The Promise

by Lesley Pearse

  By that Belle had to assume that Mr Forbes-Alton had inherited wealth and all he had to do was keep an eye on those who worked on his country estate and brought in the money to keep a grand London house. Miranda had said they’d only recently come back from a month in Sussex. She said she had been panicking her mother would want to stay longer, as she knew she must get the abortion done quickly.

  ‘No, my family don’t know him,’ she said. ‘I met him in Greenwich Park back in the spring. I’d gone for a walk on my own, and I tripped on some mud. He helped me up, and as I had hurt my ankle, he offered to walk me home. He was so charming, funny, interesting and kind. My parents have been trying to get me married off for the past few years, but the gentlemen they think are suitable are always so dull and earnest.’

  ‘And I imagine you weren’t supposed to go out walking on your own either?’ Belle suggested.

  Miranda half smiled. ‘No, Mama would’ve been furious if she knew. I couldn’t ask Frank to call on me either as we hadn’t been introduced by friends or family. So right from the start we had to meet in secret.’

  Belle guessed that Frank was a complete cad. He’d taken advantage of Miranda knowing full well that as she couldn’t invite him to meet her parents, he could make up any cock-and-bull story about himself without fear of being exposed.

  ‘What did he tell you about himself?’ she asked.

  ‘Not a great deal. What was there to tell? A gentleman with private means.’ She shrugged. ‘He dressed well, and he said he lived in Westminster.’

  ‘Where did you go with him?’ Belle asked.

  ‘We went for walks mostly, usually down to Greenwich because I didn’t dare let anyone in Blackheath see me with him. Sometimes we took a boat up river and we’d have lunch out. I could only see him about once a week or my absence would’ve been noticed.’

  ‘I meant where did he take you to seduce you?’ Belle asked.

  Miranda blushed. ‘To a room in Greenwich.’

  Belle shook her head. ‘Didn’t that strike you as odd when he’d told you he lived in Westminster?’

  ‘He said his servants might talk,’ she said. ‘I was so in love with him by then I would’ve gone anywhere with him.’

  ‘And when did he tell you he was married?’

  ‘When I told him I thought I might be having a baby.’ Her eyes filled with tears again. ‘I really believed he’d tell me not to worry and we’d get married straight away. But he wouldn’t even look at me. We were in a tea shop, and he just looked out of the window and said, “Then you’ve got a problem,” not even “we’ve”. I started crying and I could see that irritated him. We left the tea shop and then he said I knew all along he was married.’

  ‘How crafty to make out it was your fault!’ Belle exclaimed. ‘What a cad!’

  Miranda sighed, and screwed up her face as she got another stronger pain. ‘We always made arrangements for our next meeting. When he said he’d meet me at the usual time in the rose garden in Greenwich Park the following week I felt hopeful that would give him time to think it through and he’d find a solution. He kissed me goodbye down by the Naval College in Greenwich just as tenderly as he always had. But that was the last time I saw him.’

  ‘And I suppose you had no way of contacting him?’

  Miranda shook her head. ‘I had no address, nothing but little stories about people that I suspect now probably weren’t even true. I went into the tea shop we often went to in Greenwich and asked the girl behind the counter if she’d seen him, but she said, “He only ever came in here with you.” What else was there to do? I’d already been round to the house where he took me a few times, he’d said a friend of his owned it. But I’m afraid when I spoke to someone there it became clear to me it was a place where rooms were rented out by the hour.’

  Belle took Miranda’s hand and squeezed it. She could guess that finding out she’d been used as a whore, without even being paid, was the worst humiliation.

  ‘When tonight is over you must put all this behind you,’ she said gently. ‘Most of us have something in our past we are ashamed of. But all you are guilty of is being a little gullible. He is the bad person for pretending he loved you.’

  ‘That’s the part that hurts most,’ Miranda said. ‘I really loved him, I risked everything to be with him. Why would anyone do that to another person?’

