Kate felt rebellious, but managed to stay silent. If she'd lost this job, and she had no doubt she had, it was because Mum had been so difficult. Why did she always have to spoil things? Well, she would, just for once, spend her time in the way she wanted. She'd go and see Maggie. Her sister had always been kind to her, comforting her when she was a child and fell over or hurt herself. She'd been almost six when Maggie had married Sam, and then he'd lost his job that year in the General Strike, and never had a steady one since.
Maggie was sitting on a stool in front of a weak fire, nursing the youngest child, a girl of two, while the next one, aged four, played on the floor with a carved wooden doll and a few scraps of material she was pretending were clothes.
'Maggie, are you all right? You still look very pale,' Kate said, alarmed at her sister's listlessness. Normally she'd have leapt to her feet and been filling the kettle, but she just sat there, looking drained and defeated.
'I'm just so tired, can't seem to get me act together. But how are you? Dad said yer was looking fer a job. Why did you leave school?'
Kate drew up another stool and sat down beside her. 'Don't you know? It was Mum, she said I had to leave, get a job. Maggie, why does she hate me?'
Kate, who'd intended to be strong for Maggie, suddenly burst into tears and clung to her sister.
'Hush, now, love. Get down and play with your sister,' she said gently to the baby, and then Kate felt her comforting arms go round her, and Maggie hugged her tightly. Kate clung to her, and when the storm of weeping had subsided she blew her nose and muttered an apology.
'I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do that. I came to ask if you needed any help.'
'You need it, pet. I'm OK, just tired.'
'Why does she hate me?' Kate repeated, more calmly. 'I went for an interview this morning, for a good job, with Boots the Chemist, and she did all she could to make it difficult for me. She lost me that job!'
'How?'
Kate told Maggie all that had happened, and Maggie pursed her lips angrily.
'I knew it would be like this,' she said to herself, and then, more loudly, 'but there was nothing else I could have done!'
'What do you mean?'
Maggie heaved a great sigh. 'She resents you, love. She was forty when you were born, and though she insisted on looking after you, she's made you pay ever since.'
Kate tried to work this out. 'I can understand her resenting having another baby at that age, especially so long after you, but how could she help having to look after me?'
Maggie looked out of the grimy window, then squared her shoulders. 'It's time you knew the truth. I'm your mom, not her.'
Kate stared at Maggie, bemused. 'You? You're my mother? Why didn't anyone tell me, let me think – oh Maggie! Tell me, please. What happened? Why did you all have to pretend? I know your first husband died, but lots of babies are born after their fathers die.'
'Not two years afterwards,' Maggie said, and sudden comprehension filled Kate's eyes.
'I see,' she said slowly. 'You don't have to tell me,' she added awkwardly.
'I want to. I don't want you to think too badly of me.'
Kate waited, her mind in a whirl. So she was illegitimate, like her father. No, Alf wasn't her father now, was he? Or could he have been? She almost gagged at the thought. She'd heard stories about girls who were made pregnant by their own brothers or fathers, but surely her father wasn't like that? Not Alf, who'd always been so kind to her, until the past few weeks.
'Ben, my first, was only nineteen when we wed, and I was seventeen. He went off to war, and were injured the first month. He died a few weeks later. I never saw him, there were no money to go and visit the hospital where he was.'
'I'm so sorry!' Kate murmured.
Maggie nodded. 'I went a bit wild. I dain't care, and when I met this fella, an officer, he was, an Irishman who'd kissed the Blarney Stone, and he wanted me to go away with him, promised we'd be wed soon, I thought I was in for a life o' luxury. It were great for a couple of months, we travelled all over the place. He weren't short of the ready, we stayed in posh hotels, he said we'd go to Ireland and be wed there. But when I fell for you you couldn't see him for dust, he scarpered that fast.'
'He left you?' Kate asked. 'Oh, poor Maggie! How dreadful! He must have been a rotter! What did you do?'
'I had ter come home, tail between me legs. I only had enough money for the train fare. I even had to sneak outta the hotel, he left so fast he dain't pay the bill.'
