* * *
She was not too surprised when Charlotte paid her a visit later that afternoon. She had slept well and felt rested. She had submitted to Miss Reid’s brusque blanket bath, and felt the better for it, had swallowed her medicine, eaten the meal that she thought of as dinner though Miss Reid would insist upon calling it luncheon, had passed a friendly word with Bron, the nicer of the two girls who cleaned her room, whose unusual name was explained the moment she opened her mouth and the musical sing-song of Wales lilted forth, and was now contentedly watching the sparrows that squabbled in the tree outside her window and awaiting a promised visit by Toby. When the door opened, expecting the child, she turned her head upon the propped pillows, smiling.
Charlotte, pale and withdrawn, hesitated on the threshold. She was wearing a pretty shade of pink, pearl-sheened as her soft skin. Her fair hair was piled becomingly upon her small head. ‘May I come in?’
Sally struggled to a sitting position. ‘Of course.’
The other girl entered the room, moving very quietly, closing the door very carefully behind her; in fact it struck the watching Sally forcibly that she did everything very carefully – she moved, sat, folded her hands as if the air about her were fragile as spun glass and might splinter and wound at a sharp or thoughtless movement. She sat for a moment, apparently composed, looking down at her small clasped hands that lay perfectly still upon her neat lap. Then she lifted her head in a slow movement, as if that fine, pile of hair were too heavy a load for the slim neck.
‘Ben says I am to apologize to you’, she said very calmly, entirely without spirit or expression, ‘for making the assumption that you would know where I might – might—’ she swallowed, ‘where I might find someone to perform an abortion.’ Her face was drained with the effort of that. She took a breath.
Sally took refuge in a disbelieving bark of laughter that she later realized might have been misconstrued as unkind. ‘Don’t be daft. I did know.’
The fair head lifted, Charlotte’s baby blue eyes were steady; steady and empty. ‘Yes. But you see – Ben’s right – it was wrong of me to assume so just the same, wasn’t it? And I do apologize – for that and for everything else.’
‘There’s no need. What’s done is done.’
For another disconcerting moment wide, blank, blue eyes held narrow, alert hazel ones. ‘Yes. That’s true, isn’t it?’
There was a long and not too comfortable moment of silence. Then Charlotte stood and walked to the window, stood looking out, her slim silhouette sharp in the light and straight as an arrow. ‘I am to marry Doctor Patten. I think he told you?’
‘Yes. He did.’
‘No one knows what happened of course. No one knows – Ben says no one ever will – how criminally stupid I’ve been. Isn’t he clever? And kind – for I’m quite sure of course that he doesn’t truly want to marry me.’ The unnerving evenness of her tone did not falter. ‘Everyone’s very surprised of course. But pleased too, I think. Except Wilfred. But then—’ she drew a small, shallow breath ‘—I couldn’t have married Wilfred anyway. I simply couldn’t.’ She was talking now almost as if to herself. She moved and spoke, Sally thought, as if every vestige of life, every last drop of the spirit that had been Charlotte Bedford had been drained from her, leaving a pretty, obliging, empty shell. Appalled at such damage so wantonly inflicted, on a sudden and violent lift of rage she cursed the mother that had given birth to Jackie Pilgrim.
Charlotte turned. ‘I do hope I won’t let Ben down. I’m not sure that I can be the kind of wife he needs – the kind he deserves. He has such ideals, you see. Such dreams.’ She walked aimlessly to the table, trailed her fingers along its scrubbed edge, ‘Not the sort of dreams that other people have – of love, and comfort, and riches perhaps, or children. He dreams for others. He wants to build Jerusalem. In England’s green and pleasant land. You know, like in the hymn? Oh, not today, perhaps. But tomorrow. Or at the very latest the day after. He’ll wait no longer than that for his social justice, his health care for all, his working man’s Parliament.’ She turned, leaned against the table, the lucent, remote eyes on Sally again. ‘It’s a very laudable ambition, isn’t it?’
Caustic words rose, but stopped, very sensibly, before they reached Sally’s tongue.
‘But not one – I suspect – in which I will be able – or perhaps even expected – to assist.’ She moved to the end of the bed, stood like a chastened, demure little girl who has broken a teacup, still and submissive, hands linked quietly in front of her. ‘I am truly sorry for what happened. Can you forgive me?’
