by P. G. Glynn
“Perhaps. But Charles would still be married – and unable to be a proper father to your baby.”
“Oh, Nell, why do you always have to be so practical?”
“Someone has to be. And if you can’t marry Charles and won’t marry Otto … ”
“ … things are looking pretty grim?”
“Yes, actually, they are. This is no world for a fatherless infant. Being labelled a bastard would get him or her off to the worst possible start.”
At the word ‘bastard’ Marie blanched. Having a baby unwed was every woman’s dread. How had she managed to land in such soup? “I suppose,” she said eventually, “there’s only one thing to do.”
Sarah took it upon herself to confirm this all too soon. After bustling back into the dressing room, having put two and two together and made three, she observed briskly: “You’re lookin’ proper peaky, Miss Marie.”
“She’s just a bit under the weather,” Nell said protectively.
“She’s bin under more’n the weather, I reckon.” Crossing over to peer at Marie she commented: “Dear, dear, ducky … this is a bad day. It’s always the same: the man plays and the woman pays. Depends on you ’ow you pay, o’course. Two penn’orth of Bitter Apple plus a spell in an ’ot ’ip-bath should do the trick – that is, if you want rid. And your secret’ll go no farther ’n this.”
16
The Bitter Apple and hot baths had not done the trick, nor had gin, and now Marie had an appointment with an abortionist. This was a last resort and she had not told Uncle John, of course. Fearing for her safety he would only try to stop her going to the house on Raven Hill, just as Nell had tried, but Marie could think of no alternative.
Much as she was against killing the baby she and Charles had made, how could she let it live? Doing a ‘Lillie Langtry’ was no solution and, as for marrying Otto, she could never marry a man she did not love. Nell had argued that plenty of women did and that she was sure Marie would in time grow to love him, but then Nell was arguing from the viewpoint of a woman who saw Otto as a knight in shining armour. It was odd how many different ways there were of seeing a person. Otto was just one man and yet might well have been several, depending whether the seeing was through Nell’s, Aunt Gwen’s, Uncle John’s, Marie’s or even Charles’s eyes. Nell had her knight, Aunt Gwen her god, Uncle John his honourable gentleman and Marie her personable, if irritating and often overbearing as well as overeager, escort. So how would Charles see him? As arrogant and self-serving, she imagined, and perhaps also as someone to be envied. Did Charles envy Otto his freedom and his monopoly of Marie?
Best not to dwell on Charles. Dwelling on him could be her undoing, especially at a time like this. She must also not think of the risk involved in visiting a back-street abortionist. Both Nell and Sarah had warned her that the trip could end in tragedy. Bleeding to death was one possibility, as was permanent internal damage or even the baby not aborting but instead being born deformed or as a cabbage. Since Marie had exhausted her other options and resolutely refused to risk further rejection from the man who had put her in this fix, she was ignoring Nell’s and Sarah’s warnings. There must surely be more women who had survived than died, so she would focus on surviving … and on the right outcome.
Time enough to tell Uncle John after her safe return from Paddington. He had told her only last night how Ellen Terry had surmounted the problems of having two illegitimate children, adding that therefore Marie had, in a sense, only half a problem. There had been such concern in his eyes that she could have cried. She hated seeing concern where before she had solely seen pride. Well, after today Marie would somehow compensate Uncle John for all the anxiety she had caused him.
Marie had of necessity chosen a Sunday for her little trip to Mrs Purfitt’s. With no evening performance and no rehearsal scheduled for tomorrow, she hoped to be in fine fettle in time for Monday’s staging of OLIVER TWIST. If not exactly in fine fettle, she should at least have recovered sufficiently to go on as Nancy. Since not going on was not an option she would regard her recovery as a fait accompli.
“You haven’t said where you’re off to,” Uncle John mentioned as, dressed in rather less than her Sunday best, Marie left first thing for her rendezvous with Nell. He added pensively: “You usually do.”
Aunt Gwen called from the hallway: “You haven’t gone and been and fallen out with your nice Mr Berger, have you?”
