by Marie Joseph
‘He took some persuading to sit down at the table,’ she’d laughed, ‘but I told him I was used to feeding men in the middle of the night before they went to work, so in the end he gave in.’
The laugh had done it. That and the little touching scene with Annie outside in the cold morning air with no more than a neck shawl over her dress, and that long red hair waving down her back, not decently hidden beneath a cap. She had looked like a young wife seeing her husband off to work. Nellie’s heart contracted as she remembered the way Mr Armstrong had leaned down from the saddle to touch Annie lightly on her cheek. Couldn’t he see that she was bamboozling him? Making herself indispensable? Was he like all men after all, a soft touch when it came to a pretty face, especially a pretty laughing face?
She decided to play her trump card.
‘It will be Biddy who has to go if you stay. Mr Armstrong can’t keep three of us in a house this size. He’s not made of money.’
‘Biddy?’ Annie’s expression was one of horror. ‘Oh, no. Biddy can’t go away from here. She’s happy. They don’t want her back at home. Her mother would make her go back to work in the mill. She did it for a month and she hated it. For me to stay and Biddy to go would be wrong. Mr Armstrong wouldn’t …’
‘You think you know him, don’t you?’ Nellie stood up. ‘You’d not set foot over this doorstep at Christmas, and you think you know him better than me who’s looked after him for years? How do you know what Mr Armstrong would or would not do? Did you know him when he carried his dead baby down the stairs in his arms, his face like a mask? Were you there when he tried to force his wife to eat, spooning the food into her mouth then wiping it away when she let it dribble down her chin?’
There were limp grey strands straggling down the housekeeper’s neck from the bun that hadn’t been properly fastened up that morning. On a young girl they would have looked endearing, but they gave Mrs Martindale the look of an old woman well into senility.
Suddenly Annie felt sorry for her.
‘Biddy need have no fear for her job,’ she said quietly. ‘If one of us has to go it won’t be her.’
That night Seth motioned to the high-winged chair by the fire for Annie to sit down when she went in to collect his tray.
‘I feel like talking tonight, Annie,’ he told her. ‘You got me off to such a good start this morning I rode out farther than I’d intended.’
‘Forgetting you’d got to come all the way back.’
Seth grinned. ‘Take that silly cap off. Whose is it, anyway?’
‘It belonged to Mrs Martindale when she was a kitchen maid to a real lord.’
‘And did he like it? I very much doubt it.’
As Annie took off the offending cap, Mrs Martindale put her head round the door.
‘Annie’s needed in the kitchen, sir.’ Her lined face was stiff with distaste at the sight of Annie Clancy sitting there round the fire with her master, just as if she was his equal.
‘Good night, Mrs Martindale.’
‘Dismissing me as if I was a nothing,’ the housekeeper told Biddy. ‘Who was it said that virtue had its own reward?’
‘Not me, Mrs Martindale.’
Biddy went back to her novelette. She had just reached an exciting part where the eldest son of a Duke had fallen from his horse in a riding accident, thus putting his inheritance in jeopardy. Now if he died, the younger brother, who hadn’t a decent bone in his body, could become the next Duke and what would happen then? Would he become a reformed character, or would he gamble away the family fortune? And what about Lady Ursula, the beautiful bride-to-be? Would she die of a broken heart? Slowly Biddy ran her finger along another line.
Nellie crouched over the kitchen fire, brooding on the fact that in all the years of working in this house, she had never once been invited to sit down in the same room as her employer. Or had that madam sat herself down without being asked? She wouldn’t put it past her. Leaning forward, she poked the fire so fiercely that a piece of coal dislodged itself to fall into the hearth sending up a shower of sparks.
‘Do you ever think about your father, Annie?’
Seth stretched out his legs across the hearthrug, avoiding the dog sprawled there, leaned his head back and closed his eyes. The fire was so bright with flames he could see them dancing through his closed eyelids. It was good to sit with a woman again, to close his eyes if he wanted to, to talk or not to talk.
‘Do you mind if I go and get my sewing, sir?’ She sounded worried.
