Angel Meadow Read online

  “Oh dear,” she said tearfully.

  “Well, this is a pretty kettle of fish,” Mr Hayes said stonily.

  “This is rather sudden,” Miss Hayes said suspiciously.

  “No, it isn’t, Milly. Nancy and I have known each other a long time, years, but it was only recently that we—”

  “A long time? Where did you meet? We have never heard of Miss Brody, or any Brodys, have we, Mother?”

  “No, dear, I don’t think so. Brody? Do you know the Brodys, dear?” turning to her husband.

  “You would not know my family, Mrs Hayes,” Nancy began, lifting her head a little higher and straightening the aristocratic curve of her back and beside her Josh sighed and, though he still held her hand, for he meant her to know he would support her in anything she wanted to say, he leaned back in his chair with an air of resignation.

  “Our circle of friends is very wide, isn’t it, dear, but I can’t remember any by the name of Brody.” Emma Hayes did her best to fill the hostile quiet that had come about and that even she sensed but her voice tapered off gently into a whisper and she put her handkerchief to her mouth.

  “No, Mrs Hayes, I don’t suppose you will have.” Nancy’s voice was gentle. She was no longer nervous, if she ever had been. She wanted more than anything for Josh’s family to accept her, not for her own sake but for his. She did not care one way or the other if his mother’s friends did not care to drink tea with her, an activity she had heard they favoured on most afternoons, having nothing better to do, she supposed. She would not have time for it, anyway, since her new venture would take up all her time, but her heart was heavy at the thought that there might be a split between Josh and his family because of her. Josh was hoping that after they were married an apartment at Riverside House might be made available to them, a prospect that dismayed her, but as the house would be his when his father died he seemed to see no reason why they should not live in it at once. It was certainly big enough from what he had told her, with bedrooms by the score, parlours and drawing-rooms, studies and libraries, breakfast-rooms and dining-rooms and a whole floor of nurseries, with more than a dozen indoor servants and half a dozen outside to look after three people, four if you counted Freddy. His brother Arthur, who was on a walking tour with some school friends in Europe, was to take up his duties at Monarch Mill as soon as he returned and would live at home, which seemed to Nancy to be more than a houseful, especially with two small children.

  “Perhaps you would care to tell us something about your people, Miss Brody,” Millicent Hayes declared coolly, already sensing that Nancy’s “people” would not be their sort of people, getting ready to enjoy Nancy’s embarrassment. Nancy smiled.

  “Of course, Miss Hayes.”

  “Darling . . .” Josh warned, but she turned to smile at him.

  “I can only speak the truth, Josh. Would you have me lie?”

  He relaxed and smiled lovingly at her and his mother, who was watching closely, smiled too, letting out her breath on a small sigh. Her son loved this woman, whoever she was, and that was enough for her.

  “Go on, Miss Brody,” Edmund Hayes told her, his voice stern, but there was something in his eyes that reminded Nancy of Josh and it gave her courage.

  “I was born in Angel Meadow, Mr Hayes. You will have heard of it, I’m sure.”

  Though he winced, Edmund Hayes’s gaze was steady.

  “I have, lass.”

  “My mother left us when I was about nine years old.”

  “Us?”

  “I have two sisters younger than me.”

  “And your father?”

  “I knew of no father, sir.”

  “Oh, dear,” Mrs Hayes whispered, feeling for her handkerchief.

  “So, what did you do, Miss Brody?” Millicent Hayes’s voice had a sneer in it, for what else could three young children do but apply to the workhouse.

  “I found us work, Miss Hayes. In your father’s mill. I was put on a spinning frame with no experience of how the thing worked but I learned, oh, I soon learned, Miss Hayes. My sisters were taken on as a scavenger and a piecer and between us we managed to pay our rent and feed and clothe ourselves, though it was damned hard . . . begging your pardon, Mrs Hayes.”

