The September Girls (10 page)

‘Cold turkey will do fine,’ Eleanor said, doing her utmost not to sound as resentful as she felt. She didn’t want Nancy knowing how jealous she was of the woman her housekeeper went to see every single day. She knew she was being horribly unreasonable. Brenna Caffrey had been leading a perfectly awful life, living in a cellar with a new baby born the same night as Sybil, her husband unable to find work, her sons in an orphanage. She’d kept hoping the family would give up and go back to Ireland. She wanted Nancy to herself, not sharing her with Brenna, no matter how badly off she was. And now Brenna had got a house and her husband a job and they’d probably stay in Liverpool for ever.

 

‘What are you thinking?’ Marcus asked loudly as he stared into his son’s round eyes. The boy was sitting on the floor playing with the toy that Thomas Percival had brought. It was most unusual: a miniature carousel that turned when wound with a key and played a tune: ‘Greensleeves’.

‘Do you know I’m your father?’ he asked in the same, loud voice. ‘Do you know your name? Do you know
anything
?’ He was beginning to lose his temper - five minutes with Anthony and he could easily kill the child. ‘If you don’t buck up your ideas soon, boy, you’ll be put in a home.’

Christmas had been very embarrassing. Thomas Percival had asked to see his old friend’s first grandchild so he could give him the toy.

‘He has a very bad cold,’ Marcus lied. ‘The doctor has ordered him not to leave his room.’ This Percival chap would probably expect the boy to shake hands, engage in conversation, even if it was limited, but Anthony was incapable of normal behaviour. He was deeply ashamed of his son. The situation reminded him of
Jane Eyre
, except it was a crazy child instead of a crazy woman hidden in a bedroom rather than an attic.

‘A little peek wouldn’t hurt, surely, so I can give him his present,’ Thomas Percival persisted.

‘We’ll just have to see. He’s not feeling very well. Last time I looked, he had a roaring temperature.’

Sybil had been brought down for the visitors to admire. ‘She’s just woken up,’ Nurse Hutton said when she came in with the baby.

‘Isn’t she beautiful,’ Mrs Mann had gasped.

Marcus had assumed she was just being polite. Whenever he looked at his daughter she was either asleep or bawling her head off and he thought her a scrawny little thing. He glanced at her now and, to his amazement, saw that Mrs Mann was right. He hadn’t seen the child with her eyes open before, hadn’t known they were a warm nut-brown. And her hair must have grown overnight because her head was covered with feathery curls the colour of the sun, making a shining frame for her tiny, heart-shaped face. She’d grown too, inevitably, filling out so that the scrawny look had gone. He felt a moment of terror: Anthony had been just as beautiful, but look at the way he had developed.

‘Can I hold her?’ He held out his arms, ignoring the look of amazement on the faces of Nurse Hutton and his wife.

The baby was placed in his arms and he stared down at her, willing her to acknowledge him in some way, as Anthony had never done. Suddenly, she chuckled and a hand reached up, as if to touch his face, but not quite reaching.

‘She knows who I am,’ he said, the words thick in his throat. This was his
daughter
he was holding, his own flesh and blood, the result of an unsatisfactory few minutes spent with Eleanor in her bed.

‘Can I have her, Mr Allardyce? It’s time for her four o’clock bottle.’

Had they not had company, Marcus would have given the nurse the sharp edge of his tongue. His daughter seemed perfectly content in his arms, chuckling away, waving her fists in the air. He could feel the slight movement of her legs against his midriff and wanted to keep her there, close to him.

‘Mr
All
ardyce!’ the nurse said sharply.

Reluctantly, he handed the child over. Tomorrow, he’d have a word with Nurse Hutton, impress upon her that
he
was in charge, and if he wanted to hold his baby, then he would. Another scene like this and she would be dismissed and a replacement engaged who would be told where she stood from the start. It was Eleanor’s fault for letting the servants walk all over her, allowing Nurse Hutton to become far too possessive.

‘You’re an embarrassment,’ he snapped at Anthony two days later as he stood at the door of his son’s room and looked into the nothing eyes. ‘An embarrassment. I’m ashamed of you.’ It mightn’t be a bad idea if he carried out the threat he’d just made and put the child in a home. In fact, the more he thought about it, the more he warmed to it. He’d tell everyone that he’d gone to boarding school. Some people, the really rich, sent their children away at the age of five. It was a shame because he was a handsome little chap and Marcus would have liked to show him off to the Manns and Thomas Percival - Eleanor had brought down some of his paintings and they’d been deeply impressed, had even asked if they could have one.

