Never Look Back

by Lesley Pearse

  ‘You wouldn’t be Queen in that case,’ Luke interrupted, his expression one of utter scorn. ‘I’d be King.’

  ‘It’s only make-believe,’ she reproached him. ‘Us Jennings have got about as much chance of becoming royalty as father of finding a lump of gold in the Thames.’

  Matilda was woken by the church clock striking four. It was so very tempting to cuddle closer to her brothers and go back to sleep, but if she did that the best flowers would have been sold by the time she got to Covent Garden. She crept out of bed and fumbled for her clothes in the pitch darkness. She couldn’t see her father, but she knew he was there by his loud snoring. She dressed quickly, two flannel petticoats over her shift, wool stockings and her dress, then felt her way over to the fireplace to find her pinafore and cap. They were still damp, but they’d soon dry once she got outside. She groped her way over to the cupboard to pull a lump of bread off last night’s loaf, then retrieved the money she’d tied up in a bit of rag and hidden from Luke, and finally picking up her boots, cap, pinafore and, shawl, she put them into her basket and crept out of the room.

  Her boots she put on outside the door, but she waited until she’d washed her face and hands down at the pump in the yard before combing and plaiting her hair and finishing her dressing. She wrapped her shawl around her, criss-crossing it across her chest and tying the ends behind her back, then, with her basket over her arm and money in her pocket, set off for Covent Garden, munching at her bread.

  At half past seven she was sitting with a group of other flower-girls on the steps of St Martin-in-the-Fields. She had bought a dozen bunches of violets and another dozen of primroses for two shillings, some paper for a ha’penny, and the twine she’d picked up for nothing around the stalls; now she was dividing them up into small posies and arranging a few leaves around them. She could make them into thirty-six posies for a penny a time, giving her a profit of a shilling at worst, often a great deal more when the sun shone and gentlemen gave her extra. The sun was shining now, melting the slight frost, and she felt sure today was going to be a good one.

  The other girls were mostly much younger than Matilda, some only nine or ten. Many of them were barefoot, all more ragged and dirty than Matilda, and one was crippled, with one leg much shorter than the other.

  As usual there was little conversation between the girls, just a nod and a smile as yet another joined them. Six years ago when Matilda had first begun selling flowers she had found this silence disconcerting, but she understood it now. Every single one of them had a hard luck story to tell, yet they were mostly so similar that no one wanted to hear them. They grouped here every morning to gain a little comfort in being with their own kind, that was enough. Matilda would sometimes help a younger girl with her posies, remembering how hard she’d found it to make them look pretty when she first started, but she steeled herself against any further involvement. Occasionally she recognized a face as belonging to the younger sister of a girl she’d known some years earlier, but she’d learned never to inquire about them. Flower-girls had a habit of turning into prostitutes at fourteen or so.

  At eight o’clock Matilda made her way slowly up the Hay-market towards Piccadilly. She found this part of London curious as it changed so much during the course of the day. Now in early morning it was busy with shop girls and businessmen rushing to work, side-stepping the many street sweepers and scavengers. Occasionally she was lucky enough to sell a couple of posies to men at this time of day, but mostly people were in too much of a hurry to stop. By noon a different class of people emerged, ladies and gentlemen arriving in carriages and cabs for luncheon and shopping. There would be throngs of young, pretty girls too, hoping to catch the eye of a gentleman.

  Until a couple of years ago Matilda had admired and envied these girls, fresh from the country, in their fashionable clothes, dainty boots and flower-trimmed bonnets, but she was shocked when she eventually discovered they were in fact ‘gay’ – the name given to prostitutes. She knew now that in just a few short years, unless they were very lucky, these same girls would be much worse off than she was, riddled with disease, old before their time and forced to seek their customers down by the docks or in the dark, festering alleys of Seven Dials.

