A Different Day, A Different Destiny (The Snipesville Chronicles)

by Laing, Annette

  Hannah looked sharply at her boss. “What book did you say?”

  “The book of character,” repeated Mr. MacDonald. “It is the book in which I record the daily conduct marks.”

  Hannah was outraged now. “So you’ve been writing stuff about me, and you only tell me now? That’s unreal.”

  “As I say,” Mr. MacDonald said crisply, “You may take it up with the owner if you wish. Now, I have business to which I must attend.”

  As he walked away, Hannah yelled, “You better believe I will totally appeal this.”

  Bella sidled up to Hannah. “Don’t bother,” she whispered. “You know very well that you weren’t paying the mule any mind. Come on, Hannah, get to work.”

  Hannah gasped at her, her face burning. “No! I’m tired! And you’re not the boss of me!”

  Hannah knew, she just knew, that no good would come of her losing her temper. But she could no longer control her anger. She stomped out of the spinning room, and was about to head downstairs, when she heard a cry behind her. Bella, distracted by Hannah’s dramatic departure, had been knocked down when Elspeth drew back the frame.

  Hannah was terrified she would be blamed and she didn’t know what the consequences might be. She didn’t want to get involved, so she turned back toward the stairwell, only to find her way blocked by Mr. MacDonald, who asked, “And where do you think you’re going?”

  Hannah tried to push past him. “Home! I’m too young to work, and I’m tired, and I’ve had enough. I’m going home.”

  He grabbed her wrists and said angrily, “You’ll stay here, or you won’t be back.” Looking over her shoulder, he saw Bella lying on the floor, while Elspeth tried to tend to her. The spinning mule, meanwhile, was becoming hopelessly tangled.

  Dropping Hannah’s wrists and rushing to help the other girls, Mr. MacDonald yelled back over his shoulder, “That is the final straw! Hannah Dow, your services are no longer required at New Lanark!”

  Hannah was aghast. “You’re firing me? But you can’t do that! I mean, can’t you give me one of those bad conduct thingies instead?”

  Mr. MacDonald didn’t bother to reply.

  Outside, standing beneath an overcast iron-grey sky, Hannah asked herself what on earth she would do now. A woman worker carrying a small parcel wrapped in brown paper emerged from the village shop and waved to Hannah, then trotted toward her.

  “Hello, I was just picking up some of my favorite oatmeal,” said the Professor. “Lovely stuff. Takes longer to cook than rolled oats, but worth the effort… And of course, it’s organic, because pesticides haven’t been invented yet. Why aren’t you at work?”

  Hannah wasn’t in the mood for a chat. “Where have you been?”

  The Professor scratched her head, and said, “Well, as I recall, you told me to get lost. But that’s neither here nor there. What’s up?”

  Hannah said sullenly, “I got fired, that’s what.”

  At this news, the Professor dropped her package, and tiny bits of pinhead oatmeal scattered everywhere. “Blast! Oh, no, are you serious? But, Hannah, you can’t have been fired…”

  Hannah exhaled sharply. “Yes, I was. It wasn’t my fault. It was that stupid gaffer, that MacDonald dude. He blamed me because I got too tired to work. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I’m so sick of this. I shouldn’t have to work, because I’m a kid. The mill is awful. In fact, this whole place is an armpit. Come on, take me home. I’m done.”

  “Hannah, I can’t. You think I have that kind of power, and I…”

  Hannah interrupted her. “Fine, then take me back to 1940, to Balesworth. At least let me stay with Verity and Mrs. D.”

  “Hannah…”

  “Yeah, I know. You can’t. So find me a decent place to live and then let me know when it’s over, okay?”

  The Professor rubbed her forehead. “I did find you a good place to live, at Mrs. Nicolson’s. And New Lanark is a great place to live and work, believe it or not. But you messed this up, so you’re going to have to figure out what to do next. Mrs. Nicolson might have some ideas, but I don’t. I’m sorry. I haven’t got time to get you sorted out. I’m having enough trouble with Brandon. And now I don’t even have my oatmeal. Great.”

  She walked away, but Hannah followed her, calling out, “Where are you going, witch? Why can’t I go with you, huh? Do you have a time machine parked round the corner, or what? C’mon, mystery lady, tell me! And what are you doing to Brandon and my brother?”

