Fortune is a Woman (11 page)

Jealousy struck Sammy's heart like a blow, it burned his stomach and churned in his guts. Josh was
his
friend. He
belonged
to him. But Josh was wayward, he liked the other lads' company as much as he liked Sammy's, and now Murphy was his best friend.

Sammy undressed, wrapping his arms about himself, shivering in the chill northeast wind that always seemed to blow even on the hottest summer day. He glanced down at his body, comparing his stocky, powerful torso and short, bulkily muscled legs with Josh's grace, and his own heavy, bulging masculinity with Josh's, and he felt uglier than the hunchback of Notre Dame.

Josh and Murphy were dunking each other's heads under the water, jumping in and out on top of each other while the other boys splashed around, and after a while Sammy ventured cautiously in, too, but he was always on the outside of the group, always the observer. That was why it was so odd when later he claimed he didn't know what happened next that afternoon.

Sammy told his mother they had all been frolicking in the river and Josh and Murphy were daring each other on to even bigger and better dives, slapping each other on the back and laughing all the time. After a while the others grew tired and climbed out and were drying off on the bank. He said Murphy must have swum out from the pool into the river, mebbe to show off a bit more. Next thing they knew he was missing. It was two days before they found his body, tangled in the slimy green weeds on the opposite bank. His head was bashed in and they said he must have hit a rock when he dived.

When Annie asked Josh what happened he just shrugged without answering, but his gray eyes looked far- away and she could not read them. She told herself he was grieving and patted his shoulder comfortingly. "It's all right, Josh," she said, "there's nothing you could have done to help him, else you would have done it. I know."

Sammy and Josh had both worked for Frank Aysgarth since they had left school at fourteen. They had started at the bottom the way Frank had, climbing the scaffolding with a hod full of bricks, mixing cement and learning how to lay the bricks evenly. They had learned how to measure up, to put in a window frame, tile a roof, and plaster a wall.

Sammy loved the rough work, but Josh hated it, though he never dared complain to his father. But he had told Annie. Next to Sammy, she was the only one he confided in. His brothers were both married now with homes of their own and it was just Annie and Frank and Josh at home.

Annie's brown eyes were worried as she said, "Well, what do you want to do, Josh?"

He shrugged. "Mebbe I'd like to be a gamekeeper," he said lazily, "on a fancy estate. Or a farmer, looking after the cows and bringing in the harvest."

"Eh lad, you're a dreamer," she replied, laughing. "What do you know about gamekeeping and harvests?"

Sammy knew Annie worried about Josh. "Sometimes I don't know where he is," she confided to him, "or what he's doing. He just disappears."

"Don't you worry," Sammy reassured her, "I'll alius look after him."

He remembered how they had sworn when they were seven years old that they would always be best friends, always watch out for each other no matter what happened. And they had pledged their promise in blood, cutting their thumbs and squeezing them messily together, swearing their vow solemnly. He had kept his promise even though Josh had put him to the test a few times, ganging up with the others and leaving him on his own. But he had put Josh to the test, too, many a time, daring him on to things he would never do alone, like balancing on the parapet of the railway bridge or running across in front of the big thundering steam engine with seconds between them and certain death under its churning iron wheels. But what Sammy really could not stand was when Josh got interested in girls.

"Leave the lasses alone," he would say disgustedly as Josh smiled at a passing pair of pretty young ladies. And, "Why do you want to walk out with
her?"
when Josh picked up a rough, eager girl outside the Maypole grocery shop in Kirkgate. He felt that same jealousy burning him again, churning his guts till he thought he would die of the pain, and he told himself again it had always been just him and Josh and that's the way it was always going to be, no matter what.

Annie could not understand why it was that Josh suddenly became so moody. Each evening he would come home from work, wash himself and sit silently down to his tea, just the way his father did. Except that wasn't like Josh at all. And for a whole week he did not go out and Sammy didn't come to see him. She supposed they must have quarreled, but whatever it was he wasn't telling her and she sat with her knitting, noting how he jumped each time there was a knock on the door, or how he just stared silently into the fire, not even bothering to read the
Yorkshire Evening Post
she had placed on the table beside him. Mind you, with the story of that horrible murder, she wasn't surprised. The second one it was; each time a young girl and each time when the moon was full. "Moon murders," the papers were calling them, and no young woman in Leeds felt safe.

