The Orphan Collection

by Maggie Hope

  ‘That’s the wrong way, Meg,’ she heard him call. He had stopped following her and she was thankful for that, but she halted and looked around her.

  It was true, she was walking towards Old Eldon, not back to Winton Colliery. She bit her lip. She could see Wesley standing on the path grinning at her. He looked arrogantly pleased with himself, sure he was dealing with some feminine whim. She would come right in the end. She could see that that was what he was thinking. It was written on his face. Now she would have to walk past him to get on to the right road.

  He waited for her, arms folded. By, she hated the grin on his face. She loathed and detested him. And he was so sure of his charms he couldn’t even see it.

  As she came abreast of him she skirted the path so that she didn’t have to go near him. She was uncaring about the mud she got on her boots, wasn’t going to give him the chance to touch her again. Wesley, of course, had other ideas. As she drew closer he stepped forward and caught hold of her by the upper arms, holding her in a firm, steady grip.

  ‘Meg, hinny, what’s the matter with you? What did you expect was going to happen between a lad and a lass? You’ve come walking wi’ me twice, I thought you liked me.’

  Meg shuddered, she couldn’t bear his hands on her arms. Loathing showed in her face and Wesley stepped back in surprise. Even he could not fail to see that. He dropped his arms abruptly and his grin faded, his expression hardening.

  ‘Hadaway then,’ he snapped grimly. ‘If that’s how you feel, why the hell did you come out with me in the first place?’

  Meg didn’t answer, simply turned on her heel and walked on rapidly down the path. Why had she come out with him? She didn’t know, she couldn’t remember. His words rang in her ears: ‘What did you expect?’ She didn’t know what she had expected but she knew it wasn’t what had happened. Surely a lass should have some say in how far to go? Why did it have to be so brutish? Why did Wesley take no notice of her protests and struggles? Maybe it had all been her own fault, maybe she had led him to believe she wanted it to happen. She vowed she would never, never, let it happen again.

  All the bones in her body ached and she felt as though a great bruise was covering her from the waist down. She stumbled slightly and a great weariness overtook her. She was aware that Wesley was following only a few steps behind her but didn’t look back. Her pace quickened. She walked blindly on, longing only to get home.

  ‘Hey, I say! Watch where you’re going. Whoa! Whoa!’

  The voice startled her out of her misery. She had reached the end of the path and had almost walked into a man leading a stocky Dales pony. He had been busy opening the stock gate by the stile to let himself and his pony on to the path.

  The horse nickered and pranced a little but settled down immediately when the man spoke to it, obediently going through the gate and standing patiently while he spoke to Meg.

  ‘Can’t you look where you’re going?’

  ‘I – I’m sorry,’ she muttered, her face flushing even redder than it had been. She looked up at him desperately, wanting the incident to be over and him to go so that she could be on her way before Wesley reached them. Dully, she took in the fact that he was more of a boy than a man, somewhere near her own age. And he was obviously gentry though his suit was threadbare.

  ‘Do I know you?’

  Startled, her eyes opened wide at the query. He did look familiar but she couldn’t put a name to him. He frowned down at her, his face looking puzzled. She knew he was looking curiously at her face, could tell she had been weeping. She was embarrassed and looked quickly down to the ground.

  Wesley caught up with her and she saw the gentleman’s lip curl slightly as he properly took in their dishevelled appearances and saw the red strawberry stains on their clothes. He mounted his horse and rode on up the path without waiting for her to answer his question. Gathering her skirt in one hand, Meg hurried over the stile and ran down the road to the village.

  Jonty rode on and branched out over the fields for Grizedale Hall, but as he rode the image of her tear-stained face and flushed cheeks rose up in front of him. There was something about her: her fair, curly hair and her blue eyes fringed with thick lashes, bright and attractive in spite of being damp and reddened with weeping. Obviously he had interrupted a lovers’ quarrel. He rode on to the drive leading to Grizedale Hall, wondering why she seemed so familiar to him. As he got to the stables he realised who she looked like. It was a little girl he had seen in Phoebe Lowther’s kitchen. Bella, was it?

