Water Gypsies (16 page)

And he walked away along the wharf looking, Maryann thought, as if the cares of the world had been laid not at the feet of his Saviour but on his own thin shoulders.

‘I’ve got a pain in my belly.’

Joley sat beside Maryann on the side bench as she stirred the mince and gravy on the stove; every so often he screwed up his face in pain. ‘Don’t want any tea tonight.’

‘You must be sickening for summat.’ Maryann felt his forehead, but it wasn’t hot. ‘Best get you to bed soon.’

When the food was ready, Joel and Bobby brought the other children in, Joel lifting Ada and Esther over onto the boat. They could toddle about outside now, holding his hands or on reins. Bobby said he’d take his plateful back to the
Esther Jane
, while the family squeezed into the
Theodore
.

‘S’coming down thick now,’ Joel told her, rinsing his hands in the dipper of warm water Maryann had put out for them all on the counter. She peered out. Fog was curling round the wharf, rising over the dark water so that the outlines of everything were blurred and uncertain.

‘Should be ready to unload us first thing, any rate.’ He climbed down and sat on the back bed next to Joley, while the others squeezed round the table, telling her bits of news he’d picked up from the boats round about. A new baby in one of the families, a Mr Baines had had his leg crushed. Maryann responded with as much interest as she could, but her thoughts were preoccupied with Joley, who was now dozing uneasily on the back bed, and in another, distracting side alley of her mind with the idea of walking the streets until she reached the address Pastor Owen had given her. She tried to dismiss the thought. Of course she wasn’t going to go! Joley was poorly, there was a pea-souper gathering out there and the man was most likely barmy anyhow. But all the time the thought kept coming back, refusing to be chased away. A feeling of need kept rising up in her. It was connected somehow with the way the young man had looked at her, had seemed to see into her. The argument went on in her head as Joel lit the lamp and she spooned out mince and potatoes onto plates. She
couldn’t
go! What would Joel say? And what did she want to go for anyway?
For relief
… the answer floated up from inside.
From how I feel
.

‘Best have this one sleeping in with us tonight,’ Joel was saying, eyeing his son beside him on the bed.

She nodded, settling to her tea. ‘Joel?’

‘Ummm?’ He reached over and his hand pressed warm and heavy on her thigh.

‘I want to go. To that place Pastor Owen was talking about. Just for a bit.’

He looked across at her, baffled. ‘Do you? What for?’

‘I can’t explain, love.’ She looked at her plate. ‘It’s just – for Nance … And everything else that’s happened…’

‘Well – ’ he shrugged – if you want. But it’s come down bad out there. D’you want me or Bobby to come with you?’

‘No, ta.’ She managed a wan smile. ‘I’ll be all right. It’s not far.’

She would be a bit late, she thought. She could just hear a clock from somewhere distant striking eight as she set off along Wharf Road. Almost immediately she stepped out through the hatches she had regretted saying she would go alone. The fog was very thick, making her cough, and was tinged with yellow where it met the light escaping from the cabin.

‘Tara-abit.’ She parted from Joel and hurriedly closed the hatch, tying her bright scarf with the red flowers on over her hair to keep her ears warm, pulling her coat close round her and hurrying as fast as the murk would allow. The road was dark and deserted, hemmed in by warehouses.
Left, left and left again
, he’d said.
Can’t go wrong – it’s no distance
. It felt a long way, though, groping her way through the noxious fog, thick with chemicals and smoke. The only sound she could hear was her own footsteps until she reached a pub and was grateful for the sound of voices and laughter and the whiff of ale on the air. She could still hardly explain to herself what it was that drove her on, shivering in the cold, the need that forced her along these dismal streets.

The chapel was in a side road. Between a toolmaker’s and the end of the houses, he’d said, and from what she could make out of the buildings on either side he seemed to have described it faithfully. From the front window, high up, a tiny thread of light was escaping round the blackout, and once more she was relieved to hear the sound of voices, only this time they were singing. The meeting had obviously begun and Maryann was glad. She could slip in during the hymn and she wouldn’t feel so self-conscious in her old coat and dirty boots if she sat at the back. If she didn’t like it, she’d slip out again and no one’d be the wiser.

