The Favourite Child

by Freda Lightfoot

‘I am of age, Father. I can do as I please.’

  ‘Not in my house!’

  ‘Then I’d best leave your house.’

  ‘Don’t you dare answer back to me, miss.’

  Never, in all her life, had her father spoken to her in such a way and Isabella strove to hold on to her own temper. Certain that Dr Lisle had twisted the truth out of a peevish desire for revenge born out of her rejection of him, she attempted to put the matter right in as calm a manner as she could muster. She walked over to her mother’s chair and sat down. ‘Pa, I think you have got hold of the wrong end of the stick entirely. We are not, in any way, teaching birth control to the unmarried, nor turning any woman into a prostitute.’

  ‘Do not use that word in my...’

  ‘I’m sorry but I must call a spade a spade. Our purpose is to help those overburdened wives and mothers who already have more children than they can cope with.’ For all her voice was cool, even serene, the clenched fists in her lap told a different story. ‘And to prevent the very same sort of disaster happening to their own married daughters. Yearly pregnancies, or frequent miscarriages and stillbirths should not be accepted as the norm. The result is weakened offspring, even damaged children who are handicapped in some way, as well as an unhealthy mother who cannot possibly manage. It’s not right and must be stopped.’

  ‘Not by you, miss!’

  ‘Why not by me? Because I am your daughter, Simeon Ashton, manager of a fine cotton mill and person of standing in the community? Doesn’t that make me even more responsible since I have the time, intelligence and wherewithal to help?’

  ‘Welfare clinics have already been established for the poor, and that is quite sufficient. If something more needed to be done, don’t you think the government would have dealt with the matter?’

  Bella was on her feet again, unable to sit still. ‘No, actually, I don’t. Working to alleviate poverty doesn’t win votes, does it?’

  Simeon rocked backwards on his heels, smoothing his moustache in an attempt to maintain his temper. ‘I’ve always thought of myself as a liberal thinking, tolerant man who wants to provide for his family, but in my opinion it isn’t the job of a woman to interfere in matters more suitably left to her betters. If there are differences between folk, the class system as you call it, it must be there for good purpose. I see no help for it. There are some people incapable of organising their own lives.’

  ‘Because they’ve never been given the opportunity, or the education to enable them to do so.’ Bella could feel her control slipping, her patience being swamped by a red hot rage that matched Simeon’s own. ‘Who cares whether the likes of Mrs Stobbs or Mrs Blundell has one too many children so that it kills her? Certainly not the government. The conservatives exercise conventionally narrow-minded and misguided objections to birth-control and the socialists believe, again misguidedly, that having the poor produce more and more children will somehow provide them with the fodder to fight against the established order. Nobody, beyond women such as Marie Stopes, Mary Stocks and her ilk, seem to appreciate that the application of birth control is essential in creating a just and healthy society. Absolutely essential.’

  Simeon ground out his cigar and strode, stiff-backed to the door. Here he paused, hand grasping the polished brass knob and turned a bland, flat calm, expressionless face to his daughter. ‘You will close your clinic tomorrow. First thing in the morning. Then we’ll say no more on the subject.’

  Needless to say Bella did not close the clinic the next, or on any other morning. She did, however, pay a call upon Dr Nathaniel Lisle at his surgery and told him, as bluntly as she dared, to keep his nose out of her affairs in future. ‘I would be obliged if you did not attempt to stir up trouble between myself and my father by feeding him emotive and inaccurate arguments against birth control. Your task is to tend to my mother who, I believe, is fitter than she admits, rather than interfere in how I spend my time.’

  ‘It may suit your conscience to believe your mother to be better than she actually is but as the unmarried daughter of the house, the duty of her care is entirely in your hands. You should be at her side night and day, not playing at politics and misguided good works.’

  Bella did not demean herself with further argument but stormed out through the waiting room, scattering leaflets advertising her Mothers’ Clinic to his patients as she went.

  Chapter Ten

  Dr Syd’s advice was to take it on the chin. Jinnie assured Bella that she was indeed doing something worthwhile and even Edward offered his support, saying that their father was always quick to lose his temper if he felt his good name was under attack. The result was that father and daughter were barely on speaking terms. It was a sad and depressing state of affairs but Bella grew determined not to give in. She refused, absolutely, to close her precious clinic.

