Orphan of Angel Street (27 page)

James was appalled. He’d pictured Margaret in the company of some staid matron who would bring her to her senses.

‘Oh James, don’t tell me I’ve been stupid. I feel sure she’ll be all right, and that you’ll feel the same about her when you meet her.’

‘Well, I hope so.’ He went coldly to the door. Honestly, just when he thought she was beginning to see sense! ‘I do wish you wouldn’t rush into things in this irrational manner, Margaret. We’ll give the girl a month’s trial, and then see whether or not I think she’s suitable!’

‘So you’re going then – with nowt more to say?’

Mabel stood huddled in her shawl in the doorway of the dank bedroom. Her face was further hardened by grief, hair turning grey. She watched Mercy gathering together her clothes and her few other possessions.

‘What else is there to say?’ Mercy was folding her grey work dress. ‘You mean, no fond farewells? Oh, there’ll be fond farewells all right – to Elsie and Alf. They’re the ones who’ve been a mom and dad to me.’ She turned to face Mabel. The woman was truly on her own now, but Mercy could find very little pity for her.

‘I don’t owe you a thing. Eight years you’ve had me ’ere to act as your skivvy. You stole me, you did. And the only reason I ever stayed in this pigsty of a place is because of Susan and Elsie and the lads. They’re my people and they always will be. They looked out for me and took care of me while all you could ever think of was yourself. So don’t go telling me I owe yer summat. I don’t.’

She laid her book
Cheerful Homes
, and the embroidered handkerchief on top of the little pile of clothes.

‘When I came ’ere these’re all I had in the world. And there’s not much more to show now, is there? Anything else I’ve ever had’s been down to Dorothy Finch or Elsie.’

‘But Mercy – you’ve been like a daughter to me . . .’

Mercy listened to the self-pity in Mabel’s voice and felt her temper spilling over.

‘No!’ She turned on her. ‘You never once treated me like a mom should treat a daughter, and in your case it’s a good job or I might not be alive to tell the tale, like the rest of your kids!’

Mabel gasped as if she’d been punched and her face took on a terrible, twisted expression.

‘You wicked little bitch, saying a thing like that . . .’

Mercy gathered up her bundle and pushed past her. ‘And where did I learn to be cruel, eh? I’m going now. I’ll be up Moseley, living in a better house than you’ll ever set foot in. And I’ll be back – to see Elsie. You’ve got the parrot if you want some company.’

It was far sadder saying her goodbyes to George that afternoon, than to Mabel. Mercy bent and looked into his cage, smelling the sharp odour of him. He was busy burrowing his beak into his chest, cleaning himself.

‘Ta-ra, Georgie boy. Make sure she takes care of yer.’

She thought of the hours Susan had spent with him, talking to him. The house felt so desolate now.

She went to take her leave of the Peppers. Time seemed frozen in their house: Tom forever lying there, Elsie with him, shrunken and pinched in the face. She couldn’t say goodbye to Alf or Jack as they were out at work, Rosalie was at school and Johnny was gone. He’d joined the police, was in lodgings somewhere across town.

‘I’m not really saying goodbye, not for good.’ Elsie and Tom looked like ghosts in the dark little slum room.

Elsie came over, opened her arms and drew Mercy into them. Mercy put her arms round Elsie’s waist, feeling her thinness, breathing in the greasy smell of Elsie’s old green woolly. For the first time Mercy could ever remember, Elsie, once strong, vibrant Elsie, sobbed her heart out there in her arms.

‘Oh Elsie, don’t, please . . .’ Mercy’s own tears were falling. She stroked her hands along Elsie’s back. ‘I’m not really going. I’ll come back all I can to see you, and Tom. I’m sorry for leaving you . . .’

‘Can’t yer stay?’ Elsie drew back, wiping her bony hand across her eyes. ‘No, I know it’s wrong of me to ask you. But you could come and stop with us, away from Mabel. And you’d be near Tom . . .’

‘Elsie—’ Mercy steered her to the table and gently sat her down. ‘You know I can’t always stop with Tom, don’t you? That we can’t be anything to each other now, not as ’e is? I did love ’im, you know I did, with all my heart. But ’e’s gone, and I can’t – my Tom’s not here any more.’

Elsie’s watery eyes looked up at her. ‘I know, bab. And my Tom too. ’Course I know that. It’s bad of me. At your age I was marrying Alf and having Maryann soon after. Never see her from one year to the next, now do I? Not as if Coventry’s very far off.’ She looked round at Tom. He seemed to be sleeping, his mouth hanging open.

