Ellie Pride (37 page)

The thought of trudging the streets all day in the damp December air, searching for somewhere to rent, sent Ellie’s spirits plummeting, but she knew she could not stay another night in this house.

She had just finished buttoning Henrietta’s shoes when she heard someone rattling the doorknob.

‘No!’ she called out fiercely to Maisie, who was running towards the door obviously intending to open it, but as Maisie’s face started to pucker in distress Ellie suddenly heard a voice calling out to her from the other side of the door.

‘Ellie, are you in there? It’s me, John!’

John! Relief flooded her. Quickly she went to unlock the door.

It had been some time since she had last seen her brother and she was bemused to see how tall he had grown – taller than their father, but still thin and awkward with his new height in the way that very young men were.

‘Dad told me you were here. I know all about what’s been happening,’ John explained as he came into the room, his nose wrinkling in disgust. ‘This whole place stinks, Ellie. It isn’t fitting that you should be living here. The whole area’s got the worst kind of reputation,’ he added reprovingly.

Ellie grimaced.

‘I’m not here by choice, John,’ she pointed out. ‘I
had hoped that Dad would let me have a couple of the attic rooms until I got myself sorted out.’

‘Oh, Maggie would never allow that! Mind, things aren’t going very well with the shop, by all accounts – at least not according to Uncle Will.

‘Dad asked me to have a word with Mrs Kershaw about you finding somewhere to live and about getting you some sewing work,’ he told her awkwardly. ‘She’s the wife of Mr Kershaw, the photographer I work for. She says that there’s some decent houses to be rented up near Horrocks’ mill. She’s had a word with a friend of hers who rents one, and she’s given her the address of the agent who lets them out. They aren’t much,’ John warned her, ‘nothing like what you’ll be used to, Ellie, but she says if you like she’ll pass the word around amongst her friends that you’re looking for sewing work. You know, you might be better off getting a job in one of the mills.’ John avoided meeting her eyes. ‘Horrocks pays pretty well. Of course, there’s always office work,’ he continued in a rush when she didn’t respond, ‘but you’d need to get some training on one of those typewriting machines first. Look,’ he added when Ellie still made no response, ‘I know it’s not much, but Dad has sent you this…and…and there’s a couple of guineas there from me as well, Ellie.’

Hot tears burned Ellie’s eyes as he handed her the money: another five guineas from her father, and two guineas from John. Along with what she had, at least she would be able to rent somewhere to live.

‘What’s the matter with her?’ he asked, nodding his head in Minaco’s direction. Throughout his visit she had simply sat on the bed, staring into space, clutching Henry’s photograph.

‘I think it must be her way of grieving,’ Ellie told him quietly.

‘You know, Ellie, you’d do much better if you only had yourself to support. I mean…’ he looked uncomfortable again, ‘that is, Maggie said there was to be a child!’

Ellie’s heart was beating fast, and she could feel the angry panic building up inside her. The more people who knew about her pregnancy, the harder it was getting for her to ignore it and pretend that it wasn’t happening. Didn’t she already have enough problems?

‘Henrietta is Henry’s child,’ she told John sharply, trying to hide her own sense of despair and dread. ‘If I don’t take responsibility for her you know what will happen to her? She’ll end up in the workhouse orphanage. She’s not much older than Philip. How is he, John? No matter how often I have written to ask her, our aunt will never tell me how he does.’

John’s expression hardened. ‘He’s a champion little lad, Ellie, bright as a button! I’ve told him all about you – aye, and our Connie and Dad as well, and all about Friargate, but I dare say he’ll forget it all now. They’re bringing him up as if he were their own. He’s our brother, Ellie, not their son. I wish Ma had never died, Ellie!’

‘So do I, John,’ Ellie said sadly.

‘Mr Kershaw has given me the day off to give you a hand,’ John told her. ‘I’ll go round to the agents with you, if you like. They’ll pay a bit more mind to you when they see you’ve got a man with you,’ he told her, puffing out his chest.

‘Oh John!’ He was only thirteen, yet here he was for all the world acting as though he was already a man!

Again Ellie felt tears pricking her eyes as she accepted his offer gratefully, and gave him a fierce hug.

Ellie heaved a sigh of relief. The house in Newall Street was hers! It had been touch and go whether or not the agent would rent the house out to her at first, and in the end she had had to pay a full three months’ rent up front before he had reluctantly given in.

