Pauper's Child

by Meg Hutchinson

  ‘I have issued notice to quit.’

  ‘You have issued notice to quit!’

  Oswin’s body throbbed with the pain of the beating he had taken but he knew better than to ask if he might sit.

  ‘The tenant is destitute,’ he answered, ‘it was obvious to me there would be no rent paid again next week therefore I issued a termination of the occupancy of the premises.’

  Such fancy words. Sabine returned her glance to the ledger. Such a detestable little man. Had the issuing of notice to quit rewarded him with those bruises? She certainly hoped so.

  ‘The tenant is destitute, you say.’ The grey eyes lifted. ‘How can you be sure of that? How do you know failure to pay is not simply a ruse on someone’s part?’

  ‘Callista is not like that…’

  An eyebrow shaped to careful perfection rose as the explanation halted in mid-sentence. ‘Callista?’

  ‘The tenancy was held by Ruth Sanford.’

  ‘Was?’

  The eyebrow had remained raised, the one word flipping the strained silence. Why the hell did she want an explanation? Hadn’t he given those notices many times before without her ever wanting to know the reason? Money was Sabine Derry’s only interest, failure to pay their rent, anyone’s failure, her only concern; what was so different this time? His body screeching for rest he knew he would not get until the woman was satisfied enough for him to leave, Oswin resumed his explanation, missing the tightening of long fingers at his first words.

  ‘Originally the premises were let to Jason Sanford, passing on his death to his wife Ruth Sanford. Several days ago the woman died, leaving her daughter Callista as the sole occupant. I have known Callista well for some time now…’

  How well is well? Had he tried to increase that knowledge? Was that the reason he was bruised black and blue? Sabine watched the figure trying to ease sore bones without her detection.

  ‘She would not refuse to pay rent if she had the money with which to pay.’

  ‘So you gave her notice. Could the girl not work, earn the money to keep the roof over her head… or is it she is still a child, too young yet for employment?’

  Her glance steady, giving no indication she already had the answer to her question, that she too knew the girl he spoke of, having met her once at the home of Emma Ramsey, Sabine waited.

  ‘Callista is not a child.’ Oswin winced with the pain of moving his lips. ‘She is quite capable of work but has been unable to secure any form of employment.’

  ‘Is there any reason for that? Does she perhaps think herself above menial work?’

  Christ, what did this woman want! A fully itemised account, a detailed report with every specification of Callista Sanford’s history underlined! Anger added to pain chivvied Oswin’s fragile patience.

  ‘I would not have given that as a reason!’

  He had answered more curtly than intended. Sabine Derry noted the quick look of regret pass across the pale eyes and smiled to herself. The man was not what he thought himself to be.

  ‘Then what reason would you give?’

  Keeping a rein on his tongue Oswin shook his head then immediately wished he hadn’t, as pain shot barbed arrows along his neck.

  Teeth clenched against the assault to his swollen mouth, his head held immobile, he replied. ‘I can offer no reason. She cooks, she sews as well as her mother did and the house is well scrubbed.’

  It seemed he knew this Callista Sanford as well as he claimed. But again, how well was well? Keeping the thoughts to herself Sabine ran a finger over the page of the ledger pausing against one entry. ‘This appears to be the first default in payment. I wonder you acted so quickly in ordering the girl’s removal… that you did not consult me before doing so.’

  She was enjoying this, the harridan! Oswin’s fingers curled with the desire to smack his fist hard against that rat trap mouth. That you did not consult me! The words rankled, adding to the irritation he was having difficulty controlling. If he had come to her she would have given the same instruction; Sabine Derry would evict the devil out of hell if there was a penny to be got from it!

  ‘However.’ The gimlet look lifted. ‘The question Mr Derry will be asking is how the unpaid amount is to be recovered? What would you have me say to him?’

