The Wingless Bird

by Catherine Cookson

  When Jessie now ventured, ‘Do you think Mabel might help me? Her people…’

  ‘Mabel Aintree? Oh, don’t be silly, Jessie! They would scorn you in the condition you’re in. No matter what Mabel might think, it’s her parents you’ve got to think about. It’s always the parents. Don’t you know? Can’t you learn?’ And she had left her with an impatient gesture.

  It was shortly after this that her mother approached her and in a voice that she rarely used to her, she said, ‘Agnes, I…I want to have a word with you.’

  The very tone of the voice surprised Agnes, and so she followed her mother into the sitting room, and there Alice Conway sat on the couch and motioned her daughter to sit beside her. And then she began: ‘Agnes, this situation can’t go on. You can see yourself it can’t go on.’

  ‘Well, how do you think you can change it, Mother?’ She watched her mother turn and look towards the window before she said, ‘She’s…she’s got to go.’

  ‘Go? Where can she go? Run away onto the streets? But she’s promised Father not to run away, hasn’t she? So, what do you mean, she’s got to go? Where could she go?’

  Her mother was looking at her again. ‘I…we can’t have…have her here. She’s already beginning to show; the whole street will know.’

  ‘If they don’t already know, Mother. Nan’s no fool, and our precise Mr Peeble, who I am sure is quite used to pregnancies, will have detected something before now if not from the narration he has heard above his head over the past days. So where do you propose to send her?’

  ‘Cousin Mary in Durham.’

  ‘Cousin Mary?’ Agnes first screwed up her face, then she stretched it before she muttered, ‘That cousin Mary in Durham, the one you haven’t spoken to for twelve years, if not longer, or, as I should say, who hasn’t spoken to you since she married Mr Boston, a man of supposed wealth and position, and got too big for her boots, as you’ve often stated? You propose sending your pregnant daughter to her? Well!’ She sat back on the couch. ‘I’d like to know how you’re going to go about it, Mother.’

  ‘Please, please, Agnes, don’t take that attitude. I’m trying to be calm and…and helpful for us all round.’

  ‘You can exclude me from the all round, Mother; and I think it’s a little late for you to say you’re trying to be calm and helpful. To my mind it’s a pity you didn’t take that attitude when you were first made aware of the situation, because when I returned from next door you were still yelling your head off at her and painting a vivid picture of what her life would be with an illegitimate child tacked on to her. If I remember rightly, you pointed out forcibly that no man would look the side she was on ever again because cheap women had no hope of anything in the future but of being used. Am I right?’

  ‘Agnes. Please, please, don’t go on. Can’t you see I’m so upset I feel ill? And what is more’—her voice dropped now and she leant towards Agnes—‘I’m afraid of your father, I mean, for him, what he will do to that…person if he meets him again, for he will certainly do him an injury.’

  ‘He’s already done that, Mother.’

  ‘Yes, but this could be worse. And then what’s going to happen to us?’

  There it was, ‘What’s going to happen to us?’ She meant what was going to happen to her if Father should commit a crime and she was left here on her own. Of course she wouldn’t be on her own, she herself would be here. Oh yes, she would be here. But then there would be the scandal to hide from. Oh, she knew her mother.

  She said, ‘Well, when do you propose to go and see her?’

  ‘Oh, I couldn’t go. She…well, as you know we haven’t met for years, and she…she moves in quite different circles, among the elite of Durham, and he’s a churchman connected with the Cathedral.’

  Again Agnes’ face screwed up as she said, ‘And you expect them to take Jessie?’

  ‘Well, if not actually take her, Mary was always doing good works, that kind of thing, that’s how she got to know Mr Boston. Of course, at the time I know I said it was all put on just to impress him, because she was no more for doing good works than I was. I…I’ve always been honest about it.’

  Yes, yes, her mother had always been honest about her lack of initiative in that direction.

  ‘Well, what do you propose doing? Write to her?’

  ‘No; what’s the good of writing? I thought it would be evident; you are generally very quick on the uptake. I thought you might go and see her and ask her if she can help. Well, if she knows of any place where…’

  ‘No, Mother, in no way am I going to this Mrs Boston’s.’

  They were both standing now.

  ‘Well, tell me’—her mother’s voice and manner reverted to normal—‘what then is going to happen to her?’

  ‘She could get married, Mother. No matter what the young man is, he feels for her and she for him.’

  ‘Do you want murder done, girl? Because that’s what would happen. Don’t you realise that neither you nor me have really had any consideration from your father in years. It has been Jessie this, Jessie that, and Jessie the other. He even wanted her to stay at school after she was sixteen, but she got round him there. And the typing college was a comedown, I can tell you, from his idea that she would go into a profession; he’d even thought of university. Oh, you don’t know anything about the plans he had for his dear daughter, and you stand there and talk of her marrying a man from the lowest scum family in Newcastle. If she had picked on anyone else there might have been some hope; but not a Felton. Dear God in heaven!’ She threw her head back and appealed to the ceiling. ‘A Felton. They’re notorious; the father died in a fisticuffs battle. You’d think people only bought newspapers to see what’s happened to the Feltons. One has just come out of prison after doing two years for bodily harm. And this is the family you propose Jessie should marry into. I really cannot believe I’m hearing aright.’

