House of Angels (4 page)

Mercy hesitated as she reached Angel’s Department Store, desperately trying to summon up the courage to enter. She’d done the best she could with her appearance, scrubbing her face with Pear’s soap and water till it shone, and Jessie had washed her hair with lye soap, and combed the tangles out of it. Mercy had rarely done such a thing more than once a month in her life, and since Mam had been ill, hadn’t bothered at all, soap being something of a luxury. She’d been astonished to rediscover her own fairness, and how soft and slippy and clean her hair felt. Really quite wonderful. It had grown so long, Jessie had pinned it up for her into a sensible chignon at the back of her head. The new style made Mercy feel very
grown-up
.

Jessie had also insisted upon laundering her only blouse and good skirt, although it meant Mercy going about clad in nothing but her shawl until they were dry and ironed. Then her flannel petticoat and vest, worn next to her skin, which to her certain knowledge had never
been washed, were dunked in the wash tub too. Mam had always considered it highly dangerous to remove underthings, particularly at night. Now the clean flannel felt all scratchy and stiff, and full of shaming holes as the shock of the hot water seemed to have made the fabric fall apart. Fortunately no one but herself would ever see these, and Jessie had assured her the flannel would go soft again, with wear.

Jack had managed to find some boot polish from somewhere, which he’d used to good effect on her one decent pair of boots. They pinched her toes a bit but Jessie said that were she to secure a job as a shop assistant, a uniform would be provided. Perhaps accommodation too, as many of the young women employed by Angel’s were housed either in large dormitories above the store or in various quarters around the town.

Standing before her friends Mercy had felt unexpectedly optimistic and excited, but now she was sick with anxiety. She felt insignificant and out of place, the stuffed mannequins with their knobs for heads in the shop windows looking far better dressed than she was. But then Mercy couldn’t recall the last time she’d worn anything new, if ever.

Giving a little gulp in a futile attempt to moisten her dry mouth, Mercy pushed open the shop door and walked in. She was as quickly marched out again with a stern reprimand from a man in a smart morning suit. Spruced up and clean she may be by Fellside standards, but not respectable enough to be seen shopping in Angel’s emporium.

Back out on the pavement, Mercy chewed on her lip, wondering what to do next. How was she ever to get a job if she wasn’t allowed to set foot in the store? It suddenly occurred to her that, like any grand house with a servant’s entrance, the store itself would no doubt have a back door for employees, who likewise mustn’t be seen cheek-by-jowl with the esteemed customers. She set off down a side alley in search of one and soon found what she was looking for. No one answered her timid knock so she turned the handle and crept inside.

The door Mercy had found opened onto a long corridor which, in turn, led to a labyrinth of similar passages. Mercy tiptoed along them, feeling very much like a mouse who might be pounced upon at any moment by the resident cat.

Finally, and to her great relief, she opened another door and found herself in a large room. Her first impression was that it was filled with boxes, stacked high on the floor, on tables, on every possible surface, but then she saw that people were engaged in unpacking them: young boys, and girls in black dresses with their sleeves rolled up.

There were shelves all around the perimeter of the room filled with bolts of fabric, lace curtains, blankets, mantles, shawls and even furs; a strange looking collection of brass stands that held an assortment of hats, muffs and umbrellas. One was completely decked out in feather boas. A group of the same mannequins she’d seen in the shop window leant drunkenly together in one
corner, their knobbed heads close together as if gossiping over some naughty secret. And through a half-open door Mercy glimpsed a second room, which appeared to be filled with girls operating machines of some sort, perhaps sewing the fine garments that she’d seen on display.

Mercy was so overawed by the scene that she might have been content to stand transfixed for hours, drinking it all in, had she not been approached by a tall woman with a stern face and a spine that looked as if a steel rod had been inserted into it.

‘And what might you be doing in our stock room, young miss? If you’re seeking employment you should have rung the bell and waited.’ She cast a jaundiced eye over her shabby blouse and skirt, and the too-large coat she’d borrowed from Jessie.

‘I never saw no bell,’ Mercy murmured.

