The Silk Factory (25 page)

No, Stamford was of quite a different ilk. This sudden silence made him fear the worst. With a sigh, he picked up the brass hand bell from his desk and rang for the clerk to bring in the next complainant.

Effie made her way down the hill in the glaring heat, feeling dizzy and sick. The tightenings in her belly, which had started while she waited in the anteroom, had not gone away and as another came she stopped and put out her hand to lean against the wall. Beulah would not be free for many hours: in the summer months the factory didn’t turn out until the light began to fail. She thought of going down to the centre of the village to seek peace and coolness in the church but was prevented by her awareness of her graceless state. If the parson found her there she would not be able to lie to him about her trouble and he would surely say that she was not fit for the House of God.

She crossed the swing bridge over the canal, walked on past the corner of the arsenal and turned into the water meadows that divided it from the village, to find shade by the river. The pasture was full of cowpats and thistles, the infant river meandering through it in a channel that cut deep into the sandy banks in places but widened at the bends, where shallower water ran trickling over weed and stones, and muddy flats were churned by hoof prints where cattle had gathered to drink.

She took shelter in a copse beside the stream, the trees dwarfed by the massive arsenal wall on the slope above them, which stretched westward, unbroken as far as the eye could see. She spread her shawl on the bank, at the roots of a crooked wild cherry tree that overhung the stream. She sat down and watched the pale midges dancing in the shade beside her. It had been a long time since she’d eaten so she unwrapped her bundle to find the bread she’d packed, but when she looked upon it she found she had no appetite and left it where it was. How pitiful the jumble of objects seemed, spread out on the blanket: the clock face out of place as it looked up into the branches of the tree; the tangle of clothes a paltry covering against the strength of the elements; the beautiful gloves with their slim fingers and leather-covered buttons a ridiculous vanity.

She folded the shawl carefully, and put it behind her against the tree so that she could lean back and maybe doze. There was a dull ache in her back and pelvis, like the cramps she used to get each month when she bled, and she couldn’t get comfortable. The tightening came again, this time all around her middle, front to back, making her draw in her breath. She tried sitting up straight and then subsided again, leaning back on her elbows, but it made no difference; the pain gripped her until it was ready to let go and then melted away regardless of the position she adopted. Letting out a long breath, she scrambled to her feet, no longer wanting to be still. She paced restlessly along the thin beaten path that ran alongside the river, only stopping when she reached the cattle ford with its mud and mess, then fast back again, not knowing what to do with herself or which way to turn. She stood stock still as another pain engulfed her, holding her belly with her arms folded across it; this time the pain encircled her like a girdle pulled too tight and it left her dizzy and breathless as it faded away. She shook her head as if to free herself from it and knelt beside the blanket, refolding the clothes, pairing the gloves and setting all back neatly to rights. The clock, which had read three o’clock, read only ten minutes past the hour. Yet she had suffered two pains in that time, two deep, cramping pains. She felt faint and put her hands down on to the grassy bank and her head down, a sweaty chill coming over her. She crawled to the edge and vomited into the flowing water. Frightened now, she made a whimpering sound. She wanted to go home. She would get Beulah to take her. Passing her forearm over her mouth, she sat back upon her heels. Tears stung her eyes as she remembered she could not go home; the cottage would be barred against her.

She gathered up her shawl and bundle and stood slowly, pushing herself upright with one hand on her thigh. She must make her way to the silk factory, getting along as best she could between the pains. Beulah would have to help her find a carter to take her to Newnham. The workhouse would have to take them in. There was nowhere else left to go.

Beulah was coming out of the scullery with her empty basket, ready to fetch more mulberry leaves, when her sister came round the corner of the building, bent over like an old woman and with one hand grasping at the wall as if it were the only thing keeping her upright. Beulah ran. ‘Effie! Effie, what is it? What ails you?’ she said as she reached her and pulled Effie’s arm over her shoulder. Effie shook her head, unable to speak, her face the colour of uncooked dough, and Beulah knew that she had been right; Effie was sick – terribly sick. ‘Quick, down here.’ With a rapid glance to check for Mrs Gundy, she helped her sister inside and down the cellar steps. There she froze, for at the worm beds, with her back to them, stood Alice, counting the number of cocoons in the fanned twigs of broom and the number of new worms that had started to spin. Effie put her hand to her mouth, overcome by the close heat from the stove, the torrential sound of the feeding worms and the fusty, unpleasant smell of sweet herbs overlaying decay.

