Free Calico Road by Anna Jacobs Page A

setting them childer a bad example, egging them on to be cheeky to me.’
    Jack stood up, setting the book down carefully on the mantelpiece because it was unthinkable to damage such a precious object, and blew out his reading candle. ‘We’ll go and see Parson about it this very evening.’
    ‘I can’t go tonight. I . . .’ Her voice trailed away at the anger on his face.
    ‘No more excuses, Mam. Get your shawl.’
    ‘It’s old an’ matted an’ I’m ’shamed to be seen out in it. No one gives me pretty new shawls.’
    ‘Are you coming or not?’ When she didn’t speak, he reached for his book again.
    ‘Oh, all right!’
    When they got back, the wedding was booked and he’d paid for a special licence to hold the ceremony on the following Saturday afternoon because he was afraid his mother would change her mind if things were left longer. He went up to tell Meg but found her asleep, her long dark lashes still wet with tears.
    Ginny stared at him from the bed. ‘She were crying,’ she whispered. ‘Our Meg doesn’t usually cry. An’ look at her forehead. It’s all bruised.’
    He leaned forward to ruffle his little sister’s hair and, when her arms came up for a hug, he drew her to him and kissed her cheek before whispering back, ‘Meg won’t be crying when she hears my news in the morning. Now, get yourself to sleep, young lady.’
    As he went down he told himself he was doing the right thing, that without him Ginny and Shad and Joe wouldn’t have a proper home. But that didn’t stop his desperate longing for a life of his own, a woman of his own to love – and a little peace in the evening after a hard day’s work.
    Netta refused to go to the wedding but Jack took the children along to watch his sister make her vows to Ben Pearson. To his mother’s fury he had dipped even further into their small pot of savings to buy Meg a new outfit from Roper’s pawn shop: a skirt in a rich maroon colour and a bodice of a soft pink.
    She washed and mended them carefully after work, drying them in front of the fire. He’d seen his mother eyeing them with a sour expression and had warned her not to lay a finger on them.
    The ceremony was brief but the happiness in both bride and groom’s faces warmed Jack’s heart. He kissed Meg, wished her happy and shook Ben’s hand, then went to his reading classes while the children ran off to play. They all spent as much of their free time out of the house as they could.
    Arm in arm, the newly weds walked back to pick up Meg’s clothes. They found them scattered on the doorstep, trailing in the muck of the street. Ben looked at his wife in shock, seeing the happiness fade and tears well in her eyes.
    Her voice was tight with pain. ‘I’d folded them up neatly. Now I shall have to wash them again.’
    He helped her pick up the pieces of clothing, surprised by how little she owned. He didn’t know how to comfort her. ‘Eh, she’s a nasty old bitch, your mam.’
    ‘Why do you think I’m so glad to be leaving?’
    He looked at her anxiously, blurting out the question that had occurred to him more than once.
    ‘You’ve not wed me just to get away from her?’
    ‘Of course not.’ But she did sometimes wonder if she’d have married him otherwise – or at least, so quickly. He was a kind fellow but he didn’t make her pulse beat faster. She’d heard the other lasses talking and they seemed much more taken with their young men than she was with Ben. Oh, she was being silly! Asking for the moon. He was a good man who worked hard and she was lucky he wanted her.
    Together they carried her bundle back to the lodgings they’d rented from a fellow Ben knew. They had the front room downstairs of a two-up, two-down house near the lower end of Weavers Lane and that’d have to do until they could afford something better or he found a job elsewhere. Meg was still determined to leave Northby and, until they managed that, she’d carry on working so that they could save