‘Do you think they will let you stay here now?’ Mary Ellen said as they sat on the back stairs with their arms about each other, heads together. She’d been telling Billy about Ma and shedding a few tears, but somehow with his arm about her the first sharpness had eased.
Going out with Rose had been all right, but the shadow of her sister’s news had hovered at her shoulder even as she laughed at the antics of the pantomime characters on stage, and she’d felt tears on her cheeks when the choir had sung Ma’s favourite carol – ‘Away in a Manger’.
After the present giving and tea, Billy and Mary Ellen had crept away to sit on the stairs and talk.
‘It’s rotten her tellin’ you today,’ Billy said. ‘She’s spoiled everythin’ for you, Mary Ellen.’
‘No, because I’ve got you and Marion and my friends,’ she said and offered a chocolate biscuit. ‘I always knew, Billy, even though they told me Ma would get better. I knew she wasn’t ever coming home. I wish Rose had told me what was going on sooner but she thinks I’m just a kid and wouldn’t understand.’
‘Bloody grownups …’
Mary Ellen nodded and shifted closer to her friend. He was her rock and she couldn’t imagine what she would do if they sent him away.
All the excitement of the carol service and the present giving was over, and tomorrow things would be back to normal. On Christmas Day Sister said it would be prayers and a good dinner, but she believed it was a Holy day and should be spent quietly. ‘They won’t blame you because Arthur came here?’
‘It were my fault in a way,’ Billy said. ‘Arthur wanted to get his own back on me and he knew I care about people here, Mary Ellen. I couldn’t bear it if you and Marion and the others were hurt.’ There was a faint shimmer of tears in his eyes and she hugged him. ‘You’re all I’ve got – me whole family now.’
‘It’s all right, we’re safe now. I keep thinking about when I was little; Ma was always lovely to me, a good mother, and I miss her lots. You and Marion are my family too. We all have to look out for one another.’
‘I know.’ He gazed at her solemnly. ‘I’ll always be your friend and look after you and Marion too, if she needs me. I’m just glad they’ve put Arthur away. I hope he goes down for the rest of his life.’
Mary Ellen nodded, her face grave. She offered him the Cadbury’s chocolate fingers Rose had bought with her sweet coupons and he took one, biting into it with a look of ecstasy on his face.
‘These are me favourites.’
‘Yes, I know – that’s why I chose them.’
‘You’re a good friend, Mary Ellen. When we grow up I’ll be a train driver and marry you.’
She smiled at him. ‘You’ll have to study hard at school to be a train driver, Billy. You have to be clever to do that, Pa told me so. He worked on the Docks and said if he’d got a proper education he could have been a crane driver and earned twice as much as he did for labouring. He told me to study if I wanted to be better than him and me ma were.’
‘You won’t have to work. You’ll have me to look after you.’
‘I’m not going to marry for years and years. I want to be a teacher and look after the little ones.’
‘But you’ll marry me one day, won’t you?’
‘You’ll always be my best friend, Billy. If you ask me when I’m old enough I’ll give you my answer then – but not until I’m a teacher. I want to make something of my life, not be like me ma, forced to live in a slum when Pa died.’
Billy frowned over that, because Mary Ellen was the most important person in his world and he wanted to mean the same to her. She offered him another biscuit and he hesitated, wanting it but knowing there weren’t many left.
‘Rose gave you those for Christmas. You keep them.’
‘Have another one. Rose took me to a pantomime instead of giving me a present, and the biscuits were instead of pocket money, because she doesn’t bother with sweet rations and saves them for me. I wanted to share them with you – you’re my best friend, Billy.’
He grinned at her, his confidence returning as he took another of the delicious chocolate biscuits and bit into it. ‘I’ve got you a Christmas present, Mary Ellen.’
‘How did you manage that? You don’t get much pocket money, do you?’
‘No, only the threppence everyone gets on Saturday, but Constable Sallis gave me a couple of bob for helping him, and I nipped down the shop while you were out and bought something – but I shan’t give it to you until tomorrow.’
Mary Ellen had spent most of her pocket money on buying him drink and sweets when he was in hiding so she hadn’t been able to get him a scarf as she’d planned. Instead she’d bought him a set of coloured pencils. They hadn’t cost her much but it was all she’d had left from the allowance Rose had left for her with Sister Beatrice.
‘You shouldn’t have spent your money on me, Billy.’
‘It’s what I wanted. I ain’t interested in anything else – and we all got a present from Father Christmas, but I shan’t open mine until Christmas Day.’
‘Nor shall I – I like the suspense,’ Mary Ellen smiled in the darkness. Most of the other kids had torn their parcels open the minute they got them, but she’d kept her little hoard of three brightly wrapped parcels: one from Father Christmas, one from Sally and the other carers, and one from Miss Angela. ‘Do you believe in Father Christmas?’
‘Nah, ’course not, but we have to pretend to ’cos some of the little kids think he’s real. I know it’s Mr Adderbury ’cos I ’eard Sally and Angela talkin’ about it.’
‘I don’t care who it is,’ Mary Ellen said and smiled. She hugged his arm. ‘It’s nice being together here, Billy. I just hope they won’t send you away after Christmas.’
‘If they do I’ll run away and come back here. If I keep doing it they’ll get fed up and let me stay.’
