The Girl in the Attic

by Wendy Reakes

  Celia chortled as she took it from me. “I can’t believe you have something for me.” She stopped. “You know Christmas was nearly two weeks ago. Do you want to put it back under your pillow and give it to me next year instead?”

  The smile faded from my face. “You think I’ll still be here next year?” I instantly regretted my indignant tone.

  Celia looked wretched. “I’m sorry, Marley. That was insensitive.” She forced a meagre smile. “I told you my brain was addled.”

  “Where will I be this time next year?” The thought of it made the hairs on the back of my neck bristle. This time next year I would have a baby to care for, with no husband and probably nowhere to live.

  “You know what, Marley? Not today, but tomorrow we’re going to put our heads together and think of a way of getting you out of here. What do you think about that?”

  I smiled at her encouraging manner. She was the sweetest of friends. “Why don’t you open your present now,” I said.

  Celia shook her shoulders as she tore at the paper and opened her parcel. Inside was a handkerchief I’d made for her from one of the sheets in in the sea chests. I’d sewn around the square with white cotton to enhance the sides and then I’d embroidered some green holly with red berries in two corners. With one strand of yellow thread I had sewn an M and a C and friends forever underneath in a scroll.

  “How lovely, Marley,” she gasped and her eyes shining brown. “I will treasure it always.”

  Chapter 14

  While the baby grew inside my belly the winter took its toll. My stomach was still quite small and nowhere near to a similar size of the women in our village who’d carried their infants for the same number of months. I put it down to the cold, since I possessed no other sensible diagnosis.

  During my lifetime, after my brother and I had gone to live with uncle in the village of Mells, I’d been involved in the birth of three babies. Two of them were foals up at Rock Farm, but the last was a real baby, born of an unfortunate barmaid who’d worked at the Coach Inn. Millie had been unwed herself and already shunned by the small community. Mrs Franklin had taken her in, of course. Good ol’ Mrs Franklin! There had been many occasions during the past few months when I’d considered turning to her myself, but each time I was forced to recall the consequences of her kind actions towards Millie Breakspeare, I was reluctant to seek her assistant in any shape or form.

  I thought back to the men who’d frequented the Franklin’s pub, forced by their wives to boycott the business until Millie had been shown the door and thrown out onto the streets where she belonged…or so they’d said. Mrs Franklin, a good-hearted woman, had steadfastly refused to back down even though her husband had threatened her with all sorts. Within a few days, since the men had nowhere else to sup their ale, they’d returned, telling their womenfolk to mind their own business.

  When it was time for the baby to be born and the local midwife refused to attend the birth, Mrs Franklin allowed me to help during the birthing of Millie’s son. I was eleven at the time, ‘old enough,’ she’d said, ‘to witness the miracle of God’s greatest gift.’

  While the men supped their ale downstairs, Millie had gone into labour and by the next day when the baby still hadn’t arrived, Mrs Franklin sent for me to hold the hand of the distressed young girl. Uncle had been out of town on a job, so there was no one to answer to when I sneaked in through the back door of the pub at five in the morning, creeping up the stairs to Millie’s room where she writhed on the mattress in severe pain. After the initial shock of seeing the young mother dripping with sweat and her face curled with the plain horror of her experience, I recovered my composure almost immediately. ‘Remarkable for a girl as young and inexperienced as you,’ Mrs Franklin had said afterwards.

  “Can we open the window, Mrs. Franklin?” said I. It was tightly shut with dark drapes covering the light of the morning.

  “No, dear,” Mrs Franklin had answered. “We can’t let the whole neighbourhood hear her cries. Not when they are so loathsome to her predicament.” Mrs. Franklin shook her head and ran the back of her newly washed hands across her own beaded brow. “Marley!” she said as if she’d just thought of a good idea. “Go down to the pub and find Mr Franklin. Tell him to give you a bottle of brandy and then bring it back here.”

