Beauty Chorus, The Read Free Page A

music to her. She wanted to say it again, David, David, David , to somehow conjure him back to her. ‘He’s in Ireland, with
my husband’s mother. I just … I just left him there.’
    Eileen heard the pain in her voice. She patted her hand. ‘I’m sure he’ll be safe there, love.’ She sighed. ‘How old is he?’
    ‘Six months.’
    ‘Is that all? Oh, it’s hard isn’t it—’ Eileen broke off as the sleeping man at her side let out a snore. ‘Shut up, Jack.’ As she elbowed him, he
snorted. ‘You’ll wake everyone up.’
    She turned back to Stella. ‘Not that it’s anything I haven’t put up with for thirty years. Look at him with his false teeth hanging out. Put them in, Jack! Nobody wants to be
seeing that!’
    The man raised his hand to his lips and adjusted his teeth, flashing Stella an even, yellow smile before turning and settling back to sleep.
    ‘So where’s your husband, is he fighting?’
    Stella didn’t answer. Careless talk costs lives , she thought.
    The lamp guttered and went out. ‘Oh, ruddy hell, not again.’ Eileen fumbled with her bag as she put her knitting away.
    Someone coughed, hacking, waking in the shelter. From the sliver of light around the entrance, Stella guessed it must be sometime towards dawn.
    ‘So where is he? Your husband?’ Eileen tried again.
    ‘I lost him,’ Stella said curtly.
    ‘Oh love, I am sorry.’ Eileen felt for her hand in the darkness, squeezed her fingers.
    In the corner, the Christmas lights washed the faces of the sleeping babies pink. From the nearest cradle, a pair of small arms stretched up and a high, keening wail began.
    ‘Hush. There, there.’ Eileen picked him up. ‘You miss your mum, don’t you?’
    Stella felt the old familiar tightening in her chest as the baby cried, the tingling pinpricks. ‘How old is he?’ she asked quietly.
    ‘I don’t know.’ Eileen settled beside her, the baby in her arms. ‘Two, three months perhaps?’ The baby cried out as he pushed away the teat of the glass bottle she
tried to coax into his mouth. ‘Poor little mite. Don’t like the bottle do you? But you’ll have to eat, you’re wasting away.’
    ‘David never wanted a bottle.’ Stella turned the gold band on her finger slowly. She thought of the milk she had been throwing away since she’d left Ireland. She wondered
whether he too cried out for her at night. It had seemed almost criminal at a time when everyone was making do, pouring her milk away, a little less each day. The tightness in her chest became
unbearable. She felt Eileen watching her.
    ‘Were you feeding him?’
    ‘Yes.’
    Eileen looked at the anguished face of the baby. ‘Could you? I wouldn’t ask but …’
    Stella recoiled. ‘No! I couldn’t possibly.’
    As Stella shrunk back in her place, Eileen turned to her. ‘He’ll die soon,’ she whispered. ‘I’ve seen this too often lately.’
    Stella inhaled sharply as a wave of anxiety washed over her. ‘I can’t, I just can’t.’
    ‘Your baby is safe.’ Eileen shoved the child into her arms. ‘You’re here for a reason tonight, I’m sure of it.’ Stella instinctively held the child closer,
supported his head. ‘We all have to do what we can.’
    Stella nodded silently, unbuttoned her heavy overcoat with trembling fingers. She glanced self-consciously around, but everyone had averted their eyes. As she loosened her shirt, the dawn air
penetrated her thin silk camisole, felt cool against her skin. She shifted the child in her arms, cooed softly to him. She was so used to David’s plump arms, his soft, heavy body. This child
was smaller, his shoulder blades like angular wings beneath his knitted blanket. As she held him against her body, she felt him relax, sobs turning to snuffles, then silence as he began to feed, a
small fist clutching at her shirt.
    ‘There now,’ Eileen said approvingly. ‘When I was in hospital with my last, I had so much milk I fed half the babies on the ward.’ She