The Silver Locket (Choc Lit)

by Margaret James

  ‘My mother had fifteen.’ Daniel glared at Phoebe in a fury. ‘I know what size a woman ought to be when she’s only six or seven months gone. You look damn near your time to me.’

  ‘I’m carryin’ lots of water,’ Phoebe wept. ‘The doctor says it might be twins.’

  ‘My family don’t have twins.’ Daniel gave Phoebe one last kick. ‘I was up in Liverpool three months, so you ’ad plenty of time to mess about. I’ve seen you lookin’ at the soldiers. I’ve watched you smirk an’ flap your drawers at them.’

  ‘Dan, there’s only you,’ cried Phoebe, sobbing. ‘There’s only ever been you, I swear to God and all the saints.’

  ‘You women are all liars,’ muttered Daniel, unconvinced. ‘Well, we’ll soon find out. I’m dark, an’ so’s me Mum and Dad. So if this baby’s fair, you’re goin’ to be in serious trouble.’

  ‘Daniel, please!’ begged Phoebe. ‘New born babies often has fair hair! I was fair myself ’til I was five. Ask anybody in the Green!’

  ‘My family’s kids are dark. So if this brat’s a ginger nut or anything like that, I’m goin’ to make you sorry you drew breath.’

  ‘Breathe in, Mr Denham.’ The doctor listened to Alex’s chest. ‘Now out again – that’s excellent.’ The doctor smiled, delighted. ‘What about the headaches?’

  ‘I don’t get them any more.’

  ‘You don’t?’ The doctor wrote on Alex’s notes. ‘It looks as if you’re in the clear, my boy.’

  ‘You mean I’m fit enough to go and get smashed up again?’

  ‘We don’t want to hear that sort of talk.’ The doctor frowned. ‘I know it’s hard for you young officers, but this year ought to see the end of it. You chaps will be the heroes of the hour. Girls will be falling at your feet, old men will envy you.’

  The doctor tapped his nose and grinned. ‘You know your Shakespeare? “Gentlemen in England now abed,” and all that sort of thing. Where are you going next?’

  ‘To some place near Bethune.’ Alex buttoned up his khaki shirt and found his tie. ‘There are rumours of another push this autumn. My battalion will probably be in the thick of it.’

  ‘Well, there you are, then. Jerry’s going to get it in the neck, and you’ll be home for Christmas.’

  Christmas 1924, thought Alex. He pulled his gloves on then walked out of the doctor’s stuffy office, feeling sick and tired, his everlasting headache worse than ever.

  But at least he’d managed to put on something of an act. They’d finally passed him fit, and he was grateful, for the thought of going back to the trenches was all that kept him sane.

  Perhaps this autumn they would finish it. Perhaps there’d be a real battle, somebody might win it, and the politicians would be forced to talk. Then he could go to India, as he’d planned. If he were half a world away from Rose, he might forget he’d ever seen her face.

  He caught a train up to the railhead, then walked for miles along communication trenches looking for his company, which he finally found in the front line.

  ‘Alex, my dear fellow, good to see you!’ Captain Ford was evidently pleased to have him back. ‘Just in time to have a pop at Jerry. We’re going in next week, so we’ve been told and do believe. We’re going to blow them up the Kaiser’s arse.’

  Michael Easton walked into the dugout. ‘Hello, Denham,’ he began. ‘You’re feeling better, I assume?’

  ‘Yes, thank you, Easton.’

  ‘Mr Easton, I told you to check the fire-steps, to see that they were properly revetted. The damned things looked as if they were going to crumble yesterday.’ Captain Ford scowled angrily at Michael. ‘But perhaps you’ve done it?’

  ‘I’m just going now, sir.’ Michael turned to leave.

  ‘Lieutenant Easton, I didn’t tell you to dismiss!’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. I thought–’

  ‘You never think, man – that’s your trouble. Anyway, you could say congratulations to Mr Denham here.’

  ‘Sir?’ frowned Michael.

  ‘Alex’s got himself another pip. The order came through yesterday. So when the time comes for the push, this company will be split into two. Captain Denham will be officer in charge of you and Lomax, heaven help him. All right, tell him you’re delighted.’

  ‘Well done, Captain Denham.’ Michael held out his right hand and smiled, but Alex saw the hatred in his eyes.

  Chapter Eight

  Maria’s letter came the day that Lady Courtenay was due to go to London for some tests. Sir Gerard had to be in court, but Rose could see he was relieved he wouldn’t have to accompany her mother.

