The Night Flower

by Sarah Stovell

  Well, me and Hattie could see we didn’t have no choice in the matter, so we followed em back to the kitchen and sat ourselves down on the stools there, and listened a while as the reverend told us a bible story about folk what’d been bad. The Lord sent floods to punish em and kill em all off. The only kushti folk was Noah and his wife, and they had to save the animals on a boat. It wasn’t a bad story, but it give me a creepy feeling to hear the reverend tell it, because it seemed to me like he meant I’d end up dying in a flood, too, if I didn’t mend my ways.

  After he’d finished, he started reading something else, what started like this: ‘Obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ …’

  Well, I pretty well stopped listening after that, and so did Hattie, but he kept on talking, and once he’d finished, he sat with another solemn look about him and said, ‘Miriam, you will be happy in Liverpool Street, in time. We can help you.’

  I looked at him with hardly a clue what he was on about. The only way to help me was by getting me back to England, and that wasn’t seeming likely.

  He said, ‘You will find the Lord, in time, and your heart will settle.’

  I didn’t say nothing.

  Then he said to Hattie, ‘And now you have the child you have always wanted.’ As he spoke, he looked at me and I felt proper scared and confused, because I wasn’t Hattie’s child. ‘Love of a child is a good, pure love, which will heal your anger.’

  Hattie looked away from him when she spoke. ‘I don’t want a child,’ she said. ‘I didn’t ever say I wanted a child to bring up in a nursery, or send away to an orphanage, or to prison any old time. I did not say that.’ And she banged her fist on the table as she spoke, so we’d know how angry she was. ‘Why do you think you’re being good to me, giving me a child I never asked for?’

  The reverend looked proper shocked at being spoke to so disrespectful and he couldn’t much find the words when he opened his mouth again. ‘Hattie, I thought you wanted …’

  ‘One thing I’ve learned in all my years here, Father, and it’s never to want anything in this life. You’re never going to get it. And if you do get it, they’ll take it away again and leave you worse off than you was before you had it. So I don’t want a child, Father, any more than I want a Christian life.’ She looked at the bible on the work top, then picked it up and held it. ‘Is this your own book?’ she asked.

  The reverend nodded his head.

  ‘You only ever read me stories about God saying servants have to obey their masters. You’ve never bothered telling us anything about Moses, who took everyone away from slavery and punishment. But we know that story, so we know what you’ve got coming to you. Maybe not in this life, but in the next one. It’s no good you people reading this and praying and loving the Lord like you do. You gadje people have a lot to answer for, for what you’ve done to us convicts and Romanies. So much you’re never going to pray it away.’

  The reverend didn’t do nothing after that, but we knew there’d be some sorta punishment coming later – probably a long prayer we’d have to listen to, telling us how we was bad folk with plagues on the way to us. But he wasn’t gonna do it now. He took himself off, with his son following behind, and as they was on their way out, they passed by the stove where my small pot of vegetable soup was boiling, ready for the family’s lunch. Then the young John Sutton poured the holy water into it and I was cross about that, because it’d been a kushti, thick sorta soup before then, and now it was thin as breakfast gruel, for all what it had angels in it.

  All in all, Sundays wasn’t my best days. I’d got another reason for hating em, too. On Sundays – and on Wednesdays and Fridays – I’d gotta take myself a mile up the valley to the well, and had to haul two buckets of water back down with me. It wasn’t no easy task and often I’d give up after a little way, and sit down in the grass, hoping a kind settler’d come by and take pity on me and carry one of em for me. That did happen once, but mostly it didn’t. A lot of them settlers didn’t like us. They reckoned we put bad morals in the place, and them ones what couldn’t afford a convict mouth to feed in exchange for having their dirty work done for em was angry about us taking their jobs. They was also angry because the governors give us ox-head soup for nothing. So some of em shouted bad stuff at me when they saw me out on the streets, and it wasn’t easy on a girl’s heart to hear it, because I didn’t want to be here any more than they wanted me here.

