No Greater Love (48 page)

She knew he remembered well the time he had burst into her home with George and urged her to give herself up. Until now she had never alluded to the painful episode. Now the memory of it seemed to hang between them like poisoned air.

Maggie gripped the back of her chair and challenged him with her look. ‘Unless you fight against the inequality between us, you condone it and therefore support it. You’re kind and considerate and I would never insult you by comparing you to the Turveys of this world. But the powerlessness we feel is just as strong here for me and Millie, we’re still dependent on your charity for a roof over our heads. We know if we don’t both behave ourselves - improve ourselves - we’ll be back in St Chad’s.’

He stepped towards her and she saw anger in his face for the first time. ‘Is that what you think? That I only took you in out of charity? That all I want to do is improve you like some sanctimonious reformer?’

‘Aye! Why else would you take in an old whore and a fallen woman with a criminal record to boot? So you can reform our wayward characters, of course, save our souls. Aye, and score some extra points with the boss in heaven, isn’t that it?’

John reached out and grabbed her from behind the chair, seeming incensed by her words, and Maggie felt a flicker of fear. He pulled her towards him and she froze as his bony hands pinned her arms. She almost screamed, but he began to speak in a low urgent voice.

‘It may have been charity in Millie’s case, but not in yours,’ he growled. ‘I care for you, Maggie Beaton, care for you deeply. Surely you’re aware of that by now?’ His brown eyes seemed to burn with a desperation that she should believe him. ‘I want to marry you, Maggie!’

Maggie gawped at the man before her. He was still the gaunt-faced, middle-aged butcher she had known all her life and yet he was different, his expression that of a younger man, full of eagerness and uncertainty and fear of being repulsed.

Maggie gulped back her astonishment. ‘Please let go of me.’

He dropped his hold at once, but his eyes still beseeched her.

‘I know there are many years between us but we share interests in common. It would be no form of slavery, I promise, more a chance of freedom - to follow your own causes or to help me in mine. All I want to do is cherish you, Maggie, and you would never have to fear a return to the workhouse or poverty again. These past months with you here - well, they’ve been the happiest I can remember. I’d find it very hard to return to the loneliness of my past life. I’m asking you, Maggie, to consider becoming my wife.’

All Maggie could do was to stare, for once quite lost for words. John’s quiet plea had diffused her anger but left her deeply shocked. Never once had she guessed his feelings for her. To her, he had never been more than a family friend - of her mother’s generation - who had been kind to them all and helpful to her in particular. This declaration of love, for that was what it was, dumbfounded her. How long had John Heslop loved her? Maggie wondered faintly. Just these past months? Or much longer - since her suffragette days? Had he loved her all the time she had lived with George and suffered to see her with another man? Was that why he flinched every time she mentioned George’s name and seemed reluctant to find George’s child?

Maggie felt sudden revulsion at such thoughts. She did not love John Heslop! How could she love a man as old as her father would have been, who according to Susan had almost married their mother? His proposal was monstrous!

Maggie backed away from him. ‘No, I couldn’t. . . don’t ask me. I don’t love you!’

She stumbled towards the door and wrenched at its shiny brass doorknob. Without looking to see John Heslop’s expression, Maggie escaped from the sunlit room and rushed out of the house, not even stopping to put on a coat or hat. She ran three streets before she could stop shaking, then she slowed and forced herself to breathe more easily.

As she calmed down she realised she had been wrong to vent her anger and frustration at the world on the well-meaning butcher. It was not with men like Heslop that she quarrelled but with the Pearsons and the Turveys and the masters of workhouses and the uncaring landlords and bosses who misused their power and held women in such low regard. But it had stirred up something deep in John Heslop and prompted him to declare himself to her. Now she had a stark choice: marry a man she did not love or leave his employment, for they could not carry on as they were as if nothing had been said.

Maggie felt anger again that he should have spoiled their easy relationship and her new-found tranquillity, for she, too, had enjoyed the past months of companionship and quiet industry.

Twenty minutes later she found herself jumping a tram heading towards the west of the city, down towards the forest of cranes and grey glinting sheds. She had no idea what she would say to her estranged sister, but Maggie suddenly needed to see her. Susan was the closest member of her family left and Maggie recalled the childlike feeling of going to Susan when things went wrong. Her elder sister had always been the one to fuss and scold and comfort the younger ones and at that moment she yearned for the comfort and familiarity of her sister’s mild scolding - anything to blank out John’s disturbing proposal.

