Victorian Maiden

by Gary Dolman

  The workhouse – but surely she should have got there by now. To quell her mounting panic, she forced herself to count the great beech trees as she passed them at the roadside: ten, fifteen, twenty. Had she missed it? Was there really a workhouse at Starbeck at all? The women at Brimston had said – had promised her – that there was. The icy hand of doubt suddenly gripped her innards. What if they were lying? What if they were just being wicked and really there wasn’t a workhouse in Starbeck at all. She couldn’t bear the thought of going back to Sessrum House, to her Uncle Alfie and his Annexe, and to the gentlemen of the Friday Club. And she wouldn’t, she definitely would not, go back to Brimston and let her baby be taken away again by the baby farmers to die without its mama.

  She would have to live on the streets. There would be nothing else for it. But what if she did have to whore herself to live, like Mary had said she would? She remembered how she could make it seem as if the gentlemen were doing things to a different little girl, how she could take her mind, the part that was really her, the real Elizabeth, off to another altogether different place. She could do it if she had to. She could be a whore if it meant her baby would be safe. All of the gentlemen seemed to want her, even the ones at Brimston who didn’t say they needed to punish her. They often asked for her by name, which meant that Mrs. Eire could even charge them extra. Just so long as her baby was safe, so long as it could stay with her where she could love it and care for it and be with it always, then that was all that truly mattered.

  And then, Glory Be! There it was: the Harrogate Workhouse on the outskirts of Starbeck. She almost collapsed onto the pavement in relief.

  ‘Oh, thank you, Lord Jesus, and thank you Mama, if you really are in Heaven with Papa, and not being punished for all eternity in the Eighth Circle of the Inferno. Thank you for guiding my steps to here. As soon as I’m a good enough girl to be allowed into Heaven, please, please let me die. Please come for me and for my perfect, little baby.’

  Prayer of grateful thanks said, she opened her eyes once more and looked. The Harrogate Workhouse was a large and ornate building, set off the main road behind a high stone wall. The towering, pointed facade reminded her strongly of the carved African headdress that her uncle kept in the library. He had brought it back from a trip to Egypt many years ago, and it both fascinated and repelled her. Uncle Alfie had said that the Africans believed that it connected them to the ancestors of their family, whose spirits would either haunt them or protect them, or even, as he said with a rare chuckle, do both.

  An elderly, tired-looking woman in a shapeless grey dress and poke bonnet was bent over a gorse brush, sweeping the cobbled yard. She seemed to sense that she was being watched and suddenly glanced up. Elizabeth froze as she stood peering at her through the bars of the big iron gates.

  “Come t’ gawp at t’ paupers, have we, missy? I expect we make a fine mornin’s entertainment for a young lady such as ye’self, an’ no mistake.”

  With her heart jumping like a live thing in her chest, Elizabeth walked forward, forward between the gates that magically seemed to part before her, and into the yard.

  She was in.

  “Please, ma’am, I beg your pardon. I didn’t mean to gawp at you. I should rather like to come and live in the workhouse and be a pauper too. I’m not a wicked girl, I’m really not.”

  The woman erupted in a peel of laughter, which made Elizabeth start.

  “Ma’am now is it? Wan’ t’ be a pauper, do we, with our beautiful clothes and our beautiful hair and our silver necklace around our beautiful neck? It looks like ye’ve a long way to fall yet, li’le miss, afore ye could ever be a pauper like me.”

  Elizabeth curtsied politely, just as her mama had taught her to do.

  “If you please, ma’am, I am already fallen. I have lived at Mrs Eire’s Home for Fallen Women and Girls at Brimston, but I couldn’t bear it there. My mama and papa are dead and my uncle and his gentlemen friends are cruel to me, although I know that they are just trying to stop me from being wicked. But I’m not truly wicked, ma’am, honest I’m not.”

  Something seemed to resonate deep within the world-weary shadows in the old woman’s eyes. Her sneer became a gentle smile and she laid her broom down onto the cobbles.

  “In that case, come with me, me pretty lamb, and I’ll take ye to meet t’ Matron. What’s thy name?”

  Elizabeth stopped to bob a curtsey again.

