The Little Runaways

by Cathy Sharp

  Smothering her sigh, she nodded and began to walk as fast as she dare; it had frozen again last night and the pavements were icy. During the worst of the weather, shops and factories had closed, because the electric kept going off and even the schools had shut their doors some days because they were too cold for the children. Alice thought it seemed a little better this morning and she didn’t want to spend money on a tram while she could manage the walk, because she would need all her money once her condition left her homeless and without a job.

  ‘Alice,’ Nan called to her as she entered the home, still hurrying; it had taken her longer to walk to work, because of the slippery pavements. ‘I wanted a word with you, please.’

  ‘Yes, Nan?’ Alice paused, the breath catching in her throat because she was always aware that she was here on probation. One false move and Sister Beatrice would send her packing. ‘Do you need me to do something?’

  ‘One of the children in room five was sick all over her bed this morning. I think there must be a bug going round. I’ve been busy since I got here and I haven’t had time to clear it up. Can you change all the sheets and covers and take them to the dirty laundry room, please?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Alice said, relieved that it was just a straightforward request to clean up a bed. ‘I’ll be glad to.’

  ‘Make sure to wash your hands afterwards. We don’t want you to go down with the sickness, Alice. I’ve enough trouble with the kitchen staff. Muriel was complaining of feeling a bit under the weather first thing. If she goes off sick I’ll be left with all the cooking.’

  ‘I don’t mind working a bit longer today,’ Alice volunteered. ‘I don’t need a lunch break, just a cup of tea.’

  ‘You need to keep your strength up,’ Nan said, looking at her with concern. ‘You’ve been a bit pasty recently, Alice. You’re not sickening for anything yourself?’

  ‘No, I’m all right, thanks,’ Alice replied more cheerfully than she felt. ‘If you need me to stay on, just ask.’

  ‘You’re a good girl, Alice.’ Nan hesitated, then, ‘It was a pity about what happened to your boyfriend, Alice – though perhaps you’re better off without his sort.’

  Alice didn’t answer. Any girl in her position wanted to be married and respectable. Alice knew that once her condition became known people would turn their backs on her and whisper about her. Girls who went with men before marriage were not considered decent where she came from. You might be poor and you might have to mend your stockings and the holes in your clothes, but you kept yourself decent if you wanted to hold your head up high. Alice had broken the code when she’d let Jack make love to her and she was going to have to pay for it soon enough.

  As she turned away, Nan touched her arm. ‘If you’re ever in trouble, Alice, come to me. I’m sure I can find a way to help …’

  Alice stared after her. How could Nan know that she was in trouble? Of course she couldn’t – surely there was no way anyone could guess her secret yet?

  ELEVEN

  The old house was silent apart from the whispering of the wind in the eaves and the occasional soft tread of a carer’s footstep as she passed their room. Someone had looked in about ten minutes earlier, which was what had woken Nancy, and then she’d heard her brother whimpering in his sleep and the words he muttered sent chills down her spine. No one else must ever hear what he was saying or they would both be in terrible trouble.

  ‘Listen to me, Terry,’ Nancy said, leaning down to whisper close to his ear. ‘You’ve got to behave, because if you don’t they might try to separate us again. You’ll be taken somewhere they put bad boys – no, you’re not bad, but they’ll think you are if you say things like that – and they might lock us away in prison. You don’t want that, do you? You mustn’t ask who locked the door … if you do they might put us both in prison.’

  Terry clutched at her hand, his dark eyes wide and fearful as he gazed up at her. ‘I don’t want to say, Nance, but the dreams keep coming. I’m frightened that he’ll come after me again. Next time he’ll kill me …’

  ‘Pa won’t hurt you no more,’ Nancy said, reaching out to smooth his dark curly hair back from his forehead. He felt damp to her touch, because he’d been sweating. The nightmares kept on returning and then he woke screaming, his body drenched. ‘I told you, he died in that fire. Him and Ma …’

  ‘I didn’t want Ma to die.’ Terry’s eyes spilled their tears. ‘What happened, Nance? I can’t remember when I’m awake but – I dream terrible things, hear them screaming but the door is on fire and it’s locked. I can’t get to Ma in my dream – I can’t get her out …’

