Gracie Hart was born in Leeds and raised on the family farm in the Yorkshire Dales. Though starting out as a glass engraver, and then raising her family, Gracie has now written several family sagas.
Gracie and her husband still live in the Yorkshire Dales and they have two children and four grandchildren.
Can these young coal-miner’s daughters survive on their own?
Tragedy strikes a small Yorkshire mining town when Sarah Wild’s husband dies in a terrible accident. Widowed and destitute, Sarah is forced to remarry to save her daughters, Mary-Anne and Eliza, from the workhouse. But her new husband is a violent drunk and when Sarah tragically dies too, Mary-Anne and Eliza are orphaned.
Unable to rely on their drunken step-father, Mary-Anne and Eliza are left to fend for themselves. They are determined to stick together but life becomes complicated when Mary-Anne, the eldest, falls pregnant with the child of a married mine-owner.
Scared and unsure what to do, the sisters try to hide Mary-Anne's pregnancy. But such things cannot stay secret for long …
Woodlesford Village, near Leeds, 1857
‘Stop your bloody brat from gawping at me,’ Bill Parker snarled at his wife, Sarah, as her daughter Mary-Anne watched her stepfather greedily eat the stew that had been gently bubbling over the coal fire for most of the day. The gravy was running down his chin, making tracks on his black coal-dusted skin.
‘Mary-Anne, go and help your sister with the water for your father’s bath.’ Sarah gave a warning glance to her oldest daughter, knowing that Bill was in no mood to be challenged. He’d been drinking since the end of his shift down the pit, and was now the worse for wear. A time the whole family knew to be wary of him, as drink did nothing for the usually mild-mannered man.
‘Yes, Mother.’ Mary-Anne needed no further prompting as she made for the back door of the small two-bedroom miner’s cottage to their wash house that adjoined the terraced house and was the refuge from their stepfather’s wrath.
She knew better than to say, ‘he’s not my father.’ In truth she’d only been staring at her stepfather as she’d been wishing that there would be enough stew left over for her and her sister as another supper of just bread crusts would be unbearable. But when Bill had come in leery with drink, and in a mood as black as the coal dust that covered him, she knew better than to ask for even a taste of the stew that had tantalised her taste buds for most of the day.
‘Mind you and Eliza make sure the water is warm enough and let your father eat his meal in peace.’ Sarah looked at her daughter, knowing that she understood to make herself and her sister scarce in order to protect them from their stepfather’s anger.
‘Yes, Mother.’ Mary-Anne closed the door behind her and sighed as she stepped into the dark, freezing backyard, making her way to the attached wash house where her younger sister was tending to the copper boiler, full of water to fill the tin bath for her stepfather to have his daily bath in.
‘Bill’s back.’ Mary-Anne sighed and sat down heavily on the stool that was her usual hiding place when needed.
‘I take it he’s the worse for drink, else you wouldn’t be here with me.’ Eliza poked the burning embers underneath the huge copper boiler, which took up most of one of the corners in the wash house, and wiped her brow free from the sweat that was trickling down her flushed face.
‘Aye, there will be no reasoning with him; you’ve just to look at him tonight. I don’t know why old Lewis the landlord at the Boot and Shoe doesn’t tell him to get himself home earlier. He knows what he’s like when he’s had too much.’ Mary-Anne looked at her sister and was thankful that they were both in the relative safety of the wash house, but she feared for their mother who was left behind appeasing her drunken husband.
‘Lewis is just a greedy bastard and Bill is easily led. He can’t walk past the doors without feeling he’s got to go in.’
Mary-Anne sat down next to her sister and waited. Their stepfather would either appear for a wash in the tin bath that was next to them or he’d hopefully be so drunk and dozy that he would go to bed after his supper.
‘Eliza, our real father would have belted you for saying words like that and Mother still would if she heard you saying it.’ Mary-Anne looked shocked at her younger sister.
‘You can’t deny I’m right, though. And as for our true father, I sometimes worry that I can’t even remember his sweet face, it has been so long since he died and our lives have changed so much.’ Eliza put her head in her hands and fought back tears.
‘You were only young; I’m surprised you can remember him at all. I barely can and I’m two years older than you.’
Mary-Anne had been nine, and Eliza just seven, when their father had died and their whole world had fallen apart. Their father had been a miner like Bill but a rock fall at Rose Pit had cost him his life over ten years hence.
‘Well, I do, and I curse the day our mother met Bill Parker. He’s nothing but a drunken bully.’ Eliza lifted her head and spat out her words of hate against their stepfather.
‘He’s a drunken bully who took us all in when he could have sent us to the workhouse. At least we’re still with Ma and have a roof over our heads.’ Mary-Anne went quiet as raised voices could be heard from inside the cottage.
‘I don’t know why she doesn’t leave him,’ Eliza whispered. ‘I couldn’t put up with his ways.’
Bill’s voice could be heard shouting at their mother and both sisters looked at one another, not daring to go and help their mother, as they knew it would only make matters worse for all of them. A crash of breaking china followed and Bill’s voice bellowed from within.
‘Don’t you bloody tell me to go to bed, woman! Who do you think you are? You’re nothing but a penniless whore with two useless bitches tied to your apron strings.’
Inside the small cottage, Bill clenched his fist close to his wife’s face as the other held her tight by the neck pinned to the whitewashed kitchen wall.
