by Tania Crosse
‘And you’m worried about your own job, too, I suppose!’ Tresca hissed, bitterness sharp on her tongue because she had convinced herself that his obvious affection for her would sway him.
‘That, too, and why not? Why should I be risking me own job and the safety of others for one labourer who can’t keep sober and isn’t a great worker anyway? No, I’m sorry, Tresca, that I am. But I can’t do what you’re after asking of me.’
‘And doesn’t it matter to you that we’ve little money left? I were relying on my father’s wages and I’ve spent so much on our new home on the strength of it.’
‘Sure that’s not my fault. But I—’
‘You can’t blame me for wanting a few nice things when it’s the first time we’ve ever had any money to speak of,’ Tresca blurted out, hot tears of humiliation pricking her eyes.
‘Sure I didn’t say that, child—’
‘And now I don’t know what’ll happen to us. Jobs aren’t easy to get, you know, if you’re not working on the railway. But then you wouldn’t know that, would you, with your nice safe position?’
Connor stared at her darkly and shook his head. ‘Sure, child, I’ll not see you starve—’
‘And stop calling me a child!’
‘Well, you are so.’
‘No, I’m not.’
‘Fifteen, isn’t it?’
Tresca’s eyes flashed. ‘Sixteen the day after Boxing Day.’
‘There you are then. A child. A bright and lovely one, but not so wise as you thought. I’ll give you some money to tide you over, and then we’ll talk in a few days, so we will, when you’re feeling more grown-up.’
Anger had been fermenting inside Tresca’s chest and now it burst out in a squall of rage. ‘I wouldn’t take anything from you! You think you can make everything right by throwing your money around? Well, there’s—’
‘Tresca, please—’
‘No! Good night to you, Mr O’Mahoney. I hope you enjoy your dinner!’
She spun round, but as her fingers reached the door knob, Connor’s big hand closed over them.
‘No, Tresca, I won’t—’
‘Won’t what?’ She glared up at him, holding his gaze so intently that he was unaware of her boot flying out until it cracked against his shin. He hopped backwards, drawing a pained breath through his teeth and releasing his hold on her hand. She seized her chance and shot out through the door, running back up the street and driving her fury into the ground beneath her feet.
‘Tresca!’ Connor called after her through the harsh night air. But he made no attempt to follow and she didn’t stop until she was back indoors, the door slammed shut behind her.
Ten
Tresca woke from a fitful, troubled sleep and peered into the hostile darkness. Her father was up again, his bare feet padding to the door. It was the same every night. Tresca slept so lightly these days, their worries creeping into her mind like a slithering evil, that the slightest sound woke her. Emmanuel seemed as disturbed as she was as he regularly got up several times in the night and went out across the yard to the water closet. It had turned bitterly cold and she couldn’t understand why he needed to go outside so often. All she wanted was to snuggle down in bed and drift into a reviving sleep that wasn’t invaded by nightmares.
A thousand thoughts chased each other round her head. The previous day they had paid the rent, which would take them up to just before Christmas, and she prayed to God that He would bring some miracle to save them from destitution. Neither of them had been able to find a job, nor had they been able to find anywhere cheaper to live. And there was no way she would ask Mrs Mawes if their old room was still available and beg her to let them have it back.
The coal had run out five days before, and when Tresca drew the curtains that morning, the windows were encrusted with ice on the inside. She had slept in her clothes to try to keep warm, and felt sticky and uncomfortable, but it was simply too cold to strip off and wash in water that would come straight from the near frozen standpipe in the yard.
A stale crust was all that remained in the food cupboard, and in her purse, one shilling and seven pence three farthings. She and Emmanuel sat in silence, chewing on the dry bread that stuck in their throats with only icy water to wash it down. Tresca’s dull, vacant eyes were trained on the bare floorboards where once the lovely rug had been. It had gone back to the shop, reluctantly taken by the proprietor for a fraction of what she had paid for it.
