Mary had come to look her out specially. The warm glow that this knowledge gave Connie carried her through the evening meal at the long refectory table in the crowded, noisy mess room, and enabled her to chat and laugh afterwards – the mess room also doubled as the staff’s sitting room – as though her stomach wasn’t still turning from the smell of the laundry, which seemed to have been absorbed into her clothes and her skin, even her hair.
‘You coming up the moor the night, Mary?’ one of the other officers asked as several of them began to dwindle away. ‘There’s a travelling show up near the bandstand and they’ve got performing ponies and all sorts.’
‘Performin’ ponies?’ Mary wrinkled her snub nose which caused her glasses to wobble dangerously. ‘Can’t compare to old Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. Did you go an’ see that last year, Connie?’
Connie shook her head. She had heard about the two-day show at Lands End Farm in Hylton Road in July of the year before, and the three special trains it had taken to transport the 800 people and 500 horses needed to re-enact the Battle of the Little Big Horn and Custer’s Last Stand, but Larry had been ill at the time and she hadn’t been able to go to the show which had been touring the provinces.
‘Great it was,’ said Mary dreamily.
‘Oh you, you’d just got your eye on one of the Rough Riders,’ the other girl said teasingly.
‘Not me, I’ve got more sense than to get mixed up with a travelling man,’ Mary responded smartly.
The banter was light and Mary was smiling as she turned fully to Connie, but there was something in the other girl’s face – a shadow, something deep in the soft brown eyes hidden behind the spectacles – that caused Connie to say, ‘What’s the matter, Mary?’
‘The matter, lass? Nothin’, nothin’ asides I’m back in that nursery tomorrow. I could do without it, I tell you straight, but I’m only doin’ one day more an’ then someone else can have a turn.’
Connie nodded, but she didn’t think it was the prospect of the nursery duty that had caused her new friend to look that way. Still, whatever it was Mary clearly didn’t want to discuss it, and that was her own business after all.
For a moment Connie had a fierce desire for the house in the wood and all that was familiar. The fire in the blackleaded grate and her granny ensconced before it whatever the weather outside, the comforting womb of a bedroom where they were all together, hearing each other’s sighs and snores and breathing, the clucking of the hens and the taste of fresh warm milk straight from the nanny goat, Larry’s arms tight around her neck when she tucked him in at night, and her mam . . . Oh, her mam.
Whatever her mam had done she had done for them, and she loved her more now than ever. She would give the world to be able to tell her that, to hold her close, to state that her mam could stay at home and her daughter would provide for them. But it was too late. Too late. But not for Larry, or her gran either, and that was why she couldn’t give in to this childish impulse to gather her things and fly home. She had to be strong. Her mam would have expected it of her and it was the last thing she could do for her.
‘You got the blues, lass?’
She hadn’t been aware of Mary watching her, but now Connie forced a smile and nodded; speaking, just at that moment, was impossible with the lump in her throat.
‘Aye, well it’s not surprisin’, this bein’ your first day an’ all, but you’ll get used to it. Everyone does.’ And then Mary leant closer, shutting out the sight and sound of the others as she said, her voice low, ‘You aren’t really fourteen, are you, lass?’
Connie stared at her, but behind the outward façade of calmness her mind was racing. If she told this girl the truth and Mary reported her all would be lost. Far from being a paid helper in the workhouse she could find herself working as an inmate for the next two years until she was fourteen, and her granny in one of the infirm wards and Larry separated from them both. But some instinct stronger than her fear was prompting her to trust this funny, nondescript-looking girl, and it was this that enabled her to answer, her voice even quieter than Mary’s. ‘I’m twelve.’
Mary said not a word, but they looked at each other in full understanding, and it was in that moment that their friendship was really born.
His mam was right, he should have done something like this years ago. She’d got away with murder, Jacob’s whore, if you thought about it.
It was four in the morning, the day after Connie had entered the workhouse and John had had the conversation with his mother which had further inflamed his rage and burning resentment, and like the night five years before he was making his way to the house in the wood, but this time he was alone.
What was Sadie Bell after all but a stinking whore? She had put it on offer at the warehouse, oh aye, she had, but Jacob had got there before him, that was the truth of it. He could have had her; like Jacob he could have had her all his life on the side, but he’d just waited a mite too long in making his move. He ground his teeth, the image of the woman who had been like a canker eating away at him from the first second he had laid eyes on her, who he had wanted more than he had ever wanted anyone in his life, there on the screen of his mind. She had put a curse on their whole family, and moreover she had made him a laughing stock with that stunt in the pub. The word had spread quicker than a dose of salts. By, what he’d give to take it out of her hide. He swore, softly but profoundly, the profanities foul, and they seemed to propel his small stocky body along even more swiftly in the balmy moonlit shadows.
The cottage was in darkness when he came into the clearing but he had expected that, it was what he had planned for. The trollop would be back from her whoring now, however good a night she’d had.
He moved stealthily past the goat’s lean-to and the hen coop, skirting round the vegetable patch and right up to the cottage door before he eased the sack which had been slung over his shoulder to the dusty, baked ground.
