Beyond the Veil of Tears (32 page)

On leaving the area she found a sign that read ‘Portland Park’ and the road she was walking down was Portland Terrace, so at least she would know where to aim for,
on the return journey. Before long the grander houses had vanished and she found herself in a grid of terraced streets that all looked the same. But the sun had come out and although the blisters
on her heels had opened up again, she felt better for
doing
something. There were fewer people about than she had expected, and after a while the church bells told her why. It was a
Sunday. And before long she passed a Church of England church where men dressed in their Sunday best and women in neat, dark dresses and bonnets were filing in. A little later it was a chapel, and
here the bonnets of the ladies weren’t nearly so fine, but their prim faces and subdued manner were the same. Few folk spared her a glance, but when they did it was invariably a man and,
remembering what May had said, she found herself walking faster on those occasions.

After an hour or so of following her nose without really knowing where she was going, she saw two girls, arm-in-arm, coming towards her. They were giggling and deep in conversation, dressed in
rough serge skirts with woollen shawls about their shoulders, but they looked friendly enough. When she was abreast she nerved herself to say, ‘Can you direct me to Manors station?’

They stopped dead, their faces expressing their surprise as they looked her up and down, no doubt thinking her voice didn’t match her appearance. It was a moment before one said, her
accent denoting that she was Irish, ‘Manors station you want, lass? Well, you’re not too far off. Keep straight on at the crossroads into Argyle Street and you’ll come to it, so
you will. You not from round these parts?’

Angeline shook her head. ‘I’m . . . I’m from the country.’

‘Oh aye?’ They nodded, but Angeline walked on, willing herself not to hurry. She heard one say something to the other and then laughter, but she didn’t turn round, and it
wasn’t until she was a good distance from them that she stopped. The blisters the boots had rubbed on her heels were raw and bleeding, but she had noticed neither of the girls was wearing
anything on her feet. Stepping out of the boots, she picked them up by their laces with her ‘good’ hand and began walking again. The relief was magical – beyond words – and
suddenly the day got a whole lot better.

She came to the crossroads and then Argyle Street, and eventually, joy of joys, Melbourne Street and Manors station.

The nearer she got to the waterfront, however, the more uneasy she felt. There seemed to be a public house every few yards, and after a while she put her boots back on, painful though it was,
because of the muck and running filth in the roads. And the smell; she had no name for it, having never smelt the odour of extreme squalor and overcrowding and stinking privies before, coupled with
the ever-present stench of the slaughterhouses.

Mindful of all May had said, she kept her head up but her eyes straight ahead as she walked, but she was aware of women standing on their doorsteps talking to neighbours while their children,
some too young to walk, played or crawled in the gutters and on the filthy pavements. Appalled by the dirt and the stench, she tried to keep her face blank, but it was hard, especially when she saw
a dead cat slowly decaying and alive with maggots just yards from where a bare-bottomed, curly-haired infant sat sucking her thumb, big sores on either side of her rosebud mouth.

Terrified, she found she was praying silently now as she walked along the wharfs, just one refrain: ‘Help me, God; help me, God; help me, God.’ Twice, a man bumped into her –
one leaving a public house and, a few yards on, one entering – and on both occasions she felt it wasn’t an accident by their leering faces, but she didn’t acknowledge them or slow
her pace, hearing one laugh as she marched on.

She was picking her way along the rough cobbles by the side of the tracks on which the engines shunted the wagons to unload the boats that moored at the wharfs, but as it was a Sunday the river
was quiet. Just after she passed a landing stage, which was floating in the grimy black water, she came to the bottom of King Street and could have cried with relief, although the street looked as
bad as any she had passed. The sunshine had brought out the bairns and there were plenty of them playing their games up and down the mucky, slimy cobbled road.

May hadn’t known the number of the house where her brother lodged, so a few yards into the street Angeline stopped in front of two young girls sitting on the pavement with their backs to
the grey tenement wall. They were nursing their dollies – two lumps of wood with faces carved on them – which they had wrapped in bits of rag. A little further on a group of children
were skipping with a piece of old rope, their voices chanting:

Bringing her attention back to the two in front of her, Angeline bent down, saying quietly, ‘Do you know where Jack Connor lives?’

