by Gracie Hart
‘Good evening, Mr Ellershaw, sir.’ The doorman of the gentleman’s club opened the carriage door and unfolded the steps out for Edmund to alight.
‘Evening, Jones. It’s a bit parky tonight.’ Edmund stood next to the doorman and watched as Mary-Anne took his hand and was helped down out of the carriage.
‘Good evening, miss.’ Jones looked at the frightened young thing that was joining the biggest lecher in the club and couldn’t help but feel sorry for her. ‘Mind your skirt as you climb the stairs, miss,’ Jones commented, as he watched Edmund put his arm through hers and take her through the revolving doors into the brightly lit hallway of the club.
Mary-Anne turned around and gave a faint smile.
‘Dirty old bugger, he’s old enough to be her father,’ Jones said to the groom that was driving the coach.
‘Aye,’ the groom replied, ‘he’s a bastard when it comes to using women and she’s too pretty to be used by him. I wouldn’t mind a go myself, but then again I don’t have the money that he does. That’s what attracts them.’
‘I’d like to tell his wife, that’d make him think. She’s the one with the real money, not him.’ Jones closed the carriage door and went back to stand in the doorway as the groom went around the back of the club to stable the horses. Both knew Edmund Ellershaw for what he was.
Mary-Anne felt as if all eyes were upon her as she stood in the grand hallway of the gentleman’s club. The air was filled with cigar smoke and pompous businessmen all sipping their brandy and discussing business. But she could also see them stop and glance at her on the arm of Ellershaw. It was a million miles from anything that Mary-Anne had previously experienced and she felt vulnerable to their stares. They were men her parents had always told her to respect, but now she realised that they were no better than anyone else; all had their vices.
‘Now Ellershaw, this is a pretty filly you’ve got on your arm.’ Bernard Hargreaves, owner of the Fleet Mill, looked Mary-Anne up and down and patted Edmund on his back.
‘Aye, she’s my entertainment for the night.’ Edmund patted the old codger back as he picked up his room keys from the reception while keeping an eye on the quaking Mary-Anne. ‘Come on, follow me up the stairs and say nothing to nobody.’ Edmund linked his arm through hers and half pulled her up the stairs, past paintings of the great and good patrons that had at one time been part of the club.
‘You wouldn’t be willing to share, I suppose, Ellershaw? Make an old man happy,’ Bernard Hargreaves shouted up the stairs making Edmund stop in his tracks and Mary-Anne show the shock she was feeling of being discussed like a piece of property by two elderly men. Her stomach turned and she felt sick as she was bartered over.
‘What do you think?’ Edmund shouted back and pulled on Mary-Anne’s arm to get her to the top of the stairs.
‘I thought not,’ Hargreaves muttered to himself as he walked into the main smoke-filled room to join his colleagues.
‘I’m not a prostitute to do with what you want,’ Mary-Anne said as he closed the bedroom door behind them. ‘I’m only doing this to keep a roof over mine and Eliza’s heads.’
‘But that is exactly what you are … a common little prick-pincher. Being paid for services rendered; that’s why nobody is blinking an eye at you joining me in my private room.’ Edmund threw off his cloak and jacket and undid the collar on his shirt before grabbing Mary-Anne by her arms and throwing her on the bed. ‘Time for payment, my dear,’ he whispered in her ear as he lay down on top of her, pulling her skirts up and bloomers down and then fumbled with his trousers.
‘Get off me,’ she shouted and pushed against him. But he was too strong as he pushed her down into the bed and pulled his manhood out.
‘That’s it! This is what you want and what I expect from you, my little pretty bitch.’ Edmund Ellersaw grinned as he watched her panic.
Mary-Anne wanted to scream as he entered her, fighting him and pushing at his shoulders as he took his satisfaction. This wasn’t how she had wanted it, she should never have agreed to this. She grimaced as he tried to kiss her, his breath making her feel sick as he licked her face and breasts, ripping her bodice to see more of her flesh, thrusting into her until he looked down upon her with satisfaction. ‘You make a better ride than your mother.’ He laughed and caught his breath, taking pleasure at the look of horror on Mary-Anne’s face. ‘You mean you didn’t know your mother was a whore too? Dear me, she must have overlooked that story when she tucked you both into bed. I’m so glad it’s been my pleasure to have told you.’ Edmund Ellershaw looked down at the distraught girl that had given him so much pleasure, and knew he had to also break her spirit.
