Magnus wrote in a textbook style that made him sound old-fashioned and pompous. She tried to picture him in Edinburgh in the house he had described for her, the high, elaborate ceilings, tall windows with tapestry curtains and thick tasselled swags to hold them back. Only yards from Magnus’s room, Edinburgh Castle loomed over the city, impregnable on top of an old volcanic rock.
I am under the care of Mr Meiklejohn, a famous Scottish physician, and am receiving a course of treatments and tests. They are not painful. They upset my digestion but I have spent no time confined to bed here. You ask how we amuse ourselves at weekends. I am afraid it is not very adventurous of me but I spend hours in my room, catching up with schoolwork. It is expected of me. My uncle expects Ian to follow him into medicine and Rowena wants to be a nurse. Ian does everything well. He is captain of rugby and deputy head boy. I shall miss him when he goes to medical school.
Lily looked round the room. Half an hour had passed and they were well into the swing of things. The prefect sat at the desk, from where she could see the cloakroom and over the top of the frosted glass between the classrooms, into the medical room itself. Every so often she’d look up and call out a name, and as the girl went up to her she’d hand her a brown envelope and watch her go into the cloakroom to undress. Then, at a signal from next door, when that girl had been examined, she’d call to the next one on her list.
I am being strongly influenced by my uncle, who says that we are not on this earth simply for our own pleasure and insists, ‘You have to put something back in, for all the advantages life has given to you.’ One day I shall run the mill alongside Father, but I believe that God has a purpose for us all. I am afraid my contribution to His work is not going to come from deeds of valour. I have not been granted the stamina but I shall try always to do what is right and true. I want to be a good man and do good things.
Another half-hour passed. Doreen went in and came back looking pleased with herself.
‘Lily Stanway,’ the prefect called out at last, and she went to the front and was handed an envelope. In the cloakroom she put it down on the lift-up long box under the coat rack. But before she could take her clothes off, the prefect put her head in at the door and said, ‘Wait a minute. They aren’t ready. I‘ll tell you when to get undressed.’
Lily sat down, her back to the classroom, and waited. She picked up the envelope and turned it over, wondering what kind of records a school might keep. Did they say if you were stupid or clever? Did they say if you had ever had nits or impetigo?
There was no sign of her being called. It was not allowed, but Lily slipped the contents of the envelope out, a little way. Inside was a big pink-coloured card, and attached to it, three long white sheets of paper. She took it right out. On the white sheets were listed all her marks, from every little test taken from the age of five, when she had gone to Beech Lane School.
Lily lifted the white sheets over the pink card; the medical record card. There were columns and in the columns, in different handwriting, were the records of all the medicals she had ever had. There were hieroglyphics, numbers over other numbers like fractions, and several single capital letters and words in Latin abbreviations.
At the top of the card it said ‘Lily Isobel Stanway’. Then, ‘Jordangate, Macclesfield. Born 21 March 1919’.
Under that, ‘Mother: Miss Elsie Stanway’.
Underneath … She stared. She froze.
Underneath it said: ‘Father unknown‘.
What could it mean? She had a father. Tommy Stanway, Mam’s first cousin from Stockport was her father. There was a photograph of him on the kitchen mantel shelf, to prove it. Lily stared again, hoping to find something else, something to explain it. There was nothing else, except that Mam was named as Miss, not Mrs Elsie Stanway. Miss Elsie Stanway! Father unknown!
She shoved the cards back into the envelope. Horror had become disbelief, and slowly that disbelief was sickeningly turning into the terrible realisation of her state. Everything fell into place, the evasions and Mam’s refusal to talk about her father.
She went through the medical in a state of shock. The doctor merely glanced at the card. He would come across them every day. She was just another little illy-jittie. He added a few more marks, patted her on the head and sent her over to the nurse. And forever afterwards the smell of carbolic lotion would bring that afternoon back to her with shocking clarity. The nurse took a comb from the carbolic solution and slowly lifted and parted her hair, inspecting every strand.
Lily wanted to scream. She was a bastard! Mam had never married. They had lied – Mam, Grandpa and her trusted Nanna, who had taught her the need for truth. Her arms and legs shook.
‘Are you cold?’
‘Yes.’
