by June Gadsby
‘What’s that book doing on the floor?’ Harriet asked, suddenly getting her eyes on the offending object as she peered through the space between Albert and their son. ‘Goodness, why is everybody in this family so untidy? Pick it up, Oliver and put it where it belongs in the bookcase.’
Oliver immediately obeyed, giving a quick glance of apology to his father.
‘Actually, it’s my book,’ John said quickly, retrieving it from his brother-in-law. ‘It slipped off my lap when I dozed off.’
‘All right, Harriet,’ Albert said quickly, holding his hands in the air. ‘Mea culpa! I let a cinder roll onto the rug and it singed it a bit. Nothing too drastic, apart from the smell.’
Harriet’s mouth opened wide, then snapped shut and they all heard her breathe heavily through her nose, making her nostrils flare. Albert had often mused on the fact that is she flared those nostrils any harder she would send out smoke and flames like a dragon.
‘Nothing too drastic!’ Harriet’s flat chest was heaving with anger.
‘It’s all right, Mum, really it is,’ Elizabeth chipped in, hoping to pour oil over troubled waters, but knowing that once her mother started there was no appeasing her. ‘Anyway, it’s my rug.’
‘How can you say that, Elizabeth? It’s the one I gave you!’
‘Oh, Mother, don’t! It’s New Year’s Day, after all. Let’s not have any unpleasantness. I’m sure the rug will clean up.’
Harriet’s shoulders flexed, but she said no more on the subject. Albert’s low-throated growl went ignored. He got up and headed for the door, newspaper in hand, but his wife already had him in her sights.
‘Where do you think you’re going, Albert Robinson? Running away, are we? If you were thinking of sitting in the lavatory for the next hour reading your paper, you’ve got another think coming.’
On cue, Oliver came in with his two-pennorth and what he said was guaranteed to make them all forget the burn in the fireside rug.
‘Speaking of running away,’ he said, in his laconic style. ‘Does anybody know where Laura is? I’ve just looked out the window and she’s nowhere in sight. It’s getting dark. And it’s snowing.’
Elizabeth gave a small cry of alarm, horrified she should forget her daughter. It wasn’t at all like Laura to wander off, but unless she had sneaked back into the house without them noticing she had been out in the cold for a very long time.
‘I can’t see her!’ Already there was a rising panic inside her, making her voice come out an octave higher than usual. ‘Oh, God!’
‘You stay here,’ Oliver volunteered. ‘I’ll go and look for her. She can’t have gone far.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ Albert said to his son, glad of an excuse that would get him out of the house.
They came back an hour later, cold and worried. Laura was nowhere to be found and it was dark outside. The snow had turned into heavy sleet, driven before an icy wind. Elizabeth burst into tears when she saw that Laura wasn’t with them.
‘We’d better call the police;’ John, who had been silent during their absence, turned anxious eyes on his father-in-law, nodded his agreement.
‘Aye,’ he said. ‘There’s a call box two streets away.’
‘I’ll go,’ Oliver volunteered again and his sister ran over and clung to him, but he pushed her gently away. ‘It’s too early to panic, Elizabeth. You’ll see. She’ll come hopping back in any minute now with a great big smile on her face and we’ll all be relieved and embarrassed for bothering the men in blue for nothing on New Year’s Day.’
He left them all looking at each other helplessly. Even Harriet was bereft of words as they waited for Oliver to return from the telephone kiosk. Once or twice she looked down at the scorched rug and clicked her tongue, but said nothing.
Chapter Three
Laura Caldwell, at eight, had a surprisingly mature intelligence for her age despite living the sheltered, coddled life of an only child. She knew that what she was witnessing in Dawson Street on that New Year’s Day was evil and wrong.
When the big man grabbed the tiny baby in his rough hands and went off with it into the next room, a great fear came over Laura. Instinct immediately told her that something bad was about to happen. And she was the only person there who could stop it.
‘No, no!’ She bounded after him with terrified cries. ‘Don’t hurt him. Please don’t hurt him!’
