Days of Grace Read online

  I tried to cast my mind back to what had happened. As I lay there, trying to think, I realized that, rather than being dressed in my old cotton nightdress, I was wearing a pair of striped pyjamas. I didn’t own any pyjamas. Somebody had taken me out of my school uniform and put them on me. Whoever it was would have seen me without my clothes. Whoever it was had seen the blood.

  It must have been Mrs Rivers, I thought, Mrs Rivers, who had stood at the station in her pale blue coat, Mrs Rivers, whose hands in their soft leather gloves had controlled the motor car with the lightest touch, Mrs Rivers, who smelled of lemons and cleanliness. My cheeks burned and I curled up into a ball, hiding myself under the blankets.

  After a while I began to feel as if someone was watching me. I drew back the corner of the blanket and looked out. Perched on someone’s knee like a tiny child was a ragdoll. It was dirty and worn and missing one of its eyes. The other eye seemed to be staring at me nastily, as if it knew everything. I shrank back under the bedclothes but after a minute I heard somebody cough. I looked out again to see Mrs Rivers.

  ‘Oh, you’re awake!’ she said. ‘I’m so glad. I was beginning to worry about you.’

  I couldn’t bring myself to look directly at her.

  ‘Are you feeling better?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Do you remember what happened?’

  There was no way of escaping her kindness. I shook my head.

  ‘You fainted. One of the churchwardens came out of Evensong to carry you up here. It’s Grace’s room. We thought it would be nice for you to share.’

  I looked about for Grace. Mrs Rivers smiled.

  ‘I told her to leave you in peace for a while. You must be very tired.’

  I looked at Mrs Rivers’ hands, holding the doll around its middle. They weren’t like Ma’s, red raw from scrubbing floors. Mrs Rivers’ skin was smooth and pale and she wore a shiny ring on her wedding finger. My cheeks grew hot at the thought of her hands touching me.

  ‘Have you ever fainted before?’ she said.

  ‘No, Miss,’ I said.

  ‘Do you know why it happened?’

  I lay still with my eyes closed, hoping that if I kept quiet she might give up and go away, but it didn’t work. I felt a hand on my forehead, smoothing back my hair like Ma would have done.

  ‘I didn’t mean to do it,’ I blurted out. ‘I didn’t, I swear.’

  Mrs Rivers went on stroking. ‘When did the bleeding start?’ she said.

  I kept my eyes closed. ‘Today, Miss. On the train. But I didn’t meant to be bad to Ma. I just didn’t want her to send me away. I didn’t mean to be wicked. And now I’m being punished for it.’

  Her hand stopped. ‘What do you mean?’ she said. ‘Who’s punishing you?’

  ‘God, Miss. He’s making me bleed until I’m sorry.’

  Mrs Rivers sighed. ‘Look at me, Nora,’ she said.

  She waited until I turned my face to her and then she said, ‘Didn’t your mother ever tell you about the curse?’

  When I was smaller Ma had told stories at night, stories from Ireland about gypsies and their curses on the people who crossed them. But I suspected that Mrs Rivers meant something different.

  ‘No,’ I whispered, feeling small.

  What Mrs Rivers told me then was terrible and I stared at her in horror as she said it. It was as strange a story as the ones that Ma told me at bedtime but it wasn’t a story, she said, it was the truth. It was a curse that would never be lifted, no matter what I did. It happened to all girls. It even happened to Mrs Rivers. It must have happened to Ma, I thought, but she had never said a word about it.

  I wondered how many other secrets she had kept, what else she hadn’t told me. When Mrs Rivers left me to sleep, turning out the light as she went, I lay awake for a long time thinking about it, feeling hard and cold.

  Three

  I FELT BETTER ONCE I’D MADE MY DIAGNOSIS. I WOULD meet my fate in due course. In the meantime, I went to the library and took out a book, something more uplifting than the one I’d found in the bookshop, a guide to the beginnings of life rather than to its end. On its cover was a picture of a woman smiling at a baby.

