The Travelling Man

by Marie Joseph

  ‘Our dad wouldn’t look at Mrs Greenhalgh, not if she was the last woman on earth.’ In her agitation Annie pulled off the atrocious flat cap, releasing the long fall of her hair. ‘If you’d known me mother you couldn’t even think a thing like that.’

  Laurie was staring at her in total disbelief. Annie’s hair was beautiful. He couldn’t take his eyes off it. He supposed it was red, but red was far too ordinary a name for it. More gold than red. He half stretched out a hand, then drew it back quickly, anticipating the way she would swipe it away. Titian … the glinting warmth of a shining copper pan. That hair accounted for the paleness, the creamy tinge to her skin and the way a spattering of freckles marched across the bridge of her nose.

  She was still going on about the woman down the street. ‘She’s known for it …’

  ‘For what, Annie?’

  ‘For going with men.’

  ‘Your father’s not exactly an old man, love. It’s only natural. He’s got to find his bit of fun from somewhere.’ Laurie reached out for his sack. ‘I’ve got to wash this muck off me when I’ve found a dry pair of socks.’ He groped around in the bottom of the sack. ‘Forget about your dad and the ravishing Mrs Greenhalgh, love. Where do I go to get clean? Through there?’

  To his amusement, Annie changed at once into the woman of the house, a polite and solicitous hostess, with an accent to match.

  ‘There’s a hip-bath through there at the back, and if you want to have a proper all-over wash you can put some cold in it and warm it up from the kettle. Georgie and me dad make do with a lick and a promise till Friday, just head and shoulders, but if you want a decent soak you’re very welcome.’

  ‘Will you come through and wash my back?’

  His low chuckle turned to a shout of laughter as Annie upended the iron, snatched a grey shawl from the peg behind the door, and in one swift graceful movement swept her hair up on top of her head beneath the flat cap. She spoke to him over a disappearing shoulder.

  ‘I’m going down to the shops. I’ll not be long.’

  She was off out of the house as quick as a lick. He saw her head bobbing past the window, heard her call out to someone in her normal voice.

  She was a funny kid all right …

  Laurie went through into the back room, out into the yard where the zinc bath hung from a nail hammered into the wall. A lick and a promise might do for the likes of Jack Clancy, but it wasn’t good enough for Laurie Yates.

  Annie averted her eyes as she walked past Mrs Greenhalgh’s house. The front door was closed, which made a change. Usually, when the weather was fine, the big blousy woman propped the door open with a chair and sat there, missing nothing that went on in the street. Or stood on the doorstep with arms folded across her bolster-bosom. Or came out on the flags to sit on the window bottom. All signs of bad bringing up, as Annie’s mother had often reminded her.

  Mrs Greenhalgh’s son Jim was on the late shift at the mine, and Dora his wife would still be down there working on the screens, raking over the coals with her bare hands, festering her fingertips into open cracks. Annie turned the corner with head bent, muttering to herself.

  It wasn’t right. There was so much that wasn’t right. Annie’s mother had often said that when real poverty came in at the door, dignity flew out of the window. ‘Dignity,’ she would say, ‘when God made woman He meant her to have dignity, Annie. Always remember that.’

  Past the forge, across the street, past the house with sixteen children, two sets of twins and one of triplets among them. Annie often wished she could see inside, but they never used the front door, always the back. She supposed they came to the table in relays and slept top to toe, but how on earth did their poor mother manage to feed them? A man carrying a wicker basket of oatcakes on his head turned round from knocking on a door, but Annie was too quick for him. He’d have to whistle for the sixpence she owed him till Friday.

  In the next few weeks the extra coming in from the lodger made quite a bit of difference. Annie not only paid the oatcake man, but bought a fresh batch from him to hang over the end of the clothes rack to dry out. Most days she had two pennorth of greens to boil up as an extra vegetable, and one day when she couldn’t get the washing dry for love nor money she ran out and bought shop meat-and-potato pies instead of making them herself.

  ‘Though you’ll need a search warrant to find the meat,’ she warned Laurie. ‘That woman probably did no more than run past the oven with a spoonful of Bisto.’