‘A home, that’s it. I’m putting you in a home, my boy.’ What
use
was the child? None at all, so far as he could see.

The carousel stopped, but Anthony didn’t notice. Was he having them all on? What went on in that head of his?

Marcus closed the door and returned to his study. Finding a home for Anthony was something he couldn’t delegate to his secretary. The matter would have to be kept secret between him and Eleanor. She was bound to object, but Marcus was the head of the house and his will prevailed. Leaning back in the chair, he wondered how Brenna Caffrey would react if she were his wife and Anthony their child. He felt sure she would fight him all the way and, in the end, it would be
her
who would win. It gave him a curious little thrill, the idea of having fuming arguments with Brenna, then carrying her struggling body to his bed.

He opened the top right-hand drawer of the desk and took out a white, Irish linen handkerchief with M embroidered on a corner in blue. It had been under the tree on Christmas Day, a present from her for bringing Nancy’s attention to the notice in the
Liverpool Echo
that led to the husband discovering that he owned a house. It was rather ironic that he should turn out to be her saviour when he would have preferred Brenna stay in the cellar in Upper Clifton Street, watch her sink lower and lower, get paler and paler, the baby sicker. Only
then
would he have offered to help and would have expected rather more than a handkerchief in return. He had thought of offering the husband a good job in his factory, having a hold over her that way, but Nancy had told him he’d found one for himself. Marcus grimaced. His plans to capture the woman with whom he was obsessed had twice been thwarted but, one day, he was determined to get his hands on Brenna Caffrey.

 

‘You can’t send him away,’ Eleanor wept. ‘You can’t.’

‘I can, and I will,’ Marcus said impatiently. ‘I’ve found a place near Chester that will take him.’

‘But a
home
, Marcus, a
home
! Only poor children go in homes, orphans.’ She looked at him frantically. ‘Is it a lunatic asylum?’

‘It’s called the Baldwin Home for Backward Boys. It was started by a Dr Richard Baldwin half a century ago. It costs twenty-five pounds a year: hardly a place for the poor.’

‘Are the other children idiots? Are they
taught
things?’

‘Here’s the brochure.’ Marcus tossed a well-presented booklet with a stiff cover across the desk. ‘It doesn’t mention classes, but there are outings, games.’

‘Anthony needs to be taught,’ Eleanor said stubbornly.

‘What, and by whom?’ Marcus demanded.

‘I don’t know.’ She subsided into the chair in front of the desk. It was the last thing she’d expected when Marcus had called her into his study after dinner - last week, he’d summoned Nurse Hutton and given her a good dressing down. She wouldn’t tell Eleanor what for, but had been very subdued and tearful ever since - and Marcus had been spending a surprising amount of time in the nursery with Sybil. Eleanor had supposed she was in for a similar telling off and was shocked beyond belief to discover he was intent on sending Anthony away. She had no idea what to do with Anthony, but wanted him protected from the outside world, not thrust into it all on his own, unsure what was happening. ‘Perhaps we should get him a private tutor?’ she suggested. ‘It’s worth a try.’

‘It would be a complete waste of time and you know it,’ he snapped.

‘I don’t think I can live without Anthony.’ Her voice broke into a sob.

‘Eleanor, that’s nonsense and you know it.’ He clasped his hands together on the desk, so tightly that the knuckles showed white. It was a sign she was getting on his nerves. ‘How many times a day do you see the boy? Twice, three times?’

‘More than that,’ she argued. ‘At least half a dozen.’

‘And how long do you stay? No more than a few minutes, I bet. The boy is a burden. He - we - would be far better off if he were in a home where trained people would look after him.’

‘I don’t want him to go away,’ she said stubbornly. ‘He’s not perfect, but he’s my son and I love him.’

He turned away and made a dismissive gesture with his hand. ‘He’s going, Eleanor. I’ve made up my mind.’

 

She went straight to Anthony’s room. He was sitting on the bed, idle for once, wearing the pyjamas he’d put on himself, and staring into space.

