‘Come on out of this. We can’t have you involved in a public brawl.’
Elly tugged against his hold, trying to reach the man slowly gathering himself out of the filthy gutter. She was almost sobbing. ‘You are the lowest creature, to malign a dead man’s reputation. But you don’t frighten me. Make sure you leave Lucy alone or you’ll regret it.’
McAndrews thrust her out into the street and hurried her away.
Her visit next day to Mrs Brokenhurst’s house brought her no joy, as Lucy refused to appear until Elly forced her way into her bedroom. The girl then burst into furious recriminations, accusing Elly of having broken her heart. She would not listen, but continued her hysterical tirade until eventually Elly had to leave, still unsure of the exact nature of Cornwallis’ dealings with Lucy, yet fearing the worst.
~*~
A week later Lucy knocked on her door late at night, shivering like a forlorn puppy. Elly took her into her own room, now back in the main hospital. She chafed the girl’s frozen hands and made her sit with the bed coverlet tucked around her.
‘Now tell me your trouble, my dear.’ Elly’s sympathetic tone echoed her feelings. In the face of true distress, all her irritation at Lucy’s waywardness was forgotten as she sat down on the bed beside her and gave her a hug.
The girl gulped, sliding her eyes away from Elly’s. ‘I’ve been so utterly stupid.’
‘We’ve all been stupid at some time, my dear. How can I help? Tell me.’
Lucy struggled, but the words would not come out. Suddenly she slipped from the chair to kneel with her head in Elly’s lap. ‘Don’t look at me, or I can’t tell you.’
Elly stroked the dark ringlets. ‘I won’t look at you.’
Lucy gave a convulsive sob. ‘You’ve got to help me, Elly. I’m going to have a baby, and I want you to get rid of it.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
‘My poor girl. My poor, poor girl. But I couldn’t do it, Lucy. You don’t realise what you’re asking.’ Elly never understood how she found the right words, yet she knew she had to. Her own feelings must be subordinated to Lucy’s need. ‘You’re carrying a new life inside you. You are responsible for it.’
‘I thought you would say that. But I’m not responsible. I didn’t know what could happen. Elly, you’re my only hope. You have the knowledge, and you would never tell... anyone.’
‘You mean, Paul? He’ll have to be told, Lucy. He can make arrangements for you to go away –’
‘No!’ Lucy sprang up and stood quivering before Elly, ready to hurl herself in any mad direction to escape her fate. ‘I’ll kill myself before I’ll face him.’
‘Don’t talk so wildly. You’re not capable of such a thing. Consider, Lucy. You’re asking me to murder your unborn child. It’s... unthinkable.’ She shuddered as Cornwallis’ recent accusations against her father came back to haunt her. Had he been guilty of abortion? She would not believe it.
And yet... Why had they left Sydney for a place buried far into the bush? Why had a highly skilled surgeon and physician settled for practicing basic general medicine in some pin-point village when he could have headed a great hospital? She’d thought it was through grief at her mother’s death, but such an explanation wore thin in time. Could he have done it?
Lucy’s immature face hardened. Her skin had taken on a sickly yellow cast. She said harshly, ‘Hundreds of women rid themselves of unborn children when they can no longer abide to produce litters. It’s men who say we must. It’s men who bring on the babies, and what matter if the woman dies of it? There’s always another to be wed and bedded and brought to bed. My mother was one such, with a baby each year and myself the only survivor. Well, I’ll not go the same road.’
‘You need not. I’ll look after you and see you safely through the birth. There are ways of avoiding pregnancy, which I could teach you. None of this is your fault, Lucy. You’re the victim of your inexperience and the wiles of a hardened rake. I blame myself for not having taken better care of you. You couldn’t have known what Cornwallis is.’
Lucy began to laugh, the sound growing louder and higher, until Elly slapped her briskly, then rubbed the reddened cheek. ‘Don’t darling. You’re not alone in this. You have people who care about you.’
Collapsing in a sobbing heap, Lucy cuddled into Elly and let her emotions go. Elly held her, calming her as best she could.
