A Liverpool Girl

by Elizabeth Morton

  She woke with a start, her nightdress soaked in sweat and her hands twisting the pillowcase. The truth of what had been happening to her body over the past weeks seeped into her consciousness. She felt a tearing sensation and panic rise to her throat. It was the third time that week she had had this nightmare where she was sitting in the back field of the farm and was overtaken by a curious urge to run and run until, finally, she raced down to the beach and saw Callum, facing out to the sea. But when he turned, it was Johnny Gallagher who held his arms out to her and caught her as she sobbed. In her dream, she’d spun away from him, struggled to break free from his grasp, and then she awoke with a start, with the light bursting through the smeared pane of glass of the bedroom. A single tear rolled down her cheek. The dream always ended with Callum calling her name.

  She lay still in the half-light. Hannah was still fast asleep on the small single put-you-up. Raising her head and squinting, she saw that dawn was breaking. Oh God, please let me go back to sleep, she prayed. It had been weeks since Callum had disappeared, her last image of him silhouetted against the white face of the Infirmary clock as he walked down the hill, and she had not heard from him since. She had written letters to Mrs Reilly, to pass on to him, but they had always been returned with the same note. I’m afraid Callum had to go away to Italy unexpectedly; I believe he has relatives there, but we have no forwarding address at present.

  She turned on to her right side and scrunched her knees up into her chest but that lasted only for a minute before she decided lying flat on her stomach might be better. Left leg bent? No, straight was more comfortable. Maybe it would be best if she were to lie on her back? Good idea. But now she didn’t know where to put her arms. Fold them? It felt strange. What about rolling on to her right side to face the wall instead of the window? Now turn the pillow over to its cooler side. After a moment, it felt hot again, as though her cheek and hair might ignite. She bent her knees and put her head under tented sheets until she felt moisture dribbling from her armpits and down the side of her nose. Another look outside. Must be five o’clock. Oh God, oh God, oh God. Nothing worked. Not even singing or reciting the Rosary. And feeling exhausted but wide awake, she gave in to another hour of staring at the ceiling, listening to the pigeons and worrying that she might be pregnant. Really, she should have known better. She had been told about the sanctity of marriage and communion with God, and husbands. The one thing that Sister Scholastica had taught her in biology lessons spent studying badly drawn diagrams, and on one occasion the pinned open and split carcass of a rabbit, was the intricacies of the reproductive organs. It had been weeks now since she had the Curse.

  With her hands pressed on her stomach, desperately hoping for some twinge to signal that God had decided to answer her prayers, she tried to concentrate on the sensations, willing that sick feeling, or that of a huge hand rudely groping around in her belly, intermittently gripping, tearing and twisting bits of her knotted insides, pulling and dragging them downwards. Never had she wanted more the griping stomach pains, the backache. What was that? Something coming alive inside her, she thought, alert with hope. But it was only a tummy rumble and, much as she tried to convince herself it had a greater significance, the gurgle that followed suggested otherwise. No, this was certainly a feeling of life. But it was another kind of life. The sore and fulsome breasts, trying to hide the sound of retching from her mother every morning – this was a child growing inside her.

  Half past six. The sun sneaked in a thin line of light from between the gap in the curtains. She got out of bed and padded her way to the outside lavatory. Just as she had done for the last three mornings, she knelt down, rested her elbows on the lavatory seat and prayed.

  ‘Dear Jesus, I am so sorry about Callum. Please forgive me. Please don’t punish me in this way. I promise I will never speak to Callum again. People would blame him and he’s a good person, I’m sure. And what about everyone else who would get hurt? Please God, I know you work in mysterious ways but not this time, please. I will make it up to you. I swear on Mam’s life …’ And screwing up her face with angst, she beat a fist against her heart and chanted rhythmically, ‘Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa …’ until she became dizzy with the smell of the damp in the room and her own sweat. ‘Oh God,’ she cried softly, ‘do something – won’t you please do something?’

