by Maggie Hope
‘I don’t want to,’ said Jimmy, looking mutinous.
‘Ah, well, maybe you think you’re too old for your little brother,’ Auntie Betty snapped. She took one of Kit’s hands and Elizabeth took the other and they walked slowly to the corner and on down South Road, Jimmy trailing behind even more slowly. But when they came to a butcher’s shop, Auntie Betty must have been feeling guilty for she bought penny dips and had the butcher wrap the bread buns dipped in gravy juices carefully. Further down, in Newgate Street, she bought three bottles of liquorice water and they went off down the park. By this time Betty was carrying a sleeping Kit and Elizabeth the basket. So they had their picnic after all.
Elizabeth and Jimmy paddled in the stream and looked for tiddlers and afterwards they ate the picnic sitting on the grass. They’d had mince and taties for their dinner at the Home but they still ate the penny dips and drank the liquorice water, and Jimmy pronounced it to be grand, better than the lemonade Miss Rowland sometimes made them on Sundays (using ingredients she had bought in herself, of course).
Elizabeth made a daisy chain and hung it round Kit’s neck but she had to take it off again because he tried eating the daisies. But it was lovely, a lovely day, only spoilt a bit when she brought up the subject of Jenny.
‘Have you been to see Jenny too, Auntie Betty?’ she asked. Her aunt frowned and got to her feet and dusted the bits of grass from her skirt.
‘Best not to worry about Jenny,’ she said. ‘I haven’t been to see her, no, I’d only upset her. But I’m sure she’s having a grand life, up on a farm with fresh milk and butter and everything. Come on, we’ll walk along the path and then I’ll have to take you back. Uncle Ben will be wanting his tea.’
‘But – will I never see her again?’ asked Elizabeth.
‘Never’s a long time, lass,’ her aunt replied.
‘The only time I got milk up there was when I sucked the old cow in the barn,’ Jimmy muttered.
‘What? Are you making up stories again, our Jimmy?’ Auntie Betty snapped at him, and he hung back and began kicking at the grass on the side of the path.
They walked along the path which came from Coundon. Where Alice was, thought Elizabeth, but she was nervous of mentioning it to Auntie Betty who seemed to get into a mood so easily. But one day, she thought, maybe next year, I’ll go there myself, I’ll find her.
At the railway station Auntie Betty stopped. ‘You can find your own way back to Escomb Road, can’t you?’ she asked them. ‘I have to get back.’
So Elizabeth and Jimmy walked back along the road, quiet now their lovely outing was over.
‘Do you think she’ll come back soon, Elizabeth?’ Jimmy asked, but there was no hope in his voice.
‘I wouldn’t bet on it,’ said his sister.
A few months later, on a Friday afternoon, school was over for the week and Elizabeth was walking behind the rest of the class as they came out of the school gates.
‘Will you look at Lizzie Nelson?’
Julia Perkins and her cronies were just in front and suddenly Julia turned round and smirked at Elizabeth. ‘We’re going to the seaside tomorrow on the train, my dad’s taking us,’ she said. You can’t come, though. I bet you’ve never seen the sea.’
‘I have! Yes, I have,’ said Elizabeth. Well, she’d seen it in pictures, hadn’t she? And there was a poster of Redcar-on-Sea at the entrance of the railway station, wasn’t there?
‘Gerraway! You’ve never been anywhere. You haven’t got anybody to take you, you’re the queen of the bastids. You’ve only got your Jimmy and he’s a bastid an’ all.’ The other girls looked at each other and at Julia Perkins who was fairly dancing with enjoyment as she jeered at the orphan from the Children’s Home. They tittered uncertainly.
Elizabeth was determined not to be drawn though her heart was beating wildly. She was looking forward to the weekend for Auntie Betty had sent word she was coming to take her and Jimmy out, the first time for months and months. And she wasn’t going to let Julia Perkins spoil that for her. No, she wasn’t.
‘My name is Elizabeth,’ she couldn’t stop herself from saying, though.
‘And you’re a bastid!’ sang Julia, and laughed, a cackling unbearable sound. ‘I bet you don’t know what that means, do you? My mam and dad say that’s what you are ’cos you never had a dad.’
