Ann’s fingers closed painfully about the wooden ladles. She had not meant her thoughts to be said aloud; but they must have slipped out without her realising.
‘Why?’
No movement accompanied the word, the very stillness of the tall figure intensifying a silence already crushing Ann.
‘I asked why?’ It snapped like the crack of a whip. ‘Why are you leaving?’
It felt wrong to be telling him before speaking with Leah, it felt like she was deceiving a woman who had been so good to her. But wasn’t it better Leah heard a lie from her than hear from her customers they would no longer buy her dairy foods?
‘You don’t wish to give reason to me, that I can understand, after all it’s no business of mine, but out of consideration for Leah p’raps you will tell me when it is you intend to leave so that I can adjust my work to fit with hers. I take it you have told Leah?’
He had turned towards her, the purpling shades of the evening accentuating the strong line of his clean-shaven jaw, emphasising the sudden tautness of the mouth, eyes bronzed by red-gold shafts of sunset gleaming with overt accusation.
It was obvious what he thought of her, every line of his tightly held body shouted condemnation. But he didn’t know . . . he didn’t know! Ann’s glance dropped away.
‘I see. You have not spoken to Leah, you prefer instead to just walk away, to turn your back on the one person who offered help when nobody else would; so yes, Miss Spencer I agree you should go, for with a friend such as you Leah certainly has no need of an enemy.’
Strange how words said so quietly could make her smart so much. Ann swallowed against the rise of emotion in her throat. But whatever Edward Langley might think, his words of reproach could not be allowed to sway her judgement. Leah’s living must take precedence over all else.
Edward continued to stare. ‘And the lad? What of him? Is he to go with you or do you plan to play the same dirty trick on him?’
‘Alec, he . . .’ Ann’s cheeks flamed at this fresh accusation, ‘. . . he is not ready.’
‘Which all fits rather nicely.’ Edward’s scornful jeer was harsh as that other had been soft. ‘So he must stay here. In other words you can leave him to Leah. I wouldn’t have your conscience Miss Spencer, but there I go making another mistake in thinking you have a conscience.’
The sting of that remark choked her for several moments. Ann made no reply then at his snort of derision lifted her head, her glance meeting that brown-gold stare. Coldness was her only defence against the savagery of his comments, a barrier holding back the press of hot tears, so she forced her answer to come calmly.
‘Yes,’ she nodded, ‘you have made another mistake, the first being to assume I would go without explanation to Leah, the second that I would leave Alec behind, both quite without foundation. But allow me to point out yet one more of your mistakes. You presume insightful knowledge of the character of someone you have spoken with no more than a dozen times, an assessment, Mr Langley, I feel reflects clearly upon your own character.’
Shot with your own bullet, Edward Langley! Beneath the encroaching shadows of night Edward smiled admiringly. The girl was not without spirit, she was not afraid of hard work as hours in the dairy and then walking the streets of the town making deliveries had amply proved, yet she was ready to forgo the companionship of a trustworthy woman, give up the security of a roof over her head, the true reason for which she doubtless would not disclose to Leah.
He had provided the perfect opportunity for Ann Spencer to relate what instinct increasingly told him must have been said to her during her delivery round yet she had chosen to say nothing despite his deliberate provocation. There could be only one answer. Ann Spencer would not risk alienation between Leah and her customers, a situation which would harm not only Leah’s income but friendships. That had to be the reason Ann Spencer was keeping silence even though it would result in homelessness for herself and the lad. His regard for her deepened. He called after the figure walking towards the house.
‘Miss Spencer!’ As she halted he went on, ‘I should not have spoken as I did. What you choose to do or not to do is none of my affair but I take the liberty of believing Leah Marshall is. Her happiness and well-being are to me a prime consideration and though I may be judged guilty of more presumption I venture to say it is the same with you.’
Ann turned to look at him, smiling briefly as she replied, ‘In that you have made no mistake.’