  Each morning I made coffee on the stove, filling the bottom half of the pot with water, patting down the coffee grounds and screwing on the top. I drank it in my chair, taking small sips as I read both books, preparing for both eventualities.

  I always knew when the girl was at the window. I felt it in my bones. The hairs on the back of my neck would rise and I would lift my head from my book to see her sitting there, straight-backed, her belly getting bigger by the day.

  My own small Menace grew too, swelling out my abdomen. As the summer dragged on, neither of us moved much. Whilst I sipped my coffee, the girl drank what looked like milk from a beer glass, pint after pint of it throughout the day. I wondered where she got it. There was no milk float anymore and I never saw her leave the house to go to the cornershop. No-one came to visit her, no friends, no midwife, no father of the child. She seemed as alone in the world as me.

  I was cowardly, never daring to cross the road and knock on the door. There was something about the way she held herself that discouraged it. I knew all about hiding away from the world, but as her belly grew, her solitude worried me more and more. I wondered whose time would come first. As I compared the size of the girl’s belly with the pictures in the manual, I thought it would be her. I guessed that the baby would be born by October. I decided to keep a close eye on her, to be ready to help if she needed me.

  In the end, D-Day came earlier than I’d thought. It was the August bank holiday, humid and hot. Windows opened along the street as the temperature rose and people blinked as they came out of their houses, scrabbling in handbags and pockets for sunglasses. Parents shepherded excited children into cars, piling folding chairs and hampers of food into the back.

  I stayed still, watching and waiting. At noon her curtains were still closed and I felt the first pangs of anxiety. I tried to keep calm, telling myself that she was probably resting, as the book had said she should towards the end. But as the afternoon turned into evening, and the street filled up with cars again, dusty from the day’s excursions, I began to worry. I had been at the window all day. I would have noticed a taxi or an ambulance. I would have seen her leave. If the girl was giving birth, she was doing it alone. I imagined her, too proud to ask for help from anyone, twisting with pain on the bed and I knew that I had to go to her.

  As I crossed the street, my panic grew. I hadn’t thought of how to get into the house. The book hadn’t included that in its instructions. There was no point in ringing the bell. I had seen enough deliverymen stand outside, their fingers uselessly pressing, waiting for a reply. I had seen them calling in vain, trying to attract attention. It wasn’t the sort of place to encourage casual visitors. But nor did it have the complicated alarms that had appeared on some of the other, smartened houses in the row, and I knew from a lifetime of living on Victory Road that there were ways and means of breaking in. They were reported in the newspaper every week. The upper half of the door held two thin panes of glass and there was just one hole for a key. It was possible.

  As I walked up the path I tussled with myself, asking why I was doing something that was bound to lead to trouble. There would be consequences, I knew. But by the time I reached the doorstep, I had decided that I had nothing to lose. I was going to die, after all. At least this time I would be doing something good.

  I untied my headscarf and wrapped it around my hand, then picked up a brick from the pile of rubble by the step. The dirty glass smashed easily. I reached through and lifted the latch.

  I feared the worst when I saw the body on the bed, but as I moved closer the grubby sheets twitched. Despite the room’s terrible stuffiness, the girl was shivering. She lay on her side, gasping loudly, showing no sign of having noticed an intruder. As my eyes became used to the dim light, I edged my way around the bed. I reached out towards her, thought bet
ter of it, moved away, then reached again.

  ‘Hello,’ I said.

  ‘Mum?’

  The hope in her voice made me shiver. I knew I wasn’t the person she wanted. When she saw me, she screamed.

  ‘I’m Nora,’ I said quickly. ‘I thought you might need help.’

  She peered at me.

  ‘I know you,’ she said. ‘You’re that old woman from across the road. You’ve been watching me.’

  It had never occurred to me that I might have seemed strange to her.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I stammered. ‘I wanted to make sure that you were all right. I mean, with the baby.’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘But you can’t do this alone.’

