Callum was so startled he jumped as if he’d been physically struck, then opened his mouth wide and began to howl. Lucy was furious, but felt obliged to pick him up in order to stop the terrible din he was making. She couldn’t bring herself to actually cuddle the child but did jiggle him up and down for a bit, which, after a few minutes, seemed to do the trick. The sobs faded somewhat but he had a disgusting mess all over his face now, dripping from his nose. She put him quickly down again and set off at a cracking pace with a firm grip on his hand, dragging him behind her so that the small boy had to run to keep pace, his little plump legs going like pistons. Once or twice he almost tumbled over his own feet, and she had to jerk him upright, but the crying continued unabated.
Lucy took the precaution of finding a quiet corner of a back street, where she took off his smart little smock and shorts and removed his nice clean underwear. She then set about rubbing dirt and mud all over the sobbing infant, including his carefully washed hair till it stuck out in spikes all about his little head and his tears made tracks of dirt down his round cheeks. She couldn’t do anything about the fact that he looked well nourished but she ruthlessly ripped and muddied his clothes before putting them back on him, minus the underwear, of course. That was much better. Now he looked as he should: a pauper in need of care.
‘Want Mammy!’ the small boy screamed, stamping his feet. ‘Where’s Mammy?’
‘Mammy has gone. You must come with me now.’
He resisted, dragging his feet as she tried to pull him along, then threw himself to the ground, screaming and kicking his heels in a frenzy of temper. For a moment Lucy panicked, looking frantically about to see if they’d been observed. Fortunately, there was no one around. And then she smacked him, very hard, on the backs of his legs and that quietened him beautifully. He was staring at her now with shocked and fearful eyes, small mouth pouted in deep distress as he gave great hiccupping sobs.
‘Now be a good boy and do as you’re told, or you’ll get another smack,’ she warned, and was gratified to see that he understood perfectly. Probably the only language bastards like him did understand.
At the back of her mind, Lucy had been planning what tale she would tell the guardians, turning over possible problems. Perhaps she should say that she’d found the boy wandering in the middle of the road, in dire danger of being run down by a carriage or motor. She felt wary of exposing herself too openly by crossing over the river and walking through the busy part of town.
Also, it occurred to her that the Poor Law Guardians might ask his name and he was perfectly capable, at five, of remembering it. They might even ask her own name, or insist she fill in a form or something, which would never do. Not that they knew her at the workhouse since, fortunately enough, she’d never been one to go in for charitable good works, as Amelia had done. Even so, she must take care to get it right. This operation was proving to be far more problematic than she’d first thought.
Undaunted, she readjusted her plans. She wrote, ‘My name is Allan’ on a luggage label she bought in a shop and tied it to his wrist. No one would have any reason to doubt that, and the name was near enough to the sound of his own to cause the child confusion in his present, distressed state. No doubt he was young enough to forget his real name, if they called him by the new one often enough. And looking so messy and dirty, they’d simply assume that his mother was dead, or couldn’t care for him any more.
Lucy was perfectly certain that despite the workhouse being only a short walking distance from Thorny Hills, it might as well be a million miles away for all the good it would do one small boy. Once incarcerated within those solid stone walls, he’d never see his mother, or his adopted father ever again.
She went the long way, taking a detour behind Sandes Avenue and up through the woods and back streets to Kendal Green. It was with great thankfulness that she finally spotted the limestone walls and high windows of the workhouse. She sat him on the step, the child’s head now nodding with exhaustion, and ordered him sternly not to move. Lucy clanged the bell using the attached rope and rushed back across the street to hide round a corner, where she could safely watch proceedings. She saw the door open, light spill out and a woman appear. She noticed the child at once and didn’t seem in the least surprised, merely took his hand, spoke a few quiet words to him then brought him to her side. Pausing only to glance up and down the length of the street, she led him inside and closed the door.
Lucy smiled to herself. Good heavens, if she’d know it was as easy as this, she’d have done it long since.
