His breath was catching in his throat. He was still staring at the child who looked like an inanimate doll except for the rapid blinking of her eyelids in the candlelight.
‘Is…is she left in the dark?’
‘God forgive us! Aye. We’ve got to leave her in the dark most of the time. We can only take her out when we know that the road’ll be clear for a few hours.’
‘’Tis terrible. ’Tis cruel.’ His voice was high.
‘I know that, lad. I know that, but what would you have us do? Bury her as he ordered? When Frank refused to do it he was for taking her down to the river himself, but Connie stepped in. She would bury her, she said. And that’s what she did, supposedly. Oh, what a to-do it was, but our Connie’s got more spunk than her da. But as I said, she’s grown, and what we’re gona do with her now, God alone knows. Anyway, this time I’ll leave the candle, for I must go down else that lot’ll be trying to find me.’
‘How…how long will you be?’
‘Not long. He’ll want you downstairs and out as soon as the coast’s clear.’
‘How d’you…how d’you get out without anybody seein’ you?’
She pointed to the top of the padded wall to the side of the door, and she said, ‘When anybody puts their foot on the outside landing that gives a tinkle. As for air, up there.’ She pointed to the high padded ceiling. ‘There’s a vent that lets into the chimney, and it’s a tall one, and if any noise got through it just sounded like the rooks in the trees beyond.’
‘He thought of everything, that man, didn’t he? But what use was a bell inside here?’
‘Well, I understand that the sound stopped her thrashing about, at least so I was told; it sort of calmed her for a little while. But it wasn’t all that effective because he told me’—she now thumbed towards the floor—‘that he saw his grandfather come out at one time with his ear almost hanging off. Oh, he’s to be pitied, for the only pleasure he seems to get in life now is cheating the customs. I daren’t think of the times he’s risked his neck. But they’ll have him one of these days. An’ you, lad, have nearly been the means of it. An’ here’s another time.’
‘If they catch you going out what’ll you say?’
‘Once I’m in the cupboard I can hear a mouse on those stairs, and if they were to come into the room then I’m at the old trunk in the corner taking out some of the mistress’s clothes for cutting up. But don’t worry about me, lad, only sit quiet, talk to her. She understands. She can say some words.’
‘What…. what d’you call her?’
‘Belle. Just Belle.’
As she pressed the spring in the mattress he turned in panic to her, saying, ‘You’ll come…you’ll come back quick, won’t you? Eeh! Look, I…I can’t stay in here.’
‘Now, now, lad; steady on. Of course I’ll come back, but if I didn’t, laddie, all you’ve got to do is to press the spring and the door will open. So there’s nothin’ to worry about. But talk to the bairn, comfort her, ’cos she’s not barmy or daft.’
Nevertheless, in spite of her words he almost yelled out when he watched the panel glide back as if it was on oiled hinges, then slip into place again and causing the candlelight to flutter just the slightest.
He stood as if transfixed staring down at the child; then he looked about him. He hadn’t far to look. The place was about eight feet long and five feet wide. The only articles in it were the mattress, an enamel chamber pot, a bucket and a tiny low table on which the candlestick rested.
His nose was wrinkled against the smell, but the air, though heavy, was breathable. He looked around the mattress-padded walls and, reaching out, he tried to put his fingers in between two of them, but they were so firmly packed he doubted he could insert even a fingernail. Then he looked at the thing in the corner again. He couldn’t yet put the name child to it. There were two dark blots in a small round face, the whiteness emphasised by the blackness of the hair surrounding it. The child was sitting motionless like a dummy; the black orbs seemed fixed on him. She had said, comfort it. How? How was he to comfort it? He was afraid of it; scared to touch it: as yet it still wasn’t really a bairn, even though his mind told him it was the baby who had been lying in the wash-basket the morning he had left this house all that time ago. But he still couldn’t move towards it.
Then the child made a sound. It wasn’t like ma or da but more like caw, like the sound a seagull made. Then she said it again, loud and clear this time; and now he recognised it as Con. The servant’s name was Connie.