  ‘Poor Gerard, he hates hospitals,’ said Frances Courtenay, as she waved him off to deal with local poachers and to remand suspected German spies. ‘I don’t care for them myself. It’s odd that you should have this strange desire to play at being a nurse.’

  ‘We must be going.’ Rose picked up Lady Courtenay’s sable coat. ‘Payne is here to take us to the station.’

  They settled down in a first-class compartment. Lady Courtenay shook open The Times and began to read the obituaries, clucking as she scanned the lists of names.

  ‘Peter Mallison, from the first battalion,’ she frowned. ‘Do you remember him? Mr Mallison was on the bench, until that business with the chorus girl. I must write to Sylvia tonight. David Borden, Colin Graston-Smith, Alex–’

  ‘Alex?’

  ‘Burton-Powell, Royal Essex Rifles.’ Lady Courtenay looked at Rose. ‘Do we know him, darling?’

  ‘No, I don’t think we do.’ Rose breathed again. Opening Maria’s letter, she shut her ears to her mother’s doleful litany.

  ‘Now I have a favour to ask,’ Maria wrote, three or four pages into long descriptions of even longer journeys through the French and Belgian countryside, during which the ambulance trains had been attacked and shelled by German planes. One of them had been derailed, killing two nurses and a hundred men.

  ‘Rose, could you go and visit Phoebe? She hardly ever writes to me, unless she wants some money. But this month I’ve had three letters begging me to go and see her, which of course I can’t. We’re really busy over here. We ought to have four nurses to a train, but we’re often down to two or three, and all leave is cancelled.

  ‘This October, our troops started using poison gas. But there are often mix-ups and it all blows back at them. The Germans bomb the trenches where they keep the cylinders, and these all explode. So now we’re having to cope with men whose lungs are badly damaged, and most of them are going to die in the most awful way.

  ‘I shouldn’t be writing this, I know. The censor will most probably strike it out, and all you’ll see will be a mess of black. But will you go and see Phoebe? She’s in lodgings at 15 Finker Street – that’s in Bethnal Green. If she needs money, could you lend her some? I’ll pay you back, upon my honour. I wouldn’t trouble you, dear Rose, but there isn’t anyone else to ask.

  ‘I hope your mother is better, and has forgiven you for running away. When I finally get some leave and can come back to England, I hope we’ll meet again.

  ‘All my love, Maria.’

  Rose looked at the address Maria had given. She had never been to the East End. She supposed it must be full of costermongers selling oranges and lemons, cheerful Cockney flower girls and maybe even pearly kings and queens.

  It would be an adventure to go to Bethnal Green, and see the place where Phoebe and Maria had grown up. She’d leave Lady Courtenay at the clinic, she decided, then get a cab to the East End. She would sort Phoebe out, then be back in time to take her mother home to Dorset on the evening train.

  The train steamed into Paddington. They took a cab to Harley Street. ‘Listen, Mummy,’ Rose began, ‘I’m going to leave you here with Sister Golding and the other nurses, and go to see a friend.’

  ‘Very well, my darling.’ Then Lady Courtenay smiled graciously at Sister Golding, who clearly knew her place and was deference itself to influential patients. ‘Sister, when do you think we might be finish
ed?’

  ‘Well, Dr Firth will do some tests, then Mr Morris will examine you and have a little chat,’ said Sister Golding. ‘We don’t know how long that’s going to take, but Mr Morris likes to get away by four o’clock.’

  ‘Off you go then, darling.’ Lady Courtenay fluttered one white, fragile hand. ‘Do remember to have luncheon. You could go to Bonner’s in the Strand.’

  Outside in the busy street, Rose flagged down a cab. She gave the driver the address. ‘Where’s that then, miss?’ he frowned.

  ‘Bethnal Green,’ said Rose, whose imagination had conjured up a pretty park with winter trees.

  ‘It’s rough over that way, miss.’ The driver shook his head. ‘You don’t want to be there after dark.’

  ‘But it’s not yet eleven,’ Rose said crisply. ‘So the sooner we set out, the sooner I’ll get back.’

  ‘On your head be it, miss,’ the cabman said.

  Rose watched the gracious buildings and smart shops of the West End give way to offices and banks, then to tenements and mouldy, peeling terraces. As the streets grew meaner and more narrow, the people crowding them grew less well-dressed and less well-fed.

  She saw women with babies in their arms who looked even older than her mother. Little children had the pinched and wolfish faces of malevolent old men.

  The streets grew shorter and more crowded. When the cab stopped for a brewer’s wagon or a dray, the people lounging on the pavements or arguing outside the public houses took a good look at Rose.

