House of Angels
FREDA LIGHTFOOT
Contents
Title Page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
About the Author
By Freda Lightfoot
Copyright
Chapter One
1908
There was barely sufficient light in the musty loft to judge the pallor of the woman lying on the filthy sheet, rank with blood and urine, but the young girl tending her could tell by the way her mother’s eyes had sunk deeper into their sockets that the end was not far off. Even so, she put the cup to her lips, urging her to drink.
‘Try a sip, Ma. It’s good beef tea and you need to keep up your strength.’
The woman attempted to obey but a fit of coughing took hold and she turned her dry mouth away from the succour offered to deposit yet more mucus and blood in the filthy rag she pressed to her lips.
When the spasm passed, she managed a smile and squeezed her daughter’s hand by way of thanks for her efforts. Despite the gloom in the airless loft, lit only by one tallow candle, she could see tears glimmering in the girl’s eyes, and the mother’s heart swelled with fear for this child she was about to leave alone and unprotected, in Fellside of all places.
This whole district of Kendal comprised a chaotic assortment of dingy cottages clinging drunkenly together on the western slopes of the town, their walls blackened by soot and peat smoke; a veritable warren of dwellings linked by a labyrinth of dark alleys, cobbled passages, and seemingly endless flights of stone steps that climbed the hillside in a haphazard fashion. An entire family with five or six children could occupy one room, and think themselves fortunate. Those streets worthy of the honour bore such names as Sebastopol, Sepulchre Lane, Hyena Row, or The Syke, and tucked behind many a hovel could be found the family pig sty or cess pit. The area was peppered with unsavoury taverns, dark corners for striking deals outside of the law, and foul workshops where shoes were cobbled, watches, chairs or saddles mended. And in many a grimy loft, woollen cloth was woven by weary men and women old before their time.
‘Listen to me, Mercy. There’s summat you needs to know, summat you must do.’
Again the woman was taken by a coughing fit and her daughter held the frail, bony shoulders until it eased. The girl herself was barely more robust, being small and skinny, her features sharp with hunger, the colour of her lank hair indeterminate beneath the grease and filth, scabs and sores marring young flesh that rarely saw the sun. In the gloom she appeared a pale, almost elf-like creature, with a face that rarely smiled, having seen far too much sadness in her short life of just sixteen years. Only the eyes hinted at the beauty that might have been present had poverty not done its utmost to destroy it before ever it bloomed. At certain times, such as in the rare brilliance of a summer’s day, they would be a bright translucent blue, at others the light in them would transfuse almost to aquamarine. Now they were dark with desperation and dread.
‘Hush, Ma, hush. Don’t try to talk. It’s rest you need, not chatter.’
Fear lay in the pit of the girl’s stomach like undigested cold porridge. She had no interest in anything her mother had to say at this juncture. She wanted only for her to sleep and wake refreshed and reborn, to see again her bonny smile, her cheeks flushed with sunshine and happiness rather than fever.
From somewhere behind the wainscot came the scuttle and scratch of a rat, but Mercy didn’t even turn her head, too used to such an occurrence to let it trouble her. They paid sixpence a week for the privilege of not sharing this verminous room with any other family, and the rats and cockroaches came free.
It hardly seemed possible that this ravaged skeleton was her own mother: Florrie Simpson, a hand-loom weaver who’d lived her entire life on Fellside, where she’d birthed four children with only herself, the youngest, having survived infancy. Since Mercy’s father had disappeared before ever she clapped eyes on him, her mother had devoted almost every waking hour to weaving the linsey cloth in the famous checks or stripes for gentlemen’s trousers in order to feed and clothe herself and her only child in little more than rags. Six days a week she’d worked her two-treadle loom, carried her bundles of cloth to the foreman to collect a pittance in payment, then made her weary way home again, weighed down by bundles of yarn for the next batch.
On Sundays, Ma always insisted that, humble though it might be, the room should be made spic and span for this special day. But by six o’clock on Monday morning she would be off weaving again and within hours the loft was once more filled with the pernicious, lung-choking dust from the weft.
Now Florrie lay in the last throes of consumption.
Where was the point of it all? Resentment burnt like bitter gall in the girl’s breast. Ma had never seemed to stop working, slaving from dawn to dusk for starvation wages with never a minute to rest or snatch a breath of fresh air. Weaving was notoriously badly paid in an industry that had been dying ever since the huge factories sprang up to produce cheap cotton. No one wanted soft linsey petticoats these days.
When weaving was hard to come by, like the other women of Fellside she would knit stockings, for which Kendal was famous, using her crooked pins or sticks, and a carved wooden knitting sheaf tucked into the belt around her waist to hold it.
Now Florrie’s work was done and this once pretty young woman would soon be dead and buried, though never forgotten, not if Mercy – the daughter who loved her, heart and soul – had any say.
