Lovers Meeting Read Online Free PDF Page A

hands. He would have most of that from his wife in a few minutes if he had to belt it out of her. He herded her into the house as the cab pulled away.
    At the station a porter took the portmanteau and followed Peggy as she bought her tickets and went on to the platform. It was lined with passengers waiting for the train to London. The porter put down the portmanteau and touched his cap, but refused a tip from the young widow. ‘Naw! You’ve had some bad luck lately, ’aven’t yer?’ And when Peggy nodded he told her, ‘Put that back in your purse and save it for the little lass.’ He patted Josie’s cheek then hurried away.
    Josie asked, ‘Will we live in a nice house in London, Mam?’
    ‘Oh, aye,’ Peggy replied, knowing she probably lied. But she knew Josie was unsettled by events, frightened and needing assurance. Peggy was going to London because she would not stay here where her heart had been broken. And in London she might find work. She believed she could hope for nothing from William Langley. She would take nothing and thought, To hell with him and his stiff neck!
    Peggy had no one to turn to but she had to think of Josie, and as long as she had Josie she had something of David. She knew no one in London but she remembered, when she had been in service with the Langleys, hearing of a Monkwearmouth boy who had gone to London and found a job there working for a Mr Urquhart. He might be able to help her. If not, well, she would have to find something, and soon, because her purse was almost empty. She held Josie more tightly and the child clung to her mother as the platform reverberated with the approach of the train.
    It came rumbling in at speed, the brakes grinding, looming monstrous, belching smoke and steam and giving off a smell of hot metal and coal smoke. Then the friendly porter came back and lifted the portmanteau, settled Peggy and Josie aboard the train. ‘There y’are, missus.’ Another pat for Josie then he was gone with a farewell wave of his hand. With a jerk and a clanking of couplings the train pulled away. So Peggy did not hear the boys selling newspapers outside the station as they called shrilly, ‘Dreadful disaster! Blackhill sinks with all aboard!’
    That was not strictly true. While the Blackhill had been in collision in foul weather there had been a few survivors. But most of her crew and passengers had perished. And David Langley and his family had left her at the moment of sailing. Their departure had not been noted and their names were still on the passenger list.

3
    February 1888
    ‘’Ere y’are, missus!’ The hoarse voice caused little Josie Langley to look up with solemn, wide grey eyes. Peggy started out of her worried abstraction as the conductor of the horse-drawn bus bellowed to her over the heads of the other passengers. As she rose hurriedly to her feet he went on, ‘Up that street there and then foller your nose like I told you afore.’ He helped Peggy and her daughter down from the bus. This was a street of big, stylish houses, but Peggy and Josie had to pick their way between the heaps of horse manure that littered its surface. The street smelt of it, sharply ammoniac.
    Left to herself, Peggy would have walked and saved the fare, but the day was chill with a spit of rain and she was worried still about Josie’s health. The little girl seemed to have recovered fully from the fever, but Peggy was always conscious that David had left his daughter in her care. The bus had carried them from close to the lodgings Peggy had taken when they had arrived in London the night before. She had gone there warily on the advice of the cabman she had hired at the station, but had found the house comfortable, clean and reasonable in price. It needed to be.
    Josie was dressed in her best, as was her mother. The little girl wore her blue woollen coat with its flounced skirt that ended just above her buttoned boots. These Peggy had polished until they shone. So did Josie’s