Orphan of Angel Street

by Annie Murray

  Until I hear from you again I shan’t be able to believe you meant your letter. Please write and tell me it was a mistake, that the future is not just the bleak nothingness it feels to be now.

  Yours ever,

  Paul

  *

  ‘She says she’s going to keep the child. Won’t hear of anything else.’

  Grace had gone to the window as Dorothy talked, standing in the shadows by the long curtains, looking, but seeing nothing of the street outside.

  Dorothy waited, knowing Grace had heard everything she’d said. The carriage clock on the mantelpiece ticked, deafeningly, it seemed. The sound of time passing. Dorothy watched Grace’s profile, her fashionable, jaw-length hair caught neatly behind her left ear. Standing like this she looked quite youthful, still slim, in her white pleated skirt and a soft blue blouse. But as soon as she turned towards Dorothy, every day of her years of suffering showed in her face. It was not the suffering of physical deprivation, of hunger or the grinding lack of money and warmth. But Grace had never known a day in the past twenty years without emotional pain.

  ‘It’s the worst.’ She spoke barely above a whisper. Her face had suddenly taken on the creased look of an old woman’s. ‘I can’t think of anything – if she dies it could scarcely be worse. To think of her having to endure the pain, the shame and hardship . . .’

  ‘You did it – you survived it.’ Dorothy wanted to reach out, to give comfort, but Grace was untouchable. ‘She has people round her who are perhaps more forgiving than you did.’

  ‘I ran away. But I always knew I could go back. He said I could always go back so long as there was no child. I was a coward. But she has so little to go back to – not wealth or comfort as I had.’ After a moment she said in horrified wonder, ‘James Adair . . . are you sure? My memory of him is of a rather kind, stuffy fellow.’

  ‘I can only go by what she says, dear. But there is someone else – was. In America. But she said she’d had to put him off.’

  ‘What did she say to you? What are her thoughts?’ Grace stepped forward, desperately. ‘Oh, I feel I know her so well, and yet . . .’

  ‘She said she’ll never give up the child. Whatever happens she’s sticking with it.’

  Grace paced the room, unable to keep still. ‘No one knows better than you what I’ve been through, my dearest Dorothy. You know never a day has gone by without my thinking of her, praying for her . . . But I’ve asked myself over and over again whether I was wrong, whether I should have faced every shame and denial that would have been handed out to me. I could have stayed in that room, with that Mrs Bartlett, while I still had a little money.’ She shuddered. ‘I suppose somehow I should have survived. But Dorothy, I was so young, so very frightened. I felt I’d sunk beneath the level of life itself when I was there, into an appalling hell . . . But Mercy has lived most of her life in such places. I condemned her to that. And she has strength – oh God, that I had had her courage! If they hadn’t made me – if I hadn’t let them make me . . . If he hadn’t gone away – I should never have abandoned my own flesh and blood . . .’

  As her distress mounted, Dorothy went to Grace and took her gently in her arms. If only she could take this pain from her! Grace sobbed brokenly against her shoulder.

  ‘He would’ve been no good for you. Not in the end.’

  ‘My life has been one long pretence – this parody of a marriage . . .’ She looked up, wet-eyed, into Dorothy’s face. ‘D’you know, before Neville left – in the War – I prayed for him to die?’

  ‘Yes, well – so did I.’

  The two women looked at each other solemnly. Grace suddenly broke away and sat down.

  ‘I have spent my life safeguarding all the wrong things.’ Dorothy saw in her a moment of the steeliness that reminded her of Mercy. ‘Even now, to protect my sons I am a stranger to my daughter. To protect this facade of a respectable marriage which suits my husband I tolerate him spending more time in common whorehouses than he ever does with his sons.’

  She straightened her back, her chin jutting out. ‘Mercy must know who her mother is. I owe her that, and so much more.’

  ‘What about Neville – if he were to find out?’

  ‘I think’, Grace said calmly, ‘I shall probably kill him.’

  ‘Grace!’

  ‘It’s all right, Dorothy. I don’t think I mean it. I don’t wish to rot away in prison for the rest of my life. All I mean is, I have to be prepared to pay the price, whatever it may be. But now the boys are old enough, they see their father with clear eyes. I’m certain we can trust them to support us.’

