Beyond the Veil of Tears

by Rita Bradshaw

  Chapter Twenty

  Mrs Burns was as good as her word. They were still fast asleep when she woke them in the morning. Angeline had stirred once in the middle of the night when something furry had run over her legs. Normally that would have been enough to have her jumping up and screaming, but she was so tired she had merely thought, ‘Hope it’s a mouse and not a rat’ and had gone straight back to sleep.

  ‘Rise and shine!’ The farmer’s wife stood smiling down at them, basket in hand.

  ‘What time is it?’ May murmured sleepily as she sat up, rubbing her eyes and yawning.

  ‘Gone eight, lass. I had to wait till my lot were in from milking and what-have-you, an’ had had their breakfasts and gone out again, before I came. Likely one or the other of ’em will be along this way later, so I wouldn’t dilly-dally once you’ve eaten.’ She had taken two dishes out of the basket as she’d been speaking, one with several slices of thick ham and a few sausages in it and the other full of scrambled eggs. This time the accompanying jug was full of thick, sweet, milky cocoa. ‘How’s the wrist?’ she asked Angeline as she finished setting out the meal on the cloth. ‘Feeling better?’

  ‘Yes, yes, it is. Thank you.’ Angeline was staring in wonderment at the food. In spite of the big meal last night she realized she was hungry enough to eat a horse.

  ‘I’m a dab hand at fixing bones, if I do say so myself. Had plenty of practice with my lads. You were lucky it hadn’t come through the skin. Always more of a problem when that happens. My Robin nearly lost his arm when it got infected when he was a bairn, but he’s six foot three now and got arms on him like a wrestler at the Michaelmas Fair. Now tuck in, the pair of you. I’ll wait and take the plates and everything back with me, so no one knows you’ve been here.’

  Mrs Burns continued to chatter non-stop as they devoured the food, telling them all about her lads, the oldest of whom was thirty and the youngest sixteen. The six of them lived at home and worked on the farm with their father, although the eldest two were betrothed to twin sisters and planned to get wed as soon as the cottages they were helping their father build close to the farmhouse were finished. They sounded a happy and contented family, but then – as Angeline remarked to May later – how could they be anything else with someone like Mrs Burns as mother hen?

  Once they had cleared every scrap of food Mrs Burns produced an old canvas bag from the basket. ‘There’s some cheese sandwiches, fruit cake and a bottle of my lemonade in there for the journey,’ she said offhandedly, and as they thanked her again she added, ‘Don’t be daft, it’s nowt. A farm can always spare a bit of food.’

  ‘It’s the world to us, Mrs Burns.’ Angeline swallowed deeply. ‘We were at the end of ourselves last night. And it’s not just the food – wonderful though that is – but the fact you listened to us and believed us. We’ll never forget you, and your boys are very lucky to have you as their mother.’

  ‘Go on with you!’ Mrs Burns flapped her hand to hide her pleasure. ‘It’s little enough, lass; but if we women can’t stick together, it’s a poor old world. Now, you get on your way and go careful, mind.’ She grinned at May. ‘No more falling down banks, eh, lass?’

  May went red. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Burns. I shouldn’t have lied to you. We hurt ourselves getting out of the asylum, as I suppose you’ve guessed.’

  ‘Aye, I had worked that one out for meself, lass. Still, you didn’t know me from Adam, and likely I’d have done the same thing in your shoes. It’s hard to expect the best from folk when you’ve been through the mill, like you two.’ Her voice losing its briskness, she said softly, ‘I’ll say a prayer for the pair of you from this day forth and ask the good Lord to bless you.’

  Close to tears again, Angeline and May made their goodbyes. Mrs Burns directed them to a narrow bridle path that skirted the farm and wound across countryside towards Newcastle.

  They passed the farm’s orchard at one point. Pink and white blossom, snow-like, loaded the boughs of apple and cherry trees and they stood for a moment gazing over the old dry-stone wall, just drinking in the scene. A dizzy fragrance wafted over them on the warm breeze and the glinting bright blossom was a firm promise of the rich harvest to follow. The farm seemed another world from the one they had been forced to inhabit.

