Angel Meadow Read online

  “You’ve not got the better of that thing yet, I see. I would have thought that by now it would have learned who was master.”

  Josh Hayes shrugged but did not smile, nor had she meant him to. He led the animal to a denuded silver birch, tying her to a low branch to allow her to crop the stiff grass, then walked back and sat down beside Nancy as though it were the most natural thing in the world to do. He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his chin cupped in his hands, studying pensively the white, glittering world ahead of him.

  In contrast to her he was richly dressed, his cape a warm wool, his polished boots expensive, his jacket, which she could see beneath the cape, a double lining against the bitter cold. And it was cold now, for the sun had moved behind them leaving them both in the shade. Neither spoke for several minutes and yet the silence was not oppressive.

  “I seem to see you in the strangest places,” he said at last, “and yes, Copper still fights me for her own way. But she has a lovely nature and I will not give up on her.”

  “She’s a beautiful animal.”

  “Yes. But won’t you tell me what you’re doing out here? You must be a long way from home.” Meaning, she knew, that one didn’t expect to see a mill girl in this splendid area.

  “Am I trespassing?” she asked abruptly.

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Well then, I have as much right as you to be here.”

  “Of course, I just meant—”

  “That I am out of my proper station in life.”

  He frowned, turning to her and she saw the pale smoky grey of his eyes darken. He had the most beautiful eyes surrounded by long, dark lashes of which any woman would have been proud, she found herself thinking, set in a face that was young and arrogant and yet humorous, ready, she thought, to smile if she would. The last time she had spoken to him in the mill yard she had given him the rounds of the kitchen for his carelessness with his horse among the children. The last time she had seen him she had been with Mick at the Arts Treasures Exhibition and she remembered the strange communication that had passed between them. It was as though they would have spoken but she had Mick’s arm possessively round her and his family had been about him and he had been hurried away by the man she knew to be his father, the owner of Monarch Mill, Edmund Hayes. Since then she had not clapped eyes on him, had not even given him a thought, but then why should she? He was nothing to her and she was nothing to him and why she should have such a curious thought was beyond her.

  “Are you warm enough?” he said at last. She had begun to shiver, for despite the good shawl she wore it was not really the most practical garment to sit about in in January.

  Her face was cold and unsmiling. “Yes, thank you, but I must be getting home.”

  Before she could stop him he stood up and with one swift movement lifted his cape from about his shoulders and settled it round hers. “There, that’s better,” he told her, seeing nothing strange, it appeared, in a gentleman giving a lady his cape, even if she wasn’t a lady. She felt the warmth and the softness of the lining drift about her and smelled some pleasant fragrance, but just the same she struggled to refuse it.

  “I’m quite warm enough, thank you,” she told him curtly, “and as I said I must be getting home. My sisters will wonder where I’ve got to.”

  “Please, just for a moment, keep the cape. I’m as warm as toast.” He grinned disarmingly. “Now, won’t you tell me what you’re doing out here? And I’d like to hear about your sisters. I have one sister and one brother, younger than me. He’s still at school.” His frown had completely gone now, like a cloud drifting away to reveal sunlight. She watched as the corners of his mouth lifted, fascinated against her will by the crease that appeared at each side, then turned away impatiently, wondering what in God’s name she thought she was doing. She was three months pregnant and yet here she was admiring a man’s smile, listening to his chatter, she who had told herself a hundred times since Mick O’Rourke had raped her that as far as she was concerned men had no part in her life except later perhaps, in the line of business. This man had something, she didn’t know what, that seemed to draw her to him, even if it was in anger, as in the mill yard. And what the hell was she doing sitting here with him with his cape about her shoulders as though they were equals? It was seven months since she had left Monarch and she didn’t suppose for a moment that he’d noticed she’d gone. And yet in the most odd way she felt comfortable with him. They’d said nothing much to one another, nothing of great weight or importance and once again she asked herself why they should?

  “Won’t you tell me where you live?” he asked her, turning his smoky-eyed gaze on her.

  “Why, are you thinking of calling on me?” She could not help but smile.

  “It’s only a question, dammit.” He slapped his riding crop against his booted leg. “I’m doing my best to be polite, that’s all.”

