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‘Oh no, not a cold. That’s all we need,’ she said to Ethel, hurriedly reassuring the vicar, ‘It’s not your cold, of course,’ as if there were a pecking order to chills, ‘but we have to be so careful here, Mr Grantley. If one child gets a cold, they all do.’ And that meant more work, she thought to herself. One snotty nose was all it took …
Ethel knew exactly what she was thinking. Dolly might think she could fool the vicar, but not Ethel, She looked back to her plate. Honest to God, she thought, this was never lamb! It tasted more like something that had been pulling a cart yesterday. She chewed on a piece of the hard meat and then looked down the table again.
‘I find it so bracing, this cold weather,’ Dolly went on, her voice ludicrously forced. ‘So good for the lungs.’
‘Not if you’re recovering from a cold,’ Mr Grantley said darkly, turning over a suspicious-looking piece of meat with the end of his knife. ‘I’ve heard that chill weather can turn a cold into pneumonia. I had two parishioners who died last winter from colds. Never stood a chance. They were fine one Sunday and then,’ he paused, flicking over the meat like a corpse on a slab, ‘bang! Dropped down dead. From cold. Pure cold.’
More likely that they’d frozen their bloody arses off in your church, Ethel thought wryly.
‘Well, you must take care of yourself, vicar. No one would want to miss one of your services,’ Dolly ventured, watching, glassy-eyed, as the clergyman began to pick at a piece of gristle stuck in his front teeth.
‘I am always available to my flock, cold or no cold. I have to be.’ He sucked his teeth forcefully to release the wedge of gristle. ‘People look up to me; they look to me to set an example.’
Ethel was certain that Dolly did not see the humour of the situation, and regarded her thoughtfully. Dolly’s high spirits were a little too excessive for lunch with Mr Grantley. She must have heard from Andy, Ethel thought. Did she really believe that she had it all worked out? Most of Salford knew that Andy was writing to a number of lovesick girls. At the last count he had three fiancées, one putting on a lot of weight recently …
Dolly’s blonde hair was bent towards the vicar’s dyed pate. There was no chance she’d be running this place one day, Ethel thought. Dolly Blake might be pretty and clever, but she wasn’t what the governors looked for in a principal. She was too flash. Too obviously on the make.
If anyone was going to take over from Clare Lees it would be the quiet man sitting at the head of the next table. Ethel studied Evan Thomas curiously – the narrow head, long nose, and large luminous eyes the blue of iris. A very delicate creature, too frail to be sent off to fight. Ethel smiled to herself. Oh, Dolly might think she was smart, but Evan was the one to watch.
Suddenly there was a commotion, a shriek of temper as a glass was thrown across the dining room. Miss Lees stared open-mouthed, Dolly wide-eyed, Mr Grantley poised with his fork halfway to his mouth.
It was Alice. Screaming, standing up on her seat as the girls around her shrank back. They knew there would be trouble, but she seemed immune to everyone. Her face was pink, her fists clenched, a steady wail coming from her open mouth. Ethel got to her feet, roughly caught hold of the child and physically removed her from the dining room.
Her hand fastened over Alice’s mouth as Ethel paused outside the door and listened. At first there was a stunned silence, followed by the angry scrape of a chair being pushed back. As fast as her stocky legs would carry her, Ethel hurried away. Alice had relaxed in her arms and was heavy as Ethel hurried up the narrow back stairs and on into the pharmacy.
Out of breath, she deposited Alice in a chair and put her hands on her hips.
‘What …’ Ethel puffed, ‘… what … was …’ She breathed in deeply. ‘What was all that about?’
Alice was quiet, surprised by the anger coming from the only person who had ever shown her affection.
‘Alice, talk to me!’ Ethel snapped. ‘Miss Lees will be here in a minute and she’ll take a bad view of this. You’re in trouble, my girl. You don’t know how much. Alice, you have to help me to help you – now, what happened?’
‘She took my jewel.’
‘What?’ Ethel said, baffled.
Alice looked up, tears on her black lashes. ‘Annie Court took my jewel. I felt her hand go in my pocket and she stole it.’
‘What jewel? Oh, you mean your stone.’
‘It’s a JEWEL!’ Alice shrieked. Her voice was rising again.
She’s going to have hysterics, Ethel thought frantically. Oh no, not that. Hurriedly, she bent down to the child. ‘Alice, pull yourself together! Miss Lees will be here any minute –’
But it had no effect. Alice had lost all fear of anything. Her cheeks burned red, her fists clenching as she swung her feet against the chair. Ethel was shaken and remembered all too clearly what had happened a few years ago. There had been another child who had been troublesome – prone to tantrums, Miss Lees said. One day the child was transferred to another home. No one knew where. Ethel wasn’t about to have that happen to Alice.
