Orphan of Angel Street

by Annie Murray

  Paul picked his knife and fork up again. He leant towards her. ‘Not what?’

  Mercy felt herself blushing. ‘Just that I’m not your class of person, am I?’

  ‘And what class of person am I? Do tell me, because I’m damned if I know any more.’

  She stared back at him. In Paul’s eyes she could see a sad, hungry expression which moved her deeply.

  ‘People are just people, Mercy. That’s all. If there was one single thing the War taught me it was that. So please . . .’

  So she talked. About the home. About Mabel and Susan, Elsie, Tom, Johnny. And Paul listened, intently. The waiter brought a steamed marmalade pudding with custard and they ate, barely tasting it.

  ‘Johnny said the same as you when he got back, that he couldn’t stop at home. I don’t know where he’s gone now.’

  Paul looked sorrowfully at her. ‘You’ve had so many losses.’

  ‘I’ve been so lucky working for the Adairs though. Dorothy found ’em for me. They’re ever so good to me.’

  ‘You were lucky in Dorothy too.’

  ‘Oh yes – she’s awright, Dorothy is. She’s a good sort.’

  ‘You don’t think . . . Perhaps I shouldn’t say this . . .’ Paul eyed her sideways on, hesitating.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, that Dorothy might actually be your mother?’

  Mercy stared at him in speechless astonishment. She started to laugh. She laughed so hard that people stared and her bubbling mirth eventually made Paul join in as well.

  ‘Dorothy? You mean – oh no. No!’

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t realize the idea was that absurd!’

  ‘She’s just not. No . . . Oh dear no. She’s just Dorothy.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Shouldn’t have even said it.’

  ‘D’you know, it’d never even crossed my mind.’ Mercy wiped her eyes. She looked thoughtful for a moment, then shook her head. ‘No. No, she just isn’t.’

  ‘Ready to explore now?’ Paul asked impishly when they’d finished.

  ‘Let me just look in on Stevie. He’s a very good sleeper but I must make sure.’

  Paul waited as Mercy tiptoed in and replaced Stevie’s covers which he was forever kicking off. She leant over and kissed him.

  ‘He’s so beautiful when he’s asleep,’ she smiled, relocking the door. ‘All warm and peaceful. Where’re we going then?’

  ‘Let’s just follow our feet, shall we? Hmm.’ He stopped as they reached the third-class staircase. ‘I suppose just meandering round inside might get a bit dull. Shall we go and get our coats?’

  ‘OK.’ Mercy didn’t mind in the least where they went. It was all fun. More than fun. She surprised herself with the thought: this is the best night of my life!

  They were just turning back when someone came running up the stairs behind them, three at a time.

  ‘Eh – eh!’ There came a loud burst of a language Mercy had never heard before.

  A man, swarthy-faced with a black moustache, a cap, and black workaday clothes seized Paul’s arm, talking urgently: ‘Daktar – daktar . . .’

  ‘No, I’m not a doctor!’ Paul said. ‘I’m sorry . . .’

  The desperation on the man’s face was unmistakable. He made dramatic gestures, sweeping his calloused hand over his stomach and talking frantically.

  ‘What the hell’s this language?’ Paul said exasperated. ‘Is it, are you . . . Polska? Polska?’

  The man nodded emphatically and flooded them with more incomprehensible language.

  Mercy watched his hands. ‘Someone’s ’aving a babby,’ she said suddenly. ‘That’s what. Down in third class.’

  ‘Wait – I know who can help. Stay there – DOCTOR,’ Paul said to the Polish man, and ran off.

  A few moments later he returned with a dour-faced young man dressed in white with almost painfully prominent cheekbones.

  ‘He’s the kosher cook,’ Paul panted as the two other men spoke. ‘Speaks bits of all sorts – English, German, Yiddish – Polish too, thank heavens.’ Mercy’s eyes were intent on the Polish man’s face.

  ‘He says’, the cook informed them disdainfully, ‘that his wife is with baby and he needs a doctor.’

  ‘See!’ Mercy said. The cook disappeared, shaking his head.

  ‘Get him to show you where and meet me back here.’ Paul was already moving away. ‘I’ll find the ship’s surgeon.’

  The man beckoned her down the stairs, then down again until they were on F-deck. Their feet clattered on the steps.