  ‘What’s up with you, wench?’ Neville said when he got home that evening. His voice, as ever, was sneering. ‘Didn’t the wind blow the way you wanted it to today?’

  ‘I’m quite all right, thank you,’ Grace said mechanically. She knew her eyes still showed signs of tears, and she evaded his brief, insolent glance.

  Neville had returned from the War a much leaner man. Over the past year and a half though, he had bloated into middle age, with a complexion ruddy from overindulgence. His cheeks were loose and flushed and merged with his thick chin with scarcely a hint of jawline present. His body was short and stocky and he walked, legs apart, with a swagger. Lately he grew more quickly short of breath. Over the years his catalogue of charming habits about the home had grown in number and intensity: bawling about the place, hawking phlegm in his throat, drinking regularly to excess, cursing, belching and passing wind with orchestral loudness. And despite Grace’s barely concealed revulsion for him, he hadn’t left off his intermittent, gross mauling of her in bed.

  She had learned early in this loveless marriage that he could be two different men. Out of the home, or in company, he could be gregarious, charming, humorous. He had a generous side to his character and a loud, infectious laugh. This was how he had appeared to Grace’s father when their marriage was arranged. They had not been married more than a few weeks when, with her, he became moody, foul-mouthed, out of control. Both of them were unhappy. Grace knew that nothing she could do ever seemed to give him satisfaction and never had, since the very earliest days, though she had tried and tried.

  That night he flung his hat down in the hall and went, as usual, straight to the whisky decanter. He poured half a tumbler of the burning strong liquid, downing it in gulps. Grace usually avoided him, but tonight she stood at the threshold of the parlour, watching.

  ‘I don’t know why you’ve bothered to remain in this marriage.’ She spoke with such cold objectivity that he turned, mouth swirling a gulp of whisky, startled to find her observing him. He narrowed his eyes and swallowed.

  ‘It’s the thing to have a wife. If I have to have one it might just as well be you. Out of my way.’ He pushed past her and stumped heavily up the stairs.

  *

  ‘Boys, I have something important I want to talk to you about.’

  She sat on Edward’s bed. He, the younger of the two, was now ten. He sat up, grey eyes fixed solemnly on her face. Robert, twelve, was puppyish and full of often misdirected energy. He hurled himself across from his bed and landed on Edward’s legs.

  ‘Ouch!’ Edward yelled. ‘Get off, you great lump of a thing!’

  ‘Boys, please just sit still,’ Grace said, her voice sharp with nerves. ‘I want to tell you something important.’ For a moment she wished that Edward, the one most akin to her, was the older.

  Once they were sitting quiet, sensing her seriousness, she told them what she had to say, her tears coming unbidden. She felt she was confessing to them, her own children, laying bare her shame.

  ‘You see,’ she finished, looking up at them bashfully, ‘perhaps Mummy isn’t quite the person you thought she was.’

  ‘So—’ – Robert was frowning, attempting to take in the implications of this – ‘you mean we have a sister . . . somewhere?’

  ‘That’s right. Her name is Mercy.’

  ‘And she’s much bigger than us and she’s never going
to live with us?’

  ‘Yes, dear, both those things are true too.’

  ‘Oh,’ Robert said, beginning to lose interest. ‘Well, that’s all right then, I suppose.’

  ‘Mummy,’ Edward said, ‘can I carry on reading Treasure Island now?’

  Grace smiled. ‘In a moment. There’s something else, just as important, I need to say to you. I don’t often ask you to keep a secret, though this is a very special secret that I thought you were old enough to know. But this is something I don’t ever want you to breathe a word to Daddy about. Ever. It would make him very, very angry. Can you understand how important that is, my darlings?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Edward said dismissively. ‘Daddy never listens to anything we say anyway.’

  Grace knew this was true. And even when the boys spoke to their father it was never a relaxed interchange. It was a risk she had taken, but it was unlikely anything would slip out in an unguarded moment of jollity, for such moments did not exist in their household.

