BABIES (May 28 2010)
COPYRIGHT: GEORGE HOLMES
She finally landed a job as a cleaner in the Middlesex hospital. When they asked her for references, she gave Eric’s name and address saying he was a mechanic at Burnham’s garage. That was true and she would persuade Eric to put in a good word for her especially she knew he was the father of Doreen Fletcher’s baby who had been born with Down syndrome. She also knew that Eric had forced himself on mentally handicapped Doreen who had died in childbirth but who had confided in her during those last desperate weeks. She was always sympathetic to tragedy, other people’s that is. Doreen had found an old dog eared school notebook after Doreen died and in it she had written Eric’s name hundreds of times, and marked the pages with very incriminating evidence should it come to that. Yes, Eric could be relied on to vouch for her she smiled to herself. She also knew the hospital was desperate to find cleaners. No one wanted to do menial work nowadays. They were above such things preferring the dole to cleaning. She loved being a cleaner; especially in the hospital at night where she could wander at will when people were asleep and the nursing staff at a minimum. She loved the old men’s ward with its wheezing, snoring and groaning inhabitants but above all she loved the nursery. That always drew her. Those little new lives, some premature, guarded and cosseted so closely. She loved those new beings, full of promise and hope and expectations and yet as Marcy knew so well, so soft and fragile, so helpless and vulnerable.
