by Dilly Court
‘We won’t see her again,’ Biddy said, pocketing the handful of coins. ‘Half measures for them little bastards from now on. I ain’t a bloody charity.’
Brought painfully back to the present by the mewling of the twins, and with concern for Freddie pressing down on her like a black cloud, Cassy made a pot of tea using tea leaves that had already been brewed several times and left out to dry. The resultant liquid was pale, straw-coloured and tasted more like hot water than a refreshing beverage, but it warmed her stomach and made it easier to swallow the stale bread which was all she had to eat. When all the babies finally slept, she set about tidying the room although it would have been a daunting task for someone twice her size. She swept the floor and emptied the dustpan out of the window into the yard, sending a shower of dead cockroaches to feed the crows and sparrows. A gust of ice-cold air filled the room and Biddy stirred, snorted loudly and then fell back into a drunken stupor.
Cassy went outside to the pump but found it frozen solid. She filled a bucket with snow and took it indoors to melt on the range. The fire was burning low and there was very little coal left in the sack. She could do nothing about it until Bailey returned and she sat down to wait. The infants might be asleep but the house was filled with sound of movement and people talking, shouting and the occasional slamming of doors. In the room directly above her she could hear the deep rumble of a man’s voice followed by shrieks of female laughter. There was a brief silence followed by the rhythmic creak of the bedsprings, suggesting that Wall-eyed Betty was at it again with one of her gentlemen. Well, a girl had to live as Betty often said with a wink of her pale blue eye; the other was brown, hence her nickname. She shared the room with Edna, a fresh-faced girl from the country who had come to London to seek her fortune and in less than a year had changed into a shrill she-cat with a voice that could shatter glass, and a vocabulary of swear words that even made Bailey blush.
Thinking of Bailey, Cassy went to the front door to peer out into the snow, hoping to see him coming down the steps with Freddie in his arms, all well and smiling, but there were only the birds scavenging for food. A door opened and the crippled boot maker limped out with a pair of shiny new boots tied together by the laces and hung about his neck like the decoration on a Christmas tree. He acknowledged Cassy with a nod of his head, and leaning heavily on his crutches he moved across the snow like a bluebottle skating on a bowl of melted fat.
She was about to close the door when she noticed a stranger standing at the top of the steps. It was more than curiosity that made Cassy stare at the woman who had stopped to speak to the boot maker. Her breath hitched in her throat and she started forward, breaking into a run. ‘Mama,’ she screamed. ‘Mama, you’ve come for me.’ Slipping and sliding, oblivious to the cold that gnawed at her bones, Cassy hurled herself into the dark-skinned woman’s arms.
Mahdu was almost bowled over by the force of the small child who clung to her and gazed up into her face with an expression of sheer delight. ‘Cassandra?’ she whispered. ‘Is it really you?’
‘I’m Cassy and you are my ma. I knew you’d come for me on my birthday. Are we going back to India now?’
‘Best take her indoors,’ the boot maker said as he negotiated the steps, swinging himself up on his wooden crutches. ‘But be careful of the old cow. She’ll have that fine cloak off you, missis. It’ll be sold at the Rag Fair in Rosemary Lane afore you can blink.’
Mahdu took Cassy by the hand. ‘Let’s go indoors, larla. It is too cold out here for you.’
Cassy could hardly bear to take her eyes from the dark-skinned lady’s face. She wanted to drink in every detail of the fine eyes, almond-shaped and the deepest darkest brown so that they appeared black, and the silky hair shining like coal in the bright light with just a touch of silver at the temples. She felt the material of the woman’s cloak, fingering it in wonder that anyone could wear anything so fine. There was not a moth hole or a patch in sight and the lady smelt nice, like a bunch of exotic flowers. ‘You are my ma, aren’t you?’ Cassy whispered eagerly, and yet she was afraid to hear the truth.
Mahdu nodded her head. ‘We will agree on that, little one. But now I must see your guardian.’
‘Me what?’ Cassy stopped in her tracks. ‘What’s a guardian?’
‘Biddy Henchard, the woman who takes care of you.’ Mahdu angled her head, staring at Cassy’s ragged blouse and skirt. ‘Although looking at you, I don’t think she does her job very well.’
