by Marie Joseph
Slowly Jessie straightened up. That was the real world, outside in the rain and the tearing wind. And what she’d just witnessed hadn’t been a miracle. Far from it. The girl, breathing her last, was just one more silly lass to have fallen for a bit of flattery from a man like the man who had once promised Jessie herself the moon if she’d let him do what he’d set his mind on doing.
Just for a second Jessie closed her eyes and saw a face. A strong face with a clear complexion and eyes as dark as her own, but tilting up at the corners. The prick of a moustache as he kissed her, the determined probing of a tongue, the whispered promises, and the weight of his body covering her own.
And nine months later, a baby with mauve-veined eyelids and skinned-rabbit limbs, lying in a cardboard shoebox, the whole thing weighing no more than a couple of two-pound sugar bags.
But this babbie wasn’t going to die. Not if Jessie Bead could help it. Working as confidently and surely as a trained midwife, Jessie cut the cord and tied the stump with a piece of string from her pocket. Rubbing in a spot of goose grease for good measure, she wiped the baby with a frayed towel, then wrapped it in the same towel, before winding it tightly into a swaddling with a grey fringed shawl.
Only when this was done did she turn her attention to the mother. Putting her face close to the girl’s ear, she whispered softly, ‘You’ve got a gradely little lass, love. A right beauty.’
It seemed that the eyelids quivered. No more than the weak fluttering of a dying butterfly’s wings. Jessie turned and, picking up the baby, laid it across the girl’s breast. Taking up a limp hand, she gently stroked the tiny face with the lifeless fingers.
‘I’ll see to her, lass. I’ll not have her fetched up with the fair folk, neither. I’ll see she goes to a good home.’
The semblance of a smile lifted the corners of the girl’s dry lips. Jessie narrowed her eyes. Maybe she was going to live, after all.
But when Jessie turned round from laying the baby on the dresser the shadow of death had already crept across the pale face, setting it into a waxen beauty. Already the nose had taken on a pinched look, even as the last faint sigh left the girl’s body. Jessie felt her stomach contract. A birth and a death, in almost as many minutes. For a moment she stood irresolute, a long-forgotten phrase from an institutionalized childhood of enforced chapel-going seeping into her mind.
‘The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away …’
With a jerk of her head Jessie spat the words away. Fancy thoughts like that could safely be left to preachers with their mealy-mouthed rantings from pulpits. From the slackening sound of the hammering outside, she knew, without the need to consult any timepiece, that in less than an hour’s time the fair would have to be off. The clank of harnesses told her that the horses were being brought from their stabling, and by first light the heavily loaded carts and wagons would be wending their way across the moors.
Opening the door of the caravan, she yelled at the top of her voice, ‘Neilly!’ The wind took her voice and tossed it away. The rain beat against her face and whipped her skirts back against her thick legs as she climbed down the steps onto the cobblestones. ‘Neilly!’ This time the power of her voice would have stopped an advancing army in its tracks. ‘Neilly! Where the ’ell are you? Neilly!’
From somewhere out of the darkness, the bobbing lights, the frantically busy men, he came, running towards her. As he would always come running whenever she called his name.
‘Is it finished, Jessie? Has the babbie come?’ Like an ungainly lap dog he followed her up the steps and into the blessed shelter and comparative warmth of the caravan.
‘She’s gone.’ Jessie pointed to the body, then jerked her head sideways. ‘But the babbie’s alive.’
‘A boy?’ The familiar sickly grin stole across Neilly’s red face.
Jessie shot him a disgusted glance. He’d been drinking again. A bellyful by the look of him, but he was sober enough to do what she was about to ask him.
‘Fetch Billy.’ She stared at the puffy face of the big man. ‘An’ wipe that bloody stupid grin off your face. You’ll be laughing t’other side of it before this night’s done.’
Neilly stared back at her. If he was wondering why on earth she wanted to speak to Sillybilly, the town’s idiot, who yearly hung round the fairground, tolerated by the fair folk on account of his shambling gentleness, he gave no sign. Jessie’s word was his command. Always had been and always would be. Infuriating her, he sketched a wavy salute, stepped backwards, keeping his balance as always, and was gone.
