Trio - [4]

The girl seemed shy, jiggling one leg as she talked, unable to look at Joan for long without glancing away. She was bonny, a big-boned girl with a broad face and large, chocolate-brown eyes that made you think of an animal; something trusting like a dog or calf.

‘I’ll unpack then.’ She was probably not expected to stop and natter.

The girl nodded. ‘Tea's at half past.’ She slipped out of the door.

Joan sat heavily on the edge of her bed and took a deep breath. She would be here until May, maybe June. The room had cream wallpaper with pink roses on, quite nice. At the doorway there was a holy-water holder, the cup of water at the feet of a small statuette of Our Lady. On the wall opposite the beds, a picture of Christ the Redeemer, arms flung wide in welcome.

With a sigh Joan turned and lifted her case on to the bed.

She put her underwear and nightdress in the small drawer in the bedside table and hung her second-best suit and two maternity frocks in the wardrobe. It smelt musty and she wondered how clean the other clothes were, a shabby dress and coat and a pinafore dress. She had a small vanity case with her as well as writing paper, stamps and envelopes, a prayer book and a rosary.

The three of them had been thrown together and in the days that followed she had come to enjoy Megan’s irrepressible spirit and to feel protective towards Caroline, who was so patently unhappy. Now they tended to sit upstairs even though they could have joined the other girls in the sitting room, where there was a fire and the wireless to listen to for an hour in the evening. As long as the Sisters regarded the programmes broadcast as acceptable for their charges.

They were all so different but here they were, hidden away in St Ann’s; good catholic girls gone bad. She got her nightdress out and changed quickly. There was no heating in the bedroom and it was a cold March night. Two more months, Joan told herself, and it will all be over.

Caroline

Her mother had brought her here. Getting the bus into Manchester and then out again south to the home. There was a place nearer them – St Monica’s – but her mam argued that it was too close.

‘Tongues’ll be tittle-tattling,’ she said. ‘This way no one will set eyes on you. We’ll say you’re visiting Dulcie in Sheffield, helping with the twins.’

Twins. Ran in families. Could she be having twins? Not one baby but two? It was all done and dusted according to her mam. After the first awful shock, when she’d seen Mam’s face go white as fish, her eyes hollow out with dismay.

‘Oh, Caroline,’ she’d said, and the gentle reproach was harder to bear than the harsh words that followed.

All the how could yous and this familys, the respectables and let us downs, the ruin and calamity. And she fancied after that that when her mam looked at her she saw dirt, a soiled creature. A disappointment. Her dad was told and when he came home and found her in the scullery he left the house. After that he ignored her most of the time and if he did have to speak it was with a cold sting in his words. She had lost his love overnight.

Caroline had wept to her mam and begged forgiveness but when talk turned practical and her mam started to organise her stay at St Ann’s, then a small fierce voice had winkled its way out.

‘I want to keep the baby,’ she cried.

‘Caroline, you can’t,’ her mam cried in horror, wheeling round from the lowered wooden creel where she was hanging the washing to dry. She seemed more shocked at this suggestion than she had been at the pregnancy in the first place.

‘Have you any idea…’ Mam broke off, speechless at her daughter’s folly, slapping the wet shirt in her hands on the table in frustration. ‘Where would you live? You couldn’t live here. Oh, no -’ she shook her head fiercely – ‘you can throw your own life away, you can condemn your baby to the most miserable existence, but you’ll not drag us down with you.’

‘I could get a room.’

‘Not with a baby,’ her mother snorted. ‘No one would have you. You’d end up beggin’ on the streets, or worse.’

‘l could work,’ she retorted.

‘And who would care for the baby?’

‘Well…’ She struggled for solutions. Was it so impossible?

She tugged at her nail, thinking desperately, tears soaking her cheeks.

‘Think of the child,’ her mam urged, ‘growing up a bastard.’ The word like a slap. ‘Is that what you want?’

‘Caroline -’ she put down the shirt, moved to put her hands on her daughter’s shoulders – ‘if you care for this baby you’ll want the best for it, a good home, a happy family. A future. You can’t give it that. There are people out there desperate for a little one. Good people. It’s the only way.’

She pulled away then, devastated. She didn’t go to her room but ran out the back and walked up the ridge that ran behind the house. She relished the cold wind that stung her eyes. Digging her nails deep into her palms she strode half-seeing, her nose running so she had to wipe at it every few yards. She went as far as the first outcrop of rocks, Little Craven, and sat in the dip in the weathered stone that the children called the armchair. Facing away from the hamlet and the city in the distance she let her eyes roam across the moors to the peaks beyond. The first snows had reached the tops and she fancied she could smell snow in the air in among the bitter tang of the heather. She sat there until dusk drifted down while the chimneys behind were all smoking and the sheep bleated more loudly. She watched the clouds darken to purple and heard the clatter of the train in the next valley.