  ‘Then you’d sooner let her have an illegitimate child? You know what name is tacked on to such a child. Do I have to speak the word “bastard”?’

  ‘Yes, yes, I would.’

  ‘And you would bring the child up here, in this house?’

  Her mother’s chest seemed to swell as she said, ‘Don’t be more troublesome than usual, Agnes. There are places, at least ways and means to deal with such a matter. It could be adopted. Anyway’—her manner once again changed and now she was pleading—‘Do this for me, Agnes. It isn’t often I ask anything personal of you, now is it?’

  No, that was true. There had been no intimacy between them, never as far as she could remember. But to go to a strange woman and ask her…what would she have to ask her? Where to find a home in which to put Jessie? Oh, that was unthinkable. Or to take Jessie into her own home? That was even more unthinkable. And yet, she felt sure now, it was this that was in her mother’s mind because, as far as her mother knew, her cousin was childless. But there appeared to be one good thing about her mother’s suggestion. If it were possible for Jessie to go and live in Durham, it was also possible that at times she could meet Robbie Felton, and then perhaps they could get married and go off somewhere. And it would have to be somewhere far away where her father couldn’t find them.

  It was strange, but the thought of her sister marrying one of those terrible Feltons no longer filled her with abhorrence; far better that than bring a child into the world that wasn’t wanted and whom her mother had already thrown off for adoption.

  She was brought back to her mother’s voice, as though enticing her, yet with a slight sneer in it now, saying, ‘It would give you an opportunity to wear some of those clothes you’ve been spending your money on lately.’

  Yes. Yes, it would. She didn’t voice her thoughts but she immediately saw herself wearing the lime-green dress and the coat with the rose lining. How many times had she put that on in the privacy of her room and seen the different being it presented, especially when she also donned the leghorn hat. The girls, as in her mind she thought of the Miss Cardings, had tri
mmed it with a deep tone of lime-green velvet ribbon and in the heart of the bow at the side they had placed two tiny red silk rosebuds.

  ‘You’ll go?’

  ‘I’ll think about it.’

  ‘Well, don’t take too long, girl, because I cannot bear the atmosphere in this house much longer.’

  ‘What do you think Father will say to your proposal?’

  ‘He’ll agree to it.’

  ‘What makes you so sure?’

  ‘Because’—and now the words were stressed—‘he no more wants to suffer the shame of such an exposure than I do.’

  ‘Then what do you think he’ll do when your cousin won’t take her and he has to suffer it?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know. The only thing I do know is that something must be done to get her away from here…anywhere.’

  ‘Yes. Yes. As you say it, anywhere.’

  It was later that evening. Nan had just gone and Agnes had bolted the door, pulled down the blind over the window and was about to turn off the gas jets when her father appeared in the doorway. Few words had passed between them over the past week, and now she could see that it was with an effort he said, ‘Your mother tells me about this idea of hers. I’ll go along of it. When do you intend to go through?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  ‘I’ll come with you.’

  ‘Oh, no. No.’ Her head went up, shoulders back. ‘This…this is a delicate matter.’

  ‘You propose to go to Durham by yourself?’

  ‘It isn’t America or Timbuctoo, Father. I propose to go to Durham, or anywhere else I choose, by myself.’

  ‘Now, don’t start that again.’

  ‘I have never stopped, and just you remember that, Father. I am my own mistress and I can walk out of here tomorrow if I want. This minute if I want. Just remember that.’

  She watched him now take his hand and draw it slowly down over his face, stretching the pouches under his eyes in the process. And then he muttered, ‘My God! I can’t believe what’s happening, nor how long I can stand it.’ And on this he turned from her and hurried through the storeroom, leaving her trembling, and not a little, at her own audacity in daring to speak to him like that. She didn’t know whether it was from the night that she had overheard his conversation with her mother in the bedroom, or when she saw him fling that shovel at the young man who, she knew, could have felled him with one blow, that she had lost all respect for him. And, too, another part of her mind was asking how he dare go almost insane because his daughter had committed the so-called sin when he himself, by his own admission, was keeping a woman on the side.

  Life all around was dirty. She wrinkled her nose against it, then went upstairs and into Jessie’s room.

  Jessie was already in bed but not asleep, and so she sat on the side of the bed and, her voice just a whisper, she said, ‘Listen.’ And Jessie listened for a time, but then she said, ‘But she must be a total stranger. I don’t remember seeing her. How…how can I go there and live?’

  ‘Well, would you rather stay here in this prison? Use your mind, girl. If you’re away from here there might be a chance of seeing Robbie now and again.’

  ‘He’d…he’d kill him if I did, if he found out. And he won’t miss the second time. I don’t want Robbie hurt any more.’

  ‘Well—’ Agnes brought her face close to the pretty one, saying, ‘Do you want to have a bastard child?’

  ‘It’ll be that in any case, won’t it?’ Jessie’s voice now was a thin hiss. ‘I’ve faced up to it. That’s how it will have to be.’

