Only a Mother Knows (18 page)

‘I don’t know what to do.’ Dulcie could feel the unshed tears stinging her eyes, dry through lack of sleep. ‘Mum, you have to help me.’

‘Oh, I can help you, all right.’ Her mother seemed very angry now. ‘I knew something like this would happen and if the truth be known I thought it would be Edith who would bring this news to me – I thought you had more sense.’ She was quiet for a moment and Dulcie looked out of the window, over the rooftops of London as far as her eyes could see, and she wished that she hadn’t had to bring this news to her mother.

‘Leave it with me,’ her mother said with a weary sigh. ‘I’ll have a word with someone I know and we can have it all sorted by the weekend and say no more about it. Have you got any money?’

‘Of course I’ve got money, how much do you want?’

‘Not me, girl, for the …’ Her mother flicked her head to one side instead of saying the word and Dulcie’s eyebrows pleated together.

‘What?’

‘You know, Dulcie, you’re not stupid, you’ve been around … and look at the result!’

‘You mean?’ The light went on in Dulcie’s head; her mother was actually talking of introducing her to someone who would take her baby away.

‘Get rid of it,’ her mother said as Dulcie gave a short, almost inaudible gasp and her heart hammered against her ribs. That was the first time she had allowed herself to silently say the word ‘baby’ and as she did, something inside her changed. But what choice did she have? Her disgrace would be there for all to see if she didn’t ‘get rid of it’, as her mother so succinctly put it.

‘I’ll get word to you tonight,’ said Mrs Simmonds. ‘Give me your landlady’s address and I’ll make sure to get hold of you when I’ve been to see …’ She left the rest of the sentence unspoken and they finished their tea and rock bun in comparative silence.

Later that afternoon Dulcie had a message from her mother to tell her to be at Aber Street in Stepney at eight o’clock that night. Aber Street was very close to where her family lived before her parents moved at the start of the war, and as Dulcie hadn’t been near the East End since then she wasn’t looking forward to going there now.

‘This time tomorrow all your troubles will be over, gel,’ Dulcie heard her mother say before staring at the receiver and replacing it in the black Bakelite cradle. She had heard the stories of backstreet abortionists, some of them none too clean and none of them qualified if the truth be known, and her stomach churned.

What if something went wrong? What if she died? What choice did she have? Olive would throw her out for sure and it would prove her right that Dulcie was no better than she ought to be. No, she was being unfair, Olive had never treated her any differently to the other girls who lodged in her comfortable, ordered house. But Dulcie knew she would have nowhere to go. Her mother wouldn’t accept her back, that was certain, on account of her father being so strict.

No, Dulcie thought with a heavy sigh, she had no say in the matter. Oh, Lord, what had she let herself in for? She hurried upstairs, flung herself on her bed and sobbed. Thankfully she was left alone to do so.

About two hours later, after a cool bath and carefully applying what little make-up she had left, Dulcie dressed in a pale blue sweetheart-necked dress with puffed sleeves and threw a white cardigan across her shoulders; the day had been particularly warm so she didn’t want to wear her heavy coat.

Her mother had told her she would need to bring enough money to pay for the ‘procedure’ and before she went to the envelope she kept behind the mirror Dulcie took one last look at her reflection. The only change in her figure was a fuller if tender enlargement in the bust department, she thought, but apart from that nothing; her condition was not obvious.

Her eyes were a little sunken and even through her expert make-up she looked pale, she noticed, putting it down to the lack of sleep and worry, as she pinched her cheeks to give them a bit of added colour, not to mention that wretched morning sickness that seemed to last all day – she wouldn’t be sorry to see the back of that!

After counting the money she put a roll of ten-bob notes in her handbag. She had worked long hours and risked her life for many weeks to save that amount, and now it was to be used to get rid of her shameful secret. Dulcie’s throat tightened but she willed herself not to cry. She had never imagined that she would stoop to this … this terrible thing. Bad girls ‘got rid’ of their babies. Not the likes of her, she thought. Fighting back the tears Dulcie hurried down the stairs and out of the front door without a word to anybody.

