Salem Street Page 11

  Annie felt duty-bound to call at home on her Sundays off, for her dad’s sake, but took to spending more time with Sally Smith, or with the O’Connors, or even just walking alone on the tops, as everyone called the moors. It was lovely up there on a summer’s day, with the tiny streams trickling through the tussocky grass and the wind sighing around you. Anything to get her away from Number Three and from Salem Street, which she had grown to hate. If she had her way, she would never go back there, even for a visit.

  Matt was overjoyed when Annie got Ellie the job at Park House, and it seemed to bring the three of them closer together. He often walked home from chapel with the Gibsons, and talked to Annie about Hallam’s and the books he was reading, which the overseer had lent him. There was nothing lover-like in the way Matt treated her, no sign that he had noticed that she was growing up into a young woman, but at least he was still her friend, and at least he had not started walking out with any other girl!

  In May 1836 Annie celebrated her sixteenth birthday with a cake furnished by Mrs Cosden on the doctor’s orders. With Katy’s help she had made herself a new dress, which she wore for the first time the following Sunday. Of course, its neckline was high, and its cut demure, because a maidservant wouldn’t be allowed to wear anything else, but it did, Annie felt, nicely show off the curves of her figure, thanks to Katy’s lessons in how to cut out a dress. Thank goodness, she said to Ellie, twisting to and fro in front of the mirror, she was now beginning to look like a woman and not a broom handle. The dress was of a green checked cotton, the checks very faint, more to Annie’s taste than the bright ginghams now in vogue among those in service. Under Katy’s supervision, she had carefully worked a collar and cuffs in fine white lawn, with picot edging. She’d have preferred muslin, but it didn’t wash as well.

  Even Mrs Lewis had deigned to admire the dress and compliment her on her taste. The only time the mistress became half-amiable was when talking about clothes, and she even took an interest in what her servants wore. Mrs Lewis had exquisite taste, Annie thought, comparing her to other visitors to the house. You could learn a lot from what the mistress did or did not do. Of course, Annie’s dress was very impractical for anything but walking out (as Emily didn’t fail to point out), with its full skirts over three frilled petticoats and its paleness, but it made a good foil for Annie’s auburn hair, which had darkened considerably over the past two years. She knew she had never looked as good.

  Ellie, who was growing rather plump, looked at her enviously when she was all dressed up and ready to go home for her Sunday off. “If he doesn’t fall for you looking like that, he never will!” she said. “I wish I was slim like you, Annie, love.”

  “Do you think he will – notice me as a woman, I mean?” Annie asked nervously. They both knew who the only ‘he’ was in her life. She felt that she had loved Matt since she first saw him and that if he didn’t show some sign soon that he regarded her as more than just another sister, then she would die of despair. There was only one thing she wanted out of life, one overriding ambition she’d had since she was ten years old, and that was to become Matt Peters’s wife, to live with him and look after him and have his children. Everything she learned so willingly at Park House she learned because it would make her into a better wife for Matt, who was obviously going to rise in the world.

  There had been some bad years for the cotton trade in the last decade, and sometimes Hallam’s had to lay off workers, or put them on short time. Annie was glad she didn’t work in the mill, which was a very chancy way of earning a living, it seemed to her. There were weeks when her dad had no work at all and when the Gibsons had to pawn things to buy food. And not all the things pledged were redeemed. Emily was a terrible manager and spent lavishly when she got John’s wages, but had nothing left by the end of the week. She even tried to get money out of Annie sometimes, but Annie pretended that she had spent all her wages and Emily was too afraid of Mrs Lewis to go to the house and ask for Annie’s wages to be paid to her parents. Besides, Annie’s dad wouldn’t have let Emily do that. Annie’s dad, like Mr Peters, said that the money she earned was her own.