  In the evening as the theatres and fun palaces opened, the Haymarket was an even more lively and colourful place. Ladies in sumptuous hooped gowns and glittering jewels, accompanied by gentlemen in opera hats and frock-coats, were out for a night’s entertainment. Sword swallowers, tumblers and jugglers flocked to the area, and the air was laden with aromas of roasting chestnuts, shellfish and sweetmeats. Music came from every corner, the hurdy-gurdy man, singers and street musicians all competing with one another for the pennies thrown by the rich.

  Yet busy Oxford Street with its elegant shops was a better place to sell flowers and that was Matilda’s destination today. She knew the sun would lure out the shoppers, and the sight of fresh spring flowers loosened the purse-strings of even frugal housewives. With luck her basket would be empty by two in the afternoon.

  At one o’clock Matilda’s bright smile was no longer a forced one and her cry of ‘Sweet smellin’ violets, buy a posy for yer lady, sir,’ was almost a song. She had only four posies left to sell, and three times during the morning men had given her a whole sixpence without expecting change. She thought she might get off soon to go and look for a pair of boots in Rosemary Lane, the hole in the bottom of her present ones was growing so big she might as well not be wearing any.

  Her expectations that the sunshine would bring people out had been more than fulfilled. The pavements were packed with jostling crowds and the carriages, hansoms, broughams and horse-drawn omnibuses disgorged more every minute. She was warm for once, she’d even been compelled to remove her shawl and put it into her basket. She might be very hungry and thirsty, but that was almost a delight knowing she had enough money in her pinafore pocket to buy a treat of a meat pie and a glass of ginger beer on her way home.

  Matilda was just moving across the pavement towards the street to waylay an elderly gentleman with a much younger woman on his arm, when out of the corner of her eye, to her left, she saw a little girl emerge from a shop, toddling intently towards the kerb. She was a pretty little thing between two and three, with dark curly hair bobbing beneath her white bonnet, in a pink flounced dress and lace-trimmed pantaloons. Matilda was distracted from her original intention of selling the gentleman some flowers purely by the child’s apparent glee at the busy street before her. She had clearly slipped away unnoticed from her mother or nursemaid.

  The child moved very quickly despite her long clothes, and although the crowd was very dense around her, no one appeared to be aware of her presence. Matilda’s protective instincts were tugged, and she began to push her way through the crowd towards the child. But as she moved, the sound of cantering horses’ hooves and the jingling of harness made her turn her head. To her dismay a carriage pulled by four horses was coming hurtling down the street. She looked back towards the child and saw she had reached the kerb and paused, but she was clapping her hands together with excitement as she too saw the horses coming closer. She was much too young to sense the danger and it was more than likely that she would step out.

  Dropping her basket to the ground, Matilda yelled out a warning and darted forward, frantically pushing people out of her way. The coach and horses were so close now she could smell them and almost feel the heat from them on her back. Then to her horror the little girl stepped out into the street, directly in their path.

  Matilda’s own safety didn’t even cross her mind, she leaped right out into the street and snatched the child up by the waist. She heard a frenzied whinny behind her, but her thoughts were all for the child. As she felt a glancing blow against her back, it catapulted her forward, and she tossed the child towards the pavement.

  A strong smell of ammonia was the next thing Matilda was aware of, and she recoiled from it instinctively.

  ‘Can you hear me?’ she h
eard a male voice say close to her, and as she regained her senses she found herself lying on the ground and a man was supporting her head and holding a bottle of smelling-salts to her nostrils. Confused for a moment, she thought she’d fainted from hunger and that the memory of rushing to rescue a child was just a kind of dream.

  ‘’Course I can,’ she replied. ‘And stop sticking that up me nose.’

  She heard someone laugh nearby and suddenly became aware of a large crowd of people all looking down at her. The man supporting her had black curly hair and a clerical collar. He was very young for a priest, with doleful, dark eyes. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked.

  ‘Matilda Jennings,’ she replied and struggled to sit up. ‘Was there a little girl?’

  ‘Yes, there was,’ he said. ‘But thanks to you she’s now safe with her mother.’

  It was a relief to know she hadn’t imagined it. ‘Her ma ought to be horsewhipped letting go of ’er ’and,’ she said indignantly. ‘Where is she? I’ll give ‘er a piece of me mind.’

