For a Mother's Sins (31 page)

Molly put her arm around her. ‘What a bloody pair we are, stuck in this godforsaken hole. But chin up, girl, things can only get better. Let’s face it, they can’t get much
bloody worse! Come on, we need to get this place straightened up. I start work at the hospital in an hour, but I’m not leaving until you are straight.’ Molly pulled her long hair back,
took hold of a brush and began sweeping, just as the main door’s latch went up and the dark figure of Henry Parker walked in.

He was square-set and his shoulders blocked the morning light from creeping in through the doorway.

‘Who the fuck are you and why’s my pub in this state?’ he bellowed at Molly. His face was hard and dark with stubble.

‘Henry, Henry, this is Molly, she’s helping. We buried Florrie yesterday, along with the rest of the pox victims. Molly’s been helping me.’ Helen ran to the side of her
husband, pulling on his arm.

‘Get off me!’ He shook Helen loose. ‘Fucking well clean up. And you – out of my pub!’ Henry Parker pointed his stick at Molly as he pushed Helen to one side.

Molly looked at him.‘You ungrateful bastard! Where were you yesterday?’ She didn’t care how big he was; no one got away with swearing at her.

Henry lifted his stick into the air threateningly. ‘Why, you bitch . . .’ An ugly sneer twisted his face as he contemplated striking her across the face with his stick.

‘Henry, Henry, she didn’t mean it. She helped me, Henry, she helped me when you weren’t here.’ Helen pawed around him like a helpless puppy.

‘Go fuck off, you interfering bitch!’ Henry pushed Helen to one side and bellowed that he wanted something to eat.

Molly stood for a moment, watching the menacing hulk stumble into his favourite chair. She was all too aware that he was capable of snapping her neck with a single blow, and if she antagonized
him it would only be worse for Helen. Picking up her shawl, she gently touched Helen on the arm as she left, avoiding eye contact with Henry Parker.

She stood outside the inn’s entrance, listening to tables being tipped over and Henry’s swearing and Helen’s screams. The door opened for a second as the pile of rags was
thrown out. The elderly navvy picked himself up, shook his head and dragged his weary feet homeward. Molly looked up at the bedroom windows, where a row of frightened children’s faces were
squeezed up to the glass. There was nothing she could do to help them. Henry Parker would kill her if she interfered. She put her finger her to her lips, urging the children to be quiet, and walked
away.

Spring mists clung to the bottom of Whernside as she followed the riverside path back to the huts. All the scaffolding was up now, stretching right the way across the valley. The huge stone
piers of the first few arches of the viaduct looked grand; it was going to be an impressive structure when all twenty-four arches were complete.

Molly breathed in the sharp air in and smelled the peat as she mounted the steps to her home. She tried to envisage how the moor would look without the ramshackle shanties on it. One day it
would be a sight of great beauty, an engineering wonder of the world. In the meantime it was a place where daily existence was a struggle and you learned to be thankful for what little you had.

She opened the hut door quietly and pulled her new curtains back to let the morning’s light in. John was asleep in the chair, snoring loudly, while Lizzie was fast asleep in her bed behind
the curtain. There wouldn’t be much work done on the railway today, not with the hangovers most of the men were carrying. Molly pulled the curtain back and looked at Lizzie; she was growing
up so fast, practically a young lady already. Tears filled her eyes as she thought how proud Lizzie’s father would have been if he could see her now. She turned as she heard John
stirring.

‘You’re back then.’ John yawned and stretched. ‘I kept Lizzie company. She didn’t want to be on her own and I couldn’t be bothered to walk up the fell in the
dark, not when I was the worse for drink.’ He opened the stove door and poked the dwindling fire with a kindling stick, then put the kettle on to boil. ‘I’ll make us a cuppa. I
see you’ve raided the old home like I told you. The place is looking grand.’ John yawned again and stumbled to the door, opening it wide. ‘You know what I like about this place?
The silence, and the smell of the moorland when nobody else is about. Just listen to that – not a sound, just the cry of a curlew. In a few hours there’ll be engines running, people
shouting, and such a din as you can’t hear yourself think, but now it’s grand.’

Molly slipped her arms around him. ‘I can’t stay. I’m working at the hospital today. Lizzie knows to get herself to work. Thanks for stopping with her, I’m glad she
didn’t stay on at the pub. That bastard Henry Parker came back this morning. God, I’d kill him if he was mine. He’d only hit me the once!’

