Alone Beneath The Heaven

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Authors: Rita Bradshaw

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Alone Beneath the Heaven

RITA BRADSHAW

headline

www.headline.co.uk

The right of Rita Bradshaw to be identified as the Author of
the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any
means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be
otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that
in which it is published and without a similar condition being
imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

First published as an Ebook by Headline Publishing Group in 2010

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance
to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

eISBN : 978 0 7553 7583 7

This Ebook produced by Jouve Digitalisation des Informations

HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP
An Hachette UK Company
338 Euston Road
London NW1 3BH

www.headline.co.uk
www.hachette.co.uk

Table of Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Part One - The Child: 1937

Part Two - Fighting Back: 1947

Part Three - Coming Home: 1952

Chapter Twenty-four

Chapter Twenty-five

Rita Bradshaw was born in Northamptonshire, where she still lives today with her husband (whom she met when she was sixteen) and their family.

When she was approaching forty she decided to fulfil two long-cherished ambitions - to write a novel and learn to drive. She says, ‘The former was pure joy and the latter pure misery,’ but the novel was accepted for publication and she passed her driving test. She has gone on to write many successful novels under a pseudonym.

As a committed Christian and fervent animal lover, Rita has a full and busy life, but she relishes her writing - a job that is all pleasure - and loves to read, walk her dogs, eat out and visit the cinema in any precious spare moments.

Rita Bradshaw’s new novel REACH FOR TOMORROW, another warm-hearted saga of northern life, will be published by Headline in July 1999.

To my own dear family: my lovely husband, Clive,
our beautiful children, Cara, Faye and Ben,
my precious mum and late beloved dad,
and my big sister, Tonia, and her family.
I love you all

True love’s the gift which God has given
To man alone beneath the heaven . . .
It is the secret sympathy,
The silver link, the silken tie,
Which heart to heart, and mind to mind,
In body and in soul can bind.

—Sir Walter Scott

Prologue - 1927

‘Mam, don’t do it, please don’t do it. You’ll get wrong, Mam—’

‘Shut up, you, an’ keep your blasted voice down. You know ’er next door ’as got lugholes like an elephant.’

‘But you can’t, you can’t, Mam—’

‘
Shut up!
’ The thin, puny-looking boy took the force of his mother’s hand full across the face, and as he reeled from the impact, clutching hold of the back of a wooden settle to steady himself, she hissed at him, ‘I’ve no choice, no choice, do you ’ear me? You know your da, you know what ’e’d do if ’e come back an’ found it ’ere, there’d be murder done. You want ’im up afore the Justice, is that it? An’ stop your blubberin’, that don’t help no one.’

‘But it’s alive—’

‘No it’s not, it’s dead. Get that into your ’ead, Jack, it’s dead. An’ if you keep your trap shut no one’ll be any the wiser. Your da’s boat don’t dock for weeks yet, an’ nothin’ll be any the different when ’e walks through that door, you ’ear me? Now, I’m goin’ out a while’ - as the powerful forearm swung his way again the boy winced, expecting another blow, but his mother merely lifted her grubby shawl from the back of the settle - ‘an’ when I come back I’ll bring you three pennyworth of chitterlings, ’ow’s that?’

Her son made no response to the obvious attempt at bribery beyond staring at her with great accusing eyes, and after a moment’s hesitation she turned from him, wrapping the shawl round her squat shape before walking into the stone-floored scullery that made up the downstairs of the two-up, two-down terraced house. She said not a word as she passed him a moment or two later, neither did she look his way, and as the front door banged shut behind her he started to cry, great gulping sobs that shook his undernourished frame.

Outside in the dark grimy street the woman paused for a moment, glancing to her left and right before walking as briskly as her bulk would allow towards the main part of the town. If it had been daylight the mounds of filth and rubbish that littered this back street of Sunderland would have been visible; as it was the stench was enough to knock you backwards, unless you were used to it that was, and Minnie McHaffie had lived in such surroundings through all her thirty-two years of life.

‘Minnie? You goin’ to the Rose and Crown for a bevy, lass?’

