Angel Meadow Page 27

  She had not seen him since and the anguish was ferocious. She was in love. She who had resolved never, ever to get involved with a man after what Mick O’Rourke had done to her, who had sworn that she hated men, that she would concentrate her whole life on the task of making herself and her family respectable, wealthy, people of consequence with which an attachment of any sort to a member of the opposite sex would interfere, had fallen in love. She had fallen in love with Josh Hayes and she was savage in her anger, an anger directed not just at herself for allowing it to happen but at him who had encouraged it, or so it seemed to her. She was in a precarious position in her life, for Josh Hayes was not the only one to recognise what the civil war in America might do to the cotton trade. She and Jennet were laboriously building up a small but successful business, a growing business, for they sold their manufactured goods, not only on the market stall which Nancy insisted on keeping up, as a kind of insurance, but in a growing number of shops along Deansgate, King Street, Corporation Street and Piccadilly. Not of the class of Kendal Milne and Faulkner, of course, but respectable dress shops and drapers. But cotton was the sum and substance of their livelihood, their bread and butter, and if their supply dried up, as it looked increasingly likely it might, what was to become of their business? They were teetering on the edge of a precipice, so how could she add to the possible disaster by allowing herself to fall in love? She could not. Not now. Later, perhaps, when the cotton crisis was over and she would have time to think about it; but in the meanwhile she found herself torn most distressfully by a raging conflict of emotions. She suffered bursts of sheer joy at the thought of him, at the image of his lean, handsome face as it smiled quizzically into hers; then, abruptly, she would be caught up in an angry and urgent need to wish him as far away from her as possible where she hoped savagely he would stay. She didn’t want this, did she? And her heart told her most definitely that she did and her head argued against it until it ached. There would be nothing more wonderful than the passion and folly – and love, did he feel it too? – that had vibrated from his body to hers and yet nothing more disastrous!

  It was two months before she saw him again. A warm and sparkling Sunday in August with nothing above the roofs of the houses but a span of azure blue. The sunlight turned the plain red brick of the houses in Grove Place to a rich and blushing burgundy and struck diamond reflections from the well-polished windows, and even the donkey-stoned steps seemed all the whiter. The housewives of Grove Place, Annie among them, though she was not, strictly speaking, a housewife, were as proud as punch of their smart little homes and spent many hours on their knees scouring and deep scrubbing every surface, inside and out.

  Couples were strolling arm-in-arm beneath the shade of the massive sweet chestnut trees that lined Bury New Road, planted years ago when the busy thoroughfare was barely more than a lane. Children in their Sunday best rolled hoops, skipping ahead of their parents, and a slow procession of omnibuses, taking town dwellers out to Castle Hills and Sedgeley Park for the afternoon, passed their door in stately splendour.

  She and Jennet had taken Kitty and Scrap for a leisurely stroll down Broughton Lane where the hedgerows were thick with hawthorn, the dry ditches beneath them submerged by a rising tide of wild flowers. Sweet cecily, fragrant with the scent of aniseed, standing waist high, its full green foliage and luxuriant white blossom crowded side by side with hedge parsley, dock and nettle which would be followed, as autumn mellowed, by meadow cranesbill, ragwort, foxglove and willowherb. The fields beyond were just as rampant, a spreading carpet of blue and pink and yellow and white where periwinkle, buttercup, clover and meadowsweet grew riotously side by side.

  Putting Scrap on her leash they turned into the long, wide pathway that led to Lodge’s Nursery Gardens, and which was bordered by a small, running brook. They wandered along the paths between the extensive orchards of pear, apple and plum trees, all beginning to fruit, the colours quite glorious: apples of yellow and light red, the palest green, russet, orange and deep crimson; pears of the lightest green to the darkest; and the rich purple red of plums. Beds of antirrhinum bordered the paths, an explosion of colour from the palest lemon to the deepest red, delicate pinks and carnations, begonias and petunias in a patchwork quilt of colours. Roses of every sort, cabbage roses, pink and showy, the rich crimson of the red rose of Lancaster and many others, all neatly ticketed so that the novice gardener might have all the information needed to make his garden as glorious as the ones on show. There was a bed of buddleia bushes, known, the sign said, as a butterfly bush, the blossom varying in colour from white, violet-blue, pink to reddish purple and about them, as the name implied, was a cloud of dancing, skimming butterflies.

