The Orphan Collection

by Maggie Hope

  Meg took the kettle and went into the pantry to fill it from the water bucket. Her hand shook as she lifted the dipper so that water splashed over on to the floor. She felt dizzy and sick and her head throbbed.

  ‘You have to go to work in the morning, you’re on back shift, you should have come home sooner,’ she said, and bent over the fire to rake it together the better to boil the kettle.

  The next moment she felt his fingers on her shoulder and he pulled her round so violently that the kettle went flying out of her hand to clatter against the wall and fall to the ground, leaving a wet, sooty stain on the lime-washed plaster.

  ‘I should have, should I?’ Wesley snarled, and lifting his fist he slammed it into the side of her face so that if he hadn’t been holding her up she would have gone the way of the kettle.

  ‘Wes!’

  Meg’s head rocked back and for a moment she was so dazed she hardly heard her own strangled cry. But it was enough to wake Tucker in his bed upstairs and he set up a frightened howling.

  ‘Mam, mam, mam!’

  Wesley brought his face close to hers, glaring at her, his eyes red-rimmed and his cheeks suffused with fury.

  ‘I should have done that a long time since!’ he shouted. ‘What you need is a bit of stick, my lass. Mebbe if I’d done it sooner you wouldn’t have neglected the babby, let him catch the fever. But, by, I’ve learned me lesson, I have, and from now on you’ll have to watch your step or I’ll take me belt to you.’ He released his grip on her shoulder and flung her down on the floor, himself sitting back down at the table.

  Meg lay for a minute or two, her ear ringing from the blow, unable even to think straight until Wesley pushed his foot roughly into her back.

  ‘Get yourself up and see to the supper,’ he said. ‘Don’t lie there sulking like you’ve been hurt, or by God I’m telling you, you will be hurt before I’m done with you.’

  Upstairs, Tucker’s terrified screaming grew louder and louder and Dolly Bates’s husband knocked on the wall with the poker.

  ‘What’s going on in there?’ he shouted. ‘Can’t a man have a bit of rest when he comes in from the pit?’

  ‘Now look, you’ve gone and disturbed the neighbours,’ said Wesley.

  Shakily, Meg got to her feet. The kettle was boiling and she brewed Wesley a pot of tea and brought him the remains of a meat pie from the pantry. She worked like an automaton, going through the motions only, until the fog in her head gradually cleared and the throbbing lessened.

  ‘I should think so an’ all,’ said Wesley smugly. ‘Now get away up and see to the bairn. I’m telling you, Meg, if you let another bairn of mine go because you don’t look after it properly, I’ll swing for you, I surely will.’

  She didn’t answer, just climbed the stairs and lifted the hiccuping, shaking Tucker from his bed. Sitting down, she offered him her breast, though he had been weaned for a month or more now. But it was the only way she could think of to comfort him quickly. Tucker cuddled into her, holding himself tightly against her, and she crooned softly to him, rocking him gently backwards and forwards until at last he quietened, giving only an occasional sob. His tear-beaded eyelashes drooped and he fell asleep, comforted.

  * * *

  Meg was ironing on the kitchen table when the knock on the door came the following morning. She was surprised. It was early for Alice, only nine o’clock. Surely she would be busy this time of the morning? But her heart lightened as she took the flat iron back to the fire and scooped Tucker up in her arms, just in case. Now he was more steady on his feet he was like lightning, into everything before she could catch him usually.

  ‘Morning, Meg.’

  ‘Miles!’ she gasped, holding on to Tucker with both hands as he struggled to be free.

  ‘I thought … I thought I would just look in and see how you are like,’ Miles mumbled, and even through the streaks of coal dirt on his cheeks she could see his face reddening.

  ‘Miles, Miles. Howay in, lad, howay through to the kitchen.’

  Meg stood back to let her younger brother into the house and led him through to the kitchen. Once there, he stood awkwardly before the range, not sure what to do. They gazed at each other for a long moment until Meg let Tucker, who had been fighting heroically to wriggle out of her arms, down on to the floor.

  ‘Sit down, lad, sit down,’ she said, beginning to smile until she suddenly thought of something. ‘There’s nothing wrong, is there, at home I mean? Nothing’s happened, has it, not an accident at the pit?’ Her eyes were beginning to widen in horror, for surely after all this time something drastic must have happened to bring Miles round to her door?

