Angel Meadow

by Audrey Howard

  The rent of the low, two-roomed, back-to-back cottage was two and sixpence, and thanks to Nancy, learning to be a good manager and already a sensible girl, they not only eked out a living, but began to put a farthing here, a halfpenny there, to one side. Nobody thought to question what three young girls were doing living alone, certainly not the landlord who came to collect his rent each week. So long as his money was in his hand he didn’t care who put it there. He did notice that the eldest was growing into a real bonny lass with a cloud of tight brown curls and the loveliest golden eyes he’d only ever seen on a cat, but when he tried to put a hand on her she acted like a bloody cat an’ all, clawing his hand away and spitting, threatening to tell her Sunday school teacher if he touched her again.

  As the year ran on and became two, then three, he also noticed that the appearance not only of the three girls but of their home was considerably improved. Strips of matting were laid on the uneven floor and a chair arrived to match the one already in place by the fireside. A battered settle big enough only for one person, and then a cupboard, the open door revealing a shining assortment of plates and dishes, while beneath it were suspended on hooks a set of skillets, stewpans and assorted cooking and household utensils. A highly glazed teatray which reflected the firelight and even a couple of tiny prints on the freshly whitewashed walls. A clock, a little Dutch machine with a busy pendulum swinging openly and candidly to the right of the fireplace. There was a small mirror, a barrel or two containing meal and flour, a row of smoke-browned little earthenware ornaments and a muslin window-screen to replace the torn rags that had been good enough for Kitty Brody, and in the window bottom a row of cheerful geraniums in cracked pots. It was so attractive, cheerful and warm he began to wonder if it was time he put his rent up.

  When he mentioned this carefully to the eldest girl she turned on him like a tiger.

  “You do an’ we’re off,” she told him fiercely. “Yer not the only landlord in Angel Meadow and this in’t the only cottage. We could get decent lodgin’s in Angel Street fer less than we give you, so think on. It’s only our stuff what makes it look nice an’ it’d go wi’ us. Just because we’re not as bloody feckless as the rest and have done the place up a bit don’t mean yer can charge us more than the rest o’ Church Court. Me an’ me sisters’ve worked hard fer this so stick that on’t wall an’ dance round it. We’re not payin’ another penny. Now, here’s yer money an’ good-day to yer.”

  The reference to her Sunday school teacher was the absolute truth. That’s where they went every Sunday, the Brody girls. To Sunday school. Not from any particular desire to learn about religion, prayers or a thirst for any other high moral knowledge but because Nancy insisted upon it.

  “Why can’t we go to Peel Park like the others?” Rosie would demand. “There’s a band there on Sundays, Marie Finnigan told me. She’s goin’ wi’ their Niall an’ Gregory—”

  “Can Marie Finnigan read?” Nancy interrupted curtly. She was busy at the task of whitewashing the ceiling – since she was the tallest – in her fierce determination to rid the cottage of the swarming creatures that had decorated its walls for as long as she could remember and when she’d done she meant to start on the upstairs. Mary was busy on the other side of the room, her tongue between her teeth, her eyes narrowed, as she did a tricky bit round the window frame. They had moved all their bits and pieces to the wall at the back of the room and when they had finished this side would move it all again and paint the rest.

  “Well then!”

  “Well then, what?” Rosie Brody was more aggressive than Mary, who would always docilely do as Nancy bid her. Their Rosie had a lot of her father in her, Irish and truculent with it, inclined to be volatile now that she had enough to eat, and ready to argue about everything, from whose turn it was to do the cooking to her reluctance to spend every waking hour when they weren’t at the mill cleaning the sodding cottage, as she put it. Was it really necessary to scrub the floor so often, she would whine, and the windows already shone like diamonds. Not that she’d ever seen a diamond nor expected to but it would have been nice to have just one day a week when they weren’t either at their looms or on their knees in the cottage.

