The Journey of the Shadow Bairns

by Margaret J. Anderson

  “There are people who don’t want these bairns and Pig-Bear to go on this journey,” Elspeth continued. “They might try to send them back—and you don’t want that, do you?”

  Robbie shook his head solemnly.

  “If you want to get there, you must stay quiet and hide in the shadows. You see, we don’t always know who it is that’s going to try to stop us. We mustn’t let them get us.”

  Robbie looked around nervously at the other people in the waiting room and snuggled closer to Elspeth.

  “We’ll play that we’re Shadow Bairns,” she said. “And we must always stay together and keep quiet.”

  “Shadow Bairns,” Robbie whispered.

  Elspeth smiled, satisfied that she’d found a way to keep Robbie quiet whenever she needed to, but the words left a lonely echo in her mind. She saw herself and her little brother always alone, hiding in the shadows, not really knowing where they were going. But it would be a far worse loneliness if she let them take Robbie away from her. And she’d promised Mama. Jumping up, she said loudly, “ Come on, Robbie! We’ll get you cleaned up.”

  After she had washed Robbie, she took him to see the trains. Sometimes he forgot about being a Shadow Bairn, shouting with excitement and running ahead of Elspeth, who was always hampered by the luggage. Mostly, though, he stayed near her, watching the commotion and bustle of the station. Elspeth studied the board that announced the train departures. Liverpool: 11:25 from Platform 4.

  At eleven o’clock, Elspeth said to Robbie, “You stay here with Pig-Bear and the luggage. I’m going to buy the tickets—you can watch from here.”

  Robbie nodded. “We’re Shadow Bairns minding the luggage.”

  Elspeth went over to the ticket counter, confident that Robbie would stay where he was now that it was part of a game. She pushed two crumpled notes through the grille, saying, “One and a half to Liverpool, please.” She had decided not to risk asking for two children’s tickets in case the man remembered that later if people came looking for two run away children.

  “Singles or returns?” he asked, not even looking up from his tickets.

  “Singles,” Elspeth said.

  He smoothed out the notes and put them in the drawer, pushing the tickets and change toward her. He never looked up. She put the tickets carefully in her pocket and then went out and bought food for the journey with the change—warm mutton pies, buns and apples. They shared a pie while they waited for the train.

  When the train arrived at Platform 4, giving out impatient snorts of steam, Robbie pushed forward, but Elspeth held him back. They mustn’t be noticed and remembered. She looked over the people crowding toward the ticket barrier and saw a mother and father, each carrying a child, followed by two other children clutching the mother’s skirts. Dragging the suitcase, Elspeth got in behind them and told Rob to stay close.

  She gave the man the tickets, and as he punched them and handed them back, she heard him mutter, “It’ll be a long journey wi’ all them bairns!” He had taken Rob and Elspeth to be part of the family!

  With a surge of confidence, Elspeth and Robbie headed toward the first empty carriage and were scrambling aboard when a porter asked, “Are you children traveling First Class? Where’s your ma and pa?”

  “They’re looking after the luggage,” Elspeth said quickly. “They told us to get on the train.”

  “Can I see your tickets? Or does your pa have them?”

  “Here they are,” Elspeth said, showing him the tickets.

  “Third Class! I thought as much. Come along!”

  He took them farther down the train to an empty compartment, saying, “Sit here by the window and I’ll see if I can find your pa and tell him where you are.”

  Elspeth watched the porter head toward the luggage van.

  “Maybe we’d better find another seat,” she whispered to Robbie. “He might come back and start asking questions.”

  “We’ve to stay here,” Robbie protested. “He’s gone to look for Papa. He said he’d find Papa.”

  “Oh, Robbie!” Elspeth said in an exasperated voice. “You know he won’t find Papa! He’s likely one of them that’ll stop us from going to Canada to find Aunt Maud and Uncle Donald.”

  Robbie shrunk back in his seat, almost as if Elspeth had struck him and then followed without a word when she led the way down the corridor to another compartment. He climbed onto the seat and sat very close to her, twirling a curl of hair with his forefinger and sucking on Pig-Bear’s ear. His eyes never left the door, but whether he was waiting for the porter or Papa he didn’t say.