Her thoughts stole unbidden to Tremaine Farm and the happy Christmas preparations that she imagined would be taking place in the warm kitchen. But her memories of the farm had long become a broken dream, faded and indistinct, melting into shadows. Now she must face reality.
‘Good morning, Tresca, my lover,’ Mrs Ellacott greeted her as she entered the dairy an hour later. ‘I’s not seen you in a while. Half a pint, is it?’
Tresca might have blushed with shame, but she had gone beyond that now. ‘I’m afeared I can’t afford it,’ she admitted wearily. ‘But I were wondering if you needed any help?’
‘Still not found any work, then? Well as it happens, Sally’s gone to visit her mother what’s been took poorly, so you can help me making the butter. Give you sixpence if you works a few hours.’
Sixpence. It wouldn’t go far, but it was better than nothing, and Tresca felt good doing something useful again. So she spent the morning churning the cream into butter and squeezing out the excess whey until it was ready to pat into half-pound blocks. Mrs Ellacott watched her, nodding approvingly at her skill.
‘If I ever wants a dairymaid, I’ll have you, Tresca, cheel,’ she smiled, round cheeks shining. ‘But I cas’n see Sally leaving me for many a long year.’
With the sixpence safely in her purse and carrying the block of butter and pint jug of milk that Mrs Ellacott had given her, Tresca arrived home early in the afternoon. Emmanuel was supposed to be out looking for work, but at least Tresca now kept every penny in her purse so he couldn’t take any to buy himself a drink. The sixpence would buy a loaf and a little ham and cheese, enough to feed them for a day, and made more palatable by the butter and the cold milk to drink. But what would happen the day after that – or when the rent was due again?
Tresca’s shoulders slumped wearily. Why, oh why? Everything had been going so well, and now it had all fallen apart. She knew exactly how Bella must have felt all her life, and her heart wrenched with sympathy.
Bella. It would be good to talk to a friend and to see someone who was definitely worse off than she was. For surely there could be nothing worse than having been reduced to selling one’s body for a living.
She hurried back up the street. Mrs Mawes only locked the front door at night so Tresca was able to go straight in. Coldness gripped her heart as she climbed the dark, familiar stairs. Perhaps it would have been better if they had stayed in the cramped little room under the eaves. At least they might have had enough savings to tide them over until spring when they could probably have found work on the land again.
She knocked on Bella’s door and waited for an answer. None came. Her already dark mood sank with disappointment. It was unusual for Bella to be out during the day, unless she had secured a daytime ‘client’. Tresca shuddered, but she had come to accept Bella’s profession as part of life. She was sure Bella wouldn’t mind if she waited for her, so she opened the door and let herself in.
She sensed instantly that something was horribly, unutterably wrong. The air was cold, as still as death, grey ashes in the grate. Tresca’s eyes travelled over the room, and a gasp of shock scraped itself from her throat.
Bella was lying in bed, eyes closed in a marble white face. Her hair lay in a wild tangle, and Tresca followed her arm, which was hanging limply over the side of the bed. Then she noticed the burgundy puddle from the thick, dark liquid that was dripping from the middle of the mattress.
Every muscle in Tresca’s body froze rigid. She stared in agonized horror for several seconds before she broke free
from her shock. She threw back the covers and recoiled, hands over her mouth, at what she saw. Bella was lying in a pool of blood that seemed to be coming from the lower half of her body.
Oh, God.
In all her young life Tresca had never known the panic that locked itself about her. She must do something, but her head was spinning, making thought impossible. And then somehow, through a blinding fog, she found herself careering down the stairs, screaming for Mrs Mawes. But the house was as quiet as a morgue and the hallway deserted when she reached it.
She hammered on the kitchen door, frantic with desperation, and almost fell in when it was finally opened. Mrs Mawes bore an expression like thunder, which exploded when she saw who it was.
‘What the devil do you want, you—’
‘Get a doctor! Quickly!’ Tresca shrieked at her. ‘It’s Bella—’
‘Oh, it is, is it?’ Mrs Mawes replied with painful slowness. ‘If you thinks—’
‘Where can I find a doctor, then? Vera . . . Vera mentioned a Dr Greenwood. Come on, quickly!’
