by Lizzie Lane
Elizabeth gratefully accepted her writing slope, and even if her thin legs ached a little under its weight, she determined to bear it. A young girl’s hopes and dreams depended on the letters she was about to write to be given to Mr Collier, the very good man who collected the letters and kept the records and archives of Sycamore Lane Workhouse. All being well, he would send them on, one to Ireland, one to the Reverend Darby and one to be sent to Miss Magdalena Brodie.
Chapter Eleven
Magda
Although Magda watched for the postman every day, there was nothing for her.
‘Was she very old?’ Danny asked her.
‘I suppose so.’
She knew he was hinting gently that Miss Burton was dead.
‘Chin up. What else you got on yer list?’
Magda got the piece of paper out of her pocket and smoothed it flat on her lap.
‘Relatives. The only one I can ask is Uncle James, but he’s still at sea.’
‘When’s he next due?’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. He doesn’t come home that much.’
Danny grinned. ‘Neither would I if I was married to a woman like yer Aunt Bridget.’
Magda grinned at him. ‘You’re a wicked boy, Danny Rossi. Three Hail Marys for you …’
‘Yeah, and a bloody Norah!’
They laughed. Her neck stretched like a swan he’d once seen on the Thames when she laughed. She wasn’t quite as skinny as she used to be and there was more colour in her face since she’d started school.
Magda sighed. ‘I wonder if I’ll ever find them.’
He patted her hand. ‘You will. Now. What about grandparents? You must have some. Somewhere.’
‘There must be some in Italy, but I don’t think my mother’s parents spoke to her when she insisted on marrying my father. As for Ireland – yes – I suppose there must be, but I doubt Aunt Bridget would tell me where.’
‘And that Bible. Do you know where she’s hidden it?’
She nodded. ‘There’s a door set into the wall in her bedroom. It’s like a meat safe with a metal door and it’s padlocked. I think it’s in there.’
‘Hmm. We could give it a try – when she’s out I mean.’
‘She locks the front door when she goes out.’
‘Always?’
‘Always.’
She wanted to reach out and smooth away the frown that came to Danny’s forehead. He was so good to her; feeding her and being her friend, helping her with the big mission of her life – finding her family.
‘Sad,’ he said. ‘You having no family. Might ’ave been different if your mother was still alive.’
‘She would be if we’d been able to afford a doctor.’
‘Well, I blame yer father for that. He should ’ave been there, not gallivanting off around the world. Downright irresponsible that is. Downright irresponsible. And he should be here now. Getting it all sorted.’
Although she accepted deep down that her father was feckless and indifferent to his family’s suffering, Magda could not find it in herself to condemn him. To hear Danny doing it hit a raw nerve.
‘What’s it to you, Danny Rossi? What do you know about anything?’
She sprang to her feet; flinging the sandwich he’d given her back at him. Crumbs and crusts flew everywhere, bringing a flock of pigeons homing in on the treat.
She stalked off, tears stinging her eyes. At the same time she listened for the sound of his footsteps running after her. It didn’t happen.
Stubborn pride kept her away from the square for a few days. When she went back, there was a space where his father’s stall used to be.
She asked the fishmonger why they weren’t there.
‘Came into some money and moved away. That’s all I know, love. Sorry.’
Chapter Twelve
Magda 1931
Danny moving away left a big void in Magda’s life and, in the absence of anything else, she threw herself into her school work, achieving high marks and enjoying her time there. Christmas was the only time when she became melancholy, wondering what had happened to her family and the cards and letters she’d sent them.
Schooldays were coming to an end and Magda’s good looks were starting to turn heads.
Most of the girls were leaving school at fourteen. A few, like Magda, had been selected for a scholarship, a further two years’ study. The scholarship girls were educated in a separate annexe to the main school. Her aunt had protested that she needed to be out earning, not sat in a school room.
‘’Tis time you repaid me for looking after you.’
‘I’ll get a job as well as remain at school. The market’s open at five. I’ll work there before I go to school and weekends too.’