‘You’re right there, Ma. Biddy only takes care of herself, but you should know that. You come every year when I’m asleep, she told me so.’
‘Yes,’ Mahdu said with a sigh. ‘I should have insisted on seeing you in the daylight, but I had my reasons.’
‘Never mind that,’ Cassy said, taking her by the hand. ‘Come inside, Ma. You’ll freeze to death out here and I can see that you’re a lady and used to fine things.’ She led Mahdu through the snow that was rapidly turning to slush, its pristine whiteness violated and sullied by footprints turning black as the filth below was brought to the light.
Mahdu gave an involuntary gasp of dismay as Cassy showed her into the house. ‘I’ve only been here in the dark,’ she murmured. ‘It was different then.’
‘It could be worse,’ Cassy said cheerfully. ‘Come into the kitchen. I cleaned it up so it ain’t looking too bad.’ She thrust the door open with a grand gesture. ‘See how well I done, Ma. I earns me keep. She can’t deny that.’
‘My poor child. I don’t know what to say.’ Mahdu looked about her in horror. ‘This is even worse than I remembered.’
Cassy held her finger to her lips. ‘Shush, Ma. Don’t wake Biddy yet. There’s so much I want to ask you.’ She pulled up a chair, dusting the seat with the hem of her skirt. ‘Sit down, and I’ll make you a cup of tea.’
Mahdu sank down onto the hard wooden seat. She picked up her skirts as a rat scuttled across the floor to disappear into a hole in the skirting board, and she shuddered. ‘This is wrong, Cassandra. We cannot allow this to go on.’
Cassy had been draining the tea leaves and was about to refresh them with water from the kettle but she paused, staring at Mahdu and hardly daring to hope. ‘You’re going to take me with you?’
‘Not today, larla. You must understand that it is not up to me. I must speak to my mistress and then perhaps we can come to some arrangement.’
‘I don’t understand.’ Cassy swallowed hard. She must not cry. Only babies cried.
‘I work for a kind lady,’ Mahdu said gently. ‘She is very concerned about you but there are difficulties which you would not understand.’
‘If she’s so kind then why won’t she let you take me home with you?’
‘There are reasons, larla.’
Cassy sniffed and wiped her nose on her sleeve. ‘Me name’s Cassy, not larla.’
‘You must trust me, Cassy.’ Mahdu produced a reticule from beneath her cloak and from it she took a small silk purse, placing it on the table.
The clink of the coins brought an instant reaction from Biddy, who opened one eye and then the other. She snatched the purse, weighing it in her hand. ‘What d’you mean coming here in the daytime? Ain’t I told you to come after dark?’
‘You did, but I’m here now and I’m not happy with what I see.’ Mahdu rose to her feet, towering over Biddy with an air of superiority that impressed Cassy and seemed to make Biddy shrink in size.
‘Let’s see the colour of your money afore I throw you out on the street,’ Biddy said, tipping the coins from the purse. Golden sovereigns gleamed in the firelight and she picked one up to bite it between her remaining two teeth. ‘You’ve paid your dues, now get out.’
‘No,’ Cassy cried, rushing across the floor to fling her arms around Mahdu. ‘Don’t leave me, Ma.’
Biddy heaved her bulk from the chair, her mobcap awry. ‘Very touching. I won’t say a word if you get out of that door this minute.’
Cassy felt Mahdu stiffen and she was frightened
. ‘Don’t take no notice of her, Ma. Take me with you now.’
‘I cannot, little one. But I will return, I promise you.’ Mahdu extricated herself from Cassy’s frantic grasp. ‘Be brave, larla. This cannot go on.’ She made for the door but Cassy ran after her, clinging to her skirts.
‘No, don’t leave me again, Ma. Not now you’ve found me. I’ll work for your lady. I’ll do anything if you’ll take me with you.’
Biddy’s hand shot out and she grabbed Cassy by the hair, jerking her roughly away from Mahdu. She glared at her, twisting Cassy’s long dark hair until she cried out in pain. ‘Keep your trap shut, woman,’ Biddy hissed. ‘I could set the paving stones on fire if I told what I know, so be warned.’
