by June Francis
The door suddenly opened and he entered and she was filled with fear. ‘So here we are,’ said Teddy, smirking at her. ‘All better now, are we?’
She wanted to throw up but there was nothing in her stomach to get rid of because she hadn’t eaten that day. She managed to say, ‘Get out!’
‘Who d’you think you’re talking to?’ he said, his expression turning ugly. ‘You don’t give the orders round her. You’re a disgrace. Getting yourself into trouble with boys. I bet there was more than one,’ he said loudly. ‘Tart!’
She gripped the bedcovers and pulled them up to her chin. ‘You two-faced swine,’ she shouted. ‘Get out of my room!’
He approached the bed, and seizing her cheek, pinched it hard. She managed to turn her head and bite his hand. ‘You little bitch,’ he snarled, slapping her face.
Betty could scarcely believe this was happening after all she had been through. Would it all start up over again? Then she heard her aunt calling him and instantly he made for the door. ‘One word out of place,’ he warned, ‘and you’ll regret it.’
The door closed behind him and Betty sat, trembling, her mind dark with the horror of what had taken place on New Year’s Eve. She could not stay here! Had to get out! She realised that she was still clutching her sister’s letter and he hadn’t even noticed. It had been crushed into a ball when she had pulled up the bedcovers.
Without reading further, she placed it under her pillow with Winnie the Witch and lay back, trying to bring order to her chaotic thoughts. She had to return to school and continue with her studies, had to do well in her exams, and only then would she feel free to leave this house. But she would write to Emma and tell her that she had been worrying about her exams and would see her once they were over.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
‘You OK, Betty?’ asked Maggie, looking anxiously at her cousin as she picked up her jacket.
‘Will you stop fussing over me. I’m fine,’ said Betty in a brittle voice. ‘I just want to get out of this house.’
‘We’re doing that. Got all you need?’
‘Yes!’ Betty wrenched open the front door and stepped outside. It was a month since the abortion and her nerves felt stretched to breaking point. Despite her determination to study and do well in her exams, she often found it impossible to concentrate. She walked down the drive, but as she reached the bottom she saw Teddy coming round the corner on the main road. Immediately she turned in the opposite direction and raced along the pavement.
Maggie hurried to catch up with her. ‘Why are we going this way?’ she asked. ‘Was it seeing Uncle Teddy?’
‘Why else?’ gasped Betty, her heart banging away in her chest. ‘Surely you didn’t want him to keep us talking, nosing into our business?’
‘Of course not,’ said Maggie, breathless with rushing.
‘Well, then,’ said Betty, thinking she would kill herself rather than have him touch her again, ‘let’s stay out of his way.’
‘OK! But you look wild.’
Betty thought, You’d look wild if you’d been through what I’ve been through. ‘I was thinking of walking down Hatton Hill Road and then through the park and over the canal. It’s not a bad day and it’ll be a nice walk.’
‘You mean you’re going to walk to school instead of getting the bus?’ asked Maggie.
‘Yes. I feel like a good walk.’
Maggie gave her an uneasy glance. ‘But you could be late, and what about meeting Irene? Are you sure you’re feeling all right? I mean you’ve been acting a bit peculiar, since you’ve been ill.’
The muscles of Betty’s finely drawn features tightened. ‘Let’s forget about that. I’m fine now. You don’t have to walk with me. In fact, I’d quite like to be on my own.’
‘OK! If that’s how you feel,’ said Maggie, tossing her head. ‘But Irene’s going to get annoyed when you don’t turn up at the bus stop.’
Betty thought how she hadn’t been able to talk about what had happened, even to her best friend. Without another word, she strode ahead. Now her thoughts were of the woman who had performed the abortion. She had been neither judgemental nor cruel, but rather, beneath her brisk no-nonsense manner, Betty had sensed sympathy for her plight. Her aunt had not told her the name of the woman, but there was something about her which convinced Betty that she could be trusted to know what she was doing. What a relief it had been when it was all over. Her aunt had bundled her out of the house in a furtive manner and into a taxi. Despite the pain, Betty was at least relieved to be rid of what her aunt called HER SHAME, capitalising all the letters.
