The Rainbow Years (18 page)
Authors: Rita Bradshaw
Amy’s reply was lost in the harsh scraping of Perce’s chair as he stood up. ‘I’m off. Business in town.’
‘Business?’ Ronald’s voice was sharp, and not for the first time Bruce felt his father was as suspicious of Perce’s activities as he was. ‘What business are you doing at this time of night?’
Perce turned at the kitchen door and looked at them all, his handsome face unsmiling. He shrugged. ‘Probably nowt,’ he said offhandedly. ‘A pal of mine mentioned a boat brought in some damaged goods they were going to sell off cheap but there might be nowt in it.’
More likely goods that fell off the back of a lorry. Bruce stared at his brother. But if Perce wanted to risk a spell inside, that was up to him. He was sick of challenging him about it. And he was glad Perce was going out; he wanted to ask Amy if Perce had tried it on at all but there always seemed to be someone or other about. Perhaps tonight he’d be able to have a quiet word with her. He had thought more than once lately about striking out down south, especially since he had been on short time, but he didn’t like the idea of Amy being left without any protection if Perce had his eye on her. Not that he thought that Perce would try to make her do anything she didn’t want to. Did he?
As Perce left the house, Bruce was forced to recognise he really wasn’t sure.
An hour later Bruce had his opportunity to ask Amy about Perce. Eva and Harriet and the twins were playing outside, the two younger children were in bed and Ronald and May were arguing heatedly in the kitchen, a not uncommon occurrence. Amy had taken a pile of mending through to the sitting room and was tackling a torn shirt sleeve when Bruce walked in.
‘They’re at it again, tearing strips off each other.’ He shook his head wearily.‘Why can’t they give it a rest now and again?’
There was no reply to be made to this. Instead she tried to lighten his uncharacteristically melancholy mood. ‘Is this one of your shirts and, if so, what on earth have you been doing to tear it so badly? The sleeve’s hanging on by a thread.’
He glanced at the offending article. ‘It’s Perce’s.’
He sensed rather than saw her recoil, and when she quietly put the shirt back in the basket and brought out one of Thomas’s little vests, he sat up straighter on the hard horse-hair sofa and said without any preamble, ‘Has Perce been bothering you?’
‘What?’ The small vest fell out of her fingers.
‘He has, hasn’t he? What’s he said? What’s he done?’
There were a few moments of silence in which he imagined all sorts of things before she said, ‘He hasn’t done anything.’
‘But he’s said something? Something that’s frightened you?’
Again the hesitation before she said, ‘No. No, he hasn’t.’
He didn’t believe her but he couldn’t very well drag the truth out of her. ‘If he does anything, I want you to tell me, all right? Do you understand what I’m saying?’
Whether she understood him or not he never got to find out because his father stomped into the room in the next moment, his face as black as thunder. ‘You coming for a jar?’
Bruce stared at his father. Unlike quite a few of the men they worked with, his father rarely frequented public houses, even on pay day. He would sometimes have a bottle of beer at home but that was normally when he or Perce had brought a couple in, and this had happened less and less since they had been on short time. His father’s only indulgence was his baccy.
‘Now?’ Bruce asked, looking up into his father’s furious face.
‘Aye, now.’
Bruce got to his feet. The row was probably a continuation of the one the night before; his mam never let anything drop.
Amy watched them go. She was aware of her aunt banging about in the kitchen but she didn’t go in to her, her mind preoccupied with her conversation with Bruce. She was glad her uncle had come in when he had. She didn’t lie very well but she couldn’t tell Bruce the truth. If he started on Perce, there was no knowing where things would end. And it wasn’t as if Perce had done anything since the time he’d told her she was going to be his lass. He might well have forgotten all about it; he had girlfriends, after all. This thought carried no conviction. She only had to catch Perce’s eye now and again to know he still wanted her.The expression on his face at these moments had the power to make her flesh creep.
She began to apply neat stitches to the little vest, her thoughts causing her to frown as she worked. If it wasn’t for the knowledge of how much it would upset her grandma, she would ask Aunt Kitty if she could move in with her and Mr and Mrs Price. They would be happy to have her, she knew they would, but her gran wouldn’t understand why she wanted to leave Uncle Ronald’s and she couldn’t very well tell her about Perce. If her gran then told her granda he’d twist it round so it was all her fault somehow, and Perce would probably deny everything anyway. A huge family row would ensue and it would be her gran who would be the most upset. No, she had to stick it here, Perce or no Perce, but if he came out in the open and said anything else she would make it plain she hadn’t changed her mind and never would.
She sighed, breaking the thread to the vest with her teeth and then reaching into the basket for another garment.
It was some time later when the front door knocker banged. Once upon a time she would have jumped up and answered the door herself, now she waited for her aunt to do it. She wasn’t going to go back to being at everyone’s beck and call and it was little things like this that set the tone, she’d found. She still did plenty to help round the house - she glanced at the basket of mending - but these days it wasn’t taken for granted and her aunt actually thanked her now and again.
She heard voices and then the sound of someone being shown into the front room. Her aunt popped her head round the sitting-room door in the next moment and the look on her face brought Amy to her feet. ‘It’s the Father,’ May whispered as Amy hurried over to her. Father Lee had come partly out of retirement the year before when the situation with the young priest had become sensitive, and now it was the elderly priest who made any necessary house calls. ‘Father Fraser rang him and asked him to come round.’
‘Is it Gran?’ Amy’s hand clutched at her throat and all the colour left her face.
‘No, no, it’s your granda. He was took bad at work apparently. Can you go and fetch your uncle from the Blue Bell? It would be the one night he’s out drinking. I don’t know what the Father will think.’
