Salem Street

by Anna Jacobs

  “Pauline … my dear Pauline … could I … would you do me the honour, the inestimable honour, of becoming my wife?”

  She allowed him to enfold her in a reverent embrace.

  “Yes, Saul, oh, yes!” Behind his back her eyes were triumphant, but when she faced him again, they held only encouragement and quiet warmth.

  After achieving her goal, Pauline made her way to the chapel, face inscrutable, but mind working furiously to plan her future. She was most affable to Annie, whom she met outside, suggesting that she should work on at Collett Hall for another two weeks, then come home to prepare for the wedding.

  “I’d rather work for the three weeks, if you don’t mind, miss.”

  “Have you no preparations to make?”

  “Not many, miss. And my father’s house is very crowded. I have to sleep on the kitchen floor.”

  “Will your husband’s house be any better?”

  “It will when I’ve finished with it, miss, but it wouldn’t be proper for me to live there yet, would it?”

  Pauline looked at her. She felt a sympathy for the girl, perhaps because she herself was also soon to be married. “What made you decide to marry this man, Annie? From what Mr Hinchcliffe says, he is not – er – not very bright.”

  Annie sighed, tired of this question already. She decided on the brutal truth. “He has money saved, miss. And he earns a decent living, too. And he might be slow, I’m not denying he’s slow, but he’s kind as well. But it’s the money that outweighs the other things.”

  “Very sensible. I wish you luck. What shall you do with the money?”

  “Put it to work, maybe start a business. I haven’t decided yet.”

  Pauline nodded her dismissal. How intriguing! She had realised from the start that Annie was a sharp little piece, but not just how sharp. Pauline only respected people intelligent enough to direct the path of their own lives. Most people just drifted along and she had absolutely no respect for them. And as for social butterflies like Annabelle Lewis, she despised them utterly. It would, she thought, looking at Annie, be interesting to see what this one made of her life after such an inauspicious start. She would keep an eye on things. It might be quite entertaining.

  The only major hurdle remaining, as far as Annie was concerned, was for the banns to be read and for Matt – and the rest of the congregation, of course – to be faced. She was standing behind the Peters family, next to Charlie and flanked by her father, stepmother, brothers and sisters, when Mr Hinchcliffe started speaking. She felt somewhat protected by their presence, but she was dreading people’s reactions.

  As the fatal words were pronounced by Mr Hinchcliffe, she saw Matt Peters jerk and heard him gasp out loud. Most of the rest of the congregation made similar sounds of surprise, but Matt’s gasp rang out clearly above the others. He listened in stunned silence until Mr Hinchcliffe finished speaking, then he threw his father’s restraining hand off his shoulder and turned to face her.

  “You can’t do it!” he shouted hoarsely.

  “Oh, yes, I can!” She reached out blindly and Charlie took hold of her hand. She forced herself to smile at his anxious face. “It’s all right, Charlie. Pay no attention to Matt Peters. It’s nothing to do with anyone else what we do.”

  “Nothin’ to do with you, Matt,” Charlie echoed, keeping a tight hold on Annie’s hand. It was a long time since he’d been in a church, or, indeed, anywhere with so many people. He was bewildered and frightened, but Annie’s dad had said that they couldn’t get wed unless he went to church, so he had come. And now, there was Matt Peters telling Annie that she couldn’t marry him. Still holding her hand, he repeated loudly, “Nothin’ to do with you, lad! You mind your own business.”

  A murmur of laughter ran round the chapel. Matt went bright red, pushed past his family and ran out. Saul, annoyed and distressed by this scene, exchanged glances with his own fiancée and dismissed the congregation.

  Annie walked out of the chapel on Charlie’s arm, head held high, ignoring the glances and the buzz of conversation that followed her. In response to a signal from Miss Collett, she made her way over to rejoin her employer, telling Charlie to start back for home with her family. Tom, she was pleased to see, stepped forward and began talking to him.

  “Ah, Annie. Congratulations on your engagement, my dear,” Miss Collett said loudly. “I’m very pleased for you.”

  “Thank you, miss.” Annie saw heads turning and was grateful for this public support.