Mahdu hesitated in the doorway, her expression bleak. ‘We shall see.’ She left the room and at the sound of the front door opening and then closing again, Biddy released Cassy, throwing her across the room.
‘One word from you and I’ll slit your throat, you little bastard. We’ll see who has the upper hand.’
Chapter Three
Belinda sat in front of her dressing table, staring at her reflection in the mirror. The eyes that looked back at her were the same as they had always been, large and blue, fringed with long corn-coloured lashes, but the expression in them was not that of the young girl desperately in love. These were the eyes of a woman ten years older and wiser in the ways of the world but far from happy. In the room behind her she could see the reflected trappings of wealth and luxury that marriage to Sir Geoffrey Davenport had brought her. The elegant Louis Quinze furniture had been imported especially from France in order to please a young bride. The luxurious Chinese carpet in pastel shades of pink and blue complemented the swags and curtains at the tall Georgian windows of their town house in South Audley Street, and exactly matched the hangings on the four-poster bed. The cut-glass jars and perfume bottles and the silver-backed hairbrushes and mirror set neatly on the table in front of her went unnoticed and were taken for granted. The diamond rings on her fingers and the earrings that sparkled with each movement of her head meant nothing when compared to the hollow where once her heart had beaten for joy at the sound of a man’s voice and the touch of his hand.
Belinda studied the looking-glass and Lady Davenport stared back at her, still young and beautiful at the age of twenty-seven, but a pale shadow of her former self. She sighed and her lips curved into a wry smile. She might be known as an accomplished and charming hostess and the wife of an eminent diplomat, but only she and Mahdu knew that the woman who moved about London society with such grace and apparent ease was a living ghost, a polished gem with no feelings or desires other than to sparkle and be admired. Belinda’s heart was buried with the love of her life in a far distant grave, and the child whom she adored had been wrested from her arms the moment their ship had docked in London. Tears welled in her eyes as she remembered that foggy day in February when her three-month-old baby had been taken from her. She could still feel the tug of that tiny but insistent mouth on her nipples as she had given Cassandra her last feed, and the pain of her breasts engorged with milk that continued to flow for days after the baby was spirited away. Only Mahdu knew of her suffering, and it was she who had found a woman to care for the innocent love-child, whose only crime was to be born out of wedlock. Belinda dashed away the tears that trickled down her cheeks. Today was her daughter’s tenth birthday, but there was little likelihood that she would ever see her child again.
She rested her forehead on her hand, trying hard to suppress the bitterness she still felt for her father, who had died not in battle but from an attack of cholera three years previously in the military hospital in Delhi. He had been the one who engineered her marriage to Sir Geoffrey, who at the time was a widowed district officer who had elected to return to London, having accepted a prestigious position in the Foreign Office. Their courtship had of necessity been brief, fitted in between Sir Geoffrey’s return to Delhi from Peshawar and his passage back to England. There had been the formal introduction, followed by well-chaperoned meetings that culminated in a rather stilted proposal of marriage in the grounds of the Red Fort. Schooled by her father and caring little what happened to her, she had accepted politely but with little enthusiasm. If Sir Geoffrey had been disappointed by her lukewarm response he did not show it; in fact he seemed relieved to have brought the matter to a satisfactory conclusion. It was, as Belinda told Mahdu later, as if he had negotiated a truce between warring factions and could retire from the battlefield with honours. He had kissed her hand and then, strangest of all, had blurted out the fact that he had a five-year-old son living in England and did not want to go through all that wretched business of having another child. He must, he had said gruffly, make that plain from the start so that she understood the situation and accepted the fact that there would be no issue from their union. He might have expanded on this further, but Colonel Phillips and the rest of the party emerged from the Red Fort ready it seemed to offer their congratulations even before the engagement had been announced. Belinda was to discover later that Sir Geoffrey’s first wife, again a much younger woman, had died in childbirth, for which he blamed his son and heir. Young Oliver had been left at home in the care of a nanny and under the aegis of Sir Geoffrey’s eccentric aunt, Mrs Flora Fulford-Browne.
