‘Mr Grimshaw is at Ma Baker’s, Nessie. Shall we hide under the table and pretend we’re not in?’ fifteen-year-old Marcie asked fearfully.
‘No we will not!’ her sister Nessie replied proudly. ‘I’ve never hidden from the rent man yet and I’m not about to start now. Just sit down at the table and leave him to me.’ Seeing the frightened look on her younger sister’s face, her expression softened. ‘It’ll be all right, love,’ she assured her. ‘I’ve got some of the rent for him, he’ll wait for the rest.’
Despite her brave words, Nessie’s stomach was in knots. It was a well-known fact that their landlord was not a man to be messed with, but what alternative did she have? Before her horrific death some eighteen months before, her mother had always insisted that all of her offspring were out of the way when the landlord called and somehow she had always paid him. But now, with only Reuben’s wage coming in, things were going from bad to worse and some days Nessie, as the oldest girl, struggled to even feed them all, let alone pay the rent.
She felt a moment’s resentment as she thought of her father who had abandoned them all two years before when he had run off with the landlady of the local inn close to where they had lived. They’d not seen him since and in some ways it had been a blessing. At least now they didn’t have to live in fear of him rolling in drunk and aggressive from the pub. Compared to where they used to live, the rent on this cottage was much cheaper but it was reflected in their living conditions, which were sparse to say the least. ‘But needs must,’ their mother had told her brood cheerfully, and somehow, she had managed to hold the family together, bless her.
Blinking back tears as she thought of her mother and the unthinkable way in which her life had come to an end, Nessie smiled at her sister. ‘Take Joseph out into the back yard for a few minutes, Marcie. The fresh air will do him good.’
Joseph was now almost twenty months old with light brown hair and hazel eyes. He was small for his age and had never been a robust child, but unlike Marcie, she and her brother, Reuben, adored him and spoiled him shamelessly. Nessie watched as her sister swept him up into her arms and hurried away with a resentful look on her face. Then taking a deep breath, she squared her slight shoulders and waited for the knock on the door.
It came soon enough and with what she could muster of the rent money gripped tight in her hand, she went to answer it.
‘Mr Grimshaw.’ Her voice was icily polite and he grinned at her, his eyes sweeping over her lasciviously.
There was no doubt about it, this little filly was turning into a head-turner. Admittedly she wasn’t beautiful in the classical sense. Her hair, which was unfashionably straight, hung almost to her waist like a shimmering copper cloak streaked with gold and her nose was a little too upturned to be deemed pretty. Her cheeks were deeply dimpled when she smiled and her mouth was just a fraction too wide. Even so, her lips were full and red and her skin like peaches and cream. But it was her eyes, easily her best feature, that fascinated him. They were fringed with dark, gold-tipped lashes and were a deep, tawny colour that could change to darkest brown if she was upset. They were quite unlike anything he’d seen before. At sixteen years old, her slim figure was filling out nicely and Seth Grimshaw desperately wanted to own her.
‘So, me beauty, got me rent ready fer me, have you?’ he asked as he licked his fat lips lecherously.
‘Some of it, I’ll make sure to have the rest ready for you the next time you call.’ Nessie opened her hand and as he stared at the collection of ha’pennies and coppers he sneered, his nostrils widening repugnantly.
‘That’s no good to me, lass. The rent is three and sixpence per week, as you well know. There’s just short of two bob there.’
‘I’m quite aware of that,’ Nessie answered coolly. Her face was outwardly calm but inside her stomach was churning. ‘But Reuben sprained his ankle last week and had to have three days off work until he could put his weight on it again and it’s made us short.’
She had expected him to turn nasty, he was known for it hereabouts, but instead he surprised her when he leaned in and told her in a low voice, ‘Well, just see as you have it next time, pet … otherwise we’ll have to think of another way you can pay me, eh?’ His putrid breath enveloped her as, reaching his hand forward, he suddenly tweaked her breast.
Cheeks flaming, she sprang away from him as if she had been burned. He had left her in no doubt of what he wanted and Nessie felt sick to her stomach as she stared at the disgusting creature. Seth Grimshaw was fat and forty if he was a day and even now he was at arm’s length, the ripe smell of him assaulted her. He had a large moustache and the sight of the food caught in it made her want to gag. He was grossly overweight and his fat stomach strained against the buttons on his grubby, brightly coloured waistcoat. His hair was grey and plastered to his head with Macassar oil and Nessie found him totally repulsive.
‘It will be here for you,’ Nessie muttered primly as she thrust the money into his podgy fingers.
He grinned as he dropped the coins into the bag about his waist. ‘See that it is,’ he said, then he walked away without another word.