  You could try telling him about those visits to the Ramsey house… Quenching the desire to smile, Oswin held the woman’s challenging glare… no, he would do the telling of that himself and enjoy it. Sabine Derry thought she had him by the balls, that she could squeeze them and watch the man writhe, and for the moment he would let her revel in it, bask in the feeling of power it must give, but revenge was a sweet wine and he would drink deep from the cup.

  ‘The house does not have anything of much value,’ he answered, aware of the mockery barely hidden in the cutting gaze, ‘but I have alerted the bailiffs. I am sure the proceeds of their work will be enough to reimburse Mr Derry and pay their wages.’

  Her eyes still on him Sabine snapped the ledger shut. She could get rid of him now, send him packing while keeping his own wage to offset the loss of rent. There would be no query from Edwin; this side of the business he left in her hands. But she would not end the association just yet; much as she disliked Oswin Slade it amused her to watch him squirm.

  *

  Shawl drawn tight against a sharp breeze Callista glanced at the house the bailiffs had stripped bare. It had held little comfort, a bed for her parents and one for herself, a table, a cupboard; yes, the physical comforts of life had been lacking but there had been no shortage of love, that had ever been present. Her father and her mother… they had been filled with it, filled with a love for each other so obvious it had shone in their faces, sung in their voices, and the fulfilment of that love was a daughter they had both adored. But now both were dead and their daughter was alone.

  The sound of hammer on anvil, the hiss of bellows being pumped, filled the communal yard with the sounds of nailmaking, the hard manual labour which the Poveys and others worked at from dawn to near bedtime.

  ‘You knows you can lodge along o’ me…’

  Ada’s words quiet in her mind she turned away, the sound of her boots lost amid the noise from the brew-house which served as the Poveys’ workshop. It had been genuinely meant but how could she place an extra load on kind shoulders? For all their long hours of toil they barely earned enough to feed themselves; handmade nails could not compete with the price of machine made ones and their livelihood was as threatened as her own.

  ‘… but where’ll you go?’

  Ada’s question had been one she could not answer. Where could she go? She had no relative to whom she could turn, no one to offer a helping hand… but there had been one. Shawl held across her nose and mouth, the brisk breeze plucking at the skirt she had patched, she left Trowes Court. The bailiffs had come early in the morning and with them had been Oswin Slade. He had watched while the only possessions she had were carried to a waiting handcart and all the while he had smiled. The tallest of the two men sent to evict her, a brawny man whose jacket did little to disguise the muscles bulging beneath, had come to speak with her when the last item had been loaded; he had murmured an apology then had pressed two threepenny pieces into her hand. Too numbed by unhappiness it was not until some time later she had become aware of the coins and then it had been too late to return them.

  ‘The Lord be good to them as be good to others…’

  Ada had smiled on seeing the small silver coins but the smile had faded, her next words dark with feeling.

  ‘And the devil be good to them as thinks o’ none other than theirself… may he show that goodness to Oswin Slade by the soon takin’ o’ the snipe-nosed swine…’

  It was wrong to think badly of another. Charity of heart is valued more by heaven than charity of hand. So her father had taught but remembering Oswin’s smile as he watched the last of her life fall in ruins about her feet she had found it hard to abide by that teaching. But she had prayed in her
heart the charity of that bailiff’s hand and heart would not go unrewarded. She had known Ada would not accept one of the coins, would insist it had been no hardship sharing what they had with her, but feeding one more mouth had meant a little less on the plates of her family. It was not much with which to repay that woman’s generosity but it was half of all she possessed. Tuppence worth of scrag end of neck would provide a pot of broth and a penny loaf would help fill empty stomachs and show her gratitude. So one of the coins given had been spent. The meat left simmering over Ada’s fire, the loaf in the food cupboard, she had left without saying anything; goodbyes would mean more tears and they had each shed enough of them.

  Coming to the corner of St James’s Street she paused. The lowing of cattle being delivered to the abattoir carried on the morning. Were those animals as frightened as she was, did they too wonder what lay before them?

  ‘Was you wantin’ summat?’

  Startled by the voice Callista’s nerves throbbed, spilling words jerkily from a near strangled throat.

