Gypsy (35 page)

‘But they said you were over four months gone! I had to pretend I knew. Why didn’t you tell any of us? We wouldn’t have let you work at that place if we’d known.’

‘There was never a right time to tell you,’ she said wearily.

Jack bent down and kissed her cheek. ‘How do you feel now?’

‘A bit strange.’ She sighed. ‘But I’m not in pain any more. What did they do to me, Jack?’

‘The doctor will explain to you in the morning,’ he said.

‘But you must go to sleep now, I’ll go and find Sam and Theo and tell them. We’ll come to see you tomorrow.’

It was after ten at night and as Jack walked through the deserted snowy streets, his eyes filled with tears when he thought of what the doctor had said.

‘I had to perform an emergency operation to remove the parts which had not come away naturally, and sadly I have to tell you it is highly unlikely she’ll ever be able to bear another child.’

Many women Jack had known wouldn’t much care if they never had a child, and anyone who had ever seen Beth playing her fiddle would think that being a mother would be unimportant to her. But Jack knew different. He’d heard the sadness in her voice when she spoke of Molly, and knew that giving her sister up was something she’d never quite reconciled herself to, however much she declared she had. At Christmas, when she received a photograph of Molly, she had looked hungrily at it for hours. He had always thought that it would only be when she had a child of her own that she’d recover fully.

Now she’d lost that chance.

Theo didn’t come home that night, and Jack lay awake hating the man for treating Beth so casually. Theo didn’t of course know she was in hospital, but Jack was unable to understand how any man with a girl as lovely as Beth could bear to stay away from her for even one night.

Sam had looked incredulous when Jack told him the news. ‘Why didn’t she tell me?’ he kept repeating, as if he thought that if she had done, none of this would have happened. But even Sam, close as he was to his sister, expressed the opinion that it was perhaps for the best.

‘The best for who?’ Jack had roared at him. ‘For you and Theo maybe, so you can do what you want without any hindrance! But not for Beth. A part of her will have died with the baby, and when she finds out she can’t have any more, what’s that going to do to her?’

It was close to daybreak when Jack heard Theo come in. He and Beth shared what she laughingly called the parlour, which was the slightly larger of the two rooms downstairs and the one with a fire. She had to cook on that, and she’d made herself a little kitchen by putting a wooden crate with a cloth over it in the alcove beside the fire, and arranging all the crockery, pots, utensils and foodstuffs in or on it.

Her ability for home-making astounded Jack. She’d covered the bed with a bright-coloured quilt, and made cushions for the two wooden armchairs. Most people around here lived in squalor, defeated by poverty and hardship, but Beth kept the place spotlessly clean, and was always adding something to make it more homely.

Since working at the bunkhouse, she’d acquired a small table, and on Sundays when they were all home, they ate their dinner at it sitting on crates. She’d stuffed cracks around the windows with newspaper to keep out the draughts and covered the stains on the walls with theatre posters and pictures cut out of magazines. Sitting there beside a roaring fire on Sundays, a tasty dinner in front of them, they could forget the bitter cold and grimness outside for a few hours and be a real family.

Since he met Theo for the first time, Jack’s feelings towards him had swung away from jealousy because he’d snatched Beth away from him and indignation that he allowed her to think he’d masterminded her rescue from the cellar. He had eventually grown to like him once they moved to Philadelphia.

For all Theo’s flashiness, smart clothes, cut-glass accent and impeccable breeding, he was no snob. To him there were only two kinds of people: those he liked and those he didn’t. What they had or where they came from didn’t enter into it.

Once Jack had put away his old resentments, he found Theo to be generous, kind-hearted and an amusing companion — smart too, always one jump ahead of the next man.

Jack wasn’t scandalized by him cheating at cards. He felt he’d have probably done the same if he’d lost a heap of money. But what he had fully expected was that Theo would run off and leave him and Sam when Sheldon died.

But he hadn’t. He’d taken charge, organized their escape to Canada and paid for their tickets, and because he’d proved himself, Jack had trusted him implicitly ever since.

Yet as he heard Theo come in, and thought of where Beth was, Jack felt murderous. He leapt out of his bed and ran into the adjoining room wearing only his long underwear.