They shook their heads, their hair white with nits, but a young lad of eight or nine who was leaning against the wall a couple of feet away said, ‘Yes, you do. She means the
penny-a-liner.’ And to Angeline: ‘We call him that cos he can read an’ write, an’ if anyone needs a letter writin’ or somethin’ reading, they come to Jack.
He’s got a room in that house there.’

Angeline nodded and smiled. ‘Thank you.’

‘Come on, I’ll show you.’ And with that the boy turned and ran to a house a few doors away. The front door was open, and Angeline followed her little guide into a squalid hall
and up the bare wooden stairs of the three-storey building to the second floor. The lad rapped on a door at the end of the landing. ‘Jack? There’s someone wants to talk to you. A
lass.’

He knocked again a few moments later, and when Angeline murmured, ‘Perhaps he’s not in?’ he grinned at her, revealing brown-stained teeth.

‘I ain’t seen him go out, so he’s likely abed. Works six days a week in town, an’ then he’s always at his books an’ such till the early hours, is Jack. Barmy
’bout learning, he is.’ Lowering his voice, he added, ‘He’s teachin’ me to read an’ write’ as though there was something shameful about it.

‘Don’t you learn that at school?’

The boy stared at her as though she was from another planet. ‘I ain’t never been to school. I help me da at the docks. I’m a runner. Best runner there is.’

‘I see.’ She didn’t have a clue what he meant.

‘Me da’s not for learnin’,’ the boy went on. ‘Says it only gets you into trouble with the gaffers.’

‘But you want to read and write?’

The boy shrugged. ‘I want to be like Jack,’ he said, as though that was the end of the matter.

Angeline heard a bolt being slid from inside the door and the next moment it had opened. A man stood there, naked to the waist and obviously just having got out of bed, his black hair ruffled
and with stubble on his chin. His eyes were as green as May’s and shaded by thick curling lashes, and his rough-hewn face wasn’t smiling.

Angeline stared at him, shock curling in her stomach. She had never been in the presence of such raw masculinity before. Oswald had been handsome, even beautiful, but also graceful and elegant
and charming. This man was clearly none of those things. The picture she had formed in her mind of May’s brother had been of a scholarly, mild schoolmaster type, small in stature; an earnest
intellectual whose books were his passion. Nothing had prepared her for the real Jack Connor.

He looked her up and down in a way that caused her breathing to quicken and her cheeks to flush, and although she knew she ought to say something it was beyond her.

It was Jack who spoke first, his deep voice having an edge of huskiness, which again caused her stomach to flutter: ‘Aye, and what can I do for you, my bonny lass?’ And to the boy:
‘All right, Joe, you scarper now’, softening his words by fetching a penny out of his pocket and throwing it to the lad, who caught it deftly and pocketed it in an instant.

As Joe disappeared down the stairs, Angeline felt panic grip her, before she pulled herself together. ‘I’m a friend of May’s. We . . . she . . . We need your help.’

His face expressed the same surprise that the two girls on the road earlier had shown, but he recovered instantly, opening the door wider and standing back as he said, ‘You’d better
come in then and tell me all about it.’

Jack Connor prided himself on the fact that nothing in life surprised him. Having been reared in the tenement slums of Newcastle, he’d seen life in all its raw vulgarity
from a babe at his mother’s breast. A violent, drunken father and a mother who was only interested in avoiding her husband’s fists had set the course of his childhood. Three brothers
and a sister born after him had died through disease and neglect, and twin sisters had gone the same way before he was born. His two older brothers had been his rough childhood companions before
they ran away to sea when he was eight years old.

May had been born when he was six, and from the first he had loved his baby sister, protecting her from the worst of their father’s rages as she’d grown and making sure she got
enough to eat, even if it meant going without himself.

