An Orphan's Secret

by Maggie Hope

  ‘Look what I found – snowdrops!’ cried Alice as she came running back holding out a tiny bouquet. ‘Aren’t they bonny?’

  ‘Oh, aye, they are.’ Meg smiled in delight at the pure white flowers against the dark green of the leaves. ‘They’re real bonny, Alice.’ But quick as a flash, Tucker had woken up and was grabbing at the flowers, crushing them in his tiny fists before Alice had a chance to draw them away from him.

  ‘Tucker!’ she cried, but it was too late. The flower heads lay bruised and broken on the grass. ‘Tucker, you’ve spoilt them now, haven’t you?’

  ‘Ma-am!’ he wailed. Seeing both his aunt and his mother annoyed with him, he stuck out his bottom lip and took a deep breath preparing to scream at the top of his lungs. The peace of the day was shattered. It took them ten minutes to pacify Tucker and then it was time to climb the steep bank into town to meet the carrier.

  ‘Did you enjoy the look out?’ asked Alice as they jogged along in the cart, both babies sleeping like cherubs.

  ‘It was grand,’ declared Meg, ‘I wouldn’t have got out but for you, Alice, and I’m grateful, I am.’

  ‘I’ve enjoyed it an’ all.’

  Just then Meg’s attention was caught by two men standing by a farm gate, one obviously a farmer. The other was tall and dark-haired. He wore shabby riding clothes but there was something in the set of his shoulders and the way the older man was talking to him which set him apart as a gentleman. He turned to watch the cart come trundling up and for a split second his eyes met Meg’s, dark eyes they were, and then his gaze went from her to Alice and he took on a slightly puzzled look.

  The cart lurched to a halt and the carrier spoke to the farmer.

  ‘I’ll be round this way tomorrow if you want anything special bringing, Farmer Teasdale.’

  Meg had time to look properly at the farmer’s companion. She couldn’t think what it was about him, but she thought she had seen him before. He had a pleasant open face and lovely dark eyes. Surely if she had seen him before she would have remembered him? It was a puzzle . . .

  ‘Gee up!’

  The carrier was setting off again and Meg was still puzzling about it. She risked a backward glance and saw the young man staring after them. She almost felt like putting up a hand to wave to him, make some acknowledgement, at least. Daft! she said to herself, and turned to her sister.

  ‘Did you know who that was?’ she asked Alice, her question unheard by the carrier as the wheels rumbled on loudly.

  ‘Who? Farmer Teasdale?’

  ‘No, the other one, the man with him,’ said Meg.

  ‘I didn’t notice,’ answered Alice, surprising Meg who thought that any girl would have noticed the man with Farmer Teasdale. ‘Why, like?’

  ‘Oh, nothing, I just wondered,’ Meg answered, and they said no more about it.

  But she remembered the young man. And in bed that night, when Wesley took her for the first time since Robert was born, it was the stranger’s face which swam before her eyes and she was ashamed afterwards so that she tried to be especially understanding with Wesley. Yet the memory lingered and she knew it was linked to another, more elusive one. She thought of it at different times during the day as she worked at the possing stick, thumping clothes through soapy water, or did the thousand and one other chores which made up her day.

  * * *

  But the happenings of the next few months kept all Meg’s fanciful thoughts at bay. Fever was sweeping the colliery rows, scarlet fever which decimated the children and even took some of the adults. The Cornish babies both fell victim to the dread disease in July, but whereas Tucker returned from the fever hospital thinner and paler and more fractious, Robert did not return at all.

  He was but six months old when he died of the fever and Meg four months pregnant with her third child. Wesley and Dick Adamson went to the fever hospital to bring the tiny coffin home for burial.

  The funeral was quiet, there had been so many such for children in the last few weeks. Dolly Bates came, and Alice and Auntie Phoebe and Uncle Tot, but no one else apart from the parents and the minister.

  Meg stood by the tiny grave and it was Alice who took her arm to support her. Wesley stood separate from them, his face hard and impassive as the coffin was lowered into the earth. And afterwards he strode away by himself.

  Auntie Phoebe sniffed and lifted her chin in disapproval.

  ‘Gone to meet his marras in the Black Boy, I reckon,’ she said tartly.

