Perhaps her father was right. Perhaps she should go back to Liverpool. But if she did, what would happen to Minaco and her child? Elizabeth would refuse to house them and they would end up in the workhouse – if they were lucky – and as for Maisie…
Grimly Ellie stepped back, just as the door was slammed in her face.
The closer they got to the docks, the meaner the streets became. Ellie shuddered, remembering how she had felt the day she had come looking for Connie.
As they walked past a public house, a group of men standing by the doorway called out to them.
Protectively, Ellie hurried her charges past, her face flaming as she heard the men’s coarse comments.
It took her four attempts before she finally found a landlady who was prepared to offer them a room.
‘You get all sorts down here,’ she told Ellie laconically, staring at Minaco, ‘but it’s not often you get one like her. I run a respectable house, mind, and if any of you is working girls…’
It took several seconds for Ellie to grasp what she meant. Affronted, she shook her head. She was, it seemed, obliged to pay for the room for a full week and in advance, but she prayed they would not have to spend more than one night beneath this roof. Tomorrow she would ring the carter and ask him to deliver her trunk to Friargate, and once it was there, if necessary she would use Henry’s money to buy herself a small house. Once they had the security of a roof over their heads she could then set about looking for clients.
The room they were shown to was cold and dirty. The one bed looked as though the sheets had been on it through several occupancies, and her stomach heaved at the sour old smell of the air in the room.
‘Thank you,’ she told the landlady when she had shown them upstairs. ‘If you would just tell us where the bathroom is…’
‘The bathroom?’ The woman burst out laughing. ‘Lord, where have you come from? There ain’t no bathroom here! There’s a privy out in the back yard; if ye want water for washing it’s a shilling a week extra and there’s the public baths. And any
funny stuff and you’re out, the lot of yer. There’s a house down the street for the likes of that. Aye, and she’s got room to spare. One of her girls was taken bad the other night and taken off to the hospital. Got herself in the family way and tried to get rid of it. Summat went wrong and, by the sounds of it, she’s like to have killed herself as well as the brat she was carrying.’
Ellie stared at her, her face going white. Her head ached and she felt so tired…so afraid. How could this be happening to her? How could she be in such a place?
The woman had left the door open and as Ellie glanced towards it she saw a man standing outside, staring in. The look on his face made her shudder. It was exactly the same kind of look she had once seen on her Uncle Parkes’ face.
As soon as the landlady had gone, Ellie hurried to the door and closed and bolted it.
‘Miss, I need a wee,’ Maisie started to wail.
The thought of escorting her downstairs and outside to the privy and then waiting there for her made Ellie quail.
She could see the jerry sticking out from under the bed, and directed Maisie to use it.
It was impossible to avoid the unwanted intimacy of hearing her using the pot. Ellie closed her eyes, trying not to think about the house that had been her home, with the privacy of its bathrooms.
This was, after all, only for tonight. Tomorrow things would be better.
They had to be!
Their return to Friargate the next morning was not well received by Maggie, especially when Maisie announced that they had not had any breakfast.
‘Well, if you’ve come here thinking that we’re going to feed you –’
‘We haven’t,’ Ellie stopped her quietly. Turning to her father, she said, ‘I just want to telephone the carter, Father, to tell him to deliver my things here. I’m going to find us a house I can buy.’ Her chin tilted at the look on Maggie’s face. ‘Henry left me a…a little money – enough, I think, to buy somewhere.’
‘Oh, aye, and has he left you enough to live on as well? Because if so, what was you doing coming round here wanting charity?’
Continuing to ignore Maggie, Ellie continued, ‘I can work. I was already working in Liverpool.’
‘Working? A fine lady like you?’ Maggie mocked. ‘Fie, what would your mama have said? Well, don’t expect to get teken on by any o’ t’ mills round here.’