She chuckled suddenly. 'It's funny now, but it weren't then, climbing outta window, sneaking through the garden, climbing over the wall into the road and walking to the station. I looked a right mess when I got home.'
'Then what happened,' Kate asked after a pause.
'Let's have a cuppa.'
'Sit still, I'll make it,' Kate said, standing up. She needed a moment to come to terms with this revelation.
Maggie sipped the tea, and stared into the fire. 'I was only just twenty, I dain't have any money, I had to do what Mom said. I were lucky they dain't throw me out, let me end in workhouse.'
'But why did Mum – Hattie – pretend I was hers? How did she get away with it?'
'I weren't allowed out the house until you were born. Then, when you was a couple of weeks old, we moved. The new neighbours thought you was hers.'
'Well, I know it's considered a great disgrace to have – to have an illegitimate baby,' Kate said awkwardly, 'but why all this deception?'
'Mom would have chucked me out, but Dad were brought up in an orphanage. He wouldn't have that.'
'I know. They found him as a baby on the steps of St Martin's church, and gave him that name.'
'So instead Mom said we'd have to pretend you was hers. You know her family disowned her when she married Dad, because he weren't a Catholic?'
'They were Irish, weren't they?'
Maggie nodded. 'The family came over here in 1845, when there were a famine in Ireland. But Mom still thought the same way her family did. Once she told me it were common, if a woman were young enough, to pretend that her daughter's bastard was her own, so as not to be disgraced, see.'
'And Mum's resented me ever since.'
'You was going out with a posh young fella,' Maggie said hesitantly. 'That's what she told me.'
Kate sighed. 'He gave me a lift home from Stella's party because it was raining, and I went for a ride in his motor car the next afternoon. That was all.'
'But he came to see you again, Mom said.'
'Yes, and Dad – Alf, punched him and hurt him badly! I'm surprised the police haven't been round!'
'Don't you see, love, he were afraid you'd be going same way as me? Swept off yer feet by a bit of glamour.'
Kate nodded. 'But Robert isn't like that! I know he's not! He's honourable, he was sorry for me because it was raining and I didn't have a coat, and he knew I'd never been out into the countryside. He never even touched me except to help me in and out of the car!'
'They're all like that in the beginning,' Maggie said. 'Kate, you won't let on what I've told you, will you? Mom would have me guts for garters if she thought you knew, after all these years.'
'I won't,' Kate promised, but inwardly she was determined to escape from her home as soon as she could. She no longer felt any obligation to help them. They'd deceived her. How could they treat her so?
*
Soon afterwards Kate left Maggie, promising again not to reveal what she had discovered to Hattie and Alf. But Maggie had not demanded secrecy from others, and Kate needed someone to talk to. She couldn't go home, not yet, until she was calmer, had absorbed this incredible news and decided what to do.
Instinctively she ran towards Calthorpe Road and school. She wanted a sense of normality. She needed to see Daphne, talk to her. It was almost time for school to end.
She reached the school gates and slid inside, plunging behind the dense bushes. When her breathing slowed she began to think more clearly. She was being stupid, b
etraying Maggie to the family which employed her. She really could not talk about this to anyone else. Daphne would not understand in any case, and it would be an act of betrayal to burden her only friend with such information.
At least she could make up some story, tell Daphne about the fiasco of the job interview, and ask if her mother had yet written a reference.
Kate shivered. It was a warm day, but she felt cold all through. How much longer before the girls were free?
A rustling behind her made her aware of some other presence in the dense shrubbery, and she turned, apprehensive. Moaner Mac was right behind her, leering at her, brandishing a pair of shears.
'Get off! You're not wanted here!' he said, moving another step forward. Kate stared. It was almost the first time she'd heard him say anything except for his monotonous moaning. He reached out to grasp her arm.
She had forgotten him, the many times she'd seen him in the shrubbery, spying on the girls as they moved about the school gardens, or coming and going along the drive. She stepped back, trying to shake off his hand.