  “Why?”

  “Why not?”

  “Very well, I live in Angel Meadow, at least for the moment.” She lifted her head imperiously.

  “I see. You are about to move then?”

  “As a matter of fact, I am.” She was saying more than she should, she knew that, but then what did it matter? It was good to talk to someone, apart from Rosie and Mary and Jennet, of her aspirations.

  “Oh, and may I ask, without getting my head bitten off, where you are going?”

  She drew back then, for as yet they had no idea where they were going, or when, but still she felt the need to tell this man – why, for God’s sake? – of the grand plans Nancy Brody had for herself and her family.

  “I . . . I don’t know yet. We’re . . . I’m waiting . . .”

  “When you say ‘we’ do you mean the young man I saw you with at the exhibition?”

  At once she was appalled. “Dear God, no.”

  “He’s not your . . . ?” What name could he put to it and why should he care anyway?

  “Dear God, no,” she repeated, a look of such loathing on her face he was quite amazed. “I mean my sisters and Jennet. Jennet is my friend and we intend . . .”

  “Yes?” She had his complete attention now and without meaning to he put out a warm hand and took her cold one in it. Amazingly she made no objection.

  He did not wait for her answer. The words came out of his mouth before he could stop them, or even think about them. “You’re very lovely,” he said to her, his eyes a soft and velvety grey, stating a fact, no artifice or false regard in it and for several long seconds they looked at one another in what could only be called total surprise, then she snatched her hand away and stood up. His cape was flung at him in what seemed to him to be contempt, a contemptuous anger that he could not understand, for he had meant no offence.

  It seemed she was offended, deeply so.

  “I’ll bid you good-day,” she almost snarled at him, turning away and beginning to stride off in the direction from which she had come. He watched her go, amazed at the emptiness her going had left in him, then, leaping to his feet, he moved towards his mare. When he was mounted he galloped away with what appeared to be the same sort of indignation that was in her. Damn the woman, he cursed, then wondered why, for she meant absolutely nothing to him. Did she?

  10

  She felt as though there were rock inside her, pressing down inexorably but uselessly to a point just between her legs, but no matter how hard she heaved and pushed and struggled she could not rid herself of it. She could sense the anguished figures of Rosie and Mary and Jennet hovering about the bed but she was so exhausted her eyes could not focus on them properly. She knew they were there because she could hear their voices, though at a great distance, and she longed to tell them she was sorry to be putting them to such trouble and really, if she could do anything about it, she would, but even a whisper was beyond her.

  Hands touched her face and a voice – was it Jennet’s? – told someone else she was burning up and that she’d just slip down and get some fresh water and w
hoever it was she spoke to begged not to be left alone.

  “You’re not alone,” Jennet said harshly. “You have Mary with you.”

  “But we don’t know what to do,” the voice wailed. “Oh, Jennet, she’s not going to die, is she?” and despite the agony she was in Nancy felt a small smile tug at her lips at the sound of a sharp slap administered by an exasperated hand.

  “Don’t you say that, Rosie Brody. Of course she’s not going to die. She’s having a baby, that’s all. Women all over the world have babies and don’t die of it so don’t let me hear another word. Now, if you don’t want me to leave her you go and get the water. Dash down to the tap and let it run for a while then it will be nice and cool but be quick about it.”

  Though she did her best to feel confident, to show confidence, not only to the younger girls but to the labouring woman on the bed, Jennet could feel the terror grip at her insides, for, like Rosie, she didn’t know what to do either. They were all unmarried girls and as far as she knew none of them had ever seen the birth of a child. Well, she certainly hadn’t but even she, ignorant as she was, could not believe that it was normal to take so long. Over thirty-six hours and though at first Nancy had been cheerful, saying the pains weren’t so bad, that things were moving along nicely, that it wouldn’t be long now and reassuring things like that, for the past four hours nothing further had happened, despite the pains that continued to harrow her. In between Nancy seemed to doze but even Jennet could see she was weakening, moaning feebly, her body fighting to relieve itself of its burden but failing for some reason.

