Shelter from the Storm by Elizabeth Gill Page A

stairs and be just sober enough to undress before he fell into bed. She had no objection to that either. It was preferable to being pawed before sleep. It was obvious to her, however, that Tom was not drunk, because he asked her who had been there. He didn’t tell her how he knew somebody had been there. All he said was, ‘Has my mam been round?’
    ‘Esther Margaret called in.’
    ‘What did she want?’
    It was no good putting him off.
    ‘She’s in bother.’
    Tom paused in undoing the buttons on his shirt.
    ‘What, real bother?’ He stared for a moment longer and then started to laugh. ‘Never in this world!’ he said. ‘That prissy little cow? What brave lad got inside her knickers, then?’
    It was with a certain bitter satisfaction that she told him.
    ‘Dryden.’
    Tom didn’t react at all as she had thought he would. The laughter died.
    ‘How do you know?’ he said flatly.
    ‘She told me.’
    ‘She could be lying.’
    ‘What would be the point of that? What girl would claim Dryden as the father if she could claim anybody else?’
    ‘The bloody stupid little sod!’ Tom said, and wrenched his shirt off. He stood for several minutes calling Dryden every name he could think of, and then neither of them said anything more until they got into bed and lay there, thinking about it.
    ‘He’ll have to marry her,’ Vinia said.
    ‘Aye, I suppose he will. There are worse reasons. We don’t seem to be able to do it.’ And he blew out the candle and turned his back on her.
    *
    Esther Margaret could not imagine what Dryden would say. She was sure that he would refuse to marry her, that he would not have anything to do with her, and she lay in bed at night and shivered thinking of what would happen then. To be an unmarried mother was unthinkable. She had already decided that she would not give the baby up. She would never give it up, not for any reason on earth, and if that was so then she could not stay here. She imagined wildly that she would go to her mother’s distant cousin, who was the only relative who lived away, in some remote little fishing village in Northumberland, and she would … she would do what? She couldn’t think. Her days were filled with being sick and feeling ill and her nights were full of dread and terror.
    She wanted to see Dryden before her father got round to it, but he was difficult to catch at home; his shifts varied and she was unused to such things, and on Sundays he was only to be found in the pub, or so Mrs Clancy said. Mrs Clancy thought she was pursuing Dryden for romantic reasons and was inclined to laugh about it. Esther Margaret had to press her to find out when he was at home and Mrs Clancy was either not truthful or wasdisinclined to answer her questions. She wanted to tell Dryden before her father reached him so that if he was going to be cowardly about it she would know straight away. She finally caught up with him on the street early one Saturday evening.
    ‘I’m going to the pub,’ he said, trying to brush her aside.
    ‘This won’t take long,’ she said, hurrying after him. ‘Dryden, please. It’s … it’s important.’
    He stopped.
    ‘Look,’ he said, and he found her face, glanced away, and then looked more determinedly at her. ‘You’re a lovely lass, Esther Margaret, but I don’t care for nobody that way. I’m sorry if you think I did it wrong. It wasn’t meant to hurt you.’
    Esther Margaret grabbed his sleeve as he began to set off again. Dryden waited.
    ‘I’m expecting,’ she said. She hadn’t meant to blurt it out like that, but really there was no good way to tell somebody something like that, especially when he had just confessed to you that he didn’t love you or want you. Dryden stared.
    ‘Give over,’ he said, and started to walk away. She ran after him.
    ‘Please, Dryden, listen.’
    ‘I don’t have to listen. You can’t be. We hardly did it. I’ve been with lasses dozens of times and it’s never happened. You’re