The Most Precious Thing

by Bradshaw, Rita

  David wanted to know if Billy was out of the madness, Sandy too, but he couldn’t see either of them in the chaos. And he and Walter needed to get their da home, that was the first priority.

  They stood catching their breath, Ned supported between them, looking at the folk streaming past them. They were just ordinary men and women, solid working-class mining stock and their only crime was to want a reasonable wage at the end of the day. The world had gone mad.

  A young man David knew quite well, who had been on the last shift with him at the colliery before the gates had been locked and barred, passed by, carrying his unconscious wife in his arms. David remembered this lass; she was a bonny piece and they had only been married twelve months come September.

  ‘Look what they’ve done to her.’ Jackie was sobbing, the tears mingling with the blood on his face. ‘Smashed all her teeth in and broken her nose. Aimed straight for her face, one of ’em did.’

  ‘Get her home, man.’ David didn’t know what else to say. And then, as Ned sagged more heavily between them, he said to Walter, ‘Come on, Walt. That’s the place for us an’ all.’ The pain in his hand was excruciating now and he was overwhelmingly thankful Walter was with him. He would never have managed his father otherwise. The walk back was going to be a long one.

  Chapter Eight

  When the knock came at the door shortly after David had left for the march, Carrie thought for a moment it was Ada. Then, when Renee’s voice said, ‘Carrie? It’s me,’ she rose hastily, put the baking board to one side and hurried across the room.

  Carrie’s smile of welcome died a quick death as she took in her sister’s face. ‘What’s the matter?’ She reached out to Renee who was clinging to the doorpost. ‘Are you ill? You look as though you should be in bed.’

  Renee continued to hold on to the doorpost for some moments, her face twisted in pain, and just when Carrie was wondering if she needed to call Ada to help her lift Renee across to the bed, her sister reached out her hand. ‘I’ll be all right if I can sit down,’ she said shakily. ‘Can you help me?’

  Really frightened now, Carrie grasped Renee’s arm, taking most of her sister’s considerable weight as she guided her over to the bed. ‘You need to lie down a minute, lass, then you’ll feel better.’

  After collapsing on the covers, Renee lay still for a moment. Her normally rosy face was colourless and her breathing was deep and ragged. Carrie knelt on the floor at the side of the bed, stroking the hair away from her sister’s damp brow. She waited until a vestige of colour came back into Renee’s cheeks before she said, ‘What is it? Does Walter know you’re ill?’

  ‘Carrie, you’ve got to help me. I’ve . . . done something.’

  ‘Done something?’

  ‘Aye, and I know you’ll think I’m bad but I had to do it. I’m not like you, I couldn’t put up with--’ Renee stopped, sucking in breath. ‘I tried all the normal things - drinking gin, scalding baths and the like, but nothing worked. Then Elsie at work put me on to a woman she knows in the East End, a midwife.’

  Carrie had stopped stroking her sister’s brow, her hand frozen midway. She stared into the white face, unable to take in what she was hearing. The sweat was standing out like tiny teardrops on Renee’s upper lip, and she knew her sister expected her to say something but no words would come.

  ‘Don’t look at me like that.’ Renee turned her head to the side in one of the peevish flounces Carrie remembered from the past, but then Renee’s knees came up with what was obviously a cramping pain in her stomach and she groaned horribly, writhing about for some thirty seconds before she relaxed again.

  Carrie remained perfectly still. Renee had gone to see one of the backstreet midwives in the East End, the sort who were known for getting rid of as many babies as they delivered. Carrie couldn’t believe her sister could have done such a thing. Since her marriage and the washdays spent round the communal poss tub Carrie’d had a rude awakening to some of the seedier facts of life, but even among the women in Brooke Street, the old wives who practised their dangerous art amidst filth and degradation were always spoken of in furtive whispers.