  “It’s Elizabeth, ma’am, Elizabeth Beatrice Wilson, but most people call me Lizzie.”

  “Well, Lizzie, my name is Rachel, and I’ve lived as an inmate at this ’ere workhouse since i’ were firs’ built, so most people call me Old Rachel. Ye don’ need t’ curtsey for a pauper woman like me but it migh’ be as well to do so for Mrs Dixon, t’ Matron. She can be stern, but she’s a good heart in her. Do ye like hard work?”

  “Yes, Rachel, I like hard work very much, thank you.”

  “Well in that case, ye should get along jus’ fine ’ere. Ye say that ye’ve lived a’ Mrs Eire’s place?”

  “Yes, Rachel, but not for long; it was just while I… just while…”

  “Jus’ while ye had ye baby?”

  “Yes, ma’am, it was just while I had Baby Albert.”

  “And where is Baby Albert now?”

  “He’s safe in Heaven with the Lord Jesus and my mama and papa.”

  “Oh, Lizzie, and ye jus’ a child! Who was Baby Albert’s daddy, do ye know?”

  Elizabeth shook her head quickly and Old Rachel laid her skinny arm across her shoulder.

  “We know all ’bout Mrs Eire ’ere, Lizzie.”

  Her old voice was soothing in a way Lizzie had not truly known since her mama was alive.

  “She used t’ come t’ workhouse now and again, pretendin’ t’ be an in-and-out.”

  “I beg your pardon, Rachel but I’m not certain what an, ‘in-and-out,’ is.”

  Old Rachel chuckled.

  “Such nice manners on thee: An’ ‘in-and-out’s’ a vagrant, Lizzie, a tramp, someone who stays ’ere jus’ for a night or two and then disappears off on their way. Mrs Eire used t’ come in as an in-and-out, lookin’ for young mothers and widows, and ‘specially young girls t’ turn their ear. They would abscond, or discharge themsens with their silly ’eads full o’ promises of work or marriage or money or such like. Mostly though, they’d end up in various gentlemen’s beds, or be sent o’erseas to work in plantations and in other gentlemen’s beds. Mrs Dixon got wise t’ her ways, she did. She sent her off wit’ sharp edge of her tongue. Warned all t’ other workhouses round abou’ here too, she did, Ripon and Knaresborough and Scriven. Many a poor, dizzy-headed girl is a lot better off a-cause o’ Mrs Dixon, an’ many a gentleman’s bed t’ colder and t’ emptier.”

  “Where does Mrs Eire get the girls from now?”

  “All manner o’ places, Lizzie; Mrs Eire’s not one t’ be put off easily. She gets ’em from apprentice houses an’ t’ shops where t’ servant girls run for their errands. Nurse girls are always a favourite with her, I hear; there are always lots on ’em walkin’ t’ Stray wit’ their mistress’ bairns in perambulators. She knows fine they’re generally on their own an’ that they’re nearly all virgins. Virgins are where Mrs Eire can get ’er best money. Once t’ gentlemen ’ave ’ad their way with ’em, well then… there’s always Brimston an’ more money t’ be ’ad from ’em there.”

  “I preferred the gentlemen at Brimston to the ones at…”

  She clapped her hand to her mouth, mortified at what she had almost let slip. Rachel seemed kind to be sure but she was still virtually a complete stranger.

  But Old Rachel swept her into a tight embrace. Inside the cocoon of gnarled, wrinkled old arms and coarse, stiff cloth, Elizabeth felt just a little of the pain of her life begin to seep away.

  “Hush, child. I know, I know. With these old eyes, I’ve seen all manner o’ things that shouldn’ happen under God’s keepin’. I know wha’ men can do to a helpless li’le child they’
re meant to protect an’ cherish; aye, and laugh about it too. But ye are safe now, Lizzie. Mrs Dixon an’ I’ll keep ye safe an’ look after ye an’ your baby jus’ fine here.”

  “Oh, Rachel, I do believe that you’ll keep me safe, I truly do. It’s just that I can’t seem to get it all out of my head. Everything keeps whirling around and around like a merry-go-round.”

  “Ye will, Lizzie, ye will, wi’ good hard work an’ that there baby out of yer belly an’ into t’ sunshine.”