The woman in the bed hardly had the strength to lift her head, but she was observing the little girl intently. Her face contorted as she, too, tried to cry out, but was too weak, all her strength, physical and mental, sapped from her.
Laura reached the bed and tugged at the grubby, stained bedcovers, wanting to rouse the woman into some sort of action, but it seemed an impossible task. Her fingers were too small and she wasn’t strong enough to shift the quilt, let alone the woman.
‘Mrs Flynn, stop him!’ Laura screamed at the top of her voice. ‘That man’s going to hurt Billy! We can’t let him, we can’t!’
Maggie Flynn raised herself on one elbow, and then sank back with a groan before she could get one leg out of the bed. She, too, was unable to push aside the top-heavy quilt that was pinning her down. She gave up the struggle with a grunt.
‘But the bairn’s dead already, pet,’ she said wearily.
‘No he isn’t, Mrs Flynn. He isn’t!’
‘He will be soon.’ The woman sank further into the bed then they both stiffened at the sound of a weak baby cry, no stronger than the mew of a kitten.
‘See? I told you he wasn’t dead, Mrs Flynn, but Mr Flynn’s going to hurt him...’ Laura gasped for breath. ‘He might kill him, Mrs Flynn. Poor Little Billy Big Boots. You can’t let him die. You can’t!’
Maggie Flynn lay for a few long seconds, staring up at the ceiling, and then her hands curled into fists as she beat the bed on either side of her, magically re-gaining some of her lost resilience.
‘Go for help, Laura,’ she said finally. ‘Get help, lass. Oh, for God’s sake, get help!’
Before Laura could move, Mr Flynn was back, casting about him for something he desperately needed. He grabbed a pillow from beneath his wife’s head and started with it back to the scullery from where there came more faint, mewing from the newborn infant.
Laura followed the man, not knowing why she should do so, but it seemed the only thing to do. Mrs Flynn had begged her to go for help, but she didn’t know anybody round here and the people spoke with such a thick accent she couldn’t understand them half the time.
Patrick Flynn was standing at the deep, stone sink, peering down at something that Laura couldn’t see. He slowly raised the pillow and started to bring it down, an expression of determination fixed on his grizzly face. A soft whimper made him hesitate and it was then that Laura summoned all her courage and made her presence felt.
The little girl attacked the man from behind, pulling at his clothes, screaming at him to leave the baby alone. The assault took Patrick by surprise and knocked him off balance. He tried to swat her away as he would swat a bothersome fly. The damned little busybody had seen what he was about to do. He couldn’t let her get away. She would tell on him and he’d land back in prison, where he’d already spent too much time.
Patrick threw the pillow to the floor and went for Laura, but he was a big, lumbering giant of a man and she was nimble enough to dodge his frantic lunges. She fled for the back door, which was the nearest exit to the street, but it was bolted and her child’s fingers couldn’t manipulate it quickly enough.
She felt his hands on her, gripping her, pulling her away and lifting her high off the ground. One of his forearms came around from behind as he struggled to keep the wriggling, kicking child still and quiet. Laura’s sharp little teeth found purchase on a piece of his flesh. She didn’t stop to think what she was doing or whether her mother or her grandmother would approve. She bit down hard, drawing blood, the taste of it like salty iron in her mouth. With a yowl of pain he dropped her on the hard, flagstone
floor.
Someone was banging on the door, the thuds so frantic that the worn wooden timbers moved and shed dust and flakes of paint. Laura screamed, but she still couldn’t get the door open, so she was once more dodging the grasping hands of Patrick Flynn as she tried to get out of that nightmare house.
They both came to an abrupt halt at the pale apparition standing just inside the scullery door.
‘Let the bairn go, Patrick.’
Maggie Flynn, looking like a ghostly wraith rather than a human being, spoke in a hoarse whisper that had more menace in it than all the raised voices in the world could instil. Whether it was just the shattered emotion of the moment, or whether it was a temporary thing, the frail, subservient wife had gone, replaced by one of remarkable courage.
