by Tania Crosse
Tresca hurried out into the street again before he strode off to inspect somewhere else, her heart hammering. For if anyone knew where Connor might be – if he had been sent on an urgent errand for the railway, for instance – it was the chief engineer. But when she gabbled out her question, his brow pleated into deep folds.
‘No, I don’t know where he is. And I’m surprised at him, a good worker like that. And usually so reliable. I had him in mind for a sort of promotion. But I can’t give it to him if he’s not here.’
Tresca’s face was ashen, and a great, wrenching squeal escaped her lips. ‘Something’s happened to him, I’m sure!’
William Szlumper’s heart softened at the young girl’s obvious distress. ‘Something strange happened down at the cutting the other night,’ he told her. ‘The nightwatchman didn’t see or hear anything, but a ladder from high up on a particular part of the scaffolding was found on the ground in the morning, and there was a puddle of something that looked like blood. And I found this.’
He withdrew something from the breast pocket of his coat, and Tresca instantly recognized Connor’s beloved tin whistle.
Mr Szlumper caught her as her knees buckled beneath her. ‘Can someone help me?’ he called out. And when two passers-by rushed up to him, he muttered under his breath, ‘I need to get to the police station.’
‘Vera?’
The older girl looked up as the door opened. Tresca’s voice was so quiet, Vera wasn’t entirely sure she had spoken at all. She looked like a little ghost, shrivelled and unreal, as she stood uncertainly on the threshold.
Vera flew over to lead her into the room and sit her down in the chair. A small fire flickered in the grate and Vera heaped on more coal, heedless of the cost. Tresca was as pale as death itself, her lips tinged with blue, and Vera felt she must do something to warm her.
‘You look frozen to the marrow. Let me get you a cup of tea from the kitchen.’
To her surprise and relief, Tresca’s voice was a little stronger this time. ‘No. No, thank you. Tea’s . . . tea’s making me feel sick,’ she explained, trailing off into reverie again.
‘Is it?’ Vera sympathized, for once at a loss for any words of comfort, since what could get through Tresca’s shell of grief? As Vera searched her mind frantically, it struck her like a thunderbolt. Tea. Sickness. ‘Oh my God,’ she breathed. ‘You . . . you don’t mean . . . you’re expecting Connor’s child?’
Tresca raised her head and a sudden spark of life shone in her eyes. ‘Yes. And I thank God I am. I don’t care what people say. I don’t know what’s happened to Connor, but it’s all I have left of him. Only . . . I don’t know what to do. I just know I’m not going to end up like poor Bella did.’
‘No. No, of course not,’ Vera murmured, her brain whirling in circles. ‘What she did was illegal as well as, well, as killing her.’
‘But I’m not going back to the workhouse either.’ Again, that flash of determination for which Vera rejoiced. ‘I won’t have Connor’s child ending up like Lucy.’
‘So, what are you going to do?’
‘I . . . I thought you might tell me.’
Vera met Tresca’s open, trusting gaze. Oh, Lord. ‘I don’t have all the answers, you know, Tresca. Have you . . . do you have any money?’
‘A little. Connor . . .’ Her voice cracked and she paused to gather herself together again. ‘Connor had money. Money he’d saved for our future. But the police say the bank must keep the money until . . . until we know for sure what’s happened to him. Whether he’s . . . whether he’s alive or . . . or dead.’
She stared at Vera, dry-eyed. Her tears just wouldn’t come. She wanted them to. She wanted them to come and fill up the dreadful, aching emptiness inside her and wash away her tormented grief. But so far, her heart had been like arid desert sand.
Mr Solloway frowned when Tresca arrived at the workhouse for her monthly visit. ‘Er, not that way. I’m afraid you need to come to the infirmary. Your father’s health has deteriorated since you were here last.’
Tresca’s pupils dilated as she blinked at him, the only indication of the emotion that seared into her soul. She was already so overflowing with sorrow that she simply couldn’t absorb any more, and so she followed the workhouse master in silence to the men’s infirmary. The long, gloomy room was so depressing, with patients rasping and coughing from the austere rows of beds, or lying inert, toothless mouths open and eyes shut in grey faces, waiting to draw their last breath.
