by Anne Bennett
Flo couldn’t argue with this and she didn’t try. Instead, she said, though grudgingly, ‘I’ll get your rations in before I go if you like,’ and Lizzie nodded. It would be helpful because it did hurt to walk far, and it would also get the woman out of her hair for a bit.
Later, when her mother-in-law had gone home, she said to Violet, ‘She’s the most aggravating woman. Even when she’s supposed to be helping me, she’s critical of everything…even when there is nothing to be critical of. God, what would she do to me if she knew what I’m carrying in my belly?’
‘She’s not going to know a damn thing about it,’ Violet said vehemently. ‘After Monday afternoon it will just be a bad memory.’
‘Violet, I just can’t swallow any more, I’ll be sick.’
‘No you won’t,’ Violet said, tipping the castor-oil bottle up. ‘Look, you’ve nearly finished this bottle. Take a drink of water.’
‘That doesn’t help.’
‘Take it anyway.’
Lizzie took a long drink from the cup beside her. ‘Two more dessert spoons should do it,’ Violet said cheerfully, ‘and that’s one bottle out of the way.’
‘Isn’t one bottle enough?’
‘Maybe, but are you prepared to risk it? Nancy said two.’
‘I can’t.’
‘You can. What’s up with you? You once told me you’d walk over hot coals.’
‘I’d rather.’
‘Yeah? Well all you’d get then is scorched feet. This way there’s a chance you’ll get rid of that babby you’re carrying. Now open your mouth, for God’s sake. Let’s get it over with.’
They got it over with, though Lizzie gagged more than a few times, and afterwards she lay back in the chair and closed her eyes. ‘D’you want to lie down a bit?’
‘Aye, I’d love to, but I know if I move I’ll throw up,’ Lizzie said wearily. ‘My head feels as if it doesn’t belong to me and my stomach is churning.’
Lizzie was concentrating on trying to stop herself from being sick, but knew she was losing the battle when the nausea continued to rise in her throat. ‘Bowl, please, Violet,’ she cried, and Violet ran for it and held her head while she vomited over and over. Fat lot of good that did, she thought. I bet if I vomited back all I took it will do no good at all.
Just a little later, Lizzie made one of her many trips to the lavatory, glad her bruises had begun to heal and her leg was less painful, for some of the calls were of the urgent type. Violet stayed with her. At one point she’d gone home to see to and serve Barry’s tea, but she’d come back again, using the truthful excuse that Lizzie was far from well.
‘Maybe it will happen tonight,’ Violet said consolingly. ‘Bang the wall if you need me. I’d stay with you, but I don’t want Barry to get suspicious.’
‘No, I’m fine,’ Lizzie said. She felt far from fine, but thought her friend had done enough. ‘Really, you go now.’
‘Try and eat something,’ Violet advised. ‘It might settle your stomach a bit.’
‘I’ll choke if I try to, Violet.’
‘Ah, well, maybe you know best. Get some sleep if you can.’
But there was no sleep for Lizzie. She sat on the toilet nearly all evening and on into the night, often holding the bowl in front of her as the castor oil was expelling everything from both ends. She felt by eleven o’clock that she had nothing left inside her. Her throat was sore from retching and so was her stomach, and a throbbing had begun in her head; but there was no sign of miscarriage, no blood on her pants, no rush of water, no plug of mucus.
Next morning, Violet noted the blue smudging under Lizzie’s red-rimmed eyes set in a face the colour of lint. ‘Still nowt?’
Lizzie shook her head. ‘My head’s swimming and my stomach’s aching, but not the way I’d like it to be,’ she said.
‘Could you eat a wee bit of toast or porridge?’ Violet asked.
‘Toast, maybe,’ Lizzie said. ‘But there’s no reason to wait on me. I’m not an invalid.’
However, she found that the slice of toast she ate went straight through her, the same as the bowl of broth she attempted at dinner time. ‘Surely to God no baby can go through this and still hang on,’ she said, coming back into the house after yet another sojourn down the yard.
