The Surplus Girls' Orphans

by Polly Heron

  She was on her feet in an instant. ‘No. And you’re not to ask Norris.’

  ‘Wouldn’t dream of it. In fact, if he tries to tell me, I’ll wallop him for ungentlemanly conduct.’

  ‘Oh, Tom, where would I be without you?’

  ‘Tell you what. Let’s never find out.’

  *

  The train chugged through the countryside. The rain was pouring down here too, just as it had been when they had started their journey from Wilton Close first thing that morning. The view from the window should have been pretty, but the rain had darkened everything beneath brooding black skies, turning grassy slopes to bottle-green, dry-stone walls to the colour of cold ashes and villages into unwelcoming blotches humped in sodden valleys beside swollen rivers that nudged the undersides of old stone bridges arching over them.

  ‘It looks as though there may be floods,’ Molly observed.

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ said Miss Hesketh. ‘It isn’t just in our area that it is a possibility. I hope the Mersey won’t overflow its banks.’

  ‘If it does, it’s more likely to happen in the West Didsbury area than in Chorlton,’ said Molly. ‘When Ees House was built for the Kimber family, a lot of drainage work was done in the Chorlton part of the meadows. That was when they put in the overflow system for Chorlton Brook as well.’ She smiled. ‘Trust a builder’s daughter to know things like that.’

  If she had hoped her remark might raise a response from Lucy, she was disappointed. The last thing she had expected was to be asked to accompany Miss Hesketh when she took Lucy to the home that Vivienne had found. In fact, Vivienne had found two. Miss Hesketh had made telephone calls to both and had chosen this one: the lady who ran it had sounded more sensible, apparently. Was a dose of good sense what Lucy needed most? Probably. Anything to get her to name the father. Or would some fuss and kindness be more likely to produce that result? But if you ran a place of that nature, maybe fuss and kindness wasn’t what the parents wanted for the daughters who had let them down so badly.

  What did Mum and Dad think of her now? No, she wouldn’t dwell on that. She must give Lucy all her attention today, just as Tom had given his to her yesterday evening. Not that it had been possible to give Lucy any meaningful attention so far, as the three of them were sharing their six-person compartment with two others, an elderly woman whose face was as lined as a walnut and a middle-aged woman, who was presumably her daughter.

  When the train slowed and pulled into a little country halt, the two women rose, the younger one gathering their belongings, and, with a polite nod of farewell, slid open the compartment door, not without difficulty.

  ‘Allow me.’ Molly stood to close the door behind them. They smiled their thanks and disappeared along the narrow corridor.

  A couple of minutes later, doors slammed, a whistle blew and, with a lurch, the journey recommenced. Now it was just the three of them together. Molly caught Lucy’s glance of apprehension. Did she expect her aunt to deliver a wigging?

  Miss Hesketh rose. ‘I am going to stand in the corridor for a while,’ she announced, as if this was a perfectly normal thing for a lady-traveller to do. ‘This may be an opportunity, Miss Watson, for you to impart to Lucy information she may need, regarding her condition.’

  Crikey! Was this why she had been brought along? To give Lucy a quick lesson in what to expect from pregnancy and the dreaded childbirth? And…giving up the baby afterwards? Good manners brought Molly to her feet to heave the door open for Miss Hesketh to step outside. She tugged it closed and sank back down onto the seat.

  ‘Well!’ She looked at Lucy. ‘I wasn’t expecting this.’

  ‘Weren’t you?’ Lucy asked sharply.

  ‘No, but if there’s anything you want to ask, now is the time.’

  Lucy shrugged. Molly couldn’t blame her. She must be feeling overwhelmed. Lucy made no effort to pose questions and Molly was content to leave it like that, except that…

  ‘There’s one thing I want you to know. Giving away my son for adoption was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.’

  Lucy cast her eyes heavenwards. ‘If this is your way of trying to make me name the father—’

  A fierce ball of heat burst into life inside Molly’s chest. ‘I realise that your situation makes it hard for you to think of anything or anyone but yourself, Lucy, but it might surprise you to know that I would never – never – use my child to trick you or blackmail you.’ The heat was white-hot. ‘Do you have the first idea how honoured you are to hear me speak of my baby?’

