Only a Mother Knows

by Annie Groves

  Things had changed now. She had changed and she had George. No doubt Callum had changed too. She should never have treated him the way she did, she thought, as her eyes skimmed the page of Callum’s perfect copperplate handwriting. They had both lost so much, it was about time they became friends again.

  Little Alice needed a stable, united family and it was Sally’s aim to put that right today. She decided to write to Callum before she went to bed.

  As her eyelids grew heavy Agnes’s thoughts drifted to the journey home that evening. She missed Ted walking her home from Chancery Lane for two reasons. The first was because that was virtually the only time they had to themselves now, as his mother didn’t like him leaving her and his sisters alone in case there was an air raid, and the other was because, silly fool that she was, Agnes thought she was being followed by a man in a gabardine mackintosh and a wide-brimmed hat.

  Every time she turned around he stopped and looked in a shop window or turned off down an alleyway, only to emerge from a turning a little further on. A few times she told herself not to be so silly. For what reason would anybody want to follow an underground railway worker? Then, hurrying home, her mind conjured up all sorts of horrors as he drew closer. Agnes had been so scared she went into a shop just to ask what time it was until he had disappeared out of view. Maybe she was imagining it? He might have been going home from work in the same direction and never even noticed her. But she still couldn’t shake the fear from her mind. She wouldn’t tell Ted though; he’d think she was being silly.

  ‘Speak up, love, I can’t hear you very well.’ Tilly felt a lump in her throat as she strained to hear Olive’s voice over the crackling telephone wires. Her mother had arranged to use the phone in the Simpsons’ house, where Drew and George used to lodge before Drew … She tried not to think of him now, knowing it wouldn’t take much to bring her to tears after such gruelling weeks of training. Having never been away from home before, the sound of Olive suddenly made her realise how things were quickly changing.

  ‘Are there any letters for me?’ Tilly asked, eager to know if Drew had written yet; it would be lovely if her mother could forward them on to her. It would make this basic training so much easier to bear if she had Drew’s letters to look forward to at the end of an exhausting day, or to have them next to her heart when she was on night duty guarding the camp whilst the others slept.

  ‘No, love,’ her mother said, ‘but never mind, you’ll have a lot to keep your mind occupied, I’m sure.’ Although her mother’s voice was welcome, the advice irritated Tilly and she only just stopped herself from telling her that she and the twenty-nine other girls, in all shapes and sizes and from all walks of life, who were accommodated in the single-storey barracks were becoming quite adept at Drill: marching back and forth across the yard to the loud instructions of a drill sergeant who would put Nancy Black to shame. Indeed it seemed to be the only thing they did all day apart from clean their uniform and barracks.

  ‘I said,’ Tilly shouted down the Bakelite receiver, swallowing her disappointment, ‘we got here safely and the girls are all wonderful!’ She turned to a long line of girls waiting for the telephone who whooped and clapped behind her. She laughed suddenly, the lump in her throat forgotten, waving them away. This was the first chance any of them had of ringing home, if they had a telephone at home, that is. Some of the girls didn’t even have a front door any more.

  ‘Come on, hurry up, Anyone,’ called a voice from along the line, reminding Tilly of the nickname she had been given on the train, ‘we’ve all got mothers to reassure, you know!’

  ‘I’ll have to go, Mum, I’ll write to you tonight and let you know how things are.’ Tilly only just caught her mother’s fading goodbye before the pips could be heard. Putting the Bakelite receiver back on its cradle, she turned, gave a small curtsey, laughing.

  Only a Mother Knows

  TWELVE

  ‘Young Barney’s been a good pal to little Freddy whilst he’s been staying with Nancy,’ Olive told Dulcie who was sitting quietly at the kitchen table drinking a much-needed cup of tea after her shift at the munitions factory. ‘Apparently, Barney had heard Agnes telling Nancy about the subterranean shelters below the underground and when they were chased by the bigger boys, Barney hid Freddy in there for safekeeping before taking a terrible beating from the scoundrels … Dulcie, are you all right?’

