Orphan of Angel Street (9 page)

‘I’ll do the bits you can’t reach. No good you sitting there gawping at me all day, is it?’

Susan peered from under her fringe with a grin of delight. ‘Mom never lets me do nothing!’ She set to work, bony shoulder blades poking in and out as she exerted herself.

The two girls, thrown together, grew close in a short time. Elsie was always popping in to see them, bringing gifts of food: stew, pease pudding, soup – ‘I always ’ad to cook for ten before so it won’t ’urt me now, will it?’ – and asking how they were getting on. The yard was forever strung across with washing, either that of the other neighbours or Elsie, who was in the brewhouse – the shared wash-house in the yard – at all hours, toiling over the copper, maiding tub and mangle.

After school finished was the best time of day, when the boys came roaring back into the yard. ‘’Allo Mercy!’ they called out every day, and Mercy would feel her heart lift with excitement. ‘Come on!’ she’d say to Susan, and drag her chair out into the yard to watch. The twins were two years older than her, Jack roughly the same age. The twins were her favourites: freckly, red-haired Johnny, mad as a hatter on boxing, and Tom – kind, brown-haired, quieter. They let Mercy play with them – football with an old pig’s bladder tied at the top, tipcat with a ball and a bit of wood, marbles . . .

‘Yer not bad, for a wench,’ Tom told her now and again as she slammed the football along the yard.

She thought they were wonderful, the whole Pepper family.

They were all out in the yard one freezing winter afternoon, when the sun couldn’t break through the clouds and smoke, Susan muffled up on a chair in as many layers as they could find. Tom had carried her out there. Mercy liked the way the twins, wild as they were, were gentle with Susan.

They’d dealt out a few marbles and begun a game when three girls marched in from Angel Street. There was something about them that made Tom and Johnny stand up, hands on waists, elbows out, before they’d even opened their mouths.

They looked like sisters, all with lanky brown hair, the eldest with plaits coiled above her ears, pale faces and narrow, squinty eyes. Mercy felt herself bristle. She didn’t like the look of them at all.

‘What d’you want?’ Tom demanded, defending his territory, chin jutting out.

‘Where’s that Cathleen?’ the eldest said. She wore an old grey skirt, too big, dragging on the ground.

‘So who wants her?’ Johnny pushed himself forward.

‘We do.’ The eldest one was left to do the talking again in a harsh, aggressive voice. ‘Few things we need to straighten out with ’er. Who’re you, any road?’

‘We’re ’er brothers,’ Johnny said, elbows sticking out. ‘She ain’t ’ere, and I don’t reckon she’d want to see you if she was.’

The girl looked brazenly round the yard. ‘What’s ’er gawping at?’ She latched on to Mercy suddenly, who was standing by Susan’s chair. ‘Ain’t you got nothing better to do? Oh my word, what’s this then?’

The three girls moved nearer to Susan with jaunty, menacing walks. The second girl pulled the cover off Susan’s knees and made a face on seeing her white, scaley legs.

‘Urgh, look – she’s a cripple. That’s ’orrible, that is. Looks like fish skin!’

‘Was you born like that then?’

‘Can yer walk? Go on, show us, ’ave a go!’

Susan, who had been so hidden away all her life that she’d never been treated anything like this before, shrank down in the chair, eyes filling with tears.

‘Ooh, look, she don’t like being called a cripple, she’s gonna blart now. Go on, cry, cripple – boo-hoo-hoo . . .’

The eldest girl felt her plaits being grasped like handles so her head was yanked backwards and she found herself looking into two grey eyes full of a cold, intense fury.

‘That person you’re talking to is Susan,’ Mercy spat at the girl, tugging on the hair to give emphasis to everything she said. ‘And no one talks to ’er like that. No one. Got it?’

The girl scowled, wincing in pain. ‘Who d’yer think you are, eh?’

‘Me? I’m Mercy. And this ’ere’s for you.’ She loosed the girl’s hair, drew her hand back and gave her a socking great punch on the nose.

‘That’s from me. And if you come back talking to ’er like that, there’s plenty more where that come from.’

The girl was cursing and whimpering with pain.

‘Look what you done, you little bitch!’ her sister cried. ‘’Er nose is pouring!’

‘Serves ’er right,’ Mercy yelled as the boys watched in amazement. ‘And so will yours be too if you don’t clear off out of ’ere!’

‘You vicious cow . . .!’ They shouted over their shoulders as they slunk out of the yard.

‘Blimey,’ Johnny said.

