The Orphan Collection

by Maggie Hope

  As the weather grew colder, her thoughts wandered back to Jeremiah, as they did so often these days. Depression fell on her like a blanket of snow: cold and all-pervasive. She had not been in to the office for weeks; she could not bear for him to see how swollen her belly was or how drawn her face was. And though her belly was swollen, her arms and legs were like sticks. She looked an absolute fright, she did indeed. She stared at herself in the mirror over the mantelpiece one day. She had to pull herself together, she thought; feeling sorry for herself never worked.

  A knock at the door made her start. She went down the stairs and stood behind the front door thinking, hoping, he might have come to see her, though why she should think that she didn’t know, he never came to see her nowadays.

  It would be the postman. Of course it would be the postman, who else would come knocking at her door at that time of the morning? It was barely seven o’clock, the cathedral bells were chiming the hour. Her hair was still plaited loosely, with the plait over one shoulder, but that didn’t matter when it was just the postman. She drew the bolt on the front door and opened it.

  It wasn’t the postman, it was Jeremiah standing there. Taking off his hat and tipping his head so very politely. And she had always thought it was Quakers who did not remove their hats for anyone except the Lord. Though what that had to do with anything, she couldn’t think.

  ‘I’m sorry to call so early in the morning,’ he said. ‘I was passing by as it happens …’

  Lottie’s mouth had dropped open when she saw him but now she collected herself and closed it. Where on earth could he be going, passing her door so early in the morning? She thought it even as she opened the door wider and stood to one side.

  ‘Do come in,’ she said. Her face felt hot. She was sure it must be red as fire and she was very conscious of her untidy hair and the old shirtwaister dress she had pulled on before she came downstairs, just until she had cleaned up the house a little.

  Jeremiah walked past her through to the kitchen-cum-living room and stood on the clippie mat before the fire, with his hands behind him.

  ‘Lottie,’ he said, gazing keenly at her with his dark blue eyes, which seemed to be able to see right into her mind.

  ‘Yes, Mr Scott?’

  ‘I want the truth now, do you hear me?’

  ‘There is nothing wrong with my hearing,’ she replied. She pushed her spectacles up on the bridge of her nose, before folding her arms over the bulge under her apron. Standing before him, she had to look up at him, which was a distinct disadvantage. So she gestured towards a chair.

  ‘Sit down, do,’ she said and sat down in the rocker. Jeremiah hesitated for a split second, then sat down himself.

  ‘I want to know the truth,’ he said. ‘Is the baby mine?’

  Lottie was very tempted to say yes it was; she even opened her mouth to say so. But how could she? She couldn’t lie to him. In any case, the baby’s birth would prove it wasn’t true, no matter how much she wished it were.

  It was all over now, she thought dismally. He would never feel for her as she did for him. If only it had been his baby! Lottie got to her feet and walked to the window, staring blindly down the yard. ‘The baby’s father is …’ she began, then suddenly a pain shot through her and she doubled up with a low cry. Jeremiah moved with such speed that he caught her as she fell.

  ‘It’s the baby,’ she cried. ‘Help me!’

  ‘I’ll help you upstairs,’ he replied, turning with her in his arms, but Lottie shook her head.

  ‘There’s no time,’ she gasped. ‘He’s coming.’

  ‘What? The doctor?’

  ‘The baby, you fool! Put me down on the mat!’

  There was indeed no time. No time to get a doctor or a midwife or even the woman from next door. Jeremiah Scott found himself delivering the child, a little girl, on the clippie mat before the kitchen fire. And after the first numbing shock, he was automatically acting on the instructions Lottie panted to him between pains, which were coming ever faster, until one pain was running into the next and the baby came into his hands.

  Then his own common sense and natural instinct made him wrap the child in a warmed towel, which was hanging over the brass rail above the fireplace, and give her to Lottie, still with the cord attached. Or rather he laid her on her mother’s stomach, for Lottie had fallen back, totally exhausted.

  ‘I’ll get help,’ he said. ‘Will you be all right? Lottie?’

  ‘Jane from next door,’ Lottie said faintly. She felt she could not move to hold the baby yet, but she reached down and put a hand on her tiny shoulder. Jeremiah ran to the door, then hesitated.

