Ellie Pride (6 page)

Her heart sank as she saw the expression on his face.

‘I very much regret to have to tell you, Miss Isherwood, that the woman you wanted me to trace – your nurse, I believe you said she was – passed away some time ago. She was predeceased by her husband, and, as you informed me, she was in the employ of Earl Peel of Lancaster.’

‘Yes…yes…I…I understand.’

‘I have brought you bad news, I can see, and I am sorry for it.’

Mary gave him a wan smile. ‘You must think me foolish, Mr Dawson, but Emma was very dear to me. She was my nurse, you see, and my closest companion after the death of my mother. She was less than a dozen years older than I, and had been hired originally as a nursery maid.’

Frank Dawson remained quiet. He had experienced many scenes likes this one in his work as a private investigator, but something about Mary Isherwood’s quiet dignity elicited his highest accolade – his rarely given respect.

‘Emma was everything to me,’ Mary told him simply. ‘But then she…she had to leave. My father decided that I was old enough not to need her services any longer, and so Emma took employment elsewhere, which was how she met her husband. We kept up a correspondence for a while, until…until I quarrelled with my father and…and left home to go and live with friends in London.’

‘I am sorry if my investigations have brought you
unhappiness.’ Frank Dawson gave a small cough. ‘There is, of course, the matter of my fees, but –’

‘No, no…I shall pay you now,’ Mary insisted firmly. ‘Do you have your account?’

Relieved, Frank Dawson reached into his pocket for the invoice he had written before coming north. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Mary, it was just that he knew the way that rich folk could take their time about paying bills.

‘Oh…’ she began, and then checked. ‘I had heard that Emma had had a child, Mr Dawson, a son. I don’t know if…?’ Mary’s face had become slightly pink and she sounded a little nervous.

‘Oh, yes, I almost forgot,’ Frank Dawson responded. ‘I was that concerned about telling you that your nurse had passed away that I nearly overlooked the boy. It’s all here.’ He proudly removed a notebook from his pocket and tapped it with one thick forefinger. ‘A son born not a year after they had wed, he was.’

‘I see. And what do you know of this son, Mr Dawson, if anything?’

‘There is not much to know, ma’am, other than that he visits this town in his line of business. Well, not exactly his line of business, since he was apprenticed to a master cabinet-maker in Lancaster, but it seems that Master Wareing could not find work for the young man, having three sons of his own to take into the business, and so currently by all accounts Mr Gideon Walker is working for William Pride, a cattle drover, whilst
he tries his luck at setting himself up in business as a cabinet-maker.’

‘A cabinet-maker…and he visits Preston regularly, you say? Goodness, you have been thorough and clever, Mr Dawson,’ Mary complimented him. ‘You wouldn’t happen to have an address where I might find him, would you? I may have come into my inheritance too late to do anything to reward Emma for her care of me, but perhaps I shall be able to benefit her son – for her sake and her kindness to me.’

‘Very worthy sentiments, if I may be so bold as to say, ma’am. As to the young man’s address, I shall do my best to discover it, ma’am, and once I have done so I shall send you a note of it,’ Dawson promised.

‘You are every bit as efficient as my friends promised, Mr Dawson,’ Mary smiled, discreetly adding an extra guinea to the money she was placing on the table in front of her. ‘And I am very grateful for what you have done.’

After Frank Dawson had gone, Mary frowned into the silence of the room.

There had been a time when Emma had been everything to her: mother, sister, friend, protector.

The genteel poverty in which Mary had lived during her father’s lifetime, scraping a living giving private French lessons, had made it impossible for her to do anything to repay Emma for her care of her as a child, but now things were different.

With so much renovation needing to be done on
the house she could easily find work for a skilled cabinet-maker. And surely she owed it to Emma to do for her son what she could no longer do for Emma herself.

Newly returned from Lancaster, as always when he walked past the huge bulk of the Hawkins cotton mill on his way to his lodgings, Gideon was struck by its gauntness and the dark, sour shadow it threw across the narrow street. Not for anything would he want to work in such an environment, and he sincerely pitied those who must. As he turned off the main street and in through the ginnel that led to the yard that housed his lodgings, he saw Nancy walking towards him.

