Angel Meadow (14 page)

“Well, I’m afraid it’s a case really of having little choice. When you have no more than a few shillings a week left to spend on food after rent and—”

“Oh, no, Jennet. I go to the market every Saturday and if you leave it until late you can buy food at knock-down prices. Poultry, meat, fish, stuff that won’t keep until Monday, and the choice of vegetables and fruit . . . I’ve brought my sisters up on such a diet and they’ve not ailed a day.”

“You!” Jennet looked astonished.

“Yes, you see our mother . . . died when I was nine and so I had no choice but to . . .”

Dear God in heaven, why was she rattling on like this to a perfect stranger, one she had met only hours before? Jennet was no bigger than two pennorth of copper, with bones on her like a bird and looking as though a puff of wind would have her over. And yet Nancy had seen the amount of work she had got through with no word of complaint. The help she gave unstintingly when asked, her quick replies to Mr Earnshaw about this or that bit of business, her knowledge which Mr Earnshaw appeared to rely on. This was the first time she had sat down, except when she was untangling some mistake one of the other machinists had made. She was eating what looked like bird crumbs; in fact there were scarcely enough to keep a sparrow alive. Her face was thin, pale, her nose was too big for it, her forehead extremely high, her mouth too wide with scarcely more colour in it than her cheeks. Her eyes were an enormous silvery grey, and her soft, pretty hair, a pale golden blonde, was scraped back from her face into a tumbling knot of curls. She wore black, unrelieved, plain, coarse, beneath which her black boots twinkled with polish. A clean, neat little person and Nancy approved of that. Perhaps it was why she had taken a . . . yes, she must admit it, she had a taken a fancy to her.

“I tell you what, when we’ve finished here on Saturday why don’t you come with me and my sisters to Smithfield and we’ll do our marketing together. I bet I can make your few bob go further than you can.” She grinned and was rewarded by a shy smile of pleasure.

“Oh, would you? I’m afraid I’m not much of a housekeeper. You see until my father died there was—” She stopped speaking abruptly, colouring up from her neckline to her hair.

“Where d’you live, Jennet?” Nancy asked her, realising that there was something vulnerable and mysterious about this girl and that she was not willing to divulge it.

“I’ve a room in a house on Fennel Street, just over the river.”

“Why, that’s on our way home. We can walk together, but I have one condition.” Nancy kept her face very serious and she could sense Jennet’s withdrawal. She felt enormously protective for no good reason towards this slight little girl. Well, she was really no girl. Probably about eighteen or nineteen but the size of her gave the impression she was no more than a child.

“Yes?” Jennet said warily.

“I want you to teach me to speak like you do. I know the words but until I heard you” – and someone else – “I didn’t know I wasn’t pronouncing them properly. Is that a deal?”

Jennet gave a little gurgle of laughter, the first Nancy had heard, leaning for a moment against Nancy’s shoulder.

“It’s a deal.”

She was the first friend Nancy had ever had. Her sisters were part of her, loved and protected, but it was her instinct to love and protect them, like a mother with her children, her own flesh and blood, her responsibility which she had no choice but to take on. She knew she would guard and direct them until they were old enough and mature enough to make their own decisions but with Jennet it was entirely different. She liked her. She loved her sisters because it was natural to do so but she liked Jennet with no strings attached. Jennet was hardworking, conscientious, honest, good-mannered, shy and yet willing to share all she knew, and was, with Nancy. Rosie and Mary were a bit stiff with her at first, inclined to feel left out of the friendship that bloomed between their sister and Jennet. They couldn’t see what Nancy saw in her, they said, not realising that for the first time in her life Nancy was holding conversations with another person who was as well read as she was. Who understood what Nancy understood, who could share views with or argue with her, on many subjects that did not interest her sisters in the least. They could read and write and add up, since she had made them learn, not because they wanted to but because she wanted them to. It had been a chore to them, not a love of learning as it was with Nancy and she knew if she wasn’t there behind them they would probably drift off to the sort of life that would lead them to become a Mrs O’Rourke or a Mrs Murphy, living in Angel Meadow or somewhere like it for the rest of their lives. At the moment they were prepared to follow quite cheerfully where she led but already there were lads hanging about outside their front door, calling out and whistling after the Brody girls and both Mary and Rosie would giggle and preen and glance back over their shoulders at them; how long would it be before they began to chafe at the bonds Nancy kept firmly about them? When they did she wanted to be long gone from Church Court, even if it was only to some small place, perhaps another cottage but in a better part of the city.