  In one part of the corridor a small crowd of people, mostly women, were huddled anxiously near one of the doors. Mercy could see they were poor, their skirts made of thick, workaday cloth, clutching shawls round their shoulders. They reminded her of a cluster of starlings. The man spoke to them, pushing past to the cabin door. 114F. Mercy memorized the number. She could already hear the sounds of the birthing woman.

  To her great surprise the man indicated for her to enter. She pointed back down the corridor. She had to meet Paul. But he insisted, taking her arm, motioned her inside. The other women outside all stood round the doorway. Mercy began to wonder if they thought she was a nurse but since she had no way of explaining she followed the man in.

  The room was lit by one small bulb and was stuffy, full of cloying, intimate smells, especially sweat. Two narrow berths were squeezed in down either side, and Mercy saw that the young woman, barely more than a girl, was lying, panting, on the one to the right. At her head, on the edge of the bed an older woman was perched, talking endlessly in a low voice, a string of beads dangling from her fingers. It took Mercy a moment to see she was praying.

  For the moment the young woman was quiet and the man beckoned Mercy forward. Mercy felt timid, confused. What did the man want? She couldn’t speak any Polish. She knew nothing about having babies

  The young woman turned her head and Mercy saw that her black hair was drenched in sweat. Such a sweet face, but so exhausted and frightened. She put her hand out and muttered something. Mercy took the hot hand and squeezed it.

  ‘The doctor’s coming,’ she said. ‘You’ll be all right. You’ll ’ave your babby soon.’

  Pain gripped the young woman again and she began to writhe and groan horribly, her body lifting from the bed. She loosed Mercy’s hand and clawed at the thin bedcover, her cries becoming a long, sobbing wail. Mercy felt her knees turn weak. She motioned to the man that she was going up to meet the doctor. She saw in his eyes, then, that he loved his wife and how afraid he was. He had needed her to see. She spoke English: she would be able to speak to the doctor when he was unable to.

  Paul and the doctor were coming down the stairs as she reached them.

  ‘This way.’ She ran ahead of them.

  ‘What’s the trouble?’ The surgeon was a middle-aged man with a bushy moustache and a brisk air. He smelt of whisky.

  ‘She’s pretty far on by the sound of it,’ Mercy panted as they clattered along F-deck. ‘I think summat might be wrong but I’m no expert, doctor.’

  ‘I hardly supposed you were,’ he replied dryly.

  ‘Here.’ The crowd stood back respectfully to let him through. The door opened, letting out the woman’s distressed cries.

  ‘Poor thing.’ Mercy leant weakly against the wall on the other side of the corridor. The sound of such suffering made her feel faint. The other spectators were eyeing her and Paul curiously.

  ‘Well, we’ve done our good deed,’ Paul said. ‘Would you like to go up on deck now?’

  Mercy looked at him as if he were a madman. ‘Of course not! I’m not going anywhere ’til I see how she gets on. I want to know if she’s awright and if she has a boy or a girl.’ She folded her arms adamantly.

  It took another two gruelling hours. Mercy ran back up twice to check Stevie was still asleep. Several times Paul suggested tentatively that they go up and have a cup of tea before resuming the vigil.

  ‘You go if you want. I’m staying.’

  T
he young woman was clearly having a very difficult time. At every agonized outburst Mercy tensed, folding and unfolding her arms across her chest, hands clenched, listening. ‘God, I hope she’ll be OK. Oh my . . . oh dear . . .’ she kept saying over and over. She felt as if her own innards were being torn out. The sounds of pain were terrible to hear. Paul paced helplessly up and down, seeming just as bothered by Mercy’s distress as the Polish woman’s. Towards the end it seemed everyone in the corridor was willing her on with every fibre of themselves. They all stopped talking. Almost stopped breathing. There came a final, terrible bout of screams which had Mercy bent double and almost tearing out her own hair. Everything went quiet. After a moment they heard the wild, outraged scream of a newborn child. There was a collective gasp from all the other women, relieved talk and laughter and embraces. Mercy found herself sobbing.

  ‘Hey, hey . . .’ Paul felt in his pockets for a hanky but failed to find one. After a moment’s flustered hesitation he put his arm round her shoulders. ‘You don’t even know her!’