‘You are lying. My mother would never do anything like this,’ Mary-Anne cried, pulling her skirts down and noticing the smattering of blood on what was her perfectly pristine blue dress, and the rip down her bodice. While she held back her tears, she was not going to let him know that he had taken her pride as well as her virginity, and now also the warm memories of her mother.
‘She was, my dear; how else do you think that useless excuse of a man kept his job and your mother keep a roof over your heads? Regular as clockwork she was at least twice a month, just like you will be.’ Edmund sniggered as he buttoned up his trousers and ran his finger down Mary-Anne’s flushed breasts.
‘That’s where you are wrong. I don’t believe you, and this is the first and last time you are ever going to touch me.’ Mary-Anne stood shakily at the side of the bed and stared at the man she now hated. Making her way to the bedroom door, she stopped for a second. ‘You’ll get your rent, or we will find somewhere else to go. You are not the only landlord in Woodlesford.’
‘Perhaps you should join your aunt in the gutter in Leeds. You’ll be back, you’ve no option as I’ll make sure my daughter will not be giving you any more trade, so you can forget her money.’ Edmund sat on the bed and laughed as he watched Mary-Anne slam the door, not even waiting to be taken home. She’d be back, he thought. She had no choice.
Mary-Anne ran down the stairs, nearly knocking the doorman over in a bid to escape from the den of iniquity, flying out of the revolving doors, down the steps and into the night.
‘You all right, miss?’ The doorman shouted after her as he straightened himself up and watched as she fled, but he received no reply.
Mary-Anne cried and tumbled her way along the rutted road out of Holbeck and over the high steep hill that lead her back home, only looking back when she could see the safety of the outskirts of Woodlesford. Her legs shook; not only had she walked nearly six miles in the dark but she had done so after she had been raped, although other people would not see it that way. After all, she had gone into the club willingly on Edmund Ellershaw’s arm. All that she held dear had been taken from her in that sordid room by a dirty, controlling uncaring bastard.
She looked back at the dim lights of Leeds and caught her breath, sitting down on the edge of the road that lead to Wakefield, in the darkness. Tears flowed all too easy and she sobbed in the cloak of the night, not holding back the fear and the hurt that was ripping her in two. Had he been telling the truth about her mother? If not, then how did he know about her Aunt Patsy in Leeds, and could the dead baby that her mother had been carrying have possibly been his? So many questions, the answers to which she did not want to hear. But one thing she knew for sure, and that was that she would never lower herself again to give in to Edmund Ellershaw’s lusting ways. It would not happen to her again, she vowed, even as she was beginning to realise that she was not the first in her family to be bought this way.
Fifteen
Eliza lay in the darkness wrapped in her bedding, uneasy at the thought that Mary-Anne had not yet returned. She’d tried to sleep, but without her sister’s body next to her and worrying about how strange Mary-Anne had acted before she left for her so-called meeting, she’d failed to do so. Perhaps it was a man she was meeting, and wanted to keep it a secret. Whatever it was it definitely was not a spiritualist meeting
, not if it kept her out to this time. It must be all of two or three o’clock in the morning by now, as she had gone to bed at eleven and since then she had tossed and turned for at least a few hours.
She was just about to get out of her bed and go downstairs when she heard the front door open and shut, and the bolt on the back of it being closed. She listened as she heard Mary-Anne climb the stairs and enter into their parents’ old bedroom. Even before the sobbing started, Eliza had guessed that something was wrong, but Mary-Anne’s cries and tears clawed at her heart until she could stand it no more. She climbed out of bed, shivering in the cold, pale moonlight shining though her curtainless window, before walking to her sister’s room.
‘Mary-Anne, are you all right?’ She stopped outside the bedroom door, knocked quietly and listened as her sister stopped her sobs for a second.