She kissed John gently on the neck. He smelled of sleep and his reactions were slow. She wished she could curl up in bed with him instead of going to work.

‘You wanton hussy, if folk see us they’ll think I’ve slept here with you.’ He turned and grinned.

‘Let ’em think what they want, I’m past caring.’ Molly smiled at him, putting her head on his shoulder.

‘Now then, lass, I’m not ready for this yet. I need more time.’ He gripped her arms and gazed into her eyes. ‘I want things right, lass. This time they have to be
right.’ He let go of her and walked to the steaming kettle.

Molly stood staring out of the door. Right? What did he mean by right?

‘Things will never be “right” here. Look at it – the place is a quagmire, full of outcasts and people struggling to eke out a living. What are you waiting for? You know I
love you – or if you don’t, you’re stupid.’ Molly sighed and sat down at the table as John placed a mug of tea in front of her.

‘That’s just it: I know you love me, but I’ve got nothing for you. I own nothing, I’ll probably wind up following the railway line to Carlisle and end my days drunk in a
hostel. I can’t even get one of these new houses that are being built because I’m not important enough. You deserve better, lass.’ John wiped his face with his hands and stared
miserably across the table. Molly looked exhausted and her day hadn’t even begun yet.

‘Do you think I’m one of those women who follows money? Because I’m not. I love you because you are you, and through all the hard times, the rows and the deaths and the deceit,
I never stopped loving you, John Pratt. It makes no difference to me whether we live in a hut, a palace or a cottage by the sea. We could have tuppence or two thousand to our name; so long as I
have you, that’s all that matters.’ She held her hand out across the table. He grasped it and lovingly held it in his.

‘But it matters to me, lass. I want to give you everything, you and Lizzie. I want a roof over our heads and a wage coming in, and I know you want to stay around here, close to your old
man and your baby. I love you, but I want us all to be happy. Give me time and I’ll try and get those things for us all.’ John bent and kissed her as she pulled her shawl around her,
making ready to go to the hospital.

‘Nay, save your kisses. I love you for what you are, not what possessions you can give me. You must be more like your mother than I thought – she liked fancy stuff and dreamt of
houses, and look where it got her. All I want is you, here with me.’ She turned and made her way out of the hut, determined not to let John see the tears in her eyes.

‘Molly, my dear, what’s wrong?’ Doctor Thistlethwaite couldn’t help but notice a tear rolling down Molly’s cheek as she cleaned the surgical
instruments.

‘I’m sorry, Doctor Thistlethwaite, I’m just tired. It’s been a hard few months and we’ve had another two deaths this morning.’ Molly turned the blame for her
tears on to hospital matters but really they were for John.

‘My dear, I’m always here if you need someone to talk to, you know that. We were quite close before my marriage to Gladys. I sometimes regret that you turned my proposal down. We
would have been better matched.’ He put his arm around her shoulders and felt her trembling body.

Molly sniffed hard and tried to stifle her sobs. ‘Thank you, but you and Gladys look the perfect couple and I’m just tired and acting stupidly.’ Molly didn’t want to go
down that road. She’d noticed that some days the perfect couple seemed anything but happy. She wished that the old doctor would forget his feelings for her.

‘As long as you’re all right.’ He looked into her eyes and squeezed her hand, releasing it quickly as he heard the hospital door open and his wife enter.

Molly mouthed her thanks and went about her business. Here was a man with money and position, and she’d turned him down – a man any sensible woman would want. And yet where did her
heart lie? With a man who had hardly any money and no prospects, but she still loved every inch of him.

‘That man wants bloody killing.’ Molly couldn’t contain her anger as she bound Helen Parker’s bruised and broken ribs under Doctor
Thistlethwaite’s supervision. ‘If I could get hold of him and bray him like he’s brayed you, I’d do a better job and kill him.’

‘Now, Molly, it’s not for us to comment on a patient’s private life.’ Doctor Thistlethwaite smiled a knowing smile at his nurse. He admired her outspokenness and
honesty.

Gladys Thistlethwaite noted the glance between them. She’d seen them earlier through the window: her husband with his arm around Molly’s shoulders. Had he no respect for their
marriage, flirting with a common navvy’s widow in their own hospital. It was time Molly went. Somehow Gladys had to get rid of her. She didn’t know how she was going to manage it, but
she was determined that she would.

