Ragamuffin Angel Page 9

  ‘For crying out loud, woman! Get yourself away before there’s murder done. We can’t hold him much longer.’

  ‘I’m goin’.’ Sadie drew herself up as she spoke and her tone could have been described as disdainful as she added, ‘I wouldn’t stay in his company for a hundred guineas, the gutless swine.’

  Once outside the Earl of Durham Sadie found she was shaking like a leaf and the pain in her chest, which had first made its appearance in the weeks after the miscarriage and which had got steadily worse over the intervening years, was choking her breath and sending pains radiating out down her arm. She had to get away, they might let John loose in a minute. It was the one thought in her mind and it enabled her to stumble along the quay, her hand pressed to her heart, and into the passageway at the side of the Crown and make her way up into the High Street where she leant against the wall of a terraced house for some minutes before continuing on her way.

  How many times she had to rest she didn’t know, but when she finally reached the house in the wood the sky was lightening and the dawn chorus just beginning.

  She was dying.

  She had fought against it with each laboured breath, but as Sadie sank down on to the wooden settle she couldn’t fight the knowledge of her imminent demise any longer.

  ‘Mam?’

  It was still a little early for Connie to be up but her daughter was beside her in a moment, and she saw Connie’s face was white with horror which indicated how bad she looked.

  ‘Mam, what’s wrong? What is it?’

  ‘Listen to me, lass. Listen.’ Sadie reached out and gripped the young hands, her lips blue and her face ashen. ‘The Stewart family have done this. You hear me, lass? The Stewart family. I’m not a bad woman, I’ve only ever loved two men in me life. One was your da an’ the other one was Jacob, an’ he’d have married me if they’d let us alone. Oh aye, he would.’ But the pain was hitting with renewed ferocity and a steel clamp had seized her chest, cutting off the words and bringing rushing darkness.

  Oh no, Lord, not like this. Please, God, not now, not with the bairns still so young. And then, as she hovered between two worlds, You forgave Mary Magdalene and her no better than she should have been. Forgive me, Lord.

  Chapter Seven

  Father McGuigan sat very stiffly on one of the straight-backed chairs under the open window, his cup of tea steaming gently on the table in front of him as he gazed across the room at Peggy. What were things coming to? he asked himself silently. As if it wasn’t enough that Sodom and Gomorrah had visited the world in the form of that salacious and promiscuous dancer, Mata Hari, who had been so highly acclaimed for her degenerate prancing in Paris the month before, here was one of his flock – and a good, devout Catholic, in spite of the shame of having had such a daughter- daring to try and justify the unjustifiable.

  ‘I repeat, Mrs Cook, there is no excuse for the dissolute lifestyle which Sadie adopted some years ago,’ he stated grimly, his thin nostrils twitching. ‘You would have been clothed and fed in the workhouse, and the children would have received an education. To my mind that is far better than opening the door to the devil.’

  The priest hadn’t taken his cold opaque eyes off Peggy as he had spoken, and after a pause – during which the pale-blue stare seemed to penetrate right into Peggy’s skull – the old woman mumbled, ‘Yes, Father,’ as she thought, There speaks one who is sure he’ll never end his days there. And then almost immediately the superstition of centuries stepped in and she mentally crossed herself, seeking God’s forgiveness for venturing to criticise one of His chosen ones. It was the shock, that’s what it was. If she lived to be a hundred she would never forget waking up this morning to the sound of Connie’s agonised crying, and finding her granddaughter cradling Sadie’s body in her thin arms, all the while raining kisses on the beautiful lifeless face. Thirty years old. Her bonny bairn had been but thirty years old. And now there was only purgatory if Sadie had departed this life in the grace of God, or – heaven forbid – eternal damnation. And there was no doubt where Father McGuigan placed her.

  Oh, why did Father Hedley have to be ill in bed with bronchitis? she railed in the next instance. If ever they had needed the presence of the wise kind priest she had known for over forty years it was now. And look at Connie. Making Father McGuigan a cup of tea and then disappearing outside with Larry instead of sitting quietly and respectfully as was the custom. But then the bairn was beside herself. When Connie had returned home from Bishopwearmouth where she’d informed the authorities and the priest about Sadie’s death there had been no prising her from her mother’s side; sitting there stroking her mam’s face and talking to her as though she was going to answer . . . Dear God, dear God. Where was it all going to end?

