Obsession (7 page)

‘We’ll be perfectly safe, Bessie!’ Harriet had said. ‘It’s not as if we will be crossing the ocean to America, which has not long since been in the thick of a civil war.’

With a frightening crash, the roof suddenly collapsed inwards and sparks shot high into the air. There was a horrified shout from the onlookers.

‘We can’t stay here,’ Harriet said, shivering in spite of the scorching heat from the burning building. ‘This is such a big, busy city – there must be another inn close by. We should make our way now before others have the same notion and hire the rooms before we get there. Tomorrow, at first light, you can come back to see if any of our valises have been saved, which I fear is most unlikely. If not, Miss Una will provide us with everything we need when we arrive tomorrow. Thanks to your father’s advice, we have enough money in my skirt to pay for a room and for our ferry passages, and we will be safe with Miss Una by nightfall.’

They stayed for a short while longer, watching the firemen trying ineffectually to contain the blaze lest it spread to adjacent buildings. In their scanty attire, the warmth of the fire was welcome as a cold breeze had arisen which was fanning the flames. One of the other occupants spoke to them, bemoaning the disaster, and who had, like themselves, lost his belongings.

‘I think we should not remain here a moment longer!’ Harriet repeated quietly to Bessie. ‘We will walk until we find a likely inn to take us in.’

At first, they were obliged to force their way through the crowds who had gathered in the street to gaze at the fire. Above the roar of the flames and the crash of falling wood, they could still hear the whinnying of the frightened horses being led from the stables on the opposite side of the cobbled courtyard. The sounds followed Harriet and Bessie as they turned into a less crowded street. Here, the gas in the street lamps had been turned lower, and Bessie shivered, saying, ‘I think we should go back to the main street, Miss Harriet. It is quite deserted here, and there is no sign of an inn.’

Harriet sighed. She was feeling very tired and retrospectively distressed by the recent frightening events, and knew that it would take them at least another ten minutes to retrace their steps to the main thoroughfare. She agreed with Bessie that this narrow, poorly lit backstreet was an unlikely place to find the refuge they were seeking. Had it been daytime, she thought, they could have asked passers-by for directions, but there was no sign of life other than the sound of a dog barking in the distance.

They were not far from the turning when without warning three shadowy figures suddenly appeared from the darkness and approached them with arms uplifted in a threatening manner.

‘Give us yer purse!’ one said in a coarse, guttural tone.

‘And yer jools!’ barked another with a jeering laugh.

‘We haven’t got any money or jewellery!’ Bessie cried.

‘We’ve lost everything in the fire – the one you can see glowing in the sky over in the next street!’

The arm she now lifted to point to the conflagration was without warning brutally hit down by one of the three assailants as he tried to make certain that she had nothing hidden on her person. The thieves now began swearing as they discovered that the two females they hoped to rob were without property of any kind.

Harriet stepped forward between Bessie and the man who was threatening her. ‘Don’t you dare hit my maid again!’ she commanded. ‘She was telling you the truth. We have nothing but the clothes we are wearing, and this …’ She took off her wedding ring and handed it to him. ‘Now leave us alone or I shall shout for a constable. We saw one just now walking towards the fire,’ she lied.

It was the last thing Harriet would say before she fell to the ground as a heavy blow thundered into the back of her head. When she regained consciousness, she was lying in the gutter. Blood was beginning to congeal from the wound in the back of her head and was colouring her clothes. A burly constable was trying to lift her to her feet. He blew his whistle for assistance and shook his head, assuming that the bedraggled young woman was one of the many who walked the streets of Liverpool, plying their trade more often than not to sailors. There was no sign of Bessie.

When further help arrived, it was decided Harriet should be taken in an ambulance to hospital, but then, realizing it might be overflowing with casualties from the fire, they began to doubt if there would be room for this woman. Concerned about the amount of blood she was losing, from down her legs as well as from her head, they reached an agreement that, the hospital being too far away as well as over full, the best hope for her survival would be the nearby Convent of the Sacred Heart, which was not ten minutes distant. It was well known that the nuns there take care of anyone in need – even a streetwalker. They were renowned for caring for the poor and destitute, even harlots like this young woman who was without proper clothing and appeared to have no money. Clearly she had been robbed of any she might have had upon her person. Knifings, robberies and drunken fights were commonplace during their night-time shifts patrolling the maze of dark streets bordering the docks. This was undoubtedly one of them.