‘Yes, I’m sorry if I woke you, Eliza.’ Mary-Anne blew her nose and composed herself. ‘Go back to bed, I’m fine.’ She didn’t want her sister to see her in such a state.
‘I don’t think you are all right, dear sister. I’ve heard you crying and you have returned so late.’ Eliza put her hand on the latch of her sister’s door and entered into her bedroom. ‘Mary-Anne, what’s wrong? Where have you been tonight, and don’t give me that rubbish tale of a spiritualist meeting, because I don’t believe it for a minute.’ She looked at her sister sitting on the edge of their parents’ bed, half undressed and, even in the light of the candle that burned by Mary-Anne’s bedside, Eliza’s could see the pain and anguish on her face.
‘I can’t tell you; it’s nothing to be proud of. I wish I had never done it.’ Mary-Anne started sobbing.
‘You can tell me anything; I’ll not be shocked. Even if … oh, Mary-Anne, you’ve not … offered yourself to anybody, have you? Is that what you’ve been doing to this time of the night, like the girls on Canal Street? They make most of their money after dark. We aren’t that destitute yet.’ Eliza took her sister’s hand and squeezed it tight as she sat down on the bed next to her. Mary-Anne started sobbing again.
‘Oh, Eliza, I’ve been a fool! I have worried so much over this Christmas – I didn’t know what else to do and he made it sound like there was no other way out and then you had spent some of the money we didn’t get. I could see no other way out of our predicament.’ Mary-Anne looked at her sister in the faint candlelight, debating whether to tell her the whole story.
‘Who? Mary-Anne, who have you been with?’ Eliza looked into her sister’s eyes.
‘Edmund Ellershaw. He knew we couldn’t afford the rent or the coal to keep us warm from his colliery, so we came to an arrangement.’ Mary-Anne breathed in deeply.
‘You mean he exploited and forced you into giving him your body? Is that where you’ve been until this time? With him?’ Eliza hugged her sister.
Mary-Anne nodded her head and sobbed.
‘Oh! Mary, he’s a contriving bastard. You shouldn’t have gone, he’ll always have one over on you now. Are you sure you’re all right? Did he hurt you? Where did he take you?’ Eliza quickly checked her sister for any injury and then hugged her tight, swaying back and forth with her as she sobbed louder.
‘He took me to his club at Holbeck, Eliza, and then he forced me. I hate him, Eliza, he didn’t give a damn about me or my feelings, and he just wanted his wicked way. I felt such a fool as I ran out of his club.’ Mary-Anne sobbed.
‘Holbeck? Have you walked all the way back from Holbeck?! He didn’t even have the decency to bring you back home?’
‘I wasn’t going to wait. I was frightened that he’d want me again, or worse still that some of his cronies would join him in his so-called sport. So I fled.’ Mary-Anne shook but thought better than to tell Eliza the full story of the evening. It was better her younger sister kept her memory of their mother unsullied, as perfect as they had always thought her to be.
‘My dear sister, don’t do this again. Even if we are out on the streets, it would be better than you trading yourself to such a wicked man. Something will come along to save us, of that I’m sure. Now why don’t you come back into our room and let’s get some sleep and you try to put the horrible experience behind you.’ Eliza stood up and supported her shaking sister, walking her back into the bedroom they had shared all of their lives. ‘It’s late now but tomorrow is another day and we can sit down and talk about things together. I don’t want you to feel you are the only one responsible for our welfare. I’m not a child anymore, you can tell me your worries. They’re better shared.’ Eliza watched as her sister took her clothes off and climbed into bed, still upset by her night of shame. Eliza didn’t know what she was going to do, but one way or other Edmund Ellershaw was going to pay for this night.
Both girls watched as the coalman from Rose Pit delivered four sacks of coal, emptying them down the coal shoot in the outhouse.
‘Well, at least he’s honoured part of our bargain,’ Mary-Anne said bitterly as the coalman tipped his cap at them, before striding off to his horse and cart, waiting for him outside on the lane, then urging his horse onto his next drop-off point. ‘At least we won’t freeze; perhaps my night of shame was worth it for that.’
