HAROLD RUSSELL RAISED tired eyes to where his wife banged dollops of mashed potato on to a row of mismatched plates – clanging and clattering that had dragged him from his sleep. She glanced back and her scowl turned into a contemptuous snarl.
He heaved himself from his fireside chair with a grunt and crossing to sit at the table, smiled faintly at his children, huddled on a filthy pallet.
With a flick of her wrist, Alice threw the lumpy mess on to another plate. ‘Well? Were you taken on anywhere?’
He met her icy glare with a sigh. ‘Not now, woman.’
The crash, as she slammed the pan down, made him jump several inches from his seat. The smaller children whimpered, covered their ears with grubby hands and pressed against their older siblings.
As he peered into her ugly face – the only way to describe the filthy, scab-dotted skin framed by straggly hair stiff with grease – a flush of fury rose up his neck to meet a muscle pulsating in his jaw. With a roar that surprised himself, he grabbed the steaming pan and hurled it at the wall with such force that it chipped the brickwork then clattered across the room, splattering the cowering children with its grey-coloured contents.
In heavy silence, he and his wife glared at each other across the table. And this was the scene his brother-in-law met with as he stumbled through the back door.
Joseph kicked the door shut, dragged an arm from his coarse jacket and, with one eye, took in the adults’ stiff faces, the children frantically licking potato from their arms and hands, then the pan sitting on the flagstones as though it belonged there. He hiccuped twice and grinned. ‘All right?’
Neither Alice nor Harold responded.
Still grinning, he yanked his other arm from his jacket. This sent him staggering and he made a grab for the table’s edge, almost knocking off a plate. ‘All right?’ he slurred again in Alice’s face.
She grimaced. ‘Skenning drunk again? Though why I bother asking, I don’t know. Anyone with half a nostril can tell you’ve spent the day with yours at the bottom of a tankard.’ He hiccuped again and she shook her head in disdain. ‘Sit down, you drunken fool, afore you fall down.’
Holding out both arms, he dropped on to a stool. Alice stomped across the room and snatched up the pan, and he nodded. ‘Let’s have it, then. I’m fair clemmed.’
‘Oh!’ Scraping out the dregs, her lips stretched against the blackened stumps remaining in her otherwise empty mouth. ‘And why didn’t you get a meal at Nellie’s? I take it that’s where you’ve been all day again?’ She shook the spoon under his nose. ‘Nay, but you’ll not, will you? Too busy wasting brass you’ve not got on ale to buy grub, ain’t you? Well, I’m warning you, brother or no, you’d best start getting your hand fast in that pocket of yourn or you’ll be out on your ear.’
Pushing a plate towards him then slamming another in front of her husband, her voice dripped with scorn. ‘There you are. Must feed the hard-working men, mustn’t we?’ She slapped her forehead. ‘Eeh, I forget. Youse don’t bloody work, do you!’
Harold’s head snapped back. ‘There’s nowt about, woman. I’ve tramped the length and breadth of Bolton forra day’s graft, from dawn till dusk, for nigh on a month. Folk won’t take me on at my age, not when they can employ someone younger – or Irish – for less wages.’ He looked at his plate with a hollow laugh. ‘Them Irish should spend a night beneath this roof; they’d soon know the real meaning of famine.’
She ignored him and turned back to Joseph. ‘And you’ll not find work sitting on your arse in that inn. You leave a steady job and don’t bother looking for another. Then there’s that cottage of yourn lying empty. And as for that workhouse whore you call a wife—’ She stepped back as he thumped the tabletop, sending the plates rattling in protest.
‘I told thee, she’ll come begging me to take her back once the preacher’s put her straight. You’ll see, I’ll be back at Spring Row come the new week. And by God will she pay for forcing me from my own home.’
‘You’ve likely lost that cottage by now, you bleedin’ fool.’
‘Nay. Them there cottages have nowt to do with the mine. De Mathers don’t own them so losing my job don’t mean I’ve lost my home,’ he told her, referring to the owner of several Bolton pits who resided at Breightmet Hall, a centuries-old mansion with sprawling grounds and gardens situated on a peak of land overlooking the town. Lord de Mathers provided dwellings for his miners but the dilapidated hovels were a last resort if no alternative was available.
‘Regardless, you’ve not kept the rent up.’
Folding his arms, he grinned. ‘That’s being taken care of.’
Alice jerked her head to the children. When the bundles of rags scuttled back to the mattress with their plates, she cupped her chin and frowned. ‘What d’you mean, the rent’s taken care of? Who’s paying it, then?’ She shook her head when his smile broadened. ‘By God. That gullible whore’s dafter than I thought.’
‘You don’t know the half of it.’
Alice and even Harold, his curiosity roused, stared at him in confusion. Laughing, he lumbered to his jacket and rummaged in a pocket. The children, cheeks bulging with potato, gawped as, like a conjuror at a magic show, he pulled out a string of fat sausages with both hands. He whipped out the remainder with a flourish. ‘Ta-dah!’
Alice rose slowly, eyes like saucers. ‘Eeh, Joseph … Meat? We’ve not had meat in bleedin’ weeks.’ She snatched it from him, held it to her nose and sniffed. ‘Fresh, an’ all!’ she marvelled.
‘That’s not all.’ He extracted a paper-wrapped parcel from another pocket which revealed, when Alice tore it open, a large pork chop.
Harold shook his head in wonder. ‘She give you them?’
‘Aye.’
‘And she’s paying your cottage’s rent while you’re here?’
‘Aye.’
‘Well.’ He blew through puckered lips. ‘You’re a rum bugger, Joseph, you are. That wench must be besotted, poor cow.’
As Alice bustled around the fire with the frying pan, he eased into Harold’s chair with a sly smile. He could still feel the fleshy folds of the woman he’d fondled in Nellie’s, and her smell lingered on his hands.
She’d simpered over him, as she always did, and handed over the stolen meat with a seductive wink. She’d also paid for his ale all day and, in the dim recess where they always sat, willingly lifted her long skirts, letting his fingers probe roughly. He’d exposed breasts that glistened in the golden glow of the open fire, could still hear in his mind her groans of pleasure and pain as he sucked and bit her ruby-red nipples.
Nellie had ambled by at one point collecting empty tankards, murky eyes the colour of dirty dishwater lingering on them as she passed. He’d caught her eye and a smirk touched her lips. As she was often heard saying, her customers could do as they pleased so long as they lined her pockets in the process.
Establishments like hers, where hardened criminals and drunkards spent the majority of their waking hours, were the environments where he felt most comfortable. Home was merely somewhere to lay your head, have a meal and have your wife at your beck and call – in the bedroom as much as anywhere. Or at least it had been, he thought, jaw tightening.
He’d go to Bailey on Monday, see how his threat went down concerning the brat; the preacher put the wind up most people. Pity for him he couldn’t spot a good liar when he saw one, Joseph reflected, his grin returning.
He’d been at the end of his tether, wondering how he could return to Spring Row without getting his skull kicked in, when by sheer luck, he’d spotted the preacher in Bolton town the day before. He’d laid it on by the shovel-load and the old man swallowed every word. Sally would have got it both barrels. She’d come crawling through that door before too long.
He didn’t care a fig for the child, but she was his. He owned her. And when the time came and he tired of her, he’d sell her on. She’d fetch more than a shilling in the right places. He’d only got her at such a bargain price because the devil who ran the workhouse owed him. He could make a tidy profit on her in the future, even rent her out for a while first …
His smug smile turned to pure evil at the thought of the Morgans. ‘Youse will pay, an’ all, humiliating me and harbouring that whore,’ he hissed. ‘Aye, by God, you’ll pay.’