‘Another whodunit, Mrs Winterbottom? You love a good mystery, don’t you?’ Amy took one of Sexton Blake’s books from the elderly widow’s hand.
Nellie Winterbottom chuckled. ‘Since you put me on to him I’ve read nowt else. Your advice has filled many a lonely hour since I lost my Freddy.’
‘I’m pleased to hear it; there’s nothing like a good book to keep you company,’ Amy said, placing the date stamp firmly on the flysheet. Nellie smiled her thanks and trotted out of the library.
‘I’ll put these back on the shelves,’ Amy said, addressing the other assistant librarian, Freda Haigh, and indicating the cart full of returned books. ‘You can take over here for a while then go for your tea-break.’
Freda was Amy’s friend from schooldays, and it was Amy who had recommended her for a job in the library – something she now regretted. From the outset, Freda had made it quite plain that she envied Amy’s position of superiority, and she frequently attempted to undermine her. Now, she jumped at the chance to work behind the desk checking books in and out. It was an improvement on dusting shelves and rearranging books. However, she was fully aware that the borrowers preferred Amy. They even said so, asking to be attended by the pretty young lady. Yet another thing that rankled, for Freda was a plump, pasty girl with a protruding jaw. She lifted the date stamp to attend to her first client.
Mr Porter, the chemist, shoved the books he was returning across the counter, gruffly enquiring, ‘Where’s the girl who knows what I like to read? She knows every book in this library.’ Freda clenched her jaw and then, imitating Amy, she plastered on a smile and attempted to placate the chemist, at the same time sourly and silently admitting that what he had said was mainly true.
By the time Amy Elliot was nineteen she had read most of Dickens, laughing with the Pickwickians, detesting Uriah Heap and crying with Little Dorrit and Tiny Tim. Hardy, Gaskell and Twain helped shape her view of the world and Louisa May Alcott and the Brontë sisters had opened her eyes and mind to the complexities of family life and the turbulence that falling in love can bring.
Amy was a lovely, outgoing young woman with a lively mind capable of forming opinions and justifying them, but she was never arrogant where other people’s ideas and feelings were concerned. Her love for reading had served her well, and on leaving school she was rewarded with the post of assistant librarian in Barnborough’s newly opened library. The job not only immersed her in a wonderful supply of literature, it provided independence outside of Bessie’s domineering reach and Samuel’s bullying.
Amy considered herself blessed.
Today being a Monday, the library was busy. Amy wheeled the cart filled with books between the stacks, depositing books in their rightful places and every now and then stopping to chat to a customer about a book they had just read or offer some friendly advice. The last book in place, Amy returned to the desk. Reluctant to surrender the date stamp and her position behind the counter – one which she was sure raised her position in the eyes of the community – Freda went for her tea-break.
Amy served the doctor’s wife, and then bent down to take a replacement inkpad from the cupboard. When she came upright, she found herself looking into the ready smile of a tall, darkly handsome boy with deep-set, warm brown eyes. As he placed his books on the counter, she could tell straight away how he earned his living; the scrubbed but not quite clean fingernails and the fine traces of coal dust blackening his eyelashes let her know he was a collier.
He handed over the books he had chosen, the flash of white teeth against his swarthy skin making Amy’s heart flutter and her fingers clumsy as she removed the index cards and stamped the date. But it wasn’t just the smile that intrigued her; it was his choice of books. Not for him the usual thrillers or Wild West cowboy tales that miners usually selected but Erskine Childers’ The Riddle of the Sands and Forster’s Howard’s End.
‘A good bit of reading there, Mr…’ Amy paused to glance at his library card, but she already knew his name, had stamped it on her heart as she had stamped the books.
‘Leas,’ they said in unison, and chuckling after they had said it.
‘I’ve not read this one,’ Amy said, handing him The Riddle of the Sands and thinking how she might keep him there a little bit longer, ‘but I thoroughly enjoyed Howard’s End.’
‘Then so will I, seeing as how you’ve recommended it. After all, you’re the librarian.’ His smile roguish, Jude was also searching for a way to prolong his stay. ‘Have you read A Room with a View?’ he asked, and when Amy said she had, he said, ‘I’d like to go to Italy.’
