Chapter 12

The way Aggie had said it, so straightforwardly, so simply, had probably been the most shocking thing of all. When they got back, they told Lily to wait in the rectory for half an hour and then meet them in the dormitory. When she arrived there, still reeling, there was a girl sitting on a sunken camp bed, pale and wan with hollowed-out cheeks and pockmarked skin, limp hair with one plait undone that looked like it hadn’t been touched by a brush for weeks. Lily recognised her straight away. It was the girl at the window, she was sure of it. She was fiddling with a rubber band on her lap as though she didn’t want to be here, as though she had things to do. Janet was sitting on the window ledge, a pillow wedged under her bottom, one leg crossed over the other. She fixed Lily with a look and then nodded to the girl.

‘This is Bridget. Go on, Bridge,’ she said. The girl stared into her lap, then lifted her head tiredly and raised her eyes. ‘Tell her,’ repeated Janet.

The girl just sat there silently, picking at the frayed skin around nails, her socks sagging around her ankles.

‘Why d’you think we’re here, Lily? For the craic?’ Aggie said.

The girl shifted and the bedsprings squeaked as she exchanged a look with Janet. Then, with her head drooping again, winding the rubber band around a purpling finger, she sighed.

‘Tell her about your baby, Bridget,’ said Janet. ‘Don’t be frightened of Lily, she’s all right.’

‘Oh,’ said the girl. She sighed again and opened her mouth to speak, then blinked away a tear and gazed out of the window.

‘They took her babe away last week,’ Janet said. ‘They gave her to a woman, didn’t they, Bridget?’

The girl nodded and Lily could see that the skin on her hands was cracked and sore.

‘Looked like a bloody movie star, this woman,’ said Janet. ‘All done up in a posh Rothmoor coat and her husband drove a Jag and wore a trilby hat. Kept talking about his flipping car. “Corners like it’s on rails,” he said to Sister Assumpta. I heard him saying that when he walked up the path with her. They made me meet them at the gate and bring her to Assumpta’s office. What did Assumpta care about the Jag? Apart from it meaning she could get a sack load of money out of him for Bridget’s baby!’

‘Sure, she smelled like a movie star,’ said Bridget in a small voice. It was the first thing she had said. And after a long silence: ‘You know, the lady’s perfume? You could choke on it, it was that strong …’

‘Vol de nuit? Guerlain?’ asked Janet.

Bridget turned to her and frowned.

‘What you on about?’ said Aggie.

‘Never mind, go on, love,’ said Janet.

‘She held me baby, only for ten minutes or so, but when me bairn was crying for me, hungry, and I had to feed her … well …’

She winced at the memory of taking her back, of how her baby had smelled of the woman. That milky creamy smell of her little girl was contaminated by the woman’s perfume. ‘She whiffed like Mrs Hardbottom – that was her name, that’ll be me baby’s name I suppose, poor lamb …’ She frowned, as though this had just occurred to her, and that was another stab to her heart along with all the other piercing wounds, in this sorry business of her stupid Ivor getting her up the duff, again. She continued, ‘Ah, the smell was beautiful. Expensive. Like Parma Violets. But it wasn’t the smell of me little mite, Dolly.’

‘And your bosoms. Still full of milk, aren’t they? Show her,’ said Aggie, who was listening, leaning against the doorjamb, chewing gum.

Bridget lifted her shirt and showed Lily two wet patches on her greying brassiere.

Aggie handed her a handkerchief. ‘It always starts at the same time, doesn’t it?’

‘Aye,’ she replied, stuffing the handkerchief down a bra cup, and wincing.

Lily saw more tears gathering in Bridget’s eyes. Instinctively she touched her stomach.

Bridget continued, ‘I live in the annex. That’s where the wards are. The nursery wards and the labour wards. My last baby, well, he …’ Tears filled her eyes.

‘Last baby?’ said Lily, shocked.

‘Her last baby died. Bridget nearly did an’ all. Terrible shame. A day old, wasn’t he, my love? At least this little nipper, Dolly, she came out kicking and screaming and went to a good home, didn’t she?’

Bridget nodded.

‘Her mother, your mam, Nellie, she won’t have anything to do with you, will she? Disowned you, hasn’t she, love?’

Bridget winced, and Lily was reminded of something her own mother had said once. ‘You don’t want to end up drowned, like Nellie’s girl.’ Was this Bridget? Was her mother telling everyone she was dead?

‘And you, Janet? Why are you here?’ asked Lily, nervously.

Janet took a cigarette out, puffed on it, and waved the smoke away.

‘Six weeks ago I had my daughter. It still hurts me down there, you know. It’s knackered my privates up, that’s for sure. I had sixteen bloody stitches. They didn’t tell me that. Had to sit on a rubber ring for a week until Assumpta said she was taking it away as she didn’t want the little ones, the evacuees, asking questions. God forbid the children would think a person might actually have sex! Or that they might find out the real truth about bloody storks and whatnot.’

Lily was shocked as much by their low throaty laughter, as anything else. They almost seemed to be enjoying themselves, as if their predicament had brought some darkly comic humour into their lives.