  ‘Hush, now,’ Nancy said, and stroked his face gently. He was so terrified of his father’s cruelty; it was better if he didn’t remember what had happened. ‘It was Pa’s fault. He was drunk when they came back that night and so was Ma. He left his jacket on the chair and I took the keys and unlocked your door. I gave you some bread and dripping and a drink of tea and then – I left you to go back to sleep while I cleared up the kitchen. They had made such a mess … Pa was sick all over the floor. He shouldn’t have drunk so much and then it might not have happened.’

  ‘Pa beat me again, didn’t he?’ Terry clung to his sister’s hand. ‘He was bad, Nance – what he done to you. He deserved it but Ma didn’t deserve to die – why didn’t she come out?’

  ‘Stop thinking about it,’ Nancy ordered. The door had been blazing and she’d known it was too late when she saw how fierce the fire was and him standing there staring at it. ‘You have to forget it, Terry. Ma should have left him and taken us with her years ago.’

  ‘Are you angry?’ Terry asked, looking at her strangely. ‘You’re not angry with me? I was just standing there in the hall and then you grabbed me and pulled me down the stairs and we ran away …’

  ‘You didn’t do anything wrong.’ Nancy gave him a little shake. ‘Listen to me, Terry; this is important. You were in your room until I came and got you out of bed. What happened wasn’t your fault. Remember that if the police ask questions.’

  Terry was shaking all over. ‘Why should they ask questions, Nance? We didn’t do nothing wrong, did we? Did I do something bad, Nance?’

  ‘No, you didn’t,’ Nancy said, her fingers digging into his shoulders as she shook him again. ‘Just remember, you were asleep until I grabbed you out of bed and shoved you down the stairs. Your dreams are just nightmares – you stopped on the landing and looked at the door. It was a sheet of flames and you just stared at it and then you screamed for Ma, but there was nothing we could do. Pa locked us out. It was his fault, that’s all you have to remember.’

  ‘I didn’t do anything bad?’

  ‘No, love,’ Nancy said, and held him in her arms, kissing the top of his head. He smelled clean and decent and she loved him. He didn’t carry the foul stink of a man that clung to Pa: sweat and beer and other things that made her shudder.

  ‘Nance, you won’t ever leave me? You won’t ever go away? I’m afraid of the dreams – afraid of what I see; afraid they might be true next time.’

  ‘It’s only because of the shock,’ Nancy said. ‘That doctor with the funny name said you were traumatised. I think that means you don’t know what’s happening – all those things you think happened are just bad dreams. Pa used to hit us, but that’s all.’ She smiled at him. ‘I’m your own Nance, ain’t I? And I’m never going to leave you. I shall always look after you – just as you looked after me.’

  ‘Did I look after you, Nance? What did I do?’

  ‘You stopped Pa hurting me,’ she said. ‘You kicked and punched him and that’s why he went mad and beat you with his belt. He sent you to bed with no supper and said he’d deal with you in the morning.’

  ‘What was he doing to you, Nance? I heard you crying lots of nights – but I can’t remember what he did …’

  ‘That’s because it wasn’t important. He just hit me, the way he hit you and Ma – there was nothing else. You forget about it. We’re a
ll right here for the moment, but you have to be good. Sally, she’s the nice one who came and brought us some sandwiches and talked to us today – and Miss Angela. They’re friends, Terry. You mustn’t pull the head off that teddy bear again or they will think something is wrong.’

  ‘All right. I’m sorry, Nance. I was just angry because my bear was lost in the fire and I couldn’t remember what happened …’

  ‘I should’ve brought Bear but there was no time. I’m sorry, love – but you must try, please, for both our sakes. I want to stay here, ’cos some places they might send us are terrible – worse than being at home with Pa.’

  ‘I’ll do what you say, Nance – as long as they don’t part us. I can’t be alone at night or the dreams will come true, I know they will.’