It was three-and-a-half weeks before Harriet recovered from the coma she had been in. She opened her eyes to see a tall, slim woman in a nun’s habit standing at the foot of her bed, watching her. Beside the bed was another nun, round-faced with kindly forget-me-not blue eyes, who was holding a cup of water to Harriet’s lips.

‘So you were right, Sister Brigitte!’ the first one said. ‘Your patient has finally recovered her senses!’ Her voice was quite harsh, and without knowing why, Harriet felt a stab of fear. Then the one who had been addressed as Sister Brigitte gently wiped her mouth with a white napkin and smiled as she asked, ‘Are you feeling a little better, dear?’

‘My head hurts!’ Harriet whispered. ‘And my stomach!’

‘Not to be wondered at!’ said the tall nun, her mouth tightening. ‘God punishes those who sin as he thinks fit.’

Not sure what she meant, Harriet closed her eyes and drifted back – not into her previous coma, but into a deep sleep. When she woke again, the room was in near darkness, only a single candle giving a glimmer of light from a table by the window. Above it, Harriet saw a framed picture of Jesus on the Cross. Somewhere at the back of her mind she recalled seeing a nun – two nuns. The room, bare of anything but necessities, was unfamiliar, as was everything around her.

She called for Bessie, who she knew would explain things to her – why she was here and what they were doing in this strange place, but no Bessie answered her call. Instead, the tall, thin nun came into the room and stood by the bedside.

‘Please, can you tell me where I am?’ Harriet asked. ‘And could you kindly call Bessie for me?’

Ignoring Harriet’s request, the nun came closer to the bed. ‘You may call me Sister Mary Frances,’ she announced. ‘I am in charge of the infirmary in our Convent of the Sacred Heart, and you are very fortunate indeed to have been found and brought here. Sister Brigitte has remained at your bedside every night for the past three weeks. We have all been praying for your recovery if such was God’s will. Frankly, we thought He was going to take you, but Doctor told us there was a chance you would come out of the coma you were in.’

She turned to pick up a note book from the bedside table. ‘If you feel well enough, perhaps you would kindly answer a few questions. That …’ she pointed to Harriet’s dress hanging on a hook on one of the walls, ‘… that …’ she repeated in a tone of disgust, ‘… is the only garment you were wearing when you were found, other than your cloak.’

She stared down at Harriet, her eyes steely as she continued, ‘We reached the conclusion that you had probably been thrown out of one of your customer’s houses for not carrying out the ungodly duties for which you were being paid; that they beat you over the head to punish you. Young women like you,’ she added scornfully, ‘must know the risks you take when you decide to ply your trade on the streets. You will consider yourself fortunate, I imagine, to be rid of your poor, innocent baby?’

Unable to make sense of what Sister Mary Frances was saying, Harriet stared up at her. Was this a dream, she asked herself before saying, ‘What baby? I have no baby!’

‘No, young woman, you miscarried the unfortunate child that was in your womb.’

‘You mean I have had another miscarriage?’ Harriet said faintly, now sure that she must be dreaming.

‘Yes, a miscarriage!’ Sister Mary Frances said scathingly. ‘Did it not once occur to you, when you plied your disgusting trade, that you might endanger the innocent life of your unborn child? You truly deserve whatever punishments God chooses to mete out to you, young woman …’

Harriet stopped listening. There was only one conscious thought in her mind – not that this nun seemed to think she was a harlot but that she’d had a miscarriage and must, therefore, have been pregnant when she left home despite her certainty that this had not been the case. When
had
she left home? Why? Where was Brook …?

Her mind came to a halt as a fresh set of anxieties beset her. She remembered now that she and Bessie had been on their way to Ireland – to stay with Una. If she had known for certain that she was once more carrying Brook’s child, she would never have risked a fourth miscarriage – not when both she and Brook had begun to wonder if they would ever have a live son or daughter. It was not even that her figure had changed or that she had noticeably put on weight.

