by Valerie Wood
‘Nine months, sir?’
‘Nine months! That’s how long it takes for a baby to grow. Good God, James. Don’t you know anything? Surely – the fellows at school …’
James shook his head. He’d never really listened to the lewdness or salaciousness of some of his fellow students in York. He and his friends discussed music, the arts and literature, they didn’t steal out of the college buildings to meet women, or get drunk and have to climb up a drainpipe to get back into their rooms. They had, of course, to put up with many obscene suggestions from some of their fellows, but as he didn’t always understand some of the comments, they didn’t really bother him.
I’ve only been drunk once, he thought. And that was Gilbert’s fault. He was the one who kept plying me with strong ale. It was the night Gilbert had announced his engagement to Harriet Billington. When was that? During last summer before I returned to school. Gilbert insisted that I stay with him in Hull to celebrate. The colour suddenly drained from his face and he sat down abruptly, even though his father was still standing. There had been a girl. Two girls. Gilbert had met them outside the inn where they were going to stay the night rather than drive back home, and he’d brought them in to join them. ‘It might be my last taste of freedom,’ he’d whispered in James’s ear. ‘That’s why I didn’t want to stay with the Billingtons, even though I was invited.’
‘What’s the matter with you? Are you ill?’ His father’s voice came from far away.
‘Not ill, sir. I’ve just remembered something.’ He’d been mildly shocked at his elder brother. He thought that he might well have stopped his philandering now that he was to marry the sweet and gentle Harriet, but James was already under the influence of the strong Hull ale and in no state to dissuade his brother. Besides, the girls were pretty, he remembered; one of them very pretty indeed and rather shy. The other was rather worse for drink and had clung on to him as they’d climbed the stairs to the room which he and Gilbert were to share.
The dashed thing was that he couldn’t remember anything else. The shy pretty one had sat beside him, but the next thing was that it had been morning and he was still lying cramped on the sofa. His head had felt as if it had had a hammer blow, and his mouth was as thick as a crow’s nest. The girls had gone and Gilbert was asleep in the bed.
‘Well! Come on, sir. What have you remembered? Is the child yours or not?’ His father was standing in front of him, urging him to answer, his face anxious.
Was it possible? he thought. Could he have taken that girl and not remembered? Was she experienced enough to know what to do? He dare not for the life of him ask his father if it was possible. The only person he could ask was Gilbert, and he wasn’t here, and if he had been, without a doubt he would have laughed.
‘I think, sir, that perhaps it could be.’
His father, with an exclamation, turned from him. ‘You young fool! You’re going to have to pay these people to take it back, you know that don’t you? We can’t have any scandal, your mother would be simply furious. And we’ve Gilbert to think of, we don’t want anything stopping his marriage. And then there’s Anne, young Mark Tebbitt is hovering.’ He turned to James and shook his head more in anguish than anger as he quietly said, ‘Totally selfish, James. You should have thought of the consequences before taking your pleasure.’
James nodded dismally. The one time in his life, the anticipated joy of manhood, and he couldn’t even remember it.
* * *
‘Mary!’ Sammi called in a whisper through the kitchen door. ‘I think the baby needs a drink. Can you bring some warm milk and an old sheet?’
Mary nodded conspiratorially. ‘Yes, miss.’
She can never have known such excitement in all the years she has been here, Sammi thought as she went up to the guest room. It was usually a very dull household unless James was there, and he’d certainly put the cat among the pigeons now. How on earth had the woman got his name? She doubted that the accusations levelled against her cousin were true. He’s such a child himself, she mused as she laid the infant on the high feather bed. He probably doesn’t even know how babies are made. Although, she pondered, that wouldn’t actually prevent him from making one.
Anne knocked and opened the door. ‘Is Father very angry?’ she whispered. ‘Is he turning James out?’
Sammi looked at her in amazement. ‘Turn him out? But where would he go?’
