Free Saturday's Child by Ruth Hamilton Page A

Barnes might be
in hospital, but Nellie’s sympathies lay with the large family opposite, the happy band whose father had been at the receiving end of Ernest’s stick.
    She opened the door, looked left and right. It was such a short distance, yet a lifetime away. Nellie had never crossed the street. She had walked up it, down it, but never across it. Her
parents had kept themselves very much to themselves, and Nellie had followed suit. But she stepped down onto the pavement and waddled over to the Higgins house.
    Sal opened the door. ‘Hello,’ she said.
    Nellie knew with a blinding certainty that she was not being judged, that this woman took folk as she found them. ‘Toffees,’ she mouthed, ‘kiddies.’
    Sal’s face spread into a huge smile.
    ‘Clean.’ Nellie shook the tin, showed that it was closed.
    ‘Come in?’ asked Sal.
    Nellie shook her head. Why should her filth infect a household that was already troubled?
    Sal took the sweets. ‘Thank you.’ Her mouth moved all over the place as she sought to make contact with this deaf woman. ‘Very good of you.’
    Nellie turned and walked back to her hovel. She had done an important thing today. She had made contact with a nice woman and she had given sweets to children. It was a giant step. Now, she
needed cardboard boxes, sacks, tea-chests – whatever. An inch at a time, she would get this place right.
    It took over half an hour to find the top of the dresser, but Nellie experienced a feeling of pure triumph when she discovered its surface. Slowly, very slowly, she would get to the bottom of
things.
    As she gazed at her blurred face in the dusty mirror, she suddenly realized the full extent of her intentions. The reason behind her recent activity had little to do with living conditions. Her
heart bounced around in her chest like a kiddy’s toy. She faced her reflection, faced the days to come. The decision was disturbingly sudden. Because Nellie Hulme was going to find out who
she was and where she had come from.
    Ensconced once more in her favourite chair, exhausted by her effort to clear that minute section of her cluttered home, she slept. The dream came again, a tall man, an elegant lady. This time,
Nellie was inside a house, but the room was vague. It felt like a large room and it contained a great deal of furniture. There was a portrait over the fireplace, but the figure depicted was
unclear. The lady sat near the window; she was sewing very quickly. The tall man was near the fireplace – he was seated and reading.
    Plates clattered. Nellie left the room and found herself in a kitchen. A large lady was banging something on the table, probably dough for bread. Nellie could hear each crash as the woman
pounded the mix. A dog barked. Outside, birds twittered in the trees, their conversation loud and quarrelsome.
    Nellie ran through the doorway into that green world. The fields went on for ever, rising in gentle slopes towards a far horizon. She was so small that she could not look into the horse trough,
even when she stood on tiptoe. A ladybird crawled up her arm, unfolded its wings and flew away. In her dream, the beating of the insect’s wings was as loud as the flapping of a hen. Yes,
there were hens, and there was a cockerel who made a terrible noise. Cows lowed. In a nearby field, they began to congregate, lining up like a row of people in a shop. They were going to be
milked.
    She woke, sweat pouring down her forehead, stinging her eyes. Those two people were her parents, of that she felt sure. They had given her away to the Hulmes because she had turned out
sub-standard, deaf, non-speaking. Somewhere in this terrible house, there was a clue – perhaps the whole answer.
    Every month, the money came, the amount increasing to keep pace, just about, with the cost of living. It sat now in a bank account, as Nellie had no need of it. In 1949, her income from
lace-making had been over four hundred pounds, enough to buy the house in her