On Saturday night all the girls went to the late night club after the last performance. Brenda accepted drinks from whoever would buy them for her and was maudlin drunk by the time they got back to their digs. Lillian woke twice in the night to hear her staggering to the toilet to throw up. In the morning she looked dreadful, ashen-pale and hardly able to stand up.
‘I can’t move,’ she moaned.
‘You’ve got to. We’re getting the train to Liverpool at two o’clock,’ Diane told her.
‘I’ll bring you up some tea,’ Lillian offered.
Brenda just groaned.
Lillian brought her some anyway and, as she walked across the room, she nearly tripped over an empty gin bottle lying under a discarded skirt.
‘What’s this?’ she asked.
‘What’s it look like?’ Brenda retorted.
‘You never drank all this by yourself? No wonder you feel bad.’
‘Oh, go and boil your head,’ Brenda growled. ‘I just want to die.’
‘She was trying to get rid of the baby,’ Diane said when Lillian reported her find to her.
‘What?’
It was the first time that Brenda’s problem had actually been referred to as a baby.
‘Drinking a bottle of gin’s supposed to shift it. But I think it’s just an old wives’ tale.’
Lillian was shocked. All the intimate talk amongst the girls had not prepared her for this. She couldn’t adjust to it at all and could hardly bring herself to speak to Brenda, who had to be made to get up, pack and move on.
The trains were delayed and the weather very unspringlike, with gusts of cold wind bringing heavy showers. All the company seemed bad-tempered. The comic who headlined the show had a car and didn’t travel with them, which made for resentment. Sometimes he invited some other member of the cast to ride with him, but this caused even more bad feeling. Today the girl singer was the lucky one, and everyone else spent the time waiting around on cold platforms in slagging them both off. Lillian had to work very hard at not wondering whether this really was the sort of life she wanted.
Diane seemed to be having the same thoughts. ‘If I was at home now, we’d have had my mam’s lovely Sunday roast and we’d all be sitting around having cups of tea and listening to the wireless,’ she said.
‘I’d be cleaning up after the Sunday roast, and Gran’d be telling me I wasn’t being thorough enough with the oven,’ Lillian said.
The thought of it made her feel a little less bad about her present situation.
‘And I’d of spent the morning changing beds and cleaning rooms if we’d had any PGs in,’ she added.
Diane was still thinking of her family Sundays. ‘My cousins usually come round of a Sunday afternoon, or we go to theirs. We all have tea together and my Aunty Evie plays the piano and we sing.’
Lillian sighed. If she had a lovely family like that, maybe she wouldn’t have left home.
‘Susan comes round to ours. And James, sometimes…’
‘Ah, the gorgeous James,’ Diane teased.
‘Mmm.’
She missed James terribly. At least once a day she would think she saw him, in the street or sitting in a café or jumping off a bus. Her heart would turn over and she would cry out and start to run towards him, only to find it was someone who looked a little like him. Then came the disappointment, bitter after the leap of hope. While her heart was still so bound up with James, the boys who swam briefly in and out of her life meant nothing to her.
They arrived in Liverpool at last. Half a dozen of the dancers got digs with a Mrs Reeves in a narrow three-storey house close to the theatre. Lillian disliked the place from the start. It was gloomy and smelt damp and musty, and Mrs Reeves had bad teeth and a sharp manner. What was more, this was to be a two-week run. But the others were fed up and just wanted to get settled with the minimum fuss. It was either go along with the majority or find somewhere else by herself.
It was on Thursday that Brenda came into her room uninvited and dropped down onto her bed. ‘I got to talk to someone,’ she said.
Then she lit a cigarette and sat there puffing at it with quick, nervous movements, not saying a word.
‘You’ve not come on, then,’ Lillian said, to get the ball rolling.
Brenda shook her head. ‘I been getting morning sickness.’
‘Oh…dear…’
Even Lillian knew what this meant. ‘What are you going to do?’ she asked.
