A Dangerous Fortune(155)

Their eyes met across the room. Maisie read a silent appeal in his look. Slowly she got up and went to him. Standing beside his chair, she took his head in her hands and cradled it on her bosom, stroking his hair. Tentatively he put his arm around her waist, touching her gingerly at first, then hugging her to him hard. And then, at last, he began to cry.

When Hugh had gone Maisie made a tour of the wards. Now she saw everything with new eyes: the walls they had painted themselves, the beds they had bought in junk shops, the pretty curtains Rachel’s mother had sewn. She remembered the superhuman efforts that had been required of her and Rachel to get the hospital opened: their battles with the medical establishment and the local council, the tireless charm they had used on the respectable householders and censorious clergy of the neighborhood, the sheer dogged persistence that had enabled them to pull through. She consoled herself with the thought that they had, after all, been victorious, and the hospital had been open for eleven years and had given comfort to hundreds of women. But she had wanted to make a permanent change. She had seen this as the first of dozens of Female Hospitals all over the country. In that she had failed.

She spoke to each of the women who had given birth today. The only one she was worried about was Miss Nobody. She was a slight figure and her baby had been very small. Maisie guessed she had been starving herself to help conceal her pregnancy from her family. Maisie was always astonished that girls managed to do this—she herself had ballooned when pregnant and could not have hidden it after five months—but she knew from experience that it happened all the time.

She sat down on the edge of Miss Nobody’s bed. The new mother was nursing her child, a girl. “Isn’t she beautiful?” she said.

Maisie nodded. “She’s got black hair, just like yours.”

“My mother has the same hair.”

Maisie reached out and stroked the tiny head. Like all babies, this one looked like Solly. In fact—

Maisie was jolted by a sudden revelation.

“Oh my God, I know who you are,” she said.

The girl stared at her.

“You’re Ben Greenbourne’s granddaughter Rebecca, aren’t you? You kept your pregnancy secret as long as you could, then ran away to have the baby.”

The girl’s eyes widened. “How did you know? You haven’t seen me since I was two years old!”

“But I knew your mother so well. I was married to her brother, after all.” Kate had not been as snobbish as the rest of the Greenbournes and had been kind to Maisie when the rest were not around. “And I remember when you were born. You had black hair, just like your daughter.”

Rebecca was scared. “Promise you won’t tell them?”

“I promise I won’t do anything without your consent. But I think you ought to send word to your family. Your grandfather is distraught.”

“He’s the one I’m frightened of.”

Maisie nodded. “I can understand why. He’s a hardhearted old curmudgeon, as I know from personal experience. But if you let me talk to him I think I can make him see sense.”

“Would you?” said Rebecca in a voice full of youthful optimism. “Would you do that?”

“Of course,” Maisie said. “But I won’t tell him where you are unless he promises to be kind.”

Rebecca looked down. Her baby’s eyes had closed and she had stopped sucking. “She’s asleep,” Rebecca said.

Maisie smiled. “Have you chosen a name for her yet?”

“Oh, yes,” Rebecca said. “I’m going to call her Maisie.”

Ben Greenbourne’s face was wet with tears as he came out of the ward. “I’ve left her with Kate for a while,” he said in a choked voice. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed ineffectually at his cheeks. Maisie had never seen her father-in-law lose his self-possession. He made a rather pathetic sight, but she felt it would do him a lot of good.

“Come to my room,” she said. “I’ll make you a cup of tea.”

“Thank you.”

She led him to her room and told him to sit down. He was the second man to weep in that chair this evening, she thought.

“All those young women,” the old man said. “Are they all in the same position as Rebecca?”

“Not all,” Maisie said. “Some are widows. Some have been abandoned by their husbands. Quite a lot have run away from men who beat them. A woman will suffer a lot of pain, and stay with a husband even if he injures her; but when she gets pregnant she worries that his blows will damage the child, and that’s when she leaves. But most of our women are like Rebecca, girls who have simply made a stupid mistake.”

“I didn’t think life had much more to teach me,” he said. “Now I find I have been foolish and ignorant.”

Maisie handed him a cup of tea. “Thank you,” he said. “You’re very kind. I was never kind to you.”

“We all make mistakes,” she said briskly.

“What a good thing you are here,” he said to her. “Otherwise where would these poor girls go?”

“They would have their babies in ditches and alleyways,” Maisie said.

“To think that might have happened to Rebecca.”

“Unfortunately the hospital has to close,” Maisie said.