‘Who says miracles don’t happen?’ David greeted Hazel in the entrance to the surgery. He smiled broadly from behind Eleanor’s desk where he’d been signing referral letters and bringing his records up to date.
‘What’s this? Have I got a full waiting room for once?’ Hazel’s question revealed her ongoing worry about clinic numbers.
‘No, sadly not,’ he replied. ‘But Irene Bradley has given birth to a healthy baby girl. She’s named her Grace.’
‘That’s wonderful.’ Hazel couldn’t have been more pleased. She was on her way up the stairs when Eleanor called her back.
‘That’s not all,’ the receptionist said, casting a significant glance over her shoulder at her busy employer. ‘Shall I tell her the rest or will you?’
David screwed the top of his pen in place then came out from behind the desk. ‘No time to tittle-tattle,’ he said on his way out.
‘House calls.’ Eleanor explained the hasty departure. ‘Yes, Irene and her baby are doing well, thanks to him,’ she went on. ‘Matron called him out at midnight. She could see Irene was having trouble and forceps would be necessary, and it turned out she was right. Baby was born at breakfast time but Dr Bell didn’t get back here until the middle of the morning, what with tidying up afterwards, et cetera.’
Though Eleanor didn’t go into details, Hazel was easily able to picture the episiotomy procedure and the care that Irene would have needed after a difficult birth. ‘I’m glad it ended well and that she was in the right place.’
‘Thanks to you,’ Eleanor insisted. ‘But that’s only half the story.’
Hazel glanced at her watch and saw that it was almost half past two. ‘How many have we got waiting upstairs?’
‘Four so far. But listen to this. Dr Bell has only gone and offered Irene the job of housekeeper.’
The news stopped Hazel in her tracks. ‘Where?’
‘Here! He was adamant he didn’t want her and the baby going back to Nelson Yard and the conditions there. No heating, no hot water, and such like. There’s a spare room here and he says he needs someone to clean and do for him. So the solution was obvious – Irene should move out of the Yard and come here.’
‘And she said yes?’ Hazel wondered about the baby’s father and his place in the new scheme of things but she had no time to ask because Lydia Walker opened the main door and made a breezy entrance before heading upstairs.
‘Come along, Nurse, chop-chop!’ she said as she passed Hazel.
Hazel followed quickly and was soon engulfed by clinic business – measuring, weighing and examining amidst the desultory chat of the mothers-to-be and the clatter of instruments on metal trolleys. Behind the green screen one woman bearing her seventh child confided her resentment about her husband who blamed her for conceiving one child too many, as if she alone were responsible. Another talked of practicalities – from the enema administered during labour to the stitching-up afterwards, and everything in between. Hazel’s answers were clear and calm and she gave each of her patients – a total of six in this session – her full attention. By the end of the afternoon she was tired out and ready for home.
‘My stomach’s rumbling,’ she told Eleanor, who had come upstairs to help with washing up the tea things. ‘I didn’t have any dinner. And my feet ache something rotten.’
‘But you love every minute,’ Eleanor reminded her as she dried a stack of saucers.
‘I do – especially now that numbers are creeping up,’ Hazel said with a satisfied sigh. She shut her bag then put on her mackintosh. ‘A couple of months back I didn’t even know if I’d find any work.’
‘And now look at you – rushed off your feet, thanks to Dr Bell and the risk he took when you landed on his doorstep.’
Hazel nodded. ‘Yes, thanks to him.’ It was true – she owed a lot to one man. A thought struck her and she blurted it out without stopping to think. ‘Do you think he puts me in the same boat as Irene?’
‘How do you mean?’ Eleanor hung her tea towel over the radiator to dry.
‘Am I someone he was sorry for and felt duty-bound to help?’
The receptionist raised her eyebrows and treated Hazel to one of her blunt home truths. ‘Don’t be daft. You’re not the same thing at all. You only have to see the way Dr Bell looks at you to notice the difference.’
‘You do?’