Eleanor sat at the bottom of the bed. ‘Hello, darling.’ His face didn’t change, not that she had expected it to. ‘Your father is going to send you away. I . . .’ She dissolved into tears. She’d been feeling so much better since Christmas, almost her old self, although she’d never been a level-headed, rational person. She was much too highly strung, cried over nothing, lived in a state of continual anxiety over things that common sense should have told her didn’t matter a jot. Christmas Day wasn’t the first time she’d seriously considered ending her life. When Geoffrey, her fiancé, had been killed, she’d lain on the bed with a pillow pressed against her face, and it was only when she began to lose consciousness and she’d thought of how Daddy would feel if she died by her own hand, that she’d let the pillow go.

Now she was sitting on Anthony’s bed and the tears wouldn’t stop. She put her hands to her face and rocked back and forth, the pain of her misery impossible to contain. The tears trickled through her fingers and fell on her blue silk skirt.

But this wasn’t the way to behave in front of a vulnerable child. She sniffed and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, looked up and felt herself go cold. A silent Anthony was rocking back and forth, his hands over his face, aping her movements, except that there were no tears. She’d never known him cry.

‘Anthony!’ She pulled him into her arms and held him close until his heaving body was still. ‘You’re not leaving,’ she swore. ‘You’re
my
son, and you shall stay.’ She’d go back and tell Marcus this very minute.

But Marcus was adamant: he’d made a decision and refused to be deterred. He was about to write to the home and ask them to take him as soon as possible. ‘Imagine,’ he said softly, ‘just imagine if someone waved a magic wand and Anthony was completely obliterated from your mind. Wouldn’t you feel better without him?’

‘Perhaps,’ Eleanor had to concede, remembering how she had to steel herself to go into his room and how despairing she felt when she came out, ‘but no one’s going to wave a magic wand. Anthony’s here, he’s part of our lives and I’ll feel worse without him.’

‘Then you’ll just have to get used to it, Eleanor.’

‘I won’t let you take him.’

‘How will you stop me?’ He looked amused.

It was a question she couldn’t answer. He was twice as strong as her. She could scream and kick and protest as much as she liked, but it would do no good. Her child was to be taken from her and there was nothing she could do about it.

She was on the verge of hysteria when she went down to the kitchen. Nancy’s duties were over for the day and the room looked unnaturally bare, everything put away ready to be taken out again next morning.

‘Nancy,’ she called. ‘Nancy, where are you?’

The sitting-room door opened and Nancy poked her head out. ‘Where you’d expect me to be, pet? In here. What’s up?’ she asked when she saw her distraught face.

‘It’s Marcus, he’s putting Anthony into a home for backward boys. Oh, Nancy,’ she sobbed, ‘what on earth am I to do?’

‘I’d best get going,’ said a voice, and a woman with red-gold hair and pink cheeks came out of Nancy’s sitting room. She pulled a black shawl over her head and nodded at Eleanor. ‘If someone wanted to take one of my lads away, they’d have to do it over my dead body,’ she said curtly.

Eleanor felt a rush of blood to her head. How dare this low-class, ill-dressed person make such a derogatory remark? ‘Were your sons carried over your dead body into the orphanage?’ She took it for granted the woman was Brenna Caffrey.

Brenna tossed her head. ‘It was a choice between St Hilda’s and a filthy cellar. I did what was best for me lads and took them away the minute I had the chance.’

‘You don’t know my husband. If he makes up his mind to do something, nothing will stop him,’ Eleanor said hotly, wondering why she was bothering to argue with someone whose opinion she didn’t give two hoots for.

‘Then take the lad away yourself and put him somewhere safe. It’d show your husband he can’t push you around.’

‘There’s nowhere she can take him, Brenna,’ Nancy put in. ‘Eleanor hasn’t a single relative in the world.’

‘Then he can come to mine,’ said Brenna Caffrey.

 

It was the most stupid idea she’d ever heard. Move her dear little boy from Parliament Terrace, where he was used to every luxury under the sun, to a slum where he would be looked after by an ignorant Irish woman! It was out of the question.

But as the days passed and Marcus showed her the reply he’d had to his letter saying Anthony had been accepted by the Baldwin Home for Backward Boys and they would expect him the following Monday, her panic rose.