Eliza's Child (16 page)

She would clean the window, she decided. It would pass the time until Jack came home and she would see Thomas. Filled with a new energy fuelled by hope she took down the curtain and washed it and hung it in the back yard to dry. She found a wash-leather and scoured the fly dirt off the windowpanes until they sparkled. She barely heard the bells strike ten o'clock.

She was not aware of what time it was when she heard a key in the lock and Jack walked in. She had washed the furniture with vinegar water and polished it until it shone then washed the floors and tidied up the back kitchen. She turned eagerly to the door for the first sight of her child but when Jack walked in he was quite alone.

‘What the hell are you doing here?' Jack demanded.

‘Where's Thomas?' Eliza asked almost at the same time.

‘Never mind Thomas, I asked you what you were doing here,' Jack snapped. ‘How did you find me?'

‘I came for the bairn, of course, and you weren't hard to find,' said Eliza. ‘Where is he? He must be missing me, he's never been away from me since he was born.'

‘He's all right. He's in a safe place; safer than he was with you.'

‘Jack, how can you say that? A baby is best off with his mother!'

‘Not when his mother is a whore,' Jack replied, his voice dangerously quiet. ‘Anyway, how did you get in here? Did you think you could worm your way back into my life?' He shook his head. ‘I don't think so.' He was weary from the travelling and lack of sleep and now, seeing Eliza, he was filled with bitterness. Not only bitterness, though. He couldn't help the old feelings rising in himself. Had she come back because she couldn't keep away from him? He took an involuntary step towards her.

‘Jack, I did nothing wrong,' said Eliza. ‘Please let me have Thomas, please.' She had seen the slight softening in his eyes. Dear God, let him give me my baby back. I'll do anything, she prayed.

‘You deserted me, your lawful wedded husband,' Jack reminded her.

‘But you staked me on a wager!' The retort sprang to Eliza's lips but she bit it back. She had to if she wanted Thomas returned to her, she had to.

Jack was directly in front of her now and she put out a hand to him. With an oath he took hold of her and brought his mouth to hers so hard that her lips were bruised against her teeth. He held her with one arm while he tore at her dress until he had uncovered a breast and squeezed it ruthlessly.

Eliza gasped and cried out but he was past hearing as he bore her to the floor. He pulled up her skirts and held her while he unbuttoned his flies and entered her with no more ado, heaving himself again and again so that her back was scraping on the floor and pain seared through her.

It was all over in a minute. He lay panting over her then pushed himself away and got to his feet and straightened his clothes. Eliza lay for a few moments, catching her breath. Tears ran down her cheeks but she brushed them away. Wincing as she stood up, she turned to him.

‘What about Thomas?' she asked.

Jack laughed. ‘Thomas? You thought that would buy you back my son? No, lass, it will not. I told you, Thomas is somewhere safe and he will stay there. You're not going to see him again. Now, get out of this house, I don't want to see you again.'

‘MONDAY, MARCH 1ST,'
Eliza wrote in the ward day book. Her writing was copperplate and easy to read as she had been taught in the Methodist literacy class five years ago now. She paused after writing the date as she did every day, for every day it reminded her of how long she had been separated from Thomas. Today was special however, today was Thomas's seventh birthday. Dear God, where was he? She prayed he would be safe and well. He would have forgotten her but that didn't matter so long as he was well.

After a moment or two she continued writing up the history of the last twelve hours of each patient in the ward.

‘Bed no. 1: Alice Donavan, age thirty-three,' she wrote. ‘The patient slept poorly. Complained of pain in her chest. Tincture of digitalis 5 minims administered at 2am according to doctor's instructions. A little brighter this morning. Took a little light breakfast of coddled egg.'

Alice Donavan was not going to go home to her ten children and miner husband. Alice's heart was close to giving up altogether, worn out as it was with hard work, childbearing and a poor diet. Of course she didn't know that, or didn't admit it. Alice lived for the day she saw her children again but they weren't allowed to visit her in hospital. Her husband had brought them to the window near her bed so that they could wave to her but she had been so upset when they went he was frightened to do it again.

‘Bed no. 2,' Eliza wrote. ‘Betsy Jane Hopper.' She stayed as she was about to write, ‘Prolapse of uterus,' and looked up as there was a knock at the door and Nurse Jones came in. Nurse Jones was the day nurse and her relief. Eliza immediately felt guilty for she was late with the report. There had been an admission during the night, a woman haemorrhaging copiously from a knife wound to the upper arm. Sarah Brown lived only a few streets away from the hospital, a fact that probably saved her life. Her husband was with her and he was deathly pale and trembled almost as much as his wife.

‘She did it herself,' he kept repeating to anyone who was willing to listen and to Dr Parsons and Eliza, who were too busy staunching the flow to listen. Dr Parsons ordered him to leave to the ward. Luckily, the blood was flowing from a vein rather than an artery and eventually they had it stopped. Eliza washed the arm with a solution of sublimate and the doctor stitched the wound and Eliza bandaged it. All the while Sarah said not a word but watched everything with large, frightened eyes.

