Gracie. Marie Maxwell
she was emotional and she was very scared.
Suddenly she was also fed up with covering up and pretending. It was time for her secret to come out.
‘Stop going on at me all the time!’ Gracie screamed with her back to Dot. ‘I’m not going to be sick. I’m in the family way, I feel bad because I’m going to have a baby …’
Gracie looked defiantly at her mother and watched the colour drain from the woman’s face.
‘What did you just say?’
Suddenly aware of the enormity of what she was saying out loud for the first time, Gracie backed away.
‘I said, I said …’ she stuttered. ‘I said, I’m going to have a baby and I can’t go to work.’
‘No you’re not, you can’t be,’ her mother interrupted. ‘Don’t say stupid things like that just cos you don’t want to go to work, that’s wicked …’
‘Well I am. I’ve not had a show for ages and my belly’s fat. Look.’ With fake bravado Gracie unfolded her arms and patted her eight months pregnant stomach through her thin cotton nightdress, the growing stomach that she’d managed to keep hidden from everyone, both at home and at work.
Dot McCabe’s expression was almost serene as she looked first at the ceiling and then at her daughter’s swollen belly. She stared quietly for a few moments as she tried to take in the information her oldest child had given her, and then swiftly took two steps forward and slapped her daughter hard around the ear with the flat of her hand.
Then she completely lost control and did it over and over again, with both hands, hitting her as hard as she could.
‘You dirty slut, you’re dirty … dirty! How could you do that? You disgusting creature!’
Gracie tried to protect her head with her hands but still the blows rained down.
‘How could you? Who did it to you? Oh my dear God, the neighbours, the idiots downstairs, they’re all going to enjoy this! We’ll be a laughing stock. Who knows about this? Who have you told?’
‘No one, no one knows. I wanted to tell you before but I was scared,’ Gracie cried, her earlier bravery now forgotten.
‘And so you should be. What about the father? Is he that nasty squaddie your father saw you with? Is he going to marry you?’
Gracie was sobbing and talking in huge gasps.
‘No, he’s gone … he said he wanted to marry me but now he’s gone and I don’t know where and I don’t know what to do. As soon as I told him he left me. He disappeared,’ Gracie cried, gasping for breath.
Dot’s face glowed with anger as she stared at her daughter and the enormity of the situation hit her.
‘You stupid, stupid girl! Of course he left you, who wants to marry a girl who’s easy?’
The tiny kitchen prevented Dot McCabe from pacing, so instead she turned around on the spot and slapped her own forehead with the palm of her hand.
‘No one can find out about this, no one. Do you understand me? And I dread to think what your father’s going to say when he gets home. Get back into your bedroom now and stay there. Go on, you get back in there; just get in there, get into bed and cover yourself up,’ Dot McCabe reached up and took hold of Gracie by her hair, tugging it hard. ‘Don’t say a word to your sisters; I’ve got to decide what we’re going to do. Go, go, go and stop that snivelling …’
She let go of Gracie’s hair, grabbed her by the arm and dragged her to the back bedroom at the end of the long corridor of the upstairs flat.
‘You two, get dressed and get off to school,’ she told the twins. ‘Gracie’s sick and I don’t want either of you to catch it. Go on. Move. Now.’
‘But it’s too early …’ Jeanette said sulkily. ‘Why should we have to go to school now just because Gracie’s sick? What’s wrong with her?’
‘Now!’ Dot McCabe snapped with such ferocity that even Jeanette, the normally loud and argumentative sister, didn’t answer back. Without another word, both girls started pulling on their clothes. Under the watchful eye of their angry mother they purposefully ignored their sister as she climbed back into her bed and buried herself under the covers.
The double bedroom the three sisters shared was at the back of the property where the family lived. The large, semi-derelict, terraced house in the Westcliff area of Southend-on-Sea was a temporary home to three separate families, The McCabe family had the whole of the first floor, the ground floor housed a noisy family with three uncontrollable young children and the top floor, which was the attic, was home to a young married couple who were related to the landlord. None of the flats were self-contained and, whether they wanted to or not, they all intruded into each other’s lives.
Everyone living in the house hated it but it was a basic roof over their heads in the difficult times just after the war. For the McCabe family, it had been somewhere immediate for them to live when their previous home had been declared unsafe after a nearby bomb had shaken the foundations, cracked the front wall from top to bottom and shifted most of the tiles off the roof.
Their floor was relatively spacious but it was also damp, cold, and lacking in most of the basic amenities. They took it in turns to wash at the small kitchen sink and family meals were cooked on a gas stove with three rings and a broken oven, but at least there was a working lavatory which they shared with the couple upstairs. The family on the ground floor were supposed to use the outside lavatory but the children would sometimes sneak upstairs to avoid going out into the back yard. The whole situation was unbearably chaotic for everyone in the house but they all tolerated it as they waited for something better.
Gracie pulled the covers right up over her head to block everything out; she was angry with herself for not following her instincts and just running away and hoping for the best.
Because she worked long hours at the Palace Hotel on the seafront she hadn’t been home very much for the family to notice her growing belly and at work as a chambermaid she was able to keep it hidden under her roomy overall. But now her secret was out and she was going to have to accept the consequences which she knew would be harsh after seeing her mother’s initial reaction.
A sense of impending doom enveloped Gracie as she lay wrapped up tightly in her bed, waiting to see what her mother was going to do. She could feel the baby moving inside her and without thinking, she wrapped her arms around it protectively. She guessed she would have to wait for her father’s return from work before she would know her fate but she knew without doubt even her genial and easy-going father wouldn’t be able to take her side this time.
Gracie couldn’t even begin to imagine what the outcome of it all would be. Engulfed in her own misery, she tried to think of a way to resolve her situation. She thought about running away but she didn’t have a clue where to go and she also didn’t have the energy so all she could do was wait.
The feigned sickness of earlier became real as hunger gnawed at her stomach but she didn’t want to leave the bedroom as she could imagine her mother standing guard outside the door. Gracie didn’t resent her mother for the beating she had given her; she understood that she’d pushed her to the limit. To have everyone know that their eldest daughter was unmarried and pregnant, especially with father unknown, would be the ultimate disgrace – both in the neighbourhood and at the church. Gracie knew that she had committed the ultimate sin and for that there would be consequences. She just hoped they wouldn’t be as harsh as she was anticipating. She touched her stomach and tried her best not to imagine the baby she knew was inside her, the baby she could no longer pretend didn’t exist.
When Gracie heard her mother’s footsteps going down the bare boards of the stairs, followed by the sound of the front door opening and closing, she took her chance to go and find something to eat. But as she stepped onto the landing so she saw her mother coming back up the stairs.
‘Where do you think you’re