The Child From Nowhere

by Freda Lightfoot

  ‘I’m here, I’m here, Aunt Lucy. I thought you’d forgotten me. I’ve been playing while I waited for you, but I’ve been a very good girl. Honest.’

  Lucy grabbed Flora’s hand and began to march her along the street. ‘I don’t believe you. You were very naughty to go wandering off like that. Didn’t I tell you to stay and wait for me at the school gate? What your mother will say I cannot imagine.’

  Flora began to cry. ‘Don’t tell Mammy I’ve been bad. Please don’t. Mammy has to work for the war. You aren’t going to smack me, Aunt Lucy, are you? I didn’t wander off, honest I didn’t. I was just ...’

  ‘Never mind what you were just doing. I’ve told you to stay by the school gate.’ All the fury and frustration that had been building up inside her seemed to explode in that moment. How dare the child disobey? How dare that stupid boy have the effrontery simply to walk back into their lives? Lucy pushed Flora up a back street and swinging back her hand, slapped her with all her might. Flora screamed and fell over, knocking her head on a wall as she went down. She lay very still, not making a sound.

  ‘Get up, child. Don’t just lie there in the dirt. Get up, I say!’ Flora didn’t move, not even an eyelash fluttered. In that moment, Lucy realised that this time she’d gone too far.

  ‘I really don’t know where she is,’ Lucy said, trying to appear concerned and anxious. ‘I thought at first she was simply playing a game and hiding from me. I’ll admit I was a little late getting to the school, but then I’d had so many interruptions this afternoon. Heaven knows what the servants do with their time, they are certainly never around when needed.’

  Both the maiden aunts were looking troubled. Vera said, ‘Do you think we should call out the police?’

  ‘No, no, I’m quite certain she’s playing some prank or other. Making me worry because I was late. I’m sure she’ll turn up at any moment, chastened and apologetic, and so she should be. I, for one, shall certainly give that little miss a piece of my mind when she does.’ And Lucy picked up her embroidery and proceeded to apply her needle. After a moment, Vera and Cissie did likewise, while the clock ticked on in the small parlour.

  The sound of it pounded in Lucy’s head like a drum.

  But although all three women sat and waited for the better part of an hour, Flora did not arrive home from school, as Lucy had known that she would not. Cissie grew quite demented with worry, constantly getting up to look out of the parlour window, the dogs anxiously padding back and forth behind her on each occasion. Even Aunt Vera was fussing a great deal, constantly glancing up at the clock, or examining the silver fob watch she had pinned to the bodice of her woollen frock.

  ‘Dear me, I’m beginning to think we should perhaps call the constabulary,’ she began, when the door opened and Kate strolled in. She glanced about her, taking in their solemn expressions, and her usual sunny smile instantly faded. ‘What is it? What’s happened? Oh, God, it’s Eliot.’

  Cissie ran to her at once. ‘No, no, my dear. Don’t fret yourself. It’s not dear Eliot at all. It’s Flora. She’s not yet home from school, that’s all. She’s being a naughty girl and is playing pranks on us. But it’s true that we are all becoming just a little anxious about her.’

  ‘Didn’t you collect her as usual, Lucy?’

  ‘Am I your maid servant? Good gracious me!’

  ‘But that was our arrangement. We agreed. In fact, you offered.’

  ‘Out of the goodness of my heart, since the child was obviously neglected. And, yes, I did indeed go to collect her, as I always do. She was not there. No sign of her waiting at the school gate, as there should have been. She’s obviously run off to play some stupid game or other.’

  Kate looked as if she might collapse and Cissie attempted to lead her to a chair, urging her to sit. Kate shook her off. ‘She would never do that. Oh, Lord, where can she be? Where the hell is she?’

  ‘Don’t you swear at me in that common way. I’ll not have your workhouse manners in here.’ Lucy had had ample time to think long and hard over the last hour and believed she had the answer to her problem. ‘You are the one to blame here, not me. You are the one who neglects your own child and leaves her to the care of others.

  ‘And this isn’t the first child you have lost, is it?’

  Aunt Vera let out a strangled gasp, reaching at once for her sal volatile.

  ‘Oh, my word! Oh deary, deary me,’ murmured Cissie, and then for the first time in her life put forward a question on her own behalf. ‘Surely you aren’t suggesting, Lucy, that this was all deliberate? That Kate would ...’ She quite ran out of words.