‘I don’t know what Mum’s going to say,’ Maggie called after Betty. ‘I’m supposed to stay with you and keep my eye on you to make sure you’re all right.’
And I know the reason why she wants you to do that, thought Betty. She’s convinced there’s a lad I’ve been seeing and is determined that Maggie will let her know who it is. I can’t cope with this anymore, she decided.
When Betty crossed the Leeds-Liverpool canal, instead of heading towards Beach Road she began to walk along the towpath northwards. There were ducks, coots and moorhens swimming in the water, some with young that were so cute that she felt her tension ease a little. The hawthorn was still in blossom and the grass verge was bright with buttercups and daisies. When she reached Netherton, she carried on walking, past Maghull and onwards. A barge passed her and the bargee waved to her. She waved back and continued on her way for what was surely miles. Her leg muscles were aching and so were her hips.
Eventually, she had to stop and rest and she chose to do so at a place where there was an elderly man fishing and a woman sitting on a rug, reading a book. Betty had no idea where she was but had it fixed in her head that if she kept on travelling north, eventually she would reach her sister’s village.
‘Can you tell me where I am?’ she asked the woman.
‘Halsall, dear,’ she replied, without looking up from her book.
‘Where’s that?’ asked Betty, wiping her damp brow on her sleeve.
‘Not far from Ormskirk.’ She gave Betty a curious look. ‘Why, where are you heading?’ Betty told her. ‘Goodness me, love, you’re miles away from there. It’s up near Blackburn and you won’t reach it by just following the canal. You’ll have to come off and it’ll take you ages to walk there.’
Betty’s shoulders slumped. ‘But I’ve got to get there,’ she insisted. ‘I can’t walk all the way back. I have to see someone.’
‘Who do you want to see? And why aren’t you at school?’ asked the woman.
‘I’ve been ill and I need to see my sister. She lives in a cottage up north.’ Betty named the village. ‘I’m an orphan,’ she added.
The elderly man glanced her way. ‘You’re not running away from an orphanage, are you, lass?’
Betty shook her head and looked longingly at the bottle of water poking out of the haversack on the ground. ‘I’m running away from my uncle. He hits me and I can’t cope with it any longer. I’ve walked miles to get this far.’
The elderly couple exchanged looks. ‘Why don’t you live with your sister?’ asked the woman.
‘Because she’s my half-sister and we only got to know about each other last year.’ Betty licked her dry lips. ‘My father was married twice and he was killed at Dunkirk.’
‘That must have been hard. You thirsty, lass?’ asked the man.
Betty nodded.
She watched as the woman half-filled a mug with water before handing it to her. ‘Thanks,’ she said, and drank thirstily.
‘I bet you’re hungry, too,’ said the man, smiling faintly.
‘Yes, but don’t worry about it. Now I’ve had a drink, I’ll rest for a while. Then I’ll see if I can cadge a lift from one of the bargees going north.’
‘They’ll probably only be able to take you as far as Wigan,’ said the woman, ‘and it could take some time, dear, before one comes along. Is there any way we can get in touch with your half-sister and let her k
now where you are? She might be able to send someone to pick you up from Ormskirk.’
Betty heaved a sigh. ‘Emma doesn’t have a telephone.’
‘But there’s bound to be a post office in the village. We have a telephone at home and I could ask the operator to put a call through and hopefully they’ll get a message to her,’ said the man.
Betty felt tears well up in her eyes. ‘You’d do that for me?’ she said in a husky voice.
‘That’s what we’ve been put on this earth for, lass,’ he said kindly. ‘I reckon you must be quite desperate to try to walk so far.’
‘I am,’ agreed Betty.
‘So what’s your sister’s name?’ asked the woman.
‘Emma Booth. She lives in Honeysuckle Cottage.’
‘Well, you come with us,’ said the man, reeling in his fishing line. ‘And I’ll make that telephone call and we’ll see what happens. Your name is?’
