Hope - Lesley Pearse [78]
Was she carrying a child?
Round here no one could afford to get married, so if a girl got in the family way no one thought anything of it. But Betsy had enough recollection of life before her parents died to know that in more genteel circles bastards were frowned on.
Betsy was just going to wriggle over closer to the girl and look to see if she had a swollen belly, when she began to stir. She moved to sit up, winced with pain and flopped down again.
‘How’d yer feel now? Any better for a sleep?’ Betsy asked.
The girl looked about her as if confused. ‘I can see a bit better now. But both my eyes hurt. Are they very swollen?’
‘Let’s just say you won’t be getting no admirers for a bit,’ Betsy said with a chuckle.
‘It was very kind of you and your husband to help me.’
The sweetness of her voice touched Betsy, but it also reminded her to be careful. For all she knew the girl could be a magistrate’s daughter! ‘Gussie ain’t me husband; only a friend. I’ll tell youright now, we don’t normally help no one. So if you wants to stay tonight you’d better spill it out!’
‘Spill what out?’
‘Well, yer name, how old you are, and where you from, fer a start. We couldn’t get no sense out of yer while we was helping you ’ere.’
‘Hope Renton, fifteen, and I come from a village beyond Bristol to the south. Did you say your name is Betsy?’
‘That’s right. Betsy Archer and I’m nobody’s fool. So I’m gonna make a cup of tea. And then you’re gonna tell me how you ended up nearly getting yerself flattened under a carriage wheel. And when the baby’s due.’
‘I’m not having a baby,’ Hope said indignantly. ‘What made you think I was?’
‘That’s the usual reason for girls running away.’ Betsy shrugged. ‘But if you say you ain’t, then that’s one problem out the way.’
Hope watched as Betsy filled an old tin teapot with some water from a jug, and then put it on the fire to boil. She wondered why she hadn’t got a kettle.
Her memory of coming here was cloudy. She remembered Betsy and Gussie being with her in the church, then them holding her arms to support her and taking her through some very narrow alleys. But that was all she could remember.
She shuddered as she looked about the small, gloomy room. It was clearly at the top of the house for the ceiling sloped sharply towards the tiny window, and it had no furniture, only a few wooden crates and piles of sacks which clearly served as beds. On one of the crates there were several cracked cups and a large tin box. A bucket stood in the corner by the door, presumably for slops, and on another crate was a tin basin.
Hope knew people who were very much poorer than her own family, but even they had some sort of furniture, a few trinkets and bits of china. Betsy must be desperately poor, but she didn’t look it for she had gold hoops in her ears, and her red dress was stylish, even if it was shabby, dirty and a bit vulgar with such a low neck.
‘It’s quiet here,’ Hope said. ‘Is that because you are the only people living here?’
Betsy gave a kind of strangled snort. ‘Your eyes must’ve been bad when we brought you in here,’ she said. ‘It’s like a bleedin’ ants’ nest, so many people coming and going you can’t count them all. It’s quiet now cos most are out, but come this evening it’ll be a different story. Now, that brings me round to your’n. Come on, tell me!’
Hope thought fast. She was very grateful to Betsy, but she wasn’t sure it was sensible to tell her the whole truth, not until she knew she could trust her. So she gave her a safer, shortened version, that Albert resented her living with him and her sister, and while Nell was away he’d hit her and told her to get out.
‘Why didn’t you go up to the big house and tell them what he’d done?’ Betsy asked.
‘Because he would have taken it out on Nell when she got back,’ Hope said. ‘I couldn’t do anything to Albert without it coming back on Nell.’
Betsy seemed satisfied with that. The water was boiling in the teapot now, and she lifted it off the fire and put