  Elizabeth felt the dry, cracked lips press onto her forehead just as her legs threatened to give way as if they had turned to india-rubber.

  “How do you know about my baby?” she whispered.

  Rachel chuckled again.

  “’Cause I work in t’ infirmary, me pretty child, and in t’ lyin’-in room, and I’ve delivered hundreds o’ babies in t’ years I’ve been ’ere.” She sighed deeply. “An’ in that time, Lizzie, I’ll tell thee straight: I’ve seen more than a few pretty young lambs like ye, who’d rather come an’ sell their soul t’ a poor-law workhouse than be ill-used a’ home.”

  She stepped back and forced her lined, toothless, old face into a reassuring grin.

  “Look now, girl, ye’ve gone an’ quite crumpled them fine clothes o’ yours. ’Ere, let’s straighten ye out an’ then we’ll in an’ see Mrs Dixon.”

  Chapter 19

  She followed Old Rachel towards the little entrance porch under the great, ornate facade of the workhouse. It was the mouth of the African mask she was so reminded of, and it never moved as it swallowed her whole.

  In spite of the warmth of the bright summer morning outside, as Lizzie entered the bowels of the workhouse, she was engulfed by a sudden gloom and icy chill that made her skin creep. And as she gazed about, the chill seemed to penetrate further than her skin; it seemed to seep deep inside her chest and freeze her very heart.

  From without, Starbeck Workhouse was a handsome, well proportioned, even grand building, but from within it was bleak, austere and labyrinthine. The floors were of great, cold stone flags, a little like the pavements of Harrogate, but without the warming sun. The walls and ceilings had no plaster, no paint and no hangings; only a thick, smothering layer of stark, white lime-wash, and instead of paintings and portraits, there were terse, official notices prescribing what every part of her life was now going to be.

  “Jump in ’ere, Lizzie, while I fetch Matron or t’ Master.”

  Rachel was pointing through a doorway into a little room beyond. A polished, brass plaque on the wall announced it as the ‘Receiving Office,’ so wide-eyed and obedient, she walked inside.

  The Receiving Office was a small and very square room, with a large sash window on one side looking out over the part-swept front yard, and the great stone boundary wall beyond. The wall seemed so much further away, yet so much higher, from in here. After the dark of the corridor, the room was oppressively bright.

  Several notices punctuated the wall opposite, and the sight of one of these in particular flooded her instantly with cold, visceral dread. It was headed by the words, ‘Punishments for the Misbehaviour of Paupers,’ and Elizabeth’s eyes swept quickly down it. They swept down it so fast that she could pick out only the occasional word, almost as if somehow, those words might not be as real, might not be as true, that way.

  Her eyes searched in horror for anything that might hint at the punishments Uncle Alfie or his gentlemen friends meted out. And there it was. Dear Lord there it was. Amongst all of the withholding of cheese and butter, or tea or sugar; amid all the warnings of various confinements in the refractory cell, there were the words: ‘…the pauper may be publically whipped.’ She shivered as she remembered once more the big room at Brimston and the mess of blood and wheals that was the fallen girl’s back. That memory changed instantly into a terrifying image of her mama, tramping despairingly around the Eighth Circle of Hell being whipped on and on by demons. Then she saw herself, stripped naked in front of Old Rachel and hundreds of other paupers, and chained to a rack. There would be no circumspection. They would surely all see her lumpy belly, see its faint, pink marks where it had once been stretched so tight and they would know for certain what a wicked, wicked creature she really was.

  “Acquainting ourselves with the rules and regulations already, are we?”

  She started and whirled round. A small, intelligent-looking man was standing in front of her, regarding her shrewdly. Old Rachel was behind him smiling a smile of encouragement with her lovely, toothless old face.

  “I am Mr Dixon,” the man continued, “And I am the Master of the Harrogate Workhouse. Rachel here has told me that you entertain some notion of admittance as an inmate?”

  “That is quite correct, sir.”

  Elizabeth bobbed her nervous curtsey. The Master’s eyes followed her movements with rapt attention.

  “If I may say so, Miss…”

  “Elizabeth Beatrice Wilson if you please, sir.”

  She curtsied once again.