  ‘That is exactly what I am saying. Who else had the opportunity? Who else would do such a terrible thing? Didn’t this girl from Poor House Lane give away her own son for adoption, sell him in order to gain herself employment? And as if that weren’t bad enough, she inveigled herself into Eliot’s bed and got herself pregnant by him so that he felt duty bound to wed her. Now, having got her grasping little hands on his business and full control of his financial affairs, that child too has become a nuisance. She’s disposed of her as swiftly and mercilessly as she did the other. First Callum, now Flora.’

  ‘Oh, my goodness me,’ said Aunt Vera, stunned by this turn of events.

  ‘That is an abominable lie.’ Kate could barely manage to get the words out, her throat felt so constricted, her fear so great. ‘Tell me what has happened to Flora. Where is she?’

  Lucy longed to say – ‘lying dead in a gutter’, but that would give the game away. Inside, she was glorying in her victory, unexpected perhaps but all the better for that. She felt jubilant, exhilarated. She’d thought she was about to lose everything but she’d won after all. She’d not only rid herself of both of those bastard children, but, if she had her way, would soon be rid of their dratted mother as well. There would be nothing then to stop her from having Eliot all to herself. He’d be as putty in her hands, only too willing for her to look after things for him. Lucy saw herself running the factory, with Jack, now fourteen, taking over in just a short year or two. Oh, it was all going to work out splendidly.

  Kate said, ‘Tell me! I’m waiting for you to tell me what has happened to Flora.’

  Lucy straightened her spine, wrinkling her nose with distaste as she regarded her rival, just as if Kate were still that ragamuffin child who’d crawled out from one of Kendal’s worst yards. ‘Don’t try to wriggle out of this. Your guilt is plain for all to see. What did you do with them both? Throw them in the river, as you probably did with that husband of yours, assuming you ever had one in the first place. Was that the way of it? Did you dispose of Callum’s father too, once he was of no further use? Is that what you plan to do to Eliot?’ She turned to Vera. ‘Perhaps we should ask Ida to go for the police constable, after all, Aunt. This is all beginning to look dreadfully serious.’

  For once in her life Vera seemed utterly incapable of making a decision of any sort. Cissie appeared as stunned as her sister, Kate frozen to the spot, white with shock. Lucy carelessly shrugged her shoulders and marched towards the door. ‘Then I shall deal with the matter myself. See that she doesn’t run away, Vera, while I find Ida.’

  Long before she reached it, the door swung open, revealing none other than the child in question, face streaked with mud and blood in just about equal quantities, school gymslip torn, knees scraped but with a smile of pure delight on her young face.

  ‘Mammy! Mammy!’ cried Flora. ‘Look who I’ve found. You remember that boy I told you about, my friend from the market with the fat lady? I found him sitting on a wall near my school. And what do you think, Mammy? He believes he already knows you. Does he Mammy? Do you know him?’

  Chapter Ten

  Did she know him? What a question? How could a mother not know her own child, even if she hadn’t set eyes on him for more years than she cared to count? But then he wasn’t a child any more. No longer the sturdy toddler she’d once cuddled on her lap, sung lullabies or read to from his Little Stor
ies for Little Folk. Thirteen years old and on the verge of manhood, he was as tall as herself now, if more scrawny for his height than was healthy. Why was he so thin? Had he not been properly looked after? Where had he been? Why had he left? Why had he chosen to come home now, and not before? Or had he been held somewhere against his will? As these questions and a dozen others raced through her head, Kate stood rooted to the spot, frozen with shock, only vaguely aware of the other people in the room: of Vera making clucking noises of disbelief, Cissie quietly weeping, Flora was hanging on to his arm as if she might never let go, and Lucy as pale and ghostlike as she must herself look.

  ‘Mam, is it really you?’ He was gazing at her with rapt attention, his bright eyes troubled yet filled with hope.

  Kate tried to speak but no sound came out. She put a hand to her mouth, struggling for control, then tried again. ‘Indeed it is, son.’ She felt an urge to snatch him to her and yet, overawed by the strangeness of him, was quite unable to move a muscle.