Sarah struggled for breath as Bill leered at her, his breath smelling of stale beer as he breathed heavily on her. She put her hands on his arms and tried to pull them off her.
‘Bill, let me go. This is no good for anyone.’ Sarah gasped as he released his grasp slightly. ‘You’ve just had too much to drink. Go and sleep it off.’
‘Shut your mouth!’ Bill swung his fist into Sarah’s face making her head spin, and she felt a trickle of blood run down from her burst lip. Then she felt her feet give way beneath her, as Bill pummelled her head against the wall leaving her unconscious and crumpled on the floor.
Bill looked at his wife lying still and lifeless on the flagstones and then looked around at the plates he had thrown at her and the upturned chairs. He grunted to himself and then stumbled backwards, making his way to the stairs where he stopped unsteadily in his tracks, satisfied that he had vented his feelings on his wife but wondering if he should check she was still breathing.
As unsteady on his feet as he was, he decided against it and crawled his way up to his bed as Sarah had told him to do previously. Sprawling out on the clean sheets in his coal-dusted clothes and with his boots still on, he smiled to himself as he fell asleep. He’d taught that whining bitch a lesson, for sure; she’d not tell him to go to bed in a hurry again.
In the warm gloom of the wash house, Eliza and Mary-Anne whispered quietly to one another. Waiting – once the shouting had finished – to hear their stepfather’s footsteps visiting the bottom of the yard privy before coming for his bath.
‘He’s not coming. He must have gone to bed. But where’s Mother? She usually comes to tell us that the coast is clear.’ Eliza shot Mary-Anne a worried glance; her stomach was churning and she felt sick.
The racket from within the red brick terraced cottage had been so bad. She knew that Bert and Ada Simms, their next-door neighbours, would have been able to hear the night’s traumas. That once again it would have given Ada something to gossip about, and reason to pry into their affairs. But most of all she was worried for her mother’s safety.
‘I’ll go. Stay here. Something must be wrong, else mother would have come out here.’ Mary-Anne stood up and looked down at her cowering sibling. ‘Put the fire out, Eliza, but don’t empty the copper boiler. We’ll use the water for washing the clothes tomorrow.’ Mary-Anne breathed in deeply; as the eldest she felt it her duty to protect her younger sister. Even though Eliza spoke harsh words, deep down she knew she was petrified of Bill when he was in his cups. They both were.
‘No, we’ll both go.’ Their father always bathed daily, getting rid of the dirt and grime of the coalface only leaving Sunday free for the girls and their mother to indulge in their weekly ablution. Eliza reached for the jug that their mother usually filled with water to rinse their stepfather off in his bath and filled it with hot water from the copper boiler, pouring it on the fire that still burned underneath. Watching the steam rise as the fire spat and fought for its life she held her hand out for her sister and clenched it tightly as they made their way out of the wash house, and into the house.
‘Mother!’ Both girls rushed to their mother’s side where she lay, head propped against the kitchen wall with a trail of red blood from her matted hair streaked down the whitewashed wall.
Sarah groaned and opened her eyes, trying to focus on her two daughters.
‘I’ll go and get help. I’ll get Mrs Simms from next door.’ Eliza looked at her mother. This time her stepfather had gone too far.
‘No, no, Eliza, don’t,’ Sarah whispered as she came around. ‘She can’t do anything for me that you can’t … Besides we don’t want the neighbours to know our business. Although no doubt she will have heard everything tonight, the way your father was ranting. Help me up, Mary-Anne. I’ll be all right once I’m up on my feet and I’ve got a cup of tea in me.’
Both Mary-Anne and Eliza helped Sarah to her feet. Mary-Anne set one of the upturned kitchen chairs right, then sat her down gently. She sent Eliza to the wash house to fetch hot water, eyeing her mother warily while her sister was gone.
‘We can’t go on like this, Ma. You’ve survived this time, but next time he might kill you.’
When her sister returned with the water, Mary-Anne bathed her mother’s battered head, dabbing her matted blonde hair gently with a clean tea towel and then patting the split lip that had poured blood down the front of her mother’s high-necked white blouse. ‘You’ve got to leave him. We’d survive somehow.’
‘No, I can’t leave him. It’s only when he’s been drinking and doesn’t know what he’s doing. Tomorrow he’ll be full of remorse, like he usually is, and won’t touch a drop for a while.’ Sarah sipped the tea that Eliza gave her and winced as the hot drink scorched her cut lip.
‘Well, he’s made a nice mess of the kitchen.’ Mary-Anne looked around at the smashed dinner plates and the stew that she had longed for now spilt over the flagstones. ‘Looks like we’re going to bed hungry yet again.’
Sarah reached for Mary-Anne’s arm. ‘He’s a good man is your stepfather. He puts up with a lot, and not many men would have taken us all on when your father died.’
Eliza picked up the broom from behind the kitchen door and started sweeping the broken pieces of crockery up from off the floor, stopping at the bottom stairs to listen to the snores coming from the upstairs bedroom. ‘He’s snoring like a stuffed pig now. I wish he was dead, like my proper father. He wouldn’t have done anything like this.’