‘What on earth for?’ Seth folded his arms comfortably across his chest. ‘Can’t you just sit for once?’
‘Not without a terrible feeling of guilt I can’t.’
‘Guilt?’
She tried to explain. ‘It’s not right to sit without something in your fingers. Mending, or patching. And then only when you’ve done all that is to be done.’
‘Good God! What a dreadful outlook on life. You mean you never stand and stare, Annie?’
‘What at?’
He shook his head. ‘Never mind. Let me ask you a question again. Do you ever think about your father, Annie?’
‘Not if I can help it.’
‘Because he beat you?’
‘No. Because he didn’t like me.’ She sighed. ‘You can’t keep on and on trying to make someone like you. There comes a day when you just stop trying.’ Annie looked down at her folded hands. ‘Would you like me to mend that tear in your jacket while I’m here?’
Seth ignored her. ‘I was a great disappointment to my father, Annie. I wasn’t prepared to grow into the mould he’d planned for me. In the end I killed him.’
‘Shot him?’ Annie’s eyes flew wide.
‘Indirectly I killed him.’ Seth’s right hand was on the dog’s head. He needed to talk. Oh, dear God, how badly he needed to talk. ‘My father owned a cotton mill this side of Bolton. It was built by my grandfather at the beginning of the last century, then about forty years ago my father extended it to twice its size, using one of the new buildings for manufacturing velvet. Twenty years on, the cardroom was extended and business boomed.’
Annie blinked as a piece of coal suddenly dislodged itself to fall into the hearth. Instinctively she got up to reach for the fire tongs.
‘Leave it be.’ Seth waved her back to her chair. ‘I’ll see to it.’ He took his pipe from the rack and cradled it unlit in his hand. ‘As the only son, it was considered inevitable that I would go straight into the mill from school, and this I did.’ He stared at the pipe in his hand. ‘To tell you I hated it wouldn’t convey how much I loathed it. The non-ending clatter of the looms pounded in my head till I thought I’d go mad. I felt I would choke on the cotton fluff. Our house was so close to the mill you could hear the growl of the caged machinery, and the black smoke from the chimneys coated everything within miles. I’d been away to school down in Sussex, a school set in the midst of rolling fields with the sea so close you could taste the smell of it on your tongue.’
‘Tell me about the sea,’ Annie wanted to say, but she knew that now wasn’t the time. Mr Armstrong was busting to get something off his chest, and the kindest thing she could do for him was to listen and keep her own mouth shut.
‘My mother died about this time and left me some money, and when I told my father I wanted to leave the mill and enrol at the Glasgow Veterinary College to work towards passing the Royal College examinations, he was so angry he swore he would never speak to me again.’
Seth raised his eyes to stare directly at her and when she saw the pain in them, Annie found she had to look away.
‘My father kept his word. All my letters to him were returned, and when I tried to see him at the house he ordered his manservant to throw me out. Then one day I went to the mill. It was shut down for the night but I knew my father would be there working in his office. The mill was his life, you see, especially after my mother died.’
Annie held her breath.
‘We had a terrible row. I reminded my father that h
is brother’s three boys were all working willingly in the mill and that any one of them would be able to take his place when he retired. I also reminded him that it would mean there would still be an Armstrong at the helm. I tried to make him see that my life from now on would be working with animals, not in some town practice, but in the country away from the smoke and the grime.’
Seth’s voice was now no more than a whisper so that Annie had to watch his mouth carefully to read what he was saying.
‘We said terrible things to each other. He accused me of betraying my heritage; he said that if I was half a man I would buckle to and take my rightful place by his side in the mill. He raised his hand to strike me, but I held his arm quite easily. We glared at each other without speaking for what seemed to be a long time – then I turned on my heel and walked out, leaving him reaching for the whisky bottle.’
‘You look like you could do with a drop yourself, sir,’ Annie whispered. ‘Shall I …?’ She motioned towards the round table with the whisky decanter on it, but Seth shook his head at her and made a slicing movement with his hand, so that she sat still, as silent as he obviously wanted her to be. There was a ragged despair in his voice when he began to speak again.
