by Annie Groves
‘Have the car brought round immediately! At once!’ Her hands were trembling so much she had to let her maid help her into her coat. She hadn’t felt like this, experienced this degree of fear and pain since…Quickly, she closed her eyes as tightly as she could, forcing back the acid burn of her tears. That other loss was two decades ago now, and those years had softened its rawness. But she must not think about that now!
‘The car’s here, madam.’
Taking a deep breath, she opened her eyes.
White-faced, Mary hurried into the chaotic busyness of the infirmary. Everywhere she looked there were people huddled around makeshift beds. The sounds of moans and sobbing filled the air, the full horror of what was happening highlighted by the sudden cries of despair whenever someone realised that they had lost a loved one.
As she stood stock-still, too shocked by the scene before her to move, Mary was conscious of the anguish of those around her: mothers, clutching their shawls and begging every passing nurse if they had seen their daughters; men who should have been young but now looked aged beyond belief, crying out hoarsely for their wives and sweethearts. And lying over everything, infiltrating everywhere, overpowering even the fierce smell of carbolic, lay the stench of blood and death.
A nurse, her starched uniform soiled, hurried down the ward, shaking off all those who tried to reach out to her to beg for news of their loved ones.
As she reached one of her colleagues, Mary heard her saying, ‘The morgue is already full and we have nowhere to put any more bodies. And still they are bringing them in – or rather what bits of them they can find.’
Mary’s gorge rose, and she turned away, forcing back her nausea.
Somewhere in this carnage lay Gideon. And she intended to find him!
It took her close on an hour, having given up asking the exhausted and impatient medical staff, following instead the example of the other searchers as anxious as herself and examining the occupant of every bed.
Some of the sights she saw were so sickeningly distressing that she wondered if these victims might not be better dead. A young girl, a child really, with one arm torn off, her face so badly bruised it was impossible to recognise what was really left of it, lay moaning on one bed and, despite her urgent need to find Gideon, Mary had to stop beside her and do what she could to comfort the child. A nun appeared beside her, silent and black-clad, taking the child’s hand from Mary and beginning to pray. As the child struggled to breathe, Mary heard the beginnings of the death rattle in her throat.
Getting up she plunged blindly through the ward. Not even Dante himself could have depicted a scene more horrific!
When she couldn’t find Gideon amongst those waiting for treatment, she began to fear the worst.
‘You could always try the morgue,’ one of the nurses told her.
Mary could feel herself dizzying with anguish and despair, and then she overheard someone saying that those who had already received treatment had been removed to another ward. Mary almost ran towards it.
Here, there was some sort of order, although the moans of those who were lying on the neatly made beds were pitiful to hear.
‘I am looking for Gideon Walker,’ Mary told the nurse, her heart slamming heavily against her ribs as the woman pursed her lips and frowned.
‘Who are you?’ she demanded brusquely. ‘The next of kin?’ Without waiting for Mary to reply, she ordered her curtly, ‘Wait here.’
Whilst she waited, the woman sitting at a nearby bed, holding the hand of the girl lying still on it, suddenly gave a keening howl of grief, and burst out, ‘My daughter. My baby…she’s gone…she’s gone…’
Rigid with distress, Mary tried to look away as two nurses tried to pull the woman from the body of her daughter, but found she could not tear her gaze from the haunting scene.
‘You are enquiring about Gideon Walker?’
Mary turned to look into the haggard face of the man standing in front of her. She guessed that he was probably only in his early thirties, but right now he looked closer to sixty.
‘Yes.’ Her throat had gone so dry that her voice was a papery rasp. ‘I…He…’
‘He’s alive – just,’ the doctor told her, ‘but he’s still unconscious. He lost a lot of blood.’
‘Can I…can I see him?’ Mary whispered.
The doctor gave a tired nod of consent.
Gideon was at the end of the ward, his limbs – or so it seemed to Mary from her anxious glance – still mercifully intact, a bandage pinned round his head and another binding his wrist.
‘You said he was unconscious,’ she said anxiously.
