Free Eliza's Child by Maggie Hope Page A

didn’t allow him to finish.
    â€˜Do you know what you put me through?’ she shouted at him and Thomas began to wail. ‘I lost my home! I’ve had to work at the pithead! Have you any idea what I’ve been through?’ She was on her feet yet again and her foot suddenly gave way so that she fell back on to the settee. She sobbed now, her spurt of anger almost spent. Automatically she rocked Thomas to reassure him.
    â€˜I know,’ said Jack. ‘But I swear to you I never thought for a minute that they would take the house from you, I didn’t.’ He sat down on her father’s chair by the hearth. ‘I had to go, pet, they were after me. They would have killed me if they’d caught me.’
    â€˜You owed so much? You were gambling when you’d promised me you wouldn’t ever gamble again? Jack, man, what about me and the bairn? You never even told me you were running away. Why didn’t you take us with you?’
    â€˜I couldn’t. Anyway it was partly your fault. If you’d given me the necklace when I asked for it I could have sold it and the money would have held them off for a while. Why, there was a big race on at York and I had the winner, it was a certainty, I tell you—’
    â€˜For the love of God, stop it, Jack. You never learn, do you? You can’t win, you cannot!’
    â€˜I won before, I won enough for the house and the business, didn’t I?’
    â€˜Aw, Jack, don’t talk soft; you lost it all again, didn’t you? I tell you, you don’t win in the end.’
    They were quiet for a minute or two; both of them were swamped with emotion. Then Jack said bitterly, ‘I knew there would be hell to pay when I came back.’
    â€˜Watch your language,’ said Eliza, equally bitterly. ‘You don’t want Thomas to pick up bad language, do you? Any road, you took the necklace after all, didn’t you? No thought to how I was going to manage—’
    â€˜I said, I didn’t think they would take the house! An’ I’ve come back as soon as I could, haven’t I? I needed the necklace to start over again.’
    â€˜So even that’s gone, has it?’
    Jack reached into his pocket. ‘No, it has not,’ he asserted. ‘I bought it back. Eeh, Eliza I have so much to tell you, you wouldn’t believe.’ He brought out the case with the necklace in it and smiled. It flashed through Eliza’s mind that he appeared to think that would make everything all right again, for he smiled at her as he handed it over.
    â€˜Howay then, Thomas,’ he said, taking the baby and holding him up in the air. Thomas crowed and gurgled and slavered down his chin.
    â€˜Mind,’ said Jack, ‘he’s grown hasn’t he?’
    Eliza opened the case and gazed at the necklace. ‘When you pawned it why didn’t you send me some money? You knew how hard it would be for me.’ But she was aware he wouldn’t think of her, not when the gambling fever was on him. He wouldn’t think of anything else then, of course not. She shut the case with a snap and handed it back to him. ‘You might as well keep it, it does me no good,’ she said.
    â€˜Aw, don’t say that,’ said Jack. ‘If it hadn’t been for the necklace I wouldn’t have been able to get back on my feet, would I?’
    â€˜You are back on your feet, then? Really?’
    â€˜I am, my love. I’m going to get you a home to be proud of and everything you and little Thomas want.’
    â€˜For how long, though?’ Eliza was still bitter. ‘Until the next big race, that’ll be it, won’t it?’
    â€˜Nay, Eliza, it won’t happen again. I swear it will not.’
    â€˜Mind, where’ve you been all this time, then?’
    Absorbed in each other, neither of them had heard the door opening again. Mary Anne came in and shed her shawl and hung it on the hook