‘Eliza, don’t say things like that, you should never wish anyone dead. My girls, we have to endure what life throws at us and us women are at the mercy of the men we wed, always remember that.’ Sarah held her arms out to embrace her daughters, holding them tight as she stared into the dying embers of the fire. If she could turn back time and change her lot in life she would, but she had made her bed and now she must lie in it, with her drunken brute of a husband.
All she could do was pray for a better life for both her girls, that they would marry good men and be more contented in life than she was. She would continue to do what she had to do to keep her girls safe and a roof over their heads, no matter what she had to put up with.
Ada Simms had scrubbed and donkey-stoned her front steps so much that they were now whiter than the bleached whale jawbones that arched over the gateway to Fenton House in nearby Rothwell. The traded donkey stone from the rag-and-bone man made of bleach and sandstone was nearly at the end of its life after so much scrubbing. But she was determined to catch and speak to her next-door neighbour after hearing all the racket the night before as she and her Bert had sat around the fire after enjoying their supper.
Bert had told her to mind her own business, but Sarah was her friend and a neighbour – it was her business. And besides, her friend May Atkins had hinted that all was not as it seemed next door when she had joined her for tea the previous week. She’d watched from behind her lace curtains as Bert had knocked for Bill Parker to join him on the walk to their work at the pit, but if she’d been hoping for some signs of last night’s trouble she’d been disappointed. She’d watched them walk to work together in the light of the dim gas lamps as usual, just as if nothing had happened. What she’d expected she didn’t know, but now she had to wait for Sarah to appear, just to put her mind at rest that she was all right.
Ada’s senses twitched as she heard the handle of the door being turned at number one, Pit Lane, and she got ready to catch her prey like a cat with a mouse. She stood with scrubbing brush in hand and leaned on the adjoining garden wall. No matter that the weather was freezing and the cold wind was making her hands sore, she was determined to make next-door’s business her business.
‘Good morning, girls.’ Ada sounded deflated; she had been hoping that it was Sarah that was leaving the house.
‘Morning, Mrs Simms.’ Eliza and Mary-Anne chimed together.
‘Everything all right at your house? How’s your mother?’ Ada enquired, making it quite obvious that she had heard the previous night’s goings on.
‘She’s fine, thank you. Busy washing some sheets.’ Mary-Anne smiled at her nosy neighbour. She wasn’t even lying – after her stepfather had walked out to work without saying a word to any of them, her mother had stripped the bed he’d layed on and was busy scrubbing the bedding free of coal dust.
‘I’m sorry if we were a bit noisy last night. I dropped some of my mother’s best china and my stepfather lost his temper with me.’ Eliza jutted her chin out a little as she embroidered the story, almost daring her neighbour to challenge her lies. ‘I’m such a clumsy devil. I swear I’m not be trusted with anything.’
‘Oh, I didn’t hear anything my dears. Bert and I are oblivious to the world around us once we’re settled in front of our fire of an evening.’ Ada blushed and looked at the two brazen-faced young women. ‘Are you off into town?’
‘Aye, we are off to the market in Leeds to see what clothes we can pick up and then we might be doing a bit of knocking and begging on rich folk’s doors if there’s nothing that’s of worth on the market.’ Mary-Anne closed the garden gate quickly behind her and Eliza, eager to leave their inquisitive neighbour.
Ada watched as the two young women walked down the rough track of Pit Lane. Strange, Sarah was doing her sheets on a Thursday; Monday was her wash day along with the rest of the street, she thought.
No matter what had gone on next door, they were covering their tracks, and no matter what they said, she knew full well it was more than just dropping a few plates.
Eliza had to wait for her sister several times as she hobbled along the towpath of the Leeds-to-Liverpool canal that flowed on the outskirts of Woodlesford on its way to service the many mills and factories before it reached the Irish Sea.
‘I don’t know about second-hand clothes … I could do with a new pair of boots.’ Mary-Anne sat down at the edge of the canal and looked at the hole in her boots that was making her foot sore. She watched as one of the open barges known locally as ‘Tom Puddings’ passed them, loaded with coal from the pits on its way to feed the factories of Leeds or the ports of Liverpool and those along the banks of the Humber. Her skirts edged up around her knees as she sat on the bank, making the man steering the barge shout out an offer of making some quick money.
‘Now, that’s a pretty sight. Penny for a quick ’en?’
‘You keep your hand on the tiller,’ Mary-Anne shouted back, ‘it’s the biggest thing you’ll hold all day, and more stiff.’
The cheek of the man; she wasn’t a prick-pincher like the women and girls that strutted down Canal Street. He’d have to seek his relief there.
She pulled down her skirts and pushed the piece of cardboard that had been filling the hole in the bottom of her boot back into place and quickly laced her boot back up. In the distance the growing city of Leeds lay in front of them, blanketed in the smoke of the busy industries that were making Leeds one of the largest manufacturers of wool and textiles in the country. But while the factory and mill owners were thriving, building their fancy houses on the outskirts in Roundhay Park and Chapel Allerton, the ordinary factory workers suffered at their hands, living in back-to-back houses with open sewers running down the streets, overcrowded and starving.
‘Hurry up, Mary, and stop encouraging the bargemen; they don’t need a lot. And you know that Ma would give you a clout if she heard you being saucy. We’ll miss the best buys on the market. You know old Mrs Fletcher will not hold on to her best stuff for long before she sells it on to someone else.’ Eliza was eager to go and rummage on the Fletchers’ rag-and-bone cart to find clothes that she and Mary-Anne could wash, repair and then sell on in their little lean-to shop in the centre of their village.