Aunt Bridget didn’t look convinced, but Magda didn’t care. She glared at her aunt unblinking, daring her to forbid her to stay at school. Bridget dropped her eyes, fearing both the anger in Magda’s eyes and the chance the girl might put a spell on her.
‘Foreign eyes. Witches’ eyes,’ Magda heard her muttering.
She smiled to herself. If being a witch kept Aunt Bridget at a distance, then so be it. She’d be a witch!
Yellow and mauve-headed crocuses bloomed in sheltered spots in the park at the heart of Victoria Square. Even a few brave daffodils were bursting into bloom and birds were chirping in the three solitary trees around which the flowers clustered. Best of all, James Brodie came home from the sea. He so rarely came home, staying away for years at a time, which seemed to suit Aunt Bridget down to the ground. He sent her his wages and that was enough.
‘Bridget, my darling wife. I’m home again from the sea. Give us a kiss and hug, girl!’
‘James Brodie, you’re drunk!’
‘So I am,’ he responded, wobbling slightly on his muscular legs. ‘Celebrating my return from the sea to my happy home and my beautiful wife.’
Magda brightened at the sight of him. Describing Aunt Bridget as beautiful tickled Magda’s funny bone.
‘Now how about that hug and kiss,’ he said, swaying and using his spread arms to keep upright. ‘Then tonight we’ll go out and paint the town, my dear, dear, Mavourneen. How would that be?’
Aunt Bridget grabbed his sleeve, pulled him into the house and slammed the door.
Magda glanced through the window. The girls across the road had witnessed her uncle’s return and were grouped in the door over there, looking over and laughing out loud.
‘Magda! Help me get your uncle up the stairs.’
‘Darling wife,’ he said. ‘Darling girl,’ he said to Magda then frowned. ‘Are you Isabella? You certainly look like Isabella.’
Magda turned her head away from the beery breath.
Even between the two of them, it was no easy feat getting her uncle up the stairs and into bed. Like her father, he was a big man and had to be placed so that his feet stuck out between the iron rungs at the foot of the bed.
‘You take them boots off. I’ll deal with his clothes,’ ordered her aunt.
Magda did as she was told, tugging off each sea boot and knitted sock, expecting the smell of unwashed feet, yet getting the smell of Sunlight Soap instead.
His socks had been washed. She wondered who by.
Every pocket was turned inside out in Bridget Brodie’s search for money. Coppers, florins, half crowns, ten shilling notes, pound notes and even one or two fivers, were tipped onto the bed.
‘Hah! He didn’t manage to drink his way through all his wages,’ remarked Aunt Bridget. ‘Well! I can certainly use this.’ She tucked the fivers down into the front of her dress, and piled the rest on the rickety bedside table.
‘That one too I think,’ she declared, grabbing a pound note and stuffing it where she’d secreted the rest of the money. ‘He’ll only spend it on the drink if I leave too much there. Then where shall I be? In the workhouse and I’ve no intention of ending up there!’
Aunt Bridget – the meanest and cruellest woman Magda had ever come acros
s – pressed a half crown into her hand.
‘Say nothing. Tell him he drank it all.’
James Brodie slept the rest of that day and all night. He appeared the following day looking bleary eyed, smelling like a horse and looking around the place as though it were the house that stunk and not him.
Aunt Bridget’s rat-like eyes watched him pull up a chair and sit with his head in his hands over the table.
She nodded at Magda. ‘Give your uncle a cup of tea. Bit of toast too. Soak up the booze that it will.’
Her uncle groaned. ‘I seem to have lost some money.’
Aunt Bridget turned on him.
‘Lost it? Lost it? You drank it all away. You always drink it all away and get so blathered that anyone can dip their hand into your pocket and rob you!’
James rubbed at his eyes.
‘Then I’ll need to get a bit more. Do you care to go to the dog track tonight, wife? I feel me luck’s in. I really do.’
‘That I do not. I’ve got things to do here.’
