Victorian Maiden

by Gary Dolman

  When the gentlemen of the Friday Club had finished with the waif and stray girls, when Mrs Eire had sewn them up until she could sew them up no longer, and even Mr Otter had had his fill, they would disappear. They would disappear one day in Mrs Eire’s wagon with its padded sides and its double windows and its double locked doors. Some, she knew, would be taken away to Brimston to have their babies, or to accommodate the gentlemen there, or to have Mrs Eire ‘give ’em the iron.’ This she knew was some way to make their babies into cherubs for Jesus without them even having to be born. She had once asked Mrs Eire to give her the iron, to save her baby from being born, but Mrs Eire had just laughed.

  If they weren’t to have their babies, if they weren’t to accommodate the gentlemen visitors or be given the iron, the girls would be taken to York.

  Before they joined Starbeck or Knaresborough or even Harrogate to the railway, when she still believed that one and eight and eight and one surely made eighteen, it was necessary to travel to York to take a train. Mr James was a ship owner, and his ships carried passengers and freight from the ports of Yorkshire all around the Empire. Like Mr John Walton, Mr James was a great advocate of the railways. He even had his own railway wagons that carried his freight from the ports of Yorkshire all around the country.

  Sometimes Mr James’ freight was little waif and stray girls, and whenever this was the case, Mrs Eire would always fetch them to York. There, they would be loaded onto Mr James’ railway wagons, taken to a port, and sent on to a new life abroad.

  Like Mr Price, and like Alfred Roberts himself, Mr James was a great philanthropist. It was no surprise to anyone, therefore, that whenever he could, he would spread his philanthropy far and wide.

  On occasion, Mr James would feel inclined to bring waifs and strays back from other countries in his ships and in his special railway wagons. These would be little girls – and sometimes boys – that he bought from the slave markets and orphanages of the Orient; from Arabia, from India and from Canton, and they would be brought back to be given a ‘proper education.’

  Mr James would always laugh when he said they were to be given a proper education, as if it were a joke. He would engage Mrs Eire’s wagon to fetch them to the Annexe like so many lambs, and Mr Otter would take them downstairs.

  Whenever Mr James brought in a consignment of ‘native girls,’ as he called them, the Friday Club would be every bit as busy as the nights Miss Pearce came down from Budle. The girls looked exotic, otherworldly even, as Mr Otter led them shyly up the iron stairs to the slaughter. They were rarely able to speak English, but that never mattered. A scream was a scream whatever the language.

  When Mr James brought in a consignment of native girls, Lizzie would try to relax – just a little. She knew that on that Friday, the shadows on her door would stay still and the only thing that would disturb her would be the sounds of the girls. They would be as shrill and piercing as the railway engines thundering into the blackness.

  It was when she still believed that one and eight and eight and one might yet add up to eighteen that the railway had come both to Knaresborough and to Starbeck. But it was when she finally realised it did not, nor ever would, that Old Mother Shipton’s prophesy came horribly, horribly true the most.

  A carriage without horses had gone forever, and with it, it had taken something precious. But it had been an accident, it truly had. She had been foolish. Perhaps her head had been muddled from the chloral hydrate Mary had given her for her pain, but gone it had, and she had let this fill her world forever with woe.

  “So you see no hope of her daughter, of Sarah, coming, Atticus?”

  Roberts was rubbing Gladstone’s ear gently between his thumb and forefinger, and there was a steady, deep thump as the dog’s tail beat against the leather of the chair.

  “Very little, I’m afraid. Mr Elswick told us that Price used her, just as we expected that he would have done. It’s still too tender a wound to cut open again.”

  Roberts nodded sadly.

  “Mary will be distraught. She had quite set her heart on re-uniting my aunt and her daughter. I suppose the best we can hope for now is that we get our certificate of guardianship; that Aunt Elizabeth is discharged into my care and that in time this Elswick has a change of heart.”

  Lucie asked, “How is Miss Elizabeth, Doctor?”

  Roberts shook his head gravely.