  Jack noticed the change in his daughter, but said nothing. She seemed to have shot up in the last few weeks. She had stopped wearing her cap, and started tying her hair back with a blue ribbon. She was sitting where her mother used to sit, on a stand-chair drawn up to the table, with the work-basket to hand beside her, sewing a patch on one of the lads’ trousers. A bobbin of black cotton fell on to the floor and when she bent forward to pick it up he saw the hollow between her breasts.

  Jack averted his eyes. It would be boys next. Boys from the mills or the pit, or even soldiers from the barracks, coming round with eager eyes, wanting to take her for walks. Wanting to fondle her. He felt the heat rise in him.

  ‘Dad?’ It took him a second to realise she was speaking. Her eyes seemed unnaturally bright.

  ‘Do you think you could put me money up this week, so I can buy some material to make a dress?’ Putting the patching aside she clasped her hands together. ‘I know you sold the sewing machine, but I could make it by hand. I’d do it plain, no fancy bits or anything. There’s a social on down at the Mission Hall, with dancing and a bit of supper. The tickets are only sixpence.’ Her voice shook a little. ‘I can’t go in an old skin, an’ I’m growing too big for me blouses. I can’t move the buttons any more.’

  Jack’s face set hard. He could hardly bear to look at her gazing at him with tears in her eyes and that red wavy hair slipping its ribbon, falling down over one shoulder, reminding him … reminding him … With a fierce thrust of a foot he set the chair rocking.

  ‘I’ve never had a dress, not since me mother died.’ She was whingeing now, like a child who must have its way. ‘I have to go. Can’t you see?’

  ‘Have to?’

  Annie’s quick temper rose to meet her father’s angry stare. ‘You can’t shut me away inside for ever! I’m seventeen years old! The lads are my brothers, not my sons. I’m not their mother, though God knows I’m trying to be.’ She went to stand beside him. ‘There’ll be time enough for me to settle down when I get married, but first I want a bit of fun. I want to dance and laugh, I want to go to the social. Laurie said you’d let me if I asked you properly.’

  Jack’s hands were clenched tight on the arms of the rocker. He stared up at her and saw the way the emotion inside her was heaving her breasts up and down. In a minute she’d be going off into one of her old tantrums.

  His hand shot out and gripped her arm. ‘You know well there’s no money for fancy clothes.’ His hard fingers dug into the flesh of her upper arm. ‘But even if there was, you’re not going to any dance. Not at seventeen, eighteen, or even nineteen. Not while I’m here to see you don’t!’

  Annie only took in what he said about the money. When he stood up, still holding on to her, she saw that his eyes were on a level with her own. And it came to her in that very moment that if she kept on growing, the day would soon come when she was taller than her father. Taller than any of her brothers – she knew that too and somehow the knowing of it gave her courage.

  ‘If you spent less on drink you’d have more money to give to me.’

  Had she said that? Annie clapped a hand to her mouth, but the expression in his eyes goaded her on to say even worse. He hated her. It was there in his eyes, filling them, narrowing them to menacing slits.

  ‘I bet if Mrs Greenhalgh from the bottom house asked you for money for a dress you’d cough up,’ she said in frantic desperation.

  When he hit her, rocking her head back, Annie accepted that she had certainly asked for it this tim
e. When he unfastened the buckle of his belt she twisted away.

  ‘No! Not that, our Dad. Please, no!’

  The shame and humiliation were already there in her cry, but she’d gone too far. She had spoken to her father as an equal, and there was no way he was going to stand for that.

  Laurie Yates had missed two cages through taking his time back from the coal face. The work appalled him, and every back-breaking day the conviction grew in him that it was time he took to the road again. His job as a newcomer to the mine was to push the tubs, each containing four hundredweight of coal, down waterlogged steps, then up again. The cork-filled thrutcher he was forced to wear on his head to help him push the heavy tubs was an affront to his pride, even all those miles underground. That day two tubs had come off a faulty rail, and the miners helping him to get them back had made Laurie feel it had been his fault. He had sweated like a stuck pig in spite of wearing nothing but an old pair of football shorts, and in a fit of towering rage had cleared the last of the coal out to give whoever took his place a clean start in the morning.

