Angel Meadow Read online

  “She’ll not be long,” Nancy repeated, holding her little sister close to her, seemingly unaware of the squalid condition of the room that had been her home since the day she was born. Though the place stank, the child, having lived in it for so long, did not notice it. The floorboards were moist and rotting and the unpainted walls were streaked with grime which had been there for years. The window frames were spongy and rotten, ready to blow in at the first stiff breeze and the door to the street hung quite precariously to its frame. There were cracks in the plaster of both ceiling and walls from which little things scurried, forming and re-forming in patterns, and from the skirting board a mouse wandered, sat up, cleaned its whiskers, then, sensing the lack of anything edible in this place, skittered back down its hole. At the window, miraculously unbroken considering the urchins who played in the street all day and threw anything they could lay their hands on, was a scrap of fluttering fabric, thin, torn, but at least affording some privacy from prying eyes.

  A cat yowled from somewhere in the street and another answered. A dog barked hoarsely and footsteps, clogs by the sound of it, rattled on the cobblestones. For a moment Nancy’s eyes flew open, thinking her mother had returned, then, as the footsteps continued past their door, they drooped again and with Rose warm against her thin chest and Mary leaning against her, her head comfortably on Nancy’s lap, the three little girls fell asleep.

  It was broad daylight when they awoke, which meant it was late, for this was November when days were short, especially in the dark, deep caverns of the streets of Angel Meadow. Church Court was no more than five feet across with a gutter running down its centre, the windows of the back-to-back houses staring into the windows of the houses opposite or at the bare blank walls of mills, the towering forest of mill chimneys. Angel Meadow was a warren of narrow, packed streets, courts and alleys, which bred vice and disease, running out in each direction from St Michael’s Church. The church and the paupers’ burial ground about it was the only open space in that square mile of deprivation and destitution and it was here a horde of children, those not yet forced into the mills, played and shrieked, the Brody girls among them. Those who wanted to could find work in the dye works, the print shops, the foundries, the factories and workshops that abounded in Manchester but most families were employed in the cotton mills as spinners and weavers, as scavengers and piecers and all the other jobs that were a part of the trade on which the great city had founded its equally great wealth.

  The fire still had a flicker in it, and with great patience and skill, Nancy coaxed it back to life, adding little slivers of wood bit by bit, then when it was drawing properly adding small pieces of the precious coal that stood in a cardboard box beside the grate. The water was still warm in the kettle they had put on the fire for their mam’s cup of tea so, bringing it back to the boil and taking down the tea caddy, she spooned a mere half-teaspoon into the chipped brown teapot, pouring enough boiling water on to it to make one cup of tea apiece. With their hands round their cups, the little girls stared mesmerised into the fire, the warmth that they seldom enjoyed giving them an unusual sense of ease. With their feet tucked up under their shifts, they sipped the hot tea. There was nothing to eat.

  “What we gonner do, our Nancy?” Mary said at last, tipping her head back to get the last drop of pleasure from her cup of tea. “Where d’yer think our mam’s got to?”

  “She’ll be back soon, chuck. ’Appen that chap she ran after wanted another go.”

  “He never paid fer’t first, our Nancy. She’d not be likely ter give ’im another.” Mary’s voice was scathing.

  “I ’ope she brings summat back to eat. I’m bloody hungry.” Rose sighed and huddled up closer to her sister. “Is there nowt?”

  “There’s nowt, our Rosie, so give over about it.”

  “I were only askin’.” Rose’s voice was aggrieved. For several minutes the sisters sat in silence. Usually their mother would be snoring her head off on the mattress on the floor, or upstairs sleeping off the worst excesses of the night before. They would get their own breakfast, whatever it happened to be. Thin porridge on bad days with stale bread and lard, or perhaps, if their mam had had a few customers, paying ones, a bit of bacon or even an egg apiece. Mam like them to drink milk, which she insisted a friend of hers who had worked as a skivvy at a big house and was privy to kitchen gossip swore was good for your teeth and certainly theirs were all sound. She sent them to the market last thing on a Saturday night to buy vegetables that had not been sold, and bits of meat or fish or poultry, anything that would not last until Monday, again on the advice of her friend whose employer had been a doctor. They were thin as lathes, the three of them, but they didn’t seem to ail like many of the children in Angel Meadow, nor were they stunted or deformed. But then they had never worked in a cotton mill.