One of those lads was Mick O’Rourke. Not that Mick hung about outside waiting for her to appear. Not he! He would boldly knock on the door and take it as his right to be invited inside, since it was well known in the area by now that Nancy Brody was his girl. Had he not taken her about, first with her sisters and then on her own to the exhibition at Old Trafford. Though he had been disappointed by her response to the sacrifice he had made in taking her to the bloody thing it in no way deterred him from pursuing her, from inviting her to go to the Annual Manchester Fair on Liverpool Road, for a Sunday walk among the flowers in Peel Park, to Belle Vue and the dancing that took place there and which would surely lead to better things and even to the Music Hall where there were some damn good turns to be seen. He was willing to spend money on her, for Christ’s sake, so what more did she want?

He didn’t like it when she said no; he didn’t like it and he didn’t believe it, for handsome Mick O’Rourke could have any girl he pleased and so he persisted. He knew she was different to the other girls of his acquaintance; that’s what fascinated him about her, apart from her looks which made every male head turn as she walked with that straight-backed and graceful stride of hers down Church Court. He couldn’t understand it, really he couldn’t and he told her so every time he got inside the house. They had been getting on so well, so why was she trying to break his heart like this? he asked her, grinning audaciously, for he had learned that if he could make her laugh she would relax and smile back at him which made him try all the harder.

“Mick, you’re a lovely chap, really you are.”

“Well, then, why won’t yer come to Belle Vue wi’ me on Sunday?”

“Because I’ve things to do.”

“What things?”

“I’ve a friend coming.”

He frowned ominously. “What friend? An’ if it’s a bloke I’ll knock ’is bloody block off, so I will. Yer my—”

“Mick, it’s not a man and if it were it would not be your concern. I am not . . . not your anything, so please, won’t you stop believing that I am. We are friends, if you like, and I was very grateful to you for taking me to the exhibition.”

“Show it, then.”

“I don’t know . . .”

“Yes, yer do. Stop pretendin’ yer not interested in me, acushla. Come on, let’s—”

“No, Mick, you must stop this.”

But it did no good. His face would grin at her when she opened the door, his charm, which was beginning seriously to get on her nerves, oozing from him in the belief that he had only to persevere and Nancy Brody would fall into his arms like every other girl he had known. He was a problem and one that she would have to address resolutely very soon. He had even taken exception to her friendship with Jennet, his face stiff with indignation, asking her what she wanted with such a milksop when she could be with him.

Jennet had begun to spend Sunday with them, since it seemed she lived alone. She knew the city like the back of her hand, she said, as she and her father had lived in and explored it ever since she was a child, and though many of the places, art galleries, museums, a concert at the Free Trade Hall where the Hallé Orchestra was playing, were not to the younger sisters’ taste, at least they were going out, not exactly meeting people but
seeing
them, which was nearly as good, and better than sitting at home reading a book.

Mr Earnshaw, though he wasn’t much on handing out compliments, was pleased as punch at the way the Brody girls got on. All three were soon on machines, earning, since they were on piece work at the rate of twopence halfpenny a shirt, over ten shillings a week each. He did not tell them, of course, what
his
profit was on every shirt they made up, though he might have been somewhat more generous with Nancy if she had been more generous with him. No matter how hard he tried he had not yet cornered her in the outhouse. He was unaware that Ivy and Doris, both not unattractive, had warned her the first week she was there, since he had tried it on with both of them. In fact with every girl with a claim to looks.