  In retaliation Simeon decided that his prospective daughter-in-law was the one who now deserved his care and attention and there came a veritable stream of obliging helpers to the house. A girl to cut and dress Jinnie’s hair, a dressmaker, bootmaker, milliner and anyone else who had the faintest idea how to make a silk purse out of a cow’s ear, as he jokingly put it. Jinnie accepted it all with surprising equanimity, even submitting herself to weekly elocution lessons where she recited endless little ditties about Susie selling sea shells or ragged rascals running around rocks. The two shillings an hour appeared to be wasted, however, as she continued to recite the poems in a resounding Lancashire accent.

  Bella watched and listened to all these activities and improvements with wry amusement and considerable pleasure, despite finding herself more and more left out in the cold. One evening Simeon invited both Jinnie and Edward to accompany him to the theatre but Bella was not included in the party. He merely cast his most disapproving glare in her direction and said that he assumed she would be far too busy with her “patients” to spare the time for such trivialities.

  ‘I shall sit with Mother,’ Bella tartly responded, determined not to react to this loss of favour.

  Emily, however, seemed less than grateful for the extra attention and whatever Bella did for her, she objected to it. When Bella brought her supper, she said the soup was cold. When Bella read from Wuthering Heights, she asked for Jane Eyre instead. If Bella tucked in her sheets or drew up her shawl, Emily would try to slap her hand away. Yet if she did not, she would complain of a draught on her neck.

  ‘This en - engagement - is - all your - f-fault,’ Emily informed her, dragging the words out with pained difficulty.

  Bella never made any comment about this irritating habit which came and went at will. She simply went along with the masquerade. ‘I know, I know. I brought Jinnie here but not for a minute do I regret doing so. I love her dearly, as does Edward, and he is surely free to marry her if he so wishes.’

  ‘I’ve heard all about your licentious behaviour. Utterly shocking.’

  ‘Licentious? Oh, for goodness sake Mother, don’t you start. What I do at the clinic is important to me. Why can’t anyone care about how I feel? I surely deserve my freedom too.’

  ‘Why? I never had any. Why should you be allowed to do as you please?’ Emily peevishly responded in ringing tones, revealing the bitter jealously she harboured against her more liberated daughter.

  ‘Because there are too many women needing help.’

  ‘Let them suffer. I had to watch your father curb his natural instincts because we could not afford children in the early days of our marriage, why should not others suffer?’ And then as if realising she had perhaps revealed too much, or else remembering her supposedly precarious state of health, Emily sank dramatically back upon her pillows, fluttered a hand to her throat and let out a tremulous sigh. ‘You behave in this way only to vex me. It’s time you were m - mirrored.’

  ‘Mirrored?’

  ‘Mirrored. Dr Lisle - w-wed you timorrer.’

  ‘Oh God, you mean married! You want me to marry Dr Lisle? I think not, Mother. I doubt he’s my type.’ Bella
almost laughed out loud at the very idea and later that day when Dr Lisle himself appeared, offering again, in his simpering, condescending manner, to personally escort her to the theatre should she have a wish to go, Bella almost got a fit of the giggles. With commendable restraint she thanked him for his kind offer and said she really had a great deal of paperwork to do.

  He looked peeved, as if she didn’t properly appreciate the great honour he did her. Bella merely smiled and sailed out of the room, saying she would leave him with his patient as, with no qualifications herself, she was quite unsuitable to assist in medical matters. It was an unkind remark she later came to regret.

  Invited to speak at a women’s meeting being held at the Congregational School hall, Bella decided to put the case for her Mothers’ Clinic with vigour. Not for a moment would she allow the Dr Lisle’s of this world to damage her cause.

  She went alone and on foot, untroubled as always at walking through the tangled web of narrow streets. They were never empty, there always being something going on. This evening was no exception. Overexcited dogs bounded after her while bowlegged children looked up from their game of marbles, or top and whip, to watch her walk by, giving them all a cheery wave. Bored men lounging on street corners fell momentarily silent, though one or two doffed their caps as they recognised the familiar sight of her firm young figure striding past.