  ‘It’s Walter’s fault,’ Renee panted weakly. ‘He promised me he’d be careful but since we’ve been wed he don’t seem to care any more. A couple of times I’ve gone mad at him and he just shakes his head and smiles that silly smile of his and parrots out that there’s worse things in life than a bairn.’

  ‘Does he know you’re expecting?’

  ‘Course he doesn’t know, haven’t you been listening? He wants me to fall, I know he does; all his talk when we were courting about waiting till I was ready and it being up to me was just that - talk. I think he’s done this on purpose. But I’m not getting stuck with a bairn, Carrie. I’d rather top meself. Life with Walter is bad enough but at least I’ve my job and my own money to enjoy meself with, or I will have when he’s back at work. I want to live a bit before I’m put six foot under in a wooden overcoat. Have nice things and live in a nice house.’

  ‘I thought you and Walter were happy,’ Carrie said, bewildered.

  ‘Happy? Huh! You don’t know the half, lass. By, I’ve had my eyes opened all right. Just ’cos we’re married he expects me to be the little wife with the dinner on the table and his slippers by the fire, and the next minute wanting me skirt to be over me head while he takes his pleasure. And another thing, he seems older than his da at times. At least Ned likes to go down the pub and have his betting on the side; all Walter wants to do is for us to sit at home and twiddle our thumbs of an evening. I had more fun when we were courting.’

  Carrie sank back on to the flagstones, dumbfounded. She’d had no idea Renee was feeling like this. But then the only times she had seen her sister since they were both married was in the company of their husbands. True, Walter had popped round a few times during the day since the strike and both she and David had thought he seemed subdued, but then everyone was down in the mouth, struggling as they all were.

  The next pain caused Renee to grip a handful of the bedclothes. She gasped and moaned her way through it, and when Carrie again began stroking her forehead, she opened her eyes and said, ‘I’m sorry, lass. I didn’t intend to burden you with this.’

  ‘It’s all right.’

  ‘I went to see this woman Elsie told me about a couple of evenings ago, but knowing Walter was away on this march today I thought I’d go this morning to . . . have it done. I went early, I said to Walter it was overtime and heaven knows we need some with him bringing in nowt’ - her tone was bitter and it reminded Carrie of Olive Sutton when she talked about her husband - ‘and then I was going to go home and it could’ve all been over before he came back. Either that or I’d have made out I came home from the factory feeling rough with the monthly. But, well, it wasn’t like I expected.’ And that was putting it mildly. She had expected to have to drink something which would scour her out, or maybe for the woman to pummel her about a bit, something along those lines, but the knitting needle had been like a blade being pushed up inside her. Ever since, she had been almost rent in two when the pains hit and scared out of her wits.

  ‘How far gone are you?’

  ‘I’ve only just missed me second monthly, so that’s not like it’s a proper baby or anything, is it?’

  Carrie made no reply to this but her face must have spoken for her, because Renee again turned her head to the side, and her voice was querulous when she said, ‘It’s all right for you, Carrie. You don’t mind being in the family way but I’m different.’

  The urge to bite back was strong but worry for her sister overrode everything else. ‘You ought to see a doctor, Renee. You know that, don’t you?’

  ‘No, no.’ Renee was gripping her hand again. ‘Please, Carrie, don’t tell anyone, please. You’re the only one I can trust and I didn’t want to be on my own. It’s done now, nothing can change that, and the woman said it would be over within a few hours.’

  ‘What if she’s done something, damaged yo
u inside?’ Carrie extricated her hand and reached over to remove her sister’s footwear as she spoke. Instead of brown or black boots, Renee was wearing shoes of patent leather, and her stockings weren’t of wool but were soft and silky to the touch. For a second the thought of what these must have cost flashed through Carrie’s mind before she told herself it was none of her business what Renee did with her wages. And her mam wouldn’t have accepted the money anyway. Although a couple of bags of groceries left in the scullery . . .

