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A sudden noise made her pause. Ethel turned and looked upwards at the ceiling above her. It sounded like soft footsteps overhead. Was Clare Lees up and working at this hour? It wasn’t likely; she kept to regular hours. So who was it?
Picking up a full bottle of linctus as a make-do weapon, Ethel moved into the corridor. The dull gaslight threw long shadows, the far end in darkness. Slowly she moved towards the stairs and walked up them, one by one. It couldn’t be a burglar – there was nothing to steal.
At the door of the principal’s office Ethel paused and looked in. At first she could only made out the shape of a person and then, as her eyes adjusted to the lack of light, she recognised her.
‘Alice!’
The girl spun round, startled.
‘Alice, what are you doing?’
She faltered. ‘I … I … heard a noise.’
‘At this time of night? You should be in bed,’ Ethel replied, walking in and staring at the girl. Her concern turned to suspicion suddenly. ‘What are you doing in here?’
‘Nothing.’
Ethel’s glance moved to the open drawer. ‘Alice! How could you?’ she snapped, genuinely shocked. ‘What are you looking for?’
‘My file,’ Alice said defiantly. ‘I want to see it.’
‘You want to see the back of my hand, my girl,’ Ethel replied, grabbing hold of Alice’s arm and leading her to the door.
She struggled. ‘I want –’
‘If Miss Lees finds you here you’ll have cooked your goose once and for all, and no mistake,’ Ethel said hotly, then dropped her voice. ‘Good God, Alice, do you want to ruin your chances? She thinks well of you – you could jeopardise everything by doing this. She would never trust you again.’
‘I don’t care!’ Alice said hotly. ‘I want to see my file.’
Annoyed, Ethel pulled the girl to the door, closed it and held out her hand.
‘Give me the key.’
‘I don’t have it.’
‘Don’t lie to me!’ she replied. ‘Give me the key.’
Defeated, Alice handed it to her and Ethel locked the door. Then she put the key into her own pocket and marched Alice downstairs in silence. When they got back to her room, Ethel let go of the girl’s arm and looked at her.
‘You have no idea how disappointed I am in you. I thought you’d stopped doing stupid things, Alice. I thought you’d settled down.’
Alice hung her head. She was crushed by the obvious contempt in Ethel’s voice.
‘Why did you do it?’
‘I wanted to see my file. No one would have shown it to me – so I thought I would find it for myself.’
Wearily Ethel sat down and then gestured for Alice to take the seat next to her.
‘Alice, no one knows anything about your family or your past.’
‘There must be something written down,’ Alice replied. ‘There must be some record.’ She looked hard into Ethel’s plump face. ‘I have to know. It’s driving me crazy.’
‘You’re driving yourself crazy,’ Ethel retorted.
‘I bet if it was you, you’d want to know.’
Ethel looked at the girl curiously. She was right: if their situations had been reversed, she would have wanted to know. Besides, she had always been curious about Alice Rimmer herself. Maybe there was something written down, something to tell them where she had come from.
‘I have to know …’ Alice said pleadingly. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve disappointed you. You’ve always been kind to me, but …’ She paused and her face became defiant again, ‘… I have to know. Can’t you see that? Ethel, you can understand that, can’t you?’
Ethel glanced away. She had always been too lenient with Alice, had always been too fond of her. In fact she had grown closer to her over the years, Alice coming to visit – although always uneasy after the incident with the toy horse. Birthdays had been remembered, at Christmas there had been presents sneaked in, and Ethel’s pride on seeing Alice grow up had been almost as great as seeing her own sons mature.
But now Ethel was angry with her. The stubborn wilful streak hadn’t gone, after all. It was just hidden, concealed.
‘How did you get hold of the key?’
There was a moment’s pause before Alice answered.
‘Miss Lees sometimes uses her side door. She locks the main door – but she leaves the key in. I slid a piece of paper under the door, then pushed out the key from the outside. It fell onto the paper and I then pulled the paper under the door with the key on it.’
‘Very clever,’ Ethel said coldly. ‘Where did you find out about that?’
