by Annie Murray
Amy was kneeling, frantically trying to fasten Mercy’s buttons with her bony fingers, her waif-like face puckering with frustration. Playfully, Mercy picked up the two mousey-coloured pigtails from Amy’s shoulders and stuck them up above the girl’s head like rabbit’s ears.
‘Oi – pack it in. You don’t care, do yer!’
Mercy’s solemn little face stared back at Amy as she tugged her plaits back into their normal position, tutting to herself. In spite of herself Amy smiled, and saw a gleam answer her in the little girl’s wide grey eyes. Mercy grinned all of a sudden, an expression of complicity and mischief which she reserved for no one else but Amy, and flung her arms round her friend’s shoulders, clinging tight like a baby monkey.
‘Give us a love, Amy.’
‘Mercy!’ Amy was pushing her off, laughing. ‘Yer ’opeless, yer really are. Come on.’
The last sounds of the other girls’ feet were already receding down the stairs. The dormitory held fifteen girls aged between seven and fourteen. The black iron bedsteads were arranged at regimented intervals along the bare floorboards, three rows of five. There was nothing else in the room except a portrait of Queen Victoria at least twenty years before her death, a frozen expression on her face, her eyes focussed on the far distance. At the long windows hung threadbare curtains in a sun-bleached navy.
Amy seized Mercy’s hand and the two of them tore along the echoing corridor, feet clattering on brown linoleum, then down the stone stairs. They managed to close the gap between themselves and the last stragglers into the dining room. Miss O’Donnell stood outside glowering.
‘You two again – get along now.’ She was fingering a bunch of little plaited leather strings she kept tied to her waist in case she felt the need to dole out punishment at short notice.
The dining room smelt of stale wash-cloths, disinfectant and porridge. The girls joined one of the long tables at the far end but there were not two spaces left for them to sit together. Mercy couldn’t bear to be separated from Amy.
‘Move up,’ she hissed at another girl.
The girl shook her head.
‘Move up.’ Mercy gave her such a sharp ram in the ribs with her elbow that she had to stifle a squeal.
‘You’re a little cow, Mercy.’ Rubbing her side she surrendered the space so that Mercy and Amy could sit together.
The two of them were inseparable in the orphanage, and now that Mercy had started school across the road at St Philips, Amy with her ethereal looks and Mercy, blonde and tiny, were forever together in the playground.
They’d been the closest of friends since they were tiny infants. Amy arrived at the Hanley Home aged two, the year before Mercy. As the two of them grew up they developed an almost miraculous affinity for one another. Since Amy was older she spent much of her days in a different room from the austere nursery where the babies lived out their regimented, white clad existence. But there were frequent cries of, ‘Where’s that child gone now?’ when Amy slipped away into their territory of strained, milky foods and plump hands to find baby Mercy. Miss Eagle, with her assistants, was in charge of the babies. She came back into the nursery one day to find Amy sitting beside Mercy who was then about a year old, a heavy scrubbing brush gripped between both hands, trying to brush Mercy’s mop of hair with it. Mercy was crowing with delight, hands waving. The tiny girls’ eyes were fixed laughingly on each other’s. Miss Eagle slapped Amy hard and sent her away.
‘We thank Thee Lord for these Thy gifts . . .’ Miss Rowney, the Superintendent of the Home intoned piously over the meagre breakfast. The girls stood motionless. Mercy saw a fly looping round Miss Rowney’s head and hoped it would fly up her nose. The live-in staff ate together at a smaller table near the door: Miss Rowney, Miss O’Donnell, Miss Eagle and Mrs Jacobs – Meg, who had first found Mercy. Others, like Dorothy Finch, the kindest of the staff, only worked there in the daytime.
The tin bowls clattered on the tables and one of the older girls doled out a ladle of watery porridge into Mercy’s bowl. Above the fireplace hung two small Union Jacks and a portrait of King Edward’s well-fed face after the Coronation in 1901.
They were expected to eat in silence, so the chief sound was the tinny rattle of spoons in the bowls. Mercy wrinkled her nose at Amy. The porridge was lukewarm and slimy on her tongue. She dripped it off her spoon mouthing, ‘lumpy’ and Amy grimaced back. The food left white tidemark moustaches on their top lips. Even though it was thin, lumpy and tasteless they ate every scrap, for lunch would almost invariably be watery stew and tea a thin soup.