  So I didn’t much like going out, and didn’t go if I could help it, but on this day I got a surprise. I was heaving myself back down the hill, having to watch where I put my feet, because there was rotting leaves all over the place, and it wouldn’t be a kushti thing to go slipping up on em. I was breathless and panting as a black dog on a hot afternoon, and after I’d got not very far, I hid one of the pails of water in the bushes so I could go back for it later. Then I carried on walking for maybe two minutes or more and I saw that young John Sutton, fighting his way through the undergrowth and up the path towards me.

  ‘Hello,’ I said as he got nearer.

  He took off his cap and bowed, as if I was a lady of the proper sort, and said, ‘May I help you with that, Miriam?’

  And before I could even answer, he took the pail outta my hands and carried it for me himself, as if it didn’t weigh no more than a mouse. I was grateful to him, for being such a gentleman. You didn’t get much of the gentleman’s treatment when you was just a Gypsy girl and a convict.

  Then I said, because I thought I’d better, ‘I left another one back there. It was too heavy for me.’

  ‘I’ll go back for it later,’ he said.

  We walked together, all the way back through Hobart, and when the folk of the place saw how I’d got a young settler gentleman at my side, they didn’t do no shouting at me and they didn’t watch me with no angry stares, neither, and it come as such a relief, I could of cried at it. And I wondered how it must be, to never get spoke to in a bad way. I reckoned it must be like eating gold, and you’d feel precious round your insides.

  John Sutton said, ‘I’m sorry about this morning.’

  ‘What about this morning?’ I asked him. ‘It was your own lunch you wrecked. Putting holy water in that soup. It ain’t thick no more. It would’ve been nice, with bread. But now it’s watery, and it’ll be nothing in your belly.’

  He laughed. ‘I meant to say I was sorry my father and I came to disturb you, that was all. He’s a determined man. It’s why he wanted me to be there. He thinks you’d be more likely to respond to a young person.’

  ‘Probably he’s right.’ I shrugged.

  John Sutton raised his eyebrows. ‘Really?’

  ‘If I was a girl anyone’d got a hope of making Christian, then probably he’d be right.’

  John Sutton made a sad sorta face, but I could see the smiling of his mouth, and he said, ‘There’s no hope for you, Miriam. Is this what you’re telling me?’

  I shook my head. ‘No hope, sir,’ I told him. ‘The Lord ain’t done nothing for me and till He does, I ain’t doing nothing for Him, neither.’

  He must of been shocked at my words, but he looked at me and winked, bold as anything. ‘Well, that sounds fair enough to me, Miriam.’

  And I laughed a bit, just to myself, because it was funny to hear that way of speaking from the reverend’s son.

  And so, as Sundays went, this one turned out not so bad, after all.

  That night, I decided Mrs Sutton wasn’t a happy woman. I wouldn’t of been a happy woman, neither, if I was the one married to her husband.

  The reverend was a holy man, that much was clear. He was an agent of the Lord, so he said, and he spent a lot of time praying and such. That meant he was pure in his heart, but he wasn’t no fun, and that was certain.

  Every day he told us all how we was on our way to hell, and how we’d gotta save our souls. The sorta stuff he’d say was this:

  ‘Everyone here is feeling the wrath of Go
d. Your immoral and wayward conduct has brought His anger upon you. Men cannot be strong when God rises up. The strongest have no power to resist him, and the Lord will cast the wicked into hell.’

  He was a man what wasn’t at all easy on the ears or the patience and I reckoned being his wife’d gotta be about the worst thing in the world. And so I wasn’t surprised to see her looking miserable round the face a lot of the time.

  I also reckoned she was watching me whenever she could, so she could make sure I wasn’t stealing nothing. She wasn’t that happy about having me working in the kitchen and making the reverend his supper.

  That Sunday evening, Hattie was down in the kitchen with me, getting herself some water to take upstairs, when Mrs Sutton walked in and said in a very sharp sorta way, ‘The reverend would like his sandwiches in his study tonight.’

  So I said, ‘All right, ma’am. I’ll take em to him there.’

