A Liverpool Lass (14 page)

‘Any member of our dear girl’s family is welcome here,’ she said. ‘Stay as long as you can, little one.’

As they descended the stairs, therefore, Nellie looked a question at Bethan, who understood at once.

‘Easier, see, to say you’re my sister, come to stay for a day or so,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t give them pain for the world. That was what I told Father last night, when I put him to bed; better stick to that story, I’m thinking.’

‘Ye-es. Anyway, I’ll be gone soon enough and it won’t matter,’ Nellie said, following her hostess across the pleasant kitchen and into the small scullery beyond. A full copper steamed on a range and the low stone sink was full of sheets, soaking in hot water. Bethan went across the room, rolling up her sleeves as she went.

‘Laundry for the big house,’ she said briefly. ‘You won’t mind if I get on? You could make us both some tea and cook some porridge, I daresay, for I’ve not yet had my breakfast.’ She turned and smiled warmly at Nellie. ‘Might as well make use of you whilst you’re here, girl ... there’s a spare apron on the back of the door.’

Bethan herself was dressed in warm blue wool with a white calico apron tied round her. Nellie, in the grey dress she had worn for the journey, was suddenly conscious of her travel-stained appearance, for she had had no choice but to put on the clothing she had worn yesterday since her bag only contained clean underwear and a warm jacket.

‘You’ll have to tell me where things are,’ she said now, tying the apron round herself and walking over to take down a shining copper pan from the array on the wall-hooks. ‘Do you make porridge with water? Or do you use milk?’

‘Milk, since we keep a few cows in the meadows at the top of the cliff,’ Bethan said over her shoulder. She heaved a sheet out onto the washboard and began scrubbing vigorously, suds up to her elbows. Under her vigorous pummelling tiny, many-coloured bubbles flew up and burst when they touched the wooden draining board, or landed on the hardpacked earth of the floor, for the scullery was a lean-to, built on at some stage but not properly floored.

‘And where do I find the porridge oats?’ Nellie said next, pouring milk from a big blue jug.

‘In the brown crock in the larder.’ Bethan jerked an elbow at a door in the wall. ‘Did you sleep well, cariad, in spite of everything?’

‘Yes, like a log,’ Nellie said, surprised to find that she spoke no more than the truth. She remembered lying in bed weeping, with Bethan weeping too, in each other’s arms, like sisters. Well, perhaps we are sisters, she thought defiantly now. Davy would have liked us to be friends, I’m sure. ‘Can I help you with that sheet before I start to cook?’

‘No, I can manage well enough, I promise you. I mangle in the back yard, though, and that’s awkward work. You can help with that, presently. But right now if you cook the porridge I’ll finish here and then later on I’ll make a cake. We keep hens, of course, but they never lay as good in winter as in summer, so we have to use our eggs careful like, but they cost no more than a bowl of scraps and a dipper of corn twice a day. And we’ll have fish for our dinner; Freddy Mackerel has
gone out to the fishing in Father’s boat so he’ll bring us back some of his catch and the money for the boat later.’

‘Is he buying the boat?’ Nellie asked, stirring oats into a pan of milk and water.

‘No, he rents it. It all helps, but we’ll miss Davy’s money. Though there’s a pension, and Davy paid into a club – we’ll get that in time.’

‘I’ll pay me way until I leave, I won’t be a charge on you,’ Nellie said, suddenly embarrassed. She had no right here, no matter how hard she tried to gainsay it!

‘No need. The old folk are well off by most standards and I do some washing, some field work, clean up at the big house once in a while, grow vegetables out the back, and sell flowers done up in bunches when spring comes. We make butter and cheese when we’ve milk to spare and sell it at the market ... we do very well, better than folk in the city, I daresay.’ She turned from the sink, lowering her voice, though she had already said that Father spoke only Welsh and Nellie had seen him through the window, sitting out at the front in the winter sunshine, watching housewives and children making their way up and down Stryd Pen. Later, when the day got going a bit, Bethan said he would go down to the stained wooden seat by the fishermen’s huts and join other old men to gossip and eye passersby, and the comings and goings of boats in the harbour. ‘When we’ve eaten we’ll go for a stroll along the cliffs; I want to ask you something.’