  He sighed. Mrs Lowther had not been so welcoming the second time he went to see her. In fact, she had put him off going altogether. And she had hinted that his mother’s relatives wanted nothing to do with him, they simply weren’t interested. He remembered again the desolate feeling when they had left him as a young boy and they disappeared from his life, leaving him to his father. He wondered again what he had done to deserve it, what sin he had committed that they should have cut him off so completely.

  Sadly, Jonty stabled his pony and rubbed him down. There was no sign of his father’s horse. Ralph Grizedale must be off on one of his jaunts to Darlington. Well, at least Jonty didn’t have to deal with him for a while. He had enough to think about as it was, and was desperately aware that if things went on the way they were doing, the estate would be lost altogether. His trust money, when he got it, would come too late to do any good.

  Sadly, he went indoors and climbed the stairs to his grandmother’s room. He had to see that the old woman was comfortable. She was failing now, her joints crippled with arthritis so that she rarely left her room. She was dependent on him for everything.

  Chapter Fifteen

  It was autumn and the wind was blowing from the north and straight down the colliery rows as Meg walked slowly along to the end and turned right. She passed three rows, turning in when she came to the last but one. Pausing, she stared down the street, noting the washing strung across from one side to the other, for these rows had no gardens to string washing in. Only Pasture Row where she lived had gardens. Her inner turmoil was eased slightly by thinking of such inconsequential things.

  She shivered. The wind was bitterly cold. It was only October but the north-easters were already bringing the taste of winter from the Arctic.

  Meg’s deep-down thoughts were as bitter as the wind. It took all her will-power to stop herself from turning round and going back home. But she could not. She pulled her shawl tighter round her shoulders and walked on down the row to number eleven. Here lived the Cornish family, Wesley and his widowed mother. Mrs Cornish had been widowed last year when her husband was killed in a fall of stone at the pit but they had kept the tenancy of the house by virtue of Wesley’s position as a coal-hewer.

  Her feet slowed as she approached number eleven and halted at the door. Meg was ready to turn and run; she was ready to face her father and brothers first and confess the pickle she had got herself into. They wouldn’t turn her out, why no, they wouldn’t, not like happened to some girls in the same position. They were a close family, even Da for all his withdrawn silences. But Auntie Phoebe’s voice came back to her, ringing in her ears.

  ‘There’s only one thing you can do,’ her aunt had said when she caught Meg being sick over the drain in the back yard, only yesterday morning. ‘You’ll have to tell the lad. Them that makes their bed has to lie on it. It’ll be that Wesley Cornish, is it?’

  Meg had nodded miserably.

  ‘Aye, well, you wouldn’t be told. You would go with him.’

  Meg had leaned against the wall and wiped her mouth with a rag, the bitter taste of bile fresh in her mouth. She must have looked woebegone for Phoebe’s tone softened.

  ‘Never mind, lass, you’re not the first this has happened to. It’s the way of the world. He’ll have to do the right thing by you. An’ I know you haven’t been seeing him lately. Was it just the once, like?’

  Meg had nodded again, wordless.

  ‘Hmm. Them that gets the puddin’ doesn�
��t always get the most gravy,’ Phoebe commented sagely, though the remark was incomprehensible to Meg.

  And now here she was, standing by the door of the Cornish house, not daring to knock. She glanced up and down the street but there was no one about, the doors tight closed against the wind which made the clothes flap and snap and wind themselves around the lines. Dully, she thought they would take a lot of ironing if someone didn’t come out and see to them.

  Meg hadn’t seen Wesley Cornish since that fateful Sunday afternoon. She had returned home, feeling grubbily used, sure he would be boasting about his conquests to all the lads in the village and she would be named for a whore. Every day when Jack Boy or Miles came in from the pit, she met them with a sick feeling rising in her gut, expecting them to show anger and contempt for her for bringing this shame on the family.

  But it hadn’t happened, everything was as normal. Evidently Wesley was not bandying her name about at all. Her heart had grown lighter with each passing day. She was going to get the chance to put it behind her. And then suddenly she had another worry, a bigger one, a much bigger one. What was she going to do?