Mrs Mawes screwed up her lips. ‘There be a Dr Greenwood in Parkwood Road, so I believes—’
Tresca was already tearing out of the front door. Parkwood Road. She knew where that was. She raced down the hill, almost falling over her own feet in her headlong rush. Duke Street, then Brook Street, dodging in and out of people on foot, carts and carriages. Brook Street became Parkwood Road. There weren’t many houses here on the edge of the town, but which one? She spun round in a frenzy of despair, ready to break. And there was a brass plate, shining out at her.
She shot up the garden path.
‘One and thruppence!’ Emmanuel crowed, bursting in through the door. ‘’Elped clear out someone’s attic. So I bought a bag o’ coal cuz this room’s cold enough to freeze us to dead. An’ don’t you be tellin’ us off fer that! Oh . . .’ He stopped abruptly as Tresca lifted her tear-stained face to him. ‘Yere, princess, things bain’t so bad.’
She blinked at him. Sniffed. ‘Bella’s dead,’ she croaked, her voice broken and empty.
‘What?’ he breathed incredulously. ‘Surely . . .’
‘The doctor said it must have been a backstreet abortion. And it was all my fault,’ Tresca moaned wretchedly. ‘She said . . . a few weeks ago . . . that she were in trouble. But then she said it were because she couldn’t afford the rent. That weren’t it at all. If I hadn’t gone rushing in, poking my nose in, she might have told me the truth and we could . . . we could have helped her.’
She dropped her head forward again, closing her eyes against her tears. Emmanuel sat down beside her and she wept against his shoulder as he held her tightly.
‘Aw, no, princess. You’m not to blame. A cheel who lives like Bella did, well, no good ever comes of it. I knows ’ow you ’as a practical ’ead on your shoulders, but you cas’n solve everyone’s problems all the time, you knows. Things isn’t always what us wants. Let me light this fire, an’ us’ll feel better then.’
Tresca nodded. She didn’t mind one jot that he had spent some of his precious earnings on coal. She felt so numb that she really didn’t care about anything any more. But once they had the range fire going and its warmth seeped into her frozen bones, she began to feel the life returning to her limbs. They boiled some water and made some tea with the few spoons of dried leaves that were left. They had been used twice before, but weak tea would be better than no tea at all.
Emmanuel sighed as they huddled in front of the open firebox. ‘This be a terrible shock. Fer both of us, but mainly fer you. But there be some things us cas’n do nort about. Like me not gettin’ no younger an’ not ’avin’ the strength I used to. Must be old age creepin’ up on us.’
‘More likely the cold and being hungry all the time,’ Tresca murmured in reply.
‘But summat’ll ’appen for us, surely it will,’ Emmanuel told her, putting his arm round her shoulder again. ‘Just you sees.’
Yet at that moment, Tresca felt that their whole world was crumbling to dust.
Eleven
The bell on the shop door gave an ominous clang like a pauper’s death knell as Tresca struggled inside with the heavy basket on her arm. The weather had changed overnight, less cold but bringing sheeting rain that skated down the steep surface of Bannawell Street in a torrent. Yet if they were to eat that day, Tresca needed to get some money from somewhere. And so she had trudged down the hill and then up West Street to Trembath’s hardware shop, rain driving into her face. Not surprisingly, Tavistock was almost deserted. Anyone with any sense would stay indoors, but needs must and so Tresca had battled miserably through the rain, her skirt soaking up water from the street so that it clung, cold and uncomfortable, about her knees.
‘Miss Ladycott, let me help you!’ Morgan Trembath sprang forward the instant he saw her. ‘What made you come out on such a morning?’
He ushered her inside, holding the door for her and taking the basket, which surprised him with its weight. The forlorn expression on her lovely face made something happen to his heart. She looked thin and pale, the bloom gone from her cheeks, and it worried him.