  ‘No, they won’t, because they can’t; it’s all over now,’ she soothed. ‘Now, I’m going to go down to the kitchen and ask for a hot drink for us both. Nan said that was what I should do if we woke in the night. She said someone would be about, because there are nurses and carers on duty all night – but you mustn’t be frightened. You mustn’t scream or call out. I shall come back. I promise I’ll always come back for you, Terry. They can’t part us for ever.’

  Unless the police thought they’d planned it together and then they might put Terry in a mental institution and Nancy in prison.

  ‘All right,’ Terry said. ‘Go on then; I’m awake now. It’s only when I’m asleep that the dreams come.’

  ‘I know, but they will fade in time,’ Nancy said. ‘I miss Ma too – but Pa was bad. He deserved what he got – you’re not to blame, love.’ Their parents wouldn’t have known anything about what was going on, because the smoke would’ve killed them long before the fire touched them. Nancy couldn’t be certain how it had started, though she had a terrible suspicion that her brother might have had something to do with it. No, she wouldn’t let herself think it; her father had been drunk and he must have knocked the oil lamp over, mustn’t he? It had all been so quick and nothing was clear in her mind.

  ‘Just forget it, my love. We mustn’t think about it any more.’

  Terry nodded; his eyes were wide and frightened even now. Nancy squeezed his hand and then left him to look for the hot drink she’d promised. He wasn’t the only one to have bad dreams; it was just that hers were with her all the time, waking and sleeping, but she could control them, could stop herself crying out things, and he couldn’t.

  Nancy knew that she had to be careful. It was easy to make a mistake and say too much. She’d let her guard down with Miss Angela and she thought the woman might have guessed her secret – a part of her secret, but not the dangerous bit. Their lives depended on people believing her story. If they knew what Pa had done to her they might suspect she’d intended him to die and then … no, she had to keep it all inside.

  It was Pa’s fault that he and Ma had died in the fire, though Nancy’s guilt over her mother was sometimes unbearable – but Pa was evil. He’d abused and ill-treated them all. He deserved to be dead and Nancy was never going to cry for him. She’d cried for Ma at first, but now she cared only about her brother. It was her duty to protect him from – whatever came along. Her eyes were burning with the need to weep, but she forced herself to keep the pain, the grief and the shame inside herself. She could never tell anyone the real truth as long as she lived …

  TWELVE

  ‘You must promise to have tea with me every day, at least until you get your room back,’ Beatrice said when Nan came to visit her the next morning. ‘I told you that you would have your own sitting room when I took over here – and I feel guilty about turning you out for that pair.’

  ‘Don’t make a fuss, Beatrice.’ Nan smiled comfortably. ‘We have a perfectly adequate staff room I can share and I like chatting to the younger ones. I’ve known you too many years to make a fuss over something like this – besides, what else could you have done?’

  ‘I should have insisted on splitting them up, as they ought to be. It isn’t natural for a girl of that age to be sleeping in the same room as her brother.’

  ‘I dare say there are thousands of them sleeping top to toe all over the country. Most families cannot afford the luxury of separate beds for the children, let alone separate rooms. My mother had five children and two bedrooms; we kids had to crowd into one room, but at least we were all girls. Two of my sisters died of scarlet fever when they were eleven and ten, and my eldest sister caught diphtheria when she worked at the Infirmary and died of it when she was seventeen. There’s only Geraldine and me left now and she lives down in Dorset. Apart from a Christmas card, I haven’t heard from her in years – but I don’t think our upbringing did us any harm.’

  ‘I know you’re right. In a perfect world – but I doubt we shall ever have that, Nan.’

  ‘Perhaps one day things will change. They will build lots of lovely houses with electric, modern bathrooms and enough bedrooms for a family …’

  ‘And if they do a lot of the tenants won’t be able to afford the rent, unless the Government pays out money to keep them.’ Beatrice smiled wryly. ‘How are you anyway? Have you heard anything positive from Maisie?’

  ‘No,’ Nan sighed. ‘We don’t have much luck, you and I, do we?’

  ‘Not with our private lives. You should go down there – insist on talking to her. She’s your child, Nan, and you have a right to at least talk to her.’