  Matt was different from everyone else in Salem Street. Mr Hallam kept him on when others were lacking work. The overseer, Mr Benworth, was now giving Matt a good all-round training, with an eye to making him an assistant overseer one day. Overseers earned three or four pounds a week, more than Annie earned in a quarter, and they were never laid off, not at Hallam’s, anyway. They could afford to live in the good, stone-built houses in the older part of the town, pretty houses with a bit of garden, not filthy little red-brick terraces like the Rows. Salem Street seemed smaller and dirtier every time she went back there.

  Eyes glazed over with daydreams, her thoughts miles away, Annie walked slowly home. She was brought rudely down to earth by a hand grabbing her arm and swinging her round.

  “My, look what the cat brought in!” said a deep voice, and she was pulled into a beery embrace.

  Annie cried out and tried to break free, but it was no use. The man had hands like iron. He was broadly built and his body smelled sour and long-unwashed. Even when she kicked him, he only threw back his head and laughed. A woman walking past stopped and cried out, “Shame!” but scurried away when the man swore at her. No one else came forward to help the struggling girl. The man pulled her to him again and she screamed, fighting desperately to get free.

  Abruptly the hands let her go and she staggered backwards, nearly falling. The man uttered a curse and swung his fist at his assailant, but he was too drunk to aim straight. Matt laughed and dodged it easily.

  “She’s my girl, Fred Coxton,” he said. “And if you touch her again, I’ll smash your face in!”

  There was a moment when it all hung in the balance as to whether there’d be a fight, then Fred muttered something and lumbered off.

  Matt turned to Annie. “Are you all right?” he asked gently.

  “Yes. Now I am.” She shuddered and looked so white that he put his arm around her shoulders.

  “I’ll see that he doesn’t touch you again.”

  She took a deep breath, trying to regain her self-control, but she couldn’t stop trembling.

  “Look, let’s go and walk round the park till you feel better,” he suggested.

  She nodded and he led her through the new wrought-iron gates. It was still early enough for there to be few people around.

  “I thought – I thought no one was going to help me,” she said shakily. “He was so s-strong. I couldn’t get away.”

  It was so unlike Annie to tremble and be upset, that a wave of tenderness swept through Matt, taking him by surprise. After staring at her in astonishment for a minute or two, he succumbed to temptation, pulled her towards him and kissed her gently on the cheek. “It’s a good job I saw you, then.” He smiled down at her. He was nearly six feet tall and she was small enough to nestle in the curve of his arm. He kept his arms round her, enjoying the feel of her soft warm body against his.

  “Matt?” she asked shyly. “Did you – did you mean what you said to him, that – that I’m your girl?”

  He didn’t look at her. “Would you mind if I did?” he asked, rashly committing himself, though he knew his mother would go mad if he started walking out with Annie, or anyone else.

  “Oh, Matt, you know I wouldn’t!”

  Bashfully, for he had had no dealings with girls before, had avoided them after chapel and taken no part in the horseplay and furtive confidences of his peers, he took Annie’s hand in his. “Aye. I didn’t know how I felt till I saw him attacking you, but then I realised. You are my girl, an’ I wanted to kill him for hurting you, for darin’ to lay his filthy hands on you.” He laughed shamefacedly. “Not a very Christian way to feel, is it, love?”

  “I don’t mind. I like you to feel that way about me. I – I’d like to be your girl.”

  His finger traced the curve of her cheek. “You’ve grown up lately, Annie Gibson. That’s a new dress, isn’t it?
You look very pretty today.”

  “Do I?” She felt so happy she was sure he would hear her heart beating.

  He daringly pressed a kiss on her soft lips. “So – you’re my girl now, eh?” Just let the other men tease him again about being afraid of women! Just wait till they saw him with this new, grown-up Annie on his arm!

  “Yes. Oh, yes!” She looked radiant. “Oh, Matt, it’s the best birthday present I’ve ever had.”

  They walked slowly back to Salem Street, hand in hand, neither of them paying much attention to their surroundings. When they arrived at Number Three, they stood outside the door chatting.

  At last Annie said reluctantly, “I suppose I’d better go in.”

  “Yes. Me, too. Are you goin’ to chapel?”

  “Yes. We always do.”

