The Orphan Collection

by Maggie Hope

  ‘Get on through with you, Johnny Fenwick. You know I don’t like my boarders hanging about in the kitchen.’ Auntie Doris had seen the latter part of this exchange and she wasn’t slow to show her disapproval.

  Undeterred, Johnny gave Ada a last sympathetic grin before returning to the front of the house. He pondered afresh on the presence of the girl as he went. There was something about her, a vulnerable yet defiant quality that disturbed him, and when Mrs Parker had raised her hand to the child he had felt instantly protective of her. Shrugging his shoulders – after all, he knew practically nothing of the girl – he climbed the stairs to his tiny room, which had been split off a larger one by shaky wooden boarding. Sitting on the bed, the only place there was to sit, he picked up an engineering manual from the tiny bedside table and was soon lost in his studies.

  Meanwhile Ada bent her head over her food once more and managed with some trouble to finish her meal. She sat back in her chair, feeling bloated and uncomfortable, and looked up at Auntie Doris who was busy washing the dishes.

  ‘Can I go to bed now, Auntie Doris?’ The small voice with its humble plea came out with more pathos than Ada realised and her aunt was not completely insensitive.

  ‘Well,’ she said grudgingly, ‘I suppose you will be tired. All right, get ready for bed. I’ll get you a dish of water and you can get yourself washed. You’ll sleep in here, I can’t afford to give you a bed upstairs. I need them for the lodgers.’

  Ada looked round in dismay; she couldn’t see that there was anywhere to sleep in the kitchen. There was not even a settee – was she to sleep on the clippie mat on the floor? But she hadn’t noticed that in the corner there was a red mahogany chiffonier sideboard. Auntie Doris pulled open the doors and revealed a fold-up bed.

  ‘There are blankets and a pillow in the drawers. Now don’t forget, when you get up in the morning you’ll have to fold the bedclothes and put them away. Tidy, mind! You’ll get up at five o’clock. I can’t do with the bed out when I’m making breakfast for the boarders. Now run along to the netty, then you can get ready for bed.’

  Obediently Ada slipped out of the back door and into the yard. There were two doors in the corner at the far end but from the coal dust on the step of the first one, the netty had to be the second, Ada reckoned. She stretched up to the latch and there it was, an ash closet with a scrubbed wooden seat and a large – very large – hole, and there was not a small one beside it as at Grannie’s. She climbed up and sat, hanging on desperately, terrified she would fall in and thankful when she could clamber down at last. Well, at least it seemed to be for the sole use of the occupants of the house and not shared with the neighbours like the water closet they’d had in Durham City. Quickly she pulled up her drawers and rearranged her skirt, shivering in the chill of the autumnal evening before scurrying back to the warmth of the kitchen.

  Auntie Doris was pouring water into an enamel dish on the table. She scowled at the little girl. ‘Wash properly, mind. Take your dress off first.’ She brought white Windsor soap, a piece of flannel and a worn, rough towel and placed them beside the bowl.

  Ada unbuttoned her brown cotton dress with its black crepe armband and sat down on the clippie mat to untie her tall boots. The laces were stiff and hurt her fingers.

  ‘Eeh, man, howay here and I’ll do it!’ Auntie Doris was impatient with Ada and her hands were rough and horny, the veins standing out lumpily on the red skin. ‘I want you in bed in five minutes,’ she said.

  Grannie’s hands had been rough and red too, Ada thought, but Grannie was gentler somehow and Ada hadn’t minded. Auntie Doris pulled off the boots, scratching Ada’s skin with a jagged nail. Then, after Ada had washed, Auntie Doris pulled and tugged a metal comb through Ada’s curls, forcing her head back and bringing tears to her eyes.

  At last she was ready and could climb onto the lumpy mattress and pull the blankets up to her chin. The blankets smelled of the same soap she had used to wash her face, and the smell reminded her of Monday washdays when she had helped Grannie, catching the clothes as they came out of the rollers of the iron mangle. It was comforting somehow. Ada watched as Auntie Doris pulled a folding screen across the foot of the bed, hiding it from anyone going through the kitchen to the yard but not entirely screening the kitchen from Ada’s gaze.

