Ragamuffin Angel

by Rita Bradshaw

  But to hundreds of northerners the electrification of Sunderland’s tram service and the boom in the shipyards was the only news worth talking about, signifying, as it did, the steady and determined progress of the north into the twentieth century. And when the most famous escapologist of all time appeared in the Avenue Theatre, Sunderland, in May 1905, crowds flocked to Harry Houdini’s appearances, stating it wasn’t only London that could command the stars to perform. That, that, was news, man.

  But for Sadie Bell, caught in a downward spiral that had begun that evening on the town moor five years ago, time was measured only by the night hours. Wet mouths, grasping hands, oftentimes foul breath against her face, and the thrust of a stranger’s body as it penetrated her flesh summed up this eternity known as time. She didn’t know or care about the events beyond Sunderland’s dark backstreets, it was enough that she survived the next twenty-four hours, a night at a time. The indignities, the humiliation, her mother’s silent reproach even as she held out her hand for the night’s takings, had ceased to call forth a silent protest deep within her. This was life. And life had to be endured. It was as simple as that.

  Now, as she glanced across the small living room which was warm and sticky in the airless June evening, there was no animosity in her dull gaze as she took in Father Hedley sitting with her mother and the two children.

  ‘Hallo, Sadie.’ Father Hedley’s voice was without expression.

  ‘Hallo, Father.’ She hadn’t known he was here. She was rarely home before three in the morning and consequently slept most of the day away, usually rising about five to a meal Connie had prepared and cooked. After washing and tidying herself, Sadie would then leave the cottage for the walk into Bishopwearmouth where she would make for the East End and the docks. There was business done along the quays most nights, and in the labyrinth of bars and gin shops, brothels and seedy eating places of every description, there was also safety in numbers. Sadie didn’t go to the town moor any more; there had been the odd girl disappear – one of whom had ended up floating in the black water of the docks – when they had gone there.

  ‘Well, Peggy, I’d best be going.’

  As the priest rose Connie darted a sidelong glance at him. Father Hedley always did that – got up to go as soon as her mam appeared, even if he’d only arrived a little while earlier. And he never laughed with her mam these days, he was always sort of stiff. The only good thing was that Father McGuigan didn’t come at all. She had asked her granny why it was that the priests didn’t approve of her mam being on the night shift at the laundry where she worked, and her granny had said it was because the priests believed she should be home with her children at night. Which was stupid, really stupid, when you thought about it, because even her granny admitted that if her mam hadn’t got the job when she did it would have been the workhouse for the lot of them. And since her mam had been at the laundry they had never been short of food or coal and logs for the fire, and they’d even had some money spare with which to purchase the hens and cockerel and the goat from the farm two years ago. She could understand Father McGuigan playing up-he would argue with the Pope himself as Freda Henderson would say – but not Father Hedley. It had saddened her to know that Father Hedley could be dogmatic like that. It still did. Which was one of the reasons she hadn’t walked to the road with him of late. But tonight was different. She needed to talk to him tonight.

  ‘Larry, you get the baked herrings on the table an’ the bread an’ butter,’ Connie instructed as she too rose and followed the priest to the door, and then to her mother, ‘I won’t be long, Mam.’

  ‘Aye, all right, pet.’ Sadie hadn’t raised her eyes since that one glance at Father Hedley, but now she looked at Connie and smiled and her eyes were soft. She was bonny, her lass. As bonny as ever she’d seen, and with her bust developing and her hips losing their flatness she was growing up fast. Pray God Connie would never find out about the whoring. Aye, pray God, but at least it had provided for her schooling. And her bairn was bright. As bright as a button. She had often thought it strange that Michael’s child should be so intelligent, whilst Jacob’s – and him a learned man and all – should border on the dim-witted. Even now, at seven years of age, Larry still had a job stringing a sentence together and he was no nearer learning his letters than when he had first started school two years ago, in spite of Connie’s patience with him. By, how that bairn loved her brother, and him her.