‘Your toast, Uncle. And your tea,’ said Magda setting both down before him.
He looked up at her as though trying to remember who she was. Once he did, his face softened and a gentle look came to his eyes.
‘Bon journo, signora.’
The words he uttered made her heart flutter.
‘My mother used to say that,’ she said.
‘Ah, yes. Your darling mother. Has Joseph not been in touch?’ he asked his wife.
Aunt Bridget’s mouth set into a straight line as though her lips had been pickled in concrete and wouldn’t break open.
‘No! Expects me to keep the kid on thin air. It’s not easy, Jim, not now she’s getting to be a woman. Not easy at all. I’ll have to get a job if he doesn’t send something soon.’
‘You’ll do no such thing! I’ll have no wife of mine turning out to work, and there’s a fact! Here!’
Bridget looked at what she held in her hand. ‘Not much, but it’s hard times. I suppose I’ll have to manage.’
‘Have the lot. I’ll be off to sea again ’afore long, but I’ve got a shilling or two left for the dog track.’ He turned to Magda. ‘Seeing as your aunt won’t come, would you like to come with me, Maggie darling?’
She didn’t like being called Maggie, but did like the way her Aunt Bridget’s face dropped like a stone from a ten-storey building.
‘I’ll get my coat.’
She ran up the uncarpeted stairs to her room and took her shabby grey coat from the peg.
As she put it on, she kept her ear to the gap in the door, laughing quietly to herself as she heard what was said and imagined the resultant look on her aunt’s face.
‘Will you come with us Bridie – you know – out and about like a family?’
‘That I will not, James Brodie! You know I don’t approve of gambling. I’ll be off to mass like a good woman should be – a man too. I prefer to be there alone with me thoughts and anyway you’ve been that absent from church, the good Lord isn’t likely to recognise who you are.’
‘Well, that’s a bloody big lie,’ Magda murmured. ‘The Red Cow more like.’
Being on the verge of adulthood had made her braver than she’d ever been.
‘Have you ever thought of divorcing Aunt Bridget?’ Magda whispered to her uncle.
‘Good Lord, no,’ he muttered back. ‘She’d damn me to hell for even thinking it.’ He grinned suddenly. ‘Have sometimes thought about murdering her though. Set her slippers on fire when she’s snoring like a pig in front of the fire after a session at the pub.’
‘You know she goes to the Red Cow?’
‘Of course I do. Know about ’er and the landlord too. The man must be mad. Or blind. Or both.’
Magda laughed, amazed that her uncle knew his wife so well.
‘Don’t lose all the money,’ Bridget Brodie shouted after them.
Her eyes narrowed as she watched her husband and her niece walk off together. She began muttering to herself.
‘Lost one Brodie to that foreign slut and now it looks as though I’m losing another to her offspring. Don’t seem fair. Ain’t fair.’
Her husband was right though. Magda was beginning to resemble her mother, though she couldn’t recall Isabella having grey eyes. Dark hair, yes, but not grey eyes.
She stood there pulling at the bristles on her chin and tapping a stained finger against equally stained teeth.
Suddenly she became aware that she herself was being watched from across the street. Winnie One Leg was standing with one arm braced against her doorway.
There was something about that woman that made Bridget nervous. The girls she’d call names at any time, but Winnie was a different matter.
Despite the way she limped, she had handsome features and an imposing presence. For a start she was a good six inches taller than Bridget.
They held each other’s challenging gaze. It was Bridget who buckled and asked Winnie how she was.
Winnie said she was fine.
Hatred boiled like a suet pudding in Bridget’s mind, a pudding that had boiled since that bastard Joseph Brodie ditched her for a foreigner from Naples.
Wrapping her arms across her pancake breasts, Bridget crossed the road, a devious and potentially lucrative plan forming in her mind.
The fact that Winnie was regarding her with contempt went unnoticed. All that mattered was getting her final revenge on the Italian whore and her daughter. And what better revenge was there than to make the girl a whore?
She adopted all the charm she possessed.
