A Mother's Secret Read Online Free PDF Page B

cholera and dysentery, and in summer Biddy forbade them to drink it. She provided small beer for the older children and milk for the infants, but both were in short supply and Cassy had to ration out their meagre allowance each day.
    Milk dribbled out of the corners of Anna’s mouth and she closed her eyes with the barest breath of a sigh. Cassy laid the baby in the wooden orange box that served as her crib. Anna was probably six months old, although like the others she had not come with a birth certificate and her exact age was a matter of conjecture. She had been frail and puny right from the start and she would, Cassy thought sadly, be unlikely to see her first birthday whenever that might be. She changed the baby’s soiled rags and put her down in her box on a bed of straw covered by a thin piece of blanket. Anna looked like a wax doll, and it seemed to Cassy as though she was already laid out in her coffin. A cold shiver ran down her spine, and she turned her attention to Samuel who was bawling his head off. At nine months old he was already displaying the qualities of a fighter. She knew instinctively that he would survive against all odds, and she gave him a cuddle as she lifted him from the tea chest where Biddy insisted that he must be kept since he was trying to crawl and might otherwise come to harm.
    Samuel stopped crying and tugged at her hair with surprising strength. She set him on her knee and fed him on tiny morsels of stale bread soaked in the milk that Anna had not managed to drink. When he had eaten his fill, Cassy changed his rags for clean ones and allowed him to crawl around the flagstone floor for a while, although when he tried to put a dead cockroach in his mouth she decided it was time to put him back in the tea chest. He protested loudly, but with his belly full he soon fell asleep. There were two more tiny tots, twin girls who had been brought to the house a few months ago by a young woman with a painted face and tragic eyes. She had sobbed brokenheartedly, begging Biddy to be kind to her newborn babies and promising to return once a month with money for their keep. Biddy had nodded and made the appropriate noises but as soon as the door closed on the unhappy mother, she had thrust the infants into Bailey’s arms. ‘That’s the last we’ll see of her,’ she had said grimly. ‘Stow them in a box and give them enough just enough to keep the little buggers quiet. If they should take sick and pass away, no one will be the wiser.’
    This callous remark had upset Cassy more than she had words to express, and Bailey protested loudly but was silenced by a clout round the head from Biddy that sent him reeling backwards against the kitchen wall. He had clenched his fists and threatened to retaliate but on seeing Cassy’s stricken face he had seemingly changed his mind, and had put the twin girls to bed in a herring box filled with fresh straw. He had waited until late that night when Biddy staggered back from the pub and had fallen into a drunken stupor, and Cassy had helped him feed the infants with warm milk. They continued to succour them in secret and the twins clung stubbornly to life, much to the delight of their mother who confounded Biddy’s fears by turning up regularly once a month with money for their keep. Cassy watched the young prostitute cradle her babies in her arms, crooning to them and kissing their tiny wrinkled faces as if they were the most precious things in the world.
    ‘They ain’t got no names,’ Cassy said shyly. ‘What shall you call ’em, missis?’
    The light dimmed in the young woman’s eyes. ‘I doubt if I’ll be here to see my babies grow up, but they should have good names. Heaven knows I’m a sinner, but what choice did I have?’ She fixed Cassy with a questioning stare as if expecting her to offer a benediction.
    ‘I dunno, missis,’ Cassy murmured, shuffling her bare feet on the cold flagstones.
    ‘None, I tells you, little girl. I was sold to an