The Orphan Collection

by Maggie Hope

  ‘Anything there?’

  He poked his head out of the hole and looked up at the square of light, so far above him. The shape of a man’s head was silhouetted against the sky.

  ‘No, nothing,’ he said, and drew his head back in before the rain really did put out his candle. ‘I’m going on down.’

  ‘Watch yourself, lad.’ The call came echoing eerily down to him as he wound the rope round the top rung of the second ladder and climbed on to the first rung.

  Further and further he went, sure he would reach the second platform any time, incredulous that it was so far. And then his rope gave out. He peered down. Only a few yards more. He fastened the end of the rope to a rung.

  ‘This is what they mean by being at the end of one’s tether,’ he murmured drily, feeling an urge to lighten the tension.

  ‘Are you there yet?’ came the call from above.

  ‘Not yet,’ he answered, and climbed down the last few yards unsecured. He stepped off on to the platform, desperately hoping the boy would be there. He didn’t at all fancy going any further down. Nothing. There was nothing. He shone his candle all round the recess, but there was nothing but a decaying wicker basket, a corf, in the corner. He bent over it and touched it, and it crumbled in a puff of dust.

  He got to his knees and peered over the edge of the platform. Surely the bottom couldn’t be very far away? These old pits hadn’t been so deep. Why, this place must have been built early in the century.

  Faintly, in the distance, he saw a glimmer of light, the reflection on water of the candle in his hat. And there were two more ladders to go before he got there. God knows how deep the water is, too, he thought. He looked up at the patch of sky, the black silhouettes of heads at its perimeter.

  And then he heard it, a faint moaning, coming from somewhere below and to his right. Quickly he took off his hat and held the light in the direction of the sound. There was something against the grey stone, something black. He leaned perilously over, stretching as far as he could. A shelf of some kind was projecting from the wall. No, it was a timber, at least a foot across, set into the wall. For what purpose it had been put there by the original shaft-sinkers he couldn’t begin to guess, but it was there, and crouched hard against the wall, with one leg stuck out at a very peculiar angle, was a small boy. With both hands he was clinging to the timber support, his head down and his hair glistening in the rain. He whimpered again, softly.

  ‘Kit?’

  The boy didn’t move, except for a convulsive sob.

  ‘I’ll get you lad, just be a good boy and stay still.’

  Kit raised his head and looked up, his eyes wide with fear.

  ‘Don’t move, lad. Hang on there. You’re doing grand, just hold on to the wood. We’ll get you out, I promise we will, just hang on.’

  Kit clutched at the timber and stared upwards. ‘My leg hurts. I want me mam,’ he said, his voice scarcely above a whisper.

  ‘Aye, she’s waiting for you, lad, just you be brave.’

  ‘I don’t know you, I want me mam,’ Kit repeated.

  ‘I’m Jonty, a friend of your mother’s. Now, I’ll just have to go back up for a rope, and then I’ll get you. Look, I’ll leave the candle on the ledge. It’ll be all right if you can see a light, won’t it, lad? Kit?’

  ‘Aye.’

  Jonty put his hat with the burning candle on the edge of the ledge where Kit could see it, praying it wouldn’t go out before he got back. If it did the child might panic and goodness knows what might happen then. He climbed back up the ladders at a speed that paid tribute to his fitness, not even pausing for a rest at a platform.

  ‘He’s there,’ he said. ‘He’s alive, though I think he’s broken his leg. Now, I’ll need a good thick plank and another rope. And something to tie his legs together, make sure we don’t compound the damage.’

  ‘Oh, thank God, thank God!’ cried Meg, and promptly fainted clean away.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  ‘Kit? Kit? Are you there, son?’

  Jonty stepped stiffly off the ladder on to the second platform, his movements hampered by the plank tied to his back. The candle had gone out. He had only the light from the Stephenson safety lamp swinging at his belt. Luckily, he had thought to bring lucifers down with him and he lit the candle again before peering down to the jutting piece of timber where he had left the young boy.

  ‘Kit?’ he said again, and wide eyes peered at him out of the gloom. The child sobbed, convulsively.

  ‘I’m coming for you, son,’ Jonty said swiftly. ‘Just you be still now.’