  Meg brought her thoughts back to the present. She had to lift her hand and knock on the door of number eleven. She had to, as Auntie Phoebe said. It was too late now to say she didn’t want to marry Wesley Cornish. Bairns with no fathers just didn’t happen in the closed society of the pit village. Or not often, they didn’t, and when they did it was a blight on the whole family, not just the woman and her bairn.

  Hadn’t she heard a woman in Marsden once comment on it, when an unmarried girl and her child were laughing together on the beach?

  ‘You’d think she’d keep him in the house, not make a show of him like that,’ the woman had said. And Meg had looked at the child in surprise. He was an ordinary enough bairn, why should his mother have to keep him out of the way? She’d asked Mam, and Mam had told her some people thought like that because he had no da. But Meg still hadn’t understood. Lots of children had no fathers. Men were killed in the pit or died of the cholera or their lungs rotted with the dust. Why was that one bairn different? But Mam would say no more.

  The wind blew her hair in wisps about her face and Meg’s hand dropped to her side almost of its own volition. She stared at the fading paint of the green batten door, the same green paint which adorned every door in the rows. She was just noting dully that the brass sneck could do with a bit of polish when it lifted and there, in the doorway was Wesley’s mam.

  ‘Er, good morning, Mrs Cornish.’

  ‘Morning.’

  Jane Cornish stared in astonishment at the girl standing on her doorstep which was newly scoured this morning with sandstone. She stood with the Brasso in one hand and a polishing cloth in the other, an enquiring expression on her face, obviously waiting for Meg to explain what she was doing there. Meg bit her lip.

  ‘Did you want something, lass?’ prompted Mrs Cornish. ‘You’re not tongue-tied, are you?’

  Meg shook her head and smiled shyly. For some reason she had expected to see Wesley. After all, she knew he was off shift, that was why she was here. She didn’t know what to say to his mother.

  ‘Is your Wesley in?’ she managed to utter at last.

  Jane Cornish compressed her lips. She was a small, scraggy woman, everything about her meagre. Her thin hair was scraped back from her face and her narrow body dressed in a cheap black overall dress. From her five foot nothing she looked up at Meg, her gaze anything but friendly. This girl was a threat to her security and she knew it. Why else would a young lass come looking for a lad this early in the morning, before the jobs were done?

  ‘He’s in bed,’ she snapped, and her tone implied she had no intention of disturbing him either.

  ‘Oh.’ Meg hadn’t thought of that. She berated herself for not thinking of it. After all, he’d been on night shift, why wouldn’t he still be in bed? ‘Will you tell him I want to see him? Margaret Maddison, I am.’

  ‘Indeed I will not,’ snapped Mrs Cornish, openly aggressive now. ‘Why should I disturb the lad? Why can’t you wait?’

  Meg faced her desperately. Oh, she didn’t want to go back home and have to come looking all over again, she didn’t.

  ‘Who’s that, Mam?’

  The annoyance on Jane’s face deepened as Wesley came through from the back of the house, yawning widely, his feet bare and his braces hanging down by his sides. Obviously he had not been in bed, he came out of the kitchen.

  ‘Meg!’ he exclaimed.

  Wesley’s surprise was total. Since that summer day when they had taken their last walk in the fields he hadn’t seen her. She had made it very plain then that she didn’t want him yet here she was on his doorstep.

  ‘Can I come in?’

  Meg sounded tentative. Jane still held on to the door as though guarding the house against an enemy. Wesley simply stared. After a moment he spoke.

  ‘Let her in, Mam.’

  Reluctantly, Jane stood back from the door and allowed Meg to pass her, anything but welcoming.

  Meg followed Wesley into a spotless kitchen. The table was scrubbed white and the brass rail below the mantelshelf gleamed in the light from the range. She felt that not a cinder would dare to fall on the white-washed hearth. The only concession to comfort in the room was a thin cushion on the wooden armchair pulled up before the fire.

  Jane followed them into the room and stood on the clippie mat by the fender, arms folded over her skinny breast.

  ‘Can I have a word with you, Wesley, on your own?’

