Eliza's Child

by Maggie Hope

  It wasn’t just because of the lost chance for Tot to get a union scholarship to a good school, she realised. Even though she had been unsure about it when Peter had made her an offer, she regretted the loss of it now it was gone. Contrary was what she was, she thought wryly.

  ‘I’ll get an apprenticeship with my Uncle Henry. You wouldn’t let me be a cabinet maker so I am going to Alnwick. I will write to you soon.’

  The note was signed, ‘Your son, Thomas.’ There was not a mention of love or affection for her but she shouldn’t expect it, she knew. Tot had been reserved in such things ever since she brought him back from Alnwick.

  Eliza stared at the beautiful copperplate handwriting, which was beaten into all the children at the national school, where a rap across the knuckles was the punishment for untidy handwriting. Her numbed mind couldn’t think of anything else for a few minutes before grief flooded her mind. She sat down at the table where the note had been left in the middle propped up against the glass salt cellar, the silver salt spoon sticking out at the side. Thomas, he had signed himself and he never did that. He had always insisted his name was Tot ever since he was old enough to say it.

  Tot was only ten, going on eleven. He was too young to face his Uncle Henry and his sour-faced aunt whose name she couldn’t think of. Amelia, was it? Yes, Amelia. Well, he wouldn’t get much help from those two, indeed, he would not. Her mind was beginning to work again, her thoughts racing.

  If he had gone to Northumberland how had he travelled? She doubted he had enough money for the train. And then he would have to change at Newcastle and as she thought of the station in that big city her heart beat anxiously. He was but ten years old, she told herself again. And while he had been telling her of his ambitions and dreams she had been ignoring what he said, planning a future completely different for him.

  ‘By, Eliza, it’s not a good night out there,’ said Bertha. Eliza lifted her eyes from the written sheet. She hadn’t even noticed Bertha opening the door and coming in.

  ‘Tot’s gone,’ she said, quite unemotionally.

  ‘Gone? Gone where?’ Bertha asked. ‘Nay, man, he cannot be far. Do you think he’s just down at Bert’s or someone else’s? I’ll go and get him if you like.’

  ‘No, he’s gone, I’m telling you. He’s gone back to Alnwick. He’s run away from me,’ Eliza replied and found herself weeping quietly, the tears running down her cheeks. She handed the note to Bertha, then realised that Bertha’s reading skills were poor to non-existent and read it out loud. Bertha wasted no time in talking about why or how it had happened. She was always totally practical.

  ‘Right then, we must go to Alnwick,’ she said. ‘I reckon there will be a train tonight. Don’t you worry, Eliza, we’ll get him back. Howay, dry your eyes.’

  ‘He’s only ten, Bertha,’ said Eliza but she had control of herself now and she got to her feet and brought water and sloshed her face and hands. Bertha stood waiting. She was already wearing her shawl and bonnet.

  ‘You have money? Good. I reckon we will be able to buy food on the station so we needn’t take any. We’d best go as soon as maybe in case the trains stop running.’

  It was only when the two women were actually on the train, sitting in the third-class carriage that offered no comfort whatsoever apart from plain wooden seats, that Eliza thought to ask about Charlie.

  ‘Were you meeting Charlie?’ she asked. ‘He’s going to be very angry, Bertha. Maybe you should not have come. I would have managed.’

  ‘Hadaway, man,’ Bertha replied robustly. ‘He’ll have to put up with it.’ She paused before going on, ‘Any road, I reckon he won’t fall out with me altogether, not before we’re wed. Where will he find anyone else to take his mother on?’

  Eliza looked startled. Perhaps Bertha wasn’t so taken in by Charlie as she had assumed. But she thought no more about it in the all-consuming anxiety for Tot.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  TOT TRUDGED ALONG by the side of the Great North Road leading to the border with Northumberland. It was an adventure, he told himself. He was going to Alnwick. To ask his uncle for work. It was the only way he could get an apprenticeship. He had asked Mr Jenkins in Durham but the carpenter had told him he had to have money to pay for it.

  ‘Nay, lad,’ Mr Jenkins had said and Tot could still hear the man’s voice echoing in his head for it had been such a disappointment. ‘Nay, you have to pay the premium and your mam and da will have to sign the contract.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Jenkins,’ Tot had said politely. ‘I will ask, then.’

