Alone Beneath The Heaven by Rita Bradshaw Read Free Book Online Page A

married his beloved Wallis Simpson in June? Oh yes, she’d got it now - ‘After the trying times we have been through we now look forward to a happy and useful private life.’ Well, stepping out of the mould could be got round when you were the King of England, and no doubt his life, and his wife’s, would still be well oiled.
     
    But Sarah? Maggie stared over the child’s head, her face sombre. Sarah didn’t have the connections or the money the twice-divorced Wallis Simpson had had. Beauty without intelligence would have been all right for the bairn - Maggie nodded silently to herself, her eyes looking inwards - the lass would have gone one of two ways then. An early marriage to one of the more determined rough types down on the docks or, likely as not, one of the madams would have snapped her up and had her working to service the never-ending supply of customers straight off the boats. Either way she would have found her niche in life. But Sarah was bright, she thought about things and felt them deeply too. Oh aye, she felt them all right, she’d never known a bairn with the capacity to feel like this one.
     
    Maggie’s mind travelled back some six years to the first time she’d felt the stirrings of a love that was soon to become fiercely maternal. She had been helping out in the foundling nursery due to some of the Mothers being down with influenza, and had come into the yard during the children’s mid-morning recreation to find a little group of sturdy-legged boys surrounding two small girls, one in particular standing out as she faced her tormentors with blazing eyes.
     
    ‘You’re daft, you are, Sarah Brown.’ One of the boys, who was verging on six and a good deal bigger than the blond-haired little girl facing him, had closed in on the small figure, who was clutching something next to her chest. ‘Give it ’ere else I’ll skite your lugs.’
     
    ‘No, I won’t.’
     
    As the child had spoken, Maggie had noticed the other little tot - a smaller, thinner child with straight brown hair cut pudding-basin short - move closer to her friend’s side, her chin rising a notch as she’d said, ‘You leave her alone, Mick McBride.’
     
    ‘What’s going on here?’
     
    As the group of boys had scattered, Sarah had said, ‘It’s the frog, Mother,’ offering up her hands in which reposed a small round-eyed frog. ‘They were throwing stones at it to make it jump an’ they’ve hurt its leg, look.’
     
    Maggie looked, and then backed a step or two as the frog made a half-hearted attempt to escape from the small hands.
     
    ‘It’s come from the garden and it’s lost, it’s looking for its mam.’
     
    ‘Is it?’ Maggie was not a lover of things small and green, and her voice reflected her scepticism.
     
    ‘Mick McBride was going to step on it, he was.’ Rebecca had chimed in indignantly at this point, her plain little face red with outrage. ‘An’ he kicked Sarah’s legs an’ all, but she still wouldn’t let him have it.’
     
    ‘It is looking for its mam.’ Sarah had been quite adamant. ‘She’s in the pond, there’s dozens of frogs in there.’
     
    Maggie had been unable to refuse the unspoken request, and so the three of them had left the confines of the yard, and walked through to the Home’s vegetable garden, depositing the small amphibian close to the large pond at the far end of the grounds before making their way back to the nursery.
     
    The two little girls had chatted away the whole time, and at some time on the return journey Sarah’s small hand had slipped into hers, and love had been born as simply and as quickly as that. Not that she didn’t love Rebecca, Maggie reasoned quietly as her conscience twanged. She did, aye, she did, but it couldn’t be denied that somehow Sarah had got under her skin in a way that had never happened with any other bairn except her own lad, her William.
     
    Oh, what was she going on about? Maggie eased Sarah down on to the bed