  ‘And Robert – listen to me now, very carefully.’ She had a special task for Robert to perform, and he was going to have to be very grown up about it.

  Chapter Forty

  ‘Miss Hoity-toity’s been ’ere again.’

  Mabel stood across the table from Mercy who was ravenously eating bread and scrape. She’d just got in from work and was, as ever, nearly dropping from hunger. Rosalie was brewing a cuppa and Alf and Jack’d be in from the pub any minute. Soon as they arrived Mabel’d be sweet as pie to her, Mercy knew.

  ‘Dorothy, you mean?’

  ‘Left you this. In an envelope too.’ Mabel held out the note. Obviously the sealed envelope rankled with her as she couldn’t have a nose at it. Mercy examined the back of it to see if she’d tried to steam it open, but there was no sign. She took another mouthful of bread, longing for the comfort of food in her grumbling stomach.

  ‘Aren’t you going to open it?’

  ‘In a tick. Give us a chance to eat. Ta, Rosalie.’ She stirred sugar in her tea, feeling Mabel’s eyes still boring into the letter.

  Despite Mabel’s grand speeches and her attempts to be kind, the two of them still only just managed to get along. Mercy knew Mabel wanted to show herself in a good light to Alf, her husband-to-be. Maybe she’d even meant it all, wanted to be kind, be liked. The fact was, they still rubbed each other up the wrong way.

  She looked at Mabel who was stirring a pot of broth. Elsie’s range, Elsie’s room. The place was still full of ghosts: Elsie, Tom, Frank, Cathleen, Johnny . . . No wonder Jack wanted out and Rosalie’s little face was so sad, so grown up before her time. No wonder Alf wanted a new start.

  She stopped eating for a moment as a lump rose in her throat. Why was she worried about letting Margaret Adair down? She did miss her, it was true, and she’d been so kind. But Margaret could soon hire herself another servant. What these people – her people – here had endured was so much greater.

  Alf and Jack came in then, both smelling of ale and heavy under the eyes with fatigue.

  As Rosalie gave the men their bit of supper, Mercy sloped off upstairs and lit the candle in Rosalie’s room. Dorothy’s writing was a stiff, rather childish copperplate, but her spelling was good:

  Mercy –

  There’s an urgent matter I need to talk to you about in private. Meet me, Saturday 11 a.m. near the gate in Highgate Park. Don’t let me down.

  Yours,

  Dorothy Ann Finch

  Mercy sighed and tore the letter into tiny pieces. It didn’t say anything much but she wasn’t going to give Mabel the satisfaction of a look at it. Truth to tell she felt irritated with Dorothy. What was she making such a todo about?

  I suppose I ought to be grateful to her, she thought, preparing herself for bed. She laid her skirt over the chair, smoothing her hand over the soft, wrinkled cotton. It was cream, sprigged with leaves and yellow flowers. A bit old- fashioned-looking though, that length, she thought. I’ll hem it up a bit . . . She stopped herself short.

  What’m I going on about? For a second she almost laughed. What the hell’s fashion going to matter when my belly’s pushing everything out at the front and I can’t get into it anyway?

  She looked down at herself in her blouse and bloomers. Was there anything to see yet? She must be, what? Between three and four months gone? She moved her hands round her slim waist, then down over her belly, feeling the warmth of her skin. Wasn’t it just a tiny bit rounder? She kept her hands there for a moment. There was nothing she could do – it was going to grow inside her, bigger and bigger until she had to let it out. She felt very solemn. So this was what it was to be a woman, to find your future lay in the hands of your child.

  My mom must have looked at herself like this, she thought. Must have hated me for being in there, come to ruin her life. For a moment she felt a sad sympathy with her, that young, terrified woman, whoever she was. For the first time it occurred to her to wonder where her actual birth had taken place. Had she borne her child in the gutter? Was she alone, penniless, sick? Did she die in the throes of birthing and someone else take the child from her, carry her to safety where she could at least survive? Was anyone else present at her arrival? The old feeling of being lost, abandoned in the world, swept over her. It wasn’t right, any of it. Everyone should have a chance to know where they came from.

