The Night Flower

by Sarah Stovell

  His words amounted to an admission. The baby was his. I looked down at my food, afraid Mrs Sutton would think I’d been lying when I told her how Miriam frequented the Black Horse. But I hadn’t been lying. She went there nearly every night. I could easily have been mistaken, thinking her friendship with Ma Dwyer to be based in business. Anyone could be mistaken over such a thing.

  Mrs Sutton became the most decisive I had ever heard her. ‘Then we must bring the child here and face your father’s rage when it comes. Please go and arrange for a police officer to be sent to Cascades to collect the mother and her child. This is urgent, John. Go now.’

  He stood up, ready to leave immediately. Mrs Sutton turned to me. ‘Rose, could you prepare a bed for Miriam and another cot for the baby?’

  ‘Certainly, Mrs Sutton,’ I said, and set about it obediently.

  A few days ago, John had told me about the progress of the new nursery. The building they’d selected was seven miles from here – out of town and into the countryside. There was plenty of land that would be tamed and cultivated and turned into play areas for the children as they grew. The babies and their mothers would have protection out there from the squalor and vice they witnessed on Liverpool Street. ‘The governors believe fresh air and green surroundings will have more hope of reforming the mothers than exposure to brothels and brawls,’ said John.

  ‘That sounds quite right to me,’ I said. ‘Does it not to you?’

  He shrugged. ‘Maybe. I don’t know.’

  ‘How long will all this take?’

  ‘The building work is complete. The repairs are done and the kitchen in place. They just need to paint the dormitories. There will be more rooms there. Smaller ones. Ten or twelve babies in each.’

  ‘And have you thought again about taking it over, John?’

  He hesitated. ‘I don’t know. Sometimes I would like to. Other times I just don’t know.’

  ‘From what you’ve told me, though, it’s what you’ve always wanted.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And I think you’d be good at it.’

  He was silent for a minute, then suddenly he said, ‘But you could do it.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes. Once you’ve got your yellow ticket, there’s nothing to stop you applying for the post. They want the best carers for the children, and you were one of the very few things the inspectors were happy with in their report.’

  I smiled. ‘Thank you for telling me that, John.’

  I was still over a year away from being granted my yellow ticket, and at first the idea seemed impossible. But as I prepared Miriam’s bed and laid white blankets in her baby’s cot, I wondered whether I could do it, after all. It was important to make plans for my release, and my idea of escaping to England was a dangerous one that could easily be thwarted. The more I thought about it, the more possible it seemed, and it soothed me greatly to think how far I had come from the Murrays and their accusations against me.

  48

  In the end, when the baby was five days old, Mrs Hutchinson come in with her husband, the doctor and a police officer. I wasn’t sure why so many of em needed to see me, and I reckoned maybe they’d come to take me for hanging. That was what they did with the worst of the convicts, and having a baby belonging to the reverend’s son was pretty near to being the worst crime there was, as far as I could tell.

  I got scared when I first saw em coming through the door, one by one, as if there’d be no end to em. They crowded my cell till there wasn’t hardly space in the air for words to get in. But once I’d decided they must be here to take me for hanging, I almost felt relieved instead. I was tired of this life, and reckoned if there wasn’t nothing better, then I might as well get hanged. I was just hoping it wouldn’t hurt too much.

  They all stood there a while, then Mrs Hutchinson said, ‘We have communicated with the Suttons, Miriam, and come to the conclusion that the best place for you and your baby is at Liverpool Street nursery for a while. But, any hint of bad behaviour and there will be no hesitation in bringing you back here. The Suttons are kind, generous people who are prepared to give you another chance, for the sake of the child.’

  The rest of em nodded their heads, to show as they agreed with her about the kushti hearts of the Suttons, and how kind they was to let me back to the nursery, for all what I’d said bad things about their son. And I wasn’t gonna argue with em, because I wasn’t stupid, and I could see the best thing to do now was keep my head down and my mouth shut, then I’d get to see Rose again and have a friend in my life.