'Let me be!' Her voice was hoarse, trembing with pent-up anguish. His grip on her tightened, and Kate began to struggle, trying to pull free. He had more strength than she'd ever have imagined, seeing him shambling about.
Suddenly he jerked her arm and she stumbled, falling against him, and before she could recover her balance he'd got one arm round her, and was trying to push her backwards out of the shrubbery He held the shears, hanging open, in the other hand, and the edge of one blade caught against her leg, making her wince. She struggled, afraid of falling to the ground and being slashed by the blades. If that happened she knew she would be helpless, and he was in such a frenzy heaven only knew what he would do.
He moved his hand suddenly to the back of her head, twisting his fingers into her hair. The momentary relaxation of his grip gave Kate the chance to jerk away from him. She turned to run, with him in hot pursuit. Grabbing her arm he began flailing at her, and she took a deep breath and began to scream for help.
'Shut up! Shut up!' he shouted. 'Momo will hear.'
As she tried to dodge the shears she fell to the ground, tangled in the lower branches and roots of a rhododendron bush, and he fell on top of her. Kate heard the bushes rustling, and feet running towards her. She looked up to see a policeman staring down at her, and mauve petals from the disturbed flowers descending onto her face.
Mac was hauled unceremoniously to his feet, and began gibbering with fear. In the midst of the spate of words Kate thought she heard him begging for his mother, and pleading with her not to smack him.
'What's going on?' a reassuringly calm voice enquired, and Kate struggled to her feet.
'He – Mac, he grabbed me, tried to hurt me with the shears,' she gasped. She wanted to weep. It was all too much, first the revelations Maggie had made, and now being attacked by a gibbering idiot.
Suddenly a new voice intervened.
'Kathleen Martins! Why are you here, in such an untidy state, and making false and malicious accusations about my brother?'
Kate looked at the Headmistress. Miss MacDonald was glaring down at her, bright patches of red in her cheeks, and her hair, normally immaculate, coming adrift of her bun with wisps blowing across her face. Behind her were the girls, released from class, about to set off home, but all of them spellbound by the excitement and staring avidly at Kate and Moaner Mac.
'I'm not telling lies!' The injustice of it make Kate furious. 'He caught me, attacked me!'
'That is what I saw, Miss,' the policeman said calmly, but at the same time, to Kate's astonishment, Moaner Mac tore himself away from the policeman's grasp and threw himself at Miss MacDonald.
'Momo! I didn't mean it! Don't punish me! I won't do it again! Momo, don't whip me!'
Kate gulped, and stared at them. Miss MacDonald pushed him away. 'Go to your room, dear, I'll speak to you later.'
Suddenly his constant moaning, and the knowledge she'd just learned from Maggie, made appalling sense.
'You're his mother, not his sister!' she said without thinking.
'How ridiculous! He's my brother.'
'No! Momo, I'll be good!'
'Just a minute,' the policeman said. 'Is he your son?'
'I – of course he isn't, he's my brother. I won't tolerate this! You, Kathleen, are no longer a pupil at this school and are trespassing. You will leave these premises at once, and I do not wish to see you here again! If you are seen I will hand you over to the police.'
The policeman coughed. 'Will you be all right, Miss?' he asked Kate. 'Just give me your name and address, and I'll come and get your side of it later. I'd better stay here and sort out this confusion first.'
Kate nodded and told him where she lived. He wrote it down in his notebook, and then advised the staring girls that the excitement was over and they had better be on their ways home.
Kate turned away, fighting against the tears that threatened. It was too much, all at once. Not that she wanted or intended to return to the school, but all the shocks of the day, her utter misery, and the disgust she'd felt as Moaner Mac held on to her, made her want to crawl into a dark hole and lick her wounds. She knew what injured animals felt like.
She caught a glimpse of a crowd of girls as she turned away, Daphne amongst them. Her friend looked horrified, and Kate wondered if Daphne would reject her. If she did, she would be completely alone, but she could not blame Daphne if she no longer wanted to know her.
