A/N: Many thanks to Shelby Gammon1 for adding me to author alert and favourite authors, flattered! :)
So many people read this story :))) So few comment. :(((
***chapter 7***
It's four days since Ben's funeral. The shop remains shut; a notice on its door proclaiming in clipped tones "Closed until further notice – family bereavement". Yet, even with its shutters pulled firmly down over its display window and thick black sheets dug out of a trunk in the attic cloaking all the rest, even with last night's rain dripping monotonously down from the drain-pipe and flowing miserably into the gutter, still the shop manages to cast an imposing presence on the bustling high street that causes many a passer-by to gaze at it in awe and the more religious among them to bless themselves, some perhaps out of respect for the dead, others perhaps to superstitiously insure themselves against illness with the Lord's protection.
Within its walls, silent to the outside world, its world inside marked by the relentless ticking of dozens of timepieces, the Barrows have settled into a new routine.
In the cellar workroom, William Barrow makes half-hearted attempts to catch up on a backlog of clocks awaiting repair. Perhaps his customers wish to give him time to grieve for his youngest son or perhaps they simply wish to avoid a house of disease, whatever their reasons, it is fortunate none have yet become impatient, for his work is punctuated now by frequent pauses to stare at nothing. He is inevitably to be found doing so whenever she takes him a mug of tea, Kate tells Thomas. And on the rare occasions he is not, she adds, he's pouring himself a tot of brandy or whiskey, and rarely does the whirring and hum of machinery greet her ears.
With no income from the clockmaker's to buy food, he and Kate must seek work. It's a futile exercise. The two wealthy young sisters Kate was purposely introduced to by Miss Baxter, their occasional seamstress, having previously admired the beautiful needlework her mentor taught her apprentice, and keen to have her embroider patterns on their new hats, have cancelled the appointment, afraid she will bring diphtheria with her.
The poor cannot afford such niceties. Death is no stranger to their hovels; sometimes, with too many mouths to feed, it comes as both a heartbreak and a blessing. Many would gladly employ Kate in an instant – if only they had the means and money to do so. But not Thomas. He is fast, strong and has a sharp mind, and boys are often needed to lift and carry goods, but his "unnatural nature" is becoming more well known now he's older and often he's lucky to escape being beaten for even asking.
Yesterday, while browsing through the market stalls, pilfering an apple here and a handful of carrots there, a portly businessman, overhearing his vain requests, approached him in secret and promised Thomas a handsome sum and "work aplenty" if he would meet him at his "office" at noon. He swore under his breath, sorely tempted to punch the nose from his leering face except it would attract the attention of the stall holders, perhaps even the rozzers*, and a working class lad, already known to be "perverted", not a well-dressed toff, would be the one to be hauled up before the beak.
He feels sullied by the encounter. The love he and Paul share is surely no different to the love of any boy and girl? And yet their love is considered shameful while a boy and a girl are free to love. Kate still blushes whenever she passes Fred Lacey even though he's broken her heart by courting Alice Corbett and folk sigh sympathetically at unrequited love; Miss Baxter's eyes are bright with happiness when she talks, as she often does, of the man she is to marry; gentlemen may send flowers to ladies; the very young boys and girls play kiss-chase around sun-starved courts and filthy alleyways, and even the most cynical say it gladdens their heart. But Thomas and Paul are dirty, tainted, their love sordid. Why is it so wrong?
He clenches his fist angrily, peering restlessly through a small hole in the black sheet at the window, and Kate asks what's troubling him. He thinks of confiding in his sister about the ugly proposition, but only shakes his head and lies that all is fine, he's just missing Paul. Which is a half-truth because he does miss Paul, terribly, and aches for his company. But since their tryst by the canal, and unlike Thomas, who has begun to feel better, he has been quite ill and confined to bed so there has been no possibility of seeing each other. Anyroad, he knows what happened yesterday happens to girls all the time and he won't burden Kate with more worries when she is still unwell and she does so much.
Kate is the glue holding the splintered family together. Even with so little money for food and fuel, she manages to make do. She toasts three thin slices of home-baked bread by the small fire Thomas lights with their last few pieces of coal and adds home-made jam to turn the paltry breakfast into a feast; she serves three thickly cut slices of bread and dripping and their home-grown tomatoes for their lunch; her shawl pulled over her face to hide her shame at doing so, she shopped the night after Ben's funeral, jostling with the very poorest, to buy cheap scraps of meat that the butcher might otherwise have tossed to scrawny street dogs to fight over, in order to make them an evening meal.
It is this three-day old stew, padded out with potato and potato peelings, shredded cabbage leaves, and the stolen carrots, that she calls her brother and their father to now before seating herself at the kitchen table to carefully ladle the watery dish into three bowls.
In these twilight days, William Barrow will occasionally speak with Kate but never troubles himself even to acknowledge the presence of his only surviving son. Thomas is delighted at the rare respite from being his father's punching post albeit not without a twinge of guilt for the reason. He still has not offered to teach him any of the clockmaking trade nor has Thomas asked to be taught, already aware of the answer. It is more out of habit than out of any concern for his father's ailing business that every morning he winds all the display clocks just as he has always done. And because, too, there is something oddly soothing and secure in the steadily ticking heartbeats of those guardians of time. No, he cannot find in him any sympathy for the parent who has treated him so cruelly. But his sister is a different matter.
Thomas watches her now as they sit around the silent dinner table. She has given up on the conversation she tentatively began with Barrow senior, perhaps tiring of his monosyllabic answers, and is absently swirling a spoon around a dinner that is more soup than stew, and which never touches her lips. The light has gone out of her eyes and a familiar anger surges through him. For Kate is not only grieving the loss of their sibling.
She is grieving for the loss of her friend.
The day before Dr Swales was called out to Ben, and thus unaware of his sudden turn for the worse, Phyllis Baxter had left her lodgings in Buckley Street and seemingly vanished off the face of the earth. Although there were any number of supposed sightings.
A laundrywoman who knew her slightly thought she saw her walking along Clegg Avenue, but when she greeted her by name Miss Baxter, if it was indeed she, did not respond and hurried on; a newspaper boy claimed he saw her passing Whelan's Mill; someone was convinced they saw her wearing a blue hat boarding an electric tram going north and another was equally adamant she was wearing a black hat and sitting on a horse-drawn tram bound south; someone was certain they espied her with a carpet bag and waiting at the railway station; yet another said they definitely saw her shopping in a nearby town, and Miss Baxter must have been possessed of an extraordinary ability to be in several places at once, for she was apparently sighted in three different locations some distance apart at exactly the same time.
Her disappearance is the subject of much gossip and speculation and theories abound, from the possibility she has taken a short holiday to the suggestion she has gone to visit a sick relative, to the more sensational she has been murdered, the murderer is still at large, and searching for his next victim.
But all that was was known for certain was that Miss Baxter did not arrive for work at Jackson the grocer's one morning, nor did she keep her previous evening's appointment to undertake some sewing alterations for Miss Henrietta Fox. And that, abandoning everything, even her trousseau, she had left her rent paid up till the end of the week "in full and final settlement" in the drawer of a small hall table. It was where the rent collector and the landlord, who returned with both him and the key upon being informed he had received no answer despite knocking several times, found it next day.
She had left without warning or explanation and just when Kate needed her most. And only one other thing was certain.
Thomas would never forgive her.
*rozzers – police officers