Finally a murmur emerged from the head buried in her shoulder. ‘It’s not your fault either, Elly. I let him touch me, caress me. I wanted him to. It was so exciting, his hands on my body… the way he made me feel. He did things I couldn’t begin to tell you, and I wanted him to go on doing it. He taught me how to give him pleasure. He took me into such a strange, wonderful world, Elly, and I believed he loved me. He gave me champagne to drink, saying it matched the sparkle in my eyes. It was all the magical things he said, as much as what he did that betrayed me. He lied to me, Elly.’
‘He’s the master of lies, my dear,’ Elly commented sadly.
Lucy raised her face, damp and woebegone yet earnest as well. ‘But it was ecstasy. How can I regret it?’ Her expression crumpled. ‘Then he threw me out, saying I bored him. I loved him, but he didn’t love me.’
‘He used you, Lucy. He’s not capable of loving anyone apart from himself.’ But he’s very capable of hatred, she added silently, and of devising this revenge on Paul and on me.
‘I know what a fool I’ve been. Still it doesn’t help me out of this trap. You must help me. There’s no-one else.’
Elly stayed silent, her mind in turmoil. While recoiling from the idea of aborting the girl, she wholeheartedly agreed with the outburst about women being forced to bear children unwillingly. It was grossly unfair for them to be loaded with the stigma of having delivered an illegitimate child; it was worse to force them to undergo the danger and physical and psychological pain of an unwanted birth. Had her father thought this way? Had he decided to redress the balance in the only possible manner?
‘Elly?’ Lucy sat back, her gaze boring into Elly, demanding an answer.
‘I... can’t. I can’t destroy a life, even one scarcely formed.’
‘Please. Oh, please.’
Elly shook her head.
Immediately Lucy sprang up and ran to the door. ‘You don’t love me. Your friendship has been a mere sham. Well, I don’t want it, either. You can go to the devil, Elly Ballard. I’ll take care of myself.’
‘Come back, Lucy!’ Elly followed her down the corridor to the stairs, tripping then righting herself, gasping with the pain of a ricked ankle. The girl fled before her across the hall, out onto the steps. For a moment she paused under the lantern, a slight figure poised, moth-like, ready to fly.
‘Wait, Lucy.’ Gritting her teeth, Elly hobbled through the courtyard gate and stared up and down the street. But Lucy had disappeared into the night.
~*~
The search began as soon as Elly could raise it, but although Paul and J.G. and their friends combed the most likely areas of the city, Lucy remained lost. A call at Cornwallis’ house revealed that he had left to visit his Camden property hours before Lucy’s arrival at the hospital. Still, it took a lot of persuasion to keep Paul from following to confront Cornwallis. Only the need to find Lucy kept him with the searchers, and even they had to give in eventually and rest.
Elly stayed on in her office, ostensibly to work, but in reality struggling with a moral dilemma worthy of Solomon. Should she have violated her principles by helping Lucy to rid herself of the foetus? Where did love end and morality begin? Where did the rights of an unformed child begin and rights of the mother end? If her own morally strict father had seen fit to help other women in similar situations, why couldn’t she? Lucy had no one except Elly to turn to with this dilemma. She felt she had failed the girl.
She would be eternally thankful that Paul had gone home to snatch some sleep before the message came, delivered verbally by a bare-foot urchin in a gabble so fast she had to make him re
peat it.
‘Grannam says fetch Matron quick’s I can, the lass’s near gorn as wants ‘er.’
‘What lass? Lucy?’
‘Dunno. Grannam says to come along of me. You comin’?’
In answer, Elly flung on her cloak, grasped her purse then spun the boy out the door ahead of her. ‘Call up a cab,’ she directed.
The boy stopped short. ‘Won’t get no cabby to come down Durand’s Alley at night.’
Elly shuddered. ‘We’ll go as close as he will then walk the rest of the way.’
What had happened? It had to be Lucy. Was the woman exaggerating who said the girl was ‘near gorn’. When she questioned the boy she got only a blank stare. A minute later he offered the comment that there had been ‘a lotta blood when we picked ‘er up. Like a pig killin’’, and she asked no more questions.
The cab pulled up in Goulburn Street, the driver having refused to turn into the notorious quarter where the boy lived, so Elly paid the fare then set off after the small figure scampering ahead.