  Lucy looked alarmed, almost fearful, at her outburst. ‘Honoured?’

  ‘Yes,’ Molly declared. ‘You’re meant to be ashamed to give birth to an illegitimate baby, but what I felt when my son was born was an explosion of love and pride and amazement, coupled with the desperate sorrow that his father would never see him. As for having him adopted, I don’t know what you’re meant to feel about that. Relieved? Grateful? I was grateful that my son was going to be part of a respectable family, a proper family with two parents, but mostly what I felt was regret and shock and a grief so intense I thought I would die. But I didn’t. I packed my bag and went back to my old life. It was the oddest thing. I stepped back into my old life and carried on as normal, but everything was different, because I was different and have been ever since.’ She gave Lucy a hard look. ‘As for you, madam, you’re quite possibly the most self-centred person I’ve ever met.’

  ‘Oh…’ Lucy’s eyes filled.

  ‘Don’t bother with the waterworks. I’m not interested. Refusing to name the father, feeling sorry for yourself because you’re not in love with him – you shouldn’t be thinking of yourself. You should put your baby first. That’s what I did, what I had to do, why I gave him up. You’ve got a husband waiting in the wings. Can you even begin to imagine how much I longed for my chap not to have died, how much I wanted it to be a case of mistaken identity and for him to walk through the door?’

  Anguish coursed through her, almost cramping her muscles. She rubbed her arms, trying to keep from trembling. A sheen of perspiration glowed all over her skin, leaving it cool and goosebumpy.

  ‘I probably shouldn’t have said all that. I didn’t even realise I was thinking it. I’m sorry if I upset you, but I’m sorry only because you’re pregnant and supposed not to get upset. I don’t take back a single word.’

  Rising, she made to slide open the compartment door. It stuck. With a final flare of anger – she wasn’t going to be defeated by a damn door, for Pete’s sake – she lugged it open and peered out. Miss Hesketh was further along the corridor, looking out of the window.

  ‘Would you like to come back in, Miss Hesketh?’

  She resumed her seat. Miss Hesketh returned, making no effort to conceal the speculative look she aimed at her niece. Did she put Lucy’s pale face down to a scary description of childbirth?

  Molly sat back. She was drained; her limbs felt sluggish. It was an effort to rouse herself when the train pulled into another station and Miss Hesketh, peering through the window, announced, ‘Here we are. Look sharp.’

  The sky was low and heavy, but at least they didn’t emerge into pouring rain. Instead the air was a damp mist of the finest drizzle. Molly picked up Lucy’s suitcase and followed the others out of the station into a cobbled square, in the centre of which was a majestic conker tree surrounded by a circular bench. The station frontage took up one side of the square; the other three sides were occupied by a hotel with an arched porch and mullioned windows, a mock-Tudor hostelry with a slightly overhanging first floor, and pretty shops with scalloped-edged awnings over their windows – or at least they would have been pretty if summer hadn’t given up and let the world turn dark and wet.

  ‘There’s a tea-shop over there,’ Lucy said hopefully.

  Miss Hesketh gave her a sideways look. ‘We aren’t on a day trip. I daresay we’ll be offered refreshments when we arrive at our destination.’

  ‘Are you looking for a taxi, madam?’
The porter had come outside.

  ‘Yes, please,’ said Miss Hesketh.

  ‘Jimbo drives the local taxi. He’ll be propping up the bar. Should I fetch him for you?’

  ‘Propping up the bar?’ questioned Molly.

  ‘Not to worry, miss. He doesn’t get blind drunk any more, not since he drove into the magistrate’s garden wall. Where should I say you want to go?’

  ‘Thank you.’ Miss Hesketh’s voice was crisp enough to cut a hole in the drizzle. ‘If you’ll kindly alert him to our presence.’

  ‘Aye, will do.’ With a glance at the single suitcase, the porter trotted away.

  Molly and Miss Hesketh exchanged looks over the case. Was it a dead giveaway? When people arrived, one of them a young girl, with only one suitcase between them, did the locals all jump to the same conclusion?