‘And I presume you have no experience either? Where was your last employment? Do you have any references? Can you even read? Standards are high for Angel assistants, and we don’t make a habit of taking in wastrels who drop in uninvited off the street.’ She folded her arms across her bony chest. ‘Well… I’m waiting.’

Mercy struggled to recall all the questions, and to remember the little speech she’d practised with Jessie and Jack before setting out. Sadly, her mind had gone completely blank and all she could do was to stare at the woman with her jaw hanging open.

‘Speak up, girl,’ the woman chided her. ‘I suppose you do have a tongue in your head? Come along, I don’t have all day.’

Only when she felt her collar being grasped in an
iron-grip
, which surely meant she was to be evicted yet again, did she spring to life and speak. ‘I want to speak to Mr Angel… If you please, ma’am’ she added, remembering her manners.

‘What did you say?’ The woman sucked in her thin mouth, looking very much as if Mercy had asked to be admitted to an audience with the King himself. ‘I – beg – your – pardon!’ punctuating her words loud and long, so that heads turned and noses twitched, sniffing trouble brewing.

But having got this far, Mercy wasn’t going to be easily put off. She shook herself free, smoothed down her skirt and said rather primly. ‘Please tell Mr Angel that his daughter is without, and would like a word if he could spare five minutes of his time.’ This little practised speech, finally remembered, was triumphantly offered and it gave Mercy great satisfaction to see how the shock of her words sent a dozen expressions flitting across the woman’s ashen face in quick succession, from disbelief, through outrage, to nervous uncertainty.

In the end discretion won and Mercy was indeed shown into the inner sanctum of Josiah Angel’s office. At last, she thought, excitement and trepidation warring within, I shall meet my father face to face.

Not for a moment had Mercy expected Josiah Angel to gather her to his bosom or weep with joy over being reunited with his long-lost daughter, but neither was she prepared for what did happen.

He was standing behind his desk when she entered the office, a large man dressed in a frock coat and trousers of unredeemed black, seeming to fill the small room by his dominating presence. He rocked back and forth on his polished heels as he studied her for a long moment, his silence making Mercy feel all hot and bothered about the collar. And she could see by the cold fury of his gaze and the tight curl of his upper lip, that he was not impressed by her ploy to gain entry. His opening salvo confirmed her worst suspicions.

‘It’s not often that I get to meet such a consummate liar. I’ve seen some nifty tricks played in my time in the fond hope of gaining employment, but this takes the biscuit. I assume it is work you’re after?’ He didn’t wait for Mercy to answer but hooked his thumbs into his waistcoat pockets and began to pace about the room, his gaze raking over her with critical disapproval as he calmly continued with his lecture.

‘Unfortunately for you, you’ve mistaken your target. I do not normally conduct interviews myself. Miss Caraway, whom you met just now, is the person responsible for hiring and firing shop staff.’ He made an impatient clicking sound at the back of his throat. ‘And you’ve most certainly cooked your goose so far as she is concerned. Whatever possessed you, girl, to issue such a barefaced lie? What possible advantage did you imagine it would give you to pretend to be one of my daughters? Do you not realise that it is an offence against the law to attempt to pass yourself off as someone else?’

At this stage, having at last come face to face with
her father, Mercy experienced a sudden urge to speak her mind. She longed to tell this man how her mother had suffered after he’d so callously abandoned her; how Florrie had been forced to live in the meanest of slums and work all the hours God sent to earn an honest crust. How she’d developed consumption and passed away a sad and broken woman believing the man she still adored no longer loved or cared about her.

But all she could do was to gaze, mesmerised, at this man who had the reputation of being a tyrant, and was in fact her living, breathing father. Her tongue was cleaved to the roof of her mouth. She felt overcome by nerves, and some strange emotion she couldn’t begin to analyse, perhaps the knowledge that the man she’d longed to know for all her childhood years was now standing before her, that he did in fact exist. She’d believed, wrongly as it turned out, that her father was a sailor on the ocean blue. Yet here he was, in the flesh, and not at all as she’d imagined. The thought that this bull of a man might have bounced her on his knee when she was a small child seemed incredible. Impossible! Had he really teased and tickled and kissed her, as Florrie had claimed? Had he been in the least bit fond of her, or loved her just a little? If so, how could he then have gone off and left them both to starve?

