The Rag Nymph Read online

  THE RAG NYMPH

  CATHERINE COOKSON

  Catherine Cookson was born in Tyne Dock, the illegitimate daughter of a poverty-stricken woman, Kate, whom she believed to be her older sister. She began work in service but eventually moved south to Hastings where she met and married a local grammar-school master.

  At the age of forty she began writing bout the lives of the working-class people with whom she had grown up, using the place of her birth as the background to many of her novels.

  Although originally acclaimed as a regional writer - her novel The Round Tower won the Winifred Holtby award for the best regional novel of 1968 - her readership soon began to spread throughout the world. Her novels have been translated into more than a dozen languages and Corgi paperback editions have sold more than 40,000,000 copies. Three of her novels - The Fifteen Streets, The Black Velvet Gown and The Black Candle - have been made into successful television dramas, and

  more are planned.

  Catherine Cookson's many bestselling novels have established her as one of the most popular of contemporary women novelists. She and her husband Tom now live near Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

  CORGI BOOKS

  THE RAG NYMPH

  A CORGI BOOK 552 13683 2

  Originally published in Great Britain by Bantam Press, a division of Transworld Publishers Ltd

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Bantam Press edition published 1991

  Corgi edition published 1992

  Copyright © Catherine Cookson 1991

  The right of Catherine Cookson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Conditions of sale

  1. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  2. This book is sold subject to the Standard Conditions of Sale of Net Books and may not be re-sold in the U.K.

  below the net price fixed by the publishers for the book.

  Set in 1 lpt Sabon by Phoenix Typesetting, Burley-in-Wharfedale, West Yorkshire.

  Corgi Books are published by Transworld Publishers Ltd., 61-63 Uxbridge Road, Ealing, London W5 5SA, in Australia by Transworld Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd., 15-23 Helles Avenue, Moorebank, NSW 2170, and in New Zealand by Transworld Publishers (N.Z.) Ltd., 3 William Pickering Drive, Albany, Auckland.

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by

  Cox & Wyman Ltd., Reading, Berks.

  PART ONE The Child

  One

  The road was narrow. It could be measured by the width of a coach with a man walking at each side, but even so it was wider than the streets and alleys leading off from both sides of it.

  It was the last Wednesday in June, 854. The day had been hot; in fact, the previous week had been very hot and so the roads and streets were paved with ridged flags of mud, hardbaked, but not so hard as to prevent their surfaces being skimmed off into dust which, in some streets of the town, seemed to be floating waist high like a mist rising from water.

  But Felix Road wasn't in the main town, nor yet on the outskirts; it was situated to the north of the city and gave its name to the acres of housing that was home to the poor, the destitute, and the dregs of humanity. It also housed countless bars and gin shops, as well as a number of churches, chapels, and temperance halls, the latter set up, as it were, in opposition to as many brothels.

  The members of the various denominations fought hard against the evils and wickedness of drink and immorality, and in this they were aided by the Constabulary. However, the law, it would seem, was not so much concerned with those who drank as with those who sold their bodies for gain.

  It was five-thirty in the evening, and there were still very few people to be seen on Felix Road. It would be different at six o'clock when the surrounding mills spewed out their weary and gin-thirsty humanity. But now, along the middle of it came an old woman pushing a hand-cart on which was a pile of rags. She and the cart were half-covered by the shadow of the buildings on her left; but further back up the road, walking deep in the shadow, was a young woman holding a child by the hand. Yet so striking was the colour of the child's hair and of that which showed beneath the flat straw hat of the woman as to appear like distorted jogging lights in the dimness.

  Then an odd thing happened. At the sight of a man approaching from a distance the woman seemed about to thrust the child against the wall but, changing her mind, she walked forward again, and she spoke to the man.

  From the way he gesticulated the man was apparently upbraiding her, and when he lifted his arm and signalled to someone behind her she gripped the child by the hand and ran.

  The rag woman was turning her hand-cart into a narrow alley when the child was almost flung against it, the young woman crying, 'Go home! Go home!'

  even as she continued to run.

  Agnes Winkowski turned from the frightened child clinging on to the side of her hand-cart and looked back to watch two men of the law speeding

  after the woman. The sight was not an unusual one.

  Hardly a day went by but she saw some lass or other picked up by them snots. However, what she couldn't understand was why any lass on the make would be lugging a child around with her.

  She now looked at the child, saying, 'Was that your ma?'

  The little girl made a movement with her head but did not speak.

  'D'you know your way home?'

  Again the same movement, but now the voice came out in squeaks, saying, 'But Mama has the key.'

  Mama, she called her mother. Not Ma, but Mama ... 'Where d'you live?'

  'Nelson Close ... the bottom.'

  Nelson Close? Well, there were worse places than Nelson Close. But still, it was on the fringe of The Courts, with only the railway line separating it

  from Salford.

  She took up the handles of the hand-cart and began to push it, and now there was room only for the child to walk by the side of it. And this she did, holding on for support to the iron rail that rimmed the wooden edge of the cart and which helped to keep the rags in place.