  ‘I’m just tired, that’s all.’ Dulcie gave a weak smile and took another sip of her tea. She certainly couldn’t tell Olive the true reason.

  ‘You’re looking a bit peaky, I must say. Maybe you should go and see Dr Shaw.’

  ‘Oh, don’t fuss, Olive,’ Dulcie said impatiently. All she wanted to do was take her cup of tea upstairs, crawl into bed and fall into a deep carefree sleep. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to sound so rude, I’ve had a difficult night and I am so tired and longing for my bed.’

  ‘Go on, you go up, I’ll make sure you are not disturbed.’

  ‘I wish I could,’ said Dulcie, rubbing her eyes with the pad of her hand, and grimacing when she realised she had smudged her heavily mascaraed eyes, ‘but I promised I would meet my mother in the Lyons tea rooms at eleven.’ Dulcie was dreading the meeting. She had written to her mother a week ago telling her that she needed to see her and explained that she couldn’t visit the house, asking her to meet her in Peter Jones in the King’s Road before they went on to have something to eat at Lyons Corner House, which had been fixed up after the bombings.

  ‘I’m sure she would understand if you couldn’t make it,’ Olive offered sympathetically.

  ‘As she’s not on the telephone there’s no way of getting a message to her at this late notice,’ sighed Dulcie. ‘I’ll just go and have a wash and get changed out of these working clothes.’ She scowled at her navy-blue bib and braces.

  Olive nodded. Dulcie, irrepressible girl that she usually was, seemed to have an aura of defeat about her lately, and she wondered if it had anything to do with her American friend who had been killed a while ago or was it something more than that. Had he left her with something to remember him by? Olive wondered. Dulcie was a girl who enjoyed herself. She knew what was what. She was nobody’s fool; surely she wouldn’t be so foolish as to get herself …? No, Olive thought, Dulcie wouldn’t fall for that kind of caper and she had no intention of asking. It didn’t do to pry and if Dulcie wanted her to know what was on her mind she would tell her soon enough.

  But for now she would say nothing and wait until the poor girl wanted to tell her. After all, it must be something quite serious if she needed to see her own mother, who by all accounts had never had much time for her.

  ‘I’m fine, honestly,’ Dulcie said, suddenly bringing Olive out of her deep thoughts. ‘I haven’t seen Mum for a few weeks and I thought I’d be off work, so I promised her a day out in town. I’m off tonight, so I can catch up on my beauty sleep tomorrow.’ Her face brightened but Olive could tell there was still something wrong. Maybe she was worrying about her brother, Rick, Olive thought and, satisfying herself that was the problem, she said no more.

  ‘What d’you wanna come all this way for, we could be bombed as we drink our tea,’ Dulcie’s mother moaned whilst they waited for the waitress, in her black dress and white apron, to come and take their order.

  ‘There haven’t been any air raids for ages, Mum,’ Dulcie said impatiently, wanting to get straight to the point before her courage failed her.

  ‘Have you seen anything of your sister lately?’ her mother asked, giving a little sniff of disgust. ‘She ain’t even been to see me or your father since … well, I suppose she’s been busy on the stage – it must be hard for her to get away when she’s got so little time between shows.’

  ‘I don’t know where she is, I’m sure.’ Dulcie bridled, realising that even though she had asked her mother here for a pleasant day out her mother still had to bring Edith into it. Dulcie hardly dared think about the trouble that little minx had caused.

 
‘Mum, can I tell you something?’ If she didn’t say it now … ‘I’m pregnant.’ The words were blurted out in a sudden rush and her mother’s face turned a pale shade of grey and for the first time in her life Dulcie watched as she crumbled.

  ‘I don’t know what to do.’ Dulcie could feel the unshed tears stinging her eyes, dry through lack of sleep. ‘Mum, you have to help me.’

  ‘Oh, I can help you, all right.’ Her mother seemed very angry now. ‘I knew something like this would happen and if the truth be known I thought it would be Edith who would bring this news to me – I thought you had more sense.’ She was quiet for a moment and Dulcie looked out of the window, over the rooftops of London as far as her eyes could see, and she wished that she hadn’t had to bring this news to her mother.

