by Maggie Hope
‘Open the door for me,’ she said, not looking directly at him. Even her ears were blushing, she knew it.
‘Yes, right, I will, pet,’ he replied and jumped up to do it. She felt her back brush against him as he stood holding on to the door handle and took a deep breath of fresh air as she got outside. She emptied the bath tub and hung it on the nail between the window and the door, and still he stood there. Elizabeth walked to the gate and looked up and down the street but there was no sign of Auntie Betty or Kit. There were a couple of women stringing out drying lines across the street, that was all, but they were strangers to her.
He was still standing in the doorway as Elizabeth reluctantly walked back up the yard. She didn’t know what had changed about him since he’d first opened the door to her, she only knew he made her feel squirmy inside. He was looking at her through short, sandy lashes and there was a peculiar grin on his face.
‘I don’t want to keep you out of bed, Uncle Ben,’ she said as she stepped into the house, ‘not when you’ve just come off shift.’ If he had just had his bath he must have been on fore shift, she reckoned. Surely he would be wanting his bed? ‘I can wait here myself, I’m all right. I might go round and see Mrs Wearmouth anyroad.’
He put out a hand and slid his forefinger under her chin. ‘You know, pet, you’re growing up, aren’t you? How old are you now?’
‘Twelve.’
Elizabeth retreated until the backs of her knees were hard up against the wooden frame of the settee. But he stepped forward too and ran his hand round the back of her neck then under her dress.
‘Mind, you’re growing up into a bonny lass an’ all,’ he said softly. ‘I bet you’ve got nice little titties under there.’ His face was close to hers, she could see the small blue marks where coal had got into his cuts. There were hairs emerging from his nostrils, a different colour from his beard, she noticed. It felt unreal, this couldn’t be happening. Auntie Betty would be coming in with Kit any minute, she told herself. Ducking under his arm, she went to the other side of the kitchen, putting the table between them. For a second an expression of irritation crossed his face. He opened his mouth to snap at her, then changed his mind.
‘Do you know? I reckon we wouldn’t mind having you come to stay with us now. You could help your auntie, couldn’t you? I bet you’d like to get out of that place, wouldn’t you?’
‘Where is she?’ Elizabeth burst out, ignoring his question. Oh, if only Auntie Betty would come!
‘Never you mind, she’ll be along,’ said Ben. ‘Howay now, I’m not going to hurt you, you look like a frightened rabbit.’ He walked round the table and Elizabeth froze. Her brain wouldn’t work. He put an arm round her waist and pulled her to him, rubbing himself against her thin little body.
‘By, that’s nice,’ he murmured and his eyes closed. He sagged a little. It was enough for her to slip out of his grasp. She came alive and ducked for the door, wrenching it open and fleeing down the yard.
‘Come back here, you little bugger!’ he roared after her. In the road women turned in surprise to see her running by. They heard Ben shout but he didn’t come out.
‘Are you all right, hinny?’ one of the women asked, but Elizabeth hadn’t time to reply. She fled for West Row.
Mrs Wearmouth was hanging out her washing. ‘Why, hello, Elizabeth,’ she cried, ‘I never thought to see you! And mind, how you’ve grown. You’re shooting up like a bean stalk and about as fat. How are you, love?’
‘I’m fine, Mrs Wearmouth,’ Elizabeth replied, panting after the run, her face all red, her hair dishevelled. ‘Mrs Wearmouth, do you know where Auntie Betty is?’
‘Why, aye, I do as it happens. Aw, have you come to see her and her away at Cockerton for a few days? Did you not know? She had to go to see her man’s mother. The old woman’s had a stroke, they’ve took her into the workhouse at Darlington. You won’t see her today, you’ll have to come back. There’s nowt else for it.’
‘I’m very disappointed in you, Elizabeth,’ said Matron. ‘What have you to say for yourself?’
‘I’m sorry, Matron.’
She gazed at the child. She wasn’t a bad girl, not like some of those that came into the Home. Elizabeth was growing up now but she was showing none of the bad habits some of the other girls did and often had to have beaten out of them. She didn’t stare after the boys, didn’t giggle in corners and scrimp on her chores.
