The Tuppenny Child

by Glenda Young

Genres: Sagas; Contemporary Romance

Synopsis

From the author of Belle of the Back Streets, a dramatically powerful saga of secrets, friendship, motherhood, love and betrayal, perfect for fans of Dilly Court and Rosie Goodwin.

'She's not worth more than tuppence, that child!'

Those are the words that haunt Sadie Linthorpe. She is the talk of Ryhope when she arrives there, aged 17, alone, seeking work and a home in the pit village. But Sadie is keeping a secret — that she is searching for her baby girl who was taken from her at birth to be sold by the child's wicked, battleaxe grandmother when Sadie was just 15 years old.

All that Sadie knows about the family who took her daughter is that they lived in Ryhope. And the only thing she knows about her daughter is that when the baby was born, she had a birthmark on one shoulder that resembled a tiny ladybird. But as Sadie's quest begins, a visitor from her past appears — one who could jeopardise the life she's beginning to build and could separate from her beloved child forever....

Release date: May 30, 2019

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 352

Sample

Escape

May 1919

‘Where to, miss?’

Sadie glanced behind her to ensure she hadn’t been followed. Her heart hammered in her chest.

‘Miss?’

‘Ryhope, please,’ she said, snatching another look behind her, just in case. ‘Third class.’

‘Single or return?’ the ticket clerk asked.

‘Single,’ she replied. She had no intention of ever coming back.

‘That’ll be one and six, please.’

She lifted her small blue bag to the wooden counter. Her hands were shaking as she spilled the coins from it to the counter top. As the clerk expertly flicked each coin towards him, totting them up one by one, Sadie looked around the ticket office. It was a neat and tidy little place, with timetables and schedules pinned to the walls, a clock ticking above an oak desk, and a small coal fire burning in the hearth. There was a quiet hush about it, a sense of order that helped calm her racing mind.

‘You’ll be needing the Sunderland train for Ryhope. It’s due at half past the hour,’ the clerk said as he handed over her ticket. ‘You can wait in the ladies’ room if you wish.’

‘Me, sir?’

‘Yes, miss. West Hartlepool railway station is proud to open its waiting room to all ladies, whatever their ticket class.’

Sadie walked out of the ticket office, relieved to see that the platform was clear apart from a porter gathering a pile of wooden crates, laying one on top of the other. He whistled as he worked, a tune that she didn’t recognise. She turned and saw the sign for the ladies’ waiting room and quickly walked towards it. She’d never been inside one before, but she knew it was the safest place, somewhere she could hide. Her heart continued to thump as she glanced behind her one final time to be certain she hadn’t been followed. Then she took a deep breath and reached out her hand. The doorknob was cold to her touch but turned easily, and the green wooden door swung open.

It was the fire she noticed first. The roaring blaze in the huge blackened fireplace dominated the small room with its noise and heat and its musty, smoky smell. In front of the hearth was a black iron guard, wrapped around the fireplace to protect skirts and bairns. Sadie felt drawn to the fire; she wanted to walk towards it, to lift her coat and warm her backside. But a quick glance around the room at the three ladies already seated suggested that this was not the thing to do.

All eyes turned towards her as she hesitated by the door. In the centre of the room was a large table, scattered with worn magazines and a copy of The Hartlepool Northern Daily. On the wall high above the fireplace, the waiting room clock loudly ticked the minutes until the next train arrived.

‘Shut the door, pet,’ the woman closest to the fireplace barked. ‘You’re letting in the wind.’

Sadie moved quickly at the demand, and swung round to close the door. She gave a brief nod by way of apology, but all she got in return was a blank stare from a pair of dark and deadened eyes. She fell into the seat closest to her, landing heavily, the bench as hard on her legs and as uncomfortable underneath her as it looked. But it was warm in the room, and she was grateful for that, for although it was early May, it was cold and windy out.

She pressed her back against the wall and allowed her gaze to settle on the stone floor before she slowly lifted her eyes to fully take in her surroundings. On the wall to her right was a blue and white tiled map of the north-east coast, next to it a colourful poster advertising the twin resorts of Roker and Seaburn, with their sweeping bays and golden sands. On the opposite wall were two large windows, frosted to stop prying eyes looking in from the platform, providing the women inside with privacy. Underneath each window, on deep sills set in the stone walls, stood white enamel jugs holding golden daffodils.

