Orphan of Angel Street (31 page)

‘He’s so hot!’ she exclaimed, bending to kiss his flushed cheek. ‘He looks so poorly, the lamb. Feel him – he’s burning up.’

Stevie was moving restlessly from side to side in the cot, never at peace, making distressed whimpering sounds as if he’d even lost the will to cry.

Audrey Radcliffe came to stand beside Margaret. She was wearing her stiff, white apron. Margaret felt as if the woman’s eyes were boring into the back of her head.

‘It’s just a touch of cold,’ Radcliffe assured her patiently. ‘I’ve got it well in hand. He’ll be as right as rain in the morning.’

‘And how did he get a cold?’ Margaret turned, eyes full of hostile anger. ‘It wouldn’t be from being left out to freeze in the garden again with no bedcovers, would it?’

Audrey Radcliffe looked shocked and scandalized. ‘Of course not, ma’am! Who would think of doing such a thing to a child? I’m afraid you may be imagining things again . . .’

Margaret turned abruptly and went to fetch her husband. Standing by his son’s cot in his shirtsleeves and braces, James Adair had to admit Stevie was looking very unwell.

‘I’ll take him down for a while, with us,’ Margaret said, leaning over the cot. ‘And if he doesn’t improve we’ll call a doctor.’

‘I’d strongly recommend you leave him where he is.’ Nanny Radcliffe, as ever when Mr Adair was there, spoke in tones of courtesy and reason.

‘Oh?’ James turned to her. ‘You think . . .?’

‘Well, it’s only a cold, and you don’t want him to start thinking he can just try that one whenever he feels like it, do you?’

‘Margaret, perhaps—’

‘No, James.’ She scooped Stevie up in her arms and he immediately let out a cry. She turned to the nanny. ‘If you don’t mind, he’s my son, not yours. You are simply paid to look after him. You don’t own him, nor do you have the right to control our household.’

‘Margaret!’ James, outraged, followed her down the stairs. ‘For heaven’s sake, what sort of behaviour is this? She’s worth her weight in gold – we don’t want to lose her . . .’

‘Worth her weight in manure, more like!’ Margaret turned, boiling over with long repressed anger and frustration. ‘Don’t we want to lose her? Don’t we? Who doesn’t?’ She lowered her voice. ‘Mercy is convinced she’s doing harm to Stevie.’

James Adair’s eyes widened, then he roared with laughter. ‘Mercy? What in heaven does Mercy know about anything? This is absolutely ridiculous foolishness. What on earth has come over you? You really are getting things out of proportion, darling.’

‘I’ll tell you what’s come over me, what this behaviour is! It’s that of someone who has been tyrannized in her own house for far too long, by you and that, that woman up there. She’s made my life a misery. Mercy’s quite right. I should be able to look after him how I think fit.’

‘Mercy?’ James said again in angry bewilderment.

‘Yes, Mercy. Now be so good as to open the kitchen door for me please – Mrs Parslow?’ Margaret called through the open door. ‘Could you fetch Mercy through for me, please?’

Mercy appeared, her face still pink and full of mirth, until she saw them. Oh Lord, her expression said, sobering immediately. What’ve I done?

‘Mercy.’ Margaret sounded stern. ‘Come through here with us, please.’

They went into the back sitting room.

‘Light the lamp please, James.’

‘I’ll do it.’ Mercy proceeded to do so, while Mr Adair was still recovering from being ordered around in this peremptory fashion. Margaret knelt down and laid her feverish son on a blanket on the floor and he let out a sound of anguish. Margaret looked up at her husband.

‘Mercy has said to me more than once that she believes Radcliffe is not a fit person to look after our child, that she is neglectful, even wilfully cruel—’

‘Oh really – look, enough of this,’ James snorted. ‘Did you really come out with all this tripe, Mercy? I really thought you had more sense. I mean on what grounds are you making all these accusations?’

Mercy blushed, heavily. She had very little proof. But she knew. She just knew. She couldn’t speak.

But in any case Margaret held up her hand to stop her as if holding up a train.

‘It suddenly came to me this afternoon, after Stevie had gone up, and he was so distraught . . . I took his little jacket off this morning when he was hot. And d’you know, that’s about the most I’ve done for my child since the week he was born? I never dress him, undress him, bath him . . . I’m never allowed to, even if I want to. I barely even know his dear little body. And all those bumps and bruises . . . he’s not crawling or walking. How could he hurt himself so?’

