A Song Twice Over (50 page)

And their father? Where was he?

Nobody knew. Perhaps nobody cared, except that he ought to be doing something now about getting his furniture and his children off the street instead of leaving it to Anna, who could do nothing but tremble like a broken sparrow, or the hated Oliver to whom no one in St Jude's would extend a helping hand.

Where was he?

‘Have you seen my father?' asked Oliver of the silent, sombre faces around him, squaring his puny shoulders, his eyes desperate, his alert, trapped-animal senses aware not only of hostility but of the approaching dark, a taste of snow in the damp air. Unless the furniture, such as it was, could be moved it would be gone by morning, broken up and used for firewood by families every bit as desperate as his own. And, no matter what these grim, reproachful watchers might think of him, he didn't want to be the one to take his brothers and sisters to the workhouse.

Would anybody lend
him
a handcart? He didn't think so. And the landlord's men were feeling the cold and growing impatient, wanting to seal the doors and windows and get back to their ale and hot meat pies at the Fleece.

He felt the crowd closing in on him, waiting, asking him with silent accusation if he knew how easily his fleshless, half-naked brothers and sisters could freeze to death. He knew.

‘Where's my father?'

‘Inside.' It was Anna's scared whisper that answered him. ‘He went back inside.'

They found him, a few minutes later, hanging from the meat-hook in the cellar, the first carcase ever to be suspended there; the landlord's men by no means pleased about it as they cut him down since it meant delay, additional complications, a constable. Damn him. The man had always been a nuisance.

Who mourned him?

Outside, in the street, his daughter Anna fell to her knees on the wet cobbles, her thin arms around as many of his other children as they could accommodate, no idea in her reeling head but to stay there, clutching them, until such things as were about to happen had happened. Whatever they might be.

‘Get those bairns off the street before they carry him out,' commanded Sairellen Thackray, her loud, flat voice easily stirring the crowd of barely-shocked women who had seen and heard all this before. For whatever the man had been, and no matter how vile the treachery of his eldest son Oliver, one did not leave children in the street to perish of cold. Sairellen had no need to tell them that, although she did so, just the same.

‘You'll take one, Martha-Ann, won't you? And you can make room, can't you, Mary-Ellen – Beatrice – Sophia?'

They could. For a night or two, perhaps longer, being so overcrowded in any case that it was a simple enough matter to move over the few inches it took to accommodate a stranger, who might stay among them, relatively unnoticed, for ever. Or not. Who knew?

One by one the Rattrie children were led away silently by women who made no show of affection since they did not feel it, nor of pity either which, in itself brought no solutions. Stray weasels now, huge, hungry eyes swallowing their wizened, baby faces, making no protest, going where they were taken; unlikely, in this shifting, uncertain population, to see much of one another again.

The pawnbroker from St Jude's Passage came sidling up to Oliver. ‘These articles of furniture are worthless, of course,' he said to him. ‘A hard man might ask you to pay him for taking them off your hands. But, as it is, I'll take them free of charge.'

Dumbly Oliver nodded his head.

The body was carried out, frail as a child's beneath a tattered sheet, and handed over to ‘Authority'in preparation for its pauper's grave.

The landlord's men, grumbling profusely, nailed boards across the windows, sealed the door, and went away.

The crowd dispersed.

The snow came on.

The Rattrie family was no more, only Anna still kneeling where the pawnbroker poked and pried among her mother's pathetic treasures; and Oliver. Both of them shivering with shock and with cold.

‘Come inside, Anna lass, and get warm,' said Sairellen. But Cara, standing by the Thackray's doorstep, saw plainly that Anna could not move, that in her thin white face and her wraith's body through which the wind already seemed to whistle, only her huge, transparent eyes were alive, their gaze fastening on Luke as on her only hope of Heaven as he crossed the street, lifted her as carefully as a new-born child and carried her through his mother's door.

But when Oliver Rattrie attempted to follow, a stern sentinel barred the way.

‘Not you, lad,' said Sairellen, her face carved in granite.

He backed away, knowing why.

