Ellie

by Lesley Pearse

  Bonny’s face fell. She had expected John to be joyful about the news, to sweep her up in his arms and take her either to bed or out to celebrate with champagne. Instead he’d gone down to the shops and bought pork chops for their dinner. He had a dark shadow of beard on his chin, his dark eyes looked wary and he’d already made it clear he would be sleeping at his godmother’s, tonight and every night he was in London. He didn’t even seem to be enjoying the chops, now she’d cooked them!

  Bonny certainly didn’t want to get married in Dagenham, and although she liked the idea of the pretty church in Amberley, she didn’t fancy spending three whole weeks with Lydia either. She wanted to stay here, for a big London wedding, with write-ups in the Tatler, the list of guests reading like a page of Who’s Who.

  ‘Can’t we put up the banns here in London?’ she said quickly. ‘There’s a church just along the road in Queen’s Gate, and it would be far more convenient for your godmother and friends and better for my parents than Amberley.’

  John pushed away his half-eaten dinner and wiped his moustache on a napkin. Buying chops had been a mistake; Bonny needed a few cookery lessons. ‘I must discuss that with your father,’ he said. ‘Don’t you think he’ll want you getting married from your home?’

  A cloud passed over Bonny’s face. ‘You know I don’t get on with them, John,’ she said in a small voice, knowing she had to get over this hurdle at some time. ‘I suppose you’ll have to meet them, but let’s just make the plans and tell them it’s all arranged. Daddy couldn’t afford to pay for it anyway.’

  John mulled this over for a moment. He was very curious about Mr and Mrs Phillips. He couldn’t really believe they were as odd as Bonny implied, and suspected she was just ashamed of coming from a working-class home. Yet Bonny’s suggestion suited him. It would be easier to arrange the wedding close by, and he had no wish to embarrass either Bonny or his future in-laws.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘We’ll see the vicar tomorrow, then we’ll drive out to Dagenham to tell them.’

  ‘Oh John! You are wonderful!’ Bonny’s face lit up again, relieved he wasn’t going to be difficult. ‘Where are we going to have the reception? Can I have a lovely dress?’

  John smiled. She was such a child, but that made her even more adorable! ‘Yes, you can have a lovely dress, and I’ll arrange a small reception somewhere smart. But it’s not going to turn into a circus. Aside from the fact I’ve got to go back to finish off my work in the Gulf, which doesn’t give me much time to make arrangements if you want to be a June bride, we’ve also got to consider your condition.’

  ‘It won’t be showing that soon!’ Bonny said hastily. ‘You aren’t cross about the baby, are you?’

  John got up from his seat, going round the table to kiss her. As he hadn’t seriously considered a baby until he saw the doctor’s confirmation, he found it hard to assess his feelings. She looked so pretty, her hair tousled becomingly, her face pink from the heat of the kitchen. ‘Of course I’m not cross,’ he said gently, remembering women needed reassurance at such times. ‘I just haven’t had time to fully adjust myself to being a father. But the idea’s growing on me already.’

  ‘We’re going to be so happy.’ Bonny jumped up and flung her arms round his neck, kissing every inch of his face like an excited puppy. She could handle John when he smiled; it was his long silences and deep sighs which worried her. If she could just persuade him to stay a few more hours this evening she’d soon have him as enthusiastic about married life as she was. ‘I can’t wait to see the house in Somerset. I’m so excited.’

  She was terribly excited. Everything was working out as she planned. No more working, living in this nice little flat until the wedding, with nothing more arduous to do than buy a stunning wedding dress and a wonderful trousseau. As John would be working abroad until just before the wedding he wouldn’t know if she added a few more guests to the list. Then, after the wedding, there would be the thrill of doing up the house in Somerset. It was all just perfect. Except for Ellie.

  Ellie was Bonny’s Achilles’ heel: the one person who really mattered to her. Although Bonny felt no guilt at fooling John, she was deeply concerned about her friend and the way she’d looked when they parted in Harley Street.

  She hadn’t forgotten how Ellie stood by her when she had the abortion, and it turned her stomach to think her friend would have to go through the same agony. Bonny had been to the theatre twice, and called round to her digs, but Ellie wouldn’t speak to her.

