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

and straightened slowly, grimacing as her bones creaked. It wouldn’t do her any good thinking like this and worrying. What would be, would be. The easy philosophy that had carried her through some fifty years of life didn’t work so well these days. She knew in her head that it did no good to fight against the pricks, but every time she looked at the child her heart said otherwise.
     
    Why had this child come into her life anyway? She walked across to the bed she had been lying on before Sarah had awoken, her tread heavy. When William had died she’d thought she’d go mad for a time, prayed for it, anything would have been better than seeing his poor little body stretched out on the bed in their one damp room in her mind’s eye every time she shut her eyes. She hadn’t slept in weeks, not really, and then someone had introduced her to the laudanum, and after that . . .
     
    She’d made a bit of a name for herself where she’d lived. She’d heard them talk, and seen the curtains twitch more than once when she’d arrived home well-oiled and with a different bloke in tow every night. Not that she’d ever got paid for it. She shook her head at the accusing voice in her mind. But she’d needed comfort, a warm body next to hers in the long night hours when everyone else had someone. And then even that had paled, and she’d got older . . .
     
    When she’d come to work at the Home she had never expected to feel affection for anyone again; she hadn’t wanted to. Three square meals and a warm bed was all she’d asked, but she’d reckoned without Sarah. She glanced across at her, hunching her shoulders against what the child meant to her. She’d wanted a peaceful old age, a slow fading away . . .
     
    Oh, stop your griping . That other self was scathing. She’d never been able to stand them that indulged in maudlin self-pity, and she was too long in the tooth to matter one way or the other; the little lass was all that counted. How all this would end she didn’t know, but, she told herself, she’d take one day at a time. The future was too big to tackle otherwise. Perhaps the doctor would come through after all, make a stand for the little lass?
     
    She relaxed back on the hard bed with a deep sigh, bringing her swollen legs up slowly, one after the other. But the governors wouldn’t like having their charity challenged; most of them had looked the other way so often their heads were permanently fixed in that position. What was one little bairn to any of them? They came strutting round in their top hats and tails once a year, their fancy wives dressed in silk and satin with bits of lace pressed to their noses as though the place stank, and then off they went again in their fine motor cars, full of righteous satisfaction and with their social consciences appeased for another year. What did they know of real life, any of them? Her hand reached for the bottle of laudanum in her shift pocket and then stopped abruptly. No, she’d had enough the night, there was the little lass to think of and she wanted to hear her if she stirred or they had visitors.
     
    Her faded eyes flicked towards the closed door. Not that it would do Matron any good to come back now, but you never knew with her type - the unnatural ones, because if ever a woman was unnatural, the Matron was. To get pleasure out of whipping little bairns . . . Maggie shivered, then leant back and closed her eyes. Give her Florrie Shawe any day. Spitefulness she could understand, but this other . . .
     
    She never was sure what woke her, but when Maggie opened her eyes and saw the dim outline of Matron Cox bending over Sarah’s bed, her hands pressing a pillow over the child’s face, she still lay unmoving for a moment, her mind unable to accept what her eyes were seeing. And then she smelt the smoke, and saw the bed ablaze at the far end of the room, and panic propelled her upright as swiftly as her bulk would allow and with a suddenness which took the