  Mrs Sutton nodded and didn’t say nothing, but she wasn’t looking happy, and she made herself busy for a while, inspecting the kitchen for dirt and such. Then, just as I’d put the finishing touch to the reverend’s sandwiches – what was a slice of cucumber on top – she come up to me and nearly snatched the plate straight outta my hands.

  ‘Is this my husband’s?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ I said. ‘Cheese and cucumber. I was just about to take it to him.’

  ‘I’ll take it,’ she said, and off she went, marching away like she was in a proper bad mood.

  I looked at Hattie. ‘What’s wrong with her?’

  Hattie shrugged. ‘No settler woman’ll ever want a convict maid taking too much care of her husband.’

  ‘Why?’

  But that was all Hattie was gonna say on the subject.

  When I went to bed, I found Hattie sitting at the bottom of the stairs what led to her attic room, mixing things up in a bowl. She was dumping all sorts a stuff in – herbs what she’d took from the clay pots in the yard – mixing em round and crushing em up, and stirring in water from an old cup. I s’posed she was up to some magic, but I didn’t say nothing. I just watched her squash it all together with her fingers, and wrap it up in a piece of old cloth, what she must of took from her sewing basket.

  Then she tied it with a ribbon and hung it from the handle of her door.

  ‘You keeping out bad spirits?’ I said.

  She shook her head and laughed, but it wasn’t a laugh with happy in it. ‘Not bad spirits,’ she said. ‘They’re no worry of mine. I’m keeping out bad people.’

  And then she went to bed.

  23

  I wrote letters. Hundreds of them. Some I posted; others I discarded. I could never have sent them all. People would have raised their eyebrows about the state of my health and taken Charles Murray’s report as true.

  I wrote to my father. I wrote to Aunt Emily. I wrote to Jack and Clara. I even wrote letters to old friends from the village we lived in before my father’s arrest. It was folly, perhaps, to alert more minds to the turn in my fortunes, but it felt almost as real as conversation, talking to people like this. I couldn’t help hoping that one of them might look upon me with a sympathetic eye.

  But no one did. I never had any replies – neither from my father, nor from friends, nor from Jack or Clara. I put my father’s silence down to the hardships of prison life, imagining his spirits too heavy for writing. And I understood friendship, its fragility in the face of scandal. But to hear nothing from my children was shattering. I supposed my mother-in-law saw fit to stop all contact with me, and they never received my letters.

  I didn’t want to dwell upon how I had lost all of my children. I wanted to believe there was a way to get them back.

  It was four miles to the orphanage, where Arabella was now. Once I’d walked to the end of the town’s main street, I had to fight my way through wild bushland paths, overgrown with weeds and myrtle. The sun burned, the bottom of my dress grew thick with dust, and my face became red and wet with heat.

  Emerging at last, I came out on to a path that brought the orphanage into view. It was set behind huge stone walls and at first all you could see was the dark grey steeple of the orphanage church, poking up above them. There was nothing to indicate that four hundred children lived here. There was only silence.

  I went up to the gates and clanged the bell. A grim-faced woman in a black dress and white apron appeared and spoke to me through the bars. ‘Yes?’

  ‘I am here to see my daughter, Arabella Winter.’

  She nodded, unlocked the padlock and removed the chain from the gates, which she hauled slowly open. Inside the gates were two brick buildings, separated by the church. One housed boys and the other housed girls.

  The woman led me across the yard and into the girls’ building. The children were all in the main hall, working – rows and rows of them, bent over wooden tables, their fingers busy with needlework or, if they were younger, counting curious objects I couldn’t make out. All of them were clothed in the same blue and white dresses, and had their hair cropped short. I knew without being told that this was to mark them out as the progeny of sinners.

  I couldn’t see Arabella among them.

  The room was silent and I dared not speak. The woman – I supposed her to be a matron – cleared her throat. ‘Arabella Winter,’ she said.

  A head in the middle of the room looked up from its work.

  ‘Your mother is here to see you.’

