Free The Quietness by Alison Rattle Page A

fetch her mattress. Poor little mites, she thought. All of them unwanted by their mams, Mrs Waters had told her not long after she’d arrived.
    ‘They’d be left for dead on the streets,’ she’d said, ‘if Mrs Ellis and I didn’t take them in. We look after them as best we can until we find someone who does want them.’
    Queenie thought the sisters must be do-gooders of some sort. Like the Salvation Army people that Queenie had seen near home sometimes, standing on street corners singing hymns and giving bread to children. The sisters might be a bit odd, thought Queenie, but they’d taken her in at least, and paid good wages too. Queenie thought of the pile of coins hidden in her skirts and promised herself a trip to the fancy goods shop to buy some yellow ribbons for her hair, as soon as she got a day off.
    The babies were all lying still as usual, like little marble statues. Most had their eyes closed but a couple were staring into the distance, their eyes half open. They didn’t even blink when Queenie put her face to theirs. Queenie wondered sometimes why none of them seemed to be getting any better. Mrs Ellis was very strict with dosing them up with their medicine. She had taught Queenie how to mix it up and now Queenie made a jugful every morning. A piece of builder’s lime, as big as her hand, was left to stand for an hour in a quart of water. She would then add a dessertspoonful of the mixture into each of the babies’ bottles. ‘So the milk doesn’t curdle,’ Mrs Ellis said. Queenie wasn’t allowed to give them the other stuff, mind –
the Quietness
, as Mrs Ellis called it. A foul-smelling liquid from a sticky brown bottle that was kept in Mrs Ellis’s pocket.
    ‘Godfrey’s Cordial,’ Queenie read on the label.
    ‘A drop each morning and night,’ Mrs Ellis said, ‘and they’ll sleep without a murmur.’
    Queenie thought that was half the trouble, though; they slept so much they were hardly awake to suckle their bottles. And they were all growing so thin.
    ‘Those children is ill, ain’t they ma’am?’ she’d said to Mrs Waters.
    Mrs Waters had been angry at her. ‘Of course they’re ill, girl! Little bastards never fare well. But are we not doing the best we can by them? Are there not always full bottles waiting for them? They will feed when they’re hungry. They are sickly creatures and with so many of them our nerves can’t stand the fussing. Do you want your nights disturbed by their whinings? I would think not indeed. It is a mother’s blessing,
the
Quietness
, a mother’s blessing.’
    Queenie didn’t mention it again; after all, Mrs Waters must know best.
    There were only six babies on the sofa now. Mrs Waters had taken some of them away. ‘To healthy homes in the country,’ she’d told Queenie.
    ‘Not long for the rest of you,’ Queenie whispered. ‘Mrs Waters’ll find you new mams too, I’m sure of it.’
    Queenie lay on her mattress and pulled a blanket over. It still felt strange having a bed to herself. Sometimes she missed the little ones snuggled into her and their snufflings and coughs. It was lonely on the kitchen floor, with the dwindling fire throwing strange shadows on the walls and lighting up the cobwebbed corners of the room. The silence hurt her ears. No squabbling neighbours or drunken caterwauling, no dogs barking or cats screeching. Nothing, not even the sound of another’s breath. She closed her eyes and wished one of the babies would stir. Just so she wouldn’t feel so alone.

18
Ellen
    ‘What are those marks?’ asked Mary the following morning as she helped me dress.
    ‘What marks?’ I replied. Although I knew exactly the marks she meant. I had felt the grip of Jacob’s fingers on my skin all through the night. Now the bruises must be showing.
    ‘Your shoulders, miss. They’re black and blue,’ said Mary.
    I sat heavily into my chair.
    ‘Oh, it is nothing,’ I said. ‘I fell from my bed in the night.’
    I was ashamed of my lie,