The clock on the mantel—the same mahogany clock her dad had bought for her mam before they were married—chimed its sweet Westminster chimes and then struck nine, and with a sigh she put away her knitting and began to tidy up.

"Would you like a cup of tea before I go up?" she asked, stopping by Josh's chair on her way to the scullery, but he just shook his head. She walked to the stairs, hesitated and then came back again. "Something's the matter," she said quietly. "Why don't you tell me? After all, it can't be that bad. I'll bet you're just in love or something." She smiled. "Go on, tell us about her. Maybe I can help."

But he just shook his head again, leaning back in the big green plush chair, his eyes closed. "Nobody can help," he said bleakly. "Just leave me alone, Annie, will yer?"

***

The night was bitter, frost had formed scratchy patterns on the windowpane and a blast of icy wind sneaked through the dark velvet winter curtains. Annie undressed quickly, hurrying into her pink flannel nightdress and adding a warm bedjacket she had knitted herself. She washed her face and dragged the harsh-bristled brush through her long brown hair for the hundred strokes required to keep it shiny, and then she inspected herself in the mirror. She did not like what she saw.

Sally Morris had told her what everyone was saying about her. They said she looked less bright and perky than she used to, that there were tired lines on her face and a weariness in her walk that told her old neighbors that Frank Aysgarth pushed her too hard. They said she was twenty-six now and never been courted. They said that when Josh got married that would be the end of Annie Aysgarth because then she would be stuck with old Frank, knitting away her winter evenings and her life until he died and she was finally alone. She would be the spinster, the nuisance maiden aunt forgotten by her brothers with no young 'uns of her own to bless her declining years.
She would be a lonely old maid.

She sank down onto the bed, her head in her hands, tears trickling between her lingers. She was only twenty-six and life was over and she had never even had a chance.

After a while she slid to the floor, put her hands together and closed her eyes. She prayed for her dead mother and she prayed for her brothers, Bertie and Ted, and for Josh, whose sadness had only served to bring out her own misery. And then she prayed for herself. "Oh God," she begged, "please let me know
life.
Let me know what it feels like to be loved. Let me taste adventure and excitement. Let me have children of my own so I can let go of our Josh when the time comes...."

The hot stone wrapped in a bit of flannel sheeting had warmed a tiny patch of the bed and she pushed her cold feet gratefully against it. But when she finally fell asleep she was still worrying about Josh, and still wondering how life would ever catch up to her.

It was a few weeks later that it happened. Things had drifted slowly back to normal, Josh was back with Sammy and they were always out somewhere together. Frank was coughing over his pipe and grumbling about his dinner, like usual, and Annie didn't know how she was going to stand it all much longer. She had sacrificed her youth to her father's selfish demands and now she was losing Josh, too, to his own world. Resentment choked her.

The winter evenings became long, silent, desperate hours by the fire with her father in the chair opposite. Her fingers fumbled clumsily with the knitting she had always been able to do automatically over endless years of pullovers and mittens, as she dreamed restlessly of a different world, like the one she read about in the newspapers where ladies wore satin ball gowns and danced with tall, distinguished men, or sailed away to foreign countries on fabulous steam yachts and married counts and princes who loaded them with enormous jewels and love.
Living,
she told herself enviously,
that's what they were doing.

Josh had still not come home by the time she went wearily to bed and she left the door on the latch so he could let himself in. She was up again at five the next morning as usual, wrapping her woolen dressing gown around her, shivering as she hurried noiselessly downstairs to bank up the coal fire. She was filling the kettle from the tap in the scullery when she heard a noise at the window.

"Sammy," she cried, flinging open the door, "whatever brings you here at this hour?"

"Shhh," he whispered, a finger on his lips, "not so loud, Annie."