Laura’s eyes were bright round marbles standing out on stalks as she watched the woman slowly raise her hand, and in it was a long, sharp, carving knife. Laura had seen such a knife only half an hour ago when she watched her granddad slice through the pork with it.
‘Aw, get away wi’ ye, woman!’ Patrick shouted in disbelief. ‘Put the bliddy gully down afore ye hurt somebody.’
Patrick started to laugh, but he looked uncertain and Laura took the opportunity to slip through the doorway into the main room. At the same time, someone was coming in through the front door. It was a woman with an explosion of bright red hair and dressed in a way Laura had never seen before. She looked almost as crazy as Mr Flynn, the child thought, making her mouth into a large ‘Oh!’ though no sound was emitted.
‘What’s goin’ on here?’ the woman shouted, looking beyond Laura to the scullery where there was some kind of scuffle taking place.
The woman teetered forward on shoes that weren’t made for walking, but made her look taller than her four foot ten inches. Laura got a whiff of perfume as she went past. It was kind of sour and flowery all at the same time. Not at all like the fresh-smelling eau de cologne her mother favoured.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ Patrick Flynn demanded as the newcomer, followed closely by the petrified Laura, entered the scullery.
Maggie Flynn was lying on the floor, trying to crawl up the wall. Her hands and her nightdress were covered in blood and the knife lay a few feet away from her under the sink. Her foot had knocked over the slop bucket and there was brown, murky liquid flowing over the floor, giving off an unbelievable stench. Patrick Flynn once more had the baby in his hands, holding the child as if he were about to throw him at the wall.
‘No, Patrick,’ the red-haired woman said firmly. ‘Give the bairn here.’
He stared at her uncomprehendingly, as if turned to stone. None of them moved, none of them even dared to breathe.
‘He’s going to kill Billy Big Boots,’ Laura murmured, clinging like a limpet to the woman’s coat at the back, peering around her ample hips, and not believing her eyes. She wished with all her heart her mother were there to put things right. Better still, she wished she had never come, and how was she going to be able to tell them back home what happened without getting herself into a terrible lot of trouble?
‘Is he, indeed?’ The red-haired woman punched her fists into her sides and drew herself up another inch or two until her head came level with Patrick Flynn’s shoulders.
‘Divvint be daft,’ Patrick said, his voice shaking as his Adam’s apple moved up and down erratically. ‘You don’t want to believe what that little brat says. Who is she, anyway?’
‘He put the pillow over Billy’s face,’ Laura insisted. ‘Poor Billy couldn’t breathe.’
‘Did he now?’ The woman held out her arms and never let her eyes stray from Patrick’s face. ‘I’ll take that baby now, Patrick Flynn. We don’t want no more trouble with the police, now, do we? There’s been enough of that in this family because of you.’
Another long silence ensued and Laura could feel her own heart pumping away madly in her chest as she pressed even more firmly against this strange lady who seemed to be in charge of the situation.
Patrick threw back his head and gave a short, mirthless laugh. ‘Colleen, Colleen! You’re the last person in this street to get involved with the police.’
‘I tell you, if you don’t give me that bairn I’ll shop you good and proper and to hell with the consequences.’
Laura winced at the use of a word she knew would have been frowned on by her mother and would have shocked her grandmother white-faced. But she continued to cling to the woman’s skirts, not daring to move for fear that Mr Flynn would drop Billy and charge after her again.
‘Oh, Patrick!’ wailed Maggie Flynn from her slumped position on the floor, a stream of pee issuing from her and forming a steaming, frothy puddle as it mingled with the blood and the slops. ‘Oh, Patrick, don’t do this. I love you, Patrick. I’ll do anything you want. Just leave the bairn be.’
But Patrick wasn’t in the mood to listen to his wife’s pleading. She could have promised him the moon and it would have made no difference. Not with Colleen Maguire standing there threatening to snitch on him. And knowing her the way he did, she wouldn’t hesitate to carry out the threat, even if it did land her in a whole load of trouble. He wasn’t going to take the chance that the police might not believe a common prostitute. If the truth be known, half the Force could claim to be on intimate terms with the damned whore. She was curiously popular on all levels with her reputation of being an honest, caring soul, which was more than could be said for the majority of her fellow streetwalkers.