When she held out her arms he very slowly dropped onto his knees by the side of the mattress pad, and the next minute he found himself hugged to the small body. At first the feeling made him shudder; then to save them both falling sideways he put one arm about her while supporting himself against the floor with the other. Now the small face was close to his, the tongue on his cheek as if kissing it or sucking at it. He heard himself say, ‘There, there. There, there.’ Then like a small animal burrowing into the flesh of its mother she snuggled her head into his neck and put her thin legs around the side of his waist, and then she became utterly quiet.
Oh, Ma. Ma. He found himself repeating the cry in his mind. He wished he was home: he wanted his ma to put her arms about him, as she had done in the bedroom last night. Running was one thing; he wasn’t really afeared of running, it was exciting in a way; but…but this was different, he was afeared now. And this poor bairn. How long would they be able to keep it in this place? It would go mad here, like the woman who was its great-grandmother. It wasn’t right. No it wasn’t. He should be brought up before the justices. But…but then he didn’t know anything about it; he thought it was dead. Well, it would have been better dead. But what when he found out, would he still kill it?
What was he to do?
Mind his own business.
He couldn’t mind his own business; he wouldn’t be able to sleep at night for thinking of this bairn in here.
He looked towards the candle. It was half down. He wished she would hurry up and get back. Yet she said he could get out when he wanted. Well, he wanted to now, the sooner the better. He went to unloosen the child’s arms from around his neck but it clung to him. He had a picture of the day when the men had flung the cat over the dockside with a piece of wood attached to its neck so it wouldn’t drown straight away. He could see its claws coming up and grappling with the wood which pressed it under the water. The men had laughed; all but Joe Armstrong, and he had knocked Bill Storridge into the water in the battle royal that followed. And Bill Storridge couldn’t swim. But he had been the one who had thrown the cat in. Joe Armstrong had hauled the cat out but wouldn’t give a hand to Bill Storridge, and Bill Storridge’s blokes had fought Joe Armstrong’s. They were always two warring factions working at either end of the quay, hitting out whenever they came together, mostly in the bars.
She was like the cat; she was still clinging tightly to him. But she was no weight; Lily, he imagined, could make four of her. He pulled himself to his feet, asking how long he had been in here. Well, he had been in here for as long as it took a candle to nearly burn itself out, and he just couldn’t be in here in the dark.
Oh no, by God, not that! Oh no! Not in this place in the dark because he, too, would start yelling out. And anyway in black dark he would go round in circles and he wouldn’t find that spring.
He made for it, reached up and, his fingers on it, he hesitated and looked back towards the low table and the candle about to gutter. Then screwing up his eyes, he pushed his finger on the spring. When the mattress slid quietly past him, he remained standing where he was for a moment. His first reaction was to tear the child from him and push it back into the room, but he couldn’t do it, he couldn’t push it back into that blackness where it must have lived for most of its life.
He was in the cupboard now, and he didn’t stop to put up his hand and press the door back but thrust open the cupboard door and stepped into the comparative light from the starlit sky coming throug
h the one small window in the room.
He stood gasping and hardly able to breathe for the child’s bony arms were constricting his gullet. Its face was still hidden in his shoulder, but he said to it, ‘It’s all right. It’s all right,’ and it was as if he was comforting himself for being out of that hole. Eeh! Dear God! He couldn’t believe this was happening to him. They wouldn’t believe it at home; they would say he was stretching it. But when they saw the bairn…He almost sprang from the room onto the landing. What was he talkin’ about? It was them downstairs that would have to have the bairn. And he would tell them they hadn’t to put it back in that hole else he would split on them. Aye, he would. By God, he would an’ all!