As she spoke she started to peel off Stevie’s clothes, untying the silky ribbons which fastened at his neck and removing his nightgown.

‘Margaret, really.’ James stood harumphing beside Mercy. ‘This is so silly. But have it your own way.’

‘I shall, James,’ Margaret looked up at him. ‘Whether you like it or not, I’m afraid.’

As she moved Stevie, he whimpered, and when she sat him up to remove his little vest he began to scream frantically. The vest would not come away from his back. It was stuck to him with dried pus.

‘Oh my!’ Mercy whispered. She had a horrible feeling in the pit of her stomach. James Adair stood, silent now, beside her.

By the time Margaret finally managed to ease the vest off Stevie’s skin, his screaming had become hysterical.

Mercy gasped. Her eyes filled with tears. ‘No wonder he screamed every time I touched him.’

The three of them stared in appalled silence at his back. There were two huge round welts, the centre of each dark with blood and pus, the flesh around them swollen and angry with inflammation. It was obvious the wounds were sorely infected.

Margaret was shaking and crying, Stevie’s head pressed against her. ‘Oh Lord. Oh my little boy, what has she done to you?’

‘Good God!’ James Adair had gone white to the lips. He bent closer, peering at the wounds. ‘She must’ve . . . with a candle! She must be quite . . . insane . . .’

He ran from the room.

Margaret’s eyes met Mercy’s, her face distraught. ‘He’s been suffering, all this time and I didn’t see it. All those bumps and cuts – she made it look as if . . . Mercy, next time you give me advice, make sure I take notice of it a great deal more quickly.’

They heard James climbing the stairs to the servants’ quarters.

The police took Audrey Radcliffe away. So far as they knew she was carted off to one of the city asylums.

Mercy had thought James Adair was going to explode with fury that night. He marched the nanny downstairs, barely even giving her time to pack her bag while he stood over her. Mercy never knew what was said upstairs in her spartan room, but when he came down with her he was shaking.

He made her stand in the hall, and James was still wringing his hands, pacing, unable to stand still.

‘Why did you do it?’ Margaret asked her, weeping. ‘What could have possessed you to do such a thing?’

The woman stared at her. Her expression was impenetrable. In a queer, childish voice Mercy felt she would never forget, she said, ‘Well no one ever looks after me, do they?’

‘I’ll make sure,’ James said wagging a rigid finger at her, ‘that you never go near another child again in your life.’

The doctor came and dressed Stevie’s wounds, shaking his head. By the time they were left alone again, Margaret Adair had seemed to grow in stature and courage. Her instincts had been right all along! They all stood in the hall. James seemed stunned, stood wiping his forehead with his handkerchief.

‘She broke all the rules. She just flagrantly . . .’ He turned away with an anguished sound, unable to finish.

Margaret was still holding Stevie. No one was going to tell her to put him down now.

‘James – now she’s gone I’d like Mercy to be Stevie’s nanny.’

‘But . . .’ He turned, catching sight of Mercy by the bannister, blushing with astonishment. ‘She’s so young, so—’

‘Sensible? Trustworthy? A good judge of character? Better than either of us, perhaps?’

‘Well . . .’

‘Please, James, this makes complete sense. Why employ someone else when we have the perfect person here already? Mercy adores Stevie – don’t you?’ Mercy nodded, fervently, hardly daring to let herself hope. ‘She risked her own position here to make us see what was going on with that evil woman . . .’

James looked at his wife, then at Mercy, standing there so quietly, and as if overcome by the presence of them both, sat down on the stairs.

‘I owe you an apology, Mercy. I really believed that that woman was doing the best thing. That she had standards . . .’ He looked up into Mercy’s eyes. ‘Very well. We’ll try it.’

Over the next three months, Mercy was the happiest she could ever remember being. She was comfortable, well fed, she had the company of Rose and Emmie to giggle and joke, and the sisterly affection of Margaret Adair. Margaret had taken Mercy on as a project for improvement: correcting her speech, forever telling her things – the names of flowers, birds, capitals of the world (Mercy was proud to show she was good at those already).