Dulcie tried to block out the memories of ‘fixers’ her mother knew who ‘helped women out’, women who were in the family way again and couldn’t afford more kids, or whose husband had been serving overseas for the last twelve months and no matter how much they regretted their actions with either knitting needles or hot baths and gin, the cuckoo had to be removed from the nest.

The bus was crowded with women in headscarves, the air stuffy with the mixed smells of over-ripe body odour combined with a vague waft of carbolic soap, which vied with the rhythmic lurch and sway of the vehicle to make Dulcie’s stomach heave. How could she have been so stupid as to go into a public house with a stranger and allow herself to be plied with alcohol?

Because you are vain, that’s why! an admonishing voice inside her head scolded as she stared out of the grimy, dust-covered window. The bus was nearing the East End now and Dulcie was horrified to see the devastation Hitler’s bombs had caused. Almost everything she had known was damaged or destroyed.

The gaping, rubble-strewn spaces where houses once stood looked as desolate as she felt, rows of shops – gone! In their grimy place children scrambled over mounds of masonry that had, at one time, been someone’s residence or place of work.

A beautiful golden ray of light caught a shard of discarded glass, producing a dazzling flash that seemed inappropriate in this godforsaken place and Dulcie vowed that any child of hers would never know such degradation. Any child of hers except this one, she thought sadly.

Dulcie knew what she was about to do was illegal and was punishable by a prison sentence as no decent doctor worth his salt or reputation would perform an abortion and no hospital would either. But what was she to do? If she had money, lots and lots of money, she could pay a clandestine visit to a doctor who made his fortune out of that sort of thing, but she didn’t have lots of money, she was just an ordinary girl working in a munitions factory who’d got herself into a bit of trouble.

If the bus hadn’t been so full or if she was back in her own room at Olive’s house, Dulcie knew she would have scoffed aloud at the last thought that had popped into her head. A bit of trouble? More like a whole heap of it!

Poor women didn’t stand a chance once the kids came along, Dulcie could see the evidence all around her as the bus trundled down the Mile End Road. They were doomed if they didn’t look out for themselves. Especially when money was tight and some of the men were tighter. And no matter how much pride Stepney housewives took in their homes and no matter how much elbow grease they used to keep their little dwellings clean and well maintained it would never be enough, not for her anyway, and she wanted no part of it. She wanted a nice house with a garden, somewhere for her kids, out of harm’s way.

She wanted her children to see trees and flowers and fields and grow strong and healthy – have a good education. All these things her child deserved along with the nurturing love that only a mother could give. All the attention that she never had …

Unconsciously, Dulcie placed a protective hand on the gentle swell of her abdomen as the clippie rang the bell to let the female driver know people wanted to get off at the next stop. And it was only when she arrived at her destination that the first stirrings of doubt began to creep into her head.

‘You got the money?’ Dulcie’s mother asked without preamble; no ‘hello’ or ‘how are you feeling’. In fact it took her mother all her time to even look in her direction and Dulcie, her humiliation obvious, felt that like a bad smell, the woman would have preferred to waft her own daughter away, and have nothing more to do with her.

‘Two guineas. You got that, Dulcie?’ her mother continued, looking ahead, her back ramrod straight, her proud head held high as they walked down the back streets where teams of children were playing war games amongst the bomb-scarred ruins.

‘Of course I’ve got it,’ Dulcie answered, a little out of breath but catching up as her mother knocked on a dilapidated door at the far end of the side road near the turning. Her insides were jumping around like jelly on a plate. Moments later the door was opened by a little woman in a grubby-looking wrapover pinafore that barely hid drab clothing, her hair covered from her frizzy fringe to the nape of her neck in a thick black hairnet, who looked up only momentarily.

‘I take it you’re Dulcie?’ she asked, holding the front door open just wide enough to allow them into the darkened passageway.

‘No need for introductions,’ her mother said stiffly and Dulcie felt all courage leave her as they were ushered into a front room; the closed curtains only partly concealed the shabby interior, and the stench of overflowing drains and miasma of flying insects did nothing to allay Dulcie’s fears.