‘He suffered a blow to his head, as well as the damage to his hand.’
‘Why isn’t someone sitting with him – a nurse?’ Mary demanded.
The doctor gave her a grim look. ‘Given the numbers of injured we’re trying to deal with he’s lucky to have a bed, and to have seen a surgeon.’
Mary took a deep breath. ‘If he is well enough to be moved, I want to take him home.’ As the doctor frowned she told him fiercely, ‘He will receive every care, I assure you – the very best of care.’
‘I shall have to speak with the chief surgeon,’ he told her stiffly.
Mary could see that he did not like her interference, but she could also see how desperately he needed every single bed for more patients, who were even now being brought into the room.
It took Mary over half an hour to get the infirmary’s chief surgeon to agree that she could take Gideon home, and then a further two hours to make arrangements for him to be carried there, well protected with blankets and pillows she had had brought from her home, on a flat conveyance, so that he should not be any further hurt.
‘He is still unconscious,’ Mary had overheard the young doctor protesting to the chief surgeon.
‘His lack of consciousness won’t kill him, but an infection from his injury very well may, and we already have enough bodies here, don’t you think?’ had been his senior’s cynical reply.
TWENTY-ONE
‘Dead? Dozens of people killed? But not Gideon? You did say not Gideon, Cecily?’ Ellie could not hide her panic.
‘No, no, he’s alive. But it was awful, Ellie, truly dreadful.’
Ellie learned of the accident within hours of it happening from her cousin Cecily, who had heard of it from her mother.
‘Gideon!’ she whispered, pressing her hand to her breast as though to control the furious racing of her heart, and swaying so much that she had to reach for a chair in Cecily’s morning room to support herself. ‘Gideon has been hurt?’
‘Ellie, I’m so sorry,’ Cecily tried to comfort her, her own face paling as she recognised the intensity of Ellie’s emotions. Ellie had always insisted that Mr Walker no longer meant anything to her, and Cecily had believed her, but now…It was too late for her to wish that she had not mentioned his name, Cecily recognised, or to refuse to answer Ellie’s frantically anxious questions.
‘What has happened? Tell me. I want to know everything. Tell me, Cecily,’ she demanded fiercely.
Cecily bit her lip, but Ellie would not be denied.
‘Tell me,’ she insisted.
‘Well, it seems that my father saw Mr Walker when he was first taken into hospital,’ Cecily informed her reluctantly, ‘and –’
‘He is in hospital?’
Cecily looked away, her tender heart aching for the anguish she could see in her cousin’s eyes.
Then: ‘Ellie, Ellie, where are you going?’ she called after her worriedly as, without a word, Ellie turned and ran towards the door.
‘Cecily, I’m sorry, I have to go,’ she told her.
They had planned to go shopping together, but Cecily made no attempt to dissuade her. Nevertheless, just as soon as Ellie had gone she lost no time in telephoning her husband to confide in him her anxieties about her cousin.
‘She must still love him, Paul,’ she wept. ‘And yet she has always denied doing so.’
&nbs
p; ‘She is more than likely suffering from shock,’ Paul had comforted her. ‘Leave her be for now, Cecily. Ellie is a sensible and very strong young woman. She will soon be her normal self again, you’ll see. As to her loving Gideon Walker, it would be unnatural in the circumstances if she were not affected by such dreadful news, but Ellie has accepted Henry’s proposal of marriage.’
Ellie wasn’t quite sure how she came to be standing on Preston station. She had no recollection of having boarded the train in Liverpool, but obviously she must have done so.
The motion of the hansom cab made her feel sick, its air stale and fetid.
A grim pall of death hung over the infirmary, although its corridors were empty, and there was nothing of the disaster for Ellie to see.
‘Gideon Walker?’ The exhausted-looking nurse frowned as Ellie gave Gideon’s name in a faltering voice. ‘Who are you then?’