“Shut up, woman, and go back to your kitchen!” John said over his shoulder before saying to Marie in softer tones: “I take it from the absence of his Rolls that you aren’t seeing Otto. You aren’t about to do … something stupid, are you, without telling me?”
“I’m done with stupidity,” she smiled, standing on tiptoe to give him a quick kiss, “so stop looking so worried. My not seeing Otto today is more cause for congratulation than commiseration. It wasn’t easy convincing him that he could live through a Sunday without me … and that I needed a day just with Nell if I was to hold on to my sanity. It’s an odd fact that no matter how often I tell him he drives me mad, he never seems to believe me. Did you ever come across such pomposity?”
When she smiled he could seldom help himself smiling back. There was relief in John’s smile as he said: “So you’ll be with Nell, up in her den?”
Oh, to be heading there, back in those distant days when her body was her own, with no unwanted occupant, and when the sun always shone! “Either there or somewhere,” Marie said, kissing him again. “True to form, I’ll only know where we’re going when we’ve gone. Spontaneity’s best, isn’t it?”
“It is,” agreed John, waving her off and wondering when he last had a chance to be spontaneous.
+++++
Nell had been far too worried to sleep. She had spent the night tossing and turning and dreading morning. What if it all went wrong? What if Marie started to bleed and the bleeding could not be stopped? What if she couldn’t walk out from Mrs Purfitt’s as she had walked in? There were even worse ‘what ifs’ but these were quite enough to be going on with. Nell felt keenly the heavy weight of responsibility.
Meeting Marie as arranged beneath the clock at Paddington station, she urged her: “There’s still time to change your mind.”
“I’ve no choice, though, have I?” Marie tried to smile. “Don’t look so anguished, Nell. This time tomorrow I’ll be as good as new.”
“Yes … you will.”
“You don’t sound altogether convinced.”
“You know me, dear – once a worrier, always a worrier.”
“It’s obviously a blessing to be an optimist!”
They set off round the corner, their steps slowing as they approached Raven Hill. Its whole aspect was somehow forbidding and its tall houses were grey and grim. Three young ragamuffins were kicking a ball across the street and shouting, while a mangy cat sat washing itself on the pavement beside a bin issuing a putrid stench.
Climbing the hill with leaden limbs, Marie felt less and less optimistic. What kind of woman was Mrs Purfitt? She could be absolutely any kind and yet Marie was about to entrust her with her very life. Nell had once described abortionists as little more than butchers, but Marie had refused to be deterred from coming here and submitting to … to whatever it was that Mrs Purfitt was going to do. How would she kill the baby Charles had fathered in happier days? However she did it she would be breaking the law and, if caught, could be sentenced to life-imprisonment. Marie didn’t want to think about any of this … but was soon going to have to think … and to submit.
“Here we are,” said Nell, her feet rooting themselves outside number twenty-four. “This seems to be the house.”
Wedged tightly in its terrace, it seemed to Marie to be even grimmer than its neighbours. Grimy paint was peeling from the window-frames and from the black front door. Black was an appropriate colour, she thought, for a house of death. “What will you do,” she asked Nell, “while I’m in there?”
“I’m coming in with you,” Nell said, eyin
g the house as apprehensively as Marie was eying it, “and will wait downstairs. If you shout for me I’ll come running and that’s a promise.”
“You’re so good to me: better than I deserve. I’m beginning to think this is worse for you than it is for me and I want you to know how thankful I am to … to have you for a friend, dear Nell.”
Hugging each other and blinking back tears, they then mounted the four filthy steps that led to the door and Marie lifted the heavy knocker, her heart thudding as she let it drop. Oh, to be anywhere but here! Oh, for this to be an ordinary Sunday out in the fresh air with hardly a care! Why had she never properly appreciated being carefree?
The stale, smelly air from within hit Marie as the abortionist opened her door. Mrs Purfitt was small and slight, with darting brown eyes and with lank dyed black hair hanging alongside a sallow-complexioned thin face. A substantial moustache darkened her upper lip and as she opened her mouth to speak she revealed gaps between uneven, bad teeth. “Mrs Skewton?” she asked Marie, who had given the name of a character from DOMBEY & SON. “Come in quick … and who’s this?”
