A Liverpool Lass (15 page)

Lilac had been a foundling all her short life, but she had never felt that this was a disadvantage because in the background, taking care of her, looking out for her, seeing to her every want, had been Nellie McDowell. Nellie had provided Lilac with a ready-made family too and it was a real jolt when Lilac was boasting about Bessie and Charlie and the baby to hear someone mumble slyly that it was about time she realised that Charlie was Nellie’s brother and not hers, because foundlings didn’t have brothers.

Lilac felt heat rise to her cheeks. She turned on her heel and walked across to the opposite side of the playroom; an unfeeling snigger followed her.

And Miss Hicks, of course, was in her element. She made sure that Lilac felt the full weight of her dislike, a thing she had scarcely dared to do overtly whilst Nellie was so useful a member of the staff, and so
well-liked by Mr Hayman, what was more.

In her heart, Lilac felt that she was being served out by her unhappiness because she knew very well that she had not behaved properly towards Nellie; when Davy had not arrived at the Royal Court Theatre Nellie had been distressed and unhappy but she, Lilac, had been too interested in the pursuit of her own pleasure to comfort the older girl. What was more, looking back down the years for the first time in her short life, Lilac realised that she had always been a taker, never a giver. Oh, she had loved Nellie, but she had never done anything for her, not if it inconvenienced herself! I could have helped in a lot of ways, she realised now, when it was too late. I could have given Nellie a hand often, when she was up to her eyes in work, but I never did. I never even thought of it.

When Nellie comes back, though, I’ll show her I’m sorry, Lilac’s thoughts continued. I’ll do all her work for her, I’ll save my pennies to buy her presents and I’ll go to bed without being nagged and I won’t keep reminding her about taking me to New Brighton, or to the museum. I’ll ask her what she’d like to do, instead of just choosing my favourite at once. Oh, but I wish she’d come back soon!

Sometimes she thought about Davy and wondered if he and Nellie were happy together, for she had concluded that Nellie must have gone to Davy. She had not gone to Coronation Court. Lilac slipped out one afternoon three weeks after Nellie had left, and visited the court, only to find Aunt Ada, Uncle Bill and the rest as ignorant of Nellie’s whereabouts as she.

‘Where’s the feller live, chuck?’ Charlie asked when Lilac told him she believed Nellie must have gone to Davy. ‘We could write, or go there, see if she’s all right.’

But Lilac, who had never taken much notice when Davy and Nellie were talking, could remember nothing, not even whereabouts in Wales he lived, far less the name of his village.

‘Doesn’t Hal know?’ she asked miserably. ‘I was sure Hal would know.’

But Hal was not around to ask. He had joined the Navy when Davy did and been posted to foreign parts. Aunt Ada wrote, but no one knew how long it would take for Hal to receive the letter or even if, because of the war, he would ever receive it.

Aunt Ada took her back to the Culler so that she could talk to Mrs Ransom about Nellie, but that did not save Lilac from a beating. As Miss Hicks joyfully cut at Lilac’s smarting palms she reminded her, with every stroke, that she would have to mind them all, now.

‘No more outings, Miss,’ she said breathlessly, between blows. ‘No more special treatment. You’re just a wicked girl like other wicked girls, and you’ll be treated as such.’

And Lilac, cold and alone in her bed, cold and lonely in classroom and playroom, knew at last what Nellie had been to her. Salvation, that’s what she had been, but Lilac hadn’t known it. When she comes back ... she kept thinking. Oh Nellie, when you come back how happy I shall be!

After three months everyone told her that Nellie had gone for good, would never return. On bad days Lilac believed them and wandered around like a little ghost, but most of the time she was warmed and encouraged by a deep inner certainty. She had been disloyal, she had been selfish, she had been uncaring. But Nellie was generous and true. She would be back, Lilac was sure of it.

It kept her going through the darkest days that
winter and when the first signs of spring appeared in the gardens of the city and Nellie had not reappeared Lilac was still buoyed up by that inner certainty.

Nellie would return and claim her and find Lilac a changed person, then the two of them would pick up their lives where they had left off in early December. She clung to the thought as dreary day succeeded dreary day, as the evenings lengthened, the trees budded, the daffodils burst into flower.

Because without Nellie, she knew now, her life was not worth living.

