The Orphan Collection

by Maggie Hope

  ‘I came at once,’ she said and added, because she couldn’t help herself, ‘Where is Johnny?’

  ‘He’s in the garden just now,’ Dinah answered, not in the least put out by Ada’s abruptness. ‘I wanted to have a talk with you before you saw him, though. I’ll ring for tea, shall I? We don’t have any live-in staff now – the war, of course – but my daily girl is still here.’

  They sat over tea and Ada forced herself to drink it and eat a tiny cucumber sandwich, but she was on the edge of her chair, dying to go into the garden and see for herself that Johnny was there.

  ‘I understand you knew Johnny in Bishop Auckland, Mrs Gray,’ Dinah began at last.

  ‘Yes. He was a boarder in my aunt’s house in Finkle Street. I was a small girl and he was kind to me and we became friends.’ Ada put down her cup. She couldn’t bear any more small talk, she had to go straight to the point.

  ‘I loved him, Mrs Fenwick. I still do love him.’

  ‘But yet you married someone else. You are a married woman, Mrs Gray,’ Dinah said, simply stating the facts as she knew them.

  ‘Yes, but it was a mistake –’ Ada jumped in, then stopped. ‘No, no, Mrs Fenwick, I am a widow. My husband was killed in France.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ Dinah said, looking anything but sorry. ‘This terrible war …’

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ Ada said formally. She looked towards the french windows which opened out on the garden, but she couldn’t see Johnny for the heavy lace hanging there. She turned back to Dinah.

  ‘I thought Johnny didn’t love me any more.’ There was the unspoken question in her voice and Dinah rushed to answer it.

  ‘Oh, my dear, I think he does. But you will have to be careful with him. Poor Johnny, he thinks his life is finished, he doesn’t want to saddle any girl with a blind man.’

  ‘I don’t care if he’s blind, I don’t care what’s wrong with him, I just want –’

  Dinah got to her feet. ‘Yes, my dear, of course you do, and you’re right. Any girl in love would think the same. Come then, I’ll show you where he is, then leave you alone with him.’

  Johnny was sitting in a garden chair, his stick by his side. The house was casting a long shadow over the grass and almost to his feet as the sun sank lower in the sky.

  Ada came out of the house and saw him straight away. She stood still, just looking at him. The garden was quiet; a cricket chirped insistently in the long grass over the hedge and in the distance behind them there was a muffled roar as a car chugged down the road.

  Ada moaned softly, feeling her heart would burst, it was so filled with love for him.

  ‘Dinah? Is that you?’ Johnny lifted his head and turned towards the sound. ‘It is getting a little cooler now. I think I will come in.’

  Ada moved forward as the last rays of the sun glinted on his hair, bringing back the fiery bright colour. She stood before him, drinking in the sight of him, and he raised a questioning face to her.

  ‘Dinah – It’s not Dinah, is it?’

  And Ada put out her hand to his face, touching his cheek, her hand moving in a caress to his chin, his lips.

  ‘No, Johnny,’ she said. ‘It’s not Dinah.’

  Johnny rose to his feet with a strangled cry. Flinging his dark glasses away from him, he clasped her to him, burying his face in her hair.

  ‘I will not let him go, not now, Dinah,’ said Ada.

  Dinah smiled. ‘I didn’t think you would, dear.’ She was sitting on an armchair facing the sofa where Johnny and Ada sat close together, hands clasped and fingers intertwined. ‘Oh, Johnny, I’m so happy for you! I’m so happy for you both.’

  ‘We have to talk it over, Lorinda, I don’t think you know what you’d be taking on.’ But Johnny didn’t sound at all sure he meant what he said.

  Ada smiled a secret smile; she smiled at Johnny and squeezed his hand to let him know she was smiling, and she smiled at Dinah. And Dinah smiled back in full understanding.

  It was late evening, dinner was over and for the first time in her life Dinah was glad that her two sons hadn’t made an appearance for the meal.

  ‘I am a little confused,’ she said now. ‘I’m not sure what to call you: why does Johnny call you Lorinda when your name is Ada?’

  ‘Her name is Lorinda,’ said Johnny and raised her hand to his lips and kissed the fingers, one by one.