‘I'll get on with the breakfasts then,' said Nurse Jones. ‘I'll get the report after.' She pinned on her cap and went out to the ward kitchen.

Eliza went back to her writing. It took her another half an hour to finish, and by the time she had read it out to Nurse Jones and reported to Matron's office it was already eight o'clock before she could at last walk across the grounds of the North Durham Infirmary to the nurses' hostel.

Eliza was weary but she took that for granted. She always was after a night on the ward. The women's ward held both medical and surgical cases though not anyone with contagious diseases. The policy now was to keep them in a new block away from the main hospital.

The air was fresh with a cold wind blowing from the north. She huddled into her cloak, pulling it closer around her shoulders. As always, her thoughts turned to Thomas. He was seven years old now. She imagined him on his way to school, carrying his pencil and slate. He would be going to school she was sure, his father would want him to, surely. Did he remember his mother? Please God, he did.

Eliza ate the porridge and bacon and bread provided for her breakfast. She was almost too tired to eat but forced herself to and washed the food down with two cups of tea. The dining room in the nurses' hostel was painted a stark white with only the dark varnished doors for relief. The only decoration was the picture of Florence Nightingale gazing sternly down from one wall. Most of the other night nurses had already finished their meal and gone to their rooms so it was quiet except for the rattle of pots and pans from the kitchen at one end of the hall.

Eliza sat back in her chair and sighed. She would have to summon the energy to climb the stairs and get ready for bed soon but for a few minutes she was enjoying the peace. Oh, she thought, it had been hard work on the coal screens, hard, labouring work. But nursing, she found, was just as hard in its own way. She glanced up at the portrait of Florence Nightingale and stuck out her tongue inelegantly at it. The lady had issued a decree recently when there had been a movement from the grass roots for nurses to have more time off duty and even a holiday.

‘If a nurse has a true vocation then she will not wish to be away from the work,' she had said, or words to that effect. So nurses had only one day a month off or, in Eliza's case, one night. It was due on the following Monday, only two days away, and Eliza planned to visit her mother and father and her brothers in Blue House colliery village. At least she would be able to stay overnight. If she didn't go to bed on coming off duty on Monday morning she could stay until Tuesday afternoon.

‘Can I clear your pots now, Nurse?'

The voice intruded on Eliza's thoughts and she looked up and smiled. It was Bertha, the diminutive girl who had once worked at her father-in-law's house in Alnwick. She had managed to follow Eliza to the North Durham Infirmary, somehow ferreting out where she was. Now she worked as a maid in the nurses' home.

‘Morning, Bertha,' Eliza said. ‘I was just thinking of my night off on Monday. I'm going to Blue House. It's a while since I saw my mam and dad.' She rose to her feet and pushed in her chair. ‘I'd best get to bed anyway or I might fall asleep walking.'

‘You've been busy?' Bertha asked sympathetically. She knew what it could be like on the wards at night and with only one nurse on duty and a helper running between wards. She had started work at the hospital as a helper but for all her upbringing she couldn't stand to see the human misery and pain of the disease-ridden or injured patients. So she had been allowed to transfer to the nurses' home for she was soon recognised as a hard and honest worker.

‘When are we not busy?' Eliza asked. ‘I don't know what they did before this hospital was built.'

‘You do,' said Bertha. ‘They got better or they died.'

Eliza sighed. ‘Yes. Well, I'm away to my bed. Good morning, Bertha.'

‘Sleep well. Mind the bugs don't bite,' Bertha replied.

Once in bed, Eliza found herself almost too tired to sleep. Her thoughts roamed restlessly over the last few years. Years of pulling herself up the ladder of the nursing world. She had started off as a nurse's helper just as Bertha had done but by dint of hard work and determination had managed eventually to be accepted for training. Of course the fact that she had enough money to keep herself for the year's training had clinched it for her. She would never have been able to do it if she were penniless. Even with enough to fund herself she had been obliged to swear she was a widow with no dependants. No dependants, the phrase was like a knife in her heart. Where was Thomas? Where had Jack taken him?

Sometimes she thought of going back to Alnwick, of making sure that her husband had not taken him to his family. After all, Thomas was Annie's grandson, she might have changed her mind. But no, he wouldn't have done that, Annie would not have taken them in. She was too filled with hate for that. Hadn't she made it plain? No, any time she had off duty was better occupied searching elsewhere for her baby. Though he was not a baby now, she reminded herself. He was seven. Please God, let him be all right, she prayed again as she did ten times a day. And there was the nagging worry about Miley, poor Miley.

Peter Collier had written to her on behalf of her parents. There had been an accident at the pit. A coal tub had come off the wooden rails and pinned Miley to the ground. Miley was a putter by now and his job was to push the tubs to where the seam was large enough for the pit pony.

‘He has some damage to his spine,' Peter had written. ‘But the doctors think he might recover enough to walk a little. Your mother would be very glad to see you if you can manage to come to Blue House.'