  “If I may say so, Miss Elizabeth Beatrice Wilson, you are not in our usual line of inmates.”

  “Am I not, sir?”

  Dread took a cold grip on her gullet.

  “No indeed. However, Rachel has told me that you are an orphan and that you wish for relief to escape your uncle’s cruel punishments. Is that correct?”

  His eyes seemed to bore into hers, and instinctively, she reached up and caught her silver crucifix between her fingertips.

  “Yes, sir, if you please.”

  She was watching the Master’s eyes, waiting for them to begin to creep down her body as all men’s eyes did. And then they did, and dread took her in its hands and squeezed and squeezed and squeezed.

  “How old are you, Elizabeth?” the Master asked.

  “I am fifteen years old, sir.”

  “That is convenient; I thought perhaps you might be older. Rachel, would you have a bath prepared for her? Cold taps first, mind you and ninety-five degrees by the thermometer. I shall be supervising her myself as she’s not yet sixteen. Mrs Dixon is occupied at present and can’t be broke off. After that you may see to her hair and clothes, and then take her up to the receiving ward for the Medical Officer to examine her.”

  “Aye, Mr Dixon,” said Rachel, then: “Come, Lizzie, let me take ye t’ Ablutions Room; I’ll get t’ men to fill thee a bath.”

  She could feel her body trembling, feel the myriad pinpricks of goose flesh pimple her naked skin. The hem of the Master’s jacket brushed lightly against her thigh as he stooped across her and she shuddered and cried out.

  “A little over ninety-three degrees, Rachel, so that will do quite nicely for her.”

  Mr Dixon stood and flicked a drop of bathwater deftly from the bulb of his thermometer. He turned and his eyes slid once more down her naked body. She shuddered again and shielded herself with her arms and her hands, writhing in her humiliation like some worm caught in a salt pit.

  “Very well, Wilson, into the bath you go. I don’t suppose for one moment that you actually need one, but regulations are regulations.”

  Old Rachel’s horny fingers steered her into the water. It was just tepid, and she could feel it creeping inexorably up every inch of her skin as she lowered herself down into the tub.

  “I bath every Saturday, sir,” she ventured nervously, “And wash my face and hands each morning.”

  The Master chuckled and held out a large, red block.

  “I don’t doubt it, Wilson, but not with this though, I’d wager. Take it; it’s carbolic soap.”

  He held the block out to her, then, just as her fingers peeled from her skin to take it, he pulled it tantalisingly out of reach.

  “Take it,” he repeated, grinning horribly.

  Elizabeth hesitated; she so needed to be admitted; for her baby to be safe.

  The Master raised his eyebrows and scowled, and she vacillated for just a second longer before she reached out and snatched it from his hand. The chill air of the room waft
ed against her naked breast, where her hand had been a second before. The Master chuckled again, and this time she sensed the catch in it, that awful catch that gentlemen have when they intend to be cruel. She curled up tight and began to rock gently to-and-fro in the water, waiting for the brutal touch of his hands, of his mouth, of…

  “Make sure she uses the carbolic, Rachel. You know how the Medical Officer likes to smell it on his new arrivals.”

  Then the door clicked and he was gone.

  “Don’ mind ’im, Lizzie.”

  She started violently as Old Rachel’s fingers touched her back. They were slick and lumpy with soap, and her nose was filled with the sudden pungent aroma of the carbolic.

  “Mr Dixon likes ye t’ know that he’s t’ Master ’ere an’ that ye be only an inmate, but upon my soul, ’e would never touch ye.”

  Elizabeth sat patiently in the bathtub as Rachel washed the fine perfume and powder of Sessrum House from her skin and replaced it with the coarse, brutal stench of carbolic. And then she sat patiently on a stool as her long, blonde tresses were carefully cut away.

  “We’ll get a pretty penny for these, Lizzie,” Rachel cackled as she laid the handfuls of hair carefully onto a sheet of new, brown paper.

  “You’ll sell it, you mean; you’ll sell my hair?” Elizabeth was astounded.

  “I winnet, child, but t’ poor-law will. It’ll go to be made into wigs for t’ fine, old ladies o’ Harrogate to make ’em look pretty.”