He had the opportunity of telling them this in the next minute or so when he stepped off the bottom stair into the hall for, there, Betty Wheatley and Connie were both hurrying from the kitchen doorway, and they both stopped dead in their tracks when they saw him. But before he could speak Betty had reacted and rushed forward, crying, ‘You should have left her there, lad. What’s up with you? He could be in at any minute. Oh God in heaven, what now? Here, give it to me!’
When she went to pull the child from Freddie’s arms the baby gave a high piercing cry, and Connie, putting her hand across her mouth, said, ‘Eeh! Ma! God Almighty! Did you hear that? She doesn’t want to let go; she likes him!’ Connie was pulling at her mother’s arm now. ‘It could be a way, a way out. Let him take her. She’d…she’d be safe across there an’ lost among the lot of them. We could send somethin’ now and again.’
‘No, no; you can’t; me ma’s got a job to keep goin’ as it is.’ He was yelling now.
‘Well, don’t let’s stand here. If he bursts in that door we’ll all be done for.’ Betty was pushing him now none too gently through the green-baized door, along the corridor and into the kitchen now where her husband exclaimed on an oath, ‘Christ Almighty! Are you mad, woman? Why did you let him?’
‘I didn’t let him. Where is he?’
‘He’s…he’s ridden over to Doctor Black’s, likely to see what’s happened there. But he expects to go visiting somewhere else because he told me to get the cart ready; I’ve got Prince in the shafts.’
‘Where’s he for?’
‘You ask me. I don’t know. But wherever it is it’s too far to take Jumbo because he’s been riding him on and off all day. But what’s up with you, woman? Do you want us all murdered?’
‘I’ve thought of somethin’. Let the lad take it across the water.’
‘Don’t be so soft.’ There was scorn in his voice. ‘How is a lad like that to account for a bairn in arms? The authorities would be on to it.’
‘Not if he took it into his house. They all live like rats.’
‘No, we don’t. We don’t live like no rats.’
‘All right, all right, you don’t live like rats; but you’re huddled together in one room.’
‘We’re not, we have two.’
‘Oh well, you have two. How many are there of you in the two?’
‘Seven.’
‘Well then, one more won’t make any difference, will it?’
‘Shut up, Ma. Go softly. Look, lad.’ Connie was bending down to him now. ‘If you could take her across with you, your mother, being a wise woman, would find some excuse to give the neighbours for it being there; an’ I’d come across every week, I promise, an’ bring you a shilling or so and a bag of food to help for her keep. It’ll more than help for her keep what I’d bring you.’
‘You know what?’ He looked from one to the other as he seemed to get worked up; then he stammered, ‘Yo…yo…you’re awful, the lot of you, keepin’ a bairn up…up in a mad room.’
‘Better than havin’ it buried alive or drowned in a sack,’ Frank Wheatley growled at him.
‘Shh!’ Connie held up her hand. ‘Did I hear the front door?’
They listened; then Betty said, ‘He wouldn’t come in the front door, he’d come into the yard with the horse, wouldn’t he? And oh, for God’s sake, shut her up; I haven’t heard her cry like that afore.’ Betty was pointing to the child now whose head was raised from Freddie’s shoulder. But lifting her hands, Connie commanded silence when she hissed, ‘Shh! I tell you there’s someone in the hall.’
‘Well, go and see.’ Her father thumbed towards the far door; and she moved immediately, only to stop at the far side of the table within arm’s reach of her mother; and now they both stared at their master standing within the doorway.
Freddie too was staring at the man, and for a moment he wanted to throw the child from him. Then he found his arms tightening about it. The child of a sudden had stopped crying; it too seemed to be looking at the man advancing down the room.
Roderick Gallagher stopped within two arms’ length of his housekeeper and his maid, and he looked between them to where the little runner stood with a child in his arms. The child was pale-skinned with great dark eyes and black hair. It didn’t seem to have grown or changed since the morning he threw it at his man and told him to bury it. He recalled that Frank had said, ‘Why not just smother it and bury it alongside its mother.’ But no; even dead, he wasn’t going to afford her that comfort. But when his man had said, ‘But you have no bairn to bury with her, master,’ he had told him that he had already thought of that: there were ways and means of obtaining a dead child from the workhouse or hospital under the guise of dissection. Anyway, even if Doctor Black had been in at the birth he wouldn’t, three days later, have noticed anything.