‘It's – it's bitter cold, Mrs Thackray,' he whispered.

‘Aye. No doubt the lads you sent to Northallerton jail might say the same.'

She slammed the door.

‘It's bitter cold,' he said again, helplessly, humbly, hunching his scarecrow's shoulders, tears spilling suddenly from his eye corners.

So it was. Beneath her splendid black and scarlet cloak Cara could feel the chill, sharpened by a spasm of pity for this ugly, puny, vicious boy. And a spasm of disgust. Oliver the traitor who had sold his mates for money and then Oliver the fool who had lost every penny of it in the canal. Oliver the spy who listened at doors and windows for Christie Goldsborough. Hateful little Oliver who had been desperate and hungry and frightened every day of his life and who was shaking now with a cold she understood, until his bones rattled.

‘Go across to my mother's house,' she told him curtly. ‘She will give you a hot drink.'

Ducking his head, unable to answer her, he scuttled away.

‘That was kind of you, Cara.' Luke's voice spoke from behind her and spinning round she fell against him as if propelled by the forces of sorrow and struggle and endless strife rising from the very cobbles of the street, feeling his arms close around her with a sense of homecoming. She had been here before. Had stood – God knew when – in this man's embrace, just so, just like this, so that when he carried her, her feet just skimming the ground, into the narrow passage between his mother's house and the next, she seemed to float on air with him, lifting her face to a kiss which did not seem strange to her and then nestling against him, the rough texture of his jacket comforting her cheek, the odour of pipe tobacco which clung to it moving her as she suddenly remembered odours of a secure and happy childhood.

Peace. Safety. Absolute trust. The stirrings of passion which – with
this
man – held no danger. So her body told her as his hard, work-stained hands touched it beneath the folds of her cloak with tenderness and integrity, her breathing in perfect tune with his as they held each other tight and fast.

Luke – and it was her body that spoke – don't let me hurt you. It was the first time she had ever felt such concern, such need to protect and cherish a grown man. Such awareness of his worth and of her own shortcomings.

‘I know,' he said, his mouth against her forehead. ‘I know.' Of course. What had happened to the Rattries could still happen to her. But not while she stood in his secure embrace. Not while he kept his arms around her.

May he never release her.

There came a sharp tap on the side-scullery window, his mother's imperious hand which caused Cara to stiffen with alarm and Luke merely to smile.

‘Luke,' and the voice, too, was imperious. ‘Go fill the coal buckets. And then come inside, the pair of you. Are you daft, standing out in the weather?'

He smiled again, not yet taking his hand from Cara's shoulder, his mouth tender, his eyes amused, tolerant, steady, the presence of his long, hard fingers telling her that if Luke said it would be all right then it would be. No other man had ever made her feel that.

‘I'll get the buckets. You go inside. She won't eat you.'

He went off to the back yard while she remained leaning against the wall, feeling shaken and – for a panic moment – unsteady on her feet without him there to support her. She wanted him back again. Badly. She wanted him to lift her and carry her and care for her. Yet how could she give way to it? How could she not? Oh God – had it happened to her again? Don't let me hurt him. Please let me do him no harm. This was the message her heart pounded. This time – with
this
man – her own hurt did not seem to matter.

Let me do him only good. Or nothing at all. And when she drew herself together sufficiently to go and face his mother, Oliver Rattrie was standing at the end of the passage, the narrowness of the space giving him more substance than usual, his malice spurting out of him as his tears had spurted ten minutes before.

Malice, and something more tormented and twisted than she had ever imagined.

‘I saw you,' he hissed at her. And suddenly her skin was crawling.

‘What do you mean?' Although she knew.

‘I saw you – with
him
.'

How dare he? Yet daring had nothing to do with it. He had always looked at her, slyly she'd thought – longingly she now supposed – making her uncomfortable. When she had lived in that cottage next to his own he had always been
there
, under her feet, staring, watching her, listening at the wall as she almost – but never quite – made love to Daniel. Wanting her himself. And as that impotent, impossible desire of his reared up at her from his eyes and seemed to touch her –
his
dream of love turning her stomach to nausea – she pushed him aside with savage fingertips, disgust swamping even the remembrance of pity. Get away from me foul creature – little rat – little toad – little weasel. And whether she spoke the words or not she believed he heard them as, her stomach heaving, she stepped past him into Sairellen's kitchen.