Alice’s voice was low. ‘I read it in a book.’
Sighing, Ethel looked down. ‘Go back to bed.’
‘But –’
‘Go back to bed, Alice!’ she repeated, and watched as the girl left the room.
For a long time Ethel sat in her chair and listened to the clock ticking, and the water pipes clanking as someone flushed a cistern upstairs. She thought about Alice and worried. The girl was too reckless. It was madness to think of breaking in to look at her records!
Then suddenly Ethel remembered that the bottle of cough linctus that she’d taken to use as a cosh was still up in the principal’s office. Startled, she sat bold upright. If Clare Lees found it she would know that Ethel had been there. She wouldn’t know about Alice, because Ethel would never tell her, but she would have to explain what she had been doing in the principal’s office in the middle of the night.
Ethel felt faint with anxiety. She would be sacked, the money finished, and no references. Her reputation would be ruined … There was only one thing for it, she had to get the bottle back. Hurriedly she got to her feet, went back up the dim stairs and moved towards the principal’s office. Once there, she felt into her pocket and took out the key, unlocked the door and let herself in.
Moonlight shafted over the desk and along the floor. Ethel strained her eyes to see the bottle in the semidark. Finally she spotted it and grabbed it, moving quickly back to the door … Then she turned back. She paused, tempted. She looked at the desk. Her mouth dried, the moonlight falling over the wooden surface.
Get out, she told herself, get out now, before it’s too late. But she couldn’t. Suddenly she had to know what was in Alice’s file. Putting down the bottle again, Ethel ran her tongue over her dry lips and opened the drawer. Hurriedly she sifted through the A – Z listing, stopping on R. With shaking hands she lifted out the file on ALICE RIMMER.
She would be fired if she was caught. Out on her ear … Just put the file back, Ethel, she urged herself. Just put it back … But she couldn’t, and slowly opened the file. The moon shifted a little, throwing its helpful light over the paper as Ethel read the lines written on the first page. She reread them, and reeled, momentarily giddy. Then she slammed the file shut and turned.
On unsteady legs she walked to the door, clutching the bottle of linctus. Clumsily she relocked the door and then pushed the key underneath it as though it had fallen out of the lock. Holding tightly on to the banister rail she then moved down the stairs and back into her room. Once there Ethel Cummings fell into her chair and stared ahead of her.
Finally, she knew where Alice Rimmer came from. Knew who her parents were … A darkness settled over the room and over her heart. What she had read she wished she had never seen.
What she had read she would never forget.
Chapter Nine (#ulink_fa1fec9e-f0f4-51d4-92f0-803dc0ecb87e)
Late the following afternoon Ethel came back to Netherlands for her next shift. She had not slept during the day and every enquiry of Gilbert’s was met with preoccupied distance. Each time she closed her eyes, Ethel saw the damning lines written in Alice’s file. Each time she opened her eyes, she saw the same words printed in headlines and snapping from newspaper stands.
Unusually quiet, she went back to work and then, finally, she sent for Alice. It took a while for the girl to arrive and during that time Ethel washed and rewashed several bandages which had never been used, just to keep herself busy.
Finally there was a soft rap at the door.
‘Come in, Alice.’
She walked in nervously and stood before Ethel, certain that she was about to be told that her nocturnal adventure had been reported to Clare Lees. A long moment passed, and then another. Alice finally looked at Ethel, concerned.
‘Are you all right?’
‘There’s nothing wrong with me,’ Ethel replied more sharply than she meant. ‘I wanted to have a word with you.’
How would she say it? How could she phrase the next lines? She paused, studied Alice and felt all the old affection well up in her. Dear God, what good would be served by telling her? What purpose? She had been shattered by the news; what would it do to a wilful, excitable girl?
It would ruin her, Ethel realised. And in that moment she made her decision.
‘Alice, I thought about what you said last night.’ Ethel paused, considering her next words. ‘I realised that it was only natural that you wanted to know about your past and your parents. Well, I went back to the office last night –’
Alice’s eyes had widened. ‘What?’