  ‘No, no, nothing’s up,’ he said quickly. ‘I thought I’d just call in on my way back from the pit, you know, tell you I was sorry about the bairn.’

  ‘Oh, yes, little Robert.’ Meg’s smile dimmed for a moment as the sorrow threatened to overwhelm her again. She fought against it.

  ‘Eeh, Miles, I’m that glad to see you, I am. Sit down, lad, sit down and I’ll make some tea.’

  ‘I’m in me pit clothes,’ he objected, looking at the clean cushion on the chair.

  ‘Aye, well, I’ll put the cloth on the chair, the one I keep for when Wesley’s black from the pit.’ Meg rushed for the piece of old sheeting and spread it and saw him settled in the chair, then she removed the iron from the heat and put the kettle on for tea. She was so delighted, she hardly knew what to say, fairly flying into the pantry for the biscuit tin. Eeh, she thought, wasn’t it lucky she’d made currant biscuits for the funeral yesterday? Miles always had had a sweet tooth.

  ‘What happened to your face, Meg?’

  She was brought up short. In the excitement of having her brother in the house for the first time, she had forgotten all about the large black and blue bruise which covered most of one half of her face.

  ‘It’s nothing, I fell down,’ she said, and it was her turn to feel awkward. She tried to cover her confusion by chattering on.

  ‘Mind you’ve grown, our Miles,’ she said. ‘Are you getting on all right then? By, it is lovely, it’s grand, I’m so pleased you’ve come round. Go on, have one of these biscuits, they’re lovely, I know you like them.’

  Miles was looking hard at her. Though he was only fourteen, he had grown a lot since Meg left Pasture Row and was now quite tall for his age and already showing signs of developing the powerful shoulders and arms characteristic of the pitman. He was almost a man and it was as a man that he now regarded his sister.

  ‘Did Wesley do that?’ he demanded.

  Meg dropped her eyes quickly and mumbled a denial but Miles was not to be fooled.

  ‘He did, didn’t he?’

  ‘Miles, Miles, let’s not talk about it now.’ Meg, her emotions in a volatile state with grief and unhappiness, was terrified she would burst into tears and pour it all out to Miles, and that wouldn’t be right, it would do no good at all. Stooping down so that her face was hidden, she picked up Tucker and sat him on her knee, bending her face over the child.

  ‘Howay, Tucker, come and see your Uncle Miles.’

  Tucker beamed and stretched out his hand to the untouched biscuit in Miles’s hand, never one to miss the opportunity for extra food.

  ‘Tucker! I’ll give you one of your own,’ exclaimed Meg.

  ‘It’s all right, he can have this one,’ said Miles, and handed the biscuit to the little boy. ‘I’ll spoil my breakfast any road. Alice’ll be having it ready.’

  ‘Oh, you’re not going, are you? I was going to ask you all sorts of things. How’s Da? And Jack Boy? I do miss you all, you know, even if you did drive me mad sometimes.’

  Miles grinned. He had obviously decided to respect Meg’s wish not to talk about her Wesley or the bruise on her face, and she was glad he was adult and sensitive enough to respond to her appeal.

  ‘I can stay a bit,’ he said. ‘As for Da, he’s much the same, as I reckon Alice will have told you. And it’s not Jack Boy. He’s a man now, h
e says, and likes to be called Jackie. His marras call him that.’

  ‘Da, da, da, da,’ burbled Tucker. He had finished the biscuit and was trying to reach the plateful on the table, leaning over and pumping his legs up and down on Meg’s lap.

  Miles stood up and pulled on his cap. ‘I’d better be on me way,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, Miles, do you have to go?’ His visit had been so short, but at least he had come and would be back again, she told herself. ‘Still, I suppose you’re ready for your bed.’ She went with him to the front door, carrying Tucker.

  ‘I’ll call in the morn.’ Miles paused, his hand on the sneck of the front door, and half-turned to face his sister. ‘Meg, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner. I never thought like, and I should have. And I’m sorry about the babby.’ He opened the door and stepped out into the street. Then he hesitated.

  ‘Don’t you be anxious, Meg. We’ll help you, me and Jackie.’ And before she could ask him what he meant he was away up the row and round the corner.

  Meg went back to her ironing with a lighter heart, though she was somewhat puzzled by what he had meant by the last remark. What did he mean, he and Jackie would help her?

