Annie Groves - Ellie Pride

Newly returned from Lancaster, as always when he walked past the huge bulk of the Hawkins cotton mill on his way to his lodgings, Gideon was struck by its gauntness and the dark, sour shadow it threw across the narrow street. Not for anything would he want to work in such an environment, and he sincerely pitied those who must. As he turned off the main street and in through the ginnel that led to the yard that housed his lodgings, he saw Nancy walking towards him.

‘Still seeing that posh lady friend of yours, are you?’ she demanded, giving him a bold-eyed look. ‘’Cos if you ain’t…’

A meaningful smile accompanied her words, but as she deliberately reached out and touched his bare forearm with her work-roughened hands, Gideon had to stop himself from protesting. Her touch was nothing like Ellie’s and it was almost a profanity even to think about his beloved in close proximity to a woman like Nancy.

‘Just wanted to thank you, like, for helping us out wi’ poor Peggy. Snuffed it, she did, of course. Best thing for her really. She was too far gone to risk what she did. Fair butchered her, that old Jezebel who calls herself a wisewoman did. Better she had had the brat and then left it on the doorstep of the foundling home – or, better still, with its father.’ Her face twisted into an ugly bitterness. ‘Not that he’d care to acknowledge it, nor what he gets up to wi’ lasses who can’t afford to say no to him.’

Gideon didn’t know what to say. He had guessed what had happened to the girl. William Pride had spoken openly to him about the way some of the mill girls were forced to supplement their small incomes, and their resultant need of the illegal services of the town’s notorious ‘wisewoman’, who for a fee was willing to help terminate their unwanted pregnancies.

‘Poor little sods might just as well throw ’emselves int’ Ribble!’ he had told Gideon wryly. ‘At least that way ’ud be quicker and less painful.’

Gideon had kept his own counsel, although he had found what he had been told disturbing.

His landlady approached him as he walked into the house.

‘There’s a letter for you,’ she told him. ‘It came a couple of days back. Shall I fetch it?’

Nodding, Gideon tried to conceal his impatience as he waited for her to return. He had made enquiries about a couple of shop premises, and maybe the letter was about one of them.

When his landlady returned with a sealed envelope with his name written elegantly on it, Gideon resisted the temptation to tear it open straight away. She was watching him with open curiosity, but, sidestepping her, Gideon made for the stairs.

Once inside his own room he ripped open the envelope, frowning a little as he read its contents.

Disappointingly, it wasn’t about either of the shop premises he had visited. Instead, the letter declared that its writer was aware that he was a skilled cabinet-maker newly come to the town, and that she had some work she wished to discuss with him if he could make himself available at the address given on the letter when he was next in Preston.

Ruefully Gideon reread it. Well, at least he had a potential offer of work, even if he did not have any premises, but he was warily conscious of the work he had done that had still not been paid for. This time he would behave a good deal less naïvely and trustingly when he visited his would-be customer.

He studied the address. Winckley Square. Very posh. What exactly was it that Miss Mary Isherwood wanted him to make, he wondered.

At least he would have some good news to tell Ellie. Whistling cheerfully under his breath, Gideon washed quickly and then put on fresh clothes. The last time he had been in Preston he had promised that he would take Ellie boating on the river. The thought of being with her made his heart lift in anticipation.

‘Oh, my poor head. What on earth is that dreadful noise?’

Ellie sighed, trying not to betray either her impatience or her longing for Gideon’s promised arrival and her escape from the stuffy, claustrophobic atmosphere of her mother’s room and company.

‘It is the men who have come to install the new telephone,’ she replied as patiently as she could.

Fretfully Lydia Pride pressed her hands to her temples. ‘I cannot understand why your father should have been so unthinking as to have them come round now when he knows that I am suffering from a bad headache.’

Ellie said nothing. The truth was that her mother had been suffering from ‘a bad headache’ and an even worse temper on and off now for weeks, and Ellie couldn’t help fidgeting a little and glancing longingly towards the window through which the late spring sunshine was shining in intoxicating temptation.

‘You must go and tell them to stop, Ellie,’ Lydia announced. ‘I really cannot stand any more of this noise. And whilst you are downstairs, tell Cook to prepare me a tisane. It might soothe my poor aching head. No, you had better make it yourself, Ellie, I am sure that Cook did not use newly boiled water yesterday when she made me one. It had a distinctly sour taste, and she had used far too much ginger!’

The taste of her mother’s tisane could not be any sourer than the air in this room, Ellie decided rebelliously, and certainly nowhere near as sour as her mother’s mood. Ellie scarcely recognised her gentle, laughing mother in the cross shrew she had turned into these last few weeks.

‘The men are almost finished,’ she tried to placate her.

‘But why could they not wait a little?’

‘Mother, you were the one who insisted that Father had a telephone installed as soon as he could, remember?’ Ellie couldn’t prevent herself from challenging. ‘You said that if all your sisters had telephones then you must have one too. You said that Father would find that it increased his business,’ Ellie pressed on, ignoring the protective little voice inside herself that was urging her to remember that her mother was not well, and that the pregnancy must be making her feel uncomfortable. Ellie couldn’t wait for the next few weeks to be over. In fact, she decided crossly, she wished her mother would have the baby now and then perhaps the Pride household might get back to normal!

‘Ellie, I wish you would not speak to me in such a way,’ Lydia responded sharply. ‘Did you tell Jenny about the sheets, like I asked you to? They must be sent straight back to the laundry, and no bill paid until they are returned properly laundered – and whilst we are on the subject, you must take care to watch what Jenny is doing on washdays. She cannot be left alone in the wash house with the copper. If she is she will skimp on her duties!’

Ellie bit on her bottom lip. Gideon would be here soon. He had promised her that he would make all speed to come round to Friargate the moment he arrived in Preston, and her uncle had already been round to the shop to try to persuade her father to join him in one of his favourite drinking haunts.

Gideon! Ellie was longing to see him again. Would he kiss her as he had done before? A delicious sense of anticipation was filling her, increasing her impatience with her mother.

‘Ellie! Pay attention! You are not listening to me! Jenny –’

‘I’m sorry about the washing, Mother, but you said that the things for your lying-in had to be prepared, and because of the rain it took longer to get everything dried.’

‘You must not make excuses for her, Ellie. Like all domestics Jenny will try to take advantage, if you let her – Ellie, why do you keep looking towards the window?’

‘It is nothing, Mother, only that Gideon Walker has promised to take us all boating on the river. John is so excited, and –’

‘Gideon Walker?’ Lydia interrupted her sharply, struggling to control the surge of fear and hostility that drove the dull ache in her temples into a hammering crescendo of pain. Just recently she had begun to sense a change in Ellie, a new wilful stubbornness that reminded her all too painfully of the way she herself had been at the same age. ‘Ellie, I need you here with me. You know that I am not well.’