But when she reached the counter, the fire came back into her eyes. Morgan heaved the basket on to the polished surface and was taken aback as she removed several bundles of rags and carefully began to unwrap them without uttering a word. And then he realized with astonishment that each parcel contained a part of the oil lamp he had sold to her a month previously.
‘Oh dear, was there something wrong with it?’ he asked apologetically.
‘No,’ she answered flatly, lifting her chin. ‘But I were hoping you might buy it back from me. You can see it’s in perfect condition.’
Morgan’s eyes opened wide. He had never been asked such a thing before. It certainly looked brand new, as if it had never been used. Either that or she had given it a jolly good clean. He picked up each component in turn, inspecting it before he assembled it into the one item.
‘Well,’ he faltered, pursing his lips, ‘I wouldn’t normally buy something back, but maybe, as it’s you . . .’
Tresca held his gaze hopefully. Then the doorbell clanged again and there were footsteps behind her, but she didn’t turn her head. She mustn’t let him be distracted.
‘We don’t deal in second-hand goods,’ a woman’s high voice declared, and Tresca’s courage shrank as Mrs Trembath appeared from the room, some sort of office she assumed, behind the counter. She had evidently heard the conversation and now she stood gloating, arms folded implacably across her mean bosom.
‘B–but, Mother, it’s like new,’ Morgan stammered.
‘Then she’ll get a good price for it at the pawnbroker’s.’
Tresca met the woman’s steely eyes, hoping her own challenging expression might make her rethink. But Mrs Trembath threw her a withering glance and disappeared back into the room, closing the door with a deliberate flourish. A shattering silence echoed around the shop, broken only by Mr Penwaite clearing his throat as he pretended to tidy an already precise display of kitchen utensils.
‘I’m so sorry, Miss Ladycott,’ Morgan began sympathetically.
‘That’s perfectly all right. I understand.’ Tresca wondered, though, how she had spoken with such clarity when she was almost choking on her humiliation.
‘That’s a mighty pretty lamp, so it is.’
The voice behind her made her jump. She recognized it at once. She had not seen Connor since the night he had refused to give Emmanuel his job back, and now the hatred froze solid inside her. It somehow pleased her to see him dressed in his working clothes, his muddied waterproof as wet and dripping as she was.
‘I’ve come to order some more casks of oil for the workmen’s lamps,’ he went on, ‘but I were after buying another lamp for meself, and doesn’t that one rather take me fancy. How much was it new?’
‘I believe it was one shilling and ten pence, wasn’t it, Miss Ladycott?’
‘Then I’ll give you one and six, if you
think it’s a fair price.’
He had already taken a handful of change from his pocket and was counting out the money. Tresca might have thrown the coins back in his face, but she couldn’t do so in front of young Mr Trembath, and one and six would feed them for another few days. She managed to mumble her thanks and then escaped from the shop as quickly as she could.
‘Tresca, wait, will you?’
She ignored the voice calling after her and hurried on down the street. Rain lashed into her face, mingling with the smarting tears of degradation Connor had caused her to suffer and running down her neck inside her clothes. She could have cursed, turning her head away as Connor’s footsteps splashed up beside her.
‘Sure you’re wet through, child. What happened to your coat and that fancy umbrella I’ve seen you with?’
Oh, God. She couldn’t admit to him that they were at the pawnbroker’s, along with the pretty quilts she had made, her father’s waterproofs and their spare clothes, the saucepan she had also bought from Trembath’s but was sure they wouldn’t take back, and anything else they could do without. As soon as night closed in, she and Emmanuel took to their beds to shiver through the hours of darkness as they couldn’t afford a candle, let alone oil for the lamp. And it wasn’t as if they hadn’t tried like fury to find work. But times were hard and even the better-off were being careful with their money. And if shopkeepers were enjoying good business with the navvies in town, any extra jobs had long been taken up and the days had passed without a sniff of work.
‘Here, have me coat, acushla.’
Before she knew it, Tresca felt the weight of Connor’s waterproof on her shoulders as she scuttled along. Raging contempt swept her agony aside, and she flung the garment off. It landed in a puddle. She gave an ironic laugh and hurried on.