  Without warning, the Professor roughly pushed her aside, and dashed back into the shop. Hannah tore after her. But by the time she passed through the door, even though she was mere seconds behind, the Professor had vanished. To the consternation of the shopkeeper behind the counter, Hannah searched the premises, but to no avail. The Professor was gone.

  Hannah tracked down Mrs. Nicolson to the washhouse, and asked her for advice and the return of her rent money. She certainly got the advice. “There’s not much work here,” Mrs. Nicolson said as she scrubbed clothes on the ribbed iron washboard. “You could try Glasgow. Do you know anybody there?”

  Hannah shook her head, and Mrs. Nicolson looked at her doubtfully. “Or… well, I don’t like to suggest it…But my sister Jessie in Dundee might take you in and help you find work. Her daughters are weavers, every one of them. Maybe they could find you a position in a mill there.”

  Hannah resented Mrs. Nicolson’s lack of enthusiasm. Why was she hesitating to send Hannah to her sister? Sulkily, she said, “Could you at least write a letter to introduce me?”

  Mrs. Nicolson wiped at her forehead with a soapy red hand. “Och, no need. You just tell her Abby sent you.”

  “Okay. What’s her address?”

  “You’ll find her in Castle Lane, by The Vault. That’s where she stays. You’ll find her there. Just ask folk and they’ll know the way.”

  Hannah couldn’t understand how this address would work, but she figured it meant that Dundee was as tiny as New Lanark.

  “Can I have my rent money back?”

  Mrs. Nicolson stopped scrubbing. “Hannah, you have the cheek of the devil. I spent the last of your rent money on my messages in the shop not two hours hence. No, lass, you go on to Dundee.”

  Hannah shook her head in despair. “I can’t. I’ve got no money for the train, or hotels, or…”

  Mrs. Nicolson rummaged in her apron pocket. “Here’s a shilling. It’s all I have. Now go and take three of the oatcakes sitting on our table. Mind and don’t take them all, or there will be no supper for Charlie, Bella and me.”

  “Thanks, I guess,” said Hannah ungratefully. “Maybe I can get to Dundee on a shilling and three sawdust cookies. How far is Dundee, anyway?”

  “How would I know? I’ve never been there. It’s to the north-eastward, that’s all I know. Good luck to you, lass.”

  Mrs. Nicolson began to run the wet clothes through the mangle to squeeze out the washing water. The conversation was over.

  ****

  Back in the present day, the Professor was in the New Lanark archive, frantically paging through the stiff white pages of the leather-bound overseer’s book, trying to figure out what had happened. This wasn’t supposed to be how things turned out. But the book recorded that Hannah Dow was dismissed for insubordination. The Professor now had to come to terms with the fact that the story she thought she knew was no longer what had happened. The past had changed.

  ****

  Hannah was tired. Very tired. Her feet were soaking because her thin shoes were no match for the mud and water on the roads. Occasionally, she passed a stone marker that told her how many miles she was from Glasgow. She had only herself for company. She had carried her food in a knotted handkerchief, but now the food was gone, and she was starving. She had no spare clothes, and she was pretty sure she smelled bad. Her feet were killing her, and she felt a blister starting.

  The farmhouses and hamlets she had passed had not looked inviting, but it was getting late, and she knew she would have to sto
p soon. Would sixpence get her a night in an inn? How long was it since she had even seen an inn? As if things weren’t bleak enough, it started to rain. Hannah pulled her shawl over her head, and kept trudging on.

  She cast an eye over the next cottage she saw. It was tiny, but its chimney was belching coal smoke. To the right side of the cottage was a low door. Who lives here, she thought to herself, Scottish munchkins? Nervously, she knocked on the thick wooden door, and heard someone inside rise and unlock it from within.

  As soon as the door opened, Hannah felt the wonderful warmth of a fireplace. The young woman who answered had a friendly face and she was carrying a baby on her right arm. “Look at you,” she said soothingly in an Irish accent. “You’re soaked through! Do you want to stay? Come away in, and let’s get you dry.”

  Hannah was so grateful, she could have cried. She perched herself on a low stool in front of a blazing hearth. The whole room was so tiny, she could practically have touched the walls on each side if she had stood in the middle.

