Shadow Baby (27 page)

Evie enjoyed pondering on this question. The little mystery gave an additional thrill to the following Sunday - would Miss Mawson be there or not? She was not. But two Sundays later she was, and Evie had a stroke of luck, such as rarely came her way. Mrs Bewley was unwell. The doctor had been on Saturday and pronounced her feverish and possibly about to go down with shingles. Mrs Bewley had instantly beseeched him to send a properly trained nurse to her since she vowed ‘that chit of a girl’ as well as ‘that old fool, Harris’ could not adequately nurse her and she would die of neglect. The nurse had been sent and Evie and Harris banished to their more mundane duties. When Evie had gone into Mrs Bewley’s bedroom to do the fire, as she did every morning, she had been told by the nurse not to disturb the patient again unless she was specifically sent

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for. Nervously, Evie had bobbed a curtsey at the nurse, who was a figure every bit as formidable as Mrs Bewley, and asked if it was still all right for her to go to church as she did every Sunday morning with her mistress’s permission. The nurse had said of course and that nothing would be required until one o’clock at the earliest.

Normally Evie had to be back in the house by a quarter past twelve, fifteen minutes after the end of morning service. Given this unexpected bonus of another forty-five minutes, she had been planning all the way to church what she would do with it, but when she saw Miss Mawson once more her other tentative plans were abandoned. She would follow Miss Mawson home and still be back in Portland Square by one o’clock unless her quarry lived a very long way away - which was not likely, or she would have come in a cab. Evie could hardly contain herself through the service, which she was used to wishing would go on for ever. This time, knowing the direction Miss Mawson would take, she shot ahead and fairly scurried down Scotch Street, pausing only at the corner of the market to withdraw into a deep doorway. There, breathing heavily from the exertion, she waited for Miss Mawson to pass, which she did, after a time that was long enough to restore Evie’s energy. She passed quite near but looked straight ahead, walking gracefully and slowly and obviously enjoying the air and exercise. Evie followed at a distance of fifty yards, her head down in case Miss Mawson turned round. On the bridge, Miss Mawson hesitated briefly, but only to look down at the swollen river and possibly admire the daffodils growing wild along its banks. Then she proceeded up Stanwix Bank and turned eventually into Etterby Street. Evie did not follow her all along the street, which fell away down a hill then went up again. She could see perfectly well from her vantage point that Miss Mawson had entered the second last house on the right, using her own key. So far as Evie could tell, this house was quite small, quite modest, a terraced house, but not in the manner of the Portland Square terraces. There was no time to go down the hill and up again to examine its interior closely, not this Sunday. Turning back towards the city, Evie rushed home. To her immense satisfaction she was inside the house at ten minutes to one and not called upon by the nurse until half past.

Mrs Bewley did have shingles and was very ill. The nurse stayed three weeks and Evie had two more Sundays of extra free time as well as a much easier life during the week. There was no Mrs

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Bewley to stand over her and make her do again jobs she had already done faultlessly. She carried on methodically cleaning and polishing and performing all the tasks expected of her but, since she was not forced to do half of them twice over, she had, for the first time in over a year, hours to herself. These hours did not come all together but in separate stretches throughout the day. She still rose before six but by eleven she had done all the morning work and had two hours until dinner-time. It was the same in the afternoons, only the other way round - free until three and then busy until seven. She worried as to her rights in this situation. Might Mrs Bewley, when recovered, demand to know what had been going on? But Evie reckoned that if she had kept up her employer’s standards and had always asked the nurse for permission to leave the house then she could not be accused of cheating. Doubtless Mrs Bewley would accuse her but then she was likely to do so however Evie had behaved.

