The Night Flower

by Sarah Stovell

  ‘Do you like this work, Mrs Winter?’ he asked.

  I smiled at him. ‘There is no more worthwhile job than caring for babies,’ I said, ‘particularly babies that have had a difficult start in life. But you know this, John. I have heard of your high ideals, your plans for improving this place after your father’s retirement. I thought them very good.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘But I shall not be taking over now. I am going to take the cloth and become a vicar.’

  ‘May I ask what has led you to such a decision?’

  He looked round the room, where the babies were sleeping, or crying in their cots. ‘I have let go of some of my ideals. I cannot see how these children can be elevated from their situations. They are condemned to a life of wretchedness, and I do not see how anything we can do can help them.’

  ‘And what will happen to the nursery, now there is no one to succeed your father?’

  ‘The governors have sent over their plans. They have found a modern building in town that they are going to use for the new nursery. It needs some repairs and some redecoration, but they hope to have it all achieved in six months. They’re buying new beds and linen, new towels, nappies. Everything. And they want the place to be cleaned by the best maids and the babies cared for by the best nurses.’

  ‘But who will take over from your father?’ I asked again.

  ‘That isn’t my concern. They will find someone. They might even offer the position to you, once you’ve got your yellow ticket.’

  I paused, taking in his words. ‘Are you sure you cannot change your mind?’

  He shook his head, looking quite despondent. I wondered how much his decision was to do with Miriam’s condition and if he was, in fact, simply running away from the troubles that his actions had caused.

  42

  They set me to work picking oakum. It were long and boring work, what didn’t have no end to it. Mrs Hutchinson said it was a job what helped the sailors, and something no one but a convict’d ever do, because of it being so hard on the fingers.

  When the ships rolled into the harbour, the sailors hauled off all the old ropes and cables and brung em to the gaols. The folk what’d got sentenced to hard labour had to saw the rope into smaller bits, then hit it hard with a mallet so’s they could bash out all the tar what the rope’d got covered in. Then it was sent my way and the way of the other women what was working in the factory, and also to the orphanage. Oakum picking was seen as being kushti work for children to do, what with their small hands and strong eyes and such.

  Once the rope’d got to me with as much of the tar bashed out as possible, my job was to uncoil, unpick it and shred it into fibres. After I’d done that it’d get mixed with tar again and the sailors’d use it to fill the gaps between the ship’s planks so the sea couldn’t get in.

  Because of being in solitary confinement, in a cell what didn’t have a lot of light in it, I’d gotta sit on the floor and surround myself with candles to see by. They’d only just brung me the candles. Before now, all I’d had was a crack of light from the window, but after I told em a hundred times or more how I couldn’t hardly pick the oakum like that, they let me have three white candles, what they only give me once they’d got promises off my lips about working faster. They didn’t have such a thing as candlesticks, though – or not for the likes of me – so every morning I woke up, fumbled around in the dark for my matches and candles, and once I’d lit em, I had to drip wax on the grey stone floor to stick em in. I wasn’t sure if this was allowed, but I couldn’t see no other way of getting the work done, so I just went ahead and did it without asking. In the end, I reckoned I couldn’t get in more trouble than I was in already.

  And so that was how my days went by – sitting on my own in the candlelight, picking hard rope to shreds, turning my fingers black and growing sores on em. All the while my belly got bigger and my baby fought me for space to move.

  I got one visitor a day, and that was Mrs Hutchinson or the deputy matron, what come to see me in the mornings. They brung me a food box, what normally had some chunks of bread in it and maybe a flask of soup, and not a lot more. I’d gotta make it last all day, but that wasn’t as hard as I was expecting. My belly was so full of baby by then, I didn’t have a lot of room left in me for bread.

  One morning, Mrs Hutchinson said, in a not-unkind voice, ‘How are you today?’

  I didn’t really know what to say to that, because of course I was about as bad as could be. I was meant to say, ‘Fine, thank you, ma’am,’ what was hardly the truth. So I said, ‘I am not ill, Mrs Hutchinson, what I s’pose I oughta be grateful for.’