  In Dorset, peasants bobbed or pulled their forelocks to the gentry. But these Cockneys met her gaze with bold, hard stares or mirthless, knowing grins.

  Market stalls piled high with second-hand clothes and shoes, or selling fruit and vegetables, lined almost every street. People pushing loaded barrows, old men touting patent medicines, baked-potato vendors and hurdy-gurdy men walked up the middle of the road. Ragged boys were fascinated by the motor car, touching it with sticky, dirty fingers and peering curiously inside, so the driver had to honk the horn to part the crowds and let the vehicle pass.

  Rose saw buildings that had recently burned down, and were in the process of being shored up or demolished. ‘They have a lot of fires round here,’ she said.

  ‘It’s them blasted Zeppelins tryin’ to ’it the docks, but missin’ by a mile or more.’ The driver turned into a cobbled street of squalid tenements, grubby-looking old clothes shops and soot-stained terraces. ‘This looks like the place you wanted, miss,’ he added, grimly. ‘What number was it, then?’

  ‘Fifteen,’ said Rose.

  ‘It must be this one, by the pump.’ The driver stopped, and Rose got out.

  ‘I’ll wait for you,’ the driver said.

  ‘There’s no need, I might be here a while.’ Rose took out her purse. ‘How much do I owe you?’

  ‘One and tenpence, miss – and you should put that purse away.’

  Rose gave the cabman half a crown. As he drove away, she felt a sudden ripple of apprehension, and wished she’d kept him waiting. After what she’d seen in France, she had imagined nothing could surprise her – and she was still in London, after all. But this street in Bethnal Green was such an alien place she might just as well be on the moon.

  She’d never seen such squalor, so many ragged people, such filthy, blackened buildings, such general decay. As for the smell – she’d thought she was inured to stench, that nothing could be more unpleasant than the smell of gangrene coming from a putrid wound. But this place stank far worse than that, of sewage and of drains, of tanneries and of slaughter houses, of centuries of grime.

  Even in the smartest parts of London, the air rained soot from half a million chimneys. But here it was especially foetid, thick with fumes and smuts from workshops, sweatshops and a thousand factories that she later learned were rendering tallow, making matches, turning out shoddy furniture or cheap clothes.

  She knocked on the door of the lodging house. As she stood there waiting, children came to look at her and point.

  ‘You from the Board, miss?’ asked shoeless boy.

  ‘You one of them Sally Army people?’ asked a girl who carried a tiny baby that was snivelling miserably.

  ‘Where’s yer tambourine?’

  ‘You from the landlord, then?’

  ‘Got a penny ’ave yer, miss?’ The shoeless boy pawed hopefully at Rose’s smart, black bag. ‘Only me dad’s off work this week, ’e’s ’urt ’is back real bad.’

  ‘Get off my nice clean step!’ The door jerked open and the children scattered. ‘Who are you and what do you want? This ain’t a bleedin’ knockin’ shop,’ declared the sour-faced woman who glared angrily at Rose.

  ‘I’m looking for Phoebe Gower,’ said Rose politely. ‘I understand she lives here?’

  ‘Well, she did,’ the woman muttered. ‘But she don’t live ’ere no more.’

  ‘Where is she now?’ asked Rose.

  ‘What’s that to you, Miss Lah-di-dah?’ The woman shooed Rose off her whitened step. ‘If you’re another of ’er mates from up the ’Aggerston Palace Music ’All, you can sling yer ’ook. This is a respectable ’ouse, an’ I don’t want no tarts an’ so-called actresses round ’ere.’

  ‘I only want to know where Phoebe’s gone–’

  ‘Try Rosenheim’s.’ The woman jerked her thumb. ‘She might be lodgin’ there.’

  ‘Rosenheim’s?’ repeated Rose.

  ‘You daft or somethin’?’ barked the woman. ‘Rosenheim’s, the shop just up the road!’

  The shop was dark and musty, and smelled of mice and damp. Rusting cans and faded cardboard packets filled the shelves, and sacks of flour and sugar sat on the floor.

  ‘May I help you, miss?’ A tiny, dark-haired woman dressed from head to foot in threadbare black emerged out of the shadows.

  ‘Yes,’ said Rose. ‘I’m looking for–’

  But then there was a scream of pain from somewhere in the building and the hairs stood up on Rose’s head. ‘Who was that?’ she cried.

  ‘My lodger, miss.’ The shopkeeper shrugged helplessly. ‘She’s going to have a baby. I’m sorry, I must leave you for a minute.’

