‘There isn’t a lad!’ The girl’s voice came plaintive and desperate. ‘I didn’t even know me condition until you put the thought in me ’ead, and now I don’t know what to do. You’ve scared me and now I’m praying to meself that it can’t be.’
‘Well, it looks to me like it can be,’ Nora said, more gently now. The girl did look scared and obviously had no idea what could come of what started out as an innocent kiss and cuddle. ‘I’m not going to fly off the handle at you. But if you know who the father is, you must tell me.’
‘Father?’ She seemed to cringe, then wilt.
‘Father!’ she repeated as if with sudden revelation, her eyes widening with something like revelation and loathing. ‘Me father. Oh, God! Oh dear God…’
Her voice seemed to float away. Her hand had gone to her mouth. Her eyes widened with horrified disbelief. Her lips twisted as she shook her head from side to side in negation of what had entered her mind.
‘What’re you saying, child?’ Nora Jenkins’s voice quivered as she too found herself unable to credit the thought that had crept into her own mind.
She steeled herself to speak, trying to keep her voice steady, hoping against hope that the thought in her head was wrong. ‘You said your father?’
Ellie’s breathing came quick and shallow, her face as pale as paper. She let her head hang, but she seemed to be nodding confirmation; yet even now Nora dared not think of it as that. ‘Child, surely not.’
‘It ’appened only three times.’
The girl hesitated, then went on, in a firmer tone. ‘Me brother, Charlie came in and caught him touching me like he did before making me go upstairs with ’im. Me mum was out. So was Dora. Charlie was out too and we was alone. He always waited till we was alone. But Charlie came in unexpected and he went for me dad and there was a terrible fight.’ She seemed to gain strength in keeping away from the more sordid part. ‘The furniture all got knocked about – we didn’t have much as it was – me brother giving ’im such a pasting; and then he left. Two days after that me mum went down with pneumonia.’
Ellie glanced up, now taken up by her tale. ‘Me mum hadn’t been well with a terrible cold and cough for days. After me brother bashed him up, me dad ’ad a go at Mum – I don’t know why, but he said he’d had enough of her always being ill and complaining and that he’d met someone else. He liked his women. And his drink. He was a beast. Then he left and he never came back. He don’t even know Mum’s dead and I don’t know where he is ter tell ’im. Or me brother either.’ Lowering her head again as the tale came to an end, she looked thoroughly subdued and Nora Jenkins felt her heart go out to her. The first thought was to take the girl to her bosom, but she resisted the impulse. Her first and most important task was to sort out this business. It certainly couldn’t be left as it was.
‘Go and wash your face,’ she told her brusquely. ‘Then go on about your work.’ As there came a look of doubt she added hastily, ‘Leave this with me, child. I’ll think of the best way of tackling it without you having to be dismissed. Go on now, child.’ She would speak to the master rather than his wife – catch him as soon as his morning surgery finished. She’d make sure he was in sympathy with the girl’s plight. This child was a victim. She deserved justice. The girl was telling the truth – she was sure of it. She could only pray that she was.
After Mrs Jenkins left his study, Bertram Lowe sat unmoving behind his desk, staring unfocused at the opposite wall. It was hung with yellowing diplomas and certificates in their dark frames. They belonged to his father, also a medical man – a surgeon.
Beside them hung those that were his, fresher, unstained by time. His father had automatically seen his son through university, happy for him to enter the medical profession. He could have equalled his father, with a place waiting for him at the King’s College Hospital, but events had changed all that. His father had died suddenly of a massive heart attack just as his son was due to leave university. His mother, deep in shock and pining, had followed her husband ten months later. By then he’d met the girl he would marry.
A timid, quiet little thing, Mary had stolen his heart, her quiet ways making him feel protective of her. When they’d had to marry rather suddenly, he’d opted to become a general practitioner, so as to be on hand. But the baby had been stillborn, as were the next two. Rather than join his father’s hospital – which would have meant long hours away from Mary who, having lost her own parents, feared the prospect of loneliness and pleaded not to be left – he had gone into private practice. It was sad not to have fulfilled his father’s hopes and become an important man in the field he’d enjoyed. He might have opted for a Harley Street practice but felt his skills were of more use in London’s deprived East End, though he often wondered if he’d been right.
Too late by the time Millicent was born. A healthy, pretty child, Mary’s life had become wrapped up in her and he’d found himself put aside, Mary wanting nothing to do with her marital obligations lest another baby suffer the same fate as her first three. But he suspected it was more because she did not wish to share her love for her
