Tears blurred Ellie’s eyes. Dear sweet Henry! He had done that for her. Ellie’s throat ached with pain and despair.
Henry was her husband and the kindest of men, but she already knew that she would never, could never, feel about him as her cousin Cecily did about her Paul – that her love for Henry was born of duty and a protective maternalism rather than passion and desire for him.
As she suddenly heard Henry’s footsteps outside the bedroom door, she pushed the ticket into the pocket of her gown.
As she felt the onset of the familiar dragging ache that always preceded her monthly courses, Ellie let out a faint sigh of relief. She had followed the embarrassingly explicit and direct instructions Iris had furnished her with to the letter, and so far, to her relief, it seemed that they were working.
Her winter coat was laid over the back of the bedroom chair, ready for her to put on, and in her bag was the pawnbroker’s ticket.
After a night spent barely able to sleep for anxiety and guilt, Ellie had only waited until Henry had left for work before hurrying to re-count the guineas he had given her. Even though she had not as yet spent any of the money she had still needed to reassure herself that she had sufficient for her purpose.
At Cecily’s suggestion she was having lunch with her cousin at the Adelphi Hotel – ‘My treat,’ Cecily had insisted when Ellie had hesitated. Sensitively, Ellie now wondered if her cousin had perhaps
guessed just how straitened her and Henry’s financial circumstances were.
She shivered a little in the coldness of the house. Only this morning Mr Charnock had announced that he suspected that Ellie was lighting fires in the house against his orders, and that he had therefore reduced the amount of coal to be delivered.
‘But if we do not have enough coal to fuel the range then there won’t be any hot water,’ Ellie had been foolish enough to protest.
‘If it’s hot water you want, missie, then you can boil up some yourself with the kettle,’ he had told Ellie with angry satisfaction.
‘Well now, and ain’t you a pretty sight for a man’s eyes.’
Connie preened beneath the appreciative look she was being given, returning her flatterer’s attention with a mock-demure pout, whilst at the same time keeping a sharp eye out for her aunt, who had only brought her to Preston with her because she considered that Connie was not to be trusted left on her own.
Right now, though, her aunt was busily engaged talking to an old acquaintance, her back conveniently turned towards Connie, leaving Connie free to indulge in an exciting flirtation with the young man who had just addressed her.
Approvingly she gave him a quick once-over.
He was tall, with nice, broad shoulders and a
thick shock of ink-black hair. But it was his eyes that really caught and held Connie’s attention. As dark as his hair, they had a wicked, dangerous look about them that immediately excited Connie. They were the eyes of the kind of man Connie knew instinctively was her kind of man – bold, flirtatious and exciting – the kind of man her Aunt Simpkins would never approve of in a hundred years.
‘From around these parts, are you?’ he asked, eyeing her boldly.
‘And if I am, what’s that to you?’ Connie rejoined pertly, her eyes giving away her enjoyment of their flirtatious badinage.
‘Well, I was just thinking if you was, and if you wasn’t walking out with anyone, then I might think of asking you to come to the picture house wi’ me on Saturday afternoon.’
Connie felt a delicious thrill of excitement run right through her all the way down to her toes. It was a brisk March day, the sky grey and overcast, but she felt her cheeks begin to burn as though she were standing in the full heat of the summer sun.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw that her aunt had finished speaking to her friend.
Quickly, before she could turn round and see her, Connie nodded her head and then demanded recklessly, ‘Where am I to meet you and what time?’
‘In front of the picture house and just before the matinée, say around half past one!’ he told her equally as fast, blowing her a cheeky kiss and then melting away into the busy crowd of shoppers.
Saturday! She was going to see him on Saturday! A surge of happiness shot through her, driving out the misery she had been feeling! Giddy with excitement, Connie started to make plans.
As she got off the tram and headed for the pawnbroker’s shop, Ellie’s stomach fluttered with nerves. To her relief this was at least a reasonably respectable part of the city, but there was no mistaking the meaning of the shop sign, as heavy and threatening as an axe held above her head.
For several nerve-racking minutes she hesitated, walking past the shop and then back again, pausing to look over her shoulder and then into the window, but the ordeal had to be faced.
The inside of the shop was dark and smelled of candle wax and age. The man who shuffled to the counter, peering at her over the top of his spectacles, had a gaze that reminded her of dirty ice.
‘I have come about this,’ Ellie told him shakily, removing her gloves to open her purse and hand him the ticket.