The wind howled and the rain came down in sheets with the river roaring in full spate as Henry Parker urged his horse on, weighed down with the week’s wages for
Ribblehead. It was a pig of a day and to make things worse, he was late and the last light of the day was fast fading. He disliked travelling in the dark along the windswept moorland road. One on
one, he could take any man on, but the wages provided a powerful incentive for robbery and if a gang of thieves stopped him he wouldn’t stand a chance.

‘Come on, ya bastard!’ He kicked the flanks of his horse to urge it on. The poor animal’s ears lay flat against its head as it strained up the incline heading for the lights of
the Hill Inn that flickered in the distance. Suddenly the horse stumbled into a rope that had been stretched across the road, tied from tree to tree. Whinnying in terror, it reared up and threw its
rider into the wet gutter before disappearing into the night with the money bags.

‘Damn and fucking blast!’ Henry picked himself up from the ground and realized that he’d been hijacked. His head was spinning and blood dripped from his nose as a cudgel hit
him hard on the head, stunning him. Before he could stand up straight, another blow took his legs from under him. He sprawled helpless in the mud as the kicks and blows rained down, curling up with
pain as his dark-clothed attackers beat and hit him until he was nearly senseless.

‘This ’un’s for Florrie,’ a familiar voice whispered in his ear before a huge blow hit him on the head, finishing his evil life.

‘Not such a big man now, are you?’ One of his attackers gave him a final kick. ‘Come on, lads, let’s get the bastard loaded on the cart. We’ll tip him down Batty
Wife’s Hole, he’ll never be found down there, the bastard. That sinkhole goes right to the bowels of the earth, which is where he belongs. He can help the Devil stoke his
fires.’

The dead bloodied body was loaded on a waiting cart and horse that immediately began trundling on its way to the deep hole in the limestone that locals knew as Batty Wife’s Hole. The place
was believed to have been named after the wife of a local cobbler, whose husband had murdered her by throwing her down there.

The four men looked into the cavernous hole as the body plummeted to the depths, bouncing off the sides until it disappeared from sight. Finally they rolled a huge limestone boulder down after
him, making sure that the body would not be found.

‘Good night’s work, lads. We’ve got rid of the bastard – he’ll not be touching any more young ’uns or taking us for mugs with his money-lending. Say nowt to
nobody, understood? And don’t fret, ’cause he had it coming to him.’

Their work done, the group disbanded and merged into the darkness, unnoticed.

‘You say he never returned last night?’ The constable from Ingleton pencilled notes in his book as he questioned Helen Parker. He looked at the thin bruised woman
with her brood around her. ‘His horse was found with the wages still in its saddlebags near White Scar this morning. I’ve walked the length of the road, but I can’t see anything
of him. It may be he’s had an accident, but until we’ve found him I can’t say.’

Helen held her youngest tight to her. ‘He always pays the navvies this morning. He’s never missed coming home on a Friday night, he knows that these folk depend on him.’ She
tried to look worried, but she was glad he was missing. For once there had been no Friday-night drinking, no slaps for her, and the best night’s sleep she’d had in years. ‘Look at
’em all lined up outside, expecting their pay. What would I have said to them? They’d have been thinking he’d run off with it – and if you hadn’t found the wages, I
wouldn’t have put it past him.’ Helen ran her fingers through the hair of her youngest as she painted a lurid picture of her husband.

‘I take it your man wasn’t well liked, Mrs Parker. I haven’t heard a good word for him. Even the folk in the Midland office at Ingleton couldn’t stand him. They’re
sending somebody this afternoon to pay these folk, by the way. I’ll go out and inform them in a minute.’ The constable stood up. ‘Do you think he was hated enough for someone to
want him dead?’

‘Well, let’s put it this way, officer: there will be a lot drinking to his disappearance tonight and few raising a glass to his health. He didn’t have many friends.’
Helen sent her children into the back room, out of earshot. ‘He was a bastard and I won’t miss him if he never turns up again.’

‘Strong words, Mrs Parker. And I noticed you said
was
– he
was a
bastard. Do you think he’s dead, or was it just a slip?’ The constable lifted the door
latch, waiting for a reply.