‘Still seeing that posh lady friend of yours, are you?’ she demanded, giving him a bold-eyed look. ‘’Cos if you ain’t…’

A meaningful smile accompanied her words, but as she deliberately reached out and touched his bare forearm with her work-roughened hands, Gideon had to stop himself from protesting. Her touch was nothing like Ellie’s and it was almost a profanity even to think about his beloved in close proximity to a woman like Nancy.

‘Just wanted to thank you, like, for helping us out wi’ poor Peggy. Snuffed it, she did, of course. Best thing for her really. She was too far gone to risk what she did. Fair butchered her, that old Jezebel who calls herself a wisewoman did. Better she had had the brat and then left it on the doorstep of the foundling home – or, better still, with its father.’ Her face twisted into an ugly bitterness. ‘Not that he’d care to acknowledge it, nor what he gets up to wi’ lasses who can’t afford to say no to him.’

Gideon didn’t know what to say. He had guessed what had happened to the girl. William Pride had spoken openly to him about the way some of the mill girls were forced to supplement their small incomes, and their resultant need of the illegal services of the town’s notorious ‘wisewoman’, who for a fee was willing to help terminate their unwanted pregnancies.

‘Poor little sods might just as well throw ’emselves int’ Ribble!’ he had told Gideon wryly. ‘At least that way ’ud be quicker and less painful.’

Gideon had kept his own counsel, although he had found what he had been told disturbing.

His landlady approached him as he walked into the house.

‘There’s a letter for you,’ she told him. ‘It came a couple of days back. Shall I fetch it?’

Nodding, Gideon tried to conceal his impatience as he waited for her to return. He had made enquiries about a couple of shop premises, and maybe the letter was about one of them.

When his landlady returned with a sealed envelope with his name written elegantly on it, Gideon resisted the temptation to tear it open straight away. She was watching him with open curiosity, but, sidestepping her, Gideon made for the stairs.

Once inside his own room he ripped open the envelope, frowning a little as he read its contents.

Disappointingly, it wasn’t about either of the shop premises he had visited. Instead, the letter declared that its writer was aware that he was a skilled cabinet-maker newly come to the town, and that she had some work she wished to discuss with him if he could make himself available at the address given on the letter when he was next in Preston.

Ruefully Gideon reread it. Well, at least he had a potential offer of work, even if he did not have any premises, but he was warily conscious of the work he had done that had still not been paid for. This time he would behave a good deal less naïvely and trustingly when he visited his would-be customer.

He studied the address. Winckley Square. Very posh. What exactly was it that Miss Mary Isherwood wanted him to make, he wondered.

At least he would have some good news to tell Ellie. Whistling cheerfully under his breath, Gideon washed quickly and then put on fresh clothes. The last time he had been in Preston he had promised that he would take Ellie boating on the river. The thought of being with her made his heart lift in anticipation.

‘Oh, my poor head. What on earth is that dreadful noise?’

Ellie sighed, trying not to betray either her impatience or her longing for Gideon’s promised arrival and her escape from the stuffy, claustrophobic atmosphere of her mother’s room and company.

‘It is the men who have come to install the new telephone,’ she replied as patiently as she could.

Fretfully Lydia Pride pressed her hands to her temples. ‘I cannot understand why your father should have been so unthinking as to have them come round now when he knows that I am suffering from a bad headache.’

Ellie said nothing. The truth was that her mother had been suffering from ‘a bad headache’ and an even worse temper on and off now for weeks, and Ellie couldn’t help fidgeting a little and glancing longingly towards the window through which the late spring sunshine was shining in intoxicating temptation.

‘You must go and tell them to stop, Ellie,’ Lydia announced. ‘I really cannot stand any more of this noise. And whilst you are downstairs, tell Cook to prepare me a tisane. It might soothe my poor aching head. No, you had better make it yourself, Ellie, I am sure that Cook did not use newly boiled water yesterday when she made me one. It had a distinctly sour taste, and she had used far too much ginger!’

