Beyond the Veil of Tears

by Rita Bradshaw

  Angeline nodded. She couldn’t speak just at that moment for the fear that had gripped her.

  ‘You’ll be all right, lass.’ Suddenly realizing she hadn’t exactly been encouraging, May’s voice was over-hearty. ‘Just keep your eyes and ears open, and don’t panic. All Saints’ Church isn’t far from King Street. If you get lost before you get to the wharfs, ask someone where that is – but a woman, mind; not a man. And don’t answer any questions. Act simple, if you have to.’

  May continued in this vein for some minutes, and by the time Angeline left the bandstand her brain was whirling. As she exited the park she looked back to see May standing up and holding on to the edge of the bandstand as she waved forlornly. Angeline waved back, but was glad when trees hid May from view. Her friend had sapped what little courage she had with all her instructions and dos and don’ts.

  On leaving the area she found a sign that read ‘Portland Park’ and the road she was walking down was Portland Terrace, so at least she would know where to aim for, on the return journey. Before long the grander houses had vanished and she found herself in a grid of terraced streets that all looked the same. But the sun had come out and although the blisters on her heels had opened up again, she felt better for doing something. There were fewer people about than she had expected, and after a while the church bells told her why. It was a Sunday. And before long she passed a Church of England church where men dressed in their Sunday best and women in neat, dark dresses and bonnets were filing in. A little later it was a chapel, and here the bonnets of the ladies weren’t nearly so fine, but their prim faces and subdued manner were the same. Few folk spared her a glance, but when they did it was invariably a man and, remembering what May had said, she found herself walking faster on those occasions.

  After an hour or so of following her nose without really knowing where she was going, she saw two girls, arm-in-arm, coming towards her. They were giggling and deep in conversation, dressed in rough serge skirts with woollen shawls about their shoulders, but they looked friendly enough. When she was abreast she nerved herself to say, ‘Can you direct me to Manors station?’

  They stopped dead, their faces expressing their surprise as they looked her up and down, no doubt thinking her voice didn’t match her appearance. It was a moment before one said, her accent denoting that she was Irish, ‘Manors station you want, lass? Well, you’re not too far off. Keep straight on at the crossroads into Argyle Street and you’ll come to it, so you will. You not from round these parts?’

  Angeline shook her head. ‘I’m . . . I’m from the country.’

  ‘Oh aye?’ They nodded, but Angeline walked on, willing herself not to hurry. She heard one say something to the other and then laughter, but she didn’t turn round, and it wasn’t until she was a good distance from them that she stopped. The blisters the boots had rubbed on her heels were raw and bleeding, but she had noticed neither of the girls was wearing anything on her feet. Stepping out of the boots, she picked them up by their laces with her ‘good’ hand and began walking again. The relief was magical – beyond words – and suddenly the day got a whole lot better.

  She came to the crossroads and then Argyle Street, and eventually, joy of joys, Melbourne Street and Manors station.

  The nearer she got to the waterfront, however, the more uneasy she felt. There seemed to be a public house every few yards, and after a while she put her boots back on, painful though it was, because of the muck and running filth in the roads. And the smell; she had no name for it, having never smelt the odour of extreme squalor and overcrowding and stinking privies before, coupled with the ever-present stench of the slaughterhouses.

  Mindful of all May had said, she kept her head up but her eyes straight ahead as she walked, but she was aware of women standing on their doorsteps talking to neighbours while their children, some too young to walk, played or crawled in the gutters and on the filthy pavements. Appalled by the dirt and the stench, she tried to keep her face blank, but it was hard, especially when she saw a dead cat slowly decaying and alive with maggots just yards from where a bare-bottomed, curly-haired infant sat sucking her thumb, big sores on either side of her rosebud mouth.

  Terrified, she found she was praying silently now as she walked along the wharfs, just one refrain: ‘Help me, God; help me, God; help me, God.’ Twice, a man bumped into her – one leaving a public house and, a few yards on, one entering – and on both occasions she felt it wasn’t an accident by their leering faces, but she didn’t acknowledge them or slow her pace, hearing one laugh as she marched on.

  She was picking her way along the rough cobbles by the side of the tracks on which the engines shunted the wagons to unload the boats that moored at the wharfs, but as it was a Sunday the river was quiet. Just after she passed a landing stage, which was floating in the grimy black water, she came to the bottom of King Street and could have cried with relief, although the street looked as bad as any she had passed. The sunshine had brought out the bairns and there were plenty of them playing their games up and down the mucky, slimy cobbled road.

  May hadn’t known the number of the house where her brother lodged, so a few yards into the street Angeline stopped in front of two young girls sitting on the pavement with their backs to the grey tenement wall. They were nursing their dollies – two lumps of wood with faces carved on them – which they had wrapped in bits of rag. A little further on a group of children were skipping with a piece of old rope, their voices chanting:

  ‘House to let, apply within

  Lady put out for drinking gin

  Gin, you know, is a very bad thing

  So Jeannie goes out and Mary comes in.’

  Bringing her attention back to the two in front of her, Angeline bent down, saying quietly, ‘Do you know where Jack Connor lives?’

