Many a girl of thirteen or fourteen was told that and believed it until later she went with a boy probably as ignorant as her about such things except that the sexual urge was probably one of the strongest instincts of nature, to end up horribly surprised a few months later. But one thing girls were aware of was the one thing they ought not to know about: that unwanted pregnancies could be got rid of by going to some woman or other for a few shillings. It was rife, it was dangerous and many a woman and girl had died from infection and shock.
‘You will be in safe hands,’ he reassured her.
She’d begun to look doubtful, probably from fear of the unknown, maybe having heard dire stories about fatal results.
‘What if it ain’t done?’ she queried in a small voice. He wondered whether she was asking whether, if left in her condition, there’d be no place for her here, or whether something could go drastically wrong, ending her life?
She had no need to fear the latter. What she had to fear was that, left to go to full term, the child might be born in a condition not to bear thinking about. He had no qualms about his own skills, but she must be told what could come about were she to refuse his aid.
‘I will answer your question,’ he said sternly, ‘and give you the truth in plain terms, but it may upset you.’
She listened quietly to all he said on the possible results of forbidden union. She listened with eyes closed and lips tight together. Only when he had finished speaking did she open her eyes to look at him.
‘I put all me trust in you, Doctor Lowe,’ was all she said, very quietly.
It was only after she had left that he allowed his own emotions to rise to the surface. He’d always been impeccable in medical matters. He had never practised what he was now contemplating doing. Assisted abortion – if he was discovered, he’d be struck off the medical register, or, worse, would face imprisonment.
More than that, this wasn’t just any patient. This was a young person whom he’d become fond of. He was not alarmed by the operation itself but that their relationship might never be the same again. Would she always look on him as another violator of her person?
‘I put all me trust in you,’ she had said in her poor English. With those words ringing in his head Doctor Lowe felt his muscles momentarily weaken, so that he almost decided he couldn’t go through with it.
He pulled himself up sharply. She had put her trust in him and he must make himself worthy of that trust. Going slowly from his study, he closed and locked the door and made his way downstairs to the dining room where Mary would most likely be waiting to have breakfast with him.
Ten
Physically Ellie felt she’d got over it better than she’d feared. Mentally it was hard: the memory, the pain, the humiliation, the one who had performed it, medical man though he was, being someone she must face every day. To have had to go through all that because of her own father’s incest made her even more determined to make him pay, grievously, when she did finally trace him.
She could hardly look at Doctor Lowe – more than between doctor and patient, theirs was a secret between master and servant – she felt only embarrassment. Yet his own attitude towards her seemed to have become almost paternal, that of a father trying to do all he could to comfort her; he couldn’t have been more considerate.
He had told Mrs Jenkins to inform his wife that Ellie had been taken ill and must remain in bed until she was able to resume her duties.
‘Chambers will get suspicious, them sharing,’ Mrs Jenkins reminded him. She wasn’t worried about Mrs Lowe. The master could deal with her.
He frowned. ‘Of course. She must sleep elsewhere temporarily. Tell her Jay has influenza and that we don’t want the whole staff down with it.’
‘Where should I put her?’
‘We’ll clear out the old box room.’ The box room was in the attic along from the two maids’ room. Six feet by seven, it was a graveyard of discarded bits and pieces as well as housing a noisy water tank.
‘With all this stuff out of the way,’ he said, looking about him, ‘we’d easily get a single bed in here. I notice there is already a commode in here and an old chest of drawers and there are door hooks to hang her clothes on. Yes, this will do admirably,’ he concluded, ignoring the gurgling and rattling from the tank. ‘After all, it’s only temporarily, isn’t it?’
‘Why couldn’t Jay sleep there till she was better?’ Florrie grumbled in Mrs Jenkins’s hearing, while avoiding making it a direct complaint; otherwise she would have got her ear bitten off.
For all that, Mrs Jenkins’s tone was sharp. ‘I don’t suppose it crossed the master’s mind and who am I to put him right? Anyway, it’s done. You’ll have to put up with it.’
Just the same, to Nora’s mind the master’s behaviour towards young Jay was looking glaringly odd, and she was worried. The only other one aware of the deed he’d performed on the girl, she was glad it had been successful and Ellie had suffered no lasting ill effects, the thing having been quickly disposed of. But should this business ever come out, she might be implicated, and that didn’t bear thinking about.
As to his attachment to the girl, Doctor Lowe should be treading very warily. Yet as the days went on it seemed more and more that he