Mercy was mindful that she’d promised her mother she would be tactful and polite when she reminded him of his duty towards herself. This man was powerful, after all, and in a position to help her earn a living. And, illegitimate though she might be, he was still her father.

Her fingers closed over the folded sheet of paper in the pocket of her skirt, and, gathering all her courage, Mercy handed him her mother’s letter. He read it in silence, glared at her for a long, heart-stopping moment, then read it again.

‘Your mother – Florrie – she’s dead, I take it?’

‘She is, sir, yes. Died a few weeks back, if’n you please, sir.’ What a silly remark to make. Why should it please him that her mother was dead?

‘How old are you, girl?’

‘Sixteen.’ She told him her birthday and he nodded, the lines of his craggy face tightening a little, almost as if he had no wish to be reminded of her birth.

‘And you now have no means of subsistence?’

Mercy shook her head. There was the bit of weaving and knitting she did, but neither amounted to much with the prices currently being paid, and taking into account the poor state of her own skills. Jessie might be able to knit a jersey in a day, but Mercy could never match her speed, not in a million years, and even her friend struggled to cope with all them mouths she had to feed. She certainly couldn’t afford to take on one more.

He was still glowering at her, then he instructed Mercy to wait and strode from the room. The click of the door as he softly closed it behind him seemed to echo chillingly in her head.

Mercy stood on the fancy Persian rug and waited. For how long, she couldn’t afterwards recollect. It felt like hours. Long enough for her fast-beating heart to slow
and her shredded nerves to calm down, and begin to gather her scattered wits. Sufficient time for Mercy to think of all she
might
have said: how she should have spoken with calmness and some show of intelligence. Instead, she’d just stood there like a gormless idiot while he’d read that letter, as if she didn’t even have a tongue in her head let alone a brain.

She suddenly noticed that the letter her mother had written with such painstaking care as she clung on to the last threads of life had been blown from the desk in the draught from the door when it closed behind him. Or he had tossed it there. Whatever the reason, it now lay crumpled and rejected on the floor. For some reason this annoyed her and, picking it up, Mercy smoothed out the creases, reading the words again as she did so:

I know you will do this small thing for me, Josiah dear, because of what we once meant to each other.

The mere sight of her mother’s handwriting brought a lump to Mercy’s throat and tears momentarily blinded her. She gulped, rubbed away the tears, which would do her no good at all.

‘I’m here, Mam. I’m doing just what you told me. I’ve come to ask me pa for help.’ But would he give it? That was the question.

Hearing a sound at the door, and still with the note in her hand, Mercy panicked, then quickly slid it into the letter rack that stood on Josiah Angel’s desk. At least there it wouldn’t get lost or crumpled. By the time the door opened, she was once more standing smart and straight on the Persian rug, chin high, heart pounding. She was
disappointed to see it was the woman, Miss Caraway, and not her father, who entered. She remained framed in the doorway, arms folded. ‘This way, girl.’

Mercy registered this as an order, not an invitation, and did as she was bid without question, obediently following the woman back along the labyrinth of corridors until they were once more out on the backstreet that ran behind the store. Her heart sank like a stone as disappointment hit home. Oh, no, she was being thrown out, yet again.

‘Where you taking me? Don’t I get no job then?’

‘Since you appear to be destitute, accommodation has been found for you,’ Miss Caraway informed her, rather tartly. ‘Get in.’

Mercy blinked, and noticed for the first time that a carriage, or hansom cab as she believed it was more rightly called, pulled by a black horse, stood patiently waiting at the kerb. Hope soared within her. My word, this was something. They were offering her accommodation, no doubt to allow her time to settle in and get her uniform fitted before starting work at the store.
And
she was being taken there by cab. By heck, this was a turn-up for the books. ‘I’ve not brought me things,’ Mercy told the woman, in a sudden panic as she thought of her few bits and bobs at home.