Workhouse Child

by Maggie Hope

  ‘Well, there’s your dinner in the oven. If you’re hungry enough you will be able to eat it, though it’s likely dried up by now.’ If Eliza sounded sharp, it was no doubt because she hated to waste good food, Lottie told herself.

  ‘I’m sorry, Eliza,’ she said contritely and suddenly yawned, as fatigue took hold of her along with the heat of the kitchen.

  ‘Aye, well,’ said Eliza as she pulled Anne’s nightgown over her head.

  Lottie watched them both as Eliza gave Anne her supper of bread and milk broily with a grating of nutmeg on the top.

  ‘You’ve been very good to me, Eliza,’ she said. ‘Taking me in an’ all.’

  Eliza looked up. ‘Why wouldn’t I be? You are family, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, but …’ Lottie paused for a moment, thinking fleetingly of Thomas. She would probably never see him again and he was her only real connection to the family. Blood was blood and she was reminded that Eliza wanted to bring her father to live with them. Only she, Lottie, was in the way.

  ‘I am going to see about renting a little house tomorrow,’ she resumed, coming to a sudden decision. ‘I can manage the rent now. I don’t need anything big. I saw one or two for rent over by Prebends Bridge and I’ve always fancied living there. Besides, I know you need the room for your father.’

  Eliza didn’t make any objection, simply nodded her head. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘you must do what you want to do. I don’t deny I want Da here where I can keep an eye on him. Mind, I’ll have to persuade him to leave the pit.’

  Later, as Lottie was in her room, sitting cross-legged on the bed and putting her notes in order ready to type them out, she reflected on the new coolness in her relationship with Eliza, who had been such a friend to her when she was in dire need of one. Oh, she could understand it, Thomas was Eliza’s son and in her heart Eliza must blame her for Thomas disappearing as he did. But she would find a place of her own, tomorrow if she could. It was not so hard to find a place in the city.

  Within a few weeks Lottie was in a tiny cottage overlooking the Wear, almost close enough to hear the running of the water. It had a single cold tap in the pantry, which stuck out into the tiny backyard from the even tinier back kitchen, but it was space enough for her on her own. There was one bedroom and a box room, which was large enough to take a table with her typewriter and a small bookcase besides. The small window looked out on to the yard rather than the river, but still it was adequate for what she wanted.

  Lottie sat at the table one morning typing up the notes she had taken at the meeting of the Ladies’ Temperance Society. The society met once a month in an upstairs room in the town hall and the proceedings were just about the same month after month. Nevertheless, the members expected to see a full report in the Post.

  Finishing at last, she sat back with a sigh, rubbing at her forehead where an incipient headache threatened and pushing her spectacles further up her nose. Her thoughts wandered to Jeremiah, as they did so often lately. What must it be like to be his wife? Wonderful, she thought dreamily, then pulled herself up sharply.

  How could she think that? Jeremiah never mentioned his wife, at least not to her, but then he would not, would he? No, but his father had, only the day before.

  Lottie had been in the room at the back of the front office when Jeremiah came in much later than usual.

  ‘Did you go up the dale to Stanhope?’ Mr Scott, who was standing behind the counter reading a copy of the Observer, asked him. ‘How is your wife?’

  ‘Not good, I’m afraid,’ Jeremiah replied. ‘I was summoned by her doctor yesterday evening. She is very weak now.’

  In the back room Lottie dithered, not wanting to listen but not wanting to show herself either when the men were talking privately. The problem was resolved for her as the doorbell jangled and David, a recently appointed office boy, came in.

  ‘Look after the desk for a few minutes please, David,’ said Mr Scott. ‘I won’t be long, Mr Jeremiah and I are just going upstairs for a short while. The others are about somewhere. Ring the bell if anyone comes in.’

  Lottie waited – skulked, she thought to herself wryly – until the men’s voices receded before coming out. ‘Good morning, David,’ she said brightly.

  David looked surprised. ‘Oh, miss,’ he replied. ‘I didn’t know you were there.’

  ‘I’ve been through to the store room,’ she explained, though why she should need to she did not know.