‘You’ve been dawdling again, Beulah,’ Alice said, without looking up. ‘Get on and feed them quickly; they’re running short of fodder.’ When there was neither answer nor movement she turned and her jaw dropped.

‘My sister’s sick. I think she’s really sick,’ Beulah babbled. ‘I don’t know what to do!’

‘Well, she can’t stop here. The master’s not paid his visit yet,’ Alice said. ‘Get her out.’

Effie, squeezing Beulah’s shoulder so hard that it hurt, looked pleadingly at Alice. ‘My time’s come,’ she said.

Alice stared at her stonily for a moment. She stepped forward, pulled Effie’s arm away from her stomach, spread her hand flat and pressed it against her belly.

‘I’m barely six months gone. ’Tis too early, surely?’ Effie said desperately.

Alice looked grim.

‘Can you stop it?’

Alice gave the slightest shake of her head. ‘’Tis too late for that.’

As a new wave of pain took her, Effie gasped, dropped her bundle and bent forward with her hands upon her knees. Alice cast around the cellar and pulled together a heap of empty kindling sacks to cover the cold brick floor. Between them, Alice and Beulah lowered Effie down. Alice pulled up Effie’s skirts and Beulah saw that her petticoat and underclothes were wet. Alice began to strip them off. ‘Go to the kitchen,’ she ordered. ‘Fetch scissors and string and as many cloths as will not be missed.’

Beulah hesitated. Effie was moaning, ‘I can’t! I can’t!’ her head turning from side to side and her hand gripping Alice’s arm.

‘What’s wrong with her?’ Beulah whispered.

Alice snorted. ‘Nothing that won’t be righted shortly. Now, run!’

Beulah hurried to the kitchen door and hid behind it, peeping through the crack. Mrs Gundy was sweeping the floor, stopping now and then to spread tea leaves before her to collect the dust and stop it from rising. Beulah waited in an agony of anxiety, willing Mrs Gundy to be done and go. She wanted to fulfil her task if it would help Effie but why had Alice asked her to fetch these things? What possible use could they be? What was Alice going to do to her? Effie needed a doctor – medicine! Mrs Gundy bent down, groaning, to brush the sweepings into a pan. Beulah danced from foot to foot in frustration as the woman moved heavily over to the table and began to sprinkle it with soda. Halfway through scrubbing it, the master’s bell, high on the wall, rang and she stopped working and wiped her hands on her apron. It rang again, harder and more insistently, and, grumbling, she left the room. Beulah darted from her hiding place and gathered the items she’d been sent for from table and dresser drawers.

When she returned to the cellar, it took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dim light that filtered in through the barred windows. Effie was squatting on the pile of sacks, tangled drawers and petticoat, her arm around Alice’s shoulders. Her skirts were bunched up around her waist, her pale legs exposed to the thigh. Not knowing what else to do, Beulah laid the haul from the kitchen down beside Alice, who said, ‘Get the other side of her. Let her lean on you.’

As she took her place, Beulah asked Effie how she fared but she didn’t reply, didn’t even seem aware that it was Beulah by her side. Effie was making strange noises, sometimes panting, sometimes giving a long, deep, animal moan so that Alice told her to hush up and hold her noise and Effie pressed her lips together hard and clenched her teeth to trap the sound inside. Her face turned red and sweaty and she began to make
grunting
noises that reminded Beulah of the sow in the yard. Whenever she groaned and grunted, Alice said, ‘Bear down,’ and put her hand down between Effie’s legs so that Beulah looked away, embarrassed.

