The Cockney Girl

by The Cockney Girl (retail) (epub)

  ‘There are plenty of opportunities for a girl like her, Ralph. It could be arranged so easily.’

  ‘Your interest in your employee, and a casual labourer at that, is commendable, Leonore, but, quite frankly, I don’t think you know what you’re talking about.’ Ralph leaned back in the big leather chair and linked his hands across his considerable waistcoated belly. ‘Not only would I find it very difficult, very difficult indeed, to simply let the girl free, but you’ll be doing her no favours by taking her on, even if it were possible.’

  Ralph Hamley swivelled his chair around and looked down on to the rolling parkland, seeking inspiration, the words to explain such complex matters to a woman. He turned back to face her.

  ‘You’ll just be giving her a taste of better things. She’ll see it as a reward for her behaviour. Simply encourage her to do more of the same. Believe me, does more harm than good to show kindness to girls like her, once they’ve gone wrong. You have to have an understanding of their inbred, diseased minds, their corrupt attitudes.’ He gestured to the shelves of books which lined the office. ‘It’s all in there. Believe me. I know about these things.’

  ‘Well, I have different beliefs,’ said Leonora coolly. ‘Poverty and ignorance, they’re the real diseases. The poverty of girls like her and the ignorance of men like you.’ She placed her still half-full cup on to the silver tray and stood up. ‘Now, if you wouldn’t mind arranging it, Ralph, I would like to see her for myself.’

  ‘You always were plucky,’ said Sir Ralph, grinning at Leonore. ‘Why not? Can’t do any harm.’

  He picked up his cigar from the crystal ashtray, took a leisurely draw at it, then blew the richly scented smoke up towards the elaborately beamed ceiling.

  * * *

  The walk to the dormitory through the long, bare corridors echoing with the anguished cries of men and women suffering from the unthinkable and unknowable secret terrors of the mind, made Leonore even more determined to rescue Jess and her future grandchild from that hell. And when she saw Jess, standing hollow-eyed and grey-faced by the mean, narrow bedstead in the seemingly unending row of similar cots, Leonore knew she would not rest until the girl was set free.

  ‘Hello, Jess.’

  ‘Answer Lady Worlington,’ snapped Mrs Roberts, who was furious at having been ordered to accompany this nuisance of a woman to the ward.

  ‘Don’t speak if you don’t want to, Jess,’ said Leonore gently. ‘And I won’t be needing you here, thank you, Matron. Sir Ralph said it was in order for me to be alone with Miss Fairleigh.’

  Mrs Roberts shook her head at the disruption to her routine, but knew she was powerless to question her superior. ‘I’ll be in my office if you need me, and there’s a warder at the double gate there,’ she said, pointing to the barred glass and wooden doors at the end of the room. ‘The other girls will be back in an hour,’ she said, consulting the fob watch pinned to her starched white apron. ‘You’ll have to be gone by then.’

  Leonore waited for the matron to leave, then spoke to Jess again. ‘Please don’t be scared to speak to me. I’ve come to help you.’

  Jess still did not respond, but just stood there, staring down at the bare stone floor, hands clasped in front of her.

  ‘I know you have no reason to trust anyone with the name of Worlington, but I assure you, Jess, I mean you no harm. I mean only to help you.’

  Jess shifted slightly, readjusted her position.

  ‘You look uncomfortable. Why don’t you sit down, Jess?’ said Leonore patting the bed. ‘Next to me.’

  Silently, Jess did so.

  * * *

  Leonore talked for almost half an hour. She told Jess about how she had spent her girlhood in London, and about her cousin, Amelia, who still lived there. It was only when she said that she found living in the country so very difficult at times that Jess reacted at all. It was barely perceptible, but Leonore noticed her raise her eyes disbelievingly.

  ‘I know my life must seem impossibly luxurious to you, Jess, but I know what it is like to feel alone,’ she said.

  Jess looked at her more openly, directly. Then she spoke for the first time. ‘I dunno why yer being so nice to me, Lady Worlington, but me mum’s always said that the kindness of strangers can mean more than the love of friends.’

  ‘Oh, Jess,’ said Leonore, her voice shaking with emotion. ‘How can I be a stranger when the baby you’re carrying has my blood? Is my own grandchild?’