‘My father liked his drink, Annie, but he could hold it, yet that night he must have got blind drunk …’
‘Don’t go on if you don’t want to, sir.’ Annie felt a small knot of fear tighten low down in her stomach. Why was he talking to her like this? Telling her things she could swear he’d never opened his mouth about before. Delaying her, so that Mrs Martindale would have yet another reason for sending her away. She half rose from her seat.
‘Cotton fluff is oily, Annie. My father used candles as well as gas lighting. He’d been promising to replace the wooden beams by cast-iron, but he’d never got round to it. He’d been talking for years about an idea of replacing the pitch roof with a flat one to be connected to the water in the mill lodge by a pipe. He’d talked about sprinklers … Talked … and done nothing. The worst happened that night. The mill caught fire and the whole building was burnt out within the hour. It went up like a torch.’ His head slumped forward. ‘The charred remains of what had once been my father were found slumped at his desk. The only faint consolation I have is that they said he must have been overcome by the smoke before the flames got to him.’
‘But you didn’t kill him, sir!’
Annie was at his side like a flash, kneeling by his chair, reaching for his hands to pull them away from his face. There were tears on his cheeks, and when she saw them she was at a loss to know what to do. She had never seen a man cry before and the sight shocked and upset her. She twined her fingers in his.
‘The mills were always catching fire round where I used to live, Mr Armstrong! I remember me mother taking me to see one once. She lifted me up to see better and the whole sky was as red as if it was bleeding. Them mills used to catch fire on their own. Like an explosion. There wasn’t nothing you could do, sir.’
When he raised his head and looked at her, as if he wondered who she could be, Annie knew it was time to leave him be. She felt that for her to remain would be a terrible embarrassment to him when he pulled himself together. No man wanted a woman to see him cry.
‘It’s done you a power of good to talk to me, sir,’ she said softly, ‘but I’ll be off to bed now. Good night, sir.’
Seth drew her to him, lifted her and held her close against him.
‘Annie … little Annie …’
Her eyes, wide and startled, were the dark blue of a bruised bluebell; she smelled as clean and sweet as new mown hay. It had been months since he held a woman in his arms. Afterwards he blamed it on the dancing firelight, the sweetness of her, the kindness in her eyes. But most of all it was the urgent need in him.
As he kissed her his arms tightened round her, holding her close and fierce against him. For a brief wild moment he was so sure she responded, the kiss deepened as he trembled, all control gone. When she stiffened against him, twisting away, beating at him with her fists, pushing him away with all her strength, he opened his eyes and saw naked fear in her face. At once he set her from him.
‘Annie … Annie, love … I’ve no wish to frighten you.’ He still held her by the arms. ‘I thought …’
Annie closed her eyes against the very sight of him. In those last few moments he had been Laurie Yates all over again. He had been the black-haired Laurie with his mouth on hers, giving her feelings that had led to her letting him do what he wanted with her … giving her a baby … The terror tightened in her throat, crept up to her eyes, filling them with tears.
‘Let me go, sir,’ she whimpered. ‘Oh, please, please let me go.’
When he released her she almost fell, but before she could reach the door he was behind her, jerking her round to face him.
‘Is that what he did, the travelling man? Forced you against your will?’His face darkened. ‘You’re safe enough with me, little Annie. I’ve never taken a woman against her will yet, and I never will.’ The sheer terror on her face maddened him so much he lashed out in fury. ‘You really think the gypsy is coming back to marry you? After what he did?’ Tilting her chin he forced her to meet his eyes. ‘He’s not coming back, and you know it. Why don’t you grow up, Annie, and face a truth you must know?’
When she pummelled her fists against his chest, he let her go, standing in the panelled hallway as she pounded up the stairs. When he heard her shoot the bolt on her bedroom door he went back to the fire and kicked at the coals with a slippered foot, sending a shower of sparks up the chimney.
Seth was away and gone before Annie came down to the kitchen the next morning.
