A Wise Child Read online

  A Wise Child

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  For Ted and all our family, with love.

  Chapter One

  Foghorns boomed eerily from the ships in the River Mersey and the November fog swirled around the tiny terraced houses close to the Liverpool docks. In the bedroom of the end house of a terrace a girl lying on the bed suddenly cried out and an old woman turned up the wick of the oil lamp.

  The light fell on the girl’s white face and large terrified eyes and when the old woman bent over her she gasped, ‘Oh Janey, I’m so frightened.’

  ‘No need. It won’t be long now,’ Janey said and the girl began, ‘I don’t mean—’ but she was interrupted by the pain. She closed her eyes and clenched her teeth, pulling hard on the roller towel tied to the bedrail at the foot of the bed.

  When the pain receded she opened her eyes and whispered timidly, ‘I mean – it coming early. If only I was sure it was Sam’s baby.’

  The old woman shrugged. ‘Won’t make no difference, Nellie. Could be Sam’s early or Leadbetter’s late but who’s to know? Sam hasn’t got no mother or sisters to be counting up the months for him and the other fellow doesn’t know nothing about it.’

  ‘I wish – I wish I’d told Sam about Mr Leadbetter,’ Nellie murmured and Janey said sharply, ‘Now don’t start that again. Keep your mouth shut and don’t spoil all I done for you.’

  ‘I know, Janey,’ Nellie said weakly. ‘It must be Sam’s though, mustn’t it? It’s nearly ten months since – since Mr Leadbetter did that to me.’

  ‘Aye and only eight months since you was married to Sam,’ Janey said grimly. ‘And don’t you forget it was me fixed that for you. You’d’ve been in Queer Street without me, with your ma dead and your da jumped ship in America. No bloody money coming and the state you was in an’ now you’re whingeing wanting open your bloody mouth to Sam. I should’a let you get took to Ann Fowler’s Home for Fallen Women.’

  Nellie had turned her head on the pillow, tears trickling from her eyes as the old woman ranted at her. She’s talking as though she thinks the baby’s Leadbetter’s, Nellie thought, but she felt too weak to argue with the old woman.

  The pain came again and again and with each bout she grew weaker, yet the birth seemed as far off as ever. Suddenly there was a clatter of boots on the stairs and when Janey opened the bedroom door a young boy said breathlessly, ‘Mrs Nolan told me to go for the nurse and she said she’d be here in a minute. Is our Nellie all right?’

  ‘Yes. Maggie Nolan wants to mind her own business,’ Janey snapped. ‘Sadie McCann can’t tell me nothing for all she calls herself a midwife. Have you seen Sam?’

  ‘He’s in the Volunteer with Charlie West and some mates off an Elder Dempster just docked. He told me to tell him when it’s been born and he can come home,’ the boy said. Janey thrust her face close to his. ‘Don’t you go for him until I tell you. D’you hear me now, Bobby?’

  ‘All right,’ Bobby muttered, trying to peer past her to see his sister but she shut the door firmly and went back to the bed.

  ‘Bobby says Sam’s in the Volley with some mates. I’ll make sure he’s too fuddled to do any counting before I send for him,’ she sniggered.

  Nellie said nothing. She seemed to have drifted too far even to hear Janey, but the next moment there was a commotion downstairs, and a buxom midwife bounced upstairs and into the bedroom.

  She seemed to take in the situation at a glance and her face grew red with anger as she examined the exhausted girl. ‘Why wasn’t I sent for before this?’ she demanded, as she stood with one hand on Nellie’s swollen stomach and the other on her pulse.

  She turned away from the bed to whisper angrily to Janey, ‘She’s very weak. How long has she been in labour?’

  ‘A while off and on,’ Janey said evasively. ‘She’s so little and thin and she hasn’t been able to keep nothing down for months, that’s the trouble.’

  ‘There’s something wrong,’ the midwife said. ‘I might have to get the doctor.’ She turned back to the bed as another contraction convulsed the girl’s body and gently wiped her face. ‘It’s all right, Nellie love,’ she soothed her. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll look after you.’