Dismissing him from her mind immediately, Jessie moved into action. Checking first that the baby was breathing properly, she turned her attention to the dead girl.
For what she had in mind it was better to leave her dressed exactly as she was. If she were ever to be found, then robbery mustn’t even be suspected. Jessie tightened her lips. But if Neilly did his job well, she would never be found. There’d be no wretched bobbies poking their long noses into Jessie Bead’s affairs. Report the death and they’d be round, asking questions, holding up the exodus of the fair itself. Pulling down the girl’s petticoats, noticing the fine embroidery on her camisole, Jessie began to button up the high-necked blouse.
This girl, this obviously high-born girl, had left her home and her own folk of her own free will. Jessie reckoned her age as about eighteen, though she’d said she was older when she’d come begging for work. More likely than not, they’d thrown her out. Toffs were like that. She glanced at the ringless left hand. Having a babbie out of wedlock would be a shame folks like that couldn’t stomach.
‘You poor little sod.’ The crude word was spoken as reverently as a prayer.
The buttons on the sodden material were proving difficult for Jessie’s podgy fingers to manage. She narrowed her eyes. Round the girl’s neck, hidden by the blouse and the lace-trimmed camisole, was a thin gold chain. With a jerk Jessie pulled at it, feeling it snap. A long thin chain with some sort of a medallion attached to it. Holding it close to her short-sighted eyes, Jessie took it over to the lamp.
Before she could make out the tiny engraved writing on it, the door opened with a rush of sound. With a sleight of hand that would have done a seasoned conjuror proud, she upped with her skirts and dropped the chain into the canvas bag slung round her waist. No point in giving them ferreting police anything to go on if they ever found the body. Finding it would be one thing; identifying it would be quite another. Turning round, she faced Neilly and the thirty-year-old boy who gawped at her with drooling mouth and the eyes of a child.
‘She’s just having a sleep, Billy,’ she said, and he nodded. ‘But don’t tell the men outside. They’ll think she’s getting out of helping with the work.’ Another swift dive into the canvas bag, two shilling pieces held out in her hand. ‘Double your wages, Billy. One for helping, like you always get, and an extra one for saying nowt. You understand?’
The smooth face took on a cunning look. Jessie nodded. It would take wild horses to drag even a word from the thin, stoop-shouldered man, his cap dripping rain down his vacant face. She had known many Sillybillys in her childhood at the workhouse. Staunch, gentle and kind, they were worth a dozen of the others. Tell them a secret and it was a secret for ever. Give them even a pittance, and their gratitude knew no bounds.
Jessie screwed up her eyes, jerking her head towards the body, and speaking directly to Neilly. ‘You know what to do?’
Again the twisted smile of complete understanding. Jessie shook her big head from side to side. Two men. One as drunk as a lord, and the other with the brain of a six-year-old, and yet she knew she could trust them to the end of the world, aye and farther than that if need be. It were a funny world, all right.
‘No trace,’ she emphasized.
Once again the irritating sketchy salute and the oafish grin on Neilly’s pumped-up features. ‘Aye, aye, mam!’ he said.
Jessie took her long, voluminous black cloak down from a peg behind the door. It was so full
that the fair folk had often whispered amongst themselves that it would have gone four times round the Fat Woman in the Freak Show and still left enough stuff to go round Blackpool Tower. Pulling the hood over her head, she picked up the baby from the dresser and holding it close covered them both with the musty-smelling woollen cloth.
‘You want to be careful you don’t smother the poor little whippersnapper, Jessie.’ Neilly had drunk too much to watch his tongue, but he knew when he’d overstepped the mark. ‘It were only a joke,’ he muttered.
‘This babbie’s not going in the workhouse.’ Jessie’s voice was a growl. She turned to Sillybilly. ‘Now listen to me, lad. We’ve not got much time, but I want you to put your thinking cap on.’
‘Yes, Mrs Bead.’ The tall young man almost stood to attention. ‘It’s on, Mrs Bead.’