The clothes made them a small profit, which helped to boost the family income. They had an understanding with the rag-and-bone man’s wife that they had first choice of her best clothes providing they were there before seven in the morning. Otherwise they took their chances with everyone else rummaging through the cart, and this morning, after checking their mother was all right after the previous night’s skirmish, they were late. The prospect of knocking on doors asking for any old rags through the back streets of Leeds, like they sometimes had to, did not fill Eliza with joy. Too many times they had been shouted at – ‘no hawkers’ or worse. Once a dog had been set on her.
Mary-Anne finally rose to her feet and stretched. ‘I know, I’m coming. I don’t know about you but I’m tired. I tossed and turned all night thinking about things.’
‘So did I, and I don’t think Ma went to bed at all. She slept in the chair next to the fire, rather than disturb our stepfather. He hadn’t a lot to say to us this morning, I noticed.’ Eliza urged her sister to walk faster, as they ambled along the cobbled towpath. ‘He ate his porridge, grabbed his snap box and then left. I hope he’s regretting his night’s work and that he’s got a sore head this morning. Because I’m sure Mother will have one after his battering. Let’s hope he doesn’t come home in a state like that for a while now. I hate him when he’s in such a bad way.’
‘Heaven knows what next door thought,’ Mary-Anne replied. ‘Ada Simms was doing her best to find out what the noise was all about, and did you see her Bert’s face, when Bill went out of the house as black as he had returned to us last night? I’d like to be a fly on the wall next door tonight when he arrives home; I bet Ada never lets up.’ Mary-Anne strode out and smiled at her sister, knowing that Eliza was thinking the exact same thing. Eliza and she were so close; there was a bond between them that could never be severed. They had relied on one another for support since their true father had died, and now they were nearly both full-grown women, independent but the best of friends.
Making their way out of Leeds docks, Eliza and Mary-Anne arrived into a city that was bustling with life of all sorts, and the two sisters hurriedly made their way up to the market at Briggate. They passed by men who were surveying the site for the new building that was going to be the corn exchange, which in coming years would be busy, filled with local merchants bidding on and buying corn and maze. The smell of the tannery and slaughterhouse nearby wafted down, while street traders called out, making everyone aware of the wares they were selling.
The city was alive with street urchins, ducking and diving between the merchants and their customers, picking a pocket here and there, and the less bold or nimble begged on street corners for a farthing to keep them fed for the day.
The constant noise from factories spinning wool and cotton filled the air, along with the smells of the city, open sewers, smoking chimneys and cooking food from the stalls that were tempting people as they went about their business.
Eliza and Mary-Anne weaved and picked their way through the crowds, avoiding the worst of the dirt and horse manure on the busy street, arriving at the wide avenue filled with market traders called Briggate.
The spire of Holy Trinity Church rose above them as they walked up the rows of shops and traders that lined the route. Outside the printers’ shop they spotted Mrs Fletcher with her flat cart filled with rags and second-hand goods, bought and traded from the well-to-do houses around the Headingley and Kirkstall districts of Leeds, where the higher echelons of Victorian society lived.
‘Morning, lasses, I thought you were going to miss your chance this morning. I was just about to empty your sack onto my cart, thinking you weren’t going to show.’ Mrs Fletcher was as round as she was tall, tendrils of her long straggling grey hair were escaping from under a dirty white milk-maid’s cap and her dress was of a rough woven wool and was just as filthy. She grinned a toothless grin at her two best customers and wiped her running nose along her sleeve. ‘Got some good things for you today. My old man went up Roundhay; there’s a lot of well-off gents up that way and they have to keep their women suitably attired. What do you think of these then?’ She emptied her sack, uncovering an array of cast-off dresses, shawls and skirts all in need of washing, mending and a bit of care before being re-sold by Mary-Anne and Eliza.
‘How much do you want for this one?’ Mary-Anne lifted up a green brocade dress with a tear where the skirt was attached. It had in its time been a stunning dress and must have cost a pretty penny when first made.
‘Sixpence?’ Ma Fletcher put her head on one side; her cheeks were ruddy with small veins that came from making her living so long outside in all weathers. She reminded Mary-Anne of a cheeky garden robin as she waited while both sisters inspected the garment.
‘Threepence? It will take me a long time to repair this and then it’s a bit fine for some of the ladies that come to our shop in the village.’ Part of the game was to haggle and all three knew it was what was expected.
‘Four pence and we have a deal.’ Ma Fletcher waited and watched as both sisters looked at one another.
‘Yes, go on, and all the rest from out of your sack for a sixpence?’ Mary-Anne watched Eliza holding up various items of clothing, inspecting them for the amount of wear and tear.
‘A silver sixpence and you can take the lot. It’s a fair price, there’s some good stuff. You’ll soon sell it in your shop in Woodlesford.’ The old woman waited.
‘A sixpence if you’ll include those boots.’ Mary-Anne pointed to pair of lace-up boots on the cart that looked to be about her size. They looked scuffed and dirty but they didn’t appear to have any holes in, unlike the ones she had on her feet.