  The knife grinder was standing on one corner, a queue of women idly gossiping while they waited patiently to have their knives sharpened. Others, still wearing their mill aprons, known as ‘brats’, sat on their kitchen stools gossiping and crocheting at ever-open doors on this warm summer evening, their mouths moving while no sound came out as they conducted their conversations in complete privacy over the heads of unsuspecting children, a skill they’d acquired in the mill. Bella smiled and nodded as she passed by, stopping to exchange a word here and there with one or other of them.

  One woman, Sally Clarke, ran after her, to grasp Bella by the arm. ‘Hey up, love, I’m right glad to see you. I’ve been wanting to come to that clinic, only I daren’t.’

  Bella smiled encouragingly at her. She’d been a regular visitor to Mrs Clarke’s house ever since Aunt Edie had warned her that the woman needed help after her last confinement. ‘There’s nothing to be afraid of Sally. Why don’t you pop in next Tuesday morning?’

  ‘Me husband’d kill me if he ever found out. Tha knows how high church he is for all he’s not a Catholic. Doctor says if I has any more childer I’m done for, so Reg asked our vicar if there were owt as he could do like, and he tell’d him that abstinence was bad for his health and contraception against the laws of decency, so Reg says we’re not to use owt. Goes against his scruples.’

  ‘Scruples?’ Bella was incensed. ‘What about your health? Doesn’t he care about that?’

  ‘Aye, well, there’s no answer to that one, is there?’ Sally glanced back over her shoulder, nervous that he might even now be listening and then hurried on with her explanation. ‘I wondered like, if I sent one of me older childer, if you’d happen give her summat fer me. In a plain packet.’

  Bella sadly shook her head. ‘You have to be properly examined, Sally. You have to come yourself.’

  ‘Sally!’ A door banged somewhere in the nether regions of the house and an angry voice wafted out along with the sour-sweet aroma of unwashed sweat and urine. Panic lit Sally’s eyes as she peered fearfully into the gloom of the lobby. ‘I’ll send our Mavis,’ she hissed, then rushed back inside leaving Bella facing a half naked infant who sat bare-bottomed on the cold doorstep, sucking his thumb.

  Bella arrived early at the hall but from the outset she could sense antagonism in the air. The audience was middle-class and hostile. They were there to air their own views, not listen to hers. Nevertheless, she managed to remain collected and patient throughout the ordeal of the next hour or more and, she hoped, give little sign of her inner nervousness. Spurred on by Sally’s plight, she did not shirk this golden opportunity to press home the failure of any Church - Catholic, Anglican or Nonconformist, to give sound advice to desperate women on the subject of family limitation.

  One matron rose to her feet and announced that she herself had four children and agreed that childbirth was both agonising and highly dangerous. ‘Nevertheless, having lost two sons in the Great War, I’m grateful that I had a large family. And since the working classes lose even more offspring to disease and malnourishment, it is surely necessary for them to have numerous children.’ She sat down to rousing applause.

  Bella responded by informing her audience that her battle was equally against poverty and ill health, both of which were caused as much by overpopulation as economic factors, and that it did the middle-classes no credit to simply sit back and do nothing to help prevent these evils. ‘Many would be glad to confine their families to four, if only they knew how. Why leave these poor women in ignorance of information that the better educated have known for some time? That’s nothing short of prejudice and neglect of the worst possible kind.’

  The result was uproar.

  People were on their feet shouting for her to leave. There were even cries for her to be arrested and put into prison. One overexcited woman screamed that she was guilty of murdering innocents.

  ‘I believe you are confusing contraceptives with abortion,’ Bella responded, lifting her voice as best she could above the din.

  Throughout, Bella held her cool, even striding from the platform into their midst, ready to continue the discussion with all-comers. She stood, hatless, as was her wont, surrounded by a raucous and self-opinionated group of women, none of whom seemed prepared to hold silent long enough to listen to any reasoned argument.

