Looking at Eleanor in the unflattering light of a naked electric light bulb, Dover couldn’t find it in his heart to blame the absconding putative father, but it was, he thanked God, no concern of his. ‘Never mind the sob stuff,’ he snapped, ‘get to the point! You decided to get rid of-the baby.’
‘Well, natch,’ said Eleanor. ‘What else could I do? I didn’t want it and I was damned sure nobody else did.’
‘So you found somebody who’d get rid of it for you?’ said Dover impatiently. It was the old, old story and after listening to it with variations all these years he found it just boring.
‘Well, yes,’ admitted Eleanor. ‘I asked around a bit, and somebody give me the name of this woman. Well, I went off to see her, to have a look at the set up, like, because some of ’em are dirty devils and I didn’t want to finish up on no marble slab. And I wanted to know how much the damage was going to be because I wasn’t exactly rolling in the stuff at the time. Well, I went to see this woman and I was quite surprised, really, because she seemed quite decent – not a bit like the creepy old witch down Benion Street I went to . . . Well, we got talking and she said how would I feel about having the kid and then flogging it. And I said, how much, because to tell you the honest I wasn’t looking forward to going through all that business again. And she said, fifty quid, plus a pound a week in advance to cover all the extra expenses. Well, it didn’t sound so dusty to me because I reckoned I could go on working for quite a bit and most likely fiddle a few quid out of the Welfare or one of these societies as well. So I said, yes. After all, what had I got to lose? It’d have set me back ten or fifteen quid to get rid of it.’
Dover sighed and wriggled about on his table and tried to find a more comfortable spot. ’Strewth, how they went on! You asked ’em a perfectly simple question and off they went, yack, yack, yack for hours. It poured out like a blooming great dam bursting its walls. It got a chap down in time, listening to nothing else but people talking. They swamped you with words and half the time they never told you what you wanted to know. Just look at this one! Mouth opening and shutting like a speeded up goldfish. Fair made you sick!
Dover scowled and sighed and grunted. Indifferent to the suffering she was causing, Eleanor happily continued to reveal all. She conducted her two listeners steadily through the nine uneventful months of her pregnancy.
‘And then I went in this Home, see? Quite the little heroine, I was, because all these other girls that’d got caught just wanted to get their babies adopted and have done with it. But me, I told the old dears I wanted to keep mine and they thought I was a blooming marvel. It wasn’t half a giggle! Well, then my time came and that wiped the grin off my face. Fifty quid? They’ll have to give me five hundred before I’ll go through that again! The first pains started coming, see, about six o’clock and . . .’
‘You can spare us the details,’ said Dover wearily. ‘I suppose the baby was born dead, was it?’
‘No, it wasn’t,’ said Eleanor, rather disgruntled at having the thread of her narrative chopped callously in twain, ‘It lived for about a week, see. Then something went wrong and they put it in an oxygen tent but it didn’t do any good and then it died. A little boy, it was . . . I was ever so upset.’
‘I’ll bet you were,’ said Dover unkindly. ‘What did you do then?’
‘Well, I rang this woman up and told her. Gawd, was she mad! She nearly went through the roof. Galled me every dirty name under the sun, the old bitch, as if it was my fault. It seems she’d been paying this pound a week to me out of her own pocket because the woman who was going to take the baby wouldn’t cough up till she actually got it. To be fair, I can’t say I blame her, but it made things very awkward for this other woman with the baby dying. “It’s no use yelling your head off at me,” I told her. “I haven’t got no money and you can’t get blood out of a stone.” Well, she huffed and puffed a bit longer and said she couldn’t afford to chuck nearly forty quid down the drain and I said “bloody hard luck” and she rang off and that’s the last I’ve heard of her.’
A blessed silence invaded the kitchen as Eleanor finished her story and MacGregor waited for Dover to ask the vital question. But Dover, still staring glassily at Eleanor who was now lighting a cigarette, had switched off long ago. MacGregor cleared his throat. Dover blinked, heaved a deep sigh and looked round as though wondering where he was.
MacGregor ground his teeth with impatience and then plunged recklessly in. ‘Who was this woman?’
‘Which woman?’ said Eleanor who had already written MacGregor off as the light-weight in the partnership.
‘This woman who was going to sell the baby for you?’
‘Ooh!’ said Eleanor coyly. ‘I don’t know as how I can tell you that. It’s very confidential, like. I swore I wouldn’t tell a living soul.’
‘Here,’ said Dover, now staring fixedly at the ceiling, ‘or down at the nick. Take your choice.’
‘It was a woman called Comersall, Freda Comersall,’ said Eleanor quickly. Her mother had habitually threatened to fetch a policeman when she was naughty and young Eleanor had always thought this was a load of old cod. Looking at the mean, flabby face of Chief
