House of Angels (23 page)

Following this wonderful news the bride and groom had to be kissed and hugged and congratulated, then Jack insisted on going to the pub to buy jugs of ale for
everyone. Jessie set out the best she could offer in the way of supper, and they all had a merry time together.

Listening to the girl’s happy chatter Livia found herself smiling. She’d fully expected to dislike this unexpected sister but instead was instantly captivated by her. She reminded her so much of Maggie that the very sight of her brought a lump to her throat. Mercy had the same heart-shaped face, and fine long fair hair very like her sister. And if the full, rosebud mouth pouted a little more than Maggie’s had, it was nonetheless as beautiful. The eyes were different, Mercy’s having a quality to them as if you were looking into a deep ocean rather than the clear grey of a stream that had been Maggie’s. She was also feisty and funny, and strong-willed, and, judging by the tales she was telling about her time in the workhouse, not one to suffer fools gladly.

There was no sign of Maggie’s vulnerability or fragility in the sturdy way this girl had dealt with the trials that life had flung at her, nor of Ella’s giddy selfishness and exotic beauty. She seemed to possess rather an impatient, impulsive nature, the kind of girl eager to grasp a problem by the throat and deal with it.

Yet there was a wariness about her, which, Livia suspected, may be partly due to her own presence in the loft. The girl seemed pleased to be back with her friends, but kept casting dark glances in Livia’s direction, as if she were slightly resentful of this new half-sister who had somehow supplanted her place in their home.

Livia wanted to reassure her on that score, point out that Mercy had never been forgotten, but decided it
was best to say as little as possible at this stage. Mainly because Livia herself was having some difficulty growing accustomed to the idea of a new sister, and there was no doubt in her mind that this girl was undoubtedly their father’s child.

Ella was making substantial changes and feeling remarkably pleased with herself. Today she was at a farm sale, buying a mangle and boiler, a new clothes rack, and other useful bits and pieces that might make her life easier. Amos had given his permission without a word of protest, putting a wad of notes into her hand with a warning only to be cautious not to flick an eyebrow or raise a hand unless she fully intended to buy a particular lot.

‘Otherwise, you might find yourself bidding for a rusty tin kettle, or a dozen chickens you never wanted.’

‘I might very well buy more chickens to boost our egg supply,’ she stoutly responded, chin high. ‘But I’m no fool, Amos, so don’t treat me as one.’

Amos merely smiled, in that enigmatic way of his, saying nothing.

Ella had also insisted that he either sink a new well or mend the one they had so that it didn’t leak, and she wanted him to pipe the water into the house and dairy.

‘This is the twentieth century,’ she’d told him in her firmest voice, ‘and high time this farm was brought up to date.’

She’d expected resistance, sulks, an argument about how tight money was, but he’d simply given her his slow smile and said, ‘Whatever you like, dear. I’ll get Tom Mounsey over to help me tackle the job.’

Ella couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing. She was beginning to see strengths and depths in this husband of hers she’d never noticed before. And he was really being most agreeable. But then she too had perhaps been a little more reasonable lately, making special dishes for his tea, walking out with him on his evening walk and not being prone to heavy sighs when he talked endlessly of the cattle or his fishing. Were they at last beginning to tolerate each other a little more, perhaps even reach some sort of understanding?

One evening, about a week after the sale, as Ella sat watching Mrs Rackett ply her spindle in the
time-honoured
way, she suddenly asked if she would teach her the rudiments of spinning, a task she’d fiercely resisted in the past. The older woman was surprised by the request, but at once began to talk about wool, explaining the difference between short ‘staple’ and long.

‘First it has to be sorted into top quality and not-
so-good
, then cleaned of hay seeds or any ticks.’

Ella found it strangely satisfying to pull the fleece gently apart with her fingers, transforming the clumps of fleece into a fluffy mass ready for ‘carding’. The lanoline
or ‘suint’, as Mrs Rackett called it, softened her
work-roughened
hands, and soothed the red raw skin made sore from all the scrubbing and cleaning she did.

‘Next we do the carding,’ Mrs Racket explained, demonstrating with a pair of wooden ‘bats’ that were covered with rows of tiny sharp hooks. Ella found this task harder to do than it looked, the older woman’s skill clearly one born of long practice. And if she’d hoped that Amos might compliment her for her efforts, Ella was soon disappointed. He sat quietly working his loom as he often did of an evening, his Bible propped up against the frame, making no comment whatsoever, not even watching how she got on.

‘The fleece has to be pulled so that the fibres all lie in the same direction. When we’ve got a nice long sausage, then we can begin.’

The spinning was done using a spindle or ‘distaff’, a spinning wheel considered to be far too expensive for a farmer to own. In any case, Mrs Rackett thought it unnecessary as she was more used to the simple spindle.

