The sight invoked no pity in Rose. Would a bird pity the hawk that had the ability and will to tear it limb from limb? It merely increased the feeling of uncleanness any contact with him, however slight, brought to her body.
Once she had finished washing his back she rinsed away the suds with bath water already coated with a film of black grime and then turned away, drying her hands on her apron. When Silas had left the house she would bucket the bath water away, scrub out the tub and return it to its place in the scullery, propped against the wall.
By the time Silas was ready to leave the house, Rose was sitting at the kitchen table darning a pair of socks. She heard the jingle of coins in his pocket and wondered how much he was going to lose that night. Dully, and without looking up, she said, ‘We’re six weeks behind with the rent.’
‘So?’
‘I was just saying. Fairley said he wants it this week and something off the back an’ all. He was threatening the bums last week.’
‘Fairley can threaten all he likes.’
‘He . . . he means it, Silas. Since he took over from Vickers he’s had more than one family put out on the streets. And,’ she paused, breathing hard, ‘and he said to tell you he’s checked with the colliery and knows you’ve been in work the past months.’
Silas made a sudden movement and Rose flinched, her voice a gabble when she said, ‘I’m only telling you what he said to say, that’s all.’
‘Aye.’ It was a low growl. ‘Well, you’ve told me now.’ He stood without moving, watching her, and Rose began to tremble in spite of herself, her fingers tightening on the sock until her knuckles shone white.When she couldn’t stand it a second more she raised her eyes to his. Without seeming to move a muscle of his face, he said, ‘I’ll deal with you when I get back.’
‘I didn’t mean anything, Silas, honest,’ she whispered pitifully.
He stared at her for another endless moment, then a slow smile spread across his face. His voice soft and thick now, he said, ‘When I get back, Rose,’ nodding his head to emphasise the quietly spoken threat.
Then he turned on his heel and walked out of the kitchen, leaving her sick with dread.
Chapter 2
The next morning when Silas had gone to work and Jake was still fast asleep, huddled under his blankets in the icy bedroom like a baby animal in its burrow, Rose stood at the kitchen window staring out into the backyard they shared with four other houses. She watched one or two women come with their buckets to the tap. The first one went away again and returned with a piece of burning paper which she pushed up the spout to melt the ice so she could get a trickle of water going. Mrs Ducksworth from two doors up disappeared into the privy with her bucket of ashes and scrubbing brush, it being her turn to clean it, and emerged far too quickly to have done a proper job. Mind, the scavengers were due the day and the week’s accumulation of waste must be nearly up to the long wooden seat by now and stinking to high heaven.
These thoughts and many others moved around the perimeter of Rose’s mind but without really touching the core of it, the part that was numb with the agonies her body and spirit had suffered the night before. Once she had been sure Silas was finally asleep, she had crept into the kitchen and washed away the blood and stickiness with lukewarm water left in the kettle. Then she had gone into the scullery where the bucket full of ice-cold water was waiting for morning and had perched on that in an effort to numb the pain. All night long, as she had lain rigid and still at the side of him, she’d told herself she couldn’t go on. She would go to her mam’s, tell them everything. Her mam could look after Jake during the day and she could get a job so the pair of them weren’t a burden on her parents. Her old room was still vacant; many times her mam had talked of taking a lodger but her da hadn’t liked the idea.
How long she stood there before she heard Jake begin to stir she didn’t know. It could have been minutes or hours, such was the state of her mind. But when she walked into the bedroom and drew back the curtain from around the cot, her son was standing with his arms already lifted to her and it broke the trance-like stupor. She gathered him into her arms and held him so tightly he began to wriggle in protest.
‘Oh, Jake, Jake . . .’ Swaying back and forth and with tears streaming down her face, she nuzzled her chin into the dark-brown curls. She couldn’t leave Silas, and not just because she was terrified of what her da would do if he discovered what had been going on. Silas would come after her, he wouldn’t have her making him a laughing stock, which is how he would look at her going. And knowing him as she did, he would claim the child just to spite her if she didn’t go back to him. That, or worse. She wouldn’t put anything past him. And whereas it didn’t matter what he did to her, if he hurt Jake . . .
Taking the child through to the warmth of the kitchen, she placed him in his high chair with his pap bottle of milk while she divided the last of the porridge she’d made earlier for Silas into two bowls.
People had no idea what Silas was like. His mam and da and brothers had a reputation for being rough and ready and well known to the law, but she could have coped with that if he had been kind to her. And she didn’t mind his family, not really, even if they did swear and fight and carry on something awful. They weren’t like him. He was . . . inhuman, fiendish. Beneath that handsome face and the charm he could turn on and off like a tap, something was terribly wrong, but she knew no one would believe her if she said. No one except her mam and da, that was. Oh, what was she going to
do
?
It began to snow heavily mid-morning, the sky so low and heavy it seemed to rest on the rooftops. The daughter of one of the women Rose washed for had delivered two big bags of soiled laundry just after breakfast. When she had got the boiler going in the wash house in the yard it took some violent scrubbing and pummelling and plenty of work with the poss stick to get the stains out. Eventually the washing was hung from wall to wall in the kitchen and she sat down at the table for a cup of tea, her back breaking and her hands aching so much she found it difficult to hold the cup.