  Nancy stopped, letting Jennet and Kitty go ahead, her heart pierced with the beauty and fragrance of the flowers and the graceful ballet of the butterflies above them, and something seemed to break inside her. His face swam before her eyes as though in a mist, one dark eyebrow raised, his silvery grey eyes smiling and the pain in her chest and throat became unbearable so that she could barely swallow. Dear God, what the devil was the matter with her? How could she have allowed this . . . this foolish thing to happen to her, for that was what it was. Foolish! Mad! Insane! Just the sight of the blossom and the butterflies had spiralled her into the memory of that day a few weeks ago when she had been held in his arms. And yet it was not just now, for wasn’t it true that no matter what the time of day, or what she was doing in it, his face would dream into hers and his arms would rise to hold her so that sometimes she quite startled those with whom she worked or did business with her sudden distracted air. She must stop it. She must put him from her. She had no time in her life for dreaming like some silly girl and besides which, she had somehow to find a way to keep her business going if the promised cotton famine came about.

  But with what joy she would have shared this lovely moment with Josh Hayes. Her arm in his, leaning on his shoulder, their heads close together, his face bent to hers, she could feel inside her a faint but persistent knowing of what it would be like. Just a wisp of an imagined joy like a curling mist in sunlight.

  “Nancy . . . Nancy, dearest, are you all right?” a voice said to her and a hand came to rest on her arm and when she turned, disorientated, for in her trance Josh had been with her, she looked into the anxious face of Jennet. Beside her was Kitty with Scrap pulling vigorously on the leash, which the child was having a job to hold on to since Scrap wanted to go one way and Kitty the other. Kitty Brody, even at the age of two, was already showing the resolute will of her mother and it was a constant battle, or so Annie grumbled, to get her to do what she was told. She was demanding and obstinate. Only this morning, wanting to get out into the sun-filled garden with Scrap she had stood at the top of the stairs shouting, “D’yess me, d’yess me at once,” her face crimson, her eyes a vivid brilliant blue so like her father’s Nancy felt her heart shrivel. Her determination to have her own way was sometimes alarming but then, could you wonder, Annie added, for with a mother like Nancy she was bound to be self-willed, and with a father like Mick O’Rourke, though Annie had never met him, could the child be blamed for the temper she had. A bright and sunny-natured child when she had her own way but cross her and skin and hair flew, or so Annie was heard to say. She needed a man’s hand to discipline her, or a mother’s, she muttered behind Nancy’s back, for Miss Jennet was too indulgent by far.

  Nancy looked down at her and made an effort to smile and Kitty smiled back. Nancy was aware that the child did not exactly love her as a child loves its mother, for when had Nancy ever been that? She herself was not consciously aware of any degree of unusual tenderness for Kitty but she made damn sure she was well nourished and warm, protected and safe from harm, and knew, deep inside her where her motherhood lay dormant, that she would protect her child with her own life. She held out her hand to her and Kitty took it and on her other side Jennet put hers in the crook of Nancy’s arm.

  “Let’s go and have some tea in
the summerhouse, or perhaps over there in one of the arbours. They do say the watercress sandwiches are the best in Manchester.”

  They lingered for another hour, but over on the horizon, unnoticed, where the sky faded to a silvery blue, elongated puffballs of clouds had begun to appear, drifting and gathering ominously as they approached the city.

  The first spots of rain caught the summer-clad crowds by surprise. Women clutched their bonnets and wished they had brought their umbrellas, running for shelter to the summerhouse or one of the small arbours, while fathers gathered in wandering children and wished they had stayed at home to read the newspapers.

