The Dream Begins Read online

  ‘What is my business, and Mr Crawshay’s, is you promised promotions in Crawshay’s ironworks in exchange for … what would you call it, Perkins? “Personal favours”?’

  ‘It’s a criminal offence to slander a man.’

  ‘You’ll be amazed how quickly the sergeant will prove these accusations when he’s finished questioning the Paskeys.’

  ‘They’re ruffians.’

  ‘Everyone in Merthyr knows that,’ Edward agreed.

  ‘Unscrupulous, unreliable thugs.’

  ‘Undeniable. The only question is why you employ them.’

  ‘I was about to fire them.’

  ‘Don’t you need a reason?’

  ‘They talk a lot of nonsense.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘They’re lying if they said I paid them more than any other worker.’

  ‘Tell me,’ Edward continued conversationally. ‘How much did you pay them to rape Anna Parry?’

  ‘Rape …?’

  ‘A doctor is caring for the child now. She’s twelve years old, Perkins. You have daughters. Can you remember them at that age? Can you imagine grown men the size of the Paskeys raping your girls?’

  ‘Even if it was the Paskeys …’

  ‘Oh, it was the Paskeys all right. The women who live in the court caught them, unfortunately after, not before the act. They meted out their own justice on Ianto. They castrated him. He’s in the infirmary. Pain is wonderful for concentrating the mind, which is why I’m confident Ianto will give the sergeant a full account of who paid him to attack Richard and rape Anna Parry.’

  ‘Ianto Paskey wouldn’t dare incriminate me …’ Perkins only realized what he’d said when the constables moved closer.

  ‘Why wouldn’t he?’ When the deputy failed to answer Edward dropped the mask of politeness. ‘If so much as one more hair on Anna, Richard, Morgan, or Owen Parry’s head is damaged, watch your back.’

  ‘Are you threatening me?’

  ‘I’m suggesting you should employ men with integrity in the rolling mill who don’t attack young men and rape children.’

  ‘I refuse to be held responsible for what my workers do when they leave the mill.’

  ‘You don’t try to exert a good influence on them?’ Edward asked.

  ‘How do you propose I do that?’

  ‘By telling the men under your supervision to look out for orphans like the Parry family.’

  ‘If the Parrys get hurt it will be nothing to do with me.’

  ‘No?’ Edward queried.

  ‘No,’ Deputy Perkins reiterated. ‘And it’s nothing to do with me that they’ve been hurt.’

  ‘There are a lot of narrow alleyways and dark streets in Merthyr.’

  ‘So you are threatening me?’

  ‘Just conversing, one manager to another.’

  ‘You can tell Richard Parry one thing. I’ll kill him if he comes sniffing after my daughter again.’

  ‘You feel that strongly about her?’

  ‘She’s my daughter.’

  ‘Anna Parry is my goddaughter, Perkins.’

  ‘You’d arrange to have my daughter …’

  ‘I’m not stupid nor a coward. I don’t employ others to do my dirty work, nor do I attack defenceless women, children, and young boys. I leave those things to the likes of the Paskeys – and you. As I said, Perkins, watch your back.’

  Dr Edwards’ house

  High Street, Merthyr, June 1870

  Sarah stood next to the kitchen table Anna was lying on; drip feeding chloroform onto the Clover apparatus she’d secured over Anna’s nose and mouth. The sedative Dr Evans had given the girl had worked. Anna hadn’t opened her eyes since Peter had carried her into the hired carriage that had conveyed them to their house.

  Sarah continued to drop liquid slowly on to the mask until Anna’ muscles contracted in a spasm. A few seconds later Anna fell, limp and relaxed on to the table.

  ‘Watch her pupils …’

  ‘And pulse and breathing. I’ve done this before, Peter.’

  ‘I know, sorry. It’s …’

  ‘We’re both upset.’

  Peter lifted his hands from a bowl of antiseptic and dried them in a linen towel. ‘I’ve seen dozens if not hundreds of rape victims, but never one as bad as this. You?’

  ‘No,’ she whispered.

  ‘Damn Dr Evans. I wish I had a junior doctor I could pass Anna on to.’

  ‘No, you don’t, because you know no one else will care for her as well as you.’ She folded back the sheet that covered Anna’s body.