  However Bonny looked at it, Ellie was in big trouble. She was tough enough to go and have an abortion alone. But what if she died? If she didn’t get rid of the baby her career would be over and family history would repeat itself – a lone woman trying to bring up a baby in poverty.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ John sensed she was brooding on something. ‘Are you worried people might realise you’re pregnant at the wedding? Or is it because I’ve got to go away again?’

  ‘I suppose so.’ Bonny nodded, hoping he wouldn’t press her further. ‘It’s just a bit scary sometimes, especially when I’m alone.’

  Two weeks after the examination by Dr Rodriguez, Ellie was outside 14 Sussex Gardens in Paddington, looking up at the house in alarm. Sussex Gardens was a notorious area for slums, crime and prostitutes. She hadn’t expected an abortionist to live in a nice place, but number 14 was the worst house in the entire terrace. The stone work crumbled around a front door which had huge cracks as if someone had tried to batter it in, stinking rubbish was piled up in the basement area and most of the windows were broken, stuffed up with rags and cardboard. Bright sunshine seemed to emphasise the squalor of the neighbourhood. Sickly-looking children were sitting on doorsteps, mangy dogs lolled listlessly in patches of shade and a couple of tramps were squatting in the middle of a bomb-site, drinking cheap sherry.

  Ellie had been sick every morning now for over a week. Just the smell of cigarettes, coffee or fried food turned her stomach, and she couldn’t remember when she’d last felt like eating. Everyone in the cast had remarked how pale and gaunt she looked, but they believed her when she said it was nothing but nerves. She made made her début as Annie for the first time in public last Saturday. Everyone had said she was every bit as good as Betty Noble, and one critic had described her as ‘a feisty Aldo Annie, as if born for the part’. Sir Miles and Lady Hamilton had come backstage to compliment her, and she’d had good luck telegrams from Edward, Annie King and Amos and Dora. Bonny and John had sent her flowers. She was still so angry with Bonny, she felt like putting them in the dustbin but she hadn’t. They were, after all, her first proper bouquet.

  Ellie hadn’t dared confide in anyone about her predicament. She’d only managed to find this abortionist through a friend of one of the other dancers, by pretending she was a go-between for someone else. She had been alarmed when the date and time were set by this Mr Cole without first meeting him; she had expected at least an examination before she committed herself. But she was told she was to send ‘her friend’ here with the ten pound fee and it would be done immediately.

  All that had kept her going in the last few days was the knowledge that Bonny had done this and survived. So could she.

  Taking a deep breath, she walked up the litter-strewn steps and rang a bell marked ‘Cole’. She heard it ring way back in the building and covered her nose so she couldn’t smell the rubbish wafting up from the basement.

  The door opened a few inches, and a woman peered out. She had curlers in her hair and a crossover pinny, a cigarette hanging out of her mouth.

  ‘I have an appointment with Mr Cole,’ Ellie managed to say, her stomach heaving alarmingly.

  ‘You Miss Smith?’ the woman said without removing the cigarette. She had a thin, shallow face with slack, bloodless lips. She could have been any age between thirty and fifty.

  ‘Yes,’ Ellie croaked.

  ‘You’d better come in then.’ The woman opened the door a little further, then immediately turned and we
nt back down the hall, her mules slopping up and down, exposing dirt-ingrained heels.

  Ellie went in hesitantly, pausing after she’d shut the door behind her.

  ‘Come on then,’ the woman barked back at her.

  The hall was gloomy, but not dark enough to hide the filth. An old battered black pram sat at the bottom of the stairs, many of the banister spindles were missing and the cracked lino hadn’t been swept, or washed for years. The woman went into a door at the far end of the narrow passageway and turned to beckon to Ellie to follow.

  She found herself in what must have been the servants’ quarters in Victorian times. A few steps led to a narrow room, sparsely furnished with a table covered in a chenille cloth and a couple of easy chairs. A series of bells hung high up over the fireplace, wreathed in cobwebs. Bare wooden shelves covered one wall, perhaps once used for storing china or cooking pots, but now empty except for a couple of white enamel basins and a few cardboard boxes.

  Through a second door ahead, Ellie could see a rusty cooking range and a white china sink. A man with greying, straggly hair was in there, his back to her.

