Pit Bank Wench Read online

  ‘What?’ Rubbing sleep from her eyes, the girl looked up at Emma. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she parried the question, not wanting to talk of what had happened at Doe Bank, nor ready to share the horror.

  ‘Where will you be going?’

  Emma glanced at the horizon, the tendrils of smoke returning memories that curled icy tremors along her spine. Clenching her teeth she tried to force back the past horror, tried to face the new fear forming in her mind. Where could she go? How would she earn her living? She would not be welcome on the waste heaps of any other coal mine; pit bank women had a hard time scraping together the coal chippings they sold for a few pence. It was difficult enough for them to earn their keep locally. They would not share it with her, she would not be tolerated on their territory.

  Scrambling to her feet, still rubbing at her eyes, the girl Emma had pulled from Coombses’ barn looked at her as she put the question again.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  That was a question Emma had asked herself, only one of the many hiding in her heart.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she answered honestly.

  ‘Where were you bound for last night when you came to the farm?’

  Emma brushed stalks of grass from skirts still damp from the night’s rain.

  ‘I was not bound for anywhere in particular.’

  The girl’s thin face clouded and her lips trembled as she turned away.

  ‘You don’t have to worry that I’ll tag on to you. I just thought we might walk a ways together, that’s all.’ Her voice shook. ‘But you go wherever it is you were headed last night and . . . and I’ll go somewheres else. I don’t want to be a burden, not to nobody.’

  Seeing the hurt in the girl’s eyes as she turned away, Emma felt its echo inside herself. The girl did not want to be a nuisance, she would hold her own pain locked inside herself, just as Carrie had done.

  ‘I didn’t mean that having you with me would be a burden,’ Emma said quickly. ‘It is simply that the place I’d meant to go, where I’d hoped to stay, isn’t there any more.’

  ‘I see.’ The girl’s voice was dull and flat with disbelief. ‘It just disappeared, like in a fairy story!’

  If only it had been a fairy story. If only she could have woken to find that Carver Felton’s rape of her, that the deaths of her parents and sister, had been a story she had read the night before and the horror of it would disappear with the morning mist. But it would not. Emma felt the sharp ache of it anew. It would not disappear, would never leave her.

  ‘It has gone,’ she said gently. ‘But not by any stroke of a fairy wand. Plovers Croft was knocked down, flattened on the orders of its owner.’

  ‘I heard tell of that.’ The girl twisted round to face her. ‘The folk that passed through told of it, about losing their homes and having to leave behind what they couldn’t carry. Many of the women were in tears and the men close to it. But though they hadn’t had so much as a cup of tea since early morning, they got nothing from Liza but sharp words. That woman never knew the meaning of the word charity! But why did the owner have the houses pulled down? Nobody seemed to know when they were asked.’

  ‘Owners don’t give reasons.’ Emma remembered her father’s summary dismissal from the Topaz coal mine.

  ‘No, they just chuck people out on to the street. Lor’, I wish the same thing would happen to a few of them. Let them feel what it’s like to be without a home and with nowhere to go. They wouldn’t be so quick to give folk their marching orders if they’d had a dose of their own medicine! So what has become of the folk you hoped to lodge with? Have they gone on the road?’

  Drawing the shawl from her shoulders Emma gave it a brisk shake, dislodging blades of grass and stalks of heather. ‘Jerusha lived alone. She was a friend of my family’s and I had thought to stay at her house at least overnight. But when I reached the Croft the house was gone.’

  The girl’s hurt giving way to curiosity, she asked, ‘Jerusha? Would that be Jerusha Paget who knows the use of herbs and such? I’ve heard Liza speak of her, but can’t say I remember a woman of that name pass by the farm yesterday.’

  ‘She didn’t go by way of the farm.’ Emma replaced her shawl, fastening the corners beneath her breasts. ‘She’s gone to live at Doe Bank.’

  ‘She’s a friend of your family, you said? So how come you aren’t travelling with your folk?’

  ‘I think it’s time we moved on.’ Emma’s mouth set firmly. The girl’s enquiry was only natural. Why would Emma not be with her family? But she was not prepared to answer.

