Never Look Back

by Lesley Pearse

  ‘I’ll get baby,’ Matilda said, hoping to calm everything down. She remembered her own breasts had been very sore at first, and she had heard since that most fair-skinned women reacted this way.

  Abraham wasn’t crying, just lying there quietly, and she knew it was this passive silence which worried Dolores more than anything. She picked him up and found his napkin, night-gown and the bedding beneath him were sodden. Clearly he hadn’t been changed all day, even though there was a pile of clean napkins and gowns on the dresser.

  Matilda took him through to the kitchen, laid him on a towel on the table, and quickly stripped him. His tiny bottom was fiery red.

  ‘When did you last change him?’ she asked Polly.

  ‘Not an hour since,’ Polly said sulkily.

  ‘That’s a lie,’ Matilda said, trying not to get angry herself. ‘His bottom is red and sore. I don’t believe you have changed him once today. Now, this won’t do, Polly. Babies are helpless, and he’s too small yet to even cry loud enough to tell you how uncomfortable he is.’

  ‘Why don’t one of the niggers see to him then?’

  Matilda rounded on her. ‘We don’t use that hateful word in this house,’ she said. ‘The other girls in this house are guests, just like you, they are not here to look after you, or your baby. And if you can’t show some respect for me, Miss Dolores and the other girls, then you’ll be off to the poor-house.’

  Dolores was rolling her eyes. Her expression said, ‘Let her go there now. I’ve had enough of her.’

  Matilda put some ointment on the baby’s bottom, making Polly stand up so she could see how it was done, and then put a clean napkin and gown on him. ‘Now you’ll feed him,’ she said, handing him over.

  ‘I can’t, it hurts,’ she insisted.

  ‘There’s a great deal that hurts about motherhood,’ Matilda said crisply. ‘Now, sit down and feed him, stop thinking about yourself.’

  As Polly unbuttoned her dress, Matilda could see her nipples were a bit sore, but not so bad she couldn’t manage five minutes on each breast. She informed Polly of this, and went back into the front room to change the linen on the crib. As she bent down to pick something off the floor, she saw Polly had thrown bloody pads under the bed, and the chamber-pot was almost full.

  Such slutty ways infuriated her, but she decided to wait until the baby was fed before saying anything, and returned to the kitchen. She noted that Polly barely looked at her baby as she fed him, her eyes were staring off into the distance, cold and indifferent.

  Dolores made them all some tea, and after the baby was fed, Matilda took him and explained to Polly she must wash and dry her nipples, then put some ointment on each of them after each feed. ‘Now go into your room, collect up those pads and the chamber-pot and deal with them,’ she said. ‘Fatal diseases are spread by filth. I won’t have it in this house.’

  ‘But she’s the maid, ain’t she?’ Polly pointed to Dolores. ‘She does all that.’

  Matilda’s temper flared up. ‘Miss Dolores is the housekeeper here. She may have emptied your pot and cleaned away other things when you were too weak to do it yourself, but you are quite capable of looking after yourself now. So do it!’

  Polly reluctantly did as she was told. Matilda cuddled the baby till he’d gone back to sleep and then went and tucked him into the crib. As she came back into the kitchen, Polly was slouched down in the chair again and clearly had every intention of staying there.

  The success of this house depended on all the girls pulling their weight. Matilda certainly didn’t expect Polly to scrub floors so soon after having a baby, but she was perfectly capable of doing a little mending or peeling potatoes for supper.

  ‘This won’t do, Polly,’ Matilda said, as Dolores busied herself with some washing up in the scullery. ‘You were in a bad way when Fern brought you here, if she hadn’t, you might have died out there on the streets. So tell me why you seem to be going out of your way to be difficult with everyone,’

  It was unfortunate that the other five girls in the house all chose that moment to arrive home from a walk. Hearing her voice they halted in the hall, not knowing quite what to do.

  ‘’Cos you all thinks you are better than me,’ Polly retorted, pale blue eyes as cold as ice. ‘Look at you fer a start, all done up in silk. What do you know about having a baby all on your own, or having no money? I’ve heard all about you on the streets, a heart like a stone they say, and you makes money out of girls like me.’

  Matilda knew the last part of the charge against her was a rumour put about by brothel owners to deter girls going to her. She didn’t care about that. But the first part really riled her.

  ‘I know a great deal about having a baby all on my own,’ she said, suddenly not caring that the other girls would hear her. ‘I had mine on a wagon train, and when the baby was as young as Abraham I went down the Columbia river in a canoe with her. I didn’t have a kind person like Dolores to take care of me. I had to sleep in a tent in the rain, to try and dry napkins somehow. My nipples were much sorer than yours too. But I still fed her, whenever she needed it.’

  ‘I suppose she’s off in some fancy boarding-school now,’ Polly sneered.

  ‘I wish she were,’ Matilda said, her blood rising. ‘She’s dead, Polly. She died of cholera, along with my best friend and her little girl too. She was just six and there’s not a day passes when I don’t grieve for her.’

  There was a gasp from the hallway, and Dolores moved across the kitchen to shoo the girls upstairs.

  ‘You are a little gutter-snipe,’ Matilda went on, her voice gradually rising with anger. ‘A rude, ungrateful, dirty wretch. But I’ll tell you one thing, I’m going to turn you into a real mother, and a decent human being, however long it takes me. My friend who died was a prostitute too when I first met her. I found her in a New York cellar full of rats with her new baby. She was far worse off than you, but once she was given a chance she took it, and made something of herself. The night she died she made me promise I would help other girls like her. That’s why I started this house, for her. Because I loved her.’

  ‘So!’ Polly spat out. ‘You make a fair packet out of it. I don’t see you giving anything away. You ride round in your fancy cart and you’ve got that boy running your messages.’

  The implication that Peter was some sort of paramour riled Matilda even more. ‘That boy is my friend’s son, the baby born in a cellar. Along with promising my friend to care for girls like you, I also promised to take care of him. You don’t know anything about my life, you wretch, but I can tell you I’ve had just as much hardship as you. So, I wear a silk dress and have a fancy carriage, but then I used my brains to earn the money for it. Any woman can sell her body, that doesn’t take brain or skill, all you have to do is open your legs and take the money. Maybe you had no choice once you were on the street, but you have a choice now.’

  She paused, panting with rage.

  ‘What is it to be, the poor-house and back on the street? Or buckle down here and fit in with everyone else?’

  ‘I can’t stand the niggers,’ Polly said defiantly.

  That was the last straw and Matilda smacked her hard across the face. ‘You aren’t fit to walk in their shadow,’ she roared out. ‘God gave them black skin because they come from a hot country where they need protection from the sun, inside they are just the same as you or me. But they have one thing you don’t have, and that’s a mind, because each one of them wants a better life than the one they were born to. Now get back to your room. I don’t suppose any of them want to be near you either. I shall be back tomorrow morning, and God help you if I haven’t found some improvement in your attitude.’

  The girl ran out, a look of terror on her face. All at once Matilda’s anger left her, leaving nothing but shame she’d reacted so violently. She slumped down on a chair, put her head on the table and burst into tears.

  She didn’t hear Dolores come back in, just felt a warm hand on the back of her neck. ‘Don
’t cry about her, she’s just trash,’ Dolores said softly.

  ‘No she’s not,’ Matilