Scroll down for the first four chapters of this very entertaining book
Sunday, July 21, 2013
Saturday, July 20, 2013
The Seduction of Mary Kelly
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Prologue
California 1968
The television picture was grainy and indistinct, but still the image of jar upon jar of severed body parts made Beth Williams shiver. ‘Did they really need to show that?’ she murmured half to herself.
The scene changed to an outside shot of a handcuffed young man, his head lowered, almost shyly, as he walked between the two police officers, the camera following them to the waiting squad car, lingering on it until it drove off and disappeared from view.
‘But thank God they’ve caught him at last.’ She turned toward the bed. ‘They’re already talking about him going down in history as the most famous serial killer since Jack the Ripper.’
‘Famous?’ The old man lay motionless against the hospital pillow. For days he had been drifting in and out of consciousness, barely clinging to life, but now a little of his old spark seemed to return. ‘That’s an odd choice of word.’
‘Serial killers are big news these days, Jimmy.’
James Jimmy Hawkins looked up at the TV screen. ‘They always were,’ he said as the presenter’s face was replaced by a series of black and white photographs showing Victorian London; the streets and alleyways of Whitechapel finally dissolving to show a close-up of a dead woman’s face, taken from the foot of the plain wooden coffin in which she lay.
Beth followed his gaze. ‘I guess so. It’s strange – I’ve always thought the world was a nicer, safer place back in your day.’
The photograph of the dead woman gave way to another, her rounded features relaxed in death, then another, and still another, this one more horrific, the naked body hanging from mortuary hooks in the same way that dead gunslingers had once been displayed, the savage mutilations to the woman’s face and torso clearly visible. Then, lastly, a photograph showing the interior of a room. It wasn’t a good photograph, too much contrast made it hard to discern the true subject, so it was several seconds before Beth realised she was looking at the grotesquely mutilated body
of a young woman. She wanted to look away, but there was something so horribly compelling about the image that she reached for the volume control instead.
‘… And culminating in the murder of Mary Jane Kelly in the early hours of November ninth, 1888.’ The presenter reappeared, looking stern as he stared out of the screen. ‘Despite killing five women, Jack the Ripper was never caught – and to this day his identity remains one of the greatest unsolved mysteries. Thankfully, following today’s arrest, the same will not be said about…’
Beth lowered the volume again and crossed to the bed, looking down at her patient. His eyes were closed once more, and he lay so still that she instinctively felt for his pulse. It was weak, but it was there, and she felt a wave of relief.
For two weeks the old actor had clung on, and in that time she had grown closer to him than she should have allowed. It was unprofessional and she knew it – but in a city where yesterday was ancient history, who else would spare the time for a forgotten old man whose hey-day had been in the silent era. ‘Sleep well, Jimmy,’ she said.
The television news programme had begun showing photographs of the shy-looking young man’s victims: colour snapshots of smiling faces, a chilling twenty-seven in total. Beth shook her head. ‘I think the world was a safer place back in your day, Jimmy,’ she sighed. ‘Even the infamous Jack the Ripper only killed five.’
In the stillness of the room, the murmured reply was barely audible. ‘Three,’ he said, before slipping into unconsciousness once more.
Frankie Stoweski was mopping the floor in the hospital reception area as Beth came on duty the following morning. ‘Hi, Frankie,’ she smiled. ‘How’s it going?’
He grinned. ‘Bad. Real, real bad. It’s going to end in bloodshed.’
‘Doesn’t it always?’
‘Not always – but this guy Nero is really asking for it.’ He pulled a heavy book from the cleaning cart and handed it to her. ‘Did you know he used to go out at night, dressed as an ordinary Joe, and attack people – just for the heck of it. Wouldn’t surprise me if he hadn’t killed even more people
than this guy they’ve just arrested.’
Beth looked at the book. ‘The Roman Empire?’ she said, handing it back to him. ‘I thought you were still working through the civil war?’
‘No, finished that last week.’
She laughed. ‘How on earth do you remember all this stuff you read?’
‘Don’t know. Just got that kind of brain, I guess.’ He shrugged, put the book back on the cart, and picked up the mop. ‘So how’s it going with that new boyfriend? What was his name? Richard? Still certain he’s the one?’
‘Uh-uhhh,’ she grinned. ‘He just needs a little more convincing that I’m the one.’ She made to leave – then paused. ‘Frankie? You ever read anything about Jack the Ripper?’
‘Sure. Why?’
‘Oh, nothing, really. I was just wondering… do you happen to know how many people he killed?’
‘Good question,’ he said, looking thoughtful. ‘Most people say it was five. The first was a woman called Polly Nichols.’ He began counting them off on his fingers. ‘Then… let me see… Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Katherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly. I’m pretty sure that’s the right order.’
‘But you say that only most people think it was five – so it might have been fewer?’
Frankie looked surprised. ‘Fewer? No, I’ve never heard that. There are some who think it could have been more. There were two other women murdered that same year – a woman called Smith, can’t remember her first name, and another called Martha Tabram – but the murder weapon was different in both cases, and they aren’t generally considered as Ripper killings. There were also a few women killed in the area a year or two after Mary Kelly’s murder, but most people don’t connect them. Five is pretty much the accepted number. Why do you ask?’
‘Just curious. There was mention of Jack the Ripper on the television yesterday. I was talking to Jimmy about it – and I thought I heard him say there were only three.’
Frankie shook his head. ‘No – definitely five.’
‘So, I suppose you’re going to tell me you knew Jack the Ripper?’ she smiled as she straightened his pillow.
Jimmy’s eyelids fluttered open. ‘And why would you suppose that, my dear?’
‘Just something you said yesterday.’
‘Oh, you shouldn’t go taking any notice of me. Nothing more than an old man’s ramblings.’ For an instant his eyes held a look of secret amusement – the passing ghost of the expression that had once been his trademark. ‘Just like when I told you about the film I made with Fairbanks, and he cut me open with his …’ He began to cough, deep wracking coughs, and she held his hand, gently stroking the papyrus skin, trying to soothe him.
‘Well, how about I read to you?’ she asked, once the attack had passed.
Too weak to answer immediately, he lay staring up at the ceiling, until with great effort he said, ‘You know I’d love you to – but you shouldn’t spend so much time in here with me. You’ll lose your job.’
Beth glanced at her watch. ‘I’ve been off duty these last ten minutes – so I guess I can choose for myself who I spend time with, huh?’ She settled herself on to the chair by his bed. ‘So? What shall it be? The book?’
He gave a tremulous smile. ‘How many times have you read that to me, now?’
‘This will be the third,’ she grinned. ‘But it’s okay. I know how much you love that story – and I’m getting to like it pretty well myself. Besides, on my salary, I don’t get to read too many classics in first edition.’
His hand found hers. ‘How old are you, Beth? Nineteen? Twenty?’
‘Twenty-five, you old flatterer.’
‘Too young to waste your life watching an old man ride off into the sunset. This movie has gone on a reel too long as it is.’
She made to protest, but the words would not pass the sudden constriction in her throat. ‘Well,’ she said at last, almost achieving a lighter note, ‘I was always the type to stay put all through the end credits.’
Barely possessing the strength to smile, he watched her pick up the book. ‘Then – if you really don’t mind reading to me…’ He hesitated. ‘There’s… there’s another story I should like to hear for one last time.’
She squeezed his hand. ‘Of course. Is it here?’
‘In a box… in my valise.’
He heard her cross to the cupboard and take out the old-fashioned
travelling bag – but he could no longer see her. Despite the sunlight that filled the room, his vision had been growing increasingly dark – now it had faded to black.
‘It’s a diary – or some kind of journal,’ she said in surprise. ‘Is this the book?’
‘Yes.’
She flicked through the pages. ‘Such beautiful handwriting.’
‘I want you to have it … I want you to have all my books, but… this one is just for you.’
‘I couldn’t, Jimmy. It’s wonderfully kind of you, but it’s against all the rules.’
‘Then… just look after it for me… until I ask for it back?’
She brushed at her eyes. ‘We’ll see,’ she said, coming back to sit by him, squaring her shoulders, hiding behind the caricature of starchy professionalism. ‘Now, are we going to read this or not?’
‘Yes… please.’
Beth opened the book on her lap.
Beyond the window, the distant hills shimmered in the heat; across town, in a small, run-down movie theatre, a handful of people sat in the dark, watching a young and athletic Jimmy Hawkins battle his way through a horde of costumed extras – and in the quiet of the hospital room, Beth began to read:
There was a hill, just outside our village, where we would play in those distant, happier days – before my father’s illness. In fine weather the climb was manageable for a young girl’s sturdy legs, and we would clamber to the top, dancing with joy, and feeling such mastery over this part of our world.
But then the rain would come, making the steep sides slippery so that my small feet would slide, unable to gain a purchase on the muddy earth. The older boys and girls, or even my brother Henry, would pull me up, encouraging me to try harder, but no sooner would they let go my hand than I’d lose my footing, sometimes falling so badly that I would slide past my original clinging spot.
Time and time again I would try, determined to join them, only to slip down and out of their reach until, finally, I could fall no further.
I think of this hill often when I look back over my life. My name is Mary Jane Kelly and I was born in 1863…
BOOK ONE
WALES 1876
Chapter One
‘In Ireland? You are a liar, Mary Kelly. A damnable liar!’
Sitting primly at her desk, Mary’s cheeks flushed as the neatly written pages of her essay were hurled into the air – falling like large white leaves amongst her giggling classmates.
‘Well?’ Mr Griffiths’s face was darkly crimson, his breath snorting, bull-like as he loomed over her. ‘What do you have to say for yourself?’
‘They… they aren’t lies, sir, they’re…’
‘Aren’t lies? – Aren’t lies?’ His voice climbed an octave before slipping into menacing sarcasm. ‘Born in Ireland? In Limerick, is it? In the family castle, I suppose, eh? Well, you would need a castle wouldn’t you? With all those brothers and sisters. Six was it?’
Mary stared into her lap as howls of merriment rang out from a class grateful for the interruption. Behind her, Davy Briggs, a scruffy, gangly boy, leaned forward and gave her a sharp poke in the back, but Griffiths chose to ignore it, unwilling to be distracted from the matter at hand.
‘Lot of servants, were there, hmmm? Maids and butlers, no doubt –and surely a governess? Oh yes – but, you know, I’m surprised she didn’t explain to you the difference between fact and fiction!’ His patronising tone became one of irritation. ‘Well, we’ll have to remedy that, won’t we!’
Seated next to Mary, Gwyneth Davies stiffened, her hand creeping beneath the desk to find Mary’s as Griffiths strode to the front of the class to pick up the cane.
‘Come out here, girl!’
Frightened, Mary kept a firm grip on Gwyneth, but then a look of defiance crossed her face, and she let go, making her way to the front, her attention fixed on Griffiths’s gold watch chain to avoid meeting his eyes or seeing the fearsome stick in his hand.
‘I had the misfortune to be teaching your idiot of a brother on the very day you were born – right here in Wales.’ Griffiths flexed the cane. ‘That’s
a fact, Mary Kelly – and that’s what you need in this world! Facts and only facts! Not damn fairytales! Now, put out your…!’
Without waiting Mary raised her left hand, holding it in front of her, palm upwards.
Griffiths noted the small act of defiance and gave another snort. ‘Were you born in Ireland?’
Gritting her teeth, Mary gave a small nod, and immediately the thin brown cane sang through the air, searing her palm. It was a harsh stroke that stung her to tears, but she kept her hand outstretched.
‘Where?’
‘Limerick, sir – in Ireland.’
Griffiths brought the cane down again.
From behind her Mary heard Gwyneth start to cry, and determinedly she forced open her fingers where the stroke had curled them into a fist.
‘Where?’ Griffiths’s voice was loud in her ear, and she could feel his breath against her cheek.
‘Lim… Lim…’ The sobs she had been trying to suppress burst out, preventing her from speaking, but Griffiths had heard enough. He whipped the stick across her reddened palm yet again. This time the pain was too much, and she snatched her hand away, wedging it under her arm as great tears ran down her cheeks. ‘Wales… I… I was born in… in Nant-y-Pridd, in Wales.’
Griffiths gave a snort of satisfaction, and put down the cane. ‘Return to your desk. You will re-write the essay and deliver it to me first thing tomorrow morning. And this time I expect it to contain the truth!’
*
It was only the first week of the Michaelmas term, and the early autumn sun was still warm as the two girls started for home, walking in silence for a good part of the way.
At a point where the road curved to skirt the hills, a footpath followed a more direct route along the side of the river, and they took it, walking by the slow moving water and pausing to watch a dragonfly skimming over the surface.
‘Do you ever think of doing things, Gwyn?’
‘Doing things? Like what?’
‘I don’t know…’ Mary closed her eyes and tilted her face to catch the sun. ‘Just something different. Maybe even something – shocking.’
‘No – and you shouldn’t be doing that,’ said Gwyneth, moving into the shade of a tree. ‘You’ll get all brown, like a gypsy, then no one will want to marry you.’
‘Who says I want to get married? And besides, I should like to be a gypsy.’
‘Stop being silly.’
‘What’s silly about it? There has to be more to life than getting married. Just think – roaming all over the world in a caravan. Wouldn’t you like that? I think it would be so romantic!’
‘I don’t think it would be romantic at all. Very uncomfortable and smelly I shouldn’t wonder – probably dangerous, too!’
‘Oh, Gwyn!’ A desperation filled Mary’s voice. ‘I just want… Oh, I don’t know what I want, but…’ She looked down at the water, a mischievous glint coming to her eye. ‘Actually – I do! I want to swim, naked, in this river! Right now!’
Gwyneth’s eyes widened. ‘You wouldn’t?’ Then, with an anxious note, ‘Would you?’
‘I will if you will.’
‘I would never!’
For a moment, Mary remained staring at the river, feeling the warmth of the sun on her skin, then with a forlorn sigh she turned back toward the path. ‘Come on,’ she said with a sad smile. ‘Let’s go home.’
The Davies’ house was one of a row of colliery cottages that lay on the outskirts of the village, and Gwyneth’s mother was standing in the doorway as the two girls arrived. ‘I’m afraid you can’t come in, Mary. The boys are just back from their shift, and our Thomas is in the bath. But if you’d like a bite of something to eat before you go, I can bring it out to you?’
‘That’s very kind of you, Mrs Davies, but I can’t stay. Mother’s waiting for me, I expect.’
Meg Davies struggled to maintain her smile. ‘Oh, yes – I expect she is. Well, just wait you there a minute. I’ll be right back.’ She disappeared into the house, and her place in the doorway was taken by Gwyneth’s second brother, Alan, still black with coal-dust.
‘I hear you got a proper whacking today.’
Gwyneth shot him a harsh look. ‘You just leave her alone. And how do
you know, anyway?’
‘Oh, news travels fast enough, ’specially when it’s on them skinny little legs o’ Davy Briggs!’ He laughed, giving Mary a wink. ‘Old Griffiths was it? By, but he’s a mean old bugger! You just say the word, Mary, and I’ll go up there, and give him a taste of his own medicine.’
Thomas, the eldest of the Davies’ offspring, appeared in the doorway, still buttoning his shirt, his wet hair glistening. ‘You’ll do no such thing, and stop embarrassing the girl.’
‘By heck, that’s got to be the fastest I’ve ever seen you out of that bath, boy!’ said Alan. He winked again at Mary. ‘You’ll have to come by more often, my love. Makes a nice change to get the water while it’s still hot!’
‘Get away off with you,’ Thomas growled. ‘And mind my clean shirt while you’re at it!’
‘Don’t worry, I’m going.’ Alan paused, grinning. ‘Here, you’ve gone a bit red in the face you have. Water too hot, was it?’
Thomas glared at him, but remained standing awkwardly in the shadows, and when his mother came back moments later carrying a paper-wrapped package, he was almost grateful to be shooed away.
‘I’m sure your mam’s got your tea all ready,’ said Meg, ‘but here’s some bread and cheese, just in case you get hungry on the way, like.’ With some embarrassment she handed over the parcel, hovering uncertainly for a moment. ‘Well, I suppose I should be getting tea ready, myself. Proper gannets my lot are these days.’
Gwyneth waited until her mother had gone, then looked down at Mary’s hand where it hung by her side. ‘Can I look?’ she asked nervously.
‘If you want to.’ Mary held it out for Gwyneth’s examination. ‘It didn’t hurt you know. I just pretended it did.’
A small crease formed between Gwyneth’s eyebrows as she looked at the reddened flesh. ‘Oh, Mary…’
‘Hey, Kelly! Can I come and stay in your castle?’
The sudden shout startled them both, but Mary quickly recovered, aiming a smack at the boy’s head as he ran past.
‘I’ll do for you at school tomorrow, Davy Briggs, you see if I don’t!’
From a safe distance, Briggs affected a pained expression and shook his hand. ‘Hurt, did it? Never mind, eh. Get the butler to see to it. I would!’ Then, laughing, he turned and disappeared up the road.
Gwyneth watched him go. ‘Why do you do it, Mary? You get yourself into such trouble.’
‘I don’t care. Griffiths doesn’t frighten me – and I’ll be born where I please.’
‘Mary! Listen to me! You’ve got to stop making up these silly stories. Everyone knows about you and your family – and they just laugh at you.’
‘I told you, I don’t care.’
‘But I do! I can’t bear it when…’ Gwyneth broke off, biting her lip. ‘You don’t need to make up stories for them!’
Resentfully, Mary started away, but after just a few paces she stopped and turned. ‘I don’t do it for them,’ she said.
*
‘Fight. Fight. Fight. Fight. Fight.’
Drawn by the sound of chanting, Nathaniel Abrahams went to his study window and looked beyond the school gates to where a large group of children were gathered around two boys and a girl.
He placed his cup back on to its saucer and took out his watch. Ten minutes to nine; too early to ring the bell. ‘Mr Griffiths,’ he said, turning his head a fraction. ‘There would appear to be several members of your class involved in a fracas. I think you had better step out and put an end to it.’
Griffiths sauntered over, peering with mild interest at the melee. ‘Oh, Briggs, is it? And Kelly, of course – can’t quite make out the other one. Ah, Harris! I should have known! Nothing for us to worry about. They’ll sort it out amongst themselves.’
Abrahams looked at him. ‘Possibly, Mr Griffiths. But I should prefer you to sort it out.’
‘With respect, Headmaster. When you’ve been here a few years, well, you’ll see the wisdom of turning a blind eye to this kind of thing – the odd scrap, like. They’re a rough lot of kids around here, and I’ve always found it better not to get involved in their high spirits when it’s off school property.’
Abrahams gave the man a penetrating look. ‘I have been in this profession for over forty years, and in all that time I have never thought of two boys fighting one girl as high spirits! I very much doubt my opinion will change during the few years that remain to me.’
‘It won’t do her any harm,’ Griffiths snorted. ‘Might even take her down a peg or two! And if she’s anything like the rest of her family she’ll probably flatten the two of them. Her mother’s quite a brawler when she’s…’
‘Mr Griffiths! I will not have this! You will go down and stop the fight immediately – then bring the three of them to my study. Is that understood?’
Griffiths’s nostrils flared, and the broken veins on his cheeks darkened. ‘As you wish, Headmaster,’ he said.
Like a solid living thing, the tightly packed ring of spectators moved this way and that, following the progress of the fight as Mary wrestled with the two boys, hitting and kicking for all she was worth. ‘Leave her alone! You bloody well leave her alone!’ she screamed, grabbing Harris by his hair, wrenching him round and slapping at his head, while Briggs tried to pin her arms from behind.
‘Break it up!’ boomed Griffiths, striding through the gate, the crowd parting to make way for him.
Harris broke free from Mary’s grasp to stand wild-eyed and panting, but Davy Briggs kept his arms around Mary, as though he had a tiger by the tail.
‘Stop it! The pair of you!’ Griffiths prised Briggs off, pushing him back. ‘Now, what’s all this about?’
‘It was Briggs and Harris, sir,’ piped up a small girl from the crowd. ‘They threw muck all over Gwyneth Davies, sir.’
‘Is that so? Where is she?’
The far end of the circle opened to reveal Gwyneth, huddled against the railings, tears running down her cheeks, and horse dung splattered over her face and clothes.
‘God, will you look at you!’ Griffiths snorted. ‘Making such a fuss! Get inside and clean yourself up, girl!’ He watched her start toward the school, then turned his attention back to the three protagonists, looking at each of them in turn. Harris’s lip was cut, and both Mary and Davy Briggs had blood running from their noses. ‘Right, the Headmaster wants to see you, so you’d better get to his study, sharpish! And he’s a bit hot on fighting, see, so I wouldn’t go expecting anything less than a good thrashing!’
Standing alone in front of the Headmaster’s desk, Mary fretted at her torn cuff. Her face was still flushed from the fight – and the closeness of the room added to her discomfort, for despite the mild autumn weather there was a fire burning in the grate.
‘Is it a little warm for you?’ Mr Abrahams enquired pleasantly, closing the door. ‘I’m afraid that as my years advance so does my susceptibility to the cold.’
‘I’m alright, thank you, sir.’
He crossed the room and seated himself behind the heavy teak desk. ‘Gwyneth Davies is a friend of yours?’
On the scuffed leather desktop lay the cane that had recently been applied to the backsides of Harris and Briggs, six apiece, the sound of the strokes clearly audible to Mary as she’d waited outside. She stole a nervous glance at it. ‘Yes, sir. My best friend, sir.’
‘And you thought to avenge this disgusting attack? You didn’t think it better to come and report it, rather than take on these two boys yourself ?’
‘I had to stop them, sir. They were…’ She paused.
‘They were what?’
‘They were trying to make her eat it.’
A look of horror crossed Abrahams’s face. ‘Surely not! She has said nothing of this to me!’
‘She wouldn’t, sir.’
The fingers of his left hand tapped at the desk. ‘I see,’ he said, then after a few moments, ‘How is your nose? It appears to have stopped bleeding.’
‘It was nothing, sir – just a scratch.’
‘It looks to have been rather more than a scratch from the amount of blood on your pinafore.’
‘I… I don’t think it’s all mine, sir.’
He resisted the urge to smile. ‘I cannot condone fighting, Mary. I want to make that quite clear to you.’
‘Yes, sir.’
He nodded, then cleared his throat. ‘Now, I see from the punishment book that you feature quite prominently. Indeed, although he has not seen fit to enter it, I believe Mr Griffiths had cause to cane you only yesterday.’ Some papers lay on the desk, and he picked them up, sifting through the four pages of beautifully executed copperplate. ‘The cause of the trouble was this essay, entitled My Life, was it not?’
‘Yes, sir. I was just…’
Mr Abrahams raised a silencing hand. ‘I can see why Mr Griffiths might take exception to this – but the work is not without merit.’ He read for some moments more, then he asked, ‘And your father, is he a painter?’
‘Yes, sir. That is – he was. He doesn’t have to work now.’
Abrahams steepled his fingers and looked up at her. ‘I see,’ he said softly. ‘A fortunate man. So there would be someone in the house now?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Well, I am sending Gwyneth Davies home since she is in no fit state to sit in class – and as you are in a somewhat similar condition, I think perhaps you should accompany her.’
Mary brightened. ‘Thank you, sir. We can walk together.’
‘Walk? Goodness, no. That is quite out of the question. I shall take you myself.’
‘Oh,’ said Mary, suddenly anxious. ‘Oh, yes… I see.’
Chapter Two
They rode most of the way to the small mining village of Nant-y-Pridd without speaking. Abrahams made a few attempts at conversation, but though the girls answered politely enough he could tell they were ill at ease, and as the outskirts of Caerphilly gave way to open countryside he fell silent, content to sit quietly and watch the unfolding scenery.
With its mountains and valleys, impressive views and grim little mining towns, Wales was a far cry from the softer, prettier landscape of Surrey where he had spent most of his working life. But children were children wherever one went, and so, he thought, were schoolmasters. For every half-dozen decent ones, there was always a Griffiths – dull, pedantic, bullying, and invariably too lazy to bother with pupils who were troubled in the way the Kelly girl seemed troubled. Abrahams glanced at her, finding it hard to reconcile the few snippets of gossip that had come his way with the girl who appeared at school each morning in the clean white pinafore and brightly polished shoes. In his mind he went back over the pages of the punishment book; so many entries with the name Mary Jane Kelly.
The road swung away from the river, beginning a gentle climb into the distant mountains, and as the gig crested the first rise he reined in the mare. To his left, the sparkling ribbon of water wound its way toward the village with its turning pit wheel and smoking chimneys, and in the misty morning sunshine the scene possessed an austere beauty he found breathtaking.
‘It’s really quite beautiful,’ he mused. ‘I shall have to make a point of returning with my camera.’
Mary looked at him with interest. ‘You have a camera, sir?’
‘Yes, rather a good one, actually. Though I must confess to achieving very mixed results. Are you interested in photography, by any chance?’
‘I don’t know, sir.’ She turned, gazing at the village beneath its haze of chimney smoke. ‘I suppose it is sort of beautiful – when you look at it in that way,’ she said at last.
Gwyneth followed their eyes, puzzled. ‘It looks just the same as always.’
‘Well,’ he said kindly, ‘perhaps the trick is knowing how to look?’ Then he flicked the reins, and the gig started the gentle run into the village.
The surprise and confusion Megan Davies exhibited on opening the door had quickly given way to thinly veiled anger toward the two boys responsible. Abrahams had done his best to reassure her that they had been adequately punished, and he’d left feeling confident the matter was closed – at least as far as the Davies’ were concerned.
But Mary still worried him. It was obvious she didn’t want to be taken all the way home, and now, as they moved beyond the village toward a shamble of jerrybuilt hovels, he began to understand why. Even in the bright sunlight the place looked wretched, and he shuddered to think how it must appear in the depths of winter. He could only see it as an area where all hope had died – and his words to Gwyneth, just twenty minutes earlier, suddenly sounded very hollow indeed.
A little way off from these decaying heaps of brick, wood and slate stood a labourer’s cottage that had once seen better days, and it was to this that Mary reluctantly directed him.
‘Will you come in, please, sir?’ she asked as she climbed from the gig. ‘I think my father is at home.’
Abrahams tethered the horse and followed Mary into the house, pausing just inside the doorway to let his eyes adjust to the gloom. He shivered. The place had a damp, unhealthy feel that the few pathetic embers glowing in the grate did nothing to dispel.
‘Mr Kelly?’ he called.
In a large, wooden-armed chair pulled close to the fireplace sat a man, and Mary ran to him. ‘Father!’ she chided, kissing him on the forehead. ‘You’ve let the fire go out, now whatever will Mr Abrahams think?’ She crouched down, putting pieces of wood and scraps of coal into the grate
where they smouldered and smoked. ‘Mr Abrahams is the Headmaster of the new school, and he’s come all this way to see you.’ She straightened, tucking back her hair and brushing at her dress with a quaint primness. ‘We’re not so used to visitors these days, Mr Abrahams, so you will rather have to take us as you find us. Of course, it hasn’t always been this way. We used to have such parties – you couldn’t possibly imagine.’
Astonished by the sudden transformation, Abrahams watched her move about the sparsely furnished room, tidying this, rearranging that, all the while keeping up the unnaturally cheerful stream of conversation. ‘Mr Kelly?’ he tried again.
In the chair, the man moved restlessly, but said nothing.
‘Will you take some tea, Mr Abrahams? I shall be making some for father – so it will be no trouble.’
She was standing bright-eyed by the chair, barely recognisable but for the torn, bloodstained apron, and Abrahams felt suddenly very cold. He came forward, looking down at her father. The man’s eyes stared fixedly ahead, and his mouth hung loosely open, his body twitched into agitated movement by occasional spasms that would have toppled him from the chair had he not been bound to it with leather straps.
Mary caught Abrahams’s fleeting look of horror, but for a few seconds more kept the bright look on her face. ‘It’s really so nice… so very nice of you to…’ Then, as he turned to her, she saw the dreadful reality mirrored in his eyes, and the effort of keeping up the pretence became too much.
Abrahams reached out to her, and in the next moment she was in his arms, sobbing against his chest.
‘How long has he been like this, Mary?’ Abrahams asked softly, sipping the tea she had prepared for them.
‘Not long, not like this, anyway. He’s been ill for about three years.’ Her voice tailed away, and sitting on the floor by her father’s side she rested her head against his thigh. ‘But he will get better, you know – then it will be just like it was before.’
Abrahams put down the cup. ‘Mary…’ he began, but lost for words he turned his attention to the fire that now burned brightly with the last of the coal. ‘Well, it’s a little warmer in here now.’
John Kelly had fallen asleep, his head lolling against his chest, and Mary got quietly to her feet. ‘We could sit outside now if you wish? I know it isn’t so very grand in here.’
Although the room was bare and badly in need of repair, Abrahams
could see the cottage had once been a very respectable household. Along the wooden mantelpiece, pencil sketches had been pinned in an attempt at decoration, and the re-kindled fire had gone some way to dispelling the musty dampness that pervaded the room – but still he found the idea of escaping to the warmth of the sun a temptation. ‘Perhaps we might take your father outside? I’m sure the sunlight would be beneficial.’
Mary looked down, embarrassed. ‘We can’t do that. Mother won’t allow it. She doesn’t like anyone to see.’
‘Then let us sit here – the three of us.’ Abrahams turned his face from her, making a show of examining the nearest drawing where it hung from the mantel-shelf.
Mary refilled his cup. ‘I am partly Irish, you know,’ she said, breaking the silence. ‘My mother comes from Cardiff, but Father was born in Limerick – a descendent of the Irish Kings of…’ she broke off guiltily.
‘And are these his sketches?’ The drawings were unpolished, even a little crude in places, and Abrahams guessed the man was already ill at the time of their execution. Yet for all that, they showed a natural ability and a good grasp of perspective.
‘No, sir. They’re mine.’
He turned back in surprise. ‘Yours?’
‘They’re something for him to look at during the day. Mother… well, she has to work, you see.’ She unpinned one of the drawings and held it out for Abrahams’s inspection. ‘This is our family.’ A man with a head of fair, curly hair, a woman, and a large group of children were pictured around the door of a splendid cottage. The figures had been drawn only after a great deal of trouble, but the house and background were beautifully rendered. ‘I’m not very good at people – but this is Mother and Father, and these are the five boys – Matthew, David and John. The tall one is Huw – he’s the eldest and the nicest – and very strong, too! He never lets anyone pick on us. And that’s baby Glyn, we all spoil him because he’s so little. Father says he’ll turn out a little horror, but we just can’t help it. And this is me – and this…’ she pointed proudly, ‘is my twin sister, Emma. We do just everything together.’
Abrahams studied it for several moments. ‘This is very good, Mary, really very good – but I don’t understand. You actually do have more than just the one brother?’
She looked into her lap. ‘No… not really. They’re just stories I make up. I tell them to Father when it’s just the two of us here. I know he likes them, and… well, it’s how I would like things to be.’
Abrahams cleared his throat, giving himself a moment as he looked slowly and thoughtfully along the line of drawings, studying each in turn. ‘You’ve had lessons?’ he asked at last.
‘No, sir. Mr Griffiths doesn’t care for drawing.’
‘From your father, then? Before his illness?’
‘No, sir. He… well…’ She looked down again. ‘He’s only an artist in our stories. Before he became ill, he was a boot-maker.’
‘I see. Well, you have a talent, Mary – and we must see what we can do with it. What I would …’ He broke off, rising from his chair as a young man stepped into the house to stand warily just inside the door.
‘Henry,’ said Mary, running to her brother. ‘This is Mr Abrahams. He’s the new headmaster.’
Henry Kelly gave a curt nod, eyeing him suspiciously. ‘Somethin’ we can do for you, is it?’ he asked with undisguised hostility. ‘Our Mary not been behavin’ herself?’
‘No, nothing like that, I assure you.’
‘Oh, English you are, is it?’ Henry regarded him with even greater distrust. ‘So, what you here for, then?’ His eyes narrowed as he looked from Mary, to the headmaster, then back again. ‘Oh,’ he said slowly. ‘Oh, that’s the game, is it? Well, it’s nice to see you finally earnin’ your keep, Mary. And none too soon, neither, I reckon – wastin’ your time at that damned school.’
‘Mr Kelly – or may I be permitted to call you Henry?’
‘Stow that. We don’t go in for fancy manners here.’ He grasped Mary by the arm, making her wince as he pulled her close. ‘If you want our Mary, then let’s see the colour of your money. A nice young ’un like her ought to be worth a fair bit to a dried up old man like you.’
Abrahams tried to conceal his disgust. ‘Mr Kelly…’
‘Look, do you want her or not?’ snapped Henry, shaking his sister roughly. ‘She’s never been touched to my knowledge – so she’s clean.’
‘Mr Kelly. Will you please let her go. You’re hurting her.’
Henry gave a contemptuous laugh. ‘What’s that to you? Now either pay up, or get about your business and leave us be!’
‘Mr Kelly, I must insist…’
‘Insist, is it?’ Anger flared in Henry’s eyes, and he threw Mary from him. ‘Listen, you stuck-up old bastard. You’re not in your bloody school now, playin’ the great lord and master! This is my house, where I make the rules – and I reckon you just broke ’em.’ He moved forward, threateningly, fists raised. ‘Mister high and mighty headmaster, eh? Well, this time it’s you who’s for a thrashin’!’
‘Please, Mr Kelly. There’s no need for…’
Henry feinted with his left, then brought his right up to deliver a hard, open-handed slap to the side of Abrahams’s head.
Caught off guard, Abrahams reeled backwards, his hand to his face. ‘Mr Kelly, please …’
Mary flew at her brother, tugging ineffectually at him, screaming for him to stop, but Henry thrust her away, sending her crashing against their father’s chair, jarring the man into a grotesque wakefulness.
Half-dazed, Abrahams tried to take in the nightmarish scene, but Henry Kelly was advancing upon him, his voice mocking. ‘That was just a little smack, like. Now I’ll show you what a real beatin’ is!’ He repeated the feint, this time following up with a hard-fisted right – but Abrahams had no intention of being caught a second time. Shifting on to the balls of his feet, he dropped into a crouch, letting the blow pass just over his head.
For an instant, surprise showed on the youth’s face, before Abrahams delivered a straight right to the jaw that sent Henry Kelly sprawling on the floor.
Mary went to her brother, but Henry pushed her away, his eyes fixed on Abrahams, the aggressive bravado of moments before, replaced by a sullen, almost childish petulance. ‘I… I’ll have the law on you,’ he whimpered, dabbing the blood from his broken lip. ‘Comin’ into a man’s house, and…’
‘Mr Kelly,’ Abrahams was breathing hard, but he kept his voice steady. ‘It is not my place to advise you on the matter, but I doubt it would do much for your reputation to have it known you were knocked down by a dried up old man, now would it? I am more than happy to forget this unfortunate incident if you are.’
Hesitantly, Henry got to his feet. ‘Just a lucky punch,’ he muttered, keeping his distance. He dabbed again at his mouth, glancing to where Mary was trying to soothe their father. ‘Can’t you keep him quiet?’ he growled, venting his anger in a safer direction. ‘Bloody noise to have to listen to!’ He looked furtively back at Abrahams. ‘So, what do you want?’
‘Nothing, I assure you. Just to help if I can.’
‘He brought me home,’ said Mary. ‘There was a fight – at the school.’
Henry Kelly’s lips curled into a sneer. ‘That’s why you’re lookin’ like somethin’ the cat dragged in, is it?’ he said, edging away to take down a small gin-trap that hung from a peg on the wall.
Abrahams remained on his guard, but Henry had had quite enough. From the safety of the doorway he spat in the headmaster’s direction. ‘Well, we don’t need your help, see? So don’t come crawlin’ round here again, or you’ll be sorry. And you…’ He glared across the room at Mary. ‘You’d better have my dinner ready when I get back – or you’ll be more than sorry.’
With Henry gone, Abrahams took a deep breath and inspected his grazed knuckles. He knew he had grown soft with age, yet still the slowness of his reactions had surprised him. It had been a close thing, but years of coaching boys in the art of boxing had stood him in good stead,
and he was not too displeased with his performance. Half way to a smile, he became aware of Mary staring at him. ‘Yes, well…’ he said, giving an embarrassed cough.
Mary looked equally embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry about my brother, sir.’
‘He seems a very angry young man.’ Abrahams looked at her with concern. ‘You will be alright?’
Mary nodded, but the way she kept her eyes lowered, left Abrahams troubled. ‘Very well,’ he said at last. ‘But if you should ever need my help.’
She nodded again, and after a moment more he turned his attention back to the sketches pinned to the mantelpiece. ‘Then, as I was saying before we were interrupted, what I should like is to buy one of your drawings from you, if I may?’
‘I’m sorry, sir. I couldn’t sell any of these.’ She put her arm about her father’s shoulders.
‘Yes. Yes, of course. I do understand.’ He gave her a brief smile. ‘Well, I really should be getting back. I shall see you at school tomorrow?’
‘Yes, sir.’
John Kelly had grown still once more, and Abrahams reached down, taking his hand in his own. ‘It’s been a pleasure to meet you, sir,’ he said into the expressionless face. ‘I hope we shall meet again soon.’
Mary walked with Abrahams to the door and stood watching as he climbed up on to the seat of the gig. ‘I… I could draw you a picture,’ she began uncertainly. ‘A special one, just for you – if you wanted me to?’
‘A commission?’ He considered the idea. ‘Yes, a capital suggestion. A landscape perhaps?’
She nodded excitedly. ‘The view from the hill – where we stopped?’
‘That would be perfect.’ He stroked his chin. ‘I suppose we should discuss payment? Winter is approaching, and you seem to be low on coal. A bag of the colliery’s best, do you think?’
‘Oh, no, sir…’
He smiled. ‘I see you drive a hard bargain, Mary. Very well, two bags. But I shall want a favour from you in return.’
Her forehead creased into a small frown. ‘Sir?’
‘That business back there with your brother.’ He gave the reins a gentle flick, urging the horse into motion. ‘I shouldn’t like it to become common knowledge. As I said earlier – I really can’t condone fighting.’
Chapter Three
From the window of his study, Abrahams watched a group of girls run across the puddled playground, their hands clasped to skirts and shawls against the raging wind.
The morning had started fair, but leaden clouds driving in from the west had made it dark enough by two-thirty for the classroom lamps to be lit, and now a heavy rain was falling.
‘I apologise for presuming upon you with yet another meeting,’ he said, turning to address the small gathering, ‘but I thought it might be time for us to evaluate our progress.’
Perched on a chair, Miss Peebles, stick thin and dressed from head to foot in black, twitched her head in his direction, while behind her, Mr Griffiths sighed as he leaned against the wall, his arms folded.
‘I’m pleased to see the changes are being implemented,’ Abrahams continued, taking his seat. ‘But it seems to me we are not yet one school. Rather, we are still a collection of small village schools gathered under one roof.’ He noticed Griffiths beginning to fidget, and he went on quickly. ‘It is no easy matter to change from running your own establishment, with your own methods and routines, to becoming part of a grander design – and you have both done extremely well under the circumstances. But, unless we can alter our whole way of…’
Griffiths pushed himself from the wall to stand with his feet apart and his thumbs shoved into the pockets of his waistcoat. ‘With respect, Headmaster.’
‘Yes, Mr Griffiths?’
‘Your ideas may work very well in English public schools, but you have no experience of the people in these parts. They go into the mines, the lucky ones. A few to the factories, else it’s on the land. Not much call for drawing and music, whichever way.’
Abrahams kept his voice calm. ‘Surely there is always a place for art and music? This country is famous for its choirs, after all.’
‘Choirs are one thing, but giving these children aspirations over and above their situation does nothing but harm. There’s precious little for them in this life but damned hard work.’
‘It doesn’t have to be that way.’
‘That’s how it is! Nothing to be done about it. Filling their heads with fancy ideas won’t help them when they’re hacking coal in a three foot seam, will it? To read and write and know the word of God is what they need – and enough arithmetic to count their wages.’
Abrahams stared at him. ‘You surely cannot believe that?’
‘I’m afraid he’s quite right, Headmaster.’ Miss Peebles gave him an apologetic look. ‘They mostly go to thelucky ones. A few to the factories, else it’s on the land. Not much call for drawing and music, whichever way.’
Abrahams kept his voice calm. ‘Surely there is always a place for art and music? This country is famous for its choirs, after all.’
‘Choirs are one thing, but giving these children aspirations over and above their situation does nothing but harm. There’s precious little for them in this life but damned hard work.’
‘It doesn’t have to be that way.’
‘That’s how it is! Nothing to be done about it. Filling their heads with fancy ideas won’t help them when they’re hacking coal in a three foot seam, will it? To read and write and know the word of God is what they need – and enough arithmetic to count their wages.’
Abrahams stared at him. ‘You surely cannot believe that?’
‘I’m afraid he’s quite right, Headmaster.’ Miss Peebles gave him an apologetic look. ‘They mostly go to the mines. It’s a shame, I know, but…’
‘Shame be damned!’ Griffiths roared. ‘The money’s better than they’d earn working the land or sweating in a factory. It’s the best they can hope for. If you must pity anyone, pity the poor devils who can’t get into the mines.’
The Headmaster placed his hands on the desk. ‘No, Mr Griffiths. That won’t do. There are always exceptions. Those with a special talent.’
‘Occasionally there are,’ conceded Griffiths, ‘and I’ve known one or two. But you only have to look at those we have here at present…’
‘I have looked, and I see potential – Mary Kelly for instance.’
‘Mary Kelly is a damned fool! I’ve tried my best …’
Abrahams leaped to his feet. ‘Your best? Beating her for daring to show a little imagination? Is that your best?’
‘And what would you have me do?’
‘Encourage her! Help her to make something of herself .’
‘Mary Kelly’s only talent is for telling lies!’
‘Stories, Mr Griffiths. She makes up stories. There is a difference.’
‘There is indeed a difference, Headmaster. Stories are told by those who can afford it. Those who can’t are merely liars – ridiculed by their own kind and deemed unemployable by their betters!’ He paused, his tone becoming more restrained. ‘Mary Kelly’s father is a cripple. It’s thought he’ll not see the spring. Her brother is a bully and a wastrel – but at least he’ll poach the odd rabbit to keep them in meat – that is until he gets caught. Her mother is a tuppenny whore who spends the time she’s not on her back, drinking herself into a stupor.’
‘Mr Griffiths! I have warned you about repeating such gossip.’
Griffiths was unperturbed. ‘It is not gossip, Headmaster, it is common knowledge! Everyone knows it – and if you were not an outsider you would know it! Oh, I know you’ve been over to Nant-y-Pridd, but are you also aware that Mary Kelly works for two hours every morning, washing and cleaning, just to pay her school pence and keep herself dressed? She’s thirteen, for God’s sake. She should be out at work, not wasting her time here in the vain hope of bettering herself.’ He gave a mirthless laugh. ‘If she manages to be better than her mother she’ll have achieved a small miracle! She’s not a bad looking girl, and in a few years time she’ll probably find a husband who’ll knock this damn foolishness out of her. But in the meantime she should find a position as a maid, a kitchen skivvy, anything that’ll keep her respectable. But she won’t! Her head’s too full of fanciful ideas – and you want me to encourage them? What Mary Kelly needs is both feet planted firmly on the ground – and for her own sake I’d beat her bloody to achieve that!’
Caught in the crossfire, Miss Peebles studied the floor in embarrassed silence.
‘Well,’ Mr Abrahams sat down. ‘I take your point, Mr Griffiths – but I believe you are wrong. So, from the start of next week, I shall be forming a new class from the most able children – a class which I, myself, shall teach. Now, if we might turn our attention to some of the other matters I have outlined.’
*
The rain was still falling hard the next morning when Mary awoke, stretching her leg across the straw‑filled mattress to the chill space where her mother should have lain. Outside it was pitch dark, and a howling wind buffeted the small window, lifting the edges of the board that covered a broken pane.
Her nose and cheeks were cold, and she gave herself a few extra minutes beneath the blankets, listening to the reassuring rhythm of her father’s
breathing on the far side of the wooden partition. Then, reluctantly, she climbed from bed.
With the fire lit, and some tea stewing in the pot, she went to her father’s room. He lay asleep, with no sign that Henry had been there at all that night, and she sighed, knowing that without help she would never get her father out of the bed and into his chair.
She brushed her fingers against his cheek. ‘Time to wake up, Da,’ she said softly. ‘Mother will be having the breakfast on the table in no time at all.’
The man’s eyes opened slowly, and for a
moment she thought he was smiling up at her, but then his lips drew into a travesty of a grin, as they jerked and snatched in spasm.
‘I’ll bring you a nice cup of tea in a minute,’ she said making her way back to the fire. ‘It’s a terrible day out there – blowing a gale, it is. And it’s such a shame. Mother wanted to take the boys into Caerphilly today. Huw’s getting so tall now he’s fairly out of that new jacket she bought him, and she says she won’t have him going up to university looking anything less than the gentleman.’
From a cupboard on the wall she took the stale remains of a loaf, and holding it against her chest, she sawed off two slices.
‘I was hoping to go, too. Poor Emma desperately needs a new piece for her pinafore.’ She speared a slice of bread with a long fork and placed it before the smoking coals to toast.
‘I really shouldn’t be telling you this, Da – but she got in a fight at school the other day. Oh, of course, it wasn’t her fault. Some of the boys were being beastly and – well, I don’t know what I would have done if she hadn’t been there. She was very brave – but her pinafore was ruined. It really needs a new frill, and though mother would mend it in a minute, I would so like to do it myself.’
The pinafore, dress and thin coat she had worn the previous day lay drying over the backs of two chairs, and she moved them closer to the fire. ‘Would you like to play a game later, Da? You know how much John and David love those guessing games you make up. Do you remember how they laughed last time – and mother was laughing too, and trying so hard to keep a straight face, and calling us all silly monkeys?’
She poured some tea into a cup and took it, with the toasted bread, to where her father lay. ‘Breakfast, Da,’ she said.
Sitting on the edge of the bed she raised his head, helping him to eat the dry toast, giving him sips of tea to wash it down.
‘Mother’s done us proud this morning,’ she said as she worked the last piece of toast between his lips. ‘She must have been up ever so early to get all this baking done. I don’t think I could eat another bite.’
Lowering him on to the pillow, she kissed him lightly on the forehead, then made her way back to the meagre warmth of the fire, to wash herself from head to toe with the remains of the hot water.
Outside it was beginning to lighten, but only enough to show the trees as silhouettes against a brooding sky and the rain slanting down with a vengeance. ‘You know, Da? I do believe the rain is letting up.’ She shuddered as she pulled on the wet clothes. ‘So I think I might just pop into Caerphilly after all.’ Wrapping her dry shift and dress in an oilskin cloth, she put them ready by the door. Her boots were still wet through, but with the long walk ahead of her, it hardly mattered.
‘I’m going off now, Da.’ She opened the door and scanned the road in both directions, hoping her mother, or even Henry, would come home so that she might leave with a clear conscience, but there was no movement other than the driving rain. For a moment she hesitated, then she closed the door and walked to the room where her father lay. Even from the doorway, Mary could smell the evidence of his incontinence. ‘Oh, Da,’ she said, a tremor in her voice as she pulled back the blankets, ‘Oh, Da…’
*
Hubert Llewellyn, proprietor of the small guesthouse known as The Cross Keys Hotel, Caerphilly, was bristling with indignation. ‘What time do you call this, then!’ he demanded.
At the back door, half in the shelter of the porch and half in the rain, Mary stood drenched to the skin, her fair hair plastered to her head and across her face. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Llewellyn. It was the rain and…’
‘Well, I can’t help the weather, can I? Half past six we needed you here, not quarter to seven, see?’
Behind him the portly figure of his wife hove into view. ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, let her in, Mr Llewellyn. Can’t you see the poor girl’s wet through?’
‘I’d be obliged if you’d let me deal with this, Mrs Llewellyn!’
‘I’m sure you would, Mr Llewellyn! And in the meantime she’s going to catch her death, and then where will you be? In prison! On a charge of murder I shouldn’t wonder! And who’s going to have the trouble of coming to visit you? Me, I suppose!’ She bustled past him. ‘Don’t you mind him, Mary, dear. Just you come on in.’
‘I have brought some dry clothes.’ From beneath her coat Mary produced the oilskin parcel. ‘And I’ll come early tomorrow – to make up the time.’
Edith Llewellyn put her hands on her ample hips, giving her husband a sharp look. ‘There! There you are Mr Llewellyn! You see! She’ll make up the time!’
‘Well, that’s not exactly the point, is it, Mrs Llewellyn? It’s very
considerate of her, but she’s still late today! No good being late in this business! We’d soon be out on the street if I was late paying the bills, now wouldn’t we? Out on our ears, we’d be, lock, stock and barrel, we would! Oh yes!’
‘Well, then it’s a good job I pay them, isn’t it!’ She turned to Mary, ‘Now you go upstairs and get yourself dried off. The last room on the second floor isn’t being used. Oh, and while you’re up there you can tell Alice to come down to me. That girl will idle away half the day if I let her!’ She waited until Mary had gone upstairs then glanced sideways at her husband. ‘ Just like someone else I know!’
In the act of picking up his newspaper, Hubert’s eyes widened. ‘What? What are you implying?’
She gave him a withering look. ‘Just that I have some jobs for you!’
‘Oh, jobs, is it, Mrs Llewellyn! I see! And what might these jobs be?’
‘Just what I say, Mr Llewellyn. Jobs! I’m not having you slipping off.’
He began to protest, but she cut him short. ‘You always were a lazy man, Mr Llewellyn. I remember my dear mother remarking on it! Watch out for lazy, idle men, she said to me! Oh, she should have lived to see how right she was!’
*
‘Y’know it’s a quarter t’ nine?’ said Mrs Cartwright, coming to the door of the pantry. ‘I’d get a move on with that floor if I was you. Missus won’t be ’appy if it ain’t finished.’
Kneeling on the cold flagstones, Mary scrubbed, clasping the brush with both hands and using the whole weight of her body to propel it back and forth. ‘I’m – nearly – done,’ she gasped, her breath clouding in the unheated pantry. ‘Just – this last bit.’ Beside her a metal bucket held a harsh mixture of water, soap and soda, and with each dip of the brush, she winced as it seeped into her cracked and reddened knuckles. But worse was the agony in her knees when she finally stood up and, almost crying with pain, carried the bucket into the scullery to empty it.
‘Come on, cheer up. Worse things ’appen at sea – or so they tell me,’ said the cook, looking up from the pastry she was rolling out.
Wiping her cuff across her eyes, Mary gave a half smile.
‘That’s more like it. Yer can’t let it beat yer, y’know. Now, I’ve ironed yer clothes – though Gawd knows why. It’s rainin’ cats and dogs out there an’ you’ll be as wet as when you arrived by the time yer get t’ school. Ain’t yer got no umbrella?’
Mary shook her head.
‘Lawd! I suppose they ain’t been invented where you come from! Why, even the littlest mites ’as umbrellas back ’ome!’
Though she’d lived the greater part of her life in Caerphilly, Mrs Cartwright had never lost her Cockney twang nor her love of singing London’s praises, something Mary found both amusing and exciting. ‘I thought you said it never rained there,’ she smiled, changing into her freshly ironed clothes.
‘An’ no more it don’t – least, not like it does ’ere. I remember when…’ Mrs Cartwright gave her a sideways glance. ‘’Ere, you ain’t got no time for stories – an’ anyway, you’ve ’eard ’em all afore – an’ if yer don’t get off soon you’ll be late for school. I’ve put a smidgen o’ polish on yer boots, though what’s ’oldin’ ’em together, I don’t know!’ She chuckled. ‘Now that’s one thing yer don’t get too much of in London – bloomin’ miracles!’
Mary laughed. ‘Well, I’d best not go there, then,’ she said, pulling on her pinafore and slipping her feet into the damp boots.
‘Maybe I should go back – afore it’s too late.’ Mrs Cartwright sprinkled flour on to the pastry in a thoughtful manner. ‘See London an’ die. That’s what they say, ain’t it?’
‘I think that was Venice,’ said Mary, apologetically.
‘Was it? Well, if it was, I expect it was said by one o’ them foreigners what never got no further than the channel.’ The old woman busied herself cutting out pie cases. ‘See yer tomorrow, then?’
‘Yes, see you tomorrow,’ said Mary, putting the rest of her clothing into the oilskin and making ready to leave.
Rain was leaping from the stone steps that led up to street level, and Mrs Cartwright watched the girl hesitate. It was only a brief dash to the school, but she didn’t envy her even that short trip. ‘’Ere, yer can borrow my ol’ mushroom, if yer want,’ she said, going to a stick stand by the door and bringing out a battered umbrella. ‘But I want it back, mind!’
Chapter Four
Owen Davies peered with hungry expectation as his wife placed the steaming crock on the table. ‘Mutton stew, is it?’
‘You know it is.’
‘Always mutton stew on Tuesdays,’ chipped in Alan, giving Gwyneth a nudge. ‘Better than a calendar, I reckon.’
Owen shot him a warning look. ‘Mind your cheek, boy. You’re not too old for a damn good hiding yet, you know.’ But there was humour in his voice, and Alan grinned as he reached for a slice of bread.
‘Now that I won’t have.’ said his father. ‘You just wait till your mother is seated. Whatever else a man might have to go without, manners cost nothing, and he should have his full share.’
Meg scowled as Alan replaced the bread. ‘Seventeen, is it? You act more like seven sometimes.’ She ladled the stew into a bowl and set it in front of her husband.
‘By heck, that smells good! Fit for a king, that is!’ he said, reaching round to pat her behind.
‘Owen!’
He feigned innocence. ‘What is it woman? Can’t a man pay his wife a compliment, then?’
She filled another bowl and passed it to Thomas. ‘Fine example, I must say,’ she muttered – but there was a blush to her cheeks, and the trace of a smile on her lips.
Alan watched hungrily as a brimming bowl was passed to him. ‘I hear there was an explosion over at Merthyr this morning. Twenty killed, so they’re saying – and another fifty or more still under…’ He stopped short as Thomas gave him a warning kick. ‘Ah… well, that’s what I heard,’ he finished lamely.
Meg appeared not to notice, but the smile had gone from her face.
‘So, Gwyneth, my little petal,’ said Owen in the awkward silence that followed. ‘How was school today?’
Gwyneth set down the bowl her mother handed her, guiltily licking her thumb where it had slipped over the edge and into the stew. ‘We went out to Caerphilly Castle – drawing!’ she said importantly. She had been waiting for this moment, and now gave the statement its full dignity.
Her father leaned back in his chair. ‘Drawing, is it? Well, well! I didn’t know we had an artist in the family.’ He gave a sly wink as Gwyneth looked proudly about the table. ‘Mind you, I’m not surprised. I like a bit o’ drawing, myself – ’specially when it’s my wages on a Saturday morning.’
Alan laughed. ‘You can draw my bath water tomorrow, if you like, Gwyn.’
Blushing, Gwyneth turned sullen. ‘I’m no good at it, anyway.’
‘Oh, come on, now.’ Her father placed his hand on her arm. ‘No need to go taking yourself so seriously. You’re not thinking of making your living at it, are you? Well, then. What’s it matter whether you’re good at it or not?’
Gwyneth brightened a little.
‘Mary can draw a bit, can’t she?’ asked Thomas.
‘She seems to draw you,’ chuckled Alan.
It was Thomas’s turn to blush. ‘Get away with you! She’s just a kid! I was just asking because…’
Meg took her seat at the far end of the table. ‘If you are all quite finished?’ she said pointedly.
They fell silent. Owen waited for them to bend their heads, then did likewise, speaking the words of the short prayer in a low voice.
‘I was just asking,’ Thomas persisted the moment his father lifted his head, ‘because she could teach Gwyn – help her along a bit?’
Alan looked up from his bowl. ‘Damn fool idea!’
‘We’ll not have that kind of language, if you please!’ said Owen.
‘Sorry, Da. But it sounds a waste o’ time if you ask me.’
Meg turned to him. ‘Well, no one did ask you. So I’d be obliged if you’d mind your own business.’
‘She is good, though,’ said Gwyneth. ‘She gave a drawing to Mr Abrahams at the school. Proper fine it is – he thinks she could be an artist.’
Owen looked puzzled. ‘Abrahams? Who’s he then? I thought it was
Griffiths that taught you.’
‘Mr Abrahams is the Headmaster they brought in from England,’ said Meg. ‘He’s the one who drove Gwyn home the other day – in a gig, no less.’
‘Oh, England, is it?’ said Owen. ‘Griffiths not good enough for Gladstone, then?’
Meg looked up. ‘My, but you’ve never had a good word for Mr Griffiths in all these years!’
‘True enough. But at least he’s a local man. Doesn’t seem right, putting an outsider in charge.’ He turned to Gwyneth. ‘What do you make of this Abrahams, Gwyn?’
‘He seems nice enough. Not like Mr Griffiths.’
Alan gave a grunt. ‘No one’s like Griffiths!’
‘Griffiths isn’t so bad,’ said Thomas. ‘Not really.’
‘Not bad? Why, he’s a devil, man! He’s given me more stick than I can remember – and Da had to be stopped from going down there and teaching him a lesson after he laid into you!’
‘Well,’ said Owen. ‘I may have been a wee bit hasty there. Schoolmaster’s got to be a bit hard, I suppose. This new chap won’t last long if he’s not.’
Meg shook her head. ‘I don’t believe you sometimes, Owen. I really don’t!’
*
Grabbing her daughter by the hair, Annie Kelly dragged Mary across the room. ‘You… you bloody, bloody little cow!’ she screamed, slapping at her head and face with all her might. ‘The minute I turn my back!’
Mary was close to hysteria, blood and mucus running from her nose to mix with the tears that streamed down her cheeks. ‘No, Mam – it’s not true!’
‘You lying little bitch! Where’d that come from, then?’ She shoved Mary, sending her sprawling into the coal from the newly delivered sacks. ‘I’ll give you a whipping you won’t forget, you little whore!’ She swayed drunkenly toward Henry. ‘Give me your bloody belt!’
Standing in the door to block his sister’s escape, Henry Kelly unbuckled the thick leather belt, then leaned back to watch with satisfaction as his mother wrapped it around her fist, leaving a two-foot strap.
‘I didn’t do anything, Mam! I didn’t!’
‘Don’t you lie to me!’ Annie lashed the belt across the small of Mary’s back, making her scream with pain.
‘It… it was a present, Mam! Don’t! It was a…’ she screamed again as the leather snaked across her shoulder.
‘She had that old feller from up the school,’ goaded Henry. ‘I caught ’em here together the other mornin’. I knew they was up to no good.’
‘You damned little whore!’ Annie Kelly lashed again, then again, but in her gin-soaked anger she missed her mark, and the blows struck the coals, sending small pieces skidding across the floor.
Seizing her chance, Mary flung herself from the fireplace and ran to the far side of the room, staring out from beneath her dishevelled hair like a hunted animal. ‘I’m not!’ she shrieked. ‘It was a present!’
‘Present, my arse!’ Annie wiped the spittle from the side of her mouth, and advanced on Mary.
‘It was a present – a payment – for a drawing. That’s all! Go and…’ The leather seared across her left arm, and she dashed into the refuge of the corner. ‘Go and ask if you don’t believe me!’
‘Oh, you’d like that! Make me look a right bloody fool, wouldn’t it!’ Annie began lashing from left and right, swinging wildly and striking the walls more often than not, but still landing enough strokes to elicit screams of agony.
‘You don’t think I have enough to contend with!’ She jerked her head toward the room where John Kelly lay. ‘It’s bad enough I’ve got a useless cripple for a husband – but to think that a daughter of mine would…’
Stung by the reference to her father, Mary’s eyes flared angrily, and she drew herself up, as though suddenly impervious to the lashes. ‘Would what? Follow your example? Two sacks of coal would be a good price, wouldn’t it? How much do you charge?’
Taken aback, Annie let her arm drop, the strap dangling by her side. ‘What do you mean?’ she hissed.
‘Do you think I don’t know what you do when you go to Cardiff ? Everyone knows!’
‘You know nothing… none of you! How dare you! You ungrateful little whore.’
‘You are the whore – you!’ Mary’s eyes filled with tears. ‘You bring the stink of it into our bed when you come creeping home – when you bother to come home!’
‘Don’t take that from her!’ shouted Henry, disappointed at the turn of events – but Annie had lost her momentum. ‘You keep out of it!’ She
turned to Mary, staggering a little, reaching for the wall to steady herself. ‘You think I like it? What else am I supposed to do?’
No longer sobered by fury, Annie’s voice became slurred. ‘How else do you think we’ve managed all these years?’ She waved an arm toward the place where her husband lay befouled in his bed. ‘He’s been no good these past years – useless – a millstone, that’s what he’s been – a bloody millstone round my neck.’
‘Don’t you dare say that!’
‘Oh, don’t I dare? He’s been a millstone alright – dragging me down – and so have you – both of you – bloody great millstones.’ She turned to look at Henry, ‘What use have you ever been?’
But Henry had heard it all before. Snatching back his belt, he spat on the floor at her feet, then pushed his way through the door, making off to the fields and his snares.
Annie looked down at the spattered ground, trying to focus, her body listing precariously. ‘Just you and me, now, eh, Mary?’ she said, looking up with mocking affection. ‘Dear little Mary – clever little Mary – Da’s little pride and joy. Too good to go out to work. Da says little Mary must stay at school.’
‘It’s what he wanted,’ Mary protested bitterly. ‘He said I should…’
‘Better yourself?’ Annie tapped the side of her nose with her finger and leered. ‘I wonder what Da would say if he knew what his clever little girl had been up to, eh? Letting old men have her for a few bags of coal.’
‘That’s a lie – you know it is!’
But her mother was no longer listening. ‘Clever, pretty little girl you are, but I shall tell him – he won’t think you so bloody perfect then! Oh, dear me, no!’ She started towards the bedroom but fell against the table, reeling backwards to slump on to a chair.
For a moment she sat there looking confused, then she gave a lopsided smile. ‘I was pretty – once upon a time – had my pick in those days. Dances! Oh, such dances – such strong, handsome boys. Now look at me!’ She jerked up her head. ‘Well, you take a good long look, pretty little Mary. This is what you’ll be seeing in the mirror before too long. And there’ll be no presents of coal from gentlemen then!’
Mary’s lip quivered. ‘I know, Mam,’ she said quietly, seeing her mother for the pitiable creature she had become. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Sorry? I don’t want your sodding pity!’ Annie glared, her mood turning belligerent once more. ‘I do what I do because I have to, see? To put bread on the table! Because no one else will. Because I’m surrounded by a lot of damned millstones! God knows what I did to deserve this. Stuck with a cripple, and a wastrel – and a daughter that thinks she’s too good for the rest of us.’
Fresh tears brimmed in Mary’s eyes.
‘You? You don’t know the half of it!’ Annie went on. ‘You think I like doing it? Do you? Going out night after night – with all those men? All those… those big, dirty men.’ Then she gave a little giggle. ‘Well – I’m entitled to a few drinks, aren’t I? A few little drinks and a bit of fun?’ She gave her daughter a lewd grin. ‘And I can still give them what they want.’
Horrified, Mary watched the crude accompanying gesture, her lips trembling – then choking back the sobs she ran from the house.
Prologue
California 1968
The television picture was grainy and indistinct, but still the image of jar upon jar of severed body parts made Beth Williams shiver. ‘Did they really need to show that?’ she murmured half to herself.
The scene changed to an outside shot of a handcuffed young man, his head lowered, almost shyly, as he walked between the two police officers, the camera following them to the waiting squad car, lingering on it until it drove off and disappeared from view.
‘But thank God they’ve caught him at last.’ She turned toward the bed. ‘They’re already talking about him going down in history as the most famous serial killer since Jack the Ripper.’
‘Famous?’ The old man lay motionless against the hospital pillow. For days he had been drifting in and out of consciousness, barely clinging to life, but now a little of his old spark seemed to return. ‘That’s an odd choice of word.’
‘Serial killers are big news these days, Jimmy.’
James Jimmy Hawkins looked up at the TV screen. ‘They always were,’ he said as the presenter’s face was replaced by a series of black and white photographs showing Victorian London; the streets and alleyways of Whitechapel finally dissolving to show a close-up of a dead woman’s face, taken from the foot of the plain wooden coffin in which she lay.
Beth followed his gaze. ‘I guess so. It’s strange – I’ve always thought the world was a nicer, safer place back in your day.’
The photograph of the dead woman gave way to another, her rounded features relaxed in death, then another, and still another, this one more horrific, the naked body hanging from mortuary hooks in the same way that dead gunslingers had once been displayed, the savage mutilations to the woman’s face and torso clearly visible. Then, lastly, a photograph showing the interior of a room. It wasn’t a good photograph, too much contrast made it hard to discern the true subject, so it was several seconds before Beth realised she was looking at the grotesquely mutilated body
of a young woman. She wanted to look away, but there was something so horribly compelling about the image that she reached for the volume control instead.
‘… And culminating in the murder of Mary Jane Kelly in the early hours of November ninth, 1888.’ The presenter reappeared, looking stern as he stared out of the screen. ‘Despite killing five women, Jack the Ripper was never caught – and to this day his identity remains one of the greatest unsolved mysteries. Thankfully, following today’s arrest, the same will not be said about…’
Beth lowered the volume again and crossed to the bed, looking down at her patient. His eyes were closed once more, and he lay so still that she instinctively felt for his pulse. It was weak, but it was there, and she felt a wave of relief.
For two weeks the old actor had clung on, and in that time she had grown closer to him than she should have allowed. It was unprofessional and she knew it – but in a city where yesterday was ancient history, who else would spare the time for a forgotten old man whose hey-day had been in the silent era. ‘Sleep well, Jimmy,’ she said.
The television news programme had begun showing photographs of the shy-looking young man’s victims: colour snapshots of smiling faces, a chilling twenty-seven in total. Beth shook her head. ‘I think the world was a safer place back in your day, Jimmy,’ she sighed. ‘Even the infamous Jack the Ripper only killed five.’
In the stillness of the room, the murmured reply was barely audible. ‘Three,’ he said, before slipping into unconsciousness once more.
Frankie Stoweski was mopping the floor in the hospital reception area as Beth came on duty the following morning. ‘Hi, Frankie,’ she smiled. ‘How’s it going?’
He grinned. ‘Bad. Real, real bad. It’s going to end in bloodshed.’
‘Doesn’t it always?’
‘Not always – but this guy Nero is really asking for it.’ He pulled a heavy book from the cleaning cart and handed it to her. ‘Did you know he used to go out at night, dressed as an ordinary Joe, and attack people – just for the heck of it. Wouldn’t surprise me if he hadn’t killed even more people
than this guy they’ve just arrested.’
Beth looked at the book. ‘The Roman Empire?’ she said, handing it back to him. ‘I thought you were still working through the civil war?’
‘No, finished that last week.’
She laughed. ‘How on earth do you remember all this stuff you read?’
‘Don’t know. Just got that kind of brain, I guess.’ He shrugged, put the book back on the cart, and picked up the mop. ‘So how’s it going with that new boyfriend? What was his name? Richard? Still certain he’s the one?’
‘Uh-uhhh,’ she grinned. ‘He just needs a little more convincing that I’m the one.’ She made to leave – then paused. ‘Frankie? You ever read anything about Jack the Ripper?’
‘Sure. Why?’
‘Oh, nothing, really. I was just wondering… do you happen to know how many people he killed?’
‘Good question,’ he said, looking thoughtful. ‘Most people say it was five. The first was a woman called Polly Nichols.’ He began counting them off on his fingers. ‘Then… let me see… Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Katherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly. I’m pretty sure that’s the right order.’
‘But you say that only most people think it was five – so it might have been fewer?’
Frankie looked surprised. ‘Fewer? No, I’ve never heard that. There are some who think it could have been more. There were two other women murdered that same year – a woman called Smith, can’t remember her first name, and another called Martha Tabram – but the murder weapon was different in both cases, and they aren’t generally considered as Ripper killings. There were also a few women killed in the area a year or two after Mary Kelly’s murder, but most people don’t connect them. Five is pretty much the accepted number. Why do you ask?’
‘Just curious. There was mention of Jack the Ripper on the television yesterday. I was talking to Jimmy about it – and I thought I heard him say there were only three.’
Frankie shook his head. ‘No – definitely five.’
‘So, I suppose you’re going to tell me you knew Jack the Ripper?’ she smiled as she straightened his pillow.
Jimmy’s eyelids fluttered open. ‘And why would you suppose that, my dear?’
‘Just something you said yesterday.’
‘Oh, you shouldn’t go taking any notice of me. Nothing more than an old man’s ramblings.’ For an instant his eyes held a look of secret amusement – the passing ghost of the expression that had once been his trademark. ‘Just like when I told you about the film I made with Fairbanks, and he cut me open with his …’ He began to cough, deep wracking coughs, and she held his hand, gently stroking the papyrus skin, trying to soothe him.
‘Well, how about I read to you?’ she asked, once the attack had passed.
Too weak to answer immediately, he lay staring up at the ceiling, until with great effort he said, ‘You know I’d love you to – but you shouldn’t spend so much time in here with me. You’ll lose your job.’
Beth glanced at her watch. ‘I’ve been off duty these last ten minutes – so I guess I can choose for myself who I spend time with, huh?’ She settled herself on to the chair by his bed. ‘So? What shall it be? The book?’
He gave a tremulous smile. ‘How many times have you read that to me, now?’
‘This will be the third,’ she grinned. ‘But it’s okay. I know how much you love that story – and I’m getting to like it pretty well myself. Besides, on my salary, I don’t get to read too many classics in first edition.’
His hand found hers. ‘How old are you, Beth? Nineteen? Twenty?’
‘Twenty-five, you old flatterer.’
‘Too young to waste your life watching an old man ride off into the sunset. This movie has gone on a reel too long as it is.’
She made to protest, but the words would not pass the sudden constriction in her throat. ‘Well,’ she said at last, almost achieving a lighter note, ‘I was always the type to stay put all through the end credits.’
Barely possessing the strength to smile, he watched her pick up the book. ‘Then – if you really don’t mind reading to me…’ He hesitated. ‘There’s… there’s another story I should like to hear for one last time.’
She squeezed his hand. ‘Of course. Is it here?’
‘In a box… in my valise.’
He heard her cross to the cupboard and take out the old-fashioned
travelling bag – but he could no longer see her. Despite the sunlight that filled the room, his vision had been growing increasingly dark – now it had faded to black.
‘It’s a diary – or some kind of journal,’ she said in surprise. ‘Is this the book?’
‘Yes.’
She flicked through the pages. ‘Such beautiful handwriting.’
‘I want you to have it … I want you to have all my books, but… this one is just for you.’
‘I couldn’t, Jimmy. It’s wonderfully kind of you, but it’s against all the rules.’
‘Then… just look after it for me… until I ask for it back?’
She brushed at her eyes. ‘We’ll see,’ she said, coming back to sit by him, squaring her shoulders, hiding behind the caricature of starchy professionalism. ‘Now, are we going to read this or not?’
‘Yes… please.’
Beth opened the book on her lap.
Beyond the window, the distant hills shimmered in the heat; across town, in a small, run-down movie theatre, a handful of people sat in the dark, watching a young and athletic Jimmy Hawkins battle his way through a horde of costumed extras – and in the quiet of the hospital room, Beth began to read:
There was a hill, just outside our village, where we would play in those distant, happier days – before my father’s illness. In fine weather the climb was manageable for a young girl’s sturdy legs, and we would clamber to the top, dancing with joy, and feeling such mastery over this part of our world.
But then the rain would come, making the steep sides slippery so that my small feet would slide, unable to gain a purchase on the muddy earth. The older boys and girls, or even my brother Henry, would pull me up, encouraging me to try harder, but no sooner would they let go my hand than I’d lose my footing, sometimes falling so badly that I would slide past my original clinging spot.
Time and time again I would try, determined to join them, only to slip down and out of their reach until, finally, I could fall no further.
I think of this hill often when I look back over my life. My name is Mary Jane Kelly and I was born in 1863…
BOOK ONE
WALES 1876
Chapter One
‘In Ireland? You are a liar, Mary Kelly. A damnable liar!’
Sitting primly at her desk, Mary’s cheeks flushed as the neatly written pages of her essay were hurled into the air – falling like large white leaves amongst her giggling classmates.
‘Well?’ Mr Griffiths’s face was darkly crimson, his breath snorting, bull-like as he loomed over her. ‘What do you have to say for yourself?’
‘They… they aren’t lies, sir, they’re…’
‘Aren’t lies? – Aren’t lies?’ His voice climbed an octave before slipping into menacing sarcasm. ‘Born in Ireland? In Limerick, is it? In the family castle, I suppose, eh? Well, you would need a castle wouldn’t you? With all those brothers and sisters. Six was it?’
Mary stared into her lap as howls of merriment rang out from a class grateful for the interruption. Behind her, Davy Briggs, a scruffy, gangly boy, leaned forward and gave her a sharp poke in the back, but Griffiths chose to ignore it, unwilling to be distracted from the matter at hand.
‘Lot of servants, were there, hmmm? Maids and butlers, no doubt –and surely a governess? Oh yes – but, you know, I’m surprised she didn’t explain to you the difference between fact and fiction!’ His patronising tone became one of irritation. ‘Well, we’ll have to remedy that, won’t we!’
Seated next to Mary, Gwyneth Davies stiffened, her hand creeping beneath the desk to find Mary’s as Griffiths strode to the front of the class to pick up the cane.
‘Come out here, girl!’
Frightened, Mary kept a firm grip on Gwyneth, but then a look of defiance crossed her face, and she let go, making her way to the front, her attention fixed on Griffiths’s gold watch chain to avoid meeting his eyes or seeing the fearsome stick in his hand.
‘I had the misfortune to be teaching your idiot of a brother on the very day you were born – right here in Wales.’ Griffiths flexed the cane. ‘That’s
a fact, Mary Kelly – and that’s what you need in this world! Facts and only facts! Not damn fairytales! Now, put out your…!’
Without waiting Mary raised her left hand, holding it in front of her, palm upwards.
Griffiths noted the small act of defiance and gave another snort. ‘Were you born in Ireland?’
Gritting her teeth, Mary gave a small nod, and immediately the thin brown cane sang through the air, searing her palm. It was a harsh stroke that stung her to tears, but she kept her hand outstretched.
‘Where?’
‘Limerick, sir – in Ireland.’
Griffiths brought the cane down again.
From behind her Mary heard Gwyneth start to cry, and determinedly she forced open her fingers where the stroke had curled them into a fist.
‘Where?’ Griffiths’s voice was loud in her ear, and she could feel his breath against her cheek.
‘Lim… Lim…’ The sobs she had been trying to suppress burst out, preventing her from speaking, but Griffiths had heard enough. He whipped the stick across her reddened palm yet again. This time the pain was too much, and she snatched her hand away, wedging it under her arm as great tears ran down her cheeks. ‘Wales… I… I was born in… in Nant-y-Pridd, in Wales.’
Griffiths gave a snort of satisfaction, and put down the cane. ‘Return to your desk. You will re-write the essay and deliver it to me first thing tomorrow morning. And this time I expect it to contain the truth!’
*
It was only the first week of the Michaelmas term, and the early autumn sun was still warm as the two girls started for home, walking in silence for a good part of the way.
At a point where the road curved to skirt the hills, a footpath followed a more direct route along the side of the river, and they took it, walking by the slow moving water and pausing to watch a dragonfly skimming over the surface.
‘Do you ever think of doing things, Gwyn?’
‘Doing things? Like what?’
‘I don’t know…’ Mary closed her eyes and tilted her face to catch the sun. ‘Just something different. Maybe even something – shocking.’
‘No – and you shouldn’t be doing that,’ said Gwyneth, moving into the shade of a tree. ‘You’ll get all brown, like a gypsy, then no one will want to marry you.’
‘Who says I want to get married? And besides, I should like to be a gypsy.’
‘Stop being silly.’
‘What’s silly about it? There has to be more to life than getting married. Just think – roaming all over the world in a caravan. Wouldn’t you like that? I think it would be so romantic!’
‘I don’t think it would be romantic at all. Very uncomfortable and smelly I shouldn’t wonder – probably dangerous, too!’
‘Oh, Gwyn!’ A desperation filled Mary’s voice. ‘I just want… Oh, I don’t know what I want, but…’ She looked down at the water, a mischievous glint coming to her eye. ‘Actually – I do! I want to swim, naked, in this river! Right now!’
Gwyneth’s eyes widened. ‘You wouldn’t?’ Then, with an anxious note, ‘Would you?’
‘I will if you will.’
‘I would never!’
For a moment, Mary remained staring at the river, feeling the warmth of the sun on her skin, then with a forlorn sigh she turned back toward the path. ‘Come on,’ she said with a sad smile. ‘Let’s go home.’
The Davies’ house was one of a row of colliery cottages that lay on the outskirts of the village, and Gwyneth’s mother was standing in the doorway as the two girls arrived. ‘I’m afraid you can’t come in, Mary. The boys are just back from their shift, and our Thomas is in the bath. But if you’d like a bite of something to eat before you go, I can bring it out to you?’
‘That’s very kind of you, Mrs Davies, but I can’t stay. Mother’s waiting for me, I expect.’
Meg Davies struggled to maintain her smile. ‘Oh, yes – I expect she is. Well, just wait you there a minute. I’ll be right back.’ She disappeared into the house, and her place in the doorway was taken by Gwyneth’s second brother, Alan, still black with coal-dust.
‘I hear you got a proper whacking today.’
Gwyneth shot him a harsh look. ‘You just leave her alone. And how do
you know, anyway?’
‘Oh, news travels fast enough, ’specially when it’s on them skinny little legs o’ Davy Briggs!’ He laughed, giving Mary a wink. ‘Old Griffiths was it? By, but he’s a mean old bugger! You just say the word, Mary, and I’ll go up there, and give him a taste of his own medicine.’
Thomas, the eldest of the Davies’ offspring, appeared in the doorway, still buttoning his shirt, his wet hair glistening. ‘You’ll do no such thing, and stop embarrassing the girl.’
‘By heck, that’s got to be the fastest I’ve ever seen you out of that bath, boy!’ said Alan. He winked again at Mary. ‘You’ll have to come by more often, my love. Makes a nice change to get the water while it’s still hot!’
‘Get away off with you,’ Thomas growled. ‘And mind my clean shirt while you’re at it!’
‘Don’t worry, I’m going.’ Alan paused, grinning. ‘Here, you’ve gone a bit red in the face you have. Water too hot, was it?’
Thomas glared at him, but remained standing awkwardly in the shadows, and when his mother came back moments later carrying a paper-wrapped package, he was almost grateful to be shooed away.
‘I’m sure your mam’s got your tea all ready,’ said Meg, ‘but here’s some bread and cheese, just in case you get hungry on the way, like.’ With some embarrassment she handed over the parcel, hovering uncertainly for a moment. ‘Well, I suppose I should be getting tea ready, myself. Proper gannets my lot are these days.’
Gwyneth waited until her mother had gone, then looked down at Mary’s hand where it hung by her side. ‘Can I look?’ she asked nervously.
‘If you want to.’ Mary held it out for Gwyneth’s examination. ‘It didn’t hurt you know. I just pretended it did.’
A small crease formed between Gwyneth’s eyebrows as she looked at the reddened flesh. ‘Oh, Mary…’
‘Hey, Kelly! Can I come and stay in your castle?’
The sudden shout startled them both, but Mary quickly recovered, aiming a smack at the boy’s head as he ran past.
‘I’ll do for you at school tomorrow, Davy Briggs, you see if I don’t!’
From a safe distance, Briggs affected a pained expression and shook his hand. ‘Hurt, did it? Never mind, eh. Get the butler to see to it. I would!’ Then, laughing, he turned and disappeared up the road.
Gwyneth watched him go. ‘Why do you do it, Mary? You get yourself into such trouble.’
‘I don’t care. Griffiths doesn’t frighten me – and I’ll be born where I please.’
‘Mary! Listen to me! You’ve got to stop making up these silly stories. Everyone knows about you and your family – and they just laugh at you.’
‘I told you, I don’t care.’
‘But I do! I can’t bear it when…’ Gwyneth broke off, biting her lip. ‘You don’t need to make up stories for them!’
Resentfully, Mary started away, but after just a few paces she stopped and turned. ‘I don’t do it for them,’ she said.
*
‘Fight. Fight. Fight. Fight. Fight.’
Drawn by the sound of chanting, Nathaniel Abrahams went to his study window and looked beyond the school gates to where a large group of children were gathered around two boys and a girl.
He placed his cup back on to its saucer and took out his watch. Ten minutes to nine; too early to ring the bell. ‘Mr Griffiths,’ he said, turning his head a fraction. ‘There would appear to be several members of your class involved in a fracas. I think you had better step out and put an end to it.’
Griffiths sauntered over, peering with mild interest at the melee. ‘Oh, Briggs, is it? And Kelly, of course – can’t quite make out the other one. Ah, Harris! I should have known! Nothing for us to worry about. They’ll sort it out amongst themselves.’
Abrahams looked at him. ‘Possibly, Mr Griffiths. But I should prefer you to sort it out.’
‘With respect, Headmaster. When you’ve been here a few years, well, you’ll see the wisdom of turning a blind eye to this kind of thing – the odd scrap, like. They’re a rough lot of kids around here, and I’ve always found it better not to get involved in their high spirits when it’s off school property.’
Abrahams gave the man a penetrating look. ‘I have been in this profession for over forty years, and in all that time I have never thought of two boys fighting one girl as high spirits! I very much doubt my opinion will change during the few years that remain to me.’
‘It won’t do her any harm,’ Griffiths snorted. ‘Might even take her down a peg or two! And if she’s anything like the rest of her family she’ll probably flatten the two of them. Her mother’s quite a brawler when she’s…’
‘Mr Griffiths! I will not have this! You will go down and stop the fight immediately – then bring the three of them to my study. Is that understood?’
Griffiths’s nostrils flared, and the broken veins on his cheeks darkened. ‘As you wish, Headmaster,’ he said.
Like a solid living thing, the tightly packed ring of spectators moved this way and that, following the progress of the fight as Mary wrestled with the two boys, hitting and kicking for all she was worth. ‘Leave her alone! You bloody well leave her alone!’ she screamed, grabbing Harris by his hair, wrenching him round and slapping at his head, while Briggs tried to pin her arms from behind.
‘Break it up!’ boomed Griffiths, striding through the gate, the crowd parting to make way for him.
Harris broke free from Mary’s grasp to stand wild-eyed and panting, but Davy Briggs kept his arms around Mary, as though he had a tiger by the tail.
‘Stop it! The pair of you!’ Griffiths prised Briggs off, pushing him back. ‘Now, what’s all this about?’
‘It was Briggs and Harris, sir,’ piped up a small girl from the crowd. ‘They threw muck all over Gwyneth Davies, sir.’
‘Is that so? Where is she?’
The far end of the circle opened to reveal Gwyneth, huddled against the railings, tears running down her cheeks, and horse dung splattered over her face and clothes.
‘God, will you look at you!’ Griffiths snorted. ‘Making such a fuss! Get inside and clean yourself up, girl!’ He watched her start toward the school, then turned his attention back to the three protagonists, looking at each of them in turn. Harris’s lip was cut, and both Mary and Davy Briggs had blood running from their noses. ‘Right, the Headmaster wants to see you, so you’d better get to his study, sharpish! And he’s a bit hot on fighting, see, so I wouldn’t go expecting anything less than a good thrashing!’
Standing alone in front of the Headmaster’s desk, Mary fretted at her torn cuff. Her face was still flushed from the fight – and the closeness of the room added to her discomfort, for despite the mild autumn weather there was a fire burning in the grate.
‘Is it a little warm for you?’ Mr Abrahams enquired pleasantly, closing the door. ‘I’m afraid that as my years advance so does my susceptibility to the cold.’
‘I’m alright, thank you, sir.’
He crossed the room and seated himself behind the heavy teak desk. ‘Gwyneth Davies is a friend of yours?’
On the scuffed leather desktop lay the cane that had recently been applied to the backsides of Harris and Briggs, six apiece, the sound of the strokes clearly audible to Mary as she’d waited outside. She stole a nervous glance at it. ‘Yes, sir. My best friend, sir.’
‘And you thought to avenge this disgusting attack? You didn’t think it better to come and report it, rather than take on these two boys yourself ?’
‘I had to stop them, sir. They were…’ She paused.
‘They were what?’
‘They were trying to make her eat it.’
A look of horror crossed Abrahams’s face. ‘Surely not! She has said nothing of this to me!’
‘She wouldn’t, sir.’
The fingers of his left hand tapped at the desk. ‘I see,’ he said, then after a few moments, ‘How is your nose? It appears to have stopped bleeding.’
‘It was nothing, sir – just a scratch.’
‘It looks to have been rather more than a scratch from the amount of blood on your pinafore.’
‘I… I don’t think it’s all mine, sir.’
He resisted the urge to smile. ‘I cannot condone fighting, Mary. I want to make that quite clear to you.’
‘Yes, sir.’
He nodded, then cleared his throat. ‘Now, I see from the punishment book that you feature quite prominently. Indeed, although he has not seen fit to enter it, I believe Mr Griffiths had cause to cane you only yesterday.’ Some papers lay on the desk, and he picked them up, sifting through the four pages of beautifully executed copperplate. ‘The cause of the trouble was this essay, entitled My Life, was it not?’
‘Yes, sir. I was just…’
Mr Abrahams raised a silencing hand. ‘I can see why Mr Griffiths might take exception to this – but the work is not without merit.’ He read for some moments more, then he asked, ‘And your father, is he a painter?’
‘Yes, sir. That is – he was. He doesn’t have to work now.’
Abrahams steepled his fingers and looked up at her. ‘I see,’ he said softly. ‘A fortunate man. So there would be someone in the house now?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Well, I am sending Gwyneth Davies home since she is in no fit state to sit in class – and as you are in a somewhat similar condition, I think perhaps you should accompany her.’
Mary brightened. ‘Thank you, sir. We can walk together.’
‘Walk? Goodness, no. That is quite out of the question. I shall take you myself.’
‘Oh,’ said Mary, suddenly anxious. ‘Oh, yes… I see.’
Chapter Two
They rode most of the way to the small mining village of Nant-y-Pridd without speaking. Abrahams made a few attempts at conversation, but though the girls answered politely enough he could tell they were ill at ease, and as the outskirts of Caerphilly gave way to open countryside he fell silent, content to sit quietly and watch the unfolding scenery.
With its mountains and valleys, impressive views and grim little mining towns, Wales was a far cry from the softer, prettier landscape of Surrey where he had spent most of his working life. But children were children wherever one went, and so, he thought, were schoolmasters. For every half-dozen decent ones, there was always a Griffiths – dull, pedantic, bullying, and invariably too lazy to bother with pupils who were troubled in the way the Kelly girl seemed troubled. Abrahams glanced at her, finding it hard to reconcile the few snippets of gossip that had come his way with the girl who appeared at school each morning in the clean white pinafore and brightly polished shoes. In his mind he went back over the pages of the punishment book; so many entries with the name Mary Jane Kelly.
The road swung away from the river, beginning a gentle climb into the distant mountains, and as the gig crested the first rise he reined in the mare. To his left, the sparkling ribbon of water wound its way toward the village with its turning pit wheel and smoking chimneys, and in the misty morning sunshine the scene possessed an austere beauty he found breathtaking.
‘It’s really quite beautiful,’ he mused. ‘I shall have to make a point of returning with my camera.’
Mary looked at him with interest. ‘You have a camera, sir?’
‘Yes, rather a good one, actually. Though I must confess to achieving very mixed results. Are you interested in photography, by any chance?’
‘I don’t know, sir.’ She turned, gazing at the village beneath its haze of chimney smoke. ‘I suppose it is sort of beautiful – when you look at it in that way,’ she said at last.
Gwyneth followed their eyes, puzzled. ‘It looks just the same as always.’
‘Well,’ he said kindly, ‘perhaps the trick is knowing how to look?’ Then he flicked the reins, and the gig started the gentle run into the village.
The surprise and confusion Megan Davies exhibited on opening the door had quickly given way to thinly veiled anger toward the two boys responsible. Abrahams had done his best to reassure her that they had been adequately punished, and he’d left feeling confident the matter was closed – at least as far as the Davies’ were concerned.
But Mary still worried him. It was obvious she didn’t want to be taken all the way home, and now, as they moved beyond the village toward a shamble of jerrybuilt hovels, he began to understand why. Even in the bright sunlight the place looked wretched, and he shuddered to think how it must appear in the depths of winter. He could only see it as an area where all hope had died – and his words to Gwyneth, just twenty minutes earlier, suddenly sounded very hollow indeed.
A little way off from these decaying heaps of brick, wood and slate stood a labourer’s cottage that had once seen better days, and it was to this that Mary reluctantly directed him.
‘Will you come in, please, sir?’ she asked as she climbed from the gig. ‘I think my father is at home.’
Abrahams tethered the horse and followed Mary into the house, pausing just inside the doorway to let his eyes adjust to the gloom. He shivered. The place had a damp, unhealthy feel that the few pathetic embers glowing in the grate did nothing to dispel.
‘Mr Kelly?’ he called.
In a large, wooden-armed chair pulled close to the fireplace sat a man, and Mary ran to him. ‘Father!’ she chided, kissing him on the forehead. ‘You’ve let the fire go out, now whatever will Mr Abrahams think?’ She crouched down, putting pieces of wood and scraps of coal into the grate
where they smouldered and smoked. ‘Mr Abrahams is the Headmaster of the new school, and he’s come all this way to see you.’ She straightened, tucking back her hair and brushing at her dress with a quaint primness. ‘We’re not so used to visitors these days, Mr Abrahams, so you will rather have to take us as you find us. Of course, it hasn’t always been this way. We used to have such parties – you couldn’t possibly imagine.’
Astonished by the sudden transformation, Abrahams watched her move about the sparsely furnished room, tidying this, rearranging that, all the while keeping up the unnaturally cheerful stream of conversation. ‘Mr Kelly?’ he tried again.
In the chair, the man moved restlessly, but said nothing.
‘Will you take some tea, Mr Abrahams? I shall be making some for father – so it will be no trouble.’
She was standing bright-eyed by the chair, barely recognisable but for the torn, bloodstained apron, and Abrahams felt suddenly very cold. He came forward, looking down at her father. The man’s eyes stared fixedly ahead, and his mouth hung loosely open, his body twitched into agitated movement by occasional spasms that would have toppled him from the chair had he not been bound to it with leather straps.
Mary caught Abrahams’s fleeting look of horror, but for a few seconds more kept the bright look on her face. ‘It’s really so nice… so very nice of you to…’ Then, as he turned to her, she saw the dreadful reality mirrored in his eyes, and the effort of keeping up the pretence became too much.
Abrahams reached out to her, and in the next moment she was in his arms, sobbing against his chest.
‘How long has he been like this, Mary?’ Abrahams asked softly, sipping the tea she had prepared for them.
‘Not long, not like this, anyway. He’s been ill for about three years.’ Her voice tailed away, and sitting on the floor by her father’s side she rested her head against his thigh. ‘But he will get better, you know – then it will be just like it was before.’
Abrahams put down the cup. ‘Mary…’ he began, but lost for words he turned his attention to the fire that now burned brightly with the last of the coal. ‘Well, it’s a little warmer in here now.’
John Kelly had fallen asleep, his head lolling against his chest, and Mary got quietly to her feet. ‘We could sit outside now if you wish? I know it isn’t so very grand in here.’
Although the room was bare and badly in need of repair, Abrahams
could see the cottage had once been a very respectable household. Along the wooden mantelpiece, pencil sketches had been pinned in an attempt at decoration, and the re-kindled fire had gone some way to dispelling the musty dampness that pervaded the room – but still he found the idea of escaping to the warmth of the sun a temptation. ‘Perhaps we might take your father outside? I’m sure the sunlight would be beneficial.’
Mary looked down, embarrassed. ‘We can’t do that. Mother won’t allow it. She doesn’t like anyone to see.’
‘Then let us sit here – the three of us.’ Abrahams turned his face from her, making a show of examining the nearest drawing where it hung from the mantel-shelf.
Mary refilled his cup. ‘I am partly Irish, you know,’ she said, breaking the silence. ‘My mother comes from Cardiff, but Father was born in Limerick – a descendent of the Irish Kings of…’ she broke off guiltily.
‘And are these his sketches?’ The drawings were unpolished, even a little crude in places, and Abrahams guessed the man was already ill at the time of their execution. Yet for all that, they showed a natural ability and a good grasp of perspective.
‘No, sir. They’re mine.’
He turned back in surprise. ‘Yours?’
‘They’re something for him to look at during the day. Mother… well, she has to work, you see.’ She unpinned one of the drawings and held it out for Abrahams’s inspection. ‘This is our family.’ A man with a head of fair, curly hair, a woman, and a large group of children were pictured around the door of a splendid cottage. The figures had been drawn only after a great deal of trouble, but the house and background were beautifully rendered. ‘I’m not very good at people – but this is Mother and Father, and these are the five boys – Matthew, David and John. The tall one is Huw – he’s the eldest and the nicest – and very strong, too! He never lets anyone pick on us. And that’s baby Glyn, we all spoil him because he’s so little. Father says he’ll turn out a little horror, but we just can’t help it. And this is me – and this…’ she pointed proudly, ‘is my twin sister, Emma. We do just everything together.’
Abrahams studied it for several moments. ‘This is very good, Mary, really very good – but I don’t understand. You actually do have more than just the one brother?’
She looked into her lap. ‘No… not really. They’re just stories I make up. I tell them to Father when it’s just the two of us here. I know he likes them, and… well, it’s how I would like things to be.’
Abrahams cleared his throat, giving himself a moment as he looked slowly and thoughtfully along the line of drawings, studying each in turn. ‘You’ve had lessons?’ he asked at last.
‘No, sir. Mr Griffiths doesn’t care for drawing.’
‘From your father, then? Before his illness?’
‘No, sir. He… well…’ She looked down again. ‘He’s only an artist in our stories. Before he became ill, he was a boot-maker.’
‘I see. Well, you have a talent, Mary – and we must see what we can do with it. What I would …’ He broke off, rising from his chair as a young man stepped into the house to stand warily just inside the door.
‘Henry,’ said Mary, running to her brother. ‘This is Mr Abrahams. He’s the new headmaster.’
Henry Kelly gave a curt nod, eyeing him suspiciously. ‘Somethin’ we can do for you, is it?’ he asked with undisguised hostility. ‘Our Mary not been behavin’ herself?’
‘No, nothing like that, I assure you.’
‘Oh, English you are, is it?’ Henry regarded him with even greater distrust. ‘So, what you here for, then?’ His eyes narrowed as he looked from Mary, to the headmaster, then back again. ‘Oh,’ he said slowly. ‘Oh, that’s the game, is it? Well, it’s nice to see you finally earnin’ your keep, Mary. And none too soon, neither, I reckon – wastin’ your time at that damned school.’
‘Mr Kelly – or may I be permitted to call you Henry?’
‘Stow that. We don’t go in for fancy manners here.’ He grasped Mary by the arm, making her wince as he pulled her close. ‘If you want our Mary, then let’s see the colour of your money. A nice young ’un like her ought to be worth a fair bit to a dried up old man like you.’
Abrahams tried to conceal his disgust. ‘Mr Kelly…’
‘Look, do you want her or not?’ snapped Henry, shaking his sister roughly. ‘She’s never been touched to my knowledge – so she’s clean.’
‘Mr Kelly. Will you please let her go. You’re hurting her.’
Henry gave a contemptuous laugh. ‘What’s that to you? Now either pay up, or get about your business and leave us be!’
‘Mr Kelly, I must insist…’
‘Insist, is it?’ Anger flared in Henry’s eyes, and he threw Mary from him. ‘Listen, you stuck-up old bastard. You’re not in your bloody school now, playin’ the great lord and master! This is my house, where I make the rules – and I reckon you just broke ’em.’ He moved forward, threateningly, fists raised. ‘Mister high and mighty headmaster, eh? Well, this time it’s you who’s for a thrashin’!’
‘Please, Mr Kelly. There’s no need for…’
Henry feinted with his left, then brought his right up to deliver a hard, open-handed slap to the side of Abrahams’s head.
Caught off guard, Abrahams reeled backwards, his hand to his face. ‘Mr Kelly, please …’
Mary flew at her brother, tugging ineffectually at him, screaming for him to stop, but Henry thrust her away, sending her crashing against their father’s chair, jarring the man into a grotesque wakefulness.
Half-dazed, Abrahams tried to take in the nightmarish scene, but Henry Kelly was advancing upon him, his voice mocking. ‘That was just a little smack, like. Now I’ll show you what a real beatin’ is!’ He repeated the feint, this time following up with a hard-fisted right – but Abrahams had no intention of being caught a second time. Shifting on to the balls of his feet, he dropped into a crouch, letting the blow pass just over his head.
For an instant, surprise showed on the youth’s face, before Abrahams delivered a straight right to the jaw that sent Henry Kelly sprawling on the floor.
Mary went to her brother, but Henry pushed her away, his eyes fixed on Abrahams, the aggressive bravado of moments before, replaced by a sullen, almost childish petulance. ‘I… I’ll have the law on you,’ he whimpered, dabbing the blood from his broken lip. ‘Comin’ into a man’s house, and…’
‘Mr Kelly,’ Abrahams was breathing hard, but he kept his voice steady. ‘It is not my place to advise you on the matter, but I doubt it would do much for your reputation to have it known you were knocked down by a dried up old man, now would it? I am more than happy to forget this unfortunate incident if you are.’
Hesitantly, Henry got to his feet. ‘Just a lucky punch,’ he muttered, keeping his distance. He dabbed again at his mouth, glancing to where Mary was trying to soothe their father. ‘Can’t you keep him quiet?’ he growled, venting his anger in a safer direction. ‘Bloody noise to have to listen to!’ He looked furtively back at Abrahams. ‘So, what do you want?’
‘Nothing, I assure you. Just to help if I can.’
‘He brought me home,’ said Mary. ‘There was a fight – at the school.’
Henry Kelly’s lips curled into a sneer. ‘That’s why you’re lookin’ like somethin’ the cat dragged in, is it?’ he said, edging away to take down a small gin-trap that hung from a peg on the wall.
Abrahams remained on his guard, but Henry had had quite enough. From the safety of the doorway he spat in the headmaster’s direction. ‘Well, we don’t need your help, see? So don’t come crawlin’ round here again, or you’ll be sorry. And you…’ He glared across the room at Mary. ‘You’d better have my dinner ready when I get back – or you’ll be more than sorry.’
With Henry gone, Abrahams took a deep breath and inspected his grazed knuckles. He knew he had grown soft with age, yet still the slowness of his reactions had surprised him. It had been a close thing, but years of coaching boys in the art of boxing had stood him in good stead,
and he was not too displeased with his performance. Half way to a smile, he became aware of Mary staring at him. ‘Yes, well…’ he said, giving an embarrassed cough.
Mary looked equally embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry about my brother, sir.’
‘He seems a very angry young man.’ Abrahams looked at her with concern. ‘You will be alright?’
Mary nodded, but the way she kept her eyes lowered, left Abrahams troubled. ‘Very well,’ he said at last. ‘But if you should ever need my help.’
She nodded again, and after a moment more he turned his attention back to the sketches pinned to the mantelpiece. ‘Then, as I was saying before we were interrupted, what I should like is to buy one of your drawings from you, if I may?’
‘I’m sorry, sir. I couldn’t sell any of these.’ She put her arm about her father’s shoulders.
‘Yes. Yes, of course. I do understand.’ He gave her a brief smile. ‘Well, I really should be getting back. I shall see you at school tomorrow?’
‘Yes, sir.’
John Kelly had grown still once more, and Abrahams reached down, taking his hand in his own. ‘It’s been a pleasure to meet you, sir,’ he said into the expressionless face. ‘I hope we shall meet again soon.’
Mary walked with Abrahams to the door and stood watching as he climbed up on to the seat of the gig. ‘I… I could draw you a picture,’ she began uncertainly. ‘A special one, just for you – if you wanted me to?’
‘A commission?’ He considered the idea. ‘Yes, a capital suggestion. A landscape perhaps?’
She nodded excitedly. ‘The view from the hill – where we stopped?’
‘That would be perfect.’ He stroked his chin. ‘I suppose we should discuss payment? Winter is approaching, and you seem to be low on coal. A bag of the colliery’s best, do you think?’
‘Oh, no, sir…’
He smiled. ‘I see you drive a hard bargain, Mary. Very well, two bags. But I shall want a favour from you in return.’
Her forehead creased into a small frown. ‘Sir?’
‘That business back there with your brother.’ He gave the reins a gentle flick, urging the horse into motion. ‘I shouldn’t like it to become common knowledge. As I said earlier – I really can’t condone fighting.’
Chapter Three
From the window of his study, Abrahams watched a group of girls run across the puddled playground, their hands clasped to skirts and shawls against the raging wind.
The morning had started fair, but leaden clouds driving in from the west had made it dark enough by two-thirty for the classroom lamps to be lit, and now a heavy rain was falling.
‘I apologise for presuming upon you with yet another meeting,’ he said, turning to address the small gathering, ‘but I thought it might be time for us to evaluate our progress.’
Perched on a chair, Miss Peebles, stick thin and dressed from head to foot in black, twitched her head in his direction, while behind her, Mr Griffiths sighed as he leaned against the wall, his arms folded.
‘I’m pleased to see the changes are being implemented,’ Abrahams continued, taking his seat. ‘But it seems to me we are not yet one school. Rather, we are still a collection of small village schools gathered under one roof.’ He noticed Griffiths beginning to fidget, and he went on quickly. ‘It is no easy matter to change from running your own establishment, with your own methods and routines, to becoming part of a grander design – and you have both done extremely well under the circumstances. But, unless we can alter our whole way of…’
Griffiths pushed himself from the wall to stand with his feet apart and his thumbs shoved into the pockets of his waistcoat. ‘With respect, Headmaster.’
‘Yes, Mr Griffiths?’
‘Your ideas may work very well in English public schools, but you have no experience of the people in these parts. They go into the mines, the lucky ones. A few to the factories, else it’s on the land. Not much call for drawing and music, whichever way.’
Abrahams kept his voice calm. ‘Surely there is always a place for art and music? This country is famous for its choirs, after all.’
‘Choirs are one thing, but giving these children aspirations over and above their situation does nothing but harm. There’s precious little for them in this life but damned hard work.’
‘It doesn’t have to be that way.’
‘That’s how it is! Nothing to be done about it. Filling their heads with fancy ideas won’t help them when they’re hacking coal in a three foot seam, will it? To read and write and know the word of God is what they need – and enough arithmetic to count their wages.’
Abrahams stared at him. ‘You surely cannot believe that?’
‘I’m afraid he’s quite right, Headmaster.’ Miss Peebles gave him an apologetic look. ‘They mostly go to thelucky ones. A few to the factories, else it’s on the land. Not much call for drawing and music, whichever way.’
Abrahams kept his voice calm. ‘Surely there is always a place for art and music? This country is famous for its choirs, after all.’
‘Choirs are one thing, but giving these children aspirations over and above their situation does nothing but harm. There’s precious little for them in this life but damned hard work.’
‘It doesn’t have to be that way.’
‘That’s how it is! Nothing to be done about it. Filling their heads with fancy ideas won’t help them when they’re hacking coal in a three foot seam, will it? To read and write and know the word of God is what they need – and enough arithmetic to count their wages.’
Abrahams stared at him. ‘You surely cannot believe that?’
‘I’m afraid he’s quite right, Headmaster.’ Miss Peebles gave him an apologetic look. ‘They mostly go to the mines. It’s a shame, I know, but…’
‘Shame be damned!’ Griffiths roared. ‘The money’s better than they’d earn working the land or sweating in a factory. It’s the best they can hope for. If you must pity anyone, pity the poor devils who can’t get into the mines.’
The Headmaster placed his hands on the desk. ‘No, Mr Griffiths. That won’t do. There are always exceptions. Those with a special talent.’
‘Occasionally there are,’ conceded Griffiths, ‘and I’ve known one or two. But you only have to look at those we have here at present…’
‘I have looked, and I see potential – Mary Kelly for instance.’
‘Mary Kelly is a damned fool! I’ve tried my best …’
Abrahams leaped to his feet. ‘Your best? Beating her for daring to show a little imagination? Is that your best?’
‘And what would you have me do?’
‘Encourage her! Help her to make something of herself .’
‘Mary Kelly’s only talent is for telling lies!’
‘Stories, Mr Griffiths. She makes up stories. There is a difference.’
‘There is indeed a difference, Headmaster. Stories are told by those who can afford it. Those who can’t are merely liars – ridiculed by their own kind and deemed unemployable by their betters!’ He paused, his tone becoming more restrained. ‘Mary Kelly’s father is a cripple. It’s thought he’ll not see the spring. Her brother is a bully and a wastrel – but at least he’ll poach the odd rabbit to keep them in meat – that is until he gets caught. Her mother is a tuppenny whore who spends the time she’s not on her back, drinking herself into a stupor.’
‘Mr Griffiths! I have warned you about repeating such gossip.’
Griffiths was unperturbed. ‘It is not gossip, Headmaster, it is common knowledge! Everyone knows it – and if you were not an outsider you would know it! Oh, I know you’ve been over to Nant-y-Pridd, but are you also aware that Mary Kelly works for two hours every morning, washing and cleaning, just to pay her school pence and keep herself dressed? She’s thirteen, for God’s sake. She should be out at work, not wasting her time here in the vain hope of bettering herself.’ He gave a mirthless laugh. ‘If she manages to be better than her mother she’ll have achieved a small miracle! She’s not a bad looking girl, and in a few years time she’ll probably find a husband who’ll knock this damn foolishness out of her. But in the meantime she should find a position as a maid, a kitchen skivvy, anything that’ll keep her respectable. But she won’t! Her head’s too full of fanciful ideas – and you want me to encourage them? What Mary Kelly needs is both feet planted firmly on the ground – and for her own sake I’d beat her bloody to achieve that!’
Caught in the crossfire, Miss Peebles studied the floor in embarrassed silence.
‘Well,’ Mr Abrahams sat down. ‘I take your point, Mr Griffiths – but I believe you are wrong. So, from the start of next week, I shall be forming a new class from the most able children – a class which I, myself, shall teach. Now, if we might turn our attention to some of the other matters I have outlined.’
*
The rain was still falling hard the next morning when Mary awoke, stretching her leg across the straw‑filled mattress to the chill space where her mother should have lain. Outside it was pitch dark, and a howling wind buffeted the small window, lifting the edges of the board that covered a broken pane.
Her nose and cheeks were cold, and she gave herself a few extra minutes beneath the blankets, listening to the reassuring rhythm of her father’s
breathing on the far side of the wooden partition. Then, reluctantly, she climbed from bed.
With the fire lit, and some tea stewing in the pot, she went to her father’s room. He lay asleep, with no sign that Henry had been there at all that night, and she sighed, knowing that without help she would never get her father out of the bed and into his chair.
She brushed her fingers against his cheek. ‘Time to wake up, Da,’ she said softly. ‘Mother will be having the breakfast on the table in no time at all.’
The man’s eyes opened slowly, and for a
moment she thought he was smiling up at her, but then his lips drew into a travesty of a grin, as they jerked and snatched in spasm.
‘I’ll bring you a nice cup of tea in a minute,’ she said making her way back to the fire. ‘It’s a terrible day out there – blowing a gale, it is. And it’s such a shame. Mother wanted to take the boys into Caerphilly today. Huw’s getting so tall now he’s fairly out of that new jacket she bought him, and she says she won’t have him going up to university looking anything less than the gentleman.’
From a cupboard on the wall she took the stale remains of a loaf, and holding it against her chest, she sawed off two slices.
‘I was hoping to go, too. Poor Emma desperately needs a new piece for her pinafore.’ She speared a slice of bread with a long fork and placed it before the smoking coals to toast.
‘I really shouldn’t be telling you this, Da – but she got in a fight at school the other day. Oh, of course, it wasn’t her fault. Some of the boys were being beastly and – well, I don’t know what I would have done if she hadn’t been there. She was very brave – but her pinafore was ruined. It really needs a new frill, and though mother would mend it in a minute, I would so like to do it myself.’
The pinafore, dress and thin coat she had worn the previous day lay drying over the backs of two chairs, and she moved them closer to the fire. ‘Would you like to play a game later, Da? You know how much John and David love those guessing games you make up. Do you remember how they laughed last time – and mother was laughing too, and trying so hard to keep a straight face, and calling us all silly monkeys?’
She poured some tea into a cup and took it, with the toasted bread, to where her father lay. ‘Breakfast, Da,’ she said.
Sitting on the edge of the bed she raised his head, helping him to eat the dry toast, giving him sips of tea to wash it down.
‘Mother’s done us proud this morning,’ she said as she worked the last piece of toast between his lips. ‘She must have been up ever so early to get all this baking done. I don’t think I could eat another bite.’
Lowering him on to the pillow, she kissed him lightly on the forehead, then made her way back to the meagre warmth of the fire, to wash herself from head to toe with the remains of the hot water.
Outside it was beginning to lighten, but only enough to show the trees as silhouettes against a brooding sky and the rain slanting down with a vengeance. ‘You know, Da? I do believe the rain is letting up.’ She shuddered as she pulled on the wet clothes. ‘So I think I might just pop into Caerphilly after all.’ Wrapping her dry shift and dress in an oilskin cloth, she put them ready by the door. Her boots were still wet through, but with the long walk ahead of her, it hardly mattered.
‘I’m going off now, Da.’ She opened the door and scanned the road in both directions, hoping her mother, or even Henry, would come home so that she might leave with a clear conscience, but there was no movement other than the driving rain. For a moment she hesitated, then she closed the door and walked to the room where her father lay. Even from the doorway, Mary could smell the evidence of his incontinence. ‘Oh, Da,’ she said, a tremor in her voice as she pulled back the blankets, ‘Oh, Da…’
*
Hubert Llewellyn, proprietor of the small guesthouse known as The Cross Keys Hotel, Caerphilly, was bristling with indignation. ‘What time do you call this, then!’ he demanded.
At the back door, half in the shelter of the porch and half in the rain, Mary stood drenched to the skin, her fair hair plastered to her head and across her face. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Llewellyn. It was the rain and…’
‘Well, I can’t help the weather, can I? Half past six we needed you here, not quarter to seven, see?’
Behind him the portly figure of his wife hove into view. ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, let her in, Mr Llewellyn. Can’t you see the poor girl’s wet through?’
‘I’d be obliged if you’d let me deal with this, Mrs Llewellyn!’
‘I’m sure you would, Mr Llewellyn! And in the meantime she’s going to catch her death, and then where will you be? In prison! On a charge of murder I shouldn’t wonder! And who’s going to have the trouble of coming to visit you? Me, I suppose!’ She bustled past him. ‘Don’t you mind him, Mary, dear. Just you come on in.’
‘I have brought some dry clothes.’ From beneath her coat Mary produced the oilskin parcel. ‘And I’ll come early tomorrow – to make up the time.’
Edith Llewellyn put her hands on her ample hips, giving her husband a sharp look. ‘There! There you are Mr Llewellyn! You see! She’ll make up the time!’
‘Well, that’s not exactly the point, is it, Mrs Llewellyn? It’s very
considerate of her, but she’s still late today! No good being late in this business! We’d soon be out on the street if I was late paying the bills, now wouldn’t we? Out on our ears, we’d be, lock, stock and barrel, we would! Oh yes!’
‘Well, then it’s a good job I pay them, isn’t it!’ She turned to Mary, ‘Now you go upstairs and get yourself dried off. The last room on the second floor isn’t being used. Oh, and while you’re up there you can tell Alice to come down to me. That girl will idle away half the day if I let her!’ She waited until Mary had gone upstairs then glanced sideways at her husband. ‘ Just like someone else I know!’
In the act of picking up his newspaper, Hubert’s eyes widened. ‘What? What are you implying?’
She gave him a withering look. ‘Just that I have some jobs for you!’
‘Oh, jobs, is it, Mrs Llewellyn! I see! And what might these jobs be?’
‘Just what I say, Mr Llewellyn. Jobs! I’m not having you slipping off.’
He began to protest, but she cut him short. ‘You always were a lazy man, Mr Llewellyn. I remember my dear mother remarking on it! Watch out for lazy, idle men, she said to me! Oh, she should have lived to see how right she was!’
*
‘Y’know it’s a quarter t’ nine?’ said Mrs Cartwright, coming to the door of the pantry. ‘I’d get a move on with that floor if I was you. Missus won’t be ’appy if it ain’t finished.’
Kneeling on the cold flagstones, Mary scrubbed, clasping the brush with both hands and using the whole weight of her body to propel it back and forth. ‘I’m – nearly – done,’ she gasped, her breath clouding in the unheated pantry. ‘Just – this last bit.’ Beside her a metal bucket held a harsh mixture of water, soap and soda, and with each dip of the brush, she winced as it seeped into her cracked and reddened knuckles. But worse was the agony in her knees when she finally stood up and, almost crying with pain, carried the bucket into the scullery to empty it.
‘Come on, cheer up. Worse things ’appen at sea – or so they tell me,’ said the cook, looking up from the pastry she was rolling out.
Wiping her cuff across her eyes, Mary gave a half smile.
‘That’s more like it. Yer can’t let it beat yer, y’know. Now, I’ve ironed yer clothes – though Gawd knows why. It’s rainin’ cats and dogs out there an’ you’ll be as wet as when you arrived by the time yer get t’ school. Ain’t yer got no umbrella?’
Mary shook her head.
‘Lawd! I suppose they ain’t been invented where you come from! Why, even the littlest mites ’as umbrellas back ’ome!’
Though she’d lived the greater part of her life in Caerphilly, Mrs Cartwright had never lost her Cockney twang nor her love of singing London’s praises, something Mary found both amusing and exciting. ‘I thought you said it never rained there,’ she smiled, changing into her freshly ironed clothes.
‘An’ no more it don’t – least, not like it does ’ere. I remember when…’ Mrs Cartwright gave her a sideways glance. ‘’Ere, you ain’t got no time for stories – an’ anyway, you’ve ’eard ’em all afore – an’ if yer don’t get off soon you’ll be late for school. I’ve put a smidgen o’ polish on yer boots, though what’s ’oldin’ ’em together, I don’t know!’ She chuckled. ‘Now that’s one thing yer don’t get too much of in London – bloomin’ miracles!’
Mary laughed. ‘Well, I’d best not go there, then,’ she said, pulling on her pinafore and slipping her feet into the damp boots.
‘Maybe I should go back – afore it’s too late.’ Mrs Cartwright sprinkled flour on to the pastry in a thoughtful manner. ‘See London an’ die. That’s what they say, ain’t it?’
‘I think that was Venice,’ said Mary, apologetically.
‘Was it? Well, if it was, I expect it was said by one o’ them foreigners what never got no further than the channel.’ The old woman busied herself cutting out pie cases. ‘See yer tomorrow, then?’
‘Yes, see you tomorrow,’ said Mary, putting the rest of her clothing into the oilskin and making ready to leave.
Rain was leaping from the stone steps that led up to street level, and Mrs Cartwright watched the girl hesitate. It was only a brief dash to the school, but she didn’t envy her even that short trip. ‘’Ere, yer can borrow my ol’ mushroom, if yer want,’ she said, going to a stick stand by the door and bringing out a battered umbrella. ‘But I want it back, mind!’
Chapter Four
Owen Davies peered with hungry expectation as his wife placed the steaming crock on the table. ‘Mutton stew, is it?’
‘You know it is.’
‘Always mutton stew on Tuesdays,’ chipped in Alan, giving Gwyneth a nudge. ‘Better than a calendar, I reckon.’
Owen shot him a warning look. ‘Mind your cheek, boy. You’re not too old for a damn good hiding yet, you know.’ But there was humour in his voice, and Alan grinned as he reached for a slice of bread.
‘Now that I won’t have.’ said his father. ‘You just wait till your mother is seated. Whatever else a man might have to go without, manners cost nothing, and he should have his full share.’
Meg scowled as Alan replaced the bread. ‘Seventeen, is it? You act more like seven sometimes.’ She ladled the stew into a bowl and set it in front of her husband.
‘By heck, that smells good! Fit for a king, that is!’ he said, reaching round to pat her behind.
‘Owen!’
He feigned innocence. ‘What is it woman? Can’t a man pay his wife a compliment, then?’
She filled another bowl and passed it to Thomas. ‘Fine example, I must say,’ she muttered – but there was a blush to her cheeks, and the trace of a smile on her lips.
Alan watched hungrily as a brimming bowl was passed to him. ‘I hear there was an explosion over at Merthyr this morning. Twenty killed, so they’re saying – and another fifty or more still under…’ He stopped short as Thomas gave him a warning kick. ‘Ah… well, that’s what I heard,’ he finished lamely.
Meg appeared not to notice, but the smile had gone from her face.
‘So, Gwyneth, my little petal,’ said Owen in the awkward silence that followed. ‘How was school today?’
Gwyneth set down the bowl her mother handed her, guiltily licking her thumb where it had slipped over the edge and into the stew. ‘We went out to Caerphilly Castle – drawing!’ she said importantly. She had been waiting for this moment, and now gave the statement its full dignity.
Her father leaned back in his chair. ‘Drawing, is it? Well, well! I didn’t know we had an artist in the family.’ He gave a sly wink as Gwyneth looked proudly about the table. ‘Mind you, I’m not surprised. I like a bit o’ drawing, myself – ’specially when it’s my wages on a Saturday morning.’
Alan laughed. ‘You can draw my bath water tomorrow, if you like, Gwyn.’
Blushing, Gwyneth turned sullen. ‘I’m no good at it, anyway.’
‘Oh, come on, now.’ Her father placed his hand on her arm. ‘No need to go taking yourself so seriously. You’re not thinking of making your living at it, are you? Well, then. What’s it matter whether you’re good at it or not?’
Gwyneth brightened a little.
‘Mary can draw a bit, can’t she?’ asked Thomas.
‘She seems to draw you,’ chuckled Alan.
It was Thomas’s turn to blush. ‘Get away with you! She’s just a kid! I was just asking because…’
Meg took her seat at the far end of the table. ‘If you are all quite finished?’ she said pointedly.
They fell silent. Owen waited for them to bend their heads, then did likewise, speaking the words of the short prayer in a low voice.
‘I was just asking,’ Thomas persisted the moment his father lifted his head, ‘because she could teach Gwyn – help her along a bit?’
Alan looked up from his bowl. ‘Damn fool idea!’
‘We’ll not have that kind of language, if you please!’ said Owen.
‘Sorry, Da. But it sounds a waste o’ time if you ask me.’
Meg turned to him. ‘Well, no one did ask you. So I’d be obliged if you’d mind your own business.’
‘She is good, though,’ said Gwyneth. ‘She gave a drawing to Mr Abrahams at the school. Proper fine it is – he thinks she could be an artist.’
Owen looked puzzled. ‘Abrahams? Who’s he then? I thought it was
Griffiths that taught you.’
‘Mr Abrahams is the Headmaster they brought in from England,’ said Meg. ‘He’s the one who drove Gwyn home the other day – in a gig, no less.’
‘Oh, England, is it?’ said Owen. ‘Griffiths not good enough for Gladstone, then?’
Meg looked up. ‘My, but you’ve never had a good word for Mr Griffiths in all these years!’
‘True enough. But at least he’s a local man. Doesn’t seem right, putting an outsider in charge.’ He turned to Gwyneth. ‘What do you make of this Abrahams, Gwyn?’
‘He seems nice enough. Not like Mr Griffiths.’
Alan gave a grunt. ‘No one’s like Griffiths!’
‘Griffiths isn’t so bad,’ said Thomas. ‘Not really.’
‘Not bad? Why, he’s a devil, man! He’s given me more stick than I can remember – and Da had to be stopped from going down there and teaching him a lesson after he laid into you!’
‘Well,’ said Owen. ‘I may have been a wee bit hasty there. Schoolmaster’s got to be a bit hard, I suppose. This new chap won’t last long if he’s not.’
Meg shook her head. ‘I don’t believe you sometimes, Owen. I really don’t!’
*
Grabbing her daughter by the hair, Annie Kelly dragged Mary across the room. ‘You… you bloody, bloody little cow!’ she screamed, slapping at her head and face with all her might. ‘The minute I turn my back!’
Mary was close to hysteria, blood and mucus running from her nose to mix with the tears that streamed down her cheeks. ‘No, Mam – it’s not true!’
‘You lying little bitch! Where’d that come from, then?’ She shoved Mary, sending her sprawling into the coal from the newly delivered sacks. ‘I’ll give you a whipping you won’t forget, you little whore!’ She swayed drunkenly toward Henry. ‘Give me your bloody belt!’
Standing in the door to block his sister’s escape, Henry Kelly unbuckled the thick leather belt, then leaned back to watch with satisfaction as his mother wrapped it around her fist, leaving a two-foot strap.
‘I didn’t do anything, Mam! I didn’t!’
‘Don’t you lie to me!’ Annie lashed the belt across the small of Mary’s back, making her scream with pain.
‘It… it was a present, Mam! Don’t! It was a…’ she screamed again as the leather snaked across her shoulder.
‘She had that old feller from up the school,’ goaded Henry. ‘I caught ’em here together the other mornin’. I knew they was up to no good.’
‘You damned little whore!’ Annie Kelly lashed again, then again, but in her gin-soaked anger she missed her mark, and the blows struck the coals, sending small pieces skidding across the floor.
Seizing her chance, Mary flung herself from the fireplace and ran to the far side of the room, staring out from beneath her dishevelled hair like a hunted animal. ‘I’m not!’ she shrieked. ‘It was a present!’
‘Present, my arse!’ Annie wiped the spittle from the side of her mouth, and advanced on Mary.
‘It was a present – a payment – for a drawing. That’s all! Go and…’ The leather seared across her left arm, and she dashed into the refuge of the corner. ‘Go and ask if you don’t believe me!’
‘Oh, you’d like that! Make me look a right bloody fool, wouldn’t it!’ Annie began lashing from left and right, swinging wildly and striking the walls more often than not, but still landing enough strokes to elicit screams of agony.
‘You don’t think I have enough to contend with!’ She jerked her head toward the room where John Kelly lay. ‘It’s bad enough I’ve got a useless cripple for a husband – but to think that a daughter of mine would…’
Stung by the reference to her father, Mary’s eyes flared angrily, and she drew herself up, as though suddenly impervious to the lashes. ‘Would what? Follow your example? Two sacks of coal would be a good price, wouldn’t it? How much do you charge?’
Taken aback, Annie let her arm drop, the strap dangling by her side. ‘What do you mean?’ she hissed.
‘Do you think I don’t know what you do when you go to Cardiff ? Everyone knows!’
‘You know nothing… none of you! How dare you! You ungrateful little whore.’
‘You are the whore – you!’ Mary’s eyes filled with tears. ‘You bring the stink of it into our bed when you come creeping home – when you bother to come home!’
‘Don’t take that from her!’ shouted Henry, disappointed at the turn of events – but Annie had lost her momentum. ‘You keep out of it!’ She
turned to Mary, staggering a little, reaching for the wall to steady herself. ‘You think I like it? What else am I supposed to do?’
No longer sobered by fury, Annie’s voice became slurred. ‘How else do you think we’ve managed all these years?’ She waved an arm toward the place where her husband lay befouled in his bed. ‘He’s been no good these past years – useless – a millstone, that’s what he’s been – a bloody millstone round my neck.’
‘Don’t you dare say that!’
‘Oh, don’t I dare? He’s been a millstone alright – dragging me down – and so have you – both of you – bloody great millstones.’ She turned to look at Henry, ‘What use have you ever been?’
But Henry had heard it all before. Snatching back his belt, he spat on the floor at her feet, then pushed his way through the door, making off to the fields and his snares.
Annie looked down at the spattered ground, trying to focus, her body listing precariously. ‘Just you and me, now, eh, Mary?’ she said, looking up with mocking affection. ‘Dear little Mary – clever little Mary – Da’s little pride and joy. Too good to go out to work. Da says little Mary must stay at school.’
‘It’s what he wanted,’ Mary protested bitterly. ‘He said I should…’
‘Better yourself?’ Annie tapped the side of her nose with her finger and leered. ‘I wonder what Da would say if he knew what his clever little girl had been up to, eh? Letting old men have her for a few bags of coal.’
‘That’s a lie – you know it is!’
But her mother was no longer listening. ‘Clever, pretty little girl you are, but I shall tell him – he won’t think you so bloody perfect then! Oh, dear me, no!’ She started towards the bedroom but fell against the table, reeling backwards to slump on to a chair.
For a moment she sat there looking confused, then she gave a lopsided smile. ‘I was pretty – once upon a time – had my pick in those days. Dances! Oh, such dances – such strong, handsome boys. Now look at me!’ She jerked up her head. ‘Well, you take a good long look, pretty little Mary. This is what you’ll be seeing in the mirror before too long. And there’ll be no presents of coal from gentlemen then!’
Mary’s lip quivered. ‘I know, Mam,’ she said quietly, seeing her mother for the pitiable creature she had become. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Sorry? I don’t want your sodding pity!’ Annie glared, her mood turning belligerent once more. ‘I do what I do because I have to, see? To put bread on the table! Because no one else will. Because I’m surrounded by a lot of damned millstones! God knows what I did to deserve this. Stuck with a cripple, and a wastrel – and a daughter that thinks she’s too good for the rest of us.’
Fresh tears brimmed in Mary’s eyes.
‘You? You don’t know the half of it!’ Annie went on. ‘You think I like doing it? Do you? Going out night after night – with all those men? All those… those big, dirty men.’ Then she gave a little giggle. ‘Well – I’m entitled to a few drinks, aren’t I? A few little drinks and a bit of fun?’ She gave her daughter a lewd grin. ‘And I can still give them what they want.’
Horrified, Mary watched the crude accompanying gesture, her lips trembling – then choking back the sobs she ran from the house.
Friday, July 19, 2013
"The Seduction of Mary Kelly" The last victim of Jack the Ripper, by Wm J. Perring, Amazon.com
I will be posting excerpts from the two volume novel:
"The Seduction of Mary Kelly" The last victim of Jack the Ripper
by: Wm. J. Perring
If you like a good historical mystery thriller with ups, downs, twists and turns... this is your kind of read.
You may want to take some Dramamine tablets to the hammock with you.
A must summer read on those long summer days, that may or may not ever end, once you are lost in this wonderful story of dark, sinister and heart stopping characters and their story.
"The Seduction of Mary Kelly" The last victim of Jack the Ripper
by: Wm. J. Perring
If you like a good historical mystery thriller with ups, downs, twists and turns... this is your kind of read.
You may want to take some Dramamine tablets to the hammock with you.
A must summer read on those long summer days, that may or may not ever end, once you are lost in this wonderful story of dark, sinister and heart stopping characters and their story.
Thursday, June 6, 2013
Celestine,The House on rue du Maine" Chapter 16. www'fjwilson.net
Chapter Sixteen
Laffite found her note while rearranging his
pillows looking for the cause of the jasmine scent working havoc with his
desire. He drank too much wine and stayed talking to his men too late. The
dinner itself was strained as his men were trying to ignore the recent goose
chase on which they had been led.
They were weeks in the Atlantic before they
realized there was no English merchant ship carrying gold bullion into the
Carolinas. Lafitte excused it as bad
timing… they had missed the ship or possibly it had passed un-notice in the fog
one night. Lafitte knew though… he knew
he had been duped and by whom. The man
who told him of the ship was a good man and not up for mischief, otherwise
Lafitte would never have sailed into the unfortunate lie. Sadly, Lafitte discovered after the fact, the
man was told by a very worthy source in Port-au-Prince. A merchant Captain with an outstanding reputation
had not realized he was talking to one of Laffite’s men when he stupidly let
the news drop about the gold. He was the Captain of Le Celestine. The Captain
was very distraught and swore the man to secrecy when he realized his ‘mistake’
in talking out of school.
That
son of a bitch, muttered Laffite to himself. Dubois may get the rooster out of his henhouse, but he couldn’t get
the rooster out of her head that easily.
Then insult to injury, he found she was in his very bed and his men had
not seen or heard her come or go. She left her scent on his pillow, and it
spoke volumes, that would have to be enough for now. He opened the note:
Jean dear,
My husband is
home and I find I will be too busy pleasuring him every day, and every evening
to visit with you.
Our time was
nice and you were kind to keep me from boredom, but I have my man now.
Au revoir.
Mme. Captain
Maurice Dubois.
She was bloody magnificent. He would have
trouble sleeping for days.
Between the two of them, he should give up,
but it is not over until someone’s dead and he had plenty of time. He would not tweak the captain again, he had
met his match and it could cost him his lively hood and the respect of his
crew. Captain Dubois’ wife,
however… well… he would wait… her coming
into his world alone and pressing her face to his pillow was not something a
woman did out of anger, no matter how much she tried to convince herself. She could tell herself whatever she wanted,
but he knew her better than she knew herself. He had loved, angered and
placated his fair share of women, and she was one of the best.
He was home a week when he ran into Captain
Dubois in a saloon on rue Royalle-Bourbon.
They were standing at either end of the long bar and neither knew the other was
there until the patrons standing between left.
“Captain Laffite.” Maurice acknowledged the man. Several customers witnessed the exchange and
rushed from the bar. The whole town knew
the rumors of the handsome pirate and Dubois’s beautiful wife.
“Captain Dubois.” Laffite did not like
awkward moments in his life, he lived an organized existence and planned his
every move. It was one of the reasons he
could run his illegal businesses and not be caught and jailed… except for once,
and he felt that was political.
“How do you find our weather, sir?” Maurice would play with him a while, the news
would get back to his wife before he returned home, so he wanted to give the
messengers time.
“It’s a bit too warm for me, Captain. May I buy you a cool drink?” He would be
careful here. He never confronted a
powerful husband, most of his bedroom adversaries were milksops who could not
or would not keep tabs on their wives, or powerful husbands it amused the
pirate to make a cuckold. He had no intentions of getting into hand to hand
combat with this man as he was powerful, but had no intentions of being a
cuckold.
“No, thank you, I’m wanted home to… dinner…
with my wife. Maybe another time, sir?”
“Of course.” Laffite picked up his hat.
“Captain Dubois?”
“Yes.” He stopped to turn back to the
pirate. It was all he could do not to ram his fist into the man’s face.
“Are we even, then?”
“I’ve no idea what you mean, sir.” His smiling blue eyes said he did indeed know
what he meant. Maurice certainly was not
going to admit to the Terror of the Gulf that he had put the man’s ship in
harm’s way to keep him out of his wife’s bed. That was so revealing on so many levels,
it was ridiculous.
Laffite had never envied a man as much as
he envied this pompous ass, and he did not like the feeling. It was not over until a death. Laffite could wait. He was much younger than
Dubois.
Maurice loved taking Celestine and little
Philippe for walks around the city. They
would visit all the shops and buy things they needed, with Maurice introducing
his son with the pride of all new papas.
He never told his wife, but these outings were his statement to Jean
Laffite that the Dubois family would never buy the contraband products of a
pirate. His money would only go to the
New Orleans’ businessmen’s purses.
These were some of the dearest days for
Celestine. It became their custom when
he was in port, to do their afternoon shopping and visit with people on the
street. Maurice carried Philippe until
he got so big, he insisted on walking.
Exchanging news and gossip with neighbors and friends was a delight for
her husband after spending long months at sea.
He was known as a loving husband and the perfect family man with a
beautiful wife and an adorable little boy.
My dear readers, I hope you have enjoyed the first 16 chapters of Celestine. Please continue reading this novel by going to www.Amazon.com and order either the paperback or a kindle, ebook version.
There are many are seventeen more chapters full of Celestine, Maurice, Jean Lafitte and her growing family of misfits in the big house on rue du Maine
Thank you for following my blog. Once you've had time to finish Celestine, I will post many chapters of "The Hornet Slayer". The second book in the series.
"Celestine, The House on rue du Maine" Chapter 15 www.fjwilson.net
Chapter Fifteen
Maurice was a month longer than
expected. Celestine spoke of it to Jean
during one of his afternoon visits with her and the baby. The next visit, he brought his big charts and
pointed to where Le Celestine had
been and, for how long… he was told the Le
Celestine was in Port-au-Prince a full month longer than needed. Celestine
was devastated to hear this news. She envisioned
him pacing the decks rushing home to meet his child and take his wife in his
arms.
Jean was becoming a good friend, and she
depended on him to fill long afternoons and winter days when the baby was too
young for her to venture out. He was kind and gentle with the baby, and he made
her laugh and remember times before her husband left, taking the life out of
the big house. Jean had not gotten
personal since the day on the levee, and his behavior endeared him to her even
more. She looked forward to his calling card on the little silver tray in the
music room off the courtyard. It meant
he was waiting for her or he had gone but would return. She did not know how lonely she was until he
started visiting. The friendship was a terrible mistake.
When the baby turned two months, Jean
stopped coming around. She missed him
and wondered if she had done or said something to offend. She took Marguerite and Josef for a
fortnight’s visit to Colette and Pierre.
She was glad to be out of the city and looked forward to lively dinners
and seeing little Letty. Colette had not
seen the baby and wrote that she must come for a long visit. The visit was lovely, but Colette and Pierre
were distant. She was nearing the end of
the visit when Colette asked her about her ‘affair’ with Jean Laffite. She was dumbfounded; where had this accusation
come from?
“The city is small, ‘Tine and he’s
infamous. His every move is followed and
watched. Don’t you love Maurice
anymore?”
“Colette, what are you talking about? Of course I love Maurice. There’s no affair with Capt. Laffite; he’s
just been keeping me company, that’s all.
Why would you ever think such a thing?”
She was trying not to get angry, but these were serious allegations, and
she could lose her beloved Maurice. She had not forgotten how jealous he was of
the Pirate.
“Maurice has been told and he’s written to
Pierre to have the rumors dispelled or verified.” Celestine’s heart was in her throat.
“Maurice has been told what? There’s nothing to tell, Colette.”
She was mortified. Why were her actions up for scrutiny in the
first place?
“Did Maurice ask Pierre to keep his spies
on me; is that what this is, Colette?”
She was not going to sit and hear any more of the horrible accusation
that could ruin her marriage. Pierre walked innocently into the room and felt
the venom flying between the two old friends like stinging sand on a windy
beach.
“Well, Ladies, a game of cards this
evening?” He looked from one to the
other and everything in his being was shouting, ‘Women angry, run away, fast. Women angry, duck and cover.’
“Pierre, tell me what you said to my
husband regarding Capt. Laffite, please.” She sat watching his face turn from
happy man to pig at the slaughter.
“Colette, what’ve you been saying?”
“You may as well tell me everything. I’ll not leave you alone until you do.” She watched as he showed disgust at his
wife’s bad manners.
“Maurice was told that you’ve been
entertaining the pirate. He’s very
angry. He asked if I’d check it out and
I did. I discovered that the rumor got
to Maurice from one of Laffite’s own men, probably at Laffite’s request.”
“Tell me what my husband was told,
Pierre.” She was dying inside. She knew Jean was capable, but she had not
counted on his trying to destroy her marriage in such a vicious manner.
“He was told… where is this taking us,
Celestine?”
“Tell me damn it, if I’m to be branded for
adultery, I would like to know the charges.”
“He was told that Laffite moved in and is
living in the house, but leaves before day. He was told that Josef works for
Laffite’s brother and is the liaison between you two.” She was going to be sick.
“Why did my husband stay in Port-au-Prince
a month longer than necessary? Does it
have to do with this gossip? Is he with
Anna?”
“Celestine, this is getting us nowhere,
leave it.” He walked out of the room and
up the stairs.
Celestine turned to Colette.
“Is this why you invited me here, to see if
I’m a whore like our mothers, or can we assume that Jean Laffite is a lying
ass?”
“I had to know, Celestine, I had to see for
myself and look into your face.”
Celestine wondered if she would have questioned Colette in the same
situation. She would like to think she
wouldn’t, but people get carried away with gossip and tales of romantic
interludes; after all she was the wife of a seafaring man, and he could be gone
from home over a year, and… she was befriended by a very dangerous, infamous,
man.
“And?”
Celestine stood back and waited for an answer.
Colette ran and put her arms around
Celestine.
“My darling, I’ve been too long up here
with nothing to occupy my silly mind and thinking stupid thoughts about Maurice
being gone, and you, left alone in that lust filled city.”
Celestine could see how that would happen,
this place was beautiful; but there wasn’t much to keep a person away from
stray thoughts and horrible gossip.
“You need to take up charity work,
Colette. Or, maybe some hobby other than
my non-existent love life.” She wanted
to know more of why her husband stayed so long in Port-au-Prince. Was Anna winning him back? She was, after
all, the mother of the two most beloved people in his life and his longtime
mistress? Bile rose to the back of her throat.
Pierre came back into the room. He decided the woman was owed an
explanation. If her husband was going to
kill a pirate and kick her out of her home, she should know about his peccadilloes
also.
“Sit down, ‘Tine.” He told her everything. He told her about Maurice and Anna, but not
about his childhood. He told of Maurice finally finding true love with
Celestine and how devastated he was to think that Jean Laffite had been living
with his wife in his own home. He stayed a month more than planned with his
mistress until Anna finally calmed him down and almost convinced him that the
rumors were lies. But, Maurice was
Maurice, and Pierre wasn’t sure if Anna had convinced him or not.
Celestine didn’t know how to respond.
“Thank you for being honest with me,
Pierre. I know about Anna, but thank you for telling me anyway. I’d like to return to the city tomorrow. I have things I need to do.”
“Of course, we understand.”
“No, we don’t understand. Pierre, she needs
to stay right here until this horrible scandal is old news.”
“No, Colette, I’ll be fine.”
Celestine knew what she had to do. First,
she would straighten out one very bad mannered, ass of a Pirate and let him
know his foolishness had not worked. Second, she would save her marriage and
keep her son from being fatherless.
Third, Josef would have something to say about the lie told on him, and
he would certainly explain to his father.
Celestine knew just enough of the bayous
from her one trip down to Barataria to hire a small pirogue and an old man to
row it. She wore some of Josef’s old
clothes and put her hair under a rag.
She would never be noticed as anything but one of two small men in a
pirogue. She spent the first night wondering if she had left enough milk for
the baby, but Marguerite had assured her he would be fine. Marguerite was more worried about Papa
Maurice finding out she helped Tanti ‘Tine go into the swamps. But one thing she and her brother knew about
Tanti ‘Tine; she did not respond well to… ‘no’.
The second day, Celestine and her old guide
waited outside Laffite’s big compound in a palmetto thicket, and watched as the
grand house was being built; again she wondered why he had chosen this desolate
place to build a mansion. The boatman explained to her the location, and how it
was available to unload his cargo and keep his ships safe from the Gulf. He explained the real beauty of the Cypress
swamp and how the water could light up on a sunny day, and glow like fire in a
sunset. He pointed out the beautiful birds and cranes and she saw it for the
first time through the old man’s eyes. He told her about the moss gatherers
with their hooked poles, wrapping around
the Spanish moss and pulling it from the trees to be sold and end in a soft
mattress, and the alligator hunters risking their lives to provide luggage for
the rich. She finally understood how
Jean could love this place.
She was strangely calm. Jean would never hurt her, but she did not
know about his men. They were certainly
not the sort with whom one would have a romantic walk on a moonlit night along
the big bayou. She remembered his kiss that first night. It had moved her, but
now the thought made her mad as hell. That started this whole business. She left the boatman and walked calmly into
the open and around the new home being built, and around to the old house still
being used by Laffite and his men.
The men were at a very raucous but
beautiful dinner. The silver candleholders were polished and gleaming, the
white linen was clean and pressed, and accentuated the beautiful plates and
crystal glasses; too bad his men were not half as clean as their dinner
service. She walked around to the back
and looked in the tall windows and found his room; his big jacket was slung
over a chair; he had been unpacking. Had he been on a voyage? His shaving things were still damp, and a big
wet bathing towel was drying over his privy screen. So
that’s why he hasn’t been around, he’s been gone; probably terrorizing the
gulf, or another woman’s marriage. The bed was made and the covers already
turned down for his night’s sleep. She
wondered if all pirates were this pampered, or just the one trying to destroy
her?
She slipped in through the big open jib
window easily and placed the note under his pillow. She rubbed her neck with his pillow to be sure
to leave her jasmine scent, and left as easily as she had come. She was back in her own bed in New Orleans
before the sun came up on the second day.
Celestine was feeding the baby and
wondering what Maurice would like to name him when she heard familiar boots
coming across the open courtyard. She
was nervous and knew being too frightened would show guilt where there was
none. She heard him running up the
stairs and across the gallery. Maurice
looked into his bedroom and saw his wife leaning against a boatload of pillows
in a beautiful nightgown feeding their son from an alabaster breast and
remembered his wish. He stopped to take
it in. He had planned to accuse her
right away, but he walked quietly over to the bed and looked down on his little
son nursing on the beautiful breast. He
caught himself falling into her trap.
She would have to explain herself before he folded so easily.
“That’s mine.” He said harsher than he intended, his lips
clamped in stifled anger.
“Your son or my breast?” She asked reaching up for his mouth.
“Both.” He almost yelled and turned his
mouth away from hers.
He undressed down to his shirt and breeches
and got in beside them. He lay on one elbow watching his son. He was still her husband; if he wanted he
could move the baby and take her right now.
He was amazed at this little creature he
had created with this woman. He wanted
to cuddle them both and meld into the little family he dreamed about for so
long. But he would not be made a fool of
again. He would take this wonderful child himself and disappear if she wanted
the pirate.
Celestine looked over at his jacket with
the beautiful gold braid running up the big sleeves hanging over his chair, the
sword and belt hanging from the rack in the corner and the big hat resting on
its stand. His boots were standing in
front of his armoire, one falling over into the other and it almost made her
cry; these were the signs that her man
was home from the sea and in residence.
“I wanted to be on the levee when you came
home.” She turned to him barely keeping
the tears from flowing.
“I
love watching Le Celestine sail into
safe harbor.” She was getting breathless with fright. She had hoped seeing her with their son would calm him and help
him get some perspective, but it seemed to agitate him even more.
“You’re here, Celestine and that’s enough
for now. What have you named my son?”
“I was waiting for you.” She could see he was surprised and pleased
with her decision to wait for him. He was not expecting that. If she were going to leave him for the
pirate, why would she care what he wanted to name his son?
“Philippe.”
“Philippe?”
She had never heard him speak of a man named Philippe.
“Yes, Philippe after my father.” The baby was through nursing and Maurice took
his son and put him over his shoulder to gently burp him.
“You never told me about your father.” She
purposely left her breast uncovered and wiped a residue of milk off seductively
with her fingers; she knew the power the damned things had over him.
“I never knew him. He went down in a storm off the Irish Coast.”
He was trying not to take her in his arms and cover the breast with his mouth,
the same beautiful breast that had so recently given nourishment to his amazing
son.
“Oh, then, Philippe it is.” When was he ever going to tell her about his
life before her? He had told her all
about Anna, but very little of his life
before going to sea. He had
never mentioned his parents and she never asked. In her world, one did not ask a person’s
lineage. He turned onto his back and put the baby on his big chest. He could not touch it enough, this miracle of
his wife’s doing.
“So, Mme. Dubois, you’ve built a
person. It’s a job well done.”
He was purposefully not calling her wife or
Celestine. Not a good sign. Was he
reminding her who she was? Celestine got
up and walked to her dressing table. She
picked up her brush and began to brush the soft hair from around her face. She wanted him to notice Laffite’s calling
cards scattered around her dresser. She
and Marguerite had gone all over the house looking for the discarded cards to
place them in view on her dresser. A
wife wouldn’t hide cards from an innocent friendship.
“Wi… young Philippe has wet my shirt, come
and take him please.” He almost called her wife; the home life was
working, as she prayed it would.
She took the baby and put him in his cradle
by the side of her bed and changed his diaper.
She went back to the bed and took his shirt and put it in the basket
with the laundry. She sat in the big chair by the fireplace or she would faint
from desire. She had truly forgotten
that magnificent chest and what it did to her. She wanted him more than she had ever wanted
anything or anyone in her life. She
turned back to him and tried to study his face.
She could not go through with her plan.
She had to make this right.
“You promised me, Maurice. When I first
gave myself to you on the ship, when I trusted you enough to open myself to
you, you promised that you’d always come home to me, you promised.” She was angry that the tears were coming when
she wanted so badly to be calm.
“Now you come three months late to meet
your son. How could you believe lies about me?
How could you? Do you hate me
that much… no, do you hate yourself that much that you can’t believe I love you
and only you and will never love anyone else?”
She was moving full steam forward.
She was getting angrier at the thought of his not trusting her and
writing to Pierre instead of asking her in any of his letters to her. She picked up his boot from the floor and
slung it hard and it missed him by inches.
“If that’d been my knife, you’d be a
gelding now, sir.” She was sobbing and
marching out of the door when he caught her, picked her up and brought her back
to the bed. He was almost there when he
spotted the cards on the dresser. He
dropped her on the floor. Her first plan had just interfered with her
second plan and now there was no plan.
He picked up a few of the cards and looked
down at her.
She would try to re-implement her first
plan.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know I wasn’t to have
friends while you were away, or stop a man saving me in the market from giving
birth to your son on the levee. Next
time I’ll know better.” She was picking
herself up and pulling her wrapper around her breast.
“Madame, tell me what was going on in my
house while I was at sea making a living for my family, and mind, tell me the
truth.” His voice was low and rumbling. She knew what one of his sailors must feel
when he had done something wrong, but damn it, she had done nothing wrong. She was in labor for fifteen long hours giving
him a son, she coated herself each night in oils to keep her skin soft and
desirable for his return and now she had to answer to him about some bloody
pirate. She was feeling the effects and consequence of gossip on innocent women
down through the ages. No gossip monger
has to come up with facts, only the gossiped about. As for as she was concerned, he had crossed a
line. She rang for Marguerite.
“Papa Maurice, you’re home.” She threw herself into his arms. He stared over at Celestine.
“This isn’t over.”
“No, it’s not, Captain Dubois.” He reacted to her using his name and not
husband. She noted the effect.
“Rite, darling would you get your brother? Papa wishes to speak to us all together.”
“Of course, Tante ‘Tine.” She ran downstairs calling for Josef.
“What are you doing?” He was so confused, she was messing with his
head and he could not trust what she was doing or why. What the hell was going
on in his home while he was out making a living, by damn?
Celestine walked down to the courtyard with
the baby asleep in her arms. She sat at
the big wrought iron dining table and put Philippe in the little bed Josef
made, next to her.
Maurice followed putting on his jacket and
pulling up his boots. Josef came around from the stable with Marguerite. He waited for Maurice to finish dressing and
hugged him.
“Please, sit down.” Celestine addressed her strange little
family.
They sat at their usual places; Maurice at
the head with Josef to his right and Marguerite to his left, and his wife at
the other end of the beautiful table.
“Your father has questions for all of
us. First, I’d like to ask each of
you. Josef, were you ever aware of Capt. Laffite staying overnight at
this house, or was he ever in my bedroom?”
Maurice was up and booming.
“You go too far, Madame.” He was truly angry now, why would she subject
his children to such personal adult problems?
“NO.”
Josef was emphatic. “We’ve heard
the rumors, Papa Maurice and they bare no truth.” He hoped he would be believed. He knew he was
telling the truth, he watched them both.
He would never have allowed it and was ashamed when he finally realized
his spying on her in her confinement was for nothing. He helped the bad Captain in the beginning
when Tanti ‘Tine would go to the levee and work among the poor in her condition,
but he had never been the liaison for which he had been accused.
“Marguerite?” Celestine would have it out here and now and
he could leave or stay. If he stayed
there may not be enough bandages in the house to stop the blood.
“Papa Maurice, when you accuse Tanti ‘Tine
you accuse me and Josef also. Do you not love us and trust us to do right by
you? You’re being unfair to her and she
deserves better. She has worried and paced on your behalf each time a storm
came up the river. I’m sorry, Papa, but
I must speak. Josef and I have seen her
shed many tears waiting for you to come home to all of us.”
She was beginning to cry. This man had slept with her mother for years
and had not married her. Why would he be so brutal to this little woman who
loved him and was so brave waiting for him to come home? Men were allowed their women, but women were
not allowed one friend in breeches. She was beginning to see the convent as a
better life for her if this was marriage. She also liked Capt. Laffite, he had
done many favors for her, and brought her the herbs she needed for some of her
creations, and he had never treated her like a servant or anything more than
Tante ‘Tine’s ward and friend.
“Marguerite, of course I love you and
Josef. Stop this, Celestine.”
“My turn, Capt. Dubois. I have a couple of questions for you. First and foremost, why would I leave my
lover’s calling cards for my husband to see?
If you can answer that, then you may have a case.”
“Of course I can answer that. You didn’t know I was coming home.” He stood and looked at his family at the table. He did not want to be right. His heart was
about to break.
“Where is your reasoning, husband? Josef, when did you know your father would be
home?”
“Yesterday morning, the man who brings you
news of the ships coming into the harbor announced he saw Le Celestine coming up the river, one day out.”
Maurice sat back down. What a fool he was. Anna told him everything; she had even seen
this fight and her children’s loyalty to his wife.
“Children, may I speak to your papa alone,
please.” They both bent to kiss his
cheek and left the two strangely embarrassed people alone.
“You forced me to do it, husband. You’ll
take full credit for this.”
“What was your next question?” He knew he was played a fool by the black
hearted son-of-a-sea witch, Laffite. He
just hoped his trick on the pirate was as humiliating as his had been on him,
even worse. The pirate’s whole crew
would witness Laffite’s shame.
“Did you bed Anna? Be careful how you
answer. I want the truth, Maurice.”
“Of course I didn’t bed Anna. You should know by now, I could never touch
another woman.” If his lie was ever
revealed, he would be a dead man, sans pecker; and it wasn’t worth it, Anna was
falling in love with a new man. He felt
it in her touch and besides, he had only lain with her in some jealous
retribution to his wife and the pirate… Anna could feel that too.
“I’ll see you in the morning.” She walked upstairs with the baby and locked
the doors to her bedroom. Maurice turned and walked back out onto the
street. His embarrassment was getting
the better of him. How could he be so
damned blind? He walked up to rue des Chartres and found a
saloon. He would never get used to the
muddy sewage-bogged streets of this damned city. He walked off his ship, not an
hour ago in clean boots and now he had mud up to his arse, and hated it. He wanted his clean ship under his feet. A man had to walk steady on dry land and hold
fast or rumors and gossip could drag him down like the mud on his boots. He drank a whiskey and left the bar. It was time to face the gallows. His stupidity
had robbed him of his son’s birth, and he would never forgive himself for
that. What he had done to his little
dove was appalling. He was ashamed and embarrassed by his accusations. Most Sea
Captains received similar news in their careers, and many were false… some were
not. After all, the wife of a Captain was not, as a rule, a shrinking violet,
they could be lusty women full of the devil, and his was no exception. He was lucky to still have his manhood. If she discovered his lie about Anna after his
theatrics over Laffite, he would lose his for sure. Another prayer went to heaven.
He walked back up rue du Maine and stopped at a little shop still accepting
customers. In the window was a beautiful
ship in a small bottle. He never
understood how anyone could create these particular objects, but suddenly he saw it as Celestine creating
their son, the tiny being nestled in her womb, perfectly formed, and
fragile. There was jewelry for her in
his trunks on the ship, but this would suffice for this particular homecoming.
She heard the gentle knock as she was
putting the baby in his cradle. The
glass on the long doors rattled with another knock.
“I’m home from the sea, wife. Did you miss
me? I brought a pretty trinket for you and the baby.” He was standing and tantalizing her with that
all powerful smile she could never resist. She hid her smile.
“You’ll have to wait your turn, you’ve
frightened the baby.” She reached for
her son and walked back to the bed.
“I can wait. I can wait as long as it takes.” The smile had not left his face, and he stood
at the door like a repentant school boy waiting for his punishment. She started
laughing in spite of herself. She put
Philippe back in his bed and opened the door and stood blocking it.
“Do you promise to trust me? Answer me, husband.” His smile got bigger.
“Do you promise to stop being a bully and
respect my choice of friends? Answer me, husband.” He picked her up and took
her to the bed and threw her into the soft down of the bed.
“I promise to make you forget how stupid
I’ve been for the last several months. You can punish me later if you
wish. How’s that?” He kissed her, trying to take off her clothes
at the same time and as he pulled his legs out of his breeches he managed to
get his shirt caught on his arms and could not get to her fast enough.
That was the homecoming she expected from a
sex deprived Sea Captain after months at sea. She was feeling the pressure in
the small of her back and knew it would not take much to rise to her groin and
she would be embarrassingly ready for
his entry. If he had waited with his accusations, he would have seen how eager
she was for his love making. No woman
could have been sleeping with a man, and been this needy for a male body. She was insatiable and he planned to be sore
for days.
Celestine thanked God for his safe return.
She knew he lied about Anna, but he loved her enough to lie. She could not get
enough of her husband. Being in the pirate’s bedroom had affected her… she was
moved by the pirate’s scent and the intimacy of his things. It frightened her and if Maurice had not come
home when he did… well, thank God, he came home when he did. But, she would go
with him from now on or make sure he didn’t plan such long trips, it was not good
for their marriage. She was firm on
this.
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