  ‘No . . .’ Mercy found her own hanky and wiped her eyes. ‘But she looked at me and took my hand.’ She tried to smile. ‘Daft, ain’t it?’

  After a moment the doctor put his head round the door. ‘Could someone—’ – he spoke tersely, looking at Paul – ‘go up to the galley and fetch some hot water?’

  ‘Is she all right?’ Mercy cried.

  ‘Yes, yes . . .’

  There was toing and froing with water. The stooped, elderly woman carried a bundle of bloodstained bedding from the room. Eventually the doctor left.

  Soon after, the dark-haired man came out of the room, a smile under his moustache. His face looked more youthful with relief. He beckoned to them. Mercy and Paul looked at each other and stepped inside. The crowd of Poles followed until the room was full.

  The young woman was sitting up, hair plastered back on her head. Her eyes were like dark pools in her exhausted face, but there was a gentle smile now on her lips. The baby lay wrapped in her arms.

  ‘Oh!’ Mercy cried, tears filling her eyes again. So much pain, she thought, for such a miracle!

  The woman gently held out the little one for her to see. Mercy looked into a crinkled but perfect face with a tiny shading of barely formed eyebrows. Its eyes were closed as if to cling on to the secrets of life before birth.

  ‘I wonder if it’s a girl or a boy,’ she said to Paul

  As if the woman had understood, she unwrapped the baby for a moment. Mercy saw where the umbilical cord had been cut and bound.

  ‘A girl! Oh Paul, she’s a real picture!’

  She saw his eyes appraising the new child, seriously and with complete attention, and was filled with tenderness for him. Everything was full of wonder tonight.

  She felt her hand being grasped and the young mother raised it to her lips, kissing it again and again. Mercy was startled, but then pulled the linked hands back towards her and kissed her new friend in return.

  The father presented Paul and another man with a tiny glass, hardly bigger than a large thimble, full of liquid. He handed another to Mercy. They must have brought these glasses with them, among what looked like pitifully few possessions. The man threw his head back and gulped his liquor down. Paul did the same and gagged and spluttered until tears ran down his cheeks. Everyone else laughed heartily, slapping Paul between the shoulder blades. Mercy took a cautious sip. The stuff tasted explosive. Even that small amount was like a fire in her throat! Paul was still recovering, wiping his eyes.

  The man held his hand out and Paul took it.

  ‘Petrowski,’ he said. ‘Tomek Petrowski.’ He pointed at his wife. ‘Yola Petrowski.’

  Mercy and Paul told them their names, and then felt the time had come to leave this new family in peace. With a great deal more nodding and smiling they departed.

  It was only when they began to climb the stairs that Mercy noticed a long, oval stain on her dress.

  ‘Oh no – look, blood!’ The mark was nearly the size of a hand. ‘Must have been off the side of the bed.’ She turned to Paul. ‘Honestly – next time I go anywhere with you I’m going to wrap myself in an old sack!’

  ‘Oh Mercy,’ he laughed. And she heard a wealth of fondness in his voice.

  ‘Where on earth have you been?’

  James Adair was pacing the corridor, his expression livid. ‘I’ve looked all over the place for you!’

  He was full of pent-up emotion, a mixture of jealousy, frustration and self-righteous anger. He’d known Mercy was with Paul. She should be here, damn it, looking after his son! But then he noticed her dress.

  ‘What’s happened? Are you all right?’

  Mercy explained. ‘I kept coming up to see Stevie was asleep though – every hour or so. He’s been perfectly all right!’

  ‘Yes, yes.’ James felt his ire melting away. His besotted imagination had tortured him with images of her and Paul alone together . . . but this had clearly not been the case.

  ‘Well—’ – he tried to speak lightly – ‘how very exciting. I’d better get back to Margaret. She’s not at all well tonight. I’ll see you tomorrow. Will you be dining with us, or with Paul here? Up to you of course.’ He forced himself to sound jovial, an old fuddy-duddy joking about the fact that she might choose to spend time with him.

  Mercy looked at Paul.

  ‘It’d be my pleasure,’ he said.

  ‘Paul, I think, Mr Adair.’ He didn’t fail to notice the flush in her cheeks.

  ‘Right you are then.’