Accepting Nell’s presence with bad grace and dire warnings of what would happen to anyone who ‘spilled any beans what weren’t for the spilling’, she ushered them both in after first glancing furtively each way along the street. Then she shut the door and bolted it, telling Nell to wait on a high-backed hard chair in the dingy hallway. “I land us in some fine pickles, don’t I?” Marie whispered in her petrified friend’s ear before following Mrs Purfitt up the steep and narrow flight of stairs to the first floor.
The room where Marie’s baby was due to be murdered had closed tatty curtains and furnishings that were both sparse and drab. These consisted of a tall iron bedstead with a soiled cover across its mattress, a sagging chair and a small wooden chest on which stood a jug and a bowl.
Marie had hardly had a chance to absorb this sorry scene when Mrs Purfitt held out a calloused hand saying: “Cash in advance, as agreed over the telephone. Ten guineas.”
“You said ten pounds.”
“Did I?” The woman said slyly: “I can’t have been thinking right – or including a silent tongue in the price.”
“As silence is even more in your interests than mine I suggest we stick to the sum agreed,” Marie said, extracting two crisp white fivers from her purse. “That is, unless you want me to take my money elsewhere?”
Reaching for the notes and snatching these greedily, Mrs Purfitt told Marie: “You drive a hard bargain. Now let’s see how plucky you are. Get your knickers orf and lie over there. I can’t promise the pleasure you had, getting into this fix, but I can promise a good job. One jab and things’ll start to happen. Oh and Mrs Skewton, or whoever you are, that fine skirt had best come orf, too … unless you want blood soaking it!”
Gritting her teeth and banishing concerns about hygiene, Marie was soon lying naked from the waist down on the soiled mattress. She closed her eyes, attempting at the same time to close her mind. She could shut out this horror if she truly tried. The deed would shortly be done and she could leave here. But … but …
‘Buts’ tumbled in and she couldn’t stop them. ‘One jab’, this dreadful woman had said. The jab would be at the baby that Charles, in an act of love, had helped to make. That act had taken Marie close to heaven and now brought her to this hell. As for the baby they had made – it barely existed yet, but if destined to live would become a person: one with a heart and soul and an identity all her own. Yes, it was a ‘she’ not a ‘he’, Marie knew suddenly, piercingly, as in her mind’s eye she saw her baby. Oh, the sweet perfection of those blue eyes, that button nose … the sweet mouth now pursing as if to cry!
“Open your legs then. It’s too late to pretend you aren’t in the habit of opening ’em.”
The voice was so alien to the image Marie was seeing that she winced. It was her eyes, not her legs, which opened and focused on the woman standing at the end of the bed. In her hand, pointing toward Marie, was a familiar object – looking lethal in this context. Mrs Purfitt was clearly planning to jab at Marie’s and Charles’s helpless baby with a long, steel knitting needle!
“That’s vile!” Marie cried, sitting up and hunching her knees. “Keep away from me. I’m leaving.”
“Not yet you aren’t – not till we’ve finished our bit of business.” The woman had stepped back a fraction but held the needle menacingly in her fist. “I’m not ’aving you coming here all hoity toity, then copping out at the last minute. I know your sort and have seen fear in plenty afore. You’ll lie back down if you know what’s good for you and let me do the job you’ve paid me to do.”
“Not blinking likely!” Marie said, springing from the bed and reaching for the clothes she had tossed across the nearby chair. Pulling on her knickers she warned: “Keep your distance or I’ll scream.”
“Your threats won’t wash with me … and you aren’t leaving till I’ve earned my money.”
“If you think you can stop me, you’re in for a shock.” Her skirt and shoes in her hand, Marie ran to the door but Mrs Purfitt reached this before her, locking it and smugly slipping the key into her overall pocket. Deciding against physically fighting a woman wielding a knitting needle, Marie now ran to the window. Throwing back the curtains, she tried to open it but it was stuck fast and she saw that the sash-cord had snapped in half. So, taking a shoe, she hammered its heel hard against the pane of glass. The shoe went right through and Marie cut her wrist in the process. As blood spurted she yelled: “Help! Help … police … anybody!”