Amy, her eyes wide and questioning now, began to say, ‘What’s happened to—’ but her aunt cut her off with an urgent flap of her hand.
‘Get your hat and coat and go now. And be sure to tell him the Father’s waiting to talk to him. And tell Eva and the others to come in while you’re about it, I didn’t realise it was so late.Your uncle at the pub and the bairns out playing in the dark, the Father will think we’re as bad as the McHaffies in Newcastle Road.’
The McHaffies were a family notorious for their in-sobriety and neglect of their numerous dirty-nosed offspring, and knowing that whatever had befallen her grandfather, the priest catching them on the hop would upset her aunt more, Amy said, ‘No, no he won’t, he knows you and Uncle Ronald too well for that.’ She brushed past her aunt as she spoke and hurried into the kitchen and through to the scullery where her outdoor clothes were hanging on their peg.
As she was buttoning her coat, her aunt appeared in the doorway. ‘Go the front way, it’s quicker,’ she muttered, taking Amy’s arm and leading her back into the hall as though Amy didn’t know where the front door was. Her aunt opened the door and virtually pushed Amy out into the street, stuffing a couple of peppermints into the pocket of her coat. ‘Tell Bruce and your uncle to suck these on the way back,’ she muttered. ‘I don’t want them breathing all over Father Lee stinking of beer.’
Amy fairly flew down the road. The pavements were shining with the drizzling rain that had begun to fall, and when she came to the corner where a group of children, her cousins among them, were playing some game or other, she called over her shoulder, ‘Eva! Your mam wants you all in and look lively, Father Lee’s called round,’ knowing that would move them quicker than anything.
The street lamps were making pools of muted light on the wet ground as she turned in the direction of Fulwell Road and the Blue Bell Inn, and she had almost reached the public house when her arm was caught from behind and she was swung round with such force she ended bang up against Perce’s broad chest. ‘Where’re you off to?’ he said thickly, the smell on his breath and slurred voice suggesting it wasn’t only Bruce and her uncle who had been drinking. ‘Who are you meeting this time of night and in the dark?’
‘Let go, you’re hurting.’ She pulled away from him, her voice fierce. ‘Your mam’s sent me for your da, Granda’s been took bad.’
‘Oh aye?’ He didn’t seem to care and this was confirmed when he said, ‘I don’t want you working in that restaurant at night, you hear me? It’s bad enough you’re in the café in the day with lads ogling you and the like, and you in that dress an’ apron like a French maid in a promenade peepshow.’
‘What?’ She didn’t understand the reference to the French maid but she knew it wasn’t very nice because peepshows were mucky.
‘You heard me. And don’t pretend you don’t know what they want. Well, I’m not having it. You’re not taking that job.’
‘I am.’ He was blocking her way and when she tried to move round him, he didn’t let her. Her heart was pounding but she was angry as well as frightened, and her voice was loud when she said,‘Let me pass, I need to get Uncle Ronald. The Father is waiting at home for him.’
‘Let him wait.’ Suddenly he reached out and Amy found herself manhandled into the shadows, one beefy arm round her waist lifting her off her feet and his other hand across her mouth, stifling the scream that rose in her. ‘I said I’d give you time to get used to the idea you’re going to be my lass and I have, I’ve played it straight, haven’t I? But I won’t be messed about. You try playing fast and loose with me and see what you get,’ he said over her head.
She struggled violently, her arms and legs flailing, but he was big and solid and could have been a brick wall for all the effect she had on him.
‘Aw, Amy, Amy.’ She found the trembling softness in his tone now more terrifying than his threats. He had her pinned in a shop doorway across the road from the Blue Bell Inn, and although the outside of the public house was lit well enough, they were standing in almost total blackness. He kept his hand across her mouth as he turned her round to face him, holding her captive by pressing his lower body against her. ‘Be nice to me, that’s all I’m asking. There’s plenty who wouldn’t have waited as long as I have. Them other lasses, they mean nowt, you know that, but a man has needs. That’s all I go with them for. But you, if you’re nice to me, I wouldn’t look the side another lass was on. I swear it. And we’ll do the courtin’ however you want it. I’ll tell me mam if that’s what you want.’
When his hand moved she tried to scream but his mouth had already covered hers, wet and cavernous. His tongue forced her lips apart and his spittle made her want to retch. She bit down hard, causing him to swear as he jerked his head back, but again his hand covered her lower face. Wedging her with his legs, his other hand was now inside her coat, pulling at the buttons of her blouse. They gave way, accompanied by the sound of tearing and then his hand was on the small full mound of her breast, squeezing hard.
Nearly mad with fear, she continued to fight, trying to twist and turn but she was like a rag doll in his grasp. His hand left her body to fumble with his trousers and then something hard was pressing against her belly. ‘You wouldn’t have it nice, would you?’ He was trying to yank her skirt up as he spoke, his breath hot on her face. ‘I wanted to do it proper but you wouldn’t have any of it.You’ve made me do this.’
As he released the hold on her lower body with his legs just long enough to hoist her skirt up round her waist, she acted. From somewhere she found the strength to bring her knee up into his groin. He emitted a shrill sound, something between a scream and an animal yelp, before crumpling at her knees, his hands going between his legs.
It had been instinct that had guided her actions and it was the same sense of self-preservation that made her kick out at him and send him sprawling so that she could jump over him. She felt him try to clutch at her but he was doubled up and groaning and in no state to chase her. For a moment her legs seemed too weak to hold her as she stumbled out of the doorway onto the pavement, but terror enabled her to run blindly across the road into the light. Her hand was actually on the door of the public house when she realised the state of her clothing. She turned to look back but the doorway was in blackness and she couldn’t see if Perce was still there or not. Certainly he wasn’t coming for her and that was the only thing that mattered.
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