  ‘Yer believe me then? About the baby’s dad?’

  ‘Yes, I believe you, Jess. Of course I do. I know the baby is Robert’s. I have never doubted it.’

  ‘So why d’yer let ’im do this to me then?’

  ‘I had no choice, Jess. No, don’t turn away from me, please. I am making no excuses – for any of us.’ She gestured around the forbidding room. ‘For any of this. I fully admit that it is my family’s fault you are in this place, but it was not Robert who put you in here, it was his father.’

  ‘It weren’t ’is father what did this to me, was it?’ said Jess, looking down at her swollen middle.

  ‘Of course not. What I meant was that Robert is…’ Her voice trailed off. They sat silently for a while, then Leonore spoke again. ‘I would have stopped my husband if I could, Jess, please believe me. If I had known how, I would have done anything I could to have stopped him. But I’ll make up for all of this. I won’t let this go on. I’ll get you out of here. I’ll take you back to the Hall.’

  ‘Aw, no yer don’t.’ Jess became agitated at the very thought. ‘Yer ain’t gettin’ me back there. Never. Yer ’eard the things them people said about me in the court.’

  ‘It’ll be all right, Jess, I promise. We’ll find a way for you to have the baby and to be safe from all of them. No one need even know you are there.’ Leonore looked around. ‘And it’s got to be better than this place for the baby.’

  ‘It ain’t that bad. There’s plenty lives in worse.’ Jessie still had her pride, even in there.

  ‘Have you seen where the babies are kept while the mothers work, Jess? I have. I have a friend who works here, you see. He has told me about the “system” they have for unwed girls with babies.’ Leonore shuddered involuntarily. ‘It is…’ she took a deep breath ‘… uncivilised. You would be used as free labour, just as you are now, but your baby would be left all day in their so-called nursery. Believe me, you would both be far better off at the Hall.’

  ‘All right then,’ said Jess flatly. ‘I’ll come, if that’s what yer thinks’s best for the baby.’ She stood up. ‘I ain’t got nothin’ to pack, they took me clothes away from me. So I can come right away. As I am.’

  ‘I didn’t mean immediately,’ said Leonore, flustered by Jess’s sudden decision.

  ‘Changed yer mind?’ she said, dropping listlessly back on to the bed. ‘I thought yer would. Must run in the family.’

  ‘No, Jess. No, I haven’t changed my mind,’ said Leonore, taking Jessie’s rough, worksore hand in hers. ‘I want you to come with me. To let me care for you. But,’ she searched for the right words, ‘it won’t be that easy. I have to convince the authorities here that it would be for the best.’

  ‘I see,’ said Jess, her voice dull with disappointment, yet resigned to being let down.

  ‘Don’t look like that, Jess. I promised you I would help and I will. I promise I will get you out of here.’ The sound of footsteps approaching made both women looked towards the doors. ‘The matron told me to go before the others came back,’ she said, touching Jess’s cheek. ‘We don’t want to upset anyone, do we? I’ve got to prove I’m a responsible person. That I’m making a sensible decision.’

  Jess nodded. ‘As yer like,’ she said.

  ‘And I’ll get a message to your mother telling her that I’m going to sort out this mess,’ she called as she opened the doors.

  ‘But me mum can’t read. I always read ’er letters for ’er,’ cried Jess frantically after the departing figure. A sudden feeling of loss overwh
elmed her. Not for the first time since she had been incarcerated, Jess wondered if she should have gone to Granny Rawlins’s after all. Could anything be worse than this?

  Leonore stood looking at her from the doorway, the gateway to freedom, the big, surly warder by her side.

  ‘Don’t worry, Jess,’ she said, ‘I’ll find a way of letting her know.’ Leonore smiled; she had thought of a solution to that small problem at least. ‘You have brothers, don’t you? One of them will be able to read it to her.’

  ‘No! Please.’ Jess was frantic. ‘Don’t do that. They’ll tell me dad. ’E mustn’t know.’

  ‘Look, I won’t do anything you don’t agree to, Jess.’ Leonore contemptuously brushed aside the warder’s attempts to take her arm, to escort her from the ward. ‘I’ll go and see her myself, if you’d prefer.’