  He turned away in an agony of contradictory shame and longing.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Mercy tried to spend a short time with Margaret each day, taking Stevie to see her. She called in mid-morning the next day. Margaret seemed no better. She tried to sit up and play with Stevie who wanted to crawl all over her and roll on the bed. Her face was very pale, and her soft, peach-coloured nightgown only seemed to make her complexion look more sickly. Her hair hung down limply and she was weak and lethargic.

  Mercy chatted to her, telling her about the Petrowskis’ baby and she tried to smile.

  ‘You went down to third class? How brave!’

  Mercy refrained from saying she had felt far more at home down there than in first class.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Margaret murmured after a short time, her head lolling back on the pillows. ‘You’ll have to take him away. This terrible nausea . . . If only I could be somewhere calm and still.’ She lay down, grimacing as she moved, and closed her eyes.

  ‘Come on, Stevie.’ Mercy lifted him from the bed and he protested for a moment, wrapping himself round her like a monkey. She noticed his nose was running. Perhaps she’d kept him out in the air too long yesterday?

  ‘Could you pass me a little more water?’ Margaret barely had enough energy to speak.

  Stevie on one arm, Mercy poured a glass of water and passed it to Margaret’s outstretched hand. She took a few sips, then whispered, ‘James should be back soon. Poor chap – I’m really cramping his style. He’d like to be staying up, dancing, out and about. Perhaps you could dance with him tonight, Mercy? I just can’t . . .’ She slumped down again.

  ‘It’s not your fault, is it?’ Mercy said, trying to cheer her. ‘Nobody asks to be poorly. I s’pect he’s enjoying himself anyway – the ship and that.’

  ‘But he’s been so grumpy and out of sorts . . . oh dear . . .’ She was slipping into sleep.

  Mercy could scarcely wait for Paul to finish his day’s stint down in the bowels of the ship. Now it was the third day of the voyage, the ship and the constant circle round them where dark sea met pale sky were losing their novelty and everyone was beginning to need a little more stimulation.

  She whiled away the day with Stevie, passing time with some of the other nannies who visited the nursery. Scarcely any were as young as herself, but there was one not much older who was friendly. Ruby was a thin, bright-eyed young woman from Leeds who’d moved south to work for a London fam
ily and the two of them chatted idly.

  James Adair called in twice to the nursery and Mercy noticed throughout the day that no other fathers did this. Both times he saw she was busy and left again looking ill at ease.

  ‘Funny bloke,’ Ruby said the second time. ‘You’d never find ’er dad—’ – she jerked her head at Charlotte, her two-year-old charge – ‘coming down to see if she’s all right. Or still alive for that matter.’

  ‘Oh, Mr Adair’s very fond of Stevie.’

  ‘Oh yes – is that all ’e’s fond of?’ Ruby gave a chesty laugh.

  ‘What’re you on about?’

  ‘Don’t act all innocent. You know what I mean full well.’ Ruby rushed off to rescue Charlotte who had fallen bang on her face.

  Mercy frowned. Did Ruby mean . . . was she saying . . .? Uncomfortable thoughts came to her mind of the look in James Adair’s eyes when he held her on the bicycle those months ago, of occasions when she’d seen the same look in his eyes since . . . But no. What did she know about how men should might look at you? She actually shook her head to dismiss these thoughts. What was she? A servant, that was all. It was just ridiculous.

  That night James Adair dined alone again, despite Margaret telling him that she was sure Mercy would come and join him.

  Mercy met Paul for dinner and they talked and talked, and laughed together.

  After dinner he said, ‘Shall we go and see how the Petrowskis are getting on?’

  ‘Ooh yes – I want to see that babby again. But first—’

  ‘You need to look in on Stevie?’

  She smiled. Happiness gave her face an extra glow. ‘I ought to. That is what I’m here for! And I’ll get my coat.’

  They found the Petrowskis in the third-class sitting room. The place was furnished for very basic comfort, with slatted wooden seats round the walls. The air was full of smoke, tumblers of ale stood on the tables, round which there was a loud buzz of conversation in different languages, games of cards and dice and in one corner there was a sing-song going on, someone playing a fiddle. Mercy stood on the doorway with Paul looking round at the mass of people with their mix of nationalities and felt rather intimidated. It was if she’d just walked into another country altogether.