  They shook their heads, their hair white with nits, but a young lad of eight or nine who was leaning against the wall a couple of feet away said, ‘Yes, you do. She means the penny-a-liner.’ And to Angeline: ‘We call him that cos he can read an’ write, an’ if anyone needs a letter writin’ or somethin’ reading, they come to Jack. He’s got a room in that house there.’

  Angeline nodded and smiled. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Come on, I’ll show you.’ And with that the boy turned and ran to a house a few doors away. The front door was open, and Angeline followed her little guide into a squalid hall and up the bare wooden stairs of the three-storey building to the second floor. The lad rapped on a door at the end of the landing. ‘Jack? There’s someone wants to talk to you. A lass.’

  He knocked again a few moments later, and when Angeline murmured, ‘Perhaps he’s not in?’ he grinned at her, revealing brown-stained teeth.

  ‘I ain’t seen him go out, so he’s likely abed. Works six days a week in town, an’ then he’s always at his books an’ such till the early hours, is Jack. Barmy ’bout learning, he is.’ Lowering his voice, he added, ‘He’s teachin’ me to read an’ write’ as though there was something shameful about it.

  ‘Don’t you learn that at school?’

  The boy stared at her as though she was from another planet. ‘I ain’t never been to school. I help me da at the docks. I’m a runner. Best runner there is.’

  ‘I see.’ She didn’t have a clue what he meant.

  ‘Me da’s not for learnin’,’ the boy went on. ‘Says it only gets you into trouble with the gaffers.’

  ‘But you want to read and write?’

  The boy shrugged. ‘I want to be like Jack,’ he said, as though that was the end of the matter.

  Angeline heard a bolt being slid from inside the door and the next moment it had opened. A man stood there, naked to the waist and obviously just having got out of bed, his black hair ruffled and with stubble on his chin. His eyes were as green as May’s and shaded by thick curling lashes, and his rough-hewn face wasn’t smiling.

  Angeline stared at him, shock curling in her stomach. She had never been in the presence of such raw masculinit
y before. Oswald had been handsome, even beautiful, but also graceful and elegant and charming. This man was clearly none of those things. The picture she had formed in her mind of May’s brother had been of a scholarly, mild schoolmaster type, small in stature; an earnest intellectual whose books were his passion. Nothing had prepared her for the real Jack Connor.

  He looked her up and down in a way that caused her breathing to quicken and her cheeks to flush, and although she knew she ought to say something it was beyond her.

  It was Jack who spoke first, his deep voice having an edge of huskiness, which again caused her stomach to flutter: ‘Aye, and what can I do for you, my bonny lass?’ And to the boy: ‘All right, Joe, you scarper now’, softening his words by fetching a penny out of his pocket and throwing it to the lad, who caught it deftly and pocketed it in an instant.

  As Joe disappeared down the stairs, Angeline felt panic grip her, before she pulled herself together. ‘I’m a friend of May’s. We . . . she . . . We need your help.’

  His face expressed the same surprise that the two girls on the road earlier had shown, but he recovered instantly, opening the door wider and standing back as he said, ‘You’d better come in then and tell me all about it.’

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Jack Connor prided himself on the fact that nothing in life surprised him. Having been reared in the tenement slums of Newcastle, he’d seen life in all its raw vulgarity from a babe at his mother’s breast. A violent, drunken father and a mother who was only interested in avoiding her husband’s fists had set the course of his childhood. Three brothers and a sister born after him had died through disease and neglect, and twin sisters had gone the same way before he was born. His two older brothers had been his rough childhood companions before they ran away to sea when he was eight years old.

  May had been born when he was six, and from the first he had loved his baby sister, protecting her from the worst of their father’s rages as she’d grown and making sure she got enough to eat, even if it meant going without himself.

  May had left to go into service when she was twelve years old, and the same day he had walked out of the family home and into lodgings, knowing it was the time to follow his dream. His father had had him set on at the docks when he was eleven years old, but although his schooldays had been cut short, they’d planted in him a voracious desire for education. For the next five years he had worked at the docks during the day and studied at night, spending all his money on books and bettering himself. And finally, two years ago, a solicitor in the town had agreed to take him on as a clerk. It was the first rung of the ladder to becoming a solicitor.

  He occasionally called in on his mother and the three boys who had come along after May, but in truth he had little time for his younger brothers, all of whom bore a marked resemblance to their father in looks and nature. May was different, and when he’d found out she had been raped and then cast into the asylum he’d been beside himself, especially when he had been able to do nothing to secure her release. Each time he had visited her he had told her he was working towards the day when he was qualified and could fight to get her out of the place, but they had both known that day was a long way off.

  But now this young woman with the cultured voice, but who was dressed in little more than rags, was telling him May was free. He only had one chair and a small table in his room besides his bed, so he had directed her to the chair while he sat on the bed as she told her story. He stared at her, taking in her face, as her soft, pleasant voice flowed over him. She was a beautiful lass; even her nose, which had clearly been broken at some time or other, didn’t detract from her beauty, but rather gave a uniqueness to her looks that was captivating. Her liquid brown eyes, under eyebrows that curved well beyond the bone formation of the eye sockets, constantly fell away from his, as though she was shy or frightened, or both. He had pulled on a shirt before he sat down, sensing that his bare torso had startled her, but she still was as jumpy as a cat on a hot tin roof.