Mercy looked round the table as she ate and Lena, the girl opposite, pulled a face at her. Mercy didn’t care, and stuck her tongue out until Amy nudged her to stop although she continued to stare back defiantly. Mercy and Amy’s closeness seemed to rile some of the others. Affection was very thin on the ground here, living in a house with sixty other girls with no one to provide real care or attention. Maybe the others were jealous. But Mercy didn’t bother about what they thought. She’d got Amy and that was all that mattered. When they’d finished eating she pushed her hand, warm and slightly tacky with porridge, into Amy’s under the table.
Miss Rowney stood up, chair scraping the floor.
‘Get wiped up now and stay sitting for a few moments. I’ve got something to say to you all.’
The girl in charge of each table hastily smeared the pale globules away with a sour-smelling cloth. They waited.
Miss Rowney walked to the middle of the dining room and stood looking round at them. She seemed rather excited about something and was massaging the back of her left hand with her right, her expression coy with pride.
‘Now girls, today I have a very special announcement.’ Her voice echoed slightly. ‘I’m going to read out the names of eight girls, and I’d like them to come up here to the front and stand in a neat line.’ She pronounced the names rather grandly, as if they were the titles of queens.
‘Lisa Maskell, Josie Flanagan, Sarah Smith . . .’ The last, and youngest on the list was Amy Laski.
Amy glanced in bewilderment at Mercy, and, pulling her hand away, obediently joined the line of girls with their backs to the staff table.
‘I am delighted to tell you that with the help of the John T. Middlemore Homes we have secured places for eight girls to begin a new and rewarding life. So—’ She beamed round at them. ‘On 9 July, Lisa, Josie, Sarah . . .’ she reeled off their names again . . . ‘will all be travelling on a big ship across the Atlantic Ocean to Canada . . .’ this was spoken in fairy tale tones ‘. . . to a place called New Brunswick where they will all be given homes by some kind and godly Canadian people.’
She put her hands together and everyone saw they were expected to clap, which they did as mechanically as striking clocks, watching the faces of the eight girls, the emotions of wonder, pride, bewilderment, uncertainty, flitting across them like summer clouds.
You could hear her screams from one end of the orphanage to the other.
The other girls were ready, regimented in crocodiles downstairs in the long dayroom where all chairs had been pushed to one side.
‘She’s gunna get it good and proper now,’ a snotty-nosed little girl called Dulcie whispered to to the child she was paired with. ‘They’ll give ’er a right belting.’
The staff, trying to keep the other children quiet and orderly, listened with tense faces. Mercy again. Today of all days. A couple of the girls started giggling and were given a sharp smack round the back of the head for their cheek. They were all scrubbed clean after last night’s toiling with tin baths of tepid water, last minute rough wiping of porridge from faces after breakfast, the starching of pinafores, plaiting of hair and polishing of little boots, so that they were not just Sunday clean, but cleaner than ever the whole year round.
‘Now just you remember I want to see smiles on all your faces,’ Miss O’Donnell boomed at them after breakfast. ‘When Mr Hanley graces us with his presence today he’ll not want to see sullen faces
round him, but a good example of Christian Cheerfulness. Just you remember – if it wasn’t for Mr Hanley, none of youse would have a place to lay your heads or fodder in your bellies. Would you now?’ Silence. ‘WOULD YOU?’
‘NO, MISS O’DONNELL,’ they all droned, sitting in lines down the long tables.
But now, here was Mercy, splayed across her bed, clinging to the iron bedstead and screaming as if someone was trying to murder her. The white-blonde hair was slipping out from its shoulder length plaits, her face a livid pink, and she was violently kicking her legs. Miss Eagle, who had been despatched to try and force her back under control, could barely even get near her.
‘Will you stop that!’ Miss Eagle, a thin, flint-cheeked woman tried to catch hold of Mercy round her waist and was rewarded by a backward sock in the face as the girl loosed one of her hands for a second and flailed it behind her.