Theo had lit a candle and he was just standing there holding it, still in his top hat and fancy cloak, looking stunned because Beth wasn’t in bed.

‘Where is she?’ he asked.

‘In hospital, you bastard,’ Jack snarled. ‘She’s lost her baby, and you want stringing up for not being with her, for letting her work in that place.’

‘She was having a baby?’ Theo gasped, his face suddenly pale. ‘I didn’t know!’

‘You never gave her a chance to tell you, you’re never here,’ Jack roared at him. ‘You swan in and out, eating meals she makes you, putting on the clean shirts she washes for you, treating her like a little skivvy!’

Theo put the candle down and dropped his hat on the bed. ‘Oh God,’ he exclaimed. ‘She’s lost our baby? Please, Jack, sit down and tell me what happened and how she is.’

Jack could see that Theo was shocked and horrified, but that didn’t appease him. He clenched his fist and took a swing at Theo, catching him squarely on the jaw, and Theo staggered back from the force of it.

‘I’d beat the shit out of you without any qualms,’ Jack hissed at him. ‘But I don’t want to smash up this room Beth has tried to make nice. Did you ever notice that? Did you see how rough her hands have become? She was someone in Philly, she wore pretty dresses and she was happy too, but you took all that away from her.’

‘I suppose you had a better plan then?’ Theo said with a sarcastic edge. ‘One you never voiced, eh?’

‘You smug bastard,’ Jack yelled at him, and was just about to hit him again when Sam came running into the room and caught his arm.

‘Fighting won’t make anything better,’ he said angrily, getting between his two friends. ‘God knows I’d like to pulverize Theo too for neglecting Beth, but she’ll be devastated at losing her baby, and if she comes home to find Theo gone too, she’ll never recover.’

‘I wouldn’t leave Beth even if you two pummelled me to a pulp,’ Theo said indignantly. ‘You’re acting like I’m responsible for this. How could I be? I didn’t even know. Now, will you sit down and explain what happened and tell me how she is, for God’s sake? I love her, surely you know that?’

At that unexpected declaration of love, Jack’s anger faded. ‘Why did you leave her here all the time then?’ he asked brokenly. ‘Couldn’t you have introduced her to your new friends? She’s a real lady, she would never have embarrassed you.’

Theo sighed and slumped down on to a chair, running his fingers through his hair. ‘I was trying to get something for all of us. If I’d known I was going to be a father—’ He broke off suddenly, overcome by emotion, and covered his face in his hands.

‘For pity’s sake, tell me how she is,’ he said in a strangled voice after a few moments. ‘Surely I’m entitled to that much?’

Theo stood at the ward door, looking at Beth through the small glass panel. She was lying on her side in the bed, one arm hiding her face, and he knew she was crying. He braced himself to enter the room, hoping that when he took her in his arms he’d be able to find the right words to comfort her.

His face was sore from Jack’s punch a few hours earlier, but not as sore as his heart. He couldn’t claim ever to have thought how it would be to become a father, yet he felt unbearably sad that he’d unwittingly created a baby with Beth and now it had gone.

Pushing the door open, he took a deep breath and walked in. Beth moved her arm from her face and he saw her eyes were red and swollen.

‘You poor darling,’ he said softly. ‘I’m so sorry I wasn’t here with you yesterday.’

Her expression was so bleak he couldn’t bear to see it. ‘You should have told me,’ he said as he leaned over her and scooped her into his arms. ‘I love you, Beth, I know I don’t always show you, but you shouldn’t have kept this from me.’

‘They said I nearly died,’ she sobbed against his chest. ‘I wish I had, Theo. What is there for me in the future without ever having a child to love?’

‘We don’t know for certain that’s true,’ Theo said, and tears ran down his cheeks too. ‘We’ll see another doctor, we’ll make it come right.’

‘There are some things that can’t be made right,’ she said, her voice muffled against his chest.

Instinct told Theo that she felt she had been punished for having sexual relations with a man she wasn’t married to. ‘I don’t believe that,’ he said. ‘I’ll take care of you, and when you’re well again, everything will look different, you’ll see. We’ll get married one day and we’ll go home to England to see Molly. Even if we can’t have another baby, we’ll still have each other.’

She just cried against his chest, and he felt powerless to ease her pain. What could he say? He’d never hungered to have a child, he doubted any man did. He could understand Beth’s grief and disappointment, but he couldn’t presume to know how it felt.