  A loud peal of laughter from the watching crowd incensed her. ‘What are they laughing for?’ she asked. ‘It ain’t funny! That little tot could ‘ave bin trampled on.’

  ‘I think they are laughing from relief that you are not only unhurt but forthright enough to speak out,’ the man said with a weak smile. ‘What you did was exceptionally brave. Now, let me help you up.’

  As he took her two hands to help her to her feet, Matilda winced at a pain in her back. Someone in the crowd shouted out that she needed a doctor.

  Matilda was used to living by her wits. She wasn’t above pretending to shiver to gain sympathy on a cold day, or to stand outside a bakery looking longingly at the bread until she was handed some. Instinctively she knew this was a situation she could use to her own advantage. ‘My back, my back,’ she exclaimed, making an exaggerated grimace of agony as she clutched her sides. ‘It dun ’alf’urt! What’s up wif it?’

  A woman moved closer to Matilda. She was plump and kindly looking, wearing the kind of plain dress and straw bonnet which suggested she was a cook or a housekeeper.

  ‘The horse’s hoof caught your shoulder,’ she said. ‘It’s torn your dress and it’s bleeding badly. It needs bathing.’ To Matilda’s astonishment the woman then turned to the priest with the smelling-salts and wiggled her finger at him, her round face bristling with indignation. ‘You and your wife should take care of her, sir. It were your little girl she saved, weren’t it?’

  Matilda looked at the man in shocked surprise. She had assumed he was just a passer-by who because of his calling had stopped to help. Yet priests didn’t get married and have children!

  He must have guessed what she was thinking because he not only agreed he was the child’s father, but added that he was a Church of England parson. Matilda also noted now that he was trembling and ashen-faced. But any sympathy she felt for him was tempered by the possibility of a reward. She pretended to sway on her feet as if about to faint.

  ‘Look at her!’ the woman said, catching hold of Matilda’s arm. ‘She’s had such a terrible fright. She might have been killed.’

  ‘I’ll take her into the shop so she can sit down,’ the parson said quickly, and before Matilda could as much as blink, he had picked up her abandoned basket and was leading her into a draper’s shop.

  Outside on the street Matilda wasn’t afraid of anyone, not even the police who often moved her on during the day, but as she was led through the doors and saw the long polished wooden counter, bales of wools and cottons and piles of bed linen, her nerve left her. The elegantly dressed customers all took a step back in alarm, the assistants’ faces tightened with disapproval. She knew that to them she was just a beggar and quite likely to be verminous too, certainly not a person to be brought into a high-class establishment.

  Matilda’s first thought was to run back out. She didn’t think her injury was much more than a graze, and even the pleasing prospect of a cup of tea, and perhaps a shilling as a reward, wasn’t worth humiliation.

  ‘I can’t come in ’ere, sir, they won’t like it,’ she whispered, but if he heard her, he ignored her protest and whisked her right to the back of the shop where his wife, flanked by two women assistants, was sobbing noisily, clutching the little girl to her bosom as if terrified someone was going to snatch her from her.

  The parson let go of Matilda’s arm and moved closer to his wife. ‘Dry your eyes, Lily my dear,’ he said soothingly. ‘Tabitha is quite safe now, and we must think of the brave person who saved her from injury.’ He turned his head back to Matilda and beckoned for her to come forward. ‘Look, here she is. Her back is hurt and I think she’s in shock.’

  Matilda didn’t know what ‘in shock’ meant, not until the woman passed her daughter to her husband and stood up to embrace Matilda. It wasn’t just a slight touch of the arms or an inclination of the cheek either, but an impulsive, full-blown hug.

  ‘My dear, words can’t express my gratitude,’ she gasped out, dabbing at her wet face with a handkerchief. ‘I only realized Tabitha had run out when I heard a shout from the street. I ran like the wind to the door, just in time to witness what you did. You must think me appallingly rude and ungrateful, but I just pulled my angel from the person who had caught her, and ran back in here with her. Whatever must you think of me?’