  Mrs Hutchinson nodded her head. ‘Indeed,’ she said. ‘And you should be grateful your condition means you only have to pick oakum. There are girls out in the yard doing much heavier work than that. In the factory, we will be having a treadmill erected in time, because we have decided oakum picking is too easy for anyone who is not in a condition like yours. Sedentary work has no moral effect. Although you are working here, Miriam, you are not engaging in hard labour, so our hopes for your improvement remain very slim.’

  And she shook her head, to show what a bad case I was, and I got cross in my heart at the injustice of it all. I knew there wasn’t no point in fighting, though. Once the folk in authority’d made up their minds about you, there wasn’t no changing em, that was certain.

  *

  Some days, because they reckoned fresh air’d got a hope of improving my soul a bit, Mrs Hutchinson or the deputy matron’d come and let me out the cell and walk me round the yard for a while, as if I was a donkey or some such thing.

  And that was when I saw them other ladies – the mob what escaped sometimes at night, and ran off down to Liverpool Street to get liquor and cigarettes and shout bad things at the reverend. There was about twenty of em in this particular yard – only the very worst, doing hard labour for the biggest crimes: stealing from a governor, brawling with a governor’s son, or other such things as that.

  They was meant to work in silence. Usually they did and all I could hear from my cell was the steady bash of hammers on ropes, the bouncing of hard tar on the ground. But when they got sight of me, they couldn’t help emselves, and they let all their wicked tongues go running away with em.

  ‘Ain’t you John Sutton’s wench?’ one of em called.

  I didn’t say nothing, and neither did Mrs Hutchinson. I s’pose I was hoping she might tell em off, but she just kept her arm linked through mine – loosely, I might add, as if she was afraid of catching something off me, like the pox, or maybe my convict stain – and held her head high as she carried on walking. She was a dignified sorta lady, that was certain.

  Then another voice said, ‘She’s been living at that nursery close on two years. Bet she’s had a go on Reverend Sutton. Bet she’s had a go on that Holy Willie.’

  Then they all laughed in that horrible way they had, like witches.

  ‘Whose kid you got in there? Holy Willie’s?’

  ‘Holy Willie’s got a lot of kids.’

  At least fifty. Harlots’ kids, all of em.’

  ‘You ain’t nothing special, girl. You might think having a vicar’s kid in you makes you a cut above the rest, but it don’t. Almost all of us here have had the vicar’s kids in us. Some of us had the sense to get them out early, though.’

  I didn’t look up. I felt my eyes stinging hard with tears, but I wasn’t gonna let em fall, not no way.

  ‘Is it true the reverend murdered his whore?’

  Well, I didn’t know what they was talking about now, and I didn’t want to know, neither. I hoped Mrs Hutchinson was gonna shout at em, or take a whip to em, or do anything to stop em shouting at me, but she didn’t do nothing, and I realized soon enough it was because she was scared of em, for all what she was the matron of a prison. And so then I thought her stupid, for doing a job like this.

  ‘Holy Willie murdered his whore. Definitely he did. Took her out a bawdy house, kept her in his at
tic for a few years, then killed her when he was done with her. Said she’d run away, didn’t he? She didn’t run away. He killed her and threw her body in Sullivan’s Cove. But the law won’t chase him. He’s Holy Willie, after all.’

  And they all laughed again, and no one noticed that some of them tears fell out my eyes. Hattie ain’t dead, I thought. Hattie ran away. Hattie got free.

  43

  I received a letter from my father, which he’d sent shortly after his release from gaol. He tells me there is money now waiting, and he will send whatever I need when the time comes.

  I knew I still had a long way to go, but my plans now seemed to be falling into place, and I was beginning to gain a greater feeling of hope for my future than ever before.

  Friday, 9th July, 1841

  I asked Mrs M if she would cut me a lock of Charles’s hair, which she has done. I have fastened it into my ring, along with a lock of my own, cut and entwined with his.