  The doctor picked the baby up from the straw where it was lying, and he looked at it hard, turning it over in his great big hands. He frowned like he reckoned something wasn’t right with it, but he didn’t say nothing. Then, after he’d finished looking at it, he give it to me and I could see how he was meaning for me to hold it, and I got a bit afraid, but I took it.

  The police officer said, ‘If everything is done here, we should get moving.’

  Mrs Hutchinson said, ‘Of course.’

  They started walking out the cell, and I s’posed I was meant to go with em, so I did. All them bad convict ladies was out there, doing their hard labour in silence. They stood and stared, but didn’t say nothing as we went past em, and I was pleased about that. I s’posed the sight of a police officer was enough to keep em quiet for once.

  Anyway, we went walking back through all the yards and out to the front of Cascades. The police officer said, ‘I will walk you and the child back to Hobart.’

  No one took the baby off me, so I saw how I’d gotta hold it all the way to the nursery. But I reckoned someone’d take it off me once we got there and that was a relief to me.

  It was a strange thing, to go back to the nursery as a convict mother and not a housemaid. Mrs Sutton met us at the door, and straight away she took the baby off me. The doctor said it was a hungry, skinny little thing, what needed milk in its belly as a matter of urgency. Then Rose come and she give me a smile, then she give me hug, and I went and shocked everyone by crying.

  ‘Give the girl some tea,’ Mrs Sutton said. ‘And show her where she’ll be sleeping.’ She didn’t sound too unkind when she said that, and I got to hoping how maybe the worst of my life might be over now.

  Rose took me to one of the dormitories, where the ladies lived with their suckling babies. It was crowded and dirty, and noisy, too, but I liked it better than that solitary confinement cell, so I wasn’t about to complain. I sat down on my bed and then Rose went away. When she come back again, she brung me some tea and smiled at me. ‘I hear you’ve had a dreadful time, you poor thing.’

  I just looked at her.

  ‘You can get well again here.’

  I wasn’t sure what she was going on about, seeing as I wasn’t ill, but then I s’posed she meant getting my body better after all what it’d gone through. I said, ‘What’s gonna happen to the baby? They gonna give it away?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Rose said.

  ‘If they do, I’ll have to go back to solitary confinement and finish off my sentence, and I don’t much want to.’

  ‘You’ll be all right, as long as you can feed her yourself. They’ll keep you here for six months.’

  I nodded. I s’posed it meant I’d have to hold the baby to my titties, what wasn’t a thought I liked. But I reckoned as maybe I could do it, if it’d keep me outta solitary confinement.

  Mrs Sutton kept the baby a long time that day. After a few hours, I started wondering if they’d give it away, and if I was ever gonna see it again. I got a feeling stirring in me what was a bit like anger, because it wasn’t right to give a baby away without saying nothing about it first.

  ‘Has Mrs Sutton give the baby away?’ I said to Rose.

  Rose shook her head. ‘She has been feeding her. Your baby is very hungry, Miriam, and quite badly underweight.’ She looked gentle into my face and added, ‘But you mustn’t worry. It’s not your fault, and the baby will get well. No one sh
owed you what to do.’

  ‘For all what I lived in a nursery so long, I ain’t got the first idea about looking after a baby.’

  ‘We can teach you. Have you chosen a name for her?’

  I shook my head. It wasn’t something I’d give any thought to. I s’pose folk might think that strange of me, but thinking up names in that cell was more than I could manage. I wondered now if the baby was gonna get a lot of evil spirits round it, because of me not whispering its real name in its ear the second it got born. So, quick as I could, I thought up a real name for it. If Mrs Sutton ever brung it back to me, I’d tell it to the baby straight away, and keep my fingers crossed it wasn’t too late.

  Then I’d gotta come up with a Romany name, and another one what the gadje’d have to call it. I s’posed the gadje name’d be the one it got called most often, what with there hardly being no Romanies round these parts. I thought about giving it the gadje name Eve, after Evelyn, but then I reckoned folk like John Sutton and the reverend’d say I was being bad against the Lord, because of Eve being the woman what’d disobeyed him and caused all the trouble in the world. So I decided I’d call it Emma instead.