Best of all there was Stevie, who grew more delightful each week. His back healed quickly until there were just two little scars. Mercy oiled his skin after she’d bathed him, tickling him and kissing his bare tummy so that he let out his wonderful, free-flowing chuckle which made her laugh too. She played with him, fed him, rocked him to sleep. She adored him and Stevie thrived. No more the pained grizzling, he was a robust, happy boy, pulling himself to stand up now on the nursery chair. The Adairs could hardly get over the change in him.

‘Where’s my lad?’ James Adair often called when he came in from the works. Mercy would see an expression of boyish affection come over his face when he caught sight of Stevie. James would come and pick him up, swinging him into the air as if now free to play himself, until Stevie was breathless with giggles.

Life was much smoother and more contented than it had ever been. The only thing that troubled her was her increasing reluctance to go back to Angel Street. As the fortnightly free afternoon came round, she dreaded it. She’d returned faithfully all spring, found Elsie worn and low, Tom the same, always the same . . . If only there was something I could do for them, she thought. Going there was like walking into a living death which made her own happiness feel selfish and wrong. Gradually, full of guilt, she’d stopped going, and it became easier to stay away.

Margaret Adair, through a mixture of timidity and lack of organization, did not much seek out the society of other women of her class. Nor did she seem disturbed in any way by the fact that most women did not walk out with their nannies and treat them as friends. In her vague way she simply did what came instinctively to her: her need for a true confidante who she could be comfortable with outweighed considerations of class or age.

She and Mercy often went for walks together, each taking it in turn to push the pram.

As they wandered back through Moseley Village one beautiful afternoon in June, Margaret stopped and bought a newspaper. Mercy waited for her with the pram.

‘Look—’ Margaret opened it out to show her.
Daily Mail
– Golden Peace Number.

‘Oh!’ Mercy gasped. ‘It’s gold!’

The burnished ink caught the afternoon sunlight and seemed to glow. A picture of the King and Queen stared glassily at them.

‘Look at her necklace!’ Mercy smoothed her finger over the choker of pearls fastened high round Queen Mary’s neck. ‘Ain’t they something?’

‘Aren’t,’ Margaret murmured absent-mindedly.

‘Aren’t. Aren’t, aren’t, aren’t!’ Mercy did want to learn to speak better. She wanted to do everything better!

‘We’ll look at it properly at home,’ Margaret said.

They settled in the sitting room with Stevie playing at their feet and a pot of tea. Mercy couldn’t stop stroking the pages of the newspaper. ‘It’s lovely ain’t – isn’t – it?’

‘It’s to commemorate the signing of the peace treaty.’ Margaret sipped Earl Grey from her delicate, ivy-patterned cup. There was a picture of the crowded Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, of the signed treaty.

Mercy squinted at them. ‘They don’t write any too clear, do they?’

Margaret laughed, replacing her cup on the polished tray. ‘I think once you become really important you can write as poorly as you please. Listen – I’ll read you this poem.’

Across the front page was a long poem, ‘The Victorious Dead’ by Alfred Noyes.

Now, for their sake, our lands grow lovelier,

There’s not one grey cliff shouldering back the sea,

Nor one forsaken hill that does not wear

The visible radiance of their memory . . .

It was a long, sweeping poem, and as Mercy heard Margaret’s soft voice reading it, the emotions she was trying so hard to keep down swelled up in her. She took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. But the beauty of the words, the hopes and ideals of the poem for a happier time, a more virtuous nation, crashed again and again in her mind against the thought of Tom, eternally broken, lying in that sunless little room. Of Elsie’s old offering to Frank, her shrivelled, sooty flowers, of the fact that she couldn’t bear to go there any more. The words hit her like knives releasing her grief for Elsie and Tom, the deep ache in her for all that might have been.

They have made their land one living shrine. Their words

Are breathed in dew and whiteness from the bough

And where the may-tree shakes with song of birds,

Their young unwhispered joys are singing now . . .

Her heartbroken weeping stopped Margaret before she’d even reached the end.

‘Oh, my dear girl – what is it?’

For a time Mercy was unable to speak. She felt Margaret’s arm round her, pulling her close.

‘What’s troubling you, Mercy? This is so unlike you.’

After a few moments Mercy wiped her eyes and looked into her friend’s round, kind face. She drew away a little, watched her fingers fiddling in her lap and told Margaret about Tom.