‘Plain as the nose on your face,’ Eleanor concluded with a hint of thinly disguised envy in her voice. ‘But then there’s none so blind as those that will not see.’
‘Your dinner’s in the oven,’ Jinny told her as she took off her coat. ‘Good job it was a hot pot that can be reheated.’
Famished as she was, Hazel delayed setting out her knife and fork in order to listen to what Rose had to say about the day’s events. ‘Hello, Aunty Rose. What happened at Sylvia’s house earlier?’
‘What didn’t happen?’ her aunt replied with a sigh. ‘We had tears, we had doors slamming – the lot.’
‘Trust Sylvia to turn on the waterworks,’ Jinny commented.
‘But what did you find out? Was Mabel still there when you arrived? I take it Aunty Ethel went with you and Nana? Was Norman at work?’
‘Hold your horses,’ Jinny warned. ‘Poor Rose has already been through it all for my benefit. She’s worn out, poor thing.’
Hazel tried not to show her exasperation. ‘All right, well, you can tell me later then. Shall I make you a cup of tea, Aunty Rose?’
‘No, no, I don’t mind telling you all about it.’ Rose sat by the fire, her face pale and her hands trembling slightly in her lap. ‘By the time Mother, Ethel and I had got ourselves organized, Mabel had already made herself scarce, so it was just Sylvia in the house on her own. We spotted her at the upstairs window so we knew she was in, even though she refused to come to the door.’
‘She’s taken to doing that lately.’ Hazel hated to see her aunt upset like this and had a mind to go round and tell Sylvia a few home truths as soon as she’d heard the full story.
‘Mother wasn’t having it,’ Rose went on. ‘She hammered on that door until Sylvia was forced to answer. Mother’s first words, before she even stepped over the threshold, were, “When were you thinking of telling me that I’m going to be a great-grandmother?”’
‘And what did Sylvia say?’ Hazel pictured it – wizened old Ada face to face with firebrand Sylvia. She thought she knew who would back down first, but she was surprised.
‘She flatly denied it,’ Rose explained. ‘It was three against one – Ethel, me and Mother – all demanding to know why Mabel had paid her a visit, telling her she couldn’t go on pulling the wool over our eyes and anyway, what was the point?’
‘Exactly,’ Jinny agreed. ‘What is the point?’
‘Perhaps it’s because she hasn’t told Norman yet,’ Hazel suggested without much hope that this would ease Rose’s worry.
‘So she doesn’t want anyone discussing it until she’s put her husband in the picture – is that it?’ Jinny was sceptical.
‘With anyone but Sylvia that might be true,’ Rose conceded. ‘The thing is, we all knew she was lying by the look on her face and poor Ethel felt ashamed of her own daughter. It didn’t help when Sylvia turned it all around and said nasty things about us that I won’t repeat but you can imagine. In the end she told us to mind our own business, shouting at the top of her voice then weeping and wailing, saying it wasn’t fair and we were to leave her alone.’
‘Which they did,’ Jinny concluded.
‘Mother has washed her hands of the whole business,’ Rose reported sadly. ‘Ethel, too. They went away leaving Sylvia to stew in her own juice. It’s hard when your own child or grandchild is untruthful about something so important – it must cut very deep.’
‘And how did you feel?’ Hazel expected a different reaction from Rose – softer and less judgemental – and she was right.
‘I’m sorry deep down. I say we should be celebrating, not arguing. But Lord knows what Sylvia’s up to – that’s what worries me more than anything.’
But Hazel had brooded over the problem long into the night and come to a decision. She was up at dawn, dressing quietly and slipping out of the house before either Robert or Jinny was awake. Walking in the grey light on Overcliffe Common, she rehearsed in her own mind exactly what she would say.
I need a clear head, she told herself, relishing the cold gusts of wind blowing from the moors and looking down into the valley at the network of twinkling lamps that lined the streets and the canal running straight as a die through the centre of the town. Already the factory chimneys churned out black smoke and the roads were choked with traffic. Close by, on the edge of the Common, a tram stopped to let on mill workers bound for a day’s slavery in spinning and weaving sheds in the valley bottom.
