in their underwear – or what passed for it – and barricaded himself inside, it was Luke again, without making much fuss about it, who brought a shawl for pregnant Mrs Rattrie as she stood shivering and whimpering in the street. Luke who broke down the not particularly solid Rattrie door, dragged the man out and deposited him, with a certain wry humour, in the horse-trough at the end of St Jude’s Passage.

  ‘That’s Luke,’ Sairellen told Cara flatly. ‘Don’t think you’re the only one he’s ready to fetch and carry for – Miss Adeane, Dressmaker and Milliner. And keep that dog of yours away from my clean doorstep. He’ll get pepper in his eyes if I catch him loitering there.’

  Sairellen, Cara concluded, felt safer with the Rattries who would neither question her authority nor be likely to entice her son. Yet did Cara herself entice him to any warmer thoughts than friendship? She was never quite certain. Arriving home at the odd hours her employment forced upon her, she would often find him there, sometimes reading in the chimney corner while Odette sat tranquilly embroidering the Dallam trousseau; sometimes reading aloud to Liam who would not talk to him or answer his questions other than with a swift ducking of the head to signify yes or no, but who, at least, did not shy away from him and cling to Odette as he was still prone to do.

  But sometimes Luke would be alone, both Odette and Liam in bed, the dog – she had no name for him, just Dog. Damned Dog, more often than not – snoring on the hearth-rug, the fire carefully banked up for the night. And at such times, always a little out of breath from that perilous walk home, either satisfied with her day or devastated by it – emotions which any man could use to his advantage – she felt no awkwardness with Luke, was simply and whole-heartedly pleased to be safe home, to feel the warmth of her own fire; and to see him sitting there, quietly beside it.

  Occasionally, whenever the town was more raucous than usual, when the navvies from the railway camp had drawn a substantial bonus or there were soldiers passing through, he would come down to the Fleece to meet her, or rather to the iron gate of St Jude’s churchyard just beyond the square, where she would see his pipe glowing its signal to her in the dark. And when she saw that dull gleam, caught the scent of his pipe tobacco on the air, she would feel instantly secure, not simply because of his protection against the designs of strangers, but because Luke himself did not threaten her.

  Nevertheless – every now and again – she found it wise to ask herself just how she would feel should he suddenly take her in his arms, something men tended to do sooner rather than later in all her previous experience. With Luke she could not imagine it. Not that she doubted for one moment his masculinity. It was just that, in a world where the desires of men had always stalked her, where over-heated hands were always grabbing her and clutching her and trying to undress her – where men so often wished to satisfy their bodies by the use of hers, without responsibility – she did not think so poorly of Luke. He would not touch her unless he knew – as Daniel had known – that she was longing to be touched. And if the longing never came then he would settle, without a word of reproach, for the friendship they already had.

  Friendship. How strange. She had never before considered it even as a possibility between a man and a woman. Not surprising, perhaps, when the men she knew rarely took the trouble or felt the need to look beyond the gleaming fall of her hair, the brilliant turquoise eyes, the lithe, sensuous body which, although it had had one lover and borne one child, had no real knowledge, as yet, of sensuality. Perhaps – she thought dimly, still groping for an explanation – it made no real difference to Luke whether she was beautiful or not. Perhaps what mattered to him was the smaller, often fearful, frequently wrong-headed, usually well-meaning girl who lived inside her skin, very well concealed, more often than not, by the boldness of her smile, the deliberately nonchalant swaying of her hips.

  He would never take advantage of a girl like that. Of any girl. And, in the meantime, while she still attempted to wrench Daniel Carey out of her heart, she had Luke’s undemanding companionship, his decency and good humour, his quietness on the many occasions when, very noisily, she lost her head; his large, unhurried hands not exploring the nape of her neck and her backbone as poor Ned O’Mara was always trying to do, but mending the lock on her coal-place door so that no thieving Rattrie could help himself to a furtive shovel of her precious winter coal; replacing a pane of glass which a Rattrie stone had splintered; offering her a handclasp, from time to time, not of lust but of reassurance.

  She knew that Odette, her own romantic mother, would have liked her to marry him. She knew that his shrewd, hard-headed mother would rather see her dead than as her son’s wife.

  On the whole she thought Sairellen was probably right.