So she grabbed the hard green soap in the sink and worked at it frantically, lathering up some thick white foam. Then, she grabbed Alice by the scruff of the neck and smeared the foam around the child’s mouth. She screamed – just as the door opened and Clare Lees walked in.
Her glance took in Ethel and the red-faced child, who was apparently ill, foaming around the mouth. Anger left her at once. This wasn’t a bad child, but a sick one.
Appalled, she glanced over to Ethel. ‘God, what is it?’
‘She’s having a fit, ma’am,’ Ethel said calmly. ‘If you’ll just let me deal with it … Having people around only excites them more.’
Clare Lees nodded, and backed out. When Ethel finally heard her footsteps die away she got a cloth and wiped Alice’s mouth. The child was silent, her huge dark eyes watching Ethel.
‘Now look what you’ve made me do! Made me lie for you.’ Ethel wiped the beautiful little face. ‘They’ll think you’re ill now, not just a child having a tantrum. You’ll get away with it this time, but not the next.’
Alice’s tongue tasted of soap and her mouth hurt from where the towel had rubbed it. But she knew that Ethel had saved her. Had looked out for her. Noone else had ever done anything like that before. The child put her arms around Ethel’s waist and buried her head emotionally in her apron.
‘Aye, luv, you’ll have to learn to be good,’ Ethel said gently, stroking her hair. ‘It’s a hard life, and it gets harder. Don’t go looking for trouble.’
Alice was crying softly, the sound muffled. She was so highly strung, Ethel thought anxiously, and that was dangerous anywhere. In amongst a family, with supportive parents, it could be managed, but here … Ethel shivered. She didn’t want to see Alice’s spirit knocked out of her. How sad that the child had inherited a volatile character along with her beauty. A mixed blessing, to put it mildly.
‘You must learn to be good,’ Ethel urged, her voice soothing. ‘Be good. Be quiet, sweetheart. Don’t make waves. Please.’
Evan Thomas was walking out of the front gates of Netherlands, completely unaware that he was being watched. His slight tall figure in his dark coat was huddled against the cold November rain, his hand over his mouth. He paused, coughing hoarsely, as he padlocked the gate behind him. The cough had kept him out of the war. Most of the other men in their twenties had been called up, but Evan’s life had changed little. He coughed again, then moved on into the street and out of Clare Lees’ gaze.
As he disappeared from sight, Clare found herself curious, wondering where he was going. Sundays dragged. Her hand idled along the side of her desk, her fingers tapping the wood. Mr Grantley was hard work, she thought; it was a nuisance to have to make him feel so important. But what could she do? She relied on his good feeling to make things smooth for her with the governors.
Clare stepped back to the window. The empty area of gravel drive was dull, unchanging. It had been like this when she was a child here, and it would be like this after she had gone … Her mood darkened with the dull day. Dolly was angling for her job, Clare thought, smiling coldly. What a fool the girl was. But Evan Thomas was another matter.
He wasn’t orphanage fodder. He was educated, his parents both teachers in Wales. So why come to the North of England? Clare had asked him when he applied for the post. ‘It’s good to get away and see other places,’ he had replied. ‘Good to see as much of the world as possible …’ Clare wasn’t sure of that.
Her gaze moved back to the gates. She had been outside, of course. But infrequently. There seemed little reason to go out. The home provided everything she needed. It gave her accommodation and had its own chapel. She could work, eat, sleep and pray – what else was there? As for the shopping, that was done by the kitchen staff on Clare’s orders, never by herself. Even the governors of Netherlands Orphanage came here to see her.
Clare leaned her head against the glass, wondering where Evan Thomas was now. Was he in the town, or visiting friends? Maybe he had a girlfriend. She blushed at the thought, mortified at the feelings it provoked in her. Why should she care? He was nothing to her, and besides, he was thirty years younger than she. He wouldn’t be interested in some spinster with rounded shoulders and no charm.
But she hadn’t always been like this. She had been young, once. The high black gates of the home suddenly looked different to Clare – terrifying and inviting all at once. She ran her tongue over her dry lips. It was raining hard. All the children would be in their dormitories now, learning the religious collect for the day, and most of the staff were relaxing. On an impulse, Clare hurriedly put on her coat and hat, then left her office by her own private exit.
The gates were huge, only yards away, the rain blowing into her face. Her heart speeded up as she hurried towards them, her hands shaking as she took out her key and unlocked the gates. In another instant Clare Lees was outside. Firmly she pulled the gates closed behind her and looked ahead.