Elizabeth was stung. ‘I did! Of course I did. He went to America, went to make his fortune, and he’s coming back for us, he is!’
‘You’re telling lies. You’re always telling lies. You have no mam and no dad and you’re a bastid. My mam says folk like you should be put down, ’cos it’s folk like us has to pay for your keep.’
Elizabeth crossed her fingers behind her back. It was just a little lie she’d told. ‘I’m not lying and I’m not a bastid neither. My mam died and my dad’s coming back for us – he is! And I’m going out tomorrow, my auntie’s coming for us. We’re going to … to …’ Elizabeth paused, trying to think of somewhere better than the seaside. ‘We’re going to London!’ she shouted, inspiration coming.
Julia and all her friends laughed this time. They laughed loudly, bending over and holding their sides, their mouths open, their faces red with laughing. Elizabeth turned and ran from the hateful sound, running along the pavement in her clumsy black boots with the steel segs which struck sparks off the stones. But even when she turned the corner she could still hear them. She leaned against the wall, tears springing to her eyes, panting with rage.
‘Howay, man, what’s the matter with you? Come on, we won’t get any tea if you don’t hurry up.’ It was Jimmy, coming from the boys’ school. He stopped beside her on the pavement.
‘It was Julia Perkins. She said …’
‘Why, man, take no notice what she said. Anyway, you know Auntie Betty’s coming tomorrow. She might buy us sweets, bulls’ eyes maybe. She’ll take us out anyroad. Come on, I’ll race you back. I’ll give you a start, if you like.’
And they were off, running like the wind. To hell with Julia Perkins, Elizabeth told herself. Tomorrow they were going out with Auntie Betty and Kit would be there. She was dying to see how he had grown.
They waited all day by the front gate of the Home. It was sunny in the morning and they didn’t go in for their dinner, just in case they missed her. But it rained in the afternoon and Miss Rowland came out to them and persuaded them to go in for their tea. On Monday morning a comic postcard came from Auntie Betty showing a picture of Cockerton Green, wherever that was. ‘Sorry I couldn’t come,’ she had written. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll come to see you soon.’ But she never did.
That night Elizabeth dreamed about the day her mother died. She did that sometimes.
Chapter Two
ELIZABETH WAS BACK in her dream, reliving that terrible day.
‘Lizzie! Ah, Lizzie …’
The voice was faint, had she really heard it? She turned over in her bed and suddenly the dream was reality: she was snagging turnips. She paused in her work and looked about her. Was that a voice? She pushed her thick dark hair back from her face, leaving a smear of mud on her forehead. Had someone spoken or was it just a voice from the story she was telling herself in her thoughts, one of the stories she told herself all the time when she was out in the frozen fields, chopping away at the turnips – or snagging them as the farmer called it – so they provided extra fodder for the sheep and cattle.
All was quiet, the field deserted, nothing moving except for the curl of smoke from the farm in the distance, a dark stormy grey yet barely perceptible against the leaden colour of the sky. Where was Mam? Elizabeth got to her feet, stiff as an old woman after a couple of hours crouched on the frozen earth. Mam could snag turnips standing up but Elizabeth had to get closer to them. After all, she was only nine, going on ten, and her wrists were thin as matchsticks, much like the rest of her.
‘What d’you bring the lass for then?’ the farmer had asked Mam on Monday morning when Elizabeth had turned up with her. ‘She does
n’t look strong enough to snag a turnip.’
‘But she is,’ Mam had said. ‘She’s good at it an’ all, will she show you?’
And Elizabeth had stood as tall as she could in her old black boots with the cardboard soles Mam had cut for her only the night before. ‘We’ll get them soled properly on Friday, pet,’ Mam had said then, ‘both of us together. We’ll make a deal of money in a week, me and you, see if we don’t. And we’ll have butcher’s meat on Sunday.’
Elizabeth hadn’t been so sure about the money. In her experience they never did make as much as Mam thought they would. And anyroad, the kiddy-catcher might find out she was working in the fields on a school day and Mam would be fined and then where would they be? Elizabeth sighed now as she bent back to her work. Mam must have gone off into the coppice at the side of the field; that was where she had told Elizabeth to go when she had to answer a call of nature. Anyroad, she thought as she resumed chopping the top from a mud-caked turnip, the farmer hadn’t really cared whether Elizabeth was helping her mam or not. All he was interested in was that the work was done, and done cheaply. And as Mam said, there was always work for such as her for no labour is cheaper than that of a woman on her own with a family to support.
