Dancing in the Moonlight (13 page)

‘Marry
you?’
The thought was abhorrent, repugnant, and in her naivety she let him see the truth, even before she tugged her hands from his.

His nostrils flared, but his voice was low when he said, ‘Aye, me, and let me tell you there’s plenty who’d bite my hand off, so quick would they say yes.’

‘It was you who got my da and brother killed. You threw their bodies in the dock and everyone thinks they’re drunkards, and you’ve frightened Donald to death so he’s run
away.’ She took a deep pull of air, backing away from him until she found herself against the wall.

‘I did no such thing.’ He followed her, still talking quietly, but with red-hot colour searing his cheekbones. ‘Your father and brother got themselves killed, remember that.
Your father came to me begging me to put something his way; it wasn’t my fault he couldn’t handle it. And I covered up for them after. Or would you have preferred they be branded as
thieves and Donald sent down the line, eh? Because that’s what would have happened if they’d been found in the hold of the ship.’

‘You did it for yourself, not them.’

‘Is that so?’

She knew she was inflaming his fury, but she couldn’t stop herself. The bitter anger and hurt had been kept in too long, and now here he was – the man she hated and despised –
and he still wouldn’t admit what he’d done or show any remorse. ‘Yes, it is so, and you know it. Jacob’s always known what you’re really like, and he wouldn’t
dance to your tune like the others, would he? That’s what you couldn’t bear.’

‘Shut up about Jacob.’ He raised his hand as though he was going to slap her, but as she faced him, wide-eyed and trembling, he groaned, ‘Aw, lass, don’t be like this.
I’ve said I’ll marry you, haven’t I, an’ take on the young ’uns an’ all. What more do you want?’

‘I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last man on Earth.’ She tried to make a run for it, thinking that if she could get to the hall and call out, Ruby and John would hear, but
he caught her arm, jerking her to him before she’d even taken a step.

‘Oh aye, you will,’ he ground out thickly. ‘I want you, and you’ll come crawling on your knees begging me to marry you before I’m finished.’

‘No!’ His mouth closing over hers smothered her protest as he bent her backwards, but as her fingers came up to his face and her nails rent his skin, he swore, his leg whipping her
knees from under her so that they fell to the floor.

Now one hand was over her mouth and the other tearing at her clothes as he seemed to go mad. Lucy continued to scratch and kick, but the muscled weight of him made it futile. Tom was a tall,
heavy, well-built man in his prime and her slender body still had to fill out into the full curves of womanhood, so her struggles made no impact on him except to excite him more. For minutes she
fought, even when she was all but naked. His mouth at her small breasts, his exploring, pinching fingers, the indignities he was heaping on her – it was as though hell had opened and
swallowed her. A hell much worse than anything Parson Shawe had preached about.

When her body was suddenly rent in two by indescribable pain – a pain that went on and on as Tom hammered into her – even the hand across her mouth couldn’t prevent the
agonized screams, but they were muffled and choked. And then he gave a great shuddering groan and collapsed on top of her, his fingers moving with the motion and covering her nose too so that
combined with the crushing weight of him, she couldn’t breathe. But she struggled no more, not caring at that instant if she lived or died.

When, after a moment or two, the weight lifted, Lucy couldn’t move. Not until he stood looking down at her did she find the strength to pull the torn remnants of her skirt about her and
roll onto her face.

His voice harsh, he muttered, ‘You brought this on yourself, you know that, don’t you? I wanted to do it right, but you’d have none of it. Well, my offer still stands.
I’ll marry you an’ take the bairns on an’ all, and there’s not many who’d put up their hand for that, so think on.’ He waited a moment and, when there was no
movement or word from the figure at his feet, walked to the door. ‘I’ll be back when you’ve had time to see reason.’ He hesitated, then walked to the table and flung a
handful of coins on its wooden surface. ‘That’s to tide you over,’ he said gruffly. ‘You’ll find I’m not tight-fisted, not with me own and, like I said before,
you’ll want for nothing. But I won’t be played for a fool. And I tell you something: I want no more talk of Jacob. You look at another man and I’ll do for ’em. Remember
that.’