The noisome lanes were unlit, save from an occasional shaft of lamplight from a tavern doorway. Elly’s feet sank ankle deep in mud and refuse so foul she couldn’t define the combination of smells. Backyard privies exuded their contents through fences to pool with garbage heaving under the sly onslaught of rats, while the night was hideous with drunken shouting and singing, even screams. A pair of yellow eyes sped out of the dark straight at her, but the boy flew at the creature, kicking and yelling, and the goat bounded away. Elly tried to still her thundering heartbeat then shuffled on, careful to take small steps in case she tripped and fell into something unnameably dreadful.
The lanes grew even narrower, until her shoulders brushed against the shanty walls crowding in on her. The boy clutched her hand, saying cheerfully, ‘S’black as a blind man’s holiday, ain’t it?’ Still he led her unerringly through almost pitch darkness until they rounded a corner and saw a door standing crazily ajar, with the glow of candle-light within.
Elly hardly noticed the poverty of the room. She made straight for the bundle of straw in the corner where a figure lay with blood-encrusted skirts drawn up, a wad of rags thrust up between her legs. A bedraggled old woman rose from kneeling beside her.
‘You the Matron?’ Her voice was as rough as her appearance, but her eyes, flicking over Elly, were large and soft, sunk in a mass of wrinkles.
Elly nodded, dropping down beside Lucy to feel her pulse. That, with her pallor and shallow breathing told their tale. ‘She’s lost the baby. Has the bleeding ceased?’ She gingerly moved the rags, unable to suppress her gasp.
The woman said grimly, ‘Been butchered, ain’t she?’
Elly’s fury almost choked her. ‘Who did this? Was it you?’ She spun around, the blood rushing to her face.
The woman answered mildly, ‘No, ‘tweren’t me. Think I’d be fool enough to send for you if I’d ‘a done it? Found ‘er in the alley, we did, me and young Barty here. She’d been flung out to die in the dirt. Just a young’un she is. Still milk on ‘er lips.’
‘I’m sorry. Thank you for taking her in and sending for me.’ Elly looked back helplessly at the unconscious girl. ‘She’s lost so much blood. I’ll have to get her to the hospital somehow.’
Barty’s grandmother touched her shoulder lightly. ‘It’s too late, lass. I sent for ye because she called yer name, but I knowed it were no use.’
Lucy’s eyelids fluttered and Elly leaned forward.
‘Lucy, dear. Can you hear me? It’s Elly.’
The faintest smile seemed to twitch the corners of the pale mouth. Elly bent lower to detect faint breathing. She touched one of the cold hands lying flaccid, like the hands of a doll, then took off her cloak to lay it over the girl.
‘Elly.’ She caught the faint whisper and leaned close again. Lucy’s glazed stare seemed to go far beyond the crumbling walls of the room. ‘I never meant to die, Elly. It’s all gone wrong.’
‘Hush, dear. I won’t let you die. Save your strength.’
The faint voice persisted, ‘He said I’d be all right, but he lied to me, too. Then he tied me down. He hurt me, so much. I screamed... begged him to stop....’
Elly bit her lip hard and tasted blood. She couldn’t listen to this.
‘Hold me, Elly. I don’t want to go into the darkness alone...’
Elly slid her arm under the girl’s shoulders, gathering her against her bosom. With a sigh Lucy tucked her head under Elly’s chin. ‘So much blood,’ she whispered. The breath rattled in her throat.
‘Lucy?’ Elly tipped the dark head back, watched as the girl’s facial muscles smoothed out, leaving her little nose more prominent, slackening her jaw. With gentle fingers she closed the staring blue eyes. Lucy had gone on her long journey alone.
Elly stayed on her knees for a long time, cradling the slight body. Then, sighing, she laid it down on the straw and said to the watching woman, ‘Who did it? Do you know, Mrs...?’
‘Smith. Grannam Smith. I gotta suspicion. The girls ‘round here know where to go when they’ve taken a tumble too many, risky though ‘tis.’
Elly got up slowly, feeling as though her energy had drained away into the dirt floor under her boots. ‘Tell me where to go.’
Grannam Smith shook her grey head. ‘Best not. This’s no place for the likes of you. Let Barty here take yer back home to make arrangements for this poor lass. Yer can’t do no good goin’ for the butcher.’
‘I can see him hanged.’
‘No. You’ll bring trouble on us. We don’t want the law down in the Alley.’
