by Sam Hayes
She takes me upstairs and gets me into a bed. She cleans me up and wipes my face with cold water. She presses her fingers all over my belly, sinking them deep into the empty pocket where a baby lived only a week ago. Each time I yelp she purses her lips and says, ‘Hmm.’ Then she asks if it’s hurting anywhere else and I tell her that my left tit is on fire. When she has a look at it, she gasps because it’s prickly red like a giant strawberry.
‘You’re a right mess, young lady,’ she says and makes me scared because I didn’t think I was. ‘Did the midwife check that the placenta came out properly?’
I stare up at her, my lips slightly apart. I feel like I did at school when I was asked a question and I hadn’t been listening. The teacher’s eyes would bore into me and the others would giggle. I shrug and take a quick glance around the bedroom. There are three other beds, each with white sheets and a yellow counterpane. A single light bulb hangs from the ceiling, too bright in my eyes, and the orange curtains are half closed. It’s cold, too. I remember the hostel that Rachel described when she ran away. Part of me wants to go home.
‘I don’t know,’ I whisper.
‘Did you have your baby in a hospital?’
‘At home,’ I say and then wish I hadn’t.
‘Where’s home?’
‘Further north.’ Not telling her any more.
‘Who helped you have your baby?’ Freda’s sitting on the bed now, her weight pulling me towards her.
‘No one. I gave birth alone.’ I screw up my eyes for a moment because I remember that Uncle Gustaw was there but I don’t want to tell her about him and his creepy hands slithering over my skin while I heaved and split like a wild animal.
‘You’ve got a uterine infection. It’s a bad one judging by the state you’re in. And to top it all, you’ve got mastitis. I’ll have to get you some antibiotics.’
‘The man said you were a nurse and would make me better.’ I’m glad she knows what I’ve got.
‘Becco said that? Nursemaid, more like.’ She grins. ‘To all our girls. I’ll get you some tablets to dry up your milk, too.You won’t need any while your baby’s being taken care of. It’s bed for you for a couple of days. Lucky I had a spare one, eh?’ Freda’s face opens up like a spring flower.
‘Oh yes,’ I say, thankful that she is going to make me well again so I can look after my baby properly. Thankful, too, that I have a bed and there are other girls in the house that I can make friends with. ‘I can really stay for a bit?’
‘I can’t turn you out onto the street, can I? Plus, if you’re a good girl, there’s a job waiting for you as well.You’ll have to earn your keep somehow.’ Freda strokes my forehead and tucks a strand of loose hair behind my ear. ‘Get a bit of sleep. I’ll get your medicine and then introduce you to the other girls later.’ She bends down and kisses my cheek. I don’t remember my mother ever doing that. I sleep for what seems like hours and I dream of trains and strawberries and hotels and jumping out of windows and the stench of smoky old London.
It’s the noise that wakes me. Clattering and swearing and banging and squealing like there’s a cat fight. The house rattles. A strange scent filters up from downstairs where all the fuss is taking place. It’s sugar candy and pink lipstick and high heels and sweat and tobacco and old shirts and Uncle Gustaw and something else that makes the spit in my mouth curdle sour. Could he be here?
My eyes won’t open properly but even so I sit up like a mole emerging from the earth, and feel around the bed for Ruby until I remember that they’re looking after her. Just looking after her, I tell myself over and over, and then Freda creeps into the room carrying a packet of pills. I open my eyes wide in case she’s bringing me my baby.
‘Did you get some sleep?’ She sits on the bed and hands me a glass of water and a tiny white pill. No baby. ‘You’ll need to take one of these four times a day for a week. I know a doctor. He said you’ll be right as rain in no time. In fact, you might meet him one day if you’re a good girl.’ Freda pops one between my lips and guides the water to my mouth. ‘The girls are going to eat. I’d like you to meet them before they go back to work again.’
‘Have you seen Ruby? Is she OK?’
Freda nods and smiles and I feel a little better although I’m still fuzzy from sleep. I get out of bed and the floor falls away from me and I have to lean on Freda as she takes me downstairs to meet her girls. I am back in the room with the fire.
