‘That’s it,’ Hattie encouraged as she wiped the sweat from the girl’s brow. ‘Just pant now then breathe through the next pain. Good girl … that’s it, you’re bein’ so brave!’
At some point Colleen went back downstairs to fetch more hot water and when she came back she saw at a glance that things had rapidly moved on. Jia Li’s chin was on her chest now and she was pushing with all her might.
‘That’s it, have a rest now,’ Hattie soothed as the pain passed. ‘And when the next pain comes don’t push until I tell you.’
Tears of despair were rolling down Jia Li’s face now as she panted and prayed for death to come and claim her. She felt as if she was being rent in two and didn’t know how much more she could bear. She was also feeling unbearably guilty for hadn’t she prayed every single day that she would lose this child? There was every chance she would do just that now. It was far too soon for it to be born and if it died it would be all her fault. She had never wanted it yet now that she knew it might die she finally realised that it wasn’t the baby’s fault. The poor little soul had never asked to be born, all the fault lay with its father but she had no chance to dwell on these thoughts for as another contraction built, Jia Li could hold back the screams no longer and her anguished cries echoed around the little bedroom.
Flora was openly crying as she watched her friend’s agony but all she could do was whisper soothing words of encouragement as Jia Li’s face turned purple with effort as she struggled to push the child into the world.
‘That’s it, easy now,’ Hattie told her as the pain subsided again. ‘Do exactly as I tell you on the next one. I think I can see the baby’s head.’
Flora quickly sponged Jia Li’s forehead with cool water and smoothed the luxuriant, damp black hair from her brow but then another pain hit her and Jia Li’s back arched from the bed.
‘Come on now … push … harder … you can do it!’ Hattie told her and with what little strength she had left, Jia Li gave one last tremendous effort and Hattie crowed triumphantly.
‘That’s it … I can see it … come on now, you’re so close.’
From her place at Jia Li’s side Flora watched a tiny head covered in thick black hair appear between Jia Li’s legs and seconds later the rest of the child was delivered with a whoosh.
‘It’s a little girl,’ Hattie shouted with delight but Jia Li was beyond hearing. She had fainted right away.
The baby was so tiny and beautiful that she took Flora’s breath away but her delight turned to fear when she realised that she wasn’t crying.
Hattie quickly cut the umbilical cord then lifting the infant she smacked its backside soundly as Flora anxiously looked on, secretly glad that Jia Li was unaware of what was going on. Still the child remained silent so now Hattie laid her on the end of the bed and after pinching the baby’s nostrils together began to gently blow into her mouth. She seemed to go on forever as Flora held her breath but finally, with tears in her eyes, Hattie rose and shook her head. She could do no more.
‘Stillborn,’ she said softly.
Tears sprang to Flora’s eyes as she stared at the little form. She looked so perfect. Perhaps she had been too perfect to live?
‘What shall we tell Jia Li?’ Flora whimpered as Hattie turned to deal with the girl.
Hattie shrugged. ‘The truth. It was just too soon for the baby to be born, the poor little mite.’ She frowned as she noticed the bloodstains on the sheets.
‘You’d best get Colleen to run for the doctor,’ she ordered as she pressed a towel between Jia Li’s legs to try and stop the flow of blood. ‘Tell him the mother is haemorrhaging and to get here as fast as he knows how!’
Flora was gone like a shot just as Colleen came back into the room. Her breath caught in her throat as she saw what was going on but after taking a deep breath she said calmly, ‘Oh sweet Holy Mother! What can I do to help?’
‘Pray,’ Hattie muttered. ‘For there’s only Him that can help her now!’
It was late that evening when Jia Li finally opened her eyes and the doctor declared that the worst was over.
‘Oh, t’anks be to God!’ Colleen muttered as she crossed herself. ‘I t’ought we were goin’ lose her for sure back there.’
Jia Li blinked and asked groggily, ‘Have I had the baby?’
‘Yes, love.’ Flora squeezed her hand as tears sprang to her eyes. She just couldn’t bring herself to tell Jia Li that the baby had not survived.