  ‘God won’t be mocked, Mrs Cook.’ Father McGuigan, having taken a good swallow of the tea, returned to the attack. ‘He is righteous in all His ways – all, Mrs Cook – and I shouldn’t have to remind you of the fact. I –’

  There was a sudden skirmish outside – they heard it quite distinctly through the open window – and when the door of the cottage burst open a moment later and Peggy saw the look on her granddaughter’s face she closed her eyes for an instant. Connie had been listening. She might have known.

  ‘My mam was a good person.’ Larry had followed Connie into the cottage a second or two later and now Connie put her arm about the young child’s shoulders, drawing him into her side, as she approached the disdainful priest. ‘She was, she was a good person.’

  There was a pause during which Father McGuigan and the red-faced girl stared at each other, and the priest’s voice was both dismissive and cutting when he said, ‘Do not speak of things of which you do not know.’

  ‘I do know!’ Connie’s voice had risen and again Peggy closed her eyes for an infinitesimal moment. To shout at a priest! Of all the things that had happened that day this filled her with the most alarm and foreboding. What was the lass thinking of? She’d bring down the wrath of the Almighty on their heads. ‘Just ’cos me mam worked in a laundry it doesn’t make her bad!’

  ‘Worked in a . . .?’ Father McGuigan turned to Peggy and his lustreless eyes were pitiless. ‘Is that what you told her?’

  ‘Father, please.’ Peggy was wringing her hands now.

  ‘Is it, Mrs Cook?’

  ‘Aye, yes, Father.’

  ‘He that speaketh truth sheweth forth righteousness, but a false witness deceit. Proverbs twelve, verse seventeen,’ Father McGuigan stated coldly.

  ‘Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth, and let not thine heart be glad when he stumbleth, lest the Lord see it and it displease Him.’ Connie had little idea of what she was repeating but the verse she had learnt at school the previous week somehow seemed apt. Father McGuigan didn’t like her mam, he had never liked her. And priest or not she hated him.

  The effect of her words on the priest was electrifying. Father McGuigan stared at her, his eyes nearly popping out of his head, and then his voice was like thunder as he bellowed, ‘You dare, you dare to quote scripture at me, you insolent girl?’

  ‘She’s just a bairn, Father, she doesn’t know what she’s saying.’ Peggy had never been so horrified in her life. ‘She means no harm, really. Please, Father –’

  ‘I know what your granddaughter means, Mrs Cook, and she is your daughter’s child all right.’ Father McGuigan kept his eyes on Connie’s defiant face as he spoke. ‘The sins of the mother . . . Your mother was a prostitute, girl, a woman of the streets. She did not work in a laundry and the money she earned was not by honest toil. Do you understand me?’

  Connie believed him instantly. A hundred little things which had puzzled her over the years fell into place and completed a giant jigsaw in her mind. And it was in that moment, at twelve years of age, that Connie left the realms of childhood behind for ever.

  Her face had gone as white as lint, but to Peggy’s petrified gaze her granddaughter seemed to grow in stature as she faced the dour old man and shouted, �
��Out! Out of this house! An’ don’t you dare set foot here again.’

  ‘What?’

  Peggy was past speaking now, she just watched the drama unfolding in front of her eyes with dumb disbelief.

  ‘You heard me, you . . . you horrible man. My mam did what she did because she loved us an’ because she had to. She knew me granny was frightened of the workhouse an’ she wanted to keep us all together, that’s all, but the Church didn’t help her, did it. You come here, sayin’ she was bad an’ all, but you’d have left us to starve, wouldn’t you. It’s your fault she had to do what she did.’

  Neither of them noticed Peggy as she slid silently to the floor in a dead faint.