May had left to go into service when she was twelve years old, and the same day he had walked out of the family home and into lodgings, knowing it was the time to follow his dream. His father
had had him set on at the docks when he was eleven years old, but although his schooldays had been cut short, they’d planted in him a voracious desire for education. For the next five years
he had worked at the docks during the day and studied at night, spending all his money on books and bettering himself. And finally, two years ago, a solicitor in the town had agreed to take him on
as a clerk. It was the first rung of the ladder to becoming a solicitor.

He occasionally called in on his mother and the three boys who had come along after May, but in truth he had little time for his younger brothers, all of whom bore a marked resemblance to their
father in looks and nature. May was different, and when he’d found out she had been raped and then cast into the asylum he’d been beside himself, especially when he had been able to do
nothing to secure her release. Each time he had visited her he had told her he was working towards the day when he was qualified and could fight to get her out of the place, but they had both known
that day was a long way off.

But now this young woman with the cultured voice, but who was dressed in little more than rags, was telling him May was free. He only had one chair and a small table in his room besides his bed,
so he had directed her to the chair while he sat on the bed as she told her story. He stared at her, taking in her face, as her soft, pleasant voice flowed over him. She was a beautiful lass; even
her nose, which had clearly been broken at some time or other, didn’t detract from her beauty, but rather gave a uniqueness to her looks that was captivating. Her liquid brown eyes, under
eyebrows that curved well beyond the bone formation of the eye sockets, constantly fell away from his, as though she was shy or frightened, or both. He had pulled on a shirt before he sat down,
sensing that his bare torso had startled her, but she still was as jumpy as a cat on a hot tin roof.

His gaze moved to her hair, secured in a long plait at the nape of her neck, but even that couldn’t hide that it was amazing. It wasn’t brown or red or bronze, but a mixture of all
three, and thick and silky, the tiny tendrils that drifted round skin like blushed milk curling in wispy ringlets.

The last two years had trained him to take in everything about people – their body language, appearance, inflections of voice – whilst ingesting every word they spoke. Mr Havelock
had told him more than once it was one of Jack’s strengths, added to the sixth sense that every good solicitor needed to cultivate, which told them if a man or woman was telling the truth
– or, at the very least, the whole story. But somehow, with this young woman, and to his great surprise, Jack only felt confusion. Added to which he was very aware of his dishevelled
appearance, which annoyed him. He should be feeling only relief that May was free and concern that she was injured, but instead a whole host of emotions were in play.

As Angeline finished speaking he leaned forward and said, ‘So May’s waiting at Portland Park?’ and was further annoyed at the slight recoil she made, before she collected
herself. ‘And you have nothing, you say? Not a penny between you, and merely the clothes you stand up in? Why didn’t you take your things with you when you left the inn where you were
working?’

Angeline had never felt more ill at ease in her life than now, lying to this man who was May’s brother. ‘We did, but they were stolen one night.’

Jack nodded. It happened. Softly he said, ‘Is your arm very painful?’

‘Not since it was strapped up.’

‘Good.’ Standing up, he pulled on his cap and jacket. She had explained about the elocution lessons, but he was finding that the way she spoke made him feel . . . he wouldn’t
allow himself to think ‘inferior’, instead substituting ‘uncomfortable’. ‘Make yourself a drink’ – he waved to the small kettle on a steel shelf over the
hot coals that the tiny fireplace held – ‘there’s tea and sugar on the shelf, but no milk I’m afraid. I’ll get something to eat for the three of us after I’ve
got May home.’

‘But don’t you want me to come with you?’

‘Not necessary. I know where the park is.’

‘Very well.’ Angeline inclined her head. ‘If you are sure.’

There it was again. It wasn’t just her voice – it was her manner, too. Not exactly uppish, more . . . He found he couldn’t put his finger on what it was, which again irritated
him.

Once May’s brother had gone, Angeline sat exactly where she was for some minutes. She felt as though she had come through a great trial, which was ridiculous really, when she had only
found her way to this house. But that was how she felt. The reaction had her wanting to drift off to sleep where she sat, but after a while she kicked off her boots and made herself a cup of tea.
It was the first drink she had made in her life, and she had no idea how much tea to put in the mug sitting next to the little tea caddy. Consequently it was very weak, but in view of the fact
there was no milk, it was better than being too strong.