  She felt Josh’s hands grip hers, warm and strong and comforting. He had heard it all on the night he had asked her to marry him, for she would not agree until he knew everything about her. His grip told her she was amazing, that he loved her and that he was proud of her and whatever his parents decided he and she would be married in four weeks’ time. She turned and her eyes were a pure gold, deep and filled with her love, so that none of the three watching could doubt her feelings.

  She turned back to them. “I took my sisters to Sunday school where we learned to read and write. We spent any spare time we had at the Manchester Free Library at Campfield, reading the newspapers and periodicals and became members of the library so that we might bring books home with us. We became different people and because of it we were scorned by our neighbours. I swore that I would get us out of Church Court, that I would make my family decent and respectable. I was determined to . . . to be somebody. Oh, not famous but worthy of the regard and respect of any man or woman in Manchester. And I have,” she finished simply.

  “How, lass?” Mr Hayes wanted to know.

  “I began my own business. We saved hard and did without, my sisters and me. We learned machine sewing and when we were able we hired sewing-machines and began to make garments, baby clothes, shirts, things like that. I had a stall on the market and sold to decent shops in Market Street and Deansgate. We did well. We expanded. We moved out of Angel Meadow and rented a house on Bury New Road on the corner of Broughton Lane. Then . . . then the American civil war began and we . . . Mr Hayes, you will know what happened to our supply of cotton.”

  “Aye, I do that, so what . . .”

  “Josh let us have as much as he could.” Again she turned to Josh, giving him her dazzling, loving smile. “We were . . . we were not really acquainted then,” meaning they were not in the state they were now, “but he did his best to keep my one remaining machine working. I could not have managed without him.”

  “No, I can see that,” Millicent Hayes drawled nastily and at once Nancy turned on her, cementing the first brick in the wall that was always to stand between them.

  “I had no more cloth than any other manufacturer, Miss Hayes, and certainly not enough to keep four women and a child.”

  “A child?”

  “Yes, I have a daughter. I was forced to take work as a scrubber of floors to support her, while my sister and the lady who befriended us, my partner, in fact, worked to keep food on the table. Then Josh and I—”

  “And your husband? The child’s father? Where is he? Dead, I presume or . . .” Millicent broke in, determined to extract every nasty and debased exploit she was sure the woman who hoped to marry her brother had got up to.

  “I have no husband, as I am sure my use of the title ‘Miss’ tells you.”

  “Then . . .”

  “My daughter has no father. He – the man – left me.”

  “And did he give you that scar you carry on your cheek?”

  Josh exploded with such force from his chair even Nancy, who had been expecting it, almost jumped out of her skin. Mrs Hayes squeaked in alarm and Mr Hayes sighed loudly.

  “Now then, lad.”

  “No, Father, I will not sit idly by while my sister insults the woman I am to marry. You might as well know that whatever comes of this visit, whether you accept her or not, I shall marry Nancy Brody. She is the bravest, most courageous woman I have ever met and I love her and may I say I consider myself lucky that she loves me. The banns are being called at St John’s Church and I have sent invitations to every person of our – what was the phrase you used, Mother? – our wide circle of friends. This is to be no hole-in-the-corner affair, believe me. I want the world to see the woman I am to marry.”

  “Josh, darling
, it’s all right, really. There is no need to give us all the rounds of the kitchen,” Nancy declared mildly.

  “Oh, yes there is. They must be made to see how much you mean to me.”

  “I think they might by now.”

  “Good, then that’s settled then.” He glared about him, his lean face hawk-like in his rage. “And you might as well know that when we are married Nancy is to start up again in a business of her own. She is not the sort of woman to sit at home and twiddle her bloody thumbs.”

  “Joshua, that is enough, my lad. I will have no language of that sort spoken in front of your mother.”

  “I’m sorry, Mother, but I really—”

  “We know, lad. I think we’ve got the picture. Now, shall we ask Primrose to bring us another tray of tea? No, you sit down and button your lip, Millicent Hayes,” to his daughter who, it seemed, had more she wished to say. “I want to ask this young lady a few more questions.”