  The tall, angular figure of Father McGuigan was bending over slightly, his hands like claws, and in that instant no one would have looked upon his dark countenance and said he was a man of the cloth. The content of his words, along with the manner in which they were spoken, matched the furious rage contorting his thin face. ‘Repent of this wicked rebelliousness whilst there is still time,’ he ground out slowly, ‘or you will surely join your mother in eternal damnation. Come to the Lord’s holy mass and make a good act of contrition.’

  ‘My mam’s not in hell!’

  ‘What? What did you say?’

  ‘She’s not.’ And then, as Peggy raised her head and attempted to sit up, Connie said to Larry, ‘Help your granny, pet,’ before walking with quiet deliberation across the room and opening the door. And as Father McGuigan comprehended the gesture his lean, skeletal frame seemed to swell and expand, stretching the contours of his face, but he said not another word until he was outside in the bright afternoon sunlight.

  ‘Your mother chose the wide path of corruption and dishonour.’ He glared at Connie and she, in turn, glared back. Her heart was so sore that the priest’s displeasure seemed like nothing in the enormity of this trouble that had fallen upon them. Her lovely mam was dead. Her mam. They had come to take her away just half an hour before Father McGuigan had called, and they had spoken of an examination, something called a post mortem, to determine the cause of death. She could have told them what had killed her mother, she thought bitterly. The Stewart family. She hated them, she hated them all. And then the memory of a tall, lanky lad with kind brown eyes and gentle hands flashed into her mind before she resolutely pushed it away, feeling that just the memory of Dan Stewart was a betrayal of her mother.

  ‘I shall pray for you, for you all,’ Father McGuigan snapped tightly, swinging round and marching out of the clearing like an enormous black crow.

  ‘Connie?’ Larry was tugging at her blouse, and she turned to see her grandmother on her feet. Peggy was clutching at the back of a chair and she suddenly looked a very, very old woman.

  ‘Connie?’ Larry spoke again, drawing her attention back to his small face.

  ‘Aye, hinny?’ said Connie heavily.

  ‘Mam?’ he asked hopefully.

  Connie felt a great weight descend on her. She had known for a long time that this little brother wasn’t like other children, although by unspoken common assent the matter had never been discussed at home. But now she met her grandmother’s rheumy, pink-rimmed eyes and their look held for a long moment.

  ‘Mam’s not here, hinny,’ she said at last. ‘Mam’s . . . gone.’

  ‘Workin’?’

  ‘Aye. Aye, she’s workin’. She’s had to go away for a time but you’ll be a good lad with me an’ Gran, won’t you.’

  ‘Larry good lad.’ The small head nodded. ‘Me spice cake, Connie?’

  ‘Aye. Just one, mind.’

  Connie watched her brother as he trotted across the room and took one of the currant teacakes Peggy had put out for the priest. Larry had been here all day, he had witnessed her sorrow and that of her grandmother, the weeping and agonising, and he’d cried too. He had watched the strangers come and carry his mother’s body away, and he’d listened to what had been said, and yet, somehow, it hadn’t really touched him at all.

  It had been after the attack on Jacob that Connie had first noticed Larry’s strange ability to shut out the bad things in life and only to see what he wanted to see. It might have been there before, she wasn’t sure, but from that harrowing night she felt Larry had changed. It was as though her brother had retreated into a world of his own – a world of his own making – since that time, and whenever things got unpleasant or difficult or confusing he simply blotted them out of his consciousness. It worried her, it worried her very much, but perhaps in this instance it was a blessing. Certainly it had been clear to them all that the only time the small boy got upset or concerned was when she, his sister, was distressed. Even this morning Connie had had the feeling that Larry’s weeping was solely a reflection of her own sorrow, and once she’d dried her eyes and forced herself to smile and converse with him, his happy demeanour had seemed to bear this out.

  ‘Spice cake, Connie?’ Larry was making his way back across the room, a teacake in his outstretched hand.

  ‘No, no thank you, hinny. You eat yours, I don’t want one.’

  ‘Aye, Connie. Spice cake.’ The little face frowned up at her as he reached her side, and his voice was insistent.