‘Oh, yes, me too,’ Amy said. For several minutes, the magnificence of what they thought Florence had to offer kept them talking, both of them thinking they could talk to one another forever.
‘Miss Elliot!’ Phoebe Littlewood’s grating voice brought Amy and Jude back to reality, Jude flashing the head librarian a charming smile and then pointedly saying in a loud voice, ‘Thanks for your advice, Miss Elliot, you’ve been most helpful.’ He picked up his books, and giving Amy a rueful grin, he left.
Amy apologised to the queue of borrowers that, until now, she hadn’t noticed was steadily lengthening. She dutifully stamped a book, her eyes on Jude’s departing back and her mind on how lovely he was. Later, when Miss Littlewood chastised her for keeping them waiting, Amy recalled Jude’s gallant attempt to deflect her annoyance. For the rest of the afternoon she had the feeling that something special had happened. She couldn’t wait to see him again.
*
Later that day, after work, Amy made her way across the town to the home of Beatrice and Bert Stitt and their children, a bulging shopping bag over her arm. She made this journey twice a week, and had done so for the past six years because Beattie, as she now called herself, never visited Intake Farm. Although Amy made these visits to keep in touch with her sister, her chief interest was the welfare of her nieces and nephews. Five children, ranged like steps and stairs, their mother’s neglect and raucous chastising worried Amy. Sadly, Bessie and Hadley were almost strangers to their grandchildren, their visits rare and brief.
After walking for ten minutes, Amy arrived at an ugly little row of pit houses crouched in the shadow of a giant slagheap. Here the air tasted acrid, and cinders blown by the wind from the mountain of waste crunched under her feet as she walked up to the shabbiest house in Grattan Row. She opened the door, her nostrils assaulted by the stench of boiled cabbage and unwashed bodies. She shuddered involuntarily as she stepped inside.
‘Beattie,’ Amy called from the untidy parlour to the tiny kitchen beyond. When there was no response, she addressed Maggie, the oldest of her sister’s five children. ‘Where’s your mam?’
‘Dunno,’ said Maggie, hefting baby Henry from one hip to the other and then kicking one of the two small boys squabbling over a broken toy wagon. Albert, nearly six, bit four-year-old Fred. Fred screeched. ‘Shurrup! Auntie Amy’s here,’ yelled Maggie, her tangled copper curls bouncing angrily around her flushed, freckled face.
‘Did you miss school again?’ Amy’s voice was heavy with disappointment.
The copper curls bounced again. ‘I had to stay home and mind the young ’uns.’
Maggie jiggled a whinging Henry. Not yet seven, she looked and sounded as though she carried the worries of the world on her shoulders, her unwashed face and grubby cotton smock reminding Amy of a pauper child from a Dickens novel.
Amy glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece: quarter past six. ‘Have you had your tea?’ she asked, tossing her coat over the back of a chair. Maggie didn’t reply.
Amy carried her bag into the kitchen. The unlit stove, clogged with dead ashes, answered her question. She rolled back her cardigan sleeves and filled the kettle, setting it on the single gas ring on the cluttered draining board. Unwashed crockery and pans malingered in a sink full of greasy water. As she rinsed mugs and plates Amy wondered, not for the first time, if Beattie deliberately negated Bessie’s domestic skills in sheer defiance of her mother’s strict rearing.
Emptying her shopping bag, Amy filled four plates with sausage rolls and one with ginger biscuits. Intended to be a suppertime treat they’d now suffice as the older children’s first proper meal of the day. She set the plates and a pot of tea and mugs on the table. The bottle of warmed milk was for Henry.
‘Here, give him to me.’ Amy took Henry from Maggie’s arms, at the same time wondering how a child of less than six months old managed to attract so much dirt; his tiny face smeared with snot and sticky muck lurking between his fingers and toes. ‘Sit down and eat your tea nicely,’ she said, her warning aimed at Albert and Fred who were grabbing biscuits. Only then did she realise one child was missing. ‘Where’s Mary?’ Maggie pointed to the corner under the stairs.
Dumping a protesting Henry into a chair, Amy went and found the toddler asleep on a pile of coats. Gently wakening her, Amy carried Mary to the table and then filled five mugs with milky tea. Like ravening dogs, the children chewed and slurped. With Henry fed and in his pram, Amy moved from parlour to kitchen bringing order to the chaos. Finally, she heated two large pans of water.