The room was warm and clean and empty, only Sairellen herself dropping vegetables in separate string nets into the cooking pot on her fire, the steam of onions and cabbage and herb dumplings making the mouth water: although Cara's had turned very dry.

‘I have a word to say to you, lass.'

‘Yes?' She had expected it.

‘So I'll say it straight out. Before Luke comes back with the coal, or Anna comes downstairs.'

‘All right.'

‘You'd do well to leave my lad alone.'

Yes. On the whole – and with infinite sorrow – she tended to agree, although she did not mean to admit it. At any rate not yet, and not to Sairellen.

She sat down, flinging back her cape to show the scarlet lining and the expensive black wool dress piped in red. Bravado, she well knew it, both her energy and her confidence being at a low ebb. It had been a strange, disturbing day. She was tired.

Nevertheless.

‘Is that really for you to say, Mrs Thackray?'

‘Maybe not. But I'm saying it.'

‘Go on then.' She did not expect to be given any quarter.

‘I will. Because like needs like in marriage, Cara Adeane. And I'm calling it marriage because that's what he'll be calling it, ere long, if you let him. And it won't do, lass. Like to like – mark my words. Either that or it takes one to lead and one to follow. Will you follow him? He won't follow you.'

No. She knew it. Mournfully. Despairingly, almost. But she had no intention of giving in so easily. She was bound to lose him, she supposed, but that would be tomorrow. Perhaps the day after. And, until then, she was fighting still.

‘He could do worse.'

‘Oh yes?' Clearly his mother did not think so. ‘And what would you do with him, lass. Set him to delivering your fancy boxes?'

She was very angry now. ‘Where's the shame in that?'

‘No shame, but it's not work for him.'

‘No, it's not. So I'd set him up in something else – something he wanted …'

Something worthy of him. She rose to her feet in her anger and her eagerness, ready now to do battle, her energy flooding back.

‘At least I wouldn't be forever pushing him into those hopeless causes of yours, Sairellen Thackray …'

But Sairellen's answer was quick, unruffled, and final.

‘You know better than that, Cara Adeane. They're
his
causes. He gives half his income to them. Wed him and he'll want to give half of yours. Would you work your fingers to the bone, night and day, making your dresses to benefit the Chartists – or Richard Oastler's ten hours campaign?'

To benefit
Luke
she would give anything. She sat down again.

‘No. And he wouldn't force me either.'

‘Of course he wouldn't.' But Sairellen, as they both knew, was pursuing her advantage. ‘He believes in the rights of women as well as men. He'd let you go your way. And he'd go his. Knowing you as I know you, Cara Adeane, that wouldn't suit you. You'd try to stop him. And he wouldn't be stopped. You know it, lass – very well.'

Cara looked down for a moment at her clever, agile hands, breathing hard and slowly, her head bowed not in submission but because, recognizing the truth in Sairellen's words, she was forcing herself not to believe it.

‘Have I convinced you, lass?'

‘No, you haven't.' And she heard the stubbornness in her own voice followed, to her surprise, by Sairellen's deep, almost echoing sigh.

‘Very well, Cara. Then there's something else. And maybe I didn't want to say this to you. You'll know what it is.'

‘No.' But she did. She had even prepared herself to meet it. What she had not allowed for was how much it would hurt.

‘You already belong to a man, Cara. You're Goldsborough's woman – the landlord's woman …'

‘Sairellen …' Was she asking for pity? They both thought so. But Sairellen, at that precise moment, could not afford to give it.

She raised a roughened, work-swollen hand instead, commanding silence.

‘Let me finish. And hear me. I don't want –
I won't have
– the attention of that man drawn here, to this house, to my lad, by you or by anybody. Do you hear me, Cara?'