  ‘No… no, I… no… thank you.’

  ‘Then I wouldn’t be standin’ about if I was you, it be a fair cold breeze, you could tek the influenza from dawdlin’ there!’

  Wiping both hands over a bloodstained canvas apron the man touched a finger to a grubby flat cap then turned back inside the tall building.

  She had sometimes stood here on this spot as a child. Free from school she had listened for a moment to the cries of beasts delivered for slaughter then had run all the way home to Trowes Court, her hidden tears as much for them as for herself.

  Her glance was drawn to the opposite side of the narrow street, where it seemed the breeze held a sound not of its own but a hiss of words, the words of a woman filled with spite.

  ‘I saw… I saw him there and I knew…’

  Hands shaking, Callista was a child again, a child whose mouth trembled with fear.

  ‘… it was because of her…’

  Seeming to hurl against her ears, the hiss now became a harsh grate of sound, Callista’s nerveless fingers released the shawl. Caught by the fingers of the breeze, it whipped from her shoulders to fall about her feet but the cold its absence left behind was lost in the deeper coldness that was memory.

  ‘… it was because of her and you…’

  Callista’s head jerked as the face of childhood felt the vicious slap of a long boned hand and her own cry mixed with the savage, ‘… you… the spawn of his evil…’

  A sudden push sent her off balance, to stumble against the abattoir wall driving away the nightmare. Callista heard the angry mumble of a woman hauling a young girl with one hand, the other carrying a large wicker basket.

  ‘… Ain’t satisfied wi’ trollin’ theirselves on the street o’ nights, they be doin’ it now in broad daylight… should be ’osswhipped… they wouldn’t be so fond o’ wheedlin’ a man outta his money given a taste of a ’osswhip; strumpets… pah! They should all be jailed!’ First the man who had accosted her as she had walked along the narrow alleyway of Paget’s Passage and now the woman who had brushed angrily past, they both thought her a prostitute! Had the man from the abattoir had the same thought? Retrieving her shawl, keeping her glance from the dark building that was St James’s Church of England School, Callista broke into a run. There was one more thing she must do before leaving Wednesbury forever.

  *

  He had not seen the young woman again though he had looked for her each time he had gone into the town, and that had been more often than was usual. His visits to the shop of Joseph Glaze had not been those of a man bent on purchasing some rare and costly antique but of an old man bent on seeing again the thin, slightly ragged figure which infiltrated his thoughts more and more often… a foolish old man? Phineas Westley opened the cabinet which housed the perfectly sculpted statuette. Taking it into his hand he smiled at the bewitching face.

  ‘She knew all about you,’ he murmured, ‘knew your secrets; that it was you shot the great Orion with an arrow, you who demanded Autonoe’s son Actaeon to be transformed into a stag and tom to pieces by his own hands because he happened upon you bathing with your nymphs, and you who in a fit of pique filled the marriage bed of Admetus with snakes when he forgot to make a sacrifice showing gratitude for your assistance in gaining the hand of Alcestis. Oh yes, my divine one, she knows your dark side as well as she knows your beauty.’

  There had been only the brief few minutes of their walk together along Upper High Street but in that short time she had shown a knowledge of the ancient beliefs, of his own beloved mythology… and he had wanted those minutes to go on, to talk longer with the girl who it seemed shared something of his passion.

  Was it only that? Was it simply their shared conversation brought the girl to his thoughts so regularly? Or was it she had awakened something deeper, rekindled the desire he had thought long buried? Touching a finger to the cold marble face, tracing the delicately carved features, he sighed. ‘Would she come to this house?’ It was a smiled whisper but it held a longing, a pathos which throbbed.

  ‘Would who come to this house?’

  In the seconds of his standing on the threshold of the graceful room Michael Farron had caught the faint whisper, heard the yearning contained in it. His uncle had used the word ‘she’; it was a person and not an object he wished to have in his house. Could that person be the girl he had met along the High Bullen? Was it Callista Sanford he wished to share his house with… to share his life?