‘You miserable little bugger! You needn’t think I’m going to ruin my best dress just because of you – ’ere, you can ’ave another of these!’ She landed a hard slap on one of Mercy’s bare legs which produced only more anguished yells and metallic screeching from the bedsprings. The child was not big for her age, but she was a red hot wire of fury and the energy in her was extraordinary.
‘Miss O’Donnell’ll be up here any minute,’ the woman hissed in her ear, trying to prise Mercy’s hands away from the bedstead. ‘And then you’ll be for it. I ’ope she flogs you within an inch of your life, you evil little vermin.’
She managed to yank Mercy off the bed and started slapping her, only to have the child slide through her hands like blancmange and continue raging on the floor, pummelling it with her fists.
The woman landed a violent kick in Mercy’s ribs and suddenly everything went quiet. Mercy gasped, then groaned. To Miss Eagle’s satisfaction she at last saw tears start to roll down that normally inscrutable little face. The child finally opened her mouth in a roar of pain.
‘What in the name of God is going on?’ Miss O’Donnell loomed in the doorway of the dormitory, walking stiffly as if she were attired from head to foot in cardboard. Her long black outfit was topped by a black feather-trimmed bonnet and her cheeks, already florid, were plastered with circles of rouge. She was quivering, more with nerves it seemed than anger.
‘D’you not know himself will be here on the hour? Get that child downstairs immediately and stop this horrible commotion she’s making!’
Miss Eagle blushed a nasty red. ‘I can’t. Since Amy Laski went she’s been impossible to handle.’
‘In God’s name she’s only – what? – seven years old and a third the size of you!’ Miss O’Donnell clearly had no intention of risking the pristine state of her garments either. ‘If you can’t sort her out go and get Dorothy Finch. She’s the only one can knock any sense into that one.’
Mercy was left alone on the cold stone floor. She raised her head and looked up, surrounded by the black bedsteads with their threadbare candlewick covers from which the colours had long been washed out.
Her large grey eyes looked dazed, as if she’d returned from another existence somewhere. She could find no satisfactory way of expressing her need, her sense of being utterly lost. She longed to be held, loved, cared for, yet so alone was she in the world, had seen so little of such care that she scarcely knew for what it was she hungered. Pain speared at her ribs. She lowered her head again and started banging her forehead with a steady rhythm against the floor, muttering to herself, ‘Hate you, hate you, hate you . . .’ This was how Dorothy Finch found her when she arrived, flustered, upstairs.
‘Mercy! Oh Mercy, you silly babby. You’ve got to stop this!’ She swooped down and pulled the girl off the floor hearing her give a squeal of pain. ‘Mr Hanley’s coming today and the minister’s already ’ere. They’re all waiting for you. Quick, wipe your face on this.’ The woman held out a hanky and brushed the dust from Mercy’s clothes. She avoided looking straight at Mercy, as if unable to face the raw pain in her eyes.
Dorothy had come to work at the Hanley Home when Mercy was still the smallest of infants, about four months old. She had watched her grow into a toddler with a solemn, appraising face and dead straight hair. Dorothy remembered how Mercy had gone everywhere with her hand thrust into Amy’s, looking up at her with adoration and absolute trust, trotting along beside her to keep up.
When Amy left, for three days Mercy had spoken barely a word. At first no one noticed, not even Dorothy, for she was always a withdrawn child. But one day when the older ones had gone to school, Dorothy found her lying on Amy’s old bed, absolutely silent and still, her face a blank.
‘Mercy?’ Dorothy had come upon her cheerfully. ‘You didn’t ought to be ’ere, eh, bab? You’ll get it from Miss O’Donnell if she catches you!’
Mercy raised her arm back behind her head and started banging her wrist, hard on the metal bedhead until she cried out and there were tears in her eyes.
‘What the ’ell d’you do that for?’ Dorothy shouted at her in alarm. ‘What you playing at? Go on, get off with you downstairs. I’ve got quite enough to get on with without you playing me up!’
The rages began and grew wilder. They could strike any time and burn through Mercy with an intensity that no one could control or penetrate. They found her throwing her body about, screaming, biting, banging her arms or legs or head on hard objects.
