She staggered back, leaned against the table on which she had just been made filthy. ‘He did that job for you?’
He shrugged. ‘He did it. But it was his own idea.’ He lit a cigarette and his hands were surer, steadier. ‘Go to the police with your little tale and I’ll have him arrested the minute he regains consciousness after his operation.’
Gert was sharing a room with the personification of evil. She glanced at his feet, wondered whether the hooves inside the woollen socks were cloven. At school, they’d been told that Satan had strange toes. But there was no fear in her now, because she was looking not at a boss, but at a man in plain black socks. Gert’s head and heart were filled with a mixture of anger and despair. Because she had just lost Bert. If Bert had set light to Mr Heilberg’s shop, then her marriage was over. ‘Do what you like,’ she snapped. ‘I’ll not be staying married to a bloody criminal. I’ve never minded his bits of thieving, but hurting folk is summat different.’
He drew on the cigarette, smiled through a fug of smoke. ‘Oh, I’d still be careful if I were you. After all, who is going to believe that you weren’t in it with him? If you leave him now, such an action will be construed by the court as a demonstration of fear brought on by guilt. You can shout all you like about being uninvolved, but no-one will listen. I am a Freemason, you know. I have friends in high places.’
‘And in hell,’ she replied.
‘Gertrude, Gertrude.’ He shook his head in a mockery of concern. ‘I’ve tried to get that child for you and look how you repay me.’
‘Bugger off,’ she screamed. ‘I wanted Sally for the proper reasons, to see to her and make sure she were all right. But you’re not all right. The things you did to me were nasty, evil. Is the devil your father?’
He fixed his eyes on her, used the glare that worked so well on spinners and weavers. She was nothing, a plain and painted creature of the slums, yet she was standing up to him. It was becoming more and more difficult to train women, to make them understand their proper place in the scheme of things. Women were for housework, bedroom pleasures and for the performing of industrial tasks that were too menial and ill-paid for men. They were not meant to have brains. They were not meant to argue. His nose hurt. Her face was covered in bruises. She must not talk. He had to make sure that she kept her big mouth closed. ‘My father was a Worthington. His first name was neither Lucifer nor Beelzebub.’
Gert kicked out at the money, sent it spinning in all directions. ‘Right, we’ll play it your way, then. I’ll try to be fair with you, Mr Worthington. So listen, eh? I might have a short life or a long one, but I’m going to spend it making sure you pay for what’s happened. Aye, so you do know a few Freemasons, but I know folk and all, folk who don’t need the bloody masons. You’re a dead man, sweetheart. Make sure you’re never alone in a dark place. There’s no lock as’ll keep you safe, no guard dog. You’re dead, dead, dead. I’m going to make sure you suffer.’
He could feel the blood pounding round his body and into his head. She was so cool and casual that he feared her with every fibre of his being. ‘Never be alone,’ she had said. ‘No lock will save you.’ The headache was back, this time loud and angry like a huge drum behind his temples. ‘You don’t scare me,’ he snapped.
Gert smiled knowingly. ‘Is that right? Then you’re not just a bad bugger. You’re a stupid swine and all. Wedge summat under your door handle tonight, Mr Worthington. And keep your windows shut. My friends can get past most barriers.’
His lips curled. She was talking as if she were educated, was using words he hadn’t expected to hear from a slut. ‘Get out,’ he said.
‘If you shift out of me road, I will.’ Hoping that her trembling did not show, Gert squeezed past him, walked down the hall and through the front door.
He followed her, grabbed her arm, pulled her back into the porch. ‘Listen, bitch.’ The words rasped as they emerged, as if his throat were sore. ‘If anybody has a right to that kid, it’s me.’ With his other hand, he pounded his chest. ‘Remember how your sister had a ten-month pregnancy? Her man had gone abroad, but the stupid bugger believed her when she wrote and said she was having his baby. The child I tried to get for you is a Worthington. Remember that. Tell the old witch whose child that is.’
She spat into his grinning face.
He leered at her, wiped the spittle from his face. ‘The letter I handed over to you and Bert was only half the story, Gertrude. Lottie and I both signed another statement the day she left Bolton. That document is locked away in a safe. It states categorically that I am Sally’s father.’
Gert shivered. ‘I don’t give that much for our Lottie and her carryings-on.’ She snapped her fingers beneath his slightly swollen and reddened nose. Her heart was hopping about in her chest, seemed to have lost its rhythm, but she fought to keep a cool exterior. ‘We didn’t get on. I know she’s a cheap little tart. Anybody who goes with twisted folk like you has to be a tart.’