Mary Ellen laughed. She hoped he was right, because she had to stay here until Rose had finished her training. St Saviour’s was warm and comfortable and there was always enough to eat, and more importantly she felt safe here. Outside the ancient walls of the old fever hospital the streets were dark and dangerous and the vulnerable could die of hunger, cold and neglect … and in the shadows evil lurked. The kind of evil that she had never known, but sensed was there waiting for the unwary.
Rose had warned her of what their lives might have been like if she hadn’t been taken in here and Rose had been left to manage alone. She’d told her to be careful of men she didn’t know, even if they seemed nice at first.
‘If I had to work all day you would be on your own, at the mercy of strangers – men who might try to harm you. I couldn’t have looked after you properly, Mary Ellen, because sometimes I have to work nights. In a few years you will be older and I shall be earning good money. I can pay someone to look after you at night if I can’t – but until then you have to stay at St Saviour’s. You don’t know how lucky you are to have a place there … some of these homes … well, you hear bad things whispered about what happens to the children in them.’
Rose was wrong to think that Mary Ellen didn’t know how lucky she was. She’d rebelled against Sister Beatrice and her rules, but now she knew they were there for a purpose, and she’d made up her mind to obey them – and if Billy were allowed to stay she would make sure he did too. St Saviour’s wasn’t a bad place to grow up if she couldn’t go home to her mother. Her throat tightened with grief, but she didn’t cry. Ma was in heaven with Pa and the angels, and not suffering any more. Rose said she had suffered and they had to be glad for Ma’s sake that she was at peace now so Mary Ellen would try to be, even though it hurt so bad.
‘Come on,’ she said to Billy, offering him the last two biscuits. ‘One each, and then we’d better go up to the dorms or Sister will have our guts for garters.’
‘She will if she ’ears you say that,’ Billy retorted and grinned. ‘She ain’t all bad, you know, Mary Ellen. I reckon it’s time I pulled me socks up. I want to get somewhere when I’m older and if that means doin’ as I’m told for a bit and learnin’ things – well, I don’t mind, as long as they let me stay here.’
‘Well, that is good news,’ Father Joe said and lifted his glass, which contained not the usual sherry but a drop of the good Irish whiskey Mark Adderbury had provided with his compliments of the season. ‘Sure the lad is a tearaway, but he’ll calm down. After what he’s been through in his short life ’twas only to be expected he would kick a bit.’
‘Yes, I think I agree with you,’ Beatrice said and sipped her sherry. She didn’t care for the taste of whiskey despite Father Joe’s claims that she would change her mind, if she once tasted the Irish variety. ‘He was inclined to rebel when he first came here, but I think that business with his brother sorted him out. I do not think we shall have any real trouble with him now.’
‘Mary Ellen is a good girl. She’ll keep him on the right track now that she’s settled in herself. It was a sad thing that she lost her mother – and so close to the Lord’s birth.’
‘Yes, I’m afraid she is going to have to stay here for several years. Her sister is set on becoming a nurse and that takes years of training. Even when she has her certificates she may find it isn’t easy to find work that allows her to live independently. Many of the hospitals still require their nurses to live at the home provided.’
‘Unless she came here?’ he suggested with a provocative lift of his brow. ‘You might be more flexible, I think?’
‘Perhaps.’ Beatrice was feeling mellow. She couldn’t remember having a better Christmas, not even when she was a girl at home. Her parents had never been short of money, but there was no warmth in their home for they loved neither each other nor their daughter. Had they cared for her she might never have suffered so much grief and her life might have been very different. ‘Yes, I should welcome her here if I had a place for her.’
‘We none of us know what’s round the corner – except for the dear Lord and He’s not telling. Look at the troubles we’ve been after having this year, and haven’t they all resolved themselves?’
‘Yes, most of them have. Angela has done a wonderful job of raising money. I understand we’re to have some of it towards the extras the children need and the rest may be used for improvements. I’m relieved she has decided to stay on, because we should miss her now. I can’t do everything myself.’
‘Of course you can’t and that’s why Adderbury asked her to come, because he didn’t want to lose you. You are everything this home and the children need and Adderbury knows it.’
Beatrice looked at him, feeling surprised and touched by the compliment but then she knew he was right. Adderbury did appreciate her values. Sentimental tears pricked behind her eyes. She’d been a fool to feel threatened. Her work here was valued and appreciated. She might not always agree with Angela but they could manage to get along well enough if they both tried a bit harder.
‘Yes, we’ve come through pretty well when you think about it,’ she said and lifted her glass to salute him.
Beatrice realised that she’d learned to bend a little in the past few weeks, to see things in a different light. Her old-fashioned notions about children being kept in their place seemed to have become less important. Billy and Mary Ellen had shown her that they were strong characters and both honest and fearless. Had it not been for their courage and the combined efforts of the three friends, St Saviour’s might have been burned to the ground.
Because she did not believe in making too much of things, she’d thanked them and sent them to bed, but in her own mind they were heroes. Perhaps it was time that the individual was encouraged, and she would tell Angela on her return that she backed her all the way with the idea of team leaders and monitors. It was time to give the children more responsibility and to trust them to behave rather than threatening them with strict rules.
‘Here’s to 1948 and let’s hope it is the start of better things for all of us: the people, the country and most of all St Saviour’s and our children,’ she said and sipped her sherry.
‘I’ll drink to that,’ Father Joe said with his lazy smile – and he did.