At first they weren’t too concerned, thinking he might have become locked in one of the many garden sheds or outhouses as Askew had gone about his work during the course of the afternoon. When there was no sign of him there, nor anywhere in the house or conservatory, Kate gradually began to lose control. Where could he have gone? She found his soft wool beret lying discarded on the lawn, not far from where they’d been playing. Kate snatched it up and sank her face into it, breathing in the scent of him.
She felt numb with fear, convinced that he must have wandered off while she and Eliot were quarrelling, that he’d fallen into the river. Eliot’s reaction too was to turn and run down to the slow moving river. It wasn’t too deep in this part, but after a desperate search it seemed that this had not been his fate.
‘How far could he have got though, in the time? As far as the weir?’
They both looked up river to where the water slid over a shallow ridge below which it became fast moving, dark and deep. Standing on the bank, soaking wet, they considered this dreadful possibility in silence for some minutes. ‘I hope to God, not that far,’ Eliot murmured at last.
Kate was haunted by visions of him running away, after being frightened by their raised voices. Perhaps he’d even got as far as the town and who knew what might have befallen him there? Been knocked under the hooves of a runaway horse, run over by a motor. Or maybe he was still playing hide and seek and it had gone wrong and he was trapped somewhere: in an outhouse, or stuck under one of the bridges. Kate was frantic to know where to start searching, which might be the most likely place, there being far too many possibilities for a small boy to hide. And while she shivered and wept and dithered, Eliot took charge.
‘Askew, go round the neighbours. Look in their carriage houses, their garden sheds and outhouses. They all know you, so you’ll meet with no objections.’
Dennis was dispatched to alert the local constabulary, and Fanny and Ida ordered to search every corner of the house, though they’d done it twice already. ‘He might be hiding in the attic, playing some silly game. Search every cupboard, every chest, every corner.’
It was Mrs Petty who put forward the possibility of abduction. ‘He could have been taken by gypsies. They’re often about at this time of year, heading north with their horses. Maybe one of them has pinched the li’le lad. He’d fetch a good price, being so bonny and red haired, if’n they sold him on to some childless family.’ And then seeing the master’s stricken face, flushed bright crimson as she realised what she’d said. Her warning was dismissed as another of her silly superstitions, something she was prone to.
Everyone searched for the rest of that day and all night, and for days afterwards; the servants, Eliot and Kate, the local police, friends and neighbours, even the two aunts grudgingly did their bit to help, but they found no sign of him. Kate refused to rest, couldn’t eat, could no nothing but walk about in a daze of exhaustion, calling his name. Endlessly and restlessly searching the same places over and over again.
‘We’ll find him in the end. I know we will. I feel it in my heart. He isn’t dead. I would know it if he were dead.’
In the days following, the entire district was alerted to keep a look out for the missing child. Sadly, it was over a week before a description of him appeared in the Westmorland Gazette, and then it was to describe him as wearing a smart blue smock and shorts, and polished patent shoes. A small, fuzzy picture was reproduced, taken the year
before which didn’t look like Callum at all.
‘He’s grown so big since then,’ Kate groaned, still clutching his floppy beret to her breast, carrying it round with her like a talisman, as if to prove that he would soon be found, alive and well, and would be in need of it again. ‘Oh, why didn’t we have his picture taken again?’
‘We’d need to take one every single month to keep a check on his progress,’ Eliot sharply responded, not a jot of kindness in his tone.
Had anyone up at the Union Workhouse read the paper with more than their usual cursory glance, they would not necessarily have made any connection with that pretty little toddler seated on his mama’s lap with any one of the half dozen or so pauper children who’d turned up on their doorstep in the last few weeks.
Another week went by, and then another, and still there was no sight of him. Deep down, everyone was beginning to lose hope, yet couldn’t quite bring themselves to admit it, or to stop looking. Eliot was sorely neglecting his business, and Kate could think of nothing but her son, filled with guilt that it must all be her fault. If only she’d not let him loose to play on the lawn. Why hadn’t she kept a proper eye on him? How could he simply disappear in a matter of moments?