When she saw Emmanuel, Tresca’s already deadened heart fragmented into dust. The change in him was shocking. She had yearned to seek some comfort in her father’s arms, but he looked so pale, so withered, that she knew she would have to be the one to be strong for him. Her heart was savage with fear as she searched inside herself for something that wasn’t there.
‘Aw, my little princess,’ he managed to smile as she approached, though he didn’t lift his head from the pillow. ‘I feels better already fer seein’ you.’
‘Oh, Father,’ she said, forcing the corners of her mouth upwards. ‘How long have you been in here?’
‘Aw, just a week or so, till I picks up again. Reckons I’ll be back at my workbench next week, I does. Now tell me,’ he went on, forcing some life into his tone, although Tresca could see his eyes were pale and faded, ‘’ow be that young fellow o’ yourn?’
His words were like a dagger in Tresca’s side. Connor’s disappearance had made the front page of the Tavistock Gazette. ‘Have you seen this man?’ it had asked the good folk of the town. So, Emmanuel hadn’t even been well enough to read the newspaper for a couple of weeks. He didn’t know. Her thoughts spun in a tortured dance. Should she tell him, relieve some of her strangling anguish? But surely she couldn’t burden him with her own devastating misery?
‘I’s bin thinkin’ ’bout this move to Ireland,’ Emmanuel went on before she had the heart to reply. To lie to him. ‘It’ll be a proper adventure, won’t it? We’ll all be mortal happy together, like.’
He was smiling at her, but she knew it wasn’t real. Just a front. He wanted her to know that he approved. That when he was gone, she should go and live out her dream with the man she loved. And she must let him go, not knowing the brutal truth.
‘Yes, of course we will,’ she agreed softly, but her heart lay dying in her breast.
Dr Greenwood sent for her a few days before Christmas. She held Emmanuel’s limp hand, the skin like paper to her touch. She watched his shallow breathing, heard the rattle in his chest. His eyes were closed in his cadaverous face, and when at last he did open them, they were glazed and wandering.
‘Is that my princess?’ he scarcely whispered, and then his lips began to move in low mutterings which made no sense, even though Tresca leant over to try and listen.
He went quiet again, almost as if asleep. The doctor came, took Emmanuel’s pulse. ‘Not long now,’ he warned, and tiptoed silently away.
Tresca sat, cloaked in a black shroud, for two or three hours, not moving. Evening closed in, the ward was in darkness broken only by the mournful glimmer from the few lamps. And around midnight, Emmanuel slipped away.
Twenty-Three
‘Oh, my poor little lamb.’
The usual rosy hue in Jane Ellacott’s round cheeks had drained away. It was two months since Connor’s disappearance and no clues yet as to what had happened to him, despite the local constabulary’s extensive enquiries. And, of course, Tresca’s beloved father had passed away just before Christmas, so the poor cheel was going through unutterable devastation. Her face had faded to alabaster, her eyes the colour of mud in their dark sockets. She scarcely spoke a word, lost in a desert of emptiness that even the warm and compassionate Jane could not penetrate. The girl picked at her food, her already slender form becoming stick thin. Her clothes hung from her in folds, except that just now Jane had caught her sideways as she reached up for something on the shelf. And she had noticed for the first time the small but distinctive bump benea
th her skirt.
‘You’m expectin’ Connor’s babby, bain’t you?’
The words were out before she could stop them, her jaw dangling open in shock. She watched as Tresca’s face turned rigid, a determined light coming into her dulled eyes and her chin lifting defiantly. But she said nothing and returned to what she was doing, enshrouded in her own silent world again.
‘Well, I’s surprised at you,’ Jane went on as her dismay subsided. ‘But I supposes he were . . . he be,’ she corrected herself, ‘a handsome fellow. An’ you two so in love, the pair on you, an’ you was promised to each other. An’ now all this.’ She waved her hand vaguely in the air, her way of indicating the desperate situation Tresca was facing. ‘Well, you’m still the same person,’ Jane declared fiercely as her natural instincts took over again. ‘An’ you’ve been dealt a rough hand. This is still your home, an’ if anyone says ort, well, they knows what they can do. You’ll hardly be the first to have a babby out o’ wedlock in Bannawell Street, an’ at least you didn’t come by it the way some o’ them has.’