  Both Jennet and Nancy were dressed in white, simple gowns made of leno, a transparent muslin-like material, over wide petticoats of white sateen. The sleeves were full, dropping from the shoulders in what was known as a “pagoda”, wide at the wrist. The bodices were neat, fastened up the front to beneath the chin with tiny buttons covered in the same material. Each of them had a mesh hairnet enclosing a smooth chignon and a flat, mushroom-shaped hat, Nancy’s decorated with a wide ribbon of duck-egg blue velvet, Jennet’s of primrose. Kitty was dressed as all the other little girls – and boys of her age – were dressed, for up to the age of five or six both sexes looked identical in their little skirts and pantaloons. Kitty’s calf-length white dress was covered with a sensible blue pinafore with a frill over the shoulder and on her small feet were black lace-up boots.

  She began to scream as the rain, all of a sudden, came down in a deluge, demanding that Jennet make it stop, for she was getting wet and Scrap didn’t like it. She begged Jennet to carry her, holding up her arms to be picked up and letting Scrap go to the devil for all she cared.

  “Stop that silly noise at once, d’you hear?” Nancy told her, shaking off Jennet’s clutching hands which would have reached for the child. “No, Jennet, she is quite big enough to walk the short distance to the house. There is no need to carry her. You take the dog.”

  “Could we not shelter in the summerhouse?” Jennet asked anxiously, eager to get her arms about the child who she loved above all others and who was shrieking in earnest now, for she was accustomed to having her own way with the other three women of the house. She had never been tackled by her mother and was crying more in amazement than anything else.

  “The summerhouse is packed with people and so are all the arbours.”

  “The trees?”

  “For God’s sake, Jennet, we are no more than five minutes from home and if this child will stop dragging at my hand we will be there in no time.”

  “Aunty Jen . . . Aunty Jen, carry Kitty.”

  “Aunty Jennet is not going to carry you and neither am I, so pick up your feet or I shall simply drag you along on your bum.”

  “No, Mama. No, not walk,” and she began to aim kicks at Nancy’s ankle, wildly swinging her free fist in temper.

  “Nancy, please. She is so small and is not used to . . .”

  Somewhere deep inside Nancy knew Jennet was only speaking the truth but she was in some strange way dragging the ghost of Kitty’s father at her heels. She could not be said to be punishing Mick – or the child, who was showing her true Irish heritage for the first time, at least to her – for what had been done to her in the past but in her present state of mind, which could not escape the shadow of Josh Hayes that had held her in its grip for the past eight weeks, she was not her usual fair and sensible self. For two years she had managed almost to ignore her own daughter, secure in the knowledge that Annie, Jennet and Mary gave Kitty all the child needed in the way of affection but suddenly, with this show of obstinacy, this flare of hot temper, a paddy, as Annie would call it, it was as though her daughter’s father had returned to harass her. Kitty was, she had slowly become aware, being brought up in a household of indulgent women where her slightest wish was realised and though in her early months it had not mattered unduly now she was becoming unruly, unmanageable and it must be corrected.

  They had got as far as the corner of the house, ready to turn into Bury New Road and the gateway to their own home when she saw him. By now they were all as bedraggled as wet hens in a farmyard, their long skirts trailing on the wet pavement and would they ever get them clean again, she was considering, still firmly gripping the hand of her shrieking child as she did her best to get her inside the gate. The rain dripped off the brim of her bonnet and at her heels Jennet was beseeching her to let her pick Kitty up and, in the turmoil of her emotions, she was not even sure for the moment that it was Josh Hayes riding by on his gleaming, copper-coated mare. As the rain pelted down he had hunched himself down in the saddle, for like the rest of the Sunday afternoon crowds he was not dressed for wet weather. The rain dripped off the brim of his top hat and was evidently running down the back of his neck, for he shivered even further down into his summer jacket.

  She straightened up, letting go of Kitty’s hand who immediately ran clamouring for the safety of Jennet’s arms. They looked at one another. Her heart thudded so loudly and so fiercely in her chest she felt quite faint, just as though the thing were shaking her body to pieces. She wanted to reach out her hand for the gatepost, or lean her bottom on the wall, for surely she was about to fall, but instead, as though she knew exactly what he was going to do and must be ready for the agony of it, she straightened her back, squared her shoulders, lifted her sodden bonnet and stared at him as though he were a perfect stranger. He raised his hat politely, acknowledging her and Jennet and the rain in the brim spilled over his hand, then he returned it to his head and rode on.