It wasn’t until Lucy heard the back door close that she painfully dragged herself to her knees. Holding onto a kitchen chair for support, she stood up and stumbled out into the scullery.
The bolts on the door were rusty and stiff, but eventually she managed to work them into place. Then, shaking from head to foot, her legs gave way and she slid onto the floor, her face awash with
the tears racking her body.

At two o’clock in the morning she brought the tin bath into the kitchen. She painstakingly filled it to the brim with kettle after kettle of hot water and then stripped off her tattered
clothes. Before stepping into the steaming bath she burned every last scrap of clothing on the range fire and then used the scrubbing brush to scour her skin until it was red and raw.

This, then, was what her mam had told her about, the thing that happened between a man and a woman. Her blue eyes wide and tear-bleared, she shuddered. She couldn’t imagine being married
and it happening over and over. She never wanted a man to touch her again, and the thought of Tom Crawford made her skin crawl. She would kill herself rather than marry him.

She sat in the water for a long time before drying herself. Then, with the towel wrapped round her, she crept upstairs. Ruby and the twins were fast asleep. She stood for a moment, staring down
at them. They were the same. The nightmare that had happened to her downstairs hadn’t touched them, but it had changed her forever. And if anyone found out they would say she was bad, that
she’d given him the eye and got what she’d asked for. It was always the same – her mam had told her that. Men could have umpteen girls and folk smiled and said they were sowing
their wild oats and it was natural, but if a girl got taken down, it was a different kettle of fish. And that’s what had happened.
She’d been taken down.

She covered her face with her hands and swayed back and forth for a few moments before becoming still.

She couldn’t let anyone know and, even if she could, who would she tell? Mrs Crawford would have been the natural person she would have run to, but she was Tom’s mother, she
wouldn’t believe he had forced her. And just supposing she did, what would be the outcome? He would say he wanted to marry her, and she would rather go to the river this night and end it than
endure that.

Shivering, she silently pulled on the only other clothes she possessed – her Sunday frock and spare set of underclothes. Once downstairs again, she disposed of the bath water and sat down
at the table. The shivering had stopped and her mind had become clear. She knew exactly what she was going to do.

Her gaze fell on the pile of coins Tom Crawford had left on the table. There were two shiny half-crowns and a number of shillings and sixpences along with the copper. A small fortune to her, and
yet to him just loose change in his pocket.

Shame and self-disgust rose in a hot flood. He had paid for her, like men did with women of the night. Her body was still throbbing and aching from his brutality, and with a low cry she swiped
the coins onto the floor, where they rolled in all directions. And there they would stay. She wouldn’t touch a penny of his money.

She wanted to cry again. Instead she sat down and wrote a note, which she placed in the middle of the table.

The few sticks of furniture they had left weren’t much, but at least she wouldn’t be worried the landlord would send his ‘collector’ after them. He was
different from the rent man, the collector, and although she’d never seen him she knew of him from the neighbours. One family a door or two along the street had done a moonlight flit a few
months ago and the collector had found them and broken the father’s kneecaps.

The note written, she placed the pan of stew she had made the day before on the hob to warm and sliced a loaf of bread to go with it. The pawn money that old Lonnie had dished out to Ruby and
John had bought some scrag of mutton and a bag of vegetables and two loaves of bread, and she had a shilling over. A shilling between them and starvation. She glanced at the bread knife. It was the
source of her troubles, or that’s how she felt, but as the last link to her mam and da, she’d rather have walked on hot coals than let it go again. In its own way it was as precious as
Jacob’s necklace.

Her hand went to her throat and then she froze. The tiny heart and chain had gone. She glanced about her wildly. It must have come off when she was fighting Tom.

Going down on her hands and knees, she searched every inch of the kitchen floor by the light of the oil lamp, moving the lamp so that she could peer into the crevices between the stone flags.
Nothing. She sat back on her heels after a while, beyond tears. Had it become caught in her tattered clothes and she’d unknowingly thrown it into the fire? She gave a dry sob. It was the last
straw, a loss of gigantic magnitude.

Without much hope she went into the tiny scullery and there, by the back door where she had sat for a long time after she had secured the bolts, she caught a gleam of silver. The tiny clasp had
come undone, that was all. Tremblingly she picked the precious necklace up and, with her hand against her chest and her eyes closed, the tears of relief flowed. If she had lost Jacob’s little
heart it would have been the end of everything, that’s how she’d felt.

