Charity

by Lesley Pearse

  Taking up knitting helped the long evenings pass, and she was soon mastering the most complicated patterns. Her list for the home only asked for three of everything, but Charity made dozens of little jackets, bootees and a big shawl.

  At night as she lay in her bed she thought of Hugh and relived each moment of that bliss-filled holiday. She could forget the cold when she imagined that hot day by the pond. She tucked her hands round her swollen belly and felt the baby move.

  Love stirred within her, and she began to stop thinking of the baby as a problem as it became part of her. She would trudge through the snow to look in baby shops, wishing she was lucky enough to be able to choose a pram, a cot or a playpen. She read every book she could find on childbirth and babies, and with a Woolworth’s wedding ring she could pretend in shops that she was planning a nursery for her child.

  Sometimes in a wild fantasy she imagined Hugh coming for her, driving up in his father’s car and scooping her into his arms. She could project it further to him taking her to a tiny thatched cottage like Rob’s parents’, where Hugh and herself would walk down a sunfilled lane pushing the baby in a pram.

  There were times when she thought of writing to him, even of going to Oxford and confronting him, but each time she squashed the thoughts and reread his last letter to remind herself that he had betrayed her trust.

  Love for Hugh took second place to her baby. When her heart ached with sorrow, when tears trickled down her cheeks, she’d put her hands on her tummy and turn the love inside to him. Her brothers and sister had trained her for this, she’d turned to them when there was nothing else and one day, when all this was over, she’d see them again.

  March came in with a thaw. Everyone who came into the restaurant had a horror story of burst pipes, but Martin and Marjorie were lucky: their flat and the kitchens were so constantly warm they had no trouble.

  Charity too had a burst pipe in her house. She arrived home one evening to find water gushing down the stairs from the bathroom and all the tenants shrieking about damaged carpets. In her room it was only a puddle by the door and she found it ironic that soon the entire house would be recarpeted and the hall and stairway decorated, now her time there was almost up.

  She was tired now in the evenings, her ankles swollen with standing all day. Sometimes she went to bed the moment she got in from work, sleep blotting out the fear of leaving Marjorie and Martin.

  Only one case was allowed at Daleham Gardens, so bit by bit she packed everything else in boxes and Martin put them away in his store-room. Cheap posters came down from the walls, little ornaments were wrapped in newspaper and finally the room was bare and characterless again.

  ‘Well, this is it,’ Martin said on the April morning when the taxi finally came to collect her. ‘We’ll try and get over to see you, but you know how we’re fixed.’

  Marjorie was struggling not to cry. Charity’s tummy had grown suddenly in the last two weeks and there was no disguising her position any longer. She was a woman now, in the full flower of motherhood, with rosy cheeks and a calm steadfast look in those big blue eyes.

  ‘We’ll be thinking about you constantly.’ Marjorie’s voice shook as she embraced Charity. ‘Whatever you decide, we’ll be behind you. Let us know the moment he’s born.’

  Charity saw the concern in their eyes. She knew that if they had the room, they would offer it to her willingly.

  ‘Don’t worry about me,’ she whispered into Marjorie’s neck, which smelt of soap and cooked food. ‘I’ll be fine. I’m a big girl now.’

  She wanted to tell them just how much they meant to her, how she dreaded a day without their faces, their laughter and their warmth. She had a carrier bag full of little presents from them, and from the many customers who’d got to know her over the months.

  ‘We’ll send on any letters,’ Martin said. He removed his wife’s arms from her and offered his own. ‘We won’t let on to anyone where you are without first contacting you. And there’s a job to come back to, any time you want it.’

  ‘Thank you for everything,’ Charity said against his shoulder, breathing in deeply his smell of sweat, mingled with onions and roasted meat. ‘You are the kindest, nicest people in the world.’

  She had to go quickly then. Tears were springing up in her eyes and threatening to overflow.

  Hammersmith Broadway didn’t look dingy any longer as the taxi sped her away. There was a tub of daffodils outside the flat-letting agency, Mr Harris the greengrocer was sweeping the pavement outside his shop, the windows seemed to sparkle in the spring sunshine and now she was leaving, it looked like home.