  Outside the sticky confines of the cottage-where the smell of the baked herrings soused in onions, cloves and vinegar which Connie had cooked earlier was strong – the air was sweet and full of the scents of summer, even though the smoky pall and oppressive staleness of the steelworks and dark gloomy factories of Sunderland were but two or three miles away. The town’s expanding economy and the resulting population growth meant Bishopwearmouth was rapidly devouring its outlying districts, but as yet the house in the wood remained untouched. For how much longer, though? Father Hedley questioned as he breathed the woody air deep into his lungs, and for how much longer could this child at his side remain untouched by the darkness that was within her own family? It troubled him, it troubled him greatly, this affair of Sadie Bell.

  ‘Father?’

  ‘Aye, Connie?’

  For a moment Father Hedley felt he had gone back a few years in time. Since the mother had succumbed to temptation, Father Hedley had been aware that the running of the household he’d just left had fallen wholly on the slim shoulders of the child at his side. He knew Connie rose at the crack of dawn to deal with the grandmother who was now quite infirm, as well as doing the washing and cleaning, and preparing and cooking the meals for the family. The girl was mother and father to her brother, cook, housemaid . . . It was too much. How many times had he told himself it was too much, whilst reminding himself in the next breath that there were others just as worse off – ten times, twenty times worse off – in the wretched decaying tenement slums of the East End, where unimaginable depths of squalor reduced whole families living in one room to nothing more than animals? But he couldn’t get away from the fact that his sorrow and pity was more profound where this child was concerned. It was grieving to the Almighty that he should favour one of the lambs of his flock in this way, but there it was. Somehow the thought of this child’s spirit being crushed was unbearable. And now here she was, speaking in that certain tone experience had taught him meant trouble.

  ‘Father, you don’t like me mam goin’ into town at night, do you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Me granny says you think she oughta be here with us, but if she stayed at home there’d be no money comin’ in.’

  Dear God, dear God. Father Hedley blew his nose on a large white handkerchief, but even with this prevarication no words came to him.

  ‘The thing is, Father, me mam’s bin workin’ at the laundry for years now an’ she’s not well. You know she’s not well, don’t you?’

  Father Hedley nodded, his black-clad figure straight as he forced himself not to sag with relief. So Connie still believed the story she had been told about the laundry. Thank God. Aye, thank God.

  ‘An’ she won’t get any better till she gives up workin’. So you don’t think she ought to work, an’ I don’t think she ought to.’ Connie glanced at him as though the last statement was an explanation.

  ‘What are you saying, child?’

  ‘Me mam says I’ve got to stay on till at least next year, an’ she wants me to perhaps train in an office, somethin’ like that, but that’ll take ages till I’m earnin’ proper.’

  ‘I think I get your drift. You are saying you wish to leave school and obtain employment so your mother can give up her job working at . . . Ahem!’ The Father cleared his throat somewhat violently. ‘At the laundry. Is that it?’

  ‘Aye, yes, Father.’

  ‘Well, I agree with your mother.’ The priest’s voice was crisp now. ‘You should stay on at school and finish your education, Connie. You are a bright girl. A very b
right girl and –’

  ‘But, Father’ – Connie cut him short – ‘that won’t help me mam now, will it, an’ I’ve learnt everythin’ I can learn already.’

  ‘We’ve never learnt all we can, child. I am over sixty years of age and I am still learning. It’s only the good Lord who is truly wise.’

  He was avoiding the issue, and Connie’s face and voice stated this when she said, ‘Aw, you know what I mean, Father.’

  He knew what she meant all right, and like he had said, he was with her mother on this. Everything in him rebelled at the idea of Connie in domestic service, or working in a factory, or some other dead-end employment. It was too late for the mother but not for the daughter. Father McGuigan had what amounted to an obsessive fear of their parishioners seeking education and enlightenment, maintaining that once ordinary people were taught to think and question, the first thing they questioned was the existence of heaven and hell and God Himself. Personally he believed that his God was greater than any questions that could be put to Him, but this avenue of argument had not been well received by Father McGuigan; neither had his pointing out that Pope Leo XIII, who had died two years ago, had worked unstintingly to reduce class warfare and provide equal opportunity for all men. No, that hadn’t gone down well at all with Father McGuigan, Father Hedley reflected ruefully.