I hadn’t noticed before but there is a table in the bay window with two wooden benches either side. On it, there is a loaf of sliced white bread spilling out of its wrapper and a huge tub of margarine with a knife stuck in the middle. There are no girls yet although I can hear a procession of noise in the corridor. I must look a state in my dirty clothes, my hair all sweaty from sleep and my body folded from pain.
The door opens and they shuffle into the room, each one bumping into the one in front when they stop dead at the sight of me. Everything goes silent and pairs of narrowing eyes focus on me. They flick up and down my broken body, assessing the threat of me, wondering if I am like them or better than them or worse than them. It’s just like at school. Just like the kids outside my window when I was pregnant. I am a car crash and they have all slowed for a look.
Becco is leaning against the mantelpiece, smoking, his slim hips silhouetted by the bank of red-hot coals, his jutting nose a crag in his sunken face. He sneers at me, or it could be a smile – I hope it’s a smile – and I see his dusty grey eyes flash to the line of girls. He jerks his head to the table and they slowly reanimate and drag themselves towards the table.
‘Milly,’ says Freda loud and slow to everyone, breaking the syllables in two while jamming a finger into my shoulder. She marches me to the forest of young girls and stands me amongst them. ‘This is Milly.’ And then she says to me, ‘Just say hello. They understand that. They’re all foreign.’
‘I’m not,’ says one, stepping forward. ‘Hello, Milly. I’m Maggie.’ Then she giggles. ‘Milly, Maggie. We’re already a team.’ Maggie looks a bit older than me. She’s wearing torn jeans and a red T-shirt that says ‘I fuck on the first date’ across the front. Her hair is pulled back and what I can see of it is curly and springing around her ears. She has dark circles under her eyes and smudged mascara. She might be pretty.
‘Hi,’ I say. It feels weird to be called Milly when I’m really Ruth. If I hadn’t jumped out of my bedroom window I wouldn’t be here now. If I’d stayed at home I could have gone back to school and taken my exams and got a job or gone to university or got married. It’s hard to keep your head above water. I want my baby. I don’t think I can go back.
‘Milly’s got a baby and we’re taking care of it until it’s better.’ Freda’s face morphs into my mother’s, her grooves and lines stretching until they resemble the powdery surface of my mother’s pale complexion.
We’re taking care of your baby . . .
Why does everyone want to take my baby from me?
‘Milly needs a place to stay,’ Freda continues. ‘She’s going to work here so show her what’s what, Maggie.’ Freda takes hold of my shoulders as if she’s going to hold me up for everyone to see. She sits me at the head of the table and the other girls whisper amongst themselves and, like Freda said, they are talking a foreign language.
Maggie sits herself down at the other end of the table and then all the other girls, about six of them, slide reluctantly onto the benches. Another two leave the room but soon return with a metal pot of food. Freda and Becco leave and the girls resume talking with each other, ignoring me completely, rattling in their foreign tongue that even through the layers of thick accent I can tell are angry words about me. I burst into tears and once again find myself in a heap on the floor.
Freda was right. A couple of days taking the tablets and my hot tit is normal again, although still bursting with milk for Ruby every few hours despite the tablets that were meant to dry it up. Thankfully, my belly has stopped hurting and today Freda says s
he will take me shopping for some new clothes because she says I can’t do my work properly in the stuff I have. I’ve been wearing the same things since I arrived and washing my underwear in the sink. When Becco found me passed out in the alley, he didn’t bring my bag of outsized gear. I’m hoping that Freda will buy some stuff for when Ruby’s better too. Apparently she’s in hospital and I can’t visit because of my infection. I miss her but know they are looking after her even though they don’t really understand how much I want my baby. It hurts my heart.