  It was an hour or two later when Alice popped in, bringing with her Auntie Phoebe. They were on their way to the store but Alice, of course, was dying to see Meg after the visit from Miles. Her eager questions were forgotten, however, when she saw Meg’s face.

  ‘I’ll murder him. I will, I’ll kill him,’ she said.

  ‘Now wait on, Alice, I didn’t say it was Wesley did it,’ said Meg.

  ‘No, but you didn’t have to, did you? There’s nobody else living in this house, is there? You didn’t get that face from walking into a door, nor from any fall either, an’ you with a baby on the way!’

  ‘I told you he was a bad ’un,’ put in Auntie Phoebe. ‘I told you not to go with him. But no, you would do what you liked, and look what it’s got you. Nowt but trouble since the day you married him.’ The older woman folded her arms across her ample chest and turning her mouth down at the corners, shook her head, as if almost pleased to have been proved right.

  ‘It wasn’t all his fault,’ Meg felt constrained to say. ‘I lost my temper an’ all.’

  ‘Not his fault? Not his fault when he hits a lass half his size, a lass who’s having his babby and has just lost another? By, if I had my way …’

  ‘Leave it alone, Auntie Phoebe,’ Meg said quickly, becoming alarmed. ‘You won’t go spreading this about the rows, will you? It’s nobody’s business but mine and Wesley’s, I don’t want you to say anything about it.’

  ‘Don’t be so daft, Meg,’ said Alice. ‘I daresay it’s all about the place already. Nothing goes on here but everybody knows about it nearly before it happened.’

  ‘Aye, well, but I don’t want you to say anything.’

  Meg could foresee that she wouldn’t be able to hold her head up in the store for shame if this got about, let alone the chapel. She changed the subject.

  ‘Have you been talking to Miles, Alice? Why, I got such a lovely surprise when he turned up on my doorstep. It was like a Christmas box in summer, it was.’ She beamed at the memory, the lovely surprise it had been when Miles turned up.

  Alice grinned. ‘I told him, I did an’ all, and our Jack Boy – pardon me, our Jackie. I gave them what for last night when I got home and caught them both in the kitchen. They went down like nine-pins, they did.’

  ‘Thank you, Alice. I’m ever so grateful.’

  ‘We’d better be away to the store if we’re to get anything more done today,’ Auntie Phoebe reminded Alice. ‘We’ll get your shopping, eh, Meg?’ They all three knew she wouldn’t be going out of doors until her bruises faded.

  The afternoon flew by for Meg, comforted now by the feeling that the rifts in her family were healing. She hardly thought of Wesley at all. He was simply there, part of her life, and she must put up with him. What little regard or feeling she had had for him was long gone. She couldn’t imagine she had ever been fond of him at all.

  She was just lifting the pot pie from the pan when Wesley came in from the pit, striding through the kitchen and stripping off his pit coat and cap and dropping them in a heap in the corner before sitting down and unlacing his pit boots. He didn’t speak, in fact he didn’t look at her at all.

  Meg cut the pot pie, releasing a stream of gravy which ran over the suet crust in a dark, rich stream, taking a smaller portion for her and Tucker and putting the rest on to Wesley’s plate. She spooned out potatoes and leeks and they sat down to eat and still they hadn’t spoken. Meg occupied herself with feeding Tucker, trying to coax him to eat something else apart from the meat which was his favourite.

  The meal was almost finished when a knock came on the front door. Hoisting a protesting Tucker on to her hip, Meg went to answer it and there on the doorstep stood her brothers, both wearing a look of determination.

  ‘Good day, Meg, is Wesley in?’ asked Miles.

  ‘Why, yes, he is, he’s having his tea,’ said Meg, open-mouthed with astonishment. Jackie was still black from the pit, he could hardly have had time to eat anything since coming to bank. Yet here he was. He’d not been inside her house before, ever.

  The two boys walked past her. These pit row houses were all laid out on the same pattern and they knew exactly where they would find Wesley.

  ‘What the hell—’

  Meg, following them into the kitchen, saw Wesley stand up from the table, his brow darkening into a scowl. He pushed back his chair so that it fell with a clatter and Tucker jumped in her arms nervously.

  ‘Take the bairn into the front room, our Meg,’ said Jackie quietly.

  ‘But, Jackie, what’s up?’ Meg hovered, uncertain what to do.

  ‘Aye, what have you come barging in here for?’ demanded Wesley.