  Had he noticed she hadn’t eaten anything the day? It would appear so. Connie suddenly felt an overwhelming surge of love for this damaged little person and, bending down, she hugged her brother to her as she whispered, ‘I love you, Larry. I love you very much.’ They were going to rise above all this – the humiliation and the degradation – and she wasn’t going to let Father McGuigan or anyone else say anything about her mam or the rest of her family, she told herself fiercely. She would fight the whole world if she had to, and she’d win.

  It was another four days before Father Hedley was well enough to make the journey from the East End, and it so happened he met Connie returning from the farm with a half side of bacon, in the field approaching the wood. He immediately noticed the change in the girl, who he had – until that moment – thought of as a child. It wasn’t just the fact that Connie had put her hair up – gone were the childish plaits and in their place was a thick shining coil on top of her head – but the new maturity was in her stance, her attitude, even the way she greeted him, her voice controlled and circumspect as she nodded and said, ‘Good afternoon, Father Hedley.’ And then, before he could reply, there was a trace of the old impetuous child he knew as she added, ‘You don’t look too good, Father. Are you supposed to be out yet?’

  ‘Out yet’ was very appropriate, Father Hedley thought with a touch of dark humour. The week’s confinement in bed with no avenue of escape from Father McGuigan’s presence had seemed like prison, and after their difference of opinion – which had escalated into a full-scale clash – regarding the burial of Sadie Bell, things had been unbearable. Still, he had held out and got his own way on that, and there was no need for the family to ever know that Father McGuigan had intended for Sadie to be buried in a common grave and without the rites of the Catholic church.

  ‘I’m middling, Connie, if the truth be known, and much as I’m thankful for the good Lord’s sunshine this heat is taking it out of me. But I’m glad I’ve seen you like this. Perhaps we could sit a while and have a little chat before I go and offer my condolences to your grandmother?’

  ‘Aye, yes, Father.’ It was not said with any enthusiasm, and the reason for this became clear after they had seated themselves on a fallen tree trunk conveniently situated in the shade of a spreading’ oak tree at the very edge of the wood, and Connie said, ‘I suppose Father McGuigan told you what happened when he came to see us? Well, I’m not sorry, Father. I’m not. I don’t care what my mam did, she was a good person, and for him to say what he did –’

  ‘There, there, child. Don’t upset yourself.’ Father Hedley couldn’t tell her that he had secretly applauded her courage whilst being amazed at her temerity, and he had no intention of being hypocritical either, so he passed over the incident with a wave of his hand and a muttered, ‘I didn
’t come to discuss that, Connie. That’s over and done with.’

  ‘Oh. Oh I see, Father.’

  ‘No, it was what you mentioned to me last time we met, about work of some kind. I suppose the need is all the more great now?’

  Connie nodded. The funeral would take every penny they had but she was determined her mam would have a proper send off, especially after what Father McGuigan had revealed. It was only the heathen or the lowest of the low that didn’t provide for such; everyone knew that even the poorest of families would beg, borrow, steal or pawn every item they had – the clothes off their backs – in order to have ‘a good do’. Never mind the bairns were running around with raggedy backsides and they were weeks behind with the rent, proprieties had to be observed and folk knew that the payment for a special mass and a good wake for the newly departed meant dividends in the hereafter.

  ‘I’ll do anythin’, Father.’ She looked up at him as she spoke, and the warm creamy tint to her clear skin, the deep violet-blue of the heavily lashed eyes and the mass of shining golden hair brought fresh fear into the old priest’s heart. He didn’t want her to have to do anything; that was exactly what had happened to the mother and already Connie showed signs of a beauty that would eclipse Sadie’s. Mind, from when she was knee-high to a grasshopper Connie had had something Sadie didn’t have. He would have liked to have called it her faith, and perhaps her inner strength could be attributed to that in part, but she was a fighter too and he had recognised the Boadicea spirit very early on.

  ‘Well, work isn’t easy to come by, Connie, not for a young lass just leaving school, but I understand there’s a job as a paid helper in the workhouse laundry if you’re interested. Somehow’ – and now there was a twinkle in his eyes – ‘the matron is under the impression you are fourteen years of age.’