A Mother's Choice

by Val Wood

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  For ten years Delia has had to fend for herself and her son, Jack, and as a young unmarried mother life has never been easy. Every new coat and pair of shoes was bought with what little money she could scrape together as a singer on the stage.

  But when the theatre work dries up, Delia faces a dilemma: continue the search for employment with no knowing whether she’ll find the stability and security her son needs, or return to the place that should be home … where only spite and hatred await them.

  Desperate now, a chance encounter suddenly presents a lifeline. But Delia is faced with an impossible, heart-wrenching choice. Can she bear to leave Jack behind, hoping another family will care for him? Will they ever be reunited?

  What else can a mother do to give her son the life he deserves?

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-six

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Ending

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Also by Val Wood

  Copyright

  A MOTHER’S CHOICE

  Val Wood

  For my family with love and Peter as always

  CHAPTER ONE

  November 1897

  The boy, trailing behind his mother, kicked a pebble into the road. It seemed as if they had been travelling for ever. They had, he was sure of it; well, days anyway.

  ‘Come on, Jack!’ His mother’s voice was irritable. ‘Don’t dawdle.’

  He wanted to ask where they were going, for she hadn’t yet told him, but he held back; he could tell when his mother was in the mood for conversation and she wasn’t now. She seemed … well, not exactly sad, but not very happy.

  He had had his tenth birthday last Saturday, the eighth of November, and his mother had announced that they were going to do something special. He had thought that the special thing was the tea party they’d had in Brighton that afternoon with Mr Arthur Crawshaw, who was his best grown-up friend and his mother’s too.

  His mother and Mr Crawshaw had both played at Bradshaw’s that evening and Jack had hung around the theatre until the show had finished. He and his mother had said goodbye to Mr Crawshaw and gone back to their lodgings, and the next day his mother had started to pack their belongings. She had said they were moving on, but she didn’t say where they were going.

  They left Brighton on Monday morning and took the train to London; he’d asked her if she would be playing in London but she’d said she didn’t know until she’d seen her agent. Playing, he thought, kicking another stone. It wasn’t playing as he thought of playing. Playing was a game of cards or throwing dice. Playing was hopscotch, chalking squares on the ground and jumping in and out of them, making up your own rules and not caring if you cheated because it was your own game.

  His mother’s playing was standing in the middle of a stage and singing to an audience, who sometimes clapped and sometimes didn’t. He liked London and hoped they would stay for a while, and whilst his mother was visiting her agent he walked by the Thames; the tide was out and he saw a group of children down on the muddy shore gathering up what he thought was rubbish and jumped down to join them.

  They were not welcoming but he was used to that. They gathered round him, hostile and threatening, saying that this was their patch and everything on it was theirs for the keeping. He argued with them, telling them that they were wrong and that the very ground they were standing on as well as everything on it belonged to the Crown. He knew that for a fact, he said, for Mr Arthur Crawshaw had told him so and he knew everything about anything, but in any case he didn’t want any of their rubbish. He’d only come down to pass the time whilst he waited for his mother.

  ‘Who’s Mr Arfur Crawshaw?’ they mocked. ‘Never ’eard of ’im.’

  ‘What?’ he jeered back in his best imitation of Cockney. ‘You ain’t ’eard of ’im? He’s only the most celebrated Shakespearean actor of all time.’ He put his hands to his hips in a masterful pose and quoted, ‘I like this place and willingly could waste my time in it.’ The group of youngsters, three boys and two girls, stared open-mouthed and then as one they pounced and they all rolled in the mud, hitting but not hurting, until he heard his mother calling from above to get himself back up there right now.

  ‘Cheerio,’ he called, as he extricated himself from the fracas. ‘See you again.’

  ‘Not if we see you first,’ they shouted back and, grinning, went back to their rubbish collecting.

  His mother wasn’t pleased to see the mud on his clothes and brushed him down with a heavy hand before softly cuffing his ear. ‘Look at the mess you’ve made, and there’s no time to wash your breeches!’

  There was something in her voice that told him it wasn’t only his muddy clothes that had put her in a foul humour, but something else; he murmured sorrowfully, ‘Sorry. It was just a bit of fun.’

  She nodded, but didn’t say anything more, and took his hand as they walked on. They caught a horse bus to King’s Cross station and she went in to enquire about trains. He sighed as he waited, and rubbed his cold hands together, blowing on them to make them warmer. So where to now? Another town? Not staying in London, anyway.

  ‘Did you get another gaff, Mother?’ he asked as they left the concourse. ‘Where are we going?’ He shivered. It was cold and starting to drizzle with icy rain. ‘Can’t we stay in London? Are you going to do pantomime?’

  ‘Don’t say gaff,’ she told him. ‘A booking, you mean. No, I didn’t and no we can’t, except for tonight, and no I’m not. We’ll try for lodgings at Mrs Andrews’ and then tomorrow – tomorrow!’ She took a sharp breath and he looked up at her. Her face was pinched and she looked unhappy. ‘Tomorrow we’ll catch a train and move on.’ She looked down at him, touched his cheek with a cold finger and then looked away. ‘We’ll move on to another life.’