“Not that Jennet, o’ course. There’s not a man in Manchester ’oo’d want a feel of ’er, poor, skinny little bugger, but yer want ter watch them sisters o’ yours, Nance,” Ivy told her. “He don’t care ’ow young they are.”

Nancy and Ivy had taken measure of one another by now and had formed a tentative alliance and had it not been for the troublesome business with Mick O’Rourke, which was beginning to turn nasty, Nancy would have gloried in the way her plans were taking shape.

8

The sound of a human voice pealing up among the full, interlocking branches of the heavily leafed beech tree lifted a flock of rooks from their nests and sent them spinning in an ever widening circle above the woodland. The sound came again, this time deeper, full-throated and in the foliage that grew there, yew, holly and wild cherry, small animals such as badgers, squirrels, mice and rabbits, come to gather the harvest of autumn nuts, burrowed deeper into the dense shade.

The trees were quite magnificent, positively glowing with colour, a brilliant mosaic display of flaming orange, russet and gold as summer departed and though the sun could barely reach the woodland floor through the dense foliage a narrow shaft of light beamed down through a break in the canopy to touch the entwined figures of a man and woman who gasped and floundered on a soft bed of wood anemone.

“Dear God, Evie,” the man got out at last, “that was bloody marvellous. You really are wonderful.” His sweated cheek was pressed to the full and lovely breast of the woman, his body, naked but for his shirt and, incongruously, his riding boots, slumped in the boneless devastation that comes after making love, nailed to hers in a way that seemed to say he didn’t think he could ever stand again.

They lay still for several minutes, the woman, a girl really, lovingly smoothing the rough tangle of the man’s hair, her eyes dreaming up into the branches of the trees. Her bodice had been thrown to one side along with the man’s breeches, leaving her naked from the waist up and her full skirt and froth of white petticoats had been pushed to a position where the man could have access to her body with his. She wore white stockings to just above her knees and might have looked somewhat foolish, but she was an exceedingly pretty girl with shapely legs and skin like silk on her thighs and belly. The dark patch of her pubic hair, which was revealed when the man rolled off her, was damp and crisp and curling.

At once, as if now that his body no longer shielded hers, though there was no one to see but the birds and animals of Kersall Dell, she pulled her garments about herself, looking away with what seemed shy modesty as the man struggled to get his breeches over his boots and draw them up about his lean hips.

When they were both decently clothed he turned to her and pulled her into his arms, holding her against his chest and fondling her cheek and smooth throat. He breathed in the sweet aroma of her hair which tumbled in a glossy mass about her shoulders and down her back, then sighed quite dramatically. Josh Hayes was not in love with this sweet girl, he knew that, but she certainly possessed him, body if not soul, at the moment. Not only was she gentle and good-hearted and ready to laugh whenever he did, she was as lovely and fresh as the wild flowers that bloomed in the fields about his home. She was made for love, too, now that she had given in to his pleading, as passionate and eager as he was himself in the delights of the male and female body and what they did together.

But the loving thoughts only came to him in the moments after he had made love to her. As soon as they had parted, she with many a backward, yearning glance, he with light-hearted kisses blown to her across the privacy of the walled vegetable garden that they slipped through, he barely gave her another thought, since he had such a lot on his mind these days. His father was putting more and more responsibility on to his shoulders, pleased with him at last and the way he was shaping. He had begun to send him to Liverpool to see to the business interests they had there and there was even talk of him going to America to get a first-hand look at the growing of the cotton that was their livelihood. His father had more or less put the warehouse in Moseley Street, where their cotton goods were not only stored but displayed and sold, almost totally in his charge. Mr Jonas, the warehouse manager, was still in charge in name but it was only as a supervisor and Josh knew that at last he was beginning to enjoy the challenge his father had, daringly for him, flung his way. It was what he needed and he had risen to it and was proud of himself and he knew that privately his father was too, though he wouldn’t have said so for the world.

The end of May, just after they had all been to the art exhibition, seemed to have been the turning-point in his life, and he couldn’t for the life of him think why, though in some strange sense, daft as it seemed, he had begun to think that it was something to do with that girl.