  ‘Would yer?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘But not yet. Would yer wait? ‘Til yer’ve sorted it out. Like yer said.’

  ‘Whatever you say, Jess.’

  Jess watched Leonore walk away along the corridor. Would things really be easier now that she had someone who said she was her friend? She felt that things might come out right, somehow. They had to. She couldn’t stay here, not with the baby. She wouldn’t.

  * * *

  Leonore became a familiar figure at the county asylum, going once a week to visit both Jess and Sir Ralph Hamley.

  At first the visits were merely frustrating for Leonore, as Sir Ralph repeatedly refused to even consider reversing the court’s order of committal. But then, once Mrs Roberts realised that Leonore was only interested in Jess, that she didn’t intend using the laundry service, and that she represented no threat to her profits, the difficulties increased. The matron not only became less helpful, she became positively obstructive, often allowing Leonore to see only one of them, either Jess or Ralph, and sometimes allowing her to see neither. Mrs Roberts did not even bother to make plausible excuses to Leonore. The matron acted as the fancy took her, and playing games with Lady Worlington made a change from the everyday routine. But Leonore would not be deterred, even by the senseless barriers constructed by Mrs Roberts. She refused to give up on her mission. It didn’t matter that no one else would help; she would not renounce her responsibility to free Jess and her future grandchild.

  * * *

  One afternoon early in June, Leonore was arguing, yet again, with Mrs Roberts in the matron’s poky, depressing little office. She had long gone beyond the irritating pretence of sympathising with the matron’s difficulties.

  ‘And why, pray, can I not see her this time, Mrs Roberts? I suppose there has been a plague outbreak in here, or some other nonsense you’ve decided to concoct.’

  ‘She’s in the hospital ward actually,’ replied Mrs Roberts without once glancing up from her ledgers.

  ‘The baby?’

  ‘Mmm.’

  * * *

  Sylvia Rose Fairleigh was born on the 6th of June 1914. Rose for her grandmother, and Sylvia after a friend whom Leonore was always talking about to Jess. Leonore had been so kind to her, Jess was glad to be able to please her, even in such a small way.

  The birth had not been difficult, and mother and baby were both fit and healthy, but Jess was becoming increasingly distressed. Every day she had to be dragged protesting to the laundry, where she sweated from early morning until late each night. It wasn’t the work she minded, even though it was hard and relentless – East End girls were used to hard graft. It was leaving Sylvia that was so painful. Each morning she had to be forced to leave her baby with the other infants in the vast, bleak nursery. There they were left, without comfort, alone and screaming except for the breaks when their mothers were allowed to go and breastfeed them.

  Jess cried herself to sleep at night thinking about her baby, and about her mother who didn’t even know that Sylvia existed.

  Seeing Jessie’s agony, the decline in her spirit, and the lack of light in her once lovely eyes, Leonore entered a fresh phase of her campaign. She pestered Ralph Hamley with a renewed vigour.

  * * *

  No one, not the matron, not Leonore, not Jess, nor Ralph Hamley himself, would have been able to predict the day when Jess was finally released into Leonore’s keeping. It was the middle of July and Leonore was sitting in Ralph’s office waiting for him to return from a meeting in London. She was idly flicking through a newspaper she had brought with her; she had learnt to prepare herself for a long wait each week.

  ‘Good afternoon, Ralph,’ she said pleasantly as he entered the room.

  ‘Leonore.’

  ‘You seem agitated. I hope you’re not going to be difficult with me again.’

  ‘Please, Leonore, not today. I have serious matters to consider.’

  ‘And what can be more important than the welfare of one of your charges, Ralph?’ asked Leonore sharply.

  ‘If you must know, Leonore,’ said Ralph, flopping down exhausted into his chair, ‘the outbreak of war. That is what is more important than some bit of a girl from the London slums.’

  ‘Is that all?’ Leonore tossed her newspaper on to the desk in front of him. ‘If you’ve been reading The Times lately, you’d think war had already broken out.’

  ‘It almost has, I’m afraid.’

  Leonore studied his face carefully. He was serious. ‘You mean it, don’t you, Ralph?’

