The Orphan Collection

by Maggie Hope

  Well, she would get on with her novel. Though it was a little cramped sitting at the dressing table working, but Thomas would not allow her near his desk or to have one of her own. Regretfully, she thought of her desk in Durham. She pictured it in her mind as it stood before the window overlooking the old city: the woods and the distant gleam of the river and the castle and cathedral seeming to be almost in the sky rather than on the ground.

  Suddenly Lottie picked up her notebook and pencil and jumped to her feet. She ran down the stairs and into Thomas’s study. His desk was a grand affair and stood before the window looking out on to the garden. The summer flowers were dead now but there were a few October daisies still showing purple against the hedge. It was not the view of Durham she loved but it was better than looking at herself in the looking glass on her dressing table. What Thomas didn’t know couldn’t hurt him.

  It was almost eleven when Janey knocked on the door and entered the room. Lottie was scribbling away in her notebook, developing a plotline she had thought of a couple of weeks before. She was completely lost in her story and Janey had to speak twice before she heard.

  ‘Ma’am? Mrs Mitchell-Howe?’

  It penetrated Lottie’s thoughts at last. ‘Yes? What is it, Janey?’

  ‘There is a caller, ma’am, Mrs Snape. Will I show her into the sitting room, missus?’ Janey had been told the correct forms of address when speaking to her employers by Thomas, but had regular lapses. Lottie thought of the time when she was a maid of all work in his mother’s house. They had been friends, they still were.

  What would Eliza make of Thomas’s pretensions now? Lottie had a sudden wish to see her friend and talk things over with her.

  ‘Do that please, Janey,’ she said. ‘And bring in a tea tray and a plate of those ginger biscuits I made yesterday.’

  ‘Aye, I will,’ said the girl, then corrected herself. ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  Lottie smoothed her hair with her hands, then gave them a rueful look. It would take too long to get the ink stains off her fingers or to change her dress. Well, she would have to do. Leaving her work on Thomas’s desk, she went through to her sitting room.

  ‘Mrs Snape, how nice of you to call,’ she said, as she held out her hand to her visitor. Mrs Snape was a large woman held in by a formidable corset. The resulting bulge over the top of the corset strained at the black silk bombazine of her dress. The hat sitting at an improbable angle on her glossy, black ringlets had a small bird perched on the brim as though preparing to fly the nest. Lottie tried not to stare at it but it drew her eyes.

  ‘Please, do sit down,’ she said and they sat on the plumply cushioned chairs. Janey brought in the tea and Lottie poured it out, all the time conscious that Mrs Snape was looking at her hands with their black ink stains and from them to a lock of her hair that had fallen down over her forehead and over her spectacles. She felt awkward and then as she handed the tea to her guest the cup rattled in the saucer, spilling a drop or two.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’ll get you another cup.’ She felt all fingers and thumbs. This was almost a repeat performance of the day that Mrs Brownlow junior. came to call. Suddenly she giggled.

  ‘Don’t bother,’ said Mrs Snape. ‘This is fine, I have a napkin.’

  Suppressing the fit of giggles that threatened to overwhelm her, Lottie looked up and saw that beneath the perched bird there was the merriest pair of brown eyes. She relaxed.

  ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t call earlier; I desperately wanted to talk to you about your work,’ said Mrs Snape. ‘Only I took the children to Lindisfarne for the summer. I like to get them away from the city, and Sidney came up at weekends.’ She paused and smiled at Lottie. ‘I do so envy you. It must be grand to have such a talent. I get bored writing a letter, never mind a whole book.’

  Lottie had found a friend. In no time she was confiding that her novel, The Clouds Stood Still, was coming out the following week and how excited she was about it.

  ‘Thomas must be very proud of you,’ said Alice, for that was her name.

  Lottie shook her head. ‘I thought he was. But that was before we were wed. Now he disapproves of my “scribbling”, as he calls it.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Alice, pulling a face. ‘Well, when you’re famous he will most likely change his mind.’