  Even when she finally emerged into the humid warmth of a summer night, it was to find the usual group of protesters on the doorstep of the hall. Their demonstration seemed even noisier than usual, joined as they were by the women from the meeting. Eggs and flour were hurled at her, splattering her costume and Bella felt suddenly bone weary. She hadn’t expected this to be easy but it disturbed her to be so treated by other women. Surely they should understand, even if everyone else, the government, the Church, ignorant husbands, even the medical profession refused to alter their obdurate attitude?

  One particularly large missile hit the side of her head and she stumbled and half fell, would have done so had not a hand reached out to support her. ‘Oh, thank you.’ The arms that held her were young, male and taut with muscles beneath rolled up shirt sleeves. She could see a pair of corduroy trousers held fast by a wide leather belt, a canvas bag slung across his back, hob nailed boots, seeming to indicate that the man was on his way home from work. She glanced up to offer a smile of gratitude and met a pair of piercing blue eyes that regarded her with blatant approval from beneath a slouch cap tilted back at a rakish angle over floppy brown hair. High cheek bones, a long straight nose and a wide mouth, slightly lifted at one corner in a devil-may-care sort of smile all conspired to present the most handsome face Bella had ever encountered in her life.

  Her mind seemed to go numb and for a moment she could think of nothing to say. She could only look deeply into those eyes which served to remind her, so forcibly, that pioneer of sorts she may be but Isabella Ashton was also a young woman. The power of the muscles beneath her hand, the strength of his hold upon her, even the warm and sweaty closeness of his body left her feeling slightly breathless. She attempted to release herself from his grip but only half succeeded for he kept an arm protectively about her as she began to brush herself down.

  ‘Thank you, I’m fine now. A slight accident, that’s all.’ Bella knew she should move away from that encircling arm but somehow felt reluctant to do so. It must be for reasons of safety, she told herself, for he was not her sort of man at all. Far too rough looking, the greyness of his chin indicating he was in dire need of a shave.

  ‘Accident my left foot. Those witches were out to get you.’

  She let out a shrill laugh, hearing it ring
high-pitched and hollow, fervently wishing he would remove his hand from where it now rested on her middle back. Bella could feel the heat of it burning through the thin cotton jacket she wore. ‘Don’t be too hard on them. They have every right to their opinion.’

  ‘But not to knock ye down when you express yer own. Will ye let me buy you a good Irish whiskey, to steady yer nerves?’

  Bella could think of nothing she’d like better but politely declined. She thought it might not be quite appropriate to be seen entering a public house with this man, though she was sure he was probably entirely respectable. He was holding out one hand for her to take. It was perfectly clean, well shaped and with tidily trimmed finger nails. ‘Billy Quinn at yer service.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Quinn. Isabella Ashton,’ and she gave him her own hand which he held far too long before letting it go with reluctance. The impression of his fingers against hers remained with her for some moments afterwards.

  ‘Are ye any better now? I could feel ye shaking. Ach, they are indeed witches, the whole blame lot of ‘em. Come on, I’m taking you for a pick-me-up, no protests allowed.’

  ‘Thanks, Quinn, but I’ll see to Miss Ashton.’ Dan Howarth materialised out of the crowd before them. And Bella hadn’t even known that he was there.

  She frowned in surprise while noticing how her rescuer bristled, how his hand clenched into a fist behind her back. ‘And who d’you think ye are? Her guardian angel?’

  ‘Something of the sort, Quinn. She certainly needs no help from the likes of you.’

  Quinn fingered the buckle of his wide leather belt as he regarded Dan out of narrowed eyes. ‘And does she have any say in this, I wonder.’

  Dan ignored him. ‘Come on, Bella. I’m taking you home.’

  Quinn was tugging on the leather thong, as if threatening to loosen the belt. Heart in mouth, Bella recognised the aggression mounting between the two men, could feel the air almost crackle with it. She liked Dan a lot and was heartily relieved to see him now for all she’d already been safely rescued, yet for some reason the two men seemed to be seconds away from a brawl. If that buckle were ever swung in anger, as was commonly done in these parts, she was concerned that Dan might come off the worst, despite his impressive physique.