A Mother's Secret Read Online Free PDF Page A

protected her from Biddy’s volatile tempers and drunken rages. It was Bailey who had looked after her when she almost died of measles, the dreaded childhood disease that had taken the lives of three of Biddy’s youngest charges. He had wiped her nose when she cried and bathed her knees when she took a tumble. Bailey might not be her blood brother but he was something more to her; he was her whole family and she loved him dearly.
    He set her down at the top of the steps leading into Three Herring Court. ‘Best not look too happy when we go inside,’ he said, setting his cap straight. ‘Hide them sweets too, or she’ll have ’em off you quicker than you can blink.’
    ‘I’m ten, I ain’t daft,’ Cassy said, tucking what was left of her treat inside her ragged blouse. ‘Let’s hope she’s dead drunk by now and we’ll get a bit of peace.’
    Bailey took her by the hand as they negotiated the slippery stone steps that were treacherous even in summer, worn down in the middle by the passage of feet over two hundred years or more. Three Herring Court was a narrow street lined with run-down buildings that had had many uses over the centuries but now housed small businesses: a printer of religious tracts, a walking stick maker, a milliner who eked out a meagre living by taking in gentlemen lodgers, a pie maker of dubious repute, a candle maker whose small shop filled the street with the smell of hot wax and tallow, and an oriental gentleman who professed to practise Chinese herbal medicine but everyone knew he ran an illicit opium den. The rest of the dilapidated buildings were crammed with tenants, twenty to a room in some cases, and at the very end was Biddy Henchard’s tall and narrow house which she advertised as a nursery and board school, but Cassy knew that the locals referred to it as a baby farm.
    The front door groaned on rusty hinges as Bailey thrust it open. The stench outside was as nothing compared to the smell that assailed Cassy’s nostrils as she followed him into the narrow hallway. Festoons of cobwebs hung from the ceiling and the walls had shed flakes of limewash to cover the bare boards like a powdering of snow. The mixed odours of dry rot, baby sick and the rancid stench of cheap tallow candles were almost overpowered by the fumes of jigger gin and tobacco smoke, which made the whole house reek like the taproom of a dockyard pub. Echoing throughout the building the wailing of infants came to a sudden halt, drowned out by a roar from Biddy’s gin-soaked throat. ‘Shut up you little buggers or I’ll beat your brains out.’
    Not for the first time, Cassy wanted to turn and run away from this nightmare place, but the sound of a child coughing and whooping put all thoughts of flight from her head. She hurried along the narrow passage that led into the one large room which served as a kitchen, living room and nursery for some of the youngest children. The bare floorboards were littered with scraps of half-eaten crusts, potato peelings and balls of fluff which might have been dead mice or simply an accumulation of dust and fibres. The furthest part of the room was in semi-darkness with a tattered curtain drawn across the window which overlooked the court, and it was here that the children were stacked in boxes and crates like goods in a warehouse. The smell of ammonia from urine-soaked bedding was enough to floor an ox, let alone a ten-year-old child. Cassy covered her nose and mouth with her hand, shocked by the noxious fumes even though she was used to living in such conditions. The air outside had seemed sweet in comparison to the rank odour in the nursery. She made a move to snatch Freddie from the wooden crate where he spent most of his time but Biddy, who had obviously been asleep in a high-backed Windsor chair by the range, rose to her feet clutching a gin bottle in her hand and she advanced on him with a ferocious snarl.
    Cassy snatched the infant up in her arms as a paroxysm of coughing