  Chapter Thirteen

  ‘Charity! What sort of a handle is that to give to a girl?’

  If the girl hadn’t had such dancing brown eyes, such a preposterously large belly and such flaming red hair, Charity might have been offended. But there was nothing but cheekiness and good humour in her pleasant face. Charity giggled.

  ‘I’ve abandoned all faith and hope,’ she said.

  ‘Ah but the greatest of these is Charity!’ The girl’s mischievous eyes twinkled. ‘You’ve got the bed next to mine. I hope you don’t live to regret it.’

  Charity looked round the six-bedded sunny room and smiled.

  ‘It’s much nicer than I expected!’

  ‘That’s what I thought too, though most of the others moan like hell. I’m Rita, by the way. Want some help with unpacking?’

  Number sixteen Daleham Gardens was as far removed from Greystones House as Buckingham Palace was from a slum in Paddington.

  As the taxi sped through St John’s Wood and into Swiss Cottage, Charity’s spirits had lifted slightly. She didn’t know this part of London, and the wide tree-lined roads with smart houses were an unexpected bonus. But as they turned off the main road into Daleham Gardens and stopped, her heart turned somersaults.

  Not a dustbin in sight, no funny old men shuffling past with bottles in their hands. Just big, fine houses with front gardens full of trees and spring flowers.

  Number 16 was semidetached, with a wooden veranda across the ground floor and six wide stone steps up to a bright red front door. There were no signs advertising the fact that it was a ‘home’. If Charity hadn’t happened to glance down to the basement, and seen what looked like a sluice room and laundry, she would have believed it to be a wealthy family’s house.

  The door was opened by another heavily pregnant girl with long dark hair, who scuttled off to find Miss Mansell, the matron and Charity was left to stand in the spacious hall and marvel.

  To her right was a flight of wide stairs, with a stained-glass window on a half-landing that cast twinkling patches of red and blue on to apple green walls. Straight ahead she saw a nursery, and through the open door she could see small canvas cots and a couple of girls cradling babies in their arms. Next to that was a sunny sitting room where she caught a glimpse of another pregnant girl sitting knitting.

  The overall impression was one of brightness.

  ‘Charity!’ A petite older woman emerged from up the basement stairs, beaming a welcome. ‘I’m Miss Mansell, the matron. That was Holly who opened the door. Leave your case there and come into my office a minute. Then I’ll get one of the girls to show you round.’

  Charity liked Miss Mansell that first moment, even before she took her into the room behind the closed door. Her gentle voice implied strength and kindness.

  The office confirmed this. It was orderly, yet homely, and doubled as a private sitting room. Framed family photographs shared space with many of girls and babies. Notelets and letters were pinned to a notice-board, presumably from girls who’d written to thank her for their stay here.

  ‘Do sit down, Charity.’ Miss Mansell waved a small hand to one of the two armchairs by the window. She glanced down at Charity’s feet. ‘Oh dear, your ankles are very swollen. I must take your blood pressure! How are you feeling?’

  ‘Fine.’ Charity smiled, suddenly feeling much less exhausted. ‘I did a lo
t of going up and down stairs this morning. They’ll soon go down again.’ She looked at her fat ankles.

  ‘Yes I expect so, dear.’ Miss Mansell perched on the edge of the other chair like a little bird. She had a gentle face and looked nothing like Charity’s idea of a matron. ‘You’ve been waitressing, haven’t you? Very hard on the feet for a mother-to-be.’

  Although she had a file on her big desk with Charity’s name on it, she didn’t consult it once, proving she had read and remembered everything.

  ‘For now I just want to welcome you. I’ll let the other girls fill you in on all their horror stories later. But basically all you really need to know is that this is your home for the next three months and I’m Mother.’ She smiled warmly at her little joke. ‘The few rules we have must be followed because they were made for your safety and well-being. In the mornings we have a rota of work, none of which will come hard to you, though many of the girls complain. After lunch you may go out, sit in the garden or the lounge, whatever you like. Tea is served at five-thirty, but if you have friends taking you out you may skip that as long as you are home by six-thirty and you let me know. I pack you pregnant girls off to bed at nine. On Sundays you all go to church.’