  ‘Where to?’ he asked again.

  ‘Home,’ she said. ‘We’re going home.’

  Except it wasn’t home to her any more, if in truth it ever had been, she sighed to herself as they climbed aboard another horse bus, and she hadn’t yet thought thro
ugh the next plan. She’d left over ten years ago and had never been back. Every year, just before Christmas, she had sent studio photographs, bought with money she could ill afford to spend: one of her, though not in stage costume, and one of her son so that her parents could see him as he grew from an infant to a handsome boy of ten. She always sent a forwarding address but not once had they written back to her. It was as if she didn’t exist and they could be dead for all she knew, and she’d never find out because no one, not a single person, knew where she was.

  ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘This is our stop.’ She lifted her skirt so that it didn’t trail in the mud, for this was not a wholesome area, although considered semi-respectable by stage performers who couldn’t afford to be choosy. ‘I just hope she’ll take us,’ she murmured.

  ‘If we’re going to Mrs Andrews’, she said last time that I couldn’t stay again,’ he reminded her.

  ‘I know,’ his mother answered. ‘But don’t take it personally. She doesn’t take any children, not just you.’

  A brisk, severe-looking woman answered to her knock on the door of the terraced house. ‘Yes? Ah! Miss Delamour.’

  His mother stared at her as if she had just remembered something. Delia Delamour. Her real name was Dorothy Deakin, but she never used it.

  Mrs Andrews looked down at the boy. ‘I thought I said that you couldn’t bring the lad again. It’s not that I don’t like children but it’s not a suitable environment for them, unless of course they are performers themselves.’

  ‘I know you did, but could you make an exception just this once?’ She hated pleading with the old hag, but it had to be done. ‘It’s only for tonight. I’m taking him home, you see; we’re catching a train tomorrow morning and … just need a bed for tonight.’ Her voice fell away. She was desperate. What would they do if the woman refused?

  Mrs Andrews drew herself upright. ‘It ain’t right for a boy to share a bed with his mother and I don’t have any spare singles.’

  ‘He’s only nine, Mrs Andrews,’ she pleaded, knocking a year off his age, ‘and as I say, I won’t bother you ever again. We’re heading north, you see.’

  ‘North!’ the landlady spluttered as if she had just heard of the last place on earth. ‘You’d better come in then.’

  Jack bounced on the bed in the shabby but almost adequate bedroom. ‘Mother,’ he said, ‘will there be icebergs?’

  ‘What? What are you talking about?’ She was wrapping a warm scarf round her neck. It was freezing in this top-floor room with the draught whistling in through the window.

  ‘You said we were going north.’ He threw both arms above him towards the ceiling and pronounced, ‘Now is the winter of our discontent.’

  His mother sat on the edge of the bed. ‘Oh, Jack,’ she said, half laughing and yet wanting to cry. ‘Whatever am I going to do with you?’

  CHAPTER TWO

  The next morning they caught a train going north. His mother had told him there wouldn’t be any icebergs, even though it would be much colder than here in the south of England, and they would be near an estuary like the one at the end of the Thames. They were on their way to a town called Hull.

  ‘Kingston upon Hull, to give its proper name,’ she told him. ‘But all the locals call it Hull.’

  ‘And are we staying there? Have you got a booking?’

  ‘No,’ she murmured. ‘We’re not staying there; we’re going into ’country.’ She gave a silent laugh. How easily she had slipped into the local dialect.

  ‘Listen, Jack,’ she said. ‘Going back might be a bit difficult. We’re going to visit my parents; they live in a place called Paull. It’s a village near the estuary I told you about – the Humber estuary.’

  He frowned. ‘Paul is a person’s name,’ he objected. ‘It’s not a place!’

  ‘It’s a different spelling. It’s double l. It was called Paghill in ’olden days.’

  He grinned. ‘Double ’ell! Not a nice place to be, then?’

  ‘Be serious.’ She closed her eyes for a second, anxiety threatening to overwhelm her. ‘We might not be welcome.’

  ‘At your parents’ house, do you mean? Why not? And why are we going if we’re not welcome?’

  ‘We fell out. I can’t explain; it’s … complicated.’

  ‘Cos of me, you mean? Cos I haven’t got a father?’

  ‘You have got a father,’ she said stubbornly. ‘Everybody has a father. It’s just that … I can’t say. I’ll tell you one day.’

  He sat back and contemplated, and then said, ‘Why did you call me Jack Robinson instead of Jack Delamour?’

  ‘It’s your name,’ she said abruptly, knowing that she was lying.

  ‘I don’t like it. Folks laugh and say Before you can say Jack Robinson if something or other is going to happen, as if it’s the first time it’s ever been said.’ He screwed up his mouth jeeringly. ‘It’s not funny. Not when you’ve heard it a thousand million times. And it’s always grown-ups who say it.’