‘Maybe it hasn’t,’ Violet said. ‘I mean, maybe it is all over and you d’ain’t seen owt. There’s not much light in them lavvys and the shaded torches are worse than useless. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that the castor oil has done its duty and skited the whole lot out of you.’
‘I’ll tell you what it has done,’ Lizzie said. ‘And that’s got rid of the metallic taste, but I don’t know if the cure isn’t worse than the disease.’
‘Christ, some people are never satisfied,’ Violet said, and just then Ada gave the door a cursory knock and popped her head around it. ‘Just thought you’d like to know, I met your mother-in-law on Bristol Street and she said she was coming this way’
Lizzie put her head in her hands and groaned. ‘Oh God.’
‘Quick,’ Violet said. ‘You get into bed. You’re not up to dealing with that uppity bitch. I’ll tell her you’re sleeping, and if I can’t keep her out of the bedroom keep your bloody eyes tight shut.’
Lizzie was glad to do that, but she felt Flo’s eyes bore into her as she stood in the bedroom doorway complaining of the mess it was in and of the clothes littering the floor. Violet knew the haste and panic Lizzie would have been in to get into bed and could quite understand why her clothes were scattered, but that wasn’t something she could share with Flo Gillespie.
With great determination she said not a word to Flo in Lizzie’s defence, feeling it to be the safest option, but thought to herself that if Flo wasn’t throttled by someone, and before too long, there was no justice in the world.
‘What’s the matter with her, anyroad?’ Flo asked, looking at the waxen pallor of Lizzie’s skin as she lay back on the pillows.
‘She has diarrhoea and sickness,’ Violet said. ‘Summat she ate, probably.’
‘Food poisoning,’ Flo declared. ‘Not cooking the food properly. Good job Steve isn’t here. He doesn’t think much of her cooking anyway, not a patch on his mom’s, he’s always saying, but he’d never expect it to actually make him ill.’
How does Lizzie keep her hands down by her sides and not put them round the scrawny woman’s neck, Violet thought, or at least order her from the house.
‘God, if it isn’t one thing with that girl, it’s summat else,’ Flo went on. ‘Christ, I’ve seen nothing like it. First she gets herself stabbed, and then, not content with that, she falls down the bloody stairs—and now this!’
Violet, anxious to get Flo out of the house, said, ‘Look. There’s no love lost between the two of us and I’ll not pretend there is. But Lizzie could have an infection and there’s no point in us both running the risk of catching it, is there? I mean, I live next door and it’ll be easier for me to see to Lizzie.’
Flo could well see the woman’s point, though it would probably be the first time. She had no wish to have that awful sickness and diarrhoea, not that she’d admit it. ‘What about you—aren’t you worried you’ll catch it?’
Violet gave a shrug. ‘Not really,’ she said. ‘If I do, I do. There’s no work for either of us just yet anyway because the factory was hit the other night, so if me and Lizzie is going to be ill, this is the week to do it.’
‘Well,’ Flo said with a disdainful sniff, ‘there seems little I can do here. I’ll pop in tomorrow and see how she is.’
Violet came back up to the bedroom when she’d finally got rid of Flo and Lizzie heaved herself out of bed and began to dress. ‘It isn’t going to work, is it?’ she said to Violet.
‘Don’t look like it,’ Violet had to admit.
‘All that castor oil,’ Lizzie groaned. ‘Oh God, Violet, I feel so bloody ill, and I wouldn’t care, wouldn’t care about any of it if the damned stuff had just worked.’
‘I know,
bab, I know,’ Violet said, putting her arms around her weeping friend.
By Monday, 21st April, the munitions factory had found a new site to accommodate the workers. It was on the Tyburn Road, not far from Fort Dunlop, and because Lizzie didn’t know what else to do, she went with Violet to catch the tram outside Lewis’s department store. They travelled up Lichfield Road, past the fire station and through Aston, passing the big green clock at Aston Cross and Ansell’s Brewery, then on to Salford Bridge, over the network of canals that met there, before turning right into Tyburn Rd.
