Alone Beneath The Heaven Read online

  Alone Beneath the Heaven

  RITA BRADSHAW

  headline

  www.headline.co.uk

  Copyright © 1998 Rita Bradshaw

  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

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Part One - The Child: 1937

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Part Two - Fighting Back: 1947

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  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.’

  ‘Nor do I.’

  ‘I’m going to tell Matron it wasn’t me who broke that plate, I am you know.’ Sarah Brown widened her eyes at her best friend and confidante, who took the hint and gave a suitably awe-filled response.

  ‘You’re not, Sarah, I wouldn’t dare. She won’t believe you, you know Mary’s her favourite and the sun shines out of her bum. You’ll just get into more trouble.’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  The two little girls, each in the sombre uniform of faded blue dress and starched white pinafore the institution demanded, were in the middle of a crocodile of identically attired children being marched round the stone-slabbed quadrangle by a grim faced ‘Mother’. Sarah liked some of the Mothers: home-helpers who were as much prisoners of the Home as the children were, if the truth be known; but the one leading them that morning she hated with a vengeance, an emotion which was fully reciprocated by the woman in question. Florence Shawe was ugly; not just plain - ugly, and her small hooded eyes, set either side of a nose that was little more than a beak, could hardly bear to focus on the beautiful little elfin child who had been a thorn in the thin spinster’s side from the day Sarah had come into the main house from the foundling nursery four years before.

  ‘Don’t care was made to care.’ Rebecca imparted this piece of wisdom with one eye on the silent figure leading the procession. Mother Shawe had it in for Sarah this morning and she’d try and catch them talking if she could, and then that would mean standing in a corner of the big hall with their backs to the others all lunchtime, and no dinner. And it wasn’t fair - Mother Shawe was always picking on Sarah and getting her into trouble.

  ‘Huh.’

  The careless shrug of the shoulders and defiant tilt to Sarah’s blond head didn’t fool Rebecca. Sarah was just as scared of Matron as the rest of them but she wouldn’t admit it. Rebecca decided it was safer to try and pour oil on troubled waters; as Sarah’s best friend she had learned any trouble had a way of working back down to her eventually. But it was worth it to be Sarah’s friend, Rebecca thought now, covertly eyeing Sarah’s angry face. She didn’t know what she’d do without Sarah. She put out a hand and gripped Sarah’s fingers as she said, ‘Let’s forget about them all now, eh?’ She tried a placatory smile. ‘We can get Mary back later, but with Mother Shawe on her side Matron won’t believe you didn’t do it, and you’ve had your five strokes.’ Which had been applied with relish on the back of Sarah’s bare legs by Florence Shawe wielding the long thin cane kept for punishing unruly or disobedient children.

  ‘I hate her.’ Whether her friend was referring to Mary or Mother Shawe Rebecca didn’t enquire. They had completed their ten circles of the quadrangle, which passed as morning exercise, and were now filing into the building for morning lessons, bringing them fully under the eagle-eyed scrutiny of Florence as she stood with sergeant-major stiffness in the doorway.

  Sarah had found, in her short life, that once a day started badly it got worse, and this day was no exception. First Mary Owen had knocked her breakfast plate off the refectory table on purpose and then said it was her, just because she’d done better at sewing the day before and finished her sampler. And Mother Shawe had taken Mary’s side, although she knew the Mother had seen what had really happened. She hadn’t even eaten her slice of bread and jam either. A low growl from her stomach pressed home the unfairness of life as she tramped up the wooden stairs to the large classroom on the first floor, and the smarting from the raised weals on the backs of her legs seemed to increase a hundredfold.

  And now it was arithmetic all morning and she hated arithmetic, and Mother McLevy was ill and so they had to have Mother Shawe all day . . . She wished it was a Saturday so she could work outside in the vegetable garden; she never minded getting her hands dirty like some of the girls did, and she liked talking to the boys too. It was silly that they had to be in a different building to the boys, she’d found boys were much more interesting than girls. They never moaned about getting tired or having dirt in their nails, and they didn’t go all loolah if a wasp flew by or they dug a worm up. Not like Mary Owen . . . The thought returned her mind to her old enemy.

  Perhaps it was better it wasn’t a Saturday after all. Mary was always worse on a Saturday when her mam visited, crowing over Sarah just because she’d got a mam and aunties and things. Well, she wouldn’t want a mam who looked like Mary’s - all fat and dirty and with bright orange hair. The thought was without conviction. The sick empty feeling that always accompanied reminders of her own lack of parentage rose as bile in her throat.

  Her mam and da had been rich anyway, and they’d all lived in a big house with servants and everyone for miles around had looked for her when she’d been stolen out of her perambulator by
the gypsies. She could remember her perambulator, it had been big and all pink and soft, and she’d had a solid silver rattle hanging from a ribbon attached to the satin-lined hood. She nodded to herself. She had told herself the story so often it was now unshakeable fact in her mind. And her mam and da were still looking for her, every day they looked for her and her mam would cry buckets, and one day they would drive up to the Home in a great big car, shiny with gleaming brass lamps on the front, and they would walk into the refectory when they were all eating and her mam would shout, ‘That’s my child’, and they’d all go home. And everyone who’d ever been nasty to her would wish they hadn’t when they saw how rich she was, and she’d have her friends for tea . . .

  The story always went one of two ways here, depending on her mood. Sometimes she’d have Mary Owen and Mother Shawe and the Matron and everyone to her house for a party, just so they could see how lovely it all was and how kind and nice she was, and other times she would drive away with Rebecca beside her and leave them pea-green with envy, or even running beside the car pleading with her for forgiveness as she sorrowfully shook her head—