So Evie went out regularly and experienced a feeling of freedom that was quite intoxicating. She roamed the market and convinced herself she remembered it well, though in truth she was disappointed to find she did not. There was something about the butter women’s stalls that was vaguely familiar but that was all it was, the vaguest of recollections of sitting looking at people’s feet. More daringly she ventured past the cathedral and over Caldew Bridge and into Caldewgate to Holy Trinity, passing on the way the Royal Oak, which she knew was run by Messengers. It was not a Sunday and Caldewgate was busy. Workers streamed out of Carr’s biscuit factory and the place seemed as hectic as Portland Square was tranquil. Evie was apprehensive about entering the church on a weekday - she did not know if it was allowed - but her desire to see inside was so great that she went and tried the door. When it opened, she slipped inside, heart thudding and throat dry, rehearsing what she would say if challenged - ‘Please sir, I was baptised here.’ She went up to the font and stood touching the stone, her eyes shut. Here her mother, Leah Messenger, had stood holding her, a baby, in her arms and had given her a name. Mary had been with her, old Mary had been a witness, and it was all written down somewhere, there was proof. Evie trembled a little and wondered if this was the church, with its memories of her baptism, to which her mother still came. She could come one Sunday, while Mrs Bewley

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remained ill, but what good would it do? She would not recognise her mother, her mother would not recognise her. It was pointless.

The whole search was pointless and not even a proper search. Evie, walking home through Caldewgate, despaired. She needed help. She needed someone to instruct her in how a search could be made and she had no one to advise her. While she had been at Moorhouse it had seemed so hopeful - knowing her mother’s name, knowing where she herself had once lived with old Mary, knowing where she had been baptised - surely, knowing all this, she could find her mother. But now she saw how she had deluded herself and even been wilfully stupid. What she knew amounted to nothing. It was nineteen years now since she had been baptised, thirteen since Mary had died. She knew no one in Carlisle, a city of thousands and thousands of people. Her mother might not be here, and if she were, her name might be different, she might be married. Entering the Portland Square house, quietly, she thought she might as well leave. It was dark in the hallway, the heavy door shutting out the light except for a few feeble rays of sun struggling through the stained glass panels at the side. She should go up to the attic and pack her bag and leave. But where would she go? To the hirings again? She shuddered. How ever she had brought herself so low she could not now imagine. There must be other ways to find employment. She had often looked at Mrs Bewley’s Cumberland News when making it into paper sticks for the fire, and she had seen advertisements for maids of every description, but they all asked for references, and she had none. Mrs Bewley would certainly not give her one and there was no one else in Carlisle for whom she had worked, or who knew her. Except Miss Mawson. Miss Mawson could be said to know her, in a manner of speaking. Miss Mawson might vouch for her obedience and reliability and politeness and trustworthiness, unless Mrs Bewley had told lies and poisoned her mind.

Throughout the following week, the third and last of Mrs Bewley’s illness, Evie turned over and over in her mind the possibility of throwing herself on Miss Mawson’s mercy and asking her help. But she was intelligent enough to realise that, as Mrs Bewley’s friend, Miss Mawson could not reasonably be expected to give a reference to the maid who wished to leave her friend’s employment while she was ill. It would not do, and Evie saw clearly that it would not. There was no point in embarrassing, perhaps even angering, Miss Mawson and humiliating herself. But the next time

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Miss Mawson visited and Evie opened the door to her she found herself trembling so violently that the visitor noticed.

‘Why, Evie,’ said Miss Mawson, all concern, ‘you are shaking, dear, are you ill?’

Evie whispered, ‘No, ma’am.’

‘You are cold, then? Indeed, it is cold in this hallway, I have often thought so.’ Evie nodded, relieved to be given this excuse. She stood aside to let Miss Mawson mount the stairs to Mrs Bewley’s bedroom, but on the first step Miss Mawson lingered and looked over the banister at Evie. ‘Are you worried, Evie? Are you afraid of what might happen to you if, God forbid, there is a tragedy?’ Startled, Evie looked up. She did not know what Miss Mawson meant, but found herself nodding. ‘Then do not fret, my dear, I would help you find a new situation.’

And, with that, Miss Mawson carried on up the stairs and Evie returned to the kitchen weak with gratitude. Hope had returned, stronger, promising more than ever and, though she had not yet quite worked out the implications of what Miss Mawson had said, she knew beyond any doubt that some positive reassurance had been given to her for the future. Miss Mawson had shown her a most motherly concern.

