Letters from Alice: A tale of hardship and hope. A search for the truth.. Petrina Banfield
forced. ‘They’re in the back parlour. Step this way, won’t you?’ Her use of the plural pronoun seemed to go unnoticed by the doctor, but Alice and Frank exchanged puzzled glances as they followed Mrs Redbourne along the dim passageway. There was no sign of the other children, but excited mutterings and a distant thud suggested they were shut away in one of the bedrooms upstairs.
Outside the parlour room door, Mrs Redbourne lowered her voice to a loud whisper. ‘You’ll pardon the smell. I haven’t been able to get near the bed to change it and she won’t surrender the babe. She’s not put it down since delivering.’
Alice turned and looked at Frank with astonished eyes. He grimaced in response, pipe suspended in the air an inch from his mouth. As Mrs Redbourne pushed the door open and went inside, the smells of the enclosed room spilled out onto the hall: damp linen, lochial blood and the sickly sweet smell of colostrum. Frank took a staggering step backwards, folding himself against the wall. Alice sidestepped him. With her eyes fixed on the bed, she raised the coned sleeve of her cape to cover her mouth and stared.
Several dirty blankets formed a makeshift wall along each side of the mattress and just visible above the bedclothes beyond was Charlotte, a tiny infant’s head lying in the crook of her left arm. Mother and child were utterly still, their faces alabaster. The bedspread covering them, large with embroidered flowers, was crumpled and heavily stained.
‘When did she deliver, Mrs Redbourne?’ Alice asked, a slight catch in her throat.
‘About an hour or so ago. She’s working in the kitchen then all of a sudden she abandons the preparations and goes missing. I heard all the carry-on in the privy.’
Alice closed her eyes momentarily but Mrs Redbourne’s face was set, her expression implacable. ‘She needs to rest for now,’ the almoner said, looking at the woman evenly. ‘I shall wait with her while she recovers, and we can examine her when she wakes. The time might be useful for you and your husband to reconcile yourself with events.’
‘No, no way,’ Mrs Redbourne spat from the foot of the bed. ‘You need to get them out of here now. George won’t have no product of sin …’ she stopped, gathering her rage. ‘A bastard. He’ll not have no bastard child in this house, and nor will I!’ On speaking the word ‘bastard’, she crossed herself.
Charlotte stirred then and half-raised her head from the pillow. The baby remained still. The teenager’s faintly puzzled frown deepened as she took her unannounced visitors in, then her eyes grew wide. A flush rose up her neck, flooding her cheeks crimson.
For several moments no words were spoken, but a strange uneasiness grew. The seconds stretched out. Charlotte’s eyes flitted around the assembled group, analysing their every movement. Slowly, without taking her eyes off her audience, she eased her cradling arm half an inch to the left.
Her mother turned to Frank, eyebrows raised. Taking his cue, he stepped forwards, and then several things happened at once. Charlotte bolted upright and fumbled for her baby, clamping the bundle tightly to her breast. Her thin cotton nightgown shimmered in synchrony with her trembling limbs.
Alice moved then. With one gloved hand outstretched and placating, she edged sideways around a chamber pot half-filled with pink water, blood-soaked rags and something fleshy floating around inside. ‘Charlotte, it’s all right. We’re not going to harm the baby.’
The girl stared at Alice, her eyes wide and fearful. Her lips were almost without colour, the rims of her eyes white. ‘When was the last time Charlotte ate or drank anything, Mrs Redbourne?’ Alice asked, without taking her eyes off the young woman. ‘She looks terribly weak.’
The woman folded her arms haughtily. ‘I’ve told her. She’s getting nothing ’til she recites Our Lord’s Prayer.’
‘Am I to understand nothing has passed the girl’s lips since delivering?’ Dr Harland asked quietly from the doorway. Charlotte turned towards the voice, the glaze clearing from her eyes. A shadow passed across her face, one that seemed to pass unnoticed by the others in the room.
Mrs Redbourne shook her head. One of her eyelids flickered, a brief insight into her guilt. She swept it away with a swift wave of her hand.
‘Oh for heaven’s sake, woman,’ the doctor burst out. ‘She must have water.’
The woman baulked at that, flattening her hands either side of her substantial breasts. ‘I’ve told her –’
‘Water, now please,’ the doctor blasted through gritted teeth.
Mrs Redbourne’s arms fell to her side and her mouth dropped open, but after a moment’s hesitation and an affronted stare she barged past the assembled group and slammed out of the room.
She returned a minute or so later, a cup of water in hand. Without a word she passed it to her daughter, who took a hungry gulp and then choked, the rest of the contents spilling over onto the bed. The infant failed to stir at the disturbance. Alice turned, her features tightened with concern. Dr Harland dropped his Gladstone bag onto a side table near the bed and pulled out his stethoscope. ‘I really must examine the child,’ he told Charlotte. ‘We mustn’t delay.’
‘Come near me and I’ll make you sorry!’ Charlotte cried shrilly. She shrank away, tucking herself at the far end, between the head of the bed and the wall. Her arms tightened around the tangle of blankets and towels housing her small, naked infant, her eyes burning manically. Frizzy tendrils of dark hair had escaped the long braid that hung over her shoulder and were standing out from her head, adding to the appearance of madness.
Doctor Harland draped the scope around the back of his neck and lifted his hands up in an exasperated gesture. He glanced at Alice. She hesitated before opening her mouth, but before she could speak, Frank intervened. ‘Come now, Charlotte,’ he said, easing past the doctor. ‘We need to make sure the infant is well, there’s a good girl.’
‘No!’ Charlotte cried out again, this time with a violent lunge across the filthy mattress. Scrambling back out of reach in the far corner of the room, she began screaming incoherently, all the while clutching her still bloodstained baby to her chest.
Fear and grief masqueraded as madness, so that it appeared that the young mother was wildly out of control and in no fit state to take care of her baby. That she was driven to this because three strangers had descended upon her with the intention of tearing her newborn baby away was equally undeniable.
‘We had all this last year!’ Mrs Redbourne screeched. ‘Her being free with herself. There’s nothing else for it but to get her brains tested.’
Alice frowned. ‘I don’t follow.’
‘She lost it at five or six months gone, thank the Lord,’ the woman continued in explanation. ‘You’d think that’d be enough to stop her, but, oh no, she had to go and do it again, didn’t she?’
‘Perhaps if I spoke to Mr Redbourne?’ Alice ventured. ‘Sometimes, with support, families are able to –’
‘He’s disgusted with her,’ the woman snapped, though a mild flicker crossed her expression. ‘I don’t think there’s no way you’ll talk him round.’
With continuing insistence, Mrs Redbourne acquiesced and asked her husband to come down from his retreat in their bedroom.
‘Ain’t something you expect, is it?’ the porter mumbled grimly when Alice spoke to him in the hall. His dull eyes rested on his wife as he spoke, his fingernails scratching restlessly at the wooden banister. ‘Not from your own.’
Mrs Redbourne nodded along with his every word. ‘Yes, see, I told you.’ She rushed back along the hall towards the parlour, her arm outstretched and beckoning. ‘Come on, then, quick. Let’s get on with it.’
‘Just a moment,’ Alice said, unmoving. Mr Redbourne hovered on the bottom stair, looking troubled. The almoner fixed him with a steady look. ‘There might be some level of support we can put in place, Mr Redbourne, if you were willing to keep Charlotte here. I cannot promise anything, but