The Orphan Collection

by Maggie Hope

  Ada did have a few doubts about the idea when she remembered the way the sisters spoke about each other. But they would have to learn to live together, she decided, there was nothing else for it. There were two bedrooms in the house in Gilesgate, and it was the ideal solution. First chance she got she would tell Mam about it. Wasn’t Mam just saying how lonely she would be in the cottage?

  The letter to Auntie Doris telling her of Ada’s proposal was sent by the next post and the reply was equally prompt.

  Good, thought Ada as she read it. Auntie Doris seemed to have forgotten her dislike of her younger sister in her anxiety to get out of the workhouse. Her only enquiry was how soon Ada could come for her.

  There was a little more opposition to the plan from Mrs Carr when Ada put it to her.

  ‘The place is too small, Lorinda, you know it is,’ she said. ‘And I never could stand our Doris. We’ll be at each other’s throats all the time, we will.’ Mrs Carr glared at Ada and turned back to the sewing machine. Curtains were already up at the window of the tiny front room and she was busy sewing a pair for the back bedroom.

  ‘But you said you’d be lonely, Mam.’ Ada tried to use reasoned argument in her answer. ‘Mam,’ she went on when Mrs Carr kept her head bent over the material fairly rushing under the needle. ‘Mam, she’s in Oaklands, it’s the workhouse. Surely you don’t want to leave her there? Grannie always said she would never let any of hers go into the workhouse.’

  Mrs Carr sat back in her chair and the whirr of the sewing machine fell silent.

  ‘I suppose you’ve made your mind up anyway,’ she said. ‘I can’t really stop you, can I? You pay the rent and that’s it.’

  ‘Oh, Mam! That’s not it at all, I don’t want you to be unhappy. But Auntie Doris –’

  ‘Aye, well, it’s natural, I suppose, you’re bound to think more of her than me. She brought you up, like.’

  Something that had been niggling at the back of Ada’s mind came to the surface. ‘Mam,’ she said, ‘how do you know Auntie Doris brought me up? I never heard anything about you all the time you were in London. Grannie was sure you would come back, she used to tell me you would, but you never did and you didn’t write to me either. Howay, Mam, how did you know?’

  Mrs Carr looked uncomfortable. ‘I didn’t know you must have told me –’

  ‘I didn’t. You said it, that very first day at the Hall,’ Ada asserted.

  ‘Aye, well, if you must know, I did find out about your grannie being poorly. When she first took bad she wrote to me.’

  ‘But how did she know where you were? I thought you’d lost touch altogether.’

  ‘Aye. But she wrote to the place I’d gone to in the beginning and it was just by chance that I happened to see someone and –’

  ‘You knew she was poorly and likely to die? And you didn’t come back? Oh, Mam! If you didn’t care about her, what about me? What about me, Mam? Why didn’t you come for me?’ The appeal in Ada’s voice came straight from her very soul. Emotion was churning up in her; she couldn’t believe her mother hadn’t cared if she was left to go into the workhouse or an orphanage or whatever happened to her.

  Mrs Carr looked at her, her face working. ‘Aw, Lorinda, pet, you have to understand. I was just getting on with my Henry, and he would never have stood for a little lass trailing after me. I’ve told you what he was like, he liked a good time, Ada, man, it was a chance for me, I loved him, can’t you see that? And anyway, I wrote to our Doris, I knew she would take you in if I asked her. She’s not so bad, our Doris.’

  Ada couldn’t think of anything to say, she was stunned. Auntie Doris had known where her mother was and she hadn’t let on. She hadn’t said a word. And why? Ada cried inside, knowing the answer: because Auntie Doris wanted a little slave, a skivvy for her kitchen. Ada felt she would never understand the callousness of it. She walked to the door, feeling she had to get away. No one had cared about her, no one thought of her needs – not her mam, not her father and not Auntie Doris. Her aunt had at least fed her well and clothed her after a fashion. And she had kept her out of the workhouse. In fairness, Ada had to admit that.

  She went out of the cottage without another word to her mother. She would wash her hands of both of them, her mother and her aunt, she told herself. Why should she lift a finger to help them? They didn’t deserve any help, either of them, they had rubbed her face in the dirt, they hadn’t cared about her at all. They were just interested in their own selfish needs, that was the truth.