  I sprinted down the stairs, but when I couldn’t find him in the pub as instructed, I went out to the courtyard at the back, where he was rolling barrels. I stopped short when I saw two other men loading crates and empty bottles onto the back of a wagon. One was holding the reins of the horse and he had a pipe protruding from his mouth as if it were a permanent fixture.

  “Oh, here’s another one, is it?” he’d said when he saw me run into the cobble covered yard. “’Ere, it looks to me like you’ve got a pub full of young tarts, Franky,” the other man chortled.

  Mr Franklin looked up from his barrel on the floor and said. “No, this is young Marley,” he’d said. “She’s the locksmith’s niece. There ‘aint no bad in this one,” he added. He turned about and asked, “What is it, lass?”

  “Mrs Franklin asks that you give me a bottle of brandy,” I said as I turned my back on the other two men. To be sure, I didn’t much care for what they thought. The most important thing was to help Mrs Franklin get that baby out.

  I didn’t much understand Mr Franklin, when he said. “I won’t be giving my expensive liquor to the likes of that young ‘un.” And when the other men chuckled in appreciation of his bravery standing up to his wife, Mr Franklin put his hands into his pocket and pulled out a set of keys. “Here, Marley. Take these keys and fire up the range in the scullery. We’ll be hankering to eat some breakfast within the hour.”

  I looked down at the keys in my hands and up again, confused by his instructions, since I’d never before been made to fire up the range in the pub’s scullery. But then, while his back was turned to the other men, Mr Franklin gave me a quick wink of the eye.

  The banter followed me all the way to the door leading back into the bar. “Glad to see you’re keeping these little tarts in line, Frankie.”

  I looked up the stairs and heard Millie crying, so with a sudden spurt of intuition, I went straight to the scullery and unlocked the door. I must have stood inside the entrance for a good minute until I once again heard cries from above. That spurred me on to search in some cupboards behind the door built into the wall. Finally, there on the top shelf were two bottles of brandy. I smiled as I grabbed one and rushed back upstairs.

  Millie was given almost a quarter bottle and by the end of it she was drunk as a skunk as Mrs Franklin had put it.

  “Won’t that be bad for the baby, Mrs Franklin?” asked I, bemused at one so young rolling her eyes and dribbling like a baby herself.

  “That won’t affect it much now,” she answered. “He’s on his way out that door and probably a bit tipsy himself,” she hooted.

  Sure enough the baby slid out that door within seconds of Millie getting a dose of liquor, but he didn’t look much drunk. He was angry by the looks of him.

  After the birth of her son, the shame had been too much for Millie to bear, so a week later, she’d taken the babe and run off, just like I had run off the night lost my shoes and in part, for the same reason as hers. Our crying shame!

  Now, I was approaching six months of my pregnancy (brought on by that black-haired lout), and most of that time, since Christmas, I became confined to my bed due to the perishing cold and a foot that ached and ached after I’d turned it that time last September. It was the end of February now and the windows had frosted up and darkened my parlour, but through the occasional pane I could still view the grey sky, loaded with burdensome clouds of snow.

  Celia had increased my supply of Kerosene and she’d even brought up another two lamps. She’d managed that one Sunday, when the household had gone to church and she’d claimed an aching stomach.

  “Thank you, dear friend,” I said when I cast my eyes over the donations. “It is so co
ld up here.”

  She looked about her, and back to the first two sections of the attic. “I wonder…if we block off this part, it will keep the warmth in here,” Celia said aloud even though she was talking to herself. “I think that’s the problem! We’re trying to heat up the whole attic.”

  I followed her eyes to the cluster of furniture crowded into the middle attic section. Dividing my parlour from the second section, half of the width of the attic held a brick wall, acting as a partition, with my bed tucked into its corner. But the rest was open to the rafters, maybe 18feet up. I began preparing the lamps by pouring in the Kerosene very carefully, so not to spill any. Celia was looking at the beams above with her hands on her hips. Around her shoulders, she had wrapped a grey checked woollen shawl. I worried how she was also exposed to the cold in the attic, especially since she had been susceptible to influenza.

