A Mother's Love (3 page)

‘How many children do you have, Bert?’ she changed the subject.

‘Eight. One married, seven still at ’ome. But what I meant …’

‘You do understand, Bert, about losing three days’ pay?’

‘Understood, Mrs Porter.’ Emerging fully from behind the door, his clothes wafted a musty smell towards her. ‘Mr Porter was good ter me. But with ’im working as well, I only ever expected part time and …’

‘As I said,’ she cut in again. The kettle was starting to steam gently. She didn’t want to offer him tea. Employers didn’t do that sort of thing and she was now an employer. It felt daunting. ‘I need the help now, knowing nothing about printing. If you want to go up …’ She fished out a hanky, held it to her nose. ‘I’d go with you, but for the stairs.’

‘Of course.’ He took in her condition with honest agreement. ‘I won’t stay but a minute, Mrs Porter.’ The door closed quietly.

‘Coo-ee! Harriet dear?’ Her mother’s voice, quiet yet forceful, came at the back door almost immediately after Bert had disappeared upstairs.

Harriet stood up as her mother came into the kitchen, hurrying forward to take her daughter to a bosom too neat to meet the current notion of what constituted a fine figure. Buckram and frilling sewn on to undergarments did their best, and larger than usual leg-of-mutton sleeves helped the chest’s proportions, if not her small height.

‘Your father’s paying off the cabbie,’ Mary said, releasing her hold. She regarded Harriet with mingled severity and concern.

‘You know, you should have come home with us. Not to even to let us stay here with you … Grieving’s one thing, Harriet, but you mustn’t wallow in it. Not with the little one on the way. How did you sleep?’

‘Not bad,’ Harriet lied. The worst thing she could think of was to have had her parents sighing over her, her having to force the tears for their benefit. Even now, knowing what she had done made her go all shaky.

Hat and coat hung on the cane hallstand, Mary took it on herself to reach down cups and saucers from the shelves beside the kitchen range. Emptying the teapot, she lifted the boiling kettle with a padded woollen holder around its iron handle and warmed the pot, casting Harriet a sad look as she measured fresh tea into the pot.

‘I couldn’t stop thinking about you all night, with your poor Will there in the next room, and how you must be feeling with him so near yet so far. I still can’t believe what happened. One year. Lord knows he’ll be as far away tomorrow as he’ll ever be, my poor love.’

Thank God. Harriet smothered a sigh of relief.

Mary paused, teapot half filled, listening. ‘What’s that sound?’

‘Dad,’ Harriet said absently. Jack Wilson’s heavy tread made the passage floorboards creak like creatures in pain.

‘No.’ Mary Cocked an ear. ‘Someone’s moving about upstairs.’

‘Oh, our journeyman.’ Automatically Harriet used the plural pronoun.

Under the high jet-beaded collar of her mourning black, her mother had gone turkey-necked with disapproval. ‘You mean your journeyman’s up there – alone? Harriet, he’s a common employee! Will is there for friends and family. Not common
employees.
How long’s he been there?’

‘Only a few minutes.’ Harriet poured the tea, her hands shaking so that it slopped into the saucers. She felt ill envisaging the next three hours, trying to feign grief before her mother’s pitying gaze.

Mary seated herself at the kitchen table while Jack came in and stood with his back to the range. He frowned, like Mary, faintly annoyed.

‘I’ll give him another half minute then I’m up there to turf him down,’ he muttered, stirring his spoon round in his cup noisily and with purpose. ‘Improper. I take it he realises he won’t be needed the rest of the week, with you in mourning? After that, we’ll see.’

Harriet wasn’t sure whether to be glad or annoyed that her father was virtually taking over. ‘There’s an order,’ she said hastily. ‘Posters wanted by Friday. I said he could come in Thursday and Friday and I’ve put him on full time at thirty-two shillings a week from now on.’

‘You what?’ Jack choked on his tea.

‘I do need him. He’s a good worker and he was very grateful.’

Jack’s business sense flipped over in disbelief. Beneath his mourning black coat, his corpulent stomach trembled as he paced the linoleum between the kitchen table and the range.

‘I bet he was! And you must be tuppence short of a shilling. Why’n’t you speak to me before committing yourself like that? Cut it by five bob before it goes too far.’

‘I can’t,’ she said, awkward and inadequate in this new role of a woman alone in a man’s world. ‘I can’t go back on my word.’