‘She’s got the devil in her,’ Miss O’Donnell decreed. ‘Plenty of hard work, that’s what she needs.’ She set out to file down Mercy’s will and temper by physically exhausting her. As soon as they were big enough to manage it the girls were expected to carry out nearly all the domestic chores. Mercy spent long periods of her days mopping floors, scrubbing floors, polishing floors. But still her unhappy soul flared in outbursts of pain and frustration. Only Dorothy could soothe her, by grasping the little girl’s flailing body, holding tight and talking about any old nonsense until the fight suddenly dropped out of her and she surrendered to being quiet, being held.
‘Come on, stand proper now,’ Dorothy urged. ‘Look at the state of you!’ With her deft fingers she straightened out Mercy’s clothes. There wasn’t time to retie Mercy’s plaits and the little girl looked quite dishevelled with her rumpled hair and blotchy face. She was small for her age, and with her pale skin and large eyes, very like a delicate, china doll.
‘Come on – Violet’s waiting,’ Dorothy fibbed. ‘She wants to walk in with you.’
Silent now, one hand clenched to her burning ribs, Mercy followed her along the corridor to the main stairs. From the dayroom they heard a man’s voice in the hall and the eager-to-please twittering of the women, ‘. . . so nice . . . such an honour . . .’ before the nod was given to file into the hall under the Union Jack.
Chapter Two
A visit to the orphanage by its benefactor Joseph Hanley was a rare occasion. His Home for Poor Girls (1881) had been built shortly after the Home for Poor Boys, a mile further out of the city. Joseph Hanley had been in his forties then, and was now a rather corpulent sixty-six-year-old, who had recently passed on his brass foundry on Rea Street to his twin sons and moved to the clearer air of the Staffordshire countryside.
Every so often he made ritual visits to his ‘ministries’. He was an intensely religious man, a passionate nonconformist who had incorporated in the homes a more than average number of washrooms to inculcate Cleanliness and Godliness, and established close ties with the Baptist church on the Witton Road, roughly halfway between his two institutions. On most Sundays the girls and boys – about fifty of each – were frogmarched along to morning worship, swelling the local congregation no end. Every six weeks or so the minister, Mr Ezra Vesey, held a service for them in the orphanage.
Mercy sat cross-legged on the floor which smelt of fresh polish. The staff sat on chairs at the ends of the rows of children. There were windows along one side of the hall and a longer one at the end through which could be seen young horse chestnut trees, the late summer sunlight casting th
e restless shadows of leaves on the parquet floor. It was on this window that Mercy kept her gaze throughout most of her time spent in the hall, on its shadowland of changing light.
Violet, who was eight, turned and peered at her to see if she was still crying, but the tears were wiped away now, and Mercy’s face solemn, eyes raised to the light. Violet elbowed her in the ribs to get her attention.
Mercy’s face contorted. ‘Ow!’ It was almost a yelp. ‘Gerroff!’
Immediately Miss Eagle’s head snapped round at the end of the row, her face wearing a vindictive scowl. You again, it said. I’m going to get you later on.
Mercy stared hard at the window. When I’m a princess, she thought, I’ll show all of them . . . I’ll have lovely clothes and a hat for every day of the year and my own carriage and Miss Eagle’ll be on ’er hands and knees doing my floors all day every day and I’ll have a great big horse whip to keep ’er in order. And I’ll keep the people I want living there. And the only one who can do nowt is Amy ’cos she’ll have her own rooms in my castle, with . . .
‘Stand up!’ Violet was pulling at her pinafore. Everyone else was on their feet and the almost tuneful piano started to thump out, ‘What a Friend we have in Jesus . . .’
The younger girls had been placed nearer the back of the hall, no doubt as they were expected to be less well behaved than the older ones. Standing on tiptoe Mercy could just glimpse Mr Hanley, crouched in a special chair at the front. She could see the bald, porridge-coloured circle at the back of his head and his stooped little shoulders. Every now and then he let out a wheezy cough.
Mr Vesey was a very tall man with almost no hair left on his head but lots on his face, as if it had somehow slipped down round his chin, and great big spidery hands. He sang much louder than everyone else except Miss O’Donnell who almost seemed to be vying with him, loudly and off-key, the feathers on her hat quivering.
‘This is the day that the Lord hath made!’ Mr Vesey declared in a nasal Rochdale accent. ‘We shall rejoice and be glad in it.’ His hands traced webs in the air.