The big, thickset woman who hailed her from a small group of women standing on one street corner would have crossed the road but Minnie increased her pace, calling over her shoulder as she went, ‘I might later, but I’m goin’ round to me sister’s first, she’s bin taken bad.’

‘Which one? Her that lives in Blackhorn Street?’

She didn’t answer, disappearing round the opposite corner and hurrying down the uneven pavement strewn with excrement and broken bottles without turning her head.

‘Nosy so-an’-so . . .’ She was muttering to herself as she went. ‘Big Bertha, that’s all I need, as if I’ve not got enough problems—’ A faint mewing cry from beneath the shawl cut her voice dead, bringing her head swinging round as she looked to left and right again.

Damn it all, she wasn’t going to make it to the docks if it started bawling, there were too many as knew her round there. The docks would have made sure of things too, there was enough floating in the filthy rat-infested water for it not to be noticed till morning, and she wouldn’t be the first to take care of her problem in that way, not by a long chalk. By, the tales she could tell if she’d a mind to . . .

A louder wah of a cry settled the matter. She’d have to dump it somewhere else. But it couldn’t last long wherever she left it, the October night was freezing, on top of which it was a good few weeks early. That medicine of Granny White’s usually settled things in advance, but old Granny had slipped up this time. Or perhaps this one was just stronger than most? The thought brought her eyes narrowing in a face that, although appearing a good deal older than her thirty-two years, was still attractive, in a full-blown, coarse sort of way.

Oh, what did it matter anyway? As long as they couldn’t trace it back to her, that was the main thing. If, by some fluke, it lived, then that was God’s will and as such had to be accepted. It didn’t occur to Minnie McHaffie that to talk of murder and God’s will in the same breath was anathema to the Deity, and she would have been surprised if someone had suggested the concept to her. You did what you needed to do first, went to confession later, and then the slate was wiped clean for the next set of transgressions you would undoubtedly commit. Man was weak, God knew that, why else had He provided priests and the Catholic church to ease your way through a bit?

The streets were brighter as she approached the area leading to the docks, and although it was only seven o’clock on a Monday evening the countless bars, gin shops, and stalls selling everything from faggots and peas to pigs’ trotters were already beginning the evening’s trade.

She was holding the mound under the shawl pressed close against her stomach, but although movement was feeble it was still there. So . . . the water was out, she wasn’t going to risk going down the line for this or anything else, not if she could help it. A back alleyway somewhere? Another weak cry brought hot panic into her chest at the same time as she reached the narrow stone steps leading down to the ladies’ toilets. She went down them swiftly, without conscious thought, and into the nearest of the dank cubicles that smelt sourly of bleach and stale urine, shutting the battered door behind her and sliding the bolt across as she sank down onto the lavatory seat.

The cessation of movement caused more vigorous stirring under the shawl, and as she yanked the folds apart a pair of tiny arms and legs flailed wildly in the dim light from the solitary gas lamp on the wall outside, and a newborn infant, still with the smears of birth on its naked limbs, was revealed, wrapped loosely in a torn piece of rough sacking. It was a girl child, very small and weak, but as the woman looked at the tiny exposed scrap of humanity her eyes were dispassionate, the only emotion on her face being irritation.

Minnie listened for a moment, and after ascertaining she was alone in the cellar-like building she bent down and placed the child on the dirty cracked tiles to one side of the lavatory seat, the sudden shock causing it to cry again as tiny hands searched the air.

It wouldn’t last long, it would be dead within minutes, you could see your own breath down here. That was the only thought in Minnie McHaffie’s head as she opened the door and peered furtively across the outer area housing a row of grimy washbasins, the taps of which had long since been broken and rusted as the crust of brown on the basins bore evidence to. And then the matter would be done with. Their Jack would keep quiet; he knew what was good for him, he did, and if he didn’t the back of her hand would soon remind him.

She was even smiling when she climbed the steps and stole back into the street, crossing the narrow cobbled road quickly and walking back the way she had come without once looking back at the subterranean tomb.

Part One

The Child: 1937

Chapter One

‘I hate that Mary Owen, she’s a pig, she is, and a liar, I hate her.’

‘So do I.’

‘And she smells. Even Jane says she smells and she’s her sister. I don’t like Jane either.’