  Tired as she was, she felt she wouldn’t be able to sleep for everything was so strange. And any road, she thought forlornly, she had never slept in a kitchen before. She would be the only one downstairs! Her vivid imagination was already conjuring up dark shapes in the gloom. After Auntie Doris put out the gas it would be even darker, eerie and strange. Ada’s heartbeat quickened. The gas went ‘plop’ as Auntie Doris turned it off and went out of the door, closing it firmly behind her. Ada squeezed her eyes tight shut.

  ‘Matthew, Mark, Luke and John,’ she prayed desperately, keeping her eyes closed in case she saw anything horrible in the shadows, ‘bless the bed that I lie on.’ But it was no good, without her grannie’s soft voice intoning the prayer with her she couldn’t remember no matter how hard she tried. A tear squeezed its way out of her closed lid and coursed down her cheek unheeded.

  ‘Psst!’

  The hiss made her jump rigid, her eyes starting open in alarm. It was a moment before she realised it was Johnny Fenwick peeping round the screen, a candle in one hand and a paper bag in the other. The glow from the candle made his face all light planes and dark hollows but it was definitely Johnny.

  ‘I’ve brought you some pear drops.’ He moved swiftly towards her as he whispered and put the bag of sweets on her pillow. Grinning, he backed away with a finger to his lips before she could find her tongue and thank him.

  Wondering, she picked up the bag and its contents, sniffing. It was the familiar pear-drop smell, sweet and acidic at the same time. How did Johnny Fenwick know she loved pear drops more than anything? Hadn’t her grannie bought them of a Saturday night and hadn’t they sat before the fire sucking them together? Ada clutched the sweets to her and turned over onto her side. She relaxed, feeling better already, a lovely warm feeling overcoming her fears. She had a friend. Johnny Fenwick was her friend. Her eyelids drooped and Ada slept.

  It was still dark when Ada woke. For a moment she was bewildered, not knowing where she was or what it was that had caused her to wake up. She peered fearfully round her at the gloom. As her eyes grew accustomed to it, there was enough light getting in the kitchen window to show her a grotesque shape at the end of the screen. Ada stared hard, trying to make out what it was. It looked like a huge head on hunched shoulders. The light outlined what seemed to be a large nose, long and bent. Ada stared hard at it, trying to make it out. She felt a new discomfort, she wanted to go to the lavatory but she was afraid to move in case she attracted the attention of the strange being.

  The back door opened with a squeak of unoiled hinges and she heard heavy footfalls crossing the room; there was a pause before a flickering light was lifted and she saw the figure of a man through the gap between the screen and the wall. He was opening the door to the passage.

  ‘Dafty!’ Ada said it aloud, scolding herself, for as the man lifted his candle she had seen no monster but her own clothes which Auntie Doris had flung over the top of the screen, one sleeve jutting out and looking like anything but a nose! Sitting up in bed, Ada felt on the floor for her boots, pulling them on over bare feet.

  Bye! She’d been lucky there, she thought in relief. What would Auntie Doris have said if she had wet the bed? Would she have been sent to the workhouse? Quickly she made her way to the back door in the grey light of predawn. The man, whoever he was, had left the bolt drawn so she got out easily enough.

  The air was fresh and cold, making her shiver in her flannel nightie. She hurried as fast as she could, gasping as a blast of cold air from the hole in the seat hit her bare flesh. She raced back to the kitchen and jumped into bed. As she snuggled down into the warm cocoon of blankets, her elbow encountered something hard. Groping down, she found
the bag of pear drops. Popping one into her mouth, she sucked luxuriously and thought about the boy who had given her the sweets, Johnny, Johnny Fenwick.

  Doris Parker was also awake, lying beside her snoring husband. She was wondering if she had done the right thing in bringing her niece to live with them. In the half-light she stared at the framed text which had been her mother’s and now hung on the wall opposite the bed; she couldn’t make out the words but she knew they said, ‘God Is Love’. She thought back to the time when she had embroidered it and given it to her mother for Christmas, she’d been so proud of it. But Mam had been absent-minded, too interested in the new baby, who had a snuffling cold. Her sister Ada was the first baby in the family to live more than a few weeks since Doris herself and Mam lavished all her anxious care on her.