  What did Dorothy want? she wondered, pushing her thin arms through the sleeves of her nightdress. She felt very weary of it all suddenly, didn’t want Dorothy planning for her, trying to rescue her. Not again. That would only lead to more trouble, more pain. She just wanted to be left alone to struggle with her life in her own way, come what may.

  When she set out there was a light, mizzling rain, but the clouds had an insubstantial look to them and the sun was already trying to break through their swirling veil. Mercy had put her coat on but immediately felt too hot. She peered at the sky, unbuttoning the coat.

  Just stop blasted raining, she thought. Then I can take it off.

  There were plenty of people out Saturday shopping, going to get stuff out of pawn for Sunday, kids playing out along the pavements. She walked along Stanley Street, crossed Catherine Street, where a young man on a rough, wooden crutch was making his way along with terrible slowness, gripping a paper under his spare arm which ended at the elbow in a stump. He shuffled along on his one leg, unshaven face turned towards the ground. Mercy had seldom seen a face look more desolate. She wondered where Johnny was. Whether he’d found somewhere he could be at peace.

  Before she reached the park the drizzle stopped and it grew even warmer. Mercy took her coat off, leaving her navy-blue cardigan over the white blouse and floral skirt.

  The entrance to the park was opposite a row of big, posh houses on the Moseley Road. Mercy stepped inside, looking across the sloping grass. She wasn’t sure of the time.

  ‘Mercy.’

  She jumped, hearing Dorothy’s voice, and, as she turned, heard St Joseph’s clock in the distance begin striking eleven.

  Dorothy had a boy with her, a solid, rosy-cheeked lad dressed in good quality short trousers, a jacket and shiny black shoes. He was staring at her with a pointed curiosity which verged on insolence.

  Mercy looked from one to the other of them. Dorothy appeared to be in a right state. She reached out to touch the boy’s shoulder and Mercy saw her hand was trembling. She was breathing fast and for a moment seemed unable to speak.

  ‘Who’s this?’ Mercy asked. ‘One of your mistress’s, is ’e?’ Dorothy couldn’t have anything much to say to her if she’d brought a child along as well.

  The boy opened his mouth to speak when Dorothy put her fingers urgently to her lips and shushed him.

  ‘Yes, this is Robert.’ She spoke very quickly as if afraid for the words to linger in her mouth. ‘And we’ve got summat to show you, haven’t we, Robert? Mercy, I think you’d better come and sit down, dear.’

  Mercy felt her heart thump harder. She was bewildered, and Dorothy’s tone m
ade her feel very nervous. Her hands began sweating and she had to wipe them on her skirt.

  They went to a bench beside a flower bed of mixed pansies and sweet william. Dorothy sat the boy between the two of them. She took a deep breath and held it for a second.

  ‘Now,’ she said finally, on a rush of exhaled air, ‘Robert is going to show you . . . Go on, Robert.’

  Obviously aware of the solemnity of the occasion, Robert pulled a soft handful of something creamy-white from his pocket. Mercy frowned. As he opened it out it began to look familiar. She thought her heart was going to hammer its way out through her ribs. She gasped, clapping a hand over her mouth.

  The boy opened out the handkerchief and laid it across his knees. Embroidered in one corner in a blue thread, with exquisite neatness, was the name ROBERT. He unfolded the second and in almost the same cornflower blue she read EDWARD. There was a third square of linen, older, more yellowed, just like hers, embroidered, just like hers, in a faded mauve: THOMAS. She stared and stared. She couldn’t make sense of anything. Here were the very same linen squares, the same stitching as on the only small possession she had had since birth. The one tiny clue to her identity. And here this stranger, this young boy . . .

  With her hand still pressed to her lips she looked uncomprehendingly at Dorothy. Dorothy’s eyes stared back at her, full of mingled fear and tenderness.

  ‘If you’d been a boy,’ her voice trembled, ‘you’d have been called Thomas. She had it all ready for you, long before . . .’

  A winded, choking sound escaped from Mercy. She dragged her hand from her face and pressed it over her heart as if to contain the violence of its beating. Her whole body began to shake.

  ‘What d’you mean, Dorothy? What in heaven’s name are you telling me?’