  A date for the funeral has been set. Mr M has been writing to everyone he wishes to attend. I shall not be going. He has decided it is best for women to stay away, as he thinks we shall not be able to contain our grief and will all become hysterical. So I shall be staying here, along with Mrs M and her sister, and I hope Louisa will let me have Isabella during that time.

  Oh, but there is a rebellion in my heart at this loss – almost as much as when my own son was taken from me. If it is God’s will, I fear He has made a dreadful mistake.

  Saturday, 10th July, 1841

  I have been too sad recently to write. Wild, exhausting grief. Sometimes, I become so overwhelmed with the sadness of losing so many children, my heart beats madly and I think I am having a hysterical attack.

  Charles is to be buried on Monday. I still find myself praying for a miracle. I would like to go to his bed in the morning and see that God has taken pity on me and given him back. Then I would take him away with me, and keep him. He would be mine.

  Monday, 12th July, 1841

  Only Mr M and his brothers went to the funeral. Mrs M stayed behind, and was looked after by kind friends. I spent the day on the top floor, as usual. It’s a sad place now. Everything about Charles has been freshened away, but at moments I still catch the smell of him, and even the sight of him in the shadows on the wall. He is everywhere.

  Louisa let me keep Isabella with me this morning at the time we knew they would be burying Charles. It was a comfort, and I do thank God for her.

  But I must look for other work now, and leaving here means I must lose Isabella, too. The thought is intolerable.

  44

  Solitary confinement was a lonely place to be, and oakum picking about the most boring job I could ever think of doing. But even though my hands was suffering and getting black enough for me to think they wasn’t ever gonna get clean again, I decided that it was the best place for me.

  Here I was safe from them harridans out there. I didn’t like em, and I knew I wasn’t one of em, for all what they told me. They’d come up to my window some days and bang on the glass and call inside to me, where I was picking at my ropes with my sore and calloused fingers. ‘You’re just a wench, girl,’ they’d cry. ‘Nothing but a harridan like us.’ And I come to be glad of the bars on the window, and the lock on the door, because I knew there wasn’t no way in for em.

  But for all I was thankful for being locked up outta harm’s way, them weeks I spent in that cell was just about the unhappiest weeks of my life. As I went silently about my work, I thought how strange it was, that a body could think life’d got as bad as it could ever be, and then something else’d go and happen, and life got even worse. And I found myself saying out loud in the dark, ‘Ain’t there no limits to a sorry state of affairs, Lord?’ Of course, he didn’t answer, but I imagined him sitting up there on his cloud, saying, ‘No, Miriam. None at all.’

  ‘Am I ever gonna get outta here?’ I asked Mrs Hutchinson one morning, when she brung me my food box for the day.

  She sighed a sorry-sounding sigh. ‘If you behave yourself, you will be out once you’ve served your six-month sentence.’

  I nodded. I couldn’t see how I’d ever be able to not behave myself in here. There wasn’t a lot of trouble for a girl to get up to when she was locked up on her own in a concrete cell. The worst thing I could do was refuse to pick apart these ropes, but that’d leave me with nothing at all to keep my mind busy, and I was coming to realize a busy mind was my only hope.

  I said, ‘What’s gonna happen when my baby comes? You gonna send me back to that nursery?’ I’d got myself some proper fears about getting this baby out if they wasn’t gonna send me back to Liverpool Street for it. I tried my hardest not to think about it, but some nights I dreamed bad dreams of giving birth in here on my own, without no one to help me at all. And I reckoned them harridan ladies’d all appear at my window and shout bad stuff to me, and make everything worse.

  Mrs Hutchinson said, ‘We haven’t decided yet. We are still in discussion about it. It’s a difficult case and, considering your accusations against her son, Mrs Sutton isn’t sure that the nursery would be the right place for you and your baby.’

  ‘They wasn’t accusations, Mrs Hutchinson. They’re true. I ain’t no Jezebel.

  As soon as the words was off my lips, I knew I shouldn’t of said em, because of course no one believed me, for all what I was speaking true.

  Mrs Hutchinson pursed her lips in that way she’d got, and said, ‘You aren’t helping yourself with lies, Miriam.’