  ‘It’s a common enough name.’ She shrugged. ‘Change it if you don’t like it.’

  ‘Romeo, doff thy name.’ The boy thought of Arthur Crawshaw. He’d miss him if they were going to stay in the north. He’d known him for ever. Mr Crawshaw had taught him to read before he went to school; he didn’t often go to school, only if his mother had a long run at a theatre and then he was dragged off to a local school where no one knew him or wanted to. He and the gypsy children who occasionally attended were unwelcome. They always stood apart and more often than not played truant.

  Arthur Crawshaw wanted him to listen to his lines as he prepared for his performances of Shakespeare or Mr Dickens, and so that Jack could follow his script he had taught him to read, and write too, when he was little. He could also add up and count and occasionally at the smaller theatres he would help to tally the takings in the box office by stacking the coins. I’m a very useful boy, he thought. Everybody says so. He was allowed to paint the scenery and show people to their seats, and because he was so very useful nobody seemed to notice that he should have been at school.

  Mmm, he mused. I might change my name. But to what? What name should I choose? A theatrical name maybe, or …? Deny your father and refuse your name – I don’t know if it’s my father’s name, but I don’t like it when it’s made into a joke. He closed his eyes. The swaying of the train made him sleepy. He hadn’t slept much. Mrs Andrews’ third best bed was very lumpy and narrow and his mother had tossed about; he thought that he’d heard her crying during the night but then she’d turned to him and put her arms around him, just as she used to when he was very little, and murmured something like ‘I’m sorry, Jack’, and then he’d fallen asleep.

  She was shaking him by the shoulder as they steamed into the Hull station. ‘Come on. Wake up. We’ll have to rush to catch our connection. It’s the last train.’

  She left the trunk containing her stage costumes in the left luggage office and only carried one bag, which he thought meant that they wouldn’t be staying long in this place called Paull. He wondered why they had come, particularly as she’d said they might not be welcome.

  They dashed to another platform where a much smaller train was hissing up a head of steam. ‘Come on, missus,’ a porter called to them as they ran. ‘Driver wants to get home for his supper.’

  ‘This is the Hedon train, isn’t it?’ she asked breathlessly.

  ‘Aye, that it is. Hull and Holderness line. Last train tonight. Sit where you like; there’s plenty o’ seats.’

  They moved off almost immediately and Delia eased off her shoes, exchanging them for a pair of well-worn boots from her bag. ‘We’ve got a two-mile walk when we get off,’ she told him, and peered out of the train window. ‘It’s dark and cold but at least it’s not raining.’

  ‘I’m tired,’ he whined. ‘Can’t we get a cab, or an omnibus?’ She smiled whimsically and shook her head. ‘No cabriolets where we’re going, Jack, except maybe private ones, and no bus either. If we’re luc
ky we might get a ride on a wagon or a carrier cart, but more than likely it’ll be shanks’s pony.’

  ‘Aw! We’ve been travelling for ever!’

  ‘No we haven’t. It just feels like it.’

  ‘You said they might not let us stay.’ He looked out of the window into the darkness and saw the dim street lamps briefly shed light on roads and houses as the train rushed out of town. ‘Southcoates … Marfleet …’ he murmured after a while. ‘Nobody getting on.’

  ‘We’re ’next stop,’ she said eventually. ‘Then the train goes on to Patrington and Withernsea, where it stops. It’ll come back in the morning.’ She fished about in her bag again and consulted a timetable, then pressed her lips together and replaced it in the bag.

  ‘What’ll we do if they won’t let us stay?’

  She didn’t answer at first and just shook her head, and then she muttered, ‘I don’t know.’ He didn’t ask again.

  ‘Can you remember the way?’ They had left a deserted Hedon station and were walking towards the town down a long cobbled road. It was bitterly cold and quite dark with only a few street lamps and windows to light their way, but he saw small cottages on one side of the road and much grander ones on the other. A man leading a horse from the opposite direction touched his cap to his mother. ‘It’s a long time since you were last here, isn’t it, Mother? Or did we come when I was a baby and I don’t remember?’

  ‘I know the way,’ she said, and turned to tuck his woollen scarf into the neck of his jacket and pull his cap over his ears. ‘Nothing much changes round here.’

  A grocery shop was open in the main square and they went inside and bought two currant buns, two scones and a bag of broken chocolate. The woman behind the counter reduced the price of the buns and scones as she said they had been baked early that morning and might be dry. ‘They’ll fill a corner,’ she said, smiling at Jack.

  They continued on down the main street through the town, passing inns, butchers, haberdashers and a police station, and then crossed another road, leaving buildings and gas lights behind and continuing on a much longer, darker road. ‘It’s pitch black!’ he said. ‘Are you sure this is the right way? We won’t fall in the river, will we?’