Fallen Grace - Mary Hooper [3]
Grace shook her head. She had never thought of it becoming real, one of those red-faced and screaming bundles that poor women tied on to their backs when they went out working.
‘For the Lord’s sake, are you just having this child as a prop to go a-begging with?’ asked the midwife suddenly.
‘No, I am not!’ Grace replied with as much indignation as she could muster.
The pains grew stronger then, and closer together, and at one stage Mrs Smith gave Grace some strong salts to sniff which made her feel so lightheaded that she swooned into a state close to unconsciousness, although the pains still wracked her. When the effect of these wore off and she properly came to herself again, the room had darkened and the midwife had gone to tend a girl lying two beds away. Wearily, Grace heaved herself forward to look into the box at the foot of the bed.
It was empty.
Grace called out to Mrs Smith and after a moment she left her other charge and came over. She had a soft, conciliatory look on her face, and stroked Grace’s hair as she spoke. ‘’Tis a sorrowful thing, but for the best,’ she said.
‘What happened? Where’s the baby?’
‘Ah. ’Tis sad to tell you this, my love, but the child died.’
There was a long, long silence when, to her surprise, tears fell down Grace’s cheeks unchecked. She had hardly imagined it as a real, living baby, she thought wonderingly, so why was it so devastating that it was dead?
‘What was it?’ she asked at last.
‘A boy, bless his heart.’
‘Did he live at all?’
Mrs Smith shook her head. ‘Stillborn. Never drew breath.’
Grace sank back on the mattress. ‘Was it something I did wrong – when I was carrying him?’
‘No, darling. ’Tis just a thing that happens sometimes with young girls – your body wasn’t ready to bear it. It’s for the best, I’m thinking. You’re but a child yourself, with no one to care for you. The baby would have died this first winter anyway. Seven Dials is no place to raise a child.’
‘But dead . . .’
‘Never lived,’ the midwife corrected. She pushed a lock of hair behind Grace’s ear. ‘You’re very young. You’ll have other babies in good time. You’ll forget this sadness.’
‘Can I . . . ?’ As she began the question, she wasn’t sure what she wanted the answer to be. But the midwife had already anticipated her.
‘Best not to look at him,’ she said briskly. ‘I always advise against it. Just think of it as a dream, a story . . . something that never really happened. It’s easier got over that way.’
Grace had begun to cry again.
‘’Tis for the best, I say. Now sleep and rest yourself overnight and you’ll be recovered and on your way in no time at all.’
And indeed, after a night’s sleep and a bowl of meat and boiled potatoes paid for by the Society for the Rehabilitation of Destitute Women and Girls, Grace was asked to relinquish her space at Berkeley House for the next inmate. But before doing so, she was handed a well-wrapped bundle and told of a wonderful garden cemetery in the countryside.
‘I don’t do this for all the lasses,’ the midwife had said, handing over two coins, ‘but I feel remarkably sorry for you.’
Grace stared at her.
‘These shillings are the fare for you to take this little burden out of London, for nearly all the London churchyards are full up and closed now, and you wouldn’t wish the babe to lie uncoffined in a pauper’s pit, would you?’
Grace shook her head, unable to bear the thought.
‘No. So you must go to Brookwood.’
‘What’s that?’
‘It’s like a wonderful garden, with trees and flowers and statues. When you think about your poor child, you’ll be able to imagine him there with beautiful stone angels watching over him.’ Grace managed to smile a little at this, and the midwife smiled, too. It was as she’d thought: the burial of the child, the ritual to be completed, would help the mourning process. ‘And when you have buried him,’ she added, ‘then you must start your life again . . .’
x
‘Start again . . .’ Grace murmured, recalling this conversation. Then she realised that, becoming