  “Well, I suppose we’d best get dressed,” Nancy said practically. “Now, promise yer won’t tell Mam when she gets back but I’ve a penny or two put by . . . no, don’t ask me,” as both her sisters clamoured to be told where she had hidden it, and, more to the point, how she had managed it. “Whenever I could,” meaning when her mam had been too drunk to notice, “I . . . I pinched a farthing an’ put it away, hid it so’s Mam wouldn’t know or else she’d have ’ad it fer gin.”

  Mary and Rose nodded their heads in perfect understanding, their identical golden brown eyes wide and gleaming in admiration of their sister’s cleverness.

  “Now, I’m not sayin’ yer’d do it on purpose but just in case . . . well, by mistake like, yer let it out, I’m goin’ ter go an’ get it. It’s upstairs an’ yer not to come with me. All right?”

  They nodded again, watching her as she climbed the steep narrow stairs that led to the empty room at the top. It was not entirely empty, for it was here that Nancy and her sisters, guided by Nancy, stored any old bit of what their mam called “junk” that they found or could pinch, but which Nancy thought might come in useful. They had nothing in the way of furniture, the Brody family, except the mattress and the frame on which it stood, the old armchair, the stool and the deal table. The rest was clutter, odds and ends of old pots and pans, the bucket that Mick O’Rourke had mended for them since it had had a hole in it, several eating utensils and a few dribs and drabs of bedding. Whatever was not in immediate use was kept upstairs in the one room with the tiny window that looked out over Church Court and directly into the window of the house opposite where, Nancy noticed vaguely, Mr Murphy was giving Mrs Murphy a good hiding.

  She went directly to the far wall and with a bit of picking and pulling loosened a brick, putting it carefully down on the floor. Reaching inside the hole it left, she brought out a scrap of material in which something clinked. Unwrapping it as though it contained diamonds, she quickly removed eight farthings, then hurriedly wrapped the rest up again, looking over her shoulder as though suspecting her mam, her mam who did her best for them but who would drink it all up in an hour, was watching her. Thrusting the small package back in the hole, she replaced the brick then stood back to see if it was noticeable. Satisfied, she crept downstairs again. Triumphantly she opened her dirty hand to reveal to her sisters the eight farthings which added up to two whole pence.

  “We can get us a bite ter eat now, d’yer see, an’ when Mam comes ’ome she’ll be ’ungry so there’ll be a bit o’ summat fer ’er an’ all.”

  “Eeh, our Nancy, yer that clever,” Rose murmured, sighing in deep satisfaction at the thought that they were soon to have something to eat. Probably only bread and lard, or, if there was enough money, perhaps bread and dripping which was much more tasty. Mrs O’Leary at the corner shop made her own from scraps of meat, which came from God knows where, and they didn’t ask, but it was a good standby when you were famished.

  It was dry out so they didn’t bother with their clogs. The less they were worn the less they needed mending. Besides, the soles of their feet were protected by a thick layer of horn which had grown up over the years of going baref
oot. They wore woollen skirts and tops, no undergarments, naturally, since they did not, and never had done, possess such things but, with the ragged shawls that Nancy had bought on the second- or even third-hand stall on the market which they draped across their heads and wrapped securely about their narrow shoulders, they were warm enough.

  Bearing in mind that Mam might have been unsuccessful in getting her money off the brawny chap, or earned any more, for it had been late when she ran out, Nancy bought the least she could for a decent meal. Decent to them, that is. They didn’t go to Mrs O’Leary’s but to the market on Miller Street where food was cheaper and there was more to choose from. She spent a long time in choosing. Well, you had to when there was not much to go round.

