by Gracie Hart
Contents
Cover
About the Book
About the Author
Title Page
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty One
Twenty Two
Twenty Three
Twenty Four
Twenty Five
Twenty Six
Twenty Seven
Twenty Eight
Twenty Nine
Thirty
Thirty One
Thirty Two
Thirty Three
Thirty Four
Thirty Five
Thirty Six
Copyright
About the Book
Can these young coal-miner’s daughters survive on their own?
Tragedy strikes a small Yorkshire mining town when Sarah Wild’s husband dies in a terrible accident. Widowed and destitute, Sarah is forced to remarry to save her daughters, Mary-Anne and Eliza, from the workhouse. But her new husband is a violent drunk and when Sarah tragically dies too, Mary-Anne and Eliza are orphaned.
Unable to rely on their drunken step-father, Mary-Anne and Eliza are left to fend for themselves. They are determined to stick together but life becomes complicated when Mary-Anne, the eldest, falls pregnant with the child of a married mine-owner.
Scared and unsure what to do, the sisters try to hide Mary-Anne's pregnancy. But such things cannot stay secret for long …
About the Author
Gracie Hart was born in Leeds and raised on the family farm in the Yorkshire Dales. Though starting out as a glass engraver, and then raising her family, Gracie has now written several family sagas.
Gracie and her husband still live in the Yorkshire Dales and they have two children and four grandchildren.
One
Woodlesford Village, near Leeds, 1857
‘Stop your bloody brat from gawping at me,’ Bill Parker snarled at his wife, Sarah, as her daughter Mary-Anne watched her stepfather greedily eat the stew that had been gently bubbling over the coal fire for most of the day. The gravy was running down his chin, making tracks on his black coal-dusted skin.
‘Mary-Anne, go and help your sister with the water for your father’s bath.’ Sarah gave a warning glance to her oldest daughter, knowing that Bill was in no mood to be challenged. He’d been drinking since the end of his shift down the pit, and was now the worse for wear. A time the whole family knew to be wary of him, as drink did nothing for the usually mild-mannered man.
‘Yes, Mother.’ Mary-Anne needed no further prompting as she made for the back door of the small two-bedroom miner’s cottage to their wash house that adjoined the terraced house and was the refuge from their stepfather’s wrath.
She knew better than to say, ‘he’s not my father.’ In truth she’d only been staring at her stepfather as she’d been wishing that there would be enough stew left over for her and her sister as another supper of just bread crusts would be unbearable. But when Bill had come in leery with drink, and in a mood as black as the coal dust that covered him, she knew better than to ask for even a taste of the stew that had tantalised her taste buds for most of the day.
‘Mind you and Eliza make sure the water is warm enough and let your father eat his meal in peace.’ Sarah looked at her daughter, knowing that she understood to make herself and her sister scarce in order to protect them from their stepfather’s anger.
‘Yes, Mother.’ Mary-Anne closed the door behind her and sighed as she stepped into the dark, freezing backyard, making her way to the attached wash house where her younger sister was tending to the copper boiler, full of water to fill the tin bath for her stepfather to have his daily bath in.
‘Bill’s back.’ Mary-Anne sighed and sat down heavily on the stool that was her usual hiding place when needed.
‘I take it he’s the worse for drink, else you wouldn’t be here with me.’ Eliza poked the burning embers underneath the huge copper boiler, which took up most of one of the corners in the wash house, and wiped her brow free from the sweat that was trickling down her flushed face.
‘Aye, there will be no reasoning with him; you’ve just to look at him tonight. I don’t know why old Lewis the landlord at the Boot and Shoe doesn’t tell him to get himself home earlier. He knows what he’s like when he’s had too much.’ Mary-Anne looked at her sister and was thankful that they were both in the relative safety of the wash house, but she feared for their mother who was left behind appeasing her drunken husband.
‘Lewis is just a greedy bastard and Bill is easily led. He can’t walk past the doors without feeling he’s got to go in.’