  Her voice was fierce. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Please let me help.’

  ‘Why? Are you a nurse?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What do you know about it, then? Have you got children?’

  I swallowed. ‘No, but I’ve read a book,’ I said. ‘I think I could help.’

  I knew I didn’t sound convincing. I wasn’t even sure that it was true. Part of me wanted to creep away, back over the road and into my house, to not become involved, but the next minute the girl began to pant so hard that it sounded as if she were trying to blow out some kind of blockage from her lungs. She grabbed my arm, her fingers pressing hard into my flesh.

  ‘Help me!’ she screamed. ‘Please.’

  She held onto me until the contraction had passed and then collapsed back against the thin pillow, breathing hard. I could think of nothing to say and so I looked about the room. It had once been part of a fine house, I thought, for a fine family, but there was nothing fine about it now. A drawing room had been chopped in two, divided clumsily with plasterboard, leaving space for little more than the chair that I had seen from my window and the narrow bed. Damp edged across the walls, making the paper lift and peel. The faded carpet was worn, the movements of previous tenants marked by tracks between the bed and the makeshift kitchen that stood against one of the walls. The beer glass that I had seen her drink from stood on the draining board, next to the sink.

  ‘Shall I get you some milk?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s gone off,’ she said. ‘The electricity ran out.’

  I went over to the refrigerator, opened it, gagged and quickly closed the door again.

  ‘What did you say your name was?’ the girl said.

  ‘Nora.’

  ‘I’m Rose.’

  I went back over to the bed. She had a sweet face, small and pointed, with freckles scattered across her cheeks and nose, making her look even younger than I had thought. But her forehead was creased into a frown and she held herself tense. She was wearing the same black vest that I had seen her in all summer. The lower half of her body was covered by the sheet, for which I was thankful.

  She looked as if she was about to say something else but just then a tremor passed through her body and she grabbed hold of my arm again. I was beginning to think that I should find someone to help, someone who really knew what to do. I hadn’t meant it to happen like this, for it to go this far.

  ‘Shall I call an ambulance?’ I said. ‘I think you should go to hospital. There’s a telephone box on the corner. It wouldn’t take me very long.’

  ‘Please don’t leave me!’ she whispered. ‘I’m scared. Don’t go.’

  And so I stayed. As the evening became night, more contractions came and she clung to me. I found myself singing old songs to her and stroking her hair, which soon became dark with sweat. I found a candle and stuck it to a saucer. It burned hesitantly at first, then stronger, throwing shadows against the wall. The shadows danced as draughts crept under the door and made the candle flicker.

  Early in the morning, she began to make a different sort of sound, desperate and low.

  ‘The baby’s coming,’ she said. ‘I can feel it.’

  I felt myself flush as she kicked off the dirty sheet. Apart from her vest she wore nothing. She lay on her back, clenching her fists, her monstrous belly rising high above her. I made myself look between her legs and saw a dark circle begin to expand, wider with every push that she gave. Her flesh was stretched so far that it looked as if it would tear if it went any further, but as it kept on stretching I realized that the circle was the top of the baby’s head. It began to protrude out of her, revealing eyes, a nose and finally, a chin. When a pair of shoulders appeared, I took hold of them, half catching and half pulling until suddenly it was there in my hands, a small, slippery thing, covered in a layer of something white and streaked with blood.

  In that instant, something that had been clenched tight inside me for as long as I could remember was released. I stood, holding the child, tears pouring down my cheeks.

  ‘Look, Rose, it’s a little girl,’ I croaked.

  I laid the baby in her arms. Our eyes met and she smiled, then looked at her daughter with such tenderness that I had to turn away.

  I followed the book’s instructions to the letter, cutting the umbilical cord, wrapping the child in a towel, making a newspaper parcel of the strange, bloody afterbirth and taking it to the rubbish bin outside. Rose and the baby slept, their chests rising and falling peacefully. Despite my tiredness, I couldn’t sleep. I paced about, thinking.