Elly up-ended her purse on the one piece of furniture, a ricketty shelf holding a heel of loaf and a few utensils.
‘It’s all yours if you will tell me where to find this person.’
The old eyes followed the coins rolling off the shelf onto the floor.
Barty made a dart and began stuffing them into his pockets. ‘I know where he lives. I’ll take yer. Then I’ll bring yer back a pint, Grannam. That allus eases yer bones.’
The old woman raised her hands fatalistically then sat down on another pile of dirty straw, clasping her knees. ‘Go on then. I’ll watch over the lass until you send some’un.’
Elly followed the boy out into the network of alleys, her face burning hot, her heart a lump of ice. She had never felt so clear-headed, so thoroughly scoured by emotion.
What fool had said there was nothing so bad that it might not be worse? There could be nothing worse than this. All the feeble troubles she had totted up so recently were as a zephyr against this tornado of destruction, this terrible loss of a vital human being with her whole life before her. When Paul knew the truth he would never forgive himself, or Elly. She would never forgive herself. But she could force the murderer to abandon his trade.
Within a few minutes she was completely disoriented. The lanes had become a labyrinth, directionless, barely visible. Barty, towing her by the arm, seemed to proceed on a combination of touch and instinct. Shadows slithered by in the dark, some with two legs, some with four, but Elly took no notice. In a place where she’d have hesitated to come by day, she let herself be led, feeling no fear, nor any other emotion. She was frozen.
They eventually turned into a cul-de-sac, stopping before the vague outline of a tumbledown cottage, only a grade superior to the surrounding shanties.
Barty whispered, ‘‘E’s in there. I can see a light be’ind the curting.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘The Doc. That’s what they call ‘im. You goin’ in there?’
In answer, Elly stepped forward and knocked on the door, the panel rough and splintery under her knuckles. When she glanced behind her, Barty had gone, blending with the shadows. No-one answered her knock, but when she found the door unlatched she stepped inside into a damp-smelling darkness.
A slit of light guided her ahead into a cramped room furnished haphazardly with a broken-legged armchair, a table and bed, and a cabinet. An oil lamp flic
kered on the table, lighting a heap of bloody rags, with a few dirty instruments lying in a bowl of red-stained water. Bile rose in her throat, but she swallowed the bitterness. Her gaze swept the room, past the empty bed with its suspiciously stained coverlet, stopping on the figure slumped in the chair, legs out-stretched, head sagging on one shoulder. A pipe with a long slender stem had fallen from the man’s dangling fingers to smoulder on the mat, a rising smoke spiral filling the room with its sickly-sweet odour. Opium. She stepped forward to peer into the slack face. With mouth open and eyes turned up, Doctor Harwood slept.
Elly’s trembling legs gave way and she found herself on the mat at his feet. Her whole frame shook, even her head bobbed uncontrollably. She dug her fingers into her thighs, keeping them there until the tremors stopped. The thought uppermost in her mind was surprise that she was not surprised, that this might have been expected of a charlatan who had brought death to so many. Having left The Settlement when it became too hot for him, he would have continued to practice his spurious ‘medicine’ in other towns, until finally forced to flee for sanctuary in the heart of an Alsace.
Here he lived amongst his own kind who would never give him away; and here, by all appearances, he would shortly die. The man’s bones rattled with each breath; his skin had dried to parchment; he looked a hundred years old. Only slits of white showed beneath his eyelids, while his lips, wizened as sun-dried peel, curled back from a mouth full of blackened teeth. Dreaming in another world, he was letting his life slip away from this one.
Retribution had come to Doctor Harwood, more swiftly and more thoroughly than anyone could have imagined. The bitter wish that he might have killed himself earlier, before doing the same for Lucy, was pointless, Elly knew. What was done was done. But in her heart she despaired.
Had there been any point in her long struggle? She’d been frustrated at every turn. With so many against her; with her friends leaving; Cornwallis lurking in wait; Paul content with friendship while her own yearning for his love all but consumed her; and now Lucy destroyed, when she might have been saved if Elly herself had only been more flexible – what was left? She had given her health, her energy of mind and body, and her heart, with its care for humanity, and they’d been thrown back at her. She had made mistakes but paid for them dearly. Now it ended.
A HAZARD OF HEARTS Page 37