Gypsy - Lesley Pearse [5]
He had talked about a pair of buttoned boots a lady had ordered just that morning, laughing about her because she wanted pale blue ones to match a new dress. He said they wouldn’t stay looking good for long in Liverpool’s dirty streets. Why would he say that if he knew he was never going to make them?
If he had died of a heart attack, or been run over by a carriage while crossing the street, it would have been terrible, and the pain they all felt now would have been just as agonizing, but at least none of them would have felt betrayed.
Their mother wouldn’t stop crying. She just lay in her bed, refusing to eat or even to allow them to open the curtains, and Sam was like a bewildered lost soul, convinced it was his fault because he’d been less than enthusiastic about being a shoemaker.
Only a few neighbours had called to offer condolences, and Beth felt their real motive was not real sympathy but to gather more information to bandy around. Father Reilly had called, but although he’d been kindly, he’d been quick enough to say Frank Bolton couldn’t be buried on hallowed ground as it was a grievous sin for a man to take his own life.
The result of the inquest would be in the newspapers, and all their friends and neighbours would read it and shun them afterwards. She thought it was cruel and cowardly for her father to have done this to them all. And she didn’t think her mother would ever want to go out of the house again.
Five days after her father’s death, Beth was in the parlour making black dresses for herself and her mother. Outside the sun was shining, but she had to keep the blinds closed as was the custom, and the light was so dim she was finding it hard even to thread the needle.
Beth had always enjoyed sewing, but as her mother wouldn’t rouse herself to help, she’d had no choice but to dig out the patterns, cut the material on the parlour table and sew the dresses alone, for they would be disgraced further without proper mourning clothes.
She would give anything to be able to get out her fiddle and play as she knew she could lose herself in music and perhaps find some solace. But playing a musical instrument so soon after a bereavement wasn’t seemly.
In irritation Beth threw down her sewing and went over to the window where she drew back the blind just an inch or two to peep out and watch the activity on Church Street.
As always, it was crowded with people. The omnibuses, cabs, carts and carriages created piles of horse droppings, and the smell was more pungent than usual today because of the warm sunshine. Ladies of quality in elegant frocks and pretty hats strolled arm-in-arm with gentlemen in high wing collars and top hats. There were matronly housekeepers in severe dark clothes carrying baskets of fruit and vegetables, and here and there young girls, perhaps maids on their afternoon off, dreamily looking in shop windows.
But there were plenty of poor people too. A one-legged man on crutches was begging outside Bunney’s, the shop on the crossroads which was generally known as Holy Corner because Lord Street, Paradise, Chapel and Church Streets all met there. Worn-looking women held babies in their arms, smaller children tagging along behind; tousle-haired street urchins with dirty faces and bare feet loitered, perhaps on the lookout for anything they could steal.
There was a queue at the butcher’s opposite, and because of the warm sunshine the women looked relaxed and unhurried, chatting to one another as they waited to be served. But as Beth watched them, she saw two women turn and look straight up at the windows above the shop, and she realized they’d just been told that the shoemaker had hanged himself.
Tears welled up in her eyes, for she knew that the gossip would gain even more momentum after the funeral. People could be so cruel, always delighting in others’ misfortunes. She could imagine them saying that the Boltons had always thought themselves a cut above everyone else, and no doubt Frank had killed himself because he was in debt. Beth