The Urchin's Song Page 9

  Prudence now sat very still as she allowed herself to reflect on the journey she had taken the previous weekend, and the satisfactory outcome which had ensued. It had been sweet, very sweet to find out she had been right all along - that what she’d suspected from the first day the baggage had arrived was true.

  Her Aunt Vera was a fool, they all were - even Barney because he wouldn’t hear a word against Josie - but she had seen straight through the little strumpet. All that talk about her da and Gertie, what did Josie take them for? Well, the others might not have the sense they were born with, but she was on to Josie’s little game. The chit had got tired of looking after her mam and running the household in Sunderland. She’d decided to get away and, knowing Vera had a sister in Newcastle, had told a pack of lies and duped them all. All except herself, Prudence Robson. Her lips formed in a mirthless smile. Young Josie was going to find out very soon that Prudence Robson wasn’t as daft as she looked . . .

  At first Josie thought it was the dream she had been having which had woken her. It wasn’t the first time she had had it; it had been the same for years now. Sometimes whole months would go by and she would think it had finally gone, and then night after night, sometimes for a week at a time, she’d awake hot and desperate and gasping for air.

  It had begun not long after she had met Vera, and the night after her mam had been ill all the previous day. Her mam had been crying and moaning on and off with the belly-ache for hours, and Maud from upstairs had been sitting with her for a long time before she’d shooed them all into the kitchen. Hubert had only been a little baby then; she remembered that because he’d only just learned to sit up and he’d been screaming all day, even when she’d tried to feed him his pap bottle.

  After a while her mam had stopped making a noise and then Maud had come out with the chamber pot which she’d been going to take out into the backyard. Then Gertie had fallen over and cracked her head on the fender and Maud had put the pot down quickly just outside the kitchen in the hall, by the back door. Gertie had been bleeding everywhere, and Jimmy had been bawling and Hubert had made himself sick and then filled his napkin, and in the ensuing pandemonium Maud had forgotten about the chamber pot. And then she, Josie, had been going out into the yard to swill Hubert’s bit of rag through, and she had seen - she had seen what was in it. It had been tiny, the babby, so tiny, but with little arms and legs, and she had wanted to reach down and lift it out of the chamber pot which her da used most nights when he’d been drinking. She hadn’t wanted it to be in there.

  And then in the midst of it all her da had come home. There was a gap in her memory here because the next thing she could recollect was her and her da in the yard, and she’d been hanging on his arm because she knew what he was going to do. But she hadn’t been able to stop him and he had leathered her after with his belt; she still had the scars from his buckle on her back. But she hadn’t cared about that, not even when the blood had caused all her clothes to stick to her for days afterwards and her skin had felt as though it was on fire. All she’d been able to think about was the minute baby lying amongst all the filth and excrement in the privy and being scraped out by the scavengers’ long shovels and tossed in their stinking cart.

  It was from that day she had really hated her father and that night that the nightmare had come. It was always the same. It would be all right at first. All of them, her mam and her three sisters and Jimmy and Hubert would be sitting in a boat on the sea, but a funny sea - black and dark. And then the dreadful fear would fill her and a sense of horror that was paralysing. The sea would begin to lap over the side of the boat but it was thick, like mud, and her da was suddenly there, shouting they were all too heavy. One by one he would push the others out, and she could see their desperate eyes and hear their screams but she was unable to move, held down by some invisible force. And the black sea would suck them under but slowly, horribly slowly, and then she would know it was her turn . . . But she always woke up in the moment that her father’s hands reached out for her.

  Why had she dreamed the dream now? It hadn’t come once since she had been in Newcastle and - foolishly perhaps, she acknowledged as she rubbed her damp palms on her skirt - she had told herself the break from Sunderland had set her free from it.

  And then the knock came at the door again, and she realised someone was outside. Whether it was the inexplicable feeling of dread the dream always left in its wake, or a primeval sixth sense, or just the fact that Josie suddenly became very aware she was all alone in the house apart from the baby, and Gertie and the children upstairs, she didn’t know, but the hairs on the back of her neck were pricking. In the warmth emanating from the range she shivered.

  ‘Don’t be so daft.’ She spoke out loud as she rose from the settle, dropping the shirt on to the dingy cushions and reaching for the oil lamp in the middle of the kitchen table. Someone was outside, a friend of Betty and Frank’s maybe, or perhaps one of Frank’s pit cronies. It wouldn’t be any of Frank’s married children or their wives, they would have come straight in without due ceremony.

  She made her way slowly along the hall, but when she reached the front door and the knock came again, she found herself sliding the bolt instead of opening it, much to her surprise. She frowned, holding her free hand to her heart as it thudded into her throat. What was the matter with her? She was going doolally. Nevertheless, and in spite of now feeling slightly ridiculous, she called, ‘Who is it? Who’s there?’