To her relief the door opened silently, but when she pushed inside she was dismayed to see how small the chapel was. On each side was a row of pews, only eight or so deep, pressed up against the walls on each side with a narrow aisle in the middle. They looked outsize in the place, as if they had been passed on from a bigger church, and she saw that they were only occupied by a small scattering of people. The singing, of a tune with which she was not familiar, was thin and strained.

The back row of the pews on the left was empty so she slipped into it, moving half way along so she could see round the heads in front and loosening her scarf. Standing with the others while the singing carried on, she looked round. At the front was a raised dais with a plain wooden lectern on it. On the back wall, which was pale green, hung dark blue curtains drawn apart. Between them a wooden cross was fixed to the wall and to the right of it was a door.

Maryann saw that one of the two men standing at the front – dressed in just their own sombre suits – was Pastor James Owen. She was surprised at the sudden sense of relief she felt in seeing him in this strange place. She wasn’t used to public buildings or meetings now. She was used to the cabins of boats. Pastor Owen was not wearing his hat and she saw that his hair was a sludgy brown and obviously not recently aquainted with the barber’s, as it hung in a bedraggled fashion down to his collar. His eyes moved soulfully over the pitiful little congregation as they sang, though his own voice was drowned out by that of the other minister beside him, who seemed to think he had to compensate for the feebleness of everyone else and was booming out the words. ‘Blood … ransom … die…’ came floating to Maryann. She took in the all-over roundness of the man. He had no need of a barber as his head was completely bald and his cranium, cheeks, nose and stomach all had a cheerful, doughnut-like rotundity. She was just taking in another realization, that all the congregation were women, bar one pale, intense-looking man whom she guessed to be in his thirties, when Pastor Owen caught her eye. To her consternation she saw him leave his place and walk down the aisle towards her.

God Almighty!
she thought, her hands going all clammy with nerves.
What’s he doing?
Her heart was pounding.
What’s he coming over here for? He’s not going to show me up in front of all these people is he?
But Pastor Owen simply gave her a faint smile of acknowledgment and stood in at the end of the pew. When the singing stopped he stayed there.

Maryann sat down on the hard seat, which seemed to have been designed to deny any possibility of comfort and forced her to sit bolt upright. She couldn’t get away now, could she? He was blocking one end of the pew and the other was hard up against the wall! Again, she had an unnerving sense that he could see into her mind. There were prayers. Maryann put her hands in her lap and closed her eyes, but didn’t take in a word of what was being said. Her mind was fluttering between the worry that she was sniffing all the time and had nothing to wipe her nose on and noticing that the room smelt of a rank mixture of camphor, urine and frowsty clothes. All the time she was acutely aware of the long shape of Pastor Owen to her right and wondered why had he sat there. What did he want? It had not, before, occurred to her that he wanted something from her.

Next, the minister stood up and loudly, with dramatic sweeps of his arms, preached about the paralysed man whose friends let him down through the roof to be cured by Jesus. Every time he said the Lord’s name, in his Black Country accent, he emphasized it:
JESUS
. On and on he went, about being paralysed by our sins, but the only time Maryann took in anything was when he hammered home the word
JESUS … JESUS
… She felt her mind seize up with boredom. What the hell had she come here for?
JESUS
. She should be back at home with her lad, who was poorly, not sitting here on this flaming hard seat with her backside …
JESUS
… turning numb!

At last, after endless prayers and another dismal hymn, the service ended. She found herself feeling angry and cheated. Where was the sense of forgiveness, of release she had come to find? She rearranged her scarf over her hair and tied the ends, but as she did so, Pastor Owen slid along the pew towards her and looked into her eyes in that way which always made her feel stripped naked.

‘I’m glad you came.’

As Maryann couldn’t truthfully claim the same, she said, ‘So this is your church, is it?’

‘I work with Pastor Joyce, yes. Though, as I’m not in charge of the mission here, I have a little more freedom to go out to the needy instead of waiting for them to come to me.’

Was that what she was then? One of the needy?

There was a pause as she looked down into her lap and Pastor Owen sat forward with his lanky arms resting on his thighs. Maryann just wanted to go, to be at home, but she wasn’t going to be able to get past him yet. Other people were leaving, gathering up their hats, walking sticks and torches, nodding and smiling at him as they went.