  “How many times do I have to tell yer that unless we can read an’ write we’ll end up like Mam. D’yer want that? D’yer want ter wed some chap like we see at Monarch an’ have a bairn every year. Do yer? Mam was wed at sixteen, she told me once, and had eleven children. She was only in her early thirties, I suppose when she . . . when she left. If she was with us now in the end we’d have had her ter support and supply her with her gin but she’s not so I mean ter get on somehow an’ I’m takin’ you two wi’ me whether you like it or not, so shut yer gob, our Rose. An’ that’s why we’re goin’ ter Sunday school each week an’ not ter Peel Park.” Her voice softened, for she knew she drove her sisters hard, but what else could she do? She had this horror hanging over her, a picture of her mam lying on the kitchen floor with a man’s bum pumping away at her and the nightmare of it happening to her or their Rose and Mary drove her on and on and she knew she would not escape it until she had . . . Well, she didn’t really know, for Nancy Brody had no conception of what was beyond Angel Meadow but whatever it was it must be better than her mam had had. And she meant to find it.

  “I know we have ter sit through a lot of old rubbish about God an’ Jesus, our Rosie, and how he said ter bring all the little children to him, if yer can believe such a thing, but if that’s the price we have ter pay then we’ll pay it. Now get on with that wall. There’s upstairs to do yet.”

  4

  Mick O’Rourke was seventeen years old, a tall, powerfully built lad, light on his feet, which he had learned in the prize-fighting ring. He was a great favourite with the opposite sex and a porter at Smithfield Market. He was second-generation Irish, as were fifteen per cent of the population of Manchester, with a great deal of cheek and charm. From the day he first noticed Nancy Brody when she was fourteen years old, as a female and not just a kid who lived in the same street as himself, he wanted her. You got “nowt for nowt” in this world, though this did not always apply to handsome Mick, so he began to put himself out to be helpful to her.

  He had forgotten that years ago, before her mam disappeared, he had found and mended a bucket for the Brody family, an old thing with a hole in it, rusty and seemingly beyond redemption but with a bit of metal cut from a pipe, a smear of glue and some ingenuity, of which he was not short, he had put it right.

  It was the day of the Whit Walks. She was passing his mam’s house, she and her sisters, for it seemed they went nowhere without one another, or so his mam said, with that sneer in her voice that appeared when she spoke of “Lady Muck” as she had christened Nancy Brody.

  He saw her hat first, a pretty thing made of straw with flowers on it – he didn’t know what sort – bobbing along just above the level of the windowsill, and was immediately intrigued. Who, in Church Court, owned a straw hat with flowers on it? he asked himself, and when he went to the door to investigate he was in time to see three straight backs, three gracefully swinging skirts, with three pairs of immaculately polished boots twinkling beneath them, walking away from him towards Angel Street. She was in the middle, her sisters one on either side of her and it was a measure of the fascination with which the street’s occupants regarded them that every last one of them fell silent.

  As she felt their eyes on her Nancy Brody lifted her bonnet even higher. She had made it herself; well, most of it, having found it, a simple, unadorned and somewhat battered pancake at the bottom of a pile of old rags on Mrs Beasley’s stall one Saturday afternoon. Nancy and Mrs Beasley, she of the caustic wit that she had sharpened on Nancy on that first day, were old friends now, old combatants since Nancy had learned to bargain for what she wanted, often bringing the old woman down a farthing or two, which satisfied her enormously. Mrs Beasley admired that. She admired spunk and Nancy Brody had plenty of spunk. In the last five years she and Nancy had
formed a sort of mutual respect born of their recognition in one another of a spirited refusal to allow the world to get the better of them. Mrs Beasley, who had kept her stall there ever since Smithfield was amalgamated with other markets in the 1820s, had stood at the same spot in all weathers, sometimes frozen to the marrow, or pelted with icy rain and sleet, sometimes hardly able to keep to her feet in the sweltering, sultry heat which was trapped beneath a pall of smoke in the deep canyons of Manchester during the summer, and she had a feeling the lass would have shaped the same!

  She had taken a fancy to the bright-eyed young girl who had a strong vein of common sense and self-preservation in her that Mrs Beasley respected, seeing herself as she had been forty years ago. She began to put to one side bits and pieces she thought the lass might find to her liking, garments that were redeemable or with a bit of decent fabric in them that could be retrieved. Stockings and undergarments, which the sisters now wore without question, boots and bonnets and, with a great deal of ingenuity and a sense of style come from only God knew where, the Brody girls were so well dressed they caused a sensation every Sunday when they set off on their weekly visit to Ashley Road Sunday school.