  Emma’s reaction telling her to press no further, the girl brushed at her own ragged skirts. ‘Is it all right then? For me to walk alongside you, I mean? It will only be until we get to Wednesbury, then . . . then I’ll be off.’

  Where would she be off to? Emma glanced at the stick-like figure walking beside her. The Coombses had taken her from the workhouse, was that the place she planned to return to . . . was it the only place Emma herself would find? The workhouse! The very name evoked dread. People chose to die on the road sooner than be taken into such institutions. But could she make that choice? She was almost certainly carrying a child. Had she the right to kill it too? But then, hadn’t she tried once already?

  ‘My name is Daisy . . . Daisy Tully.’

  Emma smiled into the girl’s haggard little face, realising her silence had been taken for rebuke and this was the girl’s overture of friendship. ‘Mine’s Emma,’ she said, ‘Emma Price.’

  ‘Emma . . . that’s a pretty name. I like it.’

  ‘Daisy’s a pretty name too.’

  ‘My mother used to say it was her favourite, that it was the name her mother had. My mother was pretty . . .’ The girl choked on a sob. ‘If it hadn’t been for me she would still be alive. She worked herself to death so as to keep me!’

  Coming to a halt, Emma drew the girl to her. ‘Then she must have loved you very much, Daisy.’

  ‘Yes.’ The girl sniffed. ‘I know she did, but I wish she had put me in the workhouse from being born. She could have left me there and run off, same as the man who ran off and left her pregnant. I wish to God she had then she would still be alive today.’

  ‘We can’t know that, Daisy,’ Emma soothed. ‘But supposing she had left you. Ask yourself, loving you as she did, what kind of life would it have been for her after giving you up? What happiness would she have known then? Be grateful for what you had together, the love you shared. Nothing can take the place of that.’

  ‘I know, but I’m so lonely, Emma, and so afraid of being used by another man such as Eli Coombs.’

  Emma’s grip on the girl tightened. She was beginning to know what that loneliness was like: to be without the ones you loved, entirely alone in the world. And she had already met with the like of Coombs.

  ‘There can be no substitute for your mother,’ she told the weeping girl. ‘But we might both be a little less lonely if we stayed together.’

  ‘You mean it?’ The girl’s eyes lit up. ‘You truly mean it, Emma? I can stay with you?’

  ‘For as long as you wish.’ She smiled.

  Wiping away tears with the back of her hand, Daisy beamed up at her. ‘That will be forever, Emma. I will never leave you.’

  Emma looked over to the chimneys rising tall and black from the ironworks and coal mines that dominated the town.

  ‘I will never leave you, Emma.’ Paul Felton had used those very words to her.

  But he had left her!

  He had been sent away by his brother. And then Carver Felton had deliberately raped her.

  ‘Daisy, I’m sorry but we have to do it, we have to go to the workhouse.’

  ‘No, Emma, we can try . . .’

  ‘We’ve tried everywhere.’ Emma sank tiredly to the ground. ‘There’s no one in Wednesbury will give us work or a place to sleep, and we can’t go on sleeping under hedges.’

  ‘But, Emma, you don’t know what it’s like to be i
n that place. It doesn’t just break your heart it destroys your soul. I spent five years in there and, I tell you, I would rather die than go back.’

  ‘That’s easy to say.’ Emma stared blankly towards the still busy High Street. ‘But what of the winter? We can’t sleep out in the open in the ice and snow. It has to be the workhouse, Daisy, or we’ll both die.’

  ‘It isn’t winter yet!’ Daisy’s mouth set in a defiant line. ‘Besides we have pie for supper.’

  ‘Pie?’ Emma looked up questioningly.

  A smile breaking out on her thin little face, Daisy brought a small crudely wrapped package from her pocket.

  Watching her peel back the wax paper Emma felt her stomach cramp with hunger. It was the first food she had seen since that slice of bread and cheese Liza Coombs had grudgingly pushed at her. Two days without food, her only drink being water from the horse trough in the centre of the town or from the brook that bordered the heath.

  ‘There.’ Daisy broke the pie into two pieces, holding out half to Emma.

  ‘Where did you get this?’ Reaching for the food she paused, eyes widening with horror. ‘Daisy, your hands!’