  But it wouldn’t be him. No, by God, it wouldn’t be him.

  Only that day he’d learned that because the seam was running out they would be sinking a new shaft another two miles away. He didn’t need telling that he would be working on it, and he didn’t need telling either that it was one of the most dangerous jobs in the mine. He wasn’t ready yet to die choking for breath in an airless dank dark tunnel. He wasn’t going to end up with a cob of coal in place of his lungs, not if he could help it.

  He wouldn’t be missed. The miners would never see him as anything else but an interloper, though young Annie might miss him for a while. He smiled at the thought of her as he collected his tackle and started off up the hill. Let them as wanted crawl about on hands and knees far below the ground, but he would be off the next morning, and back in Liverpool he’d sign on the first ship available. Then it would be the wind on his face, salt spray cooling him, and in time he’d forget the searing heat of the mine and the time he pushed a heavy tub along in the black dark, wearing a cork-filled bag on his head.

  Lifting the sneck on the door he walked in to see Annie sitting at the big square table, her head down and her arms spread wide. What was left of her blouse hung in shreds to her waist, and the red-gold hair only partly concealed the weals net-worked across her bare back.

  ‘Oh, you poor little love …’

  Something stirred in Laurie’s black heart as he stared down at the result of Jack’s heavy hand. There was no blood, no skin broken, just the raised purple weals, an ugly sight on the smooth fair skin. How young she was – how achingly slender. He touched a bare shoulder.

  ‘Annie? Look at me, love. What in God’s name did he do that for? What could you possibly have done to anger him like this?’

  The kindness in his voice, the compassion, made her raise her face, so that she saw the lodger through a mist of tears, saw the handsome face covered in coal dust. And saw the deep pity in the dark eyes.

  ‘Oh, Laurie …’

  There was a desperate ache in her for comfort. Her mother had been dead for four years now, but it was her mother she had been crying for when Laurie walked in. Her father would never have dared to use his belt on her if his wife had been alive.

  ‘I said some terrible things to him, Laurie. I wanted a dress to wear to the social, an’ when he said no I went for him with my tongue.’ Her eyes swam with tears. ‘I have an awful tongue on me when I can’t get what I want.’

  Tenderly Laurie pulled her to her feet and into his arms, holding her carefully, drawing the tattered blouse, up, trying to cover the soft curves of her young breasts. Swearing to himself that if her father had come through the door at that moment he would have killed him and not thought twice.

  ‘Hush-up, love.’ He was a good caring father comforting a child, rocking her in rhythmic soothing movements, feeling her body curve into his.

  Did she turn her mouth to his or was it a deliberate movement on his part? Afterwards he wondered, trying to assuage his guilt. All he knew was that even as he kissed her the rocking went on, sending an ache through him, seeping away every vestige of self-control. Had he carried her through into the back room, or had she gone readily, allowing herself to be led? It had been a long time since the woman in Liverpool, and Annie was all soft willingness, clinging to him as he laid her down on the small truckle bed.

  Her cry of pain as he took her should have brought him to his senses, but by then his senses were aflame with the searing triumph of possessing her. Of knowing he was the first man ever to have touched her.

  ‘It’s all right. All right, love.’ He couldn’t stop his hands from shaking as he buttoned her into a clean blouse from the stack of freshly ironed clothes on the small chest of drawers. Even then he was cursing himself for being a fool, for using young Annie when tomorrow he would be away from this place, away from this house where the walls ran damp. But most of all away from the mine where the sky was so far away a man could forget it was even there.

  When he went through into the living-room she came and knelt down by his chair, her face upturned to his.

  ‘Will we be married?’

  Laurie had to close his eyes to hide his expression. He drew her close, tangling his fingers in the soft weight of her hair. Of all the bloody stupid things he’d done in his life, and he’d done many, making love to this young innocent lass beat the lot. If he hadn’t decided a long time ago that remorse was a wasted emotion, he’d be having a good wallow in it now. Why did he always act first and think second? Starting from the day he’d insisted on leaving school, when his father would willingly have seen him through college. Why had he turned his back on the academic career that could have been his?