He tightened his hold on her arm. ‘Derek Crumpsall was no more use than your Bert when it came to fathering. He’d nothing in him, no life, no go. But Lottie was a goer.’ He nodded quickly. ‘Every time I got desperate, she came to the mill. And I gave her the odd quid.’ He sniffed, removed the smile from his face. ‘By my reckoning, that Sally Crumpsall owes me a tenner. Because that’s approximately what I paid her mother in 1939.’
She pulled away from him, backed down the driveway. Clutching bag and shoes, she crossed the road and hid behind some bushes at the edge of the park. Within half an hour, a smile lurked at the corner of her lips. The evening was hot and clammy, yet Worthington had just closed all his windows.
Ivy opened her door, looked at the crumpled mess that had deposited itself on the flags below the step. ‘What have you come for?’ she asked, her tone sharp. She’d no time for Gert Simpson, no time for anybody at present. There was a lot going on, including Maureen and Tom’s wedding in a matter of days. And she wanted to get back to Oakmead, back to Sal. The departure date had been postponed twice already. Then there was the other business, the business that was going to put Worthington out of business . . . ‘What do you want?’ The woman had plainly taken a battering. But her husband was still in hospital. Who had belted her, then?
‘Just to come in.’
Ivy allowed her gaze to stray past the dishevelled and bruised woman, saw two dilapidated suitcases, a shopping bag and some brown paper parcels. ‘What’s all that?’ she asked.
‘Me clothes. And a few bits and pieces. I’ve nowhere to go, Mrs Crumpsall. Worthington’s chucked me out of the house we were renting. I didn’t fancy stopping there any road.’
Ivy paused for a second, processed the information. ‘Sounds just like him, does that. Come in for a bit, then.’
Gert gathered her belongings and staggered inside beneath the weight of all the baggage.
‘Stick that lot in the parlour while I think,’ commanded Ivy. She went off to make tea.
The unexpected visitor placed her packages on the floor and looked round the parlour. It was so clean, so tidy. There wasn’t much money here, but the place was homely, especially with that lovely clock ticking gently on the mantelpiece. She perched on the edge of the sofa, took out her powder compact and studied her face. Even under thick cream and powder, the bruises showed.
‘What happened?’ asked Ivy from the doorway.
‘He raped me,’ replied Gert immediately, though she hadn’t expected to come out with it so baldly. There was something about Ivy Crumpsall that invited – perhaps demanded – the whole truth without any dressing. ‘And other things, things I’d never have thought of.’ She turned her head so that the older woman might get a better view of the damage. ‘I’m not the only one what finished up bleeding, though. I split his nose, but that weren’t enough. I want him dead, Mrs Crumpsall. If somebody’ll arrange for him to be dead, I’ll dig the grave myself – with these.’ She stretched out ten nails whose painted surface was chipped.
Ivy lowered herself into the fireside rocker. There was something so vulnerable about Gert’s damaged nail varnish. It probably wasn’t like her to have such tatty hands. ‘We’ll go in the kitchen and have a cuppa in a minute.’ The tone had lost its raw and angry edge. ‘You’re not the first, love. And you won’t be his last, neither.’
‘I know.’ Gert gulped back a sob of self-pity. ‘I’ve even give up me job in Woolworths, ’cos me and Bert were working for Worthington – cleaning, odd jobs and all that. But I’ve lost that place as well – I’ve no intention of going anywhere near Worthington’s house again – and I’ve nowhere to live.’
‘I’m sorry, lass.’ And Ivy was sorry, wondered whether she might have misjudged this woman before. Gert’s next words convinced Ivy that Lottie and Gert were poles apart.
‘It were Worthington as got Lottie to write and ask me to come down here for Sally. I mean, I didn’t even know Lottie were going abroad, did I? So when I came and asked for Sally, that were because I thought Lottie wanted me to have her. I came here in good faith, Mrs Crumpsall. But Bert were in on it with Worthington, I think. I’ve finished with Bert and all. I went on the phone at the corner shop and the hospital says he’s all right. I mean, I didn’t want him to die or nothing. But he’s no husband of mine.’
‘What’ll you do?’
‘I don’t know.’
Ivy studied her peg rug for a moment or two. ‘So you’re not here to find out where our Sal is? You’re not here to try and take her off me?’
Gert shook her head so hard that the multi-coloured curls flew all around her face. ‘Lottie wrote in that letter as how you weren’t fit to mind Sally.’ She eyed the old woman. ‘And when I came that first time, I have to tell you I agreed with her, ’cos you were pale and sick looking. You seem all right now. Yon kiddy’s your grandchild . . .’ ‘She’s not, she’s not!’ cried a voice in Gert’s head. But Gert closed her inner ear and continued stolidly, ‘If owt ever happens to you, Mrs Crumpsall, I’ll do my bit for Sally. I’m not like our Lottie, I promise you.’