A clear head and a stout heart, Hazel vowed as she trod the cinder paths across the rough grassland to one side of the fancy wrought-iron bandstand. White lines marked out a football pitch on the grass and beyond that stood the sports pavilion, the centre of weekend activity for the young men and boys of the neighbourhood.
‘It’s time,’ she said out loud, turning and retracing her steps down to the very bottom of Raglan Road, where she boldly knocked on Mabel Jackson’s front door.
‘Hazel Price – what do you want at this hour?’ was Mabel’s hostile greeting.
‘Can I come in?’ Hazel said. Behind her, one or two mill workers still made their way along Ghyll Road. Hooters sounded the warning for these stragglers to hurry or lose half a day’s pay.
Taken by surprise, Mabel considered her options. Her overall hung loose, her hair was still in metal curlers concealed under a paisley scarf that was tied turban-style around her head and her feet were encased in felt slippers.
‘I don’t mean to make trouble,’ Hazel explained. ‘I’ve come to talk to you about my cousin, Sylvia.’
‘Hmm. Trouble is that one’s middle name, isn’t it?’ Mabel was taken aback by Hazel’s decision to knock on her door. It took plenty of nerve – she would give her that. She looked down from the top step at the windswept, earnest figure, dressed in warm coat and headscarf, remembering the eager schoolgirl Hazel had been not so many years before – the type who read a lot and kept to herself, not the sort to play hopscotch on the pavement or to join in skipping games with the other girls.
She got that from her mother, Mabel thought sourly. Jinny Drummond was just as stand-offish when she was a nipper.
‘It’s important,’ Hazel insisted, her heart racing.
Mabel made her decision. ‘I don’t know what Dorothy will think about me making time for you, but you’d better come in out of the cold.’ Her face was blank, her voice expressionless, but she stood to one side and let Hazel pass.
‘Ta.’ Hazel followed the long, narrow hallway into the kitchen at the back of the house. The hall bore the musty smell of old stair carpet overlaid with lavender floor polish. The kitchen itself clearly hadn’t moved with the times, from the black range where Mabel still boiled her kettle and did her baking to the stone sink and the plain Welsh dresser along one wall displaying blue and white crockery.
‘Sit down.’ Mabel pointed to a wooden rocking chair next to the fire.
‘No thanks. I’d rather stand.’
‘Suit yourself.’ Mabel’s owlish gaze didn’t waver. She waited for Hazel’s next move.
‘Sylvia,’ Hazel began again. ‘You went to see her.’
‘I did, because she asked me to.’
‘To tell you she was pregnant and to ask you for an abortion?’ There – it was out in the open, the topic that had gnawed at Hazel for days.
Mabel didn’t blink. Her expression didn’t change.
‘I’ve tried to talk to her about it,’ Hazel said in a rush. ‘But once she realized I wouldn’t help her she sent me packing. I told her she should talk things through with Norman.’
‘Oh, Norman,’ Mabel said with a slight nod of acknowledgement.
‘It’s as much his baby as hers. He has a right to know.’
‘I knew his mother before she married Dick Bellamy. And look where that got her – seven babies on the trot before the worthless so-and-so did a midnight flit. He left her without a brass farthing.’
‘It’s not really Norman I want to talk to you about.’ The heat from Mabel’s fire made Hazel’s cheeks feel flushed and her heart was still thudding away at her ribcage. ‘It’s Sylvia. We’re agreeing she came to you for help to get rid of the baby, aren’t we?’
After a pause, during which Hazel prepared herself for a barrage of the usual criticism, Mabel nodded again.
‘Thank you.’ Letting out a long sigh, Hazel’s shoulders sagged and she lowered her head.
‘For what?’
‘For not trying to pull the wool over my eyes.’
‘Sit,’ Mabel said again, and this time Hazel obeyed. ‘We won’t see eye to eye on this one, I know that much.’
