A Wise Child

by A Wise Child (retail) (epub)

  ‘No bloody wonder,’ she said.

  Katy had two items of news herself which she was anxious to tell Nellie. The first was that Peter was back at work and the second that she was almost sure that she was expecting a baby.

  ‘The fourth and last if I am,’ she said firmly but when she saw Nellie’s face she said tactfully, ‘You might be next, Nell. Our Donald is turned three, y’know.’

  They both knew that the gap between her children had been carefully planned but neither mentioned it.

  When Nellie returned to the Duncan house the following morning she found Mrs Taggart already there. ‘I’ve got me marching orders,’ she announced, ‘but at least he coughed up.’ She waved two pound notes.

  ‘The house is getting closed up,’ the cook said quickly. ‘I told Mr Thomson Mrs Taggart and you never got paid, Nell, and he give me that for Mrs Taggart.’

  ‘And what about me?’ Nellie asked.

  ‘He wants you to stay for a few days to answer the door and keep the place tidy and then he’ll settle up with you. I’m to stay on as caretaker and they’ll want me to help for the funeral,’ the cook said, preening herself.

  ‘And the house is getting closed up?’ Nellie said.

  ‘Yes, he said in the circumstances, as if it was because of what happened, but me and Mrs Taggart are just saying it’ll probably have to go for the debts. His wife and Miss Lydia was with him and they went upstairs packing things to take back with them. He opened the door with his key and Miss Lydia never even spoke to me,’ and Cook wiped away a tear.

  ‘Never mind. I suppose she was upset,’ Nellie consoled her.

  ‘The funeral’s going from his house so I don’t suppose they’ll come here again, the missus and the girls,’ Cook said.

  The number of callers grew less over the next few days and Nellie assumed that official callers must be going to the Thomson house. On Friday Mr Thomson came and told her that her services were no longer required and gave her three pound notes.

  She was not sorry to leave, although she had enjoyed part of her time there, and she was pleased to be given three pounds and thanked by Mr Thomson. The cook seemed unable to talk of anything but the tragedy and Nellie could only offer the same words of sympathy and say again how thankful she was that the Duncans had planned to dine out so she had gone home before it occurred.

  No one seemed concerned about Susan and Nellie went to the hospital to see her, only to be told that she had been returned to the orphanage. Nellie asked a nurse if Susan would be sent to another place but the woman said it was unlikely.

  ‘She’ll probably go to a home for epileptics or they might put her to work in the laundry. That’s what they do with defectives.’

  ‘But she wasn’t defective,’ Nellie protested, ‘it was only the shock brought the fit on.’

  The nurse shrugged. ‘I don’t know, I’m sure,’ she said. ‘I don’t know anything about the girl.’ She hurried away.

  Nellie would like to have befriended Susan but she knew so little about her, not even to which orphanage she had been sent. She was glad to go back to her own neighbourhood and put the whole affair behind her.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Nellie was worried when she received Sam’s letter telling her to take up the offer of a holiday with the Handleys. Try as she might she was unable to rid her house of vermin completely and both she and Tommy showed the evidence in numerous bite marks on their bodies. She had noticed Mrs Handley glancing at the fleabites on Tommy’s neck during their last visit and felt ashamed.

  There were other things too. How would she know what to do about helping in the house? And when to go to bed and when to get up in the morning? It was all right Bobby saying she was worrying over nothing. These were very real problems to her.

  Could she tell Sam now that she was worried about the expense of the journey as well as whether she should offer money to Mrs Handley? Now that her job had gone she might need her savings if Sam’s money was held up, yet he had told her they should go.

  Before she wrote back to Sam the problem was solved for her. Bobby’s apprenticeship was due to finish and he was suddenly moved back to the Liverpool works. He and Meg came to tell Nellie on a Sunday and Meg wept as they told their news.

  ‘But why, Bob? I thought you was settled there,’ Nellie said, looking bewildered.

  Bobby shrugged. ‘Ours not to reason why,’ he said bitterly. ‘The job I got sent there for is long finished but I’ve been doing others for Mr Orlando. He’s real narked about me coming back but I am indentured here.’