‘Aye, you girls will be the death of me with your hard bargaining. But, go on, we’ve a deal.’ Ma Fletcher spit on her hand and held it out for either Eliza or Mary-Anne to shake.
Mary-Anne shook it hesitantly and found a sixpence from out of her coat pocket while Eliza pushed the traded clothes back into the hessian sack that they had come from.
‘What are you girls going to do now you’ve robbed me blind?’ Ma Fletcher watched as Mary-Anne picked up the boots by their laces and smiled, knowing that they had made a good deal.
Mary-Anne looked at her sister who was having a second look through what was left on the cart. ‘We might just go and see our aunt, now we’ve done our business. Do you think we should, Eliza?’
‘Yes, if you want, we have the time now.’ Eliza stopped rummaging and put the sack with contents over her back. She quite liked her Aunt Patsy and was keen to visit her as she was never welcome in their home. Their stepfather Bill would not allow her in his house because he thought her to be immoral; it was common knowledge that she helped young women in trouble with unwanted pregnancies with her herbal concoctions and potions. Patsy knew her plants, herbs and their properties well, and their mother often commented that if she had been born a century or two earlier her sister would probably have been branded a witch.
‘You give her my best wishes now, won’t you? She stopped me from nearly killing my old man when he had the toothache. I swear another day of him moaning and bellyaching around the house would have driven me to seeing him off. That oil of cloves soon put a stop to it; she’s a canny woman is your Aunt Patsy.’
‘I’ll tell her you were speaking highly of her. She’ll be glad to hear that she was able to help. Good day, Mrs Fletcher, we will be back to see you next week.’ Mary-Anne smiled; they may have been late to the market but so far it had been a good day.
‘We can’t let our stepfather know we’ve called in on Aunt Patsy. He’d only threaten us with a belting.’ Eliza stopped for a second to catch her breath as she reached Pounders Court, a small, enclosed square of old squat weaving houses where their aunt lived. It was in one of the poorer areas of Leeds. The gutters ran open with excrement from both humans and animals, and in the corner of the square was a midden piled high with waste from all the houses. Eliza pinched her nose, trying not to breathe in the stench.
‘I know, I wish Aunt Patsy lived somewhere a little better, but she never will, not until Uncle Mick finds work. You know what our mother thinks of him; she calls him a lazy Irish Paddy and doesn’t know what Aunt Patsy sees in him.’ Mary-Anne looked at her younger sister as they knocked on the door of their aunt’s house.
‘That’s my mother calling the kettle black,’ Eliza whispered as she heard footsteps from the other side of the door. ‘She isn’t exactly married to the most upstanding man in society.’
‘Come in, my dears, it’s lovely to see you. How’s that sister of mine and what brings you knocking on my door?’ Patsy was open with her welcome as she ushered them into her humble two-room home. The bigger of the two rooms was full of drying herbs and plants that hung from the low dark beams and filled the many jars that lined the small badly lit room. After the stench of the courtyard, Aunt Patsy’s aromatic home was always a pleasant relief and the girls felt almost heady from the scents that filled it.
‘Ma is as well as to be expected and we’ve just come on a short visit after doing some business with Mrs Fletcher, who, by the way, asks to be remembered.’ Mary-Anne sat down at the scrubbed clean wooden table across from Eliza and her aunt.
‘Ah, she’s an old devil – would take the clothes off your back if you let her. You just take care when it comes to her.’ Their aunt nodded in the direction of the sack at Eliza’s feet, and smiled. ‘Looks like you’ve bought some stock. I hope she didn’t fleece you. Now tell me … your mother, you say she’s as well as to be expected. She’s not ill, is she? Or is it that good-for-nothing man that she married after losing your father? Too fond of his drink is that one.’ Patsy looked across at her nieces; they seldom visited unless there was a reason, and the reason was usually their stepfather. ‘He’s been hitting her again, I take it? That brute of a man. Say what you like about my Mick but he’d never hit a woman, it’s a coward that does that, especially in drink.’
‘We found her on the kitchen floor last night, he’d hit her head against the wall before going to bed. She’d made us stay in the wash house knowing he was the worse for drink.’ Eliza hung her head.
‘But she’s all right now?’ Patsy looked at both the girls, concerned. ‘Else you wouldn’t be here.’
‘Yes, we left her washing the linen and our stepfather’s gone to work down the pit.’ Mary-Anne sighed and looked at her aunt.
‘She should never have married him,’ Patsy whispered low. ‘How he keeps his job at the mine, I don’t know. Some days he must still be drunk when he’s at the seam. It’s your mother I feel sorry for, she’s always having to put right his wrongs.’
‘Well, he does keep his job, and for that we should be grateful. He’s not a bad man when he’s sober.’ Mary-Anne knew Bill had taken them all in when he didn’t have to. Whatever his faults he had put a roof over their heads.
Eliza shook her head; she never gave her stepfather any credit and had little time for him. ‘No, he’s just a drunken bully and I hate him.’
‘Now, hate is a strong word, Eliza, you should use it sparingly. Although I do tend to agree with you.’ Patsy sat back in her chair and looked at her two nieces, wishing there was something she could do for them. ‘Lawks! Can you hear that baby next door? All it does is screech. That’s Ruth Watt’s youngest, poor hungry little beggar. Ten kids already and her Davey out of work the best part of this year. There will be heartache at that house before long; they can’t continue living like they do. It would have been better if she’d got rid of it, than get attached.’ Patsy sighed, she was very matter of fact when it came to children, never having been blessed with them herself. ‘It will waken my Mick up if it doesn’t shut its mouth.’ Patsy glanced at the door to the back room, waiting for her husband to stir from his bed after having his usual mid-morning nap.