  A nice, well-mannered lad, Mr Jenkins thought as he watched him go out of the shop and turn down the street. He would take him on, given that everything else was right. A lad couldn’t expect to learn a trade for nowt, though, could he?

  Tot felt in his pocket and jingled the three shillings and sixpence he had saved up in his money box. Well, he hadn’t saved it all in his money box. Fourpence was money that should have gone on to the Sunday School collection plate. But as soon as he was earning money for himself he would pay it back to the chapel. God would understand that he needed it now in order to get to Alnwick.

  Tot’s stomach rumbled loudly. He was very hungry. He had been walking for hours and hours and his feet hurt an’ all. In his pack, besides his spare trousers and shirt and socks, he had a meat and potato pie he had bought at the butcher’s in Durham. Only he had promised himself he would not eat it until he was in sight of the Tyne at Gateshead and he was no further than Chester-le-Street. He sighed and stopped walking to sit down on the grass by the roadside. He took off one of his boots and shook out a couple of small stones, which had somehow or other got inside. No wonder his heel had hurt.

  Tot sat for a minute, letting the wind blow on his sweaty sock. By, it was grand. He took off his other boot and let the wind play on that foot too. He would just wait a minute or two or else it would get dark and then what would he do? He had planned to get to the railway station at Newcastle before the last train left for Alnwick. He reckoned his three shillings and sixpence should pay for his ticket.

  Tot watched as a couple of tramps walked up the road. One of them had a brown bottle in his hands. As Tot watched he took a swig from the neck then handed it over to his friend. The men went, stumbling a little and tripping, though the road was fairly straight and even. They paused as they came up to him and swayed together, gently.

  ‘What you doing, lad?’ one asked, slurring the words together so that they sounded like, ‘whadudooin lad.’

  ‘I’m visiting my uncle,’ said Tot. They stared at him and at his good coat and trousers and the good leather boots in his hand.

  ‘Where?’ asked one and the other nodded.

  ‘That farm there, across the road,’ said Tot. He had not missed them eyeing up his possessions and was wary.

  The tramps looked at him and at each other then began their slow progress along the road again. Tot sighed with relief. What he had to do was find somewhere safe to stay the night. A barn would do, or an outhouse. He tried to put on his boots but his heel hurt so he walked across the road in his stockinged feet.

  By, he was famished, starving hungry. He would just have a bite of pie. He took it out of his pack and bit into the thick pastry and gravy ran down his chin. He pushed it up into his mouth with his forefinger. Maybe he would have just one more bite.

  ‘Hey, lad, what you got there?’

  The voice came from behind him. Tot spun round to see the two tramps he had seen earlier towering over him. He had been so enjoying the bit of pie that he had forgotten to keep an eye out.

  ‘Pie. It’s my supper,’ he said.

  ‘Give it here,’ said one of the tramps, the one with a dirty face and wet lips. He held out his hand. The smell from his body was rank and his hand was streaked with something brownish on top of the dirt.

  ‘No, it’s my supper,’ Tot said. He hugged the brown paper bag with the pie closer to his chest.

  ‘Give it here or I’l
l clout you one,’ the man said, his tone menacing.

  Tot backed away and his heel caught on a tussock and he fell. In a minute the tramp was on him, the smell choking Tot as he caught hold of the pie and wrenched it from the boy’s grasp.

  ‘Give it back!’ Tot cried, scrambling to his feet.

  ‘Nay, you wouldn’t take a bit of pie off a starving man, would you?’ the man grinned. He downed the pie in two bites, shovelling the bits of pastry into his mouth. ‘By, it’s grand an’ all.’

  ‘You might have give us a bit, Steve,’ said the other one, sounding like a peeved toddler. ‘I gave you a dram, didn’t I?

  ‘Aw, shite, Silas,’ snapped Steve, ‘behave your whining. The nipper cannot be going to the farm, can he? Not when he was eating a pie for his supper. No, he would have been getting a grand meal off the farmer’s wife, wouldn’t he? So you just search his pack, I bet he has money in there, enough to buy us a pint of porter.’ He put a filthy finger into his mouth and dislodged a piece of meat from his few remaining teeth. ‘You got any money, me laddo?’ he asked Tot.

  ‘No!’

  Tot was on his feet now, and he started to run even as the one Steve called Silas hesitated. He ran up the ditch, close to the hedge, vainly searching for an opening so he could escape into the field behind. If he could only get to the farm someone would help him, wouldn’t they?