  ‘She hasn’t damaged me, not like that,’ Renee protested, adding a moment later, ‘but even if she has I don’t care as long as I get rid of it.’ And then another spasm seized her. When it was over, she said, ‘Promise me, lass. Promise me you’ll say nowt to no one. If you don’t I swear I’ll crawl out of here right now if I have to.’

  The next two hours were the longest of Carrie’s life but eventually it was over. When Renee started to bleed she insisted on climbing off the bed and squatting over the chamber pot so nothing got on the blankets that might raise questions from David. Shocked and upset though she was with Renee, Carrie couldn’t help but marvel at her sister’s iron strength of will. But if she was truthful Renee’s cold-blooded attitude about what she’d done made Carrie’s flesh creep. She held her sister’s hand, mopped her brow and fed her sips of water until her own back was aching fit to break and she felt giddy and weak, but inside she was thinking, I don’t know her. This is my own sister and yet I don’t know her, because I would never have thought in a hundred years she could do something like this.

  Eventually Renee stood up and draped the cardigan she had been wearing across the chamber pot. Then she washed herself with the cold water and soap Carrie had provided - there had been no coal for the range for days. Finally she said, ‘I’m going to the privy.’ And she picked up the pot.

  Dumbly Carrie stared at her, and as though in answer to an accusation, Renee said sharply, ‘It’s just like the monthly has come late and all at once. That’s all.’

  No, no it wasn’t.

  ‘You won’t say anything? Not to anyone?’ Renee’s voice had become softer, pleading. ‘I know you don’t agree with it but it’s done now. You won’t let on?’

  ‘You know I won’t.’

  ‘It’s for the best, Carrie.’

  ‘It was a baby.’ She hadn’t meant to say it, the words had just slipped out, but Renee’s expression didn’t alter.

  ‘I don’t see it like that,’ she said flatly. ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t. And I’ll tell you something else, lass. The time’s coming when men won’t have it all their own way and women’ll be able to pick and choose whether they have bairns or not, ordinary, working-class women. This is my body and my life and I don’t see why I shouldn’t say what happens to both. It’s not up to Walter.’

  Carrie said nothing to this and after a moment Renee went out of the room. A moment later the back door into the yard creaked. Carrie looked across to the chair and the baking board. It seemed incredible that only a couple of hours ago she had been sitting there working, contemplating going to see the owner of the corner shop and asking him to extend their credit for a few more groceries, on the understanding she would pay a chunk off the slate with her first week’s wages. It seemed as if an age had passed since then.

  When Renee came back into the room she had her hand pressed over her stomach, but when Carrie said, ‘Perhaps you should wait a while before you go home,’ her sister shook her head. She slid the chamber pot, washed out and clean, under the bed, straightened and then walked slowly over to Carrie.

  ‘I didn’t mean to involve you in this, lass, but I was scared,’ she said softly. ‘I didn’t expect the pain to be so bad.’

  ‘I know.’ To Carrie, she looked at this moment more like the old Renee who only let down her defences when the two of them were alone.

  ‘We’re still friends, aren’t we?’

  ‘Don’t be daft.’ Carrie hugged her, saying, ‘Look after yourself the next little while.’

  ‘I will.’ Renee smiled but her voice was husky. ‘You know me, lass. Look after number one because no other blighter will. Carrie,’ she hesitated a second before going on, ‘you and David, are you happy? I mean, it was so sudden and everything, the wedding, because of--’ She flapped her hand. ‘Well, let’s just say I wasn’t surprised when I found out you were expecting a few weeks later.’

  Carrie eyed her sister steadily. She had known this conversation would come sooner or later, she was just surprised it had taken Renee this long. ‘We’re fine.’

  ‘I’m glad.’ Renee had obviously been hoping for more. ‘I thought David would be happy, Walter said he’d suspected David had liked you for years, but you’d never mentioned him.’

  ‘Didn’t I?’ Carrie shrugged. ‘Perhaps I did and you weren’t listening.’