Alice, now on her knees, shuffled round to be in front of Effie, who still leant on Beulah’s shoulder. She reached between Effie’s legs, bunching up the folds of the petticoat beneath her as something dark and wet came out of her, retreated and appeared again. As it emerged once more, Beulah saw Alice pull gently on it until she got it free, and then again on an angular shape so that, as Effie gave a long, low cry, the whole came slithering out, with a great deal of blood, into the cotton petticoat, partly covered in a shiny membrane thinner than muslin. Alice opened the remains of the birth sac with her fingers and Beulah stared at what looked at first like a skinned rabbit ready for the pot, with a pale grey slippery rope attached. Alice wrapped a cloth around it. Effie lay back, leaning on her elbows and Alice pressed one hand at the bottom of her abdomen and pulled gently on the cord so that something dark, bloody and horrible slid out. The grey-white cord pulsated as if a heart were beating within it but there was no movement from the creature curled in the cloth. Beulah, thinking of the things that Effie said to comfort her, murmured, ‘There, ’tis all done now. ’Tis all over with.’ She pushed the damp strands of hair that were stuck to Effie’s forehead back off her face.

‘Is it safely delivered? Let me see it!’ Effie said.

Alice worked deftly with string and scissors to separate the infant from the afterbirth, her lips pressed together in a thin line of concentration, saying never a word to Effie.

‘Give it to me,’ Effie said, her voice loud and hoarse. She strained forward to see.

Alice put it into Effie’s arms, saying, ‘It’s a boy.’ She bundled the mess up in a sack and went to the stove. She pushed it in on top of the dying embers of coals, and flames began to lick the sacking, which twisted and shrivelled, its contents hissing. A sickening, meaty smell filled the cellar.

Beulah looked down at the newborn. It didn’t look like any of the babies she’d seen. The babies that the women carried in shawls tied around them at harvest time were pink and rounded. This one was half the size, with thin, stick-like arms and legs, and its skin was mottled and translucent so that you could see the veins beneath. She gazed into its face. Its eyes were tight shut, the eyelids huge and swollen; its nose was squashed to one side and its lips were wide. The head was pointy with a swollen area on top, squeezed and elongated in the birth. She thought it quite ugly.

Effie cupped the infant’s swollen head in one hand, passing the other hand all over its body, stroking and murmuring over it. She opened its fist, no bigger than a walnut, and touched its palm. Its fingers curled but did not grip. Beulah thought that she wouldn’t choose to touch it. Its body was all smeared with blood and was greasy-looking, with white stuff in the folds of its skin – skin that seemed somehow too big for its bones.

Effie cradled it in the crook of her arm and then bent and blew gently into its face. Its eyes remained shut. Its brow didn’t wrinkle. She began rubbing its limbs again, harder this time, lifting each arm and chafing it between her palms, but when she let them go they fell back, floppy as a rag doll’s. She hugged it to her breast and rocked back and forth, looking up at Alice in appeal.

Alice took the baby from her, lifting it from its wrappings. She held it up by the heels. It dangled from her hands. ‘There’s no life in it,’ she said.

Beulah saw the last vestige of hope pass from her sister’s eyes. Effie’s face crumpled and a high, keening cry escaped her lips.

Alice took the cloth from Effie’s slack fingers, wrapped it around the still form and pushed it into Beulah’s arms. ‘We need to get rid of it,’ she said under her breath. Her eyes flicked to the stove.

Aghast, Beulah held the warm bundle tightly against her and shrank back.

‘Take it then, ’tis not my kin and no business of mine,’ Alice hissed. ‘I don’t care how you do it but go and get rid of it. Do you want the whole village to know your sister’s shame?’ Alice knelt beside Effie and rested a hand awkwardly on her shoulder. ‘Shush, shush,’ she said; then more urgently, ‘Don’t take on so; you’ll have the master down here. Do you want us to lose our positions?’

As Beulah moved away with the baby in her arms, Effie called out, ‘Jack! Jack!’ and tried to rise. Alice caught hold of her arm; she fell back weakly against the sacks and sobbed hopelessly with her head in her hands.

Beulah laid the bundle in her basket. Her hands would not stop shaking but she forced herself to grasp the handle and lift it. She must carry it as if it were empty, as if this were any normal trip to replenish the worms’ food, on any normal afternoon. She went quietly up the cellar steps, listening at the door before venturing into the scullery. Behind her, she heard Alice saying grimly to Effie, ‘This is how we’ll proceed. As soon as I’ve cleaned you up and you’ve rested a little, I shall catch one of the carters and you can pay him to take you home. You have money?’