  Obediently, and without rush, Arabella put her work down on her desk, pushed back her chair and walked up to me. I embraced her eagerly, but she did not return it. She was pale and seemed to be without any energy at all.

  Brightly, I said, ‘Why don’t you show me around?’

  She gazed at me with lifeless eyes. She still said nothing, but appeared to expect me to follow her as she walked towards the hall door and out into a corridor that led us to the stairs.

  There were other children dotted about the place. Some stared at us as we walked past them, but none smiled. Arabella led me to a huge dormitory. There were no beds, just rows of hammocks. At the far end was a fireplace, far from big enough to heat a room this size. There were no rugs on the stone floor, and I felt certain that winter would see a terrible turn in the children’s health. I couldn’t help imagining influenza or pneumonia, and shuddered at the consequence of such outbreaks.

  ‘Is this where you sleep?’ I asked Arabella.

  She nodded.

  I said, ‘Were you busy working when I arrived?’

  She nodded again.

  ‘What were you doing?’

  ‘Counting,’ she told me.

  As far as I could tell, children of three and four, whose fingers were still too clumsy for needlework, spent their days sitting at desks, moving wooden counters from one end to the other, counting them over and over again. They were also tasked with laundry work, because they could lift loads of linen and dresses and plunge them into tin baths full of water. They were at least spared the heavy labour of running the wet clothes through the mangles and getting them dry.

  I’d brought with me a collection of Grimm’s fairy tales, which Mrs Sutton had lent me. I said, ‘Would you like to sit with me, and I can read to you?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Have you lost your voice, Arabella?’ I asked.

  Her gaze went to the floor.

  I heard rustling in the corridor outside and a matron walked in – a different one to last time. I was hidden from her view, but Arabella, standing against the wall, was clear.

  The matron dangled a cane from her spindly fingers. ‘Why are you here, girl?’ she demanded. ‘Why are you not working?’

  Arabella said nothing. I stood up. ‘Excuse me. I am the child’s mother. Arabella has been excused from her work for half an hour while I visit.’

  The matron pursed her lips and left the room.

  Arabella continued to stand in silence.

  I could hardly bear the thought that I had brought this se
ntence down on my own child’s head.

  *

  When I returned to the nursery, I was in a state of great anxiety and Mrs Sutton gave me the evening off. Even caring for the babies would have brought me little solace. The Suttons were kind, compassionate employers. Oliver was right, and I felt grateful every day for his good report. I couldn’t have found a better place to work, and it was gratifying to see how the reverend and his family had devoted themselves to the Lord’s work in trying to reform the unfortunate children in their care.

  I spent that evening in the room I shared with Miriam. I’d grown fond of her over the last few months, even though she was a dark-skinned Gypsy girl and entirely illiterate.

  ‘How are you, Miriam?’ I asked.

  All right.’ She shrugged, then looked at me and added, ‘But you ain’t looking so happy yourself, miss, if you don’t mind me saying.’

  ‘I have been visiting my daughter at the orphanage.’ I sighed. ‘It is a horrible, horrible place.’

  ‘I don’t s’pose there’s much in the way of kushti places for convicts.’

  ‘I suppose not.’ I paused for a while, then asked, ‘Have you got a mother, Miriam?’

  ‘Not no more.’ She shook her head. ‘She died before we come here. She’d got the cholera. I did my best for her, but we couldn’t fight it. We was poor. Have you got a mother?’

  I looked away from her when she mentioned the foul disease. ‘No,’ I said. ‘She died long ago. My father and aunt brought me up.’

  ‘Do you miss em?’

  ‘I miss my children.’

  ‘How many children’ve you got?’

  ‘Three living. My eldest two have stayed in England, so I don’t see them now. I had two other children, too, who weren’t strictly my own, but who I cared for as if they were. I went to work for their family after my husband died. I was their governess at first, but shortly after I arrived their nanny died, and I took over all their care. It gave me great comfort to look after them while I was separated from my own children. I would have stayed with them for a long time, if I could.’