‘Wh-what is it … a boy or a girl?’
Hattie stepped forward and told her gently, ‘You had a little girl, but sadly she was born too soon and didn’t survive. I’m so sorry, dearie. The poor little mite never even drew breath but at least she’s in a better place now and she didn’t suffer.’
Tears began to spill down the girl’s face and soak into the pillow as she croaked, ‘Where is she? I want to see her.’
Hattie crossed to the drawer where the baby lay, washed and dressed in the tiny clothes Flora had bought for her.
‘She’s right here,’ Hattie said as she carried the babe to her mother and placed her in her arms. ‘I wouldn’t let the undertaker take her away until you’d seen her.’
Jia Li stared down into the face of her tiny daughter as a pain far worse than any she had endured during the birth stabbed at her like a knife.
‘I’m so sorry, leetle one,’ she said brokenly. ‘I never wanted you and so this is my punishment.’
‘Now that’s quite enough o’ that sort o’ talk, miss,’ Hattie scolded. ‘If anyone’s to blame it’s the bloke that accosted you in the alley an’ brought the birth on too soon.’
‘It was Huan,’ Jia Li said dully and Colleen and Flora glanced anxiously at each other. They hadn’t had time to think of anything but Jia Li all afternoon but now they worried what might have happened if Jimmy and Sam had managed to find him.
‘Right, now me an’ the girls are goin’ to go down an’ make a nice cuppa while you say goodbye to your little one,’ Hattie informed her and she ushered them all from the room. Both Colleen and Flora were softly crying and in that moment, Hattie realised just how very close the three girls were.
Once downstairs the doctor gave them a tired smile. ‘She’ll need lots of rest,’ he told them, ‘and good, nourishing food, as much as you can get down her, chicken soup and that sort of thing.’
‘I’ll see she gets it,’ Hattie informed him. ‘Thank you, doctor.’
He left then but soon after the undertaker arrived and Hattie went upstairs to fetch the tiny baby down to him. Gently prising her from her mother’s arms was one of the worst things she had ever had to do and Hattie knew she would never forget the moan of agony that escaped from Jia Li’s lips for the rest of her days.
Chapter Thirty-Two
It was a few nights after Jia Li had given birth to her stillborn daughter and Jimmy and Sam’s patience was rewarded when they spotted Yung Huan sauntering along the road with his hands in his pockets, whistling merrily as if he didn’t have a care in the world. They had been devastated when they heard that the little Chinese girl had lost her baby and ever since they had been out for revenge and had kept watch outside the laundry every night after work hoping for sight of him.
‘That’s him!’ Jimmy said and Sam nodded.
‘It certainly is an’ I’m thinking it’s time we taught him a lesson he won’t forget in a hurry, what d’you say?’
Keeping close to the shadows they silently followed him, and soon he turned into a dark alleyway that led down to the docks.
‘I bet he’s headin’ for the opium den,’ Sam muttered.
‘Then it’s up to us to make sure the low-life bastard don’t get there,’ Jimmy muttered through gritted teeth.
They quickened their pace and when a heavy hand landed on Huan’s shoulder and spun him about he almost jumped out of his skin and began to babble in Chinese.
‘Not so brave when you’re up against someone your own size, are you?’ Sam growled as he
landed the first punch. Huan fell heavily to the ground as they set about him, showing him no mercy. As far as they were concerned anyone who could harm a helpless woman deserved none. Huan cowered on the ground as kicks and punches rained down on him, and at one stage, he spat out a tooth. Suddenly, there was a sharp crack and Huan screamed in agony.
‘That’s enough,’ Sam said breathlessly. ‘We only want to teach him a lesson.’ He took Jimmy’s arm and both men faded into the shadows, leaving a whimpering Huan curled into a bloody ball on the cold ground.
Chapter Thirty-Three
‘Brr, it’s freezin’ out, so it is,’ Colleen groaned on a Sunday afternoon at the end of November as she pulled her gloves on. She was about to go and meet Will and wasn’t looking forward to walking about in the cold at all.