  Matilda was so bowled over that a real lady could bring herself to explain her actions and to hug a mere flower-girl that she was stuck for words. She remembered being told that when Peggie was knocked down by the horses, the coachman didn’t even stop until he got around the corner. He’d said later that ‘he didn’t wish to distress his lady passengers with the sight of blood’. Even her father had said he hadn’t expected anything more of gentry.

  But then this woman wasn’t exactly gentry, she had a nice gentle voice and a good manner about her, but her dress and bonnet were plain and she wore no jewellery. In fact she was unremarkable in every way, slight and thin, with small, sharp features and dull brown hair beneath her bonnet.

  ‘I understand, missis,’ Matilda said awkwardly. ‘You was just worried about yer little ‘un. I ‘ope she weren’t ‘urt with me grabbing ‘er like that?’

  The woman looked across at her daughter wriggling in her husband’s arms and smiled with affection. ‘Not a mark on her, and completely unaware what trouble she caused. But let me see to you, my dear. We must get you some tea, and look at your injuries.’

  In the next five or ten minutes Matilda felt as if she had woken to find herself in a different world. A cup of very sweet tea was put in her hands, the women from the shop were casting almost envious glances at her, and the parson was introducing himself and his wife to her as if she was someone of quality.

  He was the Reverend Giles Milson, his wife Lily, and she was informed that Tabitha, their only child, had just turned two. Their church was St Mark’s in Primrose Hill and they lived in the parsonage. Lily Milson, as she tried to examine Matilda’s back through the torn dress, said she must come home with them in a cab so the wound could be properly examined and bathed.

  Matilda was perturbed by this offer. It was common knowledge that Church people only offered charity as a ruse to give the recipient a lecture on the Scriptures. Rosemary Lane was a favourite haunt of missionaries and Bible thumpers, who stood on corners ranting about hell-fire and damnation. She’d heard, too, that girls who turned to them for help were often ravished. What she wanted was to be given a couple of shillings and sent on her way.

  Yet a small voice inside her whispered that she might be better off for going along with these people. If nothing else she might get a decent dinner out of them. Perhaps even a few old clothes.

  Matilda’s customary self-restraint failed her in the cab. Whether it was because it was her first ride in a cab, little Tabitha smiling beguilingly and reaching out for her, or the Milsons’ solicitous questions about how she felt, she didn’t know. But suddenly she was crying.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ sh
e kept repeating, covering her face with her hands. ‘I don’t know what’s up wif me.’

  Lily Milson was still feeling tearful herself, and indebted to this girl for saving her child, so her heart welled up with compassion for her. As the tears streamed down the girl’s cheeks, so the dirt was washed away, and it seemed to Lily this was God’s way of showing her that but for the lottery of birth, she too could have been one of life’s unfortunates, instead of sitting here in a carriage, in clean and decent clothes, with a loving husband and beloved daughter beside her.

  Lily hadn’t always thought herself fortunate. Back in Bristol, as a middle child among eight, no one had ever taken much interest in her. She was timid and plain, with no real talents. Her father, Elias Woodberry, was a prosperous wool merchant and although he made much of his five sons, the daughters were largely ignored and left in the hands of the servants. Although her mother was distant with all her children, male or female, she seemed actively to dislike Lily, constantly complaining that she had no spirit or even looks to commend her.

  At twenty-five, still unmarried and in her parents’ eyes set on spinsterhood, Lily had become an embarrassment, so she was often sent off to various relatives as an unpaid governess to their children for long periods. One of these relatives was her father’s younger brother, an impoverished parson in nearby Bath. Yet far from being a punishment to be sent there, it was a pleasure – her Uncle Thomas was a kindly man, his wife Martha affectionate and grateful for any help with her five lively children. It was while there that she met Giles, a new curate at Uncle Thomas’s church. He was three years older than her, also with no fortune as he was the youngest of six, but the moment she looked into his dark, soulful eyes, she fell for him. He was a true humanitarian, who had chosen the Church rather than the military as a career, because he fervently believed his mission in life should be to help the poor and needy.