Belinda laid her hand on her flat stomach, remembering how she had been kept out of sight as soon as the pregnancy began to show. What stories her father had invented to cover her non-appearance at functions she had never bothered to ask, but she and Mahdu had been sent to Bombay at the earliest opportunity. They stayed in the home of a retired army captain and his Indian wife, and it was there in a small room at the back of the house that Cassandra Phillips had been born. The labour had been long and difficult and Belinda had been certain she was dying, but the Scottish doctor who attended her had been brusque and to the point, never allowing sympathy to cloud his professional judgement. Mahdu had been at her side the whole time, bathing her forehead with cool water fragranced with rose petals and giving her sips of sweet coconut milk in an attempt to keep up her strength. When it was all over, Belinda had held her baby in her arms and for the first time since she heard of George’s death, she felt something other than grief. She fell in love all over again but this time it was with their daughter. She was the most perfect and beautiful thing that Belinda had ever seen, but reality was soon to overshadow her joy and a week later they were on a ship bound for England.
‘My lady, I am come.’
Belinda turned with a start at the sound of Mahdu’s voice. ‘You’ve seen her? Did you speak to her? How is she? Is she well and happy?’ The words tumbled from her lips, culminating in a sob.
‘I saw her and I spoke to her, larla. But all is not well.’
‘What do you mean? Is she sick?’ Belinda’s hand flew to her throat. She could feel her heart beating at twice its normal rate and she could hardly breathe. ‘Tell me, Mahdu.’
‘We knew that the place was not ideal, but until now I had only seen it at night, and the woman we trusted with our precious pearl was drunk today. She was dead to the world and stinking. It was all I could do to keep from snatching the little one up in my arms and bringing her home.’
‘This is terrible news.’ Belinda stared at her maidservant, barely able to imagine the conditions in which her only child was living. ‘Why didn’t you notice this before? How could you have visited there every year on her birthday and not seen that she was living in squalor?’
Mahdu clasped her hands together, tears rolling down her cheeks. ‘You have led a sheltered life, larla. You know nothing of how poor people live either in India or in London. If there was to be secrecy then this was the only way. Believe me, it hurt my heart to leave the baby in a slum with that woman, but she was supposed to be one of the best, and your gold was the insurance needed to keep your child alive. Others in similar circumstances are not so fortunate.’
Belinda stared at her in astonishment. This was the lo
ngest speech she had ever heard coming from Mahdu’s lips, and she realised that it was the plain and simple truth. A shaft of pain made her clutch her chest as if a dagger had pierced her heart. She had brought this terrible plight on the one person in the world who truly belonged to her: the child born out of the love she had shared with George. If only she had been honest with Geoffrey from the outset, but she had been very young and controlled by a domineering father as well as the mores of the times. But surely, she thought desperately, it would have been better to suffer disgrace and public ostracism than to bear the loss of her baby and to put her child’s life in jeopardy. She raised her eyes to Mahdu’s face and saw her pain mirrored in her trusted servant’s eyes. ‘What is she like, my baby girl?’
‘She is brave and good. She looks like you but she has her father’s dark hair and the eyes of a young doe, big and trusting yet fearful. She looks after tiny babies as if she were their mother. They call her Cassy.’
‘Cassy.’ Belinda savoured the name, repeating it over and over again. ‘What have I done, Mahdu? How can I atone for my sins?’
‘You are not the wicked one, larla. You were forced to give up your child by others. It is they who are to blame.’
Mahdu’s loyalty brought a smile to Belinda’s lips but her words were small comfort. ‘I gave my baby up for all this.’ She dismissed the opulence and luxury of her surroundings with a wave of her hand. ‘I allowed myself to be bought and sold like a commodity, and in doing so I lost my soul. I must do something for her and I want to see her for myself. I can’t live a lie any longer, Mahdu.’ She bowed her head and her slender body was wracked by sobs.
‘There must be a way. We will think of one.’ Kneeling at Belinda’s side, Mahdu wrapped her arms around her, rocking and comforting her as she had done years ago when her mistress was a small child, but startled by a sudden rapping on the door she clambered to her feet.