An owl’s hoot almost over his head made him jump violently and then freeze, but the cool mugginess of the summer night enfolded him once again and he began to breathe more easily, the faint odour from the stone outhouse wherein the nettie was housed causing his nose to wrinkle. Animals, they lived like filthy animals, his mam was right on that count too. And like cleaved to like – aye, water found its own level right enough, and after tonight she perhaps wouldn’t be so high and mighty when she was forced to take herself and her brats to her whoremaster – whoever that was – and live where she worked.
The thought excited him, and he stood for a moment, relishing his contemplation of the time when Sadie would be broken and desperate and he would make her crawl on her knees for him. And he would. Oh aye, he would. He wasn’t finished with her yet, not by a long chalk. She was going to pay and keep on paying for what she had done to him.
He was smiling as he extracted the can of oil and the rags from the sack, but his expression turned to one of faint surprise when he tried the handle of the cottage door and it opened. Better and better. He had prepared himself for it being bolted, her being on her own out here with the bairns and her old mother, if the crone was still alive. An oil-soaked rag wrapped round a stone through the window followed by another lighted one would have done the trick, but this was easier. He could make sure the fire got a good hold now and he didn’t want her salvaging much; the more destitute this left her the better.
It was absolutely black inside the cottage and it took a minute or two for his eyes to adjust, but there was a full moon and soon the dim shafts of light from the window allowed him to pick out items of furniture within the small room. He moved furtively over the stone flags to the clippie mat in front of the range, opening the can and sprinkling a good amount of oil from one end of the mat to the other, before doing the same over the table, the ancient, flock-stuffed cushions on the saddle and the thin curtains.
He could hear snoring from the other room, the door being slightly ajar, but such was the adrenalin rushing through his blood that he felt inv
incible as he lit first the curtains, which flared immediately, and then the cushions. He threw a match on to the table before adding another to the clippie mat, but as he stepped backwards he kicked over the can of oil which clattered on the stone flags as it expelled its remaining liquid in a stream towards the bedroom door. This seemed to light by itself in a flash from the clippie mat, and in the same instant, as there were stirrings from the bedroom, John dived for the door of the cottage, banging it behind him as he left.
Far from being exhilarated he now felt unnerved by the ferocity with which the fire had taken hold, and expecting the occupants of the cottage to come tumbling out of the door at any moment he ran across the clearing, ploughing over the vegetable bed and getting entangled in the runner bean canes in the process, before reaching the cover of the trees.
And then the screams started. Terrible screams, screams that caused his blood to freeze and the hairs of his head to rise up and prick his scalp. Damn it, why weren’t they getting out? Sadie was able-bodied and that girl of hers must be twelve or thirteen by now. He was actually halfway back across the clearing when he stopped, his eyes wild, as the reality of what it would mean if he was seen hit him. He’d go down the line for this, sure as eggs were eggs. Even if he got them out he’d be facing a hefty prison sentence or worse.
The unearthly cries were reaching new hideous heights and again he took a step or two towards the cottage which was now clearly ablaze, before stopping once more. Whatever was happening in there they were as good as dead now; what good would it do if he got hurt too? And he hadn’t meant it. He hadn’t meant for them to get caught like this. It wasn’t his fault, dammit, they should have moved quicker.
He clapped his hands over his ears to shut out the harrowing noise, swinging his head back and forth and shutting his eyes as he let the sound of his own moaning fill his mind, and it was some time later – he didn’t know if it was seconds or minutes such was his panic and fright – that he became aware that the screaming had stopped and the thatched roof was sending a great pall of smoke into the sky.
He had to get out of there, but for the moment he couldn’t act on the thought. His stomach felt loose, his bowels had turned to water, and he had to fight the desire to be sick.
He ran his hand over his face, scrubbing at his flesh which was damp with sweat, and glanced about the flickering clearing. He must right those bean canes and extricate the vegetables he’d crushed when he trod on them. It wouldn’t do for anyone to think someone had been there. The oil can he could do nothing about now. He had meant to bring it away but when the place had gone up like that, like a tinderbox, there’d been no time for anything. Still, if it was found at all they’d most likely think it belonged to the family. He closed his eyes as the bile surged into his throat and swallowed hard, and then, as the crackling and heat reached new heights, quickly set about tidying up.
Once that was done the heat from the blazing building sent him to the far side of the clearing where he glanced back once before moving, not towards Tunstall Road and the more direct route into Bishopwearmouth, but westwards, towards the Hetton Colliery railway and Silksworth Lane where he could join the Durham Road and skirt eastwards into Kensington Road.
As he walked the sky became lighter, dawn breaking in pastel shades that promised another glorious summer’s day in this year of our Lord, nineteen hundred and five. It was Saturday 1st July, unmomentous to many, but it was the day on which the great philanthropist and founder of the Salvation Army, General William Booth, bought 20,000 acres of land on which to settle poor immigrants in Australia, and a revolutionary by the name of Albert Einstein proposed his startling new ‘Theory of Relativity’ to stunned fellow physicists. But in the north-east community of Sunderland these historic events passed unnoticed. The fresh new morning heralded the start of just another working day in which they endeavoured to hold body and soul together.