  This time he was better prepared. The rope securing him to the top of the shaft was knotted to another which took him all the way to the second platform with some to spare. Jonty had listened patiently to Bill’s instructions on the best way to reach the lad and bring him up to the surface. Even though he had a fair idea himself what to do, he deferred to the old man’s superior knowledge of situations such as these.

  ‘Don’t rush, Sir,’ Bill had said, and the other aged miners nodded in agreement. ‘More haste, less speed like. Don’t make a move till you’re sure it’s the right one.’

  Jonty, impatient to go back down to the boy, glanced across at the young mother, sitting on the grass now, supported by her sister.

  ‘I won’t do anything foolish,’ he had reassured Bill, and climbed on to the rung of the top ladder.

  Carefully, he took the plank in one hand and climbed down until he was on a level with Kit’s timber. With a bit of manoeuvring he managed to support one end of the plank on a rung of the ladder and slide it over until the other end was resting beside Kit, thanking God that he had guessed the right size of plank he would need. It had taken a few precious minutes to find it but it had been worth it.

  With the spare rope, he secured the plank to the rung and then was ready to crawl across. The operation was not quite so hazardous as it might have been because Jonty was still tied to the rope connecting him to the ladders.

  ‘Good lad,’ he said, trying to keep his voice confident and calm. If he frightened the boy now he might slip off his perch into the water below. But Kit, though he was not yet five, came of generations of miners. Instinctively, he stayed still and quiet, letting Jonty rope him to his back and take him over the temporary bridge, even though every movement gave him pain in his broken leg.

  At the surface there were willing hands stretched out to haul them up over the rim of the shaft, and a crowd to take the boy from Jonty’s back and lay him gently on the ground. Jonty sat down beside him, breathless and panting from the long climb up. The sense of relief at the success of the rescue was overwhelming, both to his tortured muscles and to his mind. People were milling round, patting him on the back and congratulating him, and there was the mother of the little lad, kneeling down and holding the child to her, tears coursing down her face.

  ‘Mind now, watch his leg,’ he warned her, and she turned to him, catching hold of his hand and sobbing out her thanks. As he looked hard at her, her fair, curling hair and blue eyes, he knew her, he felt sure he did. And the other girl, Alice, kneeling beside her sister and adding her thanks too. It had to be her sister for they were so alike.

  ‘Dear God, Meg,’ said the younger sister, ‘it’s a miracle the bairn wasn’t killed, isn’t it?’

  Meg? thought Jonty. Meg. And it was like a thunderbolt. He knew now who the women reminded him of: it was his Auntie Hannah. They were both the spit of his Auntie Hannah. And Meg, this was his little cousin Meg. He opened his mouth to speak but just then the doctor bustled up. Someone had had the presence of mind to fetch him from Winton Colliery. He knelt by the boy and within minutes the damaged leg was in a temporary splint and someone had found an old door to carry him back home on.

  ‘Take him out on the old wagon way,’ suggested Bill. ‘It’s level, it’ll be better than going up the path.’

  The track was steep and rutted, so Bill’s suggestion made sense. So the lad was carried home along the wa
gon way which once, so long ago, had taken horse-drawn coal trucks from Old Pit.

  ‘A mite tired, are you, lad?’ asked Bill kindly as Jonty picked up his coat and pulled it on over aching shoulders. ‘It’s the ladders. Me father used to say, it wasn’t the shift on the coal face that knocked you out, it was the walk to the shaft after it and the climb up the ladders to bank. By, it was a red letter day when they brought in the winding gear and cages.’

  Jonty grinned at him. ‘I reckon your father was dead to rights,’ he said with feeling. ‘By the way, can you tell me the family name of the lad?’

  ‘Oh, aye,’ Bill nodded. ‘That was young Kit Cornish. His mother’s a canny body, do anything for us old folk along here, she will. But the father now, that’s a different tale altogether like. He’s a wild one, all right. I only hope poor Meg’s lads don’t go the same road as him. The scandal of the place he is, a wonder the village doesn’t throw him out. I lived there meself till last year. Oh, aye. Wesley Cornish is a bad ’un all right. Flaunting a fancy woman, and doesn’t care who knows. Couldn’t give a damn about his own wife and bairns.’