‘All right. Return and get dressed. Clean head.’ The nit-nurse wrote on the vile pink card that told of her shame and, unsmiling, dismissed her.
Lily went back to the cloakroom. It was all very well for Mam to say nobody knew anything about her secrets. Lily had discovered the truth, as had at least two more people: the doctor and the nit-nurse. That was as well as Mam, Nanna and Grandpa.
And as she sat at the desk there came the realisation that there was at least one other. A child must have a father. She knew now how it came about. She’d seen Nanna’s cats mate and give birth, seen the scarlet-combed cockerel crowing pride in his hens. Nanna had told her everything – and said that it was the same with people, only better, because God had made people better than animals. It was because of human love that people mated and babies were conceived and born. She could not concentrate on The Pilgrim’s Progress. She wanted to cry. She couldn’t sit here. She had to get out into clean, fresh air. All at once, she jumped up and barged to the front.
‘I don’t feel well,’ she said to the prefect. ‘I’m going …’
Then, before anyone could stop her, she dashed into the cloakroom, grabbed her coat and went out into the freezing street, away from the hateful official records. She ran like the wind down Byrons Lane, over the main road and rounded a corner into Pitt Street. Then she leaned against a house, facing the wall.
Lily Stanway! You took the name of your father, not your mother. Her father was not Tommy Stanway. If she were brave she would demand the truth from Mam. But how could she ask if Mam had been a bad lot when she was young? It was always the girls who did wrong. The man was never to blame. Girls who let men do it to them were called trollops by respectable women.
Suppose Mam said she had never wanted her? Nobody wanted a child born out of wedlock. There were girls who were whispered about – ‘easy meat’, girls who disappeared from Macclesfield in disgrace, to have their babies given away or put into homes. The girls came back, pitied by some and talked about by all – an encumbrance to their parents, with no hope of marriage, their lives ruined. But Mam had gone to great pains to give Lily a respectable background. Round and round the questions went, and always they came back to the central mystery of ‘Who was her father?’ As she went through the windy, ice-cold streets, holding her coat tight against herself, she tried to imagine who he might be. Did she have any of his features? No, she looked like Mam. Was he clever? Was he alive?
A shiver ran through her when she thought of it. She had to stop again and pretend to look in a shop window, but she could barely see for the blurring tears that blinded her. What if he were alive? What if she passed him in the street every day? What sort of a father would be able to see her and not let on? He could not be the sort of man she’d want as a father; a good man who protected his child. She could not bear to think that he was alive and must know how she had always longed for a dad. He must be dead – killed perhaps in the war, before they had time to marry.
She reached the house. Mr Leigh’s motor car was outside, and for once she was glad. She could not call herself a coward for not demanding the truth in front of Mr Leigh.
They were in the kitchen. Mam’s face was flushed with drink. Lily sat down on a hard chair at the table, wi
th shivers running from the back of her neck down her spine.
Mr Leigh stood up, put out his hand and in his light, insincere voice said, ‘Lily dear. I haven’t seen you for weeks.’
She pretended not to see his hand. ‘Hello,’ she said coldly.
Mam had not noticed anything amiss. ‘I think we’ll tell Lily the sad news, Hah-d.’ She said quickly, ‘Poor Mr Leigh has lost his wife. Mrs Leigh died in a Southport nursing home after a long illness.’
She made it sound like a newspaper announcement. ‘Oh,’ Lily said. Then since they were both silent, waiting for more, ‘I am sorry.’
Neither of them seemed the least bit sorry, and the whole scene and their excited manner was making her agitation worse. She wished she dared tell Mam to come to the bedroom and give her the facts. She couldn’t. They were talking about where might be the best place for Mr Leigh to settle – Southport, Macclesfield or Manchester? His poor wife was not cold in her grave. She wanted to remind him of that, but what she heard herself saying was, ‘I don’t feel well. I’m going upstairs for a lie-down.’
She ran upstairs and threw herself on to the bed, wallowing in self-pity. On Friday she’d go to Lindow and make Nanna tell her the truth.