‘That’s why they call women the “distaff” side of the family,’ the older woman informed her, ‘because they use the spindle.’ It was a highly decorated stick with a disc at the top held on a thread by a hook. The carded wool had to be attached to it in a particular way before the spinning could actually begin. Mrs Rackett expertly worked her stick so that the weight of it turned at just the right speed, pulling out the wool at the same time so that the resulting yarn wound neatly onto the spindle.

Ella struggled to emulate her expertise but soon became
frustrated by her own inadequacy. Either the spindle wouldn’t spin properly, or it would constantly change direction, the yarn refusing to evenly wrap itself around the stick, or it would become snarled and tangled. She couldn’t even decide which hand to use, and they both very soon became all sticky and sweaty.

‘Oh, it’s hopeless, I’ll never learn,’ she cried, as the fibre bunched up into another useless lump.

Mrs Rackett chuckled as she leant over to help untangle the mess. ‘’Course you will, given patience and practise. Just let the spindle unwind a little, that’s it, now spin it again. Don’t tug too hard or you’ll break the yarn. You know what they used to say: cross patch, lift the latch, sit by the fire and spin. You can’t be angry when you spin because of the steady rhythm of the job. It’s very relaxing after a hard day’s work.’

Ella thought it unlikely she ever could relax, but after a while she did begin to get the hang of it, and became quite absorbed by the task, however flawed her work was in comparison to the older woman’s. Surprisingly, it was Amos who called an end to the lesson.

‘That’s enough for one evening. Tha’s made good progress. You can try again another night. We all need our sleep now.’

And he was right. She was indeed tired, yet Ella went to her bed with reluctance, and with a heavy heart. Every night it seemed lonelier than ever. If only she had a proper marriage, with a man who loved her. She listened to her husband’s heavy footsteps climbing up to the attic above and wished, as she did more and more
these days, that Amos cared for her just a little.

There had been a time when she’d feared him as she had her own father, when she hadn’t wanted him in her bed. She’d so resented being forcibly married off she hadn’t properly given their marriage a chance. Ella saw that now, and regretted it. Of course Amos too had made mistakes, with his lack of trust and refusal to take her into Kendal, his assumption that she was no virgin and would play him false, not to mention the unrelenting work routine, which had come as a great shock to her system.

But ever since she’d instigated their lovemaking when he’d been half asleep, Ella had never been able to erase the wonder of that moment from her mind. She wanted him, now more than ever. And since Tilda’s illness he’d shown her great kindness and respect, and Ella knew in her heart that she loved him. If only he could love her. Would they ever be man and wife in truth, as well as in name? If only she could learn to spin some happiness for the pair of them.

Mercy was delighted to be home but filled with a bitter resentment over Livia’s presence. What on earth was she doing here when she’d had the kind of privileged upbringing that Mercy could only dream of, stealing all the love from their father that had been denied her simply because she was illegitimate? Not for a moment did Mercy trust that I-am-your-best-friend attitude which the other girl seemed to have adopted. And just because she didn’t have a patronising, nose-in-the-air attitude, didn’t mean she wasn’t far too full of herself. Didn’t the quality
always think themselves better than everyone else?

Now unemployed, Mercy felt she was right back where she’d started, in dire need of a job and a decent future. There wasn’t even much in the way of weaving and knitting. Life was really quite depressing.

And so she took out her resentment on Livia.

Mercy enjoyed queening it over this more fortunate sister of hers, and since she knew the neighbourhood so much better than Livia, she’d pretend to show her the secret parts of Fellside. ‘It’s not wise to take short cuts on your own. You can quickly lose your bearings,’ she warned.

‘So Jack informs me.’

Mercy despised that calm, unruffled manner of hers, that hoity-toity, I-know-it-all attitude.

Sometimes, as she went about visiting old friends, Mercy would deliberately lead her into unsafe places through a maze of dark alleys and ginnels. Then she’d hide in a doorway, watching as Livia began to panic on finding herself alone, grow confused and get thoroughly lost trying to find her own way back. Or she’d take her into shady corners where groups of youths would throw muck and stones at them, or hover threateningly close so that Livia would grow nervous. Mercy would frighten her with tales of what they intended to do to them, then urge her to turn tail and run, while she would remain with the lads, laughing her head off.

Irritatingly, Livia soon grew wise to these tricks, and began to be amused rather than put off by them. And she remained obstinately kind.

Mercy was also jealous of Livia’s obvious friendship
with Jack. What Jack saw in her, Mercy couldn’t comprehend. They weren’t suited at all, didn’t even come from the same world. Why couldn’t he see that she was only amusing herself with him? Mercy said as much to him one day.

‘She’ll drop you the moment she gets a better offer.’

Jack had looked at her, smiled, and said only, ‘Maybe she won’t get a better offer than me. I’m pretty damn good, you know.’