  I won’t go back. They can both of them go to hell for all I care, she thought. Why should she? They weren’t interested in her until they needed her.

  But of course Ada had calmed down by the time she got back to her rooms. She just didn’t have it in her to abandon Auntie Doris or her mother. And anyway, she thought as the familiar ache descended on her mind, blotting out everything else, she didn’t care about anyone but Johnny, and he was gone. Only let him write to her or telephone her, saying it was all a mistake, he hadn’t meant any of it. Oh, why had she left the place for such a long time? He might have been trying to get in touch with her while she was out.

  But when she asked Millie if there had been any calls the answer was no, no messages at all.

  Johnny did not call because he was already back in France. There was a big push coming up and his regiment was recalled to take part in it. But he found time to write to her in those few hours before dawn on the morning of the great offensive. In his letter he tried to explain to her how his emotions had suddenly boiled over, how he couldn’t bear to think of her being in Durham if Tom came home. ‘My love,’ he wrote, trying to infuse his words with the feelings he had for her,

  My love, I’m not trying to excuse what I said and did. But believe me, I love you so much. I can’t bear to be here, imagining things, stupid things, oh God, Lorinda, I’m sorry, I do trust you, I do. And I will make it up to you. I went to the station that night but I was too late, or I missed you somehow, and I couldn’t telephone you then for you weren’t there. And I had to go back to the front.

  Lorinda, my Ada-Lorinda, I’m sorry, sorry. Tell me you forgive me.

  Your ever loving Johnny.

  He put the letter in an envelope and addressed it. He would post it as soon as he got back. Meanwhile he put it safe with his personal papers, leaving them in the dug-out as the others did, just in case. But it was something he refused to contemplate: he was going to get back, he had to clear up this thing between him and his little love.

  Auntie Doris was waiting for Ada with her bag packed, sitting in the entrance to the ward dressed in a rusty black coat and hat. Ada could remember the coat well: Auntie Doris had bought it when they moved to Tenters Street. Before that she had always worn a shawl, but she had thought a proper coat was more suitable to her position as theatrical landlady.

  ‘Mind, I’ve been waiting long enough,’ Auntie Doris said with some asperity when Ada turned up to collect her. ‘I thought you were never going to get here. Dawdling about, I suppose you were; I always had to clip your ear for that.’

  Ada ignored the last bit. ‘It was Eliza’s wedding, Auntie Doris, you know, Eliza who used to work for you in Tenters Street. I’ve been to her wedding, I told you I was going.’

  Ada thought momentarily about the wedding. She still wasn’t sure that Eliza had done the right thing. Emmerson Peart was older than Eliza and had daughters of his own. Did he simply want a maid of all work to look after them? She sighed; they were married now, anyway. Ada turned her attention back to Auntie Doris.

  ‘Well, of course I remember her,’ that lady was saying. ‘What do you think I am, in my dotage? You’d think she would have had enough the first time round, never mind trying it again, like. I know I wouldn’t chance it.’

  Ada thought briefly that if she had been married to a man like Uncle Harry she wouldn’t chance it either, but she didn’t say so. Instead she picked up her aunt’s shabby Gladstone bag. The weight of it surprised her.

/>   ‘Are you ready, Auntie?’

  ‘Like I said, I’ve been ready an age.’ Auntie Doris stumped to her feet and followed Ada along the corridor. ‘Don’t walk so fast, man, what do you think I am?’

  Ada paused. ‘Do you want to say goodbye to Matron?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ve said goodbye, what do I want to say it again for? Let’s away, out of this hole.’

  ‘Well, I’d better have a word with her.’

  ‘Well, you can’t, she’s not in,’ Auntie Doris said triumphantly. ‘There’s nothing to see her about, any road. I said goodbye, I told you I did. And I gave her a piece of my mind while I was about it.’

  Auntie Doris’s thin nose quivered with obvious satisfaction as she stuck it in the air, remembering what she had told the matron, no doubt, Ada thought and laughed inwardly. How she must have enjoyed being in a position to do it! Ada thought about the other old women in the ward, and how Auntie Doris must have crowed over them when she could tell them her niece was coming for her. It didn’t happen very often in a workhouse, Ada knew.