  ‘I think some people are born wicked,’ Belle said. ‘I’d say he was a practised philanderer, but at least he didn’t try to get money out of you.’

  Miranda looked shamefaced. ‘I did give him fifty pounds,’ she admitted. ‘It was just a couple of weeks before I told him I thought I was having his baby. He’d been telling me for some little time that he knew of some land just out of London that was ripe for building on. He even showed me some sketches of small houses, just perfect for young married couples who wanted an inexpensive house in the countryside but could travel into the city for their work.’

  Belle could see what was coming. ‘I suppose he told you his funds were tied up and he needed cash to secure the land?’

  ‘How did you know that?’ Miranda said in surprise.

  ‘Instinct,’ Belle said. ‘And you volunteered your savings?’

  ‘He wanted a hundred, but I didn’t have that much,’ she said. ‘He promised he would give it back just as soon as he’d sold some shares.’

  Belle felt a tight ball of anger in her stomach at anyone being so low. ‘I hate to say this to you, Miranda, but I think you must face the fact that getting money out of you was his intention from the moment he discovered where you lived,’ she said. ‘His good clothes, his manner and even where you met him, indicate that he was actively looking for someone to cheat. He’s clearly a man who lives on his wits.’

  ‘Then you don’t think he was married either?’

  She asked that question with such hope in her eyes that Belle almost laughed at her stupidity. The loss of her money, not turning up to meet her when he said he would, wasn’t evidence to her of a scoundrel; she still chose to believe he’d let her down because he was married.

  ‘He might be, to someone as gullible as you,’ Belle replied. ‘But it’s more likely he’s got a whole string of women around London, all doting on him, keeping him and believing they are his true love.’

  Belle had heard Jimmy and Garth talking many times about such men they knew back in Seven Dials who made a living out of cheating women. Mog had always said that until women woke up, got the vote and insisted on a society which wasn’t run just by men, for men, there would always be a hiding place for cads and bounders.

  ‘How did you find out about the woman who “helped” you?’ Belle asked. She couldn’t imagine how any woman with a family background like Miranda’s had made contact with such a person.

  ‘From a woman in the house in Greenwich,’ Miranda said. ‘I started to cry when the man who ran that place was sharp with me and said he didn’t know Frank. She came after me and asked if she could help. I was so upset, and she was so kind, I told her about the baby, and she gave me the address in Bermondsey.’

  Belle nodded. She guessed the woman in question was a whore, and one with a heart too. Sometimes she thought that the only women with big hearts were fallen women.

  ‘It was an awful place she sent me to,’ Miranda confided. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it. There were ragged, dirty children everywhere, broken doors and windows, it was so dirty and smelly I wanted to turn and run away. But I couldn’t, I had to go through with it.’

  Belle could imagine what the place was like, a rotting, overcrowded tenement like the ones around Seven Dials. ‘You were very brave. But if you could go through that, you can go through anything. Now, how are you feeling?’

  ‘I think I’m losing some blood now.’ She blushed scarlet at having to reveal something so personal.

  ‘Lie back and let me look,’ Belle said. ‘Don’t be embarrassed. You haven’t got anything I haven’t, and just think of me as a nurse.’


  Miranda was bleeding a little, but it was mostly the soapy water the woman had used running out of her. Belle had been told by one of the girls in New Orleans who had gone through it herself that the practice was to open the sealed end of the cervix, then pump soapy water in, which acted as an irritant and made the woman miscarry. It didn’t bear dwelling on what they made the opening to the cervix with.

  Belle washed Miranda and fixed a piece of clean rag beneath her. She felt it wouldn’t be much longer now and gave her a dose of the medicine Mog had supplied.

  It was almost one in the morning when Miranda’s pains became really bad. Belle could sense the strength of them by the sweat on her brow and the way she arched her back and grimaced. But she didn’t scream out, only held tightly on to Belle’s hand.

  By half past two Belle was exhausted herself, wondering just how much longer anyone could be in such terrible pain. ‘You are being very brave,’ she said as yet again she wiped Miranda’s face with cold water. She was writhing with the pain now, biting her bottom lip to stop crying out.