When she had first arrived in Moelfre and agreed to take part in Bethan’s little deception, Nellie had never really thought anyone would be fooled into believing that Bethan and not herself was pregnant. Was that why she had agreed to it? Yet as time went on, as Bethan faithfully copied the swelling of Nellie’s stomach on her own sturdy form, it became clear that not only would it work, it should, if all went well, be the means of securing the baby’s future in the only way Nellie could see clearly.

Because Bethan had been true to her word. Nellie went round the village in her enveloping cloak and she carried the baby well, her pregnancy scarcely showing until the child was due. She was introduced as Bethan’s sister Nellie, come to see the other girl through her time, and no one questioned the truth of it. After all, they didn’t know Nellie, had never seen her until she was introduced as Bethan’s sister. They had no reason to suspect that she was with child, far less that Bethan was not, when they could see Bethan getting larger week by week and could discern very little difference in Nellie’s slender figure.

But the birth of a first baby was notoriously difficult; Nellie was worried that she might have a bad time which would mean calling the doctor in to help with the birth, but Bethan reassured her.

‘Haven’t I birthed half-a-dozen of Mam’s babies, and me only a baby myself when I started?’ she said bracingly, when Nellie admitted what was worrying
her. ‘But if I do need help then we’ll swear the doctor to secrecy – he comes over from Amlwch, after all, it’s not as if he were a local man.’

By this time Nellie had the feel of the community enough to realise that the town seven miles off was foreign ground to most of the Moelfre people, so she held her peace. And besides, it was difficult to worry or be uneasy as a hard January turned into a mild February and the fishing boats went bobbing off onto a silver-blue sea under a great arch of sunfilled sky.

On the day that the baby was due, however, Nellie went off by herself for a long walk and when she got back she could see Bethan had been crying. Missing Davy, no doubt, Nellie thought, and prepared the tea for the old people – Bethan’s creamy homemade butter, some honey from the hives which squatted down by the stream in the village and yielded sweet heather honey in spring, and the homemade Welsh cakes which Bethan had taught her to make. When she had made the tea and seen the old people satisfied she and Bethan went for a walk together, partly to help Nellie to start the baby, for walking was good, Bethan said authoritatively, and partly so that they could talk without reservation.

They went along the beach until the rocks barred their way and then up onto the cliffs where already shy spring flowers grew in sheltered spots and the grass was greening up so that the cows had to be carefully watched or they would overeat and bloat themselves.

‘Bethan, what’s the matter?’ Nellie said presently, for Bethan was clearly abstracted, fixing her eyes on the horizon with such a sad look in their depths that Nellie could have wept for her.

‘Matter? Oh Nell, you’re as dear to me as any sister, but I didn’t want to put more worries on you with your time so near. I’ve not told Mam or Da, but there’s been
another of those wretched letters from the War Office; Dickie’s ship, the
Linda Blanche
, has been blown up by an enemy submarine and Dickie is posted as missing.’ Bethan sniffed and wiped her eyes, which were brimming with tears, with the heels of both hands. ‘You never knew him, love, but Dickie was the gentlest of creatures, he would not hurt a soul. It pains me to think of his death but we mustn’t tell the old people, promise me?’

‘I never would. The truth is, they may never need to know,’ Nellie said gently. ‘Mother is very poorly, isn’t she, Bethan?’

‘Yes, she is. And Dickie couldn’t write, so they won’t expect a letter from him. Oh, Nell, what a wicked world this is!’

That evening, Bethan brought out a photograph of Dickie and Davy just before they went away. Davy looked heartachingly familiar, but the picture showed Dickie as a shy youngster with a diffident look and soft, floppy dark hair, standing down by the harbour screwing his eyes up against the evening sun. He had been eighteen when the photograph was taken but, to Nellie’s eyes, he looked considerably younger, and very vulnerable.

‘If the baby’s a boy, we might call him David Richart, after the boys,’ Bethan suggested that night as they climbed wearily into bed. ‘Or we could call her Bronwen, after Davy’s Mam.’

‘You name it,’ Nellie mumbled, pushing her head into the softness of her pillow. ‘I’d rather you did, honestly.’

‘We’ll see,’ Bethan said, and presently Nellie fell asleep.

She woke in the dark of the night to find white moonlight falling on the bed and a wind getting up so that streaks of cloud hurried across the bland face of the moon.

Bethan was crying. Crying softly but continuously, her shoulders shaking.