  “I find that I must delay my own departure. Will you please come round to Mr Hinchcliffe’s house in, say, two hours’ time?” She did not wait for an answer, but nodded kindly to them and left.

  Annie strolled after her family, in no hurry to be surrounded by them again. What had happened to put her mistress in such a good mood? Whatever it was, she’d gained two more hours of freedom because of it.

  As she was passing the end of Florida Terrace a hand shot out and dragged her into the ginnel between the backs of the houses. At first she cried out in terror, but then stopped as she saw that it was Matt Peters.

  “Let go of me!” She tried to shake off his hand.

  “You can’t do it, Annie! You can’t!” He almost choked on the words. “Not Barmy Charlie! Not that old loony! It’s worse than Fred Coxton attacking you, far worse! Because if you do this, you’ll be doing it willingly, you’ll be selling yourself!”

  She stood there, looking at him coldly and waiting until he’d finished. “Charlie’s a kind man,” she said flatly when he was through. “I need a kind man, Matt Peters, because I’ve been hurt badly by two unkind men this year.”

  He flushed scarlet and let go of her.

  “I don’t see you offering to marry me,” she added contemptuously. “If it was up to you, I could go and rot in the union workhouse, couldn’t I? Me and the baby both.”

  He closed his eyes, as if in great pain. “I – I can’t marry you now,” he whispered.

  “No, because I’m spoiled, aren’t I?” she said viciously. “Well, I wouldn’t marry you now, Matt Peters, either, because you’re a sham and a coward. I’d rather, I’d much rather snuggle up in bed to Charlie than I would to a cold, calculating fish like you!”

  He turned away, feeling nauseated as she painted this picture of conjugal bliss for him.

  “You’re disgusting,” he whispered.

  She stared at him, hard-eyed. “And you’re sick, Matt Peters!” she said. “It doesn’t show, but it’s you that’s barmy inside, not my Charlie.” She turned away and left him.

  Annie Gibson was married to Charlie Ashworth on the final Saturday in May at four o’clock in the afternoon. To her relief, she did not have to go through the strain of a ceremony in the parish church before the one in her own chapel, as Emily and her father had had to do, for Dissenters could now be legally married in their own places of worship. She wished her family did not have to be present, but her dad was on short time and she had not the heart to tell him to stay away. All she wanted was to get the whole business over as quickly and quietly as possible, and then to pick up the pieces of her life again.

  She wore her best dress of blue wool, with a straw bonnet, trimmed in dark blue ribbons and white lace, and she was pale but composed during the brief ceremony. She made her responses in a clear voice and she signed the register with a firm hand, in her round careful writing.

  The bridegroom was very neatly dressed, too, in a brown jacket and a grey waistcoat, chosen for him from his stock and carefully sponged and mended by his bride. As Lizzie said spitefully, he looked almost normal.

  The whole family walked with them to the chapel, seen off by Bridie and Sally, for once united in something. Charlie’s arm trembled slightly in Annie’s all the way there and she forgot some of her own nervousness as she tried to reassure him. He trembled even more during the ceremony and his replies were mumbled in a low voice. He signed the register with a shaky cross, then turned a supplicatory gaze on his new wife. She squeezed his
hand in a way more maternal than wifely, thanked Mr Hinchcliffe and led the way out of the chapel.

  Back at Number Three, where they all gathered for a celebration meal afterwards, at John’s insistence, Annie sat Charlie in a corner, kept Lizzie and May away from him and gave him a plate of food and a cup of Emily’s weak tea. Tom came over to chat to him and did it sensibly, keeping to simple everyday topics. Charlie began to relax and Tom winked at his sister.

  As soon as she politely could, Annie said her farewells and took her husband back to Number Eight. There she made him another cup of strong tea in one of the pretty cups he was so proud of, praised the way he had behaved and took possession of her new home. Her main regret about the day was that Ellie couldn’t be there.

  Only when she got to bed did Annie’s self-control slip and the tears begin to fall. She thought she had muffled her sobs in her pillow, but a gentle hand on her shoulder announced Charlie’s presence.

  “Nay, lass, he’s not worth it.”

  “I know. But I – Oh, Charlie!” And she threw herself against the comfort of another warm human body and burst into fresh sobs.

