Charity (26 page)

‘No.’ Charity blanched. ‘If he doesn’t want me I’m not going to try and blackmail him to help.’

Marjorie shook her head in bewilderment. The kid was made of stern stuff, that much was certain; more pride than the changing of the Guard.

‘But it’s his responsibility too!’ she argued.

‘No, I couldn’t,’ Charity insisted. ‘I’d rather have a baby all on my own than have him hating me for showing him up. If I was to see him again I know I’d try and plead with him to love me again.’

‘Then you’ve got to handle this alone, I’m afraid. But we’re here and you aren’t the first girl to fall for a handsome face and a few empty promises. Now, have you been to a doctor yet?’

‘No.’ Charity shook her head. ‘I’ve been too scared to.’

The plaintive look on Charity’s face made Marjorie’s heart prickle with tenderness. She wasn’t one to get involved with other people’s problems, she had enough of her own. The restaurant wasn’t the little gold mine people supposed. A thirteen-hour day, cramped living conditions, health inspectors who thought they were the Gestapo and a mountain of paperwork left very little time even to wash her hair. But Charity was the only girl they’d ever employed who actually made life easier for them, and Marjorie was very fond of her.

‘There’s no need to be scared. The moment you face up to it, the better you’ll feel,’ she said sensibly. ‘I’ll ring my doctor now and make an appointment for you after work.’

‘But my job! I’ve got to keep working.’ Charity was close to crying now with the release of tension.

‘There’s no reason why you shouldn’t go on working for quite some time.’ Marjorie saw how close she was to breaking down and didn’t want to make things worse. ‘But you must stop carrying heavy things, and wear some flat shoes.’

Everything Marjorie knew about pregnancy had been gleaned from younger sisters and customers. She had never wanted a baby herself; until she met Charity she hadn’t even been aware she had any maternal instincts.

Charity looked down at her three-inch heels. They made her feel older and she was loath to give them up.

‘I mean it.’ Marjorie smiled. ‘And perhaps you should get a looser skirt. That way no one will notice for some time.’

‘You are indeed pregnant.’

Dr Thomas washed his hands at his sink, looking over his shoulder as Charity scuttled back behind the screen to get dressed. ‘Almost four months, which means the baby will arrive in the middle of May.’

Dr Thomas’s surgery was in the basement of a house in Brook Green, reached by a flight of steep stairs with rusting railings. Once inside, leaving behind a faint whiff of dustbins, it was a surprisingly antiseptic place with black and white tiled floor and walls that appeared to have been painted pale green only days before.

The doctor sat down at his desk and waited for the young girl to reappear. He knew she was crying and his heart went out to her. He studied the few notes he’d made. She’d be seventeen when the baby arrived, no husband, no parents and from what he gathered the father had deserted her.

Dr Thomas was well over sixty and in the thirty years he’d been a GP he must have seen thousands of pregnant women. Telling a happily married woman such news was a time for joy, but for girls like Charity there would be no happy ending.

Charity came from behind the screen, dabbing at her eyes.

‘Sit down for a moment,’ he said gently. He might be an old man with white hair, but he couldn’t fail to be moved by such a pretty girl’s distress. ‘Now, I’ve written a letter to Hammersmith hospital, that’s not the one across the road, it’s by Wormwood Scrubs. You must take it there and they’ll sort out your antenatal visits. This is a prescription for some iron tablets, take one with each meal.’

He paused, wishing he could tell her something to ease her mind.

‘Now Charity, there is an almoner at the hospital, she’s the person who will put you in touch with people to help you.’

Charity silently put the letter and prescription into her bag, trying to control a desire to break down.

‘Thank you, Doctor,’ she whispered.

‘You can come and see me if you have any problems,’ he said gently. ‘Try and eat sensibly, get plenty of fresh air and exercise to make sure you have a healthy baby. Try not to worry too much, there are people out there to help you.’

‘Miss Stratton!’ A beefy, red-faced nurse called out her name, making a point of the ‘Miss’ bit.

Charity got up, blushing. It had been bad enough sitting amongst twenty or so older married women, without having her predicament advertised.

The nurse handed her a tall glass.

‘A specimen please!’