  Though his face was set in a mould of stern, unbending resolution, there was a gleam in Edmund Hayes’s sunken eyes that appeared to say he might just take a fancy to this woman who was to be his daughter-in-law. She had spunk and Edmund Hayes was an admirer of spunk.

  24

  She wasn’t a fanciful woman. Life had knocked that out of her years ago. Even as a child in her mam’s careless charge she had been practical, seeing things as they were and not as she fancied they could be, facing up to whatever the world chucked at her, and it was usually something nasty, something that would have knocked a fully grown woman to the ground, let alone a child. And if it knocked her down then she bit her lip, rubbed her bruised knees and the scraped palms of her hands, and got up again. She had suffered and survived, but now she had come through, and brought her family through with her, she could not truly believe that such happiness, such luck, such a haven of refuge she had found with Josh could really be hers. Could it be real, could it last, this great good fortune, this knowing that she was totally and limitlessly loved by this good man?

  She had had great reservations that he would be able to persuade his family to accept her but it appeared that he had done so, even if they had agreed only reluctantly. His mother was so sweet-natured, so protected from life’s calamities she believed nothing but good could come of the love her son had found, despite the small irregularity of his bride-to-be’s past. His father, surprisingly, seemed to have seen something to admire in a woman who had achieved what Nancy had achieved, recognising, perhaps, a likeness to his own family’s beginnings decades ago. Josh had told her that his grandfather had been a simple handloom weaver who had had the vision and intelligence to know what the new power looms would mean and his foresight was to start the upward spiral of the Hayes family fortune.

  Nancy was only too well aware that Millicent Hayes would not be so accommodating! She had made it plain right from the start that she was not ready to make Nancy’s life as wife to her brother an easy one. If she could cause trouble, she would, Nancy knew and though in those few weeks before the wedding she did nothing, as far as Nancy knew, to put a spoke in the wheel, which was running smoothly, she did not fool herself that this would continue.

  In the weeks before the wedding Mrs Hayes, having taken to her son’s future bride, wished to introduce her and her family to her own dear friends who she was certain would feel the same way about her, but Nancy, being far too busy, she told Josh privately, with her new business, persuaded him to convince his mother to wait until they were married. She and Josh’s father, accompanied by an enthusiastic Millicent who could not wait to see her brother’s intended wife snubbed by all and sundry, had come home from Lytham and settled back at Riverside House. Mrs Hayes had wanted to send out invitations to those of her friends she wished to meet Nancy, those who were already bewildered by Josh’s wedding invitation, for who was this “Miss Nancy Brody” he was to marry? Like Mrs Hayes before them they had enquired of one another the history of a family called Brody, which sounded Irish to them, so was she some heiress from across the Irish Sea and, if so, where had Josh Hayes met her? It was a mystery, an exciting enigma and one which none of them would dream of missing and not one had refused his invitation to the wedding. Ever since Josh Hayes had adopted his own illegitimate son, and not only that but appeared to be exceedingly fond of him, they had wondered what kind of young lady would accept not only the boy, but a father with such strange ideas!

  Dinner parties were therefore to be arranged to take place after they were married and for the first time since they had met four and half years ago Jennet and Nancy quarrelled.

  “Well, I suppose we’d best get down to the dressmaker and order our dinner gowns,” she told Mary and Jennet. “Though I don’t suppose I shall need more than one in Lytham” – where she and Josh were to spend a few days after their wedding – “I shall, from all that Josh tells me, have to have several for later and so will you and Mary.”

  This was the most wonderful opportunity for her sister and one she had always hoped for, not visualising anything quite so grand, perhaps, but where Mary might meet a man, a gentleman, who would measure up to the sweet-natured and well-educated young woman Nancy had made of her. She deserved a chance and though Mary was terrified of it she was also excited at the idea of moving in the society from which Josh came.