  In an effort to clear my head, I opened the curtains a little. As I watched, the sun began to rise, turning the sky a delicate shade of pink, the colour of the baby’s skin. It made the street look almost beautiful, fresh with the promise of a crisp September. As dawn became morning, golden light shone through the window, warming my bones. People began to leave their houses to go to work, pleasure spreading over their faces as they paused to sniff the air. It would be a good day, I decided, a fine first day for Rose’s child.

  I turned my head to look at them, still sleeping. The morning light made the room look even worse than it had done the night before, revealing stains on the ceiling and balls of dust at the edges of the carpet. The bed sagged under the slight weight of its occupants. Its sheets had seemed grubby enough in the candlelight but now I saw that they were streaked with dirt. The pile of the chair that I was sitting on was stuck together in hard little clumps where something had spilled on it. This bedsit was no place for a baby, I thought.

  Music began to thud through the wall but Rose slept on. It was the baby who woke her, mewing like a kitten.

  ‘Good morning,’ I said.

  For a moment she looked bewildered, then she smiled. ‘It’s you!’

  ‘She’s hungry,’ I said. ‘You should feed her.’

  ‘I don’t know how.’

  The book had explained it but the daylight made me awkward. Eventually, the baby solved the problem herself, groping with her mouth and suckling greedily. I looked out of the window at my house, wishing that I were alone in the kitchen like any other morning, making coffee with no-one else to think about. But then I heard Rose murmur something to the child.

  ‘How could she have wanted to get rid of you? You’re perfect.’

  Her words had an immediate effect on me.

  ‘You and the child must come and stay with me,’ I blurted out.

  I didn’t know why I had said it but I was suddenly convinced it was the answer.

  She looked astonished. ‘It’s very kind of you,’ she said, ‘but I’m really okay here. Anyway, I can’t afford anything better than this.’

  ‘I don’t want your money,’ I said quickly. ‘But I have a house. I’m the only one who lives in it and it’s too big for me. This room is too small for you and the baby. I could give you your own room, much nicer than this one.’

  ‘But you don’t even know me,’ she said. ‘Why are you doing this? Why did you come here last night?’

  If I had an inkling of the reasons for my rashness, I had no intention of telling her; at least, not yet.

  ‘I felt sorry for you. I know what it’s like to be on your own.’

  I saw her wonder whether or not to believe me.
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  ‘You can’t suddenly invite me to move in. We’ve only just met.’

  ‘We’ve been watching each other for weeks.’

  ‘That’s the other thing. You could be anyone. It’s a crazy idea.’

  ‘It’s not crazy,’ I said. ‘And neither am I. I’m lonely, that’s all.’

  It was true. The illness had robbed me of the few friends I had left. I had pushed them away, not wanting them to know what was wrong. This girl and her growing belly had been the only thing to interest me. She had jolted me out of my solitude.

  ‘I’d be helping you, but you’d be helping me too. We could keep each other company. It would be much better for the baby. Look at this place.’

  She glanced at the room, wrinkling her nose as if she were noticing for the first time how squalid it was.

  ‘It’s hardly suitable for a child,’ I said. ‘Is that music always so loud?’

  She nodded.

  ‘The baby won’t be able to sleep through music like that. My house is quiet and so am I.’ I tried my best to sound convincing. ‘Please come, for the child’s sake. Just try it out. If you don’t like it, you can always leave.’

  She leaned back against the dirty wall, weighing up the offer. I watched anxiously, waiting for her to answer. At last, she nodded.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Thank you. We’ll come, for a while anyway. Let’s see if it works out.’

  I felt a rush of happiness. ‘That’s wonderful.’

  ‘I want to give you something in return,’ she said.

  I wondered what it could possibly be. ‘Thank you, but it’s really not necessary.’

  She smiled. ‘Please. I want you to name the baby. Choose a name you really like, one that means something to you.’

  I didn’t hesitate for a second. I smiled back at her. ‘Grace. Let’s call her Grace.’