‘Oh, God, help me,’ Dulcie thought and fleetingly, as the sombre lament of a ship’s horn sounded in the nearby dockyard, an old phrase she remembered seeing on a soot-covered Victorian workhouse popped into her head: ‘abandon hope all ye who enter …’

Dulcie looked with pleading eyes at her mother, begging her not to make her do this thing. But her mother, rejecting her silent plea, only nodded in the direction of the woman’s open hand and Dulcie unfurled her tightly clenched fingers and placed the money into the grimy palm.

As the woman opened the little cupboard that housed the gas meter Dulcie was horrified to see her reach inside the dust-covered interior to retrieve an array of vicious-looking paraphernalia: a chipped white enamel bowl containing a length of rubber tubing and a grubby-looking jug as well as evil-looking crochet hooks and knitting needles that filled Dulcie with the fear of God-only-knows.

‘Drop yer drawers, dearie, you can leave your stockings on, it’s all the same to me,’ said the woman whose face was almost unrecognisable in the dimness of the room, quite unabashed. ‘Just get yourself on the table, lie down, it’ll be over as soon as you like.’

A kettle boiled on the inflamed coals of a black-lead range, adding to the already insufferable clamminess of the little room that housed only a large wooden table and a sideboard littered with dirty clothing.

‘Please forgive me, Lord … I know not what I do.’

The imploring voice inside Dulcie’s head sounded very much like her own, but it couldn’t be, she realised, because why would she ask forgiveness for something she could stop at any moment?

She looked at her mother pulling at the collar of her woollen coat and the knot of her scarf, and wondered irrationally what had possibly possessed her to dress in such a way for the occasion. Anything to distract herself from the awful, terrible thing she was about to do. The gossamer-fine hairs on her arms stood on end and a cold chill ran through her even in the heat of the room as the sound of laughter, from children who had been brought back from evacuation now that things had calmed down a bit, carried on the stifling air. It was at that moment that Dulcie knew she couldn’t go through with destroying her baby. What had she been thinking? This thing she was about to do was wrong.

It didn’t matter that hundreds, maybe thousands of women went through it every day; she knew nobody was going to take this precious gift from her. Having her baby removed wasn’t like getting rid of an unsightly pimple, she realised – this tiny, helpless creation inside her was a living human being, part of her and part of a man who had been as lonely and as lost as she had been.

Would she ever be able to live with herself again if she went through with getting rid of her little indiscretion for the sake of her mother’s good name? Dulcie asked herself. But she didn’t want or even need her mother’s approval, she was over twenty-one, she didn’t depend on her family for money – they wouldn’t give her any if she did – and, looking now at the determined set of her mother’s thin lips, she knew she couldn’t give two hoots any more about the shame she would bring upon her family. What did they care, after all?

People were dying on a daily basis, the world had turned upside down; men were dropping in their thousands. This child had a right to carry on his father’s bloodline even if he would never have a paternal link!

Dulcie’s stomach heaved its disapproval and before she could disgrace herself there in the front room of a bomb-damaged East End terraced house, she bolted from the room, slamming the front door behind her, and didn’t stop until she reached the bus stop at the top of the road, quickly followed by her mother.

‘You stupid little cow!’ Mrs Simmonds said through clenched teeth. ‘Don’t you realise what you’ve done?’

‘Oh, I’m ever so sorry, did I embarrass you, Mum? Did I run out without paying enough?’ Dulcie rummaged in her bag and took out some more notes and pushed the money into her mother’s hand. ‘Here, give ’er this, I wouldn’t want anybody short-changed.’

‘It’s not like that, Dulcie,’ her mother said. ‘Think of what you’re doing, think of the life you’re going to ’ave now, scrimping and scraping. Living ’and to mouth like …’

‘Like who, Mum?’ Dulcie asked, knowing her mother had always tried to put a brave face on things, making out her husband’s wage was enough to support the family, to the point where she would pass her weekly bill money to a neighbour to keep the tally men from knocking on their door of a Friday night. Anything to prevent her father finding out she couldn’t manage on the pittance he tipped up.

‘… Like all the other poor mares what have no choice, Dulcie! You’re a good-lookin’ gel, you ought to know the way things turn out if you don’t play the game, and you’re not stupid.’

‘Well, that’s a first.’ Dulcie’s eyes were wide but her voice dripped sarcasm. ‘My mother giving me praise after all these years.’