  ‘Tommy’s been sleeping with me since Sam went so your bed’s here for you, lad,’ Nellie said.

  Bobby said hurriedly, ‘It’s all right, Nell. I’m fixing up a room near the works. You’ll need that room when Sam comes home and anyway Tommy’s getting a big lad now.’

  ‘And Bob will be able to come and see you often now, Nell,’ Meg said gently.

  Bobby put his arm round her. ‘I’m going to look round for a house or rooms for us an’ all,’ he said. ‘The minute Meg’s twenty-one next May we’re getting married and her father can’t stop us.’

  ‘You’ll be able to afford it now you’re out of your time, lad,’ Nellie said. She felt hurt that Bobby was not coming home yet she could understand why.

  Meg went down the yard to the lavatory and Bobby whispered quickly, ‘This has come at a bad time, our kid. Her old feller’s drinking like a fish. Barred out of the pub and boozing at home.’

  Meg came back and he said no more but later when they were going, Meg herself said to Nellie, ‘I’m having a bad time with my dad. The drink seems to have got a hold over him. I wish Bob wasn’t going.’

  ‘Never mind. May will soon be here and you can be together,’ Nellie consoled her.

  Bobby was able to find a room in a house near Fountains Road which was a reasonable size, with an alcove containing a gas ring and a sink, and Nellie and Tommy often visited him there.

  Nellie was still searching for another job without success but her search was half-hearted.

  Sam’s money was arriving regularly and she had her savings and the money from Mr Thomson hidden in her mattress.

  ‘I don’t think I’ll bother until after the school holidays,’ she told Katy. ‘I’ve wrote to Mrs Handley to say we can’t go so I want to make it up to Tom. Maybe we could all go out together.’

  Katy agreed. She had lost her harassed look now that Peter was working and her pregnancy was going smoothly. There was rich farmland and sandy beaches within easy reach of Bootle, although the people of the neighbourhood rarely ventured there, and Nellie and Katy spent happy days with the children, wandering through the lanes or playing on the sandhills.

  On one occasion they took the ferryboat to New Brighton and Tommy bragged to the other children about the day he had been on the boat with his father and all that Sam had told him about the ships in the river.

  ‘He loves the bones of his dad, doesn’t he?’ Katy said, laughing. ‘It’s all “me dad, me dad” outa him.’

  ‘Aye, and Sam loves him,’ Nellie said. ‘They’re real good mates. I hope they never fall out, especially with him being the only one.’

  ‘By the time he’s old enough to face up to Sam you might have half a dozen others,’ Katy said bracingly. ‘Me mam knows a woman was married twenty years without any and had her first when she was forty-one.’

  ‘Gee, I don’t want to wait that long,’ Nellie giggled.

  She and Katy enjoyed these outings as much as the children and they became even better friends. They thought alike on many subjects and enjoyed long conversations.

  No matter how freely she and Katy talked Nellie never mentioned a subject which was rarely far from her mind. For years she had put all doubt about Tommy’s parentage from her mind and crushed any memory of Leadbetter but now her fears had been revived.

  The married daughter of a neighbour had come home to her mother to await the birth of her first child as her husband wa
s away on the tugs.

  A week earlier she had been sitting on the step when Nellie and Gertie passed.

  ‘Still here, Josie?’ Katy said jokingly.

  The girl laughed and grimaced. ‘Yes, worse luck. Me mam says I’ll need a shot of dynamite to get started. The castor oil she’s give me! I’m three weeks overdue already.’

  ‘It’ll come when it’s ready,’ Katy said cheerfully but as they walked away she said to Nellie, ‘Me mam says it must be twins at least, the size of her.’

  The baby was born the same night and there was much hilarity among the women gathered round Bella’s step when the child proved to be only tiny.

  ‘Must’ve been all water she was carrying,’ Bella declared. ‘The Mersey must’ve rose a foot when she got rid of that.’

  Nellie had been in to see the baby and had felt a stab of fear when she saw him, small and red, cradled in Josie’s arms. And she had carried him for nine months and three weeks! So it was possible that Tommy, born that length of time after the rape, could have been Leadbetter’s. In vain she told herself that her instinct said that he was Sam’s child and that he was like Sam in character, as she knew Sam to be.

