Читаем A Dangerous Fortune (1994) полностью

Maisie coaxed the story out of her. It was typical. The man was an upholsterer, respectable and prosperous working class. He had courted her and they had talked of marriage. On warm evenings they had caressed each other, sitting in the park after dark, surrounded by other couples doing the same thing. Opportunities for sexual intercourse were few, but they had managed it four or five times, when her employer was away or his landlady was drunk. Then he had lost his job. He moved to another town, looking for work; wrote to her once or twice; and vanished out of her life. Then she found she was pregnant.

"We'll try to get in touch with him," Maisie said.

"I don't think he loves me anymore."

"Well see." It was surprising how often such men were willing to marry the girl, in the end. Even if they had run away on learning she was pregnant, they might regret their panic. In Rose's case the chances were high. The man had gone away because he had lost his job, not because he had fallen out of love with Rose; and he did not yet know he was going to be a father. Maisie always tried to get them to come to the hospital and see the mother and child. The sight of a helpless baby, their own flesh and blood, sometimes brought out the best in them.

Rose winced, and Maisie said: "What's the matter?"

"My back hurts. It must be all the walking."

Maisie smiled. "It's not backache. Your baby's coming. Let's get you to a bed."

She took Rose upstairs and handed her over to a nurse. "It's going to be all right," she said. "You'll have a lovely bonny baby."

She went into another room and stopped beside the bed of the woman they called Miss Nobody, who refused to give any details about herself, not even her name. She was a dark-haired girl of about eighteen. Her accent was upper-class and her underwear was expensive, and Maisie was fairly sure she was Jewish. "How do you feel, my dear?" Maisie asked her.

"I'm comfortable--and so grateful to you, Mrs. Greenbourne."

She was as different from Rose as could be--they might have come from opposite ends of the earth--but they were both in the same predicament, and they would both give birth in the same painful, messy way.

When Maisie got back to her room she resumed the letter she had been writing to the editor of The Times.

The Female Hospital

Bridge Street

Southwark

London, S.E.

September 10th, 1890

To the Editor of The Times

Dear Sir,

I read with interest the letter from Dr Charles Wickham on the subject of women's physical inferiority to men.