  So Ada gave Dinah a brief explanation of how her name had come to be changed when she was taken to the house in Bishop Auckland to live with her aunt. Dinah tut-tutted at the idea of it.

  ‘But that’s where I met Johnny,’ Ada said. ‘Johnny was my hero in those days.’

  ‘And still am, I hope,’ said Johnny. Ada looked up into his face with her love shining in her eyes, and even though he couldn’t see it, he knew it was there.

  ‘But surely,’ said Dinah, ‘you could have reverted to your own name long ago.’

  ‘That’s true,’ said Ada, nodding her head. ‘But Johnny was the only one who called me Lorinda for such a long time. I couldn’t bear to hear it spoken by someone else while we were parted. Silly of me, I know.’

  Dinah rose to her feet, she was beginning to feel very much the gooseberry in her own drawing room. ‘Not silly, I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘I think I’ll go to bed now. You know where your room is, dear.’

  As she climbed the stairs, her eyes were misted. The sight of the two lovers together brought back poignant memories to her: they were just as she and Fred had been, she thought. And if in the morning the guest room should prove not to have been used, then what did that matter? They had wasted enough time already.

  Ada stood at the bedroom window of the cottage which had been her father’s. Downstairs she could hear the voices of her mother and her aunt raised in some argument over the wedding breakfast which they were laying out in the front room. It was such a familiar sound now that she could ignore it altogether, it was just her mam and Auntie Doris going on as they always did.

  Both of them seemed to thrive on it, she thought as she gazed out of the window at the frost-laden bushes in the garden. In the distance the trees over the other side of the Wear were spangled with frost too, the black branches showing through to provide a contrast.

  Ada was already dressed for her wedding; she had been ready for half an hour but she was reluctant to go downstairs and join her family. She was treasuring this short time alone, thinking of how her whole life seemed to have led to this. In less than an hour she would be Mrs Johnny Fenwick. Sometimes she could hardly believe it was actually happening.

  Sooty came in and wound himself round her ankles, purring. She picked him up and held him to her, relishing the feel of his warm, furry body. Funny, she thought, how all the small everyday pleasures of life had suddenly acquired something more: the woods were more beautiful, the red roses of her bouquet somehow softer and a deeper shade than any red roses she had seen before, and Sooty’s fur, too, was extra soft and warm.

  There was a knock at the door and she turned to see Eliza putting her head round the door.

  ‘Eeh, Ada, you look grand!’

  Eliza’s down-to-earth tones and the uncompromising accent of west Durham made Ada smile, bringing her out of her fanciful imaginings.

  ‘Eliza! I’m so pleased you’ve got here early. Where’s Emmerson and the bairns?’

  Ada went forward and kissed Eliza, and the two girls hugged one another.

  ‘Emmerson’s gone straight to the church and the bairns with him. The baby’s downstairs, Emmerson reckoned he had enough on his plate without a baby an’ all.’

  Eliza stood back and gazed critically at Ada’s dress. ‘Aye,’ she said, ‘that’s just the right shade of blue, just a touch lighter than your eyes, I’d say. Eeh, lass, I’m that pleased for you, I am that.’

  ‘Ada! Eliza! Howay, man, the pair of ye, you’ll be late if we don’t get set off now.’

  Eliza and Ada grinned at each other. The strident tones of Auntie Doris Parker hadn’t alter
ed one little bit since the times she caught them gossiping together in the boarding house in Tenters Street. Together, they went downstairs, arms linked in the old companionship.

  ‘Bye, I tell you, you two’ve never changed. Still the pair for getting away by yourselves into a corner, forgetting altogether what’s still to be done.’

  Auntie Doris was standing at the bottom of the stairs with arms akimbo and they burst out laughing. For a minute her eyes snapped and Ada thought she was going to go off into a tirade, but she collected herself and gave a reluctant grin herself.

  ‘Aw, hadaway with you,’ she said. ‘The cars are here, our Ada, are you going to get married today or have we been wasting our time making all this food?’

