The Rainbow Years Read Online Free PDF Page A

didn’t have to.
     
    ‘It’s not that, lass, is it?’ Muriel’s voice was faint and tremulous. ‘You’re not in the family way?’
     
    ‘Oh, Mam.’
     
    Bess’s tone was answer enough and Muriel sat down abruptly on one of the hard-backed chairs, all the colour draining from her face. Her mouth opened a few times before she was able to say, ‘How far gone are you?’
     
    Bess gulped hard. ‘About nineteen weeks now.’
     
    ‘Nineteen?’
     
    ‘I’m sorry, Mam, I’m sorry. Oh, Mam . . .’ Bess’s face was as stricken as her voice and when she flung herself on her knees at her mother’s feet, her head buried in her mother’s lap as her arms went round her waist, Muriel only hesitated for a second before she began to stroke the dark head.
     
    ‘Why didn’t you tell me, hinny? Why didn’t you say somethin’ afore now?’ Her voice cracked. ‘Nineteen weeks. Saints alive.’
     
    ‘I . . . I was going to see someone. One of the women at work knows this woman in the East End—’
     
    ‘ You’ve told ’em at work? ’
     
    ‘No, no. Just this woman. And . . . and Kitty. That’s all. No one else knows.’
     
    ‘An’ the father?’ Muriel asked heavily. ‘You told him?’
     
    ‘He’s dead.’ It was stark and flat.
     
    ‘Dead? Oh, lass.’
     
    ‘He was killed in the war, the Somme. But,’ Bess took a deep breath, ‘he was married. I didn’t know,’ she said quickly as she felt the hand on her head make an involuntary movement. She raised her face to look into her mother’s and what she saw there made her protest, ‘I swear, Mam. I didn’t know. He’s not from round these parts, he . . . he was a gentleman.’
     
    Muriel rubbed her hand across her face and it was shaking. It was a few moments before she said painfully, ‘So there’ll be no help from that quarter then?’ And when Bess slowly shook her head, the two of them stared at each other.
     
    ‘I felt it move, this morning in the privy.’ Bess’s lips quivered. ‘I was going to see this woman later, she lives in the East End and . . .’ She couldn’t finish. ‘But now I’ve felt it move it’s different.’
     
    ‘You can’t do away with it.’ There was a note of horror in Muriel’s voice and she sat up straighter, motioning for Bess to rise. She patted the chair beside her. ‘Come and sit down, hinny, and let’s have no more talk like that ’cos it don’t help no one. It’s a mortal sin to even think such a thing.’
     
    A mortal sin. Bess felt years older than her mother and it was a strange feeling. Here was her mam talking about mortal sin when there was her father to be faced. Whatever was going to happen in the hereafter couldn’t be as bad as the here and now. ‘I’m not going to do away with it, Mam. I couldn’t, not now. But . . .’ She stopped abruptly. She had been about to say her change of mind was nothing to do with the Church or Father Fraser but this would just cause her mother further distress. ‘But there’s Da,’ she said instead.
     
    Her mother said nothing to this, she didn’t have to. They both knew what it would mean.
     
    ‘If there was somewhere I could go until it’s born, I’d do it,’ Bess said in a low voice. ‘But there’s not. Nowhere except the workhouse, that is.’
     
    ‘You’re not going there, hinny. Not while I’ve breath in me body.’
     
    ‘But I can’t stay here, Mam. Not with him.’
     
    Muriel’s face was as white as a sheet as she endeavoured to stay calm. She stood up and cleared away the crockery. She placed the contents of Bess’s plate and that of her own into a bowl which she carried to the pantry, slipping it on the cold slab beneath the newspaper-covered shelves. Even in this crisis the old adage of ‘waste not, want not’ held firm.
     
    She returned to the table and poured herself a cup of warm, stewed tea. Bess declined one with a shake of her head. It was only after Muriel had drunk her tea straight down that she said,