‘Lizzie? Where are you, Lizzie? Eeh, for God’s sake, pet …’
Lizzie sprang to her feet this time. Oh, yes, that had been her mam calling all right and there was something desperately the matter. Her voice had sounded so funny. She gazed round frantically and then, dropping her snagger, began to run towards the coppice.
‘Mam? Mam?’
The cry burst from her as she ducked under a straggling branch of hawthorn. Thorns clutched at her, scratching her face, tearing her dress and the skin of her forearms. And she knew what she was going to see: her mother lying on the ground, hands clutching her belly, face whiter than the frosted leaves on the bushes around her. And even as she watched her mother’s hands loosed their grasp on her stomach and fell to the ground on either side, palms uppermost, open, fingers bent and the broken nails pointing to the sky. Her eyes were closed, her lips almost as white as her face. The only colour was in the red pool soaking the earth about her, staining her patched old working skirt. The stain widened even as Elizabeth watched for a frozen second before snatching up her mam’s old shawl which had caught on a bush and been pulled from her shoulders.
Elizabeth knelt by her mother, covering her with the shawl, taking the one from her own shoulders, pushing it under her mother’s inert body, frantically trying to warm her hands, patting her cheeks, crying, ‘Mam! Oh, Mam!’ A wailing, desolate cry. And her mother opened her eyes and looked up at her. Elizabeth couldn’t bear that look. It was faraway though a faint smile came into the eyes, came and went so swiftly that a second after seeing it Elizabeth wasn’t sure it had even been there. And then they were blank and staring and Mam’s mouth fell open and her head fell back and Elizabeth knew she was dead for she had that look, that empty look.
Elizabeth wept. She wept and cried for her mother, and the bushes crowded in on her, and suddenly all she could see was the bare brown of the hawthorn and the red, the deep, deep red of the blood, spreading on the ground and covering everything …
Elizabeth screamed and sat up in bed, her nightdress wet with sweat, hair sticking to her head and neck. Her heart beat furiously, her mouth was dry as tinder.
‘Elizabeth, stop it! You’ve just had a nightmare, that’s all. Wake up properly now, you don’t want to have Matron in here, do you?’
She turned her head and stared at the girl who was speaking, barely above a whisper. It was her friend Joan, standing by the side of the bed, shivering in her cotton nightgown for the night was chilly. Elizabeth drew in a long shuddering breath and lay down again. The immediacy of the nightmare faded. It had happened so long ago, why did it always come back to her when she was upset?
‘Oh, Mam, Mam,’ she whispered, ‘don’t haunt me, Mam.’
‘What? What did you say?’ Joan leaned closer to catch her words.
‘Nothing, it was just a dream,’ Elizabeth whispered back.
‘I’ll get you a cup of water,’ Joan offered, and went to the washstand by the door where the jug of water stood and there was an old cup for the girls to rinse their teeth. She filled it and brought it to Elizabeth and her friend drank it thirstily and lay down again, shivering.
Joan got into the narrow bed with her: she always did when one of them had a nightmare. The girls lay with arms intertwined until warmth crept back into their bones and they fell into a natural sleep. As dawn was breaking, Joan crept back into her own bed. It wouldn’t do for anyone to find them in bed together, especially not Matron.
It was Monday morning and the orphans from the Home were on their way to school. Elizabeth walked beside Joan. There was a poetry test this morning and they were reciting Robert Browning’s ‘Home Thoughts from Abroad’. Elizabeth spoke confidently, Joan watching her friend’s mouth for clues as she stumbled through the difficult bit about ‘the brushwood sheaf round the elm tree bole are in tiny leaf’, the part she always got muddled about, when Julia Perkins came round the bend, as usual surrounded by her cronies.
‘Well, here’s Lizzie Nelson. Did you have a good time in London then?’ She was grinning her disbelief before Elizabeth even spoke, looking sideways at her friends. By, it’s a great joke, her grin seemed to be saying, a girl from the Home going on a trip to London, I must say!