  ‘I tried that last year and the Abbess told me I was wasting my time. She was very kind and understanding, but said Maisie needed privacy to recover and heal – but she didn’t call her by her name, of course. She’s known as Mary there.’

  ‘You’ve never known why she suddenly took it into her head to go off and enter a convent?’

  ‘She didn’t speak to me for years after I found her living rough with those tramps under the arches, but on her eighteenth birthday she told me that she had to find peace, and that she had to be away from me. I’ve never understood why she blamed me for what that brute did to her.’ Nan closed her eyes in remembered grief. ‘I can’t believe I was such a fool – but he was kind to us and I was missing Sam.’

  ‘You shouldn’t take all the blame, Nan. Why didn’t Maisie tell you when it began? She knew it was wrong, but she didn’t give you a chance to help her.’

  ‘Perhaps she tried and I didn’t listen. I remember being tired and feeling unwell a lot back then. I suppose I was lost in my grief over Sam and Archie.’ Nan shook her head. ‘I shouldn’t talk about it, it only upsets me.’

  ‘My fault. I know how you feel – but if I had a chance to make amends … It is too late for me, Nan, but not for you. Don’t ever give up. Maisie is alive and one day she might need you again. I needed the protection of the convent when I made my vows and I dare say Maisie did too, but she is very young. You should let her know that she can return to her home if she needs to. Not every nun remains a nun for the rest of her life. There is a chance that Maisie will change her mind one day.’

  ‘I only wish I could believe that,’ Nan said, ‘but I don’t think she will ever leave that place now.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I know how it feels to lose those you love, but perhaps there is still hope. You are still young enough to find happiness again, Nan.’

  Nan shrugged and then smiled a little sadly. ‘I travelled with that old soldier again this morning. He invited me to have tea with him one day.’

  ‘Shall you go?’ Beatrice asked. ‘He sounds rather pleasant?’

  ‘Yes, he is in his way. Very polite, always carrying too much and dropping things, but he asked me to meet him for tea now and then and I just might. It’s nice to have a few friends.’

  ‘Yes.’ Beatrice placed her hands together in a steeple position. ‘Your friendship means a lot to me, Nan – of course I have my sisters at the convent, but it is not quite the same.’

  ‘No, I imagine not,’ Nan said for she had never understood why Beatrice had chosen to become a nun, although she did know something terri
ble had happened to her friend before they met.

  After Nan left, Beatrice took a look at the two new cases of flu that had been brought to the isolation ward the previous evening. Five of them in one ward was a bit of a squeeze and she would be glad when the new wing was ready. The builders had promised it would be finished by January, but the last time she’d looked inside there still looked to be a lot to do and they were nearly into February.

  ‘How is Sarah this morning?’ she asked as Carole returned to the desk. ‘I can’t see her notes.’

  ‘I left them on the end of her bed. I’m taking her temperature every hour or so and recording it, because she’s still very unwell. The other two that went down at the same time are much better, but because of her history of a weak chest she can’t shrug it off as quickly as they others.’

  ‘I’ll have a look at her,’ Beatrice said, and went to the sick girl’s bed. She was right at the end of the ward.

  Going inside the drawn curtains, Beatrice saw the girl was lying with her eyes closed and looking very pale and still. She moved closer and took her pulse, frowning as she discovered it was very weak. According to the chart at the bottom of the bed, Staff Nurse Carole, and Michelle during the night, had monitored her and done all they could to lower her temperature, but her hair was damp and Beatrice felt very worried. Perhaps the girl should be in hospital.

  After speaking to Sarah and receiving no answer, Beatrice decided the time had come for another opinion. She left the bedside, intending to telephone from her office, but as she emerged from the ward she almost bumped into Mr Markham. He was an eminent surgeon, and also wrote remedial books for backward or abused children. He volunteered frequently at the home. Strictly speaking, he wasn’t their GP, but she needed a doctor’s advice immediately.

  ‘Mr Markham, I wonder if you would take a look at Sarah Morgan? I’m a bit anxious and I was about to send for Dr Price, but as you’re here …’