‘Is Uncle Mick all right?’ Mary-Anne asked her aunt.
‘Aye, he’s fine. Still a martyr to his bad back and he can’t seem to get a job because of it, but we are not starving unlike the ones next door.’ The girls knew that their aunt often got paid, or paid in kind for her remedies. ‘Mick has got an old friend of his coming to stay with us for a while, from Ireland. A man called John Vasey.’
Mary-Anne looked around the small house curiously, wondering where any visitor could possibly stay. Her aunt saw her expression and answered accordingly: ‘He’s going to be renting the cellar from us, so his bit of extra money will help keep the wolf from the door. I’ve just made him a bed up and put him a chair to sit on down there. It’s not much but I don’t suppose he’s expecting a lot after the famine in Ireland. Which is good because we haven’t got a lot.’
The sisters looked at one another. Their aunt was keeping her family afloat as both they and their mother had tried to do, but her solution had given them Bill to deal with also.
‘We’ll get back and make sure our ma is all right, and get these clothes washed before Bill comes home and needs his bath filling. I’ll just change my boots, these I’ve got on have got more holes than leather.’ Mary-Anne bent down and started to un-lace her old boots.
Patsy looked at her niece swapping her boots around, picking up the old boots and looking at the hole in the bottom of their soles. ‘What are you doing with them? Can I have them?’
‘Yes, they’re worth nowt to me. Have them if you think you can use them. They let the water in and you can see one’s got a huge hole in it.’ Mary-Anne stood up in her new boots and tried them for size while watching her aunt examine her old ones.
‘I’ll give them to Ruth. Mick will re-sole them for her. It’s better than having no boots at all, providing they fit.’ Patsy smiled at her nieces.
‘She’s got no boots?’ Eliza exclaimed. ‘She’s got nothing on her feet?’
‘She’s got nothing, lass, apart from a lot of hungry mouths to feed. So you be thankful for what you’ve got because your lot in life could be a lot worse than it is.’ Patsy put the boots down and reached for a small jar from one of her shelves. ‘Here, girls, could you give this to your mother? She will probably have run out of the last bottle she asked from me. Tell her it’s a bit stronger than usual and to take it with care. Make sure your father doesn’t see you give it to her. You know what he thinks of my potion-making.’
Eliza took the bottle and thanked her aunt. Her mother had always a bottle in her bedroom drawer. Her mother had called it her pick-me-up when Eliza had asked her one day what it was for and had quickly re-hidden it out of the way of her stepfather.
‘Give my love to your mother and keep out of the way of your stepfather.’ Patsy opened her door and watched the two girls leave her home. They were good girls but compared to her life in the city they didn’t know how lucky they were. She closed the door behind her and sat down at the table looking at the boots with a hole in them. Her Mick would fix them and make sure they got a good home next door. She put her hands over her ears to stop the noise of the baby wailing, it should never have been born, its father needed gelding. She bet that there was probably another one on the way already, he was that irresponsible. She gazed out of the grimy windows and sighed, feeling a moment of despair. You were born and you died; that was life full stop.
Mary-Anne and Eliza made their way home in relative silence, both thinking that their lives were perhaps not so bad and that they shouldn’t have gone moaning to their Aunt Patsy with their worries.
‘Mary, don’t let me ever marry a useless man like Mick and Bill or Davey Watts and have children I can’t afford.’ Eliza stopped on the dockside and looked around at the barges being loaded and unloaded with goods. Men were shouting, ponies were being whipped into action as they pulled heavy carts laden with goods for the city and women were selling themselves along the dockside for a few pence.
‘Let’s make a pact between ourselves that we both will find a wealthy man that will keep us in a suitable fashion. I don’t want to live like my aunt Patsy nor be used like our mother.’ Mary-Anne linked her arm into her sister’s.
‘Yes, let’s set our sights high; I don’t want to just make do. We will wait until the right man comes along and not be rushed into marriage.’ Eliza looked back at the disappearing docklands and then turned around to face the unfolding countryside where they lived. She hoped that she would never lead a life like the one they had just left behind. She and Mary-Anne were worth more than that – of that she was sure.
Highfield House
‘Father would like us all to go to luncheon tomorrow.’ Catherine Ellershaw looked at her husband across the breakfast table as she shooed the servant away from offering her another portion of poached eggs.
‘Aye, well, I haven’t the time nor the inclination to be having luncheon with your father.’ Edmund Ellershaw owner of Rose Pit answered his wife from the relative safety of behind the morning’s paper, the Leeds Intelligencer.
‘He said he was looking forward to talking to you as he wanted to know how the colliery was doing now that coal is being transported by rail and canal.’ Catherine bit into her toast and placed her knife down sharply on her plate to gain her husband’s attention. ‘You know we owe father a lot. We wouldn’t be living here at Highfield House if it wasn’t for him. The least you could do is to be sociable with him.’
