A Mother's Secret (4 page)

‘Then I’m the best one to take him,’ Bailey said, gently prising Freddie from her arms. ‘I won’t stand no nonsense from them doctors and nurses. You stay here and tend to the babes; they need you more than he does just now.’

Cassy knew that he was talking sense but the sight of Freddie’s stricken face and the way he held his arms out to her almost broke her heart. ‘Take him then, and hurry.’

‘I’ll be quick as I can.’ Holding Freddie as tenderly as any woman, Bailey strode out of the room.

Tending to the remaining infants kept Cassy fully occupied, but her thoughts were with Freddie. She knew that doctors were clever coves who had spent years at school studying books, and that made them able to cure even the sickest person. Bailey had told her all manner of interesting things that he had learned at the ragged school. Biddy had sent him there, he said, because she could neither read nor write and she needed someone to answer letters from anxious mothers who had put their children in her care. Then there was the matter of sending out bills to those tardy in paying the cost of care for their offspring, although Cassy was painfully aware that Biddy accepted payment for infants long dead, and only admitted their demise if threatened with a visit from the parent or if they were in a position to reclaim their fostered child.

Cassy sat on a low stool with baby Anna in her arms, feeding her cow’s milk from a spoon. Head lice crawled through the infant’s thin blonde hair and Cassy’s scalp itched at the sight of them. They were all infested with parasites, including fleas and roundworms, but so were all the other children who lived in Three Herring Court. Cleanliness came a poor third to having enough to eat and keeping warm in winter. There was a pump on the corner of the court but the water was often contaminated with sewage, causing outbreaks of cholera and dysentery, and in summer Biddy forbade them to drink it. She provided small beer for the older children and milk for the infants, but both were in short supply and Cassy had to ration out their meagre allowance each day.

Milk dribbled out of the corners of Anna’s mouth and she closed her eyes with the barest breath of a sigh. Cassy laid the baby in the wooden orange box that served as her crib. Anna was probably six months old, although like the others she had not come with a birth certificate and her exact age was a matter of conjecture. She had been frail and puny right from the start and she would, Cassy thought sadly, be unlikely to see her first birthday whenever that might be. She changed the baby’s soiled rags and put her down in her box on a bed of straw covered by a thin piece of blanket. Anna looked like a wax doll, and it seemed to Cassy as though she was already laid out in her coffin. A cold shiver ran down her spine, and she turned her attention to Samuel who was bawling his head off. At nine months old he was already displaying the qualities of a fighter. She knew instinctively that he would survive against all odds, and she gave him a cuddle as she lifted him from the tea chest where Biddy insisted that he must be kept since he was trying to crawl and might otherwise come to harm.

Samuel stopped crying and tugged at her hair with surprising strength. She set him on her knee and fed him on tiny morsels of stale bread soaked in the milk that Anna had not managed to drink. When he had eaten his fill, Cassy changed his rags for clean ones and allowed him to crawl around the flagstone floor for a while, although when he tried to put a dead cockroach in his mouth she decided it was time to put him back in the tea chest. He protested loudly, but with his belly full he soon fell asleep. There were two more tiny tots, twin girls who had been brought to the house a few months ago by a young woman with a painted face and tragic eyes. She had sobbed brokenheartedly, begging Biddy to be kind to her newborn babies and promising to return once a month with money for their keep. Biddy had nodded and made the appropriate noises but as soon as the door closed on the unhappy mother, she had thrust the infants into Bailey’s arms. ‘That’s the last we’ll see of her,’ she had said grimly. ‘Stow them in a box and give them enough just enough to keep the little buggers quiet. If they should take sick and pass away, no one will be the wiser.’

This callous remark had upset Cassy more than she had words to express, and Bailey protested loudly but was silenced by a clout round the head from Biddy that sent him reeling backwards against the kitchen wall. He had clenched his fists and threatened to retaliate but on seeing Cassy’s stricken face he had seemingly changed his mind, and had put the twin girls to bed in a herring box filled with fresh straw. He had waited until late that night when Biddy staggered back from the pub and had fallen into a drunken stupor, and Cassy had helped him feed the infants with warm milk. They continued to succour them in secret and the twins clung stubbornly to life, much to the delight of their mother who confounded Biddy’s fears by turning up regularly once a month with money for their keep. Cassy watched the young prostitute cradle her babies in her arms, crooning to them and kissing their tiny wrinkled faces as if they were the most precious things in the world.

