‘“Temples of Eternal Light throughout the western world are gripped by shock at this terrible time. Most are expected to disband in the wake of recent revelations. We understand that many in Europe have sent young girls to Makersfield, Texas, in the vain hope of offering their female children a better life.”’
James folded the newspaper.
Kate, who had been listening wide-eyed and open-mouthed, sat down suddenly in her fireside chair. ‘The devil’s work,’ she pronounced. ‘And what’s to happen down yonder, now, with the guardian in prison on a murder charge? Does the temple close?’ She jerked her head in the direction of Bolton.
‘God knows.’
Kate eyed him speculatively. Because of her friend’s funeral, she had missed all the action. Now, three weeks later and with the tale told many times, she still remained in deep shock. James had been arrested. Had the whole thing not been so tragic, it might have been laughable. But there was something else, another layer to her nephew’s unease. ‘It’s Amy, so,’ she pronounced, with the air of one who would brook no argument. She had watched him at Eliza’s funeral, his eyes fixed on Amy, sadness etched deep into his features.
He turned his head and looked at her. ‘What was that?’
‘Plain as the proverbial pikestaff,’ she said. ‘You are a man in love, James Mulligan.’
It was no use. She knew him, could see right into his mind, heart and soul. ‘No comment,’ he replied.
Kate Kenny sauntered to the table, took a sip of tea and picked up the newspaper. She placed her cup in its saucer, pretended a sudden interest in headlines. ‘And how’s your business in the cellar?’
‘Don’t,’ he replied. ‘Stop it, Kate.’
‘And why should I?’ she asked, spreading the paper on the table. ‘For I am just about your only living family and there is nowhere else for you to turn. You cannot expect me to sit here without expressing some concern.’
He stood up.
‘That’s right,’ she cried, ‘run away from me, then. Howandever, you cannot run from yourself.’
‘But I can go home,’ he replied. ‘I’ve sold every horse to a Cheshire stables, so the money’s there – I might appoint a site manager for this place. The businesses in town can easily be made over to Amy and Margot. Yes, I may well go home.’
There followed a lengthy silence. James stood at the window and gazed at the almost empty stable block. Kate fiddled with a brooch at her throat. ‘James?’ she said eventually.
‘Yes?’
‘Don’t leave her, not yet. Sure, the poor girl has lost her mother and one of her sisters – and isn’t Margot only just out of the hospital? And that Smythe woman is still raving on about her son, St Rupert. Can you imagine Amy coping without you? This new publicity has made her shop so popular that the orders are a mile high and—’
‘Kate, be quiet, please.’
‘But I am only—’
‘Shush,’ he commanded. Kate was right. He would have to be here while the hydro got built, while it opened, while all the places in town got passed over to the Burton-Massey girls. And A Cut Above was doing rather too well . . . ‘It’s killing me, Kate,’ he said.
‘I know.’
‘I want to run before it gets any worse,’ he continued. ‘She is so alone. Margot will become wrapped up in her baby, I’ve no doubt. For all her flightiness, she is going to make a good mother.’
‘Yes. Oh, James, how I worry for you.’
Swivelling on a heel, he faced her. ‘I’m not ready for this,’ he murmured. ‘This was not meant to happen. And I can’t conquer it, Kate. It’s as if she is a part of me, of what I have become over these past months.’
She waited.
‘God, I wish I’d never come here. But with my father leaving such a mess, I was duty-bound, Kate. Nothing at all on God’s good earth would have persuaded me not to come over. The mess I found – the inn on its last legs, the house mortgaged to the hilt, a woman and three daughters cast out . . . What else might I have done?’
Kate raised her shoulders. ‘I don’t know, son, and that’s the truth of it.’
He smiled wanly. ‘God’s good,’ he said quietly.
‘He is so. And with His blessing, the path might just become clearer, James.’ She tried to inject some hope into the words, failed miserably. Ah, well, there were chores to be done. This was Sally’s day off, and the other madam, Mary, the Light-fingered, had disappeared back into the bosom of her family. With a heavy heart, Kate set about the business of the day.