‘And there’s to be no subletting of rooms, unless you consult us about it first,’ he warned her grimly. ‘We’ve had tenants before who’ve thought they could take advantage in that way! And no gentlemen callers staying overnight or calling after dark! It’s all here in the lease,’ he added.

Like the house they had just left, the one they were to rent on Newall Street had no indoor sanitation. There was a privy in the back yard, and the house was apparently equipped with a tin bath in the kitchen.

‘A full check will be made at the end of your
tenancy, and if anything is missing you will be held responsible and will have to pay for it,’ the agent told her warningly. ‘The rent collector will call round every Friday night for the rent, starting from this week.’

‘But I’ve just paid three months’ rent,’ Ellie protested.

‘That’s our surety that you’ll be a good tenant. Any losses for breakages will be taken out of that at the end of your tenancy and the remainder handed back to you.’

Wearily, Ellie gave in. Her situation was too desperate for her to be able to argue.

It was mid-December; the shops were filled with Christmas cheer of every sort. Grimly, Ellie hurried past their tempting displays, trying not to think about past Christmases or to compare them with the life that now lay ahead of her!

If only she was not carrying the extra burden of this unwanted child. Ellie trembled at the thought of what lay ahead of her.

Nervously, Ellie hurried down the street, shivering as she felt the cold wind against the back of her neck. Outside the shop she had been looking for, she hesitated, and then, taking a deep breath, went in.

‘Yes?’ the woman inside asked her.

‘I-I believe that you…that you buy hair,’ Ellie told her firmly, removing her hat as she did so.

Ten minutes later, standing in a small icy-cold back room, trying not to shiver whilst she endured the humiliation of having her hair inspected, Ellie reminded herself just why she was here.

It was nearly a month now since she had first returned to Preston, and she was constantly worrying about how little she was earning. She no longer had the kind of customers who were willing to pay a lot of money for hand-smocked baby dresses and the like. If she was to earn anything like enough to keep them all, she needed to have a sewing machine.

Ellie had scoured the town’s second-hand shops, looking for something suitable, and two days ago she found a machine in excellent condition, the only problem being she did not have the money to buy it. And then she had remembered being told she could sell her hair. She had lain awake each night since, remembering how her mother used to brush it for her, and how Gideon had said it was the most beautiful hair he had ever seen.

But beautiful hair didn’t put food in their mouths, she told herself now as the woman finally delivered an approving nod of her head.

Ellie shivered the whole time the woman was cutting the hair off, unable to bring herself to look at the swathes of corn-gold hair being carefully put on a clean piece of cloth, and she shivered even more when she left the shop!

She had asked John to meet her at the sewing machine shop so that he might help her get the machine home. The shop owner had promised her the loan of a small handcart providing she paid a deposit on it.

John was waiting for her when she reached the shop, blowing on his cold hands as she hurried up to him.

Inside the shop she dealt briskly with the owner, and watched whilst he and John carefully manhandled the machine into the cart.

Half an hour later, John was puffing with pride as he finally assembled the machine for her and stood back to admire his handiwork.

‘Ellie,’ he called out, ‘come and look. It’s working a treat!’

Hesitantly Ellie went into the parlour.

‘It’s running fine and I’ve checked –’ John began, and then broke off as he finally noticed Ellie’s hair.

‘Ellie…what’s happened to your hair?’

‘I sold it to pay for the sewing machine,’ Ellie told him simply.

The look on his face hurt her.

‘I need it so that I can earn more money, John,’ she added quickly. ‘My hair will grow again, but little Henrietta won’t, nor this baby, if there isn’t any food for us to eat!’

Ellie blinked her burning eyes as she tried to focus on her sewing. It was gone midnight and she had been working since two o’clock in the afternoon, only breaking off with a bite of something to eat at teatime.

The dress she was making had to be finished by tomorrow. The woman she was making it for had given her the work with that proviso. In Liverpool Ellie would have turned down such work, as much for the fact that she was being underpaid for it as for the ridiculously short time-limit, but the woman had hinted that if Ellie completed this work to her satisfaction she would provide her with more, and Ellie could not afford to turn down that kind of opportunity, no matter how tired her eyes were.

Her short hair tickled the back of her neck; there
was nothing left for Gideon to run his fingers through now! Her eyes blurred again and the needle she was using to hand-sew the ruffles to the hem of the dress slipped and stabbed her finger.

Suddenly everything was too much for her. Dropping the dress, Ellie covered her face with her hands and wept with misery and despair.

A small sound caught her attention, and a small hand touched her knee. Uncovering her face, Ellie looked down. Little Henrietta was standing beside her, looking at her with solemn eyes.

