The Orphan Collection

by Maggie Hope

  ‘Hadaway then, Meg,’ Phoebe said as soon as they had rolled Hannah into the bed.

  ‘But I don’t know where—’

  ‘Oh, aye, you don’t know where to go, do you?’ Quickly, she gave Meg directions to the midwife’s house before turning back to her patient. ‘Where’s your clean nightie?’ she was asking when Hannah gave an involuntary scream and Meg stared at her, horrified. Her mother’s teeth were clenched over her lower lip where a droplet of blood was slowly forming; her eyelids were closed, their blue veins standing out against the stark white of her face. Meg paused long enough to take out the clean nightie from a drawer and drop it on the upturned tea chest which, covered by a cloth, did duty for a bedside table. Then she fled down the stairs.

  ‘Turn left at the other end of the street, along the top of the colliery rows, left up Simpson Street, to Short Street, and the second house along.’

  Meg was repeating the directions aloud as she ran for the midwife, fairly sprinting in her anxiety to get there. It seemed an age before her frantic knocking and crying were answered. Then it was the midwife’s husband who opened the door, an unshaven individual in dangling braces and collarless shirt. He listened to her appeal and scratched his head as he stood aside of her, unspeaking.

  The midwife was sitting by the kitchen fire drinking tea from a pint pot, stretching bootless feet along the length of the steel fender. She sighed impatiently when she saw the girl, her face all blotched and crying.

  ‘Please!’ sobbed Meg, hardly able to get her words out in her urgency. ‘You’ll have to come now. Mam’s awful bad, and the babby’s too soon.’

  ‘Eeh, I can’t even get a sip of tea now an’ I’ve been up all night. What’s your name, lass, any road? I don’t think I know you. Incomers, are you? You’re supposed to book me, you know.’ She took another sip of tea, making no effort to respond to Meg’s plea.

  ‘We’ve just come, yesterday. I’m called Meg Maddison.’

  ‘Maddison? I haven’t got a Maddison booked. Where do you live?’

  Meg was frantic now as the midwife showed no inclination to hurry and put on her boots but simply sat, calmly drinking tea from the pot.

  ‘We live in the rows, Pasture Row, the end one, next to Phoebe Lowther. Auntie Phoebe said to hurry.’ Meg’s nerves were stretched to breaking. Why didn’t she come, the silly woman?

  ‘Why, man, there can’t be that much of a hurry. I’d think she’s just a bit shook up if she was journeying yesterday. But I’d better have a look for myself. Phoebe Lowther’s had none of her own, she won’t know. When did she start the pains?’

  ‘She swooned half an hour since. Then she was bad, she’s awful bad.’

  The woman took a long swallow of tea and put the pot down on the fender before reaching for her boots. ‘So you’re kin to Phoebe Lowther, are you? Aye, well, she’s a nice body. A bit of a gossip though.’ She stood up and smoothed down her black serge skirt before picking up her capacious black holdall from the table.

  ‘Eeh, who would have my job, I ask you? I’m at it night and day the way people around this place breed.’

  The midwife walked at such a leisurely pace that Meg felt like getting behind her and pushing her. But at last they were there.

  ‘You took your time!’ Auntie Phoebe was at the front door when they came up the path. ‘Didn’t the lass tell you it was a rush job, Mrs Hall?’ All Phoebe’s self-assurance had deserted her, she was white and strained-looking. Catching hold of Meg before she entered the house, she drew her aside.

  ‘You go down to the other bairns, pet. This is no place for you, not now. And when your da comes out of the pit tell him to take the bairns next-door to our house. That’ll be the best.’

  Turning swiftly, Phoebe shut the door in Meg’s face and the girl was left staring at the wooden boards, an unnamed dread rising in her.

  Meg could hear Mrs Hall’s voice as she climbed the stairs to the bedroom. ‘Now, Phoebe, I know it’s because you’ve had none of your own, but don’t panic, lass …’ The voice broke off abruptly, the only other sound a muffled exclamation. Meg turned and ran off blindly. Suddenly she didn’t want to be told that the midwife had found anything wrong. Mam was just having a bairn, a babby. She’d had a babby before, hadn’t she? Why should it be different this time?

