Free A Mother's Promise by Dilly Court

Smith.’ The bleak expression in his eyes frightened her, and Hetty stepped outside, closing the door behind her. ‘What is it, man? Tell me.’
    ‘It’s bad news, miss. Nat, well – there ain’t no easy way to tell you – I’m afraid there’s been an accident at the gasworks, miss. He’s a goner.’

Chapter Four
    After her initial outpouring of grief, Jane lapsed into a state of prostration, which worried Hetty far more than weeping or hysteria. Jane took to her bed and lay there, staring at the cracks in the ceiling with unseeing eyes. Nothing seemed to rouse her from her semi-comatose state. She would neither eat nor speak, but if Hetty lifted her head she would sip water from a cup like an obedient child. Then she would simply lie back, mute and unreachable in some silent nightmare of her own. Sammy and Eddie moved about the room like two small ghosts, speaking in whispers and tiptoeing around, as if terrified of awakening Jane and hearing those heart-rending sobs that had sounded more like an animal bellowing in pain than the grief of a human being.
    Although Hetty had not previously known much about Nat’s past, she now learned from Tom that Nat had been abandoned as a baby and raised in an orphanage. He had no known relatives and few friends. Tom made thefuneral arrangements, but Hetty decided that Jane was in no fit state to be told, and on the day of the interment in the City of London and Tower Hamlets Cemetery, she gave Jane just enough laudanum to make her sleep. They had used Nat’s meagre savings to pay the funeral expenses, but Hetty had insisted that this was only right and proper. At first, Tom said that the money ought, by rights, to go to Jane, but Hetty knew that when Jane came to herself she would agree that her beloved Nat should have had a decent Christian burial. She would not want his poor remains to have been flung in a pauper’s grave where they might be taken by body snatchers, and sold to a teaching hospital for the benefit of medical students. If Nat was to go to heaven he needed to be whole, or he would not be admitted through the pearly gates, of that Hetty was certain. She was not an ardent churchgoer; for one thing she had no Sunday best clothes, and she knew that the upper-class worthies would look down on her shabby, threadbare garments, as if she were not fit to walk into God’s house. Ma had always insisted that they attend Sunday school, and Hetty tried to live up to her mother’s strict moral code. She had no doubt that Ma had gone straight to heaven. She had been a good and kind woman, who did not deserve her agonising disease and premature death, butHetty comforted herself with the belief that Ma was up there now, amongst the angels.
    The funeral was the simplest and cheapest to be had. Nat was buried in a communal grave with only Tom, Hetty, Sammy and Eddie as mourners, and nothing to mark his grave, not even a simple wooden cross. Except for the child that was growing in Jane’s womb, Nathanial Smith might never have existed at all, Hetty thought sadly as the vicar dropped a handful of earth onto the cheap pine coffin. She made him a silent promise that she would do everything in her power to look after his son or daughter, and to make certain that he or she had a better life than their poor, dead father.
    Tom touched her on the arm. ‘Are you all right, Hetty?’
    She swallowed hard and just managed a weak smile. ‘I was thinking of Jane and her baby.’
    He slipped his arm around her waist. ‘I know, girl. Best get on home then.’
    She nodded her head, unable to speak for fear of bursting into tears. Sammy took her hand in silent sympathy. Eddie was also unusually quiet as they left the cemetery and walked slowly back towards Autumn Road, but, after a while, he began to snivel and that made his nose run as if he had a cold. Hetugged at Hetty’s arm, pointing mutely to his runny nose.
    ‘Wipe it on your sleeve, Eddie,’ Hetty said gently. ‘One day, we’ll