Immediately, Ellie picked her up and settled her on her knee, ignoring the swift objecting kick she felt in her belly.

‘Don’t cry,’ Henrietta told her, patting her face.

‘Ellie!’

Ellie smiled gratefully as John hurried across the icy marketplace to where she was standing and took her heavy basket from her.

‘This basket is far too heavy for you in your condition,’ he told her sternly.

Ellie gave him a wry look. ‘It’s the end of the day and if I don’t take advantage of what materials the stallholders are selling off cheap then we don’t get to eat next week.’

She was just about managing to earn enough to pay the rent and feed them all – thanks to the work she was now receiving from the woman whose dress she had sat up all night to finish – although
sometimes their diet was made up of little more than bread and soup – a soup cooked up out of cheap vegetables, with a handful of bones from her father’s shop thrown in to give it a bit of extra thickness.

It angered Ellie to know that Hilda Brewer, the woman she now sewed for, was selling on what Ellie made at a profit to herself, for which she did nothing, whilst paying Ellie a mere pittance, but she knew that she was not in a position to complain, because she needed the money.

Cecily had sent her several imploring letters to her father’s Friargate address, begging her to visit her, but Ellie had too much pride to allow Cecily to see what she had descended to. Cecily’s mother would never allow her daughter to ‘know’ her now, Ellie was aware.

‘You should get that girl of yours to do more,’ John told her forthrightly. He had assumed a protective manner towards her that both amused and touched Ellie. ‘Aye, an’ that Minaco as well.’

Ellie sighed. ‘You know that Maisie can’t be trusted to run errands unsupervised, John, and as for Minaco…’ She frowned.

The Japanese girl rarely spoke and barely ate, and sometimes Ellie felt that she was deliberately grieving herself to death; that without Henry she felt there was no purpose to her life. Of course, that made her feel guilty, since as Henry’s wife, in the eyes of the world she should be the one who was grieving.

‘Perhaps I should think about putting a notice in my window, saying, “Sailors’ washing taken in” like they do down by the dock,’ she sighed, as John took her arm to help her over the icy cobbles.

‘What!’ His face turned an embarrassed red. ‘Ellie, surely you know what that means?’ he protested, shaking his head when she looked enquiringly at him. ‘It’s a notice put in their windows by a…a certain class of female who…who offer their services to men and…’

‘Oh!’ Ellie’s own face crimsoned as she realised what he was trying to say.

‘It’s all wrong that you should be living like this,’ John told her angrily. ‘By rights you should be in Liverpool, in the Charnock house. This child you’re carrying –’

‘I’ve already told you, John, Mr Charnock has made it plain that…well, I know that neither I nor my child would be welcome or wanted.’

Her child. Ellie grimaced to herself. For weeks she had tried her best to ignore the fact that she was pregnant, hoping that somehow if she did not acknowledge it the life within her would magically wither away, but of course it had not done so. No, it had its father’s obstinacy, that was for sure!

Sometimes in the night she woke up streaming with sweat, terrified by her own nightmares of giving birth, but a new steely Ellie had metamorphosed from the old Ellie, forced into existence by necessity and the grim daily fight for survival. Her girlhood fear of giving birth was a luxury she could
no longer indulge in! She had other, larger fears now, fears brought about by the heavy responsibilities she carried. If she should die, what would happen to those who were dependent upon her?

‘Have you heard anything yet from Connie?’ Ellie asked her brother anxiously.

‘Nope. I reckon she’s too ashamed of herself to get in touch or to come back. She was full of wild talk at one stage about going to America.’

‘Oh, John, I wish so much that she would let us know where she is. I am so worried about her!’

They had reached Newall Street now, and Ellie’s pace quickened. She was always anxious about what might be waiting for her when she had been away. Minaco had retreated completely into herself now, and refused to have anything to do with any of them, including her own daughter; and Maisie, who had become jealous of Henrietta’s growing attachment to Ellie, often pinched and bullied the little girl behind Ellie’s back. As Ellie went inside she stamped the cold out of her feet, blowing on her almost numb fingers.

Maisie and Henrietta were in the kitchen, playing with a pair of rag dolls Ellie had made them.

‘Her ma’s gone,’ Maisie informed Ellie, jerking her head in Henrietta’s direction. ‘Took off, she did. Should ha’ taken her with her.’

