Gabrielle
By B T Coll
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About this ebook
The date is 1876. In a London slum, a young girl gives birth to an illegitimate daughter. Disowned by her family and with her daughter ripped from her arms soon after birth, she soon finds herself being dragged off to a Magdalene Laundry to atone for the sin of having a bastard child. When she is released from the harsh rule of the nuns at the age of 17 years, she begins work as a kitchen maid in the London residence of Lord and Lady Salisbury. As the years go by, she often wonders what had become of her daughter Gabrielle and one day sets out to find her. With heartache along the way, can she ever find her daughter, can she ever find peace?
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Gabrielle - B T Coll
Gabrielle
B T COLL
Authors Note
Gabrielle: is a work of fiction. Names, character and incidents are entirely fictitious.
Copyright BTColl © 2014
Smashwords Edition
All Rights Reserved
Chapter One
It’s a girl.
old widow Riley shouted, as I let out an almighty scream and the baby slid out of my body and into the old woman’s hands. At that moment in time, I couldn’t care less what sex the baby was, as all I wanted was for the pain, that I had endured for the past 18 hours to stop. I breathed a sigh of relief, as I knew that my suffering had at last came to an end. Only when I heard my daughter’s cry, did I come to realise that I was now a mother, at the tender age of 14 years.
I glanced up at my mother, hoping to see some excitement at now becoming a grandmother but the expression on her face was one of disgust. She gave me an angry look, which reminded me that I had committed the ultimate sin and given birth, not to a granddaughter but to a bastard.
Do you want to hold her love?
old widow Riley asked, with a big grin on her face but before I could answer, I could see my mother shaking her head. She’s not keeping it, so just put it in the bottom drawer over there.
she told her, nodding towards the old chest of drawers in the corner of the room.
I closed my eyes, as I didn’t want my mother to see that I was about to cry. Of course I didn’t want to bring shame on my family and at first didn’t want the baby but as the months passed and my belly grew, I actually became excited at the prospect of having my very own baby to love. This excitement I kept to myself, as I knew my parents were both disgusted with me.
I could hear the two women whispering, as I found myself drifting off to sleep. I tried to stay awake, as I wanted to argue, to plead with my mother. I wanted to keep my baby so much but it was no good, my body was tired and I couldn’t fight the tiredness any longer and felt my eyelids begin to close.
I awoke to the sound of my father screaming abuse at my mother. Nothing really unusual there but he had a tone to his voice, that was rather more vicious than I had ever heard before, so I strained my ears to hear what they were arguing about.
She’s going. It’s all arranged.
I heard my mother scream but my father seemed to be disagreeing with her and I strained my ears to hear more. Sister Bernard is coming to collect her in the morning and there is no good looking at me like that.
mother said and I instinctively knew that they were talking about my baby. My father muttered something, which I couldn’t quite hear but I knew he was against the idea, by the tone of his voice. She has to atone for her sins.
mother screamed and I realised then, that she was talking about me and not my baby. I was to be sent away because I am a sinner. I won’t allow it. I’m telling you right now. I have heard about those places and if you send her there, then I will leave and never return.
my father screamed at her.
Gabriel, be reasonable. We’re not talking about forever. The Sisters of Charity will look after her and when they think she has atoned for her sins, she will return to us.
mother replied, with anger in her voice.
I’m telling you Maggie, those places have ruined many a young life and you know about my cousin Angela. She was never the same after returning from one of those Magdalene Laundries. No! I am putting my foot down. No child of mine will set foot in a place like that.
father said and I breathed a sigh of relief. That’s Ireland, not here in England. It’s different here. She’ll be treated well by the nuns and she will go just as I have arranged. We will talk no more about this. The decision has been made.
mother told him in a loud and determined voice.
I closed my eyes again. Where had life gone so wrong for me? Of course, I knew the answer. It was the day I had become entangled with that good for nothing Sean Brady and his seductive ways. I was not yet fourteen when I first met Sean and I immediately fell for his Irish charm. I know now that I was a naive and stupid little girl, who was daft enough to listen to the words of a young man who only wanted one thing. I cursed myself every night after it happened and had wanted to confess to Father Murphy but had been too scared and embarrassed. Sean and his family had only been in London for a year or two and he had the most beautiful lilt to his voice, which reminded me of my father’s accent, which I always found calming. My father had arrived in London when he was barely in his twenties and had met and married my mother, who herself was born in London but was of Irish decent. My mother’s London accent was a harder accent than my fathers, which was soft and welcoming. My mother was very loud, brash and very very intimidating. Because of this, she always got her own way and I felt scared that this would happen again, as I knew that my father would never be able to stand up to her.