  If only I could be practical about this, she thought, on the walk to her work at the haberdashers. She looked up at the huge poster on a wall. ‘Bovril for All Meat Eaters’ it said in five-foot tall letters with a picture of a roast chicken and a plume of hot steam rising from it. There was something disconcerting about it, but she didn’t know what. Perhaps it was to do with her general state of mind, her nerves, or the collywobbles she was having, as Violet would describe them. Each time she thought about telling someone that she might be having a baby – anyone, Pat, maybe, or her Aunt Kathleen – she would gulp down air and her heart seemed to jump to her throat. Callum was the only one she wanted to tell; he would know what to do, surely? But perhaps it had been better that she hadn’t seen him whilst she had got used to the idea herself. She needed to have her mind free of distractions, and the missing him feeling, a sort of permanent dull ache, had now been overtaken by a heightened anxiety.

  She walked over the railway bridge that was a good mile away from Joseph Street as a train passed underneath. Enveloped in a cloud of steam, there was the smell of coal and grease and the sound of metal clanking and squealing wheels. She went down the other side of the road and on past the parade of shops that included a grocer, where she and Pat used to buy ‘fades’ – fruit that was on the turn but still perfectly edible – a butcher’s that sold pig’s trotters and liver, the pawnshop, a blacksmith’s. There were a couple of shops that were beyond repair and boarded up because of the clearances, and a chemist’s. Stopping outside a café, she caught sight of herself reflected in the shop’s plate glass window and for a moment thought she saw a bulge just below the waistband of her dirndl skirt. In a panic, she smoothed her hands over her stomach. But she was too early on, of course she wasn’t showing, it was only her blouse, bunched up and stuffed into the top of her underwear.

  She remembered Johnny Gallagher talking about his cousin, Carmel. The same thing had happened with her, sixteen and in the club, and he had said it had broken her mother’s heart. Carmel and her bog boy were married at nine o’clock at night, Carmel in her black mantilla, her mother’s old navy-blue coat hiding her huge belly, with no one there to see. Shuffling in to Saint Mary the Virgin – that’s a laugh, Johnny had said – the sounds of the church mice scuttling across the marble floor, embarrassed, because even they were that ashamed. Babby certainly didn’t want that for her baby. The shame, the pointing and the laughing, and the ‘Oh, Mrs Delaney, we’re awful sorry what’s happened to your Babby.’

  Violet was going out tonight, going to Kathleen’s for a stout and a gossip. The chemist shop’s bell tinkled as Babby entered and she felt her cheeks stinging with embarrassment moments later as she asked in a quiet voice for a bottle of Epsom salts. The bottle of gin – mother’s ruin – she didn’t need to buy, as Violet had one already, sitting on the mantelpiece. She had heard horror stories of knitting needles and bent coat hangers, but she knew she didn’t have it in her to go that far. She thrust the bottle into her handbag and carried on to work.

  Creeping into the house that evening, she was sure Violet wouldn’t be back until ten and Hannah, who had gone with her, would stay there until the morning. Patrick was going out dancing with Doris and he wouldn’t be coming by tonight, so that was grand. It was her only chance to try this whilst the house was empty, and it was a chance that she was going to take. She took off her coat and hung it over the back of the chair. The light sloping in from outside through a gap in the curtains fell across her cheek and she noticed, in the mirror above the mantelpiece, blotted by rust and time though it was, that the exhaustion of the huge effort of it all was beginning to show on her
face. How could this happen to me? she said silently to herself, turning the words around in her mouth, repeating them, whilst hoping to God this was going to work.

  On the stove, Babby placed two rusting pots and a kettle, to bring them to the boil. Soon the room was full of steam, with condensation running down the windows, and she began to sweat. She had placed the tin bath in front of the range. She wiped away the moisture on her top lip and dabbed at the necklace of perspiration that had appeared around her throat in glistening beads of sweat. Carefully, using a tea towel wrapped around the pan handle, she lifted the first pan off the stove and poured it into the tin bath, then did the same with the kettle. There was the bottle of gin, glinting in the flickering light of the fire. She had heard you had to drink the gin at the same time as you sat in the bath water as hot as you could bear it, but she decided to take a glug now for good measure. She poured in the second pan of water. It hissed and splashed as it gushed out and caused her to jump backwards and yelp.