  There was silence for some ten seconds, and then the knock came a third time. She stared at the battered front door and then stooped down, placing the oil lamp on the floor before opening the door into Frank and Betty’s front room. Before the arrival of Frank’s second family this room had been used rarely; it had held a green plush suite and a highly polished oval table and six upholstered chairs. The suite remained, but now a double brass bed stood in the alcove which had housed the table and chairs, with a space at the side of it where the crib - containing the youngest Robson - stood at night. Along with this was a huge wooden airer constantly filled with damp and drying clothes and a rickety wardrobe, which meant careful negotiation when edging to the bed. But it was to the window that Josie made her way, carefully folding the moth-eaten velvet curtains back a fraction as she peered out into the dark street.

  But she hadn’t been careful enough. As the big broad man outside turned and stared straight at her, Josie felt a scream which was never voiced spiral in her head, and then she heard the front door being rattled as her father realised he had been tumbled. She let the curtain fall back into place and now she stood in the darkness, no semblance of colour left in her face and her hands gripping the bodice of her dress as her eyes stared wildly about her.

  He was here. Her da had found them. But how? How had he found out where they were living? She stumbled back into the hall, entangling herself in the airer on the way and causing it to fall backwards into the wardrobe. If it had fallen the other way the clothes would have landed on top of the glowing fire in the grate, kept burning day and night courtesy of the free coal the miners received, but such was Josie’s state of mind she wouldn’t have known.

  ‘Josie? It’s me. Da.’ His voice now came clearly. ‘Open the door, lass.’

  He was speaking in the wheedling tone he had used once before outside Central Station, as though he was a normal father dealing with a recalcitrant child who needed careful handling. And she answered him as she had then, her voice flat and controlled. ‘Leave us alone,’ she said.

  ‘Come on, lass, open the door. I only want to talk to you an’ see how things are. Your mam’s bin half mad with worry.’

  That was a lie if ever she heard one because Vera had told her that Shirley was pleased they were out of harm’s way. And when had her da ever bothered about how her mam was feeling anyway? He must think she was daft to swallow that one. Josie took a long shuddering pull of air and said once more, ‘Leave us alone. We’re not coming back.’ She was leaning against the cold wall fo
r support but then, as the door was rattled violently on its hinges again, she sprang forwards and banged on it herself, hissing, ‘You leave us be or else I’ll call Barney and Mr Robson. They know all about you.’

  ‘Oh aye? An’ they’re sittin’ by the fireside, are they? Best place, lass, on a night like this. Well, you call ’em an’ we’ll all have a crack together, eh? Mind, I might be inclined to say what I think about folk who take a pair of bit bairns away from their rightful mam an’ da.’

  She stared at the door, biting the end of her thumb. And then his voice came again saying, ‘Well? I’m waitin’, lass. Or could it be they’re oilin’ their wigs some place? A little bird told me there’s the comin’ nuptials to get sorted.’

  He had known. He had known all along that the house was empty except for her and the bairns. As the thought hit home she knew in the same instant her father had been keeping her talking deliberately, but then a hard hand was slid across her mouth as she was grabbed from behind and held close to a body which she recognised from its smell. ‘Now you just keep nice an’ quiet like a good little lassie an’ no one’ll get hurt.’ Patrick Duffy was holding her fast despite her struggling, and Josie would never have believed his strength if she hadn’t felt it. ‘Y’know, you’ve put me to a fair bit of trouble, me darlin’, an’ I’m not too happy about that.’

  His hand was so tight across her nose and mouth that Josie couldn’t breathe, but still she continued to struggle and kick as Patrick forced her towards the front door. She could hear him cursing, and in the moment he removed his hand from her mouth she sucked in a pull of air intending to scream, only to receive a blow across the side of her face that made her neck crack as her head bounced on her shoulders.

  The shock of it stunned her for a second, but as Patrick Duffy slid the bolt and his hand went back to cover her mouth, she twisted her head and bit down on his flesh with all the power in her jaw. Again the hall became full of softly hissed profanities, but this time it was her father’s fist that sent Josie whirling into darkness, although as she lost consciousness she thought for a moment she heard Barney’s voice and it was yelling . . .

  Chapter Five

  If he was honest, Barney had been glad of the excuse to nip home and check on Millie when Betty had asked him. He could take Pearl’s mam and da in small doses, he admitted wryly to himself as he stepped out of the front entrance of the inn and began walking along Pitt Street, but lately, what with the wedding and all, he’d seen a mite too much of them for comfort. Still, he wasn’t marrying Stanley and Marjorie, was he.

  The moon was casting a cold white brilliance on the icy street and pavements, the already heavy frost coating the layers of ice and snow with a film of sparkling silver. Barney stood for a moment, his head uplifted to the night sky in which the stars stood out like twinkling lights, and he breathed deeply, taking the clean crisp air hard into his lungs.

  By, it was good to be alive on a night like this. If he had his way he’d walk for miles now, not thinking, just drawing the essence of the night into him until he had a surfeit to carry him through the next days and weeks. And then he shook his head at himself, smiling self-consciously as though someone had told him he was being fanciful and womanish. It was funny, the way he needed to see the sky and wide open spaces; his da, and their Amos, Reg and Neville didn’t. His mouth straightened. The united attitude of his father and brothers when he had told them he couldn’t follow them down the pit had hurt him with its lack of understanding and barely concealed recrimination. But Betty had been for him. She was a canny little body, Betty.