  But if his family was as kind to her as he was then she knew she had nothing to fear. She was shy, but then Nancy had told her that shyness was considered to be a charming attribute among young ladies and she would do very well. Mary was seventeen or thereabouts, as far as Nancy could remember, and ready for marriage by the standards of those with whom she would mix. It was very unlikely that she would talk about their past and by the time the wedding was over everyone would know anyway, for Nancy had no intention of hiding where her roots were, nor how she had torn them up and transplanted them in sweeter soil. When she moved to Riverside House she would do all in her power to find a suitable husband for her sister, someone who would look after her, protect her, care for her as, she sadly admitted, had not been the case with Rosie.

  She often thought of Rosie in those days before her wedding, brooding on where she could have got to. It was over two years since that appalling day when she had found her sister in the arms of the man who had brought Nancy down and by now, she was certain, Rosie would have a couple of children at her skirts, perhaps another growing in her body, for women like her had no choice in the matter. Was she still with Mick O’Rourke or, as seemed more likely, had he deserted her, for a man on his own can go much further than one with a woman and children at his back? Though she had told no one except Annie, who had found a woman who was willing to help her, a woman who would cause no curiosity in Angel Meadow, she had had enquiries made of the folk in Church Court on the whereabouts of Mick O’Rourke’s “woman”. Annie’s friend had met with blank stares, shrugs of the shoulders and a shaking of the head, even a mouthful of abuse from Eileen O’Rourke, who missed her son and blamed the bloody Brody girls, she hissed venomously, for his disappearance. Nancy had no idea what she would have done if she had found Rosie, for her sister had made it plain she wanted nothing to do with her, but surely she could have made Rosie’s life a bit easier, for there was no doubt in Nancy’s mind that it would be very, very hard indeed with no one but Mick O’Rourke to support her.

  The quarrel with Jennet began, as quarrels do, over a chance remark of Nancy’s.

  “Now, Jennet, my love, there is one of us who will have no need to feel out of place in the charmed circle of the Hayes acquaintances, for you are as well bred as any of them.” She put her arms about Jennet’s shoulders and gave her an affectionate hug.

  “There will be no need of anything, Nancy, not even a new gown, for I’m not to come.”

  Jennet was seated before the parlour fire sewing a little dress for Kitty, a pretty thing of fine muslin, tucked and ruched and embroidered, white on white with a pale pink satin sash, which she was to wear on Sunday when she was to be taken to Riverside Hou
se for afternoon tea in the nursery with Freddy. Nancy was to inspect the rooms she and Josh were to occupy, which Josh had told her consisted of a large bedroom with adjoining bathroom, a sitting room that she could, if she wished, decorate to her own taste, and a small room that was to be turned into a dining-room where they might, as a newly married couple, dine à deux when they wished. All the rooms were on the first floor overlooking the gardens at the back of the house, the water meadows and the river, and where they might be completely private.

  Now, as Jennet spoke, Nancy, who had been just about to leave the room, whirled round in astonishment.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I’m not to come to Mrs Hayes’s dinner parties, darling. You might as well know now, I suppose, but if you had any intention of introducing me to Josh’s family and friends then I must ask you to forget it. I would be out of place in such a society and—”

  “You? Out of place! What bloody nonsense! I never heard anything so daft in all my life. Why, you come from their class. You, of all people, should feel at home in it. And besides, I need you.”

  “Why?”

  “To guide me through it. To show me the way.”

  “Fiddlesticks! When did Nancy Brody ever need anyone to show her the way? You’ll sail through it. Even if they turn their noses up at you, which they might at first, you will only stick yours higher and tell them to go to the devil. You love a challenge, Nancy. A fight! But I don’t. I am content in this little house and with the work we do. I shall be only too happy to help you with the shop when it opens, but the rest of your life, with Josh, is . . . should not include me. I know you are hoping to further Mary’s chances, find her a good husband and that is as it should be. She is your sister, but I’m not and I don’t want a husband. I find the life I have here suits me admirably.”

  “Well, Jennet Williams, I never thought to see you so ungrateful. After all we have done together as well.”