‘I’m so sorry,’ he whispered. ‘Sorry that I haven’t taken better care of you. Sorry that I didn’t tell you often enough that I love you. And I’m so very sorry we lost our baby. But don’t give up on me, Beth. Things may look bleak now, but they’ll get better. I promise you that much.’

Chapter Twenty-four

June 1897

‘Break out of it, sis, I’m sick of seeing that sad face!’

Beth blushed with embarrassment, for Sam’s voice seemed to boom around the railway carriage.

‘Why don’t you shout a little louder?’ she retorted sarcastically. ‘I’m sure that the people right at the back would like to hear too.’

‘Sorry,’ he said, looking abashed. ‘I didn’t realize I was shouting. But it seems like years since I heard you laugh or even sound excited about anything. We’ve come clean across Canada and seen so much; we’ll be in Vancouver tonight, so can’t you just perk up?’

‘Scrubbing floors, washing up and waiting on tables were hardly things to get excited about,’ she said waspishly. ‘If you can guarantee Vancouver will be better, then I might start laughing again.’

‘Maybe you’ll get a chance to play your fiddle there.’ Beth forced herself to smile. ‘Maybe, but excuse me if I don’t count on it.’

It was four months since she lost her baby, and physically she had recovered from it within a week. But hearing she would never have another child left her totally dispirited. Sometimes she stayed in bed all day, she didn’t care if the room was dirty or untidy, and when she did venture out, she avoided speaking to anyone.

Theo couldn’t have been kinder in those first three or four weeks. He brought her home delicacies, tonics, fresh fruit and chocolates, he took her out on a horse-drawn sleigh up on Mount Royal, and bought her a new dress from one of the best shops in Sherbrooke Street. Many evenings he stayed at home with her, and but for that she might have lapsed into permanent melancholy.

She was glad when the boys suggested moving on. She felt as soon as she was seeing new scenery and meeting new people that her old spirit would return.

They left Montreal by train in late March, when it was still very cold and the rivers still frozen, but spring was on its way. Theo’s theory was that the new railway running all the way across Canada to Vancouver would have created some boom towns along the route. He was right in as much as small towns
had
sprung up wherever the train stopped, but they weren’t the kind to yield the kind of opportunities Theo had hoped for.

A saloon, usually doubling as a hotel, dried goods, clothing and hardware shops, a timber yard, stabling and a blacksmith were about all most of these towns had to offer. The immigrants who had bought farmland in these remote places were sober, diligent and staid, not the kind to gamble with hard-earned money. Beth thought the only way to make a quick fortune in these towns would be to bring in bolts of dress material, hats and other luxuries to sell, for most of the women were starved of anything pretty to wear.

Yet leaving Montreal had been good for her. She had stopped dwelling on never having another child, and found the energy to work when the opportunity arose. She began to care about how she looked again, and kept up practice on her fiddle.

In most places they stopped at, the boys usually managed to find some kind of casual work, on farms, at logging camps and in sawmills. In one town Sam had helped a boot repairer out and earned nearly forty dollars. But for Beth the only work available was cleaning, laundry and occasionally some farm work, seeding and hoeing out weeds. Sometimes she had to stay alone in a rooming house while the boys stayed in the bunkhouse wherever they were working, so she was lonely too.

She had played her fiddle a few times in saloons, but although she got wild applause, her audience’s appreciation didn’t run to more than a few dimes in the hat. It was hard not to think back to New York and Philadelphia, and how good it had felt to be making a living doing what she loved best of all. She feared she would never get the chance to do so again.

Yet for all the disappointments, hardships and anxieties, it had been, as Sam said, an incredible journey right across this huge country, and the astounding scenery had staggered her at every turn: snow-capped mountains, vast lakes and pine forests, tumbling waterfalls, prairies that stretched almost to infinity. She could hardly believe that her world had once been confined to Church Street in Liverpool, and that a park was her idea of wide open space.

The reason for her long face today was simply weariness. She was tired of the nomadic life, tired too of approaching a new town and seeing the boys get excited, only to leave in disappointment a few days later. She felt unable to raise any enthusiasm for Vancouver as she was sure it would be no different to anywhere else.