‘No,’ Hazel agreed.
‘I don’t have to remind you how long I’ve been at this game. There’s nothing I haven’t seen.’
‘I appreciate that. And I know you think I’m wet behind the ears. But Sylvia is my cousin and I’m worried about her.’
‘Quite right.’
‘I mean – I can’t help wondering why a young girl who has managed to persuade the father to marry her and set up home suddenly wants to back out of having the baby?’
‘Maybe she thinks she’s made a mistake.’ Mabel’s deep, unhurried voice had the unexpected effect of calming Hazel’s nerves and making her listen rather than rush on with her own thoughts. ‘It happens, you know. Perhaps she’s realized that Norman isn’t the one for her after all.’
‘She did say there was a part of marriage that she was finding hard.’ Hazel remembered Sylvia’s awkward confession. ‘I thought lots of girls probably did. I’m no expert.’
A faint smile crossed Mabel’s face before she continued. ‘Let’s say Sylvia has seen her mistake. It’s too late to be un-married but it’s not too late to change her mind over the baby. So she turns to someone like me. That’s the sensible thing to do.’
‘You’re right – we don’t see eye to eye,’ Hazel said in a louder, firmer voice than before.
‘You said it yourself – you’re no expert. That much was obvious when you stepped into my shoes on the night Myra died.’
Hazel flinched but decided to bite her tongue. After all, she was here for Sylvia, not to stand up for herself and enter into a bitter argument.
‘And you haven’t been through anything like what that young cousin of yours is going through either.’
‘Fair enough. But I do know that Sylvia is far from being “sensible”, as you put it. I’d say she’s the exact opposite.’
‘So you’d like me to say no to her request?’
‘Yes, I would. That’s why I came here – to ask you to try to talk her round. She wouldn’t take any notice of me but she might listen to someone from outside the family.’
‘And if I refused to help her, what then?’ Mabel drew a chair from under the table and sat down on the opposite side of the fireplace. She looked Hazel in the eye. ‘Do you suppose that Sylvia would lie down like a little lamb and do as we say?’
‘Yes, if the advice was put in the right way.’ Hazel sounded uncertain as a fierce new fear began to knock at her heart.
‘She wouldn’t move on from me to the next one and the next until she found the help she’s after?’
‘Oh, God.’ Hazel gasped as the door to her imagination flew open and in rushed images of hot baths and gin, deliberate falls, cannulas, glass rods or curling irons.
‘Quite.’ Mabel read Hazel’s expression. ‘A girl in Sylvia’s predicament doesn’t deserve that.’
Hazel shook her head violently but the images stayed with her.
‘That’s what we have to take into account,’ Mabel explained patiently.
‘So you agreed to help her?’ This was the only conclusion Hazel could draw and now she saw not in black and white but in shades of grey. What if, after all, Mabel was right?
‘I didn’t turn her away.’ Mabel’s reply was guarded. ‘On the other hand, I didn’t offer to help – not right away.’
‘Meaning what?’
‘I saw how she was – like a little girl on her knees begging me for help, beside herself. I lifted her up and told her to pull herself together – that was no way to carry on. I said I would only consider our next move if she calmed down, which she did in the end. My advice was for her to think things through for a few days then get back to me. I think I managed to persuade her.’
Slowly Hazel nodded. ‘Thank you,’ she murmured. Mabel’s kinder-than-expected view of Sylvia’s predicament had surprised her and she reached out to shake her broad, work-worn hand. Now they had those few days for Sylvia to come to terms with her situation instead of rushing ahead with a back-street abortion in a frenzy of fear and desperation. ‘That’s good.’
‘Don’t thank me yet,’ was Mabel’s stolid response. She freed her hand to grudgingly pat Hazel on the shoulder then stood up to show her out. ‘You can do that when it’s all come out in the wash.’
‘Nothing’s definite,’ she assured Jinny as she set out late on Friday afternoon. Days were shortening and fog still wound its way through narrow streets, dimming street lamps and seeming to cushion footfall on greasy pavements.