If it was true that she had had an early miscarriage, she must never tell Brook. He would be angry that she had risked losing yet another baby by journeying so far. She closed her eyes, but the nun’s sharp questioning fought through her desire not to listen.

‘Who are you? What is your name? Who is this Bessie you called for so often? Do you not know who fathered your child? Why else were you trying to get money? Was the man not willing to have the finger pointed at him? I want some answers, young woman. You are here because we are sworn to Pity and Charity, but it tries me that with our limited resources we must be charitable to wicked young women like you …’

As Harriet now drifted back into sleep, she heard another voice – a quieter, gentler one saying in a soft Irish brogue, ‘She is still very poorly, Sister Mary Frances. I think we should allow her to sleep now. I will sit with her, and when she wakes up, I will give her some food. Then, when she is stronger, I will question her for you.’

In the days that followed, it was the kindly Sister Brigitte in whom Harriet longed to confide, but she dared not mention her name or where she lived. If the nuns were ever to find out, they might – almost certainly would – ask Brook to send them money for the care they had been giving her. He would learn of her miscarriage brought on by her own unwillingness to remain at Hunters Hall alone. She could not expect him to believe – indeed, she could barely do so herself – that she had shut her mind to the possibility that she may have been with child in his absence. If she were totally honest with herself, there had been
some
tell-tale signs but she had ignored them, assuring herself it could not be so since she had none of the usual discomforts she’d suffered in the past. What saddened her most of all now was that Sister Brigitte told her that her unborn child had been a boy – the son Brook had so much wanted.

Memory of the fire and the thieves’ attack slowly returned in full, but she made no mention of it to either nun, lest they somehow traced her name through the landlord of the inn where she and Bessie had stayed. Knowing Brook could never discover what had occurred, her only certainty was to go on insisting that she had no memory of events. All Harriet told them was that she had a sister living near Dublin whose name she could not recall but with whom she would go to stay when she was well enough; that although she could recall the short route from the port to her sister’s house, try as she might, she could not recollect its name either.

After several weeks, a doctor came to examine her and told the nuns that the wound on her head had healed and she could, therefore, leave the convent as soon as she felt strong enough to do so.

Harriet now revealed through necessity the existence of the coins, undiscovered by her assailants, sewn into the hem of her dress. As Sister Brigitte unstitched the hem for her, Harriet pondered yet again over the unexplained absence of Bessie. Surely, she told herself, if Bessie had managed to run away from the thieves who had attacked them, she would by now have found her way somehow to Harriet’s side? The two policemen, who Sister Brigitte told her had carried her to the convent that fateful night, would have been able to tell Bessie what had happened to her. Was it therefore likely that she had been more seriously hurt or, God forbid, killed?

At night Harriet found it hard to sleep, fearing that some other dreadful fate had overtaken her faithful maid. It brought fresh tears to her eyes when remembering that it was thanks to Bessie’s insistence upon hiding the money in her skirt that she could still pay for her passage to Ireland. Sister Brigitte had reassured her that only a small amount would be deducted for her keep and care.

Sister Brigitte tried to soften the harsh words Sister Mary Frances used whenever she visited Harriet’s sick room. The gentle Irish nun had realized from Harriet’s speech that before her fall from grace she had come from a well-to-do family. She wondered if the unfortunate girl had brought disgrace on them by running away from home. Why else, she pondered, would a well-bred girl like Harriet have need to earn money on the streets? And if she were not earning a living that way, why did she not deny it? Sister Brigitte had asked all her fellow sisters to pray for Harriet, and to dedicate a special Mass to fallen young women like her. Sister Mary Frances, conversely, gave Harriet a prayer book and a book about the saints to read, whilst bemoaning the fact that Harriet was not of the Catholic faith and would not go to Confession, so would remain unpardoned.

Once again, it was the kindly Sister Brigitte who counteracted such lectures by telling Harriet that God was kind to sinners, and that if she prayed for forgiveness, He would grant it even if she was not of their faith.