  ‘Leave it with me,’ her mother said with a weary sigh. ‘I’ll have a word with someone I know and we can have it all sorted by the weekend and say no more about it. Have you got any money?’

  ‘Of course I’ve got money, how much do you want?’

  ‘Not me, girl, for the …’ Her mother flicked her head to one side instead of saying the word and Dulcie’s eyebrows pleated together.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You know, Dulcie, you’re not stupid, you’ve been around … and look at the result!’

  ‘You mean?’ The light went on in Dulcie’s head; her mother was actually talking of introducing her to someone who would take her baby away.

  ‘Get rid of it,’ her mother said as Dulcie gave a short, almost inaudible gasp and her heart hammered against her ribs. That was the first time she had allowed herself to silently say the word ‘baby’ and as she did, something inside her changed. But what choice did she have? Her disgrace would be there for all to see if she didn’t ‘get rid of it’, as her mother so succinctly put it.

  ‘I’ll get word to you tonight,’ said Mrs Simmonds. ‘Give me your landlady’s address and I’ll make sure to get hold of you when I’ve been to see …’ She left the rest of the sentence unspoken and they finished their tea and rock bun in comparative silence.

  Later that afternoon Dulcie had a message from her mother to tell her to be at Aber Street in Stepney at eight o’clock that night. Aber Street was very close to where her family lived before her parents moved at the start of the war, and as Dulcie hadn’t been near the East End since then she wasn’t looking forward to going there now.

  ‘This time tomorrow all your troubles will be over, gel,’ Dulcie heard her mother say before staring at the receiver and replacing it in the black Bakelite cradle. She had heard the stories of backstreet abortionists, some of them none too clean and none of them qualified if the truth be known, and her stomach churned.

  What if something went wrong? What if she died? What choice did she have? Olive would throw her out for sure and it would prove her right that Dulcie was no better than she ought to be. No, she was being unfair, Olive had never treated her any differently to the other girls who lodged in her comfortable, ordered house. But Dulcie knew she would have nowhere to go. Her mother wouldn’t accept her back, that was certain, on account of her father being so strict.

  No, Dulcie thought with a heavy sigh, she had no say in the matter. Oh, Lord, what had she let herself in for? She hurried upstairs, flung herself on her bed and sobbed. Thankfully she was left alone to do so.

  About two hours later, after a cool bath and carefully applying what little make-up she had left, Dulcie dressed in a pale blue sweetheart-necked dress with puffed sleeves and threw a white cardigan across her shoulders; the day had been particularly warm so she didn’t want to wear her heavy coat.

  Her mother had told her she would need to bring enough money to pay for the ‘procedure’ and before she went to the envelope she kept behind the mirror Dulcie took one last look at her reflection. The only change in her figure was a fuller if tender enlargement in the bust department, she thought, but apart from that nothing; her condition was not obvious.

  Her eyes were a little sunken and even through her expert make-up she looked pale, she noticed, putting it down to the lack of sleep and worry, as she pinched her cheeks to give them a bit of added colour, not to mention that wretched morning sickness that seemed to last all day – she wouldn’t be sorry to see the back of that!

  After counting the money she put a roll of ten-bob notes in her handbag. She had worked long hours and risked her life for many weeks to save that amount, and now it was to be used to get rid of her shameful secret. Dulcie’s throat tightened but she willed herself not to cry. She had never imagined that she would stoop to this … this terrible thing. Bad girls ‘got rid’ of their babies. Not the likes of her, she thought. Fighting back the tears Dulcie hurried down the stairs and out of the front door without a word to anybody.

  Dulcie tried to block out the memories of ‘fixers’ her mother knew who ‘helped women out’, women who were in the family way again and couldn’t afford more kids, or whose husband had been serving overseas for the last twelve months and no matter how much they regretted their actions with either knitting needles or hot baths and gin, the cuckoo had to be removed from the nest.