To Connie, still fast asleep in her dismal room in the benignant confines of the Sunderland workhouse, the 1st of July, 1905, was a date that would become seared on her memory as though inflicted by a branding iron. A day that would haunt her in dark nightmares for years afterwards, when she would see the flames and hear the heart-rending cries, watch grotesque stumbling figures turn into balls of fire and reach out to help, only to find that they crumbled into ashes at her feet. But as yet she was blissfully unaware of the tragedy which had befallen her grandmother and beloved brother, and such was John Stewart’s ability at self-justification – a trait he had inherited from his mother – that he actually began to whistle as he strode across Broad Meadows to join Kensington Road, the first rays of golden sunshine warm on his face.
Father Hedley was tired. He had been called to a house in Stafford Street in the East End, close to the barracks, at three in the morning to perform the last rites on one of his elderly parishioners, only to find that the old lady was chary of being ushered somewhere she hadn’t yet made up her mind to go. As well as the old granny there were two aunties, eight children and the daughter and her husband living in the two-up, two-down terrace, and when he’d arrived most of them had been squeezed round the desk bed in the kitchen where the old woman lay.
He liked this family. Although they were one of the poorest of his flock, they were good, decent, kind-hearted folk and the granny was a character. So he stayed on chatting, even when it became clear that the old lady had fooled them all again by reviving, and only left after he had shared the family’s breakfast of pot boiley – crusts of bread mixed with milk and oats.
However, Father Hedley was finding that the bronchitis he had suffered two weeks previously was still taking its toll, and once back home he groaned out loud when, having settled himself in a comfortable armchair and put his feet up on the cracket in preparation for a doze, there was a banging on the front door, followed by the mention of his name.
‘Father?’ When the long-suffering Mrs Clark, who kept house for the two priests and generally looked after them, popped her head round the study door she spoke in an undertone. ‘There’s a constable in the hall asking for you. He says the farmer’s wife at Tunstall Hills Farm sent him.’
‘Oh aye? You’d better show him in then, Mrs Clark.’
So saying, Father Hedley lowered his feet and stood up, but within moments of the constable opening his mouth the priest found he had to sit down again. ‘You’re saying Peggy Cook and the little lad are dead?’ Father Hedley’s face was screwed up, his brown eyes lost behind his narrowed lids.
‘Aye, I’m afraid so, Father.’ The constable shuffled his feet before he said, ‘Looks like the girl, Connie isn’t it? had a lucky escape by all accounts.’
A lucky escape. Father Hedley was staring at the policeman but not seeing him; at that moment he was capable only of visualising Connie and her face when she heard this terrible news. It would break her. Dear God, it would break her. Hadn’t the bairn stood enough in her short life? Why this, and why now?
The last thought prompted him to say, ‘Has she been told? Connie, has she been told yet?’
The constable shook his head. ‘They said at the farm that there’s no other relatives, not that they know of leastways, and that you’ve had a bit to do with the family over the years? I understand you were responsible for getting the lass the job at the workhouse?’
Father Hedley nodded.
‘I thought it might be better if you broke it to her, Father. They said she’s a nice little lass and thinks a bit of her granny and brother, and the mother’s only just died.’ The constable made an uneasy movement here; he had been surprised when he’d discovered the lass’s mother had been Sadie Bell. Not that she’d ever caused any trouble, Sadie, and she hadn’t been foul-mouthed or abusive to the police when they’d tried to do their job, but nevertheless a whore was a whore.
The priest nodded again. ‘How . . . how did it happen?’ he asked heavily.
‘Oil can got knocked over or dropped from what we can make out. Perhaps the lad was trying to fi
ll the lamp, something along those lines, we can’t be sure. Anyway, they got trapped in the bedroom and once the fire got a hold . . .’ He drew his chin in, his voice soft as he said, ‘Bad business. Bad business.’
Father Hedley inhaled a sharp breath. It was a bad business all right. And then he surprised himself as he asked, ‘There was no jiggery-pokery then?’
‘Jiggery-pokery?’ There was a different note in the constable’s voice now and his eyes had narrowed. ‘Why? Do you know of any reason why that might be the case, Father?’
Did he? Father Hedley stared at the man and after a moment, during which he pulled in his lips and pressed down hard on them, he answered quietly, ‘No, I know of no reason, Constable. I was merely enquiring, that’s all.’
‘I see.’ The policeman kept his eyes on the priest as Father Hedley rose slowly to his feet. ‘You sure about that, Father?’
‘Quite sure.’
Quite sure. By, the constable thought, he’d like a shilling for every time he’d heard that one! And these priests, they were the worst of all. The power they wielded and the influence they had would be fine if it wasn’t used just to scare the wits out of people regarding their immortal souls. He knew of deep, dyed-in-the-wool villains who would go to mass and light a few candles and such like and emerge with a smile on their faces, convinced they were right with God and man after ten minutes in the confessional box with a bloke like this one. No matter they had half killed someone the night before – they had been given their penance and received absolution so all was well.
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