  Mention of the doctor seemed to have alarmed Janey and she began to sidle towards the door.

  ‘Where are you going?’ the midwife asked sharply.

  ‘She doesn’t need me now you’re here. It’s got nothing to do with me. I’m only the lodger,’ Janey muttered.

  ‘Stay where you are,’ the nurse snapped. ‘The doctor might want to talk to you.’

  Nellie moaned weakly as another contraction began and the midwife said in a different tone, ‘Come on now, love. Don’t fight the pain, Nellie. Go with it. It’s a big one. Now, Nellie, now, love. Push hard, bear down hard, love.’

  Nellie tried to obey and as she cried out the baby’s head appeared. The umbilical cord which should have been his lifeline was around his tiny neck, huge and engorged, throttling him as he was thrust into the world.

  The midwife slipped her finger beneath it and with an expert flick jerked it over his head. The child emerged blue and apparently lifeless but the midwife’s care was chiefly for the mother. Janey lifted the tiny body and placed him on the cold top of the rickety washstand, pushing aside the basin and ewer, as the nurse worked swiftly with Nellie.

  The midwife glanced round at the child then said urgently to Janey, ‘Here, you finish clearing up,’ and going to the door she yelled, ‘Bobby, bring me hot water in the panmug, quick.’ Swiftly she poured cold water from the ewer into the basin, then plunged the baby’s body into it.

  The boy stumbled upstairs with the panmug, steam rising from it, and the nurse indicated the space beside the bowl. She tested the hot water with her elbow then plunged the child’s body into it then back into the cold water. Over and over again she repeated the process, only pausing at intervals to smack the tiny body.

  ‘Don’t, don’t,’ Nellie whimpered, but the old woman watched silently. The nurse seemed to be tiring, her movements becoming slower, then she held the child up by his heels and gave him a last hard despairing smack.

  A thin reedy cry broke from the little boy and Janey exclaimed, ‘Bloody hell, it’s alive!’

  Nellie held out her arms eagerly, but the midwife slapped the child again then laid him down on the bed and rubbed strongly at his body.

  Only when the child’s breathing had become regular and some pink colour ha
d crept into his skin did she wrap him in a blanket and place him in his mother’s arms.

  ‘Isn’t he lovely,’ Nellie said, a smile on her tired face as she cuddled her son. She looked up at the midwife. ‘Thanks Nurse. Thanks very much,’ she said fervently.

  A pleased smile spread over the midwife’s face as she pulled down her sleeves and buttoned her cuffs. ‘Well, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t,’ she said. ‘He should be all right now, but he must be kept warm.’

  A drawer had been made ready as a makeshift cradle and the midwife took the baby from Nellie. ‘I’ll put him in this while I have another look at you and make you comfortable,’ she said, ‘but then you’d better keep him in bed with you. He needs the warmth of your body.’

  Janey was grumbling to herself as she pottered about collecting the soiled bedding. The nurse winked at Nellie but only said, ‘Another boy! My word, 1920 has been the year for boys. I’ve hardly delivered any girls. Dr Wilson says it’s to make up for all the lads killed on the Western Front.’

  ‘Their poor mothers,’ Nellie whispered.

  ‘Yes, you feel for them when you’ve got one of your own,’ the nurse agreed. She had finished examining and making Nellie comfortable and she washed her hands then lifted the baby back into the bed.

  ‘Keep him close to you but be careful you don’t overlay him,’ she said. Nellie kissed the baby and the nurse said gently, ‘Don’t be thinking about the soldiers now. That’s something you won’t have to face with your lad, Nellie. That was the war to end wars.’

  Nellie tried to smile but her eyes were closed and the nurse looked at her with concern. The girl’s lips were almost bloodless and there were purple shadows beneath her eyes.

  The midwife tucked the bedclothes around the mother and son and said quietly, ‘Don’t try to feed him yet, Nellie. Just rest. I’ll come back later.’