Becco has been lurking around the house like the shadow of a twisted branch. He seems to hide behind every door and wait around every corner and I’m sure he watches me through a peephole when I piss. I asked Maggie about him but she just laughed and reminded me that without Becco I wouldn’t be safe and dry and fed while many other homeless people are coping with the January freeze. She’s right of course and so now, when Becco melts into a shadowy corner of a room or his eyes glint from behind a door, I allow his stare to burn two holes in my back and pray in my bed that they will heal before morning.
Freda and I step out into the sharp edge of a winter afternoon and head for the shops. I feel strangely free even though I’ve been told not to leave the house alone. When I woke early on my first morning, I tried the front door but it was padlocked in three places and fixed firm with an iron grille. London is more dangerous than I realised. Freda and Becco are very protective of their girls and my heart warms a little from their care.
Twice a year my mother took me shopping for clothes, once in the spring and then again in the autumn. Aunt Anna always accompanied us with a watchful eye. I saw many things that I would have liked to own but knew that speaking up was pointless. I would be bought the same sensible pork-pie shoes and tartan wool skirt teamed with a plain white blouse for best. I was allowed corduroy trousers and an itchy sweater and underwear that turned grey and saggy after it had been through the wash.
Then of course there was the school uniform, with which the other girls in my year were creative and daring by turning up their collars and raising the hems of their skirts. They wore make-up and back-combed their hair and smudged kohl under their eyes. One day I left the top button of my blouse undone and Mother nearly fainted at the sight of me.
Freda grabs my hand and pulls me onto a bus. ‘We’ll go to Oxford Street for some bargains,’ she calls above the traffic noise and stench of diesel. When we get there, it’s so crowded I can hardly see any shops but Freda seems to know where she’s going and I follow her closely.We go into a shop with loud music and mannequins with pink hair and wearing clothes that my mother would curl her lips at and turn away from.
‘Speak up if something takes your fancy, pet. What about this?’ Freda winds her way through a group of teenage girls and points at a dummy wearing the shortest ever denim skirt with a low-slung leather belt and knee-high boots. She has on a bright pink top that doesn’t cover her middle at all and the sleeves are slashed to pieces. I love it.
‘How can I work in this though?’ I ask excitedly, wondering if anything will look good around my puffy baby waist.
‘This is ideal for work, pet. What size are you, an eight, ten?’ Freda harvests the outfit in several sizes, along with four or five other items that are similarly alien to my usual style. But having given birth to a baby and run away and whipped up this whole adventure, I don’t mind that Freda squeezes my lumpy shape into cropped clothes. It seems perfectly normal now not to be normal.
We leave the shop with three bags stuffed full of luminous treats and don’t stop there. She takes me to shoe shops and gets me stilettos and boots and then to a lingerie store with knickers I’ve never even seen the likes of before. Freda buys me seven pairs of black and red and purple stringy things and a couple of bras that hardly hold my heavy breasts. I don’t tell the assistant that I oozed milk onto one of her tissue-wrapped undergarments when I was trying it on.
After we leave the underwear shop, we pass by Mothercare. I stop and stare at the burgundy pram in the window. It’s two hundred and ninety-nine pounds. I look at Freda, just in case, and she smiles knowingly.
‘Wait until your baby’s better and you get your first pay packet before you start spoiling her. Becco will pay you each week if you do well.’
When I asked Maggie what work I would be doing, she pointed at her rude T-shirt. I tried to ask the other girls and I spoke really slowly and made signs with my hands. They stared at me with vacant eyes and their tongues lolled on their lips while I repeated what I’d said.
‘Rina give good head,’ one said as if her voice was coming from somewhere else. There was a ripple of sullen laughter.
‘What you like, mister?’ said another.
‘Lili stroke you.’
‘Oh fuck me, mister.’
One by one the girls droned their pre-programmed English at me and simmered with resigned chuckles like a big pot boiling dry. I swallowed my food down my sandpaper throat and kicked apart the pieces of the jigsaw in my head.
‘What will I have to do for my job?’ I ask Freda as she leads me zigzagging down the crowded street. We seem to be walking in the opposite direction to everyone else. ‘What will happen to Ruby when she comes out of hospital and I’m at work?’