  ‘Mrs Rosenheim? My name’s Rose Courtenay, I’m Maria’s friend. She asked me to come and visit Phoebe. I’m a nurse, so if there’s anything I can do to help?’

  ‘Oh, thank God, thank God!’ Mrs Rosenheim’s relief was almost tangible. ‘Please, come in. She’s in the parlour, we couldn’t get her up the stairs.’

  Rose followed Mrs Rosenheim into the gloomy parlour. Phoebe lay on a couch, her legs apart and panting hard. ‘That you, Mrs R?’ she gasped. ‘You found Mrs Bloom?’

  ‘Nathan’s still out looking.’ Mrs Rosenheim crouched down beside the labouring woman. ‘Look, here’s Maria’s friend. She’s a nurse, she’ll help you.’

  ‘Rose?’ Phoebe gaped, astonished. ‘What you doin’ ’ere, ’ow’d you find me?’

  ‘Maria sent me.’ Rose dragged off her hat and coat and knelt by Phoebe’s side. ‘How long have you been in labour?’

  ‘Bleedin’ hours, Rose! It feels like days!’ Phoebe’s dark eyes filled and tears spilled over. ‘Rose,’ she sobbed, ‘it’s agony!’

  ‘It’s going to be all right, you’ll see.’ Rose took Phoebe’s cold hand. ‘We’ll manage, you’ll be fine.’

  ‘I’m goin’ to die.’ Phoebe’s huge brown eyes were dull with pain. ‘How many babies you delivered, Rose?’

  ‘Dozens,’ Rose assured her, hoping Mrs Bloom would soon arrive.

  ‘She’s getting weaker.’ It was half past one, and Rose had been sitting at Phoebe’s side since twelve, watching her strength ebbing away and hearing her pathetic cries grow faint. ‘This Mrs Bloom, is she a midwife?’

  ‘Yes, and she could be anywhere in the Green.’ Mrs Rosenheim looked worried sick. ‘As I say, my Nathan’s gone out looking.’

  ‘What about getting a neighbour, or a friend?’ suggested Rose. ‘Someone who has children of her own, would she come and
help us?’

  ‘No one in the Green will get involved.’ Mrs Rosenheim’s dark eyes were like a frightened deer’s. ‘You won’t understand, miss, and it would take me too long to explain, but they’re all afraid of Daniel Hanson and what he might do. Dan is an important man round here.’

  Daniel Hanson? Rose recalled the burly, scowling man she’d seen with Phoebe, that day in the West End restaurant. ‘But you took her in,’ she murmured. ‘You can’t be afraid?’

  ‘Miss, I’m terrified.’ Mrs Rosenheim twisted her thin hands, plaiting her fingers in anxiety. ‘But Phoebe used to work for me. I knew her foster mother, may she rest in peace. When Phoebe came here, asking me for shelter, how could I turn Maisie’s child away?’

  ‘Rose!’ Phoebe suddenly clutched at Rose’s sleeve. ‘Rose, I think it’s coming!’

  Rose looked, and saw a spreading stain darken the brocade of the old couch. She didn’t know what to do, but there was nobody to ask. So she eased off Phoebe’s drawers, knelt down between her patient’s legs, and prayed.

  She saw a pale disc which had to be the baby’s head. ‘Phoebe love, the baby’s on its way,’ she whispered, as the disk grew larger and the head emerged. She watched entranced as the small shoulders came. A moment later, the child had been born and lay on the green couch, a pale ghost.

  ‘You need to cut the cord.’ Mrs Rosenheim looked timidly over Rose’s shoulder. ‘You’ll need some string. I’ll go and get it.’

  ‘Rose, don’t go!’ cried Phoebe.

  ‘It’s all right, I’m here.’ Rose watched the blue-grey cord come slithering out, squirming as if it were a living thing. Where should she cut it? Why did Mrs Rosenheim want string?

  Nothing in her training at St Benedict’s or what she’d done in France had prepared her for the sheer astonishment and awe that had overwhelmed her as she’d watched Phoebe’s baby being born.

  She almost wept when she heard voices in the passage, and a plump and cheerful-looking woman came striding purposefully into the room.

  ‘So, I’m too late,’ she beamed. She knelt beside the patient. ‘Excuse me, miss,’ she said to Rose. ‘Come on Phoebe, one more push, we need the afterbirth. Rachel, go and find a blanket, shawl or something warm to wrap the baby, otherwise she’s going to die of cold.’