  She stayed much longer than the usual calling time of half an hour, talking about her children and asking about Lottie’s life in Durham. ‘You lived alone? In a house on your own?’ she exclaimed. ‘Oh, how daring of you! And going to work for a newspaper too. It’s so exciting. I think women should be independent, don’t you?’ She took off her hat and placed it on the seat beside her. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’

  Lottie shook her head. ‘No, of course …’

  ‘I don’t know why we have to wear such concoctions,’ Alice went on. ‘But still, I’m fond of birds, aren’t you?’

  ‘I …’

  It seemed that Alice wasn’t really expecting an answer. She talked on and on and no doubt got on some people’s nerves but not Lottie’s. Lottie liked her. In fact, she was already imagining her as a character in her novel. She would fit in beautifully.

  By the time Alice at last took her leave, after inviting Lottie to her ‘At Home’ the following Tuesday week, Lottie had cheered up immensely. She could make a friend of at least one of the partners’ wives.

  ‘Alice Snape?’ said Thomas when he came in to dinner. ‘I bet she talked you to death, that one.’

  ‘I like her,’ said Lottie as she served out the lamb chops and passed him the vegetable dish. She felt the need to defend her new friend.

  Thomas shrugged. ‘I would rather you made friends with the Brownlows,’ he said, but did not pursue the subject. He tucked into his chops and afterwards made for his study. It was only then that Lottie remembered she had left her notebooks on his desk.

  ‘Lottie! You’ve been in my study!’

  He came striding back to the dining room with a face like thunder. He had the notebooks in his hand and he flung them down on the table so that they skidded over the polished surface and fell on to the floor. Lottie scrambled to pick them up. When she stood up again she was raging.

  ‘Why shouldn’t I? There’s nowhere else I can work. It’s not as though you were using the desk anyway.’

  ‘You can give up your scribbling. It’s not as though you are going to get anywhere with it, not really!’

  He did not look at all like her Thomas, she thought, with his disdainful look and cruel tongue he was more like a stranger. She flushed. ‘You think not, do you? Well it’s just as well my publisher thinks otherwise, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’ve told you, I don’t want my wife to write tuppence-ha’penny novels and gossipy pieces for the local newspaper. I told you to tell the editor you were finished with all that. You’ll do as you are told, my lady!’

  ‘Will I?’ Lottie was as furious as he was. ‘I’ll leave you first!’

  She pushed past him as he stood open-mouthed at her threat. Leave him? How could she leave him? Of course she couldn’t leave him. He started to go after her; he had to show her who was the master in this house. He stood at the bottom of the stairs, watching as she went up them. About halfway up she stopped and turned.

  ‘Any road, you knew I was a writer when you married me! You didn’t have to marry me! You didn’t say I would have to give it up, either!’ She bent forward and took her hand from the banister to shake it at him and make her point but as she did so she tripped over the hem of her skirt and fell. Thomas started forward but he was too late to catch her before she came down heavily on a stair and slid further. He was just in time to catch her before she finally fell to the floor.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  ‘The women in our family seem to have a habit of falling down the stairs when we’re expecting.’

  The voice came in and out of Lottie’s consciousness. It was a familiar voice but she couldn’t quite place it. She tried but it was too much of an
effort. She relapsed back into the grey nothingness.

  ‘I thought she moved her eyelids there,’ Eliza went on. She gazed at Lottie’s white face on the pillow. ‘The lass looks a bit vulnerable when she’s not hiding behind her glasses.’

  ‘Is she going to be all right, Mam? You should know.’

  Thomas had been gazing unseeing out of the bedroom window at the street leading down to the river Tyne, hidden in the distance. Now he turned and approached the bed and stared down at his wife’s face. A blue vein showed through the skin of her forehead and there was a small rosy bruise on one cheekbone. There was no other colour at all.

  ‘You should ask the doctor that,’ Eliza replied.

  ‘But you should know,’ Thomas insisted. ‘You’ve nursed women in childbed long enough; ever since I can remember.’

  Eliza didn’t answer immediately. She was thinking of that long ago time when Thomas was born, when she had fallen down too. Only, thank God, Thomas had been born alive and well. It had not been at all the same as what was happening to Lottie now.

