A Glimpse at Happiness

by Jean Fullerton

  ‘How do you know that?’ he asked, after a long moment.

  ‘Because . . .’ She stopped.

  ‘Because you took her letter to her mother and read it, didn’t you?’

  ‘But she was—’

  ‘Did you read Josie’s letter to her mother?’

  Mrs Munroe drew a long breath through her nose and pulled her shoulders back. ‘I did, and it was full of her monstrous lust for Nolan and lies about me. You should have read it.’

  ‘I would have liked to. Perhaps we could have helped poor Josie sooner.’

  ‘Poor Josie!’ she shrieked. ‘Poor Josie! Poor Josie has thrown aside all propriety and decency.’

  ‘As I understand the matter, on the evening Josie left this house, she had been attacked by ruffians. Patrick Nolan saved her and brought her home,’ Robert said.

  ‘She said she’d been set upon but I thought she was trying to explain away her ripped dress.’ Mrs Munroe went to lay her hand on his sleeve again but stopped when she saw the frosty look in his eye. ‘Robert, I saw them. They were in each other arms swearing their eternal love when I found them at the back door. I shudder to think how long they had been deceiving us to carry on their sordid affair. As far as I am concerned, she turned her back on those who cared for her and chose a life of sin with Nolan.’

  ‘After you threatened to have her locked in an asylum,’ he replied, though gritted teeth.

  Mrs Woodall!

  ‘I never thought my own son would take the word of a servant against mine.’

  ‘Did you threaten to send Josie to an asylum?’

  Mrs Munroe held his stare as the tenth commandment danced in her mind. ‘In my mind, her unbridled actions indicated mental instability.’

  Robert let out a colourful oath, crossed the room and stood staring out of the window, his hands gripping onto the frame.

  ‘Blaspheming will do you no good,’ she said severely. ‘After all, Saint Paul in his epistle to the Galatians tells us the adulterers and fornicators shall not inherit the Kingdom of God.’

  Robert turned and glared at her. ‘You quote scripture to me after forcing Josie out on the streets with nothing more than the clothes on her back?’

  ‘But, Robert, I did it for you. For you and your dear children, my grandchildren. I couldn’t bear to see you ostracised again because of Miss O’Casey’s disgraceful behaviour. It gave me no pleasure to expose her lewd nature but, as you well know, I have never flinched from my duty. My only thought when I saw them in each other’s arms was to safeguard your reputation and save those precious children upstairs from being tainted by Josephine O’Casey.’

  ‘By throwing her onto the streets,’ Robert replied in a leaden stare.

  Mrs Munroe fixed him with the look she used to pull his father into line on many occasions. ‘I must say, in view of all I have been through and sacrificed I am deeply hurt by your tone, Robert. So much so that I am of a mind to cut short my visit and return home.’

  Robert reached for the bell pull. ‘I will organise your travel arrangements immediately.’

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Josie turned into Walburgh Street just as the light had begun to fade. In several windows the glow of lamps began to flicker. The wind gusted and she put her hand to her head to catch her bonnet and then wished she hadn’t. The gunshot wound was only superficial and after Sarah and Mattie had cleaned it and packed salt on it for three days, it was healing nicely, but it hurt like billy-o if she moved her arm suddenly. It ached even more because she, along with Sarah, had struggled since early morning to birth Mattie’s baby boy.

  She smiled as she pictured herself in the same situation next spring. Please God, let Patrick be with her when their own baby was born.

  Sarah’s and Mattie’s eyes had fixed on her belly when they saw the blood on her arm but the baby remained tucked away unharmed.

  Although outwardly Annie and Mickey were unharmed from their ordeal, it was only in the last couple of nights that they had both managed a full night’s sleep without one of them waking up screaming. So, as much as she would have loved to stay and fuss over Mattie’s new son, Josie had gulped down her tea to dash home. Kate was there with the children, but she would, no doubt, be in a rush to go over and see Mattie’s baby for herself. Josie wanted to make sure she was back in time to get them ready for bed.

  Colly Bonny waved at her as she gathered her own children, who were kicking a half-inflated ball up and down the street.

  ‘What did she have?’ she called across.

  ‘A boy, as big as his father. They have called him Brian,’ Josie called back. ‘They’re both well.’

  Colly laughed. ‘God bless her. I’ve just pulled a tray of toffee out of the oven; send your two over for a couple of chunks, if you like.’

  Josie grinned. ‘I’m surprised they haven’t smelt it and been over already.’

  Colly went in and Josie pushed open her front door.

  ‘I’m home,’ she called down the passage as she took off her bonnet.

  Nothing! Josie’s brows drew together. Annie and Mickey usually raced up the hall right away.

  A cold hand of dread closed around Josie’s heart. Ma was dead, but Harry Tugman was still at large, and although Superintendent Jackson had assured her that he had every officer available out looking for him, it wasn’t impossible for Harry to come back to harm the children.

  Josie covered the distance to the scullery door in seconds and flung the door open. For one moment her brain didn’t quite believe what her eyes were seeing: her mother and father sitting in the two chairs by the fire, with a child on each of their laps.

