As they turned the corner into Angel Street they found themselves confronted with a small, noisy crowd gathered about a speaker, a woman who stood upon a chair, and another who, with the muffin man’s bell she had used to attract the crowds tucked under one arm, was distributing leaflets to any hand willing to take them.
‘We are not slaves! We are not toys to be bought and sold – children to be seen and not heard! We are adults with a right to have an equal say in the running of our lives and the running of the country in which we live!’ The speaker was a young woman, rather shabbily dressed, soft brown hair parted in the middle and piled untidily upon her head, her smooth-skinned, wide-mouthed face passionate as she spoke. Sally gritted her teeth as a woman jostled her excitedly, sidestepped into the road to avoid more painful contact. Toby drew protectively close to her. A tall, spare young woman, with a strong, square face that Sally vaguely recognized, smiled and offered a leaflet. Intent only on getting to the comparative peace and safety of the soup kitchen – where at least for a blessed few minutes she would be able to stop moving – Sally shook her head jerkily and stumbled on.
‘We must make this Government give us the vote. We must force it from them! Now! This very session! Then we’ll see the changes that will be wrought upon this country of ours!’ As the girl’s impassioned voice was lost behind her in the sound of the traffic, Sally, her bemused brain still functioning despite the siege of pain and discomfort, found herself all but smiling her derision. Changes? And what changes, she wondered, would the fine young lady make that might affect Sally Smith and her kind? Would she stop the likes of Jackie Pilgrim from preying on his women? Would she stop death in childbed or the outrage of sweated labour? Would she find for women the solution to the problems of their own fertility and of the grinding treadmill of poverty-stricken hand-to-mouth living which that fertility inevitably brought? She doubted it.
She tripped up the curb and stumbled, catching her breath at the pain. At the door of the soup kitchen she leaned for a moment, rallying her strength, allowing her reddened eyes to adjust to the gloom. The place was half-empty. A lethargic queue of about half a dozen waited patiently. There were plenty of seats at the long scrubbed table at the end of the room. Thankfully she ushered Toby towards the counter.
The light touch on her arm was a hammer-stroke of pain. She stopped. Toby took his bowl of soup and hunk of dark bread and set off towards the table.
‘Please. I have to talk to you. I have to!’
Wearily Sally turned, knowing from the voice, from the light, pleasant smell of wholesome cleanliness who had accosted her. She had not seen Charlotte Bedford since that night a month or so ago when she had left her in the safety of a rose-pink room to return to the tenement and the threat of Jackie Pilgrim. How many times since had she wished that she had never seen her – that she had ignored that cry for help that she had known then, too well, could only lead to trouble?
‘Please!’ Charlotte said again. In the month that had passed she had changed, even Sally could see it. Her pretty face had sharpened, her small, well-shaped mouth was pinched, and the pale eyes were blurred with tiredness and a constant threat of tears. ‘I must talk to you!’
Sally shook her head, turned away.
Charlotte caught at her arm again, then snatched her hand away as the other girl threw back her head in a convulsion of pain. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing.’ Sally wanted nothing from her. Nor was she ready to give more than she already had.
‘Please,’ Charlotte was whispering, her face truly desperate, the words intense and very fast, ‘oh, please help me. I know I have no right. I’m sure I must have brought you to trouble but – please understand! – I’ve no one else to turn to. Give me a moment. Just a moment. Some advice, that’s all.’
The girl behind the counter, small, red-headed, sharp-eyed, was watching them in open surprise and curiosity. One or two people in the queue turned.
‘Please?’
Toby was watching them, his eyes hostile upon Charlotte, worried upon Sally. He had not touched his soup.
‘Eat yer soup, Tobe, there’s a good lad. I won’t be a minute.’
Charlotte clenched herself against the awful, easy tears that threatened again. Since she had come to her terrible decision she had looked for this girl as the only contact she had with the world in which such things could happen. She could not fail now. She must not. ‘Outside,’ she said, ‘there’s a storeroom – we won’t be interrupted – I won’t keep you a moment, I promise.’
Sally hesitated for an instant longer then, touched despite herself by the pathetic, frightened intensity of this pale, pretty, pampered girl she nodded, ‘All right.’
