‘I’m most rel ... er, sorry to hear you say so. But I can understand your reservations.’ She picked up a stack of papers, hoping he would take the hint and depart. Dr Lisle stepped closer and the powerful aroma of fish almost overwhelmed her.
‘Indeed, I have most severe reservations, my dear. I was prepared to overlook the little difficulty of the clinic as a passing fancy but I fear your morals are somewhat lower than even I had bargained for.’
For once Bella made no attempt to defend herself. She simply smiled sadly and shook her head in despair at her own scandalous behaviour.
‘Of course, if you were to repent and seek forgiveness then, in time, I might reconsider. There could still be hope for us.’
‘No, no, I fear I am quite beyond redemption. I do believe you are correct, Dr Lisle. We are not at all suited,’ and Bella hastily showed the little man to the door. ‘It’s an ill wind,’ she said to Dr Syd, who was doubled up with suppressed laughter behind the curtained screen.
‘Thank your lucky stars you’re off his list.’ But then the laughter faded and her brow puckered into a frown. ‘You don’t think he’ll take the matter any further, do you? I mean, use this as a means to make difficulties for the clinic?’
‘Why should he? If he’s no longer interested in me, he can no longer have any concerns over the clinic, can he? He only wanted to close it to force my hand, or rather my finger into a wedding ring. Ugh, I shudder at the thought.’
Both women accepted this theory as sound. Within days, however, they discovered otherwise. Bella was woken by a frantic knocking at her front door early one morning which startled the babies and set them all off yelling. The caller was Dr Syd who rushed in on a blast of cold air, scattering briefcase, scarf and hat and flopping into the chair in an unusually distressed state.
‘He’s done it. He’s succeeded.’
‘Who has? Succeeded in what?’
‘In getting his revenge.’
Bella stared at Dr Syd’s booted feet depositing mud on her clean rag rug and her thoughts flew at once to Quinn. She knew he’d been too quiet lately, that he wouldn’t be satisfied with simply ruining the last vestige of hope for a reconciliation with her father, as well as the destruction of her relationship with Dan. Blast him! He had to find some other way to hurt her. Dr Syd began to talk and it took some moments before Bella could follow what she was saying.
‘She couldn’t admit to being married, you see, or she would have lost her job. Thrown out of the profession. An absolutely archaic rule but there we are. So many nurses have to keep their marriages secret. It’s not uncommon.’
‘What on earth are you talking about? Start again. Who’s married?’
‘Oh, do pay attention, Bella dear. I’m talking about Mary. Nurse Shaw. That brother of hers that you met … well, he isn’t her brother at all, of course. He’s her husband and the supposed nieces are in fact her own daughters. It’s an unbreakable rule that if a nurse marries she must leave the profession. Makes my blood boil. Some day we’ll succeed in getting it changed, though heaven knows how or when. It’s taken long enough to win the bloody vote. Women worked all through the war in all sorts of jobs, and yet they still think that once a woman marries she should give it all up. They call us pin-money wives. It’s ludicrous.’
Dr Syd ranted on for some time while Bella brewed tea and listened with increasing sympathy, though all she could truly think of was that it meant the clinic was now without a nurse. ‘It never rains but it pours. But what has all of this got to do with Billy Quinn?’
‘Billy Quinn?’ Dr Syd choked on her tea and looked up at her in amazement. ‘I know it’s early in the morning but do try to concentrate, girl. I’m talking about Dr Lisle. God knows how he found out but he’s spilled the beans to the local press. Here it is in black and white. I picked a paper up on my way to the surgery as usual. We’re ruined.’
She drew the newspaper from her briefcase and flung it onto the table. Bella saw at once that it wasn’t a rain shower they’d been hit by, or even a storm. This was a tornado.
Bella hardly needed to read every word to know what it would say, yet she did so, unable to tear her riveted gaze from the page as it informed its concerned readers of the latest scandal to hit the Mothers’ Clinic. The newspaper even carried the report under the heading: Scandal at Mothers’ Clinic.