‘They ain’t got no names,’ Cassy said shyly. ‘What shall you call ’em, missis?’

The light dimmed in the young woman’s eyes. ‘I doubt if I’ll be here to see my babies grow up, but they should have good names. Heaven knows I’m a sinner, but what choice did I have?’ She fixed Cassy with a questioning stare as if expecting her to offer a benediction.

‘I dunno, missis,’ Cassy murmured, shuffling her bare feet on the cold flagstones.

‘None, I tells you, little girl. I was sold to an evil man when I were not much older than you. Now I makes me living the only way I knows how, and it ain’t what I wants for me girls.’

Cassy looked up into the raddled face of the woman, who might have been any age from sixteen to thirty. Tears had made runnels in the paint on her face and her eyes were red-rimmed. Cassy said nothing and the woman clutched her babies to her breast.

‘Charity and Mercy,’ she murmured, closing her eyes. ‘I ain’t seen much of either, so I hope they fare better than their ma.’ She kissed each one on the forehead and laid them back in their box. ‘Goodbye, my little dears.’

The words sounded final even to Cassy’s ears and she was alarmed. ‘But you’ll be back to see them soon, won’t you?’

‘I’m sick, dearie. Something you wouldn’t know nothing about. I’ll come if and when I can, but I want you to promise to look after me babes.’ She reached out to grasp Cassy’s hand. ‘Promise.’

‘I’ll do me best.’

The mother had returned one more time, and Cassy could see a startling change in her appearance. Without the paint, her face was white as the snow outside except for livid bruises around both eyes and a split lip that could not disguise the gap where two of her front teeth were missing. She was even thinner than before and her eyes were sunken. She looked old, Cassy thought; older even than Biddy. The poor creature had wept when she said goodbye to her babies and her sobs had echoed round the court as she limped away.

‘We won’t see her again,’ Biddy said, pocketing the handful of coins. ‘Half measures for them little bastards from now on. I ain’t a bloody charity.’

Brought painfully back to the present by the mewling of the twins, and with concern for Freddie pressing down on her like a black cloud, Cassy made a pot of tea using tea leaves that had already been brewed several times and left out to dry. The resultant liquid was pale, straw-coloured and tasted more like hot water than a refreshing beverage, but it warmed her stomach and made it easier to swallow the stale bread which was all she had to eat. When all the babies finally slept, she set about tidying the room although it would have been a daunting task for someone twice her size. She swept the floor and emptied the dustpan out of the window into the yard, sending a shower of dead cockroaches to feed the crows and sparrows. A gust of ice-cold air filled the room and Biddy stirred, snorted loudly and then fell back into a drunken stupor.

Cassy went outside to the pump but found it frozen solid. She filled a bucket with snow and took it indoors to melt on the range. The fire was burning low and there was very little coal left in the sack. She could do nothing about it until Bailey returned and she sat down to wait. The infants might be asleep but the house was filled with sound of movement and people talking, shouting and the occasional slamming of doors. In the room directly above her she could hear the deep rumble of a man’s voice followed by shrieks of female laughter. There was a brief silence followed by the rhythmic creak of the bedsprings, suggesting that Wall-eyed Betty was at it again with one of her gentlemen. Well, a girl had to live as Betty often said with a wink of her pale blue eye; the other was brown, hence her nickname. She shared the room with Edna, a fresh-faced girl from the country who had come to London to seek her fortune and in less than a year had changed into a shrill she-cat with a voice that could shatter glass, and a vocabulary of swear words that even made Bailey blush.

Thinking of Bailey, Cassy went to the front door to peer out into the snow, hoping to see him coming down the steps with Freddie in his arms, all well and smiling, but there were only the birds scavenging for food. A door opened and the crippled boot maker limped out with a pair of shiny new boots tied together by the laces and hung about his neck like the decoration on a Christmas tree. He acknowledged Cassy with a nod of his head, and leaning heavily on his crutches he moved across the snow like a bluebottle skating on a bowl of melted fat.