The weather worsened during the afternoon, a thin wind moaning against the window as it rattled the glass and drove the snow further and further up the pane until it was impossible to see out. Jake had developed a cough during the day, whether the result of the damp atmosphere due to the steaming washing she wasn’t sure, but her worry about him took her mind off her own physical condition. By the time Silas returned home, Jake was already in bed, having missed his afternoon nap due to his cough, and for this Rose was thankful. Silas had no patience with illness of any kind. She had already planned to bring the child into the kitchen if he woke during the night, lest his coughing should disturb and anger his father.
She was dreading Silas’s homecoming, but in the event it was something of an anti-climax. He demanded his bath immediately he walked in the door and left the house again within the hour in spite of the foul weather, having gobbled down his dinner in record time. She knew the signs. He had a special game on, something he wasn’t about to miss come hell or high water. He rarely won and if he did she never saw any of his winnings, although once or twice in the very early days of their marriage he had flung her enough money to clear any back rent.
Since Silas was out, she was able to get on with the ironing and fold the laundry away ready to deliver first thing the next morning. She’d just walked into the kitchen after putting the flat iron on the scullery shelf to cool when she heard Jake start coughing and soon he was crying for her. She carried the baby through into the warmth of the kitchen, sitting him on her lap and soothing him by singing gently when he refused a drink. He quietened after a while although his cough was still bothering him and when she placed her hand on his little back she could feel the phlegm gurgling. She would buy a pot of goose grease to rub on in the morning, she promised herself, and perhaps a camphor block too. It would mean less money for Fairley when he called but she couldn’t help that. Hopefully she would still have sufficient to pay this week’s rent along with something off the back, maybe even a couple of weeks’ worth.
On impulse she stood up with Jake in her arms and walked over to her hidey-hole, mentally calculating the price of the goose grease and camphor as she removed the brick and felt inside for the pile of coins. And she was standing like that, Jake in the crook of one arm and her other hand fumbling for the money when the kitchen door swung open and Silas walked in.
Rose froze, petrified with fear. Perhaps if she had been able to think she might have salvaged something from the impending disaster. As it was, her terror at Silas’s sudden appearance robbed her of the ability to move or reason.
Silas stared at her, his eyes narrowing to black slits. She watched as comprehension dawned and with it a cold fury that twisted the handsome features into something ugly.
‘What have we here?’ He moved towards her, shoving her roughly aside so she stumbled and almost fell. He thrust his hand into the cavity and the coins chinked as he withdrew them.
Rose’s legs were threatening to give way. She stumbled over to the table and sat down on the bench, holding Jake against her breast. ‘It’s for - for the rent,’ she stammered. ‘He said he’d turn - turn us out onto the st-streets.’
‘You’ve been keeping this from me.’ There was a touch of incredulity in his tone. ‘Salting money away.’ He swore, not loudly but softly and obscenely and as he approached her she shrank back, crouching over the child in her arms. Flinging the money onto the table, he ground out, ‘Where’s the rest?’
‘What?’
‘Don’t tell me this is all of it. You’re crafty enough not to have put all your eggs in one basket.’
‘No, no. There’s no more. My mam knew I was worried about the rent and she—’
He hit her so hard across the face she slammed against the wall and fell back onto the floor, cracking her head on the flagstones, her feet up on the bench. She had been able to make no move to save herself because of Jake in her arms.
As the child began to scream in fright, she scrabbled her feet free and huddled against the wall, bringing her knees up to try to protect Jake. Silas heaved the table and bench away, sending the coins spinning to the floor, and then stood in front of her.
‘Get up.’ Again he didn’t raise his voice but the softness was more menacing than any shouting. ‘Get up or so help me I’ll kick you senseless.’
Her ears still ringing, she struggled to her feet and stood swaying slightly as Jake clutched at her in a paroxysm of crying.
‘Thought you’d make a monkey of me, is that it?’ He was pulling his belt free of the loops of his trousers as he spoke, his eyes never leaving her white, terrified face. ‘You an’ your mam and da. Never thought I was good enough for their precious little lamb, did they, eh? Their pure little lamb. But you weren’t so pure by the time I’d finished with you and that’s stuck in your da’s craw enough to choke him ever since. Scum like me having his daughter. Well, let me tell you, there’s scum and scum in my book, and your da’s the worst of the lot. Thinking he’s above the rest of us. An’ your mam sniffing about and reporting back, I know, I know. An’ I tell you, if she sets foot through this door again I’ll do for her and you an’ all, you hear me?’
As the buckled end of the belt came down, Rose instinctively twisted to protect the child in her arms, taking the force of the blow across her shoulders. He was going to hurt Jake. He was going to hurt Jake. It was the only thing on her mind through the searing pain. She almost threw her son onto the floor away from her and then sprang towards the range, grabbing at the massive black frying pan. Silas followed her, the belt whistling through the air.The buckle ripped across the back of her neck this time but then she swung round with the frying pan in her hand, catching him a resounding blow across his arm as he raised it to shield his face. He staggered backwards with a shriek of pain, the belt falling from his fingers as he landed against the sideboard.
For the rest of her life Rose was to remember every moment of what followed. Silas’s screaming curses, his groping hand searching for something to throw at her and finding the base of the oil lamp standing on the sideboard. Jake beginning to toddle towards her, still wailing. Her spring towards her son, then the oil lamp missing her by a whisker only to smash down on the flagstones at her feet where the shock of it caused Jake to plump down on his bottom as he lost his balance. As the thick glass reservoir shattered and sprayed its contents over Jake, there was one infinitesimal moment when she took comfort from the fact the lamp hadn’t hit him. But then the lighted wick did its devastating job of igniting the spilt oil, turning her baby into a human torch.