Storm Child Read Online Free Page A

and
echoing, and the high windows, though large, let in little daylight. The room
they stood in smelt strongly of heavily polished wood, and there were stuffed
animal heads on the walls alongside dreary paintings of ridiculously fat horses
and cows.  Charlotte and her mother said nothing to each other, both of
them gazing around the lobby, though Charlotte knew that her mother had seen it
many times before. Perhaps because of the circumstances in which her mother had
seen it before, Charlotte could almost sense the shudder that rippled down her
spine.  Even the baby seemed dumbstruck by the solemn surroundings she now
found herself in. She made no sound but buried her face in Mrs Harding’s
shoulder. Mrs Brown shuffled away, her stiff skirts rustling in the dusty
silence.
    A few moments later, Mr Finch,
tall, broad-shouldered, cruelly handsome, with a voice that could shake the
dust from the old portraits hanging on the panelled walls, entered the
hallway.  Charlotte dipped into a curtsey. He ignored her.
    ‘Mrs Harding… My housekeeper
tells me you have found a child.’ His gaze settled on the baby. ‘This, I take
it, is the infant in question.’
    ‘Yes, sir.’ Charlotte’s mother
answered quickly. ‘My daughter, Charlotte, found her out on the heath in that
dreadful storm two nights ago. We searched for a guardian, someone perhaps
injured on the road, but we found no one.’
    ‘The usual case, I imagine.’
    ‘Usual case?’ Charlotte’s mother
repeated.
    ‘A mother in trouble. Or perhaps
it just eats too much, cries too much, sleeps too
little, a drain, Mrs Harding, quite simply, a troublesome child.  It’s no
bother for me to take it off your hands…’
    ‘Oh, I do not think so…’
Charlotte began, but stopped, quickly, blushing. Mr Finch fixed her with a dark
stare.
    ‘What do you mean by this,
child?’
    ‘What my daughter means to say,’
Charlotte’s mother said, half in defiance and half apologetic, ‘is that we have
taken care of this babe for two nights, and she has been no bother at all.’
    ‘Well then, Mrs Harding, answer
this: if that is the case, pray, why has she been abandoned?’
    Both Charlotte and her mother looked
at the floor. There were all sorts of reasons why the baby could have been
left, but Mr Finch was not a man that would have listened to any of them.
    ‘Do you want me to take the child
or not?’ he demanded.
    ‘Yes… I mean…’
    ‘Well, I’ll have Mrs Brown take
the infant down to the orphanage straight away.’ Without another word, Mr Finch
turned and left them standing in the vast hallway.
    Charlotte cast an anxious glance
up at her mother, who seemed to be clinging to the baby much more tightly than
she had done before, and the baby seemed to be nuzzling into her neck much more
desperately than before, as if she understood her fate.  Mrs Brown
returned and held out her stubby arms to take her. Charlotte’s mother
hesitated.  It was then that Charlotte realised her mother didn’t really
want to part with the child either. But they had very little money, hardly
enough to feed themselves, let alone another mouth.
    ‘I’m sorry, Charlotte,’ she said.
    Charlotte looked away, her eyes
brimming with tears. Her mother held the baby out to Mrs Brown, but then
stopped as the child clung onto her arm and uttered a noise, a word perhaps?
And it sounded like: Mama.

Five
    Isaac swore as the handcart caught in yet another pothole.
    ‘There are ladies present, you
oaf,’ Polly said in a sing-song voice.
    ‘I don’t see no ladies, only you
two rough pieces o’ work.’ Polly grinned as Isaac tugged at the cart. ‘You
could give me a hand with this,’ he grumbled.
    Annie dropped her basket to the
floor and went to the back of the cart to lend her weight. 
    ‘That ain’t helping,’ Polly observed. ‘I seen mice weigh more than you.’
    ‘You get round an’ help her,
then.’ Isaac frowned at Polly.
    ‘I would,’ she laughed. ‘But I
don’t want to