The Orphan Collection

by Maggie Hope

  ‘I have to go to work, Mother, it’s my job.’

  Mrs Carr said nothing to that, merely looked discontented. They drank the tea and Ada rose to go. ‘Why don’t you go for a nice walk, Mam?’ she suggested. ‘It’s a lovely day, you’ll enjoy it.’

  ‘It’s too cold and anyway, there’s my back. It’s bad, it must have been the journey up yesterday. No, if you’re going to leave me alone again I’ll stay in bed, it’ll do me more good. And pull the curtains together before you go, the light hurts my eyes.’

  Ada was depressed as she went downstairs. She was beginning to think she had taken on more than she could manage when she’d asked her mother to stay. But she soon forgot about it in the rush to get the wards in order before the doctor’s rounds. That was one of the cardinal rules she had had instilled into her during her training: have the wards tidy and neat and everything in order for the doctors to see.

  By the end of the week, Ada was beginning to think that the sooner she had found a place for her mother to stay, the better. Every evening when she finished her work on the ward she went upstairs to find her mother the worse for drink. A new brandy bottle had to be put under lock and key downstairs in the office, the old one having been emptied that first day. But where was her mother getting her supplies? It was a mystery to Ada.

  She found out by chance one day when she caught Millie in her sitting room with Mrs Carr, when she popped upstairs for something she had forgotten.

  ‘You’ll have to give me the money, Mrs Carr,’ the girl was saying. She was standing with her back to the door and so didn’t see Ada come in. Mrs Carr tried to slip the bottle of gin behind her back as she saw her daughter, but she was not fast enough.

  ‘How much does my mother owe you, Millie?’

  Millie flushed guiltily and stared at the floor. ‘Two and sixpence, Matron,’ she mumbled.

  Ada took her purse out of her uniform dress pocket, fished out half-a-crown and handed it over. ‘I’ll have a word with you downstairs, Millie,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, Matron,’ Millie answered and ran out of the room, glad to escape.

  Ada gazed at her mother, who was clutching the bottle to her breast as though she expected Ada to take it from her by force.

  ‘Well, a woman likes a drink, and why shouldn’t I have one? There’s precious little else to do in this hole. You’re always busy, you never have any time for me.’

  ‘Oh, Mam,’ said Ada helplessly. ‘I’ve told you I have to work, do you want me to lose my job?’

  ‘You’d think you’d have a bit more time off, though. Anyway, why do you have to work? I thought your husband was a doctor in the army, surely you get money from him? It’s his duty to keep you, isn’t it?’

  Ada didn’t want to talk about Tom, she couldn’t bring herself to discuss him with her mother. Quickly she changed the subject.

  ‘I have to go now, Mam, but I tell you what we’ll do. I have a day off next Friday, why don’t we go out for the day? We can go and look round for somewhere for you to stay. It’s time we were making plans, you know.’

  ‘Oh aye, I know, you want to get rid of me, that’s it.’ Mrs Carr glared at her daughter. ‘Don’t think I don’t know when I’m not wanted.’

  ‘Oh, Mam, I haven’t time to stand here arguing.’ Ada was losing her patience. There were a million things she had to do downstairs and she had to go. ‘We’ll talk about it tonight.’

  Ada went downstairs feeling very worried about her mother. She knew the staff were beginning to talk, and it was only a matter of time before the trustees got to hear about her. And then where would her job be? It was imperative that she find somewhere else for her mother to stay. Seeking out Millie, she asked her not to run errands for her mother without asking Ada about it.

  Fortunately, Ada had the ability to switch off all other worries and concentrate wholly on her work. She spent the rest of the day working tirelessly beside her nurses and when eventually she was ready to go off duty again she was humming softly to herself as she went up to her rooms.

  As she opened the door, the smell of gin greeted her once again and she stopped humming abruptly as all her problems came back to her. Her mother was lying half on and half off the sofa, the gin bottle on its side on the rug beside her.

  ‘Oh, Mam, what are we going to do about you?’ she asked.

  Mrs Carr opened her eyes blearily and looked up at her, muttering incoherently.