  “She seems to be declining quite rapidly now. She keeps asking for her mama all the time. We’ve quite given up telling her that she’s dead. She gets so dreadfully upset, almost as if it’s only just happened, and then ten minutes later, she asks for her again. Her memory seems to have fixed itself on her mother’s death and on her time at Sessrum. Mary has been hoping for a while that she would regress back further, back to her time at Halcyon – her mother’s house – for example. She was happy back then. When she began to ask constantly for her mama, we thought that finally she had. But then she swears it’s Eighteen Eighty-One and she’s going to Heaven. Then she thinks she’s going to Hell. It’s awful, truly awful to watch, and very draining on poor Mary.”

  “May we see her?” Lucie asked.

  “Of course, but as I’ve warned you, she’s deteriorating quickly. In my opinion, she’s right on the edge now.”

  “I think she might be on the edge of lunacy.”

  The Medical Officer’s sharp whisper carried across the infirmary ward of the Knaresborough Union Workhouse, empty save for an old pauper woman wrapped tightly in a thin blanket on her narrow, wrought iron bed. She was trembling and gently sobbing as she lay curled on her thin, flock mattress.

  “She just keeps saying over and over that she wanted the world to end, that she was promised that the world would end.”

  “Lizzie has always wanted that to happen, ever since she was apprenticed down at the Castle Mill and someone told her about Mother Shipton’s prophesy.”

  Mary Lovell glanced across the ward at Elizabeth’s tiny, shivering form, and there was pain in her eyes.

  “What, that the world would end last year – in Eighteen Eighty-One?” the Master exclaimed. “Surely she didn’t really believe any of that Old-Mother-Shipton-bunkum, did she?”

  Mary nodded.

  “She believed it, or hoped and prayed for it anyway. Ever since her little daughter was adopted out from Starbeck, all she has ever wanted to do is to die. She tried to kill herself twice when she was eighteen, and she’s been waiting for the world to end ever since. Now that it hasn’t, it seems to have utterly crushed her.”

  “Is she becoming a crawler, do you think?” the Master asked.

  The Medical Officer wrinkled his brow in puzzlement.

  “A crawler, Mr Liddle? Whatever in this world is a crawler?”

  Mary answered.

  “A crawler, Mr Manders, is a pauper. It’s a pauper who has reached such a state of utter wretchedness that they hardly have the will to move. They just sit around and let the world do what it will with them. It is the saddest, the very saddest sight that you could ever possibly imagine.”

  Manders looked across the long lines of identical iron beds to where Elizabeth lay.

  “I don’t believe she is becoming a crawler then, no. She is, in my opinion, a depressive, maybe a manic-depressive. It will pass eventually if we rouse her and set her to work.”

  “It’s always passed before,” the Master agreed, “And when it does, she works like a demon. It just seems to happen more and more often as she gets older – and for longer each time. I hear she’s taken to fetching

  the bake house knives back to her ward to cut her own arms and breasts with them.”

  “She’s done it for years; it helps her to cope,” Mary explained.

  “It seems a peculiar way to cope if you ask me. Should we be restraining her then, do you think, for her own safety?”

  “No!” Mary’s retort echoed between the infirmary walls and Elizabeth started. “No restraints; it would be purgatory for her.”

  �
�Very well, very well, no restraints.”

  Liddle seemed taken aback by her outburst.

  “I could never understand why she’s still here though, why she was never married. She was supposed to have been quite beautiful when she was younger, and she has high intelligence and very nice, gentle manners. Surely there were offers, I mean other than the unpleasant suggestions she occasionally got from one or two of the vagrants, that is.”

  “There was one man,” Mary said quietly, glancing again at the wretched huddle of blankets. “He was called Tom and he was the foreman at the Castle Mills where Elizabeth was once apprenticed. He was kind and gentle, and desperately in love with her. Poor Lizzie; she could never understand that a man could be kind to her, that he could want her just for who she was. She hated herself, you see. She still does. That’s why she mutilates herself, and that’s why she wants to die.”