  ‘It’s as though she’s been torn to pieces by a wild animal. Her rectum, anus, and blood vessels are shredded, her vagina ripped, her labia bruised and cut. She’s going to be in agony for weeks. How could the beasts have done this …’

  ‘Beasts don’t inflict pain for no reason.’ Sarah checked Anna’s pupils were still dilated. Chloroform was a tricky substance. She’d witnessed sudden deaths due to overdose during lengthy operations. Determined this wouldn’t happen to Anna, she checked her breathing, pulse, and pupils every few seconds.

  The clock ticked on and she sensed the servants moving behind the door. The cook and kitchen maid had resented being turfed out of the kitchen so close to dinner time. She’d ordered them to clean the pantries but she could hear the housemaids’ and manservant’s voices in the servants’ dining room and suspected precious little work was being done.

  Oblivious to everything except Anna’s injuries, Peter worked steadily. As always when operating, he closed out everything except the task in hand; repairing and stitching torn and damaged tissue to the best of his ability.

  ‘Pulse?’ he asked after half an hour.

  ‘Pulse and respiration steady. Pupils dilated.’

  ‘Almost finished. With this number of stitches pray she doesn’t get an infection.’

  ‘You’re repairing the hymen?’

  ‘You think I shouldn’t?’

  ‘You know my views on virginity.’

  ‘A commodity over-prized by promiscuous men.’ He recited one of her mantras.

  ‘The damage the Paskeys inflicted won’t be healed by a counterfeit virginity.’

  ‘We’re only a doctor and nurse, sweetheart, not God. All we can do is tend to Anna’s physical injuries to the best of our ability and although I don’t think she’s begun menstruating, give her abortifacients to ensure she doesn’t have a child.’

  ‘I want to kill the Paskeys. Or at least castrate the one the women didn’t.’

  ‘Gelding him won’t help Anna.’

  ‘It might save the next victim.’

  ‘I can’t think further than Anna. Like her brother she’s young. She’ll heal in time, all except for the worst wounds. The ones that can’t be seen.’

  Boot Inn

  High Street, Merthyr, June 1870

  Glyn sat up in bed, a sheaf of plans and a notepad balanced on his knees. He was checking the quantities of pipework needed to convey waste gas from the furnaces against what had been delivered to the warehouses in Southampton.

  Betty entered, closed the door, set her candle on the washstand, and blew out the flame. ‘The poor Parry boys are asleep, bless them. They’re worn out.’

  ‘Hardly surprising after everything’s that happened on top of the strain of their mother’s funeral. What did you tell them about Anna?’ Glyn gave up trying to make sense of his figures, gathered his papers, and shuffled them into a pile.

  ‘The Paskeys beat her like they beat Richard.’

  ‘They accepted that?’

  ‘Morgan asked a few awkward questions. That boy knows too much for his age.’

  ‘That boy was working the trap in Edward’s drift mine when he was four years old and he’s been cutting coal since his eighth birthday,’ Glyn reminded. ‘Miners don’t watch their mouths, even among children.’

  ‘He stopped being difficult when I pointed out he was upsetting Owen. They wanted to know where Richard and Anna were. I told t
hem they’d been taken to the infirmary and wouldn’t be allowed visitors until the doctor gave his permission.’

  ‘Why the infirmary?’

  ‘I didn’t want to tell the boys Richard and Anna were staying with Peter and Sarah.’

  ‘With both Paskeys in custody my brother should be safe enough.’

  ‘Unless another of Deputy Perkins’s ruffians decides to finish what the Paskeys started.’

  ‘The police promised to keep a close eye on the deputy and his thugs.’

  ‘I’ve never known the coppers in Merthyr to keep a close eye on anything other than the free hand-outs they extort from publicans and shopkeepers.’

  ‘Trouble in the bar tonight?’ Glyn asked.

  ‘No worse than usual.’

  ‘Your life will be more peaceful in Russia with only a house to run.’

  ‘The way you men talk, you’d think there’s nothing to keeping house.’

  ‘We’ll be able to afford servants. A cook, housekeeper, maids, an indoor man of work, as well as a groom and stable boy.’

  ‘Seeing is believing.’

  ‘You can afford to employ more help here on the allowance I give you,’ Glyn protested.