  “The train’s starting soon,” Elspeth said at last. “You can sit next the window so you can see better.”

  Robbie seemed to forget his grief and fears when the train pulled out of the station. He flattened his nose against the window, watching houses and tall buildings flash past, and then farms, fields of cows, sheep on the hillsides, and occasional towns. It was a whole new world for Robbie, who had never been outside Glasgow before. Elspeth wished she could forget her worries so easily. The way Robbie still expected Mama or Papa to come back bothered her. He was usually so quick at grasping ideas. Look at the way he had understood about them being Shadow Bairns. She could tell from how he was sitting so quiet and close to her that he was still a Shadow Bairn. So why did he force her to say over and over again that Mama and Papa weren’t coming back?

  These thoughts were interrupted when the train stopped at a small station and a man and woman came into the compartment. The woman was tall and sharp-faced, the man was short, with very blue eyes and thin, sandy hair. It took them a long time to get settled because they had so much luggage, and the woman was very particular about what pieces could go up on the rack.

  “Not that one, Jim,” she said in a flat voice as her husband tried to lift a wooden crate. “That’s got the china in it.”

  Elspeth looked at the label on the crate—Beattie, Lake Manitoba, Canada. So they were on their way to Canada, too. Elspeth looked at them with interest.

  When at last the luggage had been arranged to the woman’s satisfaction, Elspeth braced herself for the questions she was sure would come. She was going to say that Uncle Donald and Aunt Maud had sent for them to come out to Canada. But the woman paid no attention to them, fixing her gaze a little above Elspeth’s head. After a while, Elspeth craned her neck to see what was so interesting up there. She saw a picture of the Tower of London. How strange that the woman would gaze at it for an hour when there was so much to see outside. The man half smiled in Robbie’s direction once or twice, but didn’t speak to either of them.

  Elspeth turned her attention back to the window and watched the countryside sliding past. They came to another station—Carlisle—and here the platform was crowded. The train stopped with a jerk, and Elspeth found herself staring at a family grouped on the other side of the glass. The father was a big man, tall and blond, and his wife had reddish hair, escaping in wispy curls from under a flat back hat. A boy of around fourteen, blond like his father, was rounding up the luggage, and two little girls, both with stubby red pigtails, were clinging to two elderly women. The two women were apparently not going with the family, for they were hugging and kissing the little girls and crying quite unashamedly. The father and son lifted their cases into the train. The family paused outside Elspeth’s compartment, but on seeing the amount of luggage on the racks and floor, they didn’t come in.

  Elspeth watched them pass with a sudden wave of longing for her own mama and papa. If only it could have been the way they planned it. Papa had not been one to talk much about his hopes, but Elspeth knew how he had longed to get away from the city, back to the land again. A piece of land of his own that he would one day pass on to his children—that had been the dream that had sustained him though all the long hours he worked at the shipyard. Now it was up to her to make the dream come true.

  Papa had said you could have a hundred acres of land free, just for living on it for three years. Of course,
they might not let her have it because she was so young, and a girl, but she would worry about that later. Aunt Maud and Uncle Donald would help her. She didn’t know how she was going to find them, but she’d worry about that later too.

  “Do you hear what it’s saying?” Robbie asked suddenly, breaking into her thoughts.

  “What’s who saying?” Elspeth asked.

  “The train,” Robbie answered. “Listen! It’s saying ‘They won’t catch us! They won’t catch us!’”

  Elspeth gave Robbie a quick hug, and he smiled up at her. They snuggled together. Lulled by the rhythm of the train, Robbie fell asleep. Soon Elspeth slept too, worn out by the tensions of the weekend.

  Chapter 4

  “Steppingstones to victory”

  MARCH 31, 1903

  That night they slept on the train, which had been shunted into a siding near Liverpool Station because there was nowhere else for the passengers to go. Every hotel and boarding house within miles was full.

