The Favourite Child (43 page)

Bella sat up abruptly, making the baby jump as she called after Tilly. ‘Where are you going? To your grandmother’s?’

Tilly hesitated with her hand on the door knob and gave a little shake of the head. ‘She couldn’t manage to put me up, much as she’d like to. Gran hasn’t two halfpennies to rub together, can barely manage to feed herself let alone...’ Her expression looked suddenly hunted. ‘Not that I asked her to, you understand. T’wouldn’t have been right. No, I made out I’d just dropped by to see how she was, it being Christmas. I give her some of me wages and ...’

‘Some?’

‘Well, most of ‘em. But she’s old, Miss Bella, and I’m young enough to work for me keep. I’ll be right as ninepence now with what you’ve just given me.’

‘But it won’t last for ever. Where have you been sleeping?’

‘Here and there. Don’t worry, this’ll tide me over nicely till I manage to find work, eh?’

‘But what if you
don’t
find any work?’

‘Why shouldn’t I?’ Tilly seemed to have forgotten that she’d been looking for nearly three months, with no sign of a job. ‘I’ve been given a good character, after all. Anyway, thanks again.’ She pulled open the front door and a blast of icy cold air gushed into the tiny house, blowing the baby’s nappies off the wooden clothes maiden that stood drying by the fire. Tilly bent to pick them up, to smooth them back into place.

Bella said, ‘How do you feel about being a nursemaid to a small baby, just until I find the mother. I’ve been a bit under the weather myself but now that I’m better, I’m itching to get back to work. I’ve calls to make, a clinic to run yet I can’t bring myself to just hand her over to the Board of Guardians. I keep hoping I’ll find Holly’s poor mother. I can’t pay you, I’m afraid. Just your food, so long as we’re not too greedy, and a roof over your head, of course. I’m offering you a home, Tilly, if you’re prepared to work for your keep, at least until things improve. We could ride out this slump together, what do you say?’

The tears this time were pitiful little sobs and hiccups which became more and more effusive, threatening ultimately to turn into a flood of adoration which Bella would find hugely embarrassing. She forestalled such a scene by promptly putting the baby into Tilly’s outstretched arms and, after planting a kiss on Holly’s cheek, then one on Tilly’s, said, ‘Right, that’s settled then. I’ll get back to work.’ And gathering her coat, she almost ran from the house.

Bella went thankfully back to her old routine, the sessions at the clinic and her regular home visits. One of her first calls was upon the new Mrs Clarke. Bella was appalled to discover that the girl was already far gone in her first pregnancy and didn’t seem to be thriving on the condition. She was far too thin and looked thoroughly washed out, if her pasty face and hollow eyes were anything to go by.

‘If only you’d agreed to come to the clinic for help,’ Bella said, glancing despairingly around the stinking hovel Reg Clarke called home. There seemed barely a stick of furniture in the room beyond a kitchen table cluttered with unwashed pots despite the presence of a brown, slopstone sink. One wall was taken up with a filthy old range in which a pitiful fire burned and the other by a bed upon which several bare-bottomed children crawled, fought, screamed or sat eating large jam butties along with the snot from their runny noses.

The smell of stale urine emanating from the tumble of bed clothes almost made her gag.

Restraining a shudder, Bella turned a deliberately bright smile upon the young girl whose name, she learned, was Alice. Bella explained how she’d chanced to be in the street anyway, so thought she’d call to see how she was coping with the children. ‘Sally was always telling me what a handful they were.’ In fact, she’d been hovering for an hour or more, hoping Reg would go off to work as, eventually, he had, thus giving her the opportunity to take advantage of his absence and pay a call upon his new wife.

The girl’s expression was sulky and mutinous and Bella could tell that she was making little impression. ‘We can manage. Reg’ll help. He’s already said so. Children are a blessing and a woman’s labour is only a part of the Cross we are all expected to bear,’ she dutifully recited, as if she’d learned the words off by heart.

No offer of a cuppa had been made, though after an hour in a draughty street Bella was gasping for one. ‘How about a brew?’ Glancing along the mantle shelf in search of the tea caddy.

‘Shurrup, you lot,’ Alice screamed, struggling to separate a tangle of arms and legs and make the children sit still. Little more than a child herself, she seemed on the verge of tears. Bella helped her to restore order then swung the kettle over the fire.

‘Have you not brought any with yer?’ Alice wanted to know, watching her fill the pot with boiling water. ‘Reg says that were the only reason he ever let you in th’house. ‘Cause you’d happen brought summat good.’

‘Sorry, but times are hard.’ It was surely true that at one time she might have brought the girl a packet of tea or a loaf of bread to help eke out the pitiful resources. But Bella was in almost as dire a state herself these days. No, not quite, she corrected herself, as another scream issued from the heap of filthy bedclothes.

‘You’ll have to wet the used tea leaves in the pot then.’

Bella did so, recalling it wasn’t the first time she’d enjoyed the dregs of a pot. Hot and wet at least, it was welcome on this chill day, though without even a drop of milk it would bring little sustenance to this poor girl.

They sat on the edge of the bed, which seemed the only place available in the overcrowded room, and sipped at the scalding weak brew. Bella looked at the children and saw hunger in their wizened faces, open sores on their stick-like limbs and an alarming pink rash all over their small bottoms. ‘Does he help you now, with the four you’ve already got?’

The bleak expression became hunted. ‘Like I say, Reg hasn’t much time when he’s on nights. Needs his sleep during the day and I have to keep the childer quiet.’ Just where, exactly, Reg slept, Bella didn’t care to consider.