  ‘They don’t hurt!’ Daisy’s mutinous look was back but as Emma made to touch her hands she drew them quickly away.

  ‘Daisy, they must hurt, they’re red raw. What on earth have you been doing?’

  Squatting beside Emma, the girl pushed the pie towards her. ‘I been cleaning, that’s all, just cleaning. The woman that keeps the pie shop in Union Street said she would give me a couple of mutton pies in return for scrubbing out the shop. I scrubbed all day yesterday while you was looking for work. Then when it came time for her to close up she said there was nothing left, not a crumb, so I was to go there today for what was owed me. Then when I went this morning she said she would pay me what was settled on together with a shilling if I scrubbed the rest of the house. I agreed. Well, I had to, a shilling isn’t to be sneezed at, only when time came to settle . . .’

  ‘She didn’t break her word again?’

  ‘No, but that don’t mean she didn’t try.’ Above the mutinous set of her mouth the girl’s eyes twinkled. ‘Said there was nothing left, just like afore, so I told her I would take the eightpence two pies sold for along with a shilling for the cleaning. Well, that wiped the smirk off her face, but I could see she was thinking of a way to get out of giving me the money, so I told her if I wasn’t paid what we’d agreed then come the morning there would not be a whole pane of glass in her windows.’

  ‘Daisy!’ Emma tried not to smile. ‘You didn’t?’

  ‘I bloody well did!’ Daisy bit into her share of the pie, chewing with noisy satisfaction. ‘That old bag weren’t going to cheat me again. I said I was happy to leave it at that if she were; that it would cost more than a shilling and eightpence to get her windows put back in. She threatened to call for the bobbies but I gave her a small reminder that changed her tune.’

  ‘A reminder?’ Emma stared at the girl who suddenly seemed so much older than herself.

  ‘Arrh.’ Her mouth full of pie, Daisy nodded. ‘I reminded her there be some things that even a bobby has to turn his back to and while his back is turned . . . Anyway she could tell I were taking no more of her fancy dealings so she paid up.’

  ‘But you still got only one pie?’

  ‘That be true.’ Daisy smiled. ‘This time there were only one left. It were the one she’d laid aside for her own supper!’

  Emma took the pie the girl still held towards her, mouth watering with hunger.

  ‘Then the woman did cheat you?’

  Picking each separate crumb from her skirts and popping it in her mouth, Daisy licked each red finger with a slow appreciative tongue.

  ‘She’d have to be smarter than she is to do that, Emma. I only got one pie, true enough, but I got the fourpence in place of the other one. Mind, it would have been worth taking a penny less just to see the look on her face. Eh! If looks could kill, the preacher man would be saying his words over me right now.’

  The preacher man! Emma’s hand dropped from her mouth, food forgotten, as the horror of that night flooded back in stark reality. The preacher man. That was what the whole of Doe Bank had called him. The man who’d helped sort out problems, who’d preached in the Chapel. The man who’d quoted the Bible while abusing his own child.

  ‘Emma, be you all right?’

  Daisy’s anxious voice brought her back from the edge of the darkness that beckoned. ‘’Twould be better if you ate that pie rather than nursed it. Lack of food has made you feel faint.’ Anxiety sharpening her voice, Daisy fumbled once more into her pocket, drawing out a small bottle she had filled with water.

  ‘Jackson’s chemist’s shop,’ she explained, pulling out the cork. ‘He weren’t looking so I borrowed a bottle. We’ll give it back when we’re finished.’

  The water helped clear the awful shadows from her mind. Emma handed back the bottle.

  ‘I . . . I must be more hungry than I’d thought.’ The explanation failed to bring the smile she had intended. ‘But I’ll be fine once I have eaten.’

  ‘Then stop talking and get that pie inside of you. Then we’ll talk about that workhouse!’

  ‘He is very handsome.’ Melissa Gilbert studied her own reflection in the triple mirrors of her dressing table. ‘Those silver streaks in his dark hair lend him quite a devilish look.’

  ‘And you like that?’ Cara watched her cousin pull a brush through long chestnut hair that gleamed in the gaslight.

  ‘It helps make a man more interesting, and Carver Felton is certainly that.’