  Mrs Sutton brung the baby back to me in the evening, after she’d kept it most of the day. She looked at it and carried it in a tender sorta way, like I hadn’t never seen her do before – not with none of them other babies in the nursery, anyway – although I s’pose she might of had a loving way with her own child once.

  ‘Here we are, Miriam,’ she said, and she passed the baby to me, so I didn’t have no choice about holding out my arms for it.

  The baby was looking pinker in the face than it had in the cell. ‘She will be cared for properly now,’ Mrs Sutton said. ‘We’ve fed her well. She will thrive here, I’m sure.’

  ‘Ain’t you gonna get it adopted?’ I asked. ‘Mrs Hutchinson reckoned that were the plan. She said you’d give it to settlers what hadn’t never been lucky enough to get their own baby. That’s what she said.’

  Mrs Sutton looked like she was giving the matter some thought. ‘We’ll see, Miriam,’ she said. ‘If we can look after her here, that might not be necessary.’

  And I could see from the way she was gazing at the baby, with all that love in her eyes, how she knew full well whose child it was and whose grandchild, too, for that matter.

  She coughed a bit and said, ‘John will be home this evening. Perhaps you two could have a talk.’

  ‘I ain’t got nothing to say to him, ma’am,’ I said.

  Mrs Sutton looked like she was choosing her words in a proper careful way. ‘I’m sure you feel a little cross with him, but John is a good man, and we would all like to help you as much as we can.’

  ‘But you got me sent to gaol, ma’am,’ I said. ‘If you don’t mind me saying, it wasn’t the most helpful thing you could of done for me, in them circumstances.’

  Mrs Sutton nodded her head, and I thought I saw a bit of pink burning her face. ‘I understand, Miriam. But we have to follow the law, and pregnancy for an unmarried convict girl is a crime, especially in cases when …’ She decided not to finish that sentence. ‘Are you hungry?’ she asked.

  I shook my head. I hadn’t hardly been hungry since going in solitary confinement. There was something about being locked up with nothing but a pot full of piss what took the appetite out a mouth, that was certain.

  ‘But you must eat, Miriam. Your body has been through a great ordeal and we need to get you suckling your baby, if we possibly can.’

  I said, ‘What if we can’t?’

  ‘We must have a go,’ she said. Then she seemed to go and decide that right now was the time for it, because she come closer to me and got me to unbutton my smock and lower it to my waist, so my titties was out for anyone to see.

  ‘This don’t seem all that decent, Mrs Sutton, if you don’t mind me saying.’

  She laughed in a brisk sorta way and said, ‘What do you think all these other ladies do?’

  I looked round at the other beds in the dormitory, what was full of all the other ladies, and it was true enough – they was sitting there happy, suckling their babies like they didn’t care one way or another who saw em.

  Mrs Sutton took hold of the baby like it was a doll, and then she brung it forwards and slammed it hard against my titty. She kept on doing that five or six times, till she was happy with how its lips was clenched round me and how much of my titty it’d got in its mouth. The baby sucked and sucked, in that wild way what it’d sucked on the bread I’d give it in my cell. I thought it looked crazy round the eyes, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to carry on.

  I said, ‘Is it getting milk?’

  Mrs Sutton leaned in and looked how the baby’s jaws was moving, to see if it was swallowing and such. She shook her head. ‘Not yet, but this sucking will get it started. It might take some time. The baby is three days old already, and hasn’t yet suckled.’

  ‘That ain’t my fault,’ I said. ‘No one told me what to do.’

  ‘I know, dear,’ Mrs Sutton said, and her voice was soft and tender, not a voice of the strict and barking sort like I’d got used to when I were living here before.

  I looked down at the baby, what was still going crazy at my titty. It kept sucking a while, then taking its mouth off and leaning back, wailing till it’d got purple in the face.

  Mrs Sutton said, ‘Your milk isn’t coming, dear. Don’t worry. We can give her a bottle, but you keep pumping.’

  ‘Pumping?’ I said, because I hadn’t heard of such a thing

  And Mrs Sutton took my hands and put em on my titty, and showed me how to work em so’s the milk’d come, and it reminded me of them ladies what you used to see sometimes in England, sitting on their stools, tugging at cows, and I felt pretty certain I wasn’t never gonna be able to keep this thing alive myself.