‘Why don’t you bring him back here then?’ Flora suggested for the umpteenth time.
‘Haven’t I tried to do just that a dozen times or more but he won’t come near the place,’ Colleen grumbled. She loved Will with all her heart and soul now but was a little concerned that their relationship was no further forward than it had been when she first met him back in July. She had told him from the start that she worked in a café with her two friends and all about her family back in Ireland but as yet he had still not told her anything about his own background whatsoever, which she was beginning to find a little worrying. Could it be that he was hiding something from her? she wondered.
Jia Li was still recovering from the birth of her baby, although at last she was growing a little stronger and appeared to be on the road to recovery. The doctor had told them that it would take some time because of all the blood she had lost and ten days on, Jai Li was still spending most of her time in bed.
Hattie had turned out to be a godsend to all of them and had helped to nurse Jia Li through the first terrible days as well as still doing the lion’s share of the cooking in the café. On top of that she had been helping Flora get the house next door ready to move into. Flora had bought some material which Hattie had sewn into curtains and they looked grand hanging at the newly painted windows. Ernie, Jimmy and Sam had done them proud and Flora couldn’t wait to move in there.
‘I wouldn’t be surprised if it didn’t snow soon,’ Hattie grumbled once Colleen had gone to meet Will. She’d taken to going round and relaxing with them on a Sunday. As she pointed out to Flora, it was better than being in her own place all alone if Ernie had gone out and Jia Li was always glad of her company. She had become almost like a second mother to all of them now.
While Hattie and Flora sat contentedly sewing cushion covers for the chairs with the material that was left over from the curtains, Jia Li slipped into a doze.
‘She’s looking a bit better now, isn’t she?’ Flora commented, glancing at her sleeping friend.
Hattie nodded in agreement. ‘She is so but she’s still got a long way to go, I fear.’
Flora gave her a sly little look before lowering her voice and saying, ‘None of the lads would tell us exactly what Sam and Jimmy did to Huan. Did Ernie say anything to you about it?’
Hattie sniffed before saying in a low voice, ‘Let’s just say, Jimmy and Sam don’t think he’ll be so keen to go about bullying innocent girls in the future. He got what was coming to him and that’s all you need to know.’
Flora looked anxious. ‘But what if he tells the police that Jimmy and Sam hurt him?’
‘He doesn’t know them from Adam and anyway, you don’t think they’d have been daft enough to do anything in broad daylight do you? It was a few nights after he hurt Jia Li before he got his comeuppance. They followed him down a dark alley one night on his way to an opium den and taught him a lesson I doubt he’ll forget.’
‘I see.’ Flora had little time to say more when the back door suddenly banged open so quickly that it slammed back against the wall and Colleen appeared all of a fluster. ‘You’ll never guess who I just bumped into,’ she said gleefully, waving her hand behind her. ‘I t’ought it was him, I never forget a face, so I took it upon meself to go an’ have a talk to him an’ here he is.’
A tall, dark young man appeared behind her and Flora too gasped. She hadn’t forgotten him either even though they had only ever met the once.
‘Bai!’ Flora rushed across the room and hauled him inside as if she was afraid he might disappear again. ‘Jia Li will be so thrilled to see you … we all are. Has Colleen told you what’s happened?’
‘She tell me everything,’ he answered regretfully. ‘But why Jai Li not tell me when I come see her before?’
‘I don’t know, we told her after you’d gone that she should have been honest with you. But anyway, she’ll be awake soon. In fact, I’ll go and wake her right now. I know she’d want me to. You can sit down here with her then and you can have a good talk. We can all go and sit upstairs so you can have some privacy.’
‘Not me, I’m late for Will,’ Colleen said with a twinkle in her eye. And then she was off again, she’d done her good deed for the day.
Flora meantime shot away up the stairs and appeared a few minutes later with Jia Li, who was looking very nervous.
Flora beckoned to Hattie and they discreetly left the room as Bai took a seat next to Jia Li and gently took her hand.
‘Who is that?’ Hattie whispered as Flora led her upstairs to the little sitting room there.