  His gaze moved to her hair, secured in a long plait at the nape of her neck, but even that couldn’t hide that it was amazing. It wasn’t brown or red or bronze, but a mixture of all three, and thick and silky, the tiny tendrils that drifted round skin like blushed milk curling in wispy ringlets.

  The last two years had trained him to take in everything about people – their body language, appearance, inflections of voice – whilst ingesting every word they spoke. Mr Havelock had told him more than once it was one of Jack’s strengths, added to the sixth sense that every good solicitor needed to cultivate, which told them if a man or woman was telling the truth – or, at the very least, the whole story. But somehow, with this young woman, and to his great surprise, Jack only felt confusion. Added to which he was very aware of his dishevelled appearance, which annoyed him. He should be feeling only relief that May was free and concern that she was injured, but instead a whole host of emotions were in play.

  As Angeline finished speaking he leaned forward and said, ‘So May’s waiting at Portland Park?’ and was further annoyed at the slight recoil she made, before she collected herself. ‘And you have nothing, you say? Not a penny between you, and merely the clothes you stand up in? Why didn’t you take your things with you when you left the inn where you were working?’

  Angeline had never felt more ill at ease in her life than now, lying to this man who was May’s brother. ‘We did, but they were stolen one night.’

  Jack nodded. It happened. Softly he said, ‘Is your arm very painful?’

  ‘Not since it was strapped up.’

  ‘Good.’ Standing up, he pulled on his cap and jacket. She had explained about the elocution lessons, but he was finding that the way she spoke made him feel . . . he wouldn’t allow himself to think ‘inferior’, instead substituting ‘uncomfortable’. ‘Make yourself a drink’ – he waved to the small kettle on a steel shelf over the hot coals that the tiny fireplace held – ‘there’s tea and sugar on the shelf, but no milk I’m afraid. I’ll get something to eat for the three of us after I’ve got May home.’

  ‘But don’t you want me to come with you?’

  ‘Not necessary. I know where the park is.’

  ‘Very well.’ Angeline inclined her head. ‘If you are sure.’

  There it was again. It wasn’t just her voice – it was her manner, too. Not exactly uppish, more . . . He found he couldn’t put his finger on what it was, which again irritated him.

  Once May’s brother had gone, Angeline sat exactly where she was for some minutes. She felt as though she had come through a great trial, which was ridiculous really, when she had only found her way to this house. But that was how she felt. The reaction had her wanting to drift off to sleep where she sat, but after a while she kicked off her boots and made herself a cup of tea. It was the first drink she had made in her life, and she had no idea how much tea to put in the mug sitting next to the little tea caddy. Consequently it was very weak, but in view of the fact there was no milk, it was better than being too strong.

  She sipped the tea, wondering how many books Jack had altogether. Books were piled high against every wall, the old bookcase along one wall long since having been overwhelmed. They were stacked under the one window the room boasted, and then on the windowsill itself, to halfway up the glass. So the room was darker than it might have been. Volume upon volume stood on the table itself, along with reams of handwritten notes and other papers. She reached over and picked up one of the handwritten pages, entitled ‘The evil of unregulated capitalism and landlordism’.

  Another wad of papers bound together had a front page that read:

  Henry Broadhurst, secretary of the TUC Parliamentary Committee, speaking at the Trades Union Congress, 1877: ‘They [the men] had the future of their country and their children to consider, and it was their duty as men and husbands to use their utmost efforts to bring about a condition of things, where their wives would be in their proper sphere at home, instead of being dragged into competition for livel
ihood against the great and strong men of the world.’ Discuss the merits of this statement, and the woman-question in general.

  Intrigued now, the tiredness slipping from her, Angeline reached for another stack of papers tied with string. It was entitled: ‘The condition of the people and the Education Act of 1870’:

  This was not an Act for a common universal education, but an Act to educate the lower classes for employment on lower-class lines, and with specially trained, inferior teachers who had no universal quality. Elementary education is not a stage in the educational process, but a minimal education for those who cannot afford to pay for something better. Examine the system and the changes from then to now, and discuss.

  Suddenly realizing that these papers might be private, and that May’s brother might not like her going through them, Angeline put them down as though they had burned her. Walking over to the bookcase, she glanced at some of the titles: How the Poor Live by G.R. Sims; All Sorts and Conditions of Men by Walter Besant; Struggles for Daily Bread by Richard Rowe – the books went on and on, but she could see few novels or poetry books.

  Thoroughly intimidated now, she sat down again at the table. When May had said that her brother had no time for the gentry, she hadn’t said the half of it. What would Jack say, if he knew who she really was? He would despise her, that much was crystal-clear. And he would probably be right to do so. How could landowners and the aristocracy ignore what was right under their noses? But then, she had.