  That proved nothing, she knew. Look at Katy. Who would think Bella would have a daughter like her? And I hope there’s nothing of me ma in me either, Nellie thought, or in Tommy. She had spent sleepless nights since Josie’s baby was born, plagued by her old worries.

  As she sat on the shore with Katy while the children played among the sandhills, Nellie felt that she must say something to Katy to relieve her mind.

  ‘I couldn’t get over the size of Josie’s baby, being so late and all, yet he was no bigger than Tommy born, was he?’

  ‘Must’ve been carrying a lot of water, like me mam says,’ Katy said, adding casually, ‘unless she got her dates wrong. She coulda been a month out.’

  Her words caused a rush of joy to Nellie which made her feel almost light-headed with relief. That was a possibility that had never occurred to her but now she realised that if the dates were wrong the birth was a week early, and there were no complications there as there had been with Tommy’s birth.

  She jumped to her feet, shouting, ‘Come on, kids. We’ll play rounders.’

  For twenty minutes she and Katy joined in the games with the children, much to their delight, and no one suspected the cause of Nellie’s sudden high spirits.

  As the mothers sat hot and breathless watching the children who still played, Katy said that she thought Tommy had come out of his shell. ‘He’s not half as quiet as what he used to be. He’s one of the gang now, all right.’

  ‘He never wants to come in when he’s playing out,’ Nellie said. ‘I don’t want him to get too rough though, Katy.’

  ‘He won’t,’ said Katy. ‘But he needs to stand up for himself.’ She laughed. ‘Me mam seen him fighting with Jenkins’ lad over some ollies and she said he was getting more like Sam than like you. You know what Sam used to be like for fighting when we was young?’

  ‘But he didn’t live round here then,’ Nellie said.

  ‘I’m talking about during the war,’ Katy said. ‘He lived in the Seaman’s when he was ashore and drank in the Volley and he was always in fights.’ She laughed. ‘Made a few enemies too, because he always won.’

  ‘I didn’t know him then. I was away in service,’ Nellie said. ‘And once I came home on me day off I never got out to see no one. Me mam had all the jobs lined up for me until it was time to go back.’

  ‘It wasn’t Sam’s fault,’ Katy said. ‘It was just because he was such a good fighter any bucko with a few pints down him wanted to prove he could do better than Sam. He’s give it up now though, hasn’t he?’

  Tommy was whirling the home-made bat around his head and yelling with the other children.

  ‘Not much of the timid fawn about him now, is there?’ Katy said with a grin and when Nellie looked startled she explained.

  ‘The teacher let our Amy lend a book to bring home. It was all pictures, like, and words underneath them and one was “the timid fawn”. It was a little animal, a sort of deer peeping through some leaves, it had big eyes, sort of frightened looking. Our Amy said it was like Tommy but I thought it looked more like you.’

  ‘Thanks very much,’ Nellie said in mock indignation. She felt that Katy had given her a lot to think about and answered some questions for her and she felt much happier.

  Nellie was still feeling happy as she cleared away the evening meal while Tommy played out and she was unprepared for a sudden attack by Janey.

  ‘I see that one over the road went three weeks over. Nine months and three weeks, same time as you was after Leadbetter seen to you,’ she cackled. ‘And she had one like a fourpenny rabbit, same as you.’

  A tide of red rushed over Nellie’s face and she stared at the old woman as though hypnotised, saying nothing.

  ‘Mind you, there’s only me knows them dates and I wouldn’t say nothing – not unless I had to, like. If you or the big feller tried to put me out. I know it’s what he wants but he wouldn’t like what I could tell him.’

  Suddenly Nellie was furiously angry. ‘Josie could’ve got her dates wrong,’ she said. ‘I’m sick of your hints and threats. Go ahead and tell Sam. He’ll think you’ve gone soft in the head, like a lot of people round here. And don’t think I can’t put you out. I hold the rent book, don’t forget.’