Brenda took another drag at her cigarette. ‘I’ve heard of someone who can help.’
‘Help? How? In what way?’
Brenda stared at the wall above Lillian’s head. ‘Get rid of it.’
‘What? How can you do that? How can you even think of it? Your baby—’
‘It’s not a baby; it’s just a blob, a thing.’
Lillian’s knowledge on this point was vague in the extreme. ‘But it will be,’ she said.
‘I’ve got to,’ Brenda insisted. ‘I won’t be able to go on working once it shows, and then what’ll I do?’
‘You could have it adopted.’
‘No. It ruins your figure. I’d never get work again. And if my parents found out, they’d kill me. They’d never let me in the house again.’
Lillian could understand that. If she were to get pregnant, Gran would turn her out for sure.
‘What about the…the father?’ she asked.
Brenda waved her cigarette in a dismissive gesture. ‘Oh, yeah, can’t you just see it? I find the bloke I was with two months ago and he says prove it—it could have been the one the week before, or the week after. They’d wriggle out of it.’
‘You mean—you don’t know who it is?’
‘No, I don’t know. Wicked, ain’t I?’ Brenda glared at her, challenging her to agree.
‘That does…well…make things difficult,’ Lillian said.
‘Difficult? It makes it bleeding impossible.’
Lillian was way out of her depth. She fell back on knowledge gleaned from the problem pages of magazines.
‘There are…places…you know, homes for…for…’
‘Unmarried mothers? They treat you like dirt in them. Friend of mine had to go to one. She was never the same after. No, there’s only one way out. It’s lucky we’re in Liverpool. The Irish girls all come over here to have it done.’
‘I still don’t like it.’
‘It’s not you that’s got to choose.’
‘I know, but—’ Lillian sighed. This was dreadful. She didn’t know what to say or do. ‘If you’ve made your mind up, why are you asking me?’
‘I’m not. I just want you and Diane to cover for me. I haven’t told anyone else, and you might be a kid that knows nothing, but you’re not a snitch.’
Lillian wasn’t sure whether to be pleased at this or not.
‘If I get it done tomorrow, I can go sick tomorrow night and Saturday, and we’re off Sunday and Monday, and I might be OK to go back to work on Tuesday. You’ll have to say I got the screaming runs and I can’t possibly go on stage. Then nobody’ll know I had it done, and I can just forget about it.’
Forget about it? Forget she ever had a baby growing inside her? Lillian put her hands to her stomach, trying to imagine a baby there.
Brenda was looking at her, expecting an answer.
‘OK,’ she agreed, because she couldn’t very well refuse. The girls might all bicker and gossip but, when it came to the point, they stuck together.
Brenda did not come down to breakfast the next morning and nobody noticed her slip out some time before midday. Early in the afternoon, a taxi arrived at the digs. Lillian heard the driver speaking to Mrs Reeves at the door.
‘Someone come and get this girl out of my cab. I don’t want her messing up my seats.’
She put her head round the bedroom door. ‘Come on, quick,’ she said to Diane. ‘It’s Brenda.’
She was so shocked when she saw Brenda that she gasped, her hand flying to her face. She had never seen any
one look so pale. It was as if there was no blood left in her body. Her face was drawn with pain, making her look ten years older, and she could hardly stand. Lillian and Diane got one each side of her and supported her. They then started the slow and awkward climb up the narrow stairs.
‘Here!’ Mrs Reeves shouted after them. ‘You can’t take her up there.’
‘You can’t stop us,’ Diane shouted back.
‘Look at her! I know what she’s been up to, the wicked girl. She’ll bleed all over my mattress.’
‘Good job. It needs replacing,’ Diane retorted.
They had nearly reached the top of the stairs. Lillian, looking down at her feet to make sure she didn’t trip, realised that blood was trickling down Brenda’s legs and into her shoes.
‘Oh, my Gawd,’ she muttered.
She and Diane manoeuvred Brenda into her room and sat her down on the rickety wooden chair.