My brothers Pat, Seamus and I had never been to Ireland and we often longed to see our father’s birthplace but mother would never allow us to go, so all we could do was listen to my father’s tales of growing up in County Cork and what it was like to live on a farm. It sounded idyllic and was a far cry from the tenement lives that we were now living, surrounded by concrete with barely a blade of grass to be seen.
I could tell that my father missed his birthplace and wondered why he had never returned, not even for a holiday to see his family. I knew that he still had a brother and sister living over there but not much else. Father liked to live in the present and just refused point blank to talk of his family, except to explain his childhood. Why he left and came to London, none of us knew and none of us were brave enough to ask. Did he have a secret? We could only guess. No rational person would leave the green fields of Ireland, to come over to live in the tenement slums of Bethnal Green in London, unless he was running away from something. Was he? One day I would ask him.
My father and brothers all worked hard, to put a roof over our heads and food on our table. They worked in one of the textile factories and they left early each morning and did not return until dusk. My mother, on the other hand, made shirts and the like and I would help her sell them, as my father insisted that no daughter of his would work in a factory. There was no skiving in our family, as times were hard and every one of us had to pull our weight and contribute to the family purse.
My father had also insisted that we were taught to read and write, in order to better ourselves and perhaps pull ourselves out of this poverty we lived in. Mother had tried to talk him out of this, as it took money from the family purse but she eventually relented.
So for four years, each Sunday, after mass, my brothers and I would walk to Mrs Kirkpatrick’s house and she would teach us to read and write. She was a retired school teacher and lived in the better part of the city but as my father told us, she needed money too, to survive. After Mrs Kirkpatrick’s death my mother had insisted that we had learned as much as the next person and we were at least partially educated, so there was no need to continue with paying for education.
My brothers Pat and Seamus tried to get better jobs, in order to get away from the factory and earn better wages but were constantly turned down and eventually came to realize, that the factory was where they would have to spend the rest of their days. My father was disappointed and my mother moaned about the money that was wasted on their education. I knew that my father had high hopes for me, as he often told me that one day I would make him proud.
Each Friday a thin, gaunt looking man would turn up in his dark and expensive suit and his top hat and collect the rent for this Godforsaken dump of a home, and my mother would dutiful hand it over to him. Some of our neighbours, due to many circumstances, did not have the rent and were quickly evicted to live on the streets. They would find themselves turning to begging and thieving before having to turn themselves into one of the many workhouses, in order to survive. I have watched all of this poverty and depravation around me since a young age and had often dreamed of escaping somehow.
My thoughts returned to Sean Brady and how he had deserted me in my hour of need. We had met in the streets, when he had became good friends with my brother Seamus and I thought him both handsome and charming. We started to meet in secret and that was when things began.
After the deed was done, we were both ashamed of our actions. It never happened again after that night because we both knew that it was sinful and as we were both good Catholic teenagers, a kiss on the cheek was all that we allowed ourselves to do from that night onwards. He still insisted that we should keep our friendship secret, as he didn’t want to fall out with Seamus. I knew that my brother would kill him, if he ever found out what we did so I agreed that we kept everything to ourselves. Sneaking out of the house to meet, him excited me and I knew that he felt the same. In this dark and gloomy world we felt happy when we were together, kissing and holding hands.
Sean had often told me that he loved me and I knew that I loved him too, even though we were both very young and didn’t know much about life. I was nearly 14 years old and still had the body of a girl while Sean who had turned 16, seemed so much older and wiser. We often discussed marriage, promising to wed someday when we were much older. We were so in love and the world was wonderful to us, in our state of romantic bliss. Some time later when I told him that I thought I was going to have a baby, he had suddenly gone very quiet. It was obvious to me that he was shocked but so was I and I needed him to comfort me and tell me that everything was going to be all right. After the initial shock of the thought of becoming a father, he suggested that we marry as soon as we were able to and I happily agreed.
That night after we discussed marriage, I found that I was unable to sleep with excitement and the next day, I ran all the way to his house, a tenement block in Hare Street around the corner and across the road from where I lived in Rutland Street, nicknamed by the locals as Big Reddy. I was feeling very excited, at the idea of marriage and wondered how we would tell our parents.
His mother opened the door and instead