  ‘Whisht, Phoebe, the lad has a right to go for a drink if he wants,’ said Uncle Tot. He took Meg’s other arm. ‘Howay, lass, let’s get you home. You have to think of the bairn that’s left now.’ And Meg was glad of his strong arm as they turned away from the grave, and walked back to the rows.

  So many little graves there were, she thought dumbly. Oh, God, what is it all for? Here she was, only just twenty-one, with a baby at home and one dead in the earth. And another on the way, a tiny tremor inside her womb reminded her.

  Alice stayed with Meg until the clock struck ten. They sat on either side of the kitchen range, Alice in the rocking-chair where she had nursed the still weak and fretful Tucker to sleep before taking him up to bed. Meg sat in the hard chair opposite, staring into the fire until it became quite dark. Alice watched her, her own young heart throbbing with pity at the sorrow of her sister. They spoke little, just sat there in companionable silence, until at last Alice stirred.

  ‘I’d better be getting home now, Meg,’ she said. ‘Shall I light the lamp before I go?

  Meg looked up, startled out of her melancholy thoughts.

  ‘Oh, Alice,’ she said, ‘I was going to make you some supper. The time’s just run away with me tonight, I didn’t realise it was so late.’ She rose from the chair and lifted the kettle, testing its weight to see if there was enough water in it before putting it forward on to the coals.

  ‘No, don’t make any for me, I’ll get some when I get home,’ Alice said quickly. ‘I’d better be on my way, Meg. There’s bait to put up for Miles, he’s on fore shift the night.’ She picked up her shawl and put it round her shoulders before turning back. ‘Shall I light the lamp, then?’

  ‘No, don’t, Alice. There’s only me and I can see enough by the firelight. If I want to see anything better, I’ve a candle on the mantel shelf.’ Meg sank down again into her chair and sighed, almost as though the effort of rising to her feet had been too much for her.

  ‘I don’t like leaving you on your own.’ Alice’s face was full of concern. ‘I wonder if Wesley will be long?’

  What Alice meant, Meg understood only too well, was that she didn’t want to be here when he came home. For if he came home and had been drinking, he could be nasty with Meg because her sister was there and she’d had enough to deal with for one night. But, on the other hand, Alice didn’t want her sister sitting on her own on the evening of her baby’s funeral.

  ‘You go, pet,’ said Meg, ‘I’ll be fine. I’ll go to bed myself as soon as Wes comes in.’

  Alice hesitated but in the end left, walking home through rows which seemed strange to her with their alternating dark and shade for they had recently been illuminated with gas lamps which cast their eerie glow every few yards.

  On her walk from George Row to Pasture Row, sorrow and sympathy for Meg formed a hard knot in her stomach which turned to anger the nearer to home she drew.

  ‘I’ve lost all patience with them,’ she said aloud, and her feet quickened as she turned into the back street of Pasture Row. ‘I’ll have it out with the lads first chance I get, I will.’ The resolve hardened in her. She determined she was going to have her say about this even if it did get her into trouble.

  The chance came almost at once. Miles and Jack Boy were sitting in the kitchen, Miles in his pit clothes ready for work and Jack Boy in his shirt sleeves, sitting at the table reading the Auckland Chronicle. Alice wasted no time in getting down to it.

  ‘I think you two should be bloody well ashamed of yourselves,’
she said flatly as she came through the door and hung her shawl up on the hook behind it.

  Jack Boy and Miles looked up in surprise, shock even, at hearing a young lass like Alice swear.

  ‘Our Alice!’ Miles reproached.

  ‘Why, man, it’s enough to make a saint swear,’ she snapped. ‘There you two sit without a care in the world at all, and your sister just buried her babby. You haven’t even the sense to go to the funeral.’

  ‘Aw, Alice! You know Da wouldn’t like it,’ said Miles, but both he and Jack Boy went a bright red and Jack Boy looked quickly down at his paper, folding it in two and placing it carefully to one side.

  ‘You’re old enough to decide for yourselves, both of you. Da never notices what you do any road. An’ you must know our Meg hasn’t got it easy, not with that Wesley Cornish. Why, man, if it hadn’t been for Uncle Tot, I don’t know how she would have got back from the funeral. Two brothers and not one to support her at a time like this.’