  She picked up her bag and went downstairs where she met Bobby, who said eagerly, ‘I heard it cry. Will it be all right now? Will our Nellie be all right?’

  ‘Yes, as long as she’s kept warm. Take the oven shelf up for the bed, Bobby, and put a brick to warm in the oven for later on. Sam’s home from sea, isn’t he?’

  ‘Aye, paralytic drunk somewhere,’ Janey grumbled. ‘I don’t know whether you done her a good turn or the child either. God knows what’s in front of it.’

  ‘It’ll take its chance same as the rest of us,’ the midwife said calmly. ‘She’ll make a good mother and Sam Meadows is a decent fellow.’

  ‘When he’s sober,’ Janey said. ‘But he’s different in drink. Always ready for a fight.’

  ‘That was before he married our Nellie,’ Bobby said indignantly. ‘When he didn’t have no proper home like. He’s only at the Volley now to be out of the way till the baby got born.’

  ‘Yes, he’s had a hard life and so has Nellie for that matter,’ the nurse said. ‘See she rests now and keep her warm. I’ll be back later.’

  Nellie could hear their voices clearly through the thin floorboards as she lay cuddling the baby in her arms. Thoughts of the past and the future were like a dark background to her joy in the baby as she kissed the dark down on his head and the tiny hand which lay like a starfish on her breast.

  She loosened the blanket and examined him closely, hoping to see something which would clearly identify the baby as Sam’s child, but she could see nothing. Surely he must be Sam’s son, she thought. Surely such a lovely child could not have come from that awful attack by Leadbetter. Her tears began to flow again and she turned her head restlessly on the pillow, but exhaustion overcame her and she drifted off to sleep.

  She was awakened by Janey carrying a bowl of gruel.

  ‘She’s been back, bossy bitch,’ she said sourly. ‘Said she wouldn’t wake you. You needed the rest but I’m not leaving you no longer. If you snuffed it she’d be the first to blame me for leaving you and anyhow you’ll be full o’wind when you come to feed him.’

  ‘Thanks, Janey,’ Nellie said, laying the baby carefully on the pillow and taking the bowl of gruel. ‘Did the nurse say I should feed him?’ she said timidly.

  ‘Get that down you first,’ Janey said. ‘She was carrying on about the room being cold and she’s sent that oil stove.’

  ‘Isn’t she good?’ Nellie exclaimed but Janey said again, ‘Bossy bitch. Made up with herself.’

  ‘But Janey, she saved his life,’ Nellie protested. She drew back the blanket from the baby’s face. ‘Do you think he looks like Sam, Janey? He’s got dark hair like him anyway.’

  ‘That’ll all rub off,’ Janey said. ‘He doesn’t look like Sam to me. What was Leadbetter like?’

  ‘I can’t remember his face. He had a beard anyway and a big stomach with a gold chain across it.’ Nellie shivered at the memory and began to weep. ‘It can’t be his, Janey, such a lovely baby. He must be Sam’s. I know it’s only eight months since we were married but the baby’s very small. He must have come early, mustn’t he?’

  Janey turned away. ‘Don’t be too sure,’ she said spitefully. ‘Nine months and three weeks I make it since you come falling in here crying and whingeing about what Leadbetter done to you and streaming with blood.’

  ‘I don’t remember much about that time,’ Nellie wept.

  ‘Well, you passed out and you took real bad,’ Janey said. ‘I looked after you and I done more. I got you married off to Sam quick in case you had a bun in the oven. And now you want to upset the apple cart, opening your bloody mouth to Sam when there’s no need.’

  Nellie wept even more bitterly. ‘Has Bobby gone for Sam?’ she whispered.

  Janey said roughly, ‘No and he’s not going until I tell him. You never know. Sam might have got something said to him and he’ll batter you when he gets back.’

  Nellie made a sound of protest and Janey picked up the gruel bowl. ‘Don’t feed him now,’ she said. ‘Leave him asleep and you go to sleep too.’

