Dancing in the Moonlight (21 page)

Jacob couldn’t witness the humiliation a moment longer. He stood up, his voice curt as he said, ‘I’m tired, I’m going to bed.’

He met his mother in the hall, returning with the bottle of brandy, and she caught his arm. ‘You not having a drink, lad?’ And as he shook his head her voice changed, becoming
sharper. ‘He’s falling over backwards to be nice, but you don’t make it easy for him, Jacob. One drink wouldn’t hurt, now then.’

He loved his mother very much, but he wanted to shake her till her teeth rattled. For years she’d chosen to close her eyes to the way Tom spoke to their da and the rest of them, and there
were none so blind as those who didn’t want to see. And yet he couldn’t put the blame wholly at his mam’s feet. His da had gone into it with his eyes open, he was reaping what
he’d sown. Damn it, he was sick of the lot of them. If he hadn’t been going to Abe’s he’d have moved out anyway. ‘I’m tired, Mam. It’s been a long
day,’ he said shortly.

‘Aye, all right.’ Telling herself it was still early days in his recovery, Enid said no more, but her annoyance was evident in that she didn’t wish him goodnight, but marched
past him into the kitchen where she shut the door with unnecessary force.

Jacob stood for a moment or two staring after her. A few months ago, even a few weeks, he wouldn’t have liked to go to bed at odds with his mother, and it disturbed him that this made no
impact on his emotions now. He was changing, he told himself. He
had
changed, and he wasn’t sure if he liked the new Jacob.

Then he shrugged the thought away. Everyone changed – it was part of life’s pattern – and maybe this was just the final stage of severing the umbilical cord. The attack, Lucy
leaving him, and everything he’d hoped for the future being blown to smithereens was part of it, but the other side of the coin was Abe and Dolly and all they were offering him. The Sister in
charge of his ward at the hospital, a stern, gimlet-eyed woman who had inspired fear in her staff and patients alike, had come and sat on his bed one night in the early hours when he couldn’t
sleep and had got himself into a bit of a state. He’d told her about Lucy, blubbering like a baby to his shame, and she’d been kindness itself, holding him like his mam would have done
and waiting until he’d pulled himself together. She’d fetched him a cup of tea and one for herself, sitting by the side of the bed and talking of this and that to pull him out of his
misery. Just before she’d resumed her duties she’d leaned across and brushed the hair from his brow. ‘You’re young, Jacob,’ she’d said softly, ‘and for now
you can’t see the wood for the trees, but believe me when I say that when one door closes another opens. I’ve been a nurse for more years than I care to remember and I’ve seen it
time and time again. Concentrate on getting well and wait for that door to open and, when it does, you walk through it, lad. All right?’

He had nodded, not really believing her, but after she’d disappeared to see to another patient he’d found he could settle down for sleep, and it had been his first long, deep sleep
since he had come round from the coma.

And now that door
had
opened. Tom’s loud laugh came from the kitchen followed by an obedient chorus from his family, grating on his nerves. It had opened and he was going to walk
through it and make a good life for himself, or his name wasn’t Jacob Crawford.

And Lucy? He would forget her. In time.

Tom was thinking along different lines as he drove home later that night. There was barely an hour that passed when he wasn’t thinking about Lucy – the desire that
had been a fixation from when she was little more than a child having grown into an obsession with her rejection of him. He had been sure she would see reason and come back with her tail between
her legs, within a day or so of leaving. With four bairns in tow and Donald having washed his hands of them, was there any other choice? But the days had turned into weeks and still no word from
her. No word for
him.
He could scarcely believe it.

After a month he had paid a visit to the Sunderland workhouse in Bishopwearmouth after it had occurred to him that that was the answer. She’d placed the youngsters into the house and gone
off to find work of some kind, but Lucy being Lucy, she would go to see them on visiting days. He could trace her through her siblings and, with her soft heart and caring nature, she was probably
thinking she had made a terrible mistake by now in leaving them there. He would use that.

He had been excited that day when he’d gone to see the master of the workhouse and, having convinced himself he was right, was bitterly disappointed and angry when he was proved wrong.
Vowing to himself he’d take it out on her hide when he did find her, he was forced to accept that he was back at square one.