‘Strip off, you’re all in need of a good wash,’ Amy ordered Maggie and the boys. She undressed Henry and Mary. From the clotheshorse she took dingy underwear and nightclothes, and with the children clean and ready for bed, she glanced at the clock. She really should be getting home, but the children shouldn’t be left alone at this time of night. She began to tell them a story but her mind was on Beattie. Her sister’s slatternly housekeeping annoyed Amy but her sympathy for the young Stitts who, she felt, had a raw deal in life always provoked her into doing something to make their home life pleasanter. She glanced at the clock again.
The front door scraped open and Beattie tottered in. Spying Amy, she pulled up, sharp. ‘Oh, are you here?’ She didn’t sound best pleased.
‘It’s as well I am,’ Amy retorted, ‘you shouldn’t leave them alone for so long. Maggie’s too young to be in charge – and it’s way past teatime – they were starving.’
‘Oh, don’t start on at me,’ whined Beattie. ‘I were only two doors down wetting the head of Carrie Heppenstall’s new baby.’ She threw her coat on the couch and walked into the kitchen. Amy caught the sweet tang of gin on Beattie’s breath as she passed by saying, ‘I’ll make a pot of tea. Do you want some?’ The remorseful look in her eyes told Amy she wanted to be friends.
‘Go on then,’ Amy said, in a show of sisterly solidarity. A fresh pot brewed, they sat by the living room fire.
‘Well, anything exciting happen in the library today?’ Beattie’s attempt to make pleasant conversation was spoiled by the distinct lack of interest in her tone.
Amy gave a half-smile. ‘No, just business as usual.’ She loved her job, but there was no point in elaborating; books meant nothing to Beattie. And she wasn’t going to mention the devastatingly handsome man she had met, even though he had never really left her thoughts. Instead she asked, ‘Is Bert working?’
Beattie’s lip curled at the mention of her husband. ‘Aye, he’s on afters this week,’ she replied, referring to the shift at Barnborough Colliery that started at two in the afternoon and finished at ten at night.
Amy glanced at the clock. It showed twenty minutes to eight. ‘You’ll not be going out again then, Beattie?’ She worried that once her sister had the taste of drink in her she might go looking for more.
‘Is that all you come here for? Checking up on me to see if I’m looking after this lot?’ Beattie waved a hand in the direction of the four older children now huddled quietly in the corner under the stairs. They knew better than to play or make noise in their mother’s presence, and not once since she came in had Beattie looked at Henry in his pram. Amy’s hackles rose.
‘I come because I care about you, Beattie,’ she said tartly. Then softening her tone she added, ‘I want to help you. You always seem so unhappy, and you never seem to get on top of things.’ Amy gestured hopelessly.
Beattie stood, belligerent. ‘Aye, well, I don’t need your pity. I’ve told you that before, and if I seem unhappy it’s because I bloody am, so you can bugger off. And you lot,’ she yelled at the children, ‘get up them bloody stairs and get to bed.’
The children jumped and after calling ‘Goodnight, Auntie Amy’, they scampered upstairs. Amy put on her coat. There was no dealing with Beattie when she was in one of her moods.
Amy walked briskly to Intake Farm, puzzling over what more she could do to help Beattie; all her efforts seemed to make little difference, and things were going from bad to worse. Maggie shouldn’t be missing school to let Beattie go out drinking. Amy had tried talking to Bert but he’d shrugged in that lackadaisical way of his saying, ‘talk to Beattie not me.’ Amy didn’t doubt he loved his children, playing silly games with them and taking them on country walks, but he failed to protect them from Beattie’s cruel hands and tongue. Perhaps, thought Amy, as she approached the kitchen door at Intake Farm, if I’d done more to protect Beattie from our mother’s hands and tongue when we were younger, she might have turned out differently. But I was just a child, she reasoned, a spoiled little girl too full of my own importance.
‘You’re late,’ said Bessie, emphasising the words and glowering as Amy stepped inside. ‘What kept you?’
‘I called with Beattie to see the children.’
Bessie’s expression darkened even further. ‘I don’t know why you bother. I wouldn’t set foot in the place. She’s nothing but a slattern for all my good rearing.’
Amy raised her eyes to the ceiling.