Fallen Grace - Mary Hooper [19]
‘And how much do you think such an advertisement in The Times would cost us?’
Lily shook her head in doubt.
‘Certainly ten shillings.’
‘Ten shillings! So the gentlewomen couldn’t have been in very trying circumstances at all,’ said Lily. She frowned deeply, thinking. ‘One of us could do something else to obtain money, get some different work . . .’
‘Perhaps,’ Grace echoed, thinking that now they were selling fewer bunches, there was certainly no need to have both of them out with cresses.
‘I could sweep the roadway!’ Lily went on. ‘I could buy a broom, look for ladies coming along and offer to make a passageway for them. That’s what the Wilson children do. Or I could hold horses for gentlemen.’
‘All the good crossings are taken,’ Grace said. ‘And it’s only boys who have the strength to hold horses.’
‘Well then, I could wait outside shops and carry parcels for ladies. Or pick up things in the streets. Patrick Cartwright told me that he once found two silk handkerchiefs.’
‘What he means is, he found them in someone’s pocket,’ said Grace.
‘Or I could go down to the river to look for things in the mud.’
‘No!’ said Grace. ‘Not that. You and I will never do that. I would rather go to . . .’
Lily looked at her and then burst into tears. ‘I’m not going back to that last place!’
Grace moved closer to put an arm around her sister. ‘No, Lily. Never. We shall never do that.’
‘You promised that we wouldn’t go back there. You said that whatever happened we never would!’ Once she’d started crying, Lily always found it difficult to stop. ‘You said that even if we had no shoes and were starving to death, we wouldn’t! You said!’
‘I meant every word,’ Grace said, smoothing her sister’s hair. ‘I promised you then and promise you now: we will never go into a workhouse or go back to the training house.’ She looked at her sister carefully. ‘But why was that place so very awful for you?’
‘That man might come for me again!’
Grace felt the blood drain from her face. ‘What do you mean?’
‘That wicked man. Oh!’ She looked at Grace in horror. ‘I said I’d never tell anyone. He said he’d kill me if I did.’
Grace was silent for a while, controlling her feelings, then she said, ‘We’re away from there now and we’ll never go back, so he couldn’t possibly know that you’ve told me.’
Lily gave a shuddering sob.
‘Tell me what you remember,’ Grace prompted gently.
‘He came at night-time. You weren’t there . . . one of the little children had called out for you and you’d gone into another room, so when he got into my bed, I thought at first it was you coming back.’
‘And then . . .’
‘Then he did something . . .’ Lily looked away, deeply ashamed. ‘He was improper with me.’
‘And did he say anything?’
‘Hardly anything, and he spoke very low, in a growl. He said that I should be a woman soon and it was as well that I found out what was in store for me.’
Grace nodded sadly. It had been the same for her. ‘Did you see his face at all?’
Lily shook her head. ‘You’d taken the candle and there was no moon that night. Besides, I was so frightened that I kept my eyes tightly shut the whole time – until he was getting out of the bed. And then I looked and saw the back of him, and when he pushed away the bedclothes . . .’ She shuddered again. ‘I saw that he only had one hand. Where the other should have been, there was just a stump.’
Grace nodded and swallowed the bile which had risen in her throat.
‘He told me that he visited all the girls once. He said he was a very important man and it was his special, secret treat for them.’ She suddenly realised the implications of what she’d said and gasped. ‘Did he come to you, too, Grace?’
Grace managed to control herself before replying, ‘Yes.’
‘Did he say the same things?’
Grace nodded.
‘And do . . . do the same?’
‘Yes, the very same. But because of that . . .’ She hesitated, but thought it was as well that Lily should know the facts of life.