Ellie frowned, pausing in the act of removing her outdoor clothes, thinking Maisie must be mistaken since Minaco never left the house, but after she had
gone upstairs and checked the rooms she realised that Maisie was right.

‘Where has she gone, Maisie, did she say?’ Ellie questioned anxiously.

Maisie gave a dismissive shrug, frowning as Henrietta reached for the doll she had been playing with, then smacking the little girl’s hand with a petulant expression.

‘Maisie?’ Ellie pressed.

‘Never said nothing. Just gave a loud cry and picked up that picture she’s allus got and ran to the door.’

Ellie looked at her brother. ‘John, what on earth could have made her do such a thing? She never goes out,’ Ellie told him, her frown changing to a warm smile as Henrietta came and wrapped her arms around her legs. Since Ellie was unable to move, John obligingly unwrapped the little girl’s arms and picked her up, tickling her beneath her chin until she giggled.

She really was the prettiest child, Ellie reflected, as she took her from him, watching her eyes sparkle with delight at the attention she was getting. And bright too. Ellie was already starting to teach her her letters, much to Maisie’s annoyance.

‘She won’t have gone far,’ John comforted her. ‘After all, she doesn’t really know her way around Preston, does she? Perhaps she just fancied some fresh air.’

Ellie shook her head decisively. ‘No, she won’t have done that.’

Whenever she could, weather and her workload permitting, Ellie made a point of taking Maisie and Henrietta to Avenham Park, remembering how much she had enjoyed her own visits there as a child, but after the first visit Minaco had refused to go with them.

‘John, I feel really worried about her.’ Instinctively as she spoke, Ellie rubbed her side to soothe the small nagging ache there.

Automatically John’s attention was caught by her action. It was his opinion that Ellie had more than enough to worry about without the Japanese woman she had taken responsibility for adding to her problems.

‘Depend on it, Ellie, she will simply have slipped out on some errand or for some fresh air.’

‘But if she hasn’t, if something has befallen her…’ Ellie protested.

‘Well, let’s wait for now and see if she returns. With temperatures as low as the ones we are currently suffering, she is bound not to want to stay out too long.’

‘And if she doesn’t return?’ Ellie pressed him, unable to feel reassured. She was shivering herself, despite the many layers of clothing she was wearing. February was turning out to be as intensely cold as August had been unusually hot.

John shook his head. ‘You are worrying too much, Ellie. She will. After all, where else is there for her to go?’

But despite his attempts to reassure her, Ellie could not shake off her own sense of foreboding.

In truth she was feeling far more despairing than she wanted John to know. Mature as he had grown, he was still only a boy and her younger brother. She should be looking after him, she acknowledged ruefully, not the other way round! The coming birth of her baby loomed over her like an oppressive shadow, her fear of what might befall her streaking her dreams and filling her with acute dread that if she should die she would leave behind her not only her orphaned child, but also Henrietta, whom she had come to love very much, and Maisie, for whom she felt an admittedly sometimes irritated sense of responsibility. What would happen to them if she was not there to care for them?

The thought of the loss of her own life no longer haunted her in the way that it had once done, but the consequences of her death tormented her far more. She now had first-hand knowledge, after all, of just what could happen to a child wrenched from the loving comfort and security of its mother’s protection.

Somewhere at the back of her mind she knew that she had been holding onto the reassuring belief that Iris would return home to Liverpool and insist on seeking her out, and that having done so, she would somehow, in her no-nonsense way, wave her version of a magic wand and rescue them all from the life they were currently living. But earlier that week she had received a letter from Iris, sent to her father’s address, informing her that she and her companions were enjoying their travels so much
that they had decided to extend them and that she now did not expect to be home for at least another three months.

She had also received a letter from Cecily in which she had mentioned the fact that she had seen Elizabeth Fazackerly in Liverpool, wearing what she was sure had been ‘our Aunt Parkes’ sables, Ellie, remember – the ones she gave to you? I must say that I was both shocked and surprised, and can only assume that you must have grown tired of them. I know my own sister would have dearly loved to have had them and I have to say I think they ought to have remained in the family instead of being passed onto someone who is of no real consequence to us, especially since we are having such a very cold winter. Aunt Parkes has complained that you do not write to her very often. She has become very reclusive, and Mr Parkes seems to spend a great deal of time away on business.’

Ellie had sighed as she had put Cecily’s letter down. There was such a gulf between them now.

‘Got to go,’ John announced, leaning down to kiss her cheek. ‘Mr Kershaw wants some photographs taking of the millworkers out on strike, and the ice on the Ribble.’