  Tom, yes, she remembered Tom – dear Tom; Tom, who knew everything and who thought she was a heroine ever as much as Grace Darling was. He had once walked from Knaresborough, all the way from the Castle Mill to the workhouse at Starbeck, and asked to see her after prayers one Sunday. It was not so long after her ‘unfortunate mishaps,’ as everyone had insisted on calling them.

  He had looked odd, all dressed up in his Sunday best, without his usual collarless shirt and ragged waistcoat. He looked just as he had done in Mr John Walton’s big parlour on the day he had invited them for tea, standing as if on hot coals. This time he was nervously passing a large bunch of red daisies and carnations from one enormous hand to the other. Mary had told her later that all flowers had meanings, and that the meanings of Tom’s flowers were that even though she didn’t know it, that she was truly beautiful, and that his heart yearned for her.

  In the cramped space between the infirmary beds, Tom had knelt down on one knee and asked her – Elizabeth Beatrice Wilson – to be his wife.

  But Tom’s words and the words of the flowers had been as a foreign language to her. Why did they speak of marriage, of love and of beauty? Didn’t they know, as everyone surely knew, that she was just a wicked, sinful harlot who had to be punished and punished until death’s blessed relief?

  She couldn’t find words of her own for Tom, dear Tom, with his eyes that were filled with kindness. Perhaps that was why he had asked her – because he was kind. But how could she yoke something so good to such badness? So she had wept and sent him away. And he, giant though he was, had wept too, as he gently laid the flowers next to her; had taken her fingers for just a moment in his own, had kissed them, and then had gone.

  But as she had lain in her bed through the long days that followed, hugging the flowers as if they might have been her poor, dead mama, they spoke to her still. They asked her if maybe, just maybe, dear Tom could have loved her, wicked and bad though she was. They told her that to Tom at least, she might truly be beautiful. And they reminded her of Old Rachel’s words on her very first day in the workhouse; of how one day, she would indeed be beautiful, and of how one day, some kind gentleman would surely come and make her a handsome husband.

  And as she hugged them as if they might have been her poor, dead mama, they made her believe it.

  Because she was not well enough to leave the infirmary ward, Mary had volunteered, nay, insisted, on going to Knaresborough, to the Castle Mill, to find dear Tom and to tell him that Elizabeth had been foolish, that her head was indeed still muddled from the chloral hydrate Mary had given her for her pain and that of course, she would be honoured to be married to a man such as he.

  But hours later, when she returned, Mary had wept too as she told her that, just like her mama, and Baby Albert and Baby Sarah before him, dear Tom had gone. He had returned, utterly distraught to the mill, had resigned his post to Mr John Walton, and had left. He had left on the very next railway train out of Knaresborough. And the worst of it all, the very worst part of it, was that no-one had known where he had gone.

  Chapter 34

  As she always seemed to be these days, Elizabeth was rocking endlessly to-and-fro as she sat perched on the very edge of her seat. And again, as she often seemed to be, she was quietly singing the lullaby under her breath. But it was only after Lucie and Atticus had been seated opposite her for several minutes that they came to realise that she was singing the same line over and over again.

  It was, “First to the poor-house, then to the grave,” and Mary was regarding her with something akin to miserable anguish.

  All at once Elizabeth seemed to notice them as they sat watching her.

  “One and eight and eight and one is Eighteen Hundred and Eighty-One,” she said to Lucie, and she smiled.

  Her smile was like the sun breaking from behind a cloud over the Holy Island, with the blue of her eyes just like the sparkling blue of the sea.

  “One and eight and eight and one and one and eight and eight and one… Where’s my mama? Where is Tom?”

  She looked at Atticus and her smile vanished, leaving only the empty shell that was the old woman she had become.

  “I’m not wicked, I’m not wicked, I’m not wicked.”

  Atticus looked suddenly flustered. He glanced to his wife in alarm and Lucie smiled patiently.

  “No, Lizzie, we know that you’re not wicked. I’m sure you will see Tom, and I’m certain that you will see your mama, very soon.”

  “Mama is very poorly,” Elizabeth continued, and then stilled for a moment, her face suddenly distraught.

