cramped communal rear yard.
Cross Street! She drew her shawl tightly around herself. Like so many dwellings in this town these had not been built for the comfort of tenants but the expediency of industrialists concerned more with the business of profit than with other people’s comfort. Jam houses cheek by jowl and you got more of them, more families with men and boys to labour in your mines and factories.
Except war, as with so much else, had changed a deal of that. Sparing one more glance at a lace-curtained window she turned away. War demanded not only men and boys, some barely two years out of school, but women and girls also to operate its factories, to fill so many of the jobs once done by their menfolk while those not called to fight continued the heavier labour required in the iron and steel rolling mills or underground in the coal mines.
Yet not every man. Leah felt the savage touch of anger. There was one who avoided both factory and fighting. Thomas Thorpe had been skilful at this, as he had been in refusing to answer the knock at his door. But if he truly was not in that house, then where?
The chapel. The answer loud in her mind Leah walked in the direction of Queen Place. The sly little toerag was probably swanning around indulging in his fantasy: minister, indeed! Thomas Thorpe could pretend all he liked, spout the Scriptures ’til he was blue in the face, but the Lord God knew the truth of the man. He recognised Thorpe had no faith other than in himself, his only creed being a belief in his own infallibility. But that was folly and though heaven might sometimes be tardy in its dealings it never failed in its justice.
Coming in sight of the chapel Leah made the sign of the cross on her breast, whispering a plea for forgiveness should her thoughts be displeasing to the Almighty.
She halted at the front of the building darkened as much with time as with soot. What justice had been done for a young girl pulled dead from that river? Accidental death had been the verdict of the official inquiry but she had known with every fibre of a mother’s being that Deborah’s drowning had been no accident.
Leah seemed to see again the pale reed-covered face, to feel the inert body cradled in her arms. The death of her daughter had been no accident, nor were it suicide neither!
She forced the scene from her mind as she walked on, nodding the time of day to the few women who like herself were not called to work in one of the factories or workshops. She wondered why their replies were clipped, why they turned so abruptly from her, ushering the children they minded quickly away.
Those women all shared one blessing which would never be visited upon Leah Marshall; the little ones they had care of. Some were infants still suckling, while others, not yet three years of age and so not attending school, had been left with grandparents thus releasing younger women to war work.
War had snatched that blessing from her, war had taken her sons and with them her hopes of grandchildren, and Deborah? While her death had not occurred on the battlefields of Ypres yet this war and nothing else had been its cause.
The content of many prayers whispered in the long lonely hours of night rose again.
You knows I be right. Silent on her tongue, the words rang in her heart. You knows what I says be truth, Lord; my wench be dead of this war surely as if her’d bin shot by them same bullets which took ’er brothers. It were war an’ naught else had Edward Langley leave this town, it were that an’ that only would ’ave him leave my girl an’ that leavin’ be cause for her dyin’, won’t none in ’eaven turn my mind from that an’ none’ll keep me from repayin’ be I given chance even though the doin’ sees my soul damned.
Immersed in thought, she had not registered the turn to the left which had taken her into School Street. Now, halfway along its length, she paused at the opening which gave on to Queen’s Place. The one she
Cross Street! She drew her shawl tightly around herself. Like so many dwellings in this town these had not been built for the comfort of tenants but the expediency of industrialists concerned more with the business of profit than with other people’s comfort. Jam houses cheek by jowl and you got more of them, more families with men and boys to labour in your mines and factories.
Except war, as with so much else, had changed a deal of that. Sparing one more glance at a lace-curtained window she turned away. War demanded not only men and boys, some barely two years out of school, but women and girls also to operate its factories, to fill so many of the jobs once done by their menfolk while those not called to fight continued the heavier labour required in the iron and steel rolling mills or underground in the coal mines.
Yet not every man. Leah felt the savage touch of anger. There was one who avoided both factory and fighting. Thomas Thorpe had been skilful at this, as he had been in refusing to answer the knock at his door. But if he truly was not in that house, then where?
The chapel. The answer loud in her mind Leah walked in the direction of Queen Place. The sly little toerag was probably swanning around indulging in his fantasy: minister, indeed! Thomas Thorpe could pretend all he liked, spout the Scriptures ’til he was blue in the face, but the Lord God knew the truth of the man. He recognised Thorpe had no faith other than in himself, his only creed being a belief in his own infallibility. But that was folly and though heaven might sometimes be tardy in its dealings it never failed in its justice.
Coming in sight of the chapel Leah made the sign of the cross on her breast, whispering a plea for forgiveness should her thoughts be displeasing to the Almighty.
She halted at the front of the building darkened as much with time as with soot. What justice had been done for a young girl pulled dead from that river? Accidental death had been the verdict of the official inquiry but she had known with every fibre of a mother’s being that Deborah’s drowning had been no accident.
Leah seemed to see again the pale reed-covered face, to feel the inert body cradled in her arms. The death of her daughter had been no accident, nor were it suicide neither!
She forced the scene from her mind as she walked on, nodding the time of day to the few women who like herself were not called to work in one of the factories or workshops. She wondered why their replies were clipped, why they turned so abruptly from her, ushering the children they minded quickly away.
Those women all shared one blessing which would never be visited upon Leah Marshall; the little ones they had care of. Some were infants still suckling, while others, not yet three years of age and so not attending school, had been left with grandparents thus releasing younger women to war work.
War had snatched that blessing from her, war had taken her sons and with them her hopes of grandchildren, and Deborah? While her death had not occurred on the battlefields of Ypres yet this war and nothing else had been its cause.
The content of many prayers whispered in the long lonely hours of night rose again.
You knows I be right. Silent on her tongue, the words rang in her heart. You knows what I says be truth, Lord; my wench be dead of this war surely as if her’d bin shot by them same bullets which took ’er brothers. It were war an’ naught else had Edward Langley leave this town, it were that an’ that only would ’ave him leave my girl an’ that leavin’ be cause for her dyin’, won’t none in ’eaven turn my mind from that an’ none’ll keep me from repayin’ be I given chance even though the doin’ sees my soul damned.
Immersed in thought, she had not registered the turn to the left which had taken her into School Street. Now, halfway along its length, she paused at the opening which gave on to Queen’s Place. The one she
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