  Jonty could see Bill was working himself up into a righteous rage about Wesley Cornish. He butted in swiftly when the old man paused for breath.

  ‘Do you happen to know where they live? I thought I would see how the boy is in a day or two.’

  Bill paused, already gathering strength to continue his tirade. He looked at Jonty, remembering he was speaking to a gentleman. Maybe he had said too much.

  ‘Aye, Sir, I do. Me daughter lives in the same street. George Row, that is.’

  Jonty looked after Meg and her sister, just disappearing round a bend in the wagon way, following the men carrying Kit. He wanted to know how the boy got on, but at the same time he was determined to have a proper talk with Meg, find out if she remembered him and if she knew what had happened all those years ago when her parents abandoned him to his father. Thanking the old pitman, he mounted his horse and rode off in the opposite direction to Winton Colliery, making his way back to Grizedale Hall.

  On his ride, memories flooded back to him. Hannah bathing him in the tin bath by the kitchen fire when he and Meg had covered themselves in mud; the day he and Meg had played in Grizedale Hall, the last day they had been together. And he remembered how he had found that cousin of the Maddisons, Mrs Lowther, and how hopeful he had been that she would lead him back to the Maddisons and there would be a simple explanation for what had happened. But he also remembered his bitter disappointment when they’d refused to see him. When he went to see Meg, in a few days, when she had got over the shock of Kit’s near brush with death, he might not say who he was at first. He’d test the water first.

  Meg started up in bed, her pulse hammering and sweat breaking out all over her body. It was barely morning. A dim grey light filtered through the thin cotton curtains so it must be just after dawn.

  She rubbed her forehead with the sleeve of her nightie, trying to collect her thoughts. She had had the nightmare again, the one which had plagued her from childhood. The gigantic man on the grey horse had been chasing after her and Mam. And she was a child again, stumbling and running up the old railway track, hanging onto Mam while the candyman was getting nearer and nearer. The candyman …

  She hadn’t thought of him for years. Vaguely, in the back of her mind, she knew his name. What was it? Her brow furrowed as she tried to recall the name.

  ‘Mam?’

  The candyman was forgotten as Kit said her name. Jumping out of bed, she pulled a shawl over her nightgown and hurried to him.

  ‘What is it, son?’

  Kit moistened his lips with his tongue. ‘Can I have a drink, Mam?’

  Meg filled a cup from the water jug, and putting her arm under his shoulders, lifted him while he drank thirstily. She looked at his leg, now immobilised properly in a splint. Nothing to worry about, a greenstick fracture that was all, the doctor had said. But she worried nevertheless. She felt Kit’s forehead. It was a little hot, but nothing to get alarmed about.

  There was a bruise on his shoulder and another on his chin but they would be gone in a few days. She couldn’t bear to think of what could have happened, closed her mind against a picture of him lying face down in murky water at the bottom of the shaft. She brushed her lips against the boy’s cheek.

  ‘I was just looking to see what was down there,’ he whispered. ‘I was being careful, honest, Mam, I was, I don’t know how I fell in.’

  ‘Whisht, petal,’ she said. ‘Try and get to sleep, you’re not going to get into trouble.’

  Kit would always be looking to see what was there, she thought with a wry smile. He had had a natural born curiosity since the day he first focused his eyes on his folded fist, staring at it for minutes at a time. She kept her arm under his shoulders and leaned back against his pillow.

  ‘Go to sleep, hinny,’ she said softly. ‘I’ll stay with you till morning now. Just go to sleep, stop thinking about it. It’s over now.’

  The boy drifted off to sleep but Meg herself stayed wide awake. It wouldn’t be long before it was time to face the day, but for now she was content to lie there with her young son against her arm, letting her mind drift.

  She had thought Wesley would come home last night. Surely he had heard about the accident? Didn’t he care what happened to his son? Not that she minded whether he came or not, not now. They got along fine without him. Sally Hawkins was welcome to him. Meg didn’t even care when the neighbours looked sideways at her though she knew they were speculating on what she had done to drive him away.

