Ragamuffin Angel (14 page)
Apart from the roof lights and long narrow windows every six feet down the left-hand wall, the only lighting looked to be provided by six gas mantles, which on a dull day would make the dangerous working conditions twice as bad as the workers struggled in the dim flickering light. Connie noticed that even now, on a sunny June morning, the army of mainly female workers consisting of inmates with a few officers supervising, all wore the same dead expressions. And this was going to be where she would spend every day, apart from Sundays, from now on. It was a daunting thought.
But there was worse to come. The inmates’ kitchen showed the presence of cockroaches and the food, which was being dished up ready to be taken through to the dining hall, made Connie feel sick, but it was the infirm wards that presented the cause of the smell that had seemed to permeate into every nook and cranny to a greater or lesser extent. The stench of urine and other strong objectionable odours was so acute that Connie found she was holding her breath, and yet she could see the place was kept scrupulously clean and the green-painted walls and stone floors scoured daily.
Nevertheless, the thought of her granny being confined in such surroundings – as Peggy undoubtedly would be if she ended up in the workhouse, due to her arthritis making her virtually helpless – was unthinkable, and for the first time Connie truly understood her grandmother’s inordinate terror of the place. It was the end of hope, of dreams, of love, even life itself. A living death.
‘Here, you all right?’ The officer who had been consigned to show her round – a young girl called Mary O’Donnell – was peering into Connie’s face and took hold of her arm, almost manhandling her away into the main hospital, as she muttered, ‘Eee, come away out of it, lass, I’d forgotten how it affects you the first time. I’ve bin workin’ here a year an’ more an’ I hardly notice it now.’
‘Don’t you?’ Connie didn’t know if she found this comforting or disturbing, but she tended towards the latter. The thought that she might become anaesthetised to such conditions was frightening.
‘You won’t see over much of this side anyway,’ Mary continued cheerfully as she led the way towards the nursery annexe where the babies and very young children were housed and cared for. ‘You might be asked to relieve one of the infirm ward attendants when you’re on duty on a Saturday, but it’ll be once in a blue moon. The worst duty, I always reckon, is Saturday visitin’ in the hall, although it don’t bother some of ’em. But I tell you, lass, some of the sights are pitiful, especially when it’s an old married couple that’s been split up an’ they cry like babies. You feel like cryin’ with ’em, or I do anyways.’
Connie glanced at the small mousy figure as a warm feeling of relief pierced the oppression. She could like this girl, she told herself silently. She hoped she would see something of her; it would be good to have a friend – someone she could talk to – in these depressing surroundings. As she caught Mary’s warm, kind eyes she asked, ‘Where do you work?’, her manner a little shy.
‘Me, lass?’ Mary blinked her eyes and adjusted her spectacles – thick, hornrimmed monstrosities – which seemed to slip down her small snub nose every two seconds. ‘Same as you, in the laundry for me sins, but it’s not so bad when you get used to it. An’ we have some right good cracks on the quiet like, an’ of an evenin’ there’s a group of us walk into town an’ have a look in the shop windows in High Street West or pay a visit to the Palace.’ They have some good shows at the Palace. Course, some of ’em are just on the lookout for lads; there’s a couple of ’em here who’d drop their drawers for anythin’ in trousers.’
And as Connie laughed – something she would have thought impossible just minutes before – Mary grinned at her, revealing a set of beautifully even white teeth, and whispered conspiratorially, ‘I tell you, lass, if old Battle-axe Banksy or the Wardress Wright knew half of what we get up to once we’re clear of this place, they’d split their corsets for sure. An’ what a sight that’d be, eh?’ she added gleefully as she dug Connie’s ribs. ‘Don’t bear thinkin’ about, does it?’
Oh yes, it would be very good to have a friend like Mary . . .
Two hours later Connie was home again and sitting at the table, Larry on her knee, sipping a cup of tea whilst telling her grandmother all that had transpired, but in spite of making much of Mary’s quips she couldn’t raise a smile from her.