  He let her cry herself out, patting her shoulder from time to time and making inarticulate noises that seemed to comfort her. He stayed till she was asleep and then wandered sadly back to his own bedroom, murmuring, “Poor lass, eh, the poor lass!”

  That was the only weakness Annie allowed herself. The next day she initiated a frenzy of spring-cleaning that left every inch of Number Eight sparkling clean. She went through all the piles of rubbish with Charlie and made him explain just what resale value each item had.

  “Some of these clothes have a lot of wear still left in them,” she said thoughtfully, after a while. “Can you get more like them?”

  “Oh, yes,” he nodded happily. “Get ’em at the big houses an’ farms. They know me an’ they keep things for me. Don’t make much money from ’em, though. Sell ’em to Mr Thomas for a few shillin’ a load.”

  “I think we could get more money for them if I washed them and remade some of them.”

  “Mr Thomas won’t pay more.”

  “I won’t be selling them to Mr Thomas,” she explained patiently. “I shall mend and remake them for people to wear, and then sell them – Oh, I don’t know, maybe at the markets. I’m a good sewer, Charlie.”

  “You’re a nice lass,” he said. “Kind. I like you. I do.”

  “I like you, too.”

  He blinked and tears came into his eyes. He was always pathetically grateful for a kind word. “Do you?” he asked wistfully.

  “Of course I do! I wouldn’t have married you if I didn’t like you.” She patted his hand. “Now, let’s get on with things. If I can help you to make more money, maybe one day we’ll be able to move out of Salem Street. We’ll get ourselves a house with a garden.” She had already noticed how much he liked flowers, bringing back bunches of bluebells and other wild flowers from his travels. “You’d like a garden, wouldn’t you? But don’t tell anyone else about it. Not anyone. It’s a secret between you and me. If we tell people, they might try to stop us.”

  “I won’t tell,” he said obediently. “I do like gardens. I like flowers. I like hens, too. Sammy’d like a garden to dig in. He’s a good dog, is my Sammy. He is that.”

  Annie was amazed at some of the things she found in the house. There were dresses in funny styles, which she’d never seen women wearing. There were bits and pieces from a score of attics, the debris of many lifetimes. A pleasant find for her was a bundle of old books, dog-eared and with the binding half eaten away by mice, but still readable. She asked Charlie if she could keep them and he pushed them into her hands, trembling with delight at being able to give her a present. After that, he would sometimes bring home books or old newspapers, and she would read them aloud to him at nights.

  Another good find in the early days was a set of torn curtains in a faded brocade. She washed them carefully, cut out the worn bits and had enough left over to cover their small front window. She was determined to make her home more comfortable, remembering the difference between Mr Hinchcliffe’s house and those of his parishioners. She would not be like the other women in the Rows! She would not!

  She was so busy that she had no time to waste gossiping, as the other women did, though she always had a pleasant word for anyone she knew. People like Polly Dykes said she was a snob and always had been, and it took Emily quite a while to accustom herself to the idea that she could not just pop along the street and borrow things from Annie, as she had expected to be able to do. Annie’s door sported a brand new lock, so you had to knock and wait for it to be opened. And Annie would say quite bluntly that she was too busy to stop and chat, and no, she had no bread to spare.

  One Saturday after work, Tom came round and helped Charlie to load a borrowed cart with the old clothes Annie had rejected as too far gone to salvage. They took this round to Mr Thomas’s yard, leaving a lot more space in the small house. Annie paid Tom sixpence for his trouble and invited him back for a meal afterwards. She wanted to get to know him better, for she thought he would make a useful ally.

  “We made old man Thomas up his price, didn’t we, Charlie?” he boasted when they returned. “I reckon that bastard’s been diddling Charlie for years, our Annie. He won’t find me so easy to cheat, though.”

  “Don’t push him too far!” Her voice was sharp. “I don’t want him to stop buying from us.”

  “I’m not stupid.” His voice was relaxed, as he was himself once away from Emily. “I still let him beat me down a bit. It’s money for old rope, that, after t’mill. I like buyin’ and sellin’. I want to get out of Hallam’s one day. There’s no future working there.”