  More to herself than to May, Angeline murmured, ‘This is real, the flowers and the birds and the trees. You can trust this. This doesn’t lie.’

  It didn’t really make sense, but May must have known exactly what she meant. She put her arm round Angeline for a moment, nodding as she said, ‘The world would be a grand place without people in it. But we can trust each other, lass. That is a certainty for the rest of our lives, come thick or thin.’

  They smiled at each other, a smile of perfect understanding.

  ‘I wish Verity was standing here with us now. If there was any justice, she would be,’ Angeline said. If Verity hadn’t introduced her to May, May would never have come looking for her. Verity had been the connection that had brought them together. She doubted she would even have spoken to May, without Verity introducing them.

  ‘I know. But it was impossible. I think the fire must have started close to the seclusion rooms, because everything was blazing when I reached there. It was like a furnace.’

  Angeline remembered the woman who had come stumbling towards them, a ball of fire, and shuddered. It seemed impossible right at this moment, with the blossom typifying the beauty of England – a season her mama had always declared her favourite of the year – that such horror had happened. And even now, right up and down the length and breadth of the land, there were men and women interned in places like Earlswood who were like Verity and May and her – not mad at all, but rather an inconvenience to someone close to them, someone more cunning or powerful than they.

  Angeline shivered in spite of the warmth of the spring morning. ‘We’ve some way to go before nightfall. Let’s move on.’

  They ate their lunch in the greenest of dells, beech trees unfolding their soft, silky leaves on boughs that stooped so low they were almost lost beneath the sea of bluebells. Immediately they had sat down on the grass May took the boot off her injured foot, and once again the walking had made it swell, despite Mrs Burns’s bandage. Angeline’s arm was throbbing, but felt much better with the support of the splint. Looking at the lines of pain at the sides of May’s mouth, she said, ‘We can rest for a few hours – even until tomorrow morning.’

  ‘No.’ As soon as she had eaten, May forced her boot on again. ‘I could be wrong, but I think the sky’s beginning to cloud over. Best we keep moving.’

  May wasn’t wrong. By the time they reached the well-to-do sprawling outskirts of Newcastle later that afternoon, a fine and misty but penetrating drizzle meant they were soaked through. It had turned colder, too, with a biting wind that chilled to the bone. Jesmond was a prosperous suburb situated in the area to the north of Sandyford Road and east of the North Road, and in spite of being born and raised in the town, May had never been in this part of Newcastle where the wealthy and influential could afford to live, far away from the festering slums. Before she had gone into service May had lived in the tenements on the north side of the Tyne, close to the quayside in Sandhill. The bridges high over the gorge meant that Sandhill and Pipewellgate and other slums had not been cleared by railway development, as in some other towns. Squalor and disease had been May’s childhood companions, and the proximity of the slaughterhouses was another continuing health hazard. Six of May’s siblings had been buried before they had reached the age of one.

  They passed large, gracious terraces and grandiose detached houses set in their own grounds, and although May hobbled along without seeming to be affected by her surroundings, for Angeline it was a strange experience. She was wet and grubby and dressed – if not in rags – in clothes even one of their servants at home would not have worn. Her boots had caused large blisters on both her heels, and beneath her frock and rough petticoat she wore no underwear, no drawers
or stockings. For the first time she really became aware that she was one of the destitute, a nothing, a nonentity, less than the muck under the fine shoes of the inhabitants of these roads they were walking along. Between Clayton Road and Jesmond Road a large carriage pulled by two magnificent chestnuts passed them, its wheels sending a spray of filthy water arcing into the air, which covered them from head to foot, but the driver didn’t even turn his head to look at them. It was as though they were invisible, Angeline thought as she bowed her head, and for the life of her she didn’t know whether to be glad or angry. Maybe she was feeling both.

  They hadn’t gone very much further when May stopped, brushing her wet hair out of her eyes. ‘I’m sorry, lass, but I don’t think I can make it to our Jack’s place tonight.’

