Calico Road Read Online Free PDF Page B

of her voice, shoving her mother away so hard she bumped into a chair, ‘I’ll hit you right back.’ Then she turned and ran out of the house, doing without food and slipping into the tiny chapel lower down the lane when it started to rain. She didn’t go home until the service was over and then walked slowly back, knowing that at least her big brother would be there to protect her now.
    Jack saw his sister come in and thought how tired she looked. The straw hat was bedraggled and Meg’s hair was hanging in damp rats’ tails down the sides of her face. When she raised a hand to brush it back, he saw the bruise on her cheek and knew their mother had been slapping her again. He’d tried to stop her hitting the children but in vain. She always turned it off with, ‘Aw, it’s only a slap or two. Keeps them in order.’
    ‘Mam said you came back once. Where did you go afterwards, Meg?’ he asked.
    ‘Out on my own.’
    ‘She’s been back with him again,’ Netta said. ‘She’ll come home with a babby in her belly at this rate an’ shame us all.’
    Meg rounded on her mother. ‘I’ve done nothing wrong an’ I won’t. How can you even think that of me?’
    Jack looked at her searchingly. ‘Promise me you won’t let him touch you.’
    ‘I’ll let him kiss me. Why not?’ He’d done that already, a shy, gentle kiss, which had thrilled him more than her. It was the cuddle that went with it that had pleased her most. ‘I won’t let him do the other thing to me till we’re wed, though.’
    Netta bounced to her feet. ‘ Wed! You can’t go getting wed. We need your wages here. Jack, tell her!’
    He pulled his mother down beside him and kept hold of her arm.
    Meg spoke to him because she could hardly bear to look at her mother. ‘She’s not tying me to her for life. I’d rather throw myself in the reservoir. An’ when I want to get wed, I shall.’
    ‘Not without my permission!’ Netta looked at her triumphantly. ‘At your age you can’t get wed unless I say so. Not till you’re twenty-one, you can’t. An’ I won’t let you.’
    ‘Then I’ll live in sin, big belly an’ all.’
    Jack shook his mother’s arm slightly. ‘Stop this. She’s only walking out with him and she has a right to make friends. She wouldn’t have run out again if you hadn’t gone for her.’ He looked at his sister pleadingly. ‘Just take care, eh?’
    Meg nodded, an unspoken promise to him. Then she looked at her mother, an angry glance that said just as clearly as words that she’d run her own life from now on.
    When Netta burst into tears, Meg left Jack to comfort her and went upstairs to take off her best clothes, which were wet now. Ginny was still awake in the bed they shared and Shad whispered from the next room, ‘She’s been in hysterics since you left, our Meg.’
    ‘Let her. I don’t care.’
    She hung the clothes on the nail in the wall then sat on the edge of the bed and tried hard not to weep. But though she stopped herself from sobbing aloud, she couldn’t prevent a few tears from escaping and trickling down her face. She couldn’t stand living like this much longer. She’d do anything to get away from her mother, anything!
    Ginny reached out to pat her back and the touch comforted her.
    ‘Why is Mam like that?’ Meg asked, not waiting for an answer because there wasn’t any explanation for sheer bad temper. ‘She’s got Jack doing what she wants. Isn’t that enough for her? I tell you, I’m leaving home as soon as I can.’ She meant it, too.

3
    T oby made plans to go up to Calico Road on the following Sunday. He was reluctant to give up his job until he’d seen for himself that his father’s legacy would support him. For all he knew, the land he’d been given could be a barren patch of moorland and the inn a ruin or a tumble-down little alehouse. He was quite sure there was some hidden reason for the gift John Greenhalgh had made. He’d racked his brains about it, but couldn’t think