‘I’m not sure that makes any difference.’ Ebeneezer Preedy’s curt voice from the doorway startled them both. ‘I had to put up with all that frivolity and music despite my protestations, and I have to say I’ve enjoyed the peace and quiet since that Irish chap left. Ran off when he knew the girl was pregnant, no doubt. And now you propose that I have to put up with a screaming child day and night. Well, I’m sorry, Mrs Ellacott. I believe I’ve been a good tenant to you these past years, but I cannot withstand the ignominy of living under the same roof as a trollop with an illegitimate brat. So, either you dismiss her within the week, or I shall be obliged to seek alternative lodgings. Now, where is my jug of hot water? And I no longer want her bringing anything up to my room.’
He turned back into the scullery and a few seconds later they heard him stomp up the stairs. Jane’s face had inflated like a balloon, so scalding was her indignation, and she stood with her hands on her hips, lips bunched into a knot.
‘Well, if he thinks he can tell me what to do in my own house, he can jolly well take hissel’ elsewhere! I’ll not have my little Tresca put out on the street. Where be his human compassion? Always been a miserable devil, he has, an’ I’ll be glad to be rid of him. Soon get another lodger, I will, with all the railway folk in town. An’ one that’s not so cold as a wet fish. Now then, my lover, we needs to look after you,’ she nodded as her natural kindness drove out her fury. ‘It’ll be lovely to have a babby in the house. So come here an’ give me a hug,’ she invited, wrapping her plump arms about the young girl, who still stood like a statue, her face a blank mask.
But as she responded to Jane’s warm embrace, Tresca’s mind was far from inert. Jane was benevolence itself, and if Tresca’s emotions hadn’t already been numbed into sterility, she might have wept in her arms. But fate had destroyed any feeling in her heart. Find another lodger? One who was no trouble and paid his rent on the dot each week? And when the railway was nearing completion and workers already leaving the town? Jane needed that money to survive and pay her own rent to the Duke of Bedford. The kindly widow wasn’t getting any younger, and her lodger and the little profit the dairy produced were her only pension.
No, Tresca couldn’t do that to her. Connor’s disappearance had gouged a void out of her soul, but there was still an innate sense of justice lurking somewhere in its depths, and she couldn’t repay Jane’s habitual generosity in this way. She would move out, no matter how Jane might protest. After all, what did it matter what happened to her now that Connor was gone? At first, she had clung to the existence of the child growing inside her, but as time had gone by, the emptiness had grown and obliterated all else. It was the not knowing that was slowly killing her. Connor was dead, she was sure of it. But without proof, a tiny, desperate flicker of hope refused to let her accept it and grieve as she should.
‘We’m proper sorry, maid.’ Elijah Edwards shook his head sadly as he glanced across at his wife, whose face had also moved into deep lines of sympathy. ‘Us only ’as the one room as you knows. If us ’ad two, you’d be more than welcome. An’ wi’ a babby as well . . . Mortal shocked us was to ’ear what’d ’appened to Mr O’Mahoney. Nice fellow he were. An’ you two seemed so much in love—’
‘Course they was,’ Mrs Edwards whispered. ‘Else a nice cheel like ’er wouldn’t be expectin’, would she, like? Well, maybe Mr O’Mahoney’ll turn up,’ she said, addressing Tresca in a raised voice. ‘Maybe ’er’s ’ad an accident an’ lost ’is memory, like. An’ when ’er’s better, ’er’ll come runnin’ ’ome.’
The elderly woman’s well-meant words stung into Tresca’s brain. Hadn’t she tried to tell herself the same thing so many times? But as the days and weeks passed, that vain hope had been sliding away. If such a thing had happened, surely someone would have recognized Connor from his description that had been circulated far and wide? He had a pretty distinctive appearance, even if Tresca didn’t have a photograph of him.
Not even a photograph. And what was breaking her was that it was becoming harder to conjure up a vision of him in her mind, to hear his lilting voice in her head. As if he was slipping away from her. As if she didn’t care any more.
She nodded, knowing that Mrs Edwards was only trying to be kind. She muttered her thanks and felt their pitying eyes on her as she went out into the raw January morning. Elijah would soon be leaving for work, which was why she had gone there so early. But how stupid could she have been? She knew that they could only afford to rent one room and couldn’t possibly take her in. And it would be the same for everyone she knew. Even Vera couldn’t help her.
