Terminus

Words and Art by Hilary Ayshford

The crowd funnels through the ticket barrier like water swirling down a plughole. I've never seen so many people in the same place at the same time. They push and jostle, jink and swerve round each other, all needing to be somewhere urgently and all knowing where they are going. I put my battered cardboard suitcase on the platform and stand and wait for the hurly-burly to die down. A large man in a crumpled overcoat catches his foot on it and stumbles into me. “Watch where you’re going,” he snarls, which is odd because he’s the one in a hurry and I’m not moving at all.

I am temporarily alone in the cavernous space under the arching roof with its brown painted iron girders and glass panels, soot-stained and murky from years of accumulated dirt and diesel fumes. The constant Tannoy announcements rebound and reverberate, bouncing off the concrete platform and tiled walls, corrugated sound waves folding in on themselves, overlapping each other and rendering the words unintelligible.

I’m gazing around in wonder, taking it all in, when I hear a voice calling my name. A woman is waving and beckoning furiously; Aunt Edith, I presume, so I pick up my suitcase and walk slowly towards the main concourse. Aunt Edith—“for goodness sake, girl, do you want to make me feel ancient? Just call me Edith”—is not what I was expecting. She is Ma’s sister, but they don’t look alike—Ma’s skin is tanned from working outside all day, her hair is dark and curly and she has strong arms and sturdy legs; Edith is pale and slender, with golden hair in a sleek bob. Although they both grew up on the family farm on the Cumbrian coast, Edith escaped in her teens and disappeared to London. She never came back to visit, and I didn’t know she even existed until a couple of weeks ago. “I wonder if Edith would help,” Ma had suggested. Gramma frowned, bit her bottom lip and said nothing. 

Edith snatches my small suitcase in the same way she has grabbed life in London by the scruff of its neck. She walks quickly in spite of her tight skirt, and I almost have to run to keep sight of her red pillbox hat bobbing among the heads of the crowd. I follow the click-clacking of her high heels on the marble floor towards the exit and try to work out if their rhythm indicates irritation, disapproval or merely haste. The color, light and noise of the city stops me in my tracks. I am dazed, confused, overwhelmed. I don’t understand any of this: why I have been sent to stay with this woman I’ve never met, what it is I’ve done wrong, what’s going to happen next.

We get on one of the red double-decker buses. I want to go upstairs so I can see better, but Edith says no, because it stinks of smoke up there. She says nothing else for the rest of the journey. We sit on the sideways seats at the back of the bus, and I hold on tightly to the silver pole when we go round corners. I can’t see much through the window because the two women facing us have hair piled up like mountains of candyfloss; their eyelashes are really long but their skirts are very short, and one of them keeps tugging it down over her thighs. She sees me looking and sticks her tongue out, then whispers to her friend.

Edith’s flat is in the basement of a terraced house, with steep steps going down to the front door. From the window you can see the feet and legs of people going past on the pavement, and at the back there is a small concrete area with a few flower pots where the browning leaves of dying plants droop in despair.

She puts my case on a narrow bed in a room so small I can touch the rosebud paper on the walls on both sides if I put my arms out. But I’m thrilled; it’s the first time I’ve had a room all to myself. The curtains and the eiderdown are pink satin, and on the wall opposite the bed is a painting of a girl with golden curls, sitting on a patterned rug and surrounded by teddy bears. I wonder if it is a picture of my aunt when she was younger.

Edith cooks sausages and mash for tea. The sausage skins are brown and shiny, but the meat inside is pink and slippery, not at all like the ones Ma makes when we slaughter a pig. The mashed potato is lumpy and made with margarine instead of butter, but I’m hungry because I’d eaten my packed lunch on the train before it even got to Crewe. Edith picks at her food. “Sorry,” she says, “I’m not much of a cook.”

She puts down her knife and fork. “You do know why you’re here,” she says.

My face is hot and I look down at my plate. “Yes,” I mumble. “Barry Brotherton did it to me in the barn and now I’m in the family way. Am I going to stay here with you until the baby comes?”

“No. Because after tomorrow you won’t be pregnant anymore.”

“But it’s too early. It’s not ready to be born yet.”

“It’s not going to be born. Tomorrow, we’re going to the clinic in Harley Street where I work and the doctor is going to take it away. He’s going to scrape it out of you. It’s not legal, so you must never tell anyone. But it will be as safe as it can be. He’s a good doctor; he’ll take care of you. They’ll deduct the money out of my wages every week.”

“Will it hurt?”

“No, because you’ll be asleep, and when you wake up there’ll be no more baby.”

“I meant, will it hurt the baby?”

“The baby is too small to feel anything yet.”

I think about this for a few seconds. “Will they give it to someone else?”

“For God’s sake!” Edith slams her hands down on the table. “Don’t you get it, you stupid girl? The baby will be dead. They are going to kill your baby!”

The room slides away upwards and sideways. Edith is beside me, forcing my head between my knees.

“Alright now?” she asks, after a couple of minutes. I nod and she releases my shoulders, but when I sit up, I spew a pool of pink sausage innards onto the yellow formica table top.

“I’m sorry,” Edith says. “That was brutal of me, but you need to understand what will happen.”

We go through into the sitting room and Edith puts a record on the radiogram. The husky sound of a clarinet playing “Stranger On The Shore” hugs us softly. She kneels down in front of my armchair and takes my hands. “You don’t have to do this,” she says.

“I can’t go home if I don’t. I’m almost sixteen now. Ma says I need to earn my keep, and they can’t afford another mouth to feed. And she says the shame of having an unmarried mother in the family will send her to an early grave.”

“You have a choice. You could stay here with me until the baby’s born, then give it to a couple who can’t have children of their own. Or you could keep it. I’d help you.”

A question surfaces in my mind; the answer seems important.

“Who’s the girl in the painting?”

“My daughter.”

“I didn’t know you had a daughter.”

“I don’t. I found the painting in a junk shop in Shepherds Bush. It’s what I think she might have looked like if I’d made a different choice.”

And now I understand why Edith left the farm suddenly and why nobody at home ever mentions her.

She squeezes my fingers. “You don’t have to make up your mind now. Why don’t you sleep on it and let me know in the morning.”

I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep in the rosy room with the picture of the girl-who-might-have-been, the daughter-who-never-was, but I do. When Edith brings me in a cup of tea, I tell her I’ve decided.

“Today,” I say, “I’d like to see Buckingham Palace. And I want to ride on the top deck of the bus.”

Edith smiles. “Fine, then that’s what we’ll do.”

About the author and illustrator

Hilary Ayshford is a former science journalist and editor based in rural Kent in the UK. She writes mainly flash fiction and short stories and has been nominated for Best Of The Net and Best Small Fictions. She vowed never to write a novel, but now finds herself half way through writing a historical novel-in-flash that started out as a short story. She likes her music in a minor key and has a penchant for the darker side of human nature.

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