The Urchin's Song (6 page)

Gertie stared back at her big sister. She’d gleaned enough to know that whatever her da had had in mind, Josie wasn’t having any of it, and as Josie was the one person in all the world she trusted implicitly, that was good enough for her. Her mam was scared rigid of her da, they all were - except Josie. Even their Jimmy wet his pants if he thought he was going to get wrong by their da.

Josie turned from her sister to where her mother was watching her. ‘You knew? All the time you knew about Ada and Dora, that it was me da who’d made ’em do that?’ Josie asked heavily.

‘Aye, I did. I did, me bairn, an’ may God forgive me ’cos I can’t forgive meself.’

‘Oh, Mam.’ Josie had been standing very straight, her face grim, but now she visibly deflated and what she said was, ‘I can’t leave you here with him, Mam. You must come with us, and the lads too.’

‘I ain’t goin’ nowhere.’ It was Jimmy who spoke and in spite of his nine years, his voice was adamant. ‘Neither’s he.’ He pointed to Hubert who was cowering against the edge of his platform, clearly overwhelmed by the amazing turn of events.

‘Lass . . .’ Shirley hesitated, and then, as the man on the floor tried to move and, swearing profoundly, fell back again against the table and into silence, she continued, ‘He’s passed out. You go, eh? These won’t go’ - she indicated her two sons with a sharp movement of her hand - ‘an’ I can’t, lass. For better or worse me place is here, but you’re young. You’ve got the rest of your life in front of you, an’ you’ve got to get Gertie out of it. If you don’t, he won’t rest until she’s gone the same way as Ada an’ Dora.’ She didn’t add that with all that had transpired this night, the fragile protection Josie’s singing had given her - or more to the point the income it had brought in - would be no defence now. Bart would kill the bairn.

Josie said again, ‘Oh, Mam,’ but in answer to the unvoiced plea, Shirley said, ‘I can’t, lass, an’ that’s that. An’ you have to. There’s an end to it. I’ll be all right. Old Maud an’ Enoch are good, an’ many’s the afternoon we spend together. They’ll not see me in a fix. I know I can always go upstairs. You both get off quick now, afore he’s on his feet.’ Shirley turned and clasped the sobbing Gertie to her, and then pushed the child towards her sister. ‘Get your coats an’ skedaddle,’ she said urgently. ‘An’ not a word as to where, mind. Little cuddy lugs are twitchin’.’

Josie glanced towards her brothers and met two pairs of wary, watchful eyes. For a moment the dire urgency of the situation was overshadowed by the bitter knowledge that Jimmy and Hubert would have no compunction in betraying their sisters’ whereabouts to the man who was intent on harming them. But then they’d been brought up knowing their best chance of survival was to side with the strongest camp. It wasn’t really their fault.

A dazed groan from the man on the floor brought her reaching for her sister’s hand. She edged them both carefully round her father’s sprawled legs and then hurried Gertie through to the kitchen. Once the door was shut behind them, Gertie clutched hold of her, saying nervously, ‘Josie, where are we goin’? Where was Da goin’ to take me?’

Josie looked down into the little girl’s face. Gertie gave the appearance of being no more than six or seven - which had been to her advantage when her father had sent her out to beg - and she wasn’t smart like their Jimmy. He might not be able to read or write but he was cuter than a cartload of monkeys, and intuitive too. She didn’t doubt Jimmy had got a fair idea of the fate which had been about to befall Gertie. But she had to make Gertie understand the danger she was in for her own protection, although she worried what effect the knowledge might have on her sister.

She explained as gently as she could, her arm round the skinny shoulders, and at the end of it Gertie’s brown eyes with their short stubby lashes were glittering with tears and her voice was quivering when she said, ‘I hate me da. I really hate him.’

That made two of them. Josie now chivvied Gertie into her coat and hat before donning her own, her ears cocked for any sound from the room next door. Their few items of spare clothing were in one of the orange boxes in the living room; they’d have to leave with nothing, not that that mattered. She had to get Gertie out of here. She picked up the poker again, holding it tightly.

As her sister managed a wobbly smile, Josie’s shoulders straightened. Gertie was such a tiny little scrap of a thing, and her own father had been going to give her to people who would make her do
that
. Until the conversation with Vera concerning the shadow over her name, Josie hadn’t fully understood what
that
entailed, in spite of having slept in the same room as her parents until she had bought the desk-bed for herself and Gertie. Vera’s brief but explicit explanation as to what her older sisters’ occupation actually meant had led on to an equally frank exposition of the facts of life, for which Josie had been thankful. She knew her mother would never have talked of such things but she hadn’t felt embarrassed with Vera; you just couldn’t somehow, Vera wasn’t like that. Perhaps it was because Vera had never had any children of her own, but Josie had always felt that the woman was part second mother, part sister, part best friend . . . oh, a whole host of things. Josie made a decision there and then. Vera would help them; she had never been afraid of their da like most folk.

‘Come on.’ Josie opened the door leading into the hall and, after ascertaining that the living-room door was still closed, she led Gertie into the darkness where, surprisingly, a candle was flickering.

‘Josie, lass? Is that you?’ Maud and Enoch were sitting on the top tread of the stairs, Enoch clutching a tin candlestick holder. ‘What’s bin happenin’, lass?’ Maud enquired in a stage whisper. ‘Sounded like someone’d bin murdered.’

‘You wait there.’ Josie pushed Gertie to the front door before giving the old couple a rapid explanation.

‘Couldn’t have happened to a nicer bloke.’ This was from Enoch, who had never had any time for Bart. ‘Good on you, lass, he’s had that comin’ for a long time to my way of thinkin’. An’ don’t you worry about your mam neither; me an’ Maud’ll look out for her right enough an’ spit in his eye in the bargain.’

‘Thank you, Mr Tollett.’ The kindness was weakening, and now Josie turned to Gertie again, her voice thick and verging on harshness as she said, ‘Stay there, mind,’ before she walked from the stairs to the living-room door, thrusting it open and standing in the aperture as she surveyed the scene within.

Her father was sitting slumped on one of the hardbacked chairs and he was cradling the arm she had struck with the poker; it was all bloody. Jimmy and Hubert were standing either side of Bart, and one of Hubert’s hands was resting on his father’s knee.

It struck Josie that their pose was that of a picture she had seen in a storybook one of her old schoolfriends had brought in one day. In the book, the father was about to kiss his sons good night before their pretty mother took them up to bed. Bart had clearly been speaking before she had opened the door but now he was silent, his eyes like two chips of blue glass as they fastened on her white face.

It was her mother, still sitting where Josie had left her, who broke the silence, saying, ‘Lass. Oh, lass.’

‘We’re going, Mam.’

‘The hell you are.’ Her father had jerked in the chair as he’d spoken, the movement taking all the colour out of his face and causing the spate of cursing that followed.

‘We are and you can’t stop us.’ Josie now looked straight at Jimmy and she made her voice sound like it needed to sound. ‘And if he’s told you to try and follow us, you or Hubert, I’ll use this poker again, I swear it.’

She saw Hubert’s eyes widen, and Jimmy turn to their father, saying, ‘Da?’ and knew instantly that her hunch had been right.

‘I’ll see me day with you, girl. You’ll live to regret this night.’

Josie held her father’s malevolent gaze as she replied, her voice shaking slightly in spite of all her efforts to control it, ‘I won’t regret it, not ever. You’re bad - evil, you are. I know what you made Ada and Dora do, and you’re not making Gertie do that. I’ll . . . I’ll tell the constable about you, I will, if you come after us.’

Bart’s eyes sprang wide, his good hand rising from where it had been nursing his broken arm to form itself into a fist, but Josie didn’t wait to see if he tried to get up. She banged the door shut, hurrying along the hall to where Gertie was waiting. She was aware of Maud and Enoch calling goodbye, but she didn’t answer them, using her breath to say to Gertie, ‘Get out, quick.’

It was bitterly cold outside, the sort of piercing cold which penetrates any amount of clothing and chills the flesh and bones beneath, and the ground under their boots was a sheet of black ice.

Holding the poker in one hand and Gertie’s arm in the other, Josie whisked her sister along the street as fast as she could. Once they had turned the corner into High Street East, however, she paused, drawing Gertie in to the side of her as she pressed against the brick wall of the public house on the corner.

The freezing night had made sure that there were fewer folk about than normal, but it was a full minute before Josie moved again. It was a quarter of a mile to Northumberland Place where Vera lived, but Josie stopped twice more on the way, once after she and Gertie had turned into Hartley Street and again at the corner of Lucknow Street, but there were no furtive shadows dodging into dark corners as far as she could see.

Reaction was beginning to set in by the time they reached the pitch-dark back street where Vera lived, and although the cold was enough to take your breath away it didn’t quite manage to neutralise the stench coming from one or two of the privies at the end of the small yards. It was obviously time for the scavengers to call with their long shovels.

Would Vera mind them turning up like this? For a moment after she had knocked on the door Josie experienced the sickening churning of self-doubt. Her da was a nasty customer at the best of times; perhaps it wasn’t fair to involve Vera and Horace in their problems. But where else could they go?

And then Vera opened the door, and as Gertie burst into noisy tears and Josie said quietly, ‘I’m sorry, Vera, but we had to come. I couldn’t think of anywhere else,’ the older woman was drawing them into the warmth of the bright, cheerful little house that was representative of its occupants, and Josie knew they were safe.

For the moment.

‘You’ll have to get right away come mornin’. This is the first place he’ll have watched, lass.’

It was now past midnight and Gertie was fast asleep on a shake-down at the end of Vera and Horace’s enormous double brass bed. Josie, Vera and Horace were sitting at the kitchen table in front of the glowing range, and Josie was full to bursting, having recently shared Vera and Horace’s supper of panackelty. Vera’s answer to any problem was food and she was a wonderful cook. The panackelty had been just as Josie liked it; slowly cooked for hours in the old coal oven so that the potatoes had absorbed all the flavour of the corned beef and stock, the onions almost caramelised and the whole lot deliciously crusty at the edges. In spite of the direness of their situation it didn’t seem so bad with a plateful of Vera’s panackelty inside her.

‘But where to, Vera? You know how Gertie is; she’s not strong enough to put up with living rough even for a night or two until I find work.’

‘Oh aye, I know that, hinny. No, our Bett’ll put you up as long as you don’t mind bein’ a bit cramped like. It’s a cryin’ shame when me an’ Horace have got all this room, but your da’s not daft. We’ve got to go to work an’ you’ll be on your own then. I wouldn’t put anythin’ past Bart Burns.’

Neither would she, but like Vera had said, it was a shame. She would have loved to live in this little house for a while. It had an upstairs and a downstairs, and apart from the second bedroom which was rented out to one of Vera’s fellow workers at the corn mill, the couple had it all to themselves. It seemed like unimaginable luxury to Josie. Vera had kitted out the front room just grand, with a stiff horsehair suite, a little glass-fronted cabinet with nice bits of china and knick-knacks inside, and a highly polished piano and upholstered stool. It even had a square of carpet and a rug - not a clippy mat but a proper, shop-bought rug - standing in front of the small ornate fireplace.

Josie had stood in awe when Vera had opened the front-room door and shown her the room, but she hadn’t dared venture inside for fear of spoiling such perfection. As far as she knew, Vera and Horace never went inside either, and the slightly musty, cold air which wafted out into the hall suggested the grate - hidden behind an embroidered fire-screen of neat uniformed roses enclosing a verse of scripture promising severe retribution for the unholy in the hereafter - rarely saw a fire.

The kitchen - the other room downstairs in the two-up, two-down dwelling - was a lovely, warm place, however, with the biggest clippy mat Josie had ever seen covering a good part of the stone-flagged floor. Horace had built cupboards from floor to ceiling all down one side, and in front of the table and four chairs were two lovely big rocking chairs with fitted feather cushions, positioned so they got most of the warmth emanating from the blackleaded range. A large hardwood settle with several plump flock-stuffed cushions completed the rest of the furniture, and Vera had already made it up into a bed for Josie with several thick blankets.

‘Thank you for letting us stay tonight.’ Josie put her hand on the older woman’s arm. ‘I didn’t know where else to go.’

‘Lass, if you hadn’t come here I’d have wanted to know why.’ Vera’s voice was uncharacteristically tender as she stared into the lovely face in front of her. Until she had met Josie that night in the Mariners’ Arms just over five years ago, Vera had always prided herself on being a sensible, unemotional woman who had a reputation as being something of a tartar. The eldest in a family of eight children, she had virtually brought up her six brothers and one sister when her mother had died giving birth to the last child when Vera was just thirteen. By the time she met Horace at the age of twenty-five, she had resigned herself to spinsterhood, something - in view of the dribble-nosed toddlers, endless washing and ironing and constant rounds of meals over the last twelve years - that wasn’t altogether unwelcome. When Horace had shyly confessed in their third month of courting that he was unable to father children due to an unfortunate accident in his youth, he’d been surprised and pleased at Vera’s response, and they had married before the year was out.