Eliza had the letter on the deal table by the bed and she stretched out a hand and picked it up and read it again. It was short but it conveyed a world of information to her. She had seen many boys maimed by the coal tubs coming off the wooden rails leading to the shaft bottom and also some by them ‘going amain', out of control on a slight downward incline. She had seen one lad almost sliced in two by such a happening. Even though Miley's accident had not been so bad as some it was unlikely that he would work again in the pit. And what else was there for him? Well, she told herself, she would see the lad when she went to Blue House on Monday.

It was two o'clock when Eliza came out of the station at Haswell and took the footpath across the moor to Blue House colliery. The place seemed little changed since her last visit, which had been a disaster. Her mother's hard tones rang in her ears still.

‘It's your own fault, my lass, you left your man. He had a right to take the lad. By, I didn't fetch you up to break your marriage vows, I did not!'

Mary Anne would not listen to her daughter's protests. ‘Go back to Jack,' she said. ‘Don't come here crying because you lost your bairn. Jack didn't whip you, did he? He treated you well. You don't look as though you're starving neither.'

Now her mother wanted her back. Eliza was not bitter, she was just glad to come. Oh God, what was she thinking? How could she be glad to come when the reason for her return was so terrible? Poor little Miley; she remembered him being born. He had been a tiny scrap of a baby and the lying-in woman had shaken her head over his chances of living, but Mary Anne had succeeded in raising him. But for what?

‘Good day, Mam,' said Eliza as she opened the door leading straight into the main room of the house. Mary Anne was kneading bread in a brownstone bowl on the scrubbed table. There was flour on her apron and on her chin, matching the white strands in her hair that were new to Eliza. She gazed anxiously at her mother; she was thinner and her face seemed to have aged twenty years since Eliza saw her last.

‘Oh, Mam!' she said helplessly and hurried over and put her arms around her. Mary Anne stood stiffly for a moment then returned her embrace.

‘I expected you earlier on,' Mary Anne said. ‘Mr Collier said you were coming this morning.' She stepped back and dusted the flour from her hands into the bowl then rubbed them on her pinafore. ‘I'll put the kettle on.'

‘I had to work until eleven,' said Eliza. ‘I'm off tonight, though. I don't need to go back until tomorrow afternoon.'

She watched as Mary Anne pushed the kettle onto the fire and spooned tea into the pot. The actions were automatic for tea was made for every visitor when there was tea to be had. The kitchen seemed smaller to her than it had when she was last here and the furnishings meaner. The clippie mat on the flagstones before the fire was just a bit grubby and looked as though it should be taken out into the fresh air and given a good shake. There were ashes overflowing from the box under the grate.

Eliza took off her nurse's cape and cap and hung them behind the door. Her mother had gone back to her bread-making while the kettle came to the boil. Now she shaped the dough into loaves and put them into the greased oven tins, before putting them back on the hearth to rise.

‘I'll have to get them to the baking oven,' she said. ‘You'll stay with the lad? Mrs Sumptor pops in usually.'

‘Of course I will.' Eliza paused. ‘Where is our Miley?' she asked. ‘How is he?'

‘Fair to middling,' said Mary Anne. She appeared too exhausted to say much except for the absolute essentials. After a moment she went on, ‘He's in the room.' She nodded towards the middle door that led into the only other room downstairs, the room where she and Tommy normally slept.

‘I'll go in to him,' said Eliza.

‘Yes.'

Eliza lifted the sneck on the door and went into the room, pinning a smile on her face as she did so. ‘Now then, our Miley,' she said. ‘What have you been up to?' Then she froze. Miley was sitting on a chair with wheels rather than legs. It had obviously been adapted from a wooden chair with a horsehair pad on the seat. The bottom of the chair had been extended with a piece of wood and his legs were stretched out on that. He had a pillow supporting his back. He gazed back at his sister with pain-glazed eyes. He was fourteen years old though he looked no more than ten.

‘Now then, our Eliza,' he said and closed his eyes. His lips moved but she couldn't catch what he was saying.

‘Mam! Mam!'

Mary Anne appeared beside her as Eliza called for her.

‘What?' She looked at Miley and then at her daughter. ‘Don't shout, the doctor says we must keep him quiet. He's had a dose of laudanum, he's just a bit tired, that's all. Howay, lass, let him be.'

‘But shouldn't he be lying down? All our spinal cases are on their backs.'

‘Mebbe so, mebbe so. But Miley gets too agitated on his back. The doctor said this was mebbe the best position for him. The carpenter at the pit did the chair and put the wheels on an' all. By, the manager and the gaffer's lad have been good to him, they have. Mr Moore gave him half a sovereign an' all.'

‘Oh, Mam, it's awful,' said Eliza and reverted to the local dialect. ‘He's nobbut a bairn.'

‘Aye well, he could have been dead,' said Mary Anne stolidly. ‘Now there's a chance he will walk again. Only it's hard. He's a bit big for me to manage. But the lads help me. They're on a different shift to Tommy now so that they can help me with the lifting. For the time being, any road. Now then, lass, I know it's a shock but you should know, if anyone does, that it happens all the time in the pits.' She brewed the tea and poured out three cups and spooned sugar into them.