The Daughters of Ironbridge

by Mollie Walton

  It was the afternoon of the second day when she saw the iron bridge. She did not turn and look up at the King house. She went down the slippery steps to the riverside and stumbled, nearly falling into the high, broad river. It had not frozen over yet, though it might if this cold grew and lasted the winter through. The water was churning beneath the roiling blizzard, confusing her eye with its complex movement. She felt she might faint, but she closed her eyes and recovered herself. Then she forced herself onwards. So close now, so close. Her collection of houses came into view and she saw her parents’ cottage and cried out with relief, sobbing and muttering as she approached. The door was shut against the cold and she fell against it, banging with her fist.

  ‘Mother,’ she cried. ‘Mother, Mother!’

  Anny had slumped to the ground and fell inwards as the door opened.

  ‘Mother,’ she whispered, but when she looked up, there was a man with a big black moustache staring at her.

  ‘Get away with yer!’ he said.

  ‘Mother,’ she whispered again. She heard voices from inside the house. They were asking who it was.

  ‘Some vagabond. There’s nothing for you here. Get away with yer, I say,’ said the man and began to shove her from the door.

  ‘Anny?’ A different voice came from behind her, away from the house. ‘Is that you, Anny?’

  Her name. She had not heard her name spoken in so long. At the prison, they called her Woodvine or Theft or worse, much worse. The door to her parents’ house was shoved shut against her and she turned deliriously in the direction of the voice.

  ‘Bless my soul, it’s Anny Woodvine,’ it said. It was a woman’s voice. ‘Peter, Peter! Come quickly! It’s Rachel’s daughter.’

  There were arms about her, strong male arms and the whiff of coal dust. She was lifted from the ground and felt her head falling backwards over an arm, the snowflakes rushing into her face, into her mouth and landing on her tongue. The rest was a blur that melted into sleep, a restless sleep filled with nightmares of falling through ice into the river, being swept along by the current and banging her fists in vain upon its frozen ceiling, watching the white sky looking down upon her as she drowned.

  She awoke in a bed, tucked up in sheets and blankets. Her eyes were crusted with the sleep of many days. Her feet were bound with bandages. Her filthy dress was gone and she was clothed in a cosy, long-sleeved nightdress of soft material. Her hair was clean and smelled of soap. Was this heaven? It felt like heaven. Warmth and comfort. It was evening or night-time, the room flickering with candlelight. She had a dim memory of being sat up and liquid being spooned into her mouth. Was that a dream?

  ‘Anny,’ came a voice, the same voice she’d heard at her mother’s door.

  ‘Where is my mother?’ she said, her voice croaky through disuse.

  A face came into view, an older face, about the same age as her mother, but not her mother.

  ‘Dunna fret, lass,’ said the woman and smiled. She sat down on the bed and passed her cool, dry hand over Anny’s forehead.

  ‘Is my mother dead?’ said Anny. The moment she said it, she realised that had been her greatest fear, lying beneath the surface as she slept.

  ‘No, lass! No, she’s all right. But she dunna live here no more.’

  Anny focused her eyes on the woman’s face. ‘I know you,’ she said.

  ‘I know you do, lass. I’m your neighbour. You remember my son, dunna you?’

  Another face appeared, standing tall above the bed. It was a local lad who’d tried to woo her once, many moons ago. He smiled at her. It was a kind face. Two kind faces.

  ‘Mrs Mary Malone,’ said Anny. ‘And Peter Malone.’

  Anny did not have the strength to say more. Seeing the faces of their old neighbours had the most peculiar effect on her; she felt as if she were tumbling down a hole, a dark, earthy descent into her childhood. When she landed, she curled up in a hollow, snug and warm and content. Her eyes glazed over and closed. She drifted into a deep sleep. Safe, at last.

  Chapter 27

  They called it the quickening, that odd fluttering sensation when the unborn child could first be felt inside the mother. Margaret had read that in a novel once and loved the term. The idea that the woman was quick with child, that it was making its presence known. It began for her on a quiet Sunday morning. She was lying on the hard, rough cot they slept in below the small, high window, the only window in the room. If she stood up on the bed and peeked out of the window, she could look out across the grey roofs, chimneys, skylights and domes of Paris, stretching out as a jumbled vista that seemed romantic at first, oppressive now. Jake was sprawled out on the floor, not having made it to the bed the night before. She looked across at him. Even snoring open-mouthed, his hair greasy with sweat and plastered across his face, she still felt the old desire lift in her. But something else was there, deep down inside and it wasn’t calling for him. It was the quickening.

  ‘Oh, my life!’ she said aloud, then checked herself, as she did not wish to wake her husband.

  They’d had a fearful row the night before. It wasn’t the first.