  ‘Let’s get you to bed, then.’ Ada bent and took hold of her under the armpits, pulling her onto her feet. ‘Howay now, Mam, hang onto me.’

  Swaying drunkenly, Mrs Carr almost fell and pulled Ada down with her, but in the end Ada managed to get her into the bedroom and laid across the bed. Immediately, Mrs Carr closed her eyes again, her mouth opened and she began to snore. Ada covered her with a blanket and went out into the sitting room, closing the door behind her.

  Definitely, she had to do something about her mam and it was urgent, Ada mused as she made herself a cup of tea and sat down on the sofa. She unlaced her shoes and put her feet up, feeling very weary. She couldn’t wait until Friday to find alternative accommodation for her mam, she had to do it as soon as she could. She would take a couple of hours off the next afternoon, she decided. But it wouldn’t be any good getting her lodgings, she knew that now. Her mam would be thrown out within a week from any decent lodging house in Durham. She was toying with the idea of finding someone to share a house with her mother when she heard a cry from the bedroom. What now? she thought wearily and went to investigate.

  ‘Lorinda! Lorinda!’ Mrs Carr was sitting up in bed, her hair all over the place and tears running down her cheeks, making channels in the rouge.

  ‘What is it? What’s wrong, Mam?’

  ‘Oh, Lorinda, I thought you’d put me out, I dreamed I had nowhere to go. Oh, pet, you wouldn’t do that, would you?’ She looked so pathetically small and helpless sitting there that Ada crossed to the bed and, sitting down, took her in her arms.

  ‘No, Mam, I wouldn’t put you out.’

  ‘It’s not my fault, Lorinda, really it isn’t, none of it was my fault.’

  ‘Henry, was it? He didn’t treat you right?’ Ada said mechanically, her weariness threatening to overwhelm her.

  ‘Henry? Why, no, man, Henry was a saint, he was. Eeh, if he knew what I’d come to he’d turn in his grave, he would that.’

  Ada felt vaguely surprised; yesterday evening her mother had called Henry every name she could think of. And today he was a saint? But her mother was rambling on about something or someone. Ada pricked up her ears as she heard a name she knew.

  ‘No, it was long before that. I would never have had to leave me mam and go down to London in the first place but for that James Johnson. It was all his fault, all of it.’ She began to weep noisily, burying her face in Ada’s apron bib.

  ‘James Johnson? Did you say James Johnson?’

  ‘Aye, I did, the rotten sod. Eeh, I was only a bairn meself, I was, only sixteen, pet. I was working up at the university, minding my own business. I was a good girl, I was. And he was lovely, Lorinda, he was, a lovely man. He promised me he would marry me, he did. I wasn’t the sort of girl to go with anybody if I hadn’t thought he would marry me.’

  ‘James Johnson? He worked at the university?’ Ada was stunned. ‘Do you mean James Johnson is my father?’

  Mrs Carr looked at her with the earnestness of the very drunk and nodded her head vigorously. ‘He is, pet, he is. Or mebbe I should say he was – he was a lot older than me, he’s likely dead now. He took advantage of me, Ada, a poor skivvy. All presents and flowers at first but it was different later. Thought himself too high and mighty for a poor maid of all work when it came to it, though he was full of promises in the beginning. But once I had a babby on the way it was another thing altogether. He denied it was his, said I’d been with other men. He was worried about his precious position at the university then. Bye, that bloody James Johnson has a lot to answer for.’


  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Ada slept little that night and what sleep she did have was fitful. She woke up a dozen times during the night and thought of her mother’s disclosure. James Johnson was my father. James Johnson is my father. The words went round and round in her head until it ached. She was filled with a furious anger with the man. He had befriended her ever since she came back to Durham and knocked on his door asking for work. She’d done his washing and ironing for months, helped him out with kitchen work, confided in him. Ada couldn’t get over it.

  Why had he thrown her mother off? Ada asked herself. Had he been married when he had the affair with the girl who cleaned his rooms at the university? But he had never mentioned a wife, only a brother, the one who was killed in the war.