  The alley opened out into a large square courtyard from which, on all sides, reared five-storey buildings, all in a state of dilapidation, and outside of each was a mound of filth and rubbish, some giving off a stench which left nothing to the imagination as from what it was derived.

  As the old woman pushed the hand-cart across the yard a number of children scampered from various heaps to gather around her, gabbling. But the gabble was such that the child couldn't distinguish what it was they wanted, until the old woman cried, 'No candy rock today! 'Tis all gone, all gone,' at which, one after the other, the children, as if at a signal, stopped gabbling and took up the chant: 'Raggie Aggie! Raggie Aggie! Baggie Aggie! Baggie Aggie!

  Lousy Loppy Aggie! Narrow old bugger Aggie!'

  The old woman seemed not to hear the children, yet on leaving The Courts to pass through another narrow alleyway, she bitterly emitted one word:

  'Scum!' Then as they emerged into a street she looked down at the child, and nodding backwards, she said, 'It saves ten minutes of pushing that way.'

  She now pulled the hand-cart to a halt and, looking at the child, said, 'Well, what you gonna do, love?'

  'I don't know.' The child's voice had a tremor in it.

  'Got any neighbours ... I mean, that you could go
to?'

  'No. Mama doesn't have neighbours, not there. It ... it was in the cellar.'

  'What was in the cellar?'

  'Where... where we lived. It's... it's down the steps.'

  Aggie looked closely at the child. Her hair was hanging almost to her small waist and it was of a colour she had never seen before, not around these quarters anyway. Fair-headed little 'uns, but none like this one. Then there were the child's eyes, grey, clear, large and at this moment expressing fear, if she had ever seen it. The rest of the face matched the eyes and the cream blush-tinted skin. She was a bonny young 'un, right enough, and from a bonny mother, from what she had glimpsed of that lass as she skidded down the road with the polis after her.

  She must be on the game, all right. But why take the child with her? That would put any bloke off, surely. Or did she use her an' all? Oh, no, no; she wouldn't want to think that. And yet, look at all the old buggers that would sell their souls for a little bit of humanity like this one. Kit's brothel down there was noted for it; and the dirty old customers, and not so old, some of them, came in their carriages, but after dark, of course. Why didn't the bloody polis get on to him and clear his place out? They had cleared Paper Meg's out last week. But then, that was nothing; they all knew she would start up some place else. But the churchmen had to be satisfied; hoodwinked would be a better word...

  'Please... '

  'Yes, love?'

  'Can I come with you?'

  'Come with me?' Aggie looked from the child to the heap of rags, then down at the mountain

  of clothes covering her own body. She smelt; the contents of the cart smelt; the cart itself was impregnated with stench; and here was this gleaming

  child, yes, aye, that was a word to describe her, she gleamed, and she was asking to come along with her. Well, if she said no, what would happen to her? Oh, she had a pretty good idea: she only needed to go back to Felix Road or even Nelson Close, where she said she lived, to find out. Poor little bugger.

  'Don't you know anybody else you can go to?

  Haven't you any relations?'

  'No.' The head was shaking again.

  'Nobody?'

  Aggie watched the child thinking, and then she said, 'Well, there are the uncles.'

  'Uncles? You've got uncles?'

  'I called them uncle. They came to the house two or three times, but.., but that was last week. I don't know where they live.'

  'Jesus in heaven!' Abruptly Aggie picked up the handles of the flat-cart, then almost growling 'Come on!' she pushed it along the road, the child trotting beside her now.

  It was a good ten minutes later when they seemed to come to the last of The Courts, for the houses dropped down to two-storey, then one-storey; and then they were confronted by an iron open-work gate set in a brick wall all of seven feet high. Aggie did not rest the hand-cart and open the gate but, giving it a hard thrust, she pushed it against the iron work and the gate swung open and into a large yard all of forty feet square, the further half of which was

  surprisingly paved with flags. And where the flags ended there rose three large stone arches, forming a sort of veranda to the front of a house, a real house with six windows visible, three above the flat roof of the stone veranda and three above that again.

  As they entered the yard a figure rose from the side of a pile of tins lying on the unpaved part of the ground, in his hand what looked like a piece of iron guttering. This he threw with a flicking movement on to a pile of scrap iron before making his way towards them, kicking out of his path and on to yet another pile the remnants of what had been a pair of trousers.

  His eyes were fast on the child and hers wide on him and his odd shape as he said, 'What's this then?

  What's this?'

  'Wait and you'll find out.' Aggie answered sharply.

  'Get this lot sorted.' She thumbed towards the rags on the cart.

  'Aye, I will. Will I sort her out an' all?'

  'There'll be somebody else sorted out if you're not careful... Sold anything?'

  'Aye, three bob's-worth out of the basket. And Arthur Keeley popped in. He'll take the scrap tomorrow, but I think he wanted to have a word with you.

  His wife's scarpered. D'you know where she is?'

  'No. D'you?' She had turned and was holding her hand out towards the child.

  'The kettle's boilin'.'

  'I'd have somethin' to say if it wasn't.'