  Doris Parker kept up a complaining monologue all the way back to Durham and even in the cab which Ada took for the journey from the station to Gilesgate. After a while, Ada stopped listening, merely interjecting the odd ‘Yes, Auntie’ or ‘No, Auntie’. Poor Auntie Doris, she must have been bottling it up all the time she was in the hospital: it would have been no use complaining in there. All the hospitals were short-staffed while the war went on.

  Briefly Ada remembered Meg Morton, the nurse she had trained with so long ago, it seemed now. Meg was a sympathetic girl right enough, but she was away in France, working as an army nurse now. Ada had had a card from her last Christmas, with a picture of a hospital which had been bombed, the walls all falling down. ‘Having a grand time working here,’ the irrepressible Meg had written across it. Ada’s reminiscent mood was interrupted as the cab drew up in front of the little house in Gilesgate.

  ‘Is this it?’ Auntie Doris asked. ‘I thought it would have been a bit bigger, like, you earning good money an’ all and married to a doctor, like.’

  Ada could remember her mother saying something very similar when she first saw the house. ‘It’s big enough,’ she said, paying the cab driver and taking Auntie Doris’s bag to the door. ‘Come on in, then.’

  She opened the door, sniffing anxiously, fearing to smell gin, but though the air was a bit fuggy, she couldn’t smell any alcohol. Breathing a sigh of relief, Ada put down the bag.

  ‘Mam?’ she called. ‘Mam, where are you?’

  ‘All right, there’s no need to shout, I was only in the kitchen.’ Mrs Carr came into the room, wiping her hands on her apron. Ada looked round, pleasantly surprised, for her mother had obviously gone to a bit of trouble to get the house ready for her sister. A big fire burned in the grate and the furniture shone with polish. But if Ada thought this meant her mother was reconciled to Auntie Doris coming and was going to give her a big welcome, she was soon disillusioned. Her mother was staring primly at the sister she hadn’t seen for twenty-odd years. She folded her arms across her chest and nodded curtly to her.

  ‘You got here then,’ she said.

  ‘It blooming well looks like it, doesn’t it?’ Auntie Doris countered. ‘I’m dying for a cup of tea an’ all. I suppose I’ll have to make it meself, you would never think of having a pot ready.’ She peered at the rouge on her sister’s face. ‘Too busy tarting yourself up, I can see well enough.’

  ‘Bye, our Doris, you never did give anybody credit for anything. Always thought the worst of folk, you did, especially me. How the hell did I know when you would get here, any road? But as it happens, the kettle is about boiling and I’ve got some scones in from the corner shop.’

  ‘Too lazy to bake your own, like,’ Auntie Doris snapped. ‘Bye, I’d be ashamed to death to give any visitor of mine shop-baked scones, I would that.’

  ‘Aye, but you’re not a visitor, are you? You live here now, and by God, you can make all the scones you like because I’m not.’

  ‘Mam, Auntie!’ Ada looked from one to another; they were facing each other like two bantam cocks squaring up before a fight. ‘Behave yourselves. I’ll take your bag up to your room, Auntie Doris, then we’ll all sit down and have a cup of tea.’

  ‘Aye, go on then,’ Doris said. ‘I’m fair gasping for a cup. But this one would rather stand and argue than get on with things as needs doing.’

  ‘Here, you watch what you’re saying about me,’ snapped Mrs Carr, but her tone was mild and she moved into the kitchen to make the tea.

  Ada carried the Gladstone bag up to the back bedroom and put it down on a chair. Glancing round the room, she saw that the bed was made up and everything was neat and tidy, there was even a potted plant standing on the chest of drawers. She smiled to herself; so much for her mother’s reluctance to have Auntie Doris to stay, she thought.

  Downstairs she found the sisters had moved into the kitchen. The fire was burning cheerfully in the grate of the range and sparkling off newly black-leaded surfaces and the brass fittings of the tidy betty shielding the ash pit. The table was set with a checked cloth, and besides the scones there were daintily cut sandwiches. Oh yes, she thought, Mam has indeed gone to a lot of trouble to welcome Auntie Doris, even if she wasn’t prepared to admit it. Her mother was already pouring tea into the cups and Auntie Doris was sitting at the table watching.

  ‘Howay, lass, don’t let the tea get cold,’ Mrs Carr said. ‘I suppose you’ll be rushing off to that hospital of yours.’

