had been a long day. After attending a subscription lunch they had seen the matinée performance of The Yeomen of the Guard at the Theatre Royal in Fishergate. From there Robert had taken John to watch the traditional football match played by the Guild against Woolwich Arsenal. And now they were joining the crowds pouring through the streets to watch and follow the procession.
Just the noise from the revellers was enough to make Ellie want to cover her ears.
‘I don’t think there’s any point in trying to get to Fishergate,’ her father was saying. ‘There’s even more people here than I expected. They’re saying that the shopkeepers in Fishergate have made hundreds of guineas letting out viewing space from their windows.’
‘Well, we have had just as good a view from our own home,’ Lydia told him, ‘and it hasn’t cost us a single penny!’
She gave a small gasp and clung tightly to her husband’s arm as the crowd swirled round them. ‘Stay close together, children,’ she urged them anxiously. ‘Connie, you hold on to me and, Ellie, you take charge of John and keep close to us. Robert, are you sure it’s safe to be out?’ she asked uncertainly. ‘The street is packed so close with people that in the heat I feel I can hardly breathe.’
‘They are saying that it is the best-attended Guild on record,’ Robert confirmed happily. ‘And we shall be perfectly all right just so long as we stay together.’
‘Dad, just look at that,’ John called out excitedly, as a group of ghostly looking grotesques walked past, their torches held aloft to illuminate their eerie masks and costumes.
Ellie shuddered, as repelled by their appearance as her younger brother was admiring.
The noise from the revellers watching and the participants in the procession was ear-shatteringly strident: young children blew shrill toy trumpets, girls screamed, and each group participating in the parade seemed to have its own musical accompaniment. A group of boisterous young men, shouldering their way through the crowds, were singing bawdy music-hall songs, whilst another group sang a rousing military anthem.
All around the Prides the warm night air was punctuated by the sounds of people’s enthusiastic excitement, and as for the smells…! Ellie wrinkled her nose as one of the Southport shrimpers walked past in her distinctive local dress, carrying a tray of her wares. The wings of her white hat were so wide that Ellie marvelled they weren’t crushed by the crowd, but then everyone knew that the shrimpers were a formidable band of women and took care not to jostle them.
John started to beg for some, but Lydia shook her head. It had been a hot day, and heaven alone knew just how long the shrimps had been on those trays. A scuffle broke out amongst the crowd and Robert started to move his family out of the way.
‘Ellie, let go of me,’ John demanded. He had seen a school friend a few yards away and was determined to boast to him about how close he had been able to get to the balloon in Avenham Park before it had begun its ascent.
‘John!’ Ellie protested, as he finally broke her hold and darted into the crowd. ‘Come back here.’
She went after him, calling crossly to him as she did so, but he refused to pay any attention to her.
Having gained his freedom, John quickly abandoned his original goal of reaching his friend and instead started to make for the front of the street, intent on getting a better view of the procession. He thought it a poor thing that his father had refused to allow him out on his own or, at the very least, agreed that they could walk alongside the procession.
For an agile ten-year-old, wriggling through the tight-packed mass of people was relatively easy; for Ellie, following furiously in his wake, it was very much more difficult.
With her hair up and her new dress on she was not a young girl any more but a young woman. Disapproving matrons and high-spirited young men both commented on her progress through their midst in terms that brought a hot sting of colour to her face, although for very different reasons.
When one young gallant actually dared to refuse to let her pass until she had allowed him a kiss, she gave him such a look of fulminating fury and disdain that he immediately stepped back. Where on earth was John? Despairingly Ellie searched the crowd. She had come only a few yards down Friargate, but the press of people was such that she felt almost as though she was in an alien land. All around her she could hear the hum of unfamiliar accents mingling with those of the townsfolk.
‘John!’ she called out, relief filling her as she suddenly saw his familiar tow-coloured head only feet away from her.
The procession was almost out of Friargate now and, as Ellie plunged into the crowd to grab hold of John, it suddenly became a dangerous maelstrom of humanity as it poured into the space left by the procession and surged down the street behind it. To Ellie’s shock she suddenly found herself being lifted off her feet by the sheer force of the tightly packed bodies and carried forward, totally helpless. She started to panic, frantically trying to turn round and make her way back to where she had last seen John, but the press of the crowd made it impossible for her to do so. It was the most frightening sensation she had ever experienced.
She gave a small cry of pain as her new straw hat was tugged off, causing its pins to pull on her hair. She could hardly breathe, let alone move. She could hear other women screaming and men calling out but somehow she felt oddly distanced from the sounds. Her chest felt so tight, she could feel her own heart pounding, and her head too. Someone’s elbow jarred accidentally into her body but she barely felt the blow. She wanted her father! Her mother! She tried to call for them but could only make a tiny pitiful mew of sound, it was becoming so hard for her to breathe. There was a dreadful pain inside her chest, as though it was being crushed…
Gideon Walker had seen Ellie as he made his way through the crowd and had immediately recognised her as the pretty blonde girl he had seen standing in the upper window embrasure of Robert Pride’s Friargate butcher’s shop. His eyes had been drawn to her. She was very pretty, and he had spent more time than he wanted to admit thinking about her since then.
He had seen what was happening to her, but by the time Gideon, who had been less than ten feet away from her, finally managed to push through the crowd to reach her, she was in very grave danger of being trampled by the crowd as it surged after the procession.
Terrified and scarcely able to breathe, Ellie was at first too relieved to be aware of just who her rescuer was when a pair of strong male hands grabbed hold of her and dragged her upright, but by the time Gideon had guided her free of the crowd she was acutely conscious not just of the fact that he had probably saved her life but also of his identity. Now that she was standing so close to him she could see just how tall and broad-shouldered he was, and how mesmerising those silver-grey eyes of his actually were.
‘You shouldn’t be out alone. It isn’t safe,’ Gideon told her, his voice gruff with the mixed emotions of protectiveness and desire that she was arousing in him.
‘I was trying to find my brother,’ Ellie defended herself. Her head ached, and her hands were shaking as she reached up to try to straighten her hair. She knew how dishevelled and untidy she must look. There was a tear in the flounce of her new dress and several grubby stains marked its original pristine freshness.
‘Ellie! There you are! Thank goodness!’ Robert Pride was frowning at Gideon as he studied him.
‘Father, this young man has just been kind enough to help me,’ Ellie explained, guessing what her father was thinking. ‘John ran off and I was trying to find him and…and the crowd…’
As her emotions overcame her, Gideon stepped forward. ‘I saw Miss Pride. And fortunately I was close enough to be able to go to her assistance.’
Robert’s frown deepened. ‘You know my daughter?’ he demanded suspiciously.
‘I know your brother, William Pride, the drover. I have been working for him. He pointed out your shop to me and Miss Pride happened to…to be there,’ Gideon responded equably.
‘I see.’