To her relief, Aunt Violet was out at the park with Susan’s two older children, enjoying the late summer sunshine. Susan came to the door, balancing a large baby on her hip. She looked years older, the pink bloom quite gone from her pasty face, her hair carelessly piled on the back of her head.

Susan stared at her in silence for a long moment, as if she had seen a ghost.

‘Haway, man Susan, and let us in, I’m not the tickman,’ Maggie teased.

At once, her elder sister burst into tears. Maggie bustled her inside and closed the door on prying neighbours. She steered her into Violet’s kitchen and pushed her into a seat, lifting the baby up to inspect it.

‘Who’s this then?’

‘Bella,’ Susan sniffed in reply. ‘She’s fifteen months.’

Maggie gave the infant a swift kiss, but she wriggled from her hold and staggered across the kitchen floor, whining at her mother. Susan reached for a bottle of milk that was keeping warm on the stove and flicked a few drops onto her wrist to ensure it was not too hot. Bella grabbed it greedily from her hand and began to suck, leaning back into the crook of her mother’s arm.

Maggie watched, trying not to imagine Christabel in just such a homely scene. She would be older than that now, walking properly, perhaps in her first pair of shoes … The thought tugged painfully at her insides.

‘I hear you’re over at Heslop’s,’ Susan broke into her thoughts.

Maggie flushed as she thought of her recent flight from his presence. ‘Aye, he gave me a job a few months back.’

Susan stared at her with puffy eyes. ‘Where did you disappear to? I tried to find you up at Hibbs’ Farm but they told me you’d left long ago. Course I’d heard about George but I thought you’d still be around somewhere. Have you been away?’

‘Aye, to hell and back,’ Maggie joked to hide her discomfort. ‘Why were you looking for me?’

Susan bowed her head.

‘Susan?’ Maggie asked, moving closer. ‘Are you all right?’

Susan’s shoulders shook as she sobbed and the baby spluttered on her milk and began to protest.

‘Oh, be quiet, you little pest!’ Susan shouted at the whingeing child.

‘Here, let me,’ Maggie said, pulling the girl and her bottle off Susan’s lap and plonking them on her knee in the opposite chair. Bella looked at her wide-eyed and uncertain. ‘I’m your Auntie Maggie, hinny, but don’t believe any tales your mam or Aunt Violet tell you.’ Bella gave her one more assessing look, then settled to drink her milk.

Susan spoke tearfully, her body crumpled and round-shouldered with defeat. ‘I was that desperate,’ she whispered. ‘Richard pawned everything -
everything!
When I complained, he started to beat me, not just once or twice but regular like and in front of the bairns.’

Maggie was horrified. ‘That terrible man! I thought the least he was doing was providing for you. What about that job of his he was always bragging about?’

Susan looked bitter. ‘He got the sack. Pretended he hadn’t, but word soon got back to me that he was spending all his time in the pub or betting on street corners. It was then I took over the second-hand clothes from Helen - I’d been too busy with the babies before. She’d run Mam’s business down to nothing, always in the boozer drinking with Richard. So I started doing the rounds again, collecting, then selling clothes round the quayside. I’d take the bairns and be out all day.’ Susan gave a shuddering sob. ‘One day I came back and actually caught them at it - Helen and Richard.’ She looked at Maggie with haunted eyes. ‘In my bed!’ she hissed. ‘In Mam and Dad’s old bed!’ Susan began to sob again. ‘They were too drunk to crawl out of it. So I got the bairns and brought them up here.’

Maggie cringed at her sister’s words, furious at her selfish sister Helen for causing so much distress but even angrier at the hateful Turvey who had all but destroyed their family.

‘I never want to see him again,’ Susan sniffed. ‘Her neither. And to think how I did everything for that selfish lass; stood between Mam and her that many times! I must’ve done something wrong somewhere along the line.’

‘Don’t say that!’ Maggie reproved. ‘You weren’t to blame for any of this. Helen was always one for taking what belonged to others, she was never satisfied just being herself. But Turvey’ll just dump her when he’s used her and she’ll realise her family weren’t so bad after all.’