  “Please don’t let her die. Uncle says she will die, she will die, she will die. I shall have to go to the Annexe.”

  She began to rock once more and to sing, loud and shrill, as if to smother her own words.

  “Lizzie, dearest, your mama did die; she died nearly fifty years ago. Please try to remember.”

  Mary sounded bone-weary, as if she was at the end of a very long and exhausting day. She reached forward and hugged the old woman, whose shocked and bewildered face peered back over her shoulder.

  Elizabeth’s eyes, bright and round, caught in a net of wrinkles, seemed to be staring into the Inferno itself.

  “Elizabeth, you must prepare yourself, because I have some truly dreadful news for you. I’m so sorry, but your mama – my sister – has died.”

  Her uncle was standing over her. She could see the deep, full circles of his eyes: eager, ravenous; mocking his words, and boring down into her very soul.

  “You are an orphan girl now, and you will have to come and live with me at Sessrum House. We can grieve for your mama, for Beatrice, together. I’ve had a special new annexe to the house built. You can sleep there, where we won’t be disturbed by the noise of the servants, and we can both remember your mama in peace. There will be lots of other children there too, and John, my son, will be there. You like John, don’t you? I shall sleep in the Annexe with you all. Your Aunt Agnes is very ill and so I shall look after you myself and make sure that you are being a very good little girl.

  You must always take care to be a good little girl for me, and always do everything exactly as I say, whatever I say. That way you can be an angel with Jesus and see your mama again some day, in Heaven.”

  She remembered the deep, black circles of his eyes creeping down her body, lingering long after his mouth had finished speaking the words. His arm had crept around her and his hand had pulled her tight against the soft flab of his body. Then he had released her with another long, hungry look that, paralysed with grief though she was, froze her very blood to ice.

  And then the arm had crept back and she could feel his fingers moving, moving all the time, pressing her and touching her as they stood in the wide, black ring around her mama’s open grave.

  She needed to force herself to believe that it was really her mama in there, in that coffin; that her warm, soft mama was now inside that hard, wooden shell.

  Mary her governess had told her that it was a special safety coffin, with a little bell house that protruded above the grave on a long, bronze tube. If her mama should
by some miracle still be alive, then pray God she would move and cause the little bell to ring the alarm across the graveyard.

  She stared and stared at the little bronze bell house. Mary had explained that the bell inside was connected to a cord which in turn was carried by the tube to her mama’s hands – those hands that were once so warm and soft, so full of a mother’s love; those hands that would stroke her hair and gently rock her to sleep while she sang her favourite lullaby.

  She stared and stared at the little bell house, ornamented with tiny bronze cherubs, and she prayed for a miracle; for the bell to ring, and for her mama to be alive.

  And it did! Just as the straps the bearers were using to lower the coffin into the grave fell slack, the bell-house slipped sharply to the side and the bell inside tinkled. The black ring of mourners began to murmur and whisper and her uncle’s hands stopped moving.

  The murmur died away and there was utter silence, save for one of the tall funeral horses snickering under its black, ostrich feather plume.

  “Pay no heed, pay no heed,” the vicar said, smiling, his hands spread in apology. “The coffin is merely settling upon the one beneath it. Rest assured the deceased has not been interred prematurely.”

  A murmur rose and settled once more, and her uncle’s restless fingers began to move again.

  She had been given special permission to attend her mama’s interment: a time of horror and anguish, when only men could generally be expected to hold their dignity. Her uncle had insisted that because she was his own sister’s daughter, she would be made of sterner stuff. He reassured her that if she stuck close by him, and allowed him to comfort her, and perhaps if he were to take her under his own great, black cape, she would indeed be able to cope admirably.

  He had, despite his own grief, fulfilled entirely his duties as a loving uncle and renowned philanthropist. He had swept his cape around her to shield her from the prying eyes and carnivorous stares of the undertaker’s mutes. He had held her tight as she had wept. He had even taken the precaution of gently massaging her chest under his cape in order to prevent her very heart from breaking in sorrow and grief. And then he had taken her in his own, black carriage, which led the procession back to Sessrum House for the funeral feast.