  Outside the mock-Tudor building, a thin man cranked up his motor car and it trundled round the square to stop beside them. When he leaped out to pick up the suitcase, Molly sniffed deeply. Well, he didn’t reek of beer, so presumably their lives were safe in his hands.

  ‘Where to, ladies?’

  Miss Hesketh murmured, ‘Maskell House, please,’ then entered the vehicle with all the dignity of a duchess and none of the desperate shame of someone with a fallen girl to dispose of. You had to admire her, all the more so when you considered she was a maiden lady.

  The journey was conducted in silence. Molly felt sick. She remembered this silence. It had been her silence once, the silence of dread and desperation and having no choice. The car went over a bump in the road, jolting her thoughts. For a moment, just for a split second, she was back in that other taxi with Danny, heading for that other destination, her stomach in knots with the anxiety of getting him to his father’s bedside in time. She had had no idea of the extent of the trouble that would get her into. Would it have stopped her if she had known? All that had mattered at the time was doing the right thing for Danny; but what if she couldn’t get another job? And any job she did get wouldn’t be a patch on the one she had lost.

  Beside her, Lucy lifted a hand to her cheek – to brush away a tear? Guilt was growing inside Molly for the way she had harangued the poor girl on the train. Whatever had possessed her to let rip like that? She should have kept her mouth shut. Ought she to apologise properly? Lucy looked stricken, her eyes dark with fear. Encased in the cherry-red swing-jacket she had been wearing the evening when she had landed on the doorstep in Wilton Close and turned the household upside down, her chest rose and fell perceptibly in short little breaths, interspersed occasionally by a longer, deeper sigh.

  ‘Here we are,’ said Jimbo. How many families had he brought to this place? Was it all in a day’s work to him?

  He steered the motor through a gateway with a sturdy wooden gate that might have belonged to a farm, and up a short driveway with deep lavender beds on one side and a rather rough-looking lawn with several sets of garden tables and chairs on the other. The car pulled up in front of a large house, the sight of which instantly brought Aaron to mind, because much of it was covered in ivy.

  Never mind waiting for the door to be opened, Miss Hesketh was out of the motor almost before Jimbo had applied the brake.

  ‘Come, Lucy.’

  Lucy scrambled out after her. Molly emerged through the other door, which Jimbo was just in time to grab hold of, even if he didn’t manage to open it for her. He lifted out the suitcase from the luggage box on the rear of the vehicle.

  ‘I’ll carry this in for you.’

  He was up the steps and ringing the bell before Miss Hesketh could say yea or nay. They followed him up the steps. Miss Hesketh paid him and, speaking quietly, but not so quietly that Lucy didn’t catch her breath and clutch Molly’s arm, asked him to return in one hour.

  The door opened and a maid admitted them through a small lobby with built-in bench-seats to either side that probably lifted up for the storage of outdoor shoes, and into a hall with a tiled floor and a table in the centre, bearing a vast and highly fragrant flower arrangement of roses and lilies and goodness knows what else besides, that wouldn’t have been out of place at a society wedding.

  ‘Miss Hesketh? This way, please. Mrs Ayrton is expecting you.’

  Molly hovered beside the suitcase.

  ‘That will be taken upstairs for you,’ said the maid before heading for a door leading to one of the front rooms. She knocked and stood aside for them to enter an attractive room with generously proportioned armchairs and a green-tiled fireplace with a glassed over-mantel display case. From one of the chairs rose a middle-aged woman with improbably black hair, dressed in a mid-calf-length checked dress with a wide collar.

  Trust Miss Hesketh to get in the first word. ‘Mrs Ayrton? Prudence Hesketh. How do you do? This is my niece, Miss Lucy Hesketh, and this is Miss Watson.’

  ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you.’ Mrs Ayrton gave a Lucy an appraising glance. ‘I expect you would you like some refreshment after your journey. It will be here directly. And we can talk about Lucy’s stay here.’

  It was bizarre. They sat in the comfortable armchairs, with an array of triangular-cut sandwiches on a couple of low tables between them, exactly as if this were a social occasion. Molly eyed the food hungrily. She was starving, but felt she couldn’t dive in when the others were nibbling so daintily. Or were they all secretly dying to stuff themselves?