‘Questions, questions.’ Freda grins. ‘Let’s get a coffee and we can talk.’
We queue up in a café bar down a side street and have to sit outside because it’s full. There’s something exciting about breath you can see and wrapping cold fingers around a steaming mug of coffee. Freda has bought us biscotti and I swirl mine through the froth of my drink. The rusty metal bar through my belly has been replaced with warmth and security and I hardly dare believe that I have been so lucky.
If Ruby and I had been forced to sleep in a shop doorway, we would surely have died in the cold. Being so inexperienced, I wouldn’t have noticed that Ruby was ill or taken her to hospital. I shudder at the thought of what might have happened. Freda has taken care of us and not asked for a penny for food or rent and now she’s bought me a whole new wardrobe of clothes. She’s the mother I always wanted.
‘So what do I have to do?’ I ask.
Freda’s face relaxes like a sponge cake fresh from the oven. She smiles and takes my hand across the table. ‘It’s important work. You give a good service to men and if you’re hot they’ll leave you a big tip and come back. Most of them are regulars. Doctors and lawyers, teachers and bankers. Maggie has a politician.’
The jigsaw is re-forming and I smash it away. If the last piece fits, I will see my new life. I am scared that Uncle Gustaw will be in it.
‘But what about Ruby?’ My voice quivers and a tear shimmies along my lower lashes.
Freda takes my hand. ‘I didn’t want to have to tell you but your baby is very sick, pet. She’s in intensive care getting the best treatment but . . .’ Her eyes dip as she lights a cigarette. She blows smoke at me. ‘But it’s very expensive to care for a young baby. That’s why I’m offering you this job. There are hundreds of other girls I could give it to but you need to pay for your baby’s treatment. Then you can have her back.’ She pushes the packet of cigarettes my way. ‘Besides, I like you and so will your clients.’ Freda’s left eye narrows to a slow wink and I can’t help the smile that stops the tear in its tracks.
‘But she’ll be OK, won’t she?’ I am trusting Freda like I wouldn’t trust my own mother.
‘If you work hard and do as I say, then she’ll be OK.’ Freda’s tone suddenly hardens. She drains her mug and stands up to leave, even though I haven’t finished. I was going to try a cigarette.
‘I will work hard, you’ll see. I want Ruby to be better more than anything in the world. I want my baby back. I want to get her a pram.’ My voice trails away as I follow Freda through the crowds.
The next night Freda announces that I will begin work with Maggie. It seems that Maggie is different from the other girls because she is allowed out of the house. Perhaps it’s because I’m Englis
h like Maggie, I don’t know, but being allowed out seems like a privilege and causes a stir among the other girls. One of them trails her finger down my spine and whispers a string of foreign words in my ear. It sounds like what Uncle Gustaw used to say to me.
When I ask questions, Freda says it’s safer to work in pairs and reminds me of Ruby lying ill in hospital. I see this little baby, all skin and tubes, looking at me through the glass of her crib. I see me earning her health.
‘But why can’t they ever go out?’ I ask about the foreign girls and when Freda doesn’t reply, I catch sight of Becco in the corner shaking his head and drawing a line across his neck. He pouts a kiss at me.
Maggie says we only have four appointments tonight although she’s sketchy about exactly what it is I will have to do. We got ready together, Maggie lending me her make-up and telling me to put on loads. She helps me into the complicated knickers and suspender belt and when I put on the bra, we laugh because one tit doesn’t fill my new bra and the other bulges out like a Yorkshire pudding. Finally, I dress and feel a bit silly in my new clothes despite Maggie’s encouraging remarks.
At eight o’clock the foreign girls go to the other side of the house through a series of locked doors. I’ve only ever taken a peek into the corridor beyond and feel relieved that I am allowed out. As Maggie and I watch Becco herding them through to work, I squint my eyes and wonder why they are here. Perhaps they have sick babies too. As we leave, I wave to Freda and catch sight of Becco blending into the wall behind her, a glint in his eye and a leer on his face.