Oh, Molly, where
are
you? Her stomach turned right over and she pushed the last morsel of the slice of stotty cake - a large flat cake of bread baked in the bottom of the oven and one of Annie’s regular stomach-fillers - to one side of the plate, straightening her drooping shoulders as she said, ‘I’ll have to go, Mrs McLinnie.’
‘Aye, aye all right, lass, an’ if we hear anythin’, anythin’ at all, I’ll send one of the lads round sharpish.’
Arthur McLinnie had opened the door to the kitchen and caught his wife’s last words, and now he looked at Rosie as he said, ‘Owt wrong, lass?’
‘It’s Molly, Mr McLinnie. She didn’t come home last night.’
‘No?’ He cast a sidelong glance at his wife before he said, ‘An’ you’ve no idea where she is?’
‘The lass wouldn’t be knockin’ at our door at this time of the mornin’ if she did, now would she?’ Annie’s voice was abrupt but without real sharpness, her Arthur was a great one for stating the obvious but it had ceased to be an irritation in the years after Shane was born, when she realized he put up with a great deal more in their marriage than she did.
‘Likely she’s kipped down at one of her little pals’ houses, lass.’ Arthur had ignored his wife, and then, as Rosie said, ‘I don’t think she would do that, not without telling us,’ he shook his head slowly. ‘Lass, there’s no tellin’ what bairns will do. Our lot have put us through hell at times. Tain’t that right, Annie?’
‘Aye, that’s what I told her.’
‘She’ll turn up, lass, don’t you fear. Me an’ the lads’ll have a scout round in a bit, how about that? An’ I’ll skelp her backside afore I send her home, eh?’
‘You? You never so much as clipped one of ours round the ear unless I made a song an’ dance about it. Soft as clarts, you are.’ Annie’s voice was abrasive but her eyes were soft as she looked at her husband, and he in his turn seemed to take his wife’s admonition as a form of compliment as he grinned at Rosie and said, ‘She knows me too well, lass. Aye, she does that.’
Rosie smiled at them both before she said again, directly to Annie, ‘I really will have to go.’ And then, ‘Goodbye, Mr McLinnie.’
‘So long, lass, an’ don’t you be frettin’. She’ll turn up.’
Annie and Rosie moved together to the back door, and when Rosie felt herself enfolded in a quick motherly embrace before Mrs McLinnie pushed her into the yard saying, ‘Now dinna fret, lass, dinna. She’ll be turnin’ up like a bad penny, you mark me words,’ it made the lump in her throat suffocating.
She swallowed hard, then turned quickly, taking Annie’s hands in her own as she held them tightly and said quietly, ‘Thank you. Not just for today but for everything. You’re such a good friend, Mrs McLinnie.’
‘Aw, go on with you, lass.’ But there was moisture in Annie’s eyes as she watched Rosie walk across the communal yard and open the rickety wooden gate in the five-foot-high brick wall. She’d get the tram and go and see Jessie later once she’d got the lads and Arthur sorted. She was bound to be in a state. Eee, bairns . . .
Annie continued staring out into the empty back yard long after Rosie had waved and disappeared after shutting the gate behind her. Bairns either sent you barmy or broke your heart or both. And you never knew whether to say owt or keep your mouth shut, you couldn’t win. Look at their Robert’s wife for example, Robert still didn’t like to hear a word against her but the lass was nowt but a brazen huzzy. Barely wed three years and already he’d caught her carrying on and likely as not it weren’t the first time. And she had her doubts about the bairn - it didn’t look like Robert, or none of their side come to that. But she could cope with Connie. Bad though it was it was straightforward like, not like the other - their Shane.
