The Favourite Child (3 page)

‘Have a child they can’t afford to feed, you mean?’

‘No woman can have a child without God’s help.’

‘This isn’t a woman. This girl is little more than a child herself. Where’s the sense in bringing a baby into the world if you live in one stinking room and are near starving yourself?’

The nurse’s shocked face clearly showed her disapproval. ‘You’re surely not condoning this dreadful act? Abortion is illegal.’ Then she glanced quickly about her as if she might be overheard, cheeks pink with embarrassment. ‘Pardon me for being so blunt but I assume you understand what goes on, due to the time you waste on these feckless layabouts.’

Bella felt a nudge of anger, partly because of the insinuation that a girl of her upbringing shouldn’t be aware of, let alone discuss such matters as childbearing, and partly because of the woman’s obvious prejudice against poverty. ‘My time is my own to waste, if I choose to do so.’

‘Of course Miss Ashton. I never meant to suggest otherwise.’ The nurse shook the thermometer with a vigour which indicated how she might like to have shaken her patient, given half a chance, and thrust it beneath the girl’s arm pit.

‘Besides, how do you know she’s feckless?’ Isabella persisted. ‘She might be unable to find employment as many are these days, hard working but poor through no fault of her own.’

‘You don’t kill a child through no fault of your own,’ the nurse bit back and Bella had to concede that this was generally the case. ‘That isn’t always so, is it? What if she’s been … taken against her will? Raped?’

The nurse’s cheeks fired to scarlet and puffed with outrage. ‘I thought never to hear such a dreadful word from the lips of a well-brought up young lady such as yourself. We all know for a fact that there are them as works hard and gets rich - or at least comfortably off, shall we say - and the rest who is poor and gets children. That’s the way of the world.’

‘Yes but why? Is there no way to stop the children from coming?’

‘I’m sure I’ll not hang around to hear this sort of blasphemy.’ Whereupon the flustered nurse snatched back her thermometer, thrust it into her pocket without even glancing at it and stamped out of the room, leaving Bella frowning with puzzlement.

It was past midnight before she thought to send a message home, via a young boy she discovered sitting on the hospital steps who readily carried it for sixpence. Bella apologised to her mother for missing the birthday dinner, saying she would explain later. She knew that would not be easy.

Dawn brought no improvement to the patient but finally, in late morning when everyone had quite given up hope, the girl opened her eyes and asked for a drink of water.

‘Good. She’s coming round.’ It was a different nurse this time. Equally as brisk as the other, she blithely continued, ‘Now we can send her home. Get her off our hands at last.’

‘Back to that hovel, in her condition?’ Bella was appalled. ‘Whoever did this to her could very well abuse her all over again.’

‘I dare say.’ The nurse issued a sniff of disdain but was already peeling back the sheets and roughly shaking the girl’s arm. ‘Come on lass. No malingering in this bed as if you had a right to it when there’s folk what deserves it more. You’re lucky we don’t call the constable and have you charged.’

With an effort that seemed to Bella nothing short of Herculean, the girl dragged herself up into a sitting position. ‘Give me five minutes for me head to stop swimming and I’ll be off home in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.’

Bella however, had other ideas.

‘I can’t believe you’re even considering letting her stay. Have you gone quite mad?’

Emily Ashton perched stiff-backed on the edge of her best leather sofa and glared accusingly at her daughter. One small fist was clenched tightly in her lap, holding fast to a lace handkerchief, in case smelling salts should be called for. The other rested along the arm of the sofa, fingers drumming with impatient fury. The sound trembled throughout the room. Even the aspidistra quivered. Mrs Ashton wore a dark olive green dress buttoned up to her firm pointed chin, almost as a declaration of half mourning for her lost hopes of the previous evening. Her slender, upright figure seemed to blend gloomily into the shadowed parlour as if requiring, along with the highly polished, heavy mahogany furniture, to be sheltered by the green paper blind of a similar colour drawn against the afternoon sun.

Or to hide our shame from prying eyes, Bella thought. She attempted a joke to lighten the atmosphere. ‘The hospital staff had the opportunity this morning to put me into Bedlam but clearly considered my behaviour perfectly normal, if somewhat eccentric.’

‘
Eccentric
!’
Emily lifted her eyes heavenwards, pointedly indicating that this was the last word she would choose to describe her ungrateful and rebellious child. ‘You know nothing about this - this street urchin.’

‘She’s a young girl, Mother.’

‘You don’t even know her name.’

‘It’s Jane Cook, known as Jinnie. And it’s only for a couple of nights, until she’s properly recovered. She certainly isn’t fit enough to take care of herself. She nearly died.’

‘And how did she manage to do that, might I enquire?’ as if it were some act of pure carelessness on her part.

Bella judiciously decided against enlightening her irate parent on the precise details. Instead, she crossed her fingers against the lie and pressed on with her plea. ‘An accident with a runaway horse. She won’t be a nuisance, I promise. You won’t even know she’s here. I shall have a bed made up in the room next to mine so she’ll be no trouble to anyone. I’ll be the one to attend her should she need care during the night.’

‘No
trouble
? She’s brought nothing
but
trouble upon this house from the minute you decided to wander the streets instead of coming home to your brother’s coming-of-age dinner, as you were directed. There was pandemonium here last night when you did not arrive.
Pandemonium!
’

‘I don’t see why there should be. It was Edward’s party after all. Not mine.’

