Mr Cadmus. Peter Ackroyd

In her work she had heard of certain powders, and of certain instruments.

      ‘I don’t want it to die inside me. I don’t want to carry a corpse around night and day. What if it began to rot in my belly?’

      ‘But it doesn’t happen that way.’

      ‘How do you know? What if it begins to stink?’

      ‘You’re upsetting yourself, Maud.’

      ‘No. I want to see it come out of me naturally. Then I will decide what to do with it.’

      In due course there began the first contractions. Millicent had already taken a course of rudimentary hospital procedure, and immediately boiled a kettle of water. She washed her friend and then prepared for the delivery. ‘Don’t push too hard,’ she said. ‘It will come naturally. Yes, I see its head. It will just drop out.’

      Maud found herself staring intently at the wallpaper. It seemed to be moving of its own accord.

      The baby eventually emerged and seemed to be searching blindly for its mother’s breast. It was crying, but Maud sensed an apology in its wail. Millicent had been considering the unexpected birth with Montmorency, and both had agreed that the baby must die. After fifteen minutes the placenta had emerged, and Millicent now cut the umbilical cord with a vegetable knife. The two girls looked at one another for several seconds. Then Maud nodded. Millicent took one of the two pillows on the bed and thrust it down over the baby’s small body. It did not cry out, and only seemed restless under the unexpected weight until it was finally still. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘you must get rid of it.’

      ‘How?’ She looked around the room, as if seeking a hiding place.

      ‘Your handbag.’

      ‘My handbag?’

      ‘A shopping bag. Anything.’

      ‘Then what?’

      ‘You dump it. Take it to the river. It will be washed down to the sea. Or the estuary.’ She really had no idea what she was saying. ‘It doesn’t matter. It won’t have anything more to do with you.’

      ‘But what if it floats to the surface?’

      ‘It won’t. In any case it will be dark. Go to the bridge after midnight.’

      ‘I will be seen on the bridge.’

      ‘Not if you’re quick. Don’t lean over the side to watch it fall. Keep on walking.’

      Wearing a dark coat, and holding a black handbag, Maud walked the quarter of a mile to Lambeth Bridge. It was a little after midnight, and the street was empty; but she was startled by any sound. She continually suppressed the urge to scream. When she heard footsteps she froze; but the steps passed down a side-street, and the silence returned to the bridge. She walked more quickly, and soon came up to the embankment wall.

      She was tempted to throw the bag over the wall, getting rid of it at once, but then she realised that it might land on the foreshore. So she steeled herself to walk onto the bridge. As soon as she knew she was above deep water she flung the bag into the river; she did not hear it drop. She had already walked away. It was done. A car’s headlights dazzled her as she crossed from the bridge into the road. She stood, startled and unable to move, as the driver sounded his horn and swerved away from her.

      He stopped the car and got out. ‘Are you all right?’

      ‘All right?’

      There was a police telephone box by the side of the bridge; he walked over to it and picked up the receiver. Within a few minutes a police car had come up to them. The driver was still trying to calm her when the policeman noticed the large patch of blood on her skirt.

      ‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘you were looking for something.’

      ‘Yes. That’s it. I was looking for something.’

      ‘What were you missing?’

      ‘I think it was a child.’

      ‘A child? Your child?’

      ‘That doesn’t matter now. He’s safe.’

      ‘But you know what happened to him.’

      ‘I don’t know. I don’t know where he is.’

      ‘So why are you here?’

      ‘Why am I here? I can hear the river flowing down to the sea. It takes everything with it.’

      ‘I think, miss, that you should come along with me. You’ll catch your death out here. We need to find you somewhere warm and comfortable.’

      He placed her gently inside the police car but, as they began to drive towards the station, she became more agitated. She wanted to know where they were going. When they reached the entrance to the station, she would not go in. ‘There is a river there. I can’t go through it. There are things in it I don’t want to see.’ She was given a chair in a corner of the police reception where she sat very still. She kept her eyes fixed on the floor until a doctor arrived to examine her. It soon became clear that she had recently given birth, and the presumption was that she had consigned the baby to the river. At the end of the war the number of abandoned babies had multiplied, and the Thames was one of the largest repositories for the unwanted and the illegitimate. The policeman already had suspicions.

      ‘German?’ he asked her.

      She did not know what he meant. ‘POW?’ he added. ‘They’re the ones.’

      Maud was taken to her own hospital on Ealing Common, where the matron on duty was called to supervise her. It was, to her dismay, Aunt Helen. Helen had seen so many cases of infanticide in these months that she prescribed some barbiturates before putting her in the care of Millicent. She had already suspected that there was some collusion between the two women over the premature birth and murder of the baby, but she preferred to stay silent. ‘I can imagine,’ she told Maud, ‘but I do not have to be told. War is bloody enough.’

      ‘Our room is nice and comfy,’ Sister Swallow said as they walked down the corridor after this unexpected meeting. ‘I’ll get you cleaned up. At this time of night the shower will be free. Those policemen didn’t take very good care of you, did they? But at least they didn’t charge you with anything.’

      The ward was well ventilated for the benefit of the patients. Sudden breezes or gusts of wind lifted up the white plastic partitions from each bed, and on these occasions it seemed to Maud that the soul of the patient was unusually disturbed. But she became accustomed to the atmosphere of the sanatorium.

      She was sure that no one could find out about her previous life. Fearing a scandal but fearing exposure all the more, she wrote a letter to the teachers’ training college explaining that she had decided to emigrate to New Zealand, where young teachers were in short supply. So the story of Maud’s past was completely concealed.

      After a few months Maud had sufficiently recovered to take part in the simple education of some of the other inmates. She had suddenly announced to a junior doctor that she believed she had once been a teacher. A teacher of English, she thought. Or perhaps of history. Still, she was happy to coach the patients, especially those who were illiterate. Within a few months Maud and Millicent had settled down together in St George’s Hospital, just as they had in the house in Lambeth, and seemed quite happy with their joint life. They were, it was said, like sisters.

      Chapter 3

      Tesco

      Miss Swallow just happened to be walking out of her cottage when Mr Cadmus appeared in his front garden. ‘What a lovely morning,’ she said. ‘Bright and clear.’

      ‘You have made it brighter, Miss Swallow.’

      ‘Now that will never do, Mr Cadmus.’