‘I get called Betty, although my name’s really Elizabeth, the same as my mother’s,’ she replied.
He nodded. ‘We’ve a granddaughter, Elizabeth.’ He removed his reel and dismantled his rod. His wife was already collecting her things together.
‘What’s your name?’ asked Betty.
‘Molyneux,’ he replied. ‘Gerald and Hannah Molyneux.’
‘Thank you, Mr and Mrs Molyneux. I’m really sorry I’ve spoilt your day out,’ said Betty.
‘Don’t you be worrying,’ said her elderly knight in shining armour. ‘We’ve the whole of summer to look forward to. Now let’s be going.’
Emma replaced the telephone in the post office, withdrew some money from her saving account, expressed her thanks and walked out into King Street. She’d dropped everything when she had received the message from the postmaster. Now she must prepare a bedroom for her sister and finish off the weekly accounts she had been in the middle of doing if she was to get them to her client on time. She had been prepared to make the journey to Ormskirk after listening to a babbled outpouring from Betty which Emma had difficulty untangling, but one thing was for certain, and that was that her sister was in a state and had come running to her for help. Emma had spoken to Mr Molyneux on the telephone, saying she would get in touch with him after she had visited the railway station and had the information needed from the stationmaster on which was the quickest route for her to take to Ormskirk. She had been completely overwhelmed by his thoughtfulness when he told her not to bother because he had a friend, a salesman, who had a van and travelled all round Lancashire. He would arrange for him to deliver Betty to her that evening. If she could just reimburse his friend for the petrol, that should take care of the matter.
Emma wasted no time getting home and decided to finish her paid work before preparing the spare bedroom. She found it difficult to concentrate because one sentence kept repeating itself in her head. Betty was running away from her wicked uncle. Presumably that was Uncle Teddy. Her eyes darkened with anger, thinking she would have the sorry tale out of Betty.
Emma managed to complete her work and then she went upstairs and into her former bedroom. She made up the single bed and shook the rug outside, polished the lino and then dusted the single chest of drawers and the bedside cupboard. She had settled on a boiled egg and bread and butter for her supper but thought that perhaps that wouldn’t be enough for her sister, so she sliced potatoes, planning to fry them and make an omelette.
Then she decided that the man who was delivering Betty to her might appreciate a cup of tea and a couple of home-made scones, so she did a baking. Afterwards, she fished out the letter Dorothy had sent to her, knowing she wouldn’t find any mention of the wicked uncle in it. Still, she was hoping she might discover some clue to Betty’s unexpected behaviour between the lines.
Reading the letter again, restrained was the word that kept coming into Emma’s head. It was a bit like Betty’s last letter. Her half-sister’s letters were generally full of her doings and the occasional joke. Sometimes she even enclosed a cartoon cut out from the local newspaper, but there hadn’t been a bright note in that letter. Emma remembered how she had thought something was worrying her sister before Dorothy had told her she had gone down with food poisoning. Had the uncle been hitting Betty? If so, why hadn’t she told Dorothy about it? Why had Betty chosen to run away from her aunt’s home to her, instead?
‘How are you feeling now?’ asked Emma, watching her sister curl up on the sofa with Tibby on her lap. Betty’s face was flushed with the sun and she had even more freckles than when last Emma had seen her.
‘Better now that I’m here,’ said Betty, stroking the cat’s head.
‘Are you going to tell me what this is all about?’
Betty kept her head lowered. ‘I thought I told you over the telephone.’
‘You babbled something about a wicked uncle. Am I to take it you mean Dorothy and Maggie’s Uncle Teddy?’
Betty nodded.
‘What did he do?’
Betty did not answer but Emma saw the muscles of her face tighten. ‘Did he hit you?’
‘Yes, but I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘We have to talk about it,’ said Emma gently, feeling a curl of anger unfurl in her stomach. ‘What’s the point of your coming here if you won’t talk about it? Why didn’t you tell your aunt?’
Betty turned her head and the curtain of ginger hair fell so that it shielded her face. ‘She wouldn’t have believed me.’