  There was the day little Alice was born. She’d thought Mam was dying then but she didn’t, it was all right. It would be all right this time an’ all, Meg said to herself. Deliberately she slowed to a walk and wiped her face with the corner of her apron. She would go down to the pit yard. Da would be coming up now and it was best if she was there to warn him before he went home. Besides there was Jack Boy and the little ’uns to think about. Miles was likely crying for his mam by now.

  The mine hooter was blowing as Meg reached the yard. Men were already streaming from it, brushing past the children standing by the gates, the boy holding Miles against his hip. Miles had his face buried in Jack Boy’s neck. He seemed to have cried himself to sleep. Alice was huddling close to him and watching the men, black with coal dust, some of them stopping to light the first cigarette in nine or ten hours. They drew the smoke into their lungs and it made them cough and gather up the phlegm in their mouths so they could spit out the coal and the stone dust, clearing their tubes. Meg watched too, anxious now about Da. Had he managed not to panic in the cage?

  ‘Here, give us the bairn.’ She leaned over and took the sleeping Miles, holding him up to her shoulder, cradling him in her arms.

  ‘Eeh, Meg, I can’t see me da at all.’ Jack Boy, relieved of his burden, looked anxiously at his elder sister. His eyes asked the question he was too shy to put into words.

  ‘Mam has the midwife,’ was all Meg said, and they turned to scan the men once again.

  ‘Da! I can see Da.’ Alice was diving between the men, running towards her father. ‘Da! Mam’s took bad,’ she cried, before Meg could stop her.

  How Alice could recognize Da, Meg couldn’t think. To her the man coming towards them, holding on to a grinning, skipping Alice, was like a stranger. He was covered in coal dust from head to toe, her fastidious da, who was always clean, no matter what. His hair was encrusted with it, his clothes stiff with it, only his eyes were the same, an intense blue staring out of a black, streaked face. The bait tin hanging by his side which had held his sandwiches clanked against the gate as he came through and his pit boots rang on the stones.

  ‘What is it, what’s the matter?’ he asked, ignoring the younger ones clamouring to be noticed and turning all his attention on Meg.

  ‘Mam. The bairn’s coming.’

  ‘Nay, it can’t be, there’s a while to go yet,’ Jack Maddison objected.

  ‘I know, I know, Da, but that’s what Auntie Phoebe says. And I had to go for the midwife, and when we get back we have to go in Auntie Phoebe’s house. That’s what she said, any road.’

  Jack Maddison grabbed the sleeping Miles from Meg, ignoring her protests about getting the bairn all black from the coal dust, and set off at a run for the colliery rows. He far outstripped his family so that when Meg got back to the house with her brothers and sister in tow, he had already disappeared inside. Slowly, she went up the garden path to number one. The kitchen was empty, the fire dying in the grate. Uncle Tot had gone to the pit.

  ‘Watch them for a minute, Jack,’ she commanded, deciding to brave whatever was going on next-door. At the very least she could bring little Miles out of the way. She could hear his fretful crying.

  ‘Aw, man, our Meg, I wanted to play cricket.’ Jack Boy was mutinous, hadn’t he minded the bairns all day? And it was lass’s work.

  Meg turned on him furiously, venting her worry and frustration.

  ‘You do as I tell you or I’ll tell Da! Then he’ll flatten you, an’ if he doesn’t, I will.’ She stopped as she saw the stricken look in his eyes. He was hardly seven, after all.

  ‘All right, all right, our Meg. I never said I wouldn’t,’ he muttered.

&nb
sp; She crept out of the back door. As she walked up their own yard, which was still glistening wetly from the swilling it had had earlier in the day, she could see through the kitchen window that there was no one about, only Miles sitting on the mat, newly wakened from sleep and sobbing as he looked round his unfamiliar surroundings. Meg rushed in and picked up the child, holding him against her shoulder and rocking gently.

  ‘There, there, me bairn. Meggie’s here, she’s got you now. Be a good lad and I’ll give you a nice buttered crust to suck. Whisht now, whisht, me pet.’

  Gradually, Miles’s sobs lessened and Meg strained to hear what was going on upstairs. She looked up at the brown boards which made up the ceiling of the kitchen and the floor of the bedroom above. There was much creaking of wood, the sound of footsteps going backwards and forwards, hushed whispers. A man’s voice, Scottish, said something and the midwife answered.

  ‘Yes, Doctor.’

