Ragamuffin Angel

by Rita Bradshaw

  ‘It’s a man’s world,’ Mary would answer stolidly. ‘It always has been. It’s not right, but there it is.’

  ‘Then women’ll have to change it, won’t they.’

  Normally at this point in the proceedings Mary would nod thoughtfully, her eyes half closed as she said, ‘Aye, you’re right, you are that,’ and then follow almost immediately with, ‘Right, lass, you comin’ to the Palace the night?’ or something similar. And Connie would catch her friend’s eye, and the two of them would laugh and escape into the world outside the harsh walls of the workhouse for an hour or two.

  But Connie wasn’t laughing tonight, and neither was Mary. It was a Sunday, and the February day had been raw with a cruel cutting wind and frequent snow showers, but in spite of the freezing conditions Connie had waited around for nearly an hour after the last mass for Father Hedley that morning. She had wanted everyone to leave, she needed to have the Father all to herself, and not for a rushed confession either. No, she had needed to talk to him. Really talk to him. And it had been an angry and bitter young woman who had poured out her heart to the old priest once they were alone in the vestry.

  ‘It’s not fair, Father, it’s not. I’ve proved myself there over the last eight years, you know that as well as I do, and at twenty-two-well, they think I’m twenty-two anyway-I’m more than old enough to start training as a nurse. I don’t want to stay in the laundry’ -here Connie dismissed the back-breaking hours she had worked to claw herself up from laundry checker to second assistant laundress, and finally to assistant head laundress -‘any more, I don’t. I want. . . oh, something more.’

  ‘Are you sure of what you heard, Connie? You couldn’t have been mistaken?’

  ‘I’m sure.’ It was said with a great deal of asperity. ‘They didn’t know I was there of course, Mrs Wright and the matron, but the door was slightly ajar and because I heard my name mentioned I didn’t knock straightaway when I was delivering the time sheets. They said –’ Connie swallowed hard, the conversation she had overheard still like an open wound. ‘The matron remarked it was a shame about the Bell girl and that she didn’t doubt I would be a good nurse, but of course the idea was quite out of the question in view of my “unfortunate” background. There . . . there was no possibility of them recommending my application to train as a nurse when my mother had been known to the police as a woman of ill repute. That’s what they said.’

  Father Hedley nodded slowly. This had cut deep and he was aware that the anger was covering a whole host of emotions Connie had battled with during the years. He had watched her fight back against circumstances which would have crushed many others, and not only fight but gain ground. Her efforts to improve her mind had not been without success; she was now an articulate and well-versed young woman and he knew she had read widely of the classics as well as modem literature. Nevertheless . . . The old priest sighed inwardly. Society was narrow-minded, especially where a young and beautiful woman was concerned. She would be termed an upstart by her peers and possibly a threat to those in authority above her. This latest development surprised him not at all.

  However, it wouldn’t help Connie to speak his thoughts out loud, and what he did say, as he gave her a reassuring pat on the shoulder, was, ‘When the good Lord closes one door He invariably opens another, child. Life has taught me that if nothing else. But sometimes it’s necessary to push with both hands. You understand me?’

  And she had nodded, biting her lip in much the same way she was doing now as she finished telling Mary what had transpired.

  ‘They’re barmy, the matron an’ Mrs Wright. Clean barmy. You’d make a canny nurse, lass, an’ I’m not just sayin’ that,’ Mary declared stoutly.

  ‘Maybe.’ Connie looked back into the plain, bespectacled face in front of her and even managed a small smile as she said, ‘But it’s not going to happen, Mary, and I’m not going to waste time crying over spilt milk, neither am I going to apologise for my mother to anyone. She was a good mam and she did what she thought she had to do. I’m not going to have anyone sitting in judgement on her and then give them the opportunity to tell me about it.’