Charity didn’t know what the nurse meant and stared blankly.

‘Go in the toilet and pass some urine in here.’ The nurse seemed to think she was deaf as well as stupid. ‘When you’ve done that put it on the table outside and go into the cubicle and undress. There’s a gown inside to put on. Take off everything.’

It seemed to be one humiliation after another. So many questions, so much embarrassment. A whole group of men and women stood around watching while the doctor gave her an internal examination. It wasn’t just the delicate probing that Dr Thomas had done, either: they pushed a huge metal shoehorn-type thing into her, prised her open then peered in. One by one they listened to the baby’s heart through a metal trumpet, just as if she was a side of meat, not a human being.

They took blood from her arm and made her cry. They said she was underweight, as if that was her fault. The doctor said she would have to be checked for venereal diseases because she wasn’t married. When she began to cry the big nurse curtly informed her that she should have thought of the consequences before she had sex.

She felt lower than a prostitute. Unclean, unwanted.

Finally at twelve, after being there since before nine, they sent her to see the almoner.

Dr Thomas had said this was the person who would help, so she began to cheer up while she waited on a row of chairs in a long corridor. But two hours later she was still there and no one seemed to care.

She was bursting to go to the lavatory when finally the door opened.

‘Come in, Miss Stratton.’ A tall thin woman in a tweed suit popped her head out the door.

She just sat behind her desk, drinking coffee and reading notes in front of her. Charity didn’t like the look of her one bit. She had a bony, heavily lined face and a row of pearls round a scraggy neck and the way she avoided looking at Charity suggested she was going to be unpleasant.

‘I’m Mrs Perkins. From what I gather,’ she said in a plummy voice, peering over her glasses, ‘you are unmarried. Four months pregnant, without any parents. Is that so?’

‘Yes,’ Charity murmured.

‘Your job?’

‘A waitress.’

‘What sort of accommodation do you have?’

‘A bedsitter in Hammersmith,’ Charity said weakly.

The woman tutted.

Charity thought Mrs Perkins was the kind Lou despised: middle class, with no experience of hardship in her own life to draw on. Such a woman would put people into categories. Charity was probably labelled ‘delinquent’.

‘The father has deserted you, I suppose?’

Charity could only nod.

‘His name and address?’

‘Why do you want that?’ Charity was immediately on her guard.

The woman looked askance at her. ‘So we can take him to court to make paternity payments, of course.’

‘I don’t know his address.’

The woman looked hard at Charity.

‘When will you girls learn some sense?’ She sighed. ‘Does he know you’re pregnant?’

‘No.’ Charity was sure that was a trick question. ‘I couldn’t tell him because I don’t know where to write.’

Mrs Perkins scribbled down what seemed to be far more than Charity had told her.

‘What had you in mind to do when the baby arrives?’ The almoner fired the question as if from a gun.

Charity didn’t know what to say.

‘Well, were you thinking of taking the baby back to your room? Have you a job in mind? Do you have any idea how much it costs to bring up a child? Or were you hoping someone would miraculously solve these problems for you?’

‘I don’t know.’ Charity hung her head. ‘I mean, I haven’t thought that far ahead.’ How could she explain to this woman that she’d been in a state of numbness since Hugh’s last letter?

‘Well you should, my girl. And quick!’ Mrs Perkins pointed her pen towards Charity. ‘Let me make a couple of points. One is that a new baby requires not only money to buy food and clothes, but a great deal of care and attention. You can’t shut it in a bedsitter on King Street for long because if it cries it will disturb your neighbours. You can claim National Assistance to live on, but believe me they will give you precious little.’

‘I’ll get a job.’ Charity imagined a baby in her poky room, and shuddered.

‘What sort of job? Waitressing? How much do you earn at that?’

‘Five pounds a week.’ Charity’s voice began to shake.

‘But where would the baby be while you were at work?’

Charity could see what Mrs Perkins was getting at.

