(untitled)
by Josephine Tey
First Draft
Claymore House, East Finchley, Wednesday 12 November 1902
Amelia Sach held the baby close to her chest and stared impatiently at the longcase clock, whose steady, purposeful ticking dominated the front parlour of the house in Hertford Road. These days, it seemed that her life was governed by waiting—waiting for babies to arrive, waiting for them to depart, waiting for the next timid knock at the door which would start the whole process again. It was twenty minutes past the time she had specified in her telegram, and there was still no sign of Walters. Sometimes she thought the woman was late on purpose, making herself seem indispensable by giving Amelia time to contemplate what she would do if left on her own with another woman’s unwanted child. The baby wriggled in her arms and gave a soft gurgle of contentment. She was a beautiful little girl, only a few hours old but already comfortable with the strange new world which she had entered in a businesslike fashion, free from fuss or struggle. It had been an easy birth, with no reason to call in the local doctor, and Amelia looked gratefully down at the child, making sure that she was warmly wrapped in the bonnet and shawl that her mother had painstakingly knitted. In fact, there had been only one anxious moment: when she took the baby in to her mother for the final goodbyes, the woman had looked at her with such longing and desperation that Amelia half-expected her to change her mind; now, in her heart, she almost wished she had.
The warmth of the baby in her arms reminded her—as it always did—of how she had felt when she first held her own daughter. It was more than four years ago, but she could remember it as if it were yesterday and she experienced the same stab of joy and pride now every time she looked at her little girl, her Lizzie, who—with her auburn hair and delicate features—was a miniature version of her mother. Her own pregnancy had seemed like a miracle after years of hoping for a baby, and her life now was dominated by thoughts of her daughter’s future. She was determined that Lizzie would never be faced with the difficult choices that she had made and comforted herself with the knowledge that, having made those choices, she was at least making a success of things: her business was growing by the day. A change of monarch had made no difference whatsoever to women so much further down the social scale, and there were still plenty who needed someone to take their humiliation off their hands; if she didn’t do it for them, she told herself, then someone else would. The Hertford Road premises were the largest she had taken yet, and Claymore House was a superior-looking building which made a fine maternity home and had been easy to adapt for nursing purposes. There were four rooms available, although, to stay within the law, she should really only accommodate one child at a time—but Finchley lay just outside the area in which London City Council inspectors exercised control and, in any case, the authorities were less keen to uphold regulations than the legislators were to make them. Not that she had anything to hide: when she placed her advertisements in the weekly journals, offering moderate terms, skilled nursing and every care taken, she was only telling the truth. More than twenty women had passed through her doors in the last eighteen months, and she would be surprised to hear a complaint from any of them; they travelled from all over the country for the benefit of her discretion, and they wouldn’t find better.
Outside, she heard the iron gate close but the footsteps coming up the path—although familiar—were not the ones she was waiting for. The front door slammed and her husband called her name. ‘In here, Jacob,’ she answered brightly, rocking the child gently as she began to cry, but her smile of welcome faded as she saw his expression change. He looked long and hard at the baby and then at her, and began to put his coat back on. ‘Jacob? Where are you going? Don’t be silly, love—you’ve only just come in. Stay with me now, Jacob—please!’
‘How many times do I have to tell you?’ he asked, the suppressed anger in his tone making his words seem far more threatening than if he had shouted them at the top of his voice. ‘I don’t want that woman in my house when I’m here, and I won’t have anything to do with what you and her get up to. I’ll say this for the last time, Amelia—whatever it is, get it over and done with by the time I get home. Do you understand me?’ For a moment, she thought he was going to strike her and she lifted her hand to shield the baby, but he turned and left without another word.
‘So you don’t want anything to do with it?’ she shouted after him. ‘You’re happy enough to spend my money, though, aren’t you? And to call this house yours when it suits you, and lay down your laws. The only thing you can’t seem to do is spend any time with your wife and daughter.’ But she was talking to an empty hallway. The front door slammed behind him, and the baby’s cries grew louder. ‘There, there,’ she said softly, but her attention was no longer on the child: she was thinking about Jacob, and how he’d be spending the rest of the night in the Joiner’s Arms, washing away his self-pity. Was that really what she was doing this for? So Jacob could afford to drink himself to death and risk everything she’d worked for with one slurred indiscretion? If only the wretched child would stop crying, she thought impatiently, hugging the tiny body closer to her. And where the devil was Walters? This was all her fault.
She went back into the sitting room and drew aside the curtain in the large bay window, talking absent-mindedly to the child all the time. Peering out into the darkness, she saw Walters at the bottom of the street, sauntering along as though she didn’t have a care in the world. And perhaps she didn’t. Perhaps her reliance on drink or on drugs—Amelia didn’t know which and didn’t care to find out—had created a detachment from life which made her ideal for a particular sort of work. Theirs was a strange, twisted relationship, she thought, as she watched the older woman’s slow progress along the pavement. They were bonded by their work and had to rely on some sort of trust, but with that came a resentment that neither could flourish without the other. In her darker moments, distanced from her husband and fearful for her child, Amelia felt trapped by circumstances from which she could see no escape. While she knew that the trap was of her own making, she hated Walters, both as an unwelcome reminder of her situation and as a scapegoat for it. It did not require a great deal of understanding to know that the feeling was mutual.
