The Orphan Collection

by Maggie Hope

  But today Wesley was on back shift, he would be out the whole day, and she was going to have a holiday while the weather was nice. Robert had been christened last Sunday and she herself had been, blessed after childbirth, so at last she was considered fit to go out and about and into other people’s houses. She and Alice and the babies were going to Bishop Auckland on the carrier’s cart. It was Thursday, market day in Auckland, and even though they didn’t have much money to spend, they could look round the stalls and walk in the Bishop’s Park. It cost nothing to look any road, she thought.

  Alice came at last, breathless and laughing, her fair hair tied back with a ribbon the same blue as her eyes and a large new shawl round her shoulders, the better to carry a baby.

  ‘Are we ready then?’

  Alice swung Tucker up in her arms and wrapped him in her shawl so that her shoulders took some of the weight from her arms. Tucker beamed. He was a little angel when things were going right for him, and he loved outings.

  Trouble was, he was a little devil when he was thwarted, Meg thought ruefully as she watched him with his young aunt. She frowned for a moment. Alice was under five foot as yet, was Tucker too heavy for her? She reminded Meg of their mother. She resembled Hannah and was not so strong as Meg herself.

  ‘Here, you take Robert, I’ll take Tucker, I can manage him better,’ said Meg.

  ‘No, man, I’ll be fine with Tucker. It’s you who should be careful, I’m strong enough. We’re not walking to Auckland, after all.’ Alice was adamant and Meg let her have her way. After all, they could change over later if she got tired. They trooped out of the house and up to the end of the row, stopping at intervals for the neighbours to admire Robert.

  Even though it was Thursday, a market day in Auckland but a working day all the same, the little town was bustling with people, most of them wending their way down to the market place. There were miners’ wives, a few men who were off-shift, along with farmers and local townspeople. Meg and Alice wandered happily down Newgate Street, looking in shop windows and marvelling at the splendid new buildings being added on to the Bishop Auckland Cooperative Society headquarters.

  After a while they exchanged babies to relieve the load on Alice’s arms. A cool wind sprang up and was channelled by the tall buildings on either side of the street which ran straight as a die all the way to Cockton Hill, being built over an ancient Roman road. But Meg hardly felt the chill, she was so busy looking at everything around her: the goods in the shop windows and stacked on the pavement, the traffic on the road. There were carts and traps and men riding horses, and on the corner of Newgate Street and Bondgate, a horse bus in from Stanhope.

  The two sisters enjoyed wandering round the market stalls. Meg bought some cod from a fishwife from Shields, a nice easy meal for Wesley’s tea. But the clock on the castle gates was moving towards midday. They had to find somewhere to feed the babies. The morning was speeding by.

  ‘Let’s not go in the park, let’s go down by the Wear,’ suggested Alice. So they bought tuppenny pies and a bottle of ginger beer and walked down Wear Chare to find a spot sheltered from the wind but still in the sun.

  There was no one about, even Jock’s Row looked deserted, and Meg could feed her babies and herself in peace.

  ‘By, it’s grand, isn’t it?’ she said, smiling as she watched Alice feeding Tucker with pieces of meat and pastry while he clamoured greedily for more. Gravy was running down his chin and Alice wiped it away with a bit of pastry before popping it into his mouth. He chewed noisily with the six teeth he had so far.

  Robert was sucking comfortably with Meg’s shawl drawn discreetly over him. Meg herself bit deep into a pie, relishing the rich meatiness of it. When Robert had had his fill, she took up Tucker and he finished his meal at her breast.

  Alice laid Robert by his mother and stood up. ‘I’ll just have a walk along to Jock’s Bridge,’ she said, ‘then I suppose we’ll have to be going back to catch the carrier.’

  ‘Aye, go on then,’ said Meg, watching her sister strolling along by the river. The sun sparkled on the peaty brown water and the air was lovely and fresh after Winton Colliery where it was so often filled with fumes from the gas ovens. Little Tucker had fallen asleep at her breast and Meg gently moved him so that she could refasten her dress.

