Chapter 25
CHAPTER 25
Bernie
On the way home, the girls and I call into the dressmaker’s. It’s a little off the beaten track but it’s considerably cheaper than any of the fancy places in town. There’s no name above the door or elaborate shopwindow full of dresses or coats. It’s simply a red door on the side of a gray building. I’d never have found Mrs. Stitch by myself—it was one of Dan’s customers who recommended her years ago—and I’ve been mighty glad since then that she did. I’ve lost count of the number of bedspreads and tablecloths that Mrs. Stitch has turned into fine outfits for my growing girls over the years. Mrs. Stitch isn’t her real name, obviously. But she was introduced to me as such and I’ve never questioned it.
As always, I knock three times on the door and wait for it to open. Mrs. Stitch is oddly insistent that it must be three knocks precisely. She won’t answer to anything less or anything more. You can’t enter from the outside. There’s no handle, just a heavy chrome knocker in the shape of a lion’s head. Seconds turn to minutes, and I knock three times again.
“Where is she?” Marie asks.
Marie’s excitement is tangible. She’s practically been bouncing on the spot all week since Mrs. Stitch measured her and Elizabeth up for new coats. With Maura’s coat to keep me warm, I was able to save the bedspread and hand my old coat in to Mrs. Stitch instead.
“Oh, this will do nicely,” she had said as she held a measuring tape around Marie’s waist. “And there’s lining too. That’ll keep this pair nice and warm all winter. I need three days to work my magic. Come back on Thursday afternoon, please.”
I check my watch. It’s 11:45 a.m. Not quite noon yet. Maybe she doesn’t open for another fifteen minutes.
“I need to go a wee-wee,” Elizabeth announces.
“Can you hold it?”
Elizabeth closes her eyes and scrunches her face. “I don’t think so.”
My heart sinks. If Elizabeth wets her pants now she’ll be frozen and probably catch cold on the walk home. I knock on the door again, banging harder this time.
“Mrs. Stitch, it’s Bernie. Bernie McCarthy. Are you in there?”
There’s no reply, but when I press my ear to the door I can hear voices inside.
I knock again, banging furiously now.
“Mrs. Stitch, please? I have the children with me and it’s freezing out here.”
Footsteps hurry toward the door and I pull my ear away and stand up straight. The door opens and Mrs. Stitch appears. Her short hair is more gray than brown and she wears thick-rimmed glasses; she blames years of threading needles for ruining her sight. She’s wearing a bright red apron that she seems to use as a pincushion, with needles and pins threaded chaotically all over.
“Three times,” she says, licking some blue thread and squinting as she tries to push it through the eye of a needle. “You’re supposed to knock three times. It’s not that complicated.”
“The little ’un needs the toilet,” I say.
Mrs. Stitch looks at Marie.
“Not me. Her,” Marie says, pointing at her sister. “I can hold mine. I’m six.”
Mrs. Stitch smiles. “Well, she’s going to have to hold it too.”
“Please,” I say, shocked that Mrs. Stitch would deny a bursting child the loo. “It’s just a wee. She’ll be very quick.”
“You’re early,” Mrs. Stitch says, and there’s a spark of frustration about her. “I said afternoon. I don’t do business before noon.”
“I’m sorry. Normally we’d wait, but Elizabeth can’t hold what’s not in her hand.”
Elizabeth has taken to hopping from one foot to the other. Alice laughs, thoroughly entertained by it all.
“Right. Fine. Just this once,” Mrs. Stitch says.
I take Elizabeth by the hand, leave Marie with the baby, and walk toward the only door at the back of the small shop. The toilet flushes, and when the door opens, a young girl comes out. She’s about sixteen or seventeen—certainly no more—and she’s been crying. Her red-rimmed eyes look ready to fall out of her head. Seeing me, she jolts. Her mouth opens and I can see her swallow panicked breathing. It’s as obvious as the nose on her face that she wasn’t expecting anyone other than Mrs. Stitch to be out here. We brush past each other and I close the door behind Elizabeth and me.
“Ew, it smells funny in here,” Elizabeth says, holding her nose.
“Hush, don’t be rude,” I say, and help her onto the toilet.
She grabs me tightly, afraid her tiny body might fall in. Elizabeth is right—the smell in here is unpleasant. Bleach and vomit. The acidity of both stenches makes my own stomach heave.
“Done,” Elizabeth announces.
I sort her out, wash her hands, and turn to search for a towel or something to dry her hands. When I turn back, I find Elizabeth with a glass Lucozade bottle in her hand.
“Fizzy pop,” she squeals, delighted.
I take the bottle quickly.
“Hey,” Elizabeth moans, “give me a-back my pop.”
I ignore her, grumbling as I examine the bottle. The label has been torn off and it’s full of slightly murky water rather than amber Lucozade. I unscrew the lid and inhale, coughing immediately. I’ve clearly found the source of the potent bleach smell. I screw the lid back on and we leave the bathroom.