  The familiar jealousy flared in Doris’s breast as she remembered Ada, her sister. It was Ada who got all the treats, Ada who had naturally curling hair and good looks and it was Ada who in the end came to nowt. Doris remembered the thrill of satisfaction she felt when she found out that Ada was expecting a baby. She turned over in bed and smiled; now she was in charge of the bairn.

  The bairn was such a little stick of a thing for all her seven years, but she seemed strong enough. She’d pay for her keep all right. Doris’s anger rose again as she remembered the spark in Lorinda’s eye: she might be small but she showed the spirit of her flaming nowt of a mother. Doris grinned. She’d brought her down a peg or two calling her Ada.

  ‘I’ll bray that impittance out of her,’ Doris said as she wearily got out of bed. ‘I’ll start as I mean to go on.’

  ‘What? Eh?’ Harry turned over and looked at her sleepily.

  ‘I said nowt for you. Just you get yourself up and see to the breakfast tables, the men’ll be down before we know it.’ Doris poured cold water into the basin on the washstand and splashed it over her face and arms before drying herself on the rough towel which was hanging on the side rail. Aye, she’d soon train the lass to the work, it would ease her own burden.

  Chapter Two

  ‘Come on, you! Up you get!’ The strident voice woke Ada from a pleasant doze, Auntie Doris sounded angry already and Ada sat up in alarm. Flinging the girl’s clothes on top of her, the woman folded the screen and set it back against the wall, glaring sideways at her niece as she did so.

  ‘Howay now, get yourself dressed, you don’t want to be caught in your nightie, do you? The men will be coming through here in a minute.’

  Auntie Doris turned up the gas in the mantle above the table and lit it with a match. Then she turned her attention to the range, raking out the ashes into the box underneath, screwing up yesterday’s Northern Echo and laying it in the grate. She took sticks from the oven and criss crossed them over the paper, covering them with the still warm cinders and coal from the scuttle, all the time working at a furious rate and berating Ada while she worked for being slow.

  ‘And don’t forget to tidy the bedclothes away, neat and tidy now! Then I’ll show you how to put up the bed.’ She filled the kettle and put it to boil on the gas ring by the fire before turning to her niece with her hands on her hips.

  Ada was scrambling into her clothes, pulling on her coarse, black stockings, pulling the legs of her drawers down over the stockingtops. She fumbled with the buttons of the dingy brown dress, managed them in the end, and then it was the turn of her pinafore. Tying the neat bow at the back as Grannie had taught her, she took a broken piece of comb out of the pocket and dragged it through her tangled curls, fastening them back from her face with a piece of black tape. Auntie Doris watched as Ada folded the blankets, pursing her lips as she struggled with their weight but not offering to help. At last the bedclothes were in the drawer and before long the chiffonier was back to looking like a sideboard again.

  Uncle Harry shuffled into the kitchen, his pale eyes watering and his nose bright pink. He glanced briefly at Ada, who was standing uncertainly, not knowing what she was expected to do next, before going over to the range and holding his brown-spotted hands out to the fire. His wife grunted her impatience.

  ‘For God’s sake, Harry, show the girl how to set the table. We haven’t got time to stand about gormless! I’m too busy now to have you in here anyway.’ Auntie Doris nodded her head purposefully to Ada, who followed Harry as he shuffled back to the front room without even bothering to answer his wife. Ada looked about her with interest. So far she hadn’t been beyond the passage door and she had thought she was to be confined to the kitchen for ever.

  The room where the lodgers ate their meals and spent their spare time was as dismal as the kitchen, she thought. Two square tables were covered in scratched and worn ‘American oilcloth’ and the chairs set around them were mismatched and ugly, though they were sturdy enough. A scrubbed wooden cupboard on the wall was the only other furniture; the only attempt at decoration was one picture on the wall, a cheap print of ‘The Thin Red Line’. The red coats of the soldiers were faded to a dirty pink and brown spots of damp adorned the corners.

  Uncle Harry drew back the thin brown curtains to disclose a thick lace, ‘dolly-dyed’ to a sickly shade of cream. Ada stood in a corner and watched him curiously as he turned up the gas jet and opened the corner cupboard. The room looked no more inviting for the extra light.