‘Nor, I believe, will I be mistaken in what I say next.’ He almost felt her stiffen with apprehension. Edward continued, ‘A few moments ago I asked why you were leaving; you refused to give a reason so now I will give it for you. You would rather go from this town than have Leah’s livelihood put in jeopardy by you and Alec remaining here.’
‘How—’
‘How do I know?’ Edward’s interruption was sharp. ‘I might pretend to be a poor judge of character but I won’t pretend to be a fool! A man with naught but muck for brain would have worked out what was meant by the words of almost every woman coming to my cart today, remarks I feared then alluded to something being amiss with Leah’s health, an idea you and I both know to be wrong.’
Veiled in that strange half darkness of dusk, a shadow moved across the slightly open doorway to the scullery, unobserved by those it watched.
‘. . . I sees Leah Marshall ’as teken notice . . .’
‘. . . what were said needed the sayin’ . . .’
Sheltered behind a half-closed door the dark shadow listened, its form shifting, pulling upward at Edward’s words drifting across the yard.
‘You recognise the meaning behind those words and so do I. They were the result of threats those women had made, warnings they would take their custom away from Leah unless you and Alec leave Wednesbury altogether. Is that not so?’
Wooden ladles clicked against each other in her tightening fingers as Ann glanced across to the house where a yellowed gleam of lamplight filtered from an upper window. Leah would be there in Alec’s room; might she have heard what had just been said?
No sound issued from the building, no movement could be detected at the lighted window. Her suspicion was groundless.
Ann returned quickly, ‘Leah must not know, she must never know! Please, I ask you Mr Langley . . . promise you will not tell her.’
No, he would not tell Leah. In a yard left empty after the girl darted into the house Edward’s resolve echoed in his mind. He would not break the promise he had given Ann Spencer and neither would he break the one made to himself. Somehow, some way, he would find a means of keeping her in this town.
Chapter 15
It was regrettable that his little enjoyment could only be indulged twice a week. Standing at the junction of Cross Street and the wider Holyhead Road Thomas Thorpe watched for the Clews boy who would call at Chapel House to walk his sister home. He would see the lad cross to the chapel and a few minutes later he himself would arrive, making it appear he came directly from the foundry. The ruse worked perfectly. Then why wouldn’t it? Wasn’t he the people’s trusted preacher, the man who helped yet asking nothing of anyone in return? Well, perhaps not everyone. With a smile he moved to stand against the smoke-blackened wall of an end-of-terrace house as the boy he watched for came into view. When he was no longer to be seen Thorpe began the walk which would bring him to Chapel House. There had been no need of asking.
She had been eager as a bitch in heat and like any dog he had been ready to serve, as he would continue to do until a more desirable playmate came along. She would not be happy giving place to a prettier girl. The next one must be pretty; she must compensate for the times he had of necessity lain with the plain-faced Sarah Clews; and when he no longer wished to avail himself in that direction?
When that more attractive replacement was at his disposal Sarah would be told her ‘bedroom’ services were no longer required; as for her finer feelings? What did they matter? The girl was of no consequence.
A rumble of sound caught h
is attention; he glanced in the direction of the shrill clang of a bell then stepped back into a well of shadow cast by the line of terraced houses as a bus rattled to a halt. The one alighting passenger, a man dressed in flat cap, moleskin trousers tied about the ankles and a muffler looked neither right nor left but walked quickly the few yards to the Dartmouth Arms disappearing as rapidly through the lantern-lit doorway. A foundry man imbibing a nightly pleasure before going home.
Satisfied he had gone unnoticed Thorpe resumed his own short journey, his thoughts slipping back to pleasures of his own.
The girl was of no consequence. Meantime he would continue to ‘sup the broth’ which had been so conveniently made available, though it would be desirable were the ‘broth’ served more frequently. But a request for the girl to come more often could cause someone to enquire why with that house used only an hour or so a week for the purposes of chapel correspondence, it needed so much cleaning.