  At five o’clock in the morning, Ada was wide awake again. She decided she might as well get up, since she couldn’t sleep any more; she had to be ready for work soon in any case. And first chance she got she would arrange with her deputy to have free time that afternoon. She wouldn’t tell her mother where she was going; it would be easy enough to think up an excuse to go out on her own. She certainly didn’t want to go to see Mr Johnson trailing Mam with her.

  In the event, Ada simply did without lunch and slipped away at one o’clock. Mrs Carr would think she was working, she reckoned. She took a bus into the city and walked to the County Hospital, where Mr Johnson was still a patient.

  As she walked, Ada rehearsed in her mind what she was going to say to Mr Johnson. Her anger towards him had cooled but only slightly. She was furious with him not only for the ruin he had brought to her mother’s life but also because he must have known who she was herself, right from the beginning. Wasn’t her name the same as her mother’s had been? Surely he hadn’t thought so little of his affair with Mam that he didn’t even remember the name?

  Thinking of how he had tried to educate her, the little kindnesses he had shown to her over the last few years, only made Ada more annoyed with him. There she was thinking he was doing it out of the goodness of his heart, because he saw she had a good brain and wanted to help her, because he liked her even, and all the time he had known she was his daughter, and had done it because she was his daughter.

  And he had actually been the one to suggest that he give her away at her wedding! He had offered himself, he had walked down the aisle with her, proud to act as her father but not ready to acknowledge the relationship. He had deceived her, that was what he had done.

  But when Ada got to the hospital it was to find that Mr Johnson had passed away a short while before.

  ‘I was going to let you know, Matron, you were the only one to visit him,’ the ward sister said to her. ‘Though his son was listed as next of kin, his solicitor told us.’

  Ada walked away from the hospital in a daze. She had got away as soon as she could, questions whirling round and round in her head. That must have been what the old man was trying to tell her that day in Old Elvet, she realised. Major Walter Johnson was his son, not his brother. She had had a half-brother and never even known.

  Mr Johnson had behaved badly, very badly, towards her mother, she thought as she went on her way. But he had become just a pathetic, ill old man who had faced a lonely death.

  Lifting her chin, she determined to forget about the past, for harking back did no good at all. She knew who her father had been now, and she knew her mother.

  ‘I am stronger than either of them,’ she said aloud, startling a little girl bowling her hoop along the pavement so that the iron ring fell to the ground with a clatter. Ada didn’t notice it, her mind was on other things. People have charge of their own lives, she mused under her breath. Maybe her early life had helped her be strong.

  Ada thought of Johnny, her lovely man. Surely the war would be over soon and they would be together again. She was passing a corner shop and on impulse she went in and bought a packet of pear drops. When she slipped one into her mouth and sucked, the old, comforting taste of sweet and acid reminded her of Johnny. Maybe she was a fool, but she could almost imagine he was there, around the next corner, just waiting for her.

  Within a week, Mrs Carr was settled in a tiny house in Gilesgate. Ada furnished it as best she could out of her small savings and tried to interest her mother in sewing curtains for the windows, for she had purchased a sewing machine from a second-hand shop. She spent all her spare time with her mother, chivvying her to take an interest in keeping the cottage nice.

  Mrs Carr swung from one mood to another. At first she had been sullen and refusing to take any interest at all.

  ‘A poky enough place,’ she commented when she looked round the house for the first time. ‘Still, I suppose you think, it’s good enough for me, you still blame me for leaving you with our Doris.’

  ‘I don’t, Mam. I know you hadn’t much choice, the way you were situated,’ Ada said mildly. ‘And it’s big enough for you, isn’t it? Why, there’s even a spare bedroom if you need it.’

  Mrs Carr snorted. ‘Why should I need it then? I don’t know anybody in this rotten hole any more.’

  ‘You know Mrs Dunne. Why don’t you go and see her? You know, she was Grannie’s neighbour. I lodged with her when I first came back to Durham.’

  ‘Interfering old cat! I wouldn’t speak to her, I wouldn’t. Why she practically crowed over me and me mam when I fell wrong with you.’ Her mother could sound quite vicious sometimes, Ada thought.