  Doctor? They’d had to get the doctor! They never did that just for a baby coming. Mam had never had a doctor before. Meg’s heart thumped in her breast. She strained to hear more.

  But there was silence. Miles whimpered suddenly in her arms, sensing the anxious turmoil going on in Meg. And there came a sound Meg had never heard before in her life, great racking sobs in an unfamiliar voice which it took Meg a minute or two to realise was Da’s. And Auntie Phoebe began talking in a funny sort of voice too, softly, coaxing, as to a feverish child.

  ‘Howay, now, Jack, there’s nothing you can do now. Best go downstairs and let us get on here, this is no place for you now. You have to hold up for the sake of those poor bairns.’

  And a new sound was added, the weak wailing of a baby.

  Chapter Six

  Meg sat beside Alice and Jack Boy on the wooden form along the back wall in the kitchen. She was cradling the sleeping Miles in her arms. He’d cried and cried for his mam but in the end fallen asleep, exhausted. Alice was swinging her legs backwards and forwards, nursing her own baby, a peg dollie wrapped in a bit of clout for a shawl. Meg looked at her younger sister. Alice hadn’t cried when Auntie Phoebe told her that her mam had gone to heaven, she’d simply picked up her doll and hugged it. And now she was sitting quietly, still hugging it.

  Auntie Phoebe and Uncle Tot were sitting at the table with Da. They were talking earnestly together. At least, Auntie Phoebe and Uncle Tot were talking, Da gave no sign that he was even listening.

  ‘I asked the minister to come, Jack,’ said Auntie Phoebe. ‘It’d be best if we have the funeral on Wednesday morning, Tot’ll be able to come then.’ As she spoke, Auntie Phoebe was rocking the cradle with her foot, the wooden cradle which had been taken from Eldon to Marsden on the coast and back inland to Winton Colliery. Meg watched her. There wasn’t any need to rock the cradle, she was thinking. The baby, Bella, was sound asleep. In spite of the violence of her arrival, Bella slept most of the time.

  But Auntie Phoebe had taken over the new baby already. She couldn’t bear to be away from Bella at all. She even wanted to take the baby next-door the night, thought Meg, sudden resentment overlaying her numb misery. She knew she wasn’t old enough herself to have proper charge of Bella. But the baby was a Maddison, she thought, not a Lowther. Families had to stay together. Da would see that if he was more like himself.

  Jack Maddison was sitting quietly, giving no sign that he even heard Auntie Phoebe. Miles woke up and struggled to be down from Meg’s lap. He toddled over to his father and tried to climb on his knee, but Jack made no move to help him. A strained, white Jack Boy went to him without being told and picked him up in his skinny arms, leaning backwards to take the weight.

  ‘Howay, Miles,’ he said softly. ‘We’ll go and pick some daisies and cowslips, and mebbe Alice’ll give us a hand, eh?’

  The room was quiet after the younger children left. Meg glanced through the connecting door to the front room. Already the coffin was laid out on two trestles supplied by the undertaker. The top was left off until the actual ‘lifting’ so friends and kin could view Hannah for the last time. It was the custom, Meg knew, only there wouldn’t be any friends and relatives, not for her mam. There weren’t any left, just Auntie Phoebe and Uncle Tot. Meg looked at her uncle who was sitting in his shirtsleeves next to Da, his face solemn.

  ‘I shouldn’t have gone down the pit, I knew I shouldn’t,’ Jack said suddenly.

  ‘Eeh, Jack, man, you going down the pit didn’t do anything,’ protested Uncle Tot.

  ‘It was another worry for Hannah, it was, it upset her,’ said Jack.

  Meg watched him from her seat by the back wall, it was the first time she had heard Da say anything since Mam died.

  ‘I’m not going down any more,’ he added now.

  Uncle Tot started to argue but broke off in midsentence as he saw he was getting nowhere. ‘Aye then, Jack,’ he said. ‘I tell you what, I’ll see about a job on bank for you. It’ll be less money, but if you mean it …’

  ‘I do.’

  Auntie Phoebe looked at Meg and sighed. ‘Howay then, Meg, there’s a lot to be done if we’re to be ready for Wednesday. It’s up to thee and me now, lass.’ And somehow the awful day passed, full of work for Meg and her aunt.