  Mrs Ayrton talked about the home she ran and the daily lives of the girls. Hearty country walks seemed to be the order of the day – ‘until it becomes uncomfortable. Fresh air is so important. I’ve never subscribed to the view that mothers-tobe should sit around with their feet up.’

  Well, that certainly put this place in context. In her sphere of life, Molly had never known any mother-to-be who was able to indulge herself by sitting around with her feet up, apart from Tilda’s sister-in-law, but she had had medical reasons for doing so. She glanced at Lucy, whose rigid posture and pallid skin made her look plain terrified.

  Mrs Ayrton showed them the sitting room, where three or four girls in their late teens or early twenties were reading or chatting while another played the piano, her arms extended because her considerable girth meant she had to have the piano-stool pushed further away than normal from the instrument. Then Mrs Ayrton opened the door on what she called the busy room, which boasted a billiard table in the centre and green-baize card-tables in the bay windows. On shelves were boxes with snakes and ladders, ludo, backgammon, draughts and something called the Landlord’s Game, which Molly hadn’t heard of. Other shelves had stacks of old magazines, while a row of sewing boxes and knitting bags was lined up in front of one of the window-seats. Half-finished jigsaws lay on a couple of low tables by the fireplace and another table offered a Ouija board.

  Lucy’s bedroom was on the second floor, its knick-knacks and trinket-boxes, pretty floral cushions in the balloon-backed rattan chair and watercolours on the walls, all suggesting that this room belonged to someone in particular rather than being somewhere for a guest. Perhaps an impersonal guest room might have seemed daunting and unwelcoming to a vulnerable girl facing weeks here, but Molly wasn’t sure she would have relished moving into a room filled with clutter that wasn’t her own.

  She gave Lucy a bright smile. ‘Isn’t it pretty?’ She went to the window. ‘Look – apple trees.’

  Lucy had said barely a word since their arrival at the station. By now, she had completely clammed up. Molly’s heart yearned towards her, but she mustn’t say or do anything to tip Lucy over the edge into the floods of tears that were no doubt building up.

  Downstairs once more in the sitting room, Miss Hesketh explained that she would pay the bill for Lucy’s first few days. ‘After that, Lucy’s father must decide what to do for the best.’

  Molly politely avoided looking at her. She wasn’t stupid. The Miss Heskeths might live in a genteel way, but there wasn’t much money keeping them afloat. If they footed the bill for the first few days, it would represent a significa
nt outlay for them. With luck, their brother would reimburse them.

  The hour was almost up. Miss Hesketh kissed Lucy’s cheek and told her to be a good girl. Molly gave her the swiftest of hugs, but her throat was too constricted for her to be able to utter any words. Not that she would have known what to say.

  The maid tapped on the door and announced the arrival of the taxi.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Mrs Ayrton, ‘and would you kindly take Miss Lucy up to her room and she can show you where she would like you to put her things. Miss Hesketh, Miss Watson, permit me to show you out.’

  And Lucy was whisked away in one direction while Mrs Ayrton escorted Molly and Miss Hesketh to the front steps.

  ‘So pleased to have met you. Don’t worry about Lucy. My staff and I will take good care of her.’

  Jimbo opened the car door and they climbed in. Molly felt weighed down and breathless. The motor pulled away down the drive. She was on the side of the car where the lavender bed was and the herby-sweet scent filled her senses. The bed was alive with bees hard at work.

  The motor passed through the open gate and turned onto the rutted country lane. Molly resisted the temptation to look over her shoulder. Along the lane, they passed through a hamlet clustered around a crossroads with an ancient stone cross and then between high grassy banks boasting vast clumps of pale-lilac bachelor’s buttons and drifts of soft-yellow lady’s bedstraw that must have swayed in every breath of breeze before recent rains had flattened them.

  ‘I think Mrs Ayrton’s establishment is all we could have hoped for,’ said Miss Hesketh. ‘My sister will be pleased when I describe it to her.’

  ‘I’m sure she will.’ Molly made the effort to join in. ‘Lucy’s room is very comfortable.’

  ‘I daresay. Too fussy for my taste.’

  ‘But Miss Patience will enjoy hearing about the ornaments and the pictures and so forth. It’ll make her feel Lucy is in an agreeable place.’