  ‘I do have to go in this evening, but I can spare an hour or two,’ Ada replied. She wanted to linger a little while, if only to make sure they would be all right.

  ‘Our Lorinda has a very responsible job, you know,’ Mrs Carr said to her sister, informatively. ‘She’s a clever lass, our Lorinda.’

  ‘I like to be called Ada now, Mam,’ Ada put in without much hope. ‘I’m used to it.’

  ‘Oh, aye, I know. And who was it called you Ada in the first place? That’s what I want to know.’ She spoke sharply now and cast a meaningful glance at Auntie Doris.

  ‘There’s nowt wrong with Ada,’ Auntie Doris snapped.

  ‘There was nowt wrong with Lorinda,’ her sister retorted.

  Auntie Doris took a piece of buttered scone and took a bite, chewing carefully before swallowing. She put down the scone and glared at her sister.

  ‘Aye, well, I had the bringing-up of the lass, and I would have felt daft shouting Lorinda all over the house. And another thing, don’t you go boasting because our Ada has done so well. It’s the bringing-up that counts and I brought her up, like I said.’

  Mrs Carr compressed her lips and bit into a pressed meat sandwich. She crooked her little finger and lifted her cup to her lips before she thought of an answer for Auntie Doris and then she spoke with the cup in mid-air.

  ‘It’s blood that counts, our Lorinda has good blood. And a good brain an’ all.’

  Ada jumped in before Auntie Doris could say what was obviously in her mind about Ada’s blood and brain. ‘Hand me the scones, please, Auntie Doris,’ she said, successfully taking her aunt’s thoughts off what she was going to say.

  ‘Yes, of course, pet.’ Auntie Doris’s face changed, the glare she was giving Mrs Carr turning to a smile as she handed the plate of scones to Ada. ‘You eat up, you could do with a bit of meat on your bones. Though next time you come I’ll have some proper scones for you, aye, and mebbe a nice Victoria sandwich cake. I know you like Victoria sandwich cake.’

  Ada stared at her in stupefaction. When she was a small child Auntie Doris had made cakes for the boarders’ teas, but when she caught Ada taking a piece she had belted her. Cakes weren’t good for bairns, she had said.

  ‘I don’t care for cakes myself,’ Mrs Carr declared before she too turned a brilliant smile on Ada. ‘I tell you what, pet, I’ll give you a nice meat pie for your supper. I got them from the butcher’s, dripping with gravy, they are. And it’l
l be a nice change from that hospital food. It’s not the same food when it’s cooked for a lot of people, is it? I’ll wrap it up for you.’

  Ada wondered why butcher’s pies were not considered to have been cooked in bulk, but her mother didn’t seem to notice the inconsistency in what she was saying.

  ‘Aye, but not like my meat puddings. I’ll do you one next time you come, Ada. You like them, don’t you?’ Auntie Doris said triumphantly.

  Looking from one to another, Ada was having difficulty in not bursting out laughing. Here were her mother and her aunt vying for her affection; it was such a novel experience for her that she couldn’t believe it. It certainly made things more pleasant for her, though, she mused. And she was beginning to realise that the insults the two sisters hurled at each other all the time didn’t mean anything much at all. Perhaps they had simply picked up where they had left off the last time they had met, it was natural for them. But it was all too much for her.

  ‘I’ll have to go now, I think,’ she said, draining her cup and rising to her feet. ‘It’s been a long day and I still have things to do at the Hall.’

  ‘Righto, hinny,’ said Auntie Doris, confounding Ada even more; never before could she remember Auntie Doris calling her ‘hinny’.

  The sisters accompanied Ada to the door, Mrs Carr pressing on her the meat pie wrapped up in brown paper. Both of them insisted on kissing Ada on the cheek.

  ‘I forgot to ask, did Eliza’s wedding go off all right? I was real pleased for the lass, I always liked her. The best worker I ever had, apart from you, of course, Ada.’ Auntie Doris nodded her head to emphasise her words.

  ‘Fine, it went off grand,’ Ada managed to choke out before she went out of the door and up the street, turning at the corner to wave at them as they stood in the doorway. Then she rounded the corner and collapsed into fits of laughing. All the way home, walking to the bus stop and riding out to the Hall, she kept chuckling to herself. Wait until she told Eliza what Auntie Doris had said! She’d never believe it.