  * * *

  The funeral was held on Wednesday at eleven in the morning. Auntie Phoebe and Meg had scrubbed the house out from top to bottom yet again, to make it decent for the funeral meal afterwards. And Meg had bathed the little ones in the tin bath which hung on a nail in the back yard when not in use. But Auntie Phoebe bathed the baby.

  ‘You’re not big enough to do the babby, pet,’ she said to Meg, who was watching her and thinking that Mam had done it differently. Mam had held a baby easily, but Auntie Phoebe was awkward and she used too much soap an’ all. And Meg rebelled in her heart. Hadn’t she been big enough to do little Miles? But she said nothing, just got on with dressing Alice and Miles in the clothes normally reserved for Sunday School.

  The day was wet and dismal. Meg had been up early, helping Auntie Phoebe boil the ham and ox tongue and pease pudding and slice the pickled beetroot which was to go with it. And all the time they had to skirt round Da who was in the rocking chair by the kitchen range, just sitting there.

  ‘Well,’ said Auntie Phoebe, ‘no matter how hard up we are, we have to have a decent tea to offer anyone who comes back to the house after, we couldn’t not give Hannah a decent send off.’ And Meg knew she meant anything less was too much akin to that thing dreaded above all, a Parish burial.

  ‘Eeh, Auntie Phoebe!’ Meg exclaimed when she saw the size of the ham and beheld the tray of cakes which Phoebe had brought round from her own house. ‘Eeh, Auntie Phoebe, we can’t pay for all this.’ She cast a quick glance at Da to see if he knew anything about it. She knew all their meagre savings had gone on the move from Marsden. And Da hadn’t been to work since Mam died, he’d only been down the pit that one day.

  But Jack Maddison didn’t even look up.

  Auntie Phoebe looked guardedly at Da too before she answered. ‘Dinna worry, pet,’ she said. ‘Your Uncle Tot has seen to it. An’ mebbe your mam carried a bit of insurance?’

  Meg looked doubtful. Da might know but they couldn’t ask him now. She couldn’t remember the insurance man calling at all when he was on his weekly rounds, though.

  ‘Well, never mind, pet. It’ll be fine, you’ll see. Everything will get paid for, things turn up.’ With a touch of surprise, Meg realised that Auntie Phoebe was embarrassed about something. Her face was all red and she kept darting funny looks at Da.

  ‘There now, I think it’s all ready. Now, I’ll just go round and change into my black.’ Auntie Phoebe changed the subject with obvious relief. ‘They’ll be here in half an hour.’

  The hearse, when it came, was pulled by two black-plumed horses and the undertaker and his boy were wearing top hats in a shining black silk with trailing ribbons. That would all be extra, Meg knew. Worry niggled at her as she picked up Miles and followed the minister and Da out to the he
arse, Jack Boy and Alice by her side and Auntie Phoebe carrying Bella.

  ‘I’ll take Miles,’ whispered Uncle Tot, and Meg gratefully released her burden to him. She couldn’t think about money now; she could still hear in her mind the sound of them nailing down the coffin lid.

  Mr Barton, the young minister barely out of his training, looked down on the family from his place in the pulpit, hardly knowing what to say to them. Distress surged through him as he saw the stooped shoulders of the husband, covered by a threadbare suit, and the group of children round him, the youngest girl looking bewildered by it all.

  His attention was drawn to the eldest girl who looked to be nine or ten years old. She had an air of vitality and strength with her springing fair hair and bright blue eyes, even though these were now red with weeping. Already she was acting as mother to the younger ones, a role he realised she would have to fill in earnest now. His heart filled with pity for her.

  The minister sighed. He had never met the family before the day the mother died, but there were so many others like this one. He thought about his own comfortable middle-class home in Surrey; how he had been fired with enthusiasm when he had heard about the surge of revivalism in the northern pit villages. And he remembered the shock it had been when he had seen for himself the dirt and poverty and downright human misery here. Though there was another side to life in the pit village, too, a side he found himself quite unable to do anything about. There was a wild side, a drinking, gambling fraternity as well as their more pious chapel neighbours. The drinkers and gamblers were catered for by the beer houses and inns like the Pit Laddie which stood right next-door to the chapel. And on a Sunday night at service they were sometimes put to it to hear themselves sing the hymns for the roistering and shouting going on. Abruptly the minister recollected himself and controlled his wandering thoughts, announcing the last hymn and bringing the service to a close.