  She poured in the whole bottle of Epsom salts in one go and they fizzed as they hit the water. Probably it was the Epsom Salts, that was making her nose itch, and she found herself stifling a sneeze as she knelt at the side of the bath and stirred the water with a wooden spoon, waiting for it to cool sufficiently so that she could get into it. I’m terrified, she thought, and yet this is all I can think of right now. I can’t sleep, and I’m constantly worrying: what will people think, will this hurt, will people somehow notice, what if this doesn’t work? She had heard that if you punched yourself violently in the stomach, that worked as well, but she had tried and all it had done was make her feel sick. She took off her clothes and stood shivering on the linoleum floor. With the bottle of gin and a glass in hand, she dipped her toe in. The water was painfully hot, but there was no use in doing these things by half. It needed to burn like hell. She needed to ‘shock the body into some kind of acute stress, causing a violent reaction in order to expel the baby’. She had read that somewhere, couldn’t remember where, but the words were imprinted on her brain. Baby. She couldn’t, mustn’t, think of it as a baby. That way disaster lay. And yet … And yet … She had found herself thinking of names. Jennifer for a girl. Teddy for a boy. The gin made her feel woozy but she took another mouthful, then another, winced at the taste of it, slugging it down, straight out of the bottle.

  Jesus, Mary, and Joseph save me … She climbed in, sank down slowly into the water with small screams, saw her pink flesh reddening, shivered with pain. The gin helped. She glugged down most of the rest of the bottle, making sure she had left just enough in the hope Violet wouldn’t notice, wrapped the Epsom salts in her blouse to chuck away later, and lowered herself in further, pulled her knees to her chest. The Epsom salts felt gritty under her bare bottom. Shapes moved around the room and very quickly she became lightheaded. But within minutes the scalding hot feeling abated and she stretched out her legs, lolled back her head, and felt swathed in a warm liquid embrace. She was drunk, and soon overtaken by an overwhelming feeling of not caring about anything. Jennifer or Teddy, her baby, was still growing inside her, and no one was going to take that away from her. She was now actually enjoying it. Luxuriating in the warmth, instead of shivering in the grey, lukewarm second-hand sludge that she was used to. Clean, warm water. A sense that everything was going to be all right after all.

  All she had to do now was find her Callum.

  The following morning, Babby woke early.

  ‘No.’ The way Violet said it with a gleam in her eye, made Babby’s knees buckle.

  ‘Please,’ said Babby. Violet was in the back yard pulling up weeds from the cracks in between the stone slabs. Babby regarded Violet’s hunched back, watched her mother with her bare hands and a spoon, digging out the stinging nettles that had grown in a clump. Violet was not going to interrupt what she was doing for anybody. Babby yelped.

  ‘I have to go. I have to go and see Mrs Reilly. I have to see the sisters. They still have some of my things.’

  ‘Things?’

  ‘My clothes. The vanity case. Stuff. I can get the boat to Anglesey and be back this evening.’

  ‘Don’t be so stupid. You can’t go. You went to bed last night and left me to empty the bath. How lazy. I’m furious, Babby. No. You’re not going anywhere.’ The way she said it, so forcefully, as she yanked up a thistle, made Babby let out the sound of a small, wounded animal.

  Try and stop me, she thought, I need to find out if it’s true that Callum is no longer at Pentraeth Farm. And she quietly slipped outside into the street as Violet sighed and called after her, ‘You’ll be back, Babby!’