She stared at him open-mouthed, taking in his disheveled appearance, his torn jacket and muddy boots. His face was a colorless gray and his dark eyes wild with panic. "It's Josh," she said, fear suddenly clutching her heart. "Something's happened to him?"

He nodded reluctantly, and she clutched at his arm. "Is he hurt?"

Sammy shook his head. "Josh isn't harmed," he said hurriedly. "Don't ask me what happened, Annie. But he's in bad trouble. As bad as any man can get. He sent me to see you. He said if you love him you'll help him. You know there's no harm in Josh, Annie, not really—"

"Whatever do you mean?" she gasped. "What trouble, what harm...
what are you talking about, Sammy?"

He took in a deep, shuddering breath and said, "Josh is in police trouble, Annie, they'll be after him this time. He told me you had your aunt Jessie's money hidden under the mattress. He said to tell you he needs it to escape." He grabbed her by the shoulders, suddenly desperate. "He has to get away, Annie, a long way away. Out of the country. He said mebbe we would go to San Francisco where your dad went, we'll make our fortunes there... if only we can leave this mess behind us. Don't ask any more questions, Annie, just give me the money. I'll go with him. I promise I'll look after him with my own life. Only I beg you not to ask me why."

His wild, dark eyes met hers and she knew he was talking about something too terrible to put into words, but she still could not understand how it could relate to Josh. He was such a good lad, he always had been... what could he have done to be in trouble with the police, such bad trouble to make him run away, all the way to San Francisco?

"Annie, for God's sake, there's no time to lose."

Pulling herself together she ran swiftly up the stairs and dragged back the heavy flock mattress, rummaging underneath for the thin sheaf of ten-pound notes. She ran back downstairs and thrust them into his trembling hands, too shocked to question him further.

"Thanks, Annie, you're a grand lass," he said, stuffing them quietly into his pocket, and without another word he ran off down the path. She called after him. "Did Josh say anything else, a message for me or anything...?"

Sammy shook his head. "I've got to rush, lass," he said, glancing nervously up and down the lane.

She nodded, tears squeezing from her eyes. "Tell him I love him, no matter what," she called. "And I'll never believe he did anything bad." Sammy's fathomless black eyes met hers for a moment and then he was gone.

The neighborhood was in an uproar when the police announced they were looking to arrest Josh Aysgarth for the murder of three young women.

"Josh Aysgarth?" they cried disbelievingly. "Why, he'd never hurt a fly. He's one of life's innocents, that lad, alius in a world of his own. And he didn't have no time for lasses either. He was alius just with Sammy Morris."

But Mrs. Morris told everybody how her Sammy had found Josh standing over the girl's body down by Durrent's Beck, half-in and half-out of the water, it was. She said Josh told Sammy he hadn't done it and Sammy—who had always been daft in the head where his friend was concerned—believed him. He had run to Ivy Cottage to ask Annie Aysgarth for help. How could she refuse? She had been a mother to Josh since their proper mam died when he was a little lad and she were nothing but a girl herself. Annie had said she knew their Josh would never do such a thing and she had given Sammy the hundred pounds her aunt Jessie had left her that she was saving for a rainy day. Then Sammy had run home to tell his mother what had happened and that he was running away with Josh and now Mrs. Morris didn't know where they had gone.

"I'll never forgive Josh Aysgarth for leading my son astray," she told the awestruck neighbors, wiping her eye on a corner of her clean, flowered apron. "My Sammy's gone and likely I'll never see him again."

And if Annie Aysgarth knew where they had gone, she wasn't telling. But everyone who saw her, shopping at the Maypole or hurrying to catch the tram or buying ale for her father's dinner just like normal, said she had aged overnight from a girl of twenty-six to a woman of forty. Poor Annie Aysgarth, they said, she had loved that boy like her own son and she would never tell on him, not in a thousand years.

As for Frank Aysgarth, after those first headlines hit the newstands he never left Ivy Cottage again. His hair turned white and he retreated into total seclusion and silence, looked after by his faithful daughter, Annie.

CHAPTER 8

1905