Nessie hastily slammed the door and leaned heavily against it, shaking like a leaf in the wind. At that moment, Marcie’s head popped around the back door and her eyes swiftly swept the room. ‘Has he gone then?’
‘Yes, he’s gone.’ Nessie sank onto the nearest chair, suddenly feeling weary. She was so tired of having to rob Peter to pay Paul and make ends meet, but what choice did she have? She had promised her mother, before she had been so cruelly taken away from them, that should anything ever happen to her she would keep the family together, and up until now she had, although she was well aware that she couldn’t have managed it without the support of Reuben. He worked laying the train tracks that were springing up all over the country. Sometimes this meant that he had to work away from home but every Friday he turned up, as regular as clockwork, to tip his wages onto the table for her and Nessie wondered how they would ever manage without him. He was her rock and she depended on him.
Marcie, on the other hand, was a different matter altogether. Since leaving school, she’d worked in three different jobs but none of them had held her interest for long, much to Nessie’s annoyance. Marcie wanted to be a lady and considered herself too good for manual work, so recently Nessie had suggested that they should change roles. She would go out to work to bring a little extra in while Marcie stayed at home to care for Joseph and keep the house running. But Marcie had been horrified at the idea. She was no fool and realised that staying at home would probably be harder than going out to work. ‘No,’ she had told her, ‘I’m going to wait until a rich man comes along and sweeps me off my feet, then I shall be waited on and spoiled.’
Nessie knew that the girl was living in cloud cuckoo land. That sort of thing didn’t happen to the likes of them. And yet, despite Marcie’s selfishness, Nessie loved her and tried to turn a blind eye to her behaviour. Usually she managed to keep her patience, but just the day before they’d had a terrible row after Nessie had sent Marcie to the market for some food. Admittedly, Marcie had shopped wisely and got everything on the list, but then finding she had a few precious pennies spare she had bought a length of red ribbon for her hair. Nessie had cried tears of rage and frustration. Marcie didn’t seem to realise that those miserly few pence might mean the difference between them eating or not towards the end of the following week, and worse still, she didn’t seem to much care. But that was Marcie; she would always put herself first.
But all that faded into the background now as Nessie relived in her mind her confrontation with Seth Grimshaw. She shuddered. He’d made it more than obvious what he wanted from her and the thought of him laying his horrible fat hands on her made her tremble with fear. No matter what, somehow, she must find a way to pay him the rent next week.
That night when Reuben arrived home he found Nessie in a subdued mood, and as he washed the worst of the dust from his face, hands and arms in the deep, stone sink and dried himself on the piece of huckaback his sister had laid ready for him, he eyed her curiously.
‘Is everything all right?’ he questioned. Nessie didn’t seem to be her usual cheery self at all.
‘I suppose so,’ she answered dully as she carried a pan of stew to the table before lifting Joseph onto a chair. He rewarded her with a smile that melted her heart and she quickly dropped a kiss on his springy curls. Marcie had been out for the last hour, as she was most nights, visiting her friends.
Reuben crossed to the table, slouching slightly to avoid banging his head on the low-beamed ceiling and Nessie realised with a little shock how tall he had become. ‘Come on, out with it.’ He lifted his spoon as she filled his dish and gave her an encouraging smile.
‘Well, Seth Grimshaw called for the rent today and when I wasn’t able to give him the whole amount he was quite …’ She struggled to find the right way to explain his behaviour. ‘Suggestive, I suppose,’ she finished lamely, keeping her eyes downcast.
‘I see.’ Reuben frowned as he spooned stew into his mouth. Working out in the fresh air all day always gave him a hearty appetite. ‘Then I’ll work some extra shifts to make sure we can pay him properly next week.’
‘You most certainly will not!’ Nessie objected. ‘You work far too many hours as it is. Why, if it wasn’t for you, we’d all have ended up in the workhouse long since.’ Her thoughts flew unbidden, as they often did, to the terrible night her mother had been found murdered. She would never forget that night for as long as she lived and still had nightmares about it as she imagined how her poor mother must have suffered. There was also always the niggling fear that whoever had murdered her was still out there somewhere and she found herself constantly looking over her shoulder and worrying about Marcie every time she went out, especially after dark.
Reuben shrugged and as her thoughts returned to the present Nessie was again struck by the difference between her brother and sister. Reuben had a heart as big as a bucket and would have done anything for any of them, whereas Marcie thought only of herself; although looking back, Nessie realised that she hadn’t always been that way. Marcie had been a placid, good-natured child, and their father’s favourite, until she hit her teenage years and then it was as if someone had suddenly waved a magic wand and she had changed dramatically.