  ‘I’m surprised you don’t know about it yourself with those sons of yours,’ said Ralph. ‘If they’re like most young men I’ve met lately they’ll be completely overexcited by the whole ugly business. Relishing the prospect of being heroes. A chance to show Germany that Britannia still rules the waves and all that.’

  His sarcastic tone alarmed Leonore. She needed Ralph on her side. He would be a very dangerous enemy. She had to lighten the atmosphere. As she avoided discussing her own family whenever possible, she enquired about Ralph’s instead. ‘Why is the possibility of war of such concern to you personally, Ralph? You have only daughters.’ Leonore tried a wide smile. ‘And I do not wish to be impertinent, but you are hardly soldiering age.’

  ‘The war is no longer merely a possibility, Leonore,’ he answered wearily. ‘It is a matter of when it will begin, not if.’

  He paused to take a cigar from the humidor on his desk. Leonore watched him go through his well-practised habit of cutting and lighting its end. The routine pacified him.

  ‘I have been instructed today – this is, of course, in confidence.’ He looked at her through the blue clouds of smoke which curled lazily between them.

  ‘Of course, Ralph.’ Leonore frowned. He really was very serious indeed.

  ‘Good. Well,’ he sighed loudly, ‘this asylum is being requisitioned. As from next week, work – secret work, mind,’ he emphasised, pointing his cigar at her, ‘is beginning here. We are being turned into a military hospital, whether we like it or not.’

  Leonore looked puzzled. She had been following the interminable newspaper articles about the German threat, of course – everyone had – but what had all this to do with the hospital?

  ‘Near the Channel, you see. Word is that Belgium might be the scene of some pretty rough fighting.’

  ‘Belgium?’ Leonore almost laughed with relief. ‘Surely, Ralph, we won’t get involved to that extent?’

  ‘If we want to sort this lot out as quickly as possible, then there are going to be some casualties. We have to be prepared.’

  ‘It doesn’t seem possible on a glorious day like this to be speaking of war. No, Ralph, I can’t believe it.’ As if on cue, a blackbird, perched in the tall elm close to the open window, burst into an enchanting trilling song. ‘And what will this mean for the people in the asylum, Ralph? What will happen to them?’

  ‘Most of them will be shifted inland, to other institutions. A few will be lodged out to locals as labourers and domestic…’

  When Leonore clapped excitedly, Ralph did not bother to finish the sentence.

  ‘I’ll sign her over
to you first thing Monday morning.’ He raised his hand to still her protests. ‘Can’t do it before then. I’ll be doing it unofficially as it is, and if Mrs Roberts becomes suspicious, well, she’ll never get out. Matron won’t want to lose one of her laundry workers.’ Ralph almost smiled. ‘I’ll miss these meetings, Leonore.’

  Leonore didn’t go to see Jess, but, leaving the asylum immediately, went straight to the gardener’s cottage at Worlington Hall.

  * * *

  ‘Oh m’lady,’ said Mrs Garnett, bobbing politely and wiping her flour-covered hands on her crossover pinafore. ‘I thought you were my husband home for his dinner.’

  ‘Don’t let me keep you from your baking, Mrs Garnett. I’m not here to disturb you. I’ve come to ask a favour.’

  Leonore sat at the table and put her proposition to Mrs Garnett while the amiable middle-aged woman got on with her kneading, rolling and cutting. The gardener’s wife listened patiently, not speaking until she was satisfied that Leonore had finished.

  ‘I don’t want to speak out of turn, Lady Worlington,’ said Mrs Garnett, as she took a tray of scones from the shining black-leaded range and set them down on the long deal table. ‘But I don’t see as how I can have that girl here in the cottage. There’s enough talk in the village about our Milly still.’ She sat down at the table, facing Leonore. ‘What would it look like? Stranger in the place. And with a baby and all.’

  ‘I understand your concern, Mrs Garnett, I honestly do, but it wouldn’t be like that. I should have explained. You see Jess’s presence here will be a secret. You’re very secluded, that’s one of the reasons I thought of you. No one need ever know she’s here.’ Leonore looked down into her lap. ‘Unless you or Garnett told them, of course.’

  ‘We’re not gossips in this house, m’lady,’ Mrs Garnett said as she eased the scones, one by one, from the tray on to a cooling rack.