Kate walked away, her shoulders rigid and her head held high. She would not be intimidated by Miss MacDonald and her frightful idiot brother. A buzz of comment followed her, but none of the girls moved, and Kate walked out alone, and turned, reluctantly, for home. It was the last place she wanted to be, but she had nowhere else to go. Maggie didn't have room for her, and anyway, if Maggie took her in Hattie and Alf would never give her any more help.
She had rounded the corner into Calthorpe Road before Daphne caught up with her.
'Kate, wait for me!' Daphne puffed. 'What on earth has happened?'
Kate turned and tried to smile. She was more relieved than she cared to admit to know that Daphne was still talking to her.
'That beastly boy, what did he do?'
'Tried to push me out of the grounds,' Kate replied briefly. 'It's not important. I wanted to see you, but I should have remembered he might be there, and we guessed he was daft.'
They walked along and Kate told Daphne about the fiasco of her interview. Somehow she couldn't divulge the rest. Not yet. In time she might be able to talk about it, but for the moment the pain was too raw for her to do more than think it over herself.
'Daphne! He called her his mother! Do you think it was really true?'
'I heard. I've been thinking about that. She's at least twenty years older than him. It could be, easily. And she pretends to be his sister because she isn't married? What a hoot!'
Kate nodded, but she was wondering how, if it were true, Miss MacDonald had managed to follow her own profession at the same time as looking after the poor half-witted boy. She suddenly felt a surge of sympathy for any woman in that position.
'I must go home now,' Daphne said reluctantly. 'Mother has some people coming for tea, and I promised to be there. Can you be here tomorow, after school? I have the reference, and I'd have brought it with me if I'd known you would be here.'
'I want to leave home, Daphne. After today, I know Mum hates me. I'll do anything. I once heard your mother say it was hard to find maids, as the girls want to work in the factories. I could do that. Maybe she'll ask her friends?'
'I know you've mentioned that before, but you really can't become a servant!'
'Why not? It's an honest way of earning a living, and that's what I need to do.'
'Yes, of course. I'm sorry, Kate. I wish I could do something for you. Promise me you'll try for a proper, respectable job first, though, and then you can find yourself a room,'
'Yes, but if it doesn't work, you'll
ask your mother if any of her friends want a maid. Please?'
Daphne sighed. 'All right, I will. But she might not like the idea, you know, of a friend of mine, working for any of her friends. But I'll ask.'
'Thanks. And don't worry, I'll find something.' I have to, Kate added to herself. If she failed, she didn't know what they would do.
*
There were only a few odd jobs available in the Market Hall on the following day, and Kate was able to escape early to meet Daphne from school.
'Here's the reference. Keep it safely, but I have a copy as well. You'll never guess!'
'What?' Kate still felt numb, but Daphne hadn't seemed to notice. She was too full of her own news.
'The police came round to see Mother late last night. Miss MacDonald had eventually confessed that she was Moaner Mac's mother after all. She left him somewhere else until she came here, and had a flat at the school. Then she thought she was safe to have him with her. She packed their bags and was gone before my mother could go round to see her. There was such a fuss! They think they may have to close the school because of the scandal.'
'Oh no! It was all my fault!'
'For letting that nasty little worm attack you? Don't be silly! Anyway, if they do close the school I'll be going to Paris this year, not next. I can take matric there at the same time as being finished. Ha, as if I want to go to all the parties and learn how to arrange flowers and recognise opera and ballet music! It will be one less year wasted.'
Kate blinked at the excitement. 'I shall miss you terribly,' she said slowly.
'I know, and me you, but we can write. Now I must rush, I promised to be home early, there's so much going on with Governors meeting at the house, and I want to find out what's happening. Come round on Sunday if you can. By then you may have got yourself a job.'
*
Kate had high hopes that this would be so. On Friday, while she was working for one of the stall-holders, another of the girls told her that a big dress shop in New Street was looking for girls to train as assistants. Armed with her reference from Mrs Carstairs Kate went there in her dinner hour, and was lucky to find the manageress free and willing to see her.
Can Dreams Come True? Page 7