  ‘You will be all right?’

  ‘Go on, fetch Jane,’ she cried and he fled up the yard.

  It seemed like an age, but in fact it could not have been much more than a minute before he was back with her neighbour, who took in the situation at a glance and bent over Lottie and the baby.

  ‘There’s a sharp knife in the table drawer?’ she asked, but he was already taking one out before Lottie could answer. ‘You have a binder ready?’

  As Lottie nodded towards the drawer of the press, Jane, knife in hand, looked towards Jeremiah. ‘Go on, this no place for you,’ she said quietly. ‘I’ll call you when she’s decent.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I’ll walk up the lane. I’ll not go far.’

  Jane nodded and turned back to Lottie. ‘It shouldn’t take long now, I’m well used to helping out when a woman’s time comes. I’ll have you comfortable in two shakes of a dog’s tail. Mind, I’ll get the midwife to have a look at you and the babby, just to make sure.’

  Lottie murmured something, but she was tired and shaken by the speed of it all. She was happy to leave it to her neighbour, who soon had the tiny girl wrapped in a shawl and lying on a pillow in a drawer from the kitchen press and Lottie herself washed and sitting propped up by pillows and drinking a cup of tea sweetened with two spoons of sugar.

  Outside, Jeremiah walked to the end of the lane and back again, hesitated, and then walked to the other end. He stood for a while looking out over the River Wear and the far bank, rising as it did above the city. Beyond, it was possible to see the ancient stone tower of the cathedral and the battlements of the castle. He stared at them for a few moments, thinking of the tiny baby in the cottage. Was she his baby? Maybe not, but it felt as though she were. After all, he had brought her into the world, and though it might be illogical he felt a responsibility towards her. He stood, gazing unseeing into the brown peaty water as a boat with the university rowing team bending over the oars went by, the coach on his bicycle calling the strokes through a loudhailer. The feel of the baby in his arms had been like a miracle, he mused.

  Smiling, he turned and made his way to Lottie’s back gate, and after a moment Jane waved from the kitchen window for him to go back into the house.

  Lottie was lying on the settee with the baby, still in the press drawer, on a chair beside her. Jane hovered by her; after all, even if he had actually delivered the baby, it was not fitting to leave him alone with the new mother.

  ‘We have to send someone for the nurse, Sister Mitchell,’ Jane said. ‘I could send my lad, or mebbe you would go, Mr Scott? Then my man goes on shift soon and I have to fix him a sandwich or something for his bait tin.’

  ‘You go, I’ll stay with her until she comes,’ Jeremiah said blandly, though he was entirely aware of Jane’s dilemma. He pulled a kitchen chair out from the table and took it over to the settee and sat down.

  ‘Well …’

  Jane hesitated, but in the end went out to get her son to run for Eliza.

  ‘I fear we have shocked your neighbour, Lottie,’ he said and she nodded, smiling.

  ‘I don’t know what I would have done without you, though,’ she replied. ‘Thank you, Jerry … Mr Scott.’

  ‘Oh I think Jerry will do. I like it, no one else calls me Jerry.’

  Lottie hesitated. She had to say something before Eliza arr
ived. ‘She is Thomas’s baby,’ she blurted at last.

  ‘I know,’ he said, then after a pause, ‘but I helped her into the world. I feel she is mine.’

  ‘I am going to have her baptized Thomasina.’ Lottie plucked at the blanket that Jane had put over her. ‘Eliza, Sister Mitchell, is my mother-in-law. The baby’s grandmother.’

  Jeremiah said nothing.

  There was a silence for a few minutes. Lottie lay against the raised end of the old settee. Jeremiah was restless. He sat for a while, then got up and walked through to the front of the house and watched the road for the arrival of the nurse, Lottie’s mother-in-law. His feelings were in turmoil. How could she be so sure it wasn’t his baby? The child could have been early, he knew it happened sometimes. He yearned for the tiny girl to be his.

  The road was empty. He turned and walked back along the passage to the kitchen. As he did so, he heard the sound of a horse and trap and stopped, then went to open the front door just as Eliza knocked.

  ‘Hello, are you there?’ Eliza called, then stopped short as she saw Jeremiah.