  “Have you been tramping for long?” the woman asked, settling down in a chair with the baby in her arms. She casually put the baby back to breastfeed. Hannah was amazed. Who would have thought the Victorians had breastfeeding? Hannah had always heard the Victorians were seriously hung up and embarrassed about everything. She had assumed they fed babies with bottles, just to be polite.

  “I’ve been walking all day,” Hannah said. “I’m headed to someplace called Dundee to see if I can find work. I guess it’s more far away than I thought.”

  The woman looked serious. “It’s quite a ways indeed. You can stay the night here, but we’ve no bed for you, so I’ll fetch you some straw from the barn, and I have a blanket spare you can use. Oh, and I’ve a bit of broth you could have. Where are you come from?”

  When Hannah told her she was from New Lanark, the woman said, “O’Donnell, my husband, and me, we’re from Ireland, from County Clare. During the Famine, we managed to get away on one of the emigrant boats to Liverpool. My husband found a little work there, so we used the money to buy a ticket to America, and took a ship bound for Boston, but the boat sprung a leak, and dropped us in Glasgow. We never got our money back, so we were penniless. I doubt we’ll ever see America. Still, we found this land, and my husband built this cottage.”

  “How did you afford the property?” Hannah wondered aloud.

  Mrs. O’Donnell seemed startled by the question. “We don’t own it. We’re squatters.”

  Just then, a large man in a heavy coat came in from outside, and shook the rain off himself. “Now, who would you be?” he said to Hannah as he scraped the mud from his boots onto the dirt floor.

  “This girl’s on the tramp for work,” explained Mrs. O’Donnell, reaching over to poke at the fire, her baby tucked in the crook of her other arm. “I said she could stop here the night for a few pennies…”

  “Hang on,” said Hannah. “You didn’t say anything about money. You want me to pay to sleep on straw?”

  Mr. O’Donnell gave her a hard look. “We’re not the casual ward of the workhouse, now.”

  “I have no idea what that means,” said Hannah. “But I’m so not paying to sleep on straw.”

  “Then you’ll have to see how sleeping under a hedge suits you,” said Mr. O’Donnell, opening the door and gesturing at her to leave his house. “Be off with you.”

  Hannah didn’t get far. There was nowhere to go, and the dark evening was now pitch black. Fortunately, it had stopped raining, and she picked out a fairly dry spot under a bushy hedge by a potato field next to the O’Donnells’ house. She brushed away some twigs, and tucked herself under the low branches, nestling into the dirt. She was so exhausted, so utterly cold and hungry, it actually felt good to cry.

  Hannah was awoken by a foot gently nudging her in the shoulder in the bleak half-light of the morning. “Here,” Mrs. O’ Donnell said softly, crouching down to hand Hannah something wrapped in a piece of cloth. Stiff from cold and bleary-eyed, Hannah rolled out from under the hedge, and sat up. She opened the packet to gaze in wonderment at a soft grey lump. “’Tis porridge,” whispered Mrs. O’Donnell, “for your journey. I saw you were still here when I came out to milk the cow. Now I’d be best getting along before himself sees me talking to you.”

  With that, she scurried away. Hannah, after watching her disappear into the house, looked at the grey cold oatmeal lump for only a second before sinking her teeth into it and wolfing it down.

  As she was scraping the remains of the cereal off her teeth, a voice said, “Funny how much less picky you are when you’re really hungry.”

  The Professor leaned down and handed Hannah three shillings, followed by two items that were totally out of place in 1851 Scotland: A metal travel mug filled with coffee, and an individually-wrapped granola bar. “Here, breakfast. It’s all I was able to grab for you.”

  Hannah looked at the mug sourly. “I don’t like coffee.”

  The Professor’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh, I thought you did. I mean, you love Starbucks.”

  “Only the strawberry Frappuccinos,” said Hannah, sniffing at the coffee with a scrunched-up nose.

  The Professor pursed her lips. “Yes, well, girl with expensive tastes, this will have to do. And try to make as much progress as you can toward Dundee today, because I don’t know when or if I can help out again.”