  The following morning, the two children joined the vast crowds hurrying from all parts of the city toward the dock where the Lake Manitoba waited. There was no need to ask the way. Elspeth could hardly believe that so many people were going to Canada.

  About the time the children joined the throng pushing toward the gangplanks, the Reverend Isaac Moses Barr was looking down from the vantage point of the deck of the Lake Manitoba. Seeing the crowds below, he felt like Moses of old, leading his people to the Promised Land. He didn’t look like Moses, for he was stocky and clean-shaven except for a small moustache that drooped over the corners of his mouth. He peered nearsightedly through round spectacles that were misting over in the light rain. Around his neck was a clerical collar, and on his head a white cap.

  Isaac Barr wasn’t worrying about how to squeeze more than two thousand people into a boat equipped for less than eight hundred, nor how to feed them in dining rooms that wouldn’t accommodate a quarter their number. He scarcely noticed the mountain of luggage piling up on the dock. Instead he was congratulating himself for giving so many people the chance to escape the smoky industrial cities of England. He was strengthening the ties between Britain and Canada. He smiled complacently at the thought that he was changing the course of history.

  His thoughts were interrupted by a nervous young man in the uniform of a head steward. “Mr. Barr, sir! There’s way too many people wanting to come on board, sir. There’s more than we have beds and bedding for.”

  “Then they will have to share bunks or sleep on the floor.”

  “Some of the stewards have deserted the ship, sir. They’re afraid, sir. There’s too many people.”

  “Then hire more stewards from among the passengers,” Mr. Barr answered impatiently. “That will solve both problems—more stewards and fewer passengers.”

  The young man was bewildered. Surely Mr. Barr must be joking, but he saw no hint of a smile on Barr’s broad face as he looked down at the waiting crowd.

  “They’re still coming,” the steward said.

  “Aye, they’re still coming,” echoed Barr. “And there is a great land waiting for them—a great fertile land under the dome of God’s own sky. Have you seen the cities these people come from—their horizons limited by the walls of factories and tenement buildings, the sky stained black with smoke belching from a hundred chimneys?”

  Mr. Barr’s voice rose and fell as if he were talking from a pulpit. The steward shuffled nervously, waiting for a chance to interrupt.

  “This immigration scheme will be a pattern for other people to follow,” Mr. Barr continued. “We’re changing lives. You’re seeing history being made.”

  “But what about all these people, sir?”

  “Let them come on board.”

  When the gangplanks were lowered, people pushed forward, each one determined to have a place on the ship. There had been rumors circulating all morning that Barr had sold more passages than the boat could hold. One look at the waiting crowd seemed to confirm this.

  Elspeth felt the surge of movement when the first passengers were allowed on the ship somewhere far ahead. All around her were tall men in heavy coats, smelling of wet wool and tobacco. The suitcase was hard to manage, and she worried about getting separated from Robbie. He was having his own troubles, being continually shoved aside and buffeted by suitcases and hampers.

  As they were pushed near the ship, Elspeth tried to plan what she would say to the ticket collector. It should be easy to convince him that she and Robbie had been separated from their parents in this crush, but how was she to find out where they should go on the boat? Was she supposed to have tickets for a room or beds? She looked up at the ship, rising above the dock like a great white wall. Was it like a train inside with lots of seats?

  Her worries were interrupted by a small but urgent request from Robbie.

  “Robbie, you’ve got to wait!” Elspeth said, desperately looking at the mob of people hemming them in.

  “I can’t wait,” Robbie said tearfully.

  “It won’t be long now,” Elspeth lied, knowing it could well be hours before they were on the boat.

  “I can’t wait!” Robbie said again, and promptly wet his blue serge trousers. Right then, Elspeth decided that running away had been a mistake. There were more problems than she could cope with. When she got on the boat she’d tell the ticket collector that they were by themselves. Let him worry about Robbie’s wet trousers. With that decision made, it was easier to wait her turn to board the ship.