  Looking back on the past few months, she realised the cracks had begun to show from the earliest days, though she had chosen to ignore them. On the journey across the channel he thought of his own comfort before hers in every regard and she allowed him to, feeling comfort in comforting him. She overlooked his selfishness in a hundred tiny ways every day, but once she was with child, her feelings on this changed. Jake was still her world, but there was a newcomer there. And as the life grew inside her, her thoughts were filled with her baby and not with her husband. He was annoyed that she was not obsessing over him anymore. He would pout and say she did not love him. She would throw her arms about him and kiss him and kiss him, asking how could he say such things, when she waited for him every day impatient for his company. This he would take offence at, saying she was trying to trap him and must he stay there every day to hear her nonsense and not be off living life, painting life, as he ought to be? She would caress his hair and try to calm him, tell him how talented and clever he was, and he would be assuaged, sometimes. But there was truly no pleasing him.

  So it went on, these endless squabbles about how hard his life was, how little she understood him, how selfish she was. He began to shrink in stature before her very eyes. The morning she felt the quickening, she lay and watched him sleep for hours. The night before had been their worst row yet. Some horrible home truths had come out. She had accused him of taking her money too much, too often and what were they to do when it ran out? What about things for the baby, and what about their future?

  The conversation was still fresh in her mind, the wounds it inflicted still felt in her heart.

  ‘Our future is taken care of,’ said Jake dismissively, taking another gulp of wine.

  Did he mean his art? She had not seen him do a painting since they’d arrived, and his sketches were few and far between these days. He had never sold a picture, in all the time she’d known him.

  ‘In what way?’ she asked, carefully, not wishing to anger him.

  ‘We will return to your father’s house, of course. With a child in your belly, all will be forgiven and we shall live in style in Shropshire. I have in mind a little gallery in the town. I met a fellow in Ironbridge who loved the idea. We’ll need your father’s capital to set it up. I’m just waiting for you to get a bit fatter and then we’ll go.’

  ‘But . . . I stole from my father. All that money. He’ll never forgive me.’

  ‘Oh, yes he will. He just needs to see with his own eyes the condition you’re in. What with the marriage certificate and my gift of the gab and your poor little victim act, that’ll sway him. Then once your family are in the bag, I shall present you – ripe belly and King fortune – to my father and he shall welcome me as the prodigal son. We shall have his blessing and money, too. It’ll all work out, you’ll see.’

  Margaret was horrified. ‘But I do not wish
to return to my family. I hate my family. I thought you understood that.’

  ‘Oh, what rot! Did you think we’d live in this hole forever, little mouse? This is a holiday for us. But we must go back. We have to get what’s rightly ours.’

  ‘I would welcome the idea of visiting your family. But I never want to see mine again. Can we not do that, and just avoid my old life altogether?’

  It seemed perfectly reasonable to her and she quite liked the idea of meeting his parents and seeing his family home in Birmingham, enjoying a hot drink in one of his father’s coffee houses. It must be better than this miserable life, at any rate.

  ‘Don’t be a bloody fool,’ he said. ‘I can’t go home empty-handed.’

  ‘But you won’t be. You shall have me. And our child.’

  ‘That’s not enough! I can’t go back without a rich wife, he told me so, in no uncertain terms. A rich wife or to make my fortune by my art. Well, the latter will never happen, that’s clear to me now. So, a rich wife it must be. And you are rich. You just need to bend the knee to your dear papa and grandmamma and all will be well. And all manner of things will be well!’

  He was swigging back the wine now, his speech slurring, his cheeks red and his forehead shining with sweat.

  ‘I won’t do it,’ she said quietly.

  He turned a cold eye on her. ‘Oh, yes, you will, mouse.’

  ‘You can’t make me,’ she said, feeling she sounded like a recalcitrant child. But she meant it all the same.

  He stood up swiftly and staggered, the speed making him dizzy. Margaret didn’t know what he would do next. She eyed the door and thought of how she could get to it and evade his reach. He recovered himself and lurched towards her. She made a break for it, but he grabbed her and fell on her, his dead weight pinning her to the wooden floorboards.

  ‘The child!’ she cried.

  ‘Shut up! Shut up!’ he was spitting in her ear. ‘I never wanted you, you simpering little bitch. I wanted the redhead more. She had something about her. By God, I wanted the local whores more than I ever wanted you. Even your stepmother, that brainless slut, was better in bed than you.’

  He heaved himself up and slapped her hard across the face, the effort of it making him fall sideways and bang his head on the floor with an almighty crack. All was quiet. As she struggled away, sobbing and holding her belly protectively, she heard him moaning. Not dead, then. He muttered a few incomprehensible sounds then turned on his side and slept like an infant. Heartsick, she put her hand to her cheek. Whores? Anny? Benjamina? What a fool she’d been. She thought of all the times a man had hit her: her brother, her father and now her husband. And she decided, enough was enough. She made herself a promise: never again would a man strike her.

  That was last night. Now, she felt her baby’s fluttering movements inside her and it seemed like a clarion call. She looked again at her husband. So, he had bedded Benjamina. He had wanted to bed Anny. He had been with prostitutes. He had never wanted her, never loved her. He was a drunk and a failure. Despite everything, she could not hate him. He was her first love. Or rather, she could not hate the man she had fallen in love with. But the man lying down there was not that man. He had never existed and was a fiction of her own making. It was astonishing, how completely one could invent a life and believe it to be true.