Poor Bethan; she’s lost so much, Nellie thought, and put her arms round the other girl. She soothed and cuddled and crooned and presently, Bethan’s sobs turned to hiccups and then her breathing smoothed out and became deep and even.

Soon, both girls slept.

The baby started at five o’clock on a Saturday evening. Nellie felt the first warning surge in the small of her back as she sat over her tea of herring and fried potatoes and caught Bethan’s eye. Bethan gave a gasp.

‘The baby ... I think I’m starting, Nell,’ Bethan said, quickly reverting to her role as mother-to-be. She turned to her father-in-law and spoke to him in Welsh, presumably saying the same thing. ‘Should I get upstairs, now, then?’

‘Not yet, girl,’ Nellie said, smiling at Bethan’s face, in which false anguish and very real excitement mingled rather oddly, she thought. ‘We’ll get the dishes done and the breakfast laid as usual; won’t do you no good to pamper yourself!’

It was ten o’clock before the pains got bad enough to bring sweat out on Nellie’s brow, but even then she could not give in. The girls had agreed to keep the old people in ignorance of just how imminent the birth was so that there might be no well-meaning interference.

‘The pains have ebbed, so it’ll likely be a while yet, Mam,’ Bethan shouted to her mother-in-law. She spoke in Welsh but translated for Nellie. ‘Nellie will wake you when it’s born. You stay snug; this’ll be a Sunday night baby I wouldn’t be surprised.’

But she delivered Nellie at six the next morning,
hanging the baby by his feet to get the first startled breath into his lungs, then cuddling him against her breast to muffle his strong, indignant shout. The baby turned blindly into her and Bethan held the child towards Nellie, looking down at the weary young mother with a most gentle and loving smile.

‘Now haven’t you done awful well, then?’ she whispered. ‘Oh Nellie, love, he’s perfect – a good few babies I’ve seen but never one as perfect as this.’

Nellie smiled back at her and felt the tiredness and the pain and the fear all drain away. Speechlessly, she held out her arms and Bethan, without hesitation, put the baby in them.

‘He is beautiful,’ Nellie whispered. ‘Isn’t he the most beautiful thing you ever saw? Ah, look at those tiny hands ... oh Bethan, he’s Davy the second!’

Bethan nodded, an expression of blissful devotion already on her face whenever she looked at the child. She had warm water ready and now she poured it into the basin, took the birth-smeared boy and dunked him briskly, lathered him, rinsed, and wrapped him in a clean white shawl. Then she put him into the cradle waiting at the foot of the bed.

‘Too soon to feed him it is,’ she whispered. ‘Can you get out? Supposed to be looking after me, you are!’

And somehow, Nellie managed. Between them they got the meals, saw to the child, weaned him from Nellie’s milk onto a bottle. Nellie’s breasts ached but Bethan bound them and kept her for three days without the tea she fretted for and Nellie’s milk dried up and her son, named David Richart, after his uncle and father, took to the bottle and throve.

He was a grand baby from the start, black-haired and dark-eyed, yet placid as a cow save for when he was hungry. The girls spoiled him, but Nellie never
forgot that he was to be Bethan’s child and Bethan, though she never spoke of it, never forgot it either. She did all the hardest, dirtiest jobs, scrubbed nappies, dug the garden, laid and lit fires, even carried the baby round the village on her hip no matter how heavy her shopping or laundry.

Richart, as the baby was called, had been born at the end of March. By June, Nellie knew she must leave, or she never would. Bethan sometimes mentioned her going, but mostly she reminded Nellie that the boy would be here waiting for her, that she must visit often – and that Lilac missed her.

‘Your family, too,’ she said one bright morning, when she was planting early potatoes whilst Nellie nursed the baby and looked on. ‘They’ll want to know what’s happened to you. Will you tell them our story – that you came to find Davy and found me, instead? And that you looked after me whilst I had Davy’s son?’

Nellie winced a little but nodded sturdily, with the baby’s warm weight close to her breast, a constant reminder of what might have been.

‘Yes, I’ll tell them. And if they don’t quite believe me, that won’t be my fault. Bethan ... I’m going now; today.’

The words hurt her, even shocked her, but she knew she had made the right decision when she saw the relief in Bethan’s dark eyes. Poor girl, she had doubtless wondered how on earth she would get rid of Nellie, if Nellie simply made no move to leave.