The chill of early morning penetrated Annie’s layers of clothing and she shut the door before pouring herself another cup of the black tea she favoured - Arthur having walked through to their bedroom with a bowl of hot water and his cut-throat razor while she had been seeing Rosie off - as her mind continued to worry at the thought of her youngest son. She’d nearly gone round the bend when Shane had first disappeared without a word to anyone, and it had been months before he’d let them know he was all right. Even then he hadn’t said where he was or what he was doing. Perhaps it was better she didn’t know at that. Annie’s eyes narrowed and she made a deep obeisance with her head to the thought. Aye, she dare bet on it, but he was still her own flesh and blood and he’d been a bonny babby. Blood was thicker than water, when all was said and done.
Zachariah was thinking much the same thing later that morning when he made his way to Blue Anchor Yard situated in the East End’s quayside. As he passed the old Elizabethan custom house there were the usual handful of snotty-nosed bairns, fishwives and rough-voiced ne’er-do-wells hanging about, but his eyes were searching for one particular face and he found it just inside the open doorway of the tall three-storey building.
‘Zac.’ Alec Piper could count the people he had time for on one hand, and this small man in front of him was one of them. ‘What you doin’ round here, man?’
‘Lookin’ for you.’
‘Oh aye?’ Alec’s bright sharp eyes, set in a face as lined and wrinkled as old brown parchment, narrowed. ‘You’d best come away inside then.’
Blue Anchor Yard was close to the ‘Death House’, the building where any bodies found in the Wear - a regular occurrence - were kept initially, and once Zachariah told Alec what he was about, the other man shook his head slowly. ‘She’s not bin found in the water, man, not yet at any rate, but I’ll keep me ears an’ eyes open. You think she’s bin done in then?’
Zachariah shrugged. He didn’t know what he thought except that if this ended badly it was going to break Rosie’s heart.
‘The coppers bin told yet?’ Alec asked quietly.
‘The sister, Rosie, is seein’ to that, but I wanted to see you. I need your help, man.’
Alec nodded. There was nothing he didn’t know about the goings-on on the quayside, and his network of contacts stretched from the East End to the north side of the River Wear, through Monkwearmouth and right up to the great breakwaters at Roker. He had fingers in every pie, from a tasty trade in smuggling to a sideline in the Roker promenade pickings, but Zachariah liked him and more than that he trusted him. It had been Alec Zachariah had gone to about the business with Shane McLinnie, and with just a few well-chosen words in the right quarter the matter had been dealt with. And Alec had chosen men who could keep their mouths shut too, in spite of the tasty bribes for information that had followed from McLinnie’s spies.
Once Zachariah left Blue Anchor Yard he walked deeper into the terraced network of hovels stretching from the quayside. Most of the human occupants of these houses shared their living space with an army of fleas, rats, mice and cockroaches, and as he passed an open doorway, where a young woman was sitting delousing several children by pouring paraffin over their hair and then cutting it all off, his mind flicked back to the report in the paper he had read a day or so ago. The National Birthrate Commission was calling for sex education to be taught in schools, and was calling for specialized teachers to present this ‘difficult and delicate’ task to young children. Then, as now, his reaction had been acidic. It might be necessary for the rich and wealthy, even for families like Rosie’s where some decent standards and propriety had been upheld, but in these quarters? The bairns here knew all there was to know about everything from when they could crawl, most of them party to their parents’ copulating from birth as whole families shared one room. And the report had gone on to urge for a better diet, better recreation facilities and more sunshine - it’d be funny if it weren’t so tragic, Zachariah thought bitterly. What chance did any bairn born in these conditions have to better themselves?
‘Hey, canny man, you lookin’ for Nick?’
Zachariah had been about to knock on a certain house door but now his hand stilled as he looked down on the young boy at the side of him who couldn’t have been more than five or six years old. ‘Aye.’
‘He ain’t in.’
‘No?’
The child’s hair was streaked white with nits and his clothes were nothing but rags, but there was a light in his eye and something about his grin that was appealing. ‘No, but I know where he is.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘How much’s it worth?’
Well, perhaps the odd child would better themselves, Zachariah thought wryly as he said, ‘A penny?’
‘A penny?’ The little face frowned up at him.