‘I don’t know, nor do I care.’ Anne drew herself up to her full height, which wasn’t very great, and smoothed her hands down her sprigged muslin gown. ‘I only know that I shall never speak to him again in my life.’ She gave a dramatic shudder, and a single false ringlet from her upswept fair hair danced about her neck. ‘He’s despicable.’
‘Nonsense.’ Sammi started to take off the baby’s thin blanket and it moved, stretching its tiny mouth and nose. ‘We don’t know for sure that this is James’s child. Poor little mite. Come on, let’s have a look at you; see what you are.’
‘Sammi! What are you doing? You’re not going to undress it?’
‘Of course I’m going to undress it. How else will we know if it’s a boy or a girl? Anyway, it needs some clean clothes. Is that all right?’ she added, suddenly remembering that this wasn’t her home and that the rules were different. ‘I asked Mary for an old sheet.’
Anne shrugged. ‘I suppose so.’ She dropped her voice. ‘But can you tell? What kind it is, I mean?’
Sammi laughed. Anne was seventeen, not much younger than her. Surely, surely she knew? She had two brothers, after all. ‘Have you not seen a baby undressed before?’ she asked. ‘But you’ve seen kittens, and puppies like Sam?’
Anne averted her eyes. Her cheeks flushed. ‘Of course not. I wouldn’t look. It’s not the thing to do. It’s rude.’
Sammi unwrapped the thin scrap of sheet which swaddled the baby. ‘Well, whether it’s rude or not, there he is. It’s a boy.’
The supper bell still hadn’t rung, even though half an hour had elapsed since they had been ordered out of the room by her uncle, so Sammi decided that she would risk going down. She knocked tentatively on the sitting-room door and walked in. She had left the baby in her room, having taken an empty drawer out of the bottom of the wardrobe and placed him in it. She had given him a spoonful of milk and wrapped him in a clean sheet, though not bound so tight as it had been.
‘Uncle Isaac!’
Her uncle had his back to her, with one arm leaning on the mantelshelf and studiously watching the fire burning in the grate. On the shelf, a collection of coloured glass was reflected in a gilt-edged mantel mirror, and in the flickering firelight and the glow from a table lamp and tall candles, the dark mahogany furniture gleamed.
‘Uncle Isaac. If you haven’t yet decided what to do, I have a suggestion.’ She glanced at James. He looked terrible. His face was pale and his hair awry.
‘I have decided.’ He turned to her and he had, she thought, such a sorrowful look about him. ‘But you mustn’t bother your head, my dear. This is not a suitable subject for you to be worrying about, and I’m only sorry that you have become involved.’
‘Oh, I’m not worrying, Uncle. I only want to help James. I just thought that if we went to try and find the woman, we might persuade her to take the baby back. We might find out also why she thinks he belongs to James.’
‘My dear, that is what I intend. We’re waiting now for Spence to bring round the carriage. We shall try to find the woman, she can’t have got far down the road, if indeed she is making her way to Hull, as I suspect she might be.’
‘I’ll get my cape then.’ Sammi turned for the door.
‘What? But you can’t come. Good heavens, no.’ Isaac pulled down his grey waistcoat and then fiddled with his watch chain. ‘What are you thinking of, Sammi? I wouldn’t dream …’
‘But you are taking the child with you? So who is going to hold him?’ she asked quietly. ‘You, or James?’
He coughed and humphed. ‘Well, I er, I was wondering
about that. I did think of asking Mildred,’ he muttered as if to himself, ‘but no, perhaps not.’
‘Aunt Mildred has gone to bed, and Anne doesn’t want to talk to James. So there’s only me, unless you ask one of the servants.’
‘Oh no. Out of the question. We mustn’t let this get out, James’s mother would be most upset. Mary wouldn’t mention it, I’m sure, but the others! Well – very well. Go and get your things.’
As she turned to go upstairs, she wondered what had been said which had turned her uncle’s demeanour from anger to such obvious distress.