‘What’s been going on?’ Elsie emerged from the brewhouse.

‘Mercy punched that girl in the kisser!’ Tom cried enthusiastically.

‘She called Susan a cripple,’ Mercy said, rubbing her knuckles. ‘And I’m not ’aving that.’

‘I don’t blame you,’ Elsie said, gradually getting the picture.

Susan was all blushes. ‘You didn’t have to hit ’er that hard, did you?’

‘Oh yes I did!’ Mercy was still flaming. ‘What does she know – she’s never had bad legs, has she?’

The days were all right until Mabel got home, always foul-tempered. At first she’d found herself a job in a button factory, cutting metal blanks for buttons of different kinds. She complained bitterly about it. ‘It’s a right bind with my eyesight – I ’ave to practically put me nose in the machine. My ’ead’s thumping terrible.’ She carried on with it for a few weeks, growing even more demoralized and bad-tempered.

One night she came home and said, ‘I’ve found you two a job an’ all.’ She emptied out the cloth bag on the table. Inside was a box containing what seemed an endless number of safety pins and a heap of small cards. ‘There yer go – yer can earn yer keep. They want one of each size on a card and there’s nine sizes. We get tuppence a gross for ’em. Yer might as well get started now.’ She pushed the box towards Susan who did as she was told with her dextrous fingers. ‘Plenty more where they come from, hooks and eyes, buttons, the lot.’

Every night, in common with many kids in the poor areas of the city, they sat carding, straining their eyes by gas or candlelight until their fingers were raw, while Mabel sat groaning that her head and eyes hurt.

Eventually she got a new job at the Anchor Bedstead Works in the packing department, but her temper didn’t improve much and she took all her spite out on Mercy.

‘This ’ouse looks like a pigsty,’ would be her complaint almost before she was through the door.

‘But I’ve been cleaning all day,’ Mercy protested at first, quite tearful after all her efforts.

One day as Mabel came in with her ‘This ’ouse looks like a pigsty,’ complaint on her lips, Mercy rounded on her.

‘That’s ’cos it is a pigsty. So what’s the use in saying it ain’t?’

Mabel loomed before her, breasts heaving with fury. ‘You saucy little bitch!’

Mercy saw Mabel’s hand coming at her, ingrained with dirt. She gave Mercy a massive slap which knocked her to the floor.

Susan was shouting too, protesting, ‘Mom – stop it!’

Mercy lay on her side, rubbing her stinging cheek. There were tears of pain in her eyes but in her fierce pride she wiped them away, determined not to let Mabel see them.

‘You’ve just got me ’ere as your skivvy, and it ain’t right,’ she snarled. ‘Elsie’s kids are at school and that’s where I should be – and Susan.’

‘School?’ Mabel narrowed her eyes and gave Mercy such a look of overpowering loathing that many another child would have cowered. ‘Oh, you needn’t think you’re going off anywhere, my girl. What do workhouse brats like us ever need to go to school for, eh? I ’ad a bit of schooling – ’er father ’ad more than I did and look what became of ’im! Whatever yer do you’ll end up in the factory so it makes no odds. I didn’t bring another mouth to feed in ’ere for you to sit about all day. Yer ’ere to work for me, and work is what you’re going to do. You’ll do just whatever I say and that’s that.’

‘Quick, she’s gone!’

Mercy was peering, terrified, after Mabel who had just disappeared to another day’s work. When she was certain Mabel had really gone she tore along to the Peppers’. Tom and Johnny, now in their last year of school, were looking out for her.

‘Get the chair from the brew’us!’ They ran over, both of them in long trousers too big for them.

It had rained in the night and the yard stank. The twins clattered across with the wheelchair and Elsie came steaming out of her door, already in a state of nerves. She was having misgivings about this school lark. It didn’t seem right deceiving Mrs Gherkin or whatever the hell her name was. She was the kids’ mom – sort of anyway. And what if she was to find out? But one look at Mercy’s set little face and Susan’s mix of nerves and excitement as the twins swung her into the wheelchair made her swallow her doubts.

‘Careful!’ Susan laughed, and clung to their arms as she landed on the old bit of baize padding the seat.

Mercy was so edgy she couldn’t keep still.

‘It’ll be awright, won’t it, Mrs Pepper?’ Her eyes radiated hope and anxiety. ‘They will let us in?’

‘Oh, I s’pect so. We’ll just ’ave to see.’ She wasn’t at all sure about Susan. Plenty of children her age had left school already, and she hadn’t even started yet! But she couldn’t bring herself to say this to Mercy. Give them a chance, she thought, that’s all.