  He was frowning at her, the vaguest hint of hostility creeping over his handsome face. ‘Why did you send me away? Why didn’t you want me no more?’

  It was as if a hand had taken her heart and squeezed the life out of it, leaving her momentarily breathless. ‘Sure, and of course I wanted you. I never sent you away, m’cushla. Haven’t I spent the last eight years searching for ye, hunting high and low in the desperate hope I’d find you again? Why in God’s name did you run off in the first place?’

  ‘I didn’t run off. I was taken!’

  A muted gasp from the aunts while Kate felt her knees give way, forcing her to sink on to a nearby chair.

  ‘I was told you didn’t love me no more, that you wanted rid of me.’

  Kate gave a low moan, eyes filling with unshed tears as she slowly shook her head, lips trembling as she whispered, ‘Never!’

  There followed a long drawn-out silence, one filled with the pain of those lost years, in which the emotion in that small parlour was palpable, almost too much to bear.

  In a voice raw with agony, quite unlike her own, Kate asked, ‘Who told you that? Taken by whom? God in heaven, Callum love, will ye tell us where’ve you been all this time?’

  And then seemingly in slow motion, Callum’s eyes swivelled round to Lucy. ‘Ask her. She knows everything.’

  Not understanding, Kate frowned. ‘How can Lucy know? Have ye told yer aunt already, before ye’d tell yer own mam? Aw, Callum sweetheart, don’t break me heart again.’

  He was vigorously shaking his head. ‘I don’t need to tell her. She knows already. Mebbe she planned it all from the start.’ As he said this, he instinctively put a protective arm about his half-sister’s shoulders and Flora hugged him tight. ‘She took me away. I couldn’t remember anything till I come to t’market again today and walked over that bridge. Me feet found this house and the minute that woman opened the door, it all came flooding back. Like a bad dream, the nightmare what runs in me head over and over. And from the state of Flora here, you can see she wasn’t satisfied with ruining my life, she intended to ruin the bairn’s as well.’

  Mind in a whirl, only then did Kate think to look upon her daughter and her heart clenched with fresh fear. Hair matted with blood, bruises on her lovely face, Flora looked as if she’d been beaten black and blue. Kate blinked in disbelief. ‘What on earth …?’

  Thrusting herself forward, Lucy tossed her head in that arrogant way she had. ‘He attacked her, of course.’

  ‘I attacked her? Nay, that’s rich, that is. I were the one what found her up that alley where you left her. I saved her. What were you going to do to the wee bairn after you’d thumped her, take her to t’workhouse an’ all, or were you hoping she were a goner?’

  Kate looked at Lucy with eyes dazed in bewilderment. ‘What is he trying to say? What’s all this about an alley, and the workhouse? Do you understand a word of it?’

  ‘Course she understands.’ Callum pointed an accusing finger. ‘She were the one! It was her what took me away that day, give me a good hiding and dumped me in t’Union Workhouse. I thought I’d struck lucky when I were sent up to that farm in the Langdales, but the Brocklebanks weren’t kindly folk. Fer all I know, she might’ve had a hand in that an’ all.’

  ‘He’s lying!’ Lucy snapped, spitting the words in the boy’s face, fingers curling with fury as if she itched to scratch his eyes out. ‘What else would you expect from a workhouse brat?’

  ‘Calm yourself, Lucy,’ instructed Aunt Vera in her sternest tones.

  ‘Oh, deary, deary me,’ echoed Cissie, wringing her hands.

  Callum was growing agitated, his now quite deep voice rising on a note of desperation as he stood before a bemused Kate. ‘Ask Flora then, if you don’t believe me. Ask your daughter.’

  It was all too much for Kate to take in. Had she lost him? Was it far too late for them ever to be close again? When she’d dreamed of this moment it hadn’t been anything like this. Why weren’t they hugging each other? Why wasn’t he weeping in her arms, glad to be home? Kate knew it wasn’t unusual for a child to blame its mother if it got lost. Was this his way of dealing with it all, by placing the blame on someone else, first on herself, and now on Lucy? She put out a hand, wanting to soothe him, to calm this beloved son of hers with the assurance that she did indeed love him, but he brushed her hand aside. Beside him, Flora was ashen, which made the cuts and bruises on her small, pinched face stand out more livid than ever.