It was the same the next morning only more so, and a stranger would have presumed Connie was leaving for two months rather than two days, such was the intensity of the family’s farewells.
‘I’ll be back on Sunday mornin’, Larry, I promise. You look after Gran for me, all right, pet?’ Connie knelt down and took her brother in her arms, the pressure of his thin little arms as he hugged her causing a massive lump in her throat. ‘An’ you know your jobs, don’t you? You have to see if the hens have laid every mornin’ an’ milk the goat, an’ Gran’ll tell you which vegetables to water the most. An’ don’t forget to put the bucket by the back door ready for when you need to fetch water the next time.’
‘Connie, Connie . . .’ In stark contrast to the way the child had behaved when his mother had been carried out of the cottage Larry was distraught, and it was only after prolonged hugs and kisses that Connie could extricate herself from his grip, and then the little boy’s face was wet with tears.
But was it any wonder? Connie asked herself silently. Their mother had been a fleeting shadow in the child’s life after the vicious beating of his father, seeing him only for an hour or so each day. It had been his sister who had bid him rise each morning, dressed him, fed him. Her hands that had mopped his tears when he’d hurt himself, tucked him into bed at night, talked to him, played with him.
‘Connie? Mo-mo.’
Connie swallowed deeply when she saw what Larry was offering her. Mo-mo, a ragged piece of cloth that the boy had clung on to and treasured from when he was a baby, was his prize possession. It was his friend and his comforter, and he always went to sleep with the piece of frayed linen beneath one cheek.
‘No, Larry. You keep Mo-mo.’ She tried to smile but it was beyond her. Oh, Mam, Mam, you should be here! It wasn’t her mother’s fault, she emphasised in her mind as though her thoughts were a betrayal, but she – his sister – had had to take the place of mother and father in the boy’s life, and that was making this doubly hard for both of them. And then, when Larry thrust the tattered piece of cloth at her again, she took it. It was his way of making sure she would be back, she realised suddenly, as she bent and hugged him again. ‘Two days, Larry. Two days and I’ll bring Mo-mo home. All right?’
He nodded slowly, the tears stopping, and she acknowledged that a promise had been made as she looked into the small face that was so like Jacob’s. Nevertheless, Connie’s eyes were moist when she turned to Peggy, and she found she was unable to speak.
‘Eee, lass, it fair makes me blood run cold to think of you in that place, even as a paid helper. I can’t help it, lass, I can’t. Your grandda’ll be turnin’ in his grave an’ no mistake,’ said Peggy tearfully.
‘Now come on, Gran.’ For a moment Connie felt she was dealing with two children instead of one, and with Larry clinging to her skirts and her grandmother’s wrinkled, sweet face all crumpled up she felt like howling herself. ‘We’ve been through all this a hundred times, an’ we’ve decided there’s no other way, now haven’t we? I’d never get set on anywhere else, it’s only Father Hedley who’s got me in as it is. Some girls of my age might pass for fourteen but I look twelve, you know I do, an’ there’s scarcely any work for grown women let alone bit lasses.’
‘You watch yerself, lass. Just watch yerself.’
‘I will, Gran, I promise. An’ the matron said I can have a sub on me first week’s wage an’ bring home some bits, so I’ll get a nice piece of brisket an’ a half-stone of flour an’ some yeast, an’ some scrag ends an’ cheese . . . Oh, it’ll be all right, Gran. Don’t cry.’
Connie left quickly – it was either that or not go at all – and walked swiftly along the narrow path at the side of the vegetable patch, and past the wooden hen coop to which the goat’s lean-to was attached which the lads from the farm had constructed for them two years ago when her mother had bought the livestock. She paused at the edge of the clearing, turning to wave, and when she saw her grandmother’s bent, frail frame and trembling lips and the way she was hugging Larry tight with her poor, distorted hands, she almost didn’t follow the path through the trees. Almost.