‘Get some STs,’ Diane said. ‘I’ll hold her up.’
‘I wanna lie down. Jus’ lie down,’ Brenda slurred.
Mrs Reeves appeared with a rubber sheet and an armful of newspapers and whipped the sheets off the bed.
‘There, she can lie on those,’ she said. ‘And that’s more than she deserves.’
Lillian and Diane got Brenda into her nightdress and onto the pad of newspapers, where she lay trembling, curled up round her pain. Lillian offered her tea, which she refused, and aspirins, which she swallowed. Then she closed her eyes and refused to answer any of their anxious questions. The only reaction they could get out of her was when Diane suggested sending for a doctor.
‘No,’ Brenda whispered. ‘No doctors.’
When the other girls returned from their trip to the shops, Diane and Lillian kept them out of Brenda’s room, saying she had a bad case of the runs and didn’t want to see anyone. But when the time came round to go to the theatre, they didn’t know what to do.
‘We can’t leave her, she’s still bleeding an awful lot,’ Diane said.
‘Is that normal?’ Lillian asked. The whole situation terrified her. The responsibility was crushing. She wanted desperately to hand Brenda over to someone who knew what they were doing.
‘How do I know? I’ve never had anything to do with this before either.’
They both looked at Brenda. It was bad enough that she was having time off, without one of them staying away as well. Being ill was simply not allowed. They were all expected to be ‘troupers’ and carry on, no matter what.
‘If we say one of us has got the runs as well—bad enough not to be able to get out of the house—they’ll have to accept it,’ Lillian said.
‘I don’t know. There’ll be a terrific row.’
From the bed, Brenda suddenly joined in. ‘Go,’ she croaked. ‘Both of you. Not so many questions that way.’
‘But we can’t leave you,’ Lillian insisted.
‘I’m OK. Go. Please.’
After some more discussion, they reluctantly agreed. It would certainly be much easier to cover for one than for two.
Lillian found it impossible to join in with the usual banter in the dressing room. The image of Brenda lying groaning on a heap of newspapers kept getting in the way of any normal chat, filling her with guilt. They shouldn’t have listened to her. They should have stayed. She went through her part in the performance like a puppet, making the right moves from long practice, but not projecting any of her usual verve into it. She just wanted to get it over with and rush back to check on Brenda.
When the curtain came down, she and Diane changed at lightning speed and rushed back to Mrs Reeves’s. They ran up the stairs, paused at Brenda’s door, then softly opened it and looked in. A small amount of streetlight came through the open curtains. Brenda was lying perfectly still on the bed in exactly the position she had been in when they’d left her.
‘She’s asleep,’ Diane whispered. ‘Best leave her.’
Lillian was sorely tempted to agree, but something about Brenda shot fear right through her. She was too still.
She walked quietly into the room. ‘Bren?’ she whispered. ‘You all right?’
There was no reaction from Brenda. An unpleasant smell hung about her. Lillian couldn’t suppress a squeak of rising panic. She stepped back and felt for the switch. Light flooded the room and both girls cried out in horror. A great patch of red stained the bedclothes and Brenda’s face was dead white. Even to two girls who knew nothing about medicine, it was clear that Brenda was not asleep but unconscious.
‘Oh, my God, oh, my God, what shall we do? We never ought to of left her—’ Diane wailed.
‘Ambulance,’ Lillian answered, and bolted from the room.
She leapt down the stairs two at a time, trying to remember where the nearest phone box was. On the corner—yes—on the corner by the theatre. She raced up the silent street, past darkened houses where people were peacefully asleep, reached the phone box and wrenched open the door. Panting now, she picked up the receiver and punched 999. A calm male voice with a strong Liverpudlian accent took her gabbled details.
‘Please, please hurry! There’s so much blood—’
The image of Brenda’s still white face shimmered in her mind’s eye. She could hardly keep from sobbing.
‘An ambulance will be with you as soon as possible, miss.’