‘I…I take in private sewing,’ Ellie explained to her father. ‘In Liverpool, Cecily and her family were kind enough to recommend me to their friends and –’
‘Aw, Ellie, lass! If Lyddy had heard you saying that…!’ He shook his head whilst Maggie glared at Ellie, obviously not liking to be reminded of his first wife.
‘Aye, well, that was all right when you’d got your fine friends, but they won’t want to know you now, will they?’ Maggie sneered.
‘Maggie, there’s no call to speak like that,’ Ellie’s father chastised.
‘Oh, that’s right! Didn’t care about you, this ’un didn’t, when she went off wi’ ’er fine relatives, wi’ not a care about her father, but now she’s back you’re acting like –’
‘No! That isn’t true!’ Ellie interrupted Maggie passionately. ‘Father, I never wanted to go to Hoylake. I wanted to stay here with you!’ Tears stood out in her eyes. ‘I hated being there and I hoped you would come for me and bring me home, but –’
‘Aw, Ellie.’ Suddenly her father’s arms were round her and he was holding her. ‘Eh, lass, I thought you wanted to be there. I thought it were for the best for you. If I’d known…’ he told her as he let her go.
Struggling to compose herself, Ellie gave Maisie the last of her coppers to send her down the street with Minaco and Henrietta to a pie shop to get
themselves something to eat. For herself she felt too queasy. The landlady’s comments about the girl from the whorehouse had preyed on her mind all night.
‘Come on in, lass, and make your telephone call,’ her father was urging her, whilst Maggie looked on surlily.
Ellie could hardly bear to see the changes in her old home, and she deliberately shut out of her mind the last time she had been there, as she asked to be put through to the carter’s number.
‘Your trunk? No, miss, I can’t deliver it for you.’
‘What? What do you mean?’ Ellie demanded anxiously.
On the other end of the line she could hear the carter explaining to her that he had been refused permission to collect her trunk by Elizabeth, who had told him that Ellie had no right to remove anything from the house.
‘But the things in that trunk were mine,’ she protested shakily.
‘I’m right sorry, miss, but the missus wouldn’t let me take ’un,’ the carter repeated. ‘Said it would be thievery if I did. Very definite about it, she were. Said you was to have nothing but what you had already got. Aye, and Mr Charnock – he was there with her and said the same. Said the trunk belonged to his son and that everything that was in it was family stuff and to stay with him.’
Somewhere in the distance, Ellie heard someone moan – a wretched despairing sound like that of
an animal. The room had gone numbingly cold, and yet she felt so dreadfully hot! She could hear Maggie’s screechy angry voice somewhere in the distance, and also her father’s – louder; urgent. She tried to concentrate on what he was saying but somehow she couldn’t. The world had become a whirling, rushing black whirligig of dizziness, sucking her down into its depths.
Reluctantly Ellie opened her eyes. She felt sick, the air around her was pungent with the smell of burned feathers.
She was lying on the floor in the parlour of the Friargate house and her father and Maggie were standing over her, the former looking harried and anxious, and the latter purse-lipped and angry.
‘Didn’t tell us you was in the family way, did you?’ Maggie announced accusingly.
‘Ellie, I don’t understand what’s going on. Surely in view of your condition your father-in-law…?’ her own father was asking.
‘Henry’s father isn’t to know,’ Ellie protested, sitting up – too quickly, she realised as nausea overwhelmed her.
The speculative look Maggie was giving her filled her with anxiety. ‘Mr Charnock has made it clear that he doesn’t…that is he feels Henry had a…a weakness that a child of his might well inherit.’
Her father, Ellie saw, was looking both shocked and uncomfortable.
‘So that’s five of you you was expecting us to house and feed,’ Maggie accused her sharply. ‘Well, don’t think this changes anything. It don’t. We’ve got more than enough mouths to feed with us own, without taking on someone who by rights ought to be the responsibility of someone else. How far gone are you, anyway?’ she demanded.
‘About four months,’ Ellie told her wearily.
‘It’s well and truly fixed there, then,’ Maggie informed her grimly. ‘No use hoping you’ll lose it!’