  ‘Won’t keep you long,’ he called out. ‘Just sterilising my equipment.’

  He was wearing black trousers and braces over a collarless shirt, slippers on his feet. He moved a couple of feet and Ellie saw a gas ring with a steaming saucepan on it.

  The woman looked at Ellie with furtive eyes. ‘Got the money?’ she said. Ellie opened her handbag and took out the wad of notes. The woman licked her thumb, flicked through them counting, then shoved them in the pocket of her apron. ‘You’d better take your things off,’ she said, flicking the ash from her cigarette into what looked like a sardine can.

  The smell of the cigarette made Ellie feel nauseous. Despite the warm day the window was tightly shut and a heavy, dirty lace curtain covered it, obscuring any view. But she could hear children playing and a ball bouncing close by. She felt they were only yards away.

  ‘How much do I take off?’ Ellie put her coat and bag on one of the easy chairs, looking nervously at the table.

  ‘Yer drawers,’ the woman said curtly. Going to one of the cardboard boxes, she brought out a sheet which she spread over the table.

  As Ellie fumbled beneath her skirt to take her knickers off, Mr Cole came into the room, carrying an enamel kidney dish. In it was a steaming long thin rod and a speculum, very similar to the one used by Dr Rodriguez to open her up and peer inside her.

  It wasn’t the instruments which frightened her so much, even though they jingled in his shaking hands, but Mr Cole. She’d never seen him before, but she’d seen his type so often as a child, lurching out of public houses. His nose was purple, the same high colour across his cheekbones, unshaven and bloodshot eyes. Even from a distance of six feet, above the smell of stale sweat, she could smell the drink.

  ‘Pull your skirt up,’ he said, giving what passed as a smile, showing rotting teeth. ‘And hop up on the table.’

  ‘I’m scared,’ she whimpered. ‘Will it hurt?’

  ‘No more than the cock that got you into this mess,’ he said with a leer, as he put down the dish to take hold of her arm.

  Ellie looked down at his hand. It was covered in engorged veins, black hair sprouting on the backs of his fingers, every nail ragged and dirty. She thought of those white soft hands of Dr Rodriguez, how gently and reverently they had felt her stomach, and she felt the room spin.

  ‘Don’t fuckin’ faint on me, girl,’ she heard the man say, as if from a distance.

  Hands were grabbing her. She didn’t know if it was him, or the woman, but suddenly she found herself flat on her back on the table, water splashing on her face.

  ‘I can’t breathe,’ she wheezed, struggling to get air. The woman was holding down her shoulders, another cigarette in her mouth, the smoke belching into Ellie’s face. But worse still, the man was pushing her knees up roughly, and thrusting the speculum into her.

  ‘Keep bloody still,’ the woman muttered, gripping Ellie’s shoulders.

  Ellie submitted to the hot speculum being pushed into her, numbed by shock. Mr Cole was cranking it open, and his breath was hot against her inner thigh. But as she stared sightlessly above her, trying hard to distance herself from the embarrassment and discomfort, she suddenly saw her mother’s face as clearly as if Polly was looking down through a hole in the stained ceiling. Her expression was one Ellie remembered so clearly when she’d been naughty, a sad, ‘please don’t do this’ face, one that had always shamed her into obedience.

  ‘Please stop,’ Ellie gasped, struggling to get up. ‘I can’t do this.’

  ‘You silly cow,’ Mr Cole said, pulling out the speculum none too gently, clutching her thigh. ‘I ain’t got time for hysterics. Do you want me to get rid of it or not?’

  ‘No.’ Ellie pushed him away from her. It wasn’t so much fear of pain that prompted her violent reaction, but a protective instinct for the tiny life inside her. ‘I can’t, it’s wrong.’

  ‘It ain’t right to bring a little bleeder into the world when you don’t want it neither,’ the woman snapped. ‘You girls are all the same, open yer bleedin’ legs for anyone, then you cry when yer caught out. Now let’s get on with it.’

  Had there been a little sympathy or reassurance from the couple, Ellie might have changed her mind, but the woman’s insulting remark wiped out any hesitation.

  ‘I can’t go through with it.’ She brushed off the woman’s restraining hand on her shoulder and tried to cover herself with her skirt. ‘Let me go.’