‘Dorothy, then. If you spoke to her about it, I’m sure her mother would have had to listen.’
‘Aunt Elsie wouldn’t believe her either because she knows we both don’t like him and he knows it as well. He’s sneaky. You’ve no idea how sneaky he is,’ said Betty, a tremor in her voice.
Emma frowned. ‘Surely there’d be bruises where he hit you? Did he hit you where they couldn’t be seen?’
‘Sometimes, but at others he’d slap my face or clout me on the side of the head.’
‘That is so wrong,’ burst out Emma, her fists clenching. ‘A grown-up should never hit a child on the head! He could have knocked you silly. Surely he wasn’t picking on you just because you don’t like him?’
‘Probably. He didn’t like the way I talked to him. I bit him last time he hit me,’ she said with satisfaction.
‘Good for you,’ said Emma, glad to see her sister show some spirit.
‘He tasted horrible and I wondered afterward whether I would really get food poisoning.’
‘You’re saying that you didn’t have food poisoning?’
Betty was silent. Emma stared at her, wishing her sister felt able to tell her everything. She was definitely holding something back. Betty lifted her head and gazed about the kitchen. ‘I like it here. It’s not as big as Aunt Elsie’s kitchen but it’s homely. I don’t want you to spoil the atmosphere by asking me any more questions about him. I feel safe here and I want to put him out of my mind.’
‘That’s fine,’ said Emma smoothly. ‘Did you leave a note saying where you were going?’
‘No! I don’t want him knowing where I am,’ said Betty, her face paling beneath her sunburn. ‘It has to be a secret.’
‘But surely your aunt will be worried about you?’ said Emma.
Betty’s expression hardened. ‘It won’t do her any harm. She thinks the worst of me as it is. She’s convinced I flirt with boys and I don’t.’
Emma thought a little flirting with boys at her sister’s age was normal. ‘It’s probably because she doesn’t want you to be distracted from your schoolwork. She is responsible for you and when you don’t arrive home, she might go to the police and report you missing.’
A nerve flickered beneath Betty’s left eye. ‘I never thought of that. I was sure she’d be glad to be rid of me, so I wouldn’t be a bother to her anymore.’
‘Maybe, maybe not,’ said Emma, wishing she knew more about Elsie Gregory. ‘What about Dorothy and Maggie? They care about you.’
‘I thought you could write to our Dot and let h
er know I’m here,’ said Betty, getting to her feet, still nursing the cat.
‘But she mightn’t get the letter until the day after tomorrow.’
‘But she might get it tomorrow. Can I go to bed now? I’m awfully tired after all the walking I’ve done.’
Emma nodded, but she was still concerned about Dorothy worrying about Betty. Somehow she had to get information to her quickly to prevent her mother from reporting Betty missing to the police. Maybe if she could get in touch with Dougie? She didn’t like doing so having not heard from him for ages, but then needs must when the devil drives.
She escorted her sister upstairs to the small bedroom that overlooked the garden. ‘I’ve put an old pair of my pyjamas under the pillow for you,’ she said.
‘Thanks,’ said Betty, managing a smile. ‘It’s a nice bedroom. Not as big as mine back in Litherland but I’ll feel safe here. Can I keep Tibby with me?’ she asked anxiously, seeming a lot younger than her sixteen years.
‘Aye, but don’t force her to stay. You don’t want her making a mess on the bed.’
Betty nodded.
Emma hesitated. ‘Will you be all right here on your own for a short while? There’s an errand I must do.’
‘Yes, I’m sure I’ll be OK here,’ said Betty, heaving a sigh.
Emma put an arm around her sister’s shoulders and kissed her. ‘I’ll come up and see you when I get back. If you’re awake I’ll bring you a cup of cocoa.’
‘Thanks. That’d be lovely.’ Betty sat on the bed. ‘And will you make me a chocolate cake sometime?’
Emma’s face softened. ‘I haven’t forgotten my promise the first time we met.’
Betty’s eyes suddenly filled with tears. ‘I didn’t think you would forget,’ she said in a shaky voice.