  He flushed and swallowed hard. “Right, then. Don’t go with your family. I’ll walk you there.” It was tantamount to a marriage proposal. It meant he wanted to show the world that Annie and he were courting.

  She floated through the rest of the day in a dream, oblivious to the knowing glances of the rest of the congregation. She was conscious only of Matt, walking by her side, sharing a hymn book, repeating the prayers in his deep voice.

  When he returned home for his midday meal, Elizabeth Peters greeted her son with a scowl and a sharp, “What do you think you’re doing, then, our Matt?”

  He looked at her warily. “What do you mean?”

  “What do I mean?” she shrilled. “You know very well what I mean! I mean what are you doing with that Annie Gibson?”

  “We’re walking out together.”

  “You’re too young!”

  “I’m eighteen. You were wed at eighteen.”

  “Yes, and look where it got me.”

  “Mam, I–”

  “So much for you gettin’ on in the world, then!” Elizabeth went on scornfully. “Once you get wed an’ the babies start comin’, there’ll be no gettin’ on for you, my lad! I thought you knew better than to get mixed up with a girl for years yet, let alone a girl from the Rows. I thought you at least had enough sense for that!”

  “Now, Elizabeth …” began Sam.

  “It has to be said and since you’re too soft to do it, I must!”

  Sam rolled his eyes to heaven, but said nothing. The more you opposed her, the worse Elizabeth got.

  Matt stared at his mother, shocked by her vehemence. He had expected her to be displeased, but she looked furious, with hectic red spots on her cheekbones and her mouth a grim bloodless line. He realised suddenly that she didn’t want him to get mixed up with any girl, that she hated the idea of his marrying. He tried to speak to her gently. “I’m not stupid, Mam. We shan’t be gettin’ wed for a few years yet. An’ she’ll make me a good wife, will Annie.”

  “She’ll drag you down!” Elizabeth said viciously. “Have you seen what her family’s like? They’ll never be off your doorstep. I want better for you than a girl like her!”

  “Now that’s enough!” said Sam sternly, as amazed as his son by the way she was spitting the venom at Matt. He spoke softly, trying to coax her into a better humour. “You’re bein’ unfair to the lad, Elizabeth. It’s up to him what he does with his life, not you, now that he’s a man grown. An’ you’re bein’ unfair to Annie Gibson, too. She takes after her mother, not after Emily. Lucy Gibson was a fine woman, a good wife and mother, and near as house-proud as you are. Annie’s a right nice lass, hardworking and bright as a button. It’s given her a bit of style, working for Mrs Lewis has. You’ve only got to listen to her talk, or look at how she moves.” He turned to Matt. “I like her, son, and I think she’ll make you a good wife – though I do agree with your mother that you shouldn’t rush into marriage.”

  Matt nodded and looked pleadingly at his mother, whose favourite he had always been. “Mam?”

  She shrugged. “I haven’t changed my mind. And I shan’t. I’d hoped for better things for you, our Matt, than marriage. As for how all this turns out, well, we’ll just have to see, won’t we?”

  Annie received no such hostile reception at Number Three. When Tom started taunting her about her young man, John turned on him and told him sharply to mind what he was saying.

  “I’m very glad for you, lass,” he said gently to Annie. “You’ve allus liked Matt, haven’t you?”

  “Yes. Yes, I have.” She smiled blissfully.

  “How long’s it been goin’ on?” asked Emily curiously. She could have sworn there was nothing between the two of them.

  “Oh, just today. I mean, we just decided today. I – we haven’t made any plans or anything yet. Well, we couldn’t for ages, could we?” She didn’t really want to talk about it to anyone; she just wanted to hug her happiness to herself.

  “Well, he’s not a bad catch,” said Emily grudgingly. As long as Annie didn’t have to come back to live with them, she’d be glad to see her well set up. It never hurt to have children who could help you in your old age. And they said that Matt Peters would be an overseer one day. A man in that position wouldn’t let his in-laws be put into the union workhouse, which was Emily’s biggest dread in life.