The street was empty. The vast Victorian viaduct threw its massive shadow, its arches mouthing at her. Go back, go back. Nervously, Clare moved a couple of feet to her right and then felt her head begin to swim. Breathing rapidly, she unfastened the collar button of her coat and noticed that her palms were sticky.
She could remember the first time she’d come through these gates – wearing a dress which was too long for her and a coat which smelled of stale cooking fat. Only seven years old. Her mother had died and Clare had stayed beside her body for two days and two nights in their shabby rooms in The Bent. A neighbour had finally found them and before Clare knew what was happening she had been taken away and brought to Netherlands Orphanage.
‘Little one, come and sit by me,’ her mother had said when she was so ill, lying in a poor cot of a bed beside a damp wall, with a cheap print of a sailing boat on it. The sounds of the pub below came loudly up through the bare floorboards. Her mother’s face was gaunt, the eyes flat. A stupid face in reality, but the hands had been kind. They had held on to Clare and pulled the thin blanket over both of them. ‘Little one, one day we’ll get out of here, and go away. Go off to somewhere sunny. We’ll have a garden, and servants … I love you. I love you.’
Clare stopped, her mouth half open, the shocking memory a fist in her heart. The street was still empty, nothing familiar in it, nothing she remembered from over forty years ago. I could run away, she thought, then remembered that she was a grown woman. Besides, she had nowhere else to go. Her gaze lingered hopelessly on the street ahead of her. She studied the dark viaduct; watched the rain making the cobbles shine.
They had buried her mother in the same graveyard as her father and that was that. The end of her family. The end of her life outside. Slowly Clare tipped back her head and felt the rain on her face. Netherlands had become her prison, she knew that. She was serving a sentence which would only end at her retirement, and even then she would stay on. And die there.
The cold rain fell against her eyelids and ran over her cheeks. Memory and longing beat to the rhythm of her heart.
Then, slowly, she turned and walked back through the gates, locking them after her.
Chapter Four (#ulink_e63b99d3-fcc2-5e40-82bd-ec127b63f0ad)
Years passed and no one came for Alice Rimmer. No one sent letters or called, no one discovered a relative or remembered a friend of the Rimmer family. The foundling remained where she had been placed – behind the high walls of Netherlands. Forgotten.
Ethel never got over the fact that Alice could have been adopted. But it was more than her job was worth to say anything. Better to hold her tongue and keep an eye on the child and look out for her as best she could. But she never stopped wondering who Alice was, or where she had come from. And she never stopped hoping that she would find out one day.
‘I’ve always said it and I’ll say it again – that child is well bred,’ Ethel told Gilbert firmly, ‘and she’s growing up fast. Ten this Friday.’ She paused, then leaned on the pile of ironing in front of her. ‘I was thinking, Gilbert …’
He glanced up at the wheedling tone, his broad face suspicious.
‘Oh aye. Your thinking usually costs me money, or sleep.’
Ethel smiled winningly. ‘I was wondering – would you mind if I brought Alice home for her birthday?’
‘Here!’
‘No, London Zoo,’ Ethel replied archly. ‘Of course here. She’s hardly ever been out of that home – none of the children has. It’s like a world of its own.’ Ethel paused, wondering how to put it best. ‘Alice needs to think she has some family.’
Gilbert’s forehead creased into frown lines. He had given up the removals now, and was making wooden toys in the shed to keep himself busy – and to make a bit of money. Tommy Field’s market sold them – well, now and again.
‘Look, luv, we have our own family. Alice Rimmer isn’t our responsibility.’
‘And that,’ Ethel snapped back, ‘is probably what her mother once said!’
He sighed, knowing that Ethel had already made her mind up.
‘But what about Miss Lees?’ he continued gamely. ‘She doesn’t like any of the kids to get out and about – and she’s not one for favouritism, you’ve said so often enough. Besides, is she really likely to agree to a child – especially Alice Rimmer – coming here for a birthday treat?’
Ethel frowned. ‘Who said she had to know it was a birthday treat? Look, Gilbert, that child needs a change, and I intend to give her one – and Clare Lees isn’t going to stop me. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.’
Which there was. A little white lying on Ethel’s part and she convinced Clare Lees that Alice needed a way to run off her ‘excess energy’. She wouldn’t mind taking her out and about, now and then. After all, Ethel said reasonably, it would stop Alice stirring up the other children, wouldn’t it?
So the following Friday Gilbert found himself sitting opposite a little girl in a plain print dress, her black hair in plaits, her eyes huge and wary. Obviously nervous, Alice was sitting with her hands on her lap, terrified of the old man watching her. Gilbert was also terrified. What the hell was he supposed to say to a child?
Paralysed and silent they both looked up relieved when, a moment later, Ethel walked in with a cake.