  She was in her nurse’s uniform and cape and was carrying her nurse’s bag. ‘Oh,’ she went on, ‘I thought Jane from next door would be here.’

  ‘She had things to attend to,’ he said. ‘I’m Jeremiah Scott, editor of the Durham Post. Lottie … Mrs Mitchell-Howe worked for the paper.’

  ‘I’m well aware that my daughter-in-law wrote pieces for the Post,’ said Eliza sharply. ‘But obviously she cannot be writing now. I thank you for staying with her, but I think you should be on your way, young man.’

  ‘I could wait in the other room to make sure I am not needed any more.’ Jeremiah’s face was a picture to behold: pink with embarrassment. He felt like a naughty schoolboy.

  ‘I dinna think so,’ said Eliza, lapsing into the local idiom. ‘What will people think? Any road, I have to see to her. Close the door on your way out.’

  Jeremiah found himself led to the door and out on to the street without quite knowing how it happened. He stood for a moment, then walked away. His own horse was whickering to Eliza’s pony on the opposite side of the road, where tufts of lush grass were pushing through the holes in the fence. Swinging up into the saddle, he trotted off towards North Road and the office.

  ‘Did I hear you talking to Mr Scott just then?’ asked Lottie, as she settled down after Eliza had bathed her and the baby. They were in the front room by now, with Lottie in a single bed brought down by Jane’s husband and son.

  Eliza shook her head disapprovingly. ‘You did, lass. I never heard anything like it, a strange man delivering a baby. Was there not a woman about at all? What was he doing here, any road?’

  ‘He just came by,’ said Lottie lamely.

  ‘Aye, well, it’s a good job Jane was in,’ said Eliza.

  Lottie gave her a quick glance. Was Eliza thinking something must be going on? No, of course not, she thought when she saw her mother-in-law’s bland expression. Eliza had picked up the baby from the dresser drawer and now she started cooing over her.

  ‘What are you going to call the bairn? Charlotte, after you? Or, what was your mother’s name?’

  ‘Minnie,’ Lottie replied. ‘But I’ve decided on Thomasina.’

  ‘Thomasina, eh? It’s mebbe a bit outlandish,’ Eliza commented but she couldn’t hide the fact that she was pleased. ‘There’s not been a Thomasina round here that I know of. It’s nice, though. Like a name from a fairy tale.’ She smiled fondly at the baby before handing her over to Lottie to suckle. ‘She has a look of our Thomas, though.’

  Lottie yawned widely and Eliza immediately became the professional nurse-midwife again. She tucked a bedjacket around Lottie’s shoulders, before checking Thomasina was suckling correctly.

  ‘Not that she’ll get much nourishment at first, but it will help your milk to come,’ she commented. ‘Now, I’ll send Jane’s lad, Jackie is it? I’ll send him for Mrs Corner.’ Eliza moved towards the door. ‘You’ll be all right for a little while on your own?’

  Lottie lay quietly, communing with her baby. Thomasina’s eyes were a medium blue, but then most newborn babies had blue eyes. They might turn brown like her own or dark blue as Thomas’s. Or Jeremiah’s either, she thought drowsily. Mother and baby drifted off to sleep. Eliza came back and lifted the baby gently from Lottie’s arms and laid her in her makeshift cradle. When Lottie awoke, Mrs Corner, the monthly nurse she had engaged for her lying-in, was already there and Eliza had gone.

  ‘She said she’d call in the morrow,’ Mrs Corner volunteered. ‘She had patients to see. Now, I bet you could take a nice drop of broth and a cup of tea, my dear.’

  Mrs Corner was a plump, white-haired woman in her fifties and a widow. She had brought up six children since her husband had been killed by choke damp in the pit, but now they were married and away she did it for the love of it. Each job lasted a month, helping out new mothers until they were properly on their feet again. Lottie watched as she bustled around, noticing things that needed doing and doing them. She felt extremely happy and content as Thomasina lay close by, making the occasional snuffling noise.

  Surely nothing could spoil her contentment, her hopes for the future now? She had her baby and Thomasina was healthy. And Jeremiah knew the truth and loved her.