  ‘Affording to pay workers and getting those worth paying are two different things. Few people are prepared to put in a full day’s work for a full day’s pay. I don’t expect servants to be different in Russia. Most expect wages for sitting round on their backsides. Anna Parry, God bless, heal, and keep her, working part time did twice as much as the full-time, full-grown slatterns in the kitchen.’

  Glyn held his tongue. Betty had managed to engineer an argument every night since his return. He’d actually caught himself regretting the loss of the peace and quiet, if not the loneliness, of the impersonal hotel rooms he’d slept in for the last few years.

  ‘Have you finished working?’ Betty eyed the pile of papers.

  ‘For tonight.’

  ‘The Parry boys didn’t want to eat, but I gave them sandwiches and a drop of brandy in milk to help them sleep. There’s no way I’ll allow them to work tomorrow.’

  ‘Edward wouldn’t want them to.’ Glyn tried to pre-empt argument. He set the papers beside the oil lamp on his bedside table.

  ‘They’ve had it hard, and now on top of losing their Dad and Mam, this business with Richard and Anna. They’re good boys. They carried their plates into the kitchen and would have washed them if I’d let them.’

  ‘You moving them into the lodgers’ dormitory tomorrow?’ Glyn asked.

  ‘Not until their future’s been decided. They’re so young.’

  ‘There are younger than Owen in the dormitory, Betty.’

  ‘None who’ve just lost their mother.’

  ‘Most are orphans like Morgan and Owen. A couple of days, we’ll be gone, on our way to Russia.’

  ‘I don’t need reminding. Your brothers said we’d discuss the Parry children tomorrow. I thought it best to wait to see what’s decided then.’ She tipped water from the jug into the china bowl on the washstand, dropped in a cake of soap and lathered it, spreading the suds over her hands and face.

  ‘We all packed?’

  ‘Apart from the clothes we’ll need for the next few days. Turn off the lamp.’

  Glyn almost refused but decided against it. Betty had never undressed in front of him. In over ten years of marriage he’d never seen her naked. He turned down the wick, punched his pillow into a more conducive shape, and lay back.

  The rustle of clothing filled the air when Betty removed her dress and hung it on the back of the door. She took her nightdress from beneath her pillow, pulled it over her head without slipping her arms through the sleeves, allowed the hem to fall and continued undressing beneath the tent like garment. She unfastened and stepped out of her petticoats, stockings, corset, bust shaper, and bloomers. After she removed each item, she folded it and placed it on the chair.

  When she finished, she slipped her arms through the sleeves of the nightgown and knelt beside the bed. Resting her forehead on the back of her hands, she recited the Lord’s Prayer and continued with a list of names Glyn thought would never end and a final plea that “God bless and keep them all.”

  Glyn wasn’t unsympathetic towards the rituals of Betty’s Baptist religion. He prayed. On occasion several times a day, when invoking the Lord’s blessing on Mr Hughes’s business endeavours. In imminent danger, like the time the horses drawing Mr Hughes’s hired carriage had bolted through crowded Berlin streets, his prayers had been desperate. But no matter how urgent, his supplications were always silent.

  Eventually Betty rose from her knees folded back the bedclothes on her side of the bed, climbed in, and lay on her back beside him.

  He glanced across at her, a shadowy grey hump in the shadowy grey gloom. Her voice, strained disembodied floated in the darkness.

  ‘You want your rights?’

  He sensed her waiting for him to break the silence that had fallen since she’d asked the question. ‘Not if you’re tired.’

  ‘Give me a minute.’ She sat up in the bed and pulled her nightgown to her waist.

  He knew it would be too much to ask her to remove it.

  ‘I’m ready.’

  Glyn remembered his last visit to a ‘lady’. He’d paid for the privilege but there’d been fun, laughter, and more emotion in the brief encounter than all the nights he’d spent with Betty.

  ‘I said I’m ready.’

  He knew what would follow if he moved on top of his wife. Her martyred rigidity while he ‘took his rights’. Lovemaking wasn’t a word that could be used to describe what he and Betty did.

  ‘I’m tired, Betty. Perhaps tomorrow?’

  ‘I wish you’d said something before I made preparations. Don’t you want children?’