  She looked down at the peaceful Robert. He was growing now. Soon she would have to wean Tucker, for Robert would need all her milk, she mused. It would be nice if there were a few months’ breathing space before she had another baby, but there was nothing she could do about that short of locking Wesley out of her bedroom. And that wouldn’t be an easy thing to do! She chuckled to herself at the thought.

  ‘Look what I found – snowdrops!’ cried Alice as she came running back holding out a tiny bouquet. ‘Aren’t they bonny?’

  ‘Oh, aye, they are.’ Meg smiled in delight at the pure white flowers against the dark green of the leaves. ‘They’re real bonny, Alice.’ But quick as a flash, Tucker had woken up and was grabbing at the flowers, crushing them in his tiny fists before Alice had a chance to draw them away from him.

  ‘Tucker!’ she cried, but it was too late. The flower heads lay bruised and broken on the grass. ‘Tucker, you’ve spoilt them now, haven’t you?’

  ‘Ma-am!’ he wailed. Seeing both his aunt and his mother annoyed with him, he stuck out his bottom lip and took a deep breath preparing to scream at the top of his lungs. The peace of the day was shattered. It took them ten minutes to pacify Tucker and then it was time to climb the steep bank into town to meet the carrier.

  ‘Did you enjoy the look out?’ asked Alice as they jogged along in the cart, both babies sleeping like cherubs.

  ‘It was grand,’ declared Meg, ‘I wouldn’t have got out but for you, Alice, and I’m grateful, I am.’

  ‘I’ve enjoyed it an’ all.’

  Just then Meg’s attention was caught by two men standing by a farm gate, one obviously a farmer. The other was tall and dark-haired. He wore shabby riding clothes but there was something in the set of his shoulders and the way the older man was talking to him which set him apart as a gentleman. He turned to watch the cart come trundling up and for a split second his eyes met Meg’s, dark eyes they were, and then his gaze went from her to Alice and he took on a slightly puzzled look.

  The cart lurched to a halt and the carrier spoke to the farmer.

  ‘I’ll be round this way tomorrow if you want anything special bringing, Farmer Teasdale.’

  Meg had time to look properly at the farmer’s companion. She couldn’t think what it was about him, but she thought she had seen him before. He had a pleasant open face and lovely dark eyes. Surely if she had seen him before she would have remembered him? It was a puzzle …

  ‘Gee up!’

  The carrier was setting off again and Meg was still puzzling about it. She risked a backward glance and saw the young man staring after them. She almost felt like putting up a hand to wave to him, make some acknowledgement, at least. Daft! she said to herself, and turned to her sister.

  ‘Did you know who that was?’ she asked Alice, her question unheard by the carrier as the wheels rumbled on loudly.

  ‘Who? Farmer Teasdale?’

  ‘No, the other one, the man with him,’ said Meg.

  ‘I didn’t notice,’ answered Alice, surprising Meg who thought that any girl would have noticed the man with Farmer Teasdale. ‘Why, like?’

  ‘Oh, nothing, I just wondered,’ Meg answered, and they said no more about it.

  But she remembered the young man. And in bed that night, when Wesley took her for the first time since Robert was born, it was the stranger’s face which swam before her eyes and she was ashamed afterwards so that she tried to be especially understanding with Wesley. Yet the memory lingered and she knew it was linked to another, more elusive one. She thought of it at different times during the day as she worked at the possing stick, thumping clothes through soapy water, or did the thousand and one other chores which made up he
r day.

  * * *

  But the happenings of the next few months kept all Meg’s fanciful thoughts at bay. Fever was sweeping the colliery rows, scarlet fever which decimated the children and even took some of the adults. The Cornish babies both fell victim to the dread disease in July, but whereas Tucker returned from the fever hospital thinner and paler and more fractious, Robert did not return at all.

  He was but six months old when he died of the fever and Meg four months pregnant with her third child. Wesley and Dick Adamson went to the fever hospital to bring the tiny coffin home for burial.

  The funeral was quiet, there had been so many such for children in the last few weeks. Dolly Bates came, and Alice and Auntie Phoebe and Uncle Tot, but no one else apart from the parents and the minister.