  “I have an idea,” she said.

  I lit the lantern and the flame warmed my hands. “What is it?”

  “I saw some pictures in a book my aunt gave me to read whilst I was ill. Arabian Nights it was called.”

  “How can that…”

  “They lived in Bedouin tents.” Celia swept her arms in the air. “Perhaps we can recreate them to insulate your living space.”

  Our minds worked together marvellously. “We can use sheets and blankets,” I announced with renewed vigour.

  Without pondering any more, both Celia and I padded through the forest of furniture to one of the sea chests in the back of the second section. When we opened the lid, we were met with an array of linen and blankets, ideal for arranging into a Bedouin tent. We began lifting them out to carry back to my parlour by the arm load. When we returned and saw the pile now resting on my bed I stopped and became sullen. “Wait, Celia,” I said slowly.

  “What is it?”

  “How can I hide my presence if anyone should come into the attic? They will surely see the tent behind the furniture and protruding from the wall.”

  “Marley,” Celia whispered. “What choice do we have?”

  I thought about that for a moment. Celia was right, we had little choice if I was going to survive the harsh winter. Besides, I wouldn’t be there much longer. As soon as we come up with a plan, we can take down the tent and it will look as if I was never here at all. “Okay, let’s do it then.”

  We began by making a canopy above my bed, which seemed to be the place I spent most of my time. Fortunately, the walls had protruding bricks and an occasional nail, useful for hanging the sheets at a comfortable height over my bedstead. We also used some of the cross beams that ran lower than the rafters in the roof and suddenly I had a cosy little nook that shone yellow, made by the lamps I had dotted about the floor.

  “We need to extend it now, so that your parlour is covered too,” Celia said as she pulled more blankets and sheets from the depleting pile.

  We hung a large white sheet on the windows, as high up as we could get, then we took the corners of the other end and draped them over the same angles as the canopy over the bed. Another we stretched over the other end of the windows, above the glass doors that led onto the roof. We left the end part uncovered, where my little makeshift kitchen was. We thought it was sensible since I used little fires to cook my food.

  When we looked back at our creation, Celia and I both smiled as we entered the Bedouin tent and lapped up the cosiness of the parlour space. “Oh, Celia, it’s excellent,” I gushed. “What a wonderful idea.”

  She beamed at my obvious joy. “I think we should stack some of the furniture, to prevent the heat going further along the attic and maybe put more rugs down.”

  “Yes, we have rugs at the far end, but Celia, how could we possibly lift the furniture to stack it up?”

  “I don’t know, but we’ll think of something, eh,” she laughed.

  We never did think of a way to stack the furniture. Everything was too heavy for us to handle, so for now, we left the attic the way it was, hoping that if anyone happened to come up during the winter, they wouldn’t see my Bedouin tent, nor the cosiness contained therein.

  That same day, Celia came back during late afternoon. “Everyone’s resting after the activities of the day,” she said.

  “What happened?” How I loved to listen to Celia’s stories about the people down below. She was adept at storytelling and added lots of drama which I wasn’t sure were true or not, but I didn’t mind, Celia’s stories were my greatest means of entertainment whilst hiding in the attic above Wilbury House.

  “We had guests,” Celia answered. “Seven people came back from church without notice to the cook. Unheard of in this house,” she added. “One of them was the vicar, which wasn’t too out of the ordinary since he sometimes comes back and doesn’t make much of a difference to the family when they sit down to their six-course lunch.” She raised up her eyebrows in deference; an expression she’d no doubt copied from her mother. “But the other six were from a family who live in nearby Frome.”

  I shivered when I heard the name of the town. The black-haired lout had come from Frome and any association to the name was abhorrent to me.

  “They said they were related…distant cousins or something,” Celia said, “and that they’d gone to the church in Mells by invitation of the vicar.” Celia shook her head. “Of course, the servants are not given any consideration and we had to suddenly bring out the best silverware and extend the table, which we’d already laid before going off to church. My mother accepted the situation fine, but ooh…the cook and the head footman were right livid.”