  ‘Why, where was Wes? Did he not go to his own bairn’s funeral?’ Jack Boy’s eyes opened wide in surprise and a dawning anger.

  ‘Oh, aye, he went to the funeral, but then he went straight out drinking with that Dick Adamson. I tell you, man, I’ve just come away from our Meg’s and her useless man isn’t back yet.’

  Alice started banging about the kitchen, filling the kettle for tea and fetching out the bread and jam to make sandwiches for Miles’s bait tin. All her movements showed her fury: the way she thrust the kettle on the coals, the way she almost threw the bait tin on the table. She looked a proper virago to the boys with her blazing eyes and tightly compressed lips.

  ‘I think it’s time you two did something for our Meg, after all she’s done for you. An’ it’s about time you had a word with Da. Our Meg’s married now. Who do you think’s going to remember or even care how it was she came to get married? She was like a mother to you two an’ all, she was. You’re old enough to know how young she was herself when she had to take Mam’s place.’

  The brothers looked at one another, both of them feeling a trifle sheepish. It was true, everything Alice said, and they knew it.

  ‘I’ll call in the morn,’ said Miles after a minute’s embarrassed silence. ‘On my way home from the pit I’ll call in, tell her I’m sorry about the babby, like.’

  Jack Boy cleared his throat. ‘Aye,’ he mumbled, ‘me an’ all.’ He rose from the table and stretched his arms to the ceiling, yawning hugely, his expression nonchalant. Almost, thought Alice, as though it was nothing unusual, just something he did most days. She couldn’t believe how easy it had been to get them to cave in on this. She should try playing war with them more often.

  ‘I’m off to bed,’ said Jack Boy, moving towards the staircase. Then he halted and turned to face them both.

  ‘An’ another thing, our Alice,’ he said, as though it had been him laying down the law a minute or two ago, ‘another thing. You can call me Jackie from now on, like me marras do, I’m not a bairn any longer, I know when you mean me or Da.’

  Alice nodded, unsmiling. It was true, he was no longer little Jack, he was a man now and beginning to face up to the real world.

  Nineteen

  It was twelve o’clock when Wesley came home and Meg by that time had fallen into an exhausted sleep in her chair by the fire. She woke with a start as he came in the door, lurching from side to side and wafting before him the stench of his beery breath, making her feel sick and ill, compounding her aching misery.

  ‘You’re drunk,’ she said flatly, watching him as he flopped down in a chair.

  ‘Aye, I am,’ Wesley replied equably.

  ‘On the day of your babby’s funeral an’ all, you should be ashamed!’

  ‘Ashamed, is it? Me ashamed! You mind your tongue, lass, or I’ll mind it for you.’ Wesley glowered, his quick temper already rising. But Meg was past seeing any danger signals. She needed to vent her anger at Wesley and the world, needed to break through the ball of desolate misery which was threatening to choke her.

  For while she was asleep she had dreamed of the day she had spent in Auckland. Not so long ago, though it seemed an age. She was with Alice and the babies, down on the river bank where the Gaunless flowed into the Wear. And she had woken still feeling the weight of little Robert in her arms, smiling down into his tiny face. And then Wesley had come in and spoilt it. She had to face the reality of the future with no baby Robert to hold in her arms. And she agonized about whether she should have weaned Tucker earlier. Had Robert succumbed to the scarlet fever because he wasn’t getting sufficient milk? Had she done something else wrong in her care of him?

  ‘I have a perfect right to go for a drink, I’ve lost me babby and I had to get out for a drink,’ Wesley stated, his face red with anger. ‘Now, get me a bite of supper, woman, an’ don’t be so impittent. Who do you think you’re talking to?’

  Meg took the kettle and went into the pantry to fill it from the water bucket. Her hand shook as she lifted the dipper so that water splashed over on to the floor. She felt dizzy and sick and her head throbbed.

  ‘You have to go to work in the morning, you’re on back shift, you should have come home sooner,’ she said, and bent over the fire to rake it together the better to boil the kettle.

  The next moment she felt his fingers on her shoulder and he pulled her round so violently that the kettle went flying out of her hand to clatter against the wall and fall to the ground, leaving a wet, sooty stain on the lime-washed plaster.