She followed Charlotte into a dark corridor and through an open door. The small room, lined from floor to ceiling with shelves that were filled with neatly stacked tins, jars and packets, was airless, its tiny window, against which buzzed a great, bloated bluebottle, tight shut. The air was dry and dusty and tickled the throat unpleasantly. Sally walked past Charlotte to lean against a large butler’s sink. Blood thudded in her ears and pain throbbed as rhythmically in her arm. She felt very ill indeed. ‘Well?’
Charlotte stared at her helplessly, seeing not a girl in pain and near to the end of her strength but a pair of narrow, suspicious eyes and a mouth as straight and uncompromising in its dislike as a drawn line. ‘I—’ having come so far, having planned this, rehearsed it, all but learned her lines word for word she could not go on. ‘I need your help – your advice—’
Sally raised impatient brows. ‘So yer said.’
‘I need – please – I need to know – the name of someone – someone who can help me.’ Charlotte’s face was contorted with effort, her hands clasped white-knuckled before her, her breath coming in small, sharp gasps like that of a child who has run too far.
Sally passed a bemused hand over her burning face.
‘I need an abortion.’ The words came out very suddenly and on a hysterical lift of voice that echoed too loudly. Tears spilled over from the blue eyes, ran down the hollows of the small, haunted face. ‘Oh please! I can’t have it! I can’t! And I don’t know what to do – where to go – I’ll die if they find out – Doctor Will – Ben – Hannah – the others. You have to help me! Please!’ She was openly sobbing.
Sally stared at her.
Charlotte fought for control of her voice, but still it lifted wildly. ‘Don’t you hear me? I’m expecting his child! I’ll die! You hear me? I mean it! I’ll die if I have to have it – if they find out – oh, you must know someone? Somewhere I can go?’
‘No.’ The word was harsh.
‘You must! Or – I swear – I’ll kill myself! If you don’t help me – won’t help me – I’ll kill myself! Please!’
Sally stared at her. In the fevered recesses of her mind she relived the one dark occasion she had stepped across the threshold of the woman the tenements called Ma Spencer, a terrified, abandoned child of thirteen. She remembered the squalor, the pain. She remembered the dirty, bloody knitting needle. ‘You don’t now what you’re talkin’ about.’
‘I mean it! I do! I won’t go through with it! I won’t have them know! I couldn’t stand it – I’ll kill myself first!’
‘You go to Ma Spencer and she’ll as likely kill yer anyway,’ Sally said grimly.
‘Spencer?’ Charlotte was on the name like a cat on a mouse. ‘Is that her name? Then you do know? Oh tell me, please tell me, where can I find her?’
‘No.’
‘Please!’
‘No!’
With a sudden movement Charlotte stepped forward, reached for Sally’s shoulders, shaking her. ‘Tell me!’
The world spun, a whirlpool of pain. As Charlotte stepped quickly back, white-faced and suddenly frightened at what she saw in the other girl’s face, there was a movement in the darkness behind her. Sally, her eyes unfocused, could see nothing of the man who loomed in the doorway but his immense size, could do not
hing through the haze of agony that all but blinded her to warn the girl who stood before her, sobbing with terror, frustration and rage. ‘Please tell me – I’ll pay you anything – I’ll pay her anything – I have to get rid of it – quickly – before they find out.’ Suddenly aware of that other presence behind her, she froze, her shrill voice cut off as if by a knife, her already pale face ashen. Very, very slowly she turned. Sally swayed, clinging to the sink, fighting nausea and the mortifying buckling of her knees.
‘What in God’s name is going on in here?’
He was a huge man, with docker’s shoulders and a craggy docker’s face; square and pugnacious, a nose like a blade, an untidy shock of reddish brown hair, a straight and at the moment harsh mouth, a jaw like a granite block. A face that scowled easily, as it was scowling now; a cool and incisive voice at odds with his appearance.
Charlotte was trembling visibly. She took a step backwards, shaking her head. ‘Ben—’
A wave of sickness rose in Sally, her head was splintering with pain. She clutched at the sink, fighting to stay upright. Through the wicked pounding in her head she heard their voices, through her own fever-glazed eyes saw Charlotte’s abandoned tears. The world throbbed about her; the figure of the man grew to manic proportions, the jutting brow and fierce nose, the hard mouth and deepset slate-dark eyes magnifying horribly and then as horribly shrinking, receding, a mannikin figure like the painted figures in the toy theatre in Boswell’s toy shop that Toby had so coveted. She saw that face turn suddenly and sharply to her, put up an unthinking hand to ward it off and in doing so released her grip upon the sink and collapsed with no sound and no hope of saving herself, striking her head upon the heavy porcelain for good measure as she fell. Ben Patten was quick, but not quick enough to catch her. He knelt swiftly by her side, took her wrist in cool, hard fingers.