  Meg stood by the tiny grave and it was Alice who took her arm to support her. Wesley stood separate from them, his face hard and impassive as the coffin was lowered into the earth. And afterwards he strode away by himself.

  Auntie Phoebe sniffed and lifted her chin in disapproval.

  ‘Gone to meet his marras in the Black Boy, I reckon,’ she said tartly.

  ‘Whisht, Phoebe, the lad has a right to go for a drink if he wants,’ said Uncle Tot. He took Meg’s other arm. ‘Howay, lass, let’s get you home. You have to think of the bairn that’s left now.’ And Meg was glad of his strong arm as they turned away from the grave, and walked back to the rows.

  So many little graves there were, she thought dumbly. Oh, God, what is it all for? Here she was, only just twenty-one, with a baby at home and one dead in the earth. And another on the way, a tiny tremor inside her womb reminded her.

  Alice stayed with Meg until the clock struck ten. They sat on either side of the kitchen range, Alice in the rocking-chair where she had nursed the still weak and fretful Tucker to sleep before taking him up to bed. Meg sat in the hard chair opposite, staring into the fire until it became quite dark. Alice watched her, her own young heart throbbing with pity at the sorrow of her sister. They spoke little, just sat there in companionable silence, until at last Alice stirred.

  ‘I’d better be getting home now, Meg,’ she said. ‘Shall I light the lamp before I go?

  Meg looked up, startled out of her melancholy thoughts.

  ‘Oh, Alice,’ she said, ‘I was going to make you some supper. The time’s just run away with me tonight, I didn’t realise it was so late.’ She rose from the chair and lifted the kettle, testing its weight to see if there was enough water in it before putting it forward on to the coals.

  ‘No, don’t make any for me, I’ll get some when I get home,’ Alice said quickly. ‘I’d better be on my way, Meg. There’s bait to put up for Miles, he’s on fore shift the night.’ She picked up her shawl and put it round her shoulders before turning back. ‘Shall I light the lamp, then?’

  ‘No, don’t, Alice. There’s only me and I can see enough by the firelight. If I want to see anything better, I’ve a candle on the mantel shelf.’ Meg sank down again into her chair and sighed, almost as though the effort of rising to her feet had been too much for her.

  ‘I don’t like leaving you on your own.’ Alice’s face was full of concern. ‘I wonder if Wesley will be long?’

  What Alice meant, Meg understood only too well, was that she didn’t want to be here when he came home. For if he came home and had been drinking, he could be nasty with Meg because her sister was there and she’d had enough to deal with for one night. But, on the other hand, Alice didn’t want her sister sitting on her own on the evening of her baby’s funeral.

  ‘You go, pet,’ said Meg, ‘I’ll be fine. I’ll go to bed myself as soon as Wes comes in.’

  Alice hesitated but in the end left, walking home through rows which seemed strange to her with their alternating dark and shade for they had recently been illuminated with gas lamps which cast their eerie glow every few yards.

  On her walk from George Row to Pasture Row, sorrow and sympathy for Meg formed a hard knot in her stomach which turned to anger the nearer to home she drew.

  ‘I’ve lost all patience with them,’ she said aloud, and her feet quickened as she turned into the back street of Pasture Row. ‘I’ll have it out with the lads first chance I get, I will.’ The resolve hardened in her. She determined she was going to have her say about this even if it did get her into trouble.

  The chance came almost at once. Miles and Jack Boy were sitting in the kitchen, Miles in his pit clothes ready for work and Jack Boy in his shirt sleeves, sitting at the table reading the Auckland Chronicle. Alice wasted no time in getting down to it.

  ‘I think you two should be bloody well ashamed of yourselves,’ she said flatly as she came through the door and hung her shawl up on the hook behind it.

  Jack Boy and Miles looked up in surprise, shock even, at hearing a young lass like Alice swear.

  ‘Our Alice!’ Miles reproached.

  ‘Why, man, it’s enough to make a saint swear,’ she snapped. ‘There you two sit without a care in the world at all, and your sister just buried her babby. You haven’t even the sense to go to the funeral.’