But he could be patient. He nodded at the thought as he drove into The Green and came to a stop, continuing to sit in the car as he stared blindly through the windscreen. He had been the first,
and Lucy was his. She was leading him a hell of a dance right enough, but that was part of the game. Say what you like, she had wanted him that night deep down. They were all the same, playing the
coquette while telling you with their eyes they were ripe for it.

He eased himself out of the car, standing for a moment as his eyes swept his surroundings. He’d come a long way since he was a snotty-nosed bairn playing in the back lanes around Zetland
Street and he intended to go further still. She would be the wife of a wealthy and influential man and, once that ring was on her finger, he’d bring her to heel.

His body hardened as he visualized exactly how he would subdue and subjugate her, and as he turned towards the house he stopped. He wouldn’t be able to sleep. His loins were burning for a
woman and he knew the very one who would do. Kitty had been as innocent as they come when she’d first been brought to the brothel by the father who’d sold her for a good sum to the
Kanes, but she’d learned fast and didn’t mind a bit of rough stuff as long as she was kept supplied with the white powder she craved. Aye, a servicing by Kitty would help him sleep, and
the good thing about a whore was that they didn’t mind whose name you called out when you were using them.

He got back in the car, driving round the deserted green and turning in the direction of Monkwearmouth. As he drove, his mind was on the pleasures of the next hour or two, but it wasn’t
Kitty he was envisaging beneath him, but the girl who continued to elude him and torment his waking and sleeping hours.

‘So, what do you say, lass?’ Perce sat, his great red hands on his knees and his eyes fixed on Lucy’s white face. It was ten o’clock in the evening. The
children were asleep and, a few minutes before, Lucy had sat down with the fishmonger to hear their fate. She had been praying all day that Perce would find it in his heart to keep Ruby and John
and the twins, but never in her wildest imaginings had she considered him saying what he had.

‘But . . .’ She swallowed past the constriction in her throat. ‘Why would you want to marry me?’

There was an inflection in her voice that made Perce sit up straighter. ‘It’s not for that, lass,’ he said hastily. ‘I mean, not with you carryin’ the bairn
an’ all. I wouldn’t expect—’ He had turned as red as a beetroot. ‘What I mean to say is: that side of things wouldn’t happen until after the bairn comes
an’ you’re feelin’ all right.’

She wanted to get up and run out of the room, out of the house, to keep running and running. Instead, she said tremblingly, ‘Then why?’

Perce cleared his throat. ‘Seems to me you’re in a fix,’ he said, stating the obvious. ‘An’ me, well, you know how it was with the bairns when you first came.
Matthew, he’s took to you, an’ I don’t know how he’d be if you went now. An’ Charley, he already looks on you like his own mam. You’ve put things right again,
that’s how I see it, an’ young Ruby and John are good little workers an’ all.’ He waved his hands helplessly, not knowing how much to say. He had been thinking hard all day
and, although he’d loved his Ada, he knew Lucy was a cut above. He’d never get the chance to marry a bonny, bright lass like her again. Course, it was too soon after Ada and the tongues
would wag, especially when Lucy started to show, but he’d weather the storm.

‘But if you feel like that, couldn’t I stay and things remain as they are?’ Immediately Lucy had spoken she knew she had shocked him.

‘With you in the family way? No, lass, no. There’s already been a bit of gossip, you know how folks are, but with you bein’ a slip of a lass an’ me just havin’ lost
Ada, it was somethin’ and nothin’. But this’ – he gestured towards her stomach – ‘this makes everything different. Folk’d say it was mine, and me name
would be mud if I didn’t do the right thing an’ marry you.’

‘But it’s not yours.’

‘Aye, well, you know that an’ I know it, but the rest of ’em.’ He shook his head. ‘I’ve got Charley an’ Matthew to think of, lass. I don’t want
them hearin’ somethin’ when they’re older and thinkin’ the less of me. Besides’ – he hesitated, and then ploughed on – ‘even if folk did believe the
bairn wasn’t mine, they wouldn’t expect me to keep you on, not with you havin’ fallen outside wedlock. I’m sorry, lass, but that’s the way it is. You’d have
earned a name for yourself.’