The desire to break something – preferably Jackie Pilgrim’s neck – stirred in Sally again. ‘There’s nothin’ to be sorry for.’
Charlotte smiled, neither in thanks nor in friendship but in simple, empty acceptance. ‘Thank you.’
She left as quietly as she had come, leaving behind her a mist of cool unhappiness on the warm summer air. Sally thought of Ben Patten, of the drive in the man, the granite power, of the sheer overwhelming size of him. For all his good and no doubt noble intentions, how could he do anything but crush the girl? She sighed and laid back against the pillows, her eyes on the sparrows that still squabbled like small ferocious schoolboys outside the window. ‘Jerusalem?’ she said aloud, her voice purely disbelieving, ‘in – what did she say? – England’s bloody green and pleasant land?’ She shook her head in pure mystification. Beyond the tree the roofs and chimneys of Poplar stood, soot-blackened and filthy against the smoky August sky.
There was no doubt about it. None at all. The sooner she and Toby could get away from here the better she would like it.
Chapter Four
I
Sally heard a great deal about the forthcoming marriage in the days that followed – mostly from the irrepressible Bron who, characteristically, was ready to see the whole unexpected affair as a romance of quite fairy-tale proportions and from Kate, the Patten’s other servant girl, who most definitely was not.
‘Whoever would have believed it?’ marvelled Bron in her pretty, sing-song voice. ‘If it had been Mr Peter, now, I wouldn’t have been near so surprised – I always rather thought that he and Miss Charlotte would make a pretty enough pair – but Doctor Ben! There’s a dark horse! I never thought he’d ever marry again, let alone pick Miss Charlotte!’
‘Again?’ Sally was faintly surprised. ‘He’s been married before?’
‘Oh, yes.’ Bron settled herself companionably upon the bed, her duster idle in her hands, her soft brown eyes misted with ready emotion, her voice dropping to the level of confidences, ‘Oh, tragic it was. Truly tragic. Years ago, mind. Childhood sweethearts they were.’
‘What happened?’
Bron leaned close. ‘She died, see. In childbirth. And the boy with her. Less than a year they were married and there she was gone. Inconsolable he was, so they say. Nearly went out of his mind. So they say. And now – Miss Charlotte! Who ever would have thought it?’
Not Kate Buckley, certainly. ‘Well – so little Miss Charlotte decided to land the biggest fish available from the looks of it.’ She was a handsome girl, strong and well made with clear, pale skin and a mass of dark hair of which she was inordinately proud. Sally had, to her own mild surprise, disliked the girl the instant she had opened her mouth. She was openly unkind to poor Bron, who went in fear of her and her harsh tongue, blandly deferential to her employers’ faces whilst rarely missing an opportunity for scornful – sometimes scurrilous – disrespect behind their backs. The only one she apparently had any time for at all was Ben Patten – and he, quite evidently, had now forfeited that privileged position by his decision to marry a girl whom Kate had decided was empty-headed, flighty and no match for him at all. Privately – very privately – Sally thought she was probably right, but in this as in most other things she held her tongue firmly and would not be drawn either to opinion or to any conversation that required anything more constructive than idle curiosity on her part. But, like Bron, Ka
te needed no active participation from her audience to keep her tongue wagging. ‘Just shows you. He’s as bad as the rest of ’em when it gets down to it,’ she pronounced, polishing the spotless window as if she intended to rub it clean away. ‘Show him a pretty face and a neat ankle and he’s off. Well – she’s bitten off more than she can chew there, I can tell you.’
‘You think so?’
‘Think? I bloody know it! Little Miss Pretty’s going to find that life as Mrs Ben isn’t as easy as I daresay she imagines. She’ll have to do a bit more about runnin’ the house than she does now for a start – what with Miss Hannah forever chasing round with them daft friends of hers and Doctor Will with his nose never out of a book, the damn’ place could fall down and I doubt they’d know it! How poor Mrs Briggs puts up with it I don’t know. It’s time someone took the lot of them in hand if you ask me – and if Doctor Ben had been considering matrimony strikes me he’d have done better finding himself someone with more than half an ounce of brains in her silly head that might have done it for him. But no. She bats those baby eyes and off he goes. I really thought he’d ‘ave had more sense!’