  Chapter Thirty

  The bells of the old cathedral were ringing out the last hours of the old year as Ina, holding tightly to her mother’s hand, skipped along the pavement to where the horse-bus stood in the marketplace of Durham City. Her mother carried a basket covered with a cloth and they were going to her grandma’s house in North Road to see in the new year. It was the only night of the year when Ina was allowed to stay up until midnight and for all it was so late and the sky so dark the marketplace was lit up with the lights from the shops, which were still open, and the Christmas tree from Norway still stood in the centre by the statue of Lord Londonderry on his horse, and it too was lit up. She tugged at her mother’s hand in her excitement and Lottie almost fell over as she stepped down from the kerb.

  ‘Ina!’ Lottie cried. ‘You nearly made me drop the basket!’

  ‘Sorry, Mam,’ said Ina, slowing to a walk. They didn’t want to lose anything from the basket. It had all the goodies in it to celebrate bringing in the new year. There was a fruit cake and fudge and a stone bottle of dandelion and burdock pop and a bottle of home-made ginger wine.

  ‘Lottie! How nice to see you! And you too, Thomasina. What are you doing out so late?’

  It was the nice man, the one who sometimes gave her mother money for the stories she wrote. She liked him; his name was Mr Scott and he always spoke to her nicely and sometimes gave her a threepenny bit. She could buy three separate things with a threepenny bit: sweets and chocolate and a penny lucky bag.

  Ina looked up at her mother, who had that funny look on her face she sometimes had when she met Mr Scott. Her face was sort of pinkish, and she had a faraway look in her eyes. Ina decided she had better answer him herself.

  ‘Hello, Mr Scott. We’re going to Grandma’s to see in the new year. And I can stay up until after midnight but I can’t go first-footing.’ She frowned as she thought of the first-footing. Only lads were able to go first-footing and it wasn’t fair.

  ‘I’m not allowed,’ she said sorrowfully. ‘I’m a girl.’

  ‘I hope you are allowed to accept a new year’s gift,’ said Jeremiah. He dug into the pocket of his waistcoat and brought out a sixpence, then looked enquiringly at Lottie.

  ‘You shouldn’t,’ said Lottie. ‘You’ll spoil her.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, it is a special occasion surely, the turn of the year, is it not?’ Jeremiah smiled down at the two of them, the little girl with shining blue eyes in a face that was full of excitement, and the woman he found himself thinking about more and more. It was more than four years since the day that he and Lottie had come together, and he still remembered every second of it. It was almost four years since he had delivered the ch
ild, Thomasina, on the clippie mat by the kitchen fire, and that too was etched on his mind. He could remember the smell of the woollen clippie strips, the sound of ash falling through the bars of the fire, the heat of the fire on his face.

  He brought his mind back to the present with a wrench.

  ‘I’m meeting my father in half an hour but I have a little time to spare. May I walk along with you? Or I can give you a lift to where your mother-in-law lives, near North Road, isn’t it?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Here, give me your basket.’

  They fell into step, walking side by side with the little girl between them, her hand in the pocket of her pinafore clutching the sixpence he had given her. Ina was quiet, thinking of whether to spend it all today or keep threepence for tomorrow. She was so absorbed with the problem that she didn’t even hear the conversation between her mother and Mr Scott.

  Lottie was surprised. In the time since Ina was born, he had rarely spoken to her except formally or in connection with her articles. In fact, she had often gone home feeling hurt because he had seemed so distant. He regretted what had been between them, she had decided. It had hurt at first but she had gradually got used to it. In any case, she was finished with men, they brought her nothing but grief. She and Ina could get on fine without a man.

  Her books were doing well enough and providing a modest income, enough to live on. And there was a little extra from the Durham Post, enough for the odd treat for Ina and still some to save for emergencies.

  ‘How are you, Lottie?’ His question broke the growing silence between them.

  ‘It is so long since I spoke to you as … as a friend.’

  ‘It is.’ She glanced up at him, surprised. ‘I’m in good health, thank you for asking,’ she answered his question.

  ‘Good.’

  They were walking down Silver Street by now, almost to Framwellgate Bridge over the Wear at the bottom. They paused for a moment, unwilling to part, and Ina stood on tiptoe and peered over the wall at the black waters below. Jeremiah put out a restraining hand in case she leaned over too far.