  And that was another thing. They could all three read and write and do sums, even in their head, and, since the opening of the Manchester Free Library in Castlefield, it was not uncommon to see the Brody girls stepping out along Church Court with books borrowed from the library under their arms. Why in the name of the Holy Mother they still continued to live in Church Court, Mrs O’Rourke said to Mrs Murphy, who sported her usual Saturday night “shiner”, she couldn’t think, for with their hoity-toity, “we’re better than the rest of you” attitude, it was a bloody wonder to her why they hadn’t moved over to Higher Broughton by now.

  They only wore their best frocks and boots on a Sunday, for on six days a week they laboured at Monarch Mill and on those days, except for their exceptional good looks, their well-fed appearance of health and cleanliness, they were no different to their fellow workers. Plain, short cotton skirts and sleeveless bodices, well-mended clogs, with woollen stockings and a warm shawl for winter. Their hair was neatly plaited, their only claim to singularity being the bright knot of ribbons each wore at the end of her plait.

  They all three had a pair of mules of their own now and they were bringing home between them sometimes as much as two pounds a week. Though Annie still worked beside them she had aged and slowed down and all three had far outstripped her, spinning more yarn between them than any five other girls put together. They were quick, nimble-fingered, fleet of foot, clear-headed, their improved health giving them a head start on their contemporaries. They never stopped except when the engine did, walking the miles up and down the length of their machines, each with a piecer but sharing a scavenger to keep the spinning frames singing, if not exactly sweetly, then in a steady, rhythmic melody of outpouring yarn.

  Mick O’Rourke leaned his broad shoulder against the door frame and watched her retreating back, quite pole-axed, it seemed, which was totally unlike his usual brash confidence when faced with a pretty girl. He had the wit, the cheek, the charm, the fluent tongue of his Irish forebears, and was never lost for a word. Put him beside a likely girl and within minutes she would be peeping up shyly, or boldly, whatever her nature, into his laughing face, convinced, as he meant her to be, that she was the very girl for him. Indeed that he had been swept off his feet by her loveliness and if she did not return his feelings he would be mortally wounded. He’d kissed the blarney stone, right enough, his mam was fond of saying, though he had been born right here in Angel Meadow and had never cast eyes on the green of Ireland nor indeed the stretch of water that had brought his grandparents to Liverpool many years ago.

  Nancy turned her head to speak to her sister and in a shaft of sunlight which somehow found its way over the end cottage, he saw her long eyelashes fall and rise in a lovely slow, sensual movement, though if questioned he could not have admitted to knowing the word, or its meaning. Her profile moved in a smile, her lips curved and the skin of her clear jaw and throat was like the petals on a flower he had seen once in Philips Park when he was sparking a lass from over Holt Town way. They had a sort of house made from glass at the park, hot and moist and the girl – he couldn’t even remember her name – had been led inside quite unable to resist him and had even allowed him to put his hand up her skirt to the equally hot and moist centre of her before she took fright. The creamy blossom he had noticed there, despite his teeth gritting in frustration, had been exactly the colour and texture of Nancy Brody’s skin.

  He came out of his trance and began to function, leaping to snatch his jacket and cap from a hook at the back of the door, shouting to his mam that he was off.

  “Where yer goin’, darlin’?” she shrieked from the dark back regions of the cottage.

  “I dunno. There’ll be plenty ter see in town, so there will, an’ I might ’ave a look at Whit Walks.”

  “But it’s not until Friday, our Micky.”

  “Them’s Catholic walks on Friday, Mam. I’ve a fancy ter ’ave a look at Proddys’.”

  “Eeh, Mick O’Rourke, yer never!” As she came towards him she crossed herself apprehensively as though he had told her he was off to defile the sacred cross at St Luke’s Church in St George’s Road. She went to the door, following his progress down the narrow street, as did every man lolling against the wall having a peaceful smoke, every woman leaning in her doorway having an enjoyable gossip with next door and every child screaming and shrieking and throwing clumps of some unidentified filth at a cornered cat. They all stopped whatever they were doing to stare and the cat thankfully made its escape.