‘Well, I’ll have to start walking back to Amlwch to catch the train home soon,’ Nellie said. But she didn’t mean it and knew, somehow, that Bethan understood that the words were said because they were expected rather than meant. ‘Unless there’s a bus?’

‘Not till market day, but ... ah, the porridge looks cooked. Let’s eat.’

And later, walking up the cliffs with the fresh, exciting sea breeze in her face and strange sights all around, Nellie and Bethan talked from their hearts. Nellie told Bethan all about Lilac, the child who had been as good as her own child since her arrival at the Culler, and Bethan told Nellie how she and Davy had longed for a child – she even admitted that a baby would have cemented their marriage in a way nothing else could.

‘For though I loved him, I think he had no thought of marriage until his parents grew so infirm and Dickie such a worry to him,’ she admitted as they strolled, arm in arm, up the steep incline to where the rolling meadows waited. ‘And with Davy gone I’ve got nothing, Nellie, save memories of a happiness which may have been false. Now you’ve got your little Lilac, a job, a family ... so if you stay here and give birth to Davy’s baby and we pretend the child is mine, how much better for us both it would be!’

‘Oh, but people would know, everyone here would know, you’d find yourself with few friends, there would be gossip ...’

‘No, I’ve thought it all out! And be honest, girl, if you go back with a child or even with a big belly the orphan asylum people won’t like it. They’ll turn you over to one of those places for bad girls and you won’t last long there, you aren’t bad enough! But if you let me have the baby then you can go back to your job, and Lilac, and pick up your life where you left off.’

‘But the people here ...’

‘Trust me! Didn’t I say I’d worked it out? I’ve already said you’re my sister, now I’ll say you’ve come
to see me through my time and I’ll put a cushion under my smock – first a tiny one, then larger, larger – until you have the baby. The days are growing shorter with winter coming on, you won’t need to be seen about much. Indoors we’ll say you feel the cold and hang you about with shawls and extra clothing, outdoors you can wear that brown cloak of yours. Honest to God, girl, no one will even think we’re playing games, why should they? And Davy’s baby will inherit, just as he would have done had things been different, for I know my Davy too well to think he would have turned his back on his own flesh and blood. Oh Nell, is it cruel to say what can you offer, compared with all this? And you’ll still have Lilac! And you’ll be here until the birth and after, I’ll take care of you, see you want for nothing.’

Nellie stared; Bethan had indeed thought it all out. The plan seemed foolproof, and yet ...

‘Bethan, surely that won’t work, because the people close to you would know the child wasn’t yours, wouldn’t they? Where
do
you come from? Do you have no relatives of your own who might question you suddenly producing a baby?’ Nellie asked curiously. ‘You sound a bit different from the way Davy sounded, too.’

‘Oh a bright girl you are and no mistake,’ Bethan said, her dark eyes shining. ‘There’s clever that little baby will be with you for its Mam and our Davy for its Da! From Cardiff I am, another big city – another port. That’s how I met Davy, out walking down Tiger Bay with my girlfriend Sally and her brother Bill. A big family are the Eliases, two brothers and ten sisters I had, so glad to get shot of a girl were Mam and Da. They liked Davy right well; six months we knew each other and then for two weeks he courted me, begging
me to be his wife, so we wed and I come back here. I wrote a few letters, but my Mam never replied – too busy getting shot of the others, I daresay – and very happily I settled down, considering I was a city girl and you can’t get much more country than this!’

‘So your plan is that when the baby’s born I’m to go back to Liverpool, and Lilac, and forget I ever had a baby? Bethan, I don’t know whether I can! Already I feel a closeness for this baby that I don’t feel for Lilac, dear to me though she is.’

‘No, indeed, not to forget your baby! An aunt you will be, and a frequent visitor, I hope ... just not a mother twice over, Nell, for you have your little Lilac, waiting. You owe her something, and all your owings to the baby I will pay and willing, eager! Oh Nell, I’ve lost Davy and all I have now is the old people and them more pain than pleasure if the truth be told. Let me have the baby and I’ll look after it so well ... oh, Nellie, you don’t know how I’ll love that little baby.’