‘Where did you go?’ Matron asked, more softly.
‘Just down to woods, Matron. I … I plodged in the beck. It was lovely.’ Elizabeth couldn’t possibly tell the truth, couldn’t mention Uncle Ben. Her mind as well as her tongue was frozen at the thought of him. Anyroad, if she said anything they would think it was her fault, and maybe it was. Maybe she had done something to make him think … No, she hadn’t.
‘You will apologise to the teacher and take whatever punishment she thinks necessary. And you will report to me when you come back from school. Every evening, do you hear?’
‘Yes, Matron.’
‘Now go to bed, you’ll get no supper.’ Elizabeth was glad to find herself outside the door. She knew the interview would have gone on and on but it was Matron’s early evening off and she wanted to get away. That was lucky anyroad.
She sat on her bed in the empty room, staring out of the window. Fragments of memory had returned to her during the day. She remembered especially the day Mam died. Mrs Wearmouth and Auntie Betty were in the kitchen, the neighbour helping to get the dinner ready.
‘Who the hell put another babby in her belly?’
It was Mrs Wearmouth speaking. The children were sitting in a row on the settee watching as she cut potatoes in half and dropped them in the great iron pan with a plop. Even the baby was watching, his fist stuffed in his mouth.
‘Shh, the bairns are listening,’ Betty had hissed, and the two women turned away.
Elizabeth pondered over this conversation now. Funny how she had forgotten so many things from when she was younger but that day stuck in her memory. It meant something, she knew, and one day she would find out what.
Chapter Three
1916
ELIZABETH TURNED OVER the card of the everlasting calender which Auntie Betty had sent her for Christmas the first year she went to the Children’s Home. There it was, the day she had been waiting for, the day she was free, for today was 23rd June, 1916 and she was sixteen years old. As her mam used to say, she was almost as old as the century.
More important, Jimmy was thirteen next month and he too would be free of the Home and the guardians, for wasn’t there a war on? Because of the war her brother could leave school a whole year early and go to work. He’d sat the exam which proved he was proficient in reading and writing and could do sums and recite the kings and queens of England, and in three weeks’ time he too would be free.
‘Elizabeth! Get yourself down here, you’re late, it’s almost a quarter to six.’
‘Coming, Joan, I’m coming,’ Elizabeth called back down the attic stairs, but this morning she wasn’t inclined to hurry and turned back to the old looking glass above the deal chest of drawers which she shared with Joan, her friend from the Home and now the maid of all work in the big old house which was doing duty as a hospital for wounded soldiers. And there were plenty of them in this second year of the war.
Elizabeth poured cold water from the jug into the basin which stood on the washstand by the door. She splashed her face and arms and dried them quickly on the thin towel before cleaning her teeth with Odontoline, rinsing and spitting in the water before she emptied it into the slop pail and rubbed the basin around with an old flannel. Within a couple of minutes she was dressed and covered with the green wraparound overall and cap which was as much a uniform as she had had to wear in her orphanage days. But this was different, this was a working uniform, and besides she didn’t have to wear black shapeless stockings with it but had some decent beige ones like everyone else.
Downstairs in the kitchen
Joan had already eaten her porridge and gone. Bless her, thought Elizabeth gratefully, her friend had cooked enough porridge for both of them and there was a cup of tea in the pot too. After all, there was a whole three hours yet to proper breakfast which was shared by all the staff, including the nurses, and a lot of hard work to be got through before then.
She washed and dried the pots and put them carefully away before going out into the cool morning air. The laundry was just across the yard, a converted coachhouse it was, right next to the stables. As Elizabeth hurried past she heard Jimmy’s voice. He was talking to the horses as he worked and she smiled to hear it. Jimmy loved horses, especially the big, patient farm horses which shared the stables with the carriage horses and the pony which pulled the trap to the station for supplies three times a week.
There was no one in the laundry room, the laundress didn’t usually come until eight o’clock, but Elizabeth was the laundry maid and it was her job to fill the boilers and light the fires underneath them. Then she had to sort the laundry. Most of it was white, sheets and pillowcases, but there were nightshirts and hospital blues too. Even the whites which had come in since yesterday evening were to be sorted into grades of soiling and the worst put into cold salted water to soak.