It would be her responsibility now to mind the loom and go on without her, to carry on living in this rat-infested hell-hole, this hand-to-mouth existence, with barely a penny left over after rent and food had been paid for, and the woollen masters had taken their cut. There’d been much fearful talk lately among the tenants that the landlord, Josiah Angel, who owned these buildings, intended putting up the rents, though he did nothing to improve the condition of the place and justify that rise.
Not that her mother ever complained. What can’t be cured must be endured, was Florrie’s motto. Mercy was only too aware of the few options open to her, if she was to survive. She could either work herself to death in the unhealthy miasma of Fellside, as her mother had done, or earn a better living on her back. And even at sixteen she understood precisely what such a job entailed, and nearly vomited at the thought.
Florrie slept for a while, which was a relief. But much as Mercy longed for sleep herself, having not closed her eyes for a day and a night, not since Mrs Flint, her neighbour, had brought the beef tea, sh
e remained alert, fearful her ma might slip away when she wasn’t looking.
It was late evening now, and she became aware that her mother was awake and speaking, in weak but insistent tones. Something of great importance, or so she claimed. Mercy leant close to listen, her eyes stretching wide as Florrie whispered the secret she’d carried in her heart for sixteen long years, choosing at last to speak because of fears for her beloved daughter’s future.
‘Your da didn’t run off to be a sailor like I telled ya. Truth is, I were never married, never had any other bairn but thee.’
The exertion of this confession brought the expected penance of another coughing fit, and in something of a state of shock Mercy persuaded her mother to take a sip or two of the tincture she’d bought from the herbalist with their last few coppers. It seemed to quieten Florrie, calmed her sufficiently for her to continue in soft, rasping tones.
‘No miscarriages. No still-born bairns afore you. No husband. It were all a lie. You were my one and only precious girl. I might never have had you ’ceptin I grew careless. Not that I regret having you, child, not for a moment.’
The warmth and love in her eyes as she looked at her daughter was unmistakable and Mercy’s own eyes filled with ready tears.
‘Don’t fret yourself, Ma. I don’t care if you weren’t never married. You don’t have to try to be respectable for me. Don’t I love the bones of you?’
Florrie smiled sadly and squeezed her daughter’s hand. ‘There’s little more than bones left of me now, so I’m glad you do. And I love you too, my lovely girl.’
After a moment’s rest to gather her strength, she continued, ‘Your father were Mr Angel, the gent what owns the big department store in town.’
Mercy gasped. ‘What – the bleeding landlord? Him what owns these buildings?’
‘The very same. Him and me…we had a bit of a thing going once. Lasted for a year or two, s’matter of fact. He were right good to me, was Josiah.’
Little by little, and pausing between sentences to allow for coughing spasms, the story slowly emerged. Florrie Simpson had worked in the town’s department store, known as Angel’s, in the household linens department where she’d caught the eye of the owner, Josiah Angel. Against all odds the pair had fallen in love. Not that young Florrie had expected this great man of wealth and prestige in the town to abandon his wife and children for a mere slip of a girl such as herself.
‘Oh, but he made it very plain that he loved me,’ she whispered, her face going all soft, and her blue eyes glowing at the memory.
So why did he leave us to live in near starvation in this hell-hole all these years? Mercy longed to ask, but buttoned her lip as she’d no wish to distress her mother in her last hours. Seeming to guess her daughter’s troubled thoughts, Florrie strove to explain.
‘I was obliged to leave the store when I fell pregnant with you. Wouldn’t have been right for me to stay on, even had that been possible. None of the other girls would’ve been allowed, so it’d look odd if he made an exception in my case. But, like I say, he did what he could for a long while. Set me up nice and comfy in a lovely little cottage in the Shambles. Proper pretty it were, and handy for Josiah to pop in on his way to and from the store.’
A look of blissful contentment crept over her face and Florrie fell silent, reliving those sweet, precious encounters in her head; the loving hours they had spent together while the child quickened within her. It was as if she were losing her grasp on the present and slipping back into the past, where she much preferred to be. Mercy gently brought her back. ‘Why did he stop coming?’
Florrie shook her head. ‘I don’t know. He just did. One day I was expecting him to call on his way home, as he always did, but for some reason he never arrived.’ A tear slid down the hollow cheek, and Florrie wiped it away. ‘I’m sure it weren’t his fault. He had his family to think of.’
‘Did he know about me?’
‘Oh, aye. Took quite a shine to you, he did, when you were a bairn.’
‘But then he just stopped coming, without any explanation?’
‘Aye, when you were about twelve months old.’
‘And sent no more money?’
Florrie sighed. ‘Not a penny. I thought at first it were because you’d been teething and making a row, as bairns do. But then I hadn’t been too good meself, suffering some sort of infection in me tubes. He saw to it that I had a proper doctor, fetched me a few tasty bits to eat and suchlike. He could be a kind man when it suited him, though I’ll admit he hasn’t a reputation as such. Eeh, but we had some good times together for a while…then he just stopped coming.’ Sadness cloaked her ravished face. ‘I never blamed him. I reckon it all came to be a bit too much for him, what with his other responsibilities. Or happen his wife found out. I don’t know.’