‘Winnie. If you would like to come over to my place, there’s a little business I’d like to discuss in private.’
Winnie was disinclined to enter the scruffy little house on the other side of the street. Still less was she inclined to discuss business with this disgusting wreck of a woman.
Women that knew Winnie professed that she could read people like books, and as it was with books, she liked some but was unimpressed with others. Bridget Brodie fitted into the latter category.
She nodded. ‘Lead on.’
Bridget, that boiling pudding of an idea spurting steam in all directions, almost skipped across the road.
Once Winnie was inside, she closed the door though didn’t stray too far from it.
Winnie’s gaze swept over the poor furnishings, the smoky fire, the attempts by someone to prettify the place with homemade paper flowers gathered in a plain clay pot.
‘It’s about Magda,’ hissed Bridget, the pupils of her eyes resembling the heart-of-glass marbles. ‘She’s of an age to go out and make a living and being the daughter of a whore – an Italian whore as a matter of fact – I think the best place for her is with you. For a price. Of course.’
Bridget did not possess the perceptiveness of her neighbour from across the road, so she could neither notice nor evaluate the cold, hard look Winnie was giving her.
‘And what does your niece think of the idea, Mrs Brodie?’
‘Call me Bridget.’
Winnie decided to do no such thing.
‘Is she willing?’
‘Oh, I dare say you can beat the willingness into her. What else is a girl like her to do with her life? All she has are her looks and the wantonness passed down from her mother.’
Bridget paused.
The moment she saw that pink tongue lick over those yellow teeth, Winnie knew what she was going to say next.
‘As with all apprentices, I take it there will be an indenture to pay. As I’m her next of kin, I would be the one to hold that indenture – in safekeeping you might say.’
In times past when Reuben had controlled her life, Winnie might have agreed to the plan. As it was she had of late been nostalgic and regretful about that time. If only her daughter had lived. If only Reuben hadn’t been the man he was. If only the doctor hadn’t refused to come – except for an exorbitant fee.
So many ‘ifs’ she thought. So many things that might have been.
Magda was so like her.
‘Mrs Brodie …’
‘Bridget.’
‘Mrs Brodie. I hear what you say, but I find it difficult to understand. You are offering me a member of your family into a life that is – for those of us who take it up – the start of a road to nowhere. It’s a hard, cruel life Mrs Brodie, yet you are willing to hand me Magda knowing full well what will happen to her; the softness, the youth hardened with experience into nothing more or less than a cynicism about life.’
Bridget folded her arms and fought to understand what Winnie was saying. She was offering her a sure-fire hit with the men that visited over the road. Why didn’t she name what she was prepared to offer?
‘So let’s cut to the bargain; how much are you willing to pay me for her?’
Winnie shook her head. ‘Let’s you and me get things straight, Mrs Brodie. I will repeat again in case you’re not hearing it straight; women come to the oldest profession in the world, not out of their own choice, but as a last resort. Some are made promises never kept by the men they thought loved them. Once they’ve fallen into the trap, there’s no climbing out – not easily anyway. But Magda has a choice in life. If she comes to me of her own free will, then that’s a different matter. Good night, Mrs Brodie,’ she said.
Bridget Brodie stumbled as Winnie pushed her roughly aside.
‘I beg your pardon,’ yelled Bridget.
Winnie cared not a jot for being rude. How could a woman so callously sell off a member of her family? How could she?
She’d disliked the Irishwoman even before she’d entered that gloomy house. She disliked her even more now.
As she re-entered her own establishment, one of the girls asked if she was all right.
‘You look as though you’ve seen a ghost,’ the girl remarked.
Winnie mumbled a wordless response. Her feelings and thoughts had turned inwards. If seeing a ghost meant feeling as though the past had come back to haunt her, then indeed she had. Tonight she would toss and turn in her bed with dreams that were memories and memories that turned into dreams. The baby, the daughter she’d lost, would drift through her dreams, though as a young woman on the threshold of life – and that young woman would be Magda Brodie.