That, even given Kate’s habitual ill humour, seemed to contain an unnecessarily strong thread of bitterness to Sally’s ears, and Bron, later, confirmed it. ‘She’s always been the same. Can’t bear anyone to get near Doctor Ben, can’t Kate. Got a very soft spot for him she has, like. It’s understandable, mind. He rescued her, see.’ Her voice dropped to an awed whisper. ‘A fallen woman she was. You know?’
‘Oh?’
‘Oh yes. Came to Doctor Ben with – well, you know—’ the girl blushed furiously. ‘Always says Doctor Ben was the first man ever treated her like a real person. Oh very kind he can be, you know. If you’re in trouble, like.’
Sally smiled.
‘Well of course you know. But sharp too, mind, if he doesn’t get his own way. Very hard on a person he can be. I shouldn’t like to cross him, I don’t mind telling you that. In fact if truth be told the man scares me stiff. I keep out of his way if I can. Very chancy that temper of his, see? An’ I’m not the only one thinks so, either.’
‘But – Kate – she surely didn’t expect – I mean she must have known he’d marry some day? They all do, don’t they – broken ’earts an’ all?’
Bron grinned acknowledgement of this small piece of feminine cynicism. ‘Oh I’m not saying she’d ever expect him to look at her. No, no. She wouldn’t expect that. It’s just – she’s never cared much for Miss Charlotte, see? An’ she thinks she isn’t good enough for him.’
Sally yawned tiredly, settled comfortably upon her pillows. ‘Well – I don’t s’pose what Kate – or you an’ me – think about it all ’ll worry either of ’em a lot!’
Bron was a natural fount of information: she loved nothing so much as a good gossip. Flitting about the room with duster or mop she would chatter like a small Welsh sparrow, the words tumbling over themselves, interspersed with her lilting, infectious giggle, and never a shade of malice or spite to cloud the bright sunlight of her. Only the uncharitable Kate – of whom she was truly terrified – could cow her to silence.
During those first few long days of convalescence Sally found herself listening with a growing degree of interest. She learned of ‘poor’ Mr Ralph’s unrequited passion for Miss Hannah, of Miss Hannah’s own blindness in that respect, to say nothing of her disregard for convention and the natural proprieties. ‘Fills the house she does with such funny people! Some friends of hers are in prison! Imagine! “Oh Bron,” she says to me the other day, “How I wish I could be there with them!” – Lord, me Da’d have killed me if I’d got mixed up with such goings on! But no – Doctor Will sees nothing wrong in it, or so it seems. It’s all this silly voting business, see.’ Bron straightened from her task, planted small hands on all but non-existent hips, ‘Do you know, she asked Kate and me to go to one of those meetings of hers? You know, the votes for women nonsense?’
‘Did you go?’
Bron was shocked. ‘The very idea! Of course not! What d’you take me for? What’s it got to do with me?’
‘Did Kate?’ Sally asked shrewdly.
Bron’s small, generous face tightened a little into the expression that only the mention of Kate could bring. ‘Course she did. Once or twice. Not that she thinks more of it all than I do – but it was Miss Hannah’d asked, see?’
Sally saw. ‘And?’
Bron shrugged. ‘She said it was all just a lot of talk. The young lady Miss Hannah thinks so much of – oh, I can’t remember the name, got a terrible memory for names I have – anyway Kate said she talked an’ talked about the rights of working women and how we’d all be free and happy if we could vote – well, something like that anyway. An’ Miss Hannah made a speech – even Kate said it was a pretty good one, mind, so it can’t have heed bad, can it? – an’ there was lots of girls like us there, so it seems, but Kate didn’t care much for any of them.’
‘Who does Kate care for?’
Bron smiled swiftly. ‘No one I know. So then they started talkin’ about marching to Parliament with banners an’ things.’
‘And Kate lost interest?’ Sally asked, a little slyly.
‘Oh yes.’ Bron was tranquil and entirely ingenuous. ‘I mean – that’s how Miss Hannah’s friends got put in prison, isn’t it? With their marching, and their banners and all. It’s against the law.’
‘Is it?’