Mary-Anne sat down next to her sister and waited. Their stepfather would either appear for a wash in the tin bath that was next to them or he’d hopefully be so drunk and dozy that he would go to bed after his supper.
‘Eliza, our real father would have belted you for saying words like that and Mother still would if she heard you saying it.’ Mary-Anne looked shocked at her younger sister.
‘You can’t deny I’m right, though. And as for our true father, I sometimes worry that I can’t even remember his sweet face, it has been so long since he died and our lives have changed so much.’ Eliza put her head in her hands and fought back tears.
‘You were only young; I’m surprised you can remember him at all. I barely can and I’m two years older than you.’
Mary-Anne had been nine, and Eliza just seven, when their father had died and their whole world had fallen apart. Their father had been a miner like Bill but a rock fall at Rose Pit had cost him his life over ten years hence.
‘Well, I do, and I curse the day our mother met Bill Parker. He’s nothing but a drunken bully.’ Eliza lifted her head and spat out her words of hate against their stepfather.
‘He’s a drunken bully who took us all in when he could have sent us to the workhouse. At least we’re still with Ma and have a roof over our heads.’ Mary-Anne went quiet as raised voices could be heard from inside the cottage.
‘I don’t know why she doesn’t leave him,’ Eliza whispered. ‘I couldn’t put up with his ways.’
Bill’s voice could be heard shouting at their mother and both sisters looked at one another, not daring to go and help their mother, as they knew it would only make matters worse for all of them. A crash of breaking china followed and Bill’s voice bellowed from within.
‘Don’t you bloody tell me to go to bed, woman! Who do you think you are? You’re nothing but a penniless whore with two useless bitches tied to your apron strings.’
Inside the small cottage, Bill clenched his fist close to his wife’s face as the other held her tight by the neck pinned to the whitewashed kitchen wall.
Sarah struggled for breath as Bill leered at her, his breath smelling of stale beer as he breathed heavily on her. She put her hands on his arms and tried to pull them off her.
‘Bill, let me go. This is no good for anyone.’ Sarah gasped as he released his grasp slightly. ‘You’ve just had too much to drink. Go and sleep it off.’
‘Shut your mouth!’ Bill swung his fist into Sarah’s face making her head spin, and she felt a trickle of blood run down from her burst lip. Then she felt her feet give way beneath her, as Bill pummelled her head against the wall leaving her unconscious and crumpled on the floor.
Bill looked at his wife lying st
ill and lifeless on the flagstones and then looked around at the plates he had thrown at her and the upturned chairs. He grunted to himself and then stumbled backwards, making his way to the stairs where he stopped unsteadily in his tracks, satisfied that he had vented his feelings on his wife but wondering if he should check she was still breathing.
As unsteady on his feet as he was, he decided against it and crawled his way up to his bed as Sarah had told him to do previously. Sprawling out on the clean sheets in his coal-dusted clothes and with his boots still on, he smiled to himself as he fell asleep. He’d taught that whining bitch a lesson, for sure; she’d not tell him to go to bed in a hurry again.
In the warm gloom of the wash house, Eliza and Mary-Anne whispered quietly to one another. Waiting – once the shouting had finished – to hear their stepfather’s footsteps visiting the bottom of the yard privy before coming for his bath.
‘He’s not coming. He must have gone to bed. But where’s Mother? She usually comes to tell us that the coast is clear.’ Eliza shot Mary-Anne a worried glance; her stomach was churning and she felt sick.
The racket from within the red brick terraced cottage had been so bad. She knew that Bert and Ada Simms, their next-door neighbours, would have been able to hear the night’s traumas. That once again it would have given Ada something to gossip about, and reason to pry into their affairs. But most of all she was worried for her mother’s safety.
‘I’ll go. Stay here. Something must be wrong, else mother would have come out here.’ Mary-Anne stood up and looked down at her cowering sibling. ‘Put the fire out, Eliza, but don’t empty the copper boiler. We’ll use the water for washing the clothes tomorrow.’ Mary-Anne breathed in deeply; as the eldest she felt it her duty to protect her younger sister. Even though Eliza spoke harsh words, deep down she knew she was petrified of Bill when he was in his cups. They both were.