  ‘Laurie?’ She was waiting, gazing at him, her eyes limpid with the trust she had in him. ‘Will we be married soon?’

  If she didn’t get up from where she was kneeling the boys would be in from school. Or her father would walk in.

  Laurie spoke quickly: ‘Of course we’ll be married, love. But first I have to go away.’

  ‘You can’t! Not now. Not after …’ She looked away, too shy, he guessed, to meet his eyes.

  ‘Listen, love.’ Keeping one eye on the door Laurie gently raised her up, guiding her towards one of the stand-chairs round the table. Pushing the work-basket towards her before going back to his place by the fire. ‘I’m never going down that mine shaft again. It’s how I imagine hell will be, but worse, because down there is hell on earth.’ He sat forward, feeling better now that he’d got her sitting away from him, even though her face was as white as bleached cotton.

  ‘But what we … what we just did?’ Her voice faltered. ‘That means we belong. Only night women an’ …’

  ‘Mrs Greenhalgh?’ he prompted, hoping to get a smile out of her.

  ‘You can’t leave me now,’ she said, hysteria thick in her throat. ‘What if …?’ Terror stared from her eyes, choked her voice.

  ‘What if you have a baby?’ Laurie said it straight out. It was the first thing they all said, the girls like Annie, the inexperienced, the first-timers. From where he sat he willed her to take a hold of herself. ‘You won’t have a baby,’ he told her firmly. ‘I made sure of that.’

  She had no idea what he meant but it was what she wanted to hear so she believed him. The terror faded from her eyes.

  ‘If you got me into trouble, our dad would kill me first then you next.’ She came over to him, lifted his hand and gently kissed it.

  ‘Your dad will come in and catch you if you don’t look sharp.’ His mind was working overtime. The quivering girl must be calmed down. Fast. ‘I’ll come back. I promise.’

  ‘When?’ She was clinging to him like a bloody limpet.

  ‘A year from now. Less than a year. On your birthday. Exactly to the day I came here. I’ll save every penny, then I’ll come back for you.’

  ‘And we’ll be married?’

  ‘We’ll
be married, sweetheart.’

  He tried to put her from him, but she wasn’t ready.

  ‘Let’s say it together, Laurie. Like we were standing together in church.’

  ‘I promise to marry you,’ he said through clenched teeth.

  ‘I promise to make you a good wife,’ Annie whispered, feeling her heart contract with love. ‘For ever and ever, Amen. An’ you’ll come back for me?’

  ‘I’ll come back for you. I promise.’ The school must have loosed. Laurie could hear the clatter of clogs in the street outside. ‘Amen,’ he said with fervour. ‘In the sight of God,’ he added. For good measure.

  ‘An’ you won’t forget me?’

  ‘I’ll never forget one single word we’ve said.’

  Firmly he put her from him.

  As soon as her father and George had gone off to work the next morning Annie packed a hunk of bread and a nice thick slice of potted meat for Laurie to take with him.

  ‘To put you on,’ she told him, ‘till you get well on your way.’ She added an apple, first wiping it carefully down the front of her blouse. ‘Your clean socks are in your sack, and a starched white collar. In case you have to go in front of an interviewing body to get taken on.’

  She was behaving like a wife already. So trusting, so naîve, so young, Laurie couldn’t get out and away quick enough. He was inordinately relieved when Timmy came downstairs complaining of the toothache, crouching down between them on the rug, holding a rag to the fire then pressing it against his cheek. Eyeing them up, taking all in.

  ‘Will you write to me often?’ Annie stood on the step with the door closed behind her, dry-eyed and outwardly composed.

  ‘Better not, love. Your dad would be bound to find out, then there’d be hell to pay.’ He risked touching her cheek, only to find his hand caught as she turned her lips to kiss his fingers. ‘I won’t be responsible for him hitting you.’