The clinic is being run by Jezebels. By a nurse who has committed the cardinal sin of breaking one of this noble profession’s most important rules; and by a scarlet woman who not only has been mistress to a notorious bookmaker well known in the area but has also given birth to his child, passing it off as a waif and stray abandoned on her doorstep. It has even been rumoured that she is expecting another.
‘What utter tosh. These stupid rumours grow bigger by the day. They’ll be saying all three of these babies are mine before we’re done.’
Now having been joined by Tilly, looking somewhat bemused and befuddled, jiggling a baby on each hip, all three women looked at each other appalled, for of course that was exactly what they would say.
Bella felt sick. It was as if the whole world had turned against her. With this kind of press, what hope did she have of winning even Dan’s support? Why on earth should he choose to believe her above the facts he read in the paper?
Because if he truly loved her, he should surely take her word above all others.
Dan knew perfectly well that Holly wasn’t hers. How could she possibly be? Though Bella knew that for all he understood the fallacy of this particular part of the tale and might long to believe in her, his mates were constantly dripping doubt like poison in his ear. She still hoped she might win him round, though it would take time. But as well as the upset these lies had caused in her relationship with Dan, there was the effect upon the clinic.
‘Read the rest,’ Dr Syd said, her voice bleak.
‘Two other babies have been found abandoned, one of whom appears to be the child of a woman patient. So much for the beneficial effect upon families of our Mothers’ Clinic.’
‘Where in heaven’s name did they get that story from? Has Mrs Blundell been gossiping? It’s not true anyway. The new Mrs Clarke wasn’t a patient at the clinic. Everyone knows how desperately hard I tried to persuade her to come, yet failed.’
‘No one is going to believe that, because she’s certainly a patient now. Anyway, mud sticks. They, he - we can only guess the source of these tales for we’ve no proof - have thrown enough at us this time, to make sure of that. How our various benefactors will view this sort of scandal, I dread to think. They are hardly going to be pleased and may withdraw their support altogether.’
Bella wrote again to her father, risked further rejection by calling at Seedley Park Road time after time to beg for the support of her family, using every device she could think of. She pleaded with Mrs Dyson, with Emily, even with Sam when once he came to the door, for a brief moment of her father’s time so that she could explain the facts to him. Bella felt certain that if she could only win him over then she could convince anyone. Besides, Simeon Ashton still had influence. If people saw her father standing by her, they would think twice before condemning her. But he remained obdurate. There was no response. This man, her adored Pa, who had once believed that the sun shone out of his daughter’s lovely hazel eyes, refused absolutely to even speak with her.
Within days Bella received a rather stiff and formal letter from Mrs Lawton, the magistrate’s wife who had been on the committee with them from the beginning, coldly informing them that she was withdrawing her financial support, as were her many friends. In frighteningly quick time all their other benefactors melted away; a weeping Nurse Shaw departed not only from the clinic but from her hospital post to be a full time mother, and Dr Syd was informed by the medical counsel that if she did not resign her position at the clinic forthwith, her days as a GP would be numbered.
Bowing to pressure, Bella closed the clinic.
Her ‘ladies’ were horrified. ‘Nay, th
ee can’t close us down,’ Violet said, appalled.
Poor Mrs Stobbs began to quake with fear even at the thought of having nowhere left to go for help. ‘Hecky thump, I’d be off again in no time without you to keep me on the straight and narrow.’ Even Mrs Solomon, the perennial optimist, began to wail and complain that if the clinic closed, the blessed Eli would be sure to ask her to try for another boy and she was exhausted and simply couldn’t face it. Not again.
Mrs Blundell was full of contrition that she might have inadvertently caused this furore, while denying she’d gossiped to anyone but her own chums. ‘Nay, you only have to break wind and someone in t’next street’ll hear about it,’ she added, in her robust way.