  When she began to retch Belle quickly got a bowl and held it for her but with her spare hand she pushed back the sheet to look. There was a lot of fresh blood, and as Miranda once again retched, there was a rush of what looked like pieces of liver. Knowing what that meant made Belle want to retch too.

  ‘Is that it?’ Miranda gasped out.

  Belle gathered up the bloody rags, placing clean ones beneath Miranda. She didn’t want to look closely, but felt she must before she put them in the bucket. But there was something pale and tadpole-shaped, and knowing that must be the baby, she couldn’t stop herself from crying. It was even more distressing to think she had a baby in her own womb which would be wanted and loved, while that poor little mite had to be destroyed.

  ‘Yes, that’s it,’ she managed to get out through her tears. ‘Has the pain gone now?’

  ‘Yes, I just ache,’ Miranda whispered hoarsely. ‘What would I have done without you?’

  Belle hoped that if she lived to be a hundred she’d never have to see something as hideous as that again. Silently she cursed Frank, wished he could see what his greed and wickedness had done tonight, and that he’d suffer because of it.

  She washed Miranda all over and covered her up with the sheet. ‘Next time you meet a young man, you bring him to me to sound out,’ she whispered, and kissed her forehead. ‘Now I’ll make you some hot milk with some brandy in it. Then you can go to sleep.’

  Chapter Four

  Just after six in the morning Mog slipped in through the back gate to the shop yard. It was a beautiful morning, with the promise of another hot day ahead. Birds were singing, and at any other time she would have been reminded how lucky she was to have got away from Seven Dials and to have a loving, hard-working husband.

  But she had barely slept with anxiety about Belle. Although back in the days when she worked as the maid in Annie’s brothel she had taken care of six or seven girls in exactly the same predicament as Miranda, it had never come easily to her. It was a foul, shameful business, and even worse for Belle to witness it when she was pregnant herself.

  Mog wished with all her heart that there was an alternative for unmarried women who found themselves in this position. But if they didn’t go along with an abortion, without support from their families or the father of the child they were likely to find themselves cast out on to the streets, the workhouse the only place that would take them in. If their baby didn’t die from neglect during the birth, it was likely to be placed in an orphanage, or farmed out to someone who saw child rearing as a profitable business and showed no tender care.

  But Mog’s main fear today was that if anything had gone wrong last night, Belle would be in serious trouble. The law might turn a blind eye to anyone helping a prostitute through such an ordeal, but not a lady of quality.

  Women did die from these barbarous abortions, if not while it was happening, then later when infections set in. Belle might not be guilty of aiding and abetting what Miranda had done, but if the girl died, her family would need to blame someone and Belle would be their scapegoat.

  All was quiet and the back door was open a little to let in air. Mog pushed it open a little further to look in. Belle was fast asleep on the floor, wearing only her chemise, her hair tousled and one slender arm tucked around her head. The blonde girl on the makeshift bed was equally peaceful. She was wearing an old cotton nightdress trimmed with lace which Mog had made for Belle. Her colour looked good, not too pale, nor flushed and feverish.

  Relief flooded through Mog. There was no blood, mess or anything to suggest anything out of the ordinary had taken place in the room. She could see a covered bucket outside in the yard, and guessed that any evidence was in there.

  Despite her relief that all was well, there was something about the blonde girl which made her look through the door again, and to her shock she recognized her as the daughter of Mrs Forbes-Alton. Until just a few days ago all she knew of this woman was gossip: that she was bombastic and liked to keep a finger in every pie in the village. Mog had finally met her at a meeting which had been called to start a knitting group to make useful items for soldiers at the front. Mrs Forbes-Alton had been there with her two daughters, and Mog remembered them clearly because they looked so uncomfortable when their mother began to sound off as if she was running the entire show.

  Mrs Fitzpatrick, the wife of a famous concert pianist who had blue blood running through her veins, had made a tentative suggestion that maybe Mrs Jenkins, who ran the village haberdasher’s, could advise women what to knit and give instruction to novices as she was something of an expert.