‘Here!’ he said, thrusting the infant at her. She took it and quickly cradled it to her bosom, rocking with it and pulling the loose edges of her coat around it to keep it warm in the unheated house. ‘But don’t think I haven’t finished with you...or that little bugger either.’
He had addressed the last part of his sentence to Laura and she quivered with fright when she saw his great thick sausage of a finger jabbing the air in her direction. Her head was telling her to get away from that place as fast as she could. Her legs refused to move.
With one last disdainful glance at his prostrate wife, Patrick Flynn grabbed his coat and strode out of the room, anger stiffening his spine. Almost wrenching it from its hinges, he let the front door bang against the wall. The cold January wind immediately rushed in to fill the space that he had vacated.
‘Shut the door for us, pet,’ the woman said, giving Laura a little push, but it wasn’t an unfriendly gesture. ‘Ye’re a good girl. What’s your name, eh?’
‘Laura Caldwell.’
Laura stood on tiptoe to push the bolt firmly into place after closing the door as instructed. Her heart was still beating fast and she was fearful of Mr Flynn returning before she could get away to the comfortable safety of her own home.
‘That’s a pretty name,’ the woman said as Laura came back and stood before her. ‘Now then, Laura Caldwell, can ye help us a bit more and take hold of this babbie till I deal with his poor ma?’
Laura’s eyes widened. All she wanted to do right then was to leave Dawson Street and never come back. Not even to see Billy. She wasn’t supposed to wander off. She knew that very well. Her mummy would be angry and worried and there would be trouble. And her daddy would go quiet and tight-faced, the way he often did. He would just wheel himself off to his room without saying anything. He did that a lot. And her mother would cry herself to sleep, which also happened a lot, whether it was Laura’s fault or not.
‘What do you want me to do?’ she asked demurely.
She was looking in awe at the confusion of red corkscrew tendrils framing a face that was heavily painted with black and red and pink. Just like a clown, Laura thought to herself. She supposed this was what her grandma meant when she talked of women being “all dolled up” and “common as muck”. Her mummy only ever wore a little pale pink lipstick when she went out. Even then, Grandma Robinson criticized, but then she was old-fashioned. Grandpa Robinson called her “straight-laced”, but did it behind her back rather than to her face and risk being told off
.
‘Just sit down in the chair in the next room and take the babbie on your knee. Think ye can do that, me darlin’?’
Laura nodded uncertainly, for she had never so much as touched a baby before, and climbed onto the nearest chair. Baby Billy was placed on her lap and she tried not to hold him too tightly in case he broke. He looked so fragile and smaller even than Peggy, her favourite rag doll, though he was a good bit heavier.
‘Like this?’ she asked.
‘Aye, hinny, like that,’ said Colleen Maguire, and she touched a forefinger to Laura’s flushed cheek. ‘Your Mummy must be very proud of you. I wish I had a daughter, but then, mebbe, in a few months’ time I will have.’ Colleen patted her swollen stomach and grinned. ‘If it’s a girl, what do you think I should call her, eh?’
Laura’s eyes stretched some more as she stared at the woman’s stomach, then at the painted face, thinking how pretty it was, despite the make-up. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘My favourite name’s Bridget, but Mummy says that’s an Irish name.’
‘Well, now, there’s nothing wrong with bein’ Irish,’ said Colleen Maguire, herself born and bred in the shadow of the Ballyhoura Hills and proud of it. Though her life had taken a turn for the worse when her no-good husband had dragged her all the way to the north-east of England to find work in the mines or the shipyards.
So much for a man with foresight and ambition, she thought. With no jobs forthcoming, he had put his innocent young wife to work on the streets of Jarrow in order to pay their way. It was either that, he had told her, or starve. He had died without a penny to his name, six months later, struck down by the consumption he had brought with him. ‘Bridget’s a lovely name. How would you like it if I call my bairn Bridget, eh?’