‘I was supposed to go to the hospital because there were complications, so too risky to have my baby here and I had my Woollies’ wedding ring and vanity case all laid out on the bed. But the baby decided to come before I got to the end of the path. Oh, that was a sight. The nuns screaming and howling like bloody banshees. They took me into the scullery – that was as far as they got me – and pulled the little lass right out of me. Used a pair of flaming salad tongs to finish the job. There was such a commotion. And the St Columba’s kids, who were having a PE lesson outside, were all peering in the window to get a look, standing on buckets and each other’s shoulders. Some of them were crying when they saw the blood because it was everywhere – on the floor, all over the table. One of the sisters ran out but she’d forgotten to wash her hands and there was blood all over them, up to her wrists, and the kiddies started screaming their heads off when they saw her. And God, Sister Assumpta was furious. That was the best part.’

She laughed. How can she laugh? thought Lily. Doesn’t she care about her child?

‘If you had your baby, why are you still here?’ she said.

‘Why are any of us still here?’ she said, mysteriously. ‘Why are you here?’

‘I’ve told you. I’m here as a sister’s help,’ Lily explained. And then she began to wonder. Why was she here? She was the only one who slept in the same dormitories as the children. Aggie and Janet were on another floor, Bridget was hidden away in Ambrose Hall. Also, no one had asked her to do anything much, apart from clear dishes away and chop up wood, which was not much more than the other girls seemed to do.

‘Janet’s here because her parents will pay the nuns when she leaves. Up until then, though, they want her to stay here and work. Sort of penance, isn’t it, Janet? They want her to go home pure and reformed. They think after making all those Rosary Beads for the nuns, she’ll have grown angel wings and her only love will be Jesus and she’ll never want to have sex again. Crazy.’

Lily frowned.

‘Crazy, for sure,’ murmured Janet in agreement.

‘Bridget will tell you that,’ said Aggie. ‘Ivor was pulling down your drawers the minute you got out of here, and Jesus went right out of the window, didn’t he, love? Jesus didn’t even get a look in. You just wanted your Ivor and you were going to let him do whatever he wanted to you, because to hell with it, that’s what you wanted as well.’

‘Couldn’t have put it better, meself,’ said Bridget, regretfully.

‘Anyway,’ said Janet. ‘Where else can I go? My mother and the nuns have decided I can stay for a few months as long as I help with the sewing. I’m good with a needle, can stitch something out of thin air any day of the week. So I’m working the debt of shame off – and at least I don’t have to sleep in Ambrose any more now that I’ve had my baby and I can mix with the evacuees. My mother at least made sure I was moved out of Ambrose, though Sister Assumpta would much rather I was still hidden away there. “Jesus is love, you little whore”, she whispers in my ear when she stands over me, watching me do blanket stitch when I’m buttonholing their shirts. Anyway, I’m off soon. Not sure where. My father doesn’t want me back. Just chucking money at the nuns buys me some extra time, though, and my own room which I share with Aggie.’

Lily shivered.

‘I expect you’re wondering about me?’ said Aggie.

‘My baby isn’t due until March.’

Lily’s eyes widened.

‘Didn’t have a clue, did you?’

She smoothed down her dress. And, of course, now Lily could see it. The rise of her stomach? Well, it wasn’t too many scones and jam after all – she had a baby in there!

‘Oh God!’ said Lily. ‘I had no idea.’

‘Why would you?’ asked Aggie. ‘I’m about four months pregnant. I can still hide it pretty well. Except for these bloody things, they’re already enormous.’

She cupped her breasts in her hands, jiggling them up and down as if she was weighing two bags of flour, deciding which one was the heavier of the two. ‘Can’t bear this bloody brassiere! Over Shoulder Boulder Holder, I call it! Anyway. It’s my dirty little secret that I’m supposed to be ashamed of. I’m supposed to tell no one. That’s the pact between my parents and the nuns. They pay handsomely, like Janet’s parents. As long as I say nothing, they even pay so I don’t have to do the laundry, like poor Bridget here. I just have to help with evacuees until I can’t hide it any more. Then I’ll be shoved in the annex with the other poor wretches. In the meantime, Sister Assumpta gets rich on the back of it.’

Bridget, with her long lifeless curtains of hair hiding her face, twisted the band around her very purpled finger. There were no concessions for her. It was obvious she was as poor as a church mouse. Lily turned to Janet.

‘Your baby. Where is he now?’

‘Who bloody knows?’ she replied with a shrug. ‘Probably on his way to Canada.’

Lily gasped. ‘Canada!’ She sat in frozen silence.

‘Or Australia. I’d rather Canada. Because of my freckles. What if my baby has my freckles? Imagine him burning up in that hot sun? My parents have said I have to stay here until all that is settled as well. They don’t want me running around Liverpool, trying to find my baby. Though there’s no chance of that. What do they think, that I’m going to jump on a ship or something? Hammer on folks’ doors asking if they’ve got my child? If I’m truthful, I’m not so sure I’d want him anyway. I just want my life back. What can I give a baby? Nowt!’

One thing Janet has to be admired for is her honesty, thought Lily. She was unflinching. She looked again at Bridget, now straightening, and re-straightening the hem of her dress. It was a disturbing sight.

‘And Bridget?’

‘Bridget’s going round the bend, aren’t you, love? Third time she’s been in here, poor mite. Bridget’s never leaving this bloody place.’

There was a silence.

‘Chin up, love,’ said Janet to Lily. And she tossed back her head, full of spirit, and smiled. ‘We had a grand day out, didn’t we?’