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THE TRAIN journey from London to St Andrews was always long and tedious, but Shona quite liked the numbness that regularly overcame her after the first hundred miles. She would try at first to read but the book would fall from her hands within half an hour no matter how good it was. Train journeys, long journeys like this one, were conducive only to daydreaming and soon she would be in a stupor, no longer aware of the eating hordes around her. She watched the endless procession of travellers coming from the buffet carrying their absurd little paper carrier bags full of disgustingly smelly food and was surprised what little impact they made on her. People, nameless people about whom she would never know anything. She felt utterly remote from them.

The woman opposite her was clearly longing to engage her in conversation but Shona had resisted all overtures. No, she had not wanted to read this stout, dry-skinned, white-haired woman’s magazine and no, neither had she accepted a share of her sandwiches. To the query ‘Going far?’ she had said she was and promptly shut her eyes. Fatal to be polite with five hundred miles ahead. She wanted to have established herself before Watford as unfriendly, uncommunicative and very, very tired. All true, especially the last. She felt exhausted and deeply, deeply tired, a drained, dizzy feeling not at all like ordinary fatigue. The thought of Catriona’s fussing over her was for once something to look forward to. Good food would be cooked, a warm bed prepared and every comfort lavished upon her. She could wallow in all this spoiling and enjoy the sensation. For a few days, at least. Then she supposed the rot would set in as it always did. She would start to feel irritable

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again and that unbearable sensation of wanting to escape and never return would overwhelm her.

She kept her eyes closed until Oxenholme and then she stared out of the window at the snow-covered hills of the Lake District. It was a dark afternoon. Though it was only midday, the December light was already fading fast. The white of the snow seemed fluorescent, beaming up towards the dark grey sullen sky. It felt like home though it was not. Shona was always puzzled by this strange sensation of familiarity whenever she was amid snow-covered mountains - she felt happy and comfortable yet there was no reason for this. Home was the sea, always had been. She closed her eyes again after Carlisle. She was going to Glasgow instead of Edinburgh, where usually she changed trains for St Andrews, because she was visiting her Grannie McEndrick on the way home. It was not something she wanted to do, but the suggestion, her mother’s of course, was not one she felt she could turn down. She hadn’t seen her grandmother for over a year and she knew fine well how a glimpse of her was fervently desired. Grannie McEndrick had been ill since the summer and was full of sudden intimations of mortality. She’d let it be known she wanted to see Shona ‘for one last time’.

She got off the train at Glasgow, dreading the trail out to Cambuslang and the big stone house where her grannie lived. She had no money for a taxi - what student had? - and the buses were so slow. Lumbered with a rucksack and another heavy bag she had difficulty getting on the bus at all, and nobody helped. She looked big and strong enough to manage on her own, she supposed. And she had made no effort to look attractive, why should she? She hated girls who traded on their looks to cadge help. Her beautiful hair was bundled up inside a woollen ski hat and she was wearing her customary black ski jacket zipped right up to her chin, with black trousers and heavy boots. Who would imagine such a formidable creature might have arms that were weak and ached with the weight of her load? She was so tired by now that she felt sick. She wished she had refused to stop off at Grannie McEndrick’s for a night and day. There would be no luxury in her house. It was a house that had died in the last few years. Only two rooms were in use and all the others were shut up, the cold air seeping out from them through the ill-fitting doors. A house which had once seemed warm and hospitable was now bleak and repellent, everything about it neglected and dated in a shabby rather than quaint way. There

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would be no delicious food. Grannie McEndrick existed on tinned soup and crackers and cheese these days.

Shona had to stop four times on the journey from the bus stop to her grandmother’s squat house. She stood, bowed over, almost in tears. Tears of that kind of self-pity she found despicable but to which she had lately been succumbing more and more often. It was going to be such a strain undergoing her grannie’s questioning. She knew what line this would follow: was she happy at university? Was she enjoying herself? Was the work interesting? Was it hard or easy? How was she managing in the big city? Had she been homesick? And, the most pressing question of all, ‘Any romances, Shona?’ She ought to be able to take it all in good part, or else lie cheerfully. No harm in joking, making up entertaining answers. But she had not the energy for it, nor for the truth. She wanted to get through the next twenty-four hours as painlessly as possible and then move on, duty done. Her one thought, as she reached her grandmother’s door, was how quickly she could get to bed.