  Meg heard the tremor in her own voice and clamped her teeth together in an effort to get over her fit of nerves.

  ‘There’s nothing you can have to say to our Wesley that I don’t have a right to know,’ declared Jane.

  ‘Mam!’

  Wesley’s exclamation seemed to have an effect on her for she nodded towards the passage.

  ‘Go on then. You know where the front room is.’

  Meg followed Wesley along to the front room. Once there and with the door firmly closed, she turned to face him. Wesley was smiling confidently and she could see he was thinking that if she’d sought him out, she must want to see him again.

  ‘I knew you still liked me,’ he said, ‘lasses always have a soft spot for the first lad to take them.’ He cocked his head on one side, a teasing light in his eyes. ‘Well, I might think about it …’

  ‘It’s not that, not that at all. I had to come,’ Meg said flatly.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I’m going to have a bairn.’

  The confident grin was wiped from Wesley’s face and his jaw dropped.

  ‘A bairn?’

  The door to the front room burst open and Jane Cornish catapulted into the room like a miniature whirlwind.

  ‘A bairn, is it? An’ you’re trying to make out it’s our Wesley’s? Well, you can be ganning. Hadaway out of my house, you impittent little hussy.’ She glared her contempt at Meg, her hands on her hips and her chin thrust forward aggressively. ‘You don’t think I’m going to let him be taken in by the oldest trick in the world, do you? Go on, I said, out of it, before I take my broom to you.’

  ‘Mam. Stop it. You’ll do nothing of the sort,’ Wesley protested, but his voice sounded unconvincing and Meg’s heart sank within her.

  ‘I won’t, will I not? I’ll damn’ well do what I like in my own house.’ Jane’s voice was rising. She advanced on Meg, eyes flashing and her thin nose quivering with rage. For a minute Meg thought the older woman was going to hit her.

  ‘How do we know who you’ve been with?’ Jane went on. ‘If you went with our Wesley you’ve likely been with a dozen more. I bet if I was to ask around the village I’d hear some right tales about you and your goings-on, you dirty little madam. I’m not one to gossip or I’d mebbe have—’

  ‘Mam!’ Wesley stepped forward and grabbed his mother’s arm, propelling her towards the door. ‘I think this is for me and Meg to talk about.’

  �
�Why, man, you’re a great soft ha’pporth. You know nowt, you’ll believe anything she says. She’ll take you in proper all right, that sort always does.’

  Meg had had enough. If she had to listen to that woman screeching at her a minute longer she would knock her down herself, and where would that get her? She pushed past them and ran down the passage and out of the front door.

  ‘Don’t you worry, Mrs Cornish,’ she flung over her shoulder, ‘I’m all right, I don’t need you or your precious son. We’ll manage on our own, me and the bairn, you wait and see.’

  Once outside in the cold fresh air, she set off at a run, quite oblivious of the neighbours who had suddenly found it necessary to test the dryness of the clothes hanging on their lines. The raised voices had been heard, of course, all across the street, the walls of the cottages in the row being only a single brick’s thickness.

  Vaguely, Meg heard Wesley calling after her as she turned into Pasture Row, but she took no notice. All she could think of was getting home and closing the door against the rest of the world. She had never been so ashamed in her life before.

  ‘Meg!’

  Wesley caught up with her before she reached her own gate. He took hold of her elbow and swung her round to face him.

  ‘Meg, Meg, don’t run away from me. Don’t, pet. I’ll marry you, I will. I just got a bit of a shock, that’s all.’

  Meg raised her face to his, flushed and tear-stained. She was ready to protest hotly, she wanted to tell him to go to hell, she didn’t want him to marry her as a favour. No, she didn’t.

  Wesley saw the protest coming and forestalled it. ‘Meg, I mean it, I want to marry you,’ he said quickly.

  ‘What about your mam?’ she asked bitterly. ‘You’re underage. If she wants she can stop you.’

  ‘Aye, but she won’t. Any road, I’m twenty-one next month, she couldn’t stop me then. But I’ll speak to her, I’ll tell her. Listen, Meg, I’ll come back with you now and we’ll make plans, eh? What do you say?’