A Child's Voice Calling Read Online Free PDF Page B

healthy country air of Belhampton . . . She remembered Eric’s words on the train: ‘
I would have married you, Anna-Maria. I would have married you and called the child mine
.’ Her beautiful, fair-haired daughter could have been Mabel Drummond.
    Yet Annie Court could not imagine her life without Albert, Alice and Georgie, her children who were the reason why she carried on the day-to-day struggle to bring up her family respectably while living on the poverty line. They helped her to repress her memories of the past, that other life which was now neverspoken of because of what had happened to her poor papa and the unforgiveness of her sisters.
    Encouraged by her success at early morning shopping, Mabel next decided to try her luck at the Friday night stalls in Nine Elms Lane. Albert begged to come with her and so, with Thursday’s and Friday’s earnings in her pocket, and promising her mother that they would come straight home, they set off to walk over the railway bridge and along Battersea Park Road to the line-up of stalls and costers’ barrows beneath the gas lamps in the late October dusk. A mist curled up from the river, which mixing with the pall of chimney smoke gave a greenish tinge to the lights. A barrel organ was playing on the corner of Tideway Walk, and a crowd of rough-looking children had gathered to listen and caper to the music while workers from Price’s candles and Doulton’s pottery had come over to spend their pay, rubbing shoulders with gasworkers, laundrywomen and clerks. Newsboys shouted the headlines and racing results, and flower girls eyed the better-dressed men strolling between the stalls.
    Holding tightly to Albert’s dragging hand, Mabel surveyed the busy scene, though with so many street sellers competing for trade she wished she had somebody to advise her on how best to spend her four pennies.
    ‘’Ad a good look, ’ave yer? I’ll turn rahnd, so’s yer can see me backside an’ all.’
    Mabel started, realising that she had been staring at the ragged girl who had just spoken. She was wrapped in a long, grimy shawl which she drew around herself and the baby she carried in her arms. Her features were sharp, her hair lanky anduncombed, and her toes stuck out of her worn shoes. She was about the same size and height as Mabel, though her face appeared older and in better circumstances she might have been quite pretty. Jostled by the crowd, the two girls found themselves standing next to each other and Mabel was unpleasantly conscious of the smell of the girl’s unwashed clothing. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said awkwardly. ‘I didn’t mean to be rude.’
    The girl nodded towards Albert. ‘’Im yer bruvver?’
    ‘Yes – and is that
your
baby brother or sister?’ asked Mabel, just to show that she too could ask questions of a stranger.
    ‘Yeah, bruvver. Bleedin’ ’eavy ’e is, too. Got any more at ’ome, ’ave yer?’
    ‘A sister younger ’n me, and another brother. What about you?’
    ‘We’ve ’ad two bruvvers an’ a sister kick the bucket – only me ’n’ Teddy left.’
    Mabel was so horrified by this that she had no answer and the girl shrugged. ‘Yer from rahnd ’ere, then?’
    Mabel nodded. ‘Are you?’
    The girl gestured with her head. ‘Over Vaux’all way.’ She looked curiously at Mabel. ‘Don’t s’pose yer got a spare copper on yer?’
    Mabel’s fingers curled protectively round the coins in her pocket. ‘Not to spare,’ she said very definitely.
    ‘What yer after, then – cheap grub? If I wasn’t weighted dan wiv this ’un, I’d soon be under some o’ them stalls, not ’alf I wouldn’t! ’Ere, come an’ ’ave a gander.’
    She led Mabel to a greengrocer’s barrow and advised buying one pennyworth of speckly apples and another of four squashy oranges, both itemsbeing sold off at half price; potatoes cost another three halfpence and then, moving on to the roast chestnut man’s glowing brazier, Mabel spent her remaining halfpenny on