  Celia had already told me about the family who lived in the house where I resided without their knowledge nor by invitation of any kind. The Earl was called His Lordship by the servants, but Celia had found out about their history from a footman called Lancelot.

  Lord Wilbury had inherited the house and title from his father George, Celia had told me. “He had once cut off the son,” Celia had said with wide brown eyes, “Disinherited him after he went and did something bad. But then he forgave him when he got wed. Her name was…”

  “Elizabeth,” I said quietly as I finished Celia’s sentence.

  “How do you know?”

  “Her things are up here next to George’s,” I said softly, respectful of her presence in the attic.

  “Ah, yes. When George died…Lord Wilbury had George’s things put with Elizabeth’s in the attic.”

  “But what of William?”

  “Who?”

  “The baby…William. What happened to him?”

  Celia shook her head. “I don’t know, but I’ll find out, don’t you worry none, Marley.”

  Chapter 15

  Just like the nightI’d lost my shoes, the day the baby came in June was a big moment in my life. The momentous event began quite early in the morning. A sharp pain in my belly had made me groan in my sleep, until my consciousness suddenly alerted me to the notion that the pain was very real. I opened my eyes and knew right there and then my time had come, four weeks early, according to my calculations.

  I had spent the winter delving into periodicals and the large stack of newspapers to discover any information about birthing I could find. But it appeared that women in confinement, and the procedures for having a baby, were not to spoken of. That must surely have been the case since there was nothing of worth I could find, except for the odd advertisement for cocaine drops for teething babies, and I couldn’t imagine getting my hands on anything like that. Eventually, I scoured an informative article for birthing calves, which put an image in my mind of Celia reaching inside me to pull out the baby by its legs. It was an embarrassing notion, but Celia had assured me, that whatever happened, she would be there to do whatever needed doing.

  Neither of us could have predicted the turn of events of that day.

  My waters broke midmorning after pacing the floor of my little parlour with two pairs of foot gloves on my feet. I must have resembled a waddling duck and when the fluid sprung from my belly
, it was confirmed. I was a duck waddling on water. Celia still hadn’t arrived, so she had no way of knowing the state I was in. Some of the spasms were intolerable. They hurt so much that I wanted to cry out each time, but there was also a part of me glad to feel the force of that new life inside me. The pain gave me joy, nothing like how I felt from the pain in my foot. There was no joy in that at all.

  When Celia burst into the attic like a whirling dervish, she saw me sitting on the side of the bed, huffing and puffing. She was huffing and puffing herself, but I was positive Celia wasn’t in labour. She stopped when she saw my tired eyes and the beads of sweat on my brow. “What’s wrong?” she asked hesitantly.

  I groaned. “The baby is coming.”

  Celia’s red face suddenly went pale as her mouth fell open and she stuttered her response. “It’s impossible. Not today.”

  I shook my head, unable to form words on my panting, pouting lips.

  She went down on her knees and peered into my eyes to demonstrate the seriousness of her concerns. “The mistress went into labour this morning.”

  I gasped. It couldn’t be true. I shook my head again as I grabbed her hand resting on my lap and squeezed it tight.

  “That’s why I couldn’t come up this morning. The household went on red alert.” With her voice breaking, Celia was wide eyed and scared. Maybe even, more scared than I.

  “Oh, God.”

  Suddenly she became resolute. She stood up. “No, we mustn’t worry. In fact, it’s perfect, isn’t it? If anything goes wrong I can bring the midwife up here and she can help you.”

  I shook my head violently. “No…”

  “Marley,” she said solemnly. “I won’t let anything happen to you. If you have to be discovered now, today, then let it be so.”

  I croaked my response the best I could. “If they find out about me…they will send me to gaol after they’ve taken my baby away. You can’t let them do that, Celia...”