The Travelling Man by Marie Joseph Page A

had sent them both from the classroom.
    ‘Yes, Mr Thwaites. Winter’ll be here before we can turn round.’ Annie wished he would go away. He made her feel uncomfortable somehow. He had pale eyes that stood out like chapel hat-pegs, and a neck that rested on the rim of his high collar. Since his wife had died of double pneumonia it was said he was looking for a new wife to bring up his children, but Annie couldn’t imagine anyone applying for the job. Not unless they were really hard up and none too fussy.
    ‘You’re making a good job of the ironing, lass.’
    He was staring at her bare arms, making her wish she had kept her sleeves buttoned at the wrists. She folded the pillowcase neatly into the shape Edith Morris liked for putting away in a drawer, and looked up to see the thick-set man still staring at her.
    ‘You’ll be up tonight to pick the washing up?’ he asked, never taking his eyes off her.
    Then, much to Annie’s relief, he smoothed back his light brown hair and replaced his hat. Perhaps he’d go now, and good riddance, she told herself, remembering how Janie had decided that his hair must have come off a coconut, it was that coarse and sparse.
    ‘About eight o’clock, Mr Thwaites. If that’s all right with you.’
    ‘I’ll have the brass ready, lass.’
    She nodded and started on a table-runner worked in cross-stitched daisies at the ends. Tomorrow she’d be washing Mr Thwaites’s yellow combs and ironing his shirts, dipping his collars into the bowl of starch and doing his socks by hand, being careful not to shrink them.
    The iron was cooling so she changed its solder for the one heating up in the fire, taking it out with the tongs, dropping it into the iron and closing the shutter with a loud thud. Whoever was hard up enough to marry Mr Thwaites would have to take on his washing, yellowed combs and all. Annie spat on the base of the iron and tried it out first on one of Edith Morris’s dusters.
    When that too grew cool she pulled the blue ribbon from her hair and pressed it carefully. Bringing it up like new.

4
    IT WAS LATE November before Annie forced herself to admit that she was in a trouble so terrible the mere thinking of it almost stopped her heart.
    Lying in her narrow bed in the back room cluttered with washing tackle – dolly-tubs, mangle, copper, posser, rubbing-board, wicker clothes-baskets – she let the living nightmare take over. It squeezed the breath out of her; it brought her out in a cold sweat.
    Laurie had taken her face between his hands and reassured her that nothing could go wrong. He said he had made sure of that. Annie brought an arm up across her eyes. How had he made sure? She groaned – a piteous little sound. Her old school friend, Janie Whittaker, had got married a year ago and told Annie that there wouldn’t be any babies for a long time yet, not with her and Jake wanting to get a few bits of furniture together first. Jake was ‘being careful,’ she said.
    How careful? In what way careful?
    Annie called in at Janie’s mother’s house on her way back from delivering a load of washing. Mrs Whittaker wouldn’t let her daughter or her new son-in-law lift a finger between them when they came in from standing in the mill all day. She was there at the table, having a good knead-up with her strong hands. Flour on her nose, happiness shining out of her now her future was secure with a married daughter living at home, just as if she’d never left. Things were going to go on just the same, she was sure of it.
    Mrs Whittaker thought Annie looked a bit off. It was a pity her hair was so red, it drained what colour there was from her cheeks, and made her freckles stand out like brown measles. She had quite a nice bust on her, though her blouse needed the buttons letting out. Her mother would have made her a new one in no time, having served her time to millinery and dressmaking. Little Mrs Clancy had been a lovely woman, with time for everybody. Thought she was a cut