  An hour later, Babby was walking towards the landing stage with her coat over her arm. She bought a bottle of fizzy pop from a kiosk, wiped the top of it, and took a glug. There was a calmness about her as she fixed her eyes on the Mersey Princess coming in to dock. She was scared but part of her had never felt so determined in all her life. She could actually feel the end of her nerves tingling. She watched as two men on board threw ropes on to the landing stage, which were caught by a younger man and wound around the cleats. The passengers got off the boat and, clutching her ticket, she walked down the gangway, briefly turning to look back at the Pier Head. With the wind fanning her hair to reveal her high forehead, it gave her a sharp thrill in the pit of her stomach knowing she was going back to the farm. She made her way on board and as the engines started up, there was a humming and vibrating and rattling, of glasses and bottles, cups and saucers. She looked at the bleached-out photographs of cheerful sailors and elegant ocean liners hanging on the walls.

  Then there was a hand under her elbow, the swish of cloth, and the flapping of swathes of black material coming upon her like a huge black crow. The glancing touch felt cold, unfeeling. The nun, wearing polished wooden rosary beads about her waist and with a set of keys that she jangled in her deep pocket, gave her a supercilious stare.

  ‘You must be Babby,’ she said, with a brief, smug smile. Babby’s mouth gaped open. It was as if every muscle in her body had ceased to function, as if she was unable to summon up the energy in order to utter a single word.

  The nun’s eyes were small, triumphant puddles staring out from her face, encircled in the white coif and veil.

  ‘Come with me, dear,’ she said. ‘The boat won’t leave until you come with me …’

  Babby trembled. She shrank back against the wall, frozen, without a clue what to do next. The nun stepped forward, reached out, clutched her hand with her bony fingers – and Babby felt terrified. Despite what the nun was saying about wanting to help her, she felt sick with fear, and her thoughts lurched to the refrain she had heard all her life. Saint Jude’s. Saint Jude’s. You’ll end up in Saint Jude’s, Babby, you will, Babby. Had she followed her? Had she actually spied on her and followed her all the way from her house? The nun’s face grew knotty, red and cross.

  ‘All these people – you’re holding them up,’ she said with a humph. ‘Your mother said you would make things difficult.’

  The nun gripped her arm.

  ‘Where are you taking me?’ asked Babby. She squirmed away, and stamped a foot. ‘I won’t go to Saint Jude’s!’ she said suddenly, but then, as if all the energy drained from her body, she let her arms fall to her side. There was a silence. Babby wanted to say something about how the nun couldn’t make her do anything she didn’t want to, and Violet was a coward for sending her instead of coming herself. But she just couldn’t. Couldn’t find the strength to get the words out.

  ‘Saint Jude’s? Don’t be silly. I’m taking you home to your mother.’

  The air was heavy with an oppressive quiet. A cold chill crept up her spine and, with it, a kind of sickness rose to Babby’s throat as her legs wobbled underneath her. She gulped down great gasps of breath and trembled with shock.

  ‘No!’ she cried.

  ‘Don’t make a fuss, dear,’ said the nun. ‘Violet said you would make a fuss, but it won’t help anything.’

  The
nun walked over to one of the men who had thrown the rope from the boat. She murmured something in his ear. He nodded. It was as if Babby’s frightened pale face was invisible to them all as the nun then took a minute to chat to him about the inclement weather and the swell of the tide. Finally, she went back to Babby.

  ‘May God bless you and love you even in the overwhelming darkness,’ the nun whispered in her ear, grasping her am tightly.

  Babby felt her body go limp. She turned wearily, to see another nun, smiling and waving at her on the landing stage. A dull ache formed in her chest. Letting the sister take her by her sagging arm, her cheeks burned as every pair of eyes followed her down the gangway, on to the landing stage, and off towards the direction of home.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Babby stood in the doorway, her eyes red-rimmed and swollen with tears as she gnawed at the skin around her thumbnail.

  Violet was sitting in the parlour, pushing and pulling a needle through a piece of linen.

  ‘Don’t say a single word,’ Violet said, raising the palm of her hand to Babby when she came a step further into the room. ‘I know everything. I know about the baby. How far gone are you? And who’s the father? I’m assuming it’s the boy Callum?’ She leaped to her feet, threw down the needle and thread, and banged a fist on the table. ‘Oh God, Babby, how could you have been so stupid? I’m glad your da is not here to see this. The shame of it!’