Mary allowed her neck another disparaging stretch. ‘You should remain closed the whole week – a time like this. And you shouldn’t be worrying about business matters in your condition either. Women aren’t meant for that sort of thing.’

‘What sort of thing?’ Defiance made Harriet’s tone sharp, evoking corresponding terseness from her mother.

‘A woman’s place is in the home with her husband and children.’

‘I haven’t got a husband, have I?’

‘More reason to’ve asked my advice, Harriet.’ Jack’s heavy brows drew together in bluff sympathy. ‘Paying employees more than they’re worth – typical female approach. Will wouldn’t’ve had it.’

Harriet’s defiance hadn’t diminished. ‘Will’s not here now to have anything. Or have you forgotten?’ She heard her mother gasp but Jack retained his composure, concerned only for his daughter’s wellbeing.

‘Your mother’s right, Harriet. You shouldn’t be worrying about business matters. You can’t say Will hasn’t left you comfortably off. My advice is to put the business into the hands of a firm of auctioneers who’ll get you the best price for it. With you living on upstairs with just rent to pay, if the money’s invested properly, it’ll last you years.’

‘Or until you marry again, eventually.’ Her differences with her daughter shelved, hope glowed in Mary’s grey eyes. Harriet was still young and so very pretty. There was every likelihood.

Harriet’s eyes began to brim over at all she’d had to put up with from Will. ‘If keeping house, having children and being under a man’s thumb is all there is to marriage, I never want to marry again. As for having babies—’

She broke off, choked by tears. Conceived in pain, the baby would be born with even more pain. She knew how near she was to spilling out a confession of Will’s callous indifference to her tender virgin state on their wedding night, how she had cried out in pain as he had viciously entered her for his own satisfaction. She wanted to shout at them, ‘I don’t want his brat! I hope it’s born dead.’ But she didn’t.

Her mother had given another gasp at what she’d already said, her teacup clinking sharply on to its saucer. Harriet was being quite impossible. It was grief, of course. She could be forgiven.

Mr Higgins came down and, seeing his new employer’s parents there, beat a hasty retreat. After he’d gone, Harriet sat by the kitchen range while Mary went to rescue the washing from the cooling suds. The ache in her lower back had become heavier. The warmth from the range penetrating the heavy black skirt helped to soothe it, but the weight within her distended stomach was an inexorable reminder of what lay ahead. Even though Will was dead, the pain and the degradation he had brought her would live on – the existence of his child would ensure that.

No one understood. Clara and Annie’s marriages were happy. Fully occupied with tending their children, they could count on their husbands to support them. They had no fear of the future. Even her brothers, not yet married, employed by their father, had no need to fear it. His business would be theirs one day. How could she, a young widow with a baby, keep a business running, even if she wanted to? Better take her father’s advice. Sell it.

Her mother returned, drying her hands. Harriet got up and took the cups to the sink. She was still dwelling on her dismal future when a raw twinge, expanding outward like a twisted knife wound, stabbed out all other thoughts, exploding panic inside her. She clutched the sink.

‘Mum!’ Her voice was a high squeak. ‘I’ve got such a pain …’

For a second her mother’s expression was as alarmed as her own, the unspoken question arcing between them, but Mary managed to smile.

‘It’s not that, dear, there’s three weeks to go yet.’

‘But it hurts!’ The saying that a woman carried her own coffin with her during pregnancy came unbidden to Harriet’s mind, and she remembered all the stories of women dying in premature childbirth. An aunt, her mother’s youngest sister, had died that way. She didn’t want to die. Didn’t want to join Will in hell. She’d had dreams …

‘It must be the shock of losing Will, that’s all.’ Mary sat her down, soothing her, while Jack, who had gone very white, looked on with some embarrassment.

Mary chewed her lip, thinking hard. ‘It can’t be, not on the day of the funeral! Someone must go for the doctor. I can’t. And you, Jack, you have to be here when everyone arrives. Go and ask that Mrs Hardy if she can go.
Now
, Jack!’ as Harriet gave another squeal. He jumped as though scalded, hurrying off swiftly for a man of his size.

Mrs Hardy was in within seconds, clutching a thin roll of oiled cloth, the sort used for kitchen tables and shelves.

‘Something to pop on ’er bed so’s it won’t get stained,’ she said. ‘Pity we can’t let ’er go upstairs in the parlour. Not with ’er poor husband lying up there. Terrible thing, never to see ’is little’un. I’ll get my May to run for Doctor Rubin and Mrs Mason. Good midwife, that one. Yer daughter’ll benefit from ’er.’