‘Maggie,’ Robert Pride interrupted grimly, ‘that’s enough. There’s no call for that kind of talk. Ellie, love, the best thing really would be for you to go back to Liverpool. I wish I could do more for thee, lass, but…’
Ellie hated to see him looking so unhappy.
‘I can’t go back,’ Ellie told him quietly, ‘but it’s all right, Father. Don’t worry about me. I’ll manage.’
Giddily she struggled to stand. She felt so ill and weak, and she longed to be offered a comfortable clean bed to lie on, but her pride wouldn’t let her betray as much in front of Maggie. As to her claim that she could manage, Ellie tried to suppress the panic bubbling inside her.
She had in her purse the five guineas her father had given her yesterday, that was all. She had been relying on the money she had tucked away in the trunk, and not just that but on her sewing machine and the fabrics she had put there as well. And what about her clothes? All she had – all any of them had – was what they had on. And the medicine that
was to have rid her of the unwanted child she was carrying was also in the trunk. It was obviously too late for that now, even if she could have afforded to replace it. Maggie’s eyes were far too sharp.
The thought of another night in the boarding house down by the docks made Ellie feel sick. This morning they had all been scratching, and Ellie was sure she had seen something moving in the landlady’s hair when she had stood at the bottom of the stairs watching them leave.
The hallway had smelled of urine, and one of the two men who had come out of the privy whilst Ellie had been waiting her turn to go in had not bothered to button his flies.
In Liverpool the busy life of the dock area had seemed exciting and romantic when viewed from the safety of her own secure life, but here in Preston, living amongst the detritus washed up by the sluggish tide, Ellie had very quickly become aware that the reality of dockside life was very different: the sailors they had walked past this morning on their way to Friargate, still drunk from the night before, lying in their own vomit; the whorehouse at the end of the street, where in the daylight it was easy to see the running sores on the women’s faces, despite their youth.
They had walked past a sailors’ mission, with its sad huddle of derelicts standing outside, Ellie freezing in affront as a man had swaggered past her and then turned round and come back offering her half a crown – ‘Double that if I can have the
both of you,’ he had added, nodding in Minaco’s direction.
The last thing she wanted was to have to return there, but she knew she had no alternative.
Collecting Maisie, Minaco and Henrietta, she walked them back via the town centre, pausing outside the offices of an employment agency. If she couldn’t earn any money from her sewing then she would have to find other employment, but prudently she recognised that turning up to be interviewed whilst she was accompanied by her dependants was not perhaps a wise idea. She paused a little longer outside the window of a house-letting agency. A little further down the street she could see the familiar pawnbroker’s sign. A bitter smile twisted her mouth. She didn’t even have anything she could pawn, other than her wedding ring. Blankly she looked at it.
‘Stay here,’ she commanded the others.
Inside the shop she tugged off her ring and put it down on the counter.
The man behind it was brisk. ‘Two guineas. And I’m being generous at that!’ he told her. Shrugging his shoulders: ‘Take it or leave it.’
‘I need more than that,’ Ellie told him. She felt as though she was choking on her own saliva as the despair welled inside her.
‘Well, it’s a decent enough gown you’re wearing,’ he began, ‘and the brooch is probably worth a crown. ‘Course, you could always sell your hair if it’s long and thick enough. There’s a place down
off the market – allus on the lookout, she is, for good-quality hair. Use it for wigs, they do. I can give you a note for her.’
Her hair! Ellie looked at him in distress, hating the sudden memory she had of Gideon’s hands in her hair as he kissed her.
‘Thank you, but I’ll just take the two guineas,’ she told him numbly.
Once outside she wondered angrily why on earth she had not taken him up on his offer. The way she felt about Gideon surely she should have wanted to be rid of her hair, and with it her memory of him touching it!
She took her charges back via the alleys that led past a bakery, remembering that they sold off misshaped teacakes at the back door as well as the previous day’s stale unsold bread.