  She paused to let that sink in.

  ‘Now, each week you will go to your antenatal classes up on the Heath. Most of the girls enjoy that, as it’s a pretty walk even if it is uphill all the way. When you go into labour you come and tell me, even if it is during the night. I get an ambulance and see you off.’

  She went on to explain that Charity must sign the back of her benefit book, which she would cash for her and give her back fifteen shillings a week pocket money.

  ‘Most of the girls smoke,’ Miss Mansell said disapprovingly. ‘Many of them stuff themselves with sweets, but whatever you blow your money on, once it’s gone you have to wait another week for more. I don’t give subs.’

  Charity had assumed she would have to hand over every penny of her maternity allowance. This and the news that she could go out in the afternoons came as a pleasant surprise.

  They chatted for a little longer about Charity’s job and her uncertainty about the future. Miss Mansell listened carefully to her anxiety about her brothers and sister.

  ‘My dear, you must put them aside for the time being. All that matters now is you and your baby’s health. I’m here to listen, to advise and help you young mothers, but the feelings you will have when your baby is put into your arms may very well drive out everything you have thought beforehand.’

  ‘You mean I might want to keep him?’ Charity always thought of her baby as ‘him’.

  ‘I know you will want to keep him.’ A flicker of sadness crossed the older woman’s face. ‘You will want it so fiercely you will think it’s impossible to do otherwise. I never met a girl who wanted anything else in all my years here.’

  ‘But they do give them up, don’t they?’ Charity wanted reassurance that she could manage it too if she had to.

  ‘It’s very often the most loving, caring girls who do,’ said Miss Mansell. Her eyes held a strange expression. ‘It isn’t lack of love which prompts them, believe me. Your grief will be another couple’s joy if you give him up. But that, my dear, has to be your choice, made only with love and a great deal of soul-searching.’

  ‘There’s the bathrooms.’ Rita pointed out three baths in cubicles just outside their dormitory. ‘There’s a bog on each floor too. Yesterday some of the girls in the other dorm got tough with a girl who smelt. They bundled her in here and shoved her in the bath.’

  Charity immediately felt nervous.

  ‘She was a bit pongy.’ Rita grinned. ‘But I’m glad I’m not in that room, there’s some right dragons in there. They don’t like me much. They think I’m weird.’

  Charity thought there was nothing weird about Rita at all, unless you counted being outspoken and friendly.

  ‘It’s because a lot of them have never been away from home before.’ Rita dropped her voice to a whisper as she showed Charity the other dormitory. ‘You see some of them were sent away by their parents, to stop the neighbours finding out. They’ve had pampered lives, they hate scrubbing floors and polishing. They moan about everything.’

  ‘Do we have to scrub floors?’ Charity wasn’t concerned, just surprised. The floors were all covered in shiny brown lino which hardly warranted scrubbing.

  ‘Yes we do. Miss Mansell says it’s good exercise, keeps our muscles supple. We scrub Monday, polish Tuesday. I quite enjoy it.’

  The dorm was an airy room overlooking the big rear garden, with six white-painted iron beds, a locker apiece and two large chests of drawers and one small wardrobe and a washbasin. Personal belongings were everywhere: teddy bears on beds, makeup, perfume and even handbags gaping open.

  ‘That’s asking for trouble,’ Rita said, pointing out one bag. ‘Stealing isn’t a problem here, but I’d be a bit more careful than that.’

  The attic floor had sloping ceilings and small windows. Here there were only four beds to each of the two rooms, and in one a girl lay sleeping.

  ‘Fiona’s been up all night with her baby,’ Rita whispered.

  They went downstairs to see the nursery.

  Charity was overcome with tenderness as she peered into each cot. All the babies were different – dark ones, fair ones, some bald and big, one so tiny it looked like a doll.

  Eight babies in eight cots. Eight piles of nappies in square pigeonholes with another beneath holding a basket of talc, bottom cream and sponges. A nappy bucket for each, and eight low chairs for feeding, around a white-painted table, its legs cut short.