  Oh aye, she had nursed plenty of women, young girls and middle-aged women, who had been in the same position as Lottie was in. Most of them had fallen or been knocked down by their men. More babies were lost that way …

  ‘You didn’t do it, did you, Thomas?’

  ‘Mam! I did not! How can you ask such a thing?’ Thomas was shocked to the core.

  ‘I’m sorry. I just had to hear you say it.’

  Eliza wished that she were as close to her son as she had been when he was younger. Now he told her nothing about his life and it was hard for her to know what he was thinking. Perhaps that was natural when a lad grew into a man. She looked at the girl lying so still on the bed. So white she was and her skin so translucent. Not a picking on her, her mother would have said.

  She put her hand under the bedclothes and felt Lottie’s stomach. It was not hard, her skin was not hot; she mebbe would not be getting an infection. On the other hand, she had lost her baby. Her own grandchild. Eliza sighed.

  ‘She won’t die, I don’t think,’ she said. ‘But she’s but a slip of a lass, she’ll take some nursing.’ Lottie’s tiny figure and narrow hips were the result of childhood deprivation; Eliza had seen it all too often. But she didn’t say so to her Thomas. It didn’t mean that the girl would not recover well. She was surprisingly tough, but then workhouse girls had to be to survive.

  Thomas let out a sigh of relief. He felt guilty, for it had been his fault, he knew that. But why wouldn’t she do as she was told? Women were supposed to obey their husbands, weren’t they? And nothing good ever came of women working. Look at the times he had come in from school to an empty house and nothing but a cold tea set on the kitchen table. Then when he went to boarding school he had visited his friends’ homes. Their mothers weren’t dashing about the place all the time working, working, no, they had been waiting at home with fresh-cooked meals they had made themselves, even when they had a maid in the house.

  Lottie had been the maid in their house, he thought. Not like Bertha who had carried on her own washing business and helped his mother out at the same time. When he was younger, Lottie had always done what he wanted her to do, tidied up after him, fetched and carried for him. But she had still been considered a friend by his mother.

  ‘Why did you marry Lottie?’ Eliza asked suddenly.

  For a moment or two Thomas couldn’t think of an answer. He had always liked Lottie, loved her even. Why was his mother asking such a thing? In her world a lad always married a lass if he impregnated her. ‘Took her down’, they called it.

  ‘I’m surprised you don’t say it was my duty.’

  ‘Aye. Well it was. Do you love her, though?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘That’s all right then. Lottie is a decent lass and she has a good brain an’ all, she won’t let you down.’

  Thomas looked away, embarrassed by this unusually frank speech coming from his mother. He walked to the foot of the bed and looked again at Lottie’s white face. ‘I … We were arguing,’ he said. ‘I wanted her to stop working on her dratted writing.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She should have been spending more of her time on me and preparing for the baby, not scribbling away at rubbishy novels.’

  ‘Aye, well.’

  Eliza was quiet for a moment, gathering her thoughts. ‘She needs her writing, man. Her stories are not rubbish. Haven’t I just said she has a good brain?’ she said eventually.

  A sound from Lottie made them rush to the side of the bed. Lottie’s eyes were open. She licked her lips and tried to speak. Eliza lifted her head from the pillow and gave her a few sips of water from the feeding cup on the bedside table.

  ‘Take it easy, petal,’ she said. ‘You’re going to be fine, you’ll see.’

  ‘I’ve lost the bairn?’ Her eyes flickered to Thomas when Eliza nodded. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered.

  ‘It wasn’t your fault,’ he replied as he stepped closer and took her hand in his. Eliza slipped from the room to give them time to themselves.

  ‘A fanciful tale of a girl aspiring to enter the law profession,’ said the Review when The Clouds Stood Still was published at the end of November. ‘Nevertheless, it is quite entertaining.’

  ‘Typical patronizing remark,’ said Lottie. ‘I don’t suppose it will sell very well without a good review.’