  Mary stared at her. ‘What are you goin’ to do, lass?’ she asked anxiously. She had been frightened she’d lose Connie when her friend had told her she was putting in the application to train as a nurse, but she was even more perturbed now. She had never thought she’d have a friend like Connie – she was more than a pal, even more than a sister, in spite of them being so different. Mary knew she wasn’t half as bright but that didn’t matter, not a jot, because Connie didn’t care – Connie didn’t judge people like that.

  She would never forget the day, some few months after Connie’s family had died, when she’d told Connie about her uncle and his friend and what they had done to her when she’d been a bairn. It had been the first time she’d talked about it to anyone besides her mam, and then that had been only the once when she’d come stumbling into the house with her knickers and clothes torn and blood trickling down her legs. It had been her da setting about his brother- half killing him so her da was put away for six years – that had caused her two oldest brothers to have to go down the mine when they were only nine and ten years old so the family could eat, and then their Ruby had died at four with the fever because her mam had no money to call the doctor.

  They’d lived hand to mouth for years, and her mam had had to take in washing, as well as the cleaning jobs she had taken when she could get them at the big houses, but still there had been no money for clothes or boots in the winter.

  She had been seven years of age when her uncle and his friend – a big, meaty docker with a huge pot belly – had raped her, and she had felt responsible for the family being torn apart from that moment on, right until she and Connie had talked things through. Connie had let her cry and rage, over and over again, and had kept talking to her until she had found some semblance of peace inside. That had been when she’d been fifteen years old.

  Since then her fear of men – all men – had lessened to a degree, as long as they made no move to touch her in any way. Even when she took her wage home to her mam every Sunday morning she was careful to make sure she was never alone with her da. She didn’t think he’d do anything, not her da – she knew he loved her and that he was heart sorry about what had happened – but she just couldn’t help how she felt. And she never stayed more than a few minutes, she couldn’t help that either, but it seemed as though since her da had come out of prison her mam had had a baim every year, and the crowded, dirty house with its army of bugs and insanitary conditions disgusted her. Yet she felt awful inside – terrible – for feeling that way, especially when her da had been locked away because of her.

  ‘What am I going to do?’ Connie repeated Mary’s question and moved restlessly, rising from the straight-backed chair where she had been sitting to look out of the window at the swirling snow, which for the moment obscured the ugly brick wall beyond. As she turned back to Mary, who was sitting on Connie’s bed, she said, ‘I’m getting out of here, Mary. This has made up my mind. I’ve been thinking of going for ages, you know that. I was just hanging on to see if this nursing idea bore fruit, but if they don’t want me I’m not going to beg and plead.’ She raised her head, with its swathe of golden hair, proudly.

  ‘Oh, Connie.’ Mary’s fingers went uncertainly to her mouth and immediately Connie understood, and her voice was warm as she said, ‘I mean together, us going together, you daft hen. Here, look at this.’ She reached over to the small table which was covered in books and pulled a newspaper from beneath the pile. ‘The Grand has been advertising for an assistant housekeeper and there are two maids wanted there as well. That’s where I went last night, once I was off duty, to see if the posts are still available.’

  ‘The Grand Hotel in Bridge Street?’ And now Mary’s, ‘Oh, Connie,’ held more than a shred of awe. ‘You didn’t, lass, did you? What did they say? Do they still want two maids?’

  ‘I’m not applyi
ng for one of the maids’ jobs,’ Connie said gently after a pause. ‘It’s the assistant housekeeper I’m going for. And yes, that’s available, and there’s still one maid’s position to be filled.’

  ‘Oh, lass.’ Mary clasped and unclasped her hands. To be free of the workhouse. She had started work in its dark confines nine years ago when she was fourteen and her da had been out of prison twelve months. He had been unable to get any regular shifts at Austin’s shipyard in Wear Dock Yard where he’d been a welder, and the conditions he had endured in the prison, added to the years of working in the cold, wet, and in winter, freezing environment in the shipyard, had given him chronic arthritis in his hands and legs as well as welder’s lung. So Mary had started work as soon as she was able and had taken home all her wage each week, keeping only thruppence at the beginning for herself. Her contribution, along with that of her two older brothers and later her younger sister, Beattie, who was a year younger than Mary and in service in a big house in Hendon, had enabled her parents – and the new family that was added to each year since her father’s return – to survive.