The taste of her mother’s tisane could not be any sourer than the air in this room, Ellie decided rebelliously, and certainly nowhere near as sour as her mother’s mood. Ellie scarcely recognised her gentle, laughing mother in the cross shrew she had turned into these last few weeks.

‘The men are almost finished,’ she tried to placate her.

‘But why could they not wait a little?’

‘Mother, you were the one who insisted that Father had a telephone installed as soon as he could, remember?’ Ellie couldn’t prevent herself from challenging. ‘You said that if all your sisters had telephones then you must have one too. You said that Father would find that it increased his business,’ Ellie pressed on, ignoring the protective little voice inside herself that was urging her to remember that her mother was not well, and that the pregnancy must be making her feel uncomfortable. Ellie couldn’t wait for the next few weeks to be over. In fact, she decided crossly, she wished her mother would have the baby now and then perhaps the Pride household might get back to normal!

‘Ellie, I wish you would not speak to me in such a way,’ Lydia responded sharply. ‘Did you tell Jenny about the sheets, like I asked you to? They must be sent straight back to the laundry, and no bill paid until they are returned properly laundered – and whilst we are on the subject, you must take care to watch what Jenny is doing on washdays. She cannot be left alone in the wash
house with the copper. If she is she will skimp on her duties!’

Ellie bit on her bottom lip. Gideon would be here soon. He had promised her that he would make all speed to come round to Friargate the moment he arrived in Preston, and her uncle had already been round to the shop to try to persuade her father to join him in one of his favourite drinking haunts.

Gideon! Ellie was longing to see him again. Would he kiss her as he had done before? A delicious sense of anticipation was filling her, increasing her impatience with her mother.

‘Ellie! Pay attention! You are not listening to me! Jenny –’

‘I’m sorry about the washing, Mother, but you said that the things for your lying-in had to be prepared, and because of the rain it took longer to get everything dried.’

‘You must not make excuses for her, Ellie. Like all domestics Jenny will try to take advantage, if you let her – Ellie, why do you keep looking towards the window?’

‘It is nothing, Mother, only that Gideon Walker has promised to take us all boating on the river. John is so excited, and –’

‘Gideon Walker?’ Lydia interrupted her sharply, struggling to control the surge of fear and hostility that drove the dull ache in her temples into a hammering crescendo of pain. Just recently she had begun to sense a change in Ellie, a new wilful stubbornness that reminded her all too painfully
of the way she herself had been at the same age. ‘Ellie, I need you here with me. You know that I am not well.’

‘You said that you wanted to be left alone to sleep,’ Ellie reminded her mother, aching with impatience to be gone. ‘And besides, I have already promised John that we are to go on the river. Father said it would do us all good to get out in the fresh air,’ she could not restrain herself from adding.

‘Ellie, I do not want you to go. I want you to stay here with me,’ Lydia stopped her angrily as she turned to the door.

Ellie stared at her mother. ‘But…but why?’ she demanded. She could feel the whole of her stomach cramping in anger and disbelief. Hadn’t she done everything she could to make her mother comfortable, and to do as she was bidden these last difficult weeks? ‘You are just being mean because you are cross, and –’

‘Ellie, how dare you speak to me like that?’ Lydia demanded angrily. ‘And as for you going anywhere with Gideon Walker, I absolutely forbid you do so!’

Ellie could not believe that this was her gentle, loving mother speaking to her so.

‘No,’ she denied fiercely, ‘no, I won’t stay. I won’t!’ Tears of confusion filled her eyes as she heard the rebellion in her own voice, and her legs trembled a little at her defiance, but that didn’t stop her from hurrying towards the door and wrenching it open.

Lydia watched Ellie leave in shocked disbelief. Had she behaved in such a way as a girl her mother would have had her whipped! Of course, Lydia knew exactly who to blame for her daughter’s behaviour. Gideon Walker!

