‘Listen, Millie, I’m sorry. I really am. I wouldn’t have done this to you for the world, if I’d ha’ thought. I know how to take care of a girl, and I should have done, but dammit, it was all so –’ He looked sharply at Jessie who was sitting in her usual chair by the grate and his voice dropped, became more confidential. ‘Well, you know how it was. I mean, we didn’t exactly plan nothing and – you know how it was!’
Now he did move closer and stood on the other side of the table and, resting his fists on it, leaned closer to her.
‘Look Millie, I’ll get it all fixed. I’m really sorry, but I can put it right. I’ll arrange it all with old Mother Charnik, over at Christian Street. She’ll sort it out. I’ll pay, dolly. It won’t be no problem –’
She looked up at him, puzzled, and he stared back at her, his eyes glistening with emotion and his forehead even more tightly corrugated than usual.
‘What?’ she said dully. It really was very strange; she had been feeling uncomfortable and uncertain for some weeks, refusing to consider what might be the cause, but now she had been forced to face up to it and knew for certain that she was pregnant, she felt so much worse. It was as though the knowledge of her state gave her permission to yield to it, and now she felt sick most of the time and often was sick, retching her heart out in the scullery as Jessie, tutting a little, wisely kept out of her way and left her to get on with it till she felt well enough to come trailing back into the kitchen. Now, trying to understand what Lizah was saying, she felt her gorge begin to rise again, and she thought – hold on. Control it. Hold on –
‘I said I’ll get it all fixed. You won’t have to worry. I’ll even get the old girl to come here to you. You won’t have to go over there, so no one will know from nothing. I’ll bring her here, late, and that’ll be that. I wouldn’t have knocked you up for a fortune, Millie, I really wouldn’t. I’m sorry –’
‘Maybe she don’t want Mother Charnik,’ Jessie said sharply. ‘Yet.’
Mildred closed her eyes and took a deep breath and then opened them again and looked at Jessie. ‘Who is Mother Charnik?’ Her voice sounded thick in her own ears; heaven knows what I must sound like to them, she thought muzzily.
‘She’s the midwife in these parts. And everything else, too,’ Jessie said and her voice was still harsh. ‘She’ll bring a baby alive as often as not, but if you don’t want to wait that long and don’t care much for it then she’ll bring it sooner. Do you understand me? Don’t you have the likes of her up West?’
Mildred stared at her, and with one hand wiped her upper lip, which was beaded with sweat. ‘There was a midwife when my stepmother had the children,’ she said. ‘Came in the last week and stayed till the monthly nurse took over. And then Nanny Chewson, of course, once she came –’ Her voice drifted away and again she closed her eyes. It would be rather nice to be able to go upstairs and lie down and sleep, she thought. It was getting very warm in here.
Unbidden, a memory lifted into her mind; waking late one night at Leinster Terrace, hearing the doorbell and sitting up in bed – how long ago? Perhaps three or four years, now. And hearing whispering voices in the hall, and slipping out of bed to investigate and peering out of her bedroom door to see the figure of a tall man going into Mama’s room and hearing Papa’s voice. ‘I’ll wait downstairs, Horner. Only be in the way here. And for the love of heaven keep quiet. Don’t want the whole damned household afoot –’ And he had looked up as though he had known she was there watching and she had shrunk back unseen into the shadows, but hadn’t gone away.
Not until the man had come out of Mama’s room half an hour later and gone downstairs and she had heard Mama weeping had she gone down a flight, not caring now whether Papa were to come and find her or not, for Mama sounded so piteous, and she had crept into Mama’s bedroom and there she had lain in her bed, her face twisted into jowly shapes by her tears and at the sight of Mildred she had cried even more loudly.
‘I should not have let them do it. I should not have let them do it –’ she kept saying and Mildred had sat on her bed beside her and stroked her forehead until she had calmed down and said softly, ‘Not let them do what, Mama?’ And Maud, eaten with her pain and her distress and her loss had let it drip out, in disjointed phrases and tangled words, telling her stepdaughter how it had been; Papa certain he wanted no more brats, four in the nursery was quite enough and he had three more already eating their heads off under his roof, and that was an end of it, and how he had arranged it all, bringing the man to her, making her have it done – and now she lay in her bed and wept and bled and wept again and Mildred had wanted to weep with her. She had not understood completely what it was that had made her stepmother cry so much, but that she was in sad pain, that much she knew. And it was due to her father. She knew that too.