Susan wiped away tears with the back of her hand and sat up straighter.

‘You know, Aunt Violet thinks now that he’s not even her nephew. She never did hear from his mam after the wedding. Thinks he might have met the real Richard Turvey somewhere and just taken on his name - sponged off his relations.’ Susan gave a harsh laugh. ‘To think I was married to a hoaxer and you were right about him all along.’

Maggie vowed silently that she would never voice her suspicions that Turvey had caused her arrest and brought on their mother’s death, or got George blacklisted on Tyneside, for she did not want Susan to carry the burden of that guilt too. It was time for them to forget Turvey for good.

‘If I ever set eyes on that bastard,’ Maggie fumed, ‘I’ll string him up by his bollocks from the High Level Bridge!’

Susan glanced up in shock. Her face was taut with disapproval, then unexpectedly she started to laugh. ‘Eeh, Maggie, I can see you haven’t changed! I hate to admit it, but I’ve missed your quick tongue around the place. The number of times I’ve backed off from Richard for fear of being hit and told myself that you would never have put up with such carry-on. I used to wish I’d been born you.’

Maggie looked at her sister in amazement. ‘You shouldn’t wish that,’ she answered gently. ‘Besides, it’s not a life many would choose.’

She glanced down at Bella’s soft brown curls and her snub nose, breathing noisily as she sucked the last of the milk, and felt an overwhelming sense of loss for her own daughter. It felt so natural and right to be holding a child in her arms and she knew instinctively that when she had to hand Bella back, her arms would ache with emptiness. She had experienced the feeling so many times over the past eighteen months; rather than growing less with time, her desire for Christabel increased.

‘I don’t know how long Aunt Violet will put up with me and the bairns,’ Susan said, her face creased in worry again. ‘And to think I was that stubborn about wanting to move back to Sarah Crescent. Now I’d be thankful for anywhere to call me own.’

‘Why should Violet want rid of you? You’re company for her and she needs someone to nag since Uncle Barny passed on,’ Maggie smiled encouragingly. But she saw her sister’s worried look and knew how she must fear her insecurity.

‘Aunt Violet’s been good to me,’ Susan defended her. ‘But I’m that frightened for the bairns if anything should happen. I couldn’t go into the workhouse, Maggie,’ she whispered, her eyes wide with terror.

And Maggie thought suddenly that Susan would probably never survive in a place like St Chad’s, separated from her children. She would die a slow death from the degradation and daily humiliations. Maggie shuddered as she remembered.

It was then she realised she had it within her power to do something positive for her sister. She could help her financially and practically - if she accepted John Heslop’s offer of marriage. Maggie’s heart sank at the prospect and she knew that she would be marrying the butcher for hard-headed reasons, but once she had entertained the thought, it became easier to contemplate. She had sworn to harden her heart and never love anyone again after George died and they took Christabel from her. But she did not love Heslop and so when she lost him as she would - he being so much older - there would be no pain.

And one other exciting thought spurred on her decision. Once respectably married to the butcher, she would be able to apply to adopt Christabel. They might never allow her near her daughter while still a disgraced unmarried mother, but how could the authorities object to adoption by a respected businessman who was also a Methodist lay preacher and a Guardian of the Poor Law? Marrying John Heslop was her best chance of finding and securing Christabel, Maggie realised.

‘I can help you, Susan,’ she offered.

‘How?’ Susan asked, her face hopeful.

‘Well, to start with I could help you with the clothes business,’ Maggie suggested. ‘Or you could leave the bairns for me and Millie to look after while you go round the houses. You’d look less like a pack of gypsies if you didn’t have them tagging on.’

Susan gawped. ‘Is that you speaking, Maggie? You never used to be bothered with bairns.’

Maggie flushed. She kissed the top of Bella’s head. ‘I’d put up with your devils - if you’d trust me not to turn them into little suffragettes and revolutionaries by the time they gan to school.’

‘I wouldn’t trust you at all!’ Susan laughed. ‘Still, it’s good of you, Maggie, and it would be a grand help to me. But wouldn’t Mr Heslop mind you filling his house with bairns?’

Maggie cleared her throat and looked away. Now was not the time to share her news with Susan. ‘He’s a good man, I’m sure he won’t mind me helping out,’ she answered.