‘Nothing was worth that and you know it. After we’ve used this coal up, we’ll put an order in with the Nibble and Clink pit. We’ll get away with not paying for it for a month or two and hopefully things will have turned the corner by then. We’ll also have a wander around Rothwell and Woodlesford tomorrow and see if we can see anything cheaper we fancy to rent that doesn’t belong to Ellershaw. We can always do a moonlight flit, it would serve him right to be left with this cottage empty.’ Eliza had decided that neither of them were going to be beholden to the controlling pit owner who had ruined Mary-Anne’s life.
‘But I like living here, and now Bert and Ada Simms have shown their true nature and are looking after us since mother died and Bill left, I even like our neighbours.’ Mary-Anne sighed.
‘A house is just four walls with a few knick-knacks in it, we can soon make somewhere else our home as long as we have one another.’ Eliza was determined that no one was going to have control over them ever again. ‘We’ve enough money to get us to the end of January if we’re careful, and I’d like to see the tallyman try and throw us out anyway. I’d go and thump on that bloody Ellershaw’s door and tell his wife just what he gets up to when her back is turned.’ Eliza was angry at the abuse Mary-Anne had taken and she, being the feisty one, was not going to put up with it. ‘The bastard.’
‘Eliza, Mother will be turning in her grave, what with my actions and your language. You’ll not say anything, even if we do get evicted.’ Mary-Anne thought back to Edmund Ellershaw scoffing at the easy conquest of their mother and went quiet as she listened to Eliza venting her plans for vengeance on her assailant. Perhaps Eliza was right to want to fight back, for the sake of their mother if nothing else. Edmund did deserve a taste of his own medicine, but at the same time she did not want their family’s dirty linen made public. There had to be a better way to hit back at him and time would reveal it.
The day passed slowly in the lean-to shop. Mary-Anne finally sold Minnie Armstrong her mother’s altered skirt, looking at the few pence that she paid for it and thinking that it would keep them in food for a few more days. Eliza made herself busy repairing and stitching garments that Ma Fletcher had sold them the last time they had visited, and she watched as her sister re-arranged the shop window.
‘It’s a pity we haven’t got another green dress like the one Grace Ellershaw bought.’ Eliza looked up at her sister’s attempt at making a garment like those they had repaired and remade. It now looked interesting enough to catch a passing shopper’s eyes. ‘She hasn’t been back yet; I don’t know if that’s a good thing or bad, given the circumstances.’
‘That was the other thing Edmund Ellershaw said, that he’d be making sure Grace had nothing more to do with us. I’m just glad that so far she has not returned the dress that she purchased. Knowing Edmund Ellers
haw, he could have demanded that she got her money back, and that would have been a disaster seeing we have spent quite a bit of time and money on it. I worried when you said she had returned and looked around the shop.’ Mary-Anne sighed.
‘She couldn’t do that, and, besides, she’d have brought it back by now if she had listened to her father. Her brother seems to be more like him; perhaps hopefully she takes after her mother. Though her brother is quite handsome, don’t you think?’ Eliza smiled at her sister.
‘I can’t find the son of Edmund Ellershaw handsome! Besides, I think he has an air of arrogance about him.’ Mary-Anne looked at her sister and couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing after the night she had endured. ‘You shouldn’t even be looking at him. What about Tom – I thought he was the love of your life?’
‘He might be, but he doesn’t have much money and I think his mother has a lot of say in his life. Anyway, there’s no harm in looking, and William Ellershaw is good-looking, but he does have an air of superiority about him, you are quite right. He wouldn’t look twice at either of us anyway, you can tell that he thinks we’re not worthy of his attentions.’ Eliza looked up from her sewing and saw Mary-Anne staring out of the window, a piece of mending in her hands. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes, just thinking that there is no justice in the world and that the more money people have the more they seem to want, and they don’t give a damn about people’s feelings. I feel so dirty after Edmund Ellershaw’s unwanted attentions, I sometimes think I can’t live with the shame.’ Mary-Anne dropped her head and looked at the garment that had seen better days in her hand. Her life was like the garment, in tatters, and she didn’t know if she could mend it.
‘Who’s that knocking on the door at this time of night?’ Eliza got up from her chair next to the fire and walked along the passage to the front door.