  John Sutton come back that night, just like his mother’d said he would. I can’t say as I was expecting him to come to the dormitory and say hello, but that was exactly what he did, and he even give my cheek a kiss. He must of been after something.

  ‘Hello, Miriam,’ he said.

  I nodded my head and made my voice come out cold. ‘John Sutton,’ I said.

  He shoved his hands in his pockets and looked awkward as a boy. ‘How are you?’

  ‘About as well as could be, considering my circumstances.’

  He didn’t look me in the eyes, so I knew he felt bad in his heart, or a bit ashamed. ‘My mother said you’d had a difficult time.’

  ‘Your mother spoke true.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You want to see your baby, John Sutton?’ I asked him.

  He didn’t say nothing about it being his own baby, but he did look at the lying-asleep thing in the cot next to my bed. ‘Is this it?’

  ‘That’s it,’ I said. And then, to make my point a bit more, I added, ‘Don’t you reckon as if it looks like you?’

  Well, I couldn’t see how anyone could deny such a fact, but John Sutton did. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not at all.’

  It was clear to me how that was all he was gonna say on the matter, and I ain’t ashamed to admit I pretty well wanted to punch the nose off his face, what was the sorta thing I knew Ma Dwyer’d tell me to do if she’d of been there.

  But instead I said, ‘I am grateful to your mother, for bringing me back here.’

  ‘We heard about what you had been through, and how the child was suffering, and we considered it our duty to help.’

  ‘Well, that’s about right. It’s your baby.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Well, I ain’t never seen another baby what looks like you and you’re the only boy I’ve ever been near, so after putting them two facts together, I’d reckon it’s your baby, John Sutton.’

  ‘My father is coming home tonight. He’s been away for two weeks. He will be angry that you have come back here, but we will do our best to help you.’

  And then he looked at the baby again and walked off.

 
The night come down, and although it was horrible noisy in the nursery dormitory, it was better than being in that cell. Mrs Sutton’d given me some cotton wool for the baby, for when I changed its napkin and such, and I used some of it to stuff my ears, so the noise could get drowned out. Of course, a bit of cotton wool wasn’t gonna drown it all out, but it helped a bit. Sleep come easier than what it’d done in that cell.

  In the end, I was woke up by Mrs Sutton shaking me. It was still dark, so I knew it wasn’t morning. I rubbed my eyes.

  ‘It is midnight. Your baby needs feeding,’ she said.

  She’d told me before I come to bed that the baby’d gotta get fed every four hours at two, six and ten, no matter if it was morning or night. I sat up. ‘It ain’t two yet, missus.’

  ‘But we need to help get your milk coming. At the moment, we’ll be best trying every two hours.’

  ‘But it’s asleep,’ I said.

  ‘Then wake her up,’ Mrs S said, in a voice what was strict, but not nasty.

  ‘How do I do that?’ I said, because I didn’t have no idea how to wake up a baby, and I reckoned every method I tried was probably gonna kill it. You couldn’t shake a baby awake like Mrs Sutton’d just done with me, and I didn’t reckon you could hit it or shout in its ear.

  ‘Just pick her up and see if that stirs her.’

  So I did, but the baby didn’t wake up, it just rolled its big head around, like a dog. Then Mrs Sutton got a flannel what was cold and wet, and she wrung it over the baby’s head, till the shock of it made it cry. ‘There,’ she said, in her soft voice, and I wasn’t sure if she was talking to me or the baby. ‘There we are. Sssh.’

  I could see Mrs Sutton wasn’t going nowhere in a hurry, so I undid my nightgown and pulled it down over my shoulder. I wanted her to see as I was doing my best with suckling this baby, so it wouldn’t go costing the place a lot of money in being kept alive through other means. But it wasn’t no good. Mrs Sutton shoved that baby to my titties again, trying over and over to get everything just right, but no milk come and the baby was screaming like a starving vampire. After a while Mrs Sutton sighed. ‘She will need to be given a bottle.’