‘And you’ve not seen or heard from him since?’
‘Never.’
Anger, hot and raw, was building inside Mercy at the treatment her mother had suffered at this man’s hands. ‘Then he wasn’t the gent you thought he was.’
‘Nay, don’t say that!’
‘Didn’t you ever go and ask, at the store I mean?’
Florrie looked shocked. ‘I could never do that. Wouldn’t have been right. He were the boss, the owner. I were… I were nowt.’ The conversation had exhausted her and she closed her eyes, her breathing growing ever more laboured, her face crumpled with pain.
Mercy said, ‘Don’t ever say such a thing. You’re not nowt to me, you’re my ma, and I love you.’
‘I know, lass. I know.’
As Florrie stroked her daughter’s cheek, Mercy held on tight to her other hand, willing her mother to keep on fighting, not to give in to the exhaustion that was claiming her. She urged her to rest, not to talk any more, but Florrie was determined to somehow find the strength to finish what she had started.
When she spoke again, she spaced out her words, struggling to catch a painful breath between each. ‘I – want – you – to – ask – him – for – a – job. A future. He owes me that, and he could do so much for you, lass.’ She turned her head slightly to indicate the box they kept under the bed, the one in which they stored their few precious belongings. ‘Letter – give it to him. Tell Josiah I allus loved him – selfish old goat.’ A smile lit up Florrie’s face as she fought to breathe, her eyes locked with love on her daughter.
It was all over. Just as Mercy had glimpsed a lightening of the sky through the narrow loft window cut high in the sloping roof, her mother had breathed her last. Mercy thought she would remember that last rasping, rattling breath for as long as she lived. For some hours afterwards, the girl had lain unmoving, holding her mother close, intent on trying to warm the rapidly cooling body, praying she was mistaken and that the loving arms would come round her as they always did when she needed comfort. But it was Jessie Flint from the room below who did that, prising free Mercy’s tight grip.
‘She’s gone, lass. Her soul has already flown. Let her be,’ the old lady gently urged. Then she’d gathered the child close to her soft bosom, letting her sob while she murmured a few inadequate words of comfort and condolence before briskly fetching wash cloth and water to do what had to be done.
Now Florrie lay stiff and cold, as neat and clean and tidy as she’d liked to be in life. Mercy sat dry-eyed beside the bed, still waiting for her mother’s head to turn and her lovely face to break into a smile as it would do every morning when she woke.
‘We can make the sun shine in our hearts, even if it’s wet and cold outside,’ she would say.
But this morning there was no response from the shrunken, withered figure that lay unmoving on the ramshackle bed, a mere shadow of the lovely young woman she’d once been. Even now, in the hour of her death, she was but thirty-six. Far too young to be meeting her Maker.
Heavy footsteps sounded on the narrow stairs. Men coming to carry her precious mother away. With no money for a funeral, Florrie would be put in a pauper’s grave and Mercy felt
her own small body begin to shake at the dreaded prospect.
‘Na then, don’t tek on, lass. Bear up, as yer ma would wish,’ old Jessie soothed.
But Mercy shook not with grief, of which she’d barely begun to comprehend, being still in shock, but with the degradation and humiliation of it all. She was outraged that her lovely, young, caring mother could be bundled up in a sheet and carried away like a roll of bad cloth to be dumped in some dark, musty hole in the ground; that her last resting place would be unmarked and uncared for. As if reading these thoughts, old Jessie clucked softly, patting and stroking the young girl, offering what comfort she could where none was available.
The men had no difficulty in lifting the woman, light as a child. They carried out the task with sombre respect, but it was all too much for Mercy. She could barely take in what was happening; unable to comprehend how it was that her quiet, orderly, albeit simple life could suddenly be turned upside down. How one day her mother had been happy and laughing and filled with her characteristic energy to work hard in order to get her daughter out of this place, and then within a few short months, be dead and buried.
All that stuff she’d told her at the end about who Mercy’s real father was. Not some common sailor after all, but a man of consequence, a man of class and position. And this gentleman, so-called, had cruelly deserted Florrie and her child. Having set her up in some pretty little cottage in town, no doubt only to assuage his guilt, he’d soon grown bored and abandoned her to cope alone as best she might. Probably found himself some other pretty maid who’d caught his eye, and forgot all about poor Florrie. A sad but familiar tale which made Mercy burn with shame and embarrassment on her mother’s behalf. Within months, Josiah Angel had forgotten his lover sufficiently to stop sending her money, or even paying the rent on their one-time love nest. Was it any wonder her mother had ended up living a life of penury, hard graft and near starvation?
Even then she couldn’t escape him entirely, but was compelled to pay the man an inflated rent for the privilege of living in this rat-ridden hole.
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