2
The woman kept in the shadow of the trees and bushes. She had known that someone would come looking for her to fetch her back, to offer her money or some inducement to keep the child. She saw the maid run down the drive and out into the lane, whilst she watched from the safety of the garden. When she saw her return and enter the house, she felt it safe to leave and make her way back down the long, lonely Anlaby Road, towards Hull.
‘He’ll be all right there,’ she muttered. ‘If they’ll keep him.’ She fantasized about this mansion that he would live in, the food he would eat, the warm bed he would sleep upon, how he would play and tumble in the garden. If they keep him. If they don’t take him to the workhouse. That worried her a lot, and she knew that she would have to check; she would have to call at the hospitals and charity homes which housed the unwanted and the very poor. ‘For, God forbid,’ she muttered, ‘I couldn’t do that to him; not to my own.’
She moved back into the shadows as a carriage drove towards the hamlet of Anlaby. Some nob going home to a good supper, she surmised, and ran her hand over her own swollen, empty belly.
The young girl looked kind, she reflected, young Rayner’s sister perhaps? She seemed to know how to handle bairns. Perhaps she would persuade ’lady that they should keep him, though I have my doubts about that; and ’young man – why, I would never have guessed it, little more than a bairn himself, an innocent, I would have thought, but there, there’s no telling what can happen when passion’s aroused, it makes no difference if tha’s fifteen or fifty.
As she approached the outskirts of the town, several carriages and gigs passed her by, and again she kept to the shadows; she mingled with the crowds who were making their way to the inns and hostelries, and slipped unnoticed into the maze of alleyways and dark courts which clustered about the river, and opened the unlocked door to her home.
Her body felt heavy and bloated as she slumped onto the bed; her feet and ankles were swollen from the unaccustomed long walk, and the veins in her legs stood out, purple and knotted. Two children lay awake in the bed, and another was asleep under the thin blanket. She gazed fixedly at her husband, his mouth open as he slept in the only chair, and wondered what had happened to the passion that they had once shared.
He was so handsome, so strong, full of hope and optimism. We used to sing and dance, be happy. Now he’s bitter and melancholic and all we have is despair. A tear trickled down her cheek. At least Silvi had been young and lovely, she’ll never grow old and ugly like her ma, and I hope, oh how I hope, that ’bairn was born of love and not abuse.
Her husband stirred in the chair, then he opened his eyes and saw her watching him. ‘Well? Is it done? Did tha tek him?’
She nodded wearily. Who, she wondered, would take care of her children when she had gone?
‘How much did they give thee?’
‘What?’ She gazed at him through glazed eyes.
‘Did they give thee owt? Money!’
Perplexed, she shook her head.
‘Daft bitch! Didn’t tha ask?’ He sat forward in the chair, staring at her with hatred in his eyes.
‘Ask? Ask? Would I ask for money when his ma is only just dead?’ Her voice sank to a whisper and she put her head in her hands and started to sob. ‘I’ve not yet sunk so low that I’d sell my own grandson.’
He got up from his chair and she thought that he was going to strike her as he came near, but he sank down beside her on the narrow bed and put his arms around her, his head against hers, and held her close, and joined her in her weeping.
The brougham rattled along the turnpike road towards Hull, and James and his father peered out of each side of the carriage windows in an attempt to see anyone who might be walking along the road. Spence stopped once, as he had been instructed to do, should he see anyone, but it was only a vagrant with a pack on his back, who asked them if he could ride alongside the coachie. He was refused, and they continued on slowly, stopping occasionally when James or Isaac called out that they thought something had moved in the hedge.
As they approached Hull they passed the redbrick workhouse, and Sammi gave a small shudder and held the child closer. If they couldn’t find the woman who had brought him, she didn’t want to contemplate the fate which awaited him. ‘Where will you start to look, Uncle? Who will you ask?’
Isaac gave a deep sigh. ‘I’m not sure; I suppose I’ll try the clergy. We’ll try the Holy Trinity first, they’ll no doubt know if any of their congregation has gone astray. A child is hardly something that can be hidden.’ He stopped abruptly as if he had said too much and Sammi knew that, had she been able to see him, his face would have been red with embarrassment.