  ‘You silly bleedin’ mare!’ Mr Cole sneered at her. ‘Gaw on, push off then.’

  Ellie was off the table in a second, knocking the kidney dish to the floor as she grabbed her knickers and coat. ‘Let me have my money back,’ she said.

  Mr Cole let out a bellow of derisive laughter. ‘Fuck off,’ he said, rheumy eyes narrowing. ‘There ain’t no refunds ’ere.’

  ‘Give it back or I’ll go to the police,’ Ellie said more bravely than she felt. ‘You ought to be locked up for doing this.’

  She didn’t see him move. One second he was a few feet from her, the next she felt his fist crash into her cheek.

  ‘Get out of ’ere,’ he yelled. ‘While you still can.’

  Ellie took one look at his clenched fists and she knew he meant it. She snatched her handbag from the chair, backed to the door, opened it, and ran.

  She was at the end of Sussex Gardens before she realised she was still holding her knickers in her hand. Blood was running down her cheek and she was crying.

  ‘Ellie, open up!’

  Ellie lifted her head from the pillow at the sound of Bonny’s voice, but she couldn’t get up. She had got back from Paddington some two hours earlier; she should have gone straight to the theatre, to get ready for tonight’s performance, but she couldn’t face it.

  ‘I know you’re in there,’ Bonny said, her voice coming right through the keyhole. ‘And if you don’t unlock the door, I’ll go and ask your landlady for a key.’

  ‘Go away Bonny,’ Ellie said feebly. ‘I don’t want to talk to you.’

  ‘You’d better,’ Bonny said firmly. ‘They’re going crazy at the theatre because you haven’t turned up. I said I expected you were ill and I’d come here to check. If you won’t speak to me, you’ll have the producer on your back.’

  Sighing, Ellie got up and unlocked the door, but went straight back to her bed and slumped down.

  Bonny came in, turned on the light and looked down at her friend.

  Ellie’s Islington digs were good, compared with many they’d shared. Highbury Place was a pleasant wide road overlooking a park, number 4 a well-kept, large terraced house with white stone steps. Ellie had a room of her own with a proper divan, a washbasin, even a bedside rug. But after Bonny’s airy and spacious flat in Kensington she found it depressing and wrinkled her nose at the all too familiar seediness and the musty smell.

  ‘What’s happened?’ she asked, bending ov
er to touch the raw place on Ellie’s cheek. ‘Who did that to you?’

  For a while Ellie wouldn’t reply; she just turned over on her stomach and sobbed into the pillow. Bonny sat down on the bed and stroked her hair, urging her to explain.

  ‘I had this feeling something had happened this afternoon,’ she said softly. ‘It wouldn’t go away so I went to the Theatre Royal. When they told me they hadn’t seen you and the understudy was going on I was so afraid. Tell me? Please!’

  Slowly Ellie told the story, her face still half buried in the pillow, but Bonny caught hold of her and turned her round, drawing her into her arms as if Ellie were a small child.

  ‘You were very brave,’ she whispered. ‘I’m glad you didn’t go through with it. He might have butchered you, like that other man did me. I’ll look after you, Ellie, I promise I will. I know I haven’t always been a good friend to you, but I won’t let you down now.’

  It was odd for Ellie to be on the receiving end of comfort, but she let herself be held and sobbed out all her fears. ‘How can I bring up a baby? It will be like Mum and me all over again. I didn’t want to kill it, Bonny, but how will I manage? And there’s Sir Miles too.’

  She didn’t know why she brought up his name. She hardly knew the man, but since he came to her first night with his wife she’d been thinking about him constantly. She was sure it was Sir Miles she had to thank for the part of Annie. He was most definitely interested in her. She’d even found herself weaving little day-dreams of confiding in him the next time she saw him. It was silly, she knew that, but she hadn’t got any other family.

  ‘What’s Sir Miles got to do with it? Bonny asked. She understood all Ellie’s other fears, but not that one. John knew Sir Miles and Lady Hamilton well, but as far as Bonny knew, Ellie had only met him once, at the Savoy.

  ‘I think he’s my father,’ Ellie blurted out.

  Bonny laughed. She thought Ellie was delirious. ‘Oh really? Mine’s Winston Churchill!’