Mary's Child Read Online Free PDF Page A

survived it all, for twenty pounds a year and her keep. But Master Jack would be her last.
    ‘He’s a canny little bairn. Quick-tempered little divil sometimes but no viciousness in him.’ She had cared for his father, Mr  Richard, and his uncle, Mr  Christopher, that was killed in the yard. And their father, the old man himself, George Ballantyne, had promised her a pension that would be enough for her to live on. When Master Jack went to boarding school in a year or two she would go to live with her widowed sister.
    She did not complain. ‘If I’d got wed I’d have had bairns o’ my own, mebbe, and mebbe a man that punched me round the house every Saturday night when he came home drunk.’ She had the example of another sister there.
    Now she took young Jack for his walk. He trotted ahead of her or dallied behind as she left Richard Ballantyne’s house and strolled along the tree-lined streets to Mowbray Park. On the way they passed George Ballantyne’s house and Jack ran into the drive, staring up at the tower pointing at the sky like a finger. Amy called him, ‘Where do you think you’re going, Master Jack?’
    He squinted into the sunlight, peering up at the tower room. ‘I’m looking for Grandad!’
    ‘You might see him tonight. Mr  George is coming to your house for dinner. Now you come out o’ there and behave yourself or you go home.’
    Jack obeyed in the face of this warning and they walked on. There were several strollers, although most people who passed rode in open carriages driven by coachmen. The gentlemen wore top hats and the ladies held parasols to protect them from the sun. Amy and Jack caught glimpses of the beflagged buildings of the town but did not go down into its crowds and turned instead into the park.
    Jack ran along the paths in the cool shade cast by the trees and clambered over the old cannon captured in the Crimea. Amy grabbed him when he slithered off the barrel that had been polished by the trousered behinds of thousands of boys. Then they walked around the pond with its ducks. A low, colonnaded wall ran along the side of the pond, with stone lions mounted on it at intervals. Jack scrambled up and sat on the back of one of these while Amy rested on a bench a few yards away.
    After a minute or two he looked down and saw a small girl in a big hat and button boots staring up at him out of dark eyes. They looked at each other for a moment then Jack asked, ‘Do you want a ride?’
    Chrissie nodded. ‘Yes, please.’
    Jack swung one leg over to join the other and slid down the smooth stone side of the lion to land beside her. Chrissie put up her arms but was too short and Jack said, ‘I’ll push you up.’ So between them, Chrissie grabbing at handholds and Jack shoving with his two hands on her bottom, she wriggled on to the back of the lion then sat up astride it.
    She sat there catching her breath, but only for a moment. Mary Carter came hurrying and demanded, ‘What are you doing, climbing about the place in your good clothes?’ And as she saw the water of the pond, an inch or two deep on the other side of the lion: ‘Suppose you fell in?’ She thrust past Jack and whisked Chrissie off the lion, set her on her feet and shook down her skirt.
    Harry Carter soothed, ‘She was only having a ride and not doing any harm.’
    But Mary was adamant. ‘She shouldn’t be climbing about when she’s out dressed. Now come on.’ She took Chrissie’s hand and led her away.
    Jack watched her go, saw her turn once to look back at him, then she was gone. He scrambled back on to the lion and forgot about her.
     
    Later that afternoon, Mary Carter sidled past Reuben Ward, her upstairs neighbour, who sat unshaven and unwashed on the front doorstep, sunning himself and grinning drunkenly. His wife was not to be seen, hiding inside the house and not showing her face. Mary had glimpsed her earlier and seen one slitted eye peering out from a black-bruised cheek.
    Mary held Chrissie by the