Free The Petticoat Men by Barbara Ewing Page A

letter.
    It started to get dark but I didn’t light the lamp, I sat at his table for a while, just me and the yellow daisies in the little vase and the usual evening sounds and shouting from Wakefield-street as it got darker. I hadn’t really expected to get married of course, it didn’t matter, Ma didn’t marry Mr Rowbottom, after our Pa died, course not. Ronald was over thirty, and we all supposed he must’ve likely had a family at some time but he didn’t speak of them and so we didn’t ask and he never got letters or messages all the time he’d been here, months and months. And I had expected him to keep being here unless he told me different because he seemed very fond of me and I was fond of him and I think I dreamed we’d take our child on railway journeys with the steam and the clanking and the engine bell ringing, whatever else might happen, and I forgot my rotten leg altogether.
    Anyway, he was gone for good with no message.
    Ma and Billy said, ‘Never mind, Mattie, we’re a family, and we’ll be a family with an extra one, and never mind Rotten Ronald Duggan, we’ll be cosy like we always are,’ and although it wasn’t Sunday we all had a glass of port by the light of the moon, looking out towards Regent-Square where that turkey lived, there were couples there arm in arm I remember, and from upstairs we heard Ernest singing that song I loved:
When like a diadem
Buds blush around the stem
Which is the fairest gem?
Eileen Aroon.
    and the moon shone so bright and cold and that was the end of Ronald Duggan.
    Even though I was getting bigger I still cleaned the rooms easy, and made my hats, a very pretty one for this lady who always employs me in Mortimer-street, and I wasn’t heartbroken like you read in the novels, I was – a bit sad, course I was, but I wasn’t heartbroken, no I wasn’t, I’d got over all that sort of thing, we’d be a family for this baby, course we would. We wouldn’t be shorter of money either, I could still make hats, and the Houses of Parliament must know how lucky they were to have Billy, so he’d always be employed, and the rooms were all let, we always had the cotton fabric salesmen who came down each week from the North with their samples.
    Freddie and Ernest had this other actor-ish friend, Mr Amos Gibbings, and he sometimes took the railway man’s room now that it was empty and kept his gowns there at certain times and that was that. I was fine, and I was happy in a funny way and if it was a boy I certainly wasn’t calling it Ronald, and I had this nice thought that I might call it Freddie, for Freddie upstairs, who was always so kind and sometimes gave me and Billy books to read, once he gave me The Woman in White , and once I saw him helping Ma with the coal-hole which was stuck, even though he is a gentleman and had a nice suit on! We always liked him, Freddie.
    And then one night I woke because everything was hurting and hurting. I was suddenly bent almost double with pain and bleeding and I tried to run out my bedroom door for Ma and almost bumped into Freddie, all by himself coming up the stairs in a yellow satin gown and a bright blue shawl, his chignon was a bit loose and he was trying to take it off and I remember his bracelets and bangles jangling like I was jangling and he saw me.
    ‘What is it? Mattie? ’
    ‘I think I’m—’ and I couldn’t talk because of trying not to scream with the pain but he could see of course and you know what? Freddie didn’t care about his gown, he just ripped off his chignon and his hat and then he half carried me to the water closet, we had one inside the house and we were very proud of this for our tenants, and I was trying not to scream but I had to scream by then, and he held me and helped me and the blood was on me and on him and on the floor and still he held me and helped me and then Billy appeared and he saw, and he ran for Ma to wake her, and while they weren’t there but Freddie was there – it was