The Urchin's Song (12 page)

The shock of it stunned her for a second, but as Patrick Duffy slid the bolt and his hand went back to cover her mouth, she twisted her head and bit down on his flesh with all the power in her jaw. Again the hall became full of softly hissed profanities, but this time it was her father’s fist that sent Josie whirling into darkness, although as she lost consciousness she thought for a moment she heard Barney’s voice and it was yelling . . .

If he was honest, Barney had been glad of the excuse to nip home and check on Millie when Betty had asked him. He could take Pearl’s mam and da in small doses, he admitted wryly to himself as he stepped out of the front entrance of the inn and began walking along Pitt Street, but lately, what with the wedding and all, he’d seen a mite too much of them for comfort. Still, he wasn’t marrying Stanley and Marjorie, was he.

The moon was casting a cold white brilliance on the icy street and pavements, the already heavy frost coating the layers of ice and snow with a film of sparkling silver. Barney stood for a moment, his head uplifted to the night sky in which the stars stood out like twinkling lights, and he breathed deeply, taking the clean crisp air hard into his lungs.

By, it was good to be alive on a night like this. If he had his way he’d walk for miles now, not thinking, just drawing the essence of the night into him until he had a surfeit to carry him through the next days and weeks. And then he shook his head at himself, smiling self-consciously as though someone had told him he was being fanciful and womanish. It was funny, the way he needed to see the sky and wide open spaces; his da, and their Amos, Reg and Neville didn’t. His mouth straightened. The united attitude of his father and brothers when he had told them he couldn’t follow them down the pit had hurt him with its lack of understanding and barely concealed recrimination. But Betty had been for him. She was a canny little body, Betty.

He took another great breath of frost-flavoured air into his lungs, savouring its sharp cleanness after the cloying dust of the concrete works in which he laboured six days a week.

Aye, he and Betty got on all right, and if Prudence had given their stepmother half a chance it would have been a happier household the last few years. Nevertheless his thoughts were tinged with pity when they touched on his sister. It must be doubly hard for a woman to look like she did when she was a thinker, and Prudence was a thinker all right. If there was one thing he would miss when he got married it would be the talks - arguments sometimes - that they’d shared, because Pearl wasn’t made that way. Social reform, the fight the unions were engaging in, the burgeoning Suffragette Movement were all beyond Pearl. Not that he minded that, he quickly reassured himself. Pearl was soft and sweet and docile, everything a woman should be. Aye, he was lucky she’d looked the side he was on. He
was
lucky. He didn’t question why he had to emphasise this in his mind.

He passed the junction with Wellington Street and continued on along Pitt Street, knowing he had to be quick to avoid suffering one of Pearl’s wounded silences when he got back. They were killers, those silences of hers, when she’d look at him with big hurt eyes and quivering lips if he stepped out of line in some way. He perhaps should have told Pearl he was cutting along home for a minute or two when he’d made the excuse he needed the privy, but he’d known Betty wanted it kept just between them two, to avoid Prudence and his da dismissing her anxiety about Millie. And he could be home and back in minutes.

His hobnail boots were loud on the icy ground as he turned right into Spring Garden Lane, and then he paused. For a minute there he’d thought someone had just gone into their house, but it must have been next door’s. Who’d be calling round at this time of night?

Nevertheless his steps quickened, and as he reached the open door and his brain registered the struggling girl and the big man’s fist slamming into her face, his yell was purely instinctive as he launched himself forward, kicking over the oil lamp which was still on the floor as he did so.

Bart, already hampered by his broken arm in its sling, was caught off-balance and knocked halfway down the hall with the force of Barney’s body, but it was Patrick’s scream as the oil lamp smashed over his boots and trousers that brought Josie back to consciousness. She wasn’t aware that the bottom of her own skirt was on fire until Barney was kneeling beside her, smothering the flames with his coat as he dragged her out into the street, but the main contents of the lamp had gone all over the little Irishman as the cries and shouts from within the house professed.

However, between them Bart and Patrick must have managed to put the flames out, because by the time Barney was able to leave Josie sitting against the wall of the house and re-enter the hall, the two had vanished the way Patrick had come in - through the back yard - and only smoking floorboards remained.