  It was a vain hope. Steve was surprisingly fast on his feet when he got going, and he flung himself after Tot and landed in a sort of rugby tackle on him, knocking the wind out of the boy so that he couldn’t move for a few seconds. It was enough for Steve to go through his pockets and find the three shillings and sixpence.

  ‘Give it me back!’ Tot cried. ‘Get off me, you stink like a midden!’

  ‘A midden, eh? You impittent little—’

  Tot thrust his fist as hard as he could into Steve’s stomach, not even realising that he was shouting and crying as he did so.

  ‘You little bugger,’ said Steve, and slammed his fist into Tot’s face. The boy went limp, his face deathly white but for the fast reddening mark on his cheek.

  ‘I think mebbe you shouldn’t have done that, Steve,’ Silas observed. ‘I expect you’ve not done for him. ’Cos if you have I’m not getting strung up for it, I’m telling you, I’m not.’ He began backing away.

  ‘What’s all this shouting? I heard a bairn crying. What are you two bits of nowt doing? Where’s the bairn?’

  A man was looking over the hedge, a man who could have been the farmer. At any rate, it was a man who spoke with some authority and the tramps fled up the road, suddenly as fleet as fell runners.

  The farmer leaned further over and saw what looked to be a bundle of clothes in the ditch. Only a bundle of clothes did not moan, not in his experience. He walked along the hedge to where there was a small, almost overgrown gate and let himself out. Just as he had thought, it was a bairn, a little lad of maybe ten or eleven. The lad’s eyes were open and he was struck by the beauty of them, a deep violet they were, and ringed with dark lashes that many a woman would have given her right arm for.

  ‘What’s this all about, lad?’ the farmer asked as he climbed down into the ditch and lifted the boy’s head. There was no answer. Even as he spoke the lad’s eyes closed again and the chin flopped on to his chest. The farmer gathered him up as he would have done a sheep or lamb and put him over his shoulders to carry home, the legs dangling on one shoulder and the head on the other. He hefted him up into a more comfortable position and climbed out of the ditch.

  ‘Here, mother,’ he said as he pushed open the back door of the farmhouse and trudged into the kitchen. ‘I’ve brought you another orphan lamb.’

  ‘A lamb?’ His wife looked at him in surprise. ‘You daft beggar, why would you bring in a lamb at this time of year? Oh, it’s a bairn. Set him down on the settle and let’s have a look at him. Where on earth did you find him? By, look at his poor little face, has he had an accident on the road? Mind, I tell you, that road’s getting busier by the day. Something should be done—’

  ‘Aye well, shut up and see what you can do for the lad. No he didn’t have an accident, this was done to him on purpose. He was belted by a couple of tramps, I chased them off him.’

  ‘Eeh, setting on a little lad, the swine,’ said his wife as she put a cushion under Tot’s head. She fetched a dish of water and a cloth and started to sponge his rapidly swelling face. ‘I’ll put a cold compress on it. Do you think mebbe we should fetch the doctor?’

  ‘Nay, lad’ll likely come round. Any road, what could a doctor do? And he’d cost a mint o’ money if we brought him out and who’s to pay?’

  ‘Well, I’ll just keep him quiet. See what he’s like come the morn,’ agreed his wife. ‘But if he doesn’t wake up properly by then we’ll have to tell somebody.’

  ‘Aye well, we’ll see,’ said Farmer Bates and turned for the door. ‘I’d best fasten up the hens or the fox’ll be in there.’

  After he had gone out, his wife watched the boy for a moment or two then got to her feet and began to prepare supper. She felt unsettled and a bit melancholy. If only she had been blessed with a babby, she thought. A lad like this one must be a bonny lad. It would have been someone to work for, someone to pass the farm on to. She didn’t wonder why he had been walking up the road on his own. There were often lads about, looking for work, and some of them as young as this one seemed to be.

  Eliza and Bertha stood on the platform at Newcastle station, looking around them at the crowds of people there. Men and boys were going in and out, some of them in working clothes, and once or twice Eliza thought she saw a lad looking like Tot only to realise it was a stranger. As the platform emptied the disappointment was like a hard lump in her stomach.