  He took another great breath of frost-flavoured air into his lungs, savouring its sharp cleanness after the cloying dust of the concrete works in which he laboured six days a week.

  Aye, he and Betty got on all right, and if Prudence had given their stepmother half a chance it would have been a happier household the last few years. Nevertheless his thoughts were tinged with pity when they touched on his sister. It must be doubly hard for a woman to look like she did when she was a thinker, and Prudence was a thinker all right. If there was one thing he would miss when he got married it would be the talks - arguments sometimes - that they’d shared, because Pearl wasn’t made that way. Social reform, the fight the unions were engaging in, the burgeoning Suffragette Movement were all beyond Pearl. Not that he minded that, he quickly reassured himself. Pearl was soft and sweet and docile, everything a woman should be. Aye, he was lucky she’d looked the side he was on. He was lucky. He didn’t question why he had to emphasise this in his mind.

  He passed the junction with Wellington Street and continued on along Pitt Street, knowing he had to be quick to avoid suffering one of Pearl’s wounded silences when he got back. They were killers, those silences of hers, when she’d look at him with big hurt eyes and quivering lips if he stepped out of line in some way. He perhaps should have told Pearl he was cutting along home for a minute or two when he’d made the excuse he needed the privy, but he’d known Betty wanted it kept just between them two, to avoid Prudence and his da dismissing her anxiety about Millie. And he could be home and back in minutes.

  His hobnail boots were loud on the icy ground as he turned right into Spring Garden Lane, and then he paused. For a minute there he’d thought someone had just gone into their house, but it must have been next door’s. Who’d be calling round at this time of night?

  Nevertheless his steps quickened, and as he reached the open door and his brain registered the struggling girl and the big man’s fist slamming into her face, his yell was purely instinctive as he launched himself forward, kicking over the oil lamp which was still on the floor as he did so.

  Bart, already hampered by his broken arm in its sling, was caught off-balance and knocked halfway down the hall with the force of Barney’s body, but it was Patrick’s scream as the oil lamp smashed over his boots and trousers that brought Josie back to consciousness. She wasn’t aware that the bottom of her own skirt was on fire until Barney was kneeling beside her, smothering the flames with his coat as he dragged her out into the street, but the main contents of the lamp had gone all over the little Irishman as the cries and shouts from within the house professed.

  However, between them Bart and Patrick must have managed to put the flames out, because by the time Barney was able to leave Josie sitting against the wall of the house and re-enter the hall, the two had vanished the way Patrick had come in - through the back yard - and only smoking floorboards remained.

  By now Gertie and the children were all awake and streaming downstairs and little Millie was yelling her head off in her crib in the kitchen, but all Barney was concerned with was the slight figure propped against the wall outside.

  The neighbours came out in force, and after a brief and blunt explanation Mr Stefford next door was off at a run to the inn in Pitt Street, and Mrs Stefford was dealing with a weeping Gertie and the other children. Mr Middleton, on the Robsons’ other side, was dispatched for the doctor, and his wife - a stout and very capable midwife - helped Barney settle Josie in the big armchair in the kitchen before she picked up the screaming baby and, together with Mrs Stefford, took all the children back into her house.

  Josie was only dimly aware of all this. The pain in her head was excruciating, and combined with the accompanying swirling and dizziness, kept her swimming in and out of consciousness. But she knew she was holding on to Barney’s hand, and she kept holding on even when the others arrived home and the doctor came and their hushed voices hovered about her.

  ‘. . . concussion after blow on the head like that. Man ought to be strung up by his thumbs.’ She didn’t recognise this voice and assumed it must be the doctor, but was too sick and disorientated to open her eyes. ‘. . . take it further. It had to be her da, who else would have attacked a little lassie?’ This was from Frank, and such was the distress in his voice Josie would have liked to be able to reassure him she was all right, but she must have lost consciousness again, because when she next came to she wa
s being carried before being placed on something very soft.

  At this juncture she was longing for the blackness to take her over again because the pain in her head was unbearable, and when oblivion came she sank into it gratefully, even as she thought, I must let go of Barney’s hand, he can’t stay here with me. But perversely her fingers tightened and as she went down and down into the waves of darkness, his voice was saying, ‘Go to sleep, lass - aye, that’s right. You’ll feel better come morning.’

  ‘You told me you’d set it all up.’ Patrick Duffy was speaking through gritted teeth as he hobbled through the back streets, the burned flesh on his legs making every step agony.

  ‘I did, man, I did. Look, I told you--’

  ‘Oh aye, you told me all right.’ There followed a spate of cursing that brought white flecks of spittle to the corners of Patrick’s mouth, and only ceased when they came to the horse and cart they had left tied up in the back yard of an inn some streets away.

  ‘You take the reins.’

  Bart did as he was told; Patrick’s hands were blistered and the blackened skin was hanging in strips in some places where he’d tried to beat out his burning trousers in the first panic-filled moments before Bart had been able to get to him and smother the flames with his coat. Bart was terrified. Duffy was not known for his magnanimity at the best of times, and this definitely was not the best of times.