‘Don’t worry – I haven’t mentioned it to your dad,’ Jinny said, silently envying Hazel’s freedom to choose how and where she lived. If I was her age I’d jump at the chance of branching out, she thought as she methodically laid out Robert’s tea of pork pie, pickle and two slices of bread and butter.
The front door clicked shut and the noise of traffic soon drowned out the sound of Hazel’s quick footsteps.
Yes, there’s a lot I’d do differently if I got the chance. Jinny stared wistfully at the window, catching her own shadowy reflection, then hurried to close the curtains.
Meanwhile, Hazel made her way to the far end of Ghyll Road – the starting point for her and Gladys’s search.
‘It would be handy for my work at the clinic,’ Hazel had decided. ‘And it’s on the bus route to the hospital for you. Plus there’s Clifton Market only a stone’s throw away and the Assembly Rooms if we’re ever short of entertainment.’
Gladys had turned up her nose. ‘The Assembly Rooms are old hat,’ she’d complained. ‘Give me the jazz club any day.’
But they’d agreed that Ghyll Road offered plenty of possibilities and Gladys showed her eagerness to go ahead with their plan by showing up early for once. She stood outside the Chinese laundry on the corner of Ebeneezer Street, stamping her feet against the cold and tapping her watch as Hazel approached.
‘Good heavens, I hardly recognized you,’ Hazel exclaimed, taking in Gladys’s latest hairstyle – more blonde than ever and even more closely cropped. She wore a navy blue clutch coat teamed with a printed yellow silk scarf and matching beret.
‘Where’ve you been?’ Gladys chided. ‘I’m freezing.’
‘Why – I’m not late, am I? Anyway, I went to Morrison’s estate agency for the addresses of flats to rent. They gave me three here on Ghyll Road and one at the top of Ebeneezer Street.’
Armed with the list, Gladys immediately discounted the one on Ebeneezer Street. ‘Too close to the gas works,’ she said.
Then it turned out that the first address on Ghyll Road was next door to Pickard’s butcher’s. Gladys wrinkled her nose. ‘All that smelly offal being cooked on the premises! But the second address might be worth a look,’ she decided.
‘Perhaps beggars can’t be choosers,’ a dispirited Hazel pointed out, trudging along in Gladys’s bright wake. She bore in mind the fact that her savings might soon run out unless there was an upturn for her at the clinic.
‘We’re not beggars.’ Gladys’s retort was true enough. ‘We’re two respectable young women with good jobs and references to whit. Any landlord would jump at the chance of having tenants like us.’
‘So what about this one?’ Referring to the estate agent’s list, Hazel stopped outside an ornate stone terraced house with three storeys plus a cellar that was approached from the pavement by narrow stone steps. A row of nameplates to one side of the front door showed that the house was split into six separate residences. ‘It says here that the landlord lives on the ground floor,’ she pointed out to Gladys.
Gladys stood back to inspect the somewhat shabby building. ‘I bet it’s the cellar that’s empty,’ she predicted, venturing down the worn steps to peer through the window at a dark, bare room. ‘Just as I thought.’
‘That’s the third one crossed off the list, then?’ Hazel asked. At this rate, nothing short of a palace would satisfy Gladys.
‘Yes. Who wants to live in a mouldy old cellar? We’d be like a pair of moles scratting about in the dark.’
They walked on down the street to the final address on the list – a detached house set behind a high laurel hedge in large grounds. Straight away Gladys viewed this with more interest.
‘Finally, your majesty!’ Hazel teased her hard-to-please cousin.
‘Who lives here?’ Gladys wondered as she set off up the drive.
Hazel followed, noticing a yard to the side with a coach house and other outhouses. Approaching the stained-glass front door, she saw a wide porch containing wellington boots of all sizes and a child’s bike carelessly thrown down and partly blocking their way. To either side of the entrance were well-lit rooms with large paintings on the wall, a grand piano in one corner and more children’s toys scattered across oriental carpets.