‘You bloody lot of twisters!’
As Gallagher sprang forward, Connie thrust an arm back to the table and, grabbing up a long wooden rolling pin, she brought it in a swinging arched movement towards him. Fortunately for her it missed his head and struck him on the shoulder, causing him to stagger sideways for a moment. He was screaming now like a madman, and so was Betty Wheatley, yelling at her husband: ‘Get them away!’ she yelled to him. ‘Use the cart. Get them away!’
As Frank grabbed Freddie by the coat collar and almost lifted him from the floor, he saw the two women fling themselves onto the man. Then, in the next second, it seemed he too was being flung into the cart, and as he fell on his side the child let out a startled cry. The next thing he experienced was being tossed from one side of the cart to the other while aiming to protect the child with one arm and trying to find something to hang on to with the other hand.
He knew when they had left the country road and taken the broader way into South Shields, for he wasn’t being tossed about so much. When they passed an inn he saw in the light from the lanterns that the child had its eyes wide open and its mouth was agape, but that it was no longer crying. It was still gripping him tightly, and every now and again he had to loosen its hands from the collar of his coat.
They were in the town now and he pulled himself up by the iron frame of the seat and yelled at the man, ‘Where are you goin’?’
And Frank turned his head and yelled back, ‘Where d’you think? To drop you nearest the river, then to make myself scarce or I’ll be done for the night.’
‘I…I don’t think I’ll…I’ll be able to get across. The tide’ll be high about now.’
‘That’ll be your lookout.’
‘No, it isn’t, mister. She’s not my lookout…this ’un I mean.’
‘Well, if you don’t want to see her end up in the river you’d better let her hang on to you. And as my lass said, you won’t lose by it. Although what’ll happen now since he’s found out God alone knows. Here’s one though that’s not waitin’ to see. So prepare yourself, laddie, I’m goin’ to dump you along the quay here.’
‘But…but the bairn, mister, what’ll I say to people?’
The horse had pulled to a stop now and Frank Wheatley called over his shoulder, ‘Say it’s your sister’s like: you’re mindin’ her bairn. It’s your sister’s. Well, here we are; I daren’t go any further. I’m goin’ to drop you now and leave this lot at the ostler’s. It’s where he usually leaves i
t. He’ll call for it the morrow; but he won’t find me there, no, by God! Anyway, I’ve had enough, years of it. So come on, get down, an’ look slippy.’
Easing himself to the end of the cart, Freddie dropped to the ground; but he had hardly time to relinquish his hold on the iron rail when he heard ‘Gee up, there!’ And by the dim front lamps of the cart he saw it disappear into the distance.
He stood for a moment peering about him. He knew where he was all right, but he’d have to walk some way to get to his sculler, and from what he could see of the river below the dock wall the tide was rising high.
Two figures passed him but took no notice of him or of what he was carrying. A group of youngsters came racing from a side alley; they were having some sport. There were lasses among them, but they took no notice of him either. There were shouts from the river from where a boat was likely being coaled.
Then he saw a dim shape coming towards him. It was a woman; and he thought his mind was going a bit funny again because he seemed to recognise her walk. And as she came nearer he saw she was carrying a lantern in one hand and a cudgel in the other, and he thought…But no; it was only a nightwatchman. He hadn’t got over the knock on his head. And that must be true because he was feeling tired again. Then the figure stopped in front of him and raised the lantern and said, ‘In the name of God! And’—there was a pause—‘What have you got there?’
‘Oh, miss, miss, am I glad to see you. Oh, it’s been awful, it has. You wouldn’t believe, miss. You were right. Aye, you were right. I should’ve told you. You were right. This is it.’
The Harrogate Secret (aka The Secret) Page 12