  A piece of scrag end, fatty and gristly and just about on the turn and therefore cheap, a bag of vegetables way past their best but still edible and five pounds of potatoes, rotten but again still edible. It would make a decent meal, in fact two if they were careful, and it would give Mam something to stick to her insides when she got home. She’d gone without her shawl and was bound to be perished.

  The battered old stewpan simmered gently over the fire and though they all hung over it, mouths watering, they waited and waited for Mam; and when she hadn’t turned up by early afternoon they could wait no longer.

  Bloody hell, it was good, they kept telling one another as they shovelled it into their mouths, keeping some back for Mam, even though they could have eaten hers as well as their own. They were children with children’s healthy appetites and they’d had nothing since yesterday, but that was Mam’s and must be saved for her. She had not returned by the time night fell.

  The next day was a repeat of the one before. A fumble in the secret hoard, a trip to the market, a plate of tripe and onions this time, which Mam always said was good for them, and the wait, anxiously watching out of the filthy window for the sight of her familiar shapeless figure.

  At the end of a week they began to face the harrowing fact that their mam, whom they had loved without reservation, was not coming back.

  2

  The sergeant looked over the top of his desk at the three little girls who stood before it, a surprised expression on his florid face. It was not often the police station was visited by children, unless they were street urchins caught thieving who had not been fast enough to evade the arm of the law, which didn’t happen often, he might add. Like bloody eels they were, real slippery customers, darting and diving with their catch in their hands, probably no more than a loaf of bread or a tanner out of a customer’s change pinched from the counter of the beer house when the customer’s back was turned, escaping up the warren of alleyways that cobwebbed Angel Meadow.

  But these three had come in to the station of their own accord, scared stiff, poor little buggers, you could see that, creeping over the threshold clinging to one another, peeping round them as though they expected a copper to grab them and stuff them in a cell. They had sidled over to the desk, their eyes on the floor, then the tallest one had screwed up the courage to look up at him and he’d been quite stunned by the beauty of her eyes. He was not a fanciful man, ask his wife, and he’d seven children of his own but this one, beneath the layers of filth that coated her skin, was going to be a real looker. Aye, dirty she was, like most who lived round about but dirt couldn’t hide the soft, golden brown depths of her eyes, nor the long silken lashes that surrounded them. It was like looking into a glass of whisky, which he didn’t do very often since he couldn’t afford it, but that was the colour of this kid’s eyes; and when the other two peeped warily from beneath their long curling lashes he could see theirs were exactly the same.

  He leaned on the desk and without realising it softened his voice.

  “Yes, chuck, what can we do for yer? Lost yer pussy cat, ’ave yer?” He turned to wink at the constable who sat at a desk behind him and the constable was considerably startled, for the sergeant was not known for his joviality.

  “No,” the girl said gravely. “Me mam.”

  They had debated for hours, days, on what they should do. Every morning as soon as it was light they had draped themselves in their shawls and searched the alleys and courts around Church Court until dark fell, asking every woman they met had she seen their mam.

  “’Oo’s yer mam, chuck?” they were asked sympathetically but it was very evident that when they spoke her name, Kitty Brody was reckoned nowt a pound in these quarters and if she’d disappeared, well, good riddance to bad rubbish was their opinion.

  After Mam had turned the corner out of Church Court they had no idea in which direction she had gone, running off after the cheating customer. She could have turned right along Ashley Lane under the railway bridge towards Newtown, which like Angel Meadow was a teeming refuge for the Irish; left towards the bridge over the River Irk or sharp left into Angel Street and St George’s Road and the centre of the city. It could have been any of them and so, patiently, day after day they walked the streets, searching any bit of spare ground they came across, going further from Angel Meadow than they had ever been in their entire life but with no success. They had even gone along the banks of the river, precariously clinging to the edge, for the water was foul with sewage, dead animals, the waste from the mills along its bank, its surface a floating, stinking slick of oil. They wandered round Strangeways Park brick field, climbing piles of broken bricks and debris, turning over heaps of rubbish until some chap shouted to them to get off out of it, chasing them off the site.