She roused Ruby first. Bringing her sister downstairs to the kitchen, she sat her at the table. ‘We have to leave here, now, today,’ she said without any preamble. ‘We’re
behind with the rent and, once they know Donald’s gone, they’ll put you and John and the twins in the workhouse. Look, this is what Donald wrote.’ She had screwed up his note
initially, not wanting the others to know the fate he’d consigned them to, but as an afterthought had straightened out the paper and hid it. Now she was glad she had. In Ruby’s eyes it
backed up her words like nothing else could have done.

White-faced, Ruby read her brother’s scrawled words and for once her bumptiousness was absent. ‘You – you wouldn’t do what he said, would you?’ she whispered
fearfully, the terrible tales her parents had told of their beginnings in that dreaded place filling her mind.

‘I don’t want to, so that’s why we have to go. But you’ll have to help me, Ruby. I’ll try and get a job somewhere, but you’ll have to take care of the little
ones.’

Ruby stared at her. ‘But where will we live?’

It was a good question. Until this very moment she hadn’t fully acknowledged that at the back of her mind she’d known Jacob wouldn’t see them destitute and neither would his
mother. But now, in the space of twenty-four hours, everything had changed. Jacob had been beaten nearly to death and was lost to her, and so was Mrs Crawford in a different way. They were on their
own.

‘Once I get a job we’ll find a room somewhere.’ As times had worsened, it wasn’t unusual for families of ten or more to rent one room in a house. Somehow they’d
manage. She closed her mind as to how she was going to feed the five of them. ‘We need to take everything we can carry between us because we’re not coming back, not ever. You understand
that, don’t you?’

Ruby nodded. She was frightened, not just by the situation, but by Lucy too. Her sister had a strange look on her face and her voice was wooden, odd. Whispering again, she said, ‘Are you
all right?’

She would never be all right again, but she couldn’t tell Ruby what Tom had done. She couldn’t tell anyone. No one must ever know. She answered Ruby with a nod. ‘Go and get
dressed and tell John what’s happening. It’ll be light soon and we need to get away once we’ve had something to eat. Make it a game with the twins, I don’t want them crying
or creating as we leave.’

‘What’s that?’ Ruby had been about to do as she was told when her gaze fell on one of the half-crowns, which had rolled into a corner of the room. ‘It’s money,
Lucy, and look, there’s more,’ she said excitedly as her sharp eyes spotted other coins.

As she sprang forward, Lucy’s arm shot out and pulled her back. ‘Leave them,’ she said fiercely.

‘Leave them?’ Ruby’s voice was high with surprise. ‘But it’s money, lots of money. Where’s it come from?’

‘That doesn’t matter, but I don’t want you picking it up, do you understand me? It’s not ours.’

‘Whose is it then?’

Lucy didn’t answer this. What she did say was, and in a voice that made Ruby take a step backwards, ‘You touch any of that money – just one penny – and I’ll put you
in the workhouse sooner than you can say Jack Robinson.’

Ruby stared at her sister. Slowly she edged past her and scampered out of the kitchen and up the stairs to John’s room. Her brother was curled under the blankets like a dormouse and
didn’t take kindly to being woken by Ruby shaking his shoulders like a dog with a rat. ‘Get off me,’ he muttered irritably, trying to pull the covers over himself again.
‘Leave me alone.’

‘Wake up, John, now.’ Ruby wrenched the blankets right off the bed. ‘Our Lucy’s gone stark-staring barmy and there’s money all over the kitchen floor and she
won’t let us pick it up.’

‘Wh-what?’ John sat up, rubbing his eyes and yawning.

‘Donald left a note and we’ve got to get away or they’ll put us in the workhouse, but Lucy’s gone queer in the head. She’s acting all funny and there’s money
everywhere,’ said Ruby, exaggerating as she often did to get her brother’s attention.

John held his sister’s feverish gaze. ‘It’s not only Lucy who’s gone queer in the head, if you ask me,’ he said stolidly, knowing his lack of reaction would drive
Ruby crazy.