  The bus was crowded with women in headscarves, the air stuffy with the mixed smells of over-ripe body odour combined with a vague waft of carbolic soap, which vied with the rhythmic lurch and sway of the vehicle to make Dulcie’s stomach heave. How could she have been so stupid as to go into a public house with a stranger and allow herself to be plied with alcohol?

  Because you are vain, that’s why! an admonishing voice inside her head scolded as she stared out of the grimy, dust-covered window. The bus was nearing the East End now and Dulcie was horrified to see the devastation Hitler’s bombs had caused. Almost everything she had known was damaged or destroyed.

  The gaping, rubble-strewn spaces where houses once stood looked as desolate as she felt, rows of shops – gone! In their grimy place children scrambled over mounds of masonry that had, at one time, been someone’s residence or place of work.

  A beautiful golden ray of light caught a shard of discarded glass, producing a dazzling flash that seemed inappropriate in this godforsaken place and Dulcie vowed that any child of hers would never know such degradation. Any child of hers except this one, she thought sadly.

  Dulcie knew what she was about to do was illegal and was punishable by a prison sentence as no decent doctor worth his salt or reputation would perform an abortion and no hospital would either. But what was she to do? If she had money, lots and lots of money, she could pay a clandestine visit to a doctor who made his fortune out of that sort of thing, but she didn’t have lots of money, she was just an ordinary girl working in a munitions factory who’d got herself into a bit of trouble.

  If the bus hadn’t been so full or if she was back in her own room at Olive’s house, Dulcie knew she would have scoffed aloud at the last thought that had popped into her head. A bit of trouble? More like a whole heap of it!

  Poor women didn’t stand a chance once the kids came along, Dulcie could see the evidence all around her as the bus trundled down the Mile End Road. They were doomed if they didn’t look out for themselves. Especially when money was tight and some of the men were tighter. And no matter how much pride Stepney housewives took in their homes and no matter how much elbow grease they used to keep their little dwellings clean and well maintained it would never be enough, not for her anyway, and she wanted no part of it. She wanted a nice house with a garden, somewhere for her kids, out of harm’s way.

  She wanted her children to see trees and flowers and fields and grow strong and healthy – have a good education. All these things her child deserved along with the nurturing love that only a mother could give. All the attention that she never had …

  Unconsciously, Dulcie placed a protective hand on the gentle swell of her abdomen as the clippie rang the bell to let the female driver know people wanted to get off at the next stop. And it was only when she arrived at her destination that the first stirrings of doubt began
to creep into her head.

  ‘You got the money?’ Dulcie’s mother asked without preamble; no ‘hello’ or ‘how are you feeling’. In fact it took her mother all her time to even look in her direction and Dulcie, her humiliation obvious, felt that like a bad smell, the woman would have preferred to waft her own daughter away, and have nothing more to do with her.

  ‘Two guineas. You got that, Dulcie?’ her mother continued, looking ahead, her back ramrod straight, her proud head held high as they walked down the back streets where teams of children were playing war games amongst the bomb-scarred ruins.

  ‘Of course I’ve got it,’ Dulcie answered, a little out of breath but catching up as her mother knocked on a dilapidated door at the far end of the side road near the turning. Her insides were jumping around like jelly on a plate. Moments later the door was opened by a little woman in a grubby-looking wrapover pinafore that barely hid drab clothing, her hair covered from her frizzy fringe to the nape of her neck in a thick black hairnet, who looked up only momentarily.

  ‘I take it you’re Dulcie?’ she asked, holding the front door open just wide enough to allow them into the darkened passageway.

  ‘No need for introductions,’ her mother said stiffly and Dulcie felt all courage leave her as they were ushered into a front room; the closed curtains only partly concealed the shabby interior, and the stench of overflowing drains and miasma of flying insects did nothing to allay Dulcie’s fears.

  ‘Oh, God, help me,’ Dulcie thought and fleetingly, as the sombre lament of a ship’s horn sounded in the nearby dockyard, an old phrase she remembered seeing on a soot-covered Victorian workhouse popped into her head: ‘abandon hope all ye who enter …’