  The scene ran through her mind as she pushed a small kettle on to the fire in the grate, steadying it on the bar. She was sorry if Jeremiah’s wife was ill, of course she was. And why she had hidden herself when the Scotts were talking in the office she did not know. She was an absolute fool at times, she told herself.

  She took the cup she kept on the small mantelshelf and spooned mint tea and a little sugar into it. When the kettle boiled she took her tea through to her bedroom, where she had an armchair by the window overlooking the bridge over the Wear. Lottie always found this view so peaceful. It calmed her when she was agitated, and lifted her spirits when she was low. The Wear, she thought dreamily, watching a cleric walk over the bridge, his black gown billowing slightly in the wind. The river had been called the Wear throughout its history but spelt differently. The Wiir it had been in early Saxon times, there were documents in the cathedral library. She often spent time in the library.

  Lottie was sitting there when she saw another figure of a man crossing the bridge, and the man looked familiar somehow. She leaned forward and watched him, but he was a distance away and she couldn’t quite make him out. Or at least she couldn’t believe it. He disappeared up the path, which was shrouded with trees leading up the bank to the houses above.

  Lottie stood up and took her cup back into her small office. Her heart beat uncomfortably fast as she sat down once more and looked down at the typewritten sheets before her. It couldn’t be, she told herself. Of course it couldn’t be. Just then there was a loud knocking at the front door of the little house.

  Twenty-Five

  A month earlier, Thomas had been walking aimlessly through the streets of Montevideo with no particular plan in mind. In fact, his mind was a blank, as much through shock as that he had not been to bed for three nights. He had lost everything he had in a last game of poker. He did not have the means to get out of the city even. For where would he go? Not back to England, unless he wanted to risk a prison sentence. Why did he always have such bad luck?

  He turned down a narrow alley, which offered him some protection from the searchers who might be on his trail. Who were almost certainly on his trail, for they wanted revenge, not to mention their money back. He didn’t think of where the alley might lead, only that it offered him anonymity. Eventually, he came on to the riverfront lined with docks. Coming out of the dark alley into the light of the early morning sun blinded him for a moment and he hesitated.

  ‘Mind, you’re in a bad way with yourself!’

  Thomas started with alarm and took a step back into the shadows. The voice was English; the words not merely English but spoken with an accent that came straight from the banks of the Tyne. The searchers had caught him, they would exact revenge for – what? Last night’s gambling fiasco? The money he owed to the last lodging house he had stayed in? Or worse? Money he owed back home? That was most likely, considering this man’s accent. His tormented thoughts were interrupted as the Geordie grabbed hold of his arm with a fist of iron and stopped him easily.

  ‘Let me go!’ shouted Thomas, pulling ineffectually away.

  ‘What’s the matter wi’ you? Is somebody after you? Weel, it’s not me, man, I’ve just got off the boat.’

  ‘I-I’m sorry …’ Thomas mumbled, recovering himself. This man wasn’t a searcher, thank God. Now he wasn’t panicking his brain began to race. This was his chance to get away from whoever was following him. At least if he stuck to the seaman he would have backup, for a Geordie would help another if he was in trouble.

  ‘I was att
acked last night, like, and I thought it was all happening again.’

  ‘Robbed, were you? Bastards! Well, I haven’t seen anybody about except me shipmates. You look as though you’re down on your luck. Howay along wi’ me, there’s a decent bar near here where we can get a pie and a pint. It’s a Welshman as runs it.’

  The seaman was a middle-aged man with brawny arms and shoulders and a face that was burnt mahogany brown with the sun. But he was smiling at Thomas in understanding and Thomas responded to the first kind words he had heard in weeks.

  ‘Thanks, I think I will,’ he said and fell into step with the seaman. He put his hand in his pocket and felt the few coins there. Were they enough?

  ‘My name is Jonty, by the way,’ the seaman said. ‘Jonty Polson from Shields. And you?’

  ‘Tommy. I’m from Northumberland, Alnwick way.’ It was best to be cautious, he thought.

  ‘Mind you don’t sound Northumbrian,’ Jonty said as he led the way into a crowded bar-cum-restaurant. ‘I’d have said Durham or mebbe Sunderland.’