  Eileen O’Rourke’s mouth thinned vengefully when she saw who it was her son was chasing after, then she turned away, shrugging, beginning to smile, for if her Mick, who was as randy as once his father had been, thought he’d a chance of getting into that one’s drawers he was sadly mistaken. His cock’d fall off before Nancy Brody gave in!

  “Nancy . . . aay, Nancy, ’old on, will yer?” Mick shouted, throwing his cap to the back of his thick, chocolate-coloured curls and shrugging into his jacket. He straightened his red, spotted neckerchief against his brown throat and his lips curled up in a devastatingly white smile.

  The three girls stopped and turned and when she saw who it was Nancy smiled too, which she wouldn’t have done for any other lad, for if he had forgotten the bucket, she hadn’t. Mick had only been ten or eleven at the time and she a skinny girl three years younger but his careless kindness to her mam had impressed her immeasurably. She had often wondered what they would have done in the early days without that bucket. It was all very well having a tap at the corner of Church Court with the good water the Manchester Municipal Council provided pouring from it, but if you’d got nothing to put it in what was the use of it? It had been a life-saver that bucket and was still in daily use despite their improved situation in life.

  “Mornin’, Mick,” she said politely. “Lovely day.”

  “I dunno about the day bein’ lovely, Nancy Brody, but to be sure I never saw a lovelier sight than the three o’ yer. I’ve lived in this ’ere street all me life an’ there’s many a bonny Irish lass workin’ on the market, but I swear by the Holy Mother I’ve never seen such a bevy o’ beauties as the Brody girls.”

  He beamed at them with great good humour, at his best beneath their admiring gaze. He’d no idea how old they were, but they were pretty and smiling, all three of them and that was enough for Mick. She, the one he had his eye on, was tall with a fine slender figure but with a pair of full tits on her, high and round and perky, just as he liked them, and the sooner he charmed their owner the sooner they’d be in his hands. He meant to begin at once.

  “Get away wi’ you, Mick,” Nancy said, but as easy and friendly as anything, just as though they had been talking together only the day before, which Mick took to be a good sign. The other two said nothing, both shy, he thought, which was not how he li
ked his women. Nancy wasn’t, thank the Holy Mother. She regarded him steadily, candidly and his heart leap-frogged in his chest. She really was a looker. Her saucy hat clung to her mass of hair which rioted in lovely profusion about her head. She’d fastened the tight curls back with a knot of scarlet ribbon and from the nape of her neck it hung, or rather cascaded, down her back to her waist. He had an urgent desire to put his hands in it, for it was a warm, shining brown with streaks of gold and honey threaded through it, a colour that matched her eyes. He’d never seen anything like it before, so accustomed was he to the lank and often verminous locks of the girls with whom he consorted.

  He swallowed convulsively, for in that fraction of a moment he was overcome by the strange emotion she had so suddenly aroused in him. There was trust in her eyes and a soft liking, with none of the coquettish posturing he had found in other lasses and for an incredible moment he felt the need to be gentle with her, to treat her as he would a decent Catholic girl towards whom he had honourable intentions, then he shook himself and grinned impudently.

  “An’ where are the three o’ yer off to, then, an’ lookin’ so smart about it? To be sure I swear the good Queen up in London isn’t half so fine as the Brody sisters.”

  Both Mary and Rosie preened and smiled at him, their eyes wide and wondering, then glanced at each other, smoothing down the fullness of their grey cotton skirts, but Nancy continued to regard him steadily, her eyes clear and without guile.

  “We’re off ter see the Whit Walks, Mick.” She stretched her neck to look up at the patch of blue sky above, blue today because it was Whit Monday and the mills were closed. Smoke did not pour from the chimneys and the sunlight seemed the more golden for it, and the sky a more serene blue, like forget-me-nots. “It starts from St Ann’s Square so me an’ our Mary an’ Rose thought we’d walk over, it bein’ such a lovely day. They say there’ll be over five thousand children taking part. Then there’s teachers an’ all the bigwigs in their top hats an’ finery, an’ their wives. We want to have a look at the fashions, don’t we?” turning to smile at her sisters, speaking in the careful way she was cultivating and which so incensed Eileen O’Rourke.