The Travelling Man by Marie Joseph Page B

above in some ways, but then Mrs Whittaker had heard she’d come from a quite well-to-do family in Manchester. Big Methodists, from what she’d been told. How she’d ever come to marry Jack Clancy was a mystery. She’d never turned Catholic for him, though. Mrs Whittaker couldn’t stand the sight of him, always giving women the glad eye, even when his wife was expecting.
Especially
when she was expecting, poor soul.
    Annie went after about twenty minutes. She was never going to get a word on her own with Janie, not with Janie’s mother standing there with both ears wagging.
    She was passing the house with sixteen children just as the father came out.
    ‘Nasty neet, Annie.’
    ‘It is that, Mr O’Mara.’
    Annie watched him cross the street swinging his arms like a soldier on parade. She turned the corner, averting her eyes from Mrs Greenhalgh’s house. It was all very strange. What was Janie’s husband doing right that Mr O’Mara was doing wrong? Was it because the O’Maras were Catholics, while Janie’s husband was Chapel? Had Laurie been a Catholic?
    Annie slowed her steps. There was so much about Laurie she didn’t know. Not a word had come from him since the bright morning he’d walked away from her with his sack across his shoulder. But he’d write to her. The minute he’d found a ship. She was sure of it.
    The blind was down in Grandma Morris’s house. Annie guessed that the old lady would be dozing with Edith sitting by the fire busy with her embroidery. Annie knew she would be welcome if she popped in for a minute, but how could she sit there chatting when her mind was so filled with worry it felt as if maggots had taken over her brain. Besides, they were such good people, Edith and her mother. Annie didn’t suppose Edith had put a foot wrong in the whole of her life. Lately the entire world seemed to be full of good people who never thought of sinning – people who would be shocked to the very depths of their souls when they found out that Annie Clancy had let the lodger have his way with her.
    She stood for a moment on the flags outside the window. A warm yellow light shone out through the blind. The desire to knock on the door and go inside was an ache inside her. Edith mopped the window bottom every day, and as Annie drew a finger along the neat yellow-stone edging, an idea suddenly occurred to her.
    Edith bought
Home Companion
every week and sometimes passed it on to Annie to read. Towards the end of the magazine there were letters from girls at the end of their tethers, asking the editor for advice on how to solve their problems. Annie moved on, trailing the empty wicker clothes-basket behind her. That’s what she would do. She’d write a letter, signing herself ‘Worried Blue Eyes’ and wait to see what the answer would be. Whatever was printed she would act upon. She would … she would do whatever the editor thought best.
    She stopped with one hand on the sneck of her own door. About three weeks back a young lady had been strongly advised to resist her fiancé’s caresses, remaining pure till their wedding in two years’ time. Making love out of wedlock, the editor had said sternly, was considered by all right-thinking people to be both vulgar and unfortunate.
    That editor would likely tear Annie’s letter up and drop it straight into the waste-paper basket. A girl making love with the lodger, still in his pit dirt. The editor would be sick at the mere idea of it.
    The maggots were nibbling away at her brain again. She could feel her breasts tingling; she could feel them growing bigger. ‘Oh, dear God, help me now,’ she whimpered. ‘I am asking You from my heart. Please,
please
, help me now. I ask you from my very soul to make things come all right.’
    She opened the door and saw Eddie sitting on John’s head, while the two other boys fought to the death over a large glass marble.
    And knew in that moment that nothing and nobody could help her now.
    One morning, just after