Beneath the black woollen hood Jessie’s eyes shone like newly washed currants. ‘Who is the kindest man in this town, Billy? Who loves childer?’
Sillybilly shuffled his big feet, hesitating only for a second. ‘The clogger, Mrs Bead … I do his errands sometimes, and he never shouts at me, not even when I forget. He’s the nicest man in the world, Mr Haydock is. He made these for me and he wouldn’t take no money from me mam. He showed me how to clean them with banana skins.’ Ruefully, Billy glanced down at his mud-caked footwear. ‘A good rubbin’ll bring the shine up again, Mrs Bead. They’re not spoiled.’
‘Can you show me where he lives?’ Jessie moved towards the door. ‘It’s not far from here, is it, lad?’
‘Just off Victoria Street, Mrs Bead.’
‘Right then.’ Without a backward glance, Jessie opened the door and stepped out into the dark night, her enormous bulk negotiating the three steps with a daintiness that wouldn’t have disgraced a ballet dancer. Before she had taken more than a few steps the hem of her cloak, trailing along the muddy cobblestones, was soaking wet and she was forced to lower her head against the driving rain.
‘This way, Mrs Bead.’ Sillybilly pointed out a direction it was impossible to see. ‘You all right, Mrs Bead?’
A grunt was the only answer he got. Jessie could feel the wetness through the cloak on her back. Holding the baby tightly against her chest left her without a hand to steady herself, and the cobbles beneath the thin soles of her boots were slippery with grease. The sounds of men working and hammering were fading now. Her breath came rasping in her throat, and only by concentrating on the metallic ring of Billy’s clogs on the narrow pavements could she force herself to keep going. One more year with the fair, she told herself, then she could give up this way of life for ever. A bungalow at Lytham St Annes was what she had in mind. A life of respectability for her and Neilly, bought with the money she’d striven so hard to save. Bowing her head, she struggled on.
Years of overfeeding, of indulging herself in massive plates of potato pie washed down with gallons of milk stout, of taking little or no exercise, had made her short of breath and wheezy of chest. Her eyes bulged and the tops of her thick legs rubbed together in a smarting agony, but she kept on.
When Jessie Bead made up her mind to do something, she did it. When she had said this baby wasn’t going into the workhouse, she had meant it with every fibre in her being. And not until she had handed her over to somebody decent would she be satisfied.
The street they were walking along was deserted. The shops were shuttered against the night, the gas lamps had been extinguished. A man, crazed with drink, caught them up as they passed the dim silhouette of St John’s Church, but when he lurched towards them Jessie gave him a mouthful of invective that sent him reeling against a low wall. Jessie knew no fear. For a long time now she had lived and worked with the roughest of men, and their behaviour held no terrors for her.
‘Nearly there, Mrs Bead.’ The importance of being useful was making Billy light-headed, and he turned and smiled his queer, lopsided smile at her. ‘The chapel’s at the top of the next street, and the clogger’s shop is just here at the bottom. You don’t get corns nor chilblains if you wear clogs, Mrs Bead.’
‘No, Billy. That’s true enough.’ Jessie stopped because he had stopped. She lifted her head and peered up at a door with an iron knocker set high. ‘You can go now, Billy,’ she wheezed. ‘Get yourself back home and out of those wet things.’ Her gruff voice gentled. ‘You’ve been a good lad.’
Billy’s grin was wide enough to split his face in two. ‘An’ I’ll not tell nobody about the parcel, Mrs Bead.’
‘The parcel?’ Jessie held the baby close. God bless his simple mind; the shambling man-child hadn’t even cottoned on to what it was all about. She smiled back at him. So much the better … so very much the better.
‘I’ll keep me gob shut, Mrs Bead.’
‘I can trust you, Billy.’
When the sound of his clogs died away, Jessie lifted the knocker and let it fall three times against the door. She did the same again until a wavering light behind the yellow blind of an upstairs room told her the clogger was on his way down.
When the bolt was drawn back and the door thrown open, she saw a stocky man standing there, his strong features illuminated by candle flame. There was no fear sharpening his glance; nothing more than a gentle puzzlement as he raised the candlestick higher in his right hand.