But like she had just said aloud, there was no other way, she had to go. And she would soon be home again, two days wasn’t all that long, and she’d bring a bag of acid drops and juju’s for Larry as a surprise, and some of the soft liquorice sweets her granny liked to suck. The thought of the rare treats gave her the strength to smile and wave and then turn into the trees, emerging moments later in the field beyond, where she made for the road, leaving the house in the wood and its two occupants to the gentle warmth of the lovely summer’s day.
Chapter Eight
Kitty was troubled. There was something afoot, she knew the signs – her holiness and John ensconced in the morning room for an hour or more with the door shut and their voices low always meant bother for some poor soul. The last time it had been Matthew – or rather the lass he had been courting for a few months – who had come under fire. John had gone in with a tasty titbit about something in the girl’s family’s past and within hours Matthew had been told to finish the relationship or suffer his mother’s wrath. Exit the lass.
Kitty was frowning as she stood with her ear pressed against the morning room door. The twins were currently courting two sisters whose family was one of the leading lights in the town, but a plainer pair of lasses she’d never seen, and if either Gilbert or Matthew were in love she’d eat her hat. But their mother would get her own way, she’d be bound, and it wouldn’t be long before a double wedding was in the air. Edith had organised John’s wife for him so this wasn’t the first time; it was only Art who had gone his own way up to now. By, the damage Edith Stewart could do when she opened her mouth; she fair terrorised the lot of them.
Why stick it then, feeling as you do? The voice in her mind was sharp and confrontational and she answered it almost immediately with an irritable shake of her head. Because even with Henry gone she was still tied into this family through bonds of love. She felt like Henry’s bairns were her own – oh, not John, not him, he had always been a sly, cruel child with a vicious streak that was pure Edith, but the others she loved. Oh aye, she loved them, as fiercely and as passionately as she had loved their father, God bless his soul.
She had been nowt but a bit lass of thirteen when she had come over the water from Ireland to live with an aunty in Sunderland’s East End. Her own family, consisting of mother, father, and six younger brothers and sisters, had been wiped out with the cholera within weeks of her father – a seaman – first bringing the disease home. Her mother’s younger sister had been kind but harassed; her own large family were eating her out of house and home and she hadn’t needed another hungry mouth to feed, so within days of her arrival in Sunderland Kitty had found herself applying for the job of nursery-maid to the Stewarts.
Kitty shook her head again as she thought of that interview with Edith. John had been two years of age and his sister, Mavis, barely one, and their mother had completely duped the homesick, bewildered Irish lass she had been then, when she had said Kitty’s main duties would be to care for the children. Caring for the children, cooking, cleaning, waiting on table – she had been doing the whole lot within six months. But by then it had been too late to leave. She had fallen in love with Henry Stewart almost from the first time of meeting him, and her love had told her that Henry was desperately unhappy with his tartar of a wife. And so she had stayed, and their love – something purely of the mind and never of the body, much as she would have wished it differently – had continued until the day Henry had died. She had had his heart, his wife had had his name and their children. Kitty doubted if one of them loved their mother. Respected her maybe, feared her almost certainly, and in John’s case craved her approval with obsessional single-mindedness, but love? No, not love.
The sudden scrape of a chair within the morning room told Kitty she better make herself scarce, and she hurried along the gleaming, thickly carpeted hall into the drawing room where she left the door slightly ajar and stood behind it, listening. She felt no compunction at all about spying on her mistress and John – it had served both herself and the rest of the family well in the past – but this time she heard nothing she could make head or tail of as the two of them emerged into the now deserted hall.
‘Be a man, John, for once in your life.’ Edith’s voice was low but of a biting quality that carried quite distinctly to Kitty in her hiding place. ‘You say you recognised the woman when she was carrying out her trade and she was quite brazen about it? She needs teaching a lesson. How dare she assume she can proposition you!’
‘I sent her packing, I told you.’
‘I should hope so, I would expect nothing less of a son of mine, but that is not the point. The mere fact that she had the gall to approach you and think you would receive her kindly is scandalous. She should be drummed out of town, that is the truth of it. The woman is gutter material.’
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