  Hannah tore open the chocolate chip granola bar, and gulped it down in a few bites, chewing greedily, and licking the stickiness from her fingers. When she looked up again, the Professor was gone. “Typical!” she said, through a mouthful of oatmeal crumbs.

  ****

  At first, through the darkness, all Brandon could see of the Hitherton Union Workhouse was an imposing silhouette. Approaching it took him through a vegetable garden toward the large brick building with a forbidding entrance of white stone. He climbed the steps, and pulled on the bell at the gate. When he was greeted with silence, he rang again.

  Eventually, the door opened to reveal a small man in a stained brown suit.

  He had thinning red hair, and a pale white pock-marked face, against which his ginger moustache stood out in sharp relief. He looked furious.

  “What do you want?” he said accusingly in a London accent. “And how dare you use the Guardians’ entrance?”

  Brandon could see no alternative but to bluff his way in. “Um, I think I live here?”

  The man wasn’t impressed. “Not anymore you don’t. I’ll meet you round the back.” He gestured fiercely to his right, and slammed the door in Brandon’s face.

  Brandon was confused, but he stumbled back down the steps, and made his way to the rear of the building. His first instinct was to tell the man that he’d never been here in his life, but then he decided it might be wiser to see how things played out.

  When he reached the gate at the back of the workhouse, he found a family waiting to be admitted. The man’s clothes were ragged, and he held his hat in his hands as he stared hopelessly at the ground. His desperately thin wife was wearing a filthy, soaking dress. Her wet hair was falling in rats’ tails from under her bonnet, and she cried and held tightly to her wailing baby. They all looked so miserable that Brandon looked away, embarrassed for them.

  Soon, the workhouse man unlocked the gate with an enormous jangling set of keys. “Casual ward or admission?” he growled.

  “We need to stay longer than a night, sir,” the ragged father whispered humbly. “Thank you, sir.”

  “You want admitted, then. Name?”

  “Weaver, sir, John Weaver and family. I tried to find work, sir, honestly I did. I’m a nailmaker come down from Sheffield, but there isn’t no work here neither…”

  The workhouse man wouldn’t let John Weaver finish his story. “Never mind that. You’re here, and that’s all that concerns me. I’m the Master of this workhouse, and the Matron will be here in a minute to take charge of your wife and child. Go into the wash house, Weaver. You too, lad.” He directed a worried
Brandon to follow John Weaver into a grim whitewashed building with bricked-in windows.

  As the Master followed them, he said, “What do you want back here then, Brandon Clark? Have you lost your job already?”

  “No, sir,” Brandon stammered. How did this guy know his name?

  “That’s as well, then. I suppose you never found yourself lodgings, is that it?”

  Brandon seized on this. “That’s right, sir. I couldn’t find a place to live. So I’m, er, back.”

  The Master shook his head. “You can’t live here, not now you’ve been discharged. I would put you in the workhouse casual ward, since you’re only here for the night, but it’s full up. So I’ll put you in the able-bodied men’s dormitory tonight, and you’ll need to find yourself other lodgings on the morrow.”

  The paint was caked thickly on the bare brick walls of the washhouse. Weaver was soon standing naked in a large shallow rectangular pool, up to his ankles in cold and dirty water, trying to bathe, and weeping to himself. But Brandon was resisting taking off his clothes. He said lightly, “Hey, I’ll just take a shower tomorrow morning…”

  The Master puffed out his cheeks. “Don’t be insolent, Clark. It’s regulations that every pauper admitted has a bath. Get on with it.” He waited until Brandon and Weaver finished bathing, and had dressed in the ugly grey workhouse uniform. Then he ordered them to follow him outside.

  Brandon and Weaver trudged across a courtyard, surrounded by high walls and the forbidding main building. Apart from a water pump in the center, the yard’s only distinguishing feature was a pile of broken rocks, to which the Master pointed. “Tomorrow morning, Clark, I ought to put you to rock-breaking to earn your keep. But you’re a puny little lad, so you can paint a bit of the stairwell instead.” He laughed. Brandon was not amused.

  The Master opened a door to the main building of the workhouse. It smelled of boiled oatmeal and human bodies. The walls were freshly painted in two different colors, dark green on the top half, and darker green below. The floors were stone. Brandon thought desperately that he had checked himself into a prison.