  Doing her best to overcome her reluctance to expose Nancy’s body, not only to her own gaze but that of her sisters, for surely it was an invasion of Nancy’s privacy especially when she was unable to protest, she had opened her legs and peered into that secret place from which the baby would come but there was nothing, nothing but blood and stretched flesh which looked as though it would tear apart. To encroach upon another woman’s innermost recesses was against all the precepts with which she had been brought up, for a motherless girl does not talk to a father about the embarrassing workings of a female body, but she could not help to bring a child into the world without . . . without looking at that part of Nancy’s body from which it came, could she?

  But that had come later. At first she had kept Nancy decently covered under a clean sheet, giving her sips of water, wiping her sweat-streaked face, holding her hands even though Nancy’s grip felt as though it were breaking every fragile bone in her own. She had made broth from ham bones, lentils and carrots, spooning the liquid into Nancy’s reluctant mouth, telling her that she must keep her strength up and all the time at the back of her mind had slithered the unpleasant truth that soon she would be forced to help her friend to bring the child into the world. There was a cord to be cut, Nancy had told her and she’d need plenty of clean sheets and to keep hot water ready, for what purpose Jennet was not awfully sure. She had dreaded the very thought of it; now she prayed fiercely that it would happen, no matter how embarrassing she might find it, how frightening or mystifying, if only it could be got over and Nancy relieved of the suffering that was, Jennet was sure, slowly killing her. The baby had to come out, there was nothing surer but when, and how . . . please, please, dear Lord, let it be soon.

  Rosie hurried in with a jug of clean, cool water and in her eagerness to help tipped it too far over a piece of clean linen so that half of it splashed on Nancy’s skull-like face. She slowly opened her eyes which were sunk in great muddy holes of pain and with an effort lifted a hand which, even in the past thirty-six hours, seemed to have wasted away, to have become thin and claw-like. Her cracked and bitten lips parted and with deep and painful compassion, ready to weep in sympathy, Jennet wet them with the cloth.

  “Yes, darling,” she murmured brightly, “it won’t be long now and then the baby will be here.” On the other side of the bed Rosie and Mary hung over her, wishing they could believe Jennet but knowing instinctively that it was not true. They were so afraid. Nancy had been their mainstay for a long time now, providing them with food and warmth and decent shawls and clogs; how would they manage it all without her? Besides, they loved her. Though they might have thought her harsh in her determination to make them learn to read and write, to be clean and fastidious so that it was second nature to them now, expecting the standards she had set to be kept up, she had done it only for their sakes, and her own. Even when that awful thing had happened to her last year and the grievous months that had followed when they had suffered the derision of their neighbours who had been delighted to see the Brody girls pulled down, she had kept them steady, calm herself, saying it would soon be over. They would leave Church Court, she had promised them, so what did it matter what its denizens shouted after them.

  “Sticks and stones might hurt my bones but words can never hurt me,” she had quoted at them cheerfully and they had got through it. She had got them through it. They could not bear to lose her now.

  Nancy was trying to say something. From inside her, where that reservoir of strength lay, the strength that had kept her going for the past nine months struggled through the layers of pain, through the layers of bone and muscle to get to the surface of her and speak the words that she must. Her glorious fighting spirit, which had battled through death and disaster, hunger, cold, poverty and hardship, and now the hardest labour she had ever been asked to perform, inched its way to her lips and the words she must speak.

  Her breath fanned Jennet’s cheek but no words escaped and they realised that her exhausted body was almost beyond itself.

  “What is it? What is it, dearest?” Jennet was weeping and Mary began to moan, for surely her sister was dying and what was there to be done about it.

  It was Rosie who caught the faint, sibilant whisper and at once her face cleared.

  “Annie . . . she’s asking for Annie. Annie’ll know what to do for her.”

  “Who is Annie?” But Rosie, without shawl or bonnet, was already racing down the stairs and out into the street and all those who were gossiping there, it being a fine day in July, watched in astonishment as she raced like a greyhound in the direction of Angel Street. They knew, of course, what was happening to Nancy Brody, for like all small communities such things soon got about. How, no one could have said, but Nancy’s first labour pains had been known of almost before she felt them herself. It looked as though there were some problem, they told one another, feeling no sympathy, the way their Rosie was going hell for leather down the street but it was their problem, theirs and that stuck-up cow who’d moved in with them. In the ordinary way of things they would have rallied round any woman in trouble but those Brody girls and their airy-fairy friend had made it quite plain right from the start that they wanted none of them. Course, that Nancy had been like that from the day her mam vanished!