  ‘I was brought up in Durham,’ Thomas said but Jonty had lost interest. ‘I’ll get the food. Meat pie all right wi’ you? Hey, take that empty table afore someone else does.’

  He went up to the bar as Thomas slid into a seat by the wall, which gave him a good view of the room and the door to the street. He felt safer now – surely no one would be after him, it was almost day. The lights in the street were going out, along with those from the boats and the one or two ramshackle houses. He put his forearms on the rough wooden table and leaned his weight on them. Dear God, he was weary to death!

  ‘Here we are then, lad, get that down you, it’ll put a lining on your stomach.’

  Jonty plonked a plate of pie in front of Thomas and a flagon of ale beside it. The smell of the pie made Thomas feel faint and his mouth watered. Jonty hooked a stool to the table with one foot and sat down opposite him. He watched as Thomas attacked his pie, shovelling it down with his fork.

  ‘Mind, you’re a bit peckish,’ said Jonty.

  Thomas hesitated. ‘I haven’t eaten all day,’ he admitted.

  ‘Nor yesterday neither, I’d say. Well, lad, get it down you.’

  Thomas slowed down a little. At least the ravening hunger was settling down a bit.

  ‘You want a billet? You can have one on the Mary Jane. We’re a bit short on this trip: one of the stokers has been taken off here. Something wrong with his gut, he’s in a bad way. It would get you back to North Shields and a few bob in your pocket, but mind, it’s a hard slog.’

  Thomas paused with his ale halfway to his mouth. ‘I-I don’t know …’ he said. What if he were taken up by the bobbies as soon as they docked? Would they be looking for him or would it all be forgotten? By, but it would be grand to get back to England, though, it would an’ all!

  ‘Aye, well, if you don’t want to,’ said Jonty. ‘But the way I look at you and the way you’re expecting trouble, you’d be best off coming wi’ us.’

  ‘Go with you? Are you authorized to take on men?’ Thomas asked.

  Jonty stared, then laughed. ‘You swallowed a dictionary have you? It sounds like it. What do you do when you’re at home? Not labouring, I would bet. Mebbe you’re not the man for the job.’

  ‘I’ve worked hard in my time!’ snapped Thomas. ‘I’ll do it an’ all, you’ll see if I’m up to it.’

  ‘Howay then. You’ll have to be signed on and the sooner the better, before they find someone else.’

  Jonty got to his feet, swilled back the last of his ale and led the way out of the bar. ‘You got anything you want to pick up?’

  ‘Nothing that matters,’ Thomas admitted.

  ‘Howay then, let’s away. We’re off on the next tide.’

  Life aboard the steamer was hard, harder than anything Thomas had done before, and the work of a stoker the hardest of all. His hands cracked and blistered and coal dust got into the cracks so that they began to look like a miner’s hands, only they were not hardened to it and he felt they never would be. But the work did not really occupy his brain and his thoughts went over the events of the last months, even years.

  If only he had had that big win, how different his life might have been. If only he had not put everything into the last gamble, the South American railway scheme that would have made his fortune, aye and Lottie’s too. Hadn’t he only taken the money from the firm so that he could give Lottie a better life? Didn’t she deserve it after all she had been through? Oh, Lottie, he agonized. He had to see her again, he had to. As the days went by, filled with hard slog and indifferent food, the turmoil in his brain seemed to fuse with the ache in his muscles and the stinging pain in his hands.

  ‘If I get through this I’ll never gamble again, I swear to God,’ he mumbled to himself as he came off shift one day and fell into his hammock.

  ‘What’s that? Who the hell is that talking? Can a man not have a minute’s peace?’ an irate voice asked out of the gloom. ‘Shut your flaming face!’

  Thomas didn’t hear it because he was already in an exhausted sleep.

  It wasn’t until they were but two days out of North Shields that Thomas began to worry about how he was going to manage to see Lottie and yet keep hidden from the law. Where was she? Had she gone back to Durham? He would have to find out before he risked going there himself. There was one thing for sure, though, he would keep well away from Newcastle. Brownlow, Brownlow and Snape would have had to make good the client’s money he had taken. Though he had only borrowed it really; he had meant to pay it back. He was no thief. He would have repaid it were it not for the bad luck that dogged him. He would go to his mother’s house. Even if she had heard what he had done she would take him in. After all, it was a while ago now.