‘Miss Eliza had what they call a brain tumour,’ Diane explained to Sally. They were hiding in a deserted corner of the Bolton Central Library, both of them on pins, as Diane should have been at school.
‘I know.’ Sally glanced at the clock. ‘We’ll have to shift if we’re going to get there before dinner time. Your teachers might do their shopping during the dinner hour.’
‘That’d be why she stopped liking you, Sal.’
‘I know,’ repeated the older girl. It was plain that Diane was not in a listening mood.
But Diane decided to shut up for a minute. She was closer to Sally than to any of her school friends. She didn’t want to lose Sal, because Sal played out like a younger girl, still liked hopscotch, skipping ropes and, when teams could be scraped together, a game of rounders. ‘I don’t mean to get on your nerves,’ she explained eventually.
‘Sisters get on one another’s nerves,’ replied Sally, ‘and we’re like sisters.’
Diane smiled. ‘You see, the congregation’s all stuck in a rut,’ she declared.
Sally, used by now to Diane’s butterfly mind, agreed. ‘They won’t know what to do. I mean, how many years have they prayed to that light, Diane? It’s what Mrs Kenny would call a vocal point.’
‘She does that on purpose,’ Diane murmured. ‘She knows it should be focal point.’
They stared at a blank wall for several minutes, each deep in thought. Had they bitten off more than they could chew? Would today’s actions cause further disasters? After all, they were just a couple of kids, so what did they know?
‘“The Emperor’s New Clothes”,’ Diane declared eventually. ‘That lad were the only one who dared to tell the truth. Everybody else was, “Ooh, you do look nice, Your Majesty” – blinking liars the lot of them. He saw the Emperor was naked and he said so. We have to be like him, like the boy who told the truth.’ Her voice raised itself in excitement. She had better keep quiet.
‘How are we going to do it?’ Sally asked.
Diane raised a thin shoulder. ‘I’ll make it up as I go along.’
A librarian came towards them, thin lips clamped together, iron-grey hair scraped back into a severe bun. She pointed at the word silence on the wall, then strode away, fat buttocks stretching the tweed skirt. ‘Like two pigs fighting in a little tent,’ remarked Diane loudly. Her keeping quiet had lasted all of thirty seconds.
The woman stopped in her tracks, turned, looked at Diane. ‘Out,’ she said, in a stage whisper.
Sally elbowed Diane in the ribs. ‘Come on,’ she urged.
But Diane was quite enjoying herself. Adults could be dealt with. ‘If we can’t talk, how do we ask questions?’
The librarian blinked. ‘You aren’t even reading,’ she said.
Diane took a step nearer to the irate custodian of literature. ‘We might have been whispering about which books we need.’
‘But you weren’t.’
‘No, we weren’t.’
‘So get out.’
‘But we might have been. Can you see what I mean?’
Sally pushed Diane from behind, steering her out into the street. ‘You’re getting to be more trouble than you’re worth,’ complained the older girl.
‘My gran says that,’ came the reply, ‘but she says I’m lovable with it.’
Lovable with it? Sally was beginning to wonder how on earth she had managed to get herself involved in these latest and rashest of plans. It had all sounded all rig
ht at the time, job to be done, someone must do it and so forth. But Sally’s enthusiasm for the project was diminishing with every step she took.
Diane stopped. ‘A lid,’ she pronounced, as she ground to a halt.
‘A lid?’ Sally failed to follow this new train of thought. In fact, she might have stood a better chance of keeping up with another type of train, the ten thirty for Manchester out of Trinity Street. ‘Diane?’
‘I’m thinking.’
‘Yes, I can tell.’ When Diane was thinking, wheels turned. Her face always screwed up against the dimmest of lights, while her forehead seemed to become one huge frown. A lid. A lid for what?
‘There’s loads,’ continued Diane now.
‘Right,’ said a bemused Sally.