‘You haven’t thought about it, dear, have you?’ Suddenly the older woman’s voice softened. ‘I don’t mean to be harsh, but I see so many girls like you, Charity. Reality is wheeling a pram through the streets in the early morning and leaving your baby at a nursery all day while you work. Then going to collect it at night when you are exhausted. By the time you’ve bathed and fed it, it’s time for bed, then the whole thing starts again the next day. You’ll have no time for friends, no nice clothes for yourself, it will be work and still more work, washing nappies at midnight, wondering where you’ll get the next shilling for the gas. Every decision has to be made by you. If the baby’s sick you can’t go to work. If you can’t work you get no money.’

Charity’s stricken face proved Mrs Perkins’s point.

‘There is of course an alternative,’ the almoner said gently, her pale eyes fixed on Charity. ‘That is adoption. At this stage in your pregnancy it often sounds like the perfect solution and one most girls are eager to grasp.’

‘Give the baby away?’ Charity’s eyes flew open in horror. ‘Oh no, I couldn’t do that.’

‘Don’t be too hasty.’ Mrs Perkins took off her glasses and polished them. ‘I have never yet met a girl who gave her baby up easily, however much she claimed before its birth that she would. But in the end it is the bravest, the most caring mothers who do, because they can see beyond their own pain and want the best for their child.’

Charity shook her head.

‘No, I couldn’t.’

‘No one is asking you to. No one will force your hand, Charity. The final decision will be up to you, and you alone. But I can tell you now there are couples out there desperate for a child to love, people who have beautiful homes, stable marriages and everything in the world to offer. Every adoptive couple is checked and rechecked for suitability. It’s a lucky child who ends up in one of these homes, a child matched to its new parents by what is known about the real ones. Nothing is left to chance.’

She didn’t tell Charity she worked on a committee for an adoption society, or that she was one of the people who vetted prospective adoptive parents. Instead she paused and took a small booklet out of her desk.

‘Take this home and read it,’ she said, and passed it over. ‘Meanwhile I’ll get in touch with someone from the Moral Welfare Association, they are a group of people who help girls such as yourself. A lady called Miss Frost will be in touch with you soon.’

Charity found herself just wandering around Shepherd’s Bush instead of going home. Darkness had descended without her noticing; the air was damp with a slight hint of fog.

Christmas was on everyone’s mind. Women struggling with heavy baskets of shopping. Men in suits carrying carrier bags along with their briefcases and umbrellas. Schoolchildren dawdling home in groups, pausing to look into shops bright with tinsel, decorations and coloured lights, but Charity felt nothing but apathy.

A huge Christmas tree had been erected on the green, lit up with hundreds of coloured bulbs. A green-grocer’s wares spilt out on to the pavement: piles of tangerines, cupped in silver paper, pineapples, nuts, apples and bananas. A toy shop on a corner had a working model of Santa Claus waving his arms in its brightly lit window and two small children stood with their noses pressed up against the glass, faces bright with excitement.

Was it only two years ago she’d been like one of those children? She could remember taking Prue and Toby into Lewisham one afternoon on the bus and seeing Santa Claus at Chiesman’s in his grotto. He had given her a hand mirror, only pink plastic with a lady in a crinoline painted on the back, but she’d thought it wonderful. Just a few weeks later the fire had burned everything – that mirror, her parents, their home – and finished her childhood for good.

Next Christmas her child would be over six months old. It seemed only minutes since James was that age. Mrs Perkins didn’t have to tell her how hard it was to bring up a child. She knew.

She walked back past Greystones and glanced down into the basement. They had a tree in the window and she could see Joan sprawled out in a chair, smoking a cigarette while she watched television.

Once she’d considered herself better than those other girls, but now she could see there was little difference. They were all in trouble in one way or another.

*

She read the little booklet that night. Not once but four times. It spelled out in simple language exactly what being an unmarried mother meant and the stigma on the child. It explained there were benefits she could claim and National Assistance for her and her baby, but it underlined the message that few landlords would give her a flat and the Council rarely considered unmarried mothers on their waiting lists.

Adoption was explained fully, and mother and baby homes. Charity put the booklet down and sobbed into her pillow. She had lost everything she cared for now. The children, Hugh and even Lou and Geoff. She daren’t pass on her new London address in case Geoff took it into his head to pop over and see her. However much she wanted their sympathy and kindness, she wasn’t going to risk Uncle Stephen discovering her predicament, or bringing shame to her brothers and sister.