‘I…he is a friend of my family,’ Ellie managed to respond. She had gone terribly cold and her teeth had started to chatter. She felt sick, dizzy, light-headed, a hundred times worse than she had done when her mother had died. Because this time her fear wasn’t for herself but for Gideon? She fought to resist the thought.
The nurse scrutinised her before replying, ‘What a shame, duck. You won’t be able to see him. You’re too late. He’s gone!’
Ellie gasped and swayed, her face blenching. Gideon was dead! She would never see him again. Never hear his voice…The pain tore at her like nothing she had ever experienced or ever imagined – dark, feral, clawing and ripping at her like a wild animal.
‘Aye,’ the woman continued, oblivious to Ellie’s distress. ‘Some fine lady came and took him away. In a fair old state she was too, proper upset! And a grand to-do about her taking ’im away, but they let her in the end.’
Mary Isherwood – that must be who the woman was talking about, Ellie guessed through her blaze of pain. Mary Isherwood had taken Gideon.
Numbly Ellie started to walk away.
‘Ellie?’
Ellie stared uncomprehendingly into her Aunt Amelia’s stern face as though she were a stranger.
‘What are you doing here in Preston? In Winckley Square and on your own?’
‘I came to see Gideon,’ Ellie told her quietly.
Amelia Gibson frowned, her lips pursing. ‘Quite obviously, Ellie, you are not feeling yourself, otherwise you would never have done something so…foolish. Does my sister know you are here? No?’ she challenged, when Ellie merely shook her head slowly. ‘Come with me, Ellie. This sort of behaviour is intolerable and would have deeply shamed your mother.’
‘Gideon…’ Ellie began helplessly, as her aunt took a firm hold of her arm.
‘I will not hear that young man’s name spoken,’ Amelia Gibson told her coldly. ‘I am disappointed in you, Ellie. How can you behave so, after everything that has been done for you?’
Ellie gave a deep shudder as her aunt pushed her firmly into her home.
‘Have you any idea how shocked I was to look out of my parlour window and see you standing in the square, for all the world…?’ Her lips folded into a condemningly hard line. ‘I shall telephone my sister immediately and you will be sent back to Liverpool on the first available train, and from there escorted to Hoylake. Whatever can have possessed you?’
Ellie wanted to cry even though her eyes were so dry that she could not do so. She had no more idea than her aunt as to just what had motivated her behaviour, or even of how she came to be in Winckley Square.
‘So, miss, what do you have to say for yourself?’
Ellie quailed as she looked into the angry features of her Uncle Parkes. He had sent for her to present herself to him in his study, making her feel like a prisoner as she was firmly escorted there by his manservant.
The air in the room was so thick with cigar smoke that it made her choke a little. A decanter of spirit stood nearly empty on his desk, a half-filled glass beside it.
As he came out from behind his desk and walked towards her, Ellie could smell the overpowering scent of alcohol on his breath.
‘I-I can’t explain what…why…my feelings…’
Ellie realised immediately that she had said the wrong thing as his face darkened and he took a step towards her.
‘Your feelings. Aye, well, we all know now what those are, don’t we?’ he raged. ‘Just as we all know what you are! Bringing disgrace upon yourself and upon my house by…’ Reaching for his glass, he took a deep swallow, almost emptying it, whilst Ellie trembled in distress.
‘You are an ungrateful little harlot – a whore. And it is my duty to castigate and punish you for your sinfulness.’
Ellie was beginning to feel frightened. Her uncle’s face was a dark red colour, and tiny specks of spittle flew from his mouth as he raged at her, calling her all manner of horrible things, using words she had never heard before but which she knew instinctively were degrading and disgusting. Shock piled up on top of shock, fear upon fear, until they lay suffocatingly heavy over her, choking, smothering her ability to protest.
She felt numbed, as though what was happening around her could not possibly be real, and yet at the same time her senses were somehow heightened so that she could feel the sharp, savage bite of her own fear so intensely that it was magnified a hundred times. She was afraid of the intensity of his anger, which was totally outside her experience but, more than that, she was desperately afraid of the danger she could sense closing around her, a danger that had its roots in the sickening look she could see in his eyes, the hot feral smell he was generating in the air around her, the deep inner awareness she suddenly had that made her want to turn and run, and yet held her immobile where she stood.