  ‘If it doesn’t, you have the satisfaction of knowing that you tried at least,’ Thomas replied. He was reading the business page of The Times. There was an article about the fortunes to be made from investing in railways in the far-flung corners of the world. If he could only get in at the beginning, he could become a millionaire in no time at all. Excitement rose in him, the sort of excitement that took hold of him when he wagered money on an outsider at the racetrack and saw his horse romping home at the head of the field.

  ‘My publisher thinks it will sell well. He should know, shouldn’t he?’ Lottie went over to the small table by the window where half a dozen copies of her book were on display between bookends. She picked up a copy and looked at it. It had a plain cover with a small illustration of a girl on the front. Just looking at it made her fill with pride.

  ‘Alice really liked it. I gave her a copy,’ Lottie went on. In fact, Alice had been filled with admiration for her work, which made up in some part for Thomas’s uninterest. ‘Alice says …’

  ‘What? What are you going on about?’ asked Thomas. He folded his paper and rose to his feet. ‘I must go, I have things to do before I go to court,’ he said. Forgetting to kiss her or even say goodbye, he swept out of the room.

  Thomas was not interested in her work, Lottie thought sadly. Still, at least he was not so against it as he had been before she lost the baby. Surely if her book was popular and made money he would be more glad for her. Proud even.

  ‘Can I clear the table, missus?’

  Janey had come into the room with her tray and Lottie nodded. ‘I’m going out, Janey,’ she said. ‘I’m meeting Mrs Snape.’

  ‘All right, missus,’ the girl replied.

  As Lottie went upstairs to get ready for her morning with Alice, she kept her eyes averted from the stair where she had fallen that day. The memory of it brought such a feeling of guilt and depression to her. She blamed herself, oh aye, she did. She mourned for her baby too.

  ‘When you’re rich and famous, I’ll tell everyone you are my friend,’ Alice declared. They were in Alice’s parlour drinking coffee, which was the fashion now in London, according to Mrs Brownlow, who had just returned from the capital. Lottie was not fond of it, not even as an after-dinner drink. It would never be as good as tea for slaking thirst or giving comfort in difficult times, she reckoned. It was bitter and left a nasty taste on the tongue, even with added sugar.

  ‘Sometimes I just wish I was back in Durham sitting at my desk and scribbling away or pounding on the typewriter,’ mused Lottie. Sometimes indeed, she thought but didn’t say aloud, s
he wished she were back in West Stanley dashing the pit clothes against the wall in the yard or boiling pot pies for one of the lads coming in off shift.

  Alice was shocked. ‘You don’t really wish you had not married Thomas, do you?’ Alice was so happy in her own marriage. She couldn’t imagine that her friend was not.

  Lottie laughed. ‘No, of course not,’ she said. ‘I’m happy with Thomas. I’m a lucky woman.’ Alice would never understand her feelings. She couldn’t understand them herself.

  ‘Well, Lottie, I’m glad to hear it. Independence is nice in theory I suppose, but it does limit a woman’s life. There are so many places we cannot go alone. The Playhouse for instance, and especially not at night. We are “the weaker vessel”. Even if we do rail against it, it is a fact.’

  ‘Alice!’ cried Lottie as she stared at her friend. ‘I didn’t know you were so old-fashioned.’

  Alice’s cheeks became pink. ‘I don’t think it old-fashioned,’ she replied stiffly. ‘I think it all too easy for a young woman to get a bad reputation even if she has not done anything seriously wrong. It is enough that she is too free in her ways. She becomes hoydenish.’

  It was enough for Lottie to realize that despite their friendship there was a huge gulf between them. Alice would never understand how she felt. Yet she couldn’t resist a try.

  ‘What about the women who have no man to depend on?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m sorry for them, of course,’ said Alice. Her cheeks were red rather than pink now and she wished she had said nothing. Of course she knew that Lottie came from the lower classes; indeed, there was some question about Thomas too, but surely with a name like Mitchell-Howe his family must have good connections? To her relief, Lottie rose to her feet and brought the conversation to an end.

  ‘Oh!’ she exclaimed, glancing at the marble mantel clock. ‘Is that the time? I’m sorry, Alice, I’ve had a lovely morning but I promised Thomas I would be home when he comes in for the midday meal.’