All I Want Is You by Elizabeth Anthony Page A

we heard a lady’s voice faintly singing ‘Home Sweet Home’.
    ‘That’s Dame Nellie Melba.’ Robert grinned. ‘How about that? The lady herself, singing in Chelmsford, right this minute.’
    ‘You ain’t half a clever-clogs,’ muttered Betsey.
    Mrs Burdett had come in and was listening in amazement. ‘Chelmsford? How…’
    Robert began to explain about radio transmissions, using words none of us could understand. I just listened to the music, entranced, but soon enough the bells began to summon us upstairs, and we all went rushing off to do our jobs again.
    One day when we were in the sluice room, Nell pulled me aside. ‘Oh, Sophie,’ she said. ‘Oh, Sophie.’
    Tears were running down her cheeks. I went quicklyto close the door, after checking nobody else was around outside. ‘Nell. What is it?’
    She told me she was pregnant. My spirits sank, but I tried to say what I thought best. ‘Eddie loves you, doesn’t he, Nell? He’ll marry you, he has a good job as the Duke’s chauffeur…’
    ‘He’s saying it’s not his.’ She began sobbing noisily.
    ‘Not his? But…’
    ‘He told me that I’d – that I’d been with lots of other men for all he knew. But it’s not true!’ She looked distraught. ‘There’s nothing else for it – I’m going to have to get rid of it.’
    ‘Nell.
Nell
…’ But someone was coming; I could hear footsteps in the passage outside, and quickly we got on with our task of emptying the contents of the chamber pots down the drains then swilling them out. I worked in silent anger, because Eddie would get away scot-free just by saying she was a slut, and also because I’d heard terrible tales about women taking poisons like pennyroyal in desperate attempts to end a pregnancy.
    Later, when I got Nell alone again, I told her I thought there were church charities that would help girls like her; I said we could take the bus into Oxford on our next afternoon off, to find out.
    But it was all too late.
    Two days after Nell told me her news, I was up first as usual, for though I’d been here four years it was still my job to clean out the kitchen and scrub the huge oven before breakfast began. I’d just started to sweep the floor when the other servants came running in to tell methat Nell was ill in her bed. They were horrified, and asked me to come back upstairs to her. ‘You’re her friend, Sophie.’
    Betsey actually offered to take over my tasks, and I hurried up the many flights of stairs to find Nell lying on her narrow iron bed in a pool of blood, her face as white as chalk.
    ‘Oh, God,’ I breathed. ‘Oh, Nell…’
    We did our best. We cleaned her, we made her sit up and drink a little hot tea, and someone found laudanum to ease the stomach cramps that seized her so badly.
    ‘She was expecting a baby,’ I told the others. ‘She must have a doctor.’ I think my voice was raw with despair; I didn’t know if she’d taken something deliberately, or if it had just happened. And either way it didn’t really matter, a doctor
had
to come to her.
    But Mr Peters had arrived by then – I could hear his stern voice outside our dormitory. ‘Doctor Blakey cannot be sent for,’ he declared. ‘That would mean Their Graces would have to know what has happened, and they would be shocked beyond belief. Besides, we are expecting important guests.’
    It sickened me that Nell should be lying there in her own blood, possibly dying, and she was being ignored simply so that the Duke and Duchess shouldn’t be troubled. Suddenly I realised how much I hated this place. I hated the Duke and the Duchess and all their grand visitors; all the people for whom I and Nell and the others had to turn our faces to the wall as they passed by because we weren’t fit to look at them.
    Nell continued to have terrible cramps all day andwas still bleeding. I wanted to tell Mrs Burdett what had happened, but house guests were indeed expected that afternoon and Mrs Burdett was closeted with the