Reg Clarke came personally to see Bella, and she suffered a difficult hour while he preached and bemoaned his lot in life; how he needed his comforts but his wives had let him down, either by inconveniently dying or by lying to him. Alice, apparently, had disgraced herself to such an extent that he no longer felt he could care for her and she’d been returned to her mother, rather like an unsatisfactory gift. Bella had heard that in fact Alice had packed her frugal belongings and fled, thankful to be free of the responsibility of all those children. She’d vowed never to have another, poor girl.
Despite his Christian charity, Reg refused to take back his baby son and somehow managed to put the blame for being left with four motherless babies at Bella’s door. She promised to find him a good woman to help him look after them but he must not, on any account, she warned, mistake a child-minder for a wife again. The woman would be available only to help him care for the children. He must look elsewhere for his ‘comforts’, and this time use proper precautions. He went away somewhat chastened.
The following week the two unnamed babies were found new homes. One was also offered to Holly and at first Bella refused it. The child was all she had left now. She represented someone to love and build a new future for. But the woman at the Board of Guardians tactfully reminded Bella of her single status, which was highly irregular, and of the fact that guardianship had only been granted on a temporary basis. With the Mothers’ Clinic now closed she could not even claim to have a nurse for the child. Tilly, apparently, did not count.
On the day she had to hand her over, Bella felt as if her heart must surely break so tight was the band of pain across her breast. She lifted little Holly from her crib to say goodbye, cuddling her close to savour the sweet scent of her for the last time. Even the warm weight of the baby in her lap brought a gush of tears to her eyes. How could she bear to give her up? It was like having a part of herself torn away. She took the child to the Guardian office and walked away like a woman sleep walking, returning home to an oddly silent house.
Tilly, sobbing into her handkerchief, asked if Bella wanted her to leave now that there was no reason for her to stay.
‘Oh Tilly, I do hope you won’t. I could do with a friend right at this minute. We’ll sort this all out, I promise. Somehow we’ll start again. I’m not giving up. I shall rise again out of the ashes, just like the phoenix, see if I don’t.
Tilly, who knew nothing at all about mythology, blew her nose and trusted in friendship.
Billy Quinn stood at the corner of Liverpool Street and watched Bella striding along. She was a fine figure of a woman, her lovely red-gold hair flying free in the breeze. Pity really that she was so damned stubborn.
He knew where she was going. For all she’d supposedly closed that dratted clinic, she was heading in that direction. He’d used everything he could find against her and what he couldn’t find, he’d made up. He’d fired anonymous letters here, there and everywhere, the most productive being to that little weed of a Dr Lisle, and still she defeated him. She’d no intention of giving up. You had to admire the girl, obstinate as she was. He wouldn’t put it past her to reopen that clinic, and to keep it open if it killed her.
And mebbe it would in the end. Mebbe she had it coming to her.
He took some satisfaction from the havoc he had created. She’d lost the children she doted on. He’d scuppered any chance of her being welcomed back into the bosom of her family. Even Dan Howarth had soon lost interest, once he heard the full and glorified version of the story which had been fed to him through Len and his useful contacts. All in all, things were going well.
And didn’t she owe him this revenge? It was surely a fair price for her to pay, for hadn’t she stolen his best girl from him? Hadn’t she refused to even consider the very reasonable offer he’d made for her to share his new home and help him to go up in the world and climb the ladder of success? Oh no, Isabella Ashton thought herself too fancy for him. To hoity-toity by half. She’d toyed with him like a cat plays with a mouse and then dropped him. Who was the cat and who the mouse now?
For the moment Quinn was prepared to bide his time, to see how things panned out. Trade was slack what with the slump, jobs being hard to find and money being tight. He was having to squeeze people hard to get even a threepenny bet out of the punters. Money he badly needed to pay the rent on his new house in Weaste but he fully expected his affairs to improve. He’d keep an eye on her, continue to make his presence felt every now and then, just to let her know that he hadn’t forgotten about her. It was a ploy he’d used many times before. Wear a person down over a number of weeks or months and they rolled over sweet as pie, exactly when he wanted them to.