  ‘Oh, Thomas, Thomas.’ Eliza wept to see him standing on her doorstep. ‘I thought you were dead; Lottie thought you were dead.’

  She was unable to move for shock, standing there on the back doorstep, for he had come in through the yard. She felt she was seeing things. He looked twenty years older than when she had last seen him and he was dressed in dirty old clothes like a common labourer.

  ‘Well, can I come in, Mother?’ Thomas asked. Maybe she didn’t want him in, he thought. Had she heard what he had done in Newcastle? She had evidently been in touch with Lottie.

  ‘Aye, come in, come in,’ she said, standing back from the door and wiping her eyes with the corner of her pinny. She put her hand on his arm as he brushed past her, almost as though to reassure herself he was real. She gazed up into his face. ‘You’re so brown, lad,’ she said, though what she wanted to do was shout and rage at him for leaving as he did without so much as a word.

  ‘Mam,’ he said and put his arms around her and kissed her cheek and suddenly they were both overcome by the emotion of the moment. Her body felt small and frail and he was shocked at how much she seemed to have aged. Awkwardly they went into the kitchen and she pushed the kettle on to the coals automatically and put the teapot to warm.

  ‘Does Lottie know you’re back?’ Eliza had her back to him as she asked the question.

  ‘No, I don’t know where she is,’ he said and she swung around to face him. ‘I reckoned you might.’

  ‘I do. I know my responsibilities even if you do not,’ snapped Eliza. She dumped the teapot on the table with such force that drops of tea welled up through the spout and spilt on to the scrubbed bare wood. She made no attempt to get cups or milk and sugar; she forgot about the tea.

  ‘Where is she, Mam?’ Thomas asked patiently. He did not sit down, just stood there by the table.

  ‘Over by Prebends Bridge, she has a cottage there,’ said Eliza. ‘Well, she couldn’t stay in Newcastle waiting for you to come home, could she? Poor lass, she must have been ashamed and devastated an’ all to have her man run away like you did.’

  Thomas did not respond to her remark. What was there to say? ‘Give me her address, Mam,’ he repeated.

  ‘I’ll have to, I suppos
e. But don’t you think she’s gone through enough? By, you were never brought up to run away from your responsibilities, Thomas, you make me ashamed, you do an’ all.’

  ‘I know, Mam, I’m sorry. But give me her address, please.’

  ‘All right, all right! You stay away for God knows how long and then you cannot spend a few minutes talking to your mother. You’re not going right now, are you?’ Eliza remembered the tea and gestured towards it. ‘Stay and have a bite and a cup. By, lad you look that thin and poorly. Let me look at your poor hands, I can see they’re not right. By, what have you been doing to them? Slaving and skivvying by the look of them. Thomas …’

  ‘Mam, please, if you don’t tell me I’ll find out for myself somehow. Don’t worry, I’ll come back, I promise I will.’ Thomas turned to the door impatiently, then looked back again to his mother.

  ‘It’s 54 George Street, I told you I would give it to you. Go on, then, go.’

  ‘I’ll come back, Mam, I will,’ said Thomas. ‘But I have to see Lottie, you can see that, can’t you?’

  ‘Aye. Go then.’

  She watched through the kitchen window as her son went down the yard, pulling the gate to after himself. His poor hands, she thought dully. When he came back, if he came back, she would mix an ointment of boracic and petroleum jelly to poultice them.

  Well, she had work to do. Anne would be coming in for her tea and Peter too. She would make some panacklty. She went into the pantry for potatoes and onions, then cut some pieces of bacon from the slab on the cold shelf.

  Twenty-Six

  ‘Afternoon, Lottie,’ said Thomas.

  She leaned forward the better to see him, for she couldn’t trust her eyes. Her glasses were on a string around her neck and her fingers shook as she put them on. His image swam into focus. It was Thomas’s face, albeit an older Thomas with greying hair and a furrowed face, and it was definitely Thomas’s voice. But still …