And Nellie, looking into those dark and passionate eyes, knew that she would agree with Bethan’s plan, that she must leave her baby. All unknowing, I stole Davy from her, and I am going to have the baby which should have been hers, Nellie told herself. She’s right, I’m in no position to give the baby the things Bethan can give it and I have a responsibility for Lilac, too. So I’ll stay here until the baby is born and then I’ll go back to the Culler and take up my old life and no one the wiser.

She wrote to Lilac that afternoon and posted it next day; just a note explaining that Davy had been killed and she was staying with his parents for a few weeks, until they had got over the shock. Lilac was only nine and would scarcely understand her motives, but at least she would see that Nellie was going to come back as soon as she could, though the staff at the Culler, Mrs
Ransom in particular, would be very angry with her. But they won’t know anything, and they’ll probably give me my job back, Nellie told herself optimistically. And if they don’t I’ll get another job, because I’m good at my work, that no one can deny.

So the two girls settled down together and grew fond of each other and Nellie learned a few words of Welsh and chatted to Davy’s father and went up to the bedroom and talked to Davy’s mother. But she never forgot that she was supposed to be a city girl from Cardiff who spoke no Welsh – that at least was true – and she saw, with great surprise, that their story was accepted by everyone.

So Nellie helped Bethan in the house and used the big old mangle in the back yard and wore a droopy shawl indoors and her cloak outside. She watched as Bethan put a tiny thin cushion under her smock, then a larger one, then a larger one yet, and the more she got to know Bethan the easier it was to think of parting with the baby, for Bethan was good and generous, never stinting the two old people of love or care, working like a black for them, rarely thinking of herself. She deserved at least the solace of Davy’s child, Nellie told herself, and remembered, when she walked down the long garden which ended in the cliff, threading her way between the winter cabbage, the potato clamp with the straw sticking out at the bottom and the bare-branched fruit trees, that all this would belong to her baby one day, that it was his inheritance. And by giving him up, I’m really the one who is giving him all this, she told herself, and it eased the little, niggling ache in her heart.

And as the winter days drew out the two girls talked about Davy and about the baby, and in bed at night, when Bethan slept, Nellie thought about Lilac and wept for her loss, not of Lilac, who would be waiting
for her, but of the baby, who would never know the sacrifice she had made for it, never know that she was its mother.

Lilac awoke on the day after her ninth birthday with no conception of what was about to befall her. She ate her porridge, noticed Nellie was missing from her usual place behind the urn, decided it must be that bellyache which had made Nellie so abstracted the previous day and went in to her class as usual.

By teatime, however, the whole of the Culler was in an uproar over Nellie.

‘She’s a good gairl,’ the cook kept remarking. ‘She’s never gone off ... something’s ’appened to ’er.’

‘She must have gone to Coronation Court,’ Lilac said enviously. ‘Why didn’t she take me?’

‘What? Gone to the court with a bag full of clo’es and ’er best winter cloak on ’er back? She’s gone off, that’s what she’s done.’

Lilac glared at cook and went up to Nellie’s room to check. Here, she stared in real dismay at the empty clothes rail, the empty hooks on the back of the door. Her hopes rose when she checked the chest of drawers, for Nellie’s aprons and uniforms were neatly folded there. But in the long drawer at the bottom of the chest lay the pink dress and the red cloth coat with velvet collar and cuffs, and at the sight of her best things Lilac’s heart constricted in her bosom. Nellie really had gone, then, and without a word. She had quite deliberately left, sloughing Lilac and the Culler as a snake sloughs last year’s skin.

And with Nellie’s going, Lilac’s pampered existence at the Culler came to an end. Lilac had taken for granted the fact that Nellie saw to her clothes, so that
every small garment was always clean and pressed, mended and matched. Now, she had to do as the others did – accept any brown dress and white pinafore that seemed likely to fit her out of the laundry bag, iron it with one of the heavy flat irons warming on the range down in the kitchen, and after so many days wear, put it in the dirty linen basket at the end of her dormitory and go to the laundry bag for a clean one.

She got her own supper, and it was always bread and scrape now, because there was no Nellie to save her bits and pieces. She was in class until teatime and then she went straight to the playroom with her peers. No extra reading lessons sitting beside Nellie on the bed upstairs or in the housekeeper’s room. No cosy chats over crumbly biscuits and hot milk, no trips down to the post box with the teachers’ private letters, no loving cuddle before she went to sleep at night, watched by nine envious pairs of eyes.