‘Do you really think this is the right address?’ Gladys sounded less sure of herself now they were on the doorstep and she hesitated before pressing the bell.
Hazel consulted her list. ‘This is number 120, isn’t it?’
Their voices must have attracted the attention of someone crossing the wide hallway because a woman’s figure could be made out through the glass panels and a muffled, short-tempered voice called out, ‘There’s someone at the door!’
Soon after, the door was opened by a man they both recognized.
‘Bernard!’ Taken aback, Gladys’s pre-rehearsed speech disappeared from her head.
Hazel realized it was the philandering doctor from King Edward’s.
He stepped out into the porch, closing the door behind him. ‘Hello, girls,’ he began with a mixture of suspicion and pleasure. ‘What brings you to my neck of the woods?’
Hazel was the first to get over their shock and explain their mission – a flat for two single people, close to the bus routes and so on.
‘Well, we do have rooms to let,’ Bernard acknowledged. ‘They’re above the old coach house, which is standing there empty, doing nothing. It was Vera’s idea that we should get a lodger.’
‘Is there room for two?’ Gladys found her voice and fixed on her chirpy smile.
‘I should say so.’ Bernard’s tone was enthusiastic as he looked from Hazel to Gladys and back again.
‘What would the rent be?’ Hazel enquired, hearing children’s voices arguing, overridden by the same woman’s voice as before.
Bernard blithely ignored the fracas. ‘Eight shillings per week. How does that sound?’
Hazel’s face fell. That seemed an awful lot. After all, you could rent a whole house on Raglan Street for seven.
‘Four shillings each.’ Gladys turned to Hazel, whose face told her how she was feeling. ‘It’s worth a look, isn’t it?’
In the meantime, without them noticing, Bernard’s wife Vera had left off chastising the children and quietly opened the door. She was tall, with chin-length dark hair styled into a central parting and carefully crimped. Her face was inscrutable as she took in the scene.
‘It was once the groom’s quarters, in the days when people had them. Horses and carriage on the ground floor, groomsman above.’ Bernard was in full swing, putting a good gloss on the rooms in questions. ‘There’s a kitchen and two other rooms – a bedroom for each of you. Plenty of space.’
‘Bernard,’ his wife said in an undertone as she drew him back into the hall, frowning now and unyielding. ‘I’d like a word in private.’
‘Oops, that’s torn it!’ Gladys suppressed a giggle as the pair retreated. ‘Did you see the sour look on her face?’
‘Yes. I don’t suppose we’re the sort of lodgers she had in mind,’ Hazel agreed. This was embarrassing, to put it mildly.
They waited less than a minute before Bernard reappeared. ‘Vera’s had a change of heart, I’m afraid,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘It seems the coach house is not to let after all.’
‘Oh dear!’ Gladys’s dismay fooled no one. It was obvious that the situation tickled her.
‘Never mind. Ta, anyway.’ Hazel was anxious to be on her way. ‘We’ve only just started to look, haven’t we, Gladys?’
‘That’s right.’ Gladys’s eyes twinkled with suppressed laughter. ‘Will you keep your eyes and ears open for us, Bernard?’
‘You bet.’ He gave a conspiratorial wink then mumbled under his breath, ‘Sorry about that. I hope to see you girls in town later tonight.’
‘If you’re lucky.’ Gladys winked back at him.
Hazel turned away and started back down the drive. ‘Really!’ she told Gladys crossly when they were safely back on the pavement.
‘I didn’t do anything – what did I do?’
‘You winked at him!’
‘He did it first.’
‘Honestly, Gladys! All right, if you must know – he’s someone I can’t stand.’ There was something wolf-like about Bernard – a glint in his yellowish eyes, a hint of saliva at the corner of his mouth. ‘What now?’ she asked, stuffing her list into her pocket.
‘Now we go home and get changed for the jazz club,’ Gladys decided gaily. ‘I’ll see you at the tram stop, seven o’clock sharp.’