It was late in the evening and they were sitting in the parlour sipping a hot toddy, exhausted after several more fruitless hours of searching and, for the first time, the two of them talked as they never had before. Mostly they shared their feelings about losing Callum, their fears over what might have happened to him. Eliot even took her in his arms and Kate clung to him as she wept, united in their grief. His kindness brought a sort of comfort, and at the same time an increase in her pain, for Kate could tell by the way he sorrowfully patted her shoulder, that he still saw her as nothing more than a young, naïve maid towards whom he felt a considerable sense of guilt. She so longed to tell him that she didn’t care about what had happened between them, she didn’t blame him in the least, not deep down in her heart. Didn’t she love the bones of him, so wasn’t it the most natural thing in the world that she would give herself to him?
Instead, thinking of the loss of her lovely boy, the words came out all wrong. ‘If only you’d listened to me about Swainson, instead of arguing and shouting, Callum would never have run away.’
Eliot looked at her and sighed. ‘Oh Kate, is that all you can think of, Swainson? He is the least of our worries right now. If you hadn’t been so obsessed with your petty vengeance against him, I agree, we might well have paid more attention to Callum.’
‘And if you hadn’t started shouting and frightened him,’ Kate grumbled.
The brown eyes narrowed, taking on their familiar cool, distant expression, all too clearly reminding her that he was the clever, arrogant male, and she a mere woman. ‘I quite understand that as hope has begun to fade, fear has turned to despair but we mustn’t let it turn into anger and blame. Where is the point in that?’
‘Where is the point? I’ll tell you where is the point. Because he’s my child. My son. That’s the bloody point.’
‘My son, Kate,’ he softly reminded her.
She bit back the denial which sprang to her lips, swallowed the bitter taste of it. ‘So what if we don’t get him back? Ever?’
Eliot had lost a beloved wife, and now the child he’d come to think of as his own. He too could taste the bitter aloes of defeat and was irritated and annoyed by her obstinate determination to place all the blame on to him. ‘Why can’t you accept that not everyone has the same way of going about things as you? Swainson may well be a harsh taskmaster, a foolish man perhaps, but not necessarily an evil one. Otherwise why would the men at the factory support him?’
‘No doubt because it’s in their interests to,’ Kate shrewdly surmised.
‘Oh, Kate, you are growing paranoid.’
‘Don’t use your fancy long words on me.’ And she burst into tears.
She rather hoped he would draw her into his arms once more but he leapt to his feet, chestnut eyes blazing with a blistering fury. His jaw tightened, mouth twisted with shock and disgust. ‘How can you stand there arguing about Swainson when your child is missing? Have you no heart, woman? How can I believe in your innocence when you are so utterly callous?’
Kate gasped, realising with disbelief and horror that it was not with the foreman that he was angry, but with her. He didn’t see himself as responsible at all. He laid the blame for Callum being lost entirely upon her. ‘You d-don’t understand. It all springs from that - from our argument about Swainson - and your stubborn refusal to listen. You’re an obstinate, arrogant bastard, that’s what you are, Eliot Tyson.’
‘Am I indeed? And had you not been so set against my foreman from the beginning, I might have taken what you had to say more seriously. As it is, I don’t believe a word. You’re making it all up so that you can throw the blame for Callum’s disappearance on to someone else. Well, it won’t work, Kate O’Connor. Don’t think you can wriggle out of your responsibility so easily. Had you been a decent mother to him in the first place, none of this would have happened. You were utterly feckless and irresponsible from the start.’
‘I was not!’ She wanted to leap at him, to claw that damning expression from his face, or fall into his arms and have him tell her he didn’t mean any of it, that all would be well and her darling Callum would be found at any moment.
But he wasn’t even looking at her. He was pacing the parlour in a lather of temper, pausing only to brandish a fist or wag an accusing finger in her face as he raged at her, their moment of rare intimacy gone. ‘First you almost get the child run over by wandering in front of my carriage, then you take him back to Poor House Lane where he picked up a sickness that was almost the death of him, and now you’ve lost him altogether. What kind of mother are you?’