Now her eyes snapped open and she stared at Lizah.
‘Are you telling me you wish me to kill this child?’
Lizah stood up and put his hands back in his pockets. ‘Child –’ he said. ‘What child? Ten, twelve weeks ago there weren’t no child. There’s no child now. How can there be a child in just ten, twelve weeks? In another six months, half a year, then tucka, maybe a child. But now? All you have now is an embarrassment, a problem you got to deal with. A problem I got to deal with. It was my fault and I got to put it right.’
‘That wouldn’t be putting it right,’ she said and frowned, trying to think clearly. ‘When I knew, when I had to know, I thought – please let it be all those weeks ago, so that it never happened. Take me back to the Park so that I can say no, and run home and not let it happen. But I couldn’t change it. It happened and I can’t –’ She gave a little choking sound, half a laugh, half an exclamation. ‘I can’t unhappen it, can I? What’s happened is there. It’s for always – and now you’re saying you want to – that you can – it’s mad.’
‘Not mad,’ he said flatly. ‘Sense.’
‘What can be sensible about trying to kill a child?’
He closed his eyes in exasperation. ‘Millie, for Gawd’s sake, be your age! This is the real world, not your fancy schmancy one where people sit around having tender feelings and enjoying ’em all the time. Down here we got to be practical. I’m being practical. I want we should get married one of these days. I don’t know when, but one of these days. And do you think my mother’ll ever – if you have a baby now, before we get married do you think she’ll –’ He threw his hands in the air. ‘You tell her, Jessie. You explain to her about Momma. About how she’ll be over this.’
‘As God is my witness,’ Jessie said. ‘I love my Momma. But it’s none of her business.’
‘What? Are you out of your mind? You always was a stubborn devil, but this is – tell her, Jessie! Tell her she’s got to get rid of this mumser! I can’t bring Momma round to me gettin’ married if she’s in this state, can I? And I want her to come round, believe me I do.’
‘Trying to get rid of my child is no way to make me feel you want to marry me, Lizah,’ Mildred said and managed to stand up. She felt the need to be in command of the situation and she couldn’t do that when she had to look up to him. ‘If you love a person you want their child. I think maybe –’ She stared at him and then shook her head slowly. ‘To tell the truth, I don’t really know. But I think perhaps that is one of the reasons I want this baby.’ And she set one hand on her belly, as though to protect it.
‘Of course I want us to have kids, Millie,’ he said and now he sounded petulant. ‘Of course I do. But the thing of it is, not now. Now is not the time. It’s not just Momma, either –’ He stopped and looked sideways at Jessie. ‘I didn’t want to say it, but I’ve got to, I suppose. It’s a bad time for me, financially, you understand? I got into a bit of a game at the spieler in Osborne Street and they’ve set Jack Long’s lot on me –’
Jessie caught her breath sharply. ‘What? How do you mean?’
‘I can’t pay, and they say I got to. You know how it is –’ He grinned a little crooke
dly then, with all his old charm, and turned to look at Mildred. ‘Remember how we met, Mildred? Your brothers, they had a bad debt and I was mad. I was real mad. Bad debts upset a person. No one’s got the right to bet when they don’t have the necessary to cover if they lose. I was so mad at your brothers that – that only you could have talked me out of it – doing ’em a mischief, you know? Well, now it’s my turn. I was as cocky as your bloody Basil, and that’s the truth of it. I thought I could beat the bank and I didn’t manage it –’
‘Faro,’ Jessie said disgustedly. ‘Bloody faro. When will you learn? A bit of poker or solo or klobiosh ain’t good enough for you. You’ve got to go fancy with Ruby Michaels and that lot down at Osborne Street –’
‘So what’s to do with you? You win a few and you got to lose a few. Now I’m on a losing streak, so there it is. I can settle with Mother Charnik for whatever she needs. But for more than that, I’m out. I’m plain boracic, and there it is. So, you see, Mildred?’ He turned to her appealingly. ‘It’s just not the time for no kids.’