‘Why of course. Stands to reason.’
‘Not for everyone it isn’t. Wally and Dan Dickson were up there with banners in the strike last year. No one tried to arrest them.’
Bron was scandalized. ‘The strike? But Sally – that was the docks. That was men.’
‘Why, so it was,’ Sally said.
It did not take any great perception to realize that if Kate’s favourite in the family was Ben Patten, Bron’s was, unequivocally, Ben’s younger brother Peter. Any mention of ‘Mr Peter’ always brought a breathless giggle and a shine to the soft brown eyes. ‘Oh, a right ha’porth he is! Always has been, see. But a good lad, mind. Not an unkind bone in his body that one. And laugh – he’d make the devil himself laugh if he set his mind to it. A lovely boy, really. Breaks a heart a week, or so his Da’ always says.’ Ralph Bedford too got more than his fair share of warmth. ‘Oh, he’s ever so kind. Quiet like, but nothing’s ever too much trouble for Mr Ralph – cares about people, if you know what I mean. Taught me and Kate to read he did, an’ to write too. He’s got a lovely way with him has Mr Ralph. Gentle, you know? The youngsters all love him.’
‘Yes. I ’ad noticed.’
Bron ignored or perhaps did not notice the faintly waspish tone. ‘He lives and dies for those youngsters.’
‘Where do they come from? The kids, I mean?’
‘Oh,’ Bron waved a small, airy hand, ‘all over. Street children Doctor Ben calls them, and that’s about it. Orphans, see? Roamin’ the streets, homeless until here. Well – you know – you must have seen them? Now they’re fed and clothed and taught their letters. Cared for, like.’
‘So – what is this place? An orphanage?’
‘A bit like, I suppose, yes. But don’t you let them hear you call it that, mind. A home’s what they call it. A children’s home. An’ that’s what it is too. More of a home than any of these little devils have had before. It’s a shame some don’t appreciate it!’
‘’Ow many of them are there?’
‘Oh – I’m not sure. It varies, see? There are ten, I think, at the moment. And your Toby, of course. Now there’s a lovely lad. I like your Toby. And Mr Ralph was saying just yesterday what a bright little mite he was.’
‘Was ’e indeed?’ There was no mistaking this time the sharp edge to Sally’s tone. Twice in two days Toby had come to see her and twice in two days she had had to listen to him chattering for the whole of the time he was with her about Ralph Bedford. He had been like a cat on hot coals within five minutes of arriving, dying to be off again and unable to
hide it.
‘You got an appointment or somethin’?’ Sally had asked caustically.
‘It’s just – Mr Ralph’s got the tin soldiers out. ’E’s goin’ to tell us about a famous battle.’
‘Ah. Well – don’t let me keep you, General.’
She was more disturbed than she cared to admit even to herself about Toby’s obvious liking and admiration for a man whose ideas about what was or was not good for him were likely to be very different from Sally Smith’s. Lying alone, the nagging worry would not leave her. What kind of influences were working on Toby while she lay helpless here? What kind of harm might these well-meaning people wreak? What could she give him in face of what might be offered here? Ralph himself had not come to see her again – neither indeed had anyone else apart from Doctor Will, who had checked on her progress with that twinkling smile and pronounced it, with some trace of caution, satisfactory.
‘But only satisfactory,’ he had added, lifting a warning finger, ‘you aren’t out of the woods entirely, my dear. Rest and quiet is what you’re going to need for a good few days yet.’
And rest and quiet were indeed what she got, with only Bron and sometimes Kate to talk to and Toby’s looked-for visits becoming rarer and rarer. In the end she was reduced to asking Bron to find him for her; and even then it was a good half hour before the small blond head peered around the door.
‘Well, well—’ she lifted dark, quarrelsome brows, ‘took yer long enough ter get ’ere, didn’t it? Come by Bow, did yer?’
The smile died on his face. He lifted a shoulder.
‘Cat got yer tongue?’ She knew how badly she was handling him, but was powerless to stop herself. At sight of his face, at sight of the wide, clear eyes, the soft, still-babyish curve of his cheeks, an ache worse than the pain in her arm had ever been seemed to have taken root within her. The ache of anticipated loss.
Tomorrow, Jerusalem Page 11