  Angeline nodded. When she’d last glimpsed May’s ankle the flesh was bulging over the top of her boot and it was clear her friend was in a lot of pain. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll find somewhere to shelter. You’ll feel better in the morning.’ In truth, she didn’t know how they would fare when they did reach May’s brother’s house. Apparently he rented a room in a house in the warren of streets close to the wharfs, not far from where May’s family still lived, but May had made it quite clear they couldn’t ask her parents for help. ‘Me da didn’t lift a finger when they had me put away,’ she’d said the night before, when they were discussing what to do. ‘In fact I reckon the family I worked for saw to it he was paid off not to make a fuss. He’s a swine and Mam’s not much better. Apart from me an’ Jack, there’s Andrew and Reg, and they both ran away to sea as soon as they were able, and three little ones still stuck at home, poor little blighters. He’ll be leading them a hell of a life, for sure.’

  May’s face was white and pinched and she had lost her usual bravado, and just how wretched she was feeling was highlighted when she murmured, ‘I’m sorry, lass. At least you were dry and well fed in the asylum. I don’t know how we’re going to manage—’

  ‘Stop it!’ Angeline put her arm round May’s waist as she spoke. ‘I’d rather starve than be back there, and so would you. We’re going to be fine.’ There was a park to the left of them opposite the row of terraced houses on the other side of the road, and now she led May into it, saying, ‘Come and find a bench and sit for a minute.’

  It was a very neat and manicured park, as befitted this superior part of the town, but due to the inclement weather they were the only ones around, and to Angeline’s delight she saw a bandstand in the middle of the lawned area surrounded by flowerbeds. After helping May up the steps they found it to be relatively dry, the small wooden walls providing some protection to about four feet high, although from that point up to the fancy wooden roof it was open to the elements. On the far side of the park there looked to be a cemetery stretching away as far as the eye could see, but at least no one from there was going to bother them, as Angeline said with ghoulish humour.

  May managed a weak smile. It took her a few seconds to ease her boot off her swollen foot, but when she did both girls stared in dismay. Not only was her ankle black and blue, but it was so distended the skin was stretched tight and was very inflamed. Angeline wondered if Mrs Burns’s diagnosis had been wrong. Maybe the ankle was broken after all.

  Huddling together for warmth, they spent a damp, cold, uncomfortable night in the dubious shelter of the grandstand, dozing now and again but not really sleeping, and longing for the warm bed of straw in the barn and for Mrs Burns’s hot milky cocoa. But not once did Angeline wish herself back in the asylum. She had meant what she’d said to May: she would rather starve to death than be transported back to Earlswood. Her wrist was paining her, she was hungry and chilled to the bone, and had no idea what the next day would hold, which made her stomach churn as much as the hunger. But she was alive and she was free. It was enough. No – not enough, she corrected herself in the next moment. It was everything.

  At some point in the night it stopped raining and by the time a weak, watery dawn began to make inroads into the dark sky it was clear May was going nowhere. There was no chance of pushing her bloated foot into her boot, for one thing, and even if that had been possible she wouldn’t have been able to walk more than a few steps. As the birds began to sing in the trees surrounding the park and the sky lightened to a rain-washed blue and the sun came out, Angeline made a decision.

  ‘Give me Jack’s address and I’ll go and at least leave a message with someone, if he’s at work, before I come back here and we decide what we’re going to do. You can’t walk on that foot today, May. Look at it.’

  ‘But your arm . . . ’

  ‘I don’t walk on my arm.’ Angeline smiled, although in truth the thought of trying to find May’s brother by herself was terrifying. At home she had never stepped out of the house without a chaperone in the person of her mother or Miss Robson, and since her marriage Myrtle had been at her side even when Oswald was absent. You told the coachman your destination and then settled back and waited to arrive – it was as simple as that – and young ladies never ventured out unescorted.

  But she wasn’t a young lady now, Angeline told herself. She was one of the faceless poor, a nothing, a nobody; and in that lay her protection against Oswald finding her, even if he suspected that she hadn’t died in the fire.

  ‘Lass . . . ’ May’s voice was hesitant. ‘You’re not used to what it’s like – where I come from, I mean. It’s rough and ready enough in the centre of town, but down by the riverside it’s worse. There’s good folk there an’ all, don’t get me wrong, but there’s plenty of the other sort alongside them. You . . . well, you’ll stand out like a sore thumb, if you don’t mind me saying so.’