Correspondence! He almost laughed aloud. Letters written yet never sent, questions asked yet never relayed to church authorities. Coming into Queen’s Place, staring at a building black against the deep grey of night, his pulse throbbed with an almost painful surge. He, Thomas Thorpe, was the ruling body of this chapel! That was the way it would remain as it would with the house; that would be used only by him, his private domain where he would continue to enjoy Sarah Clews’ ‘extra services’. As he had enjoyed them an hour ago.
Standing in the pool of deep shadow cast by the chapel walls it seemed he saw again the girl he had followed into that small bedroom, watched the garments slip one by one to the floor in a faded patched heap gathering about her feet, saw the openly inviting smile as she kicked away the repellently ugly bloomers.
Long gone was the shy casting-down of the eyes, the blush which said she knew what she was doing was wrong, the trembling breath, the uncertain half pull away as he touched her; now she stood naked, her arms stretched out for him.
Thinking it would add to the romance of the moment she had freed her hair of its pins but it hung in lank dull strips like dried wounds across breasts he found overlarge for his liking; Sarah Clews had nothing to his liking but then you didn’t look on the shelf while poking the fire. And afterwards? Since her brother called to collect her it meant there was no time for ‘afterwards’. It all worked well insomuch as the girl was willing and he had the use of her body.
Therein lay the fault!
He moved soundlessly around the side of the chapel pausing again as the small house came in sight, a lamp-lit window verifying the girl was still inside.
It was ease without satisfaction, the kind of satisfaction he would have had from lying with the prettier, infinitely more desirable Deborah Marshall. But she had thought herself too good for him. Too good! The daughter of a woman scratching a living from some half-dozen cows thinking herself above associating with the chapel minister! Well, she had paid for that lack of judgement.
But Deborah Marshall was not the only one who had made a mistake; Sarah Clews also held a wrong opinion. The fool! He snarled irascibly, the sound bouncing back from shadowed walls. She believed him in love with her. He stared at the house cocooned in the velvet dark of night. He held no more feeling for her than he might for a pig.
How long before he brought the girl’s ridiculous fantasy to an end?
‘Be that you Mr Thorpe?’
After replying to the lad come to walk his sister home Thomas Thorpe silently answered his own question.
He would indulge Sarah Clews’ foolish misconception just as long as it took for someone better to come along.
So they would buy her cheese, continue to take her butter and cream only supposing she give Ann Spencer and the boy their marching orders.
With lips set in a tight line Leah Marshall tied the ribbons of her black bonnet.
There were conditions, requirements which must be met if custom was to be kept. No doubt Jinny Jinks were back of that, her and Lottie Hopcroft and Lord knew how many more were making demands. But Leah Marshall knew the answer those demands would receive.
She had not been meant to hear. It had been as she had come from seeing the lad settled after taking him supper. She had needed neither lamp nor candle to light her through a scullery she had spent half a lifetime in so her approach had gone unseen by the couple talking in the yard. It had not been her intention to listen, but as she was about to step outside she had heard Edward’s words coming clear on the quiet of evening.
‘I sees Leah Marshall ’as teken notice.’
‘What were said needed the sayin’ . . .’
Had curiosity made her hesitate at the threshold of that open door? Or was it rather an intuition that should the subject of discussion be something which would hurt her own feelings then in order to save her hurt neither Edward nor Ann would repeat it? With that thought in mind she had made to leave the scullery when once more Edward’s words halted her.
‘I see you recognise the meaning of those words . . .’
Meaning? She had frowned. Why would the wench recognise what were meant? Unless they had been said to her.
‘. . . they were the result of threats those women had made . . .’
Threats! The word had held her motionless, only her brain whirling with its questions. What threats? Who had made them? Why when it concerned Leah Marshall had no woman approached her?
Edward had supplied the answer.
‘. . . warning they would take their custom away from Leah unless you and Alec take yourselves away from Wednesbury altogether . . .’