‘Engaged to a decent, respectable young man, and yet you go whoring with your lover – well, I fully intend to put an end to that. You will marry Henry Charnock, miss, without delay, and just to make sure you understand what I am saying to you…’
To Ellie’s terror he removed a thick heavy leather belt studded with brass from his desk drawer, wrapping it slowly and almost caressingly around his hand as he stared at her, transfixing her with the intensity of his gaze.
‘There is only one way to punish females like you!’
Terrified, Ellie turned and ran blindly towards the door, but Josiah reached it before her, barring her exit, his lips parting in a hot panting breath of pleasure as he saw her fear and heard her small anguished cry of despair.
‘Seeking to evade your deserved punishment. For that you will get double rations.’
He was insane, Ellie decided frantically. He had to be. Just the sight of the hot, gloating look in his eyes made her feel sick and faint. She could not believe that this was happening. Her own father had never once whipped either her or her sister in all their lives, and he was a mere butcher, whilst her uncle was a gentleman. Then she remembered the bruises she had seen on her aunt’s body, and the haunting look of fear Ellie had so often seen in her eyes as she looked at her husband.
Later Ellie was to acknowledge that it was in those seconds, trapped in that room, that she had undergone the fiercely swift and ferociously painful metamorphosis from which she emerged as a very different person. Panic shocked through her. Helplessly she looked towards the curtained window, but even if she could reach it before her uncle she knew she could not escape through it.
As she looked at him the plea she had been about to make to him to reconsider his actions died unspoken. He was licking his lips lasciviously and, as he smiled coldly at her, Ellie saw the way his hand strayed to his own body.
Her face burning with outrage and shame, she looked away from him, her stomach heaving.
‘Little whore.’ He said it almost tenderly, but his grip on her shoulder was anything but tender, making her cry out in pain. ‘You should be thankful to me that I am providing you with the respectability of a husband; protecting you from your own sinfulness! Slut…harlot…’ He ground out the words in her face, covering her skin in spittle as he low
ered his mouth towards hers.
Nauseous, Ellie managed to turn her face aside as she frantically begged him to stop.
‘Stop? Why? Do not pretend that you are not enjoying it,’ he taunted her. ‘A slut like you – how many times have you done it? Tell me…’
Sobbing, Ellie tried desperately to pull away, gasping in terror as she felt the sleeve of her gown tear beneath his grip.
‘Defy me, would you?’ Josiah challenged her savagely.
His hand was on her bare arm, his nails digging into her flesh. Revulsion jolted through her, a hot lava-flow of disgust. His hand moved from her arm to the bodice of her dress, his fingers clawing at her breast.
A strength she hadn’t known she possessed came to her rescue, and she shoved him aside with all her might.
Caught off guard he staggered but still retained his hold on her.
‘Now you will be punished,’ he told her, and Ellie could see the anticipatory pleasure in his eyes.
As he spoke he reached for the front of her gown, tearing at it, his nails sharp against her skin. Ellie screamed as she felt his hot breath against her semi-exposed breasts as his fingers tugged and pinched at them.
Her shock and fear, the heat, the stench of alcohol and male sexual aggression were overwhelming her. She could feel her senses starting to slip away. Frantically she fought to remain conscious.
He was tearing at her skirts now, and reaching for the leather belt. Terror-stricken, Ellie screamed again. She could see him raising his arm, the light glinting off the brass studs on the belt. She was doomed. He would beat her senseless and then…She dare not even think of it.
Desperately she tried to pull away from him, but the pain of his fingers squeezing tightly into her breast was agonising. As the reality of what was happening to her crashed down on her, Ellie instinctively prayed to her mother.
‘Stop fighting me and take your punishment, little whore…’
‘Josiah, let her go at once!’
Ellie wasn’t sure which of them was the more shocked by the coldly demanding sound of her aunt’s voice, her uncle or herself.