She was about to close the door when she noticed a stranger standing at the top of the steps. It was more than curiosity that made Cassy stare at the woman who had stopped to speak to the boot maker. Her breath hitched in her throat and she started forward, breaking into a run. ‘Mama,’ she screamed. ‘Mama, you’ve come for me.’ Slipping and sliding, oblivious to the cold that gnawed at her bones, Cassy hurled herself into the dark-skinned woman’s arms.

Mahdu was almost bowled over by the force of the small child who clung to her and gazed up into her face with an expression of sheer delight. ‘Cassandra?’ she whispered. ‘Is it really you?’

‘I’m Cassy and you are my ma. I knew you’d come for me on my birthday. Are we going back to India now?’

‘Best take her indoors,’ the boot maker said as he negotiated the steps, swinging himself up on his wooden crutches. ‘But be careful of the old cow. She’ll have that fine cloak off you, missis. It’ll be sold at the Rag Fair in Rosemary Lane afore you can blink.’

Mahdu took Cassy by the hand. ‘Let’s go indoors, larla. It is too cold out here for you.’

Cassy could hardly bear to take her eyes from the dark-skinned lady’s face. She wanted to drink in every detail of the fine eyes, almond-shaped and the deepest darkest brown so that they appeared black, and the silky hair shining like coal in the bright light with just a touch of silver at the temples. She felt the material of the woman’s cloak, fingering it in wonder that anyone could wear anything so fine. There was not a moth hole or a patch in sight and the lady smelt nice, like a bunch of exotic flowers. ‘You are my ma, aren’t you?’ Cassy whispered eagerly, and yet she was afraid to hear the truth.

Mahdu nodded her head. ‘We will agree on that, little one. But now I must see your guardian.’

‘Me what?’ Cassy stopped in her tracks. ‘What’s a guardian?’

‘Biddy Henchard, the woman who takes care of you.’ Mahdu angled her head, staring at Cassy’s ragged blouse and skirt. ‘Although looking at you, I don’t think she does her job very well.’

‘You’re right there, Ma. Biddy only takes care of herself, but you should know that. You come every year when I’m asleep, she told me so.’

‘Yes,’ Mahdu said with a sigh. ‘I should have insisted on seeing you in the daylight, but I had my reasons.’

‘Never mind that,’ Cassy said, taking her by the hand. ‘Come inside, Ma. You’ll freeze to death out here and I can see that you’re a lady and used to fine things.’ She led Mahdu through the snow that was rapidly turning to slush, its pristine whiteness violated and sullied by footprints turning black as the filth below was brought to the light.

Mahdu gave an involuntary gasp of dismay as Cassy showed her into the house. ‘I’ve only been here in the dark,’ she murmured. ‘It was different then.’

‘It could be worse,’ Cassy said cheerfully. ‘Come into the kitchen. I cleaned it up so it ain’t looking too bad.’ She thrust the door open with a grand gesture. ‘See how well I done, Ma. I earns me keep. She can’t deny that.’

‘My poor child. I don’t know what to say.’ Mahdu looked about her in horror. ‘This is even worse than I remembered.’

Cassy held her finger to her lips. ‘Shush, Ma. Don’t wake Biddy yet. There’s so much I want to ask you.’ She pulled up a chair, dusting the seat with the hem of her skirt. ‘Sit down, and I’ll make you a cup of tea.’

Mahdu sank down onto the hard wooden seat. She picked up her skirts as a rat scuttled across the floor to disappear into a hole in the skirting board, and she shuddered. ‘This is wrong, Cassandra. We cannot allow this to go on.’

Cassy had been draining the tea leaves and was about to refresh them with water from the kettle but she paused, staring at Mahdu and hardly daring to hope. ‘You’re going to take me with you?’

‘Not today, larla. You must understand that it is not up to me. I must speak to my mistress and then perhaps we can come to some arrangement.’

‘I don’t understand.’ Cassy swallowed hard. She must not cry. Only babies cried.

‘I work for a kind lady,’ Mahdu said gently. ‘She is very concerned about you but there are difficulties which you would not understand.’