  Mrs Carr lifted the cover off the Singer sewing machine and inspected it. Experimentally, she moved the treadle up and down and sniffed. ‘Never been oiled in years, I’d say.’

  Ada smiled to see that her mother handled the machine as though she was well used to them. ‘Have you done some sewing before, Mam?’

  ‘I have. I worked in a dress factory when I went down to London.’ Mrs Carr laughed shortly. ‘I soon got out of there, I can tell you. Bloody slaves, that’s all we were. Working for money that wouldn’t keep body and soul together.’

  Ada forbore to ask what her mother had gone on to. She had just about lost all her illusions about her now and maybe it was better not to know. But it did occur to her that her mother could perhaps make a little money taking sewing in, alterations or something like that.

  ‘I have to get back to the Hall, Mam,’ Ada said aloud.

  Mrs Carr pursed her lips and yet again Ada was struck by her likeness to Auntie Doris, not so much in looks as in mannerisms and the way she spoke.

  ‘Aye, well, it doesn’t matter about me, I’m sure,’ said Mrs Carr. ‘I’ll be perfectly all right on my own here, even though I don’t know a soul.’

  ‘There’s the curtains to run up – look, I’ve got you some nice cheerful material from the market,’ Ada said, ignoring the complaint in her mother’s voice. ‘I have to work, Mam, or we’ll both starve.’

  ‘Aw, go on then,’ Mrs Carr said crossly.

  Ada hesitated as she got to the door. Was her mam going to be all right? Fervently she hoped she wouldn’t go on the gin again; these last few days she had been relatively sober.

  ‘Goodbye for now. I’ll come back when I can and bring you some oil for the machine.’

  ‘Ta-ta,’ Mrs Carr replied absently and Ada was cheered to see her fingering the curtain material, opening out the bundle on the table. As Ada opened the door she looked up. ‘Don’t bother, I can get some meself. I can’t wait about for you all the time with no curtains at the window and nosy folk staring in,’ she said.

  Ada felt quite happy about her mother as she went up the drive of the Hall and let herself in the front door. As usual her eyes were drawn to the afternoon post which was laid out on the hall table. Her heart beat uncomfortably as she looked for a letter from Johnny. And there was one! There it was in its buff envelope, the stamp ‘Passed by the Censor’ across the front. She could hardly wait to get it upstairs, where she could open it in private. With a feeling of relief she opened the door into the silent flat: she would still worry about what her mother was up to in her little co
ttage but at least she wasn’t creating havoc in Ada’s own rooms. The situation had been getting impossible.

  Shedding her coat and hat, Ada sat down on the sofa and opened the letter. There were two sheets covered with Johnny’s beloved handwriting.

  ‘My dearest Lorinda,’ she read and impulsively she kissed the words. She was his dearest Lorinda. Oh, how much better her given name sounded when it came from Johnny than when it came from her mother. Though she’d tried and tried, she had never succeeded in making her mother call her Ada.

  She read on, drinking in every word. Johnny said very little about what was happening to him at the front, but she supposed he couldn’t say a lot or the censor would have blacked out the words. Instead, his letter was full of plans for the future – their future, his and hers. He told her of his business in Toronto and the house he had built just before the war.

  ‘But if you don’t like it, my love, I will build another, and you can have it exactly as you want it.’

  Ada looked up from the letter. He would build another house just to suit her whims. Oh, Johnny, Johnny, she thought and went to the bag of pear drops which she kept in the sideboard drawer, taking one out and popping it into her mouth as she did whenever the longing for him filled her.

  ‘My love, my Lorinda,’ she read on after she sat down again, ‘I can’t wait for the day. I don’t care if you haven’t got your divorce by then, we’ll still go away to Canada together, I won’t go without you ever again. When I get back to you we will never, never be parted, I promise you.’

  Ada sat back, contented. She felt exactly the same: she didn’t care what anyone said, she would go with him wherever he wanted to go, Canada or the South Pole, she didn’t care. As far as she was concerned she was already divorced from Tom, even if she didn’t have the papers yet to prove it.

  She was still sitting there when there was a knock at the door and Millie poked her head round.