  ‘Give me a minute.’ He tried to recall some of the women he’d spent time with in the bordellos in Europe … then remembered the pretty dark-haired Russian in Moscow who knew exactly how to revive a jaded sexual appetite.

  The memory resulted in a performance even he rated perfunctory.

  When he finished, Betty rolled on her side and rearranged her nightdress.

  He was almost asleep when she spoke again. ‘I want children. But with you away so much …’

  ‘We’ll talk in the morning, Betty.’

  ‘We need to do more than talk. You might not be so tired first thing.’

  He didn’t answer. His thoughts were with a girl in Greenwich. Light brown hair, blue eyes, and a bewitching smile that had made him feel as though he were the most important being in the world – until her next customer had arrived.

  Dr Edwards’ house

  High Street, Merthyr, June 1870

  Sarah waited until nine o’clock before knocking Anna’s bedroom door. Peter had dosed the girl with laudanum twice during the night to help her sleep as much as deaden her pain but when Sarah walked in Anna’s eyes were open. Dark, desolate as she lay curled in the foetal position in the bed.

  ‘I brought you breakfast, Anna. Tea and toast. I put two sugars in the tea and brought the bowl in case you want more.’ Sarah set the tray on the dressing table and opened the drapes.

  Anna’s face was swollen, her throat and cheeks marred by scratches and bruises that had darkened to deep purple. If she’d cried in the night, there was no trace left of her tears.

  Sarah had become expert at concealing her feelings while working in London. But she found it impossible not to show anger towards the men who’d so cruelly abused Anna. After Peter carried Anna upstairs he’d had to physically restrain her from going to thank the women who’d emasculated Ianto Paskey. He only succeeded in stopping her by reminding her they had to keep Richard and Anna’s whereabouts secret from other thugs who might be tempted by the rumours of bounty payable by Deputy Perkins.

  Sarah sat on the bed and offered Anna the cup but Anna continued to stare blankly through large, frightened, and Sarah suspected, unseeing eyes.

  ‘I do
n’t know if you remember what we talked about last night, Anna. Richard’s here. The doctor and I have been looking after him. You can see him.’

  ‘No!’ Anna focused on Sarah. ‘Does Richard know what the Paskeys did to me?’

  Sarah returned the untouched teacup to the tray. ‘No, but you’ll have to tell him. He’ll want to know how you came by those bruises.’

  ‘I couldn’t bear Richard to know what they did to me. I don’t want anyone to know.’

  ‘I understand how you feel …’

  ‘Did anyone ever do the vile things to you that the Paskeys did to me? Do you know what’s it’s like to be stripped naked … to be … to be …’

  ‘Anna, don’t think about it,’ Sarah pleaded. ‘You have your life ahead of you.’

  ‘I have nothing …’ Anna dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘I … don’t … have … anything … Please! Don’t tell Richard.’ She grabbed Sarah’s arm. ‘Please, promise me you won’t tell him.’ Anna turned her head to the wall. ‘I wish the Paskeys had killed me.’

  There was nothing theatrical in the pronouncement. Sarah’s heart went out to the girl. ‘I know you’re hurting and you think your life is over, but it’s not. You’ll recover and when you do, you’ll realise life is precious and worth living.’

  ‘Everyone knows what the Paskeys did to me. No decent person will want to come near me.’

  Peter knocked the door and opened it. Unable to face him, Anna buried her head in the pillow. He handed Sarah a bottle of laudanum and slipped outside.

  Sarah gathered her thoughts. ‘The Paskeys beat Richard; we could tell him they beat you.’

  ‘Just a beating?’

  Sarah poured water into a glass and added drops of laudanum. ‘If that’s what you want.’ She couldn’t bring herself to remind Anna that as the women in the court knew what the Paskeys had done to her, the story would have been related in every pub, street, and court in the town by now. ‘Drink this.’ She gave Anna the glass.

  ‘Richard will find out, won’t he? He and everyone will know just by looking at me. Auntie Maggie and Auntie May saw me; saw what those men had done …’

  ‘What happened wasn’t your fault. No man should do what the Paskeys did to you to any woman, especially a girl your age. The Paskeys are pure evil and they’ll be punished.’ Sarah set down the glass and the bottle, sat next to Anna, and wrapped her arms around her.