  They were squashed tighter now, so tight that Elspeth couldn't even look down at her own feet, but she eventually felt the edge of the gangplank and shuffled forward and up. The traveling bag caught on a ridge of board nailed crosswise the ramp. She felt the pressure of the crowd behind her as she struggled to free it. The bundle was slipping from her grasp, but she managed to jerk the bag up. “Hang on to me, Robbie!” she shouted, but her words were lost, muffled by the crush of bodies around her.

  At last Elspeth was on the deck. She looked wildly around for Robbie, only to find that he was right beside her, flushed and tousled, but much less worried and frightened than she was. There was no sign of any official looking at tickets, so Elspeth and Robbie joined the crowd pouring down the stairway. When they saw some other children, they instinctively followed them, and found that all families with children were to be lodged together in the middle hold.

  Elspeth felt vaguely disappointed that the boat wasn’t more like the train. There the seats had been covered in soft red velvet and the little lamp fixtures had been gold. Here everything was made of raw wood and bare boards, as if it were still being built. The hold was partitioned off by upright posts with boards nailed to them to form crude bunks, sometimes two deep, sometimes three. Instead of mattresses there was loose straw, and the floor was covered with sawdust.

  The hold was a huge room, dimly lit by paraffin lamps. People were claiming bunks, spreading their belongings around, shouting at their children. Tentatively, Elspeth set their bundles on a bottom bunk, but a woman immediately told her to move along because that bunk was taken.

  In the far corner, Elspeth spotted a narrow opening between the bunks on the end wall and those on the side. Wriggling into it, she found that the ends of the two sets of bunks and the side of the ship formed a space like a tiny room. Pulling Robbie in beside her, she whispered, “This is where the Shadow Bairns live.”

  Robbie liked their corner. Right away he began to build Pig-Bear a castle out of the sawdust on the floor. Elspeth filched some straw from neighboring bunks, just in case they had to sleep there on the floor. She hoped that once everyone was settled she’d be able to claim a leftover bunk without causing any fuss, but judging from the way people were still pouring in there weren’t going to be any empty bunks. Already arguments and even fights were breaking out. People were being forced to give up some of the bunks they had claimed and put two or three children in one bed.

  Elspeth spread their blankets and sorted out t
heir clothes. She helped Robbie change his trousers, laying aside the wet ones until she could find out where to wash them. Getting on the boat now seemed so easy that she was ready to cope again. She wouldn’t tell anyone they were alone—not yet. After all, she had even thought to bring along a bar of yellow laundry soap.

  The bunks on either side were occupied now, but no one paid any attention to two unaccompanied children. One woman hung blankets over the end of her bunks, which made their corner very dark.

  “Pig-Bear can’t see,” Robbie complained. “And I’m too hot. I want a drink of water.”

  “I’ll get you a drink soon,” Elspeth promised, wondering what they were going to do about meals. She was beginning to realize there was a lot she didn’t know. “We’ll go back up and take a look around, but you’re to stay right beside me.”

  “Like a Shadow Bairn,” Robbie said, nodding solemnly.

  They crawled out of their corner and made their way through the crowded hold. The first flight of stairs was more like a ladder than a staircase. They had to push their way between people who were still on their way down. Two more flights brought them to the deck.

  It was a relief to be outside. A thin drizzle of rain was falling, but the day seemed bright in contrast to the gloom below. They stood in a sheltered place between a lifeboat and the rail, absorbed in the bustling activity all around them. A few passengers still hurried up the gangplanks, cranes swung precarious loads of luggage from the dock to the hold, and a mob of gulls fought over a basket of bread that had burst open on the dock. The smell of the sea, the wet salt wind, and the cries of the birds reminded Elspeth of their faraway home in the Highlands. Even she, who had so little to leave behind, suffered a pang of homesickness, but that was forgotten when a straggling band assembled on the deck and played God be with you till we meet again.

  “They’re singing to us!” Robbie said, jumping up and down with excitement and clapping his hands.

  The pulse of the engine and the shudder of the boat drowned out the first wavering notes. A cheer went up from those staying on the shore, answered by a louder cheer from the deck. When the ship pulled away and the people on the dock were just a white blur, all waving white handkerchiefs, Robbie was still waving back. He thought everyone was saying good-bye to him.