  ‘It will be all right, Mary.’ Connie’s voice vibrated with the depth of her feeling, and as always she seemed to understand what Mary was thinking. ‘You want to leave don’t you, and you’ll be coming out with as much as you get here to give your mam, I promise.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Mary wanted to escape the workhouse, of course she did she assured herself in the next moment, as the thought of leaving the grey confines she had hated for so long – and which were only made bearable by her friendship with Connie – brought a pang of fear at the unknown in its wake. Here she was fed and housed and secure, and her weekly wage was certain. There would always be workhouses, everyone knew that, but out there in the streets beyond the workhouse gates life was much more uncertain.

  ‘Listen.’ Mary’s head had been averted but now she looked directly into Connie’s violet-blue eyes as Connie knelt down on the cold cracked lino and took the other girl’s twisting hands in her own, stilling their agitation. ‘You’d be getting what you do here, five shillings a week, I’ve already checked, and the hours are shorter, the work’s lighter, and you get paid extra if you work at weekends.’

  Mary’s eyes opened wide – it sounded too good to be true – and then the reason for this became apparent when Connie continued, ‘But it’s not live-in. Now you know I’ve got a bit saved . . .’ Her voice lowered here; only Mary knew about the laboriously saved nest egg hidden at the back of the rickety wardrobe which had accumulated over the years. On finding herself suddenly with no dependants and with her food and board provided for, Connie had determined to save a portion of her weekly wage, especially when her promotions at the laundry had resulted in modest but welcome pay rises.

  Admittedly there were her clothes and toiletries to be paid for, and since Connie had discovered Mary’s home situation she had insisted on paying for her friend whenever they enjoyed a night out. The Empire Theatre, with its cupola topped by a revolving steel globe surmounted by a statue of the Greek goddess of dance, was their favourite place. It was even fun whilst they were waiting in the stalls queue – different categories of patron entered by different entrances to avoid any social embarrassment – as they were entertained by buskers and tempted to buy hot potatoes and hot chestnuts, and in the interval they always had a cup of hot Bovril to see them through the second half of the show. They visited the Palace too, or sometimes the Cora at the bottom of Southwick Road which was originally the Wheat Sheaf Hall, and not at all grand and imposing like the other two theatres. Other times Connie would treat Mary to a cream tea at the tea-rooms in Fawcett Street, or a pleasure trip by ferry round the harbour when they’d eat ice-creams and hold on to their hats.

  ‘But you can’t pay for yourself an’ me an’ all, lass, not rent money. It’s too much.’ Mary twisted her thin buttocks worriedly, causing the ancient bed to creak and groan. ‘An’ that money’s yours.’

  ‘It won’t be like that, listen.’ Connie straightened, seating herself on the straight-backed chair again before leaning forward and speaking in a low voice as she said, ‘If I get the assistant housekeeper post I’ll be earning eleven and six a week to start with, that’s over two shillings more than I’m getting now.’ And then, as her voice dropped even lower, ‘I’ve a tidy bit put away, lass, going on forty pounds, and there’s a small house for rent in Walworth Way off Union Street that’d do us proud. It’s a twelve-month lease, and once I’ve paid the deposit we can sub-let the two rooms upstairs with shared use of the kitchen, and that’ll mean we live there virtually rent free. But we’ll be answerable to no one, think of it. We can come and go when we like, eat what we want, we’ll be free. Independent.’

  Mary’s mouth had fallen open in a wide gape but she seemed quite unaware of this, her eyes like saucers behind her thick spectacles as she stared at Connie’s flushed, animated face. The amount of Connie’s painstakingly acquired riches had momentarily stunned her, but it was her friend’s single-mindedness, rather than the thrift of the plan, which was rendering her dumb. Connie really meant to go.