Elizabeth set to with a will. For one thing, work kept her warm and it was cool in this great cavernous place, even in June. Though it would be hot later on in the day when the boilers were at their hottest and the sun was directly overhead.
It was almost eight o’clock. The fires were burning brightly and the huge coppers beginning to sing. Elizabeth picked up the two buckets of ash which she had raked from under the grates and started to carry them, panting slightly, out to the corner of the yard where the ash pit was. She was a little clumsy with the weight of the buckets and only just managed to stop herself from colliding with a wheelchair containing a man in hospital blues being pushed by an orderly.
‘Oh!’ she gasped and put down the pails with a bump, spilling a ring of grey ash as she did so. A lock of hair had fallen over her forehead and she pushed it back under her cap, unaware that she left a smear of grey on the white skin.
‘Watch where you’re going, will yer!’ the orderly shouted. He had stopped the chair and turned towards her, holding the handle of the chair in one hand and lifting the other in a threatening gesture as though he might swipe her across the face with it. He was a middle-aged man and wore the uniform of a soldier but with a Red Cross armband on his left sleeve.
Elizabeth shrank back involuntarily. Private Wilson was known as a man who bullied anyone he considered to be below him, though he acted very differently towards the officers and nursing staff.
‘Stop wasting time, Wilson,’ said the man in the wheelchair. ‘I told you I fancied a look around the grounds, not the stable yard.’
‘Yes, Captain Benson. Sorry, sir.’
The man cast a last baleful glance at Elizabeth and resumed pushing the chair over the cobbles of the yard. The man in the chair had been looking back at her but now he jerked and gripped the arms with whitened knuckles. A line between his eyebrows deepened into a furrow but he said nothing more.
Elizabeth watched until they were out of sight round the corner of the block. Poor man, she thought, still seeing in her mind’s eye the plaid which had covered the bottom half of the captain’s body, the flat place at the bottom where his feet were missing. He looked vaguely familiar though his accent was what she would call ‘posh’, like most of the officers at the Hall, so she couldn’t have known him before. None of her acquaintances talked posh. She hadn’t seen him at the Hall before either, he must be new.
Benson … Now where had she heard that name? He had fair hair that needed cutting. The sun had glinted on it as the chair moved into the light after the shadow of the stable block, the last thing she’d noticed before he disappeared from view. He could have been good-looking but for the scar which ran down from the corner of his left eye and disappeared under the collar of his shirt. Benson … Absent-mindedly, Elizabeth went in for the broom and shovel, and began sweeping up the ashes she had spilt.
Of course! Benson was the name of the man who’d owned the mine where her dad had worked before he took off. He’d owned a number of mines. She remembered the name clearly now, had even seen the man when she was little. His son looked something like him, that was why he’d seemed familiar. Mr Benson had often been around Morton when her mam was alive. Probably still was.
‘Elizabeth Nelson, will you stop dreaming and get on with your work? Do you mean to say you haven’t even got rid of the ashes yet? How are we supposed to get the washing done …?’
Elizabeth hurriedly stood the broom and shovel against the wall of the laundry and picked up the buckets of ash.
‘Sorry, Mrs Poskett, I’ll just take them now,’ she said, and hurried away to tip out the ash. Mary Poskett was in charge of the laundry and Elizabeth was her only laundry maid, though there was enough work for another. But she was a nice enough woman, and not afraid to work as hard as Elizabeth if necessary.
She had worn a strange expression when Elizabeth had first turned up for work, as though she was going to mention the old days at Morton Main, but she never did. She had no family, though there was talk in the hospital of a daughter who had disappeared. Probably run off to London, thought Elizabeth when she heard that, and felt sympathy for the older woman and a pang for her own father.
They worked until time for staff breakfast, a substantial one taken in the big kitchen of the old house along with everyone else who worked there, except for Matron and the doctors, of course. And afterwards they went back to work, putting the linen through the great wooden rollers of the mangle. Elizabeth turned the handle while Mrs Poskett fed in the washing, and then at last, her arms aching from the prolonged effort, it was ready to hang out on the drying green beside the vegetable garden.