  “Wasn’t that Mr Hayes?” Jennet asked in bewilderment, holding her precious, still sobbing burden to her, her precious burden who was proclaiming her disapproval of “naughty Mama” in no uncertain terms.

  Nancy turned and shut the gate, doing her best to seem unconcerned, for it was of the utmost importance to her that no one should know that her heart was shredding itself to bloody pieces inside her chest.

  “I believe it was,” she murmured, lifting her hands to her wet face, glad of the rain which hid the true state of her tears.

  “He was very cool,” Jennet remarked as she struggled up the steps with the squirming child.

  “Do you think so? I did not notice.”

  His thoughts were savage and painful as he continued his journey past the houses of Grove Place and the Grove Inn Bowling Green where the rain had scattered the players, leaving their bowls in black groups on the grass. His mare’s head drooped and so did his, for he had never, even when Evie died, felt so dragged down and bloody miserable.

  Nancy Brody. He had thought of no one else in the past eight weeks, his male body remembering her warmth, her sweetness and yielding in his arms, the surprise of her submissive compliance to his orders on the day he had run her down on Market Street. She had leaned against him, allowed him to hold her, to touch her hand, to place his arm about her, sighing and soft-eyed, her mouth ready to hover beneath his own and but for the presence of the others he would have kissed her and she would have let him. Damnation, why had he let this happen to him and yet, if he was honest, had he any choice in the matter? A man does not choose where he will love or the world would be filled with perfect marriages. Oh, yes, he loved her. He loved her as he had never loved Evie, he knew that now, had known it for weeks, months, years, he supposed, if he was honest. He could not get her out of his mind, or his heart, where she had settled and would remain for the remainder of his days. He knew that too but there was absolutely nothing, Goddammit, that he could do about it. His family just about managed to live with Freddy, who was now his legally since he had adopted him, the adoption giving the situation some degree of respectability. His mother had become fond of him, allowing the little boy to call her “Ganma” though his father was more difficult to soften. Those with whom the family mixed socially had forgiven him his sin, not the sin of impregnating a servant girl, for that was no sin at all and besides did not many of the young men of good families do that, but for acknowledgin
g the child of that sin. Freddy would be brought up as the legitimate child of the Hayes family, for after all he was Josh’s son. You only had to look at him, his cap of brown curls and the clear silver gaze of his eyes which came from his grandmother who had given them to Josh and to his brother Arthur, to know whose child he was. He was accepted and loved. Josh had his father’s approval at last and was doing well in the family business, so how in hell’s name could he introduce the woman he loved into this equation? Sweet Jesus, he himself did not know where she had got her daughter from. Not from any husband, that was for sure and even if she had, how would his father, who was ambitious for both his sons, and his mother, who had only just come to terms with Freddy, take to a daughter-in-law who had been born in the slums of Angel Meadow? It would tear the family apart and ruin any chance his son might have of growing up in the respectability a child needs. He had never forgiven himself for Evie’s death but he felt he had atoned for it with his resolute determination, against strong opposition, to bring up her son in a way that would have pleased her and made her proud.

  But Nancy . . . How was he to live for the rest of his life without her, without what he knew would be the sweetest, the most exciting part of it? For three years, ever since he had first seen her in the mill yard, she had invaded his thoughts in the strangest way and he had wondered why. Now he knew. He had, without consciously realising it, admired her tenacity, her spirit, her capacity to move forward despite appalling setbacks. Like the attack on her by the bully who had split her face and, though he knew no details, her illegitimate child, and, he was sure, many more in her journey from Angel Meadow. He liked her pride in herself, her belief that she was someone special, for she was. He wanted to guard her and keep her as a man does his woman. He wanted her to lean on him, him and was jealous of those who had her affection. He knew he would never be totally alive, totally enthusiastic without her, never totally whole. He would know other women but he would never feel like this again.