Sadie glanced at the older woman by the fire who had spoken so abruptly when she’d entered. She guessed that the woman was travelling in third class too. Her boots were worn, and her flat brown hat sat askew on her head as she slouched against the wall. To Sadie’s right was a young woman who looked about twenty, slightly older than her own seventeen years. But from the look of her, she would definitely not be travelling in third. The girl’s clean, pretty bonnet partly shielded her unlined features, and her concentration went into reading a book with a light brown cover that she held in her small, soft hands.

To Sadie’s left was another well-dressed young woman. Whether she was a mother or a maid, Sadie couldn’t tell, but she had a large black perambulator in front of her with a sleeping baby inside. The pram was turned towards Sadie and she could see a baby’s tiny pink face peeking out. She had grown used to seeing women with bairns over the last ten months, though it hadn’t been easy at first. In those ten months her life had been turned upside down. As she gazed into the dancing flames of the fire, she cast her mind back to the Hartlepool lodging house she’d left only that morning, where she’d been living with Freda McIntyre and her son, Mick.

Sadie had been left with little choice but to move into Freda’s house after the Spanish flu ravaged Hartlepool and took her parents in its deadly wake. With no relatives to take her in, she was handed over by the authorities into Freda McIntyre’s care, to live as a lodger in her spare room. But there was nothing caring about Freda, as Sadie soon found out.

Freda was a woman who looked older than her years, her face made heavy from the drinking of ale. But she must have been pretty as a girl, for there was a touch of something to her features and her long dark hair that made her popular with gentleman callers. Sadie would scuttle away and hide from the men who came into the house, afraid in case any of them climbed the stairs to her room. Freda enjoyed the company of her men friends more than she cared about Sadie’s welfare. Sadie hadn’t been sure, when she first moved into the house, what Freda’s business was, but she soon found out when she became friendly with Mick, Freda’s son. He was the one who explained to her that the men who came to the house paid to spend time with his mam, and in her bedroom too.

When she first arrived at Freda’s, Mick walked Sadie to Hartlepool market each morning. He was friendly enough at the start and Sadie was glad of his companionship. She was just one of the many girls who lined up at the market, waiting for the women from the fancy houses to appraise them and pick them off one by one to work in service. If they were found suitable, a shilling would be placed in their hand to contract them for however long they were needed. Sometimes Sadie was hired for a day, sometimes just an hour. If she was lucky, she was given a job that would last all week.

She was obliged to hand over her earnings to Freda, every single penny. In return, Freda provided her with a roof over her head, a bed to lie in and breakfast and supper to eat. But it was a breakfast that Sadie had to prepare before she went out to work, and a supper that she had to cook no matter how tired she was at the end of her working day. And she was forced to cook not just for herself but for Mick and Freda too before she climbed the stairs to her cold, damp room.

She proved herself a hard worker, and word spread amongst those who hired at Hartlepool market that she was good in the kitchen. It was said she had perfect hands, cold hands, for making pastry for pies. When she was given a job with a cook or a chef in one of the big houses, she tied back her long fair hair into a plait and happily got down to work. The warmth of the coal oven and the sweet aroma of baking reminded her of helping her mam.

She was always eager in the kitchen, always keen to know more and to learn, but when she was chosen at the market to work with a housekeeper, she dreaded her days. The endless cleaning and scrubbing were not to her liking. It was back-breaking work. Worse still were the times when a housekeeper contracted her services on a Friday, for all the girls knew that Fridays were the worst days of all, when the heaviest cleaning was done ready for entertaining at the weekends, and there were always stairs to be scrubbed.

Sadie would be given a stiff brush and a tin bucket filled with scalding water and washing soda and left to get on with it. With the houses so big and so grand, there were always plenty of stairs, wide too, with as many as four flights – and woe betide any girl if she didn’t do a good job, for the work would be checked. The housekeeper would peer at each stair with a candle in her hand, and if she found dirt in any corner, she would put down the candle long enough to give the girl a tongue-lashing. After that, she’d give her another bucket of steaming hot water and make her do the stairs again, every single one of them. Only once had Sadie, unknowingly, left a scrap of dirt on the stairs. After having to clean the whole four flights again, she never made that mistake again.

At first, at the end of her working day, Sadie looked forward to talking to Mick, telling him about where she’d been, in whose house she’d worked and what she’d seen inside. But as time went on, Mick became increasingly absent from the house, at his mam’s beck and call, and Sadie saw him less often after she finished work. In the mornings, when he walked her to the market, his mood increasingly turned dark, and where once he’d been chatty and friendly, now he answered her questions with a simple yes or no.