She opened the door before Walters had a chance to ring the bell, and stood aside to let her into the hallway. ‘Where the hell have you been?’ she whispered angrily. ‘I said five o’clock.’
Walters was dressed respectably enough in the brown cape which she always wore, tied tightly with a black ribbon at the throat, but her smile seemed grotesquely out of place in a face which had been destroyed by hard living and which looked much older than its fifty-odd years. It reminded Amelia of the terrible old women who haunted the fairy tales that she read to Lizzie, and the impression was hardly dispelled by Walters’s response. ‘A few minutes isn’t going to make any difference to the little one, is it?’ she said, and held out her arms. Amelia noticed the dirt under her ragged fingernails, and hid her disgust as she handed the baby over: she needed help, no matter what form it took; Walters knew it, and never missed an opportunity to exploit the fact. On a previous visit, when Amelia had been called away for a moment by one of her patients, she had come back into the parlour to find Walters holding Lizzie in her arms, and the triumphant expression on her face was enough to remind Amelia how easily they could destroy each other; there was no doubting who had the most to lose. Now, Walters kissed the newborn’s forehead and the child stopped crying immediately. ‘She’s a pretty little thing,’ she said softly, laughing as the child stretched out a tiny hand to touch her face. ‘I’ll be sorry to see her go.’
‘I’ve told you before,’ Amelia said angrily, realising how like her husband she sounded, ‘I don’t want to know what happens after you leave here.’
She went hurriedly over to a small bureau in the corner, unlocked the top left-hand drawer and removed a cash-box, feeling Walters’s eyes on her all the time. As she counted out thirty shillings on to the table, the other woman laid the child carefully down on the settee and scraped the money into her purse without waiting to be asked. ‘It’s not much to pay for a clear conscience,’ she said quietly. ‘Not when you expect me to do all your dirty work.’
‘It’s what we agreed.’
Walters picked the baby up and wrapped her in the thick blanket which Amelia had put ready. ‘That was a long time ago, though, and you’ve kept me very busy just lately. Seems to me you should face up to the truth or pay a bit more for your ignorance.’
‘I’m not listening,’ Amelia said, still clutching the rest of the money. ‘Just take the child and go.’
‘What will it be this time, I wonder?’ Walters mused, running her hand lightly across the baby’s cheek. ‘River or rubbish dump? Which do you fancy, my little one?’
Amelia turned away and put her hands over her ears. ‘Stop it!’ she screamed. ‘Get out—now!’
There was a tentative knock at the door and a young woman looked in on them. She was the latest intake, and it was obvious from her swollen belly that the birth was only a matter of days away. ‘Is everything all right?’ she asked, looking curiously at Walters and the baby.
‘Yes, Ada, we’re fine,’ Amelia said, pulling herself together. ‘Go back upstairs—you should be resting.’
‘You’re kindness itself, aren’t you?’ Walters said sarcastically as soon as they were alone again. ‘Always so concerned for their welfare. But what about my welfare, eh? Who looks out for me? I’m taking all the risks here, while you sleep easy in your bed. How do I know you won’t turn me in?’
‘Because we’re in this together,’ Amelia said, horrified at how true it was. ‘Now just leave.’ Walters opened her mouth to speak but changed her mind, and turned to go with nothing more than a defiant glance. Amelia heard the front door close and, in response, footsteps from the room above, and realised that the baby’s mother—still weak after the birth—must have struggled out of bed and walked over to the window for a final glimpse of her child. What in God’s name must she be thinking? Amelia wondered. Was she trying to imagine the fine, wealthy lady who would bring her daughter up, or did she know in her heart that Walters’s was the last touch which the baby would know? The thought made her desperate to see Lizzie and she hurried up to the nursery. When she opened the door, the child was standing over by the window and she turned an excited face to her mother.
‘It’s so cold now, Mummy. Do you think it’s going to snow?’
‘Oh, it’s bound to soon,’ Amelia said, bending down to cuddle her. They looked out of the window together, trying to see beyond their own reflection to the darkness of the yard and the houses opposite and, as she caught sight of herself next to her daughter’s innocence, it seemed to Amelia that her own face had grown so much older in the last few months. If only it were just the physical shell that decayed with age, she thought, and not the heart: the world—her world—would be a very different place.
‘What’s that, Mummy?’ Lizzie asked, pointing to the handful of five-pound notes that her mother had forgotten to put back in the bureau before coming upstairs.
‘That’s Christmas,’ she said, smiling.
Lizzie frowned. ‘But Christmas is too far away.’
‘Oh, it’s only a few weeks, and they’ll fly by quickly enough as long as you’re good.’ She hugged her daughter tightly. ‘And I promise you—it will be the best Christmas that any little girl could have.’