Isabella Ashton would either come to him willingly in the end, or have no life left worth clinging on to. He’d have his revenge in full, so he would.
Arriving at the clinic just moments after Quinn had watched her walk the length of Liverpool Street, Bella finally allowed herself to glance back the way she had come. Was that him, lurking in the shadows? Heart beating fast and hard against her ribs she sent up a silent prayer that it was no more than her imagination. Would she never fully recover her nerve? It was truly dreadful the effect that man had on her. But she’d no intention of allowing him to ruin her life. She’d beat him yet.
So saying, Bella gave a deliberately cheery wave to Aunt Edie, gratefully accepting a slab of parkin and heading up the stairs where she knew Dr Syd would be waiting for her. They’d agreed on a counsel of war, determined to somehow find a solution to their problems. Not for one moment could she allow her ‘ladies’ to be so easily abandoned. Bella felt that if she was to be denied love in her life, from Dan and even from little Holly, then she could at least hang on to her precious clinic, no matter what the cost. She would give her life to that, and to the mothers who so desperately needed her help.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Bella began by sitting down with Dr Syd to study the accounts. Together they examined what it cost the clinic for rent, cleaning, gas, nursing staff, stationery, postage and other sundry expenses. After that they considered their projected income. Now that their usual sponsors had withdrawn support, the result was not encouraging. It cost more than £600 a year to run the clinic, not counting their own expenses which, until Bella’s recent troubles, had been given freely. If they could not call upon the usual subscriptions and donations, then there seemed little hope the clinic could continue.
Bella was distraught. ‘It’s so unfair. We’re a professional organisation affiliated to the National Society for the Provision of Birth Control Clinics, so we can’t just give up.’
‘Nor can we survive without proper funding,’ Dr Syd sadly pointed out, and all our sponsors have been scared off by the scandalous reports in the newspapers.’
‘Then we must fight back. If people complain because I’m not qualified, we should remind them that Marie Stopes herself has suffered similar criticism. As for this nonsense of my carrying Quinn’s child, well it’s all lies which deserve to be treated with contempt.’ The more she argued her case, the more heated Bella became till she was pacing about the floor in an agitated state, thumping one fist into the other. ‘Our achievements here are too good to lose, certainly not as a result of nasty gossip. Where once we used to be the ones askin
g for help, now other, newer clinics come to us for advice. The women of Salford depend upon us. We must not allow this vindictive campaign of gossip and innuendo against me, to destroy the Mothers’ Clinic.’
‘Fervent sentiments with which I heartily agree but what can we do?’ Dr Syd asked, holding out her elegant hands in despair.
Bella chewed on her lip, paced the floor some more, wrung her hands and finally said, ‘We need to prove the cynics wrong. We must convince everyone that the clinic is worth keeping open; that it’s not only needed by our patients but means we can put our valuable experience at the disposal of other establishments.’
‘But how do we convince them of that?’
‘We must get the people who really matter on our side.’
‘And they are..?’
‘… Salford City Council!’ The two friends spoke the words together and then grinned at each other in delight.
The very next day Bella called at the Municipal Offices and asked for the clinic to be inspected. They came in droves. Doctors, nurses, medical students, social workers, Members of Parliament and numerous other interested parties. Bella and Dr Syd spent an anxious few weeks while these various parties sat and watched them at work, talked to the women, examined every record card and patient file, studied their statistics of success and failure.
They’d been compelled to find a replacement nurse for Mary Shaw, but she proved her worth a dozen times over in those weeks. Completely unflustered by events, uninterested in scandal, Nurse Hughes simply pressed on, concerned only for her precious patients.
The Favourite Child Page 32