‘Ssssh!’ Ethel cautioned her. ‘This is between us. No one else must ever know. Listen to me, Alice, I have something to tell you.’
The girl stared at her, hardly breathing.
‘I went back and I looked for your file,’ Ethel paused again. ‘I looked once and then again. There was no file. I’m sorry, but there was nothing to see.’
She could feel the hope leave Alice’s body, see her eyes dulling, her lips pale. There was nothing to see. Nothing.
Gently, Ethel put her arms around her. ‘There, there, luv, I had to tell you. I couldn’t leave you wondering, could I? Couldn’t leave you imagining all sorts.’ She held on to the fourteen-year-old, and lied. ‘I’m afraid no one can tell you anything, luv. Because there’s nothing to know.’
Chapter Ten (#ulink_d0970d86-a9d1-5770-9ee2-3fb8bce9ad4a)
1927
The world had changed radically in the aftermath of the Great War. Outside the grim Netherlands Orphanage there were posters of women with their hair shingled, their hemlines raised. Some even wore make-up, and at the cinemas in Salford Mae West and Greta Garbo heralded in a new age of glamour. As did Charlie Chaplin, the little man taking on the big boys. Everything was changing, speeding up. In March the land speed record of over 200 miles per hour had been set and in May Lindbergh flew the Atlantic solo.
But at Netherlands Orphanage little had changed. The old regime was still intact, Clare Lees still the principal. She was badly stooped now, her dowager’s hump making her irritable, her voice shrill with the onset of old age and lost hopes. Evan Thomas had hung on too. He had thought his ship would have come in by now, but it appeared to have hit some unexpected rocks. Having been made deputy head several years earlier he was surprised to find himself still the deputy head, but he reckoned that he had come so far, it would be folly to give up now. After all, he was only thirty-six, and life still held promise.
Dolly Blake had also remained at Netherlands, but she had aged less phlegmatically, and now had a bitter expression about the mouth. Her ambitions had faltered and when time passed and she had looked close to being left on the shelf, she had decided that Andy was her best option. After all, nothing stopped her from seeing Evan Thomas after she was married.
Except Andy wasn’t quite the fool she’d taken him for. He had given up his other women, but had never trusted that Dolly would be so honourable. Two years after their wedding he’d come to pick her up from work one night unexpectedly – to find Evan Thomas with his hand down his wife’s blouse. All Dolly’s explaining, begging and cajoling had had no effect. Andy had left her.
The shock had rendered Dolly temporarily insensible, and Evan – sporting a spectacular set of bruises inflicted by an enraged Andy – had backed off fast. He didn’t want to have Dolly hanging round his neck, emotionally or professionally. After all, there had been a scandal and muck stuck.
Being a man, he had escaped the worst of the fallout, but the unfortunate Dolly had a ‘name’ now. It was obvious to everyone that the governors would never approve her promotion. Evan knew it. And Dolly knew it.
Rejected by her lover and deserted by her husband, Dolly had become a public laughing stock. The only place she could escape the gossips was Netherlands Orphanage, and to there she had retreated. The last person in the world to assume Clare Lees’ example, overnight it appeared that Dolly Blake became a prude.
‘You should see her,’ Ethel told Gilbert one Sunday as she folded the washing. ‘All buttoned up and tight-lipped, like some outraged virgin. If she sees one of the boys even looking at the girls she goes mad. Not that they can help it – the lads all hang around the railings when it’s time for church, ogling the lasses. Natural, I call it, but Dolly and Miss Lees think it’s something smutty.’
Gilbert laughed, paused in the carving of one of his wooden animals. It was just a hobby now, each one taking months to complete as he grew older and slower.
‘There’s nothing like poacher turned gamekeeper,’ he said. ‘I always said that the boys and girls should mix; having them separate like that makes them all the keener.’ He stared at the figure he was carving. ‘What about Evan Thomas? Still thinks he’s king of the midden?’
Ethel’s expression hardened. ‘He’s going to stay until Miss Lees retires or pops her clogs. That one’s hard-faced, all right. Too cocky by a half.’ She leaned against a pile of washed sheets. ‘You should see him, strutting about, bossing everyone behind Miss Lees’ back. A right toerag. Thing is, he thinks the job’s all but his – now that Dolly’s out of the running. He has no idea that Miss Lees has other plans.’