‘Don’t quibble. We were desperately worried, particularly as it grew late and still you didn’t appear. Your father very nearly called out the constabulary to look for you, while I was beset by one of my fainting fits. What our guests thought I daren’t imagine. It was all most distressing.’ Emily’s agitation increased with the telling of this tale which Bella had already heard related several times during the hour since her return. For as long as she could remember if there was any way her mother could put the blame for life’s misfortunes upon her daughter’s shoulders, she would do so, largely because Bella coped with them so much better than she.

‘I’m sorry Mother. I never meant to stay out all night. Events just flew out of control.’

‘Why does that not surprise me? When will you stop this racketing life you lead? It’s not at all proper for a gel of your station to be going about unchaperoned.’ Attempting to soften her blunt Lancashire accent with the more refined tones she considered appropriate for a mill manager’s wife.

Having married slightly above her station with high hopes for a bright future, Emily Ashton was a disappointed woman. Her husband she considered far too soft for his own good, save when it came to commenting upon her adored son who, sadly, had been an academic disappointment. Her daughter was a lost cause. As for life in what she had hoped to be the higher echelons of middle class society, however carefully she might arrange the flowers on her polished hall table, however expensive the gowns she wore or the fineness of the food which graced her beautiful mahogany furnished dining room, she still had to climb into the loneliness of her marital bed each evening. Disappointing was the only word Emily could find to describe every facet of her life. Was it any wonder if she lacked confidence even to give proper instructions to her own servants, or express her opinion on any matter which may provoke dispute. Emily had long since given up hope that anybody would listen to her. So any opportunity she could find to express her bitterness, she did so with relish.

‘You shame us all with your recklessness. What your father’s views on the matter will be, I shudder to contemplate.’

As one, the eyes of the two women swivelled to where Simeon himself stood in his favourite spot before the blazing fire, hands clasped behind his back in his usual stance, rocking on his heels from time to time as he listened, without comment, to his wife’s words. Yet he seemed encouragingly relaxed, Bella noticed. But then Pa was rarely anything else.

It was one of the things she loved best about her father, that and his comfortable girth. Just to look at him made her want to put her arms about him and give him a cuddle. He was a dumpy little man with a round, smiling face topped by crinkly red-gold hair very like her own in colour, save for being better controlled with a splash of daily Brylcreem. He was the dearest, sweetest man, with the patience of a saint and, as both mother and daughter were only too aware, would make no detrimental remark upon anything Isabella chose to do. This was partly because above all things Simeon detested a scene but mainly because his beloved daughter could do no wrong in his eyes. However dictatorial he may be with the operatives at the mill, and however thrifty with his hard earned brass, in the hands of the women in his own family, he was soft as putty. He believed it to be the man’s task in life to protect and indulge his women folk, and not a soul in the entire household from Tilly the house maid, through the redoubtable Mrs Dyson to his dear wife, or more particularly his only son and heir, were in any doubt that Isabella was his favourite.

What he said to her now, in his gently scolding tones, was that this was no laughing matter. ‘I’ll not have your dear mother’s plans thrown into disarray because of your fads and fancies. I tolerate a good deal of your reckless, unladylike behaviour but ill manners distress me. You should know that by now.’

‘Yes Father.’ Bella flew to his side to place a loving kiss on his whiskered chin.

‘I live in hope that one day this overdeveloped social conscience of yours will ease and you will take your rightful place in up-and-coming Manchester society.’

‘Yes Father,’ she said again, attempting to sound contrite. ‘And in the meantime - about Jinnie? She can stay?’

‘What does she think of this plan of yours?’

‘I haven’t discussed it with her yet but I’m sure she’ll be grateful.’

‘Is that why you’re doing it, for her gratitude?’

A dull rose pink suffused Bella’s cheeks. ‘Of course not. As if I would. You surely know me better than that.’

Simeon heaved a sigh of resignation. ‘She may stay for two days. Not a second longer.’

‘Dearest Pa, no wonder I adore you,’ and flinging her arms about his neck, rained yet more kisses upon his ruddy cheeks while he tut-tutted in pretended protest.

Emily put one hand to her throat and made a small choking sound. ‘You’re to give in to this daft folly of hers? As always?’

‘Her kindness may be inconvenient for us, Emily, but it is well meant. No worse surely than my funding the Christmas Breakfast at the chapel?’

‘That is entirely different,’ Emily stormed, screwing her handkerchief into a tight ball in her fist. ‘You sponsor the Breakfast out of a right and proper sense of duty, and at no risk to yourself. Isabella takes her life in her hands every time she walks alone through those dreadful streets.’

Simeon turned his benevolent gaze upon his daughter, peering at her from over his wire spectacles. ‘Your mother makes a fair point. The streets of Salford are not entirely safe for a young girl, particularly as night falls. Perhaps you could at least confine your good works to daylight hours.’

‘If you wish it, Pa.’

Emily was on her feet, fists shaking with rage. ‘No, no, no. Why will no one listen to me? She must be stopped completely. I will not have
my
daughter demeaning herself in such a way. Forbid her to leave the house at all, except with myself as chaperone.’

‘Nay Emily lass, that’d be a bit much eh?’