Mrs Hardy was talking as though Harriet wasn’t there, but Harriet was in no mood to care, being more concerned by the thought of May as a messenger. Mrs Hardy’s youngest was eighteen but definitely lacking. May was usually to be seen sitting behind the counter smiling at nothing in particular while her mother served customers with candles or kerosine or gas mantles. Harriet didn’t give much for her chances of getting a message to anyone, least of all a midwife and a doctor.

Mr Wilson beat a hasty retreat to wait for the mourners, and the two women went upstairs. Left alone, Harriet listened to their footsteps going back and forth above her in the bedroom, willing them to come down to be with her before the next pain came. When it did come, her shriek brought them to her side in seconds. Mrs Hardy took her hand.

‘There, there, luv. We’re getting you upstairs and into bed. See, it’s not so bad. Up you come.’

Hoisted to her feet, with Mrs Hardy’s arm around her waist and her mother holding her hand, Harriet was guided up the narrow stairs. As they went, she was dimly aware of her father opening the front door to Aunt Sarah, the first of the mourners.

The midwife took her time, arriving seconds behind the hearse to find the hall and kitchen full of people talking louder than normal so as not to hear the bereaved widow in labour above them.

Since the bearers were handing the coffin downstairs with their customary reverence despite the howls from the bedroom, Mrs Mason’s large bulk had to wait for it to pass before going on up. Already put out by the unsavoury experience of a coffin passing within inches of her nose, she entered the bedroom as Harriet let out another yowl.

‘What’s all this noise then?’ The black straw hat was coming off, hat pins being thrust back into it, then it was dropped on the chair along with the midwife’s coat. Rolling up the sleeves of her brown linen blouse, she glared at the girl.

‘What a blessed lot of fuss! You’re scaring them all out of their very wits downstairs. It ain’t as bad as all that.’

‘I can’t help it,’ Harriet wailed at her.

‘Yes you can,’ came the unsympathetic reply. ‘It ain’t hardly begun yet.’

The rest of the day promised to be composed not of time but of one vast swamp of agony as far as Harriet was concerned. Mrs Mason took a brief peek at her underparts then announced that she had ages to go yet.

Next to arrive was the doctor, squeezing in at the door as the mourners were filing out. He made an even briefer examination, his fingers cold. He smiled encouragement at Harriet as she winced. ‘All going splendidly,’ he said brightly and left, almost part of the funeral cortege, so quickly had he come and gone.

‘What if I have complications?’ she implored weakly. ‘I could die and no one seems to care.’

‘You won’t die, strong gel like you,’ said the midwife, while Mary smoothed her daughter’s hand gently.

‘You mustn’t worry. The doctor would have stayed if there’d been any complications.’

‘I’d better get on with the sandwiches,’ Mrs Hardy said, ‘or they won’t be ready for when everyone comes back.’ She hurried off.

Jack had gone with the others to represent his bereaved daughter and her mother and to make sure the cause of their absence didn’t escape those who hadn’t been to the house. Harriet would have the sympathy of everyone around the graveside today. Thus alerted, there was none of the bright gush of conversation that usually concluded the return from a funeral with the worst part done with. Mrs Hardy’s tasty ham and tongue sandwiches were hardly touched. After drinking a warming cup of tea and expressing heartfelt hopes of the grieving widow’s safe delivery, all the guests beat a hasty retreat. No one lingered except for Harriet’s godmother, Aunt Sarah, her mother’s sister. Even she kept strictly out of the way, and Harriet was not even aware of her presence downstairs.

Towards evening, the pains grew closer together. Harriet reacted with gasps, back arching, face contorted with a need to strain. Mrs Mason got up to assess her charge, then quickly twisted a bedsheet into a rope and tied each end to the bottom rails.

‘Right, deary,’ she commanded. ‘Hold on to this. Pull hard on it and push down only when I say. Right – push, now!’

Her face twisted with the pain, Harriet stared uncomprehendingly. Mrs Mason tutted at such ignorance.

‘As if you was doing Number Twos, but harder … Harder than that!’ Harriet pushed, gripping the sheet rope for dear life. ‘Come on, girl! With all your might and main. That’s it. And once more! No – don’t give in. Come on – once more – another nice push. Then you can rest.’