‘It’s a birthday cake, for you, Alice.’
‘For me?’ The child replied, her voice low. No one had celebrated her birthday before. In fact, only Ethel had ever mentioned it. But now here she was, out of Netherlands, with a cake! It was too good to be true.
Beaming, Ethel put the cake in front of Alice, then lit the ten candles on the top. As soon as she saw the flames, Alice reared back in her seat, alarmed.
‘No, luv, it’s all right.’ Ethel laughed. ‘It’s a candle for every year you’ve been born. Ten candles, ten years.’
Alice stared into the flames, each of them reproduced in the dark pupils of her eyes.
‘Blow them out and wish,’ Ethel urged her.
Gilbert was watching the little girl and then glanced at his wife. A cake of all things! I wonder how much that cost. They hardly ever had cake these days, what with money being so bloody tight.
Urged on by Ethel, Alice leaned towards the cake, took in a huge breath, and blew. The candles went out all together, thin trickles of smoke curling up from the spent wicks. She smiled, then clapped her hands together and giggled. The sound was so infectious that Gilbert found himself laughing too.
Excited, Alice leaped to her feet. ‘Oh, thank you, thank you!’ she said, hugging Ethel tightly. ‘It’s the best thing that ever happened to me.’
She chatted on and on after that, all shyness gone. Gilbert put down his paper. Fascinated, he listened to the stories of the home and tut-tutted where he thought it was appropriate. Knowing that she had an audience, Alice was vibrant, her voice rising and falling, her eyes brilliant, her hands waving in the air as she talked.
On the sidelines, Ethel watched, amused. Yet even she was surprised when Gilbert went out for a moment and then came back from the shed with some of the wooden toys he had made.
Diffidently, he showed them to Alice.
‘I … I made these,’ he said, pushing a toy horse and a camel across the table towards the little girl.
‘You made them?’ she asked, astonished.
Gilbert nodded, puffed up with pride. Carefully he lit his pipe and sat down in his battered easy chair.
‘I learned to carve from my father. He could make anything.’
Alice’s eyes were fixed on the toys.
‘Go on, you can touch them,’ Gilbert said.
Ethel raised her eyebrows. Well, she thought, this was a turn up. Her husband was normally so possessive of his carvings. Things were going better than she would have dared to hope.
Slowly Alice picked up the camel and turned it over in her hands. Then she laughed and picked up the horse. In another moment she was racing them along the table, Gilbert watching her, Alice hooting with laughter. She felt secure, happy in this little house, and was so giddy with excitement that she lost her grip on the horse and it fell over the edge of the table.
As it landed heavily at Gilbert’s feet, its head snapped off.
Alice froze in her seat, watching as he bent down. Ethel too was holding her breath. Carefully Gilbert fingered the broken toy, then glanced over to the child. For an instant he was enraged, but when he saw tears running down Alice’s face he faltered.
‘It were badly carved,’ he said, coughing. ‘It weren’t your fault, luv.’
But she knew it was. Knew he was lying to be kind to her. She had broken the toy and ruined everything. They wouldn’t ask her to their house again. No one wanted a stupid clumsy girl around. No one ever wanted her around for long.
Brushing away her tears, Alice stammered, ‘Sorry, I’m sorry –’
‘Like I say, it weren’t well made,’ Gilbert persisted manfully.
Mortified, Alice got to her feet and turned to Ethel. ‘I should go back now –’
‘You don’t have to,’ Ethel said, her heart shifting. Oh, bugger the bloody toy! Why did that have to happen? ‘Stay a while longer, Alice.’
She shook her head. ‘No, I should really go back.’ She turned to Gilbert. ‘I’m so sorry about the horse, Mr Cummings … really sorry.’ Then she looked back at Ethel. ‘Thank you for my cake. It was the best birthday I’ve ever had.’
Chapter Five (#ulink_8fadfaa3-4e1a-51db-87ea-e18efd06e85b)
Alice cried herself to sleep that night, her head under the blankets so that the others girls wouldn’t hear her. They would have gloated, she knew. They had all been so jealous that Alice had been allowed out. Why her? they’d asked. It must be because she was so pretty. Matron’s favourite.
Some of them would have liked to bully Alice, but there was something about her which stopped them. She was so confident, not like the rest of them. It did no good telling her that she was an orphan like everyone else; Alice would simply shrug her shoulders and walk off. She was special, she told them; she was only at the home temporarily. Her family were coming back for her, she said. Her rich family.
They laughed at her, but there was something about Alice Rimmer which made them wonder. She didn’t have the scarecrow looks of the rest of them and could stand up for herself – maybe her people would come back for her. After all, she had hinted at coming from an important family. Her mother, she said, was famous.