  ‘It’s furnished mostly, but we’d need to get a few bits and pieces. Perhaps move a couple of the chairs upstairs if people are going to live in the rooms, and that’ll give us more space for what we need in our room downstairs. But we can sort it out when we’re in.’

  ‘But. . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Just supposin’ you don’t get the housekeepin’ job? What then?’

  Connie made no reply for a moment, and then her voice was quiet and level as she said, ‘I’m still taking that house in Walworth Way, lass. I’m going, I’ve made my mind up. I can’t stay here now, not even another month or two. Something changed when I didn’t get the nursing job, and this is my time for going. And anyway’ – her voice became light and buoyant again – ‘I shall get the housekeeping post. I’m determined I will. I’m going to push with both hands and keep pushing until I get what I want, and I shan’t take no for an answer. That’s what Father Hedley said after all.’

  It wasn’t exactly what the good Father had said but Mary was too dumbfounded to argue.

  ‘I want more than this, lass. This . . . existence. All the years I’ve been saving have been for this moment, I feel it in me bones. Mrs Wright and the matron, they’ll always see me as my mam’s daughter. And I’m not ashamed of that,’ Connie added swiftly, her colour high, ‘I’m not ashamed of her, but I won’t get a fair chance here. And that’s all I want, lass. A fair crack of the whip.’

  ‘Aye.’ There was an expression in the violet-blue eyes that said far more than the mere words and made Mary want to cry, and it was that more than anything else that made her say, her voice firm, ‘Well, I’ll be crackin’ me own whip alongside of yours, lass, you know that, an’ one thing’s for sure, we don’t owe this place nothin’. By, we don’t. I’ve seen enough hacky sheets an’ stuff to last me a lifetime an’ that’s the truth. They say pigs are dirty, but there’s nowt compared to folk for sheer filth in my book.’

  ‘So you’re with me then?’

  ‘Aye, lass. I’m with you. An’ mind you flutter them eyelashes when we go to the Grand, for both of us.’

  ‘It’s a woman we’ve got to see, the manager’s wife I think.’

  ‘Well, in that case you’d be best puttin’ a paper bag over your head in case her husband’s got a rovin’ eye an’ she knows it.’

  Mary grinned at her, and then they both giggled at the picture her words conjured up in their minds, but as Mary walked back to her own room some minutes later there was no smile on her face and she was thinking, The Grand, by, the Grand. Trust Connie to start at the top.

  The Grand Hotel in Bridge Street was a handsome and commodious establishment, centrally situated within one minute’s walk of the railway station, and with an imposing front elevation of five storeys. Visiting dignitaries and stars appearing at the Sunderland Empire would frequently stay at this leading hot
el on Wearside, and its restaurant was the place to be seen, so it was with some secret trepidation that Connie, Mary trotting along obediently at her side, approached the arched entrance on the Tuesday evening following her conversation with her friend.

  Now the moment was here, with the huge building looming in front of her, she actually felt physically sick at her temerity.

  It had been a wild idea, her applying for the assistant housekeeper’s job, but if only she could get it it would show them. Quite who – besides the matron and Mrs Wright – it would show Connie didn’t question, but there were definitely others there all right. All the veiled slights and covert whisperings by the other officers regarding her family background – which had begun with her first promotion – had gradually, over the years, become like a solid ball in the pit of her stomach, and she knew she was the focus of speculation and not a little jealousy. She would like it not to matter, she would really, really like it not to matter, but it did. And she was angry with herself that it did, but there it was. However, it had urged her to keep saving and saving, even when the temptation to go out and buy some grand new clothes or fancy shoes like some of the other girls had been almost overwhelming, and so her means of escape had mounted with the steady input into the old sweet jar hidden in the wardrobe.

  Her legs were trembling as she entered the hotel and she could see Mary was totally overawed and speechless, but as the slim, smart hotel porter approached them Connie swallowed hard, put her shoulders back and smiled. ‘Good evening.’ It was a bit squeaky but she couldn’t help that. ‘We have an appointment for half past six with Mrs Alridge.’