It was there at the door within ten minutes, but it felt like ten hours. Lillian and Diane clung to each other, not knowing what to do to help their friend, hating their ignorance. Mrs Reeves, alerted by the voices and the clatter of Lillian’s feet, stood in the doorway of Brenda’s room and talked non-stop about how nothing like this had ever happened in her house before.
‘Oh, shut up, you old witch!’ Diane snapped.
‘Don’t you talk to me like that. You’re no better than she is. I knew it the moment I saw you lot—’
‘Please!’ Lillian cried. ‘Please, stop it!’
They were prevented from descending into a full-scale row by the arrival of the ambulance.
The ambulance men took in the situation at a glance.
‘When did she have it done?’ one asked.
‘Early this afternoon,’ Diane told him.
‘And she’s been bleeding like this since then?’
‘No. It—it wasn’t quite so bad at first. She was awake—’
‘She is going to be all right, isn’t she?’ Lillian begged.
The men gave away nothing.
‘They’ll do their best for her in emergency, miss.’
‘You two coming with her?’
Diane and Lillian didn’t even have to look at each other.
‘Yes,’ they chorused, and followed the men and the stretcher downstairs, with Mrs Reeves close behind them, still complaining.
Brenda was hurried away from them as soon as they arrived at the hospital. Lillian and Diane gave what few details they knew about her and were sent to wait.
It was a long, long night. They huddled together on an uncomfortable bench, every so often trying to assure each other that Brenda was going to be all right, and bewailing the fact that they hadn’t got her to hospital earlier. Nothing they could say could take away the helplessness they felt, or the worry that ate away at their insides. At some point a nurse informed them that their friend had been taken down to Theatre for an emergency operation. Then, some time after that, a young doctor came to see them. His face was grim.
‘You’re the young ladies who are with Miss Tyler?’
They both nodded. Lillian could feel something unravelling inside her. The words no—no—no—pounded through her, but she didn’t know whether she said them or not.
‘Do you know who did this to her?’
They both shook their heads.
‘You’re sure? Because if you’re withholding information, you’re party to a crime.’
‘Crime?’ Diane squeaked.
‘Abortion is illegal.’
Both girls flinched. It was the first time the word had been used.
The doctor was incandescent with fury and frustration. ‘It’s disgusting what these people do. They’re butchers. Butchers! Hanging’s too good for them. They should be made to come and see the results of what they do.’
All the time he was speaking, Lillian felt a dreadful cold certainty creeping over her.
‘Brenda—’ she whispered. ‘Is she—?’
The doctor closed his eyes briefly. His anger vented, he looked defeated and desperately tired. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said gently. ‘We couldn’t save her.’
Chapter Eighteen
JAMES escaped early from the flat. Having to listen to his mother and sister talking wedding dresses and household goods morning, noon and night was beginning to get on his nerves. He paused at the gate to look back at his new home and felt a small glow of pride. The Kershaws were on the up. The flat was in a pleasant tree-lined street on the Westcliff side of town. It had its own small front and back garden, nice light rooms and a proper kitchen and bathroom. His mother was absolutely delighted with it and seemed to have gained a new lease of life, enjoying arranging the furniture and polishing all the surfaces when before she’d never seemed to have enough energy to get round to everything.
Satisfied that all was well at home, James set off for Kershaw’s Auto Repairs. There was plenty there now to keep him busy. He fitted a new clutch for one customer and renewed the brake linings for another, breaking off to answer the phone to three new customers. After that he had an hour before the next car was due in, so he made a cup of tea before spending some time on the Riley that was his latest do-up-to-sell-on project.
He took Lillian’s latest letter out of his pocket and studied it as he waited for the kettle to boil. He was worried about Lillian. Her last two or three letters had lacked her usual enthusiasm. He was sure there was something wrong and had written to ask her. She had assured him that she was all right, but he was not convinced. He was thinking about this when Frank turned up.
‘Wotcha, mate,’ he said. ‘Got a minute?’
‘Yeah, I’m just having a break,’ James said. ‘Tea?’
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