  Matt walked Annie back to Park House and planted another of his shy kisses on her cheek under a tree in the park. “Next time we’ll talk properly, make plans,” he told her. “We – we can’t do anything for years yet. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Yes. I know that. We need to wait an’ save some money.” She would have liked him to say a few more-loverlike things, but he talked instead about his work and his prospects there.

  Ellie fell on her neck the minute she walked into their bedroom. “It’s happened! I can see it’s happened!” she cried. “It shows in your face!”

  Annie blushed and admitted that she and Matt were now walking out together officially. Ellie squealed so loudly that Mabel banged on the wall and told her to be quiet, after which they had to discuss everything in whispers.

  The next year passed in a blissful dream for Annie. She did her work as efficiently as ever, but her real life, she felt, was lived on her Sundays off, which she spent mainly with Matt.

  At the end of that year, Katy astonished everyone at Park House by leaving to marry a farmer, from a family she’d known for years. His wife had died a few months previously and there were three children from that marriage, but she said they were nice kids. All the bitterness, all the antagonism towards men dropped suddenly out of her and she blossomed into a comely woman.

  Mrs Lewis was furious. She always took it as a personal affront when servants left. To her it was a step down in the world for them to get married. They would have done better to have stayed on in service and enjoyed what she considered to be an easy life. They would only wind up with large families and small purses if they got married, and so she always told them. But did they listen to advice from their betters? No, they didn’t! They just went ahead and ruined themselves.

  Ellie was the one to benefit from the resulting rearrangement of staff. Dr Lewis insisted that a governess now be hired for Marianne. Her mother spent far too little time with her and the child needed to spend time with a more educated woman than Katy, with a lady, in fact. Watching how Annabelle neglected her only child, he often wondered what madness had driven him into her arms? The only things that interested her were herself, her social life, money and her clothes. The only things she read were books of etiquette, or fashion magazines, such as the World of Fashion or The Court Magazine and Belle Assemblée. She would pore over their illustrations for hours on end and take all their pretentious advice to heart, even when it conflicted with good sense. It quite sickened him.

  No, he told her firmly, when she protested about the expense, their daughter now needed a governess and Annabelle must recognise that fact. She was furious. The last thing she wanted was another lady living with them. Apart from the expense, it would mean that there was always someone observing what she was doing, possibly trying to interfere. And you couldn’t treat a governess
like a servant. She would expect better food and accommodation than them.

  Jeremy proved very stubborn and unmanageable, and the servants had a bad few days until Mrs Lewis had grown accustomed to the idea of the governess in her house. A chance remark from Mary Purbright made her realise just how much employing a governess for Marianne would enhance her social status, and she therefore began to recover her temper, though she still grudged the expense.

  Ellie was promoted to nursery maid and was to earn eight pounds a year, as much as Annie. She was delighted with this arrangement, because she had grown very fond of Miss Marianne.

  “I don’t think I shall ever want to get married,” she told Annie, when they were discussing her and Matt’s plans. “This job suits me fine. You can never tell what’ll happen with a husband. Look at what my mam had to put up with when Dad was out of work. And look at what it’s done to her! She’s as sour as a lemon and getting sourer all the time.”

  She smiled and added, “Though my dad’s a lovely man.”

  Annie laughed indulgently, secure in the knowledge of her own happiness with Matt. “You’ll change when you meet somebody,” she said. “It’s lovely to know that someone loves you! You’ll want to marry then, see if you don’t.”

  “But it’s not lovely to have a family to feed and clothe,” retorted Ellie, who had never forgotten the bad times.

  “Me an’ Matt aren’t rushing into things, are we?” protested Annie. “It’s people who rush into marriage who suffer. You have to save up and buy your furniture and have a bit put by before you get wed. And besides, Matt’s got a lot to learn before he can become an overseer. Mr Hallam’s going to send him to Liverpool next year, to study the raw cotton trade. An’ Mrs Cosden is teachin’ me to cook. I’ll want to be able to do things properly when we have our own house. She says I have a very nice touch with sponges an’ my pastry’s nearly as good as hers now.”