Knowing instinctively and at once that she had found her man, Jessie thrust the swaddled bundle at him, watched him hold it awkwardly in his free arm, then saw his mouth drop open in amazement as the baby set up a wailing.
‘Take it. Give it to your wife. Love it, and bring it up like your own.’
Jessie’s voice was as deep as a man’s, and before Seth could open his mouth to speak she had hurried away, the black cloak billowing out behind her like the sail of a ship.
Two
‘CHEESE AND FLIPPIN’ rice!’
Even in the direst of emergencies, and surely this was one, Seth Haydock never allowed a swearword to pass his lips. An ardent, godfearing Wesleyan Methodist, he believed that swearing was the work of the devil, and if a man couldn’t express his feelings without cursing then he’d be better keeping his mouth shut.
That was Seth’s code, and he stuck by it firmly.
Not that there hadn’t been plenty of times in his forty years when a good old fruitful epithet wouldn’t have come amiss, relieving the feelings he kept on a tight rein. But, as he was for ever reminding himself, the Lord Jesus had never cursed, and that was enough for Seth Haydock. No one could ever accuse him of being sanctimonious, but what his heavenly Father sent his way Seth accepted. Not passively, but with a quiet courage that had over the years made him many staunch friends.
He had accepted without rancour that he would for ever walk with a slight limp after a sniper’s bullet had shattered his left knee on the hot plains of South Africa during the Boer War. He had accepted that his young wife’s death from consumption had been the will of God, and he firmly believed that some day she would be up there waiting for him, blue eyes smiling and her hands outstretched to greet him.
‘Cheese and flippin’ rice!’
Heedless of the rain bouncing up from the cobbles, he ran out into the middle of the narrow street, the candlestick slipping from his grasp. The short street was shrouded in darkness, as silent as the grave. In four hours’ time the knocker-up with his umbrella spokes tied to the end of his long pole would be making his way down from the chapel end, but now, in the small cold hours of a Wednesday morning, each and every window was shuttered blind.
The woman – if indeed she’d been a woman – had disappeared round the corner. The only recollection Seth had was of opening the door and instinctively holding out his arms for the bundle thrust into them. Whoever it was had skedaddled.
Seth’s feet in the down-at-heel slippers were already soaking wet. The knocking had been so insistent he’d had time to do no more than drag his trousers on over his nightshirt, and that was clinging to his back like a wet poultice.
He stood there, a bewildered, stocky little ma
n, frozen by indecision, even the primeval instinct for seeking a shelter deserting him.
The baby, shocked from its birth sleep, opened its mouth in a loud wail. The rain was falling on its tiny face, and the sight jerked Seth out of his stunned immobility.
He turned and went back into the house, kicking the door closed behind him. Without the candlelight to guide him, the way was hazardous, but Seth knew his little front shop down to the last wood shaving on the flag floor. Past the wooden counter with its brass foot gauge, skirting the long bench polished by his customers waiting their turn, he padded, groping his way through to the back room where, though the fire in the grate had sulked its way to a glimmer, there was still a comforting feeling of leftover warmth.
Laying the baby down carefully on the horsehair sofa set at right angles to the fireplace he reached up on the mantelpiece for a box of matches, struck one and lit the gas, hearing it plop into life, not surprised to find that his hand shook more than a little.
The soft light shone down on the baby’s face, now purple with fury. Its eyelids quivered, then settled back into slits in the pallor of a round face no bigger than the perimeter of Seth’s pint pot set on the table in readiness for his early morning tea. Mercifully the crying stopped.
Seth stood with his hand pressed over his mouth. ‘Oh, dear God,’ he whispered, and it was a prayer, not a blasphemy. ‘Oh, dear God. What am I supposed to do now?’
The fire. That must be the first thing. Kneeling down on the pegged rug, Seth took the steel poker from its rest on the fender and carefully raked the dead ashes from the heart of the fire. The tiny red glow sprang to life and, oblivious of the pain shooting through his bad knee, Seth piled on sticks warming in the hearth, laid coal from the scuttle in a pyramid, then sat back on his heels with a satisfied look on his face as the fire took hold.