What had happened to the mother she loved, Ellie wondered angrily, distressed flags of red flying in her cheeks as she hurried downstairs. For weeks now Ellie had dutifully acted as a go-between for her mother, conveying her increasingly demanding instructions to Annie and Jenny, and doing all she could to appease both of them as well as her mother. If anyone should have a headache, she decided rebelliously, it should be her.

Not that she was the only one to suffer from her mother’s suddenly sharp tongue. Only the previous day, Lydia had shocked them all when, at supper time, she had been discussing Cecily’s wedding.

‘It will be a very grand affair,’ she had announced. ‘My sister says that Cecily’s fiancé’s family are very well connected, and can trace their ancestors back to the reign of our late queen’s grandfather!’

‘Well, that is nothing,’ John had boasted immediately. ‘There were Prides keeping a butcher’s shop in the Shambles for hundreds and hundreds of years, weren’t there, Dad, before they were knocked down to make way for the new Harris Museum?’

‘John, I wish you would not mention such a place
as the Shambles!’ Lydia had complained sharply. ‘And as for boasting about your father’s family’s connection with it, I would have thought I had taught you better.’

There had been a small uncomfortable silence whilst the siblings had looked at one another, and then their father had said quietly, ‘I seem to remember, Lydia, that when we first met you liked to hear stories about the origins of my family and the business.’

When Ellie had glanced across the table at her father she had seen a look in his eyes, a sadness that had made her heart ache.

And then he had got up and had left the table without finishing his supper, and her mother had sent John to bed.

But now, as she hurried downstairs, Ellie could hear John calling out excitedly, ‘Gideon’s here!’

Her heart was beating so fast she felt giddy. And even in the darkness of the narrow passageway Ellie felt as though she could feel the warmth and brilliance of the sun.

‘What on earth is happening?’

Ellie felt her whole body quiver at the sound of Gideon’s voice from across the small room at the back of the shop, where he was standing, with John and Connie both trying to out-do one another to engage his attention. At the same time, the dog, Rex, was barking his head off, as eager
for Gideon’s acknowledgement of his presence as the others.

Ellie’s shy gaze met Gideon’s much bolder one. For a few seconds her feelings were so intense that it was impossible for her to answer his question, and even more impossible for her to tear her gaze from his.

‘The noise?’ Gideon prompted her, and Ellie shook her head, laughing, as Gideon waved in the direction of the workmen.

‘They are installing one of the new telephones,’ she informed Gideon.

Immediately, John chimed in, ‘Yes, and we went to the telephone company’s offices and saw how they worked, and they told Ellie that she could have a job working in the telephone exchange any time she wished.’

‘Did they indeed!’ Gideon marvelled, but it was the look in his eyes as his gaze met Ellie’s over the head of her younger brother that made her colour up so prettily, her argument with her mother already almost forgotten. Almost, but not quite.

‘Gideon, if you don’t mind I should like to call at Miller’s Arcade on our way back later. I want to buy some sweets for my mother. And there is a shop there that sells her favourite ginger pieces dipped in chocolate.’

As Gideon inclined his head, Robert Pride gave his elder daughter a pleased look. He was aware of just how much responsibility had been placed on Ellie’s shoulders recently, and just how much
more there would be if things went wrong with the coming child’s birth, as had been so gravely forecast.

Sombrely he waited until the chattering quartet had moved out into the street, before giving his assistant instructions to mind the shop and hurrying up into the house.

Lydia looked up expectantly as the bedroom door opened. Ellie had obviously realised how badly she had behaved and had come back to beg her forgiveness. Mentally Lydia rehearsed what she intended to say to her erring daughter, but to her irritation it was her husband who was coming into the room.

‘Where is Ellie?’ she demanded peremptorily as Robert closed the door behind him.

‘She has gone off to the river with Gideon and the children.’

‘And you permitted her to go?’ Lydia’s mouth thinned. ‘I wish you would not encourage that young man to believe himself welcome here, Robert.’

‘But he
is
welcome,’ Robert told her easily. ‘He is a hard-working lad, and –’

‘He has no prospects! No family! Can you imagine what my sisters will think if Ellie should be foolish enough to walk out publicly with him?’