‘No, we’ll both go.’ Their father always bathed daily, getting rid of the dirt and grime of the coalface only leaving Sunday free for the girls and their mother to indulge in their weekly ablution. Eliza reached for the jug that their mother usually filled with water to rinse their stepfather off in his bath and filled it with hot water from the copper boiler, pouring it on the fire that still burned underneath. Watching the steam rise as the fire spat and fought for its life she held her hand out for her sister and clenched it tightly as they made their way out of the wash house, and into the house.
‘Mother!’ Both girls rushed to their mother’s side where she lay, head propped against the kitchen wall with a trail of red blood from her matted hair streaked down the whitewashed wall.
Sarah groaned and opened her eyes, trying to focus on her two daughters.
‘I’ll go and get help. I’ll get Mrs Simms from next door.’ Eliza looked at her mother. This time her stepfather had gone too far.
‘No, no, Eliza, don’t,’ Sarah whispered as she came around. ‘She can’t do anything for me that you can’t … Besides we don’t want the neighbours to know our business. Although no doubt she will have heard everything tonight, the way your father was ranting. Help me up, Mary-Anne. I’ll be all right once I’m up on my feet and I’ve got a cup of tea in me.’
Both Mary-Anne and Eliza helped Sarah to her feet. Mary-Anne set one of the upturned kitchen chairs right, then sat her down gently. She sent Eliza to the wash house to fetch hot water, eyeing her mother warily while her sister was gone.
‘We can’t go on like this, Ma. You’ve survived this time, but next time he might kill you.’
When her sister returned with the water, Mary-Anne bathed her mother’s battered head, dabbing her matted blonde hair gently with a clean tea towel and then patting the split lip that had poured blood down the front of her mother’s high-necked white blouse. ‘You’ve got to leave him. We’d survive somehow.’
‘No, I can’t leave him. It’s only when he’s been drinking and doesn’t know what he’s doing. Tomorrow he’ll be full of remorse, like he usually is, and won’t touch a drop for a while.’ Sarah sipped the tea that Eliza gave her and winced as the hot drink scorched her cut lip.
‘Well, he’s made a nice mess of the kitchen.’ Mary-Anne looked around at the smashed dinner plates and the stew that she had longed for now spilt over the flagstones. ‘Looks like we’re going to bed hungry yet again.’
Sarah reached for Mary-Anne’s arm. ‘He’s a good man is your stepfather. He puts up with a lot, and not many men would have taken us all on when your father died.’
Eliza picked up the broom from behind the kitchen door and started sweeping the broken pieces of crockery up from off the floor, stopping at the bottom stairs to listen to the snores coming from the upstairs bedroom. ‘He’s snoring like a stuffed pig now. I wish he was dead, like my proper father. He wouldn’t have done anything like this.’
‘Eliza, don’t say things like that, you should never wish anyone dead. My girls, we have to endure what life throws at us and us women are at the mercy of the men we wed, always remember that.’ Sarah held her arms out to embrace her daughters, holding them tight as she stared into the dying embers of the fire. If she could turn back time and change her lot in life she would, but she had made her bed and now she must lie in it, with her drunken brute of a husband.
All she could do was pray for a better life for both her girls, that they would marry good men and be more contented in life than she was. She would continue to do what she had to do to keep her girls safe and a roof over their heads, no matter what she had to put up with.
Two
Ada Simms had scrubbed and donkey-stoned her front steps so much that they were now whiter than the bleached whale jawbones that arched over the gateway to Fenton House in nearby Rothwell. The traded donkey stone from the rag-and-bone man made of bleach and sandstone was nearly at the end of its life after so much scrubbing. But she was determined to catch and speak to her next-door neighbour after hearing all the racket the night before as she and her Bert had sat around the fire after enjoying their supper.