This road had once been full of little workshops backing on to the canal, but from the tram they could see the gaping holes and piles of rubble and knew that this area too had seen plenty of enemy action. But then, haven’t we all? Lizzie thought, for though the raids hadn’t been as ferocious as the one on the 9th April, they were still raids most nights and it still played havoc with your sleep patterns. She was feeling decidedly jaded.
It was good, though, to see most of the women had also come to the new place when they turned in the gates, and they greeted each other warmly. But although Lizzie tried to act as naturally as possible, she knew she was on borrowed time. Eventually a decision would have to be made and all she was doing was postponing it. The worry of it pressed each day on her mind and heart, occupied each waking minute and many of those spent sleeping, where it portrayed itself in nightmares.
Each morning when the alarm would ring, Lizzie would heave herself from the bed and onto her knees where she’d plead and beg the Almighty to deliver her from this shame; and it was what she asked for too before she slept. She began a novena and had a Mass said. Steve’s family and even the priest thought it was for Steve, but Lizzie had done a deal with God. Whatever the priest thought, or even what he said, didn’t matter: God knew what she was about.
She seldom talked to Violet about it, for what could Violet do? And of course, she could talk to no one else, and so she coped alone and remained terribly frightened, taking each day at a time.
And then one balmy evening in mid-May, when Lizzie was writing a letter to Niamh to go with the card for her birthday, Violet came in the door to say, ‘Lizzie, I have heard of summat else.’
Lizzie just looked at her. ‘To get rid of the babby, like?’ She suppressed the hope that rose inside her. Nothing had worked so far, so why should this be any different. ‘What?’
‘Well,’ Violet said. ‘I don’t know much about it, like, and I’d have to make enquiries, but I can be discreet when I want to be. It’s these tablets, and you take them and have a bottle of gin and sit in a hot bath and bingo. Only,’ she added, ‘it only works if you are three months or under. How far on are you?’
‘Going on fifteen weeks,’ Lizzie said, ‘so it probably wouldn’t work, but anyway, I couldn’t do it.’
‘Why not?’
‘Violet,’ Lizzie said, ‘I have no feelings for this child I am carrying, but nothing is its fault. I’ve taken codliver oil and thrown myself down the stairs to no avail. But tablets…I’ve thought long and hard about this and I’ve decided now that the only good thing I can do for this child is to hide away somewhere until it is born and then let it go to someone who will give it a good and loving home. What if I took something that damaged it in some way? No one would want it then and it would spend its life in some institution, and I would feel guilty for the rest of mine.’
Violet thought about Lizzie’s words and could see her reasoning. ‘But how long are you going to leave it?’ she said, ‘because though there is nowt yet, you’ll be showing soon. And where’re you going to go, anyroad?’
‘Back to Ireland,’ Lizzie replied.
‘Is that the only option?’
‘All I can think of,’ Lizzie told her resignedly. ‘What would Flo do if she got to know? And Steve would be told her version of it posthaste. I can’t risk that.’
Violet knew that Flo and Steve wouldn’t be the only ones to judge and castigate Lizzie. Because she didn’t mention the rape after the attack, few would believe she was raped at all, but she didn’t share these thoughts. She just put her arms around Lizzie and held her tight. ‘If anyone in the whole bleeding world will believe you, surely to God it will be your mother?’ she said at last.
Lizzie doubted it. Her mother wouldn’t hear the words of any sort of explanation. She’d see only the shame of it, the disgrace, the fact that she’d be snubbed shopping in Ballintra, and ostracised at St Bridget’s. The whole family, including her own two wee children, would become social lepers. She knew that a girl may as well commit suicide as take that news home to her mother in Ireland. However, she didn’t think there was any alternative for her.
‘There’s places women can go away to and stay until they have their babies,’ she said, ‘and then the nuns find homes for them. I mean, I don’t know where they are or anything, but everyone knows about them. I heard of a girl like that once. Her parents said she’d gone to her auntie’s in England, but there had never been talk of any auntie before, no letters or anything, and no one from England had ever come to visit, so people drew their own conclusions and a few months later the girl was back.’
‘Well at least they’ll not know or suspect that of you here,’ Violet said, ‘because it’s natural for you to go to Ireland to see your kids and then come back again.’
