Читать книгу Letters from Alice: A tale of hardship and hope. A search for the truth. - Petrina Banfield - Страница 12

Sometimes the almoner is called on to find a suitable home into which young children can be temporarily admitted or find a foster mother for the baby either herself or through an outside agency, and probably raise the funds to pay for this. Her aim, in addition to arranging that the children shall be satisfactorily looked after, is to secure as far as possible mental peace for the patient, for worry is a bad bedfellow.

(The Hospital Almoner: A Brief Study of Hospital Social Science in Great Britain, 1910)

At just before 7 o’clock, Peter Harland guided Charlotte down the front step and onto the street. The rain was still hissing down in torrents, as if the sky itself were weeping for the small lifeless body Alice had gently swaddled and left in a drawer in the parlour. Shadows moved behind the closed curtains of the adjoining houses. Rainwater overflowed from their gutters, splashing onto the flagstones below. The young woman’s departure seemed to penetrate Mrs Redbourne’s hardened stance. Watching from the downstairs window, she wept as her daughter shuffled away, a flattened hand clamped over her mouth.

Light spilled onto the pavement as several doors and windows opened along the street, neighbours leaning out to find the source of all the commotion. Once the doctor had settled Charlotte inside the cab he motioned to Alice, who was waiting just inside the hall. Frank held his coat over his colleague as she jogged to the cab, her soiled cape folded over her arm. There was a babble of whispers from the spectators as she climbed hastily inside, Frank’s mackintosh flapping noisily in the wind behind her.

When Alice was settled inside, Frank closed the door discreetly and stepped back onto the pavement, watching as the taxicab turned in an arc and disappeared down the rain-drenched street, back the way it came.

Inside the cab, Alice gave instructions for the driver to head towards the Royal Free Hospital.