  Her mind wandered back to the man who had rescued Kit from the old pit shaft. He’d been grand, he had, she would be grateful to him for ever, she thought, rubbing her thumb up and down the boy’s arm. He’d been so sympathetic an’ all, with such lovely eyes, like dark brown velvet. She’d seen eyes like that before.

  Meg began to feel deliciously drowsy and her eyes closed of their own accord. She drifted back to sleep as the grey light at the window became brighter and in the rows the caller went on his rounds, rapping lightly at the windows to call the pitmen up for back shift. And the man of her dreams had changed from the frightening figure of the candyman. This one had the same dark hair and eyes, but instead of the eyes being hard like black bullets under frowning lids, they were soft and gentle and understanding.

  Wesley came just after Tucker had gone to school, walking straight in the front door and through to the kitchen as though he still lived there instead of being an irregular visitor. He was black from the pit. Meg jumped in apprehension as she heard the metallic ring of his metal-studded pit boots on the boards.

  ‘What’s this then?’ he asked, without bothering with any greeting. ‘It’s a fine thing when everybody in the pit knows my lad has had an accident except me.’ He stood, legs astride and hands on hips, his pit cap pushed to the back of his head, and glared at Meg.

  ‘If you’d been here you would have known, wouldn’t you?’ she pointed out.

  Wesley scowled. ‘You should have sent Tucker round to tell me, I have a right to know,’ he snapped.

  ‘I’m not sending Tucker round to your fancy woman’s house,’ Meg replied sturdily.

  Wesley stepped forward, his eyes narrowing to slits. ‘Sally’s twice the woman you ever were to me, frozen little bitch that you are. I’ve a good mind to show you now how a proper woman should act with her man.’

  Meg stood her ground. ‘Oh, yes, that’s what you came for, is it? I thought you hadn’t come to see Kit. You don’t care about the bairn. Why, you hardly know him. And when did we last see any of your pay to feed him? How do you think I manage?’

  ‘You do all right, you don’t deserve any money from me. Why, you’re lucky I let you stay in my house.’

  ‘Your house? Your house, is it? I always thought it was a pit house,’ she taunted.

  ‘You’ve got a sharp tongue, haven’t you?’ Wesley lifted his hand to threaten her and she laughed.


  ‘Oh, aye, that’s going to do your name the world of good, isn’t it? Your marras’ll cheer you on all right, living with that Sally Hawkins and only coming round here to knock your wife about. Any road, I thought you were bothered about Kit?’

  ‘Mam! Mam!’

  As if on cue, his frightened cry came from above their heads, calming Meg immediately.

  ‘We’ve gone and upset the bairn, now,’ she said more quietly as she hurried to the bottom of the stairs.

  ‘It’s all right, pet,’ she called up, ‘it’s just your da come to see how you are.’ She looked back into the kitchen at Wesley. ‘Now, go on up and see the lad. And be nice to him. The doctor says he has to be kept quiet for a few days. He had a bad fall and a nasty shock. This is no time to be fighting, with a sick bairn in the house.’

  Wesley had the grace to drop the quarrel. Sitting down in his old chair by the fire, he took off his boots and went upstairs in his stockinged feet.

  Meg hovered around the bottom of the stairs, listening to him talking awkwardly to the son he hardly knew. He’s only doing it so that he doesn’t look bad to his marras, she thought bitterly. If he cared at all about the lads he’d do more for them. Her thoughts went back to baby Robert. Wesley had cared about him. He’d cared enough to take it as a personal insult when Robert took the fever and died.

  Coming downstairs some minutes later, Wesley put five shillings down on the kitchen table. Meg gazed at it, feeling like picking it up and throwing it back at him.

  ‘What’s that for?’ she asked his retreating back.

  ‘Buy the bairn something,’ he called over his shoulder.

  Meg picked up the two half crowns, staring at the silver in her hand, tempted to throw it on the fire back. But in the end she reached up and put it on the mantelshelf. Proud gestures would get her nowhere.

  It was the following Saturday when the little house in George Row had another visitor. Meg had prevailed upon Tucker to stay at home and entertain his small brother while she did her shopping.