  ‘Carver . . . or Carver’s money!’

  Melissa smiled into the mirror. ‘I find both more than a little interesting.’

  ‘Forget Carver Felton!’ Cara snapped. ‘He would do you no good.’

  Laying the brush aside, wide swathes of soft shining hair falling over her shoulders, covering shapely breasts hidden beneath soft white silk, Melissa twisted about on her small gilt chair. ‘Maybe he would not, Cara, but his money most certainly would.’

  A snatch of breath marking her irritation, Cara Holgate’s handsome face darkened. She had not expected this. She had not thought Melissa and Carver Felton would meet.

  ‘You can do better for yourself than him. There are plenty of men with money enough to make him look like a pauper.’

  Melissa smiled in the way she knew would heighten her cousin’s annoyance. She had always been able to get under Cara’s skin. Ever since they were children she had played this game, and she had always won.

  ‘But do they have his looks?’ she asked softly, grey eyes following every nuance, every shade of emotion that flickered across the other woman’s face. ‘I prefer a man I am considering as a husband to have both those qualities: money and a handsome face.’

  A husband? Cara felt her nerves quicken. If Melissa and Carver were to wed, where would that leave her?

  ‘Carver Felton your husband!’ She laughed lightly. ‘My dear girl, how can you even think it? He’s a womaniser. He has made love to at least a dozen women I can put a name to, and probably as many again that I cannot!’

  ‘Including yourself, Cara?’

  A smile painting her mouth like rouge, Melissa waited for the reply, inwardly congratulating herself. The question had obviously taken Cara off guard.

  ‘I . . .’ she stuttered. ‘I . . . that has nothing to do with it!’

  ‘I agree.’ Turning back to the mirror, Melissa took up the brush once more, drawing it through the rich thickness of her hair. ‘The number of women Carver Felton has had or who they are is of no importance. I want only his name, his money and the position that goes with them. The other things that go with marriage can be found elsewhere. By Carver and myself.’

  ‘So, you are thinking of Felton for a husband?’ Cara stared back at the smiling grey eyes while inside her jealousy tumbled like rushing waters.

  ‘Only thinking of it, Cara.’ Brush held in mid-air,
Melissa watched the effect of her answer on the older woman. ‘At the moment.’

  Aware of the iron will beneath her cousin’s smile, Cara turned away, walking to the other side of the room before answering. ‘I would have thought that had you to choose a husband from among iron masters and colliery owners you would have chosen someone younger. Someone like Arthur Payne, for instance.’

  ‘Arthur Payne?’ Touching the back of her brush to her mouth, Melissa adopted a pensive look. ‘He’s younger, of course, and is handsome in a pretty boy sort of way. But then, I do not care for men when they are quite so young. They’re so . . . so gauche, don’t you think, Cara?’

  ‘No, I do not,’ she snapped. ‘What I do think is that you would be a fool even to consider Felton. He would only take what he wanted then drop you. And think how that would go down in the drawing rooms of Wednesbury, not to mention Rugeley.’

  ‘It would cause a stir. But then a woman has merely to change her gown to set this town talking.’

  ‘I am glad you see that. So unless you wish to be the centre of attention you will cease throwing yourself at Carver Felton!’

  Turning once again so her gaze was on the mirror, Melissa shrugged her silk-clad shoulders. ‘If being the centre of their attention means I have all of Carver’s, then so be it. I suppose a woman must be prepared to suffer a little censure to get what she wants.’

  ‘Or a great deal of pain getting what she deserves!’ Cara’s eyes blazed angrily. ‘Play your games if you must, Melissa – and, God help us, we both know you must – but don’t play them with Carver Felton. He is not for you!’

  Setting the brush on the dressing table, Melissa watched the older woman’s reflection, saw the fingers curl and uncurl at her sides, the full mouth tight as a drawstring. This was far enough for now. Annoy Cara further and she might just send her packing back to Rugeley, where it was doubtful Felton would follow. He was only just sniffing at the bait; he had to swallow it before he could be reeled in.

  ‘You’re probably right, Cara, maybe he’s not for me. But you must agree he would make an excellent catch for somebody?’