‘Sometimes I think about finishing ’im off, d’you know that? My own son.’ She started crying again. ‘Who’s ever going to look after ’im but me?’

Mercy couldn’t answer her. She was weighed down by the truth of her words.

‘Elsie, can I have a cuppa tea with yer before I go?’

‘’Course you can. Look at me, wallowing in self-pity. Some send-off for yer.’ She went to stand up.

‘No – let me do it, you sit there.’ Mercy saw Elsie sink back on the chair with relief.

She got out two of Elsie’s willow-patterned cups and laid them on saucers. The two of them sat sipping a strong brew of tea together. It was like old times, yet Mercy could already feel she was slipping away, that her life was elsewhere. She could come and visit, but it would never be the same again. Tears stung her eyes, but she fought them back. No more of that.

Before she left she went to Tom’s bed. With a pang she saw that asleep, he looked more like his old self, the accusing blankness of his eyes hidden behind quivering eyelids.

‘Goodbye, love,’ she whispered. And leant over to kiss him. His face smelt of coal tar soap.

Elsie looked her over at the door, smiling bravely.

‘You’ve grown up to be a right stunner, Mercy. And God knows you deserve a bit of happiness.’ She took Mercy’s arm for a moment. ‘If you run into Johnny, ask ’im to come and see me. I’m not going over there begging.’

Mercy nodded. ‘’Course I will.’

‘Come on.’ Elsie summoned all her energy. ‘You can’t go without seeing everyone.’

She went round the yard, digging them all out of their houses: Mary Jones in her apron, Josie Ripley, the Mc- Gonegalls, everyone except Mabel.

‘Don’t forget us, Mercy!’

‘Ta-ra bab – come back and see us—’

‘’Cos we ain’t going nowhere!’

‘Give us a kiss . . .’

‘Ta-ra – God bless, love – bye!’

They walked down the entry out of the yard as if in triumph, and after all the hugs, pats and kisses, they waved her off down Angel Street. Everyone turned to stare at the beautiful, golden girl after whom the street might have been named, carrying her bundle, a flower in her hat, as she turned to wave a last time, then was gone.

Her room in the Adair house was simple, as Margaret Adair had told her it would be, but she loved it immediately. It was small, squeezed in at the top of the stairs, with just enough room for a bed, a chair and a small white chest of drawers. Resting on it were a pewter candlestick and a bowl and pitcher decorated with honeysuckle. There was a little tasselled rug laid beside the bed on the bare boards, and a high window through which she could only see sky, unless she stood on the chair and looked down across the garden. A small rectangular mirror hung on the wall beside the door, in a white frame.

That evening, as she was stowing her few belongings in the chest of drawers and feeling strange and lonely, she heard a knock at the door, accompanied by giggles.

‘Come in?’

More giggles as the door opened and Mercy saw Emmie, the freckly maid, followed by a younger girl with wavy brown hair and enormous brown eyes who Mercy knew must be Rose. Both of them were dressed in plain grey frocks and both had the titters and couldn’t seem to stop.

Mercy watched as they sat down on her bed, feeling the infection of their laughter until a grin broke over her face and she was giggling too. The three of them ended up prostrate with laughter on the bed before anyone had spoken a word.

‘Ssshh!’ Rose sat up after a time, trying to sober them. ‘Or she’ll be after us.’

‘Mrs Adair?’ Mercy asked, surprised.

‘No.’ Rose was scathing. ‘The old tartar – Radcliffe, the nanny. You want to watch ’er, she’s a right mardy cow.’

Rose jumped off the bed suddenly and strutted about, face like a po’. ‘What this child needs is a regular routine . . .’

Mercy laughed with recognition. She already liked Rose a great deal. ‘I saw her – when she was here yesterday.’

‘We reckon she’s a witch,’ Rose said, plonking herself down again. ‘Don’t we, Em?’

Emmie, taller, older, had a lot less to say.

‘We just couldn’t believe it when she took you on,’ Rose said. ‘You going to be a companion or summat? We thought ’e’d make ’er ’ave another Radcliffe. Someone all starchy with a face like the back of a tram. ’Ow old’re you?’

When Mercy told them they gasped in amazement.

‘You’re only a year older than me!’ Emmie said.

Rose was seventeen, and in charge of cleaning the upper floor, and Emmie worked downstairs. They both helped out in the kitchen. The cook, Mrs Parslow, was apparently all right once she got to know you.

Mercy could see Rose was busy having a good look round at what little Mercy had brought with her. ‘You been in service before?’

‘Not like this, no.’