Edmund sighed and put his paper down. ‘Your bloody father, it’s all I get in my ear from morning to night. He might own nearly every woollen mill in Leeds but he forgets I’ve a living to make and a mine to run and I just can’t drop everything on his request of luncheon. Take our William: he’ll keep him amused and it will keep him out of my way. As it is he just gets under my feet at the moment; he doesn’t seem to be interested in getting his hands dirty, learning his trade. Which sets him at a disadvantage when he one day becomes the owner of the coal mine. Take our Grace with you as well, she always sweet talks her grandfather, being the apple of his eye.’
‘Perhaps our William will find his feet in textiles; someone has to take the reins from my father and it certainly won’t be you, as you’ve no knowledge of the industry. I will take him with me and hint to my father that he would do well to encourage him into the running of the mills. It could be the making of him.’ Catherine Ellershaw smiled thinking of her precious eldest son who had just turned twenty and was back from Cambridge after finding it not to his liking, and being unable to settle into his studies.
‘Aye, let your father take him under his wing. So he can spoil him even more than he is already. When I was his age, I’d been a miner for at least five years, knew my job inside out and was gaining the respect of my fellow workers. I wasn’t swanning about with a poetry book under my arm, too precious to get my fine clothes dirty.’ Edmund Ellershaw was disappointed in his son; he wasn’t the tough manly figure he had hoped him to be, as the rightful successor to the pit at Rothwell. The pit that Edmund had bought when his old employer had struggled with its upkeep and had lost interest in. Ellershaw was a self-made man – at least where the mine was concerned – and he never let anyone forget it.
‘Not everyone is interested in mining, although it seems that it is the only thing talked about in this house. Have you thought any more about my proposal of taking a house in Roundhay? It would be so much more civilised there. Better for Grace, William and baby George. We could employ a proper nanny for him then, not just a local girl, plus we would have the Whittakers as neighbours.’
‘We want nowt with moving to Roundhay; Highfield is a good enough house and we are away from the rabble in Leeds. Besides, you’d never be away from the Whittakers, you’d be playing cards with them all day.’ Edmund threw his napkin down, he’d had enough of his breakfast and enough of hearing his wife and the notion that she had got of moving to Roundhay. A notion put into her head by her empty-headed friend Rosaline Whittaker, whose husband gave her anything she wanted just to keep her quiet. ‘I’ll be away to the pit now; time’s money and I can’t afford to be losing either.’
‘It seems to me you never have time for discussing our family and our needs, Edmund. And it isn’t as if we lack funds, Father would never see us short.’ Catherine looked up at her husband whose face belied the anger that he was feeling inside.
‘I’m away, say good morning to the boys and Grace when they eventually decide to get out of their beds and join you for breakfast. I’ll be back in time for dinner tonight.’ Edmund pulled his chair away from the table not giving his wife or servant a second glance as he walked through the dining room into the hallway, picking his hat and riding crop up from the hall stand. He stood for a minute and looked at himself in the full-length mirror in the hall, and wondered where all the years had gone.
He had once been a handsome young man full of ambition and a desire for life. Now he was middle-aged, grey haired with a podge of a belly and a wife who never gave him a moment’s rest. No wonder he made the colliery and his office there his refuge from her nagging voice and his unbelievably spoilt children.
It was his own greed that was to blame, he thought, as he looked around the grand hall of Highfield. He already had his mine when he met the Ellershaws. If he hadn’t had his head turned by the thought of Catherine’s money – or rather her father’s money – he would have been happy with a local lass from Woodlesford or Rothwell, one that would have been happy with just a roof over her head and bairns to care for. Not always wanting something bigger and better. He opened the front door and hesitated as he pulled it to. What was wrong with the house they were in? It was the biggest one along Princes Street; its six bedrooms were big enough for their family and guests when they entertained. His wife had a cook and several maids for all the work. He, himself, refused a valet but there was a groom to tend to the coach and horses and a stable lad besides the gardener.
Their house stood proud on the corner of the street, in its own grounds and the fluted columns at the doorway hinted at the wealth that lay within. Nay, they wouldn’t be moving to Roundhay, she’d have to be bloody satisfied with her lot. Edmund loosened the reins of his already saddled horse from the tethering ring in the garden wall and mounted. Time to get to his office and to wait for a visitor he knew would show their face today, a face that always gave him pleasure, albeit entirely one-sided.
Sarah Parker closed the door behind her and set off up Pit Lane, following in her husband’s footsteps, and those of all the miners who headed to the pit every morning.
Her stomach churned with the thought of what she was about to do and her legs felt weak underneath her. She looked ahead of her, watching the pithead wheel that dominated the skyline turn, as men were lowered to their work deep down in the bowels of the earth. They were in search of the black gold that powered the wheels of the industrial revolution that was spreading like wildfire throughout the country.
Coal fed everything – the new steam engines that powered their way along the North Midland Railway; the engines that turned the spinning mules in the many mills around Leeds – and industries just could not get enough of it.
She hurried on; sooner she got it over and done with, the better. Her skirts brushed the side of the frost-covered grass and she pulled her shawl tighter around her as the early morning sun took its time to warm the sparkling white countryside. She looked up at the sign above her head and walked in through the open gates of Rose Pit, glancing around the yard to make sure her Bill was not there and that he was out of the way, down below at the seam head.