Kate felt as if she’d been slapped. She stared at him in stunned disbelief, the snarl of contempt on his face, in his voice, seeming to vibrate through every jangled nerve in her body. She couldn’t quite believe that his kindness had evaporated so swiftly, and so completely. She took a steadying breath, desperately striving to calm herself. ‘Is that what you really think?’
He snorted his contempt. ‘Don’t tell me you’re going to pretend that you didn’t benefit from the adoption. You were far more concerned with getting yourself a fine job, not to mention eagerly climbing into my bed at any conceivable opportunity, to pay proper attention to your own child. But then, what else would one expect in a girl from Poor House Lane?’
It was as if he’d stuck a knife into her heart, and then twisted it. Only when he saw the shock in her eyes did Eliot see that perhaps he’d gone too far. But it was too late. The words couldn’t be taken back so he continued to glare at her in cold fury, stubbornly refusing to retract a word, or to allow a morsel of pity to creep into his heart.
Kate turned on her heel and walked calmly away. Up in the nursery she slipped out of the uniform dress and pulled on the only other frock she possessed, a plain brown fustian which had been provided in place of the one burnt on the garden bonfire. Then she wrapped her shawl about her head and left the house, all too aware of Fanny trailing after her, standing at the door and silently watching as she walked away.
Within a short half hour, Kate was back in Poor House Lane, back where she had started, back where she belonged; only this time with no hope of escape, and knowing her child was lost for good.
Chapter Twenty-One
It was worse than before. This time she not only had no work but also no hope of getting any. Bad enough to be without references, and live in the hovels of Poor House Lane but she couldn’t even go to Swainson and ask for outwork, not now, not after all that had happened. And somehow she’d lost the stomach for living here; for the stench’ of sharing her bed with a gaggle of urine-soaked children while Clem and Millie made low grunting noises of love in some shadowy corner; for the overflowing privy and the groaning pain in an empty belly. She found herself thinking with longing of clean sheets, of her lovel
y nursery and lost privacy, of crisp clean uniforms and Mrs Petty’s roast lamb dinners.
And all the time, Kate was haunted by the loss of her child.
She got through each day in a daze, spending much of it endlessly searching the back streets and yards of Kendal, just in case Callum had got himself lost and someone had taken him in, like a stray dog or cat. She would see his small, beaming face everywhere, recognise the bright copper of his hair and run to grab some child who proved to be a perfect stranger. There were no tears now, just a terrible choking pain clamped like an iron band about her chest. But then she didn’t have time for tears. She was too busy searching. He must be somewhere. How far could one small boy travel on his own? And if he was in Kendal, she would find him, she was sure of it. If only she looked hard enough.
Every evening she would wend her weary way back to Poor House Lane and Millie would fold her arms about her friend, and the pair would weep silently together, grieving for this golden child they had both loved.
And then there were the nightmares: an awareness of some dark presence lurking in the shadows waiting for him, of a great weight pressing down upon her, stopping her from breathing, from running to save him from some unseen evil. She would hear the sound of tiny feet running away from her, she knew not where, nor with whom. Sometimes these images were so powerful that she could smell Callum’s fear, see the river, the dark woods or the fellside, sense a terror greater than she had ever experienced and knew that some dreadful disaster was about to fall upon him. She would wake in a sweat, jerking upright, calling out his name at the top of her voice. Then she would get up from the bed in the middle of the night, pull on her shawl and go in search of the place of which she had dreamed.
Every night as she lay down to sleep, Callum was the last thought in her mind. Every morning when she woke, he was the first thought to come into her head, and her heart would plunge afresh with grief. But then, unexpectedly, she woke one day with an idea in her head, filling her with new hope. She pulled on her clothes and ran to Millie who was already working on the leather in the dim light of dawn that streaked in through the single filthy window. Without fail she got in her two hours before stopping long enough to make breakfast for her family. Not that Clem would be bothering much with that this morning. He was still fast asleep in a drunken stupor which was becoming all too common, snoring like a pig under the heap of tatty bedclothes.
The Girl From Poorhouse Lane Page 25