She could feel him studying her, the silence of the shop almost suffocatingly heavy.
‘The watch is my husband’s,’ she told him, desperate to break the quietness. ‘It belonged to his grandfather. I have brought the money – the twenty-five guineas,’ she hurried on, gabbling and breathless in her desire to have her ordeal over, as she tipped the guineas onto the counter. ‘It is all
there, the twenty-five guineas. They are the same ones you gave him. I –’
‘Twenty-five guineas? Where is the rest?’
Ellie stared at the pawnbroker, appalled. ‘The rest?’ she stammered. ‘What rest? It is all there…’
‘The amount advanced against the watch is there, but the fee for the loan is not. The arrangement was that the watch could only be redeemed by a payment of an extra five guineas! Did your husband not tell you this?’
‘No…that is not possible!’ Her head reeled. A charge of five guineas to borrow a sum of twenty-five!
‘He…I…the money has been held for barely a week, and to charge such a sum is…is…usurious,’ she protested shakily.
‘Indeed? You may think so but I can assure you that that is the nature of our business.’ The look in the dirty-ice eyes was not kind.
Ellie was beginning to feel sick, her breathing rapid and her skin breaking out in a rash of perspiration. But ladies did not perspire, ladies merely glowed! But then ladies did not go into pawnbrokers’! But she wasn’t a lady, and she was tired of trying to pretend to be one, of trying to be the person her mother had wanted her to be. Her thoughts, disorientated and muddled, swarmed through her head, making it ache.
‘Please, you don’t understand, that watch belonged to my husband’s grandfather. It is of great sentimental value to him.’
When the pawnbroker made no response, she protested, ‘I do not have five guineas. I do not have –’
‘Is there a problem, Father?’
Ellie tensed as a younger man came out from the back of the shop. Taller than his father, he nevertheless possessed the same features.
‘My husband pawned his watch here for the sum of twenty-five guineas,’ Ellie told him quickly. ‘I have come to redeem it but now I am told there is a fee to pay of an additional five guineas, which I do not have. I have no money at all…’ She felt shamefully close to tears brought on by the sheer misery of what she was enduring.
‘No money? I see. Well, in that case…’ he was shaking his head but then suddenly he stopped. ‘I see that you are wearing a pretty little ring.’
Instinctively Ellie covered her left hand and her engagement ring, but to her humiliation he simply laughed and told her, ‘No, not that one. It is plain to see that it is merely paste.’
Merely paste! Her engagement ring!
‘No, I was meaning the other ring you are wearing.’
The other ring…her mother’s ring. Ellie felt as though she was going to choke. There was a huge lump in her throat, a huge welling ache of desolation. Silently she slid the ring off and pushed it across the mahogany-topped counter.
Smiling, the young man picked it up. ‘It is not a particularly valuable piece but the stone is a pretty
one, though small, and the gold of good quality. I am being a fool to myself in doing this, but…’ He gave a small shrug. ‘Give her the watch, Father.’
Dry-eyed, Ellie picked up the watch, carefully checking it to make sure that it was Henry’s.
She had no idea how much time she had spent in the pawnbroker’s but what she did know was that when she stepped outside it again she was changed for ever.
The last of her girlhood was gone, in every sense. There was a thinness on her right hand where her mother’s ring had been, a coldness that matched the tight band of pain around her heart. In half an hour’s time she was due to meet Cecily and when she did…Ellie took a deep breath. It was no use her having any false pride. She had known this morning, when her housekeeping had been reduced again, what she must say to her cousin, how she must lower her pride and beg Cecily for her help.
‘Ellie, what is wrong? You are not yourself at all today,’ Cecily complained gently as she broke off her conversation to study her cousin worriedly.
Screwing up her courage, Ellie took a deep breath. ‘I…Cecily, if that friend of yours should mention again that she likes the dress I made for the baby, would you tell her…would you tell her that you can furnish her with my name and that I would be pleased to make up something similar
for her – and for any other of your friends who might want any sewing done and are prepared to pay me for it.’
Cecily didn’t try to conceal her shock. ‘Ellie, what are you saying? What on earth –’
‘I need to earn some money, Cecily,’ Ellie blurted out, her face burning with embarrassment and shame. ‘I…Henry…Henry’s father pays him the merest pittance and…and…’ Tears of anger pricked her eyes.