+++++
Otto Berger, seated below in his hired Rolls, felt that he fitted into the second category. It had not taken him long, on reaching Paddington, to guess why Nell had telephoned first thing suggesting that his car’s presence in this vicinity after ten might prove to be very welcome. She had added somewhat in panic that he must also be prepared for the opposite reaction. Well, since meeting Marie he had learned to be prepared for anything and to stay on his toes in readiness for the next happening.
Dashing to her rescue, Otto took the four steps to the front door in one bound and pummelled it with his fists before noticing the knocker and using that instead, making enough noise to waken the dead. A bolt was drawn, then another, and Nell was suddenly standing there saying: “Do something! Marie’s in trouble.”
Before Otto could move a huge man appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, wearing just a vest beneath his braces and oozing sweat and menace. “Here, what’s the big hurry?” he demanded, arms folded across his massive chest, from the foot of the stairs. “Stay right where you are. You ain’t going nowhere.”
“Is that so?” Otto asked with deceptive politeness before raising a fist and a knee and using these effectively.
Now there were hurrying steps overhead and Marie was clip-clopping downstairs toward him, wearing one shoe and holding her wrist which was roughly bandaged with what looked to him like part of a petticoat. “Otto!” she exclaimed, passing a hairy individual who, clutching his crotch in apparent agony, was letting rip with epithets. “I won’t ask how you found me, since I can probably guess.”
“It’s my doing,” Nell said.
“And it’s no bad thing,” Marie told her.
“Is that your way of saying,” Otto asked, “that you’re pleased to see me?”
“I wouldn’t put it that strongly!” She was in fact greatly relieved to have him here, helping her escape. “Well, are we planning on staying here all day?”
“Is there anywhere better to be on a Sunday?” Otto asked, delighted to find that apart from her wrist Marie appeared unharmed. “Once we’re out of this house we’ll have to try and think whether there is.”
“When I can get a word in,” said Mrs Purfitt primly from three stairs up, “I’ll tell you this: if you’ve damaged my man’s marriage tackle I’ll damage you and that’s the truth.”
Otto asked: “Will you be doing the damaging before or after?”
Her bus
y eyes stilled as she queried suspiciously: “Before or after what exactly?”
“The police get here. They’re on their way, I gather.”
She blanched, having forgotten the cry for help thanks to all the subsequent palaver. “I’ve done nothing,” she protested. “Except for her wrist, which was her own doing, Mrs Skewton’s just as she was when she arrived.”
“I’m glad to hear it. Believe me, it would be the worse for you if she weren’t.”
“The worse for me?” Mrs Purfitt was outraged. “It’s a fine kettle of fish when an honest woman who’s only trying to help others is treated like she’s in the wrong!”
“If you’re so honest,” Marie said, “you’ll refund my money.”
“I’ll do what?”
Gathering his sluggish wits sufficiently to come to his wife’s assistance Mr Purfitt, who was now rubbing his jaw while still holding his crotch, muttered: “I can feel a wallop coming on.”
Nell, fearing more fisticuffs, urged Marie and Otto: “Let’s be off! We’d best be gone, hadn’t we, before the police come to arrest her for illegal pursuits?”
“Which they’ll do,” said Marie, “if they search her and find two crisp fivers in her overall pocket.”
“Anybody’d think it was my fault you turned out to be chicken-livered!” As the abortionist spat this at Marie there were sounds from the street and she hastily handed over the money. “Tell on me now,” she said, “and you’ll be doing the dirty on someone as don’t deserve it.”
A youthful police constable new to the beat knocked on the half-open door before asking: “Did somebody send for me?”
“Yes, officer,” Marie responded, “I must admit that I did.”
Blushing at being so elevated in status, the bobby said: “Well, Miss, what’s the problem, then?”
“There was a problem,” Marie told him, “and I’m afraid that I panicked. I shouldn’t have done, but I did. You see, it was such a shock when the call came from my sister.”