So it weren’t all due to the lad’s illness. Of course that had the wench tense with worry but with her return from making yesterday’s deliveries there had been a quietness about her, which was still there.
‘Leah must not know, she must never know . . .’
The reply had reached to the scullery, the sound of quick footsteps running across the yard following her as she had returned upstairs to the boy’s room.
Anger bottled up so long inside threatened to burst to the surface. Leah smoothed an irate hand over her long dark skirts. She had asked no question of Ann Spencer and none of Edward Langley nor would she ask any of Jinny Jinks or any other buying the products of her dairy . . . but that didn’t mean those women would be left in any doubt as to the reason of Leah Marshall’s visit.
Turning towards the cupboard from which she had taken her bonnet Leah looked at a woollen coat, instantly recalling the day she had purchased it from John Kilvert’s pawn shop. The sky had been leaden, great banks of grey cloud rolling together obliterating every vestige of blue, and the rain, herald of a storm, had held a softness, each drop gentle as the tears her children had wept. Joshua, not quite fourteen yet already tall and straight, walked to her right trying valiantly to hold back that outward sign of heartbreak. To her left Daniel, not yet so tall but as ever copying his brother, kept his stare resolutely forward while like his brother he was unable to stem the trickle of tears that slipped down his face: only Deborah, clinging fearfully to her mother’s hand, had wept openly as they had walked behind a horse-drawn hearse. But she had not wept, not then. All that day she had bitten hard on the grief which had racked her since hearing her husband was dead, held the tears which for the sake of her children she had forbidden to fall as her life’s love had been lowered into the grave.
She had hung the coat away. When the children were sleeping, when the house lay silent, she had hung it here in a cupboard of the bedroom she had shared with Joseph. Only then, crumpling to her knees, had the flood of grief overwhelmed her. When the pink light of morning had filled the room she had at last forced herself to her feet, to face a life without the one man she had loved, a life which for their children must be lived.
‘Stay beside me Joseph,’ she had whispered into the dawn, ‘stay close my dearest love, let your strength help me raise our children, to see them safely wed.’
She had raised them. Leah’s fingers closed on the soft cloth of the coat.
But Heaven’s grace had not allowed she see them wed. Three more times she had donned the coat she had vowed that morning never to wear again. Leah closed the door of the cupboard. Three times more she had followed behind a hearse, had felt her heart shatter as her loved ones had been placed in the earth. Pray God He would not have her do so again. Perhaps if she had got rid of the coat after Joseph . . . maybe keeping it had tempted Fate and that was why . . .
Stop that, Leah Marshall! Glaring at her reflection in the mirror Joseph had hung above the small wash stand Leah admonished herself. That be superstitious twaddle an’ you knows it! Weren’t no coat responsible for the loss of Joshua an’ Daniel, it were bullets fired by Germans!
Leah sighed heavily.
Joshua and Daniel, both killed by soldiers quite possibly as young as themselves, lads who were also fighting a war they had no likin’ of; young men whose mothers lived as she lived, in the heartbreak of knowing they would never again hold those sons in their arms.
But it were no war had taken Deborah.
The swift stab in her chest made Leah try to block further thoughts but silent as predators they stole into her head.
No gun had been fired, no bullet had ended her daughter’s life.
‘Drowned following a fall. Death by misadventure.’
The verdict of a coroner . . . but not the belief of a mother!
Voices from across the tiny landing brought her back to the present. Leah breathed a long stabilising breath then, composing herself, left the bedroom.
‘I be goin’ along of Spring Head.’ She turned to Ann who had followed her down the stairs.
‘I, that is Alec and myself, we . . . we need to talk with you, there is something we have to tell you.’
‘I be naught of a betting woman but I’d lay odds I knows what it be you an’ the lad feel need of discussin’.’ Leah tied the corners of her shawl beneath her breasts, answering at the same time, ‘Well lessen it be vital important I’ll ask y’waits ’til I be back, there be a bit o’ business I wants to see to an’ this evenin’ be the best time.’
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