  ‘Aw, Alice! You know Da wouldn’t like it,’ said Miles, but both he and Jack Boy went a bright red and Jack Boy looked quickly down at his paper, folding it in two and placing it carefully to one side.

  ‘You’re old enough to decide for yourselves, both of you. Da never notices what you do any road. An’ you must know our Meg hasn’t got it easy, not with that Wesley Cornish. Why, man, if it hadn’t been for Uncle Tot, I don’t know how she would have got back from the funeral. Two brothers and not one to support her at a time like this.’

  ‘Why, where was Wes? Did he not go to his own bairn’s funeral?’ Jack Boy’s eyes opened wide in surprise and a dawning anger.

  ‘Oh, aye, he went to the funeral, but then he went straight out drinking with that Dick Adamson. I tell you, man, I’ve just come away from our Meg’s and her useless man isn’t back yet.’

  Alice started banging about the kitchen, filling the kettle for tea and fetching out the bread and jam to make sandwiches for Miles’s bait tin. All her movements showed her fury: the way she thrust the kettle on the coals, the way she almost threw the bait tin on the table. She looked a proper virago to the boys with her blazing eyes and tightly compressed lips.

  ‘I think it’s time you two did something for our Meg, after all she’s done for you. An’ it’s about time you had a word with Da. Our Meg’s married now. Who do you think’s going to remember or even care how it was she came to get married? She was like a mother to you two an’ all, she was. You’re old enough to know how young she was herself when she had to take Mam’s place.’

  The brothers looked at one another, both of them feeling a trifle sheepish. It was true, everything Alice said, and they knew it.

  ‘I’ll call in the morn,’ said Miles after a minute’s embarrassed silence. ‘On my way home from the pit I’ll call in, tell her I’m sorry about the babby, like.’

  Jack Boy cleared his throat. ‘Aye,’ he mumbled, ‘me an’ all.’ He rose from the table and stretched his arms to the ceiling, yawning hugely, his expression nonchalant. Almost, thought Alice, as though it was nothing unusual, just something he did most days. She couldn’t believe how easy it had been to get them to cave in on this. She should try playing war with them more often.

  ‘I’m off to bed,’ said Jack Boy, moving towards the staircase. Then he halted and turned to face them both.

  ‘An’ another thing, our Alice,’ he said, as though it had been him laying down the law a minute or two ago, ‘another thing. You can call me Jackie from now on, like me marras do, I’m not a bairn any longer, I know when you mean me or Da.’

  Alice nodded, unsmiling. It was true, he was no longer little Jack, he was a man now and beginning to face up to the real world.

  Chapter Nineteen

  It was twelve o’clock when Wesley came home and Meg by that time had fallen into an exhausted sleep in her chair by the
fire. She woke with a start as he came in the door, lurching from side to side and wafting before him the stench of his beery breath, making her feel sick and ill, compounding her aching misery.

  ‘You’re drunk,’ she said flatly, watching him as he flopped down in a chair.

  ‘Aye, I am,’ Wesley replied equably.

  ‘On the day of your babby’s funeral an’ all, you should be ashamed!’

  ‘Ashamed, is it? Me ashamed! You mind your tongue, lass, or I’ll mind it for you.’ Wesley glowered, his quick temper already rising. But Meg was past seeing any danger signals. She needed to vent her anger at Wesley and the world, needed to break through the ball of desolate misery which was threatening to choke her.

  For while she was asleep she had dreamed of the day she had spent in Auckland. Not so long ago, though it seemed an age. She was with Alice and the babies, down on the river bank where the Gaunless flowed into the Wear. And she had woken still feeling the weight of little Robert in her arms, smiling down into his tiny face. And then Wesley had come in and spoilt it. She had to face the reality of the future with no baby Robert to hold in her arms. And she agonized about whether she should have weaned Tucker earlier. Had Robert succumbed to the scarlet fever because he wasn’t getting sufficient milk? Had she done something else wrong in her care of him?

  ‘I have a perfect right to go for a drink, I’ve lost me babby and I had to get out for a drink,’ Wesley stated, his face red with anger. ‘Now, get me a bite of supper, woman, an’ don’t be so impittent. Who do you think you’re talking to?’