  If the inhabitants of Church Court were amazed it was nothing to the sheer, jaw-dropping consternation that afflicted every minder at Monarch as the fleet foot of the girl they recognised as Rosie Brody flew down the narrow aisle between the spinning frames. The gatekeeper, against his better judgement, even though he remembered her, had opened the gates in answer to her frantic cries, calling after her as she sped across the yard and up the steps to the floor where Annie Wilson worked. His shout lifted every head in the yard but it was too late, for Rosie had already gone.

  “Wha’ . . . wha’?” Annie gawped, breaking at least half a dozen threads as Rosie’s hands pulled at her. “’Ere, what the ’ell are yer doin’?” she managed to gasp, then, before she could even turn round to stare at her co-workers, Rosie had switched off her machine and was tugging at her to go with her.

  “Give over, yer daft cow.” She slapped at Rosie’s hands, convinced the girl had lost her senses, but all the while Rosie was drawing her towards the door at the end of the spinning-room, her feet and Annie’s slipping in the grease and oil that slicked the floor. The overseer was beginning to stride towards them, his face like thund
er and all over the room women were staring, open-mouthed, more threads breaking and the place in an uproar; all the while Annie struggled and all the while Rosie, being younger and stronger, drew her forward. She was shouting, her face like a flame, for she had run all the way, her hair standing out from her head in a cloud of tangled curls.

  “You’ve got to come, Annie. Please, you’ve got to come. There’s no one else . . . and Jennet can’t manage and Nancy’s going to die.”

  “Will yer let go o’ me arm, yer little madam,” Annie panted.

  “I can’t. We have to run.”

  “I’m runnin’ nowhere. Bloody ’ell, at my age . . .”

  “Please hurry, Annie. Our Nancy’s dying.”

  “What yer talkin’ about? Dyin’? Will yer let go o’ . . .”

  Suddenly Rosie stopped, turning to face the distressed figure of the older woman. They were out in the yard by now and a dozen men watched with considerable interest. Annie gasped and floundered, her hand to her breast, her face as red as Rosie’s, her own hair all over the place. They were nose to nose and it was plain that Rosie Brody had no intention of allowing Annie Wilson any choice in the matter of where she went in the next moment.

  Her words were bald. “Our Nancy’s having a bairn.”

  “A bairn?” Annie put her hand to her mouth. “Dear God in ’is ’eaven. Bu’ why?”

  “It won’t come, Annie. It’s stuck. Thirty-six hours and it won’t come.”

  “Bloody ’ell, lass. But is there no other woman ’oo can ’elp?”

  “She won’t have them, Annie. She wants you. Besides, they wouldn’t come.”

  It had been April before Kate Murphy, who had eyes like a hawk, even if her Joe did black them regularly, noticed the curious fullness of stuck-up Nancy Brody’s body, and even though she narrowed her eyes, squinting in the pale sunshine, she could not quite believe what she saw. She knew what she saw, all right. Bloody hell, she’d had enough of her own and there wasn’t a moment went by in Church Court when some woman or other wasn’t up the spout, but just the same . . . Nancy Brody? Lady High Mucky Muck who hadn’t the time of day for anyone, who considered herself so far above any of them it was a wonder she condescended to walk on the same rotten flags that they did. There was a rumour she was to leave Church Court taking her lah-di-dah friend and sisters with her and good riddance to the lot of them; but the fascinating evidence of her own eyes as Nancy’s shawl slipped for a moment could scarcely be believed. Was it real? Was it a bairn in that slightly distended belly and if so who was the chap? Not Mick O’Rourke who had been hanging about her last year, for he’d taken up with Marie Finnigan and there had been no one else about or someone would have noticed. Happen someone where she worked in that sweat shop in Brown Street or . . . or . . . Well, it was no good standing here gawping.