‘Can’t breathe,’ mumbled the thoughtful child. ‘Without air, a fire can’t breathe.’ There was an important job to be done, a task that needed to be performed by a brave, fearless person. The only folk with guts in this world were children. Adults seemed to collect more uncertainties as they matured, so children had to take the lead.
She opened the back door very quietly. There would only be elders here, she supposed, as she insinuated her way into the inner sanctum. The blessing table was there, a thin, lumpy mattress stretched across a trestle. She remembered a service during which a fat girl called Maria Hough had been cleansed, and this very couch had collapsed beneath her weight. Everyone in the temple had heard it.
On a side table stood the ewer and bowl that had been used for the ceremony, white towels folded immaculately at one side. From snatches of conversations overheard by Diane, she had gathered that Mr Wilkinson had been a meticulous folder of cloth.
The lamps were on a shelf, each one dead and cold, so there was nothing to be done in this room. But just to make sure that today’s gestures would be understood, the child picked up towels and flannels and threw them to the floor. Nothing here was clean; everything was filthy, contaminated by Guardian Wilkinson.
She walked to the outer door. ‘All right, let’s be having you and it,’ she told Sally.
The two girls carried a heavy object into the room. ‘Glad the mill’s got them new bins,’ Diane said. ‘Nice big lid, this is.’
Sally blew a tress of hair from her cheek. ‘They’ll stop us,’ she said breathlessly.
‘They’ll help us,’ replied Diane with certainty.
‘But—’ Sally closed her mouth firmly when she saw the expression on her friend’s face. Diane believed in herself. Diane had a certain undeniable power. ‘All right,’ Sally breathed. ‘We do it your road.’
Leaving Sally in the sanctum, Diane opened the door and stepped into the old mill shed that was now a temple. Rough floors had been sanded down by members of the cult, while the walls, brown and green, were decorated by pictures portraying the life of Moses. These gave the hall a distinctly Catholic air, as if they imitated the Stations of the Cross.
Benches and chairs were placed in a rough circle at the centre of which the Light still survived. Approximately half of the seats were occupied, mostly by elders who were retired from work, then a few jobless men, some women, no children. Diane caught her breath as she looked at these people. They were lost, bewildered, as confused as those who had followed Moses out of Egypt. It has to be done, her inner voice repeated. They are waiting for help, and there is none, not since they read the newspapers.
Diane remained on the stairs leading to the inner sanctum until every head was turned in her direction. Without the slightest glimmer of stage fright, she hopped down two steps and began to speak the words that needed saying.
‘It’s all over,’ she announced, noticing how round their shoulders were. ‘We can’t pretend and carry on as if nowt’s happened.’
The congregation shuffled feet, coughed, looked at each other. Their planned meeting was over, and they remained in great distress. It was plain to Diane that they needed help and that she would have to become a maker of decisions. She felt so much pity in that moment that she was forced to sniff back a tear.
‘It has to be done,’ she continued, ‘and you all know what I’m talking about.’
Sally appeared in the doorway, placing the heavy, circular lid against the jamb. She watched in near awe while Diane Hewitt preached to her elders and betters.
‘See, we were all took in by it,’ Diane said next. Well, that was a lie for a start, because she hadn’t been taken in by any of it. ‘You all know what’s happened in Texas and here as well.’ She inhaled deeply. ‘Mr Wilkinson did things in there.’ She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. ‘He did things to girls and some of them girls have spoke to the bobbies now. It was all wrong. The fire they found, the first one, was likely caused by the hot sun on dry twigs and leaves. Other fires was lit deliberate – it’s all been proved.’
They were motionless now. Each soul in the room possessed its own hope, its own despair. The temple had been their meeting place, their solidarity. Shockwaves had already travelled through the community, though some diehards clung fiercely to their faith in the initial flame.
‘We can keep the temple,’ Diane said now. ‘We’ve had some money given us.’ She stopped for a moment, brought to mind what Mr Mulligan had said: ‘I can give this money, but I cannot do any more than that.’
The child shook herself back into the here and now. ‘We can make our own preaching,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to be anything in particular, just a Bible-reader. We don’t need a guardian, we can look after one another.’