Gilbert smiled conspiratorially at his wife. ‘Our girl?’
She nodded, beaming with pride. She had never told Gilbert what she had discovered that night so long ago, and she never would. Instead she had watched over Alice with even more care and was rewarded by seeing her grow up well, gradually calming down. For Alice Rimmer had changed radically, both in appearance and temperament. It was not that she was any less emotional, simply that she had learned how to suppress her feelings, to control her outbursts. Her hotly exotic looks had cooled too. Beautiful she was, but quietly so.
The sensual strangeness had now been replaced by a true allure. The pale oval face, the dark eyes, the glossy hair were remarkable, and as Alice matured into a young woman she gave off an almost electrical charge. No one failed to recognise it, and many of her peers at Netherlands were jealous of her.
Only Hilly Barker bore Alice no resentment. Grown into a frail, elfin figure, she was as close to Alice as she had always been and was devoted to her. And so she should be, thought Ethel. After all, hadn’t Alice looked after and confided in Hilly when no one else wanted to know the sick girl in the sanatorium? Oh yes, Ethel thought, Alice was nothing if not loyal to her friends.
Another type of girl would have taken advantage of Hilly’s devotion and some of the younger girls’ slavish admiration – but Alice didn’t. Her thoughts were concentrated on one thing, and one thing only – to get away from Netherlands. Out into the world.
‘I have to get away,’ she had said months earlier. ‘I’ll go mad if I don’t.’
Ethel had soothed her, as ever. ‘In time, you will. But you’ve got the chance to get an education, Alice, so you should take the opportunity. Teachers get well paid and they’re respected. You could do a lot worse.’
Alice knew Ethel was right. Knowledge was the only way to gain respect. So she set to and she studied. Temperament and spirit were controlled. Outbursts only led to punishment and isolation. With a massive effort of will Alice learned to control her natural ebullience. Inside, she might be raging, but outside she seemed almost content with her lot.
The only one who was never fooled was Ethel. She had an instinct that Alice was plotting something, but had to admit that she was impressed by the girl’s application. Especially lately – now that Alice had confounded everyone by becoming Clare Lees’ favourite.
She didn’t ingratiate herself with the principal, but she was a quick learner and more than willing to take on some of the rudimentary teaching of the smallest children. The school inside Netherlands was makeshift, the education basic – but who was prepared to spend money educating foundlings? The future mill workers, pit boys and domestic servants? The books they had were out of date, the maps hopelessly old-fashioned, but Alice didn’t seem to mind. She could see an opportunity for herself – and she was going to take it.
The shift in power had been noticed by everyone. Evan Thomas was caught off guard and Dolly was white hot with envy.
Not for the first time, Ethel had taken it on herself to send out a warning to Alice.
‘I thought you hated Clare Lees,’ she had said a month earlier. ‘What are you up to now?’
Alice had turned her dark eyes on the matron ingenuously. ‘Why should I be up to anything?’
‘Because I know you,’ Ethel had replied. ‘I’ve known you since you were a child, and I can tell that you’re up to something.’
Alice had slid her arm through Ethel’s, the matron’s skin warm and soft to her touch. ‘I’m fine. I’m doing well now. I thought you’d be pleased.’
Ethel had studied her carefully. ‘I have to say that you’re the last person I ever expected to see teaching here.’
‘I love teaching,’ Alice had replied, ‘and the pupils seem to like me.’
Ethel had continued to study the remarkable face. But she didn’t accept the story – Alice was too beautiful to stay hidden away at Netherlands for ever. It might be all right for poor Miss Lees, but Alice was born for better things – and she had the beauty and the wit to achieve them.
‘Well, you be careful,’ Ethel had replied warningly. ‘I still say that you’re up to something. Watch out that you don’t tie a knot with your tongue that you can’t undo with your teeth. Evan Thomas thought he was the favourite – he won’t like being the loser.’