  I didn’t say nothing then. I s’posed my best way outta this place was to go along with what they was thinking about me, and never argue for my good character. But it was a hard thing to do when I knew what the truth was, when I knew John Sutton knew it, too – and all them other Suttons, for that matter. But a convict what said bad stuff about a reverend’s family wasn’t a convict folk’d got sympathy for, and that was the fact of it.

  Eventually Mrs Hutchinson said, in a voice what wasn’t her normal barking voice, ‘We will make sure you get the help you need for your confinement.’

  ‘It ain’t gonna be long, ma’am,’ I said.

  She nodded her head. ‘I know, Miriam.’

  And then she went away.

  The days went on, and the days was long, and then they stopped being days at all. There wasn’t no such thing as time no more. Sometimes my cell was light, and sometimes it was dark, but I was always here inside it, and there wasn’t nothing else.

  My baby didn’t kick so much no more. A few months back, it’d been wriggling and squirming and leaping around, but now it hardly did nothing. I s’posed it was about as worn out as I was, with being shut up in the dark without a face to see, not even its own. I can’t say as I was feeling a lot of love for it – it wasn’t even born, for a start, and it hadn’t been a reason for much in the way of happy so far. But seeing as it was the only other body in here, I said to it, ‘You’ll get outta here soon enough.’

  And then I got to feeling jealous of it.

  *

  Sometimes, I reckoned I was dead. I used to lie myself flat on my back on the floor and hold my hand over my heart to check it was still beating. It was, but I might still be dead, so I would say things, too, to check I’d still got my voice.

  ‘Hello,’ I said in the dark. ‘Hello.’

  Then I thought about my mother and asked, ‘Evelyn, can you hear me?’ And though I couldn’t hear no reply, I reckoned she was saying yes, so I carried on. ‘I ain’t getting on that well in Parts Beyond the Sea. I’m in a sorry way.’

  And then I cried a bit, and even though I’d got my tears and my voice, I still wasn’t certain I was alive.

  45

  Wednesday 14th July, 1841

  There is little to report. Isabella is now fully in Louisa’s care, and all I am allowed to do is more and more sewing. I shall not be sorry to see an end to it when I go.

  Mr Murray seems to have found me a new situation. A friend of his knows a gentleman and his fam
ily, recently arrived here from the USA. They are in need of a governess for their two daughters, aged fifteen and thirteen, and Mr M has recommended me for the post. I am meeting them tomorrow. Their house is fifteen miles from here, closer to where my mother-in-law lives, so I’m hopeful that I’ll have a chance to resume contact with my children again and see them regularly. I know it was my separation from them that caused this too-strong attachment to Charles and Isabella.

  It has been just over a week since we lost Charles. No one speaks about him, and if it weren’t for this dreadful ache in my guts, it would feel as though he had never been on earth. Mrs M still spends most of her time shut away in her room, but then again she did that a great deal when Charles was still here, so little has changed. In those days, she said it was because of her headaches. We all assume now that it is mourning. She has not once been to see Isabella, or requested that Isabella be taken to her.

  Twice now, I have crept up to the attic early in the morning and hidden myself in the old nursery cupboard – full of things that need throwing out – where I’ve watched Louisa at work and seen how she cares for the baby. She is good enough, of course, by which I mean the baby won’t starve in her care and is always well dressed, but she provides nothing of the love I have for the child, and which I believe the child so desperately needs.

  Thursday, 15th July, 1841

  Today, I met Mrs Renton, the woman seeking a governess for her children. It is much the same as any other governess’s position: I will be instructing her daughters in art, French, music, literature and a little mathematics.

  ‘There will be a one-month trial period,’ Mrs Renton said. ‘If you meet our expectations, we will keep you on permanently. If not, we can help you find other work – here with us, if you want it. There is plenty to do.’ She smiled at me as she said this. ‘Do not worry, my dear. I’m quite sure that won’t be necessary. Mrs Murray has written you a wonderful reference and I know you are perfectly capable of doing the job.’