The Waterfront Lass

Annemarie Brear

Description

Don't miss the BRAND NEW gripping historical novel from Bestselling author AnneMarie Brear

Wakefield 1870

On the banks of the River Calder, Meg Taylor struggles to care for her younger siblings and sick mother whilst her father is away working as a boatman on the canals. The slums where they live are rife with disease, and Meg longs for a different life, away from the grinding poverty, but she'll never leave her family.

But with the canals slowly dying as trade moves to the railways, and with Meg’s father stubbornly holding onto the past, Meg fears her family’s future is going to get even bleaker. If only there was a way she could save them….

Christian Henderson is tired of the greed of his wealthy family. He sees the poverty around him and wishes he could do more to help the proud working-class people he meets. People like Meg Taylor, whose courage he so admires.

From the moment he meets Meg, Christian is captivated – Meg might be poor, but she is proud and spirited!

Meg’s dreams of being with a man like Christian are fantasy. How can a lass from the waterfront be with a wealthy man such as he?

And worse, if she follows her heart to be with him, what will happen to the family she loves?

Praise for AnneMarie Brear:

'AnneMarie Brear writes gritty, compelling sagas that grip from the first page.' Fenella J Miller

'Poignant, powerful and searingly emotional, AnneMarie Brear stands shoulder to shoulder with the finest works by some of the genre’s greatest writers such as Catherine Cookson, Audrey Howard and Rosamunde Pilcher.'

'Mesmerising from beginning to end.' Lizzie Lane

Sujets

• Sea Stories
• Mashups
• Cultural Heritage
• Siblings
• Historical
• Women
• Coming of Age
• Condado de Yorkshire (Reino Unido)
• Inglaterra
• Friendship
• Historical romance
• SpongeBob SquarePants
• Sibling
• General officer
• Historical fiction
• Woman
• The Women
• General
• Sagas
• Family Life
• Romance
• England
• Wakefield
• Saga
• Yorkshire
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Boldwood Books
• Date de parution: 06 juin 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781801627771
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE WATERFRONT LASS


ANNEMARIE BREAR
Dedicated to my sister Margaret, born in Wakefield and who has always shared her love of books with me, especially historical family sagas.
CONTENTS



Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20


Author’s Note

More from AnneMarie Brear

About the Author

Sixpence Stories

About Boldwood Books
1
WAKEFIELD WATERFRONT, YORKSHIRE, ENGLAND, 1870

With a muttered oath, Margaret May Taylor, named after her maternal grandmother, but shortened to Meg, plunged the dolly stick back into the grey soapy tub and twisted it numerous times. Arms aching, for she’d been hard at it since before five o’clock, she pulled out the wet, tangled clothes and dropped them into the next tub of clean water with Reckitt’s Paris Blue added to keep the garments white. Sweat dripped off her forehead, despite the sun only just rising over the rooftops, and the morning was heralding another frigid January day.
In the corner of the small paved yard, her younger sister Mabel was, at fourteen, old enough to be trusted to use the dreaded mangle to squeeze the water out of the clothes and sheets.
‘Meg, there’s no more bread,’ stated Susie, another sister, aged eleven, as she came out of the back door to collect more coal from the lean-to shed next to the lavatory. Having their own lavatory was something of a rarity in Wellington Street. Their neighbours had to share lavatories, usually one between two or more houses, but for some reason unknown to all of the street’s inhabitants, number seven, the Taylors’ home, had its own. Meg’s mam liked to think it was because number seven was a special number, but Mr Pike from number eleven said it was because their house had originally been the last one in the street and didn’t have a neighbour to share with. However, that changed some years ago when more terraces were built on to number seven to the railway at the end of Wellington Street.
Mabel tossed her head. ‘There’s never enough food in this house.’
‘Who ate it all?’ Meg puffed, using her wrist to wipe her dark brown hair back from her face. ‘Mam’s not had her breakfast yet.’
‘Betsy and Nell. You know Betsy can’t cut it thin enough.’ Susie scooped up pieces of coal into a bucket.
‘Then you should have been up earlier to cut it,’ Meg fumed. ‘I can’t be out here and in the kitchen at the same time. You’ve to pull your weight.’
‘I do!’ Susie snapped.
‘And go steady on the coal,’ Meg warned. ‘It’s all we’ve got. Just use a few pieces.’
Susie heaved up the bucket full of coal and hobbled with the weight of it back inside, struggling to keep the filthy bucket away from her stockings and skirt.
Meg hoisted a basket of wet clothes over to Mabel, who was hanging out the clothes she’d just mangled. Three ropes stretched across the paved yard to cope with all the washing, but it was unlikely any of it would dry on such a winter’s day.
Nicky, the youngest of Meg’s siblings, leaned against the kitchen doorjamb. At six, he was too small for his age, the legacy of being ill most of his life and being born into the family when her father was struggling to make any money with his narrowboat.
‘Get away inside and sit by the fire,’ Meg said to Nicky, adding more clothes to the tub.
‘Mam said I can go to school today.’ His faint voice barely reached across the cramped space to Meg.
‘I don’t think so.’ Meg gave a grim smile. ‘It’s too much for you.’
‘Mam said.’ He frowned, upset. His grey eyes, so like Meg’s, were expressive of his hope.
‘Aye, but Mam doesn’t see how you suffer after a day at school, does she?’ Meg twisted the dolly stick vigorously, half-annoyed that her mother, who was practically bedridden upstairs, had undermined her rule.
‘I want to go!’ Nicky stamped his foot.
Sighing, Meg shrugged. ‘Then go with the girls, but don’t cry to me when you can’t leave your bed for a week afterwards.’
Thrilled, Nicky disappeared inside.
‘That was harsh,’ Mabel said, back at the mangle.
Meg gave her a stern and exhausted look. ‘You know as well as I do how he gets after being at school.’
‘Aye, but he wants to be like the other boys. Let him go.’
Meg straightened her aching back. ‘Right, I will, and you can help look after him and Mam.’
‘I already do, don’t I? When you’re at work.’ Mabel pouted angrily. Not one for working was Mabel or doing anything that she didn’t want to do. Mrs Fogarty, the neighbour next door, said Mabel had been born into the wrong family and should have been the daughter of a gentleman, not a narrowboat skipper.
In silence, the two sisters continued the arduous task of washing, mangling and hanging out as the sun rose and the back-to-back terraced houses came alive as men went to work and women began their housework and getting children sorted. Many neighbours were already washing as the Taylor sisters were. Mondays in this poor area of the waterfront were washing days for those women who had the strength to do it.
From the canal and the River Calder came the sounds of activity. Horns blasted from boats and barges, while the mills and factory steam whistles blew, summoning the workers into their gates. Trains shuttled and rattled along the viaduct that had been built over the end of not only Wellington Street, but all the streets running east to west from the river.
Meg’s father, Frank, owned a narrowboat. He had been transporting goods along the canals since he was a boy helping his father and now his sons, Freddie and Arthur, helped him. For weeks they’d be gone from home, travelling the waterways from Wakefield to other parts of Yorkshire, leaving Meg to run the family, the house and take care of her ailing mam, as well as work her few shifts a week at the local pub, the Bay Horse.
When her father was home, it wasn’t for long, a few days, and then he and the boys would be gone again. At times, Meg wished she could simply jump on a boat and leave behind her responsibilities for weeks, and she resented Freddie and Arthur’s freedom. If she’d been born a boy, she’d be on the boat now, watching the countryside go by, jumping up to open the locks, to dock at the many wharves and meet different people, to sleep under the stars in summer, to have a bond with the others who traversed the waterways.
Instead, she broke her back, cleaning, cooking and skivvying after her family with no thanks, no kind word from her father. She was the eldest and a girl. She shouldn’t expect thanks.
‘I’m going to have to go soon,’ Mabel said, hanging the last shirt on the line from her basket. ‘I don’t want to be late.’
‘No, it’s fine. You go.’ Meg waved her away. Mabel’s job at the woollen mill further up Thornes Lane Wharf was another income to help keep the family clothed and fed. In the summer, Susie would leave school and join Mabel in the mill and the extra pennies would come in handy. ‘Make Mam a cup a tea before you leave.’
‘Then I’ll be late. I ain’t having the gaffer telling me off and docking me wages.’ Mabel flounced towards the door.
‘Say my wages not me wages. Mam wants us to speak properly like she does.’
‘Who cares?’ Mabel declared.
Meg flung the clothes down, annoyed at being both the sister and the parent. ‘Don’t worry about anything, Mabel. I’ll make Mam’s tea. I’ve got to make sure the others are ready for school, anyway.’ Meg sighed and left the clothes to soak and went inside.
The kitchen contained a range by the wall and a square table that wasn’t large enough for the whole family to sit around, especially when her father and brothers were home. Stone flags covered the floor, and the whitewashed walls were past their best. Plaster, cracked and brittle, fell every day like blossom and Meg swept it up every morning and night. She’d told the rent man about it each week for over a year, but the landlord so far had done nothing about it.
Years ago, to accommodate the growing family, her father had knocked down the dividing wall between the kitchen and the poky front room, creating one larger room where a green horsehair sofa could fit under the front window. The girls had made a rag rug for the floor and rag-stuffed cushions for them to sit on by the fire.
Wellington Street was a series of two-up and two-down terraced houses, all in various states of dilapidation. The walls ran with moisture, the windows iced over each morning in winter, and the rats were constant visitors in the roof and walls. The chimneys smoked and the shared water pump often didn’t work so she had to walk to the next pump at the end of the street and carry back full buckets of water, which didn’t last long enough. The lavatories overflowed and some years the polluted river flooded, swamping them in foul, stinking water up to their knees. Mould grew as quickly as flowers in a hothouse, and in the warm summer weather the stench from the factories and dye houses made Meg gag.
How she longed to get away. The idea of leaving consumed her night and day, but how could she go away with no money? The little amount of money she made working behind the bar at the Bay Horse was barely enough to buy her new boots and a hat each year. She put most of it in the tin on the mantel to pay the bills.
Sighing, Meg stirred the porridge as Nell sat at the table, scratching her head. ‘You’d better not have nits again,’ Meg warned.
‘I can’t help it.’ Nell scratched harder.
Meg ladled out bowls of porridge and passed them about the table. ‘Betsy, you can go to Boyd’s Bakery and buy a loaf of bread and bring it back here before you go to school, since you cut it too thick. How many times have I shown you how to slice it?’
‘I try!’ Betsy stomped over to the chair and picked up her spoon. ‘Why can’t Susie do it?’
Susie, standing in front of the small wall mirror, pla