  At the church gates, when Johnny arrived with Arthur, whom he had prevailed upon to act as his best man, there was a gang of urchins hanging about in hopes of a ‘hoy-oot’, the traditional throwing of pennies and ha’pennies. Any bridegroom foolish enough not to bring a handful of change in his pocket was inviting cries of ‘Shabby wedding!’ Johnny knew this, feeling the weight of coin in his trouser pocket.

  ‘Good luck, mister!’ one or two of them called sympathetically when they saw his dark glasses and stick, and Johnny waved the stick in acknowledgement.

  ‘Thanks, lads,’ he said.

  And then he was in the church, waiting by the altar as the organ was playing. He heard the rustle as the congregation stood for the bride and he stood too, turning his head unerringly to the aisle down which she was coming.

  The next moment he felt her hand in his and they were repeating their vows. For the first time since she was a small girl, his bride was claiming her given name as she said in a low, clear voice,

  ‘I, Lorinda …’

  Chapter One

  1863

  ‘Mammy!’

  Lottie woke suddenly, panic flooding through her whole body. She sat up in bed and stared across the large dormitory filled with beds and sleeping children. The child in the bed only 12 inches from hers began to cry, and a couple more followed suit.

  ‘Quiet!’ shouted a stout woman standing in the doorway holding a lantern. ‘Any more noise and I’ll bray the lot of you.’ The room quietened at once until only an odd muffled sob could be heard.

  Lottie sank down in the bed, feeling the lumps in the hard mattress against her backbone and skinny shoulders. The bed was wet, she realized with a shiver of foreboding. She would be smacked, or brayed as Matron called it, anyway. Well, she thought, she was used to that. Ever since her mammy had gone to heaven she had been smacked most days.

  Matron closed the dormitory door and the room was dark again but for the moonlight filtering in through the high windows. Lottie stared at the bits of sky she could see through the panes. There were stars shining between small clouds. Her mammy was there, she told herself, and she was happy and watching over her little girl.

  Lottie couldn’t remember very much about her mammy. But she comforted herself with holding on to the small scraps she could remember and added to them in her imagination. She hugged her pillow as her heart slowed back to normal after her nightmare. She couldn’t remember what the dream had been about even, only that she needed her mammy. Mammy would look after her; she would make the unnamed thing go away. Even if Lottie couldn’t see her, she knew Mammy was there in the sky just like one of those stars.

  Suddenly aware that the tiny girl in the next bed was sobbing and the noise was getting louder, Lottie sat up and leaned over towards her.

  ‘Ssh,’ she said softly. ‘Whisht now, whisht, don’t cry, pet. If Matron hears you she’ll come back and we’ll both get wrong, we’ll be smacked.’

  ‘Lottie? Can I come into your bed? Please can I?’

  ‘Howay then, come on,’ Lottie replied and a small body climbed in and snuggled under the blanket, not minding the dampness of the sheet. She put her arms around Lottie’s neck and Lottie cuddled her skinny little frame to her. Betty had only come into the workhouse a day or two ago and she was only two years old or maybe three. Even the matron couldn’t say for sure how old she was, because she had been a foundling. One of the Guardians, Mr Robson, who had a greengrocer’s shop, had caught her biting into a plum she had taken from the stall at the front of the shop and had chased her into Newgate Street before catching her.

  ‘You little imp!’ he had shouted and she had dropped the plum and begun to tremble and wail in fright.

  ‘Shame on you!’ a woman shouted at him. ‘What do you want frightening a little bairn like that for?’

  A few late shoppers, for it was eight o’clock on a Saturday evening, stopped and stared at the woman, the child and Mr Robson.

  Mr Robson’s face was as red as a beetroot with the injustice of it, for the remarks they made about him were uncomplimentary, to say the least.

  ‘She was stealing my fruit!’ he said and then wished he hadn’t, for he certainly didn’t want to bandy words with people like that. After all, late shoppers were usually folk in from the mining villages and just looking for bargains as the shops closed for the weekend. After something for nothing, they were.

  ‘The lass must be hungry,’ another woman observed. ‘What’s a mouldy old plum to you?’

  ‘Nevertheless …’ Mr Robson began, then stopped. ‘As a matter of fact, I was looking for her mother,’ he said stiffly. ‘But as there is no sign of her, I’ll take her up to the workhouse for the night. Not that I have to explain to any of you. I am a Poor Law Guardian and it is my duty.’