The following day they were sent home from school because of the bad weather. The boiler had gone out overnight and pipes had frozen and burst when the furnace was lit again. Lily kept out of Mam’s way, cleaning the kitchen, tidying the workroom and her bedroom, her brain whirling with all the questions, wanting to cry for herself and the horror of it all, wishing she could rise above the feelings of shame that kept coming over her.
ln the afternoon, when she could not stand her thoughts any longer, Doreen came to the house. Mam showed her into the kitchen but Lily couldn’t pretend. ‘What have you come round for?’ she said, with such resentment that Mam rebuked her, ‘Now then, our Lil.’
Doreen threw a sweet, respectful glance at Mam. ‘You are a Silly Lily!’ She gave that mirthless and explosive laugh. Mam was trying to keep her face straight. Doreen said, ‘Your mam’s going to make my summer frocks.’ She opened her coat, put her hands on her hips and admired her well-developed bust. ‘I’m getting bigger in all the right places.’ She made a taunting face, as if her figure were something to boast about.
Lily raised her eyebrows and said, ‘Huh!’, hoping it meant something.
Mam said, ‘You are much too young to be talking this way, Doreen.’ She frowned and without saying more went into the shop.
There was more to Doreen’s visit. Lily said, ‘You haven’t only come for that. What else do you want?’
Doreen took off her coat and put it over a chair. ‘Are you going to ask me to sit down? Offer me a cup of tea?’
They had an enormous kettle, always at the ready on its hinged trivet over the fire. There were clean cups on the table and, seeing nothing else for it, Lily took down the tea caddy and earthenware pot from the fireside shelf.
Doreen had come to stand by her elbow, looking to the door and back to her. She tapped Lily’s arm and whispered, ‘You’ll never guess who’s got a girl into trouble. Who’s put Mollie Leadbetter up the spout.’
‘Put her where?’ Was she being stupid? ‘Who … ?’
‘Ray Chancellor!’
‘Trouble? What sort of trouble?’
Doreen’s horrible laugh never spread to her eyes, but the eyebrows were lifted to heaven. ‘You don’t know?’
Lily filled the tea pot, resigned to having to listen. ‘No, I don’t.’
Doreen jeered, ‘No wonder everyone calls you Silly Lily.’
‘Everyone doesn’t,’ Lily said. ‘You do.’
‘Never mind.’ Doreen was all-knowing. ‘Getting a girl into trouble means giving her a baby.’
The metallic taste came into Lily’s mouth. She tried to conceal the trembling in her hands by pouring the tea, while Doreen repeated, ‘You know about babies? What men and women do? Sectional intercourse?’
‘Course I know. Course I do!’ Lily did not know it by its proper name of Sectional Intercourse, but she knew all about having babies. ‘What has it to do with Ray Chancellor?’
Doreen was exasperated. ‘He’s been a bad boy!’ Then, seeing Lily had not grasped it all, ‘A dirty lad! He’s done what he shouldn’t. He’s done it to Mollie Leadbetter. Mollie Leadbetter’s going to have a baby.’
‘No!’ Lily’s insides tightened. Her hands shook as she pushed a cup across the table to Doreen.
Doreen’s lips tightened. ‘Yes! Albert Leadbetter went to see Frank Chancellor.’
Lily took exception to Doreen’s speaking about adults as if she were on familiar terms with them; calling Mr Leadbetter, that fierce little man who clumped about on a surgical boot, Albert. Doreen’s familiarity was nowhere near as shocking as what she was saying, but Lily could not help but ask, ‘Why do you call grown men and women by their Christian names behind their backs? You call Mam Elsie. She never said you could. You call Mr Chancellor Frank. Now Mr Leadbetter’s Albert. Why?’
Doreen gave a long sigh and carried on with her story. ‘Mr Leadbetter told Mr Chancellor that Ray has to marry their Mollie.’
Lily tried to sound casual. She dared not let Doreen see the turmoil she was in. ‘Are they going to marry, then?’
Doreen was filled with importance. ‘Frank … Mr Chancellor said, “It can’t be my son. Ray wouldn’t bring our name down. Ray’s only a schoolboy. Seventeen. The baby could be anyone’s.”’
Lily’s voice had gone down to a whisper as her stomach knotted again. ‘What’s going to happen?’
‘Mollie Leadbetter’s going to have to get rid of it.’
‘How d’you get rid of it?’ Lily was terrified Mam might come in.
‘No wonder you’re Silly Lily.’ Doreen took a sip of her tea. She smiled as she imparted it all. ‘They are going to tie her legs up in the air so she can’t move and then they push a long steel thing up her, inside her until it comes loose. Until she loses the baby.’