  ‘I should have, should I?’ Wesley snarled, and lifting his fist he slammed it into the side of her face so that if he hadn’t been holding her up she would have gone the way of the kettle.

  ‘Wes!’

  Meg’s head rocked back and for a moment she was so dazed she hardly heard her own strangled cry. But it was enough to wake Tucker in his bed upstairs and he set up a frightened howling.

  ‘Mam, mam, mam!’

  Wesley brought his face close to hers, glaring at her, his eyes red-rimmed and his cheeks suffused with fury.

  ‘I should have done that a long time since!’ he shouted. ‘What you need is a bit of stick, my lass. Mebbe if I’d done it sooner you wouldn’t have neglected the babby, let him catch the fever. But, by, I’ve learned me lesson, I have, and from now on you’ll have to watch your step or I’ll take me belt to you.’ He released his grip on her shoulder and flung her down on the floor, himself sitting back down at the table.

  Meg lay for a minute or two, her ear ringing from the blow, unable even to think straight until Wesley pushed his foot roughly into her back.

  ‘Get yourself up and see to the supper,’ he said. ‘Don’t lie there sulking like you’ve been hurt, or by God I’m telling you, you will be hurt before I’m done with you.’

  Upstairs, Tucker’s terrified screaming grew louder and louder and Dolly Bates’s husband knocked on the wall with the poker.

  ‘What’s going on in there?’ he shouted. ‘Can’t a man have a bit of rest when he comes in from the pit?’

  ‘Now look, you’ve gone and disturbed the neighbours,’ said Wesley.

  Shakily, Meg got to her feet. The kettle was boiling and she brewed Wesley a pot of tea and brought him the remains of a meat pie from the pantry. She worked like an automaton, going through the motions only, until the fog in her head gradually cleared and the throbbing lessened.

  ‘I should think so an’ all,’ said Wesley smugly. ‘Now get away up and see to the bairn. I’m telling you, Meg, if you let another bairn of mine go because you don’t look after it properly, I’ll swing for you, I surely will.’

  She didn’t answer, just climbed the stairs and lifted the hiccuping, shaking Tucker from his bed. Sitting down, she offered him her breast, though he had been weaned for a month or more now. But it was the only way she could think of to comfort him quickly. Tucker cuddled into her, holding himself tightly against her, and she crooned softly to him, rocking him gently backwards and forwards until at last he quietened, g
iving only an occasional sob. His tear-beaded eyelashes drooped and he fell asleep, comforted.

  * * *

  Meg was ironing on the kitchen table when the knock on the door came the following morning. She was surprised. It was early for Alice, only nine o’clock. Surely she would be busy this time of the morning? But her heart lightened as she took the flat iron back to the fire and scooped Tucker up in her arms, just in case. Now he was more steady on his feet he was like lightning, into everything before she could catch him usually.

  ‘Morning, Meg.’

  ‘Miles!’ she gasped, holding on to Tucker with both hands as he struggled to be free.

  ‘I thought . . . I thought I would just look in and see how you are like,’ Miles mumbled, and even through the streaks of coal dirt on his cheeks she could see his face reddening.

  ‘Miles, Miles. Howay in, lad, howay through to the kitchen.’

  Meg stood back to let her younger brother into the house and led him through to the kitchen. Once there, he stood awkwardly before the range, not sure what to do. They gazed at each other for a long moment until Meg let Tucker, who had been fighting heroically to wriggle out of her arms, down on to the floor.

  ‘Sit down, lad, sit down,’ she said, beginning to smile until she suddenly thought of something. ‘There’s nothing wrong, is there, at home I mean? Nothing’s happened, has it, not an accident at the pit?’ Her eyes were beginning to widen in horror, for surely after all this time something drastic must have happened to bring Miles round to her door?

  ‘No, no, nothing’s up,’ he said quickly. ‘I thought I’d just call in on my way back from the pit, you know, tell you I was sorry about the bairn.’

  ‘Oh, yes, little Robert.’ Meg’s smile dimmed for a moment as the sorrow threatened to overwhelm her again. She fought against it.

  ‘Eeh, Miles, I’m that glad to see you, I am. Sit down, lad, sit down and I’ll make some tea.’

  ‘I’m in me pit clothes,’ he objected, looking at the clean cushion on the chair.