‘Ellie, oh my dear! I had wondered that you did not have proper servants, but I had no idea…’
‘I hate having to raise such a matter with you, Cecily, but you and Iris have both said that I could earn my living with my needle and now I am very much afraid that I must, for if I do not we shall soon be dressed in rags, as well as having only the poorest food to eat and no coals with which to make a fire.’ Ellie caught herself up as she saw how distressed Cecily was looking.
‘Oh Ellie, I am so sorry. Of course I shall tell my friends. You may depend upon it.’
Gideon had almost reached his two newly acquired properties when a boy came flying round the corner, running as fast as his thin bare legs could carry him, his head turning to look back in the direction he had just come so that he all but cannoned into Gideon.
Automatically Gideon reached out to steady him,
cursing as he twisted violently in his grip like an eel.
‘Hoy there! Hold onto that boy, will you? The young varmint has just stolen a pie from my shop.’
Beneath his grip Gideon could feel the sharp bones, the thin body hunching defensively. The boy was filthy, his clothes little more than rags, his shoes, Gideon realised as he looked down at him, at least a couple of sizes too big and stuffed with newspapers to make them fit and keep out the rain.
Sharp flinty eyes, feral as a wild animal’s, savaged him with fury. The small tow head bent towards his wrist, his lips curling back from his teeth. Immediately, Gideon took evasive action. The boy was so thin that even with only one good arm Gideon was able to lift him and swing him off the ground.
‘Go on then, hit me,’ the boy told him, cursing richly.
The stallholder had reached them now, red-faced and out of breath.
‘Little varmint. Deserves to be hanged. This isn’t the first time he’s stolen off of my stall.’
‘Well, you ain’t getting it back,’ the boy told him unrepentantly. ‘Wouldn’t have sold it anyway. Off, it was, and you should have the law on you, you should. That’s no mutton you’ve got in them pies – more like rat.’
‘Why, you…’Ere, give him to me,’ the stallholder demanded.
Without taking his eyes off the boy, Gideon asked the stallholder, ‘How much was the pie?’
‘Thruppence. No, sixpence!’
‘Thruppence. He’s lying. Got a big sign up saying they’re a penny, four for thruppence. Not that anyone in their right senses ‘ud want four!’ The boy swore and spat. ‘Not worth a farthing, it weren’t. Give me gut rot, it will, if it don’t kill me altogether.’
Reaching into his trouser pocket, Gideon removed a silver sixpence and gave it to the glowering man.
‘You best take it before I change my mind,’ he warned him.
Having tested the coin with his teeth to make sure it was real, the man pocketed it and walked away, still muttering under his breath.
‘What did you do that for?’ the urchin asked Gideon once the stallholder had turned the corner.
‘I don’t know,’ Gideon admitted, and it was the truth. He wasn’t normally given to sentimental impulses, and there was nothing about the boy that was remotely deserving of either his protection or his generosity. Quite the opposite.
‘Wot’s the likes of you doing down here anyway?’ the boy challenged him. ‘Come whoring, have you? That’s wot normally brings you toffs down here. Should’a thought you were more of a stage door Johnny type m’sel’, wi’ them fine clothes!’
Filthy fingers felt the fabric of Gideon’s coat. ‘Nice bit o’ worsted. Mind you don’t take it off. Them girls will have it away and sold before you can say Jack Robinson. But if you’re looking for a woman, there’s a house three up. Mind you ask for Katie, though; she’s clean and young, and don’t
let them fob you off with Sally. She ain’t even got any teeth!’
‘I am not looking for a woman,’ Gideon told him grimly, releasing him.
‘Then wot are you doing down here?’
‘I have come to look at some property I have recently acquired. Not that it is any of your business.’
‘Property? Down here?’ The too-old eyes in the young face suddenly rounded. ‘ ’Ere, you ain’t the one that’s gone and bought them two terraces from under Bill Connolly’s nose, are you? You are!’ he breathed in wonderment when Gideon made no response. ‘Aye, well, no wonder you was fool enough to part with a silver sixpence to old Robber Harry, for a pie you wouldn’t give a dog. Bill Connolly ’ull make mincemeat of you – aye, and you’ll end up in old Harry’s pies like the rats. You’ll never keep them houses, Bill Connolly ’ull have ’em off you as fast as a sneak thief could have your watch – no, faster. You watch! Freeze you out, he will; put the frighteners on folk so they won’t rent and then put his own rents down. And then, with the places empty, Bill’s mob will be round stripping ’em bare. Surprised they haven’t been in and done it already. Allus a good market for a bit o’ lead flashing…’