  Her days were still immensely long. She awoke at first light, made up the fire to warm her rainwater and, no ma
tter how chill the morning, how glacial their little downstairs room, went through what she believed to be the essential toilette of a lady, standing naked before the hearth with only the thin wool rug between her bare feet and the splintered floorboards, to wash her hair and as much of her body as she could manage without freezing, before either Odette or Liam were up; only the dog looking on, grunting his displeasure at her intrusion – since this was his rug now, after all, his fireside – his small, sardonic eye informing her that he knew she was no lady, whatever she might pretend to Mrs Amabel Dallam. Just a barmaid from the Fleece, that vicious little eye kept on reminding her, with no more chance of rising above it than a crippled fighting-dog. Also from the Fleece. And the rightful property, whenever he chose to reclaim it, of the Fleece’s owner. Or whenever he chose to call in the debt which she did not really believe to be cancelled.

  He would want something from her one day. Not her body, like poor Ned who had reached the stage of trembling now and turning pale whenever he managed to lay a hand on her. No. Not that, since Captain Goldsborough had women enough around him who knew far more about catering to the finer points of his appetite than she did. She felt in no danger from him there. Why should he demean himself with a barmaid, after all, when he still – albeit surprisingly – had the celebrated actress Mrs Marie Moon from Martinique and Paris. Not to mention the red-headed woman in a black riding-habit and a man’s tall hat who appeared like a thunderbolt sometimes in the afternoons, when her husband thought her out hunting, Cara supposed; and an assortment of others, not all of them beautiful, some of them positively strange, but with an air of quality or style about them, coming to spend a night or two in the huge four-poster bed in his private rooms – the ‘seraglio’ they called it – at the head of the back stairs.

  In his place Cara would not have demeaned herself with a barmaid either.

  But eventually he would want something and she would very likely find herself summoned to his rooms – the ‘seraglio’, the harem, the lair – not for sex like Mrs Marie Moon and the lady of the riding-habit, but for instructions, as she watched so many others, both men and women, climb that back staircase every day.

  She had no idea what he asked of them, no notion at all of what aims or ambitions he might wish to foster, or what – if anything – mattered to him in life. Yet she was in no doubt at all as to the sources of his power. The possession of two things. Property. And information.

  For when the Goldsboroughs, of whom he seemed to be the last – she could only say Amen to that – had sold their manor and their land they had not sold their ramshackle dwelling-houses and warehouses and their tumbledown squares of old taverns and shops – perhaps none of it quite so ramshackle then – leaving their final heir in possession of what had once been the very heart of Frizingley.

  Everybody, therefore – or very nearly – in the decaying cobweb of streets and squares and alleys loosely called St Jude’s paid him rent, or owed him rent, being, in consequence, very much at his disposal. No shopkeeper or tradesman could afford to forfeit his goodwill, since he owned their business premises and the homes of their customers. No dubious tavern, and there were several, could keep its secrets from him for the same reasons, so that he would know the names and faces of the men who attended the radical meetings in the back room of the Dog and Gun, the Chartists, the Ten Hours Men, the Owenites, the Anti-Poor Law Leaguers, who would be certain, of course, to lose their jobs should Ben Braithwaite or Uriah Colclough or John-William Dallam ever come to hear of it.

  He would know, too, who brought illegal gaming cocks to the Beehive and about the discreet back door of that tavern, shrouded with ivy, where men were admitted who had stolen goods for sale. He would know what happened to those goods when the thieves had been paid off and gone, who bought them, who remodelled them, who melted them down. He would know which pawnbrokers were honest and which were not. He would know, since assignations of this type usually took place in a room laughingly known as the ‘bridal chamber’at the Rose and Crown, which women deceived their husbands, whether it was for love or for money, with whom, and for how much. He would know who was in debt and how steeply, since usually the debt would be to him. He would know, so well, which debts could never be paid and must therefore be settled, to suit his whim, in some other fashion.

  And so when he smiled and said, ‘There is a little something you can do for me …’ it was done. Always. One way or another. Sometimes, waking abruptly and startled in the night, a sick, cold dread would come over her that one day his queer humour might find it amusing to try and give her to Ned.

  It was a part of her life she took great care to conceal from the Dallams. Appearing at Frizingley Hall bright and early throughout October and November, never staying long enough to make it obvious that she had no other work but always on hand to seize any scrap of opportunity which might come her way, she was Miss Adeane, Dressmaker and Milliner, to the life; always – and at a cost in effort none of the Dallams could even imagine – immaculate in her pale blue wool dress, refurbished now with tiny royal-blue satin bows from neck to hem, and a dark blue cloak made from the unworn bits joined together of a pair of old plush table-cloths she had inveigled from Ned O’Mara.