One foot placed itself in front of the other entirely of its own accord since her brain had no idea where she was going. So cold, although she was only aware of the numbness that enshrouded her. The colossal viaduct was a mere blur as she passed beneath it, a forbidding spectre from her old life.
‘Miss Ladycott.’
Her name scarcely registered in her mind as Morgan Trembath ran up behind her, and she continued on down the hill without paying him any heed. Morgan stood for a moment, his arms hopelessly by his sides as he watched her, a desolate, wretched figure. A ghost.
May God forgive him, but he had almost rejoiced at the news of O’Mahoney’s disappearance. No . . . rejoice was hardly the word. He had liked the man, for God’s sake, even if he had been so jealous of his relationship with Tresca Ladycott. He had prayed they would have some violent disagreement that would destroy their love for one another. But never in a million years would he have wished the Irishman dead, which in all probability he was. And seeing the effigy of desolation Tresca had become, he would gladly have brought O’Mahoney back to life for her, were it within his power.
‘Miss Ladycott, wait, please!’ he called, springing after her. ‘I just wanted to say again how sorry I am for your misfortune.’
The girl blinked up at him, a slow swoop and lift of her lashes, as if she was waking from a deep trance that was filled only with sorrow and despair. Morgan Trembath, who had always shown her kindness. And suddenly, she could not have said why, something in her frozen heart melted. Perhaps it was because she had been surrounded by the love and compassion of mainly female friends, and now this young man was offering her his sympathy. Perhaps his physical closeness stimulated the natural instincts of a woman to seek solace and protection from the opposite sex. But, for whatever reason, the tears that had remained stagnant and obstinate inside her for so long erupted in an unstoppable flow of misery, and she leant against Morgan’s chest, sobbing as if her heart had, quite literally, broken.
Morgan’s hands patted the air around her shoulders. Good Lord, he hadn’t meant to upset her like this. He had meant to offer her comfort. He felt so ashamed, such a fool, but she was so drenched in grief that there was really nothing for it but to put his arms around her. And, oh! What a good feeling it would have been if only the reason for his embrace had been different.
; ‘Oh, Miss Ladycott, Tresca, if I may be so bold,’ he murmured. ‘I’m so very sorry. I would not have upset you like this for the world. Please, forgive me. And know that if there is anything I can do to help, anything at all, you only have to say the word.’
To his dismay, he felt her stiffen and she pulled away, glaring up at him, the release of her tears having unlocked the burning spirit inside her.
‘Oh, yes?’ she snapped back with icy contempt. ‘You wouldn’t say that if you knew the truth.’
‘The truth?’ Morgan shook his head, totally bewildered. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Then let me tell you,’ she spat, her eyes ablaze. ‘Connor O’Mahoney, the man I love, is . . . is gone. And I’m carrying his child. Some people are sneering at me because of it, and those who want to help me actually can’t do so. And I have no doubt that you can’t or won’t either.’
She tossed her head and strode off down the street, leaving Morgan staring after her, jaw agape and shaken to the core. Good Heavens above, he would never have believed it.
‘I beg your pardon?’
Tresca’s eyes widened with incredulity. Morgan Trembath stood before her in the dairy the following morning, his stance irresolute and twisting his hat in his fingers. Nevertheless, his voice was steady when he repeated his request.
‘I want to prove to you that I meant what I said. I want you to marry me.’
Tresca stared at him, convinced she had misheard a second time, but knowing she hadn’t. Marry him? A second later, she threw up her head in a sarcastic laugh.
‘Don’t make fun of me, if you please, Mr Trembath—’
‘Morgan. And I’m not making fun of you. I mean it.’ His eyes bore intently into her face and her bitterness stilled as she realized he was deadly serious.
‘I’ve been thinking about it all night. Haven’t slept a wink,’ he went on in earnest. ‘I’ve had feelings for you ever since you came into the shop asking for work. Only I was too timid to tell you. I was trying to pluck up the courage, but then Mr O’Mahoney came into your life, and it was obvious . . . So I had to stand aside. And I was so happy for you when he told me you were betrothed, though it broke my heart. But now . . .’