Freda sent her son nightly to the Red Lion to buy a jug of ale to bring back to the house, and Mick took a liking to it. Sadie often found him drunk, slumped on the stairs, when she came in from work. No more would he want to sit and talk to her about her day’s domestic work. He’d try to kiss her and hold her, telling her he wanted to lie with her in her room.

Life with Freda and Mick couldn’t have been more different to the life Sadie had lived while her parents were alive. She was happy then, close to her mam and dad in the warmth of a loving family home. Now she had no friends, or even a kindly neighbour to talk to; only the girls she worked with while in service, who changed almost daily. She battled her loneliness, but it was a solitary existence for her, and one she struggled to resign herself to. She knew that there had to be more to life than this, for hadn’t she experienced the warmth and love of a family once? And she wanted to believe she could find it again, if only she knew where to look.

It was this that kept her hoping for a renewal of her friendship with Mick, but his moods and behaviour were changing daily as the ale took hold. Desperate to keep him – her only friend – close, one winter evening she allowed him into her bed while Freda was sleeping. One night was all it took, and in the weeks following, she discovered she was pregnant with his child.

At first she didn’t understand what was happening to her body. But when one of the cooks she worked with at Hartlepool joked about her getting fat, the joking soon turned serious as the woman asked her if she might be pregnant. They had a hushed conversation as they worked together, with the cook filling Sadie in on as many details as she could.

‘A baby?’ Sadie whispered. ‘Me?’

The cook eyed Sadie’s apron, which had grown tight across her chest and stomach. ‘I know a woman who can get rid of it for you,’ she said. ‘She’ll charge you for it, but I can ask her if you like?’

A cold shiver ran down Sadie’s spine. There was nothing she wanted less than to lose the baby growing inside her. She thought of her mam and the miscarriages she had suffered, losing child after child.

‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘I want to keep it.’ She put her hands to her stomach. ‘This baby is mine.’

At first, Sadie was hopeful that the news of the child might somehow soften Mick again. She carefully picked her moment to tell him, one evening at Freda’s house after a miserable day spent cleaning. Mick followed her to her room as she requested. He was keen, thinking he was to take the same pleasure he had taken from her the last time. Sadie sat on the edge of her bed.

‘Please, Mick, sit with me,’ she said.

Mick sat heavily next to her and immediately tried to kiss her, forcing her down to the bed.

‘No, Mick! No!’ she cried, fighting him off with her fists. ‘That’s not what I want.’

‘You wanted it last time,’ he breathed in her face.

She struggled to turn her head from his as his lips pressed down, and pummelled her fists against his back. Reluctantly Mick eased away.

‘Then why have you brought me here?’ he asked dully.

Sadie’s disappointment at Mick’s actions mixed with anger now as she shifted from under the bulk of him. The two of them moved uncomfortably into sitting positions on her bed.

‘There’s something I need to tell you,’ she said firmly.

‘Oh aye?’

She put her hands to her stomach, then raised her gaze to meet Mick’s. ‘I’m going to have a baby,’ she said. ‘Your baby. I didn’t know it at first, but I spoke to a woman I worked with and she told me it was true. She knows about these things; she’s got three bairns of her own.’

They both sat in silence, letting the weight of her words sink in.

‘Say something, Mick,’ Sadie pleaded, but he simply sat staring at the worn floorboards in front of him. Then, without a word, without warning, he pulled her sharply from the bed by her arm, yanked her across the bedroom floor and out to the landing at the top of the stairs.

‘Mick? What the . . . ?’

Sadie struggled, but she was no match for him. He was taller and stronger and she never stood a chance against the shove that he gave her. It came out of nowhere, completely unexpected, and she lost her footing just as he had planned, tumbling down the stairs and landing in a heap at the bottom. Mick followed her down, but when he reached her, he simply stepped over her and carried on walking.

It was a miracle the baby survived and Sadie didn’t break any bones. But from that day on, she kept out of Mick’s way and they never spoke again.

Throughout her pregnancy, Sadie continued to line up each day at the market, but the work came less frequently to her once the swell of her stomach started to show. She was often the last to be chosen, and on the days she wasn’t picked at all she would return to the lodging house to be put to work by Freda, scrubbing the house clean and cooking meals. Of course she guessed that Mick had told Freda about the baby, but she kept the swell of her belly covered as best she could, and for weeks it went unmentioned in the house.

Freda’s mind was elsewhere, too busy sleeping off her hangover each morning when Sadie got up for work and too busy drinking each evening when she returned. But when the pregnancy could be hidden no longer, she began to eye Sadie like her own prize cow. Sadie began to hear her whispering with Mick on the landing outside her bedroom door. And when she entered the kitchen to make meals, their hushed conversation would break off, leaving her feeling uneasy and more unwelcome in the house than ever. Snippets of conversation that she did hear unsettled her. There was talk of money to be made and a sale to be agreed. But when she questioned them, demanding to know what they were talking about, Freda hissed at her: ‘We’re talking about you, not to you – now scram!’