  She saw them, as if looking at them for the first time. Ma, who had looked so pale when Josie had waved her goodbye, now sat in her dark green day dress, with a healthy glow in her cheeks, while Annie explained something about her embroidery hoop to her. Robert, in his charcoal jacket and pin-striped trousers, traced his finger over a page while Mickey read his storybook.

  She tried to speak then four pairs of eyes turned on her.

  Annie and Mickey jumped down and ran towards her. Josie tore her eyes from her parents and caught the children to her.

  Ellen stood up and crossed the room. ‘Josie! Oh, sweet Mother, Josie, are you all right?’ she asked holding her at arms’ length and running her eyes over her rapidly. ‘I haven’t slept a wink since we got Bobby’s letter. Tell me you’re all right, my darling girl.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Josie assured her mother, still not quite believing that her parents were actually standing in Sarah’s scullery.

  Robert gently tilted Josie’s head to the light. ‘Are you sure? Young Mickey here tells me you were shot.’ He was already taking her injured arm and gently articulating it. ‘Has any one looked at it? Has it been dressed properly? You can’t be too careful with a dirty wound like that. Fragments can be left and set off a fever.’ He let her arm fall and studied her closely in the available light. ‘I’d better look at it myself in a while, just to be sure.’

  Josie threw herself into her mother’s arms, buried her face in her shoulder and burst into tears, unable to hold back her relief and joy. Robert came over and put his arms around them both. When he pressed his lips to Josie’s forehead she started to sob uncontrollably.

  How she could ever have thought her parents would turn their backs on her, she didn’t know, but in the wild and dangerous weeks since they’d left, her love for Patrick had turned her whole world on its head. It was little wonder she’d forgotten how unshakable her parents’ love really was.

  ‘Mam,’ she sobbed, her tears making dark spots on the fabric of Ellen’s jacket. ‘Oh, Mam, I’m so sorry, when you didn’t reply to my letter I thought—.’ She stopped and buried her face in her mother’s shoulder again.

  Ellen hugged her tighter. ‘There, there,’ she said as she ran her hand lightly over Josie’s damp face.

  ‘Your mother didn’t answer your letter because she never received it,’ Robert said
in a controlled voice as he dragged a chair over so that Ellen could sit next to her daughter.

  ‘If we’d known the trouble you were in, we would have come straight back,’ Ellen said.

  Trouble! thought Josie, remembering that she’d had to let out the laces in her stays that morning.

  She gestured to Annie and Mickey and put her arms around them. ‘Colly has some toffee cooling, why don’t you pop over and have some while I talk to my mam and pa?’

  Annie went to take Mickey’s hand but he screwed up his face. ‘But I want to tell Dr Munroe how Ma Tugman fell though the stairs and we got away.’

  Robert leant over and ruffled the boy’s hair. ‘You’ve already told me twice, and how Josie found the stolen silver plate and took it to the police. Now you do as she says and when you come back we’ll read the rest of the story.’

  Annie took her brother’s hand and this time Mickey trotted off after her.

  After she heard the front door close, Josie took a deep breath. ‘Mam, Pa. I know I should have told you before and I’m truly sorry. It has hurt me to be dishonest with you both but I must tell you the truth now,’ Josie said, as her heart thundered in her chest. ‘I love Patrick and since I left, we have been living together as man and wife.’

  ‘So I understand,’ Ellen replied. ‘Now why don’t you tell me it all from the beginning.’

  Josie explained all about how Patrick had met and married Rosa and what happened to her. ‘And, although Annie and Mickey think their mother is dead, she is not. So Patrick is still married.’

  Although frowned upon, premarital relationships could be remedied in a chapel. An adulterous one could not.

  There was a long pause and then Robert spoke. ‘I won’t deny that this doesn’t create huge problems, Josie.’ He took hold of Ellen’s hand and pressed it to his lips. ‘Your mother and I know how unforgiving society can be to those who love outside the accepted boundaries.’ Ellen gazed up at Robert and then they both looked at Josie. ‘But you are our daughter and we love you, so let us deal with one thing at a time. What can we do to get the case against Patrick dismissed?’

  Harry swilled the gin around in his glass and threw it down his throat. The gut-rotting liquid burnt but he welcomed the pain. Slamming the glass on the table before him he glared at his surroundings.

  The Blue Coat Boy was two miles from the Boatman with a ceiling so low that even an averaged sized man had to stoop. It was also so deep within the Wentworth Street rookery that, even with the nabbers out in force looking for him, he could sit in the bar without fear. The bar was crammed with men and women escaping their damp and dreary hovels in order to drink themselves into oblivion in the warm companionship of the public house.

  Porters from the market rubbed shoulders with butchers, cheesemongers and barrowmen, while raddled trollops tried to persuade them to part with their cash for a quick knee trembler in the side alley.

  Ollie Mac lumbered to his feet. ‘I’ll get you another, ’Arry. That’ll see you right.’

  Harry knew another gin wouldn’t set him right; no more than all the others he’d poured down his neck since Ma had died, cursing him with her last breath. The image of her motionless face and staring blue eyes came back to him again. With all the craftiness gone from her face she looked like the mother Harry had remembered as a lad. Bitter remorse and misery gripped his chest and made him choke and cough.