‘I know that. Aye, I know now, lass. You’d make ten of yon Lottie Kerrigan.’
The kind tone brought tears spurting from Gert’s already crimson-lidded eyes. ‘I’ve nowt,’ she cried between sobs. ‘Nowt and nobody and nowhere of me own.’
Ivy rose and crossed the room. ‘You’ve me and little Sal and you’ve here,’ she whispered. ‘Get yon pile of stuff up the dancers and into our Sal’s room. She’s still away, but we’re keeping this house on. Our lass has been given a cottage by Lord Tom. He said she’d rabbited on for years about a house in the country, so he’s gone and given her a lovely place. But we’ll not be there a lot. She’ll be coming back here, to her own school. So, when me and Sal come home, you’ll have to manage on the sofa till I get another bed. Any road, you can keep the place dusted for me, eh? Now, pull yourself together and we’ll have a drink.’
‘I can’t,’ sobbed Gert. ‘I can’t live in your house and act as if nowt’s happened—’
‘Course you can.’
‘He did it!’ she shouted. ‘My Bert. He did that fire, you know. And Ruth and Joseph Heilberg are your mates and Maureen Wotsername—’
‘We know all about it,’ announced Ivy firmly. ‘Bert’s a damn fool of a man, but we all guessed from the kick-off that it were Worthington’s plan, that arson attack. He blackmailed Bert, I bet.’
‘Aye.’ Gert dried her face. ‘But that doesn’t make no difference, not to me. Nothing’s worse than hurting folk. Burns are awful. And Bert can say he didn’t know she were there, but that doesn’t matter to me, neither. The pawnshop were in a terraced row. Fire spreads. Loads of folk could have died that night.’ She blew her nose. ‘Any road, Bert can bugger off. I’ve done me best. Time I had a new life.’
While they drank tea in the kitchen, Ivy kept one eye on Gert and the other on the clock. The disruption of Paradise Mill had started some days ago, but the best was yet to come. Today, at twelve noon, three sheds were going to down tools and walk out. Ivy, who was only human, wanted to see the fun. ‘When did he do all that to you?’ she asked.
‘Thursday.’
This was Monday. ‘So you looked a lot worse afore today?’
Gert sniffed. ‘I felt ashamed. I couldn’t go out looking like the loser in a boxing match, could I? This morning, I thought of you, thought you might just help me.’
Ivy clattered the spoon in her saucer. ‘Would you like to see something really exciting?’
‘Eh?’
The old woman leaned forward and whispered, as if she imagined the kitchen to be full of people. ‘We’re fetching him down, Gert.’
‘Eh?’ repeated the guest. ‘Who?’
‘The man who bruised your face, love.’ And worse, mused Ivy. Aye, the real damage was hidden, because although the body would heal, a woman was never the same after rape, since it was an invasion of the soul, too.
‘Bloody hell,’ breathed Gert.
‘I agree,’ said Ivy. ‘With custard.’
Gert excused herself to go down the garden. Before leaving the room, she smiled at Ivy. ‘Thanks for . . . for trying to help me. You’re the only one I could turn to except for Mrs Worthington – and she’s got trouble enough of her own.’ The brave expression melted, leaving her face old and wise. ‘That poor woman, eh? How’s she managed all these years? No wonder there’s bolts and locks on her bedroom door.’ Gert bit her lip, shook her head, then went out into the back garden.
Ivy Crumpsall closed her eyes and leaned back in her chair. She pictured him suspended from a rope, the ugly eyes bulging even further than usual from their hooded sockets. Her right hand clasped as if it held the lever to a trapdoor. Aye, she’d like to send him from here to eternity, all right. And, if ever given half a chance, she wouldn’t even wear the hangman’s mask. Her eyes flew open. She wanted him to know, wanted him to see her face today.
Gert came in, lowered herself gingerly into a chair.
‘All right?’
‘Not as bad as it were, ta.’
Ivy smiled kindly, though her face managed to remain tight. ‘He’ll be stopped and all, Gert. Nigh on a quarter of his workforce did a disappearing act a couple of days since. He’s been running round like a screw-necked chicken trying to get folk to change their minds and come back to Paradise. The whole town’s in on it, you know. Mill owners know what’s afoot – even the bloody Freemasons want shut of him, ’cos they’re decent men at heart. That’s why we’ve stayed on, me and Lord Tom. Well – there’s the wedding and all, of course. Them as have left Worthington’s have been took on by other mills – better pay, nice conditions, a union to speak up for them. They’re not all fools, the mill owners. Today, we’ve another fifty-odd coming out, only they’re planning on a bit of a show. They’ll lose nowt, because every man and woman starts a new job tomorrow. Fancy a front seat?’