‘Not your time, perhaps,’ she said. ‘But it is mine.’
‘What?’
‘I’m the one who is pregnant. Now. So I can’t choose any time, can I? It’s been chosen for me.’ She turned her head and looked at Jessie. ‘She says it will be at the turn of the year. She worked it out for me.’
She smiled then and Jessie smiled back and for a moment a bubble of intimacy hung between the two women, excluding Lizah. He stood outside the charmed circle of their femininity, their understanding of themselves and each other through their bodies, and as though he knew he was excluded, he shuffled his feet and said loudly, ‘I told you. Jack Long’s lot are after me and they can get nasty. I’m getting out of the way for a while. So if we’re going to get Mother Charnik we’ve got to get a move on.’
‘We’re not getting her,’ Jessie said flatly and got to her feet. ‘Not till the turn of the year. Then is soon enough. Go away, get your money together for your debts and don’t worry about a thing. I’ll look after her.’
‘That’s easy said. Of course I worry. I’m going to marry her, ain’t I?’
The nausea that had been threatening to overtake Mildred began to subside and she sat down again. ‘Lizah, perhaps we ought to talk about that,’ she said carefully.
‘Listen, I understand.’ He was standing legs apart, with his fists hanging loosely at his side in his old pugnacious style. ‘You want to have this brat and you want to give it a name. So I’ll just have to sort things out. We got a few weeks, one way and another. I’ll talk to Momma. You too, Jessie, eh? For all you got some crazy ideas, Momma listens to you. And maybe I’ll talk to Poppa –’ He looked troubled and some of his pugnacity seemed to ooze away from him.
Mildred shook her head. ‘You misunderstand, Lizah. I’m not telling you I want to be married. Quite the reverse.’
‘Eh?’ He stared.
‘I’m not sure that would be the right thing to do.’ She said it patiently, needing to explain carefully and needing to make him understand the first time she told him. Long arguments of the sort at which Lizah was adept could not, she felt now, be tolerated. ‘I don’t want you marrying me just because I’m pregnant –’
‘I asked you before I knew,’ he said sharply and lifted his chin angrily. ‘Don’t make me out some sort of bastard who –’
‘I’m not, I do assure you, trying to say anything bad about you at all,’ she said. ‘Listen, please, and hear me out. I am not sure I want to get married just because I’m pregnant. I know it’s the usual thing in cases like this.’ She managed a little grin. ‘Even in the smart parts of town, you know, these things happen. I know of other women of whom it has been whispered that the christening came a deal nearer the wedding than was seemly. But I don’t want it to be like those. I don’t wish to marry just for the sake of a child. I believe I can care for my own child, on my own.’ She lifted her head with an oddly proud little gesture. ‘I would never have thought I could keep myself at all. Had I known what I know now six, or even ten years ago, I would’ve left my father’s house long since. I can earn and live as long as I am sensible. Well, being pregnant need not change that. I work here, at home –’ And again she flashed a conspiratorial look at Jessie. ‘And there are two of us to help each other. If Jessie is willing to keep me here while I have my child and will go on fetching me my parcels, then I think I can manage well enough. Then afterwards, if you still want to, why, then we can talk about marriage. I will be better able to think properly about it. Even though –’ She hesitated.
‘Well?’ He was standing and staring at her, his face a picture of confused feelings. That there was relief there was very evident. He wanted to behave as he believed a man should. He wanted to take care of his woman and to take care of his child, but at the same time, he wanted to do it in his own way and in his own time. And here she was giving him just that opportunity. Yet, being given an opportunity by a woman undercut his own sense of masculine pride. Mildred could see the thoughts chasing themselves over his expressive face and felt an odd emotion in connection with him. She felt sorry for him, and that was something very new. She had been frightened by him, obsessed with him, amused and repelled and delighted by him; to feel pity, however, was strange. It made him seem even shorter in height than he was which was rather odd, she thought.
‘– I made a promise to your mother,’ she finished.
His brows came down again. ‘To my mother? What do you mean?’
‘When you took me to see her. That night – she made me promise I wouldn’t ever marry you. On my father’s life, she said I had to promise.’ She stopped then. ‘I must say I didn’t take it very seriously at the time. It was all so silly, you know? Like a bad melodrama. Not real at all. But now –’ She shook her head. ‘Now I think about it a lot.’