  Mrs Jenkins agreed she’d be happy to do that, and would offer a discount on any knitting wool purchased from her.

  ‘Oh no,’ Mrs Forbes-Alton had boomed out in her plummy voice. ‘We can’t have anyone profiting from our venture. We should buy the wool wholesale.’

  Mog had seethed along with a great many other women because Mrs Jenkins had lost her husband in the war in South Africa, and just a few weeks earlier had seen both her two sons enlist. She was big-hearted, generously knitting clothes for every new baby born in the village, and had helped countless young women make their wedding dresses. Everyone knew she would be struggling to make ends meet now her sons had gone to war. But as one woman pointed out, she’d probably knit more items than anyone else in the village.

  That afternoon at the meeting, both the Forbes-Alton girls had been impeccably dressed and looked the very picture of shy docility. That made it even harder for Mog to imagine that the older and plainer one had been having a secret love affair.

  After the meeting feelings were running very high about Mrs Forbes-Alton and it was said that this was how she always behaved, belittling the efforts of anyone else, but doing very little herself. They said she was boastful and mean-spirited and treated her servants appallingly. So it was somewhat ironic that Belle had rescued Miranda, and saved that ogre of a woman some richly deserved shame and humiliation.

  Now Mog knew what Miranda’s mother was like, she felt even more sympathetic towards the daughter. She’d probably been brought up by servants, with little interest and affection from her mother. It was no wonder she fell into the arms of the first man who said he loved her. But she’d paid a very high price for a little fleeting happiness.

  Hopefully she would recover physically in a few days with rest and good hygiene, but Mog knew that the mental scar of losing a baby, whether by accident or intent, was something that took a great deal longer to heal.

  Belle stirred and opened her eyes as the back door creaked. She saw Mog and smiled, putting one finger over her lips and nodding towards Miranda, then got up and came out into the yard.

  She closed the door behind her and taking Mog’s arm, led her over to a couple of wooden boxes where they sat down in the sunshine. ‘She’s going to be all right, I think,’ Belle said in a low voice. ‘She was very brave, didn’t scream or anything, and fe
ll asleep soon after it was over, but I couldn’t go through that again.’

  Mog put her arm round her and held her close. She hated that her Belle had been forced to see something so harrowing.

  ‘It doesn’t bear thinking about how it would have been for Miranda if she had gone home,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘I’ve met her mother and she’s a Tartar.’ She went on to tell Belle what she knew about her. ‘But what are you going to do with Miranda now?’

  ‘Let her sleep for as long as possible,’ Belle said, looking back at the door. ‘I won’t open the shop of course, not when I’m supposed to be at Lisette’s. I’ll walk her home later. Fortunately the friend she’s supposed to have stayed with isn’t on the telephone, so her mother won’t find out she wasn’t there. Miranda can pretend she’s just having a very heavy monthly and go back to bed.’

  ‘You’ll have to get rid of that.’ Mog pointed to the bucket.

  ‘I’m going to pour some turpentine on it and set fire to it later,’ Belle said. ‘I can’t do it now; it would be suspicious if anyone saw smoke at this time in the morning.’

  ‘I’ll take my hat off to you, you’ve thought it all through,’ Mog said admiringly. It never ceased to astound her how after all the humiliations and terrors Belle had been through she had retained her humanity, dignity, warmth and sense of humour.

  She had loved Belle as her own from the moment she held her in her arms when she was newborn, and she would have continued to love her even if she’d lost her mind and her beauty. But to see her return to England and by her own force of will open the milliner’s she’d always dreamed of and make a huge success of it, that made Mog immensely proud.

  Belle half smiled. ‘It’s not the first time I’ve had to plot something, but I don’t know whether I can tell Jimmy. How was he last night?’

  ‘He was fine, but then he’s always easy about everything. Not like some men that fly off the handle when their missus goes out. You got a fine one there.’