  She expected a tirade in return from Janey but the old woman seemed taken aback by Nellie’s defiance. She stared at her from her small red-rimmed eyes, working her toothless mouth, then said ingratiatingly, ‘Don’t be working yourself up, girl. You took me the wrong way. There’s things I could tell you that would rise the hair from your head, worser by far than your bit of trouble, but I know how to keep me mouth shut. No need for us to fall out, girl. I’ve known you since you was born.’

  Nellie stood breathing rapidly as the old woman talked, then feeling that she would be sick if she stayed a moment longer with her she snatched up her purse and shawl and rushed out of the house.

  She went to join the women gathered round Bella’s step, where she could listen to the jokes and the gossip until she felt calmer. When she returned later with Tommy the parlour door was closed and during the following days Janey carefully avoided any controversial subjects.

  When the children returned for the new school year in September Tommy was moved up to the class of a new teacher at the school, Miss Helsby. He liked his teacher and enjoyed school.

  Nellie was delighted when he asked if he could write to his father. She had taken out the steel-nibbed pen and the penny bottle of ink and sent Tom to the corner shop for a packet of notepaper and envelopes, so that she could write to Sam.

  When the boy returned he said diffidently, ‘Now you’ve got a new packet can I write to me dad, Mam?’

  ‘He’ll get ink all over him,’ Janey warned. ‘As if you don’t get enough on yourself,’ but Nellie ignored her and told Tom he could write when she was finished.

  When she had written, ‘I hope this finds you well as it leaves us at present,’ she sat for a long time pondering and biting the end of the pen before adding a few lines about Tommy growing tall and Bobby doing well, ending with her usual formula.

  Although Tommy made many blots, he wrote without hesitation.

  Dere Dad

  I went to the shop for this paper. Me mam said I cudd write with pen and ink. I brort me composition home. I got ten out of ten. Bert benet and jimm jones had a fite They got took in the hurry up van there wer five poleesmen love from Thomas Meadows.

  ‘That’s the gear, son,’ Nellie said. ‘You’re a clever lad.’

  Later when Gertie came with novelettes for Nellie she told her about Tommy’s letter, quoting it word for word.

  ‘Just think,’ Gertie said to the boy, ‘when your dad’s far away in a foreign country he’ll be able to read your letter and know about your marks for composition.’ She winked at Nellie. ‘And all about Bert B
ennett and Jim Jones going off in the Black Maria.’

  Tommy flushed with pleasure and afterwards often spoke about Gertie’s words.

  Nellie has still not had her fortune told by Mrs Gilligan but Katy had called at an opportune moment while Lettie was out and her fortune had been told and so had Gertie’s. They had each told Nellie about it.

  ‘She said I would have many troubles while I was young,’ Katy said. ‘But in later life I would know great happiness. One of my children would be very successful and one would win great honour on the battlefield.’

  ‘You won’t mind having troubles while they’re young if you know you’ll be happy later on, will you?’ said Nellie.

  ‘Peter said it’s all baloney,’ Katy said. ‘That bit about the battlefield is out for a start because he’ll make sure none of ours goes in the army. You know his brother was badly wounded at Ypres but he was a wreck even before the wound. Trench foot and rheumatism from lying days and nights in water in the trenches. He was discharged but he was dead in six months.’

  ‘I wonder which one will be successful,’ Nellie said. ‘I’ll bet it’ll be your Amy.’

  ‘Might be this little one,’ Katy said, patting the bulge beneath her skirt.

  Gertie told Nellie that she was annoyed that Peter had scoffed at Mrs Gilligan. ‘I believe every word she says,’ Gertie said. ‘She told me I’d have many good friends and a happy life but I won’t marry until late in life. We won’t have children but I’ll know true love and prosperity.’

  ‘She gives you all the details, doesn’t she?’ Nellie said. ‘Not like that woman I went to in New Brighton. You coulda taken anything out of what she told me.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what makes me sure,’ Gertie said. Her eyes filled with tears but she wiped them away. ‘She told me things about me mam and dad what nobody knows, only me. And Katy’s sister Dolly came asking her to tell her fortune but she wouldn’t. Said she couldn’t see nothing but after Dolly went Prudence was real upset. I think she saw trouble for Dolly.’

  ‘Is that her name, Prudence?’ Nellie said.