  If only he’d gone with her that morning he could have caught the O’Casey woman, and Ma would still be alive - not mouldering in her grave.

  Lifting his eyes from the bottom of the empty glass he watched Ollie chatting to a pert-looking girl with an eyeful of cleavage and painted lips. Ollie had stood by him, and Harry didn’t wonder at it - the wiry Scotsman was always his most loyal man, but others of the gang had scarpered as the police closed in.

  Ollie gave the strumpet pressing herself into him a lavish kiss and then fought his way back. He plonked a bottle on the table.

  ‘It’ll save me another trip,’ he said, slopping gin into both their glasses.

  Harry threw another mouthful down. ‘I shouldn’t have left her like that,’ he slurred.

  ‘Now, now, man,’ Ollie said, shaking his arm. ‘What could you have done? The peelers were on their way and your old Ma wouldn’t have wanted you taken, now, would she?’

  Harry wasn’t so sure. He had the feeling that his ma would have shopped him to the nabbers herself if she’d known where her ‘sweet’ Charlie had been carted off to.

  He wiped his nose on his sleeve. ‘But you didn’t see her, lying there all broken.’ Ollie gave him a sympathetic look but said nothing. ‘What sort of son am I, to let his own mother be buried in a pauper’s grave?’ Harry swallowed the rest of the gin and Ollie poured another. Harry drank that too.

  Somewhere a woman started to sing and others joined in. Harry peered through a haze of tobacco smoke at the happy drinkers. He heaved himself up, swaying for a second or two before he found his balance.

  ‘Shuurrup,’ he bellowed. ‘Me ma’s dead. Show a bit of respect.’

  A couple of men at the bar turned and shoved two fingers up at him. Harry ripped the front of his jacket open and started to peel it off but got tangled in the sleeves. There were snorts of laughter and Ollie pulled him back into his seat.

  ‘Look, Harry. What say you and me find ourselves a nice bit of skirt each and have some fun?’ he said encouragingly.

  Harry shook his head and drew the small, double-barrelled pistol out of his pocket and turned it over in his hand, remembering Ma’s rare smile when Charlie had given it to her. He sniffed loudly.

  ‘I took this from her cold hand, I did,’ he said, running his thumb over the handle and held it up. It was a nice piece, perfectly balanced.

  Ollie grabbed his hand and shoved it under the table. ‘You trying to get arrested or something, waving that thing about?’

  ‘Don’t you understand? It’s my fault Ma’s dead,’ Harry snivelled.

  Ollie shook his head. ‘Look, you’re not to blame. I tell you, Harry, no muvver had a better son, than you.’

  Harry forced a smile. ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘I do. Honest, mate. If anyone’s to blame for your ma it’s that bastard Nolan, devil take him. If he’d been straight and honest and taken her booty upstream as he’d agreed, instead of ratting to the coppers, none of this would have happened. Things would have worked out fine if he hadn’t crossed her. If you want to blame anyone, he’s your man, and now that Plant’s in custody, Nolan’s going to get off clean as a whistle when he comes up in front of the judge next week.’

  Harry blinked his eyes a couple of times as Ollie’s words sank in. ‘You’re right. It’s all that bastard’s fault.’ An image of Patrick and Josie laughing and dancing at a wedding rose up in Harry’s mind. ‘Him and that swanky woman of his. It was her who broke in to Burr Street. If she hadn’t poked her nose in where she had no business, me ma would never have fallen down the stairs.’

  ‘That’s right, Harry.’ Ollie slapped him on the back heartily. ‘See, they did it, both of them. So don’t go on there blaming yourself because there weren’t nuffink you could have done.’

  A weight lifted from Harry’s back. Ollie was right. He shoved the table away and staggered to his feet. He raised the gun and shook it above his head. A woman screamed and men backed away.

  ‘It was Nolan and that fecking doxy of his.’ He stumbled back and crashed into the table behind and those sitting around it darted away. A bottle smashed under his feet as people screamed and dived for cover.

  He ran his hands over the smooth barrels of the pistol. ‘He thinks he’s got the better of us, Ma,’ he said cocking and un-cocking the hammers. ‘But don’t you worry none. I’ll make sure Nolan and his woman pays!’

  Chapter Thirty

  There wasn’t a bone in Patrick’s body that didn’t ache after the mile or so’s journey from Pentonville to the Old Bailey. As he was on remand and still presumed innoce
nt, Patrick had tried to get permission for his mother to visit again. This had been denied, leaving him without any hope of relief from his dread of what had happened to Annie and Mickey and of course, Josie.

  Therefore, unlike his travelling companions, Patrick was eager to get to London’s central criminal court because he would get the last glimpse of the woman he had loved for such a very long time and, please God and all his saints above, she would tell him that Annie and Mickey were safe.

  The carriage juddered to a stop and Patrick looked towards the back door as it swung open and one of the two wardens flanking the door waved them out with his truncheon. All six of them stood in line to avoid the drag on the chains that bound them, and then marched into the back door of England’s foremost court.