  ‘Don’t be so silly, girl! This…this cousin Mary of Mother’s, whatever she’s said about her, might be a compassionate woman; and I don’t think she has any children of her own. If…if, though, she doesn’t let you stay with them, then Mother will try to arrange for you some place else. That would certainly cost money, and I can’t see Father spending any on you in that way. Oh, no, no. In the state of mind he’s in, he’d rather put you in the workhouse than provide one penny towards bringing a child into the world whose father happens to be one of the Feltons. If nothing comes of this he’ll keep you here. And what would your life be like then? I can tell you one thing, I won’t be here to be used as a buffer. Oh, no. As soon as you’re settled one way or another I’m out of it.’

  ‘Oh, Agnes, don’t leave me!’ The young girl was clinging to her now. ‘I’ve only you. There’s no-one else, there’s no-one in the wide world.’

  ‘Well, in that case you’ll have to make a break for it along of me. Where on earth we’ll go, I don’t know. Anyway, one day at a time: tomorrow I go to Durham and, as Mother said’—she pursed her lips now—‘it will give me an opportunity to wear some of the clothes I have been spending my money on. By the way, Jessie, do you love Mother?’

  ‘Our mother?’ Jessie peered upwards at Agnes, and Agnes said, ‘Yes, our mother. Whose mother do you think?’

  ‘No. No, I don’t love her. I don’t even like her. And…and I’ve known that for a long time.’

  ‘Strange’—Agnes rose from the bed—‘we’re both of the same mind. And it’s sad, isn’t it? So sad.’ She turned and went from the room.

  Four

  It was an unusually hot summer’s day for this part of the country. The temperature was well up into the seventies. Those who were in the habit of exaggerating said it was in the nineties. Agnes wore her coat open, showing the dress and its scarlet belt to effect. Her hat she wore slightly tilted to one side; her grey shoes were fastened by an openwork strap and a buckle; and she had gloves to match. These she carried in her hand, together with a grey leather handbag.

  She had her ticket and was now waiting on the platform for the Durham train. A number of other passengers were waiting too, and although she stood apart from them she didn’t go unnoticed. She was feeling nervous inside for a number of reasons. One was that her clothes were making her self-conscious. Had she been in her ordinary summer dress and coat she wouldn’t have felt like this. She strongly regretted now wearing the outfit: she had been stupid, vain, and not a little mad.

  A man in a light grey summer suit and modern trilby to match passed behind her twice. She became conscious of him on his second walk because although she didn’t turn and look at him she knew his eyes were on her.

  The train came puffing in. Only a few passengers alighted, and when she went to open the carriage door that was opposite to her an arm shot forward and opened it for her, and the man was looking at her with a broad smile on his face as he said, ‘I…I thought it was you, but I couldn’t…well, what I mean to say…Oh, get in!’ he laughed.

  She got in and sat down, and he sat opposite to her, and then she heard his voice saying on a high note, ‘I thought it was you and yet I wasn’t sure.’

  She smiled back at him now, saying frankly, ‘You can be excused, for I’m not often dressed like this.’

  ‘Oh.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘It’s a beautiful suit…dress…coat, so different. I often wonder why it is that English women choose such drab colours; at least they do up here. It must be the weather, I think. What do you say?’

  ‘Or the lack of money to buy such outfits.’

  ‘Oh, no, no.’ He made a movement with his fingers as if dismissing her statement. ‘There’s a lot of money up here, and the women spend most of it. Even so, in the main, I think their choice is rather drab.’

  ‘Perhaps you are comparing us with the South?’

  ‘No; not exactly.’

  ‘Or abroad?’ She ventured now.

  ‘Again, no. In Greece it’s mostly black the women wear, and Italians too, except on high days, holidays, and weddings, and then it’s often the national costume.’

  When the train gave a jerk, then a loud shriek and a puff, puff, puff, he looked out of the window and said, ‘How far are you going?’

  ‘Oh, just to Durham.’

  ‘So am I. By coincidence, so am I. Have you friends in Durham?’

  She hesitated before she said, �
��I’m to visit my mother’s cousin whom I last saw when I was twelve. I don’t know whether I’ll recognise her or even she me.’

  ‘I’m sure she’ll be pleased to see you.’

  ‘I wish I were as sure.’

  She leant against the black leather-padded headrest, and when he did the same and continued to look at her with that half smile on his face she turned her gaze to the window, and there was silence between them for some minutes until he said, ‘You know, it’s odd meeting you like this because I was just thinking of you this morning. You see, I had a letter from my sister. You met her in the shop that night.’

  ‘Oh, yes, yes.’

  ‘Well, she’s just had another baby. This is her fourth and she put it very amusingly. She said, “I’ve got another one for sugar mice.” You see, she did enjoy, in fact we both enjoyed that day we had in Newcastle and ending up in your shop. And we had fun when we got home because my two older brothers raided the box. Then my brother Henry, after eating an enormous dinner, pinched one from the back of the tree where my sister had hung them for the children, and he gobbled it in a manner most unbefitting a parson.’