Oh aye, this one would definitely go far. ‘Two?’
‘Sixpence an’ I’ll tell yer.’
‘
Sixpence?
’
‘All right, all right, I was only funnin’. Threepence.’
Negotiations completed Zachariah was directed back the way he had come to Low Street, where he found the said Nick, another old and useful acquaintance, who had the lowdown on every thief, extortion racket, pimp and prostitute operating on the south side of the river, and who could gather information from stone itself when profitable.
Then, having done all he could, Zachariah made his way back to Benton Street, there to find Annie McLinnie comforting a half-hysterical Jessie who had been sent into a fit of the vapours by the ignominy of having a constable call at her door.
It was about two o’clock that same day when Molly opened her eyes, and she felt as though she was clawing her way up through layers and layers of thick, cloying cotton-wool as she struggled to keep them open. She was in a room of sorts, but it was so different to anything she had ever visualized that she couldn’t quite believe she was really awake. She lay perfectly still in a trance-like state for some good time, her arms and legs dead weights and her mind numb, before she exerted herself enough to rise on her elbows and glance about her.
Where was she? What had happened? Then with the effort of movement her mind cleared and she jerked into a sitting position on the wide, silk-covered bed as her hands went over her mouth to stifle the scream she had been about to utter. It had been that drink the man had brought in to her and the two ladies. It had tasted sweet and nice, but odd, and the minute she had finished it her head had begun to swim and her tongue had felt too big for her mouth. She didn’t remember anything after that.
She glanced round the room again, her green eyes wide and frightened and her hands still pressed against her lips. By, she was thirsty; she could drink a jug of water straight down, she could. There were two small tables either side of the headboard, draped in a silky material that matched the soft pink covers, and now Molly reached towards one of them, on which stood a tall water jug and fancy glass, and she poured herself a drink which she consumed in several frantic gulps. After pouring herself another glass and drinking it more slowly, she again glanced about her.
She’d never been in a room like this; who’d have thought it? She didn’t know people had rooms like this in real life. It was beautiful, so, so beautiful - like something Rudolph Valentino would live in. Rosie didn’t know she’d got in to see some of his films -
The Sheik
was her favourite, he’d made her feel all funny in his Arab headdress and flowing robes - because she knew her sister would have said she was too young with all the hoo-ha of him being shocking, but Ronnie had known the cinema manager . . .
The name checked her thoughts and brought her scrambling off the bed, the unusual feel of carpet beneath her bare feet causing her to glance down briefly as she made her way to the window, which was luxuriously draped with thick gold velvet curtains with elaborate tassels. Fancy people using beautiful material like this just for curtains, you had to be rich to do that, didn’t you?
When she pulled the drapes aside she found thick iron bars at the window, and now she swung round as she glanced round the room again and began to whimper deep in her throat. Why had they put her in here like this? The brilliant chandelier overhead set in a mirrored ceiling that caught every tiny movement from the room below, the long gold-embossed dressing table and velvet stool, the flamboyant silk covers and mass of cushions and pillows scattered about the big bed suddenly stopped being wonderful and became terrifying. And she could smell herself. She glanced down at her dress which had been torn in her struggles last night. She had the smell of Ronnie’s friends on her - it was fishy, thick, horrible.
The door was locked, but she had half expected it to be, and after battering on it for some time and shouting and shouting she eventually gave up, walking across to the bed again and climbing under the silk covers, which she pulled up to her chin as she sat propped against the voluptuous pillows. She glanced up at the ceiling in the midst of her tears, and in spite of her fear and confusion became arrested by the sight of herself, her hair spread out around her in a shimmering golden arc and the silky covers adding to the ethereal beauty of the scene. Eee, she looked like a princess lying here, she did. She wriggled a bit, appreciating the slinky gleam of the silk as it moulded to her shape. She did, she looked lovely. And then the radiance dimmed as a different image, one of subjection and brutality, flashed into her mind.