  It was a lovely room, with a pale grey and white tiled floor and huge windows looking on to the garden. Mobiles hung from the ceiling and a big jolly nursery frieze ran along one wall.

  ‘I love coming in here,’ Rita said and stroked her stomach. ‘I was never interested in babies before, but now I’m always popping in to lend a hand.’

  ‘Are you getting married or anything?’ Charity hardly dared to ask, but didn’t think somehow she’d be rebuffed.

  ‘No, he scarpered the moment I mentioned I was late,’ Rita grinned. ‘I’m going to have mine adopted. I can’t see any alternative.’

  Rita, as it turned out, was in much the same boat as Charity. Her mother and father didn’t know about the baby and wouldn’t help if they did. Until coming here she’d worked as a chambermaid.

  ‘My folks are snobs.’ Rita picked up a crying baby and held him against her shoulder. ‘They sent me to a good school, then secretarial college and hoped I would marry someone presentable soon after. But I moved into a flat in Earls Court with some mates and that’s when I got into this mess. The girls asked me to leave. So I got the job in the hotel, lay low and let my parents think I’m working up in Edinburgh.’

  ‘But how?’ Charity held her back and stretched slightly to relieve the pressure caused by standing for so long.

  ‘A friend I knew in school works there. I post her a letter every week. She posts it to my parents and sends their replies back to me. I’m terrified Dad might spot me one day. They live in Hampstead Garden Suburb, you see, which isn’t a million miles from here.’ She giggled.

  ‘Let me have him.’ Charity held out her arms for the baby which Rita couldn’t silence.

  Rita sat down heavily on one of the low chairs, tucking her hands round her tummy. ‘Tell me about yourself,’ she said.

  Charity sat down too. It was easy to talk to Rita, as if they were old friends already. She passed quickly over her parents’ death, but explained about Hugh and her brothers and sister.

  ‘I’m never going to be a mug when it comes to men again,’ Rita declared. ‘I don’t intend to make the same mistake again. But you’ve had it tougher than any of us here. It makes me feel guilty whining on about my parents.’

  ‘This is Charity,’ Rita announced as they entered the dining room in the basement, in answer to the gong for tea.

  Aside from
the eighteen girls already sitting at the table, Miss Mansell and two women helpers were there too. It was a sea of faces and as Rita reeled off the list of names Charity felt certain she could never learn them all.

  She was surprised at the family atmosphere as bread and butter was passed round, cups of tea, jam and honey, then cake.

  She saw at once how the girls split into two groups: those with babies and those still pregnant. Not that there was any animosity; they just had different values. The pregnant ones talked about pop records, clothes, even what they would do when they left; the mothers chatted about feeds, of getting up at night and babies’ weights.

  The dining room was a semi-basement and the sun came right in. There was a television down here too but no one seemed to be interested in it.

  ‘We aren’t allowed to smoke anywhere but the lounge,’ Rita whispered. ‘We all watch Ready, Steady, Go!, but nothing else much.’

  By the time Charity got to bed at nine she knew a little about each of the girls in her dormitory. Anne was a quiet, dark-haired girl from Romford. Sally, the extrovert with pretty auburn corkscrew curls, made them laugh with tales of her ‘Sugar Daddy’ who wrote to her all the time. Then there was Linda, a moonfaced girl who had a book of poetry by her bed, and Dorothy.

  Dorothy was the one Charity found herself liking the most. She was tall and strikingly beautiful with a perfect oval face and dark lustrous eyes. Her dark brown hair she wore parted in the middle and plaited at each side of her head like a Red Indian squaw. She came from Devon and spoke with a cultured accent. She referred to the girls in the other dorm as ‘the peasants’ without any malice, and cut up a large chocolate cake to share out.

  ‘Mother sent it,’ she said. ‘It’s her way of grovelling a bit because Pop called me a whore. As I pointed out to him, if I’d been a whore I’d not only have a wedge in the bank, but I wouldn’t be stupid enough to have ended up here.’