Mercy had her lovely George now, of course, but she still thought of Jack as her own very special friend, and resented Livia taking him from her. She wanted him to hate the Angel family every bit as much as she did.

George too was having difficulty finding employment since he’d only ever been a farm labourer, his true calling, she supposed, and he loved the work. But there wasn’t much call for tending sheep here in Kendal itself. Between them they didn’t have a penny to their name, having used up the last of their savings while on the road, driven back to town by Mercy’s homesickness. It certainly wasn’t going to be as easy to earn a living here as she’d first hoped. And without a job there was precious little chance of them ever being able to set up home together. In the meantime they had to be content with sharing a straw pallet on Jessie’s hard floor.

Mercy found this particularly hard to accept when she considered that this posh, so-called half-sister of hers must be loaded with brass, yet quite clearly kept it all to herself.

‘I think it’s time we talked, don’t you?’ Livia said to Mercy one day. ‘There are things you should know about us, your new family. I’m sure there must be lots of questions you want to ask. Finding out you even existed has been something of a surprise so far as I’m concerned, and it must be even more so for you. I didn’t realise I had another sister until Jack told me about you. We’ve all been looking for you ever since.’

Mercy snorted her disbelief. ‘I can’t see why you’d care.’

Livia raised questioning brows. ‘Why wouldn’t I? And why wouldn’t I be concerned that my father had started bullying you too?’

A small silence while Mercy digested this remark, uncertain as to its true meaning. Was she saying that her father had been known to bully other girls at the store? Or did she mean that as well as abandoning Mercy and her mother, Josiah Angel had then started to bully her too?

They were sitting on the steps that led up to Fountain Brow, a group of bare-bottomed children playing in the dirt nearby. A man with a handcart rumbled by, hawked and spat into the filthy gutter, and Mercy noticed how Livia quickly pulled her skirt away in case he spattered snot on it. The gesture almost made her laugh out loud. It proved how fancy and fastidious she was.

‘You don’t belong in these parts. Why don’t you go home to yer posh house, your rich friends and yer doting papa? What are you doing slumming it here wi’ us lot?’

Livia sighed. ‘Let me tell you about my doting papa.’ And she did. In a few blunt sentences, well laced with bitterness, Livia described the years of abuse at her
father’s hands. She told about Ella’s forced marriage, Maggie’s suicide, although she claimed the reason was that she’d been driven to the point of despair by their father’s bullying. The facts about the pregnancy were still very much her private secret, and would remain so until she’d found the courage, and the right moment, to confront her father on the subject. Livia went on to explain that this was the reason she’d finally walked out, and as she talked, Mercy’s mouth fell open.

‘But I thought—’

‘That we’d led a spoilt, sheltered existence, pampered and cosseted by an adoring father?’ Livia’s sigh this time was heavy with sadness. ‘I wish that had been the case. I wish I could take you home to him now and say, “Father, here is a welcome addition to our family, a new daughter to treasure.” But he doesn’t even treasure his legitimate daughters, seeing us only as pawns to move about the chessboard of his life to his own advantage. He has damaged us all by his cruel treatment of us, by his resolve to exercise power over our lives, having first destroyed our mother. It is no surprise to me that he turned on you too, bullying you and having you beaten and locked away. It’s typical of him.’

Mercy struggled to readjust her thoughts. ‘But why do you let him get away with it? Why don’t you stand up to him?’

Livia shook her head in despair. ‘With what? As his daughters living at home we had no say over our own lives. He had all the power.’ She told Mercy then about the cage in the tower room, the shackles and the butcher’s
hook, the strap he used on them regularly.

The younger girl’s eyes widened in shock, hardly able to take in what she was hearing. This was the last thing she’d expected. By the sound of it she’d been the fortunate one, after all. At least Mercy had been loved and cared for by her darling ma, whereas Livia’s mother had died years ago, leaving those poor girls with a brute for a father.

Who’d’ve thought it? The quality were even more of a mystery than she’d bargained for.

Livia said, ‘He’ll be furious when he finds out you’re back in Kendal. I’m afraid that he’ll see you as a threat to his precious reputation. Stay well clear of Angel House, Mercy. Don’t ever allow him to lure you in there. I beg you never to trust him.’

Mercy shook her head in disbelief. ‘What you say may well be true, but Josiah Angel as good as killed my ma by his neglect, and one day I mean to tell him so. I want to give that man a piece of my mind.’

‘Just forget him,’ Livia urged. ‘Seeking revenge will do you no good at all. I wish I had money to give you, a job to offer, but I don’t have a penny to my name. I swear I’ll find some way to help you and George, to help all my friends who live here on Fellside. Trust me, I’ll do everything I possibly can. In the meantime, I would so like us to be friends. To be real sisters. I’ve lost one already, I don’t want to lose another.’