‘Aye,’ Lizzie said, and gave a grim little smile. ‘And Niamh will be pleased at least. I haven’t really answered her letter properly yet. I’ve just made vague promises, you know. But I can tell her I’m coming home for a bit in this latest letter. But not just yet. I’m going to hang on as long as possible, because I am terrified of facing my mother. And these places are run by nuns, and nuns are…well, they’re not exactly angels of mercy, you know.’
‘At least stay a little longer,’ Violet said. ‘You’re so blooming thin there ain’t even the slightest bulge yet. So, when you find out about these places, what you’ve got to remember is however bad they are, you will only be there for a few months and anyone can stand that. Have the baby, leave it with the nuns for adoption, and come back here and pick up on your life again: and Bob’s your uncle and no one’s any the wiser. But for God’s sake be careful. Don’t leave it so long that someone will jump to it before you can get yourself away.’
‘I know, Violet. I won’t, don’t worry.’
‘That’s it, girl,’ Violet said encouragingly, ‘and when it’s all over, I’ll be waiting here for you. Feed Flo some line like you’re sick or summat and going home for a rest, and tell the factory the same and any who ask. Give your notice in properly, because you don’t want anyone getting suspicious and poking about in your business, especially not now.’
Lizzie knew Violet spoke sense. She must handle this just as if she was really going home for a wee holiday. She wondered how big she would be by the time of Niamh’s First Communion. She’d be five months pregnant, but maybe with her physique she’d get away with it, and she remembered how the doctor used to laugh when she was expecting the other two and ask if there really was a baby there at all. ‘Please God,’ she implored. ‘Let this one be the same.’
And when the child was born it would go to a good, respectable, childless couple who would give it all the love, attention and time that it needed. Then she really could put the events of that terrifying night in February behind her and look forward at last.
Towards the middle of June, one of Lizzie’s workmates who often worked alongside her said, ‘Hey, Lizzie, you must be the only one here that’s putting on weight.’
Lizzie paled and bent her head so it should not be seen as she said, ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Pretty obvious, ain’t it. I mean, there ain’t much to you and never has been, but there’s more of you than there was, that’s all. While the rest of us are halfstarved on the bleeding rations you seem to be thriving on yours.’
‘It was bound to come sooner or later,’ Violet said on the way home. ‘Pregnancy is one thing you ca
n’t hide, though you’ve managed much longer than many could. But to dally any longer would be plain stupid.’
Lizzie knew that too. ‘I’ll give my notice in tomorrow and then write to mammy and make the arrangements,’ she promised. ‘I’ll write to Steve too, though I know he’ll have no objection.’
Lizzie’s boss had plenty of objections, though. He liked Lizzie and thought her a good worker. ‘Go home for a while, see your kids, watch the young one make her Communion or whatever and I’ll hold your job.’
‘It’s very kind of you.’
‘Kind, be damned. It’s myself I’m thinking of as well.’
‘I don’t know how long I’ll be away.’
‘You could send me word?’
‘No, really, I think it’s best if I just leave,’ Lizzie said, and added untruthfully, ‘My doctor recommended me to have a break; my nerves are bad.’
‘Hmph! The very devil, nerves,’ the boss conceded. ‘But I must say, my girl, you show no sign of it. You’re positively blooming. In fact, I wish half the factory looked so healthy.’
And Lizzie did look healthy. Her skin was clear, her cheeks tinged with pink from the early summer sun and her hair shone. Inside herself, a solid lump of panic, fear and dread had settled. It sometimes seemed to fill Lizzie’s throat so she didn’t feel hungry, or it would attach itself to her raw nerve-ends so she was nervous and jumpy.
No one could see inside, however, but most women she worked with could understand how she would miss her children. Many of the children in the area who’d been evacuated in the first rush on 1st September had been brought back by Christmas, though more were evacuated a second time after the severity of the November raids the following year. ‘I know they went to strangers, like,’ one girl said to Lizzie, ‘but they’re all right, with good people and not that far away really, means I can see them of a weekend, like. Must be awful for you to take them over to Ireland and not clap eyes on them for six months. I don’t blame you going to see them.’