The yard was full of pithead ponies waiting for the precious coal to be brought up from the earth below, their handlers too busy to see or care about the desperate woman that quickly made her way to the office of Edmund Ellershaw, the mine owner. Even if they had given her any notice they would have recognised her as a regular visitor and all of them knew why she had come. Her with her husband down below, risking his life every day for her and her lasses, while she satisfied old Ellershaw as his mistress, the dirty old bugger.
Sarah stopped in her tracks as Tom Thackeray the mine supervisor pulled the office door open, blushing as he paid his respects, knowing full well why she was there.
‘Morning, Mrs Parker. Not a bad day for November.’ He touched his cap as he stepped down the steps allowing her to the office door. ‘Is Eliza well, Mrs Parker?’ He had to ask her, even if he didn’t like to be seen with the woman that everybody knew to be Ellershaw’s whore. Eliza, her youngest daughter, had caught his eye and he was sweet on her.
‘Very well, thank you, Tom. I’ll tell her you asked after her.’ Sarah smiled at the young man as he walked away and then quickly entered into the office of the man she absolutely loathed, who had treated her no better than a dog. He owned her, just like he owned the colliery, the house she lived in and half the houses in Woodlesford and Rothwell, and there was nothing she could do.
‘I thought I’d be seeing you today, Sarah. The state your man was in yesterday morning, I should have sacked him on the spot and thrown you out of that house once and for all.’ Edmund looked at the creature before him. Despite two children and a world of care, she was still a handsome woman and she was his for the taking. ‘So, he’s drunk the rent money away yet again and given you a good hiding into the bargain by the looks of that lip.’
Edmund got up from his comfortable office chair and rubbed his finger around Sarah’s trembling cut lip. His face inches away from hers as he pulled her towards him.
‘Well, you know what I want, don’t you, Sarah?’ His spare hand fumbled with his breeches buttons as he watched Sarah’s heaving breasts and ran his tongue as far as he could go down her bodice, licking between them and biting as he aroused himself. ‘Payment will be made and accepted with interest.’ He turned Sarah around, splaying her hands out across his desk and lifting her skirts up as far as they could go, exposing her naked buttocks. He ran his fingers between her legs and Sarah winced as no care was shown to her private parts. ‘That’s it, you just can’t get enough of me, can you, my dear little whore?’ He widened her legs with his knees and entered her with a force so hard that Sarah’s eyes filled with tears as he satisfied himself. She’d lost count of the number of times that she had put herself through the degrading act of making herself available for Ellershaw’s sexual desires in order to protect her family. She hated him with every inch of her body, but worse still she hated herself for letting him use her like a whore. She closed her eyes until his thrusting had come to an end and he withdrew, buttoning his trousers up quickly as he hid his shame.
Sarah breathed in deeply, pulled her skirts down and turned around to look at her assailant. ‘We are square? The rent’s paid for this month?’ She shook as she pulled her skirts straight and looked at the man she hated. One day she’d get even with him, but until then she was under his control.
‘Aye, we are square, until the next time.’ Edmund wiped his saliva-covered chin and slumped down in his chair. ‘Now best get off before somebody comes in; we don’t want the husband finding out about our little arrangement now, do we?’
Sarah held her head up high and stepped out of the red-bricked office, breathing in the sharp frost-filled air of the morning. Her legs shook as she sneaked out of the yard, noticing one of Bill’s friends looking at her as he spat a mouthful of saliva out onto the coal-dusted yard. He went about his work and didn’t acknowledge her, knowing full well her business with old Ellershaw – all the colliery workers did. That was everybody, except Bill.
Sarah made good her escape, hoping nothing would be said to her husband about her visit and that he would stop drinking, praying hopefully that there wouldn’t be a next time, when she had to degrade herself to Ellershaw’s perversions – a prayer she knew would never be answered, not while the landlord at the Boot and Shoe enticed Bill with his ale and he drank himself to oblivion.
‘Go on then, get it opened and read. You won’t know what’s in it if you don’t.’ Mary-Anne watched the excitement on her younger sister’s face as she looked at the handwritten note that they had found pushed underneath the battered door of their small workshop when they arrived that morning.
Eliza looked up with a beaming smile at her older sister; they both had a good idea who the note was from. He’d been making his presence known to Eliza for some time now, since he had moved to the village, and now it would seem that the handsome but shy Tom Thackeray had decided to put pen to paper. She carefully unfolded the cream parchment, her hand shaking as she read the words aloud.
Dear Eliza,
I would be most honoured if you would walk out with me this coming Sunday. Could we perhaps meet after chapel and take a short stroll around Woodlesford together?
If I hear nothing to the contrary, I will wait for you outside the chapel gates at twelve.
Yours faithfully
Tom (Thackeray)
‘Well, he gets straight to the point: short and sweet.’ Mary-Anne laughed and smiled at her younger sister, whose cheeks had turned rose-bud pink. ‘Are you going to meet him?’
Eliza quickly folded the note away into her apron pocket and composed herself. ‘I might, I don’t know. After all, he’s the supervisor at the Rose, he’s at least got a good job. Please, don’t tell Ma, I want this to be a secret, and besides, she will only want you to escort me.’ Eliza reached for Mary-Anne’s hand and squeezed it tight. ‘Promise me you won’t tell her, because if Stepfather finds out he’ll not agree to it. You know how he hates anything to do with the management at the Rose.’