She bent her head and looked down at her fingers, laced on the table in front of her. ‘It troubles me a lot because I hate my father so, you see. I –’ She swallowed. ‘I have found myself wishing him dead. He has refused to allow the lawyers to give me my money and it seems he has the right to exercise such control. My mother’s will was so made that only if he says it is the right time for me to have the money may I have it. If he never says it, then I will be denied my legacy from her for always.’
She lifted her head and looked at him with her eyes wide and candid. ‘You see, Lizah? I hate him so much that I wish him dead. And your mother made me promise on his life that I would not marry you. And though I am not superstitious – and it is surely mere superstition to take such promises seriously – I cannot help but feel wrong about it. Perhaps it is because of my condition. I have heard that women do not think as clearly as they usually do when they are as I am, and I know my stepmother has always been – captious – when she has been increasing. So I feel I should wait –’
He still stood there looking at her and now his face was sullen, and no longer showed his thoughts so clearly.
‘That’s all stuff,’ he said at length. ‘I think that’s all a lot of stuff. I think it’s much easier than that. You just don’t want me no more. I don’t do so well in the fights lately and you’ve heard. And I’ve lost a lot of money betting trying to make up for what I ain’t winning so you don’t want me no more. You think I’m a layabout, a no-goodnik, and you ain’t interested in me, even though you ought to have a man with you at such a time. But now I’m in trouble –’
‘That is wicked!’ she flared at him and her face was white with anger. ‘How dare you say such a thing! This is the first I have heard of you having such trouble. Do you think I ever cared about how much money you had? For all I knew when I first met you, you had nothing! There was no evidence to suggest – and you saw how I lived! For all you knew, I was the one with money! Of course I did not choose to go about with you for such a reason! You insult me to suggest it – and you insult me now to say I am speaking to you as I am because you are no longer plump in the pocket!’
&nb
sp; He looked at Jessie and she made a face at him. ‘Don’t look at me! I’d heard a few words around that you weren’t doing too well – Momma said she was worried – but I didn’t say a word here. Did I, Millie?’
‘Why didn’t you?’ Mildred said, looking at her.
‘Because I knew before you did what the situation was with you, madam! And I saw no need to upset you for no reason, just yet. It was only rumours.’
‘Well, it’s true,’ he said sulkily. ‘And I’m sorry, Millie. Didn’t mean to insult you.’
‘All right,’ she said after a moment. ‘We shall forget it.’ And there was a long silence then and at length he took a deep breath and turned to the door.
‘I’ve got to go. I don’t like to stay anywhere too long these days. The word goes about and I don’t want to meet Long with a broken bottle in his hand waiting when I come out. Listen, I’m going to Southend. Just for a few days. Maybe pick up some fights at the booths there. It’s summer – you never know. I’ll see you when I get back – later in the year. September time, thereabouts.’
He lingered at the door as the two women remained in their place, silently watching him. ‘You’re sure you don’t want Mother Charnik?’ he said then, in one last despairing throw.
‘No,’ Mildred said. ‘No thank you. This is my baby and I am going to have it. Goodbye, Lizah. Take care of yourself.’
‘Yes,’ he said and went. And they sat and listened as the front door banged closed behind him.
20
It was, by and large, a tranquil pregnancy. Once the initial nausea had settled down, which it did before the third month was over, she felt remarkably well, and could spend long hours sitting in the small kitchen with her head bent over her work and her needle flying without feeling at all bad. Her skills increased fast, and by the end of the fifth month, even though the August weather became thick and sticky as the heat pushed down relentlessly into the narrow East End streets, she was felling the linings into fifteen coats a day. Her earnings increased in proportion and she was able to tuck away more savings into her japanned tin box, which she kept in her wardrobe in her small back bedroom. And that made her very happy, even though the lawyer to whom she had applied for her legacy still reported to her that they could do nothing; her father still refused to agree to sign the necessary documents. But if she could earn enough to save as well as live, she would tell herself optimistically, returning the key of the box to the chain round her neck and tucking it into her bodice, that mattered less and less.
Jubilee (Book 1 of The Poppy Chronicles) Page 21