She could remember how scornfully her mother had described those so poor that they had to stand in line waiting to buy up such offerings. Now, like them, she was standing there, her face averted as she hoped that she wouldn’t be recognised.
The way in which Maisie and Henrietta fell on the hard pieces of bread, tearing into it, filled her with shame and guilt. Ellie broke one of them open and shuddered as she saw the weevil inside it, her gorge rising. Minaco hadn’t eaten anything all day. Ellie had woken up in the night to find her sitting on the floor rocking back and forth, holding onto her photograph of Henry.
The smell of urine, stronger than ever, hit her as soon as they walked into the boarding house. Maisie wrinkled up her nose and exclaimed, ‘Stinks!’ Mixed with it was another smell, sharp and more acrid, and Ellie’s body tensed as she recognised it. The whorehouse might officially be at the end of the street, but that smell!
Quickly she bundled the others up the stairs, reaching for the key to unlock their room.
Instinctively she knew that someone had been in it, and obviously not to change the bedding or do any cleaning. Even the chamber pot was still full!
Well, if they had been looking for something to steal they would have been out of luck. All she had in the world was with her!
Henrietta had begun to grizzle. Ellie waited for Minaco to go to her and comfort her, but the Japanese girl was ignoring her. Gently, Ellie went over to her and bent down so that they were on a similar level. There was a solemnness and wariness about the little girl that made Ellie’s heart ache for her. When she picked her up she felt as frail as a small bird, her bones tiny and fragile. Beneath her clothes she was frighteningly thin with none of the soft plumpness Ellie remembered from her own siblings and her relatives’ small children.
She should not be living here like this, Ellie acknowledged despairingly. She needed food and warmth, and a proper decent home. Giving her a
quick cuddle, Ellie put her down again.
Minaco was curled up on the bed, clutching Henry’s photograph and staring into space. It was as though she had somehow gone somewhere else.
‘Don’t like it here,’ Maisie was sobbing, her bottom lip jutting out.
‘Well, we won’t be here much longer,’ Ellie promised.
‘Are we going back to Liverpool?’ Maisie asked eagerly.
Ellie shook her head. It was impossible to explain to her why they could not return to the Charnock house.
Half an hour after they had returned to the house, a fight broke out in the street below. Maisie rushed excitedly to the window to watch, despite Ellie’s instructions to her to come away.
Yells and curses filled the air, and some of the girls from the whorehouse had come to watch the proceedings, Ellie saw, as she went to the window to tug Maisie back.
She had planned to walk up to the marketplace as the stallholders were packing up for the day to see what she could scavenge for them all to eat, but there was no way she dared risk going out now!
Her stomach had started to rumble. Putting her hand on it she wondered bitterly if the unwanted life she was carrying inside her might be extinguished through starvation. Her body started to shake but
Ellie gritted her teeth against giving in to the temptation to think about the full horror of what was to come. She couldn’t afford to!
Ellie woke abruptly, wondering at first where on earth she was. And then she remembered!
The noise that had woken her was someone trying the locked door to their room. She lay frozen with fear beneath the bedclothes as she watched the handle twist to and fro as whoever was outside turned it impatiently. Her heart was thumping as though it was going to break through her chest wall. She felt more alone and afraid than she had ever imagined it was possible to feel.
At Ellie’s insistence they had visited the privy together, Ellie insisting that they all stood guard for one another, and then she had ushered them back upstairs to wash as best they could in the bowl of cold and soon scummy water their landlady had reluctantly provided.
Breakfast had been the last of the now very stale bread, and some watery milk Ellie had bought from the landlady.
Ellie wished that she could have left Minaco in charge of Maisie and Henrietta whilst she went alone to find them new lodgings, but the Japanese girl had retreated even further into herself and, pathetically, little Henrietta was now turning to
Ellie with her arms held out for help instead of her mother, snuggling contently onto Ellie’s lap when she dressed her, babbling away in a mixture of Japanese and English.