  ‘Howay then, lass,’ he said as he motioned her over. ‘You get out the pots, they’ll be down for their fodder before we know it.’

  Ada came to his side obediently, waiting for him to hand down the pint mugs and knives and forks which she could see were in the cupboard. She looked up in surprise as he glanced quickly at the door before patting her bottom lingeringly. Her mouth dropped open as he put an arm around her thin body and squeezed her to him. She didn’t know what to do or how to respond to him so she kept herself rigid. It was the first friendly touch she had had since she came to Bishop Auckland, but it didn’t feel right somehow, not really friendly. Desperately uneasy, she just wished he would let her go.

  ‘I’m your friend,’ Uncle Harry said softly and his wet moustache brushed her cheek, making her skin shrink, ‘I’ll look after you.’

  There was a noise in the passageway just outside the door and Uncle Harry released her abruptly, causing her to stagger a little. Ada took the mugs he handed down to her without looking at him and moved away to set the tables. Her face was red and she felt awkward and strange and very unsure of herself.

  Suddenly the ache for her grannie was a hard lump in her stomach which refused to budge, a lump as heavy as lead. Her eyes blurred and she couldn’t look at Johnny as he came into the room, closely followed by the other lodgers. Johnny paused, glancing curiously from Ada to her uncle. He could sense there was something wrong. But Ada brushed past him quickly, anxious to get back to the kitchen and the rough voice of Auntie Doris. At least she knew where she was with Auntie Doris.

  Ada sat back on her heels and surveyed the front steps she had just finished scouring with sandstone. She thought they looked nice and clean but would Auntie Doris? Standing up, she took deep breaths of the cold early-morning air. It wasn’t very often Ada got the chance to be out in the fresh air; Auntie Doris didn’t like her to go out much. She’d been in Finkle Street for a month and she hadn’t been to school yet. Ada liked school, she looked forward eagerly to starting a new one here in Bishop Auckland. If it was like the school in Durham she would soon make friends with the other girls, she knew. Maybe Auntie Doris would let her go next week.

  ‘Are you not finished out there yet?’

  Ada jumped as Auntie Doris came out into the passage and stood with her hands on her hips glaring at her.

  ‘Yes. Yes, I am.’

  Picking up her bucket and piece of sandstone, Ada hurried through the house. She emptied her bucket in the yard drain and then began washing up the breakfast dishes. By this time she didn’t have to be told what the next job for her was, she had quickly got into the routine.

  Auntie Doris was black-leading the range, her brush
going rhythmically to and fro, to and fro. Ada looked at her sideways. She didn’t seem to be in a really angry mood, just intent on getting the oven door to shine.

  ‘Am I going to school next week, Auntie?’

  The question sounded loud in Ada’s own ears, and her heart pounded as she bent over the plate she was scrubbing clean of grease. Auntie Doris stopped buffing the oven door. She stood back and looked at her niece, her mouth set.

  ‘No you’re blooming well not!’ she said flatly. ‘You’ll learn all you need to know here in this house.’ She turned back to the range. As far as she was concerned the subject of school was closed.

  Ada pressed her lips tightly together to stop herself from crying. She continued with the washing-up and after a while she no longer wanted to weep, she began to feel rebellious instead. Why shouldn’t she go to school?

  Everybody went to school. How would she ever be able to read and write if she didn’t go to school? Auntie Doris was horrible, she had no right to stop her. She hated Auntie Doris. She glared her hatred behind her aunt’s back. Auntie Doris continued with her work, serenely unaware of the feelings she had roused in Ada.

  When the washing-up was finished, the draining board scrubbed down and the cloths wrung out and hanging on the brass rail above the range, Ada went out to sweep the back yard. Gradually she worked off her bad feelings towards Auntie Doris, there was nothing she could do to alter things now. She would leave it for now, but Auntie couldn’t keep her off school for ever. Any road, if her mam came back for her – and Ada prayed every single night that she would – Auntie Doris would no longer have the charge of her. Mam would let her go to school, surely she would. Ada fell to dreaming about how it would be if her mam came back. They would go to live in Grannie’s old house in Durham and Johnny would come to tea and she could change her name back to Lorinda. Bye, it would be lovely.