Ragamuffin Angel Read Free

brats already and a stomach full of the next one, and she’s making a fool of all of us –’  
    ‘You shut your filthy mouth!’ Jacob’s face was drained of colour. ‘You don’t know the first thing about her. She’s a good woman, a warm woman, and meeting her helped me keep my sanity after I’d lived with your sister for two years. I was ready to top meself when I met Sadie and I tell you that straight.’  
    ‘You –’  
    As John’s fist struck out, Art caught his brother’s arm and held on to him as Jacob continued, a spate of words flowing out of his mouth now. ‘I should have known on the wedding night how it was going to be but I thought she was just frightened, being a young lass of nineteen and all, and that she’d come round. Come round!’ He made a guttural sound in his throat. ‘Your mam had done too good a job for that, damn her. How would you feel if your wife was physically sick with fear every time you came near her, eh? You answer me that. I’ve taken Mavis five times in six years of marriage and each time I felt I’d raped her. The things your mam had drummed into her . . .’ He swore again. ‘She’s not normal, she can’t be, and she’s made her daughter worse than she is. You don’t know how many times I’ve thanked God the rest of you were lads.’  
    ‘You dirty liar.’  
    The blizzard was ferocious now, whipping the snow into a mad frenzy, but it was nothing on John as he wrenched himself free of Art and flung himself on the man in front of him, Gilbert and Matthew adding their weight to his as the three of them began to rain punches on Jacob’s tottering form.  
    The speed with which the cottage door opened indicated that the inhabitants within had been listening to the proceedings, but as Sadie Bell, heavily pregnant and screeching like a banshee, made to hurl herself into the mêlée, Art caught hold of her, shouting for Dan, who was standing transfixed by the violence in front of him, to help hold the distraught woman.  
    Dan would have obeyed, but out of the comer of his eye he’d become aware of another figure, that of a slight, golden-haired child darting after its mother, and when the small girl of around six or seven tried to go towards the fight he reached out and caught her, lifting her off her feet as she began to struggle and add her cries to those of her mother.  
    Jacob was on the ground now and he was screaming as John’s thick hobnailed boots belted into him again and again with savage intent. Twice Gilbert and Matthew tried to pull John away, shouting the while for him to stop, that Jacob had had enough, but each time John flung them aside and returned to the blood-soaked figure on the red spotted snow like an enraged animal that, having scented blood, was determined to go for the kill.  
    In the end, and only when Jacob was limp and unmoving, Gilbert and Matthew wrestled John to the ground, urged on by Art and Dan’s frantic shouts, holding him down by brute force for some thirty or forty seconds as he continued to resist.  
    And then a silence came upon them all, even Sadie, as, Art having released her, she stumbled across to Jacob’s still form and knelt down in the snow by his side.  
    ‘Sadie?’ A bent old woman was standing in the doorway of the cottage, her arms around a small toddler who was clinging to her tattered skirts but making no sound. ‘Is he breathin’, lass?’  
    ‘’Course he’s breathing.’ Art was frightened; it sounded in his voice.  
    ‘Just about.’ Sadie lifted her head towards her mother and the fruit of Art’s voice was reflected in her white face and streaming eyes. ‘But he’s awful still, Mam.’  
    ‘Get him inside.’  
    ‘No.’ John was standing now, Gilbert and Matthew either side of him, and unlike the rest of them his face showed no fear and his voice was cold and weighty when he said, ‘He’ll never set foot in this brothel again, I’m telling you.’  
    ‘It’s not a