She felt the fingers and the racing pulse they counted. She lay for a moment, eyes closed, gathering herself, the star-split darkness behind her lids a momentary refuge from a world of pain and explanations.
‘Get her a glass of water,’ Ben said. ‘Quickly.’
Charlotte was still sobbing uncontrollably. She stumbled to the sink. ‘There’s no glass.’
‘Then damned well get one!’
‘I—’
He turned his head and looked at her. She fled, returned a moment later with a small glass which she filled at the sink. Gently but very firmly, cradling Sally’s head expertly so that she could do nothing but allow it, he lifted her and put the glass to her lips. ‘Drink this, just a little.’
She sipped at it. Her stomach settled a little. The pain in her arm gnawed like a rat.
He waited a moment. ‘Feeling better?’
She nodded, her eyes still closed. She could hear Charlotte still crying, quietly now, like a helpless child.
‘Charlotte, for God’s sake stop snivelling.’ It was said perfectly levelly. ‘It does no good. Think about someone other than yourself for a minute, will you? Who is she?’
‘I – don’t know.’ Charlotte hiccoughed, swallowed a sob, ‘That is – her name’s Sally. That’s all – I know.’
‘Sally,’ he said, and then she felt a firm hand on her chin. ‘Sally?’ His voice had taken on some small warmth, an almost imperceptible edge of gentleness. ‘What’s wrong? Where are you hurt?’
She opened her eyes. ‘My arm.’ The husky voice cracked a little, exhausted.
‘Come and hold her.’ Ben did not look at Charlotte, his voice was peremptory. And, ‘Be careful!’ he snapped as she knelt behind Sally, taking her head upon her lap.
Sally lay like a doll. Firm fingers tore the material of her sleeve, unwrapped the dirty scrap of bandage. She flinched, closed her eyes again.
‘Mother of God,’ he said. And Sally felt Charlotte’s involuntary sharp movement as she turned her head away.
‘When did this happen?’
‘About two weeks ago.’
‘Why the devil did you let it go so far? Why didn’t you come to us?’
She opened her eyes and looked at him. Saw the tightening of the muscles about his long mouth, suspected that under different circumstances she would have heard a rougher edge to his tongue. She glanced down at the wound and, like Charlotte, looked hastily away from its puffy ugliness, the seeping of filth that stained the torn sleeve.
He touched it gently, face absorbed, a faint, vertical line between his brows. ‘Can you sit up?’
She nodded and struggled to a sitting position.
‘Good, good. Easy now. Don’t overdo it.’ He held her steady. ‘Now then,’ he frowned a little, obviously a habitual expression, ‘we have to get you to the surgery. My father’s there. He’ll patch you up. Can you walk?’
‘I bin walkin’ fer the last nineteen years or so.’
His mouth twitched very slightly. ‘I’d take you myself, but I do have an urgent case waiting.’
‘Don’t bother.’ She knew how brusque that had sounded, but the effort of talking at all was great enough without the added strain of pleasantries.
‘Charlotte will go with you.’ He threw the other girl a sharp, impersonal glance that was tantamount to an order and brooked no argument. ‘Now – let’s get you on your feet.’
As effortlessly as if she had been a child he almost lifted her to her feet. She swayed a little. ‘Toby,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘Toby,’ Charlotte supplied. ‘It’s the child – her child, I think – anyway, he’s always with her. He’s outside with his soup.’
‘Take him with you.’
For one rocky moment Sally felt her knees buckling again. Firm hands held her. She steadied herself, drew away. ‘I’m all right.’
‘You will be, I think. But in another day—’ he let the sentence hang in the air. Why were some of these people so idiotically stubborn about accepting help? Why couldn’t they see that they hurt no one but themselves with their distrust and their useless, obstinate pride? ‘I’d come myself,’ he said again, ‘but I have a confinement. A bad one. The mother needs me.’
‘It’s all right,’ she said, and resolutely fought the temptation simply to let go, to surrender to the almost welcome darkness that hovered, waiting to claim her, ‘I can manage.’