‘Where will I go?’ she asked Mrs Martindale, when the housekeeper told her that the carrier would be calling with his cart within the hour, and that today was as good as any for her to leave.
Nellie hadn’t been born yesterday. She had heard the way Annie had rushed up the stairs to shut herself away in her room, and she’d half expected to hear Mr Armstrong follow her. But then she’d realised that a forward girl like Annie Clancy wouldn’t stand a chance with a gentleman like Mr Armstrong. He could pick and choose; soiled goods wouldn’t do for him. Deliberately she closed her mind to the woman he visited in Manchester every month or so, stopping for two nights at a time.
‘I can give you her name,’ her informant had told her. ‘She’s been set up in a house by at least five men from the Exchange. They have their set times for visiting. She’s a high-class prostitute.’
The very word had upset Nellie no end. There was no proof, so she chose not to believe it. When the master went to Manchester he went on business, that was all.
Bending down to the fire-oven, she took out the first of a batch of crusty one-pound loaves. ‘I’ll fill this one with brawn and that should see you right till you get home.’ She straightened up. ‘You know that’s the best thing for you, don’t you?’
‘You know I won’t go home, Mrs Martindale. I’m not going home till September when Laurie will be coming for me. I’d rather die than go back there now.’
‘Well, we can’t have that, can we?’
Now that the matter was settled Nellie was inclined to be generous. Something akin to pity stirred in her flat bosom. Leaving the bread to cool on a wire-mesh tray, she rubbed the side of her long nose.
‘I’ve been thinking, Annie. Let’s have our cocoa. You mix it ready and I’ll get the kettle back on the boil. There’s a farmer I know by the name of Barney Eccles. His wife is a cousin of mine in a roundabout way.’ She sniffed. ‘Not that we’ve spoken in many a long year.’
She closed her eyes briefly at the memory of the pretty girl who had got herself into trouble, been overjoyed that the man had stuck by her, married him and gone on to have a baby every other year, or so she’d heard.
‘They’re a big family, Annie. So help won’t come amiss and I’m sure if you mention my name they’ll take you in. Lily always had a kind heart. That was pr
obably her downfall,’ she added. ‘You must tell her that you looked after your brothers on your own after your mother died.’ She passed a cup of frothy steaming cocoa over to Annie. ‘I’ll have a word with the carter. I’m pretty sure he goes out that way of a Tuesday. One thing I’m sure of. You won’t be turned away. The farm is miles from nowhere and the Eccles’s seem to have trouble keeping their servants. Young girls don’t like being so far from the town.’ She gave a thin sarcastic smile. ‘But with you being betrothed and more or less passing time on until your fiancé comes to claim you, that won’t bother you, will it?’
‘Why so sudden?’ Biddy wanted to know.
‘Well, I can’t stay here, can I?’ The concern on Biddy’s round face made tears smart suddenly in Annie’s eyes. ‘Mr Armstrong only took me in till I was better, then the snow came. I’ve outstayed my welcome as it is.’
‘Does he know you’re going:’ Suspicion sharpened Biddy’s nose. ‘It seems funny to me you going all at once like this.’
‘Of course he knows.’ Annie told the lie easily. ‘The carrier won’t be passing this way for another week, maybe not that if the cold snap comes back.’ She forced a smile. ‘Anyway, I’ve got a place to go to.’
‘A decent place?’
Annie nodded, walked quickly to the door and climbed the stairs to her room. Before she shamed herself by sobbing on Biddy’s shoulder.
She never actually said goodbye to Biddy. Instead she stayed in her room, looking her last on the polished mahogany chest-of-drawers, the matching dressing-table with its oval stand-mirror.
She stripped her bed, folding the sheets ready for the wash, and she stood by the window staring out at the pearl-grey sky banked with heavy grey clouds. She looked her fill at the river-like stream with the willow tree trailing broken branches into swirling brown water.
Then she sat down on the edge of her bed and in her small even handwriting, using the stub of a pencil rather than go downstairs for the bottle of ink, wrote a short letter.