Mary Poskett stood back, puffing a bit, her face beetroot red from the effort. ‘Eeh, lass,’ she said. ‘It’s getting over much for me. Fair pulls me arms out, it does.’ She looked down at the remaining clothes in the basket and sighed.
‘You go in, it’s nearly tea-time anyway,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Go on, I’ll finish up here.’
‘You’re not a bad lass,’ commented Mary, and trailed up the path to the gate which led to the stable yard and the laundry.
Elizabeth sang to herself as she worked, hardly knowing what it was she was singing, happy to see the white linen blowing on the lines in the afternoon sun. There was ironing to do after tea, but she didn’t mind that. Plain ironing it was mostly, bed linen. And there was the never-ending round of washing. Already the dirty skip would be waiting, full to the brim with more sheets to sort and soak.
Jack Benson sat in his wheelchair in the bay of a first-floor window, staring out over the back of the house, not seeing anything much of the rolling fields he had loved to roam as a boy, nor the tall chimney of a colliery in the distance, belching black smoke.
His attention was caught, however, by the movement of white objects closer to the house. He leaned forward and gazed down. It was a drying ground. The white objects were sheets and pillowcases, he could see that now, blowing in the wind. The girl was there, pegging out smaller items, her dark hair blowing too as it escaped from her cap. Her hands were red, he could see the colour even from this distance; she was thin yet she handled the linen well, deftly pegging it out on the lines which were moving as the wind caught the sheets and lifted them to flap and crack in the air. Not pretty, but there was something about her …
He sighed and sat back, away from the window. He was bored, that was it, taking such an interest in a washer girl. Now, if he was home it would be different. In Newcomb Hall he was so close. He could walk from here, taking the footpath over the fields, it wasn’t more than a mile or two. Or if he still had his feet he could walk. But he hadn’t. He needed looking after and at home there was only his mother, frail and living in a twilight world since the death of his father. A
nd old Nancy couldn’t look after both of them, of course she couldn’t. She was only a cook after all.
His attention was caught by a movement down in the garden near the drying ground, a glimpse of khaki from behind a bush, a hand on top of the garden wall. One of the orderlies having an illicit cigarette, he supposed. Yes, there was a small puff of smoke rising into the air.
Jack leaned forward as far as he could, more out of boredom than anything else. The orderly stepped out into the open as the garden gate opened and the girl came in, carrying her laundry basket. He threw the cigarette end away and it swung in an arc and landed in an onion patch. He was stepping up to the girl, putting out his hand. Jack felt a tiny pang of disappointment. It was an assignation, obviously there was something going on between them.
He would have pushed his chair away from the window but the orderly who left him there had put the brake on hard and he couldn’t move it. He tried to look elsewhere: out to the distant stand of trees, at the clothes blowing in the wind, anywhere. It was extraordinarily difficult somehow. And suddenly he heard a cry, quickly choked off, and looked back at the couple.
The orderly, Jack recognised him now, was Private Wilson. He seized the girl. Her basket fell to the ground as she struggled. Private Wilson’s hand was clasped over her face … Good God! The man was molesting the girl, she wasn’t a willing partner at all! He was dragging her behind the bush. The girl was fighting, flailing her arms, grabbing hold of the wall. The man was grinning!
Jack looked about for the bell the nurse had left with him. He rang it, loud and clear. Wilson looked up at the windows for a moment and carried on trying to get the girl behind the bush. Frustrated, Jack pushed himself forward in his seat, cursing his missing feet, trying to reach the window which was open only a couple of inches at the bottom.
He fell to the carpet, catching his forehead a glancing blow which he hardly felt, he was so intent on reaching the window. Why the hell didn’t someone come? What was the use of a bell if no one answered it? Dragging himself on to his knees, making his missing feet throb with pain, he managed to reach the window sill. Pushing upwards with his arms, getting his shoulder beneath the sash in the end, hanging on to the wooden frame of the window, he at last got it open another six inches.