‘You got a nerve!’

‘They awright then – to work for?’

‘Not so bad. Mrs Adair’s scared of ’er own shadow, ’er is. ’E’s awright, when ’e’s in a good mood . . .’

‘Which ain’t been very often lately,’ Emmie commented.

Mercy felt thoroughly cheered up by their company. It was a long time since she’d had a laugh with anyone her own age. The two of them took her to see the room they shared. Rose led them along the landing. On the way she leant close to Mercy, pointing to a third door and whispering, ‘That one across there is Radcliffe’s – when she’s not down there scaring the wits out of that poor babby.’

They sat for a few moments in Rose and Emmie’s room where there were two beds and a small window facing the road.

‘I think I’d better go down,’ Mercy said.

‘Eh – if you’re ’er companion,’ Emmie said as Mercy stood up, ‘does this mean we ’ave to wait on you?’

Mercy grinned. ‘Oh, I blooming well hope so!’

‘I want you to know,’ James Adair told her, ‘that I am at first only employing you for a trial period of one month.’

Mercy stood before him in the front parlour. Mr Adair turned away and addressed her reflection in the giltframed mirror over the mantelpiece. Mercy thought how tall he was. She could see where Stevie got his looks, the shape of the face, brown eyes. He stood there with his legs apart, swaying backwards and forwards a little, one hand stroking his moustache. Mercy did not know how to speak to him. She saw Margaret Adair smile at her across the room, trying to be reassuring, but only managing instead to look more anxious.

‘Any trouble,’ Mr Adair went on, ‘anything missing from the house—’

‘James!’ his wife protested miserably.

‘Any upset in the household routine for which I consider you responsible, and you will have to go before the month is up.’ He turned round again and looked at her sternly. ‘Is that clear?’

‘Yes, sir.’ Mercy looked at the rich swirls of crimson, fawn, green, on the rug under her feet. He didn’t want her here, that was as plain as anything. At that moment she felt like running back home to Elsie.

‘I’ll be direct with you.’ Mr Adair spoke as if he were addressing a clutch of businessmen. ‘I should not have employed you myself. My wife acted rather hastily. I should have looked for someone more mature to be a decent and respectable support to her.’

Mercy felt very deflated and cold inside. Perhaps after all her defiant words to Mabel, she didn’t have a future in this house.

Seeing her dismayed expression, Margaret Adair spoke gently to her.

‘Mercy – perhaps this is not a good moment to discuss too many things. Come down to me tomorrow morning and we shall talk about your duties properly.’ She looked apprehensively at her husband. ‘You’ve finished with Mercy, haven’t you, dear?’

He nodded curtly.

‘You can go and ask Mrs Parslow for a plate of food, and then if I were you I should have an early night.’

Mercy slunk out of the room. After she’d eaten some cold beef and potato, she slowly made her way upstairs. She didn’t know what else to do but shut herself in her room. It felt too early to go to sleep.

The attic stairs were next to Stevie’s nursery. Pausing by the door, Mercy heard the sound of splashing water. It must be his bathtime. She pressed her ear to the door, suddenly full of longing. He was such a nice babby. It would have been fun to go in and play with him if he hadn’t had such a off-putting keeper! She smiled, hearing Stevie gurgling behind the door. Oh well, perhaps she’d get a chance to play with him when he was down with Mrs Adair.

As she moved her head away from the door, a high shriek came from the room, a sound so sudden and tormented it could only have been of pain. It was followed by a few seconds’ silence, in which she heard the nanny’s voice say, sweetly, ‘There, oh dear, there we are,’ before Stevie gathered his breath and began to scream and scream.

The sounds followed Mercy up to the attic. She sat on her bed. His crying went on for a long time. Eventually it went quiet.

Mercy didn’t know what to do. It was growing dark and cold. She lit the candle and put it on the chair by the bed. Then she undressed. She got in under the soft, worn covers, reached for her
Cheerful Homes
by Dr J. W. Kirton and began slowly to read,

‘It is the most natural thing,’ the book began, ‘for young people to indulge in the hope that some fine day they will fall in love with someone, and someone will do the same thing in return.’

She turned the book over, lying with it on her stomach, looking up at the candlelight shadows on the white, bugless ceiling. She thought of Tom, of Elsie and the others waving her goodbye that afternoon. This house felt so big and quiet and strange, and it was obvious Mr Adair didn’t want her there. Full of sadness and uncertainty, she wanted to run back to all the familiar things of Angel Street. She closed the book and turned over, hugging her pillow. She cried quietly to herself.