“What the hell are you doing with that?” Mrs. Stitch snaps so unexpectedly that my heart jumps.
She snatches the bottle from my hand and her long nail snags my wrist. I put my wrist to my mouth and look at her, lost for words.
Alice is growing fussy. Marie is trying her best to keep her calm by rocking the pram. I glance around the small shop for the teenage girl, but she’s gone.
“I was going to put it in the bin,” I say, picking up the baby and bouncing her on my hip. “I think someone poured something nasty in there. Bleach, is my best guess.”
Mrs. Stitch doesn’t reply. She takes the bottle and places it under the table where she keeps her sewing machine.
“Aren’t you going to throw that out?” I say.
“Your coats are ready,” Mrs. Stitch says, gathering two small coats from a nearby rack and passing them to me.
The coats are beautiful, and Marie and Elizabeth tug at them in my arms, trying to get a better look. I don’t pay them much attention.
“I think the young girl left it in there,” I say, struggling to gather my thoughts. “I think she might be in trouble or something. She was crying.”
Mrs. Stitch ignores me. “There’s enough material left over to get a coat for the baby too, if you like?”
“Why would she leave something like that where someone could find it? Could be very dangerous if a child got their hands on it. Elizabeth thought it was fizzy pop. Could you imagine if she drank it?”
“Do you want the coats or not?” Mrs. Stitch asks.
“I just think—”
“Mrs. McCarthy, please.” Mrs. Stitch jams her hands on her hips. “This is not something you need to concern yourself with. You’re married. You don’t have to worry about the same things young girls do.”
“What does marriage have to do with anything?”
Mrs. Stitch snorts and rolls her eyes as if my ignorance is exhausting her. My girls begin to dance and twirl, playing princesses or fairies. Marie hums a tune and Elizabeth smiles and giggles. Their childhood innocence snatches my breath away as the threads of Mrs. Stitch’s words gather. I see the young girl’s face, her teary eyes and shaky hands. I see the stinking Lucozade bottle that belongs in the bin, not hidden under a desk like a dirty, dangerous secret. I think about Mrs. Stitch’s strange opening hours, how I’ve seen young women in here earlier than noon. Always young women. Always with the weight of the world on their shoulders.
“Is she pregnant?” I whisper, as if just asking out loud will bring the four walls crashing down around us.
Mrs. Stitch glares at me with narrow eyes, and she doesn’t say no.
“Oh my God.”
Mrs. Stitch turns her attention away from me and helps the girls peel off their old, too-small coats so they can slip into their new ones. They’re a picture in petite royal blue coats that are as fine and dandy as the best ones Switzers has to offer.
“Look, Ma,” Elizabeth says, stretching her arms out as wide as they go. “I’m a grown-up, like you.”
My heart aches, and for a moment I wish my beautiful little girl never had to grow up, never had to become a woman.
“You didn’t actually want her to drink that, did you?” I ask, my anger bubbling to the surface.
“That will be three shilling and sixteen pence, please.” She puts out her hand and I know this conversation is over.
“You could kill her with poison like that. What even is it?”
“And I suppose you have a better solution, do you?”
“I…”
I exhale and let my tired shoulders round. There is no better solution, I know that. Every woman knows that. A baby outside of marriage is a death sentence. Families throw young women out on the street. Girls as young as sixteen are left with nowhere to go and nowhere to turn—and that’s if they’re lucky. The unlucky ones are sent to one of those homes. Dan says they’re run by the church, but they are as far from a place of God as you can imagine. I didn’t ask him how he knew. You’d be surprised the things a man will hear in a butcher’s shop.
“Women gossip like clucking hens,” he says. “Especially if it’s their neighbor’s business. Young girls go in, and haggard, broken women come back out. If they come out. Some don’t, and I often wonder what happens to them.”
I have my suspicions that they die in childbirth, but I don’t dare tell Dan. He climbs the walls with worry every time I have a baby. It wouldn’t do him well to land more worry at his feet.
Besides, I wonder more where the babies go. No baby has ever come out of one of those homes. Ever. I don’t know much about them, I’ll admit, but one thing I know for certain is no daughter of mine will ever set foot inside one, no matter what mistakes she makes.
“I hope she’ll be all right,” I say, making eye contact with Mrs. Stitch. “The girl, I mean. She must be so frightened.”
“Oh, she’ll be back,” Mrs. Stitch says, with a confidence that makes me both sad and relieved. “They always come back.”
I nod and swallow a lump that feels too cumbersome for my throat. I pass Mrs. Stitch some money and she counts it out loud.
“Come along, girls. It’s time to go,” I say.
Marie and Elizabeth thank the seamstress for their new coats and I push the pram out the door with the girls following behind me. I’ve never been so relieved to inhale fresh air in all my life.