He watched her for a moment, eyes keen. Then he nodded. ‘Yes. Well, take it easy. It isn’t far.’
She nodded, too exhausted to speak.
‘Ben,’ Charlotte said, tentatively.
He shook his head brusquely, his eyes still on Sally ‘Later, Charlotte.’
‘But—’
‘Later, I said. Take her and the child to the surgery. Father’s there. She’ll need a bed. Arrange it.’
Numbly Charlotte nodded. Turned away. Stopped. Turned a face to him that was stripped to the bone with anguish. ‘Ben? What – what am I going to do?’
‘Later,’ he said again, his voice more gentle. ‘We’ll talk of it later, Charlotte.’
That walk to the surgery was not an experience that Sally ever had any wish to repeat. At every step she was convinced she could go no further, every contact of foot with ground sending shock waves of pain through her body and into her head. Yet somehow she stumbled on, small Charlotte on one side, even smaller Toby on the other, the child now openly crying, his expression and attitude a contradictory mixture of abject terror and heartbreaking fierce protectiveness.
‘It’s all right, Tobe.’ The words were slurred a little. She could not precisely control her tongue. ‘We’re – goin’ to a doctor. A proper one.’
‘I’m comin’ too,’ he said, sniffing. ‘I can look after you, Sal. I can!’
By the time they reached the Bear she was at the end of her strength and had someone offered to cut off her arm with an axe she would have submitted with no argument. Charlotte led her through a door and down a narrow corridor into a room that gleamed with cleanliness. Through a disorientating haze of pain she was aware of blessed coolness and the heartless yet not unpleasant smel
l of antiseptic. She eyed with uncertainty a forbiddingly tall, sharp-featured woman in crisp apron and even crisper cap, whose skirts rustled officiously as she moved and whose voice was as cool and fresh-laundered as the apron and cap. She heard Charlotte’s voice, murmuring some explanation, felt Toby’s small, hot hand almost prised from hers.
‘It’s all right, Tobe. Do as y’er told now, there’s a good boy.’
She closed her eyes as they undressed her, clad her in a loose nightgown so starched that it might have been made of white cardboard. She heard the nurse tut fussily at the sight of her arm, felt a noticeable gentling of her brisk hands. Then they laid her upon a high, hard bed and left her in the cool, bright room, alone with the pain, too exhausted to be afraid or even to be curious. She was still at last, and that for the moment was enough, any need for thought, any need for action thankfully suspended, her precarious hold on reality slipping from her into feverish dreams, the strength to hold it gone.
‘Well, young lady, here’s a thing.’ The voice came to her from what seemed an immense distance. Like his son he was huge, but his face was kinder. The searing pain brought by his touch on her arm opened her eyes and caught her breath in her throat. He gentled her with a strong and kindly hand. Picked up something that glinted steel in the light, gleaming wickedly. She fastened her teeth firmly into her lip.
‘There’s a brave lass. Hold on now. This won’t take a moment.’
But she could not. This time, blessedly, the darkness was swift, sudden and absolute.
II
She woke up in a room that she knew vaguely to be familiar, a room she had seen before – in a dream, perhaps, or a nightmare. It took some considerable time and an immense amount of concentration for the realization to come to her that the dream had been reality, that her drifting in and out of this room, her recollection of the faces and the voices that went with it were no nightmare, no matter of a feverish imagination. She had lain in this bed for days. She had been held down in her delirium by firm hands, had been bathed and fed and tended by strangers. Their hands had cooled her burning forehead, their voices had spoken above her head, distant and unintelligible. She lay very still for a long time, taking in the surroundings that were so strange and yet so oddly familiar. A narrow room, painted white. A tall window, curtains drawn, beyond it sunlight, the muted sound of traffic. A table and a chair of scrubbed, bare wood, upon the table a bowl and a selection of jugs and shallow dishes. A functional room, clean and cool, yet made more personal by the sprigged material of the curtains, the matching cushion on the chair, the bright flower print upon the wall. She lay quite still, movement and thought suspended. There was no need to move. No need to think. Not now. Not yet. Where there had been agony there was now a small, throbbing soreness. Where there had been bitter, bone-deep exhaustion there was now a pleasant lassitude. It was enough. She closed her eyes and slept again.
Tomorrow, Jerusalem Page 9