  ‘Is this true Flora? Did someone hurt you? Was it …?’ Kate couldn’t find the words. She’d trusted Lucy. Despite her initial doubts, largely due to her sister-in-law’s innate snobbishness, yet she’d come round to accepting the woman’s help, pushing aside the guilt all working mothers feel when leaving the care of their child to another. But Kate had to know the truth. She had to understand what, if anything, Lucy had done. Could this stuck-up sister-in-law who’d viewed her with contempt from the start, constantly scorning and disparaging her because of her humble origins, truly have set out to steal and damage both her children?

  Flora glanced fearfully up at her aunt then burst into tears. Nothing could have been more damning.

  Kate got slowly to her feet, an eerie calmness creeping over her. It must be true then. This woman had indeed hurt her children! But why would she do such a thing? And then the answer came. She’d done it out of jealousy, from fear of losing what she considered to be her own children’s inheritance. And she still blamed Eliot for Charles’s suicide.

  The gaze Kate turned upon Lucy now was ice cold. ‘Mother of God, what an unholy mess.’

  ‘Don’t you dare look at me in that condemning way, you Irish whore! Who are you to judge me? Your children deserved everything that happened to them, no worse than they received at your own hand, feckless, selfish mother that you are.’

  Kate had never felt more calm, more in control, instinct warning her that this was not the moment for unleashing her fiery Irish temper, although she might well inwardly burn to defend herself. ‘It’s true then. You abducted Callum, and today battered Flora. Do you deny it?’

  ‘Why should I? A doxy like you deserves everything you get.’

  There was a collected intake of breath at this confession.

  Callum leapt forward, scarlet in the face with outrage. ‘Don’t you call my mother names or you’ll have me to reckon with. You’re the villain here, the nastiest piece of work I ever clapped eyes on, and I’ve seen some bad ’uns in me time. Nobody could call the workhouse easy, and the Brocklebanks weren’t soft either but then they weren’t gentlefolk, not like you. You’re supposed to know better.’

  Kate rested a calming hand on her son’s shoulder. This time he didn’t shrug it off, but let it lie. Entirely ignoring Lucy, she quietly addressed the aunts. ‘Whatever the truth of this matter, Flora’s wounds need attention. Cissie, perhaps you would ...’

  ‘Of course, of course. Come along, Flora dear. Come to your Aunty Cissie.’ And Flora willingly flung herself into the com
fort of the doggy-scented embrace, sobbing her heart out.

  ‘Go with her,’ Kate urged Callum, but he stubbornly shook his head.

  ‘I’m staying here, with you.’ Their eyes met and a flicker of hope stirred in Kate’s heart. Perhaps it wasn’t too late after all, and she hadn’t quite lost him.

  ‘I trust we can keep this matter in the family?’ Vera quietly warned, meaning she had no wish for any further gossip to be inflicted upon them. Neither had Kate.

  Callum gasped. ‘Nay, aren’t we going to call the coppers in? She should be prosecuted, locked up.’

  Deep down Kate agreed with him, yet knew Vera made a valid point. Hadn’t they all had a bellyful of rumour and scandal already? Were she to even try to get Lucy arrested, as Callum suggested, it could easily backfire upon herself, knowing how clever and manipulating she could be. Even now Lucy had that satisfied smirk upon her face, knowing she was untouchable. And Kate still saw herself as the girl from Poor House Lane, for all she was now a respectable married woman. ‘I shan’t make any decisions on that score until Eliot comes home,’ she told the older woman, and Vera nodded her approval.

  With the aunts and Flora gone, Kate drew in a steadying breath, clenching her fists in an effort to hold on to her hard-won restraint as she faced her sister-in-law. ‘So did it give you satisfaction to watch me pine for me lovely boy, knowing all the time where he was?’

  Lucy laughed. ‘It was at times most entertaining.’

  A pain clenched Kate’s heart as she thought of the anguish this woman had put her through. ‘What kind of woman are you? What sort of mother?’

  ‘One who would go to any lengths, any lengths, not to see her own children disinherited,’ Lucy hissed.

  ‘I have no idea whether or not they should inherit. That is a decision only Eliot can make, which he will do in the fullness of time when this war is won. For now, I’d be obliged if you would pack your bags and leave his house. I don’t want you any longer under his roof, under our roof.’