  ‘Father, please, listen to me.’ Connie’s voice was a little too shrill and a little too quick to be natural, and now, as he glanced down at the ethereal, golden-haired child at his side, he met the full force of the great sapphire-blue eyes under their fine curving brows, and the appeal in them drew him to a halt. ‘Me mam . . . Me mam’s not well. She’s not, Father.’ Connie’s voice was passionate in her desire to make him understand. ‘She has these turns, pains in her chest an’ she looks awful, an’ they’re gettin’ worse. She tries to make out she’s all right but I know she’s not, Father. An’ I could work. I could, Father.’

  ‘Child, you’re not old enough. Now you know that.’

  ‘But lots of ’em do it, you know they do, Father.’

  ‘That does not make it right.’

  ‘Oh, Father.’

  When her voice broke and she lowered her head her face was not clearly discernible but he knew she was fighting back the tears, and after a long pause, during which he drew his lower lip into his mouth and shut his eyes for a few moments, Father Hedley said, ‘What do you want me to do, Connie?’

  ‘Just . . . just to tell me if you hear of anythin’ goin’, Father, an’ . . . an’ maybe tell them you know me?’

  ‘You want me to recommend you for employment when you should be attending school?’

  Put like that it sounded awful. Connie rubbed her nose and fiddled with one of her plaits, but then she raised her eyes to his and answered simply, ‘Aye, yes. I do, Father.’

  He should have known better than to .ask. Where her family was concerned there was nothing she would not do or say. And then he was further reminded of this when she prompted urgently, with scarcely a blush, ‘Will you? Will you, Father?’

  The righteous disapproval of Father McGuigan was like a sword probing his conscience but he ignored it for the moment. ‘What sort of thing did you have in mind?’

  ‘Anythin’, Father, I don’t mind. I’m as strong as a horse.’

  They looked at each other, the old priest and the slim young girl, and the thought flashed through his mind that if half the men and women he knew had this sort of loyalty and love his life would be a lot more tranquil. And then he nodded slowly, and, her hand slipping into his, they continued their walk to the road.

  Sadie was later than normal as she hurried along the cobbled alleyway which led from the High Street to the quayside. There were numerous small boats moored at the water’s edge and several upturned along the quay, and she could hear the sound of the ‘Keel Row’ being sung with the accompaniment of a fiddle in the Earl of Durham. There was a pair of constables standing outside the Old Custom House – owing to the many nefarious and rough and rowdy characters frequenting the riverside no policeman was so foolish as to walk alone – and so, although she had arranged to meet one of her regulars in that pub, she slipped into the merry din of the Earl of Durham.

  The song changed to a popular hit of a couple of years before, ‘Bill Bailey won’t you please come home’, as the door closed behind her, and through the murky light, thick with a film of smoke, she saw the normal seething crowd of sailors and dockers interspersed with steelworkers, miners, fishwives and – like herself – dock dollies. She had been indignant when that term had first been applied to her, she remembered now with a bitter twist to her lips. That had been when she could still feel and react. Now she felt nothing, it was as though a paralysis, a slow deadening of her mind and emotions had choked the life inside her leaving just an empty shell. But it was a shell that men were still prepared to pay for and that was all that mattered.

  And then, as though someone had heard the thought and offered a direct challenge, she saw him. John Stewart. He was standing with a group of men at the bar, and just as he spat down on the sawdust-covered floor his eyes glanced across the room and met her shocked gaze. She saw him stiffen, and then watched his hard black eyes take in her loose hair, the low neckline of her dress which was now exposed after she had dropped her shawl over one arm on entry in to the public house, and the paint and powder she had hastily applied in the alleyway a moment or two before. They were the marks of her trade and he recognised them as such, and slowly, very slowly, a smile slid across his good-looking face.