She prodded Cathleen who seemed thoroughly clogged up with sleep.

‘She don’t look too good,’ Susan said kindly.

‘She always looks like that,’ Johnny said, going to push the chair.

‘No!’ Mercy ran in front. ‘I’m pushing Susan.’

Johnny shrugged. ‘It’ll be hard work.’

Mercy could feel the sun on her face as they got out of the dank yard where the sun only ever shone, if they were lucky, in the late afternoon.

‘You awright?’ she asked Susan, who nodded hard, too full up with everything to speak. There was the morning street coming to life, a horse snuffing in an empty nosebag at the side of the road, people coming and going. She could smell fresh bread mingled in with the factory smells and horse manure, hear the morning cries, cartwheels on the cobbles.

It was so exciting! And Mercy said that at school she’d learn new things. Find out how to read properly, not just spell out her letters with one finger on the table. Maybe she could be a bit more like the others!

Cathleen said goodbye and went off to work. Johnny and Jack ran back and forth in front of the wheelchair urging Mercy on, Tom walked rather protectively beside Mercy and Elsie came along behind, watching Mercy push on the chair with her slender weight, leg muscles straining. The sight of her wrung Elsie’s heart. Her clothes were in a pathetic state: patched and worn, grubby and obviously too small. She’d grown more and more worried about Mercy, heard the shouts coming from Mabel’s house, seen Mercy’s bruises and cut lips. After all, a quick cuff or a smack when necessary was one thing. No one’d argue with that, but this was different.

‘Does she belt you hard?’ she’d asked some time ago. Mercy had simply said yes.

She’d tried having a go at the woman and was told to ‘Bugger off and keep yer nose to yerself,’ and variations on this. What else could she do? She saw now that the child was limping.

‘What’s up with your foot – boots worrying yer?’

‘They’re ever so tight,’ Mercy said. She’d had no new ones since she’d been with Mabel and they were falling apart. She’d got paper stuffed in the sole to keep the wet out.

Elsie made a mental note to make sure, somehow, that Mercy got new boots. Otherwise the child would be barefoot the winter through. Asking her so-called mother would be a waste of time, the hard-faced bitch.

‘Let Jack push Susan for a bit now,’ she cajoled. ‘You’ll wear yourself out.’

‘No. I’m doing it.’ The reply wasn’t rude, just resolute.

When they reached the enormous red-brick school, the boys called out ‘Ta-ra!’ and vanished into the boys’ entrance at the far end, Johnny punching the air as he went.

‘Ain’t it big?’ Susan said in a small voice.

Noisy groups of girls were arriving at the school, all staring at them. Mercy glowered back. What were they gawping at, nosey cows?

‘Don’t you go losing your temper,’ Susan pleaded. ‘I don’t mind ’em looking. It does no harm.’

Elsie hesitated, even more nervous herself now. ‘Wait ’ere. I’ll try and get you sorted out.’

After what felt an age she appeared with a flustered young teacher, austerely dressed in a grey skirt to the floor and a high-necked white blouse. She had a round, plain face.

‘Well, that one’s all right,’ she said sharply, pointing at Mercy. ‘But we can’t possibly take the other one. This is a school for normal children. We can’t have the likes of her here. There are special schools for that sort.’

Susan cringed, visibly flayed by the cruelty of the words.

Mercy gripped the bar of the chair, head held up defiantly. She felt as if someone had their hands tight round her throat.

‘I’m not coming in if Susan can’t come too,’ she managed to say, huskily.

‘Well!’ The teacher’s cheeks flushed a mottled pink. ‘What a rude and unpleasant child. You can go somewhere else if that’s your attitude. This is not a school for cripples – we couldn’t even get that—’ – she pointed to the unorthodox-looking chair – ‘up the steps. Take it away!’

Although she meant the chair, her whole manner implied that ‘it’ meant Susan.

Elsie was usually full of respect for authority, but now it was her turn to speak out.

‘What kind of a thing’s that to say to the poor girl? Call yourself a teacher? You’re s’posed to be ’ere to get some learning into their ’eads, not chase ’em away when they come begging for it!’

The teacher spoke in a low, icy voice. ‘The fact remains, this is not a school for cripples. Now is this other child going to come in, before you waste my time any further?’

‘No,’ Mercy said. ‘Not without Susan.’

‘You don’t make decisions at your age!’ The teacher seemed set to hoik Mercy bodily up the steps. ‘You’re supposed to attend school. It doesn’t matter about her!’