  “It’s no good, we’ve got ter go ter’t police.” Nancy’s voice did its best to be positive, as though it were nothing out of the ordinary for a resident of Angel Meadow to hobnob with the law. It wasn’t, in fact, but on the wrong side of it. For one of them to go voluntarily into a police station was unheard of and a measure of the desperation of their situation.

  “Oh, our Nancy,” Mary quavered and on Rose’s pointed little face came a look of dread.

  “I know . . . I know, but what else can we do? Mam’s been gone fer a week now and . . . and God knows what’s happened to ’er.” Her voice broke, obviously fearing the worst. If she’d caught up with that chap he might have done anything in his fury. Beaten her senseless and left her for dead in an alley. Chucked her in the river or . . . or, well, whatever it was, they had a right to know and that was what the bloody police were for, after all, wasn’t it, to keep the peace, to uphold the law and if anything had happened to their mam and that bugger was the cause of it then he should be found and put in prison. Surely, where they had failed, the bobbies could find him, and Mam.

  “Mam didn’t like the police, our Nancy,” Mary persisted fearfully. “She used ter say they were for important folk, not the likes of us.”

  “I know she did but . . . well, what else can we do? There’s only a tanner left in . . . upstairs, and us’ll have ter find work soon. Unless yer fancy the workhouse, our Mary?”

  The workhouse! It was the place that even the worst afflicted did their best to keep out of and though the Brody girls were not sure why, for they had seen no more of it than the big wrought-iron gates that guarded it, Mam said she’d rather spend the rest of her life on her back than go in there. They’d be separated for a start which was enough to frighten the wits out of the three little girls, for they had never been separated in their lives, from each other or from their mam. Now and again Mam did not come home for twenty-four hours which was why they hadn’t worried unduly at first, staying out overnight with God knows who and God knows where – she never said – but she always came home. Until now.

  “Yer mam?” the sergeant asked now. “Yer’ve lost yer mam?” He scratched his head and the constable at the table turned round to stare, for never in all the years he had been a policeman had anyone ever reported a missing mam. The station on St George’s Road was the largest in Manchester, since it was needed to keep order in Angel Meadow where vice was prolific and even now the cells were full of drunks and layabouts who had been fighting, men and wo
men caught thieving or fornicating in the gutters, wrong ’uns of all sorts and all waiting to be taken to the assizes. But this was a real poser and no mistake. Even the sergeant didn’t seem to know how to proceed.

  “Well, where did yer last see ’er, lass?”

  “Last week. Seven days an’ nights she’s bin gone an’ we’d like yer ter find her, please.”

  “Would yer now? Well, ’appen she don’t want ter be found, ’ave yer thought o’ that, chuck? ’As yer pa bin batterin’ ’er about or owt like that?”

  “We ’aven’t got no pa.”

  “I see.” He scratched his head again, for the effect of those three pairs of incredible eyes looking at him with every faith that he would find their mam for them was quite doing him in.

  He turned to the constable. “What d’yer think, Constable Perkins?”

  “Well, we could keep an eye out for ’er, Sarge, but a week’s a long time to—”

  “Yer mean yer think she’s dead?” the tall one said flatly, her face expressionless. “An’ if she is then it’s ’im what did it.”

  “’Im? ’Oo?”

  “Chap she ran after. He never paid her so she . . .”

  The sergeant’s face became visibly less concerned.

  “Never paid ’er? What for?”

  Nancy knew she had made a mistake and really, had she expected anything else. Mam was a whore and as soon as the bobby realised it he had turned scornful. A mam who was missing, a mam who stayed at home and looked after her children, or went out and did a decent day’s work, was worth at least a bit of interest, but once the bobbies understood what Mam did to earn her living they had washed their hands of her. A whore who got herself into trouble was nothing to do with them. In fact she probably deserved whatever fate had befallen her and they certainly weren’t going to waste their time looking for her. There was no use in relating the story to this man who was already turning away, for in his mind this was the old story of a whore being diddled out of her money and there was nothing they could do about it. She’d probably gone off with the very fellow who had diddled her!