The House by Princes Park Read Online Free PDF

there was a baby in a basket on the back seat who made not a sound for most of the way. The driver had almost reached his destination when it began to cry. Instead of stopping to give it the bottle Mrs Cookson had prepared, Daffydd Jones pressed his foot harder on the accelerator. Nearly there.
    He recognised the white convent when it came into sight, perched on a hill three miles from Abergele. He had been before. The Mother Superior knew him, but not his name. Daffyd Jones wasn’t a Catholic, he had no truck with Papist nonsence, but the convent was also an orphanage and had agreed to take the child if it was a girl. Arrangements had been made elsewhere in the event his daughter’s bastard turned out to be a boy.
    The small car groaned its way up the hill and seemed to breathe a sigh of relief when it stopped outside the convent’s thick oak door. He got out, pulled the bell, and returned to collect his tiny passenger whose cries by now had become screams of rage.
    An ancient nun, as curved as a question mark, waswaiting for him, nodding, like a puppet, when he came back and handed her the basket.
    She nodded at him to come inside. He refused, saying gruffly, ‘I’ve to give you this.’ He handed her the scrap of paper Mrs Cookson had given him. ‘After all, what harm will it do?’ she’d said.
    Tipping his hat, he bade the nun goodbye. She nodded again and closed the door.
    Daffydd Jones watched the door close and wondered why there were tears in his eyes.
    Inside the convent, the nun peered at the paper. Her eyes were old, but she could still see, particularly when it was nice, clear print like this.
    ‘Ruby O’Hagan,’ she read. Well, at least the child had a name, even if the poor, wee mite had nothing else.

Emily

Chapter 2
1933–1935
    The Convent of the Sisters of the Sacred Cross near Abergele was renowned for its orphan girls, all superbly trained by the age of fourteen to enter the world of live-in domestic service. They could sew the neatest of seams, embroider, cook, clean, launder, even garden. They were respectful, healthy, extremely moral, highly religious, and had perfect manners.
    The girls made ideal housemaids, nursemaids, cooks, seamstresses. Well adjusted and apparently content with their lot, they had been brought up, if not with love, then with kindness. Physical punishment was strictly forbidden in the convent.
    Their education was confined to subjects that would be of use to girls whose role in life would be to serve others until they eventually married a man from the same class as themselves, usually another servant. Apart from domestic skills, they were taught to read and write and do simple arithmetic. They learnt a smattering of history and geography. It was considered a waste for the girls to study science, literature, art, current affairs, or politics. No one was likely to ask a servant girl what she thought of the situation in Russia or which Shakespeare play was her favourite, though she could, if asked, recite the catechism, reel off the names of the last ten Popes, sing several hymns in Latin, and accurately describe the fourteen Stations of the Cross which she had made every Good Friday for as far back as she could remember.
    There were applicants anxious for a convent girl from as far away as London, though the girls mainly went to wealthy Catholic homes across the Welsh/English border: Cheshire, Shropshire, Lancashire. Occasionally, a girl stayed and took the veil.
    Until they left, the girls spent most of their time within the confines of the convent. They were taught there. They went to Mass in the tiny chapel in the well-tended grounds, the service taken by a priest from a seminary twenty miles away. If the girls were ill, unless it was something contagious or requiring surgery, the young patients were cared for by the nuns themselves.
    On Sunday afternoons, they went for a walk in the quiet, secluded lanes, proceeding in a crocodile, two by two, seeing only the