Lily wanted to be sick. ‘Who told you all this?’
‘I’m pally with Nellie Plant.’
Lily had heard about the friendship. ‘What’s that to do with it?’
‘Nellie told me all about it. She tells me anything if I’ll go to the back door of The Shakespeare for her for a jug of ale.’ She laughed at the thought. ‘She can’t hold her tongue when she’s drunk.’
‘Does your mam let you go round to Nellie Plant’s?’ was all Lily could think of to say.
‘Don’t talk daft!’ Doreen said in a scornful voice. ‘I tell them I’m at your house. Stopping in with you. Nellie told me how they do it. It’s called a bortion. She’s had two done but she won’t say who she’s had sectional intercourse with.’ Doreen was relishing every minute. ‘Albert Leadbetter’s blaming Ray Chancellor and saying it will be all over the papers and then what? Frank Chancellor says it wasn’t Ray. Ray Chancellor says it wasn’t him. Mollie Leadbetter’s mother and father have to find twenty-five pounds to send their Mollie to a doctor in Manchester for a bortion.’
Doreen drank her tea with genteel sipping noises. Lily held her cup between ice-cold palms, trying to believe this was not happening to poor Mollie Leadbetter, trying not to think about this other terrible end to an unwanted child. ‘How did you hear about it?’
‘I heard my dad telling my mam.’
‘When is it going to happen? The bortion?’
‘Today,’ Doreen said. ‘Mollie’s gone to Manchester.’
Doreen had to be lying, but … ‘You saw Mollie and Ray Birchenough kissing, didn’t you?’ Lily said.
Doreen’s expression was one of sheer pleasure. ‘I saw them doing it. Last November.’
She had to be lying. Lily said, ‘You couldn’t have. You’ve never been to their houses at night …’
Doreen exploded, splattering tea all over the table. ‘They don’t do it in the house at night, you great … !’
‘Shut up!’ Lily did not want to listen. S
he couldn’t bear any more of it. ‘Please, shut up.’
Doreen stood and glared, but her eyes were eager and her words came fast and scornful. ‘I’m telling you, Lily Stanway. They were doing it standing up. They were by the Bollin, beyond the gennel in Spring Gardens. Under the railway bridge. Mollie’s stockings and knickers were down round her ankles. Ray had one hand under her skirt. Mollie’s jumper was up round her neck and he was playing with her titties. Mollie liked it. She was laughing and wriggling.’
‘Don’t, Doreen! I don’t want to hear!’
But Doreen would not be stopped. ‘Then he pushed her legs apart! Like this!’ Here Doreen stood with her toes turned out, knees wide to demonstrate. ‘And he dropped his trousers down. His behind was bare and he took his thing in his hand and pushed it hard up inside her.’
Lily felt the blood drain from her face. ‘Don’t tell me any more!’
Doreen’s eyes were glittering. Her face was pink with excitement. ‘He was hurting her. Making her cry out, “Don’t do that! No! Ray. No!” That’s what she said, “No, Ray! No.” She was crying and making a big, long, wailing noise and calling out for her mammie. “Oh, Mammie!” He took no notice and went on faster, making horrible grunting noises and pinning her against the wall so she couldn’t get away. And he said, “Shut up!” He put his hand over her mouth to stop her crying until he’d done with her.’
And Lily was crying; crying and trying to control herself in case Mam came in and asked why.
Doreen wiped her mouth with her sleeve. ‘They never saw me.’ She picked up her coat and went out of the kitchen, high and mighty in her knowledge, and then Lily heard her in the shop, being sweet and respectful to Mam before she went home with the pattern books.
She hated Doreen then. Doreen must be making it up. Doreen and she were not allowed out on to the streets at night, so how could she have followed anyone in the dark? She couldn’t have seen anyone doing those things. There was one single gas lamp on the other side of the Bollin. It would be pitch black under the railway bridge. Nobody could see anything. Ray Chancellor would have been at school in Edinburgh last November. And even if Doreen had followed a couple of lovers on a December night, what kind of girl was she to make up wicked lies about Ray Chancellor? What kind of a girl would spy on poor, half-witted little Mollie?
A Daughter's Shame Page 16