  ‘Oh aye,’ said the woman, favouring him with a scornful glance. ‘Of course it is.’

  He turned away, remembering he wasn’t going to talk to these people. Instead, still hanging on to the little girl, he called to his assistant to close the shop while he went up to the workhouse, with its adjacent orphanage.

  ‘It’s an infernal nuisance, that’s what it is,’ he grumbled to Matron when he brought the child in. ‘I have better things to do on a Saturday night. But what else was I to do? There was no sign of her mother, or father either. If she has one, that is.’

  He handed the child over to Matron, holding her away from him with some distaste, for there was a nasty, dirty smell about her.

  Lottie happened to be walking along the corridor at the time, trying not to be noticed, but the woman had a sharp eye. She too held Betty away from her clean apron as she called to Lottie.

  ‘You there! Lottie Lonsdale! Take her and see she is washed and gets a uniform. And mind, I’m putting you in charge of her. Oversee her properly or you’ll feel the edge of my belt.’

  ‘Yes, Matron.’

  Matron and Mr Robson watched as Lottie took the child and went on down the corridor. ‘I’ll enter her into the record, Mr Robson,’ Matron said. ‘There’s no need for you to bother. You get off home to your wife and family, they’ll be wondering why you’re out so late.’

  ‘I will, thank you, Matron,’ Mr Robson replied. ‘But it was my Christian duty to fetch the lass. Duty comes first, Matron.’

  ‘Indeed, Mr Robson.’ She smiled archly at him and the bow beneath her chin wobbled. She shouldn’t have mentioned his wife and children, she thought as he turned away. He may have joined her in a cup of tea in her cosy sitting room. Sometimes she could do with a little company in the evenings.

  Meanwhile, Lottie had taken the new little girl to the kitchens, where Susan Dunn was washing up the supper bowls at the enormous stone sink. Though Susan was twelve years old, old enough to have recently joined the inmates on the women’s ward, she had to stand on a stool to reach the tap. It was just a cold water tap, but there was a large copper boiler to the side of the range and hot water had to be ladled from there.

  ‘Who’s this then?’ she asked Lottie, as she eyed the little girl. ‘I’m not seeing to her mind, I’m done for the day. Just as soon as I finish off these pots.’

  ‘Matron said I had to see to her,’ said Lottie. ‘Is there any panacklty left? I reckon she’s hungry.’

  ‘A b
it. You’re lucky, I haven’t washed the pan out yet. I was just going to put the panacklty in a bowl and put it in the pantry. The night porter likes a snack when he comes on.’

  Lottie looked at the child. She was gazing at the bowl with undisguised hunger. She would have to be fed before she was bathed.

  ‘I think the bairn’s need is more important than the night porter’s,’ Lottie opined and Susan nodded agreement as she put the bowl of potatoes, onions and a few scraps of fat bacon on the table and Lottie sat the girl in front of it.

  ‘What’s your name, any road?’ she asked.

  ‘Betty,’ the girl said, through a mouthful of the food she was stuffing into her mouth with her hands rather than the spoon Susan had given her. Lottie brought in the tin bath and ladled hot water into it from the copper boiler and added cold from the tap.

  ‘Well, hurry up and eat your supper. Then you can have a bath and I’ll fetch you a uniform from the linen cupboard.’

  It was the policy of the Guardians for the inmates of the workhouse to do all the cooking and cleaning for themselves and that included looking after the little ones. In addition, the children had to be taught how to take over all the tasks as soon as they were old enough. After all, they were there at the expense of the ratepayers, and should show their gratitude for their board and lodging by paying some of it back.

  And they got a free education too, didn’t they? It was not so long ago that poor children got no education at all, and even now most scholars at the National Schools had to take their threepence every Monday morning to be taught their letters and figuring.

  Lottie knew all about this, because the children were reminded of it every single day.

  Lying in bed a short time after being assigned to Betty, her arms around Betty as the little girl’s breathing slowed into a sleeping rhythm interrupted only by the occasional snuffle, Lottie was having difficulty in getting back to sleep herself. Her thoughts were going over her nightmare and the unnamed dread that was always in the back of her mind.