At last they began to mumble around their circles, stopping only when Diane’s voice was raised again. ‘In the week, this shed can be used for different things – them of us who can read must teach them as can’t read. You could have mothers’ meetings, stuff like that, buy some toys for children to play with. Then, on Sunday, do your own service.’ She paused. ‘But that thing’s got to be put out.’ She pointed to the flame. ‘And me and Sally have come here to do it.’
Again, they were still. An old man rose to his feet, cracking knee joints echoing in the silence. ‘I’ve nobbut months to live,’ he said, ‘and this here temple were my strength. But it’s nowt to do with yon flame.’ He waved a stick towards the Light on which so many had come to depend. ‘It’s us what matters. It’s us being here like this, all together, like, that’s where we come up trumps. The lass is reet. She’s said all as wanted saying.’ He sat down.
Three men left the ranks and walked to the steps. Diane stood to one side and allowed them to pick up the heavy lid. Between them, they carried the item to the middle of the room. A woman gasped, placed a hand to her mouth. Another wept quietly, while two old couples left the temple quietly, heads bowed.
Diane approached the pivotal point of so many lives. Standing by the flame, she raised her hand and placed it on her heart. Mr Mulligan had told her what to say. ‘We all believe in God,’ she said solemnly, ‘and in His Light in Heaven. This is no longer a holy light, so we will extinguish it.’ She’d had a bit of trouble with ‘extinguish’ and was glad when it came out all in one piece. During practice, the word had seemed to catch on her teeth, falling into fragments before hitting the air.
The men, aided by Diane, placed the lid on top of the Light’s metal bowl. A corporate gasp emerged from onlookers, while small puffs of smoke leaked to announce the struggle as fire sought oxygen. ‘Leave it to cool,’ Diane suggested. ‘Then pour water on it just to make sure.’
Blindly, she left by the front entrance, Sally in hot pursuit.
‘Diane?’
‘I’m not skriking.’ Fiercely, Diane rubbed at her nose.
‘Aw, love.’ Sally put her arms around trembling shoulders. ‘We did right,’ she said. ‘Well, you did.’
‘It felt . . . it felt like I was . . . killing them, Sally.’
‘You were saving them.’
The unlikely saviour sobbed.
‘It weren’t right, Di. None of it. You are the first right thing to happen in there.’
�
�I know, I know, but it still hurts in my stomach. They’re so poor and lonely, some lonelier than others.’
‘They were paying with daughters and granddaughters.’ Sally dabbed at Diane’s wet cheeks. ‘There were nothing free, Di. They’d have started shipping them out to Texas for breeding – thank God none of them’s already gone. You did right, love. For the rest of your life, you’ll know you did right.’
The girl who had done right walked with her supporter through the streets of Bolton, tears drying as she feasted her eyes on familiar sights. Lumbering trams overtook lumbering horses, market folk shouted about their wares, women with turbaned heads gossiped on corners. The dummy outside Bowes clothiers sported new overalls; two of John Willie’s men carried a sideboard out of the shop. ‘I love Bolton,’ Diane announced.
‘Better than Pendleton?’ asked Sally.
‘No, different.’
‘I know what you mean.’ Sally breathed in smoke-tainted air, caught the scent of fish and chips, coffee newly ground, a whiff of smoky bacon. ‘It’s like an exciting story, then a peaceful one.’
Diane laughed out loud. ‘There’s been nowt peaceful up at Pendleton just lately.’ Then her laugh faded. ‘It’s been terrible, Sally. And he did it all. Guardian Wilkinson did murder.’
‘Aye, he did.’ Sally looked over her shoulder. ‘There’s our tram.’
Diane’s mischief surfaced once more. ‘Nay, Sally. We report to Mr Mulligan, get him to buy us some dinner, then we hang about till he’s going home.’ The chin rose in mock defiance. ‘We are going to travel in style again, Sal. I think we’ve earned it.’
Mulligan's Yard Page 38