Elizabeth turned and ran, Joan shouting after her: ‘Hey, what’s the matter?’ But Elizabeth simply shouted over her shoulder, ‘I’ll see you tonight.’
‘Are you badly then?’ Joan took a few steps after her then hesitated.
‘No … Yes, tell them I’ve got the runs …’ And then she was off, hurrying along the alleyway which led to the path along the top of the wood to Old Morton village, and after the village Morton Main.
She slowed down to a walk as she came to the wood and ducked under the fence until she was under the trees, listening to the birds, smelling the wild garlic almost overpowering the damp musty scent of the ground. She was alone in the wood, the trees joining overhead to make a canopy, mysterious and exciting.
She crossed the rickety wooden bridge over the stream, and walked up the rise to the old railway line and the tunnel beneath, emerging on the other side only a mile or two from home. For Morton Main was home to her still, even though she hadn’t seen it during the years she had been in the Home. Oh, why hadn’t she been brave enough to come before? Everything she saw now was familiar, even after all this time, familiar and dear.
She passed her old school; heard the chanting from the classrooms. The seven times table as she passed class four; ‘I before E except after C’ from class five. And then she was approaching West Row and her old home. ‘I’m a fool,’ she said aloud. There was another family living there now, she had to go instead to Double Row, to Auntie Betty’s house. She found it and walked up the back yard to knock boldly on the door. Auntie Betty would not turn her away, she thought, even though she couldn’t be bothered to come to see her and Jimmy in Auckland.
It was Uncle Ben who opened the door, his collarless shirt open at the neck, braces hanging down over his trousers, a cigarette hanging from his wet lips.
‘Aye, what do you want?’ he asked, lifting a hand to scratch at the stubble on his chin. Then he took in her blue and white checked dress, black cotton stockings wrinkled around the legs, the hair tied back severely with black tape, and frowned.
‘It’s not Lizzie, is it? What the hell are you doing here?’
‘Elizabeth.’ She stared at him, lifting her chin, willing him to let her in, remembering how Auntie Betty had said it was Uncle Ben who wouldn’t take them in when Mam died. ‘I want to talk to Auntie Betty.’
He stood back from the door, allowing her room to get past, and she walked into the kitchen. There were dirty pots on the table. He’d evidently just eaten a fried breakfast; congealed fat and a crust of fried bread lay on a plate
and there was a smell of bacon. The fire was blazing, making the room suffocatingly hot, and the zinc bath stood on the hearth rug, half full of grey scummy water.
Uncle Ben followed her in, grinning. ‘Well,’ he remarked as though it was the greatest joke in the world, ‘you’ll have a job to see your Auntie Betty because she’s not here.’
Elizabeth’s face fell. She hadn’t thought her aunt might not be in, it was Monday, wasn’t it? Monday was washing day in Morton Main. No woman was out of her house then, she was too busy with the possing stick at the wash tub. Maybe she’d gone to the Co-op?
‘But she’ll be back, it’s washing day. I can wait, can’t I?’
‘Please yourself.’
Ben Hoddle closed the door and took a seat beside the fire. He nipped the glowing end of his cigarette into the flames and put the stump behind his ear. ‘Aye, well, she might be a while.’
‘I don’t mind, I can wait, I’ve plenty of time,’ said Elizabeth. She glanced around her. ‘I’ll side the table, if you like?’ she offered. She was uncomfortable just sitting there with him staring at her.
He sniffed. ‘If you like,’ he said, and, taking the stump from behind his ear, lit it again from a piece of paper he tore from a newspaper lying on the steel fender. He sat back and watched her as she tidied away the remains of his meal and washed the dirty pots in a chipped enamel bowl with a ladle of water from the boiler on one side of the fire.
At first she was so full of disappointment at not seeing Kit she was hardly aware of Ben. She worked away, washing and drying pots and putting them in the mahogany press which took up almost the whole of one side of the room. Then she took a bucket and scooped water out of the bath tub, taking it outside to the drain in the brick-paved yard. It was when she bent down to lift the now almost empty bath that she became aware of his eyes on her. Looking up, she saw he was staring intently down the ill-fitting neck of her dress, where it fell open as she stood bent almost double.
Blushing deeply, she seized the handles of the tub and lifted it off the ground, then stood looking at him.