  She went downstairs and Nellie lay weeping quietly. Although she still felt exhausted sleep evaded her and her mind ranged back over the past year. In spite of her efforts to blot it out she returned to the time before her marriage to Sam when she was in service with Joshua Leadbetter JP and his wife.

  Mrs Leadbetter and her children were on an extended New Year visit to relatives and the young maid who shared Nellie’s attic bedroom had been called home to a sick mother.

  Nellie recalled the strangeness of going to bed alone, and then her terror on awakening to find Joshua Leadbetter standing beside her in his nightshirt, one hand clamped over her mouth and the other tearing at her nightdress.

  She moaned quietly as she remembered the pain and humiliation of his attack on her and the ferocity of his threats of gaol or worse for her if she ever complained about him.

  He had finally left her, bruised and bleeding, and somehow she had managed to dress and creep out of the house. The rest was a blur until she reached this house. Her mother was recently dead and her father at sea, but Janey and Bob were still in the house and Janey had taken charge when Nellie arrived home and collapsed.

  Now as she looked back on that time it all seemed like a bad dream. The days and nights of fever, the nightmares in which she had seen Leadbetter in every shadow, her longing for death. Janey had been kind, laying wet cloths on her head and giving her a concoction which brought oblivion for hours.

  When she began to recover Janey had brought Sam to see her, telling her that Sam wanted to marry her. Nellie remembered him standing before her, big and awkward, twisting his cap in his hands and saying gruffly, ‘I’ll look after you, Ellie.’ That had been his pet name for her when they were children.

  I should have told Sam about Leadbetter then, she thought, but I was too ashamed and too frightened, and I was glad to obey Janey when she told me to say nothing. I was like a sleepwalker drifting along as though everything was happening at a distance from me.

  Even her wedding. She remembered nothing of it but being in a dark office and someone s
aying, ‘Make your mark here or can you write your name?’

  Nellie thought she must have fainted because she knew nothing more until she was on the sofa in this house. She remembered that she had come out of her trancelike state enough to feel terror on her wedding night when Sam slipped into bed beside her.

  Sam’s lovemaking, though, had been totally different to Leadbetter’s brutal assault. For such a big, clumsy man he had been surprisingly gentle and tender, soothing and coaxing her until she had timidly responded to him. ‘There now, girl, that wasn’t too bad, was it?’ he had said when it was all over and she clung to him, weeping with relief.

  Janey had questioned her next morning, wanting to know whether Sam had said anything about not being first and when she had mumbled an embarrassed denial Janey said with satisfaction, ‘That was my doing. You wouldn’t have healed so quick only for the way I seen to you.’

  Sam had already signed on for another ship and he sailed two days later. Soon after that the vomiting began, Nellie recalled, but I was so green I didn’t even know I was pregnant until Janey told me. I was so happy, too, she thought wistfully, thinking Sam would be pleased, until Janey began saying that the baby might be Leadbetter’s. ‘First come first served,’ she had cackled.

  Nellie began to weep again. What was wrong with Janey? She could be so kind, she thought, looking after me and she often saved me from a beating from Ma when I was little, but then she can be just the opposite. I can’t trust her and I’m afraid of her.

  Her tears falling on the baby’s head woke him and he cried weakly. Nellie tried to breastfeed him then they both slept again.

  She was roused by a tap on the bedroom door and Bobby whispering, ‘Can I come in, Nell?’ He crept over to the bed. ‘Janey’s been at the gin again,’ he said. ‘She’s asleep now. Should I go for Sam?’

  ‘Yes, quick before she wakes up,’ Nellie whispered but Bobby lingered.

  ‘Can I see the baby?’ he asked and Nellie drew back the bedclothes to show him the child.

  ‘Do you think he’s like Sam, Bob?’ she asked anxiously.

  ‘I dunno, he’s so little and Sam’s so big,’ Bobby said. ‘His hair’s like Sam’s though. Black and curly. At least he’s not ginger like me.’