  Renee’s hand went again to her stomach and she winced. ‘I think I’ll get along home, lass, and let Walter look after me for a change when he gets in. Although I could be half dead and he’d only notice if his dinner wasn’t on the table,’ she added with the bitterness which had so disturbed Carrie before. ‘These stupid marches, what good do they do?’

  Carrie watched her sister leave with deep sadness, and it was only when she was alone that she realised just how much the last few hours had taken out of her. If what Renee said was true and Walter really had deliberately tried to get her pregnant, even knowing how she felt about having a bairn, that was inexcusable.

  She turned to survey the room, her eyes drawn to the rumpled covers on the bed and then the chamber pot beneath it.

  But to do away with the baby?

  She glanced across to the baking board as the reality of what had just occurred hammered in her head, and, her mind seeking temporary refuge in the mundane, she found herself murmuring, ‘I must get on, else I won’t get my quota done.’ Earlier she had placed a damp towel over the papers which had been stiff and difficult to roll that morning, but now it would be quite dry. She’d have to dampen it again. But still she did not move.

  Renee had got rid of her baby, but was she any different? She’d wished the child inside her dead a hundred times since Alec had forced her.

  No, it was different. It was as if there were two arguments going on in her head. Renee was married and she had been courting Walter for over two years before they had wed. Their child had been conceived in love, or at least respectability. Renee might not have liked the end result but she had lain with Walter because she wanted to; her sister would be the first to admit she liked a bit of making on.

  But a bairn was a bairn, wasn’t it? No child asked to be born, its birth was a result of a man and a woman making on, and who gave anyone, even the mother, the right to take away a life or wish the unborn child dead? Why was it wrong for Renee to want her baby dead because she was married and the bairn was her husband’s, and right for her to wish hers gone because of how it had come into being? Her hand touched the mound of her stomach. She was a hypocrite, that was the truth of the matter, but she couldn’t help how she felt. Nevertheless, she had to face the fact that this bairn inside her was the innocent one in all of this, just as Renee’s had been. But that tiny life had been extinguished now, flushed out and disposed of in the privy where the scavenger’s shovels would deal with it.

  She put her hand to her throat, the lump there threatening to choke her. Oh, Renee, Renee, what have you done? Carrie worked the skin of her neck for a moment, struggling to get a hold on the emotion beginning to swamp her.

  She couldn’t think of this now, not Renee’s dead baby nor her live one. Her hand moved to massage her forehead where a pulse of pain was throbbing. She’d think about it later, when she was lying quiet in the darkness with only the sound of David’s breathing disturbing the night. Then she could re-examine everything that had gone on and all that Renee had said, along with these thoughts about her own baby.

  She made herself walk across to the lumpy old armchair, settled the small table holding
the baking board in front of her and sat down with a heavy sigh. She must concentrate on getting as much work done as she could before she walked along to the corner shop. She’d make sure she allowed enough time before David came back; Mr Marley would be more likely to agree to let them have a few things on the slate if she went to see him herself. He was a nice man at heart.

  The extent of her girth made working at the table difficult but there was nothing to be done about that. As her fingers began to move swiftly with monotonous regularity, Carrie became almost oblivious to the papers and paste in her hands. Her thoughts sped on. David wouldn’t like it but she would continue making the firework cases at home even once he was in work. They had weeks of rent to clear for a start, but it wasn’t only that. They had to get out of this one room and into either the upstairs or the downstairs of a house at some point; they couldn’t stay here for ever. She wouldn’t stay here for ever. Five shillings for ten gross of crackers might not be much in the way of things considering the hours involved, but it wasn’t to be sneezed at either. And she would make every penny work for them, just like her mam had done at home. Like that fishwife had said to her the night she’d found out Alec was going to marry Miss Reed, you had to take life by the scruff of its neck and bash its face in. She hadn’t felt much like doing any bashing lately, but maybe it was time.