  She had gloves too with embroidered tops done by her mother, her old cream kid boots dyed black to hide the scuff marks at the toes, her freshly washed hair elaborately coiled and ringleted, not a stain upon her anywhere, not an odour of anything but the lavender and violets and rose-petals she gathered surreptitiously from anybody’s garden she happened to pass, and which Odette brewed into perfume in the cellar. Miss Adeane, bright as a button, neat as a new pin, as she cheerfully responded to Amabel Dallam’s bubbling enthusiasm for her daughter’s wedding. Diverting it, whenever she could, in her own direction.

  It was to be at the end of December, as near as possible to Christmas yet not later, certainly not in January, Amabel being unwilling to forfeit, by a day or two, the distinction of marrying Gemma in this year of 1840 when the Queen – a year younger than Gemma – had gone so blissfully to the altar with her Albert. And if Gemma should further follow the example of the Queen who, married in February was expecting her first child for November, then Amabel would be well-satisfied.

  A honeymoon baby. What a pity one could not use the term ‘love child’which, Amabel knew, meant something rather different. Perhaps Miss Adeane who had done such exquisite embroidery on the wedding chemises would be interested in the layette? Most definitely Miss Adeane would. Although the wedding-dress, white satin like the Queen’s, with masses of lace and orange blossoms, had been ordered, of course, safely and securely and considerably to Linnet Gage’s satisfaction, from Miss Ernestine Baker, who was always called upon for wedding-dresses. In fact Amabel knew of no one in Frizingley – who was anyone, that is – who had not gone to her. And no one who had been dissatisfied.

  ‘What a wonderful woman she must be,’ murmured Cara. ‘One wonders, with so many bridal gowns to churn out in a season, how she manages so that they do not all look alike.’

  Perhaps they did. A little.

  ‘Heavens,’ Cara smiled, knowing she had sown the seed, ‘How clever of her to remember everything. Even to stitching the little sachets of sugar in the hem. She does do that, of course …? Doesn’t she?’

  ‘My dear …? Sugar in the hem?’

  ‘Why yes. A symbol of the sweetness of the married life to come.’

  Amabel was charmed.

  ‘But Mrs Dallam, we always did that in the rue Saint Honoré. For good luck.’

  What else did they do there, Amabel was bound to wonder, what other elegant and thoroughly delightful innovations which had not yet arrived in Miss Baker’s establishment in Market Square? What fun it would have been at the reception, murmuring that little snippet about the sugar to Lizzie Braithwaite and Maria Colclough and Ethel Lord. A pretty trifle, of course. But Amabel’s life was made up of such things. And now the wedding-dress was finished, hanging in guarded splendo
ur in a locked wardrobe upstairs, a fairytale creation – if, perhaps, bearing just a whisper of resemblance to the fairytale creation Maria Colclough’s daughter had worn – and which, she was dimly aware, had aroused her admiration a shade more warmly than Gemma’s.

  ‘What a dream! Sheer bliss,’ had enthused Amabel when the dress had been delivered, seeing herself – and perhaps Linnet – in those fluted tulle frills, that May-blossom of lace with which the white satin foundation had been covered.

  ‘Very nice, mother,’ Gemma had said.

  Oh dear. Would Gemma have preferred something a little less …? Girlish was the word which came into her mind. Dainty. Pretty. Would Miss Adeane, who was not dainty either, have had other ideas on how to dress Amabel’s dear but often so difficult daughter? Was there another way?

  Amabel, who had been so radiantly happy lately, with her husband well on the road to recovery and her daughter bringing her the very son-in-law she had most wanted, was suddenly troubled and perplexed. She had simply desired to make Gemma beautiful on her wedding day, to hear the gasps of admiration, the sentimental sighing echoing around the church as her daughter entered it. Would Miss Ernestine Baker’s dress produce that gasp, those sighs? Or would Gemma be just another Frizingley bride going to the altar in the same tulle frills as Maria Colclough’s daughter, although rather more of them, the same wreath of orange blossom as Queen Victoria, perhaps, but which young Amanda Braithwaite had also worn when she became Mrs Jacob Lord?