‘It’s Jia Li’s young man, or at least he was.’ Flora quickly told her all about why Jia Li had come to New York. She knew that she could trust her now and when she’d finished the story, Hattie nodded.
‘Eeh, let’s hope it all works out for ’em this time then, eh? Did you see the way the lad looked at her? He still loves her, it was written all across his face.’
With broad smiles on their faces they were only too happy to make themselves scarce. It was time to give the two lovebirds downstairs some privacy.
Although Colleen was a little late she found Will standing on the dock where they always met patiently waiting for her. His hands were blue with cold and his nose was glowing red as she hurried up to him full of apologies.
‘I’m so sorry I’m late,’ she gushed breathlessly. ‘But somethin’ wonderful has happened, so it has! I was on my way to meet you when I bumped straight into Bai. He’s Jia Li’s – one of my friends – young man … or at least he was …’ She hurried on to tell him all that had gone on and when she was done he shook his head.
‘Do you know that’s the first time you’ve ever mentioned either of your friends’ names? You’ve talked about your family at home and why you left but you never told me anything about either of the girls you live with. I didn’t know one of them was Chinese, or are they both Chinese?’
Colleen shook her head as she linked her arm through his and they began to amble along, trying to find somewhere they could get out of the wind. ‘Not at all, the other one comes from England, and you could have met them be now had you taken up their invitation to come to tea.’ Colleen had always been very discreet about both Jia Li and Flora because she knew they both wanted as few people as possible to know their whereabouts.
‘Anyway. Let’s just hope that Jia Li and Bai can sort themselves out.’ She quickly drew him away from making any more enquiries about Flora. ‘I told her from the start she should have been straight with him, so I did. I mean if she’d only been honest and told him the way the baby came about I’ve no doubt he’d have stood by her even if the poor little soul had lived. It’s terrible sad, to be sure.’
Will nodded in agreement. It was a sad story, the sort his mother would have read about in one of the romance books she had been so fond of. He could only hope that Jia Li and Bai would find their happy ending now. He felt sad then as he peeped at Colleen out of the corner of his eye. The wind was whipping her glorious red hair into a tangle of curls and with her sparkling emerald eyes and her cheeks rosy he knew that he could never love another girl as he loved her. But what future lay ahead for them? How could he stay with her when he was
nursing such a dark secret? And yet, on the other hand, how could he ever bring himself to leave her?
‘Look, there’s a tea shop open. Shall we go in out of the cold?’
Colleen’s words brought his thoughts sharply back to the present and squeezing her hand he led her inside. It was there that she dropped her bombshell as she sat spooning sugar into the coffee he had bought for her and staring thoughtfully off into space.
‘I’ve been t’inking …’ She licked her lips, obviously nervous. ‘That in the not too distant future I might go home to me mammy in Ireland.’
He was so shocked that he choked, causing some of the coffee from the cup he had been raising to his lips to slop all over the table.
‘You’ve been thinking what?’
A guilty flush stained her cheeks. ‘Well, the t’ing is, me mammy will find it hard to cope now me daddy has passed, so she will. Me little brothers will do what they can but I’ve no doubts the main o’ the work will fall on her shoulders an’ now me friends are doin’ OK in the café an’ they have Hattie to help ’em I could be a tremendous help to her.’ She stared at him, silently willing him to tell her that he loved her and would come with her, but all he did was stare down at the coffee stain spreading across the table.
‘I see,’ he said eventually and disappointment spread through her veins like iced water as she was forced to admit to herself that perhaps she had been right. He wasn’t as committed to her as she was to him. Yet still she clung to the hope that he might just be waiting for her to ask him, so taking a deep breath she went on tentatively, ‘The ideal solution would be for me to take a good strappin’ husband home w’it me who could do some o’ the heavier jobs on the smallholdin’.’
When he continued to simply stare at the table she knew that all was lost and she felt as if her heart was breaking. ‘Anyway.’ She forced herself to go on. ‘It’s been nice knowin’ you, but if I’m to be leavin’ for Ireland soon there’s no point in us meetin’ again, is there?’
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