Sadie’s baby was born in the cold of her room to Freda’s bloodied hands. Sadie immediately reached out for her daughter, and Freda gave her that much, at least: a few days of holding her child to her and feeding her from her breast. There’d been a little birthmark on the baby’s shoulder, a mark Sadie would never forget. It was the colour of the red wine she served in the houses she worked in, and she remembered touching it, running her finger across the raised patch. It reminded her of the shape of a ladybird, like a ruby, a living, breathing gem.

‘I’m going to call you Birdie,’ she whispered to the child. ‘And I’ll do whatever it takes to look after you and love you. Do you hear me, little one? You don’t know it yet, but I’m going to do everything I can to get us out of here, away from these people. We’ll have a life of our own, Birdie, just you and me. We’ll never be apart, it’ll be the two of us against the world, and you won’t work in service, I’ll tell you that now. No daughter of mine will have to clean and scrub. You’ll have the best of it all, the finest things I can buy.

‘Oh Birdie, we’ll look out for each other, won’t we? I’ll protect you and keep you from harm. I’ll tell you all about my mam and dad, and how much they would have loved you. And if there really is a heaven, like folk say there is, then that’s where they’ll be. They’ll be looking down on you now and I know they’ll be smiling and waving and blowing you a kiss. Mam will be saying to Dad, “Look, there’s your grandchild,” and Dad will be proud, Birdie, I know that he will.’

In the days following the birth, Sadie heard Freda and Mick talking outside her bedroom door.

‘Shame it’s just a girl,’ Freda was saying.

‘How much will we get?’ Mick asked.

‘We’ll be lucky if we get more than a few shillings. It’s got the mark of the devil on it, a red patch of skin touched by evil. All these months we’ve waited, and when it comes out, it’s not right.’

‘We’ll make something, though, won’t we?’

Freda gave a harsh laugh. ‘She’s not worth more than tuppence, that child! Don’t worry, though, I’ll find someone to buy it. There’s always someone wanting a bairn, no matter if their skin is diseased.’

Freda never once touched the child after the blood from the delivery had been washed from her hands, and Mick never came to see his daughter while Sadie was nursing her. Sadie heard him about the house, though, laughing with his mother, the two of them deep in drink. Freda came to Sadie’s bedroom once a day to check on the baby, to ensure Sadie was feeding her correctly and to bring a tray of food. But any hopes that Sadie might have had that the woman was softening towards her after the birth of her grandchild ended as quickly as they had entered her head. Far from being kind, Freda was simply looking after her investment.

At the end of the first week, when Sadie had bonded with her newborn baby, Freda came into the room with a man following behind. Sadie sat up straight in the bed, assuming he was a doctor, come to check on the baby’s patch of red skin. But as he approached the bed, she was puzzled to see no doctor’s bag about him. She was further confused because this man was better dressed than any doctor she’d seen, in his black suit with matching waistcoat and tie. His shoes were shined, she noticed, and he was dressed as neat as a pin. He was thin, too, with a pinched face and dark eyes and short black hair smartly combed to one side. But it was his moustache she would remember, the tidy, clipped black moustache of a man whose appearance was as important to himself as it was to others.

He walked into the room with an air of efficiency about him, and if he was shocked at the state of the place, with its walls peeling from damp, and torn curtains at the window, his face gave nothing away. Sadie hugged her baby to her breast, for if this smartly dressed man was not the doctor, then who was he and what did he want?

‘Show him the mark,’ Freda commanded.

Sadie hugged the child tighter.

‘Show him, or I’ll come over there and rip that blanket off it myself.’

Sadie looked up into the man’s face, hoping for a smile, but she was sadly disappointed. ‘Are you the doctor?’ she asked.

The man dropped his gaze to the floor. Then he straightened and gave a little cough. ‘I’m here to see the baby. I hear it has a little mark on its skin.’

‘No,’ Sadie said, swinging the child in her arms away and across to the other side of the bed. ‘No. I won’t let you see her. Not if you don’t tell me who you are.’

‘Sadie!’ Freda cried. ‘For God’s sake, let the fella see the mark.’

But even as Freda’s angry words were leaving her, she was already striding across the room towards the bed. She barged straight past the man standing at the bedside, grabbed the baby from Sadie’s arms and pulled the blanket from its shoulders. The man remained silent and unmoving when he saw the scarlet patch of skin.