  ‘You can look at our sister’s face, all puffed up and bruised like that, and still have the gall to ask us what we’re here for?’ Jackie strode up to Wesley, facing up to him with only a few inches between them, and even in that tense moment Meg had to marvel at the way he’d grown. Why, he was almost as tall as Wesley and equally as broad.

  ‘Well, what do you think we’re here for?’ he said again before turning back to Meg. ‘Go on, lass, take him out of the room.’

  ‘You stay where you are in our own house,’ snapped Wesley to her, ‘you’re my wife, not his.’

  ‘Go on, Meg, man, you don’t want to frighten the bairn,’ said Miles softly, and Meg had perforce to go into the other room. But once in there she could hear every word that was said in the kitchen.

  ‘You’re going to take me on, both of you together, eh? Two against one, like? I reckon you’re too feared to fight me one at a time. Pair of bloody cowards, that’s what,’ blustered Wesley.

  ‘Oh, no, it wouldn’t be fair, would it, Wesley Cornish? An’ I suppose it’s fair for a man to fight a woman, an’ one that’s carrying his bairn at that,’ snapped Jackie. Miles and he were crowding Wesley till he had his back against the table, one on either side of him.

  ‘She deserved what she got,’ said Wesley. ‘She neglected my bairn so that he caught the fever. Many a man would have brayed her up before now, I’m telling you …’

  ‘Aye, Wesley Cornish, and we are telling you. Lay one finger on our sister again and we’ll lay a few on you. You’ll be hounded out of the village an’ all, and we’ll see your name’s dirt in the pit. How long will you last, do you think, if all your marras turn against you? And they will an’ all when we’ve finished with you. You’ll stink to high heaven, you will.’

  Jackie paused and spat into the fire as a gesture of contempt.

  ‘Hadaway, man, you can’t do nowt like that, not in the pit,’ jeered Wesley, though Miles could see he was half-believing.

  Jackie laughed, a low, mirthless sound that made Meg, in the next room, shiver. Suddenly she jumped clean out of her chair as there was a loud crash from the kitchen. Leaving Tucker, who
was playing on the clippie mat with the peg bag, she rushed back through the connecting door. Wesley was slumped in the corner, a bruise fast coming up on his face almost as big as the one she had herself. Jackie had bided his time, catching Wesley completely off guard and flooring him with one punch.

  ‘Now, lad,’ he said gently, helping his brother-in-law to his feet. ‘Now I’m sure you can see what I mean, can’t you? You mend your manners with our Meg, Wesley Cornish, and keep your fists to yourself in the house. Now howay and finish your supper.’

  He nodded to Meg. ‘I don’t think you’ll have any more bother, lass. Now, I’m away for me tea. I’m fair famished after all that exercise, an’ after a shift on the coal face an’ all.’

  ‘Oh, Jackie, you didn’t have to—’ she began.

  ‘Oh, aye, I did. You know us, Meg, us Maddisons will look after our own. And just you think on, like,’ he added to Wesley, who had sat down in his chair again and was feeling gingerly in his mouth where a tooth had come loose. ‘You think on, Wesley Cornish, what I’ve said the day.’ He turned back to his sister. ‘Well, it was nice seeing you, Meg. I’ll call again the morn, just to keep an eye on things, like. Howay, Miles, we’ll be off now, leave them to their teas.’

  Outside the two boys strode to the end of George Row and turned the corner before looking at each other and bursting into uproarious laughter.

  ‘You made a good job of that, our Jackie, but you’d have had a job setting his marras against him,’ chortled Miles. ‘And I know you wouldn’t start any trouble down the pit an’ all. You were pulling it a bit there, lad. Why, you know it wouldn’t be safe. If the owners got to hear of it, we’d all get the sack.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Jackie, sobering up and walking on his way, ‘but if Wesley’s fool enough to think I might … well, that’s all we need, isn’t it?’

  ‘It was great the way you caught him like that.’ Miles, still laughing, had almost to run to keep up with his brother. ‘Thinking about going in for the bare-knuckle fighting when the show comes to Auckland, are you?’

  Meg brought Tucker back from the front room, his face all covered in coal dust where he had found the coal pail and sucked on a large lump. She found a flannel and rubbed his face clean before sitting back down at the table, apprehensive about what Wesley would do next. He had his head bent over his half-eaten meal, his knuckles white as he grasped the edges of the table, the muscles in his arms standing out with tension.