  The child followed Aggie through the middle arch and towards a heavy, paintless oak door, then into a room dimly lit by a window that looked on to the covered way. The room was filled with an assortment of clothes, some in wash-baskets, some hanging over clothes-lines, others attached to nails driven into a wooden frame fixed to the walls like a chairback panel. The smell wasn't as strong as that which permeated the yard, but nevertheless it was heavy with the odour of ageless sweat.

  Now they were going through another door and into a different kind of room, and this room caused the child to stop and slowly look about her. A fire was burning in a black grate which had an oven to the side of it; a large black kettle was sizzling on the hob. And at the foot of the iron structure was a high steel fender, suggesting from its dull surface that it had never seen emery paper since the day it left the foundry.

  Set at right angles to one side of the fireplace was a two-seat wooden settle, and at the other side a much larger leather couch. In the middle of the room was a round table covered with oilcloth, and four high-backed carved chairs set around it. Along one wall stood a plain sideboard. It was black, as if once it had been varnished; and this gave it a sheen of its own.

  The room was evidently a kitchen, but holding dining- and sitting-room furniture. Along each side of the long window hung a heavy brocade curtain, the colour having long since disappeared, but which still retained an air of quality. The curtains were not

  drawn half across the window and so closing out the light as most curtains were wont to do, but were wide apart showing, of all things, a piece of grassland parched by the sun but, nevertheless, still giving evidence that it was grass by the strip in the shadow of the house.

  The child stared towards it as if in recognition of something held in memory; then she turned and looked at the old woman, who was sitting on the couch unlacing her boots, and she said, 'You have a garden.'

  'Huh!' Aggie turned and looked towards the window and she repeated, 'Garden? A piece of grass. But I've seen the time it was. Oh aye, I've seen the time it was. Take your hat and coat off. Are you hungry?'

  The child considered for a moment, then said, 'No.

  No, thank you. But... but I'd like a drink, please.'

  'Well, you'll have that in a minute once I've eased me feet an' got some of these togs off.'

  The child watched her now stand up in her stockinged feet on what had once been a fine Persian rug but was now worn in parts to its back, and unpin her hat. After her coat was thrown down on to the couch, to be followed by the long mud-fringed skirt and tattered voluminous blouse, there appeared before the child a fat woman, a very fat woman, in what seemed to be a clean blue-striped blouse and a long grey skirt with a fringe.

  'Ah! that's better. One of these days I'll go out like this and scare the whole population, 'cos they'll think I'm in me bare pelt.' She now turned and, gathering up the coat, the blouse and the skirt, and the black hat, she threw them behind the couch, saying, 'See you tomorrow, my dears;' then looking at the child, she said, 'Well now, you're dry, you said,' and, taking her hand, led her across the room and into the original large, stone-floored kitchen, and from there into an equally large pantry. Here, taking a milk measure from a marble slab, she bent over a big brown earthenware jar, took off the wooden lid, dipped in the measure and scooped up some clean water, which she handed to the child, saying,

  'Drink that.'

  The handle of the can pushed up by her right ear, the child drank, and then, her mouth dripping, she smiled at Aggie, saying, 'It's lovely, cold.'

  'Aye,
and it's clean. You can bet on that, it's clean; the well sees to that.' After taking the measure from the child, Aggie refilled it and then she herself drained it, after which she put the lid on the brown jar and hung the can on a nail. Then, from a shelf in the pantry, she took down a large covered dish, sniffed at the contents, and, smiling now on the child, said, 'Nothing much goes rotten in here. Good as an ice box, this.' Then taking a smaller dish from the shelf she turned to the child, saying, 'You carry that in; 'tis butter. Now all we want is some bread and some onions an' we're set. Go on,' saying which, she lifted her knee and pressed the child gently forward.

  And so they returned to the kitchen again; and after the meal was put on the table Aggie went through the other room and from the door yelled,

  'Ben!' just the once before returning to the kitchen.

  As she sat down at the table she said to the child,

  'Sit up now.'

  When the boy, as she had thought of the youth but who was actually seventeen, came into the room he needed no urging to sit at the table; then grinning at the child, he said, 'What's your name?'

  'Millie. What's yours?'

  The question was innocent but it brought a great guffaw from the youth and he answered, 'Ben Smith, Jones, or Robinson.' Then turning quickly to Aggie, he added, 'Long time since I said that, isn't it?'

  'You should know.'

  'And you an' all.' He nodded at her. 'It was to your dad in the yard out there.' He thumbed behind his shoulder. 'Seven, comin' eight I was; just like yesterday. I'd heard that Billy Steele had died that mornin' from the fever and there I was after his job. "What's your name?" your da said.

  "Ben," I said. "Ben what?" he said. "Well, take your choice," I said: "Smith, Jones, or Robinson."

  And he cuffed me ear, an' not gently at that. But he took me on. Aye.' He looked down now on to the plate on which lay a pig's foot and two pieces of streaky pork; and picking up the pig's foot in his two hands, he gnawed at it for a moment before looking at the child again and asking her, 'Well, what's your other name?'

  'Your hands are very dirty.'

  There was the sound of a smothered chuckle from Aggie. And now the child watched Ben slowly lay down the half-eaten trotter and hold up both hands before his large face. Looking first at one, then at the other, he said, 'Aye, you're right, they are dirty.