‘Well, five children will be enough for anyone to cope with, Alice. So, you must come to see me after the birth.’

‘Reg says I should’ve sat up straight after - after, you know - and coughed.’

‘Coughed? What on earth for?’

‘That would’ve saved me from getting caught. It’s me own fault I’m up the spout ‘cause I forgot to cough.’

Bella closed her eyes in momentary despair and disbelief. Education was indeed the answer, as Dr Syd said, but the most difficult part was always to get the women to venture up those stairs. ‘You really must come to the clinic for help, or this child could be but the first of many.’

Alice bit her lip, looked as if she were about to say something of importance and then changed her mind. She set down her mug, scarcely touched. ‘You’d best go. If anybody sees you here, they might tell him and then I’d be for it. Reg don’t like no interference.’

‘Unless it provides a free packet of tea. All right, I’ll bring some next time. I’ll go now, Alice, but remember what I said. See that you come to the clinic.’ As Bella left the house with no small sigh of guilty relief, she held out little hope.

Despite every effort on Bella’s part as well as those of her ‘ladies’, baby Holly’s mother could not be found. Time went by and still she continued to put off the proposed visit to the Board of Guardians. Perhaps tomorrow, or the next day, or the one after that the woman would turn up or some other, better solution might present itself.

‘What are you going to do with her?’ Tilly would ask, cradling the child against her shoulder while she gently rubbed her back. She’d taken quite a shine to her, Bella could tell and, like herself, was almost beginning to dread the prospect of having to give her up. ‘She’s a survivor, this one,’ Tilly would laugh, and so she was, a part of Bella’s family now.

For Tilly, there was the added worry that she would then be out of a job and on the streets again.

Times were hard, as Bella knew only too well. Sometimes she could actually feel herself sinking lower and lower with less money in her purse and cupboards that were almost bare, a frightening sensation which often kept her awake at night. This had certainly not been what she’d intended when she’d first set out on her mission. She’d meant to make other women’s lives better, not her own worse.

She spent a good deal of time scouring the local papers, half expecting to see her scandalous behaviour emblazoned across the headlines for everyone to see. People tended to believe what they read in print, however inaccurate it might be, and if Quinn persuaded one of his cronies, or a female friend perhaps to pass on this tale of their supposed intimacy to some tin-pot newspaper reporter, what hope would she have of refuting it? It would take only a scandal of that sort for someone, and not her father this time, to close the clinic down for good. Each day she sighed with relief when she found that Quinn had not carried out this particular threat.

Ever since his latest attack on her Bella had become increasingly jumpy and was glad of Tilly’s company. She was also pleased that Dan became a regular visitor to her little house, though for a different reason. She took great care to give him lots of attention, even to leaving Holly with Tilly at least one evening a week so they could go out together, alone. She loved him and didn’t want him to feel hurt or neglected, his nose pushed out of joint from all the fuss the baby was getting. They would walk through the park, or along the canal towpath, happily planning their future. No date had yet been fixed for the wedding but Bella didn’t mind. She was content to wait, knowing that Dan was a good man with a strong sense of pride, anxious to do things properly.

He often spoke of his family: of baby Joe having a special pair of clogs made to encourage him to walk, of the squabbling twins, of young Pete’s desperate desire to have a dog and Violet’s equal determination that she’d enough on her plate, thank you very much. At other times Dan would speak of his mates at the docks and the difficulties of getting started in married life.

Though relations between them were warm and loving, and he’d accepted her decision not to do anything drastic with the child until she’d tried a little longer to find her mother, Bella could tell, by the way his mouth tightened and his jaw jutted with characteristic stubbornness, that there was much more he would like to have said upon the subject.

‘It’ll be different for us. We’ll do things properly,’ he’d say and Bella would happily agree since this was only evidence of his natural caution. They would wait till things picked up, he’d say. ‘Once this slump is over, we’ll marry in double quick time, make no mistake about that.’

Bella hoped that Holly herself would win him over completely in the end, as she certainly seemed to be doing. He would sit happily dangling her on his knee whenever he came round, which he did quite frequently these days. From time to time though, he too asked the same question as Tilly, and Bella gave him the same answer.

‘Whoever the mother is, she must have been desperate to abandon such a lovely child. But then it’s a harsh world out there at the moment, for some women in particular. I shall keep her safe for as long as I can, since her mother trusted me to do so. Besides, I enjoy having her.’

‘The longer you keep her, the harder it will be for you to part with her. It’ll only hurt all the more when you have to let her go.’ A fact that, sadly, Bella could not deny. She loved the child already, absolutely adored her, and deep in her heart dreaded taking her to the Guardians.

‘She’s not a pet dog,’ Dan said, to which Bella responded with outrage.

‘For goodness’ sake, what do you take me for? Do you imagine that I’m going to grow bored with her after a month or two and suddenly abandon her like an unwanted pup. If I don’t find the mother, then of course I’ll take her to the Board of Guardians. I promise.’

What she did not say was how she loved to wake up and find the baby sleeping peacefully in the crib beside her, her gaze bright with interest, taking everything in. How she adored to watch her tiny pursed mouth hungrily grasp the teat of the feeding bottle, her trusting hands as fragile as pale rose petals but with a grip of steel. Bella could not, and would not, simply hand the baby over to an orphanage. The very idea seemed heartless in the extreme when she could offer both love and a good home.