  12

  Breath short and rapid from running, Callista stood beside a cluster of daffodils and narcissus, their colour beginning to peep from the tip of each bud. She had been given the bulbs by an old gardener who had lived at the coach house adjoining the lovely grounds of Oakeswell Hall and her mother had helped her plant them here where her father lay buried beyond the wall enclosing the sacred ground of the church of St James. Yellow had been a favourite colour and whenever he saw it he would smile and say, ‘It is the colour of the cloak of Apollo who spreads light across the sky…’

  She had early learned to say nothing of the stories her father told, had kept them to herself while at school. They would not have gone well with the clergy who came each Thursday morning to give a Bible lesson, nor with Miss Montroy who would doubtless have used them as a reason for yet another punishment, another sharp slap to the face of a frightened child.

  But he had not taught the myths as truth; he had not allowed them to detract from the Christian faith, but had been careful always to keep that at the forefront of his daughter’s mind.

  But it is hard to believe. The cry only in her mind, Callista knelt to rest a hand on the gentle rise of ground which she and her mother had visited each Sunday afternoon, then she on her own when Ruth had become too ill to make the journey. It is hard to believe in heaven’s mercy when your mother dies in pain, when she is given a pauper’s burial!

  ‘I tried, Father…’Tears fused the budding flowers together, turning them into a tiny carpet of yellow among the green of grass. ‘I tried so hard… but it was not enough, I should have gone on trying… forgive me.’ Choked on a sob, the words rested a moment on the breeze, then were gone.

  Rising to her feet, her shawl draped across her trembling mouth, she whispered again. ‘I loved you, Father; I loved you both so much.’

  *

  Sitting on a bench protected from the breeze by the lee of the church Phineas Westley watched a slight figure kneel to the ground then rise again. Judging by the dress it was the figure of a woman but why had she knelt… and why was she now running away?

  Gloved hands resting on a cane, he watched as the same figure now came along the path leading from the lych-gate which circled to the rear of the building where burial plots were marked, some by elaborate structures, others by simple headstones. But this woman had gone to neither. Intrigued, Phineas allowed his gaze to follow the shawl draped figure to a corner of the graveyard close against the wall which minutes ago had separated her from
the church grounds.

  What was the mysterious figure doing? Squinting against the brightness of the morning he watched the same ritual. Standing several moments, it seemed she stared at the ground… but at what? That small area was devoid of any remembrance stone; not even a simple wooden cross marred the unkempt grass filled patch. A gust of wind found its way around the sheltering wall and Phineas rose. Whatever the woman was about she had chosen a brisk morning to do it. He had heard talk of some scoundrel taking flowers from graves in order to sell them to the next grieving family; if this proved to be that varmint he would thrash the thief himself, woman or no woman!

  Grasping his cane firmly he took a step forward, then halted. There were no floral tributes, at least none he could see; apart from a few hothouse reared lilies and carnations already wilted by the cold, the only wreaths were designed with evergreens and berries. So if not the flowers? But yet it was…

  Phineas’s mouth twisted with disgust and anger as the figure knelt to pick up a small posy, the yellow of petals gleaming like gold. How dare she! Phineas fumed inwardly. What kind of woman would rob the dead! He must not call out, that would serve only to alert the thief and she would be off too quickly for him to catch.

  Ignoring the path which took a circuitous route he picked his way between graves, his steps making no sound as he approached. Almost level, he raised the cane then frowned as the shawl draped figure sank to the ground and kissing the posy, placed it upon a patch of fresh turned earth whose dark colour hidden among the grass had not been visible from where he had been sitting.

  *

  ‘Miss Sanford… my dear… I apologise for disturbing you, I did not recognise…’

  ‘You are not disturbing me, Mr Westley, I was about to leave.’

  Seeing the glance aimed at the still half raised cane Phineas lowered it, his smile holding a continuation of the spoken apology.

  ‘I should not have taken it upon myself to approach you. It was wrong of me to assume…’