  ‘I don’t think he’s here,’ said Bertha at last. ‘We’ve looked all over the station. No, I think you should go on to Alnwick, he’s likely there. I’ll go back to Durham. You never know, he might have thought better of it and gone home and then what will he do if there’s no one there?’ She bit her lip as she looked up at Eliza. ‘I think that’s the best plan, don’t you?’

  ‘I don’t know, we should have left a note,’ said Eliza, sounding fretful. ‘Why did we come off without thinking like this?’

  ‘We thought we’d find him,’ said Bertha. ‘Mind, I think he’s likely already got to Alnwick. And he knows the place and he’ll find his uncle or his grandma. He’ll be fine, I’m telling you.’

  ‘He will, won’t he?’ Eliza wanted to believe it. Surely neither Henry nor Annie would turn the lad away, they wouldn’t. And if he had gone back to Durham, well then, he could slip in the back door and he would be fine until Bertha got home. The back door was always open, no one locked their back doors. So Eliza took the train to Alnwick.

  ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

  Henry came to the door of the parlour-cum-sitting room as a maid showed Eliza into the hall.

  ‘I’m looking for my son,’ said Eliza, holding her chin high. ‘Have you got him here?’

  ‘Why should I have him?’ Henry demanded. ‘I was glad to see the back of him when he was living with my mother. He looks too much like that good-for-nothing brother of mine. Any road, how did you come to lose him?’

  ‘He ran off when I wouldn’t let him leave school. He said he wanted to be a cabinet maker. But I think he just wanted to grow up before his time. Any road, he ran off, like I said, and left a note that he was coming here to get an apprenticeship with you.’

  ‘With me? Why would I give him an apprenticeship? Tell me that. His father nearly ruined the family before he jumped off that cliff, did you know that?’

  ‘You cannot blame that on the lad,’ said Eliza. ‘Our Tot’s a good, obedient lad.’

  ‘Oh aye, a good lad. He’s so good he ran off,’ said Henry, his voice heavy with sarcasm.

  ‘I’d best go and see if he went to his grandma. Though why he should do that I do not know, I don’t.’ Eliza turned to the
door to go out and back to the town to Annie’s cottage.

  ‘Nay, you won’t find him there neither,’ said Henry. ‘The place is closed up.’

  ‘Closed up? Why?’

  ‘The old woman is in her coffin. There’s only the laying-out woman there. I gave her a shilling to stay so I could come home.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nay, for goodness sake, will you gather your wits if you have any. You sound like you lost them all. My mother is dead and gone. It’s the funeral the morn. Is that plain enough for you?’

  ‘Why didn’t you let me know? Tot won’t know. He might have gone there and not know why he can’t get in.’ Eliza rushed to the door then turned. ‘If he shows up here will you send a message down to the cottage?’

  ‘If it’s the only way to get rid of you I will.’ Henry turned his back on her and strolled to the window. ‘Go on, be off with you,’ he said. ‘Do you think I’ve nothing to think about but your whelp? I’ll send word if he comes, I’m telling you.’

  ‘I’m indebted to you,’ Eliza said evenly.

  ‘Aye,’ said Henry.

  Tot was not at the cottage. The old woman in charge of the place said she had orders not to open the door to anyone and she wasn’t going to, even when Eliza said she was family. The lad wasn’t there. If he had been she would kick him out, she said. And if Eliza didn’t stop bothering her she would call in the polis; he was due on his rounds just now, any road.

  It was too dark for Eliza to look around by now. She walked down the main street and called in the shops to ask if anyone had seen a lad about ten years old but no one had. It began to look as though Tot had not managed to get to Alnwick, not yet.

  She was tired and hungry and there was no one left for her to ask so at last she decided to give up the search for the night. She found a bed at an inn on the outskirts and settled in resolving to start searching again in the morning. Annie’s funeral was at eight o’clock so that was a good place to start, she told herself, as she lay down wearily on the bed. She had no nightgown with her so she went to bed in her chemise. Not that she expected to sleep; her thoughts were going round and round in her head and all she had managed to get to eat had been a slice of bread and cheese with a mug of ale to wash it down. It lay uneasily on her stomach and she had to prop herself up against the iron and brass bedstead as there was only one pillow. In spite of the hard bedstead, she dropped off to sleep almost inmmediately, however. She awoke to grey daylight and the sound of rain pattering on the small windowpane. A fitting day for a funeral, she thought, as she poured water from a china jug into a china bowl and washed.