‘They may not be church-goers, Uncle.’ More than likely not, she thought. The poor ragged woman wouldn’t have been welcome among the estimable congregation. She probably did her praying at home, if she had one.
‘Chapel, you mean? You think that she might be chapel?’
‘No, Uncle. Having seen her, I think she wouldn’t have the energy or inclination for either. Why not try some of the inns? They are more likely to know the people who live in the town.’
‘Sir!’ James had hardly spoken on the journey, and had mostly kept his eyes glued to the carriage windows. Now he turned towards his father. ‘Perhaps we could try The Cross Keys. The landlord might remember.’
His father drew in a sharp breath. James had told him that the only occasion when something might have happened was when he had stayed the night in town with Gilbert, though he was careful not to implicate his brother.
The Cross Keys Inn was a busy coaching inn and stood opposite the golden statue of King William in Hull’s Market Place. It was also the departure point for the coaches to York and London, whose services were still flourishing while the North Eastern Railway board of governors and the town aldermen wrangled over where the next railway line should run. There was an arrow-straight railway track between Hull and Selby, and others not so straight to Bridlington and Withernsea on the coast, which had opened up the possibility of day excursions to see the sea.
But the crowds of people who were passing the carriage as Sammi waited for James and his father to come out of the inn were not the kind who would be travelling by rail or coach. They teemed by on their way home from work, if they were lucky enough to be employed, from the oil or flax mills in Wincomlee, from the shipyards or the docks, and they spent their money and sought relaxation and entertainment in the streets of Hull.
And if they were not employed, they still came out of their overcrowded, dismal houses which were squeezed together in the squalid streets and courts in the heart of the old town, searching for simple pleasures: dogfights or prize-fights made them forget their misery and poverty, and gave them their only taste of excitement, or if that failed, they pursued oblivion in drink.
Sammi crouched into a corner of the carriage so that she wouldn’t be seen, and felt the occasional thud on the carriage door when someone banged it as they went by. There was some coarse bantering as well-dressed visitors arriving at the inn mingled in the street with the ill-fed and ragged poor, with beggars and thieves.
A face pressed against the window and leered in at her; she heard Spence shout to get away and a minute later she jumped in fright as the door handle rattled and then opened, but it was only James and his father come back from a fruitless errand.
‘We’ve drawn a blank there, I�
��m afraid. The fellow’s not talking, even if he knows anything.’ Isaac sat down beside her and took off his top hat and tapped it thoughtfully. ‘We could get out and walk and ask a few people. They might talk if persuaded by a copper or two, but I don’t like to leave you here with only Spence.’
‘I’d rather come with you, Uncle Isaac. If we find the woman and she sees the child, she might have second thoughts about abandoning him.’
‘Very well. We’ll walk a little way, although I fear we must be alert constantly.’
Sammi realized that her uncle would know of the dangers. His office was not far from the Market Place, in the old High Street which ran alongside the River Hull. It was an area which, though safe enough during the day, at night the inns and taverns would be overflowing with seamen and travellers, and others who might be on the lookout for easy money, and who would not be too particular or discriminating about delivering violence in order to get it.
She wrapped the infant inside her cape, and James and his father came on either side of her. She was glad that she was dressed in her plain cape and bonnet, but wished that she had changed from her flounced silk gown which she had dressed in for the ill-fated supper, and which peeped from below her cape. Her uncle, though, was conspicuous in his greatcoat and top hat and with his silver-topped cane clutched firmly in his hand. James, though hatless, was wearing a velvet coat and a cravat at his neck, and both men, she thought, summed up the epitome of wealth.
They moved away from the inn, following the crowd down from the northern end of the Market Place towards St Mary’s Church where there were several inns and grocery shops and all manner of business premises, and which led ultimately to the Queen’s Dock, the first dock to be built in this town of shipping, whaling and fishing. Here, too, in this crowded area were banks and brothels, alms-houses and pawnbrokers, temperance houses and sailors’ mission homes.