  And Sadie knew she could still feel.

  Should she go? Now? Quickly? The thought was there through the surge of blinding hate that was making her ears ring, but such was the force of her emotion that Sadie found she couldn’t move. She was aware of a big man at the side of her – a Swede or Dutchman by the sound of his accent-asking her if she wanted a drink, but still she couldn’t take her fascinated gaze from the satisfied dark one across the room. And it drew her. Like a lemming towards a cliff, like a moth towards a flame, it drew her, and then she was standing in front of him and listening to him say, his voice cocky and sure of itself, ‘Sadie. Sadie Bell isn’t it? It’s been a long time, lass,’ and she knew he still wanted her. The lascivious desire was plain to read in his face.

  ‘Hallo, John.’

  She had never called him by his first name before – at the warehouse he had been Mr Stewart, the eldest son and someone to be instantly obeyed – and his eyes narrowed for a second. But then they cleared and Sadie knew what he was thinking. She was a whore. One of the dockside scum and brazen with it by the look of things, and he was going to have her tonight.

  Over her dead body.

  ‘What you drinking then?’

  There was a note in his voice that told her he was pleased she’d been seen searching him out. She was still beautiful; she hadn’t yet been reduced to having to accept any and every customer, and she still charged more than most and got it.

  For a moment Sadie didn’t trust herself to speak, and then she said, her voice low and steady, ‘Port and brandy.’ She had progressed to that from stout and golden ale after just a few months, finding the strong liquor helped what followed.

  ‘Port and brandy it is, lass.’

  That John was aware of, and relishing, the covert nudges among his group of companions was evident in the lilt to his voice when he turned and ordered the drink, and then he swung back to her, his voice overloud as he said, ‘How about you and me taking a little walk this evening, eh? There’s money in me trousers and something else you’ll like.’

  She didn’t have a chance to answer before the barman tapped John on the shoulder and handed him the glass, but as John passed it to her he said again, ‘How about it then?’, his eyes making no secret of the fact that he was already stripping the clothes from her body.

  It was a waste of a good drink but it couldn’t be helped, and never had she got so much pleasure and gratification from a mea
sure of wine and a measure of spirit as when she watched it hit John Stewart’s grinning face. He was absolutely still for a good three seconds and then he shook his head violently, drips of deep red liquid flying in all directions, as she hissed, ‘I’d have to be dead before I consented to scum like you touching me.’

  The torrent of foul abuse that sprayed out of his mouth coincided with the punch at her face, and although she had been expecting the blow she wasn’t quick enough to avoid it altogether. His clenched fist struck her on the right side of her head, making her ear ring, but she was still on her feet when she saw his friends grab him and restrain him as he struggled to get free.

  ‘Here, come on, I’m havin’ no rough stuff the night.’ The landlord was there like a shot. ‘I’ve had the law pokin’ around twice this week already an’ that’s twice too much. Out, the lot of you. You an’ all, Sadie. Go on.’

  It was taking four of his comrades to hold John, and now he was screaming unintelligibly, enraged at being prevented from reaching the object of his fury. He was fighting mad, they could all see it, and the brief moment of enjoyment his friends had felt at seeing the bumptious little upstart – as they all privately thought of John Stewart – being brought low by a whore, a whore, was swallowed up by their concern at what he might do if they let go of him.

  ‘Get yourself away! Go on! We can’t hold him forever.’

  In spite of the shouts being directed at her Sadie remained stiff and silent as she continued glaring at John, and then said, her voice a deep growl as it came from her throat, ‘You’re a big nowt, John Stewart, an’ there’s not a person alive’d say different if they spoke the truth. It was you an’ your mam that killed your da an’ you know that, don’t you. Deep inside you know that. You killed him as sure as if you’d taken a knife an’ slit his throat.’