  “You get out,” agreed Charlie. “It’s dangerous. All mills is bad. Bad in the old days, when they were smaller, and still bad now! Oh, yes! I know.”

  Tom cleared his plate of stew. “That was good!” he said, smacking his lips. “Got any more?”

  Annie gave him another helping and another piece of bread and he began to shovel it down noisily. “You’re a good cook, our Annie,” he said when he’d finished. “Better’n Emily. Only things she’s any good at are prayin’ an’ havin’ babies.”

  “Too many babies. They can’t afford them.”

  “Well, you know our dad. He does like a bit of a tumble. Not doing badly for an old ’un, either. Though Emily’s not a patch on our mam.”

  There was silence for a moment as they both remembered their mother. It was Tom who broke it. “You’ve changed a lot since you left home, Annie. You learned a lot in that doctor’s house. You allus were smart. Too smart, I used to think, but I were wrong.”

  “You can’t know too much in this world. You’d have done better for yourself if you’d learned more at school and kept out of that mill.”

  “Aye, well, I didn’t, did I? I didn’t know then what it’d be like in t’mill. Mind, I’ve learned a few useful things there. I can fight an’ take care of meself, an’ that’s never wasted round here, is it? You might be glad you’ve got me to look after you one of these days.”

  “I’ll just be glad if you stay out of trouble,” she retorted. “And I’ll look after myself, thank you.”

  “Oh, I stay out of trouble most of the time, don’t you worry I’m not stupid! Er – Annie.”

  “Yes.”

  “I – I wouldn’t mind gettin’ a bit better at figuring. I don’t bother much with readin’, but figuring and ciphering can be very useful.”

  “Oh, yes?” She wasn’t exactly encouraging. She remembered all too clearly those years when Tom had been sent to school and had wasted his chances, while she had had to stay at home.

  “Will you help us? Give us a bit of practice, like?”

  “I might. When I’ve time. If you really mean it.”

  He relaxed, then sat upright again. “You won’t tell anyone, though, will you?”

  “Why should I? It doesn’t pay to blab your business to other folk
.”

  In the middle of June, Annie made a big effort and invited her family round for a meal, the excuse being a belated celebration of her eighteenth birthday. She did this mainly for her father’s sake, but, to her surprise, Charlie enjoyed the party as much as anyone. He sat in a corner and took little active part in the conversation, but Tom and her father both made an effort to talk to him, little Becky made him laugh and he beamed all evening long. He must have been starved of company for years, she realised. Poor man!

  “You’re a good cook, lass,” John told her after the meal, “like your mam was.”

  She could see Emily’s scowl. “I’m glad you enjoyed it, Dad. I used to enjoy cooking. I wish I had a proper oven here.”

  “You’ll have to forget your fancy ways now!” said Emily sharply. “This is Salem Street, not Nobs Alley.”

  Annie took a deep breath. She had taken just about as much as she could stand from Emily and her sister, Lizzie. It was Charlie who saved the day. “Annie is a right good cook,” he said, nodding emphatically. “She’s a good lass, too. I’ve never been so well looked after in me life.” He blushed at his own temerity in volunteering a remark.

  Even Emily hadn’t the heart to contradict him, not while the poor old fellow looked so happy and while she was eating Annie’s food. It were wonderful, Emily thought, sighing, to have a meal bought and cooked for you. This were what it must be like to be rich.

  Tom trod on Lizzie’s toes as she opened her mouth and said loudly, “You’re a lucky man, Charlie, a very lucky man.” He looked so menacingly at Lizzie that even she didn’t dare to spoil the mood of the moment. The kids were all a bit frightened of Tom when he got that sort of look on his face.

  It was funny, Annie thought afterwards, that she should get on so well with Tom nowadays. Lizzie she still detested and she had never taken to Emily, but she found she could really talk to Tom. Her dad came into Number Eight to see her sometimes, and that was lovely, too. He was a nice man, though a bit weak, she now realised. He didn’t come to see her too often, because of Emily’s jealousy. He would always avoid trouble, rather than put his foot down about something. The younger children were also discouraged from having much to do with their half-sister, but Tom popped in several times a week and she began to look forward to his visits and his cheery voice telling her all the news from the Rows.