‘There’s someone here I’d like you to see,’ he said, staring ahead of him at the cross on the wall. ‘Someone whose soul is also in need of succour and healing – as I believe yours is.’ He looked deep into her eyes again and Maryann felt herself tremble inside at this close attention. ‘That’s why I especially hoped you’d come.’

‘To see? Who?’ She felt panicky now. What was she letting herself in for? She felt suddenly as if Pastor Owen, young and unlikely a prophet as he seemed, knew every single thing about her, that she was dirty and wicked, that she was a woman who had taken the life of her unborn child. And who on earth was he going to present to her? Some ill-used woman whom he’d picked up on the streets, bulging out at the front with some bully’s spawn? A lady of the night that he wanted her to reform? Was he out of his mind? She had come to him for help but he was the one making demands on her.

‘I don’t think… ’ she tried to protest.

‘There’s nothing to be afraid of. It’s just a member of our congregation who carries a weight of sorrow in their heart.’

Maryann thought of the ladies who’d been sitting around her. She couldn’t imagine what possible help she might give any of them, but they hadn’t looked all that fearsome had they? She hoped it wasn’t the intense young man he’d got lined up for her with some odd request, but she was pretty sure she’d seen him leave.

Pastor Owen stood up and turned to her. ‘Assist me – just for a few moments – please, Mrs Bartholomew. It would make a great different to someone, and I believe it would give you rest in your own soul.’

She was drawn in. How could she refuse him? If he had held out his hand to her then, she would have taken it. Instead, he indicated with a movement of his head that they should move along to the front of the chapel. Aflutter with nerves, she followed him.

Sixteen

Pastor Owen led her to the front of the chapel, towards the door which opened off to the right of the cross. Just as they reached it, it opened and Pastor Joyce came out. His big mixing-bowl face took on an expression that was grave about the eyes but smiling at the mouth, the sort of smile he might give to someone bereaved.

‘Ah!’ he cried. ‘Good evening to you! You’ve come to see our poor friend then?’

‘The healing grace of the Lord may well be seen in this place tonight,’ Pastor Owen said. The combination of this pronouncement and the other man’s coffin-side expression made Maryann want to run down the aisle and escape through the back doors. Bewildered, she followed Pastor Owen into a small, dimly lit room. It was bare: a wooden floor, small table in the middle, over which hung a dimly burning light bulb with no shade. There were a couple of hard chairs. The only other thing she noticed was the jaundiced colour of the light, for the walls were yellow. She took in all of this in a couple of seconds because what snatched her attention from anything else, was the figure kneeling sideways on in the far corner. The sight stole the breath from her. She stood quite still, unable to move.

‘Our friend is a spirit deep in remorse,’ Pastor Owen was saying. ‘He has come regularly to our congregation, pouring out to me his misdeeds, his sorrows, which weigh him down and blacken his soul in the eyes of the Lord. All he needs to free him now is to feel the forgiveness of the people he has transgressed against. Without that forgiveness…’ But Maryann wasn’t listening. For her the only thing in the room was the broad-shouldered figure in the black coat, trilby hat pulled well down, raising itself to its feet with a heavy, lumbering movement and beginning to move towards her.

Everything seemed slow, dreamlike. Closer he came, his shape, the gait so utterly familiar, the figure that had haunted her days and polluted her dreams for so many years. He reached the table and loomed over her, his body like a box, filling the room with his square shoulders. The bulb dangled over his head, and with the unhurried relish of one who enjoys inflicting pain, her stepfather raised his head slowly, turning his face out of the shadow to the light and looked into her eyes.

The features were more disfigured than she had even imagined. She began breathing again, with a gasp of revulsion. That night when little Margaret Lambert, driven by his cruelty, had smashed a lamp over his head, the oil had poured out and burned fiercely on him. The left side of his face was completely altered, a mass of puckered flesh reaching right down his neck, where raised ridges alternated with flat areas which had an unnatural shininess. His left eye was completely hidden in the contorted skin. The right side had been burned, though less severely, and it was into Griffin’s lashless right eye that Maryann found herself looking back. She gripped the edge of the table, afraid her legs might give way.