Bert had told her to mind her own business, but Sarah was her friend and a neighbour – it was her business. And besides, her friend May Atkins had hinted that all was not as it seemed next door when she had joined her for tea the previous week. She’d watched from behind her lace curtains as Bert had knocked for Bill Parker to join him on the walk to their work at the pit, but if she’d been hoping for some signs of last night’s trouble she’d been disappointed. She’d watched them walk to work together in the light of the dim gas lamps as usual, just as if nothing had happened. What she’d expected she didn’t know, but now she had to wait for Sarah to appear, just to put her mind at rest that she was all right.
Ada’s senses twitched as she heard the handle of the door being turned at number one, Pit Lane, and she got ready to catch her prey like a cat with a mouse. She stood with scrubbing brush in hand and leaned on the adjoining garden wall. No matter that the weather was freezing and the cold wind was making her hands sore, she was determined to make next-door’s business her business.
‘Good morning, girls.’ Ada sounded deflated; she had been hoping that it was Sarah that was leaving the house.
‘Morning, Mrs Simms.’ Eliza and Mary-Anne chimed together.
‘Everything all right at your house? How’s your mother?’ Ada enquired, making it quite obvious that she had heard the previous night’s goings on.
‘She’s fine, thank you. Busy washing some sheets.’ Mary-Anne smiled at her nosy neighbour. She wasn’t even lying – after her stepfather had walked out to work without saying a word to any of them, her mother had stripped the bed he’d layed on and was busy scrubbing the bedding free of coal dust.
‘I’m sorry if we were a bit noisy last night. I dropped some of my mother’s best china and my stepfather lost his temper with me.’ Eliza jutted her chin out a little as she embroidered the story, almost daring her neighbour to challenge her lies. ‘I’m such a clumsy devil. I swear I’m not be trusted with anything.�
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‘Oh, I didn’t hear anything my dears. Bert and I are oblivious to the world around us once we’re settled in front of our fire of an evening.’ Ada blushed and looked at the two brazen-faced young women. ‘Are you off into town?’
‘Aye, we are off to the market in Leeds to see what clothes we can pick up and then we might be doing a bit of knocking and begging on rich folk’s doors if there’s nothing that’s of worth on the market.’ Mary-Anne closed the garden gate quickly behind her and Eliza, eager to leave their inquisitive neighbour.
Ada watched as the two young women walked down the rough track of Pit Lane. Strange, Sarah was doing her sheets on a Thursday; Monday was her wash day along with the rest of the street, she thought.
No matter what had gone on next door, they were covering their tracks, and no matter what they said, she knew full well it was more than just dropping a few plates.
Eliza had to wait for her sister several times as she hobbled along the towpath of the Leeds-to-Liverpool canal that flowed on the outskirts of Woodlesford on its way to service the many mills and factories before it reached the Irish Sea.
‘I don’t know about second-hand clothes … I could do with a new pair of boots.’ Mary-Anne sat down at the edge of the canal and looked at the hole in her boots that was making her foot sore. She watched as one of the open barges known locally as ‘Tom Puddings’ passed them, loaded with coal from the pits on its way to feed the factories of Leeds or the ports of Liverpool and those along the banks of the Humber. Her skirts edged up around her knees as she sat on the bank, making the man steering the barge shout out an offer of making some quick money.
‘Now, that’s a pretty sight. Penny for a quick ’en?’
‘You keep your hand on the tiller,’ Mary-Anne shouted back, ‘it’s the biggest thing you’ll hold all day, and more stiff.’
The cheek of the man; she wasn’t a prick-pincher like the women and girls that strutted down Canal Street. He’d have to seek his relief there.
She pulled down her skirts and pushed the piece of cardboard that had been filling the hole in the bottom of her boot back into place and quickly laced her boot back up. In the distance the growing city of Leeds lay in front of them, blanketed in the smoke of the busy industries that were making Leeds one of the largest manufacturers of wool and textiles in the country. But while the factory and mill owners were thriving, building their fancy houses on the outskirts in Roundhay Park and Chapel Allerton, the ordinary factory workers suffered at their hands, living in back-to-back houses with open sewers running down the streets, overcrowded and starving.