She nodded. She knew full well what people would think of her. Gossip would be rife.

‘Knowin’ what happened, that it wasn’t your fault, I’d be prepared to bring up the bairn as mine. Give it me name, I mean, an’ treat it like the others.’

The bairn.
Tom Crawford’s bairn.
She wanted it ripped from her body, this monstrosity growing inside her. Her voice so low it was a whisper, she murmured, ‘I could see
someone. Have – have it taken away.’ She knew there were such women who would do the job for a price, everyone did, but not who they were or how much it would cost. Would Perce lend her
the money?

His next words hit that hope on the head. ‘Never, lass, an’ don’t talk of it. It’s a sin against God an’ nature, an’ I know of more than one lass who’s
gone down that route and lived to regret it.’

‘I don’t want his baby, Perce.’ She gulped, tears trickling down her cheeks. ‘I feel dirty, unclean, contaminated.’

Perce drew in breath through his nose and then sighed loudly. ‘The way I see it, lass, you’ve got no choice. And it’s your baby too. An’ mine, if we get wed. Him’
– he searched for the right words – ‘him fathering it is nowt in the long run; it’s what happens after it’s here that counts.’

Lucy stared at the man she had privately termed as slow at best, and simple at worst, and knew a moment’s deep shame at her opinion of him. His words had struck a chord in her – she
had never looked at it like that before. But what if it looked like Tom Crawford when it was born? Worse, what if it had his nature? But she couldn’t cross that bridge now; a day at a time
was enough. And in that moment she knew she was going to accept Perce’s offer of marriage. How she would face the other side of marriage, once the child was born, she didn’t know. It
made her flesh creep to think of lying with him and letting him touch her, but again she told herself: a day at a time. She wanted to be here for the twins and Ruby and John; Matthew and Charley
too, come to it. They needed her, all of them. And if she was being truthful, the thought of ending it all was terrifying. She just didn’t know if it was more terrifying than continuing
on.

‘Are you sure you want to do this, Perce?’ she whispered, part of her hoping he would say no and that he had changed his mind. ‘You said how people would talk. Don’t you
mind?’

Perce stared into the lovely young face in front of him. He might not have much up top, he reflected, but he knew human nature and he recognized a good girl when he saw one. If she left this
place she wouldn’t live long, she’d see to that. She was an innocent. In spite of what had happened, she was an innocent in the true sense of the word and he found that he wanted to
protect and take care of her in a way he never had with Ada. Ada had been a product of the East End, tough and hard-bitten and vigorous, like him, and he had loved her, but she had never aroused
the desire to shield her from the harsher side of life like Lucy did. He didn’t know how this was going to turn out; he only knew he was going to have a damn good try to make it work.

Without any hesitation, he said, ‘I’m sure, lass, and they can say what they want. What they don’t know they tend to make up, and while they’re having us over
they’re leavin’ some other poor blighter alone.’

They were married very quietly by special licence within two weeks, not at the Holy Trinity Church in Church Street, where Perce and Ada had been wed some years before, but at
a small Methodist church where the minister had been very happy to do the job for the handsome donation Perce had made towards the fund for the failing church roof. Only the children were present
and the minister’s wife and grown-up daughter, who agreed to act as witnesses, again for a generous handout by Perce.

Perce closed the shop for a while, and in no more than an hour and a half they were back home, Ruby and John delighted with the bonus of a day off school, and Ruby eager to help Perce in the
shop. After Perce had changed out of his Sunday suit and had a quick bite to eat, the three of them disappeared downstairs, leaving Lucy with the four younger children. They hadn’t really
appreciated what was going on. For the twins the short ceremony meant they could live in their new home forever and would never be cold and wet and hungry again, because that was what Lucy had told
them. Matthew understood that Lucy had agreed to become his new mother and that she would never leave, because that was what Perce had told him. Charley was just happy that the other three were
happy and took his cue from them.

Lucy sat watching them play, ostensibly while tackling a basketful of mending, but in reality her hands were still.

She was a married woman. She felt sick, but more in her spirit than her body. She was tied for life to Perce and, when the child was born, she would become his wife in deed as well as word.