  ‘Not unless I open my mouth, like I did with Mrs Burns, and I’ll try not to do that unless I have to. I’ll be all right, May. I mean, look at me. No one is going to think I’m anything but dirt-poor, not dressed like this.’

  ‘Aye, but . . . ’

  ‘What?’

  May didn’t know how to put it. She didn’t want to frighten Angeline, but how could she warn her that someone as bonny as Angeline would be eaten alive if she wasn’t well versed in the ways of the world? And her friend was anything but that, in spite of what she’d been through with that swine of a husband. There were always men looking for new flesh for the whore-markets that littered the docks, and they had plenty of ways of luring a lass to her doom. Then there were the sailors and other ne’er-do-wells, who would think nothing of pulling a young lass on her own into a doorway or down an alley and having their way. You had to appear as tough as old boots to be safe, and before she’d gone into service May had thought nothing of carrying a knife to show she meant that No was No, if she was out after dark.

  Weakly she said, ‘There’s always men who try it on, lass, and you’re not used to that. Better we stick together.’

  ‘I know that would be best, but it’s not possible. You need to rest your ankle, but it might be days before you can walk. I have to try and see if your brother can help. If not . . . Well, we’ll face that together. I’ll be as quick as I can, but I have to go.’

  May nodded, still clearly unhappy. ‘His name’s Jack Connor, and the last time he came to see me at the asylum he was living in a house in King Street, but that was months ago. He might have moved, for all I know. He’s pulled himself up by his boot-laces, has our Jack,’ she added with some pride. ‘He’s always been a one for learning and books, despite our da trying to knock it out of him and make him work in the docks, and he got himself taken on as a clerk in a solicitor’s office last year.’ Then, as a thought occurred, she said quickly, ‘If you do see him, perhaps better not say who you really are, lass. Or that we’ve skedaddled from the asylum. Him being on the side of the law, so to speak, he might not see it like we do.’

  Angeline stared at May. ‘What shall I say, then?’

  ‘We can say we met at the asylum, which is true enough, but that we got released on the same day. He might not know about the fire, but if he does we’ll mak
e out that it must have happened after we’d been let out. You was in the pauper ward, same as me, and you were in because . . . ’ May wrinkled her brow for some moments. ‘Because the family you worked for as a governess to the bairns said you were stealing, but you maintained it was the daughter of one of the mother’s friends, because you’d seen her at it. We had a lass in the ward for that reason – Grace her name was. Grace Cunningham. That’s who you are. Grace had educated herself and learned to talk proper, so she could rise in the world. Poor lass,’ she added. ‘She topped herself one night in the privy. Hanged herself with her own nightdress that she’d torn into strips.’

  Angeline’s eyes widened in horror. ‘And that’s who I am?’

  May nodded. ‘She was nice enough,’ she said, as though that made it acceptable. ‘And bonny. And it explains the way you talk. Jack’s got no time for the gentry, that’s the thing. The reason he wants to become a solicitor is to fight for the poor in the courts an’ such. Goes on about it for hours, if you let him. Tell him we’ve been working in an inn for a while, but there was a fight between some of the customers and we got hurt. That’s when we decided to get out and come back to Newcastle.’

  Angeline shook her head. ‘I’m not much good at lying.’

  ‘In this case it’s necessary, lass.’

  ‘But what if the authorities write to your parents to tell them you’re presumed dead?’

  ‘They won’t. It was the family I worked for who had me admitted. They might let them know, but they won’t care. And even if they did write to my parents, neither of them can read. It’ll be all right – just do as I say.’

  Suddenly everything seemed a lot more complicated, but Angeline could see that May was right.

  ‘Now,’ May went on, ‘keep walking south for a couple of miles and you’ll come to Melbourne Street, with Manors station. The prison is a stone’s throw from there, so you’ll know you’re on the right track. Make for the river; it’s no good me telling you the names of the roads cos you won’t remember them all, but just keep going south and you’ll come to the river and the wharfs. Walk along by the side of them till you come to King Street. If you come to Aberdeen Wharf you’ve gone too far. Can you remember all that?’