‘Well?’ Freda demanded.

‘Is it healthy otherwise?’ he asked.

Freda nodded and held out her hand expectantly. ‘Do we have a sale?’ she demanded. ‘If you don’t want it, I’ve got plenty of others who’ll take it.’

Sadie sat and watched, her stomach turning, her breath coming out of her fast and shallow with the shock.

‘Yes,’ the man said. He held out his own hand and Freda took it in a tight handshake. ‘I’ll take it now. I’ve got my man waiting outside with the car.’

‘Wait!’ Sadie cried. ‘What’s happening?’

The man shot her a look, just the briefest of glances exchanged between them. Then he turned and strode out of the room, ignoring her cries. He’d been in the room for just a few minutes, but that was all it took for Sadie’s life to be changed in every way.

Sadie moved quickly and swung her legs from the bed, but Freda saw her trying to stand and pushed her back with her free hand. Then, without another word, she walked from the room with the baby and slammed the door shut behind her.

Sadie struggled up again, using the bedpost as support. She stood still for a moment, gathering her strength and calling out over and over for Freda, for the baby. In her desperation, she even called for Mick. From out on the landing, she heard the sound of a key in the lock. She moved to the door and banged on it with her fists, all her anger and hurt and fear coming from her. But she knew they wouldn’t answer.

She turned and walked towards the big sash window. Using all the strength she could find, she heaved at it until it gave way and started to move. It opened an inch, and then another, but she could get it to budge no further. On the road in front of the house she saw a fancy black car that she’d never seen before. In the front seat a man sat at the steering wheel. The car window was lowered and he was smoking a cigarette, his elbow resting on the window ledge. In the back seat she could make out another figure. It was a woman, her face shielded by a wide-brimmed black hat.

Suddenly he appeared, the man who minutes ago had been at Sadie’s bedside, and in his arms he held what looked like a bundle of rags. But with a sickening lurch to her stomach, she knew immediately what it was. She watched as the back door of the car swung open and the man leaned inside, handing the precious parcel to the woman in the hat. Sadie bent low to the open window.

‘No!’ she cried. ‘You can’t do this! You can’t take my baby!’

The man at the steering wheel glanced up in the direction of her cries and caught her looking down. She watched as the thin man with the moustache walked from the back of the car towards the driver.

‘Back to Ryhope?’ the driver asked as he threw his cigarette to the pavement.

Just three little words, but Sadie heard them clearly through the gap in the window.

The man with the black moustache nodded, then walked to the passenger side of the car and disappeared inside. Sadie’s cries were lost as the throaty hum of the engine started and the car began to move away. As it edged forward, she caught sight of the number 3 on its licence plate.

Hours later, Freda came to her room with a tray of food – and harsh words too.

‘I want you back working tomorrow,’ she commanded. ‘You’ve lazed around here long enough now. First thing in the morning you’ll be at Hartlepool market. Get yourself some work and start earning again or I’ll throw you out on the streets.’

Sadie glared at her but didn’t reply.

‘Got nothing to say for yourself?’ Freda snarled. ‘No, you’ll still be crying about the bairn, I’ll bet. Well, pull yourself together. It wasn’t anything more than a tuppenny child. I almost had to give it away. A child like that with the mark of the devil on it is best out of my house.’

‘You sold my child?’ Sadie gasped at Freda’s callous words. The confirmation of what she had seen from the window hit her like a bullet to the heart. ‘You took her!’ she cried, louder now. ‘And you sold her? For tuppence?’

Freda pointed a bony finger towards Sadie and poked her hard in the chest.

‘Don’t you forget that I am the child’s grandmother and I have the right to do what I choose! And never you mind how much we got. It’s none of your business. You need to remember this, lass – you knew the rules when you took this room: no babies allowed. You should think yourself lucky I got rid of it for you. A young lass with a bairn brings shame on my house, and you bring shame on yourself. Besides, it’s bad for business having a bairn about the place, and I’ve got a living to make.’

Sadie stayed silent. She would cry later, when Freda was downstairs with Mick, mother and son lost in their nightly drunken haze. She wondered if that night’s beer would be bought with the proceeds from the sale of her child.

Left alone in her room, she made a decision. She had no friends or relatives or anyone else she could turn to for help, but she was determined to get out. She didn’t know when and she didn’t know how, but she knew that she couldn’t continue living under the same roof that housed the evil of Freda, not after what she had done.

One morning while she was waiting at the market to b. . .