  This life was over, she knew that now. As quiet as the mouse he named her, she stood. She dressed. She found her money and packed a few essentials into a carpet bag. She left her husband sleeping on the floor. Descending the spiral staircase, the smell of dead animals growing stronger with every step, she marvelled at how stupid she had been, how naive and reckless. She thought, A bigger fool there never was upon this earth. She resigned herself to making the best of her disappointing and difficult life ahead, her growing babe inside her at least being a source of joy.

  But as she thought of her unborn child, she recalled how her father and brother had always called her the weakling strain of the family. She wanted at that moment to prove them wrong, to never live down to the King family’s low expectations of poor little Margaret, the poor little mouse. She thought for a moment of her pointless education, how she could play the piano well and could speak French. Perhaps it wasn’t so pointless after all. She could try teaching English and piano to French children, just as their artist friends had suggested. It was a tall order, for an Englishwoman on her own to make her way in a foreign country. Margaret felt her baby quickening inside her again and it spurred her on, out into the street. She was encouraged too by her memories of Anny’s strength and bravery. She still blamed herself for Anny’s ruin. And she realised that their friendship might have been Anny’s downfall, but it was the very making of herself. Fuelled by her determination to prove her family wrong and her admiration for the strength of her lost friend, she walked away from her husband and into the Paris morning, full of hope and the resolve to make a life for herself, without the Kings, without Jake, without anyone but herself and her child. She would do it; she would be strong and she would survive. Anny had taught her how.

  Chapter 28

  In the time after her salvation, Anny was feverish. She was aware only of sips of water and the gentle touch of a cool cloth about her face. Days or weeks passed; she had no way of telling. A day came when she felt brighter and wanted to say something. She watched her saviours pottering about their tiny house and she said, ‘Thank you.’

  They turned round to look at her and came to her, smiling at each other.

  ‘Do you know your own name?’ said the woman.

  ‘Anny.’

  ‘And mine?’ said the young man.

  ‘Dunna fuss the wench, son!’

  ‘Peter,’ said Anny. ‘And Mary.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Mary.

  ‘Malone. Mary and Peter Malone,’ added Anny.

  ‘Nothing wrong with your memory then,’ said Mary. ‘Glad to see it. You were in a terrible state when we found you. But I’m glad to see you’re still all there. I’ll get you some soup and Peter will sit and talk with you, wonna you, Peter?’

  She went off to the kitchen table. Peter drew up a stool and sat down beside the bed. He looked awkward but willing. His arms were ingrained with coal dust. A miner, then.

  ‘You used to work at the forge,’ said Anny.

  ‘I did, but I didna wanna stay there after . . .’ He trailed off.

  ‘After what?’

  Peter looked round at his mother. He was tall and strapping, his arms muscular, his neck thick and his face well formed with high cheekbones. They were around the same age, him and herself, yet she’d not mixed much with the neighbours since she’d started working at the big house. What a fool she’d been. What fine friendships she could have had. He’d grown into a man since the last time she’d seen him, kicking about with the other kids. But he looked like a child again when he turned his worried face to Mary.

  ‘The blast?’ said Anny. ‘Do you mean the blast?’

  ‘Yes, the accident at the furnace.’

  ‘That was no accident,’ said Anny. ‘That was King’s fault.’

  ‘Well, no. I mean, yes. That’s what they say. That’s what I say. That’s why I left King’s employ.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I couldna stand to line the man’s pockets after that. I’m a collier now. Different master.’

  ‘What’s it like, down the mine?’

  ‘Oh, you dunna wanna know about that,’ said Peter.

  ‘I do,’ said Anny.

  Mary appeared, carrying over a tray with a steaming bowl. ‘Here’s your soup. Come now, Peter. You’ll tire Anny out with all this chit-chat. Let me feed her now. Fetch that extra pillow, will you, lad?’

  Mary helped her sit up a little and spooned the soup into her mouth. It was good to taste good food. Life came down to simple things like this. Simple, good things.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said to Mary, when they were done.

  ‘You’re very welcome,’ she repli
ed, standing up to return the bowl to the table. Peter was sitting by the fire, reading a book. Mary pottered around the table. Anny closed her eyes and listened to the comforting sound of a mother’s tasks at day’s end.

  ‘Mrs Malone,’ she said and opened her eyes. ‘Where is my mother?’

  Rachel was sent for and came the next day, a Sunday. There were many tears and kisses and hugs and hand-holding, much of which had been banned by the prison, of course. Anny noticed Peter watching them with shining eyes, an emotional young man. Mother looked like an angel to Anny, but after talking with her for a while, she could see that her mother’s face was drawn and she had black shadows of exhaustion beneath her eyes.

  ‘I shall come home with you today, Mother. I shall help you at home. I’m never leaving you again. I want to stay with you always, just the two of us.’

  ‘Oh, my dear lass. Dunna say such things. You have had a bad time. But you will rally and then you will make your own life.’

  ‘No,’ said Anny strongly, hauling herself to sit up. ‘No, I won’t. I don’t want any part of it. Any of it. I just want to be with you.’

  ‘Dunna upset yourself, Anny, please,’ said her mother and soothed her, stroking her hand and easing her back down on the pillows. ‘You mun rest. You mun get well. Mary wants to nurse you back to health and I will visit when I can.’