‘Happen it’s time we gave our Marcie a good kick up the backside and got her out to work again,’ he said, as if he had been able to read Nessie’s mind.
‘Hmm, you can try,’ she answered with a wry grin, but Reuben wasn’t smiling.
‘I’ll speak to her tonight,’ he promised. ‘And I’m going to tell her that she either gets out there and finds herself another job or she’ll have to leave.’
Nessie was shocked. He sounded like he meant it, so she didn’t argue. Glancing across at him she smiled. Reuben and Marcie were very much alike in looks if not in nature. They both had deep-brown eyes and dark brunette hair which had a tendency to curl, unlike her own, which her mother had always teased her was as straight as pump water! Little Joseph tended to take more after herself with slightly lighter hair and eyes. Now Nessie focused her attention on the youngest member of the family who was swirling the vegetables around his dish rather than eating them. It was nothing new. Joseph had always been a sickly child with little appetite and she constantly worried about him.
‘Come on, sweetheart, you won’t get to be a big, strong boy like your brother if you don’t eat your dinner up,’ she encouraged.
Holding his arms out to her for a cuddle he gurgled gleefully and she couldn’t help but smile, but eventually she managed to coax a few spoonfuls into him.
Reuben meanwhile dropped heavily into the fireside chair and gingerly inched his boot off. His foot was still very painful from the injury he had sustained the week before at work. Nessie was only too aware that he had returned far too soon – the instant he could get his boot back on, in fact – but that was her brother all over and the difference between him and Marcie struck home once again. Planting Joseph gently on the floor, where he listlessly went back to playing with some wooden bricks Reuben had carved for him, Nessie leaned over and stared at the swelling worriedly.
‘You shouldn’t even be walking on that yet, let alone working,’ she fretted as she stared at his ankle, which looked no better, but Reuben just smiled.
‘It’ll be fine. The swelling will have gone down again by morning.’
Nessie didn’t bother to argue with him. She knew of old that there would be no point. Reuben could be as stubborn as a mule when he had a mind to be. Instead she began to carry the dirty pots to the sink and soon she was up to her elbows in water as she scoured them.
While she was washing up she couldn’t resist peeking at her brother. Since their father had left them, Reuben had become the man of the house and she worried about what would happen to them all if he should meet someone he wanted to wed. After all, he was a good-looking lad – well, man almost now – and Nessie knew that more than the odd girl from the cottages thereabouts had set her cap at him. His arms and shoulders were heavily muscled from the many hours of strenuous manual work he did and his smile could light up a room. Sooner or later one of the girls was bound to catch his eye and then … She stopped her thoughts from going any further. There was no point in looking for trouble when as yet there was none, and she felt selfish for thinking that way. Reuben was entitled to a life, after all. She shouldn’t expect him to spend the rest of his life supporting them.
Once she had finished washing up, Nessie lifted Joseph into the sink and tenderly washed him from head to toe while Reuben sat reading the local newspaper, which Mr Clarke from further along the row always supplied him with when he himself had read them. He’s so small for his age, she thought worriedly. Despite all her best efforts to tempt him to eat, he hardly ate enough to keep a bird alive and she was concerned that as yet he had made no attempt to walk but she hoped that as he grew he would become stronger.
Eventually, when Joseph had been changed into a clean nightshirt and tucked into Nessie’s bed in the room she shared with Marcie, she made her way back downstairs and lit the candles. It was late September and the nights were drawing in rapidly, which meant they needed extra candles – adding to their expenses. Taking up one of Reuben’s socks that needed darning she sighed. It had had so many repairs there was hardly anything of the original sock left, but new ones were out of the question for now. She was still busily sewing when the back door opened, letting in a blast of cold air, and Marcie appeared. She kicked off her boots and pouted, saying, ‘These boots are killing me, they pinch my toes. When can I have a new pair?’
‘When you get off your lazy backside and go out to earn the money to buy some,’ Reuben told her sharply.
Nessie held her breath as she felt a row brewing.
‘And what am I supposed to do?’ Marcie sniffed. ‘It’s all right for you. The railroad supply you with decent boots, at least.’
Reuben glared at her. ‘Aye, they do. I need ’em working out in all weathers,’ he ground out. ‘I’m throwing heavy railway sleepers and train tracks about all day long whereas you never step out o’ the house unless it’s for pleasure. I’m tellin’ you now it has to change so first thing tomorrow I want you up and out looking for a new job otherwise you’ll answer to me when I get home tomorrow evenin’.’
Seeing that her brother meant it, Marcie threw herself on to the wooden settle and crossed her arms across her chest with a sullen look on her face. Life was so unfair!