By now Gertie and the children were all awake and streaming downstairs and little Millie was yelling her head off in her crib in the kitchen, but all Barney was concerned with was the slight figure propped against the wall outside.

The neighbours came out in force, and after a brief and blunt explanation Mr Stefford next door was off at a run to the inn in Pitt Street, and Mrs Stefford was dealing with a weeping Gertie and the other children. Mr Middleton, on the Robsons’ other side, was dispatched for the doctor, and his wife - a stout and very capable midwife - helped Barney settle Josie in the big armchair in the kitchen before she picked up the screaming baby and, together with Mrs Stefford, took all the children back into her house.

Josie was only dimly aware of all this. The pain in her head was excruciating, and combined with the accompanying swirling and dizziness, kept her swimming in and out of consciousness. But she knew she was holding on to Barney’s hand, and she kept holding on even when the others arrived home and the doctor came and their hushed voices hovered about her.

‘. . . concussion after blow on the head like that. Man ought to be strung up by his thumbs.’ She didn’t recognise this voice and assumed it must be the doctor, but was too sick and disorientated to open her eyes. ‘. . . take it further. It had to be her da, who else would have attacked a little lassie?’ This was from Frank, and such was the distress in his voice Josie would have liked to be able to reassure him she was all right, but she must have lost consciousness again, because when she next came to she was being carried before being placed on something very soft.

At this juncture she was longing for the blackness to take her over again because the pain in her head was unbearable, and when oblivion came she sank into it gratefully, even as she thought, I must let go of Barney’s hand, he can’t stay here with me. But perversely her fingers tightened and as she went down and down into the waves of darkness, his voice was saying, ‘Go to sleep, lass - aye, that’s right. You’ll feel better come morning.’

‘You told me you’d set it all up.’ Patrick Duffy was speaking through gritted teeth as he hobbled through the back streets, the burned flesh on his legs making every step agony.

‘I did, man, I did. Look, I told you--’

‘Oh aye, you told me all right.’ There followed a spate of cursing that brought white flecks of spittle to the corners of Patrick’s mouth, and only ceased when they came to the horse and cart they had left tied up in the back yard of an inn some streets away.

‘You take the reins.’

Bart did as he was told; Patrick’s hands were blistered and the blackened skin was hanging in strips in some places where he’d tried to beat out his burning trousers in the first panic-filled moments before Bart had been able to get to him and smother the flames with his coat. Bart was terrified. Duffy was not known for his magnanimity at the best of times, and this definitely was
not
the best of times.

‘Patrick, man, I’ll sort it--’

Bart glanced at the small man hunched on the hard wooden seat beside him. His thin sour face was grey with pain, and even in the darkness the enmity shooting from the two black jets that were his eyes was chilling. Bart knew he had to make this right somehow. By all that was holy he had to make this right, but how? He sucked in a lungful of icy cold air, sweat born of terror making his armpits damp beneath his layers of clothing.

As the old nag clip-clopped on towards Gateshead the silence was only broken now and again by a groan from Patrick as the pot-holes in the rough roads caused the cart to bounce and rock, and with each exclamation Bart’s dread increased.

Bart took the same road on which they had travelled into Newcastle, a route which skirted the main town of Gateshead. The road was dark and lonely at times, the heaped snow either side of the banks and hedgerows and the ice beneath the horse’s hooves making the going laborious. The plan had been to tie the children up with the rope they’d brought and gag them, hiding them under the old coal sacks in the back of the cart. This route had been ideal for its isolation. Now Bart wasn’t so sure. He was well aware of the fisherman’s gutting knife Patrick carried with him at all times, and having seen its sharp, vicious blade his flesh was twitching.

To his knowledge no one had ever dared lay a finger on Patrick, and he’d unwittingly been the means of something much worse. His own heartbeat was thumping in his ears and his throat was dry with terror. By, this damn ride seemed endless . . .

‘You let on to that little baggage back there about me an’ Doug in that do afore she skedaddled? Mentioned names, did ye?’ Patrick’s voice was oddly quiet, and Bart’s terror increased.

‘No, man, no, I swear it. You know me better’n that. If Shirl hadn’t opened her big mouth ’bout Ada an’ Dora the lass’d be none the wiser the day, an’ I denied everythin’ anyway.’

Patrick didn’t speak for some seconds, and then he said with a change of voice, for his words now came almost friendly-sounding, ‘An’ you’ve never told Shirl anythin’?’

‘I’ve told her nowt. What she thinks she knows hasn’t come from me, an’ Ada an’ Dora knew better than to blab. I dare say Shirl put two an’ two together, but she’d never let on.’

‘She told that ’un back there.’

‘
No
. I’ve told you - it wasn’t like that!’

‘So you say.’

They had passed Gateshead when Patrick spoke next, still in the friendly voice. ‘Keep on this road instead of turnin’ off. I’ve a bit of business to do in Washington afore we go back. Cut across the moor an’ go on past Brandy Row an’ Old Washington, all right?’

‘Aye, just as you say, man.’ Bart darted a quick glance at the little man but Patrick was staring straight ahead into the dark night. Bart had accompanied Patrick to the village of New Washington - half a mile north of Old Washington - once in the past, when the Irishman had had some business there. Bart had known better than to ask what had been afoot and Patrick hadn’t told him, but the straggling village built for the colliery workers and holding rows of terraced houses, a few good shops, a Methodist chapel and the Bath Brick Works hadn’t impressed him. However, Washington itself - where they were now headed - was larger than New Washington and Old Washington, and he’d feel a mite more comfortable there than on this lonely road. He’d buy Patrick a few drinks and perhaps they could get his burns seen to before they carried on to Sunderland? Whatever he had to do to make this right he would.

Nothing more was said until they had ridden right into the town, past the school and then the rectory, until they reached the Cross Keys public house opposite the smithy. Then Patrick said, ‘Wait here a minute.’

‘Why don’t I come inside with you?’ Bart had jumped down from the cart in order to assist Patrick to dismount, but the other man ignored his outstretched hand. Bart heard him gasp as he lowered himself to the ground. Patrick was in a lot of pain, that much was obvious, and the knowledge was turning Bart’s bowels to water.

Patrick looked at him for a moment and his face was grim, but when he spoke he merely repeated his previous words. ‘Wait here a minute.’

Bart waited. Indeed, he did not dare move from his place at the horse’s side, but now his flesh was beginning to creep. He wished he was home. By, he wished he was home all right. The feeling he had on him took him back to the times when, as a bairn, he was waiting for his da to get back from the docks. Six foot, his da had been, big and burly and an out-and-out swine. The big man’s favourite trick had been locking him in the large oak chest down in the cellar of the riverside house they’d rented. It had flooded regularly, that cellar, and apart from the terror of being buried alive, Bart had always been petrified he’d be forgotten down there and the flood waters would come before anyone remembered him. But it had been the waiting
before
the event that had regularly made him mess his trousers.

By the time Patrick re-emerged with two other men, a full half an hour had passed. Patrick smelled of whisky but the alcohol obviously hadn’t dulled the effects of the flames as the small Irishman was moving with painful stiffness. ‘This is Wilf an’ Lenny.’ Patrick gestured at the small, gnome-like person with shifty eyes and a lump on the side of his neck like a bunion, and the other man who had a big scar down one side of his face. Bart nodded at them but they just stared back. ‘I’ve some stuff to pick up while I’m here so we’ll go down yonder’ - Patrick indicated the road which led past the smithy and the graveyard of Holy Trinity Church - ‘an’ there should be some bits ’n’ pieces waitin’ in a spot by the old gravel pit. Wilf an’ Lenny here’ll load it on the wagon.’

Bart wanted to say that Wilf and Lenny weren’t needed; that he could do any humping that was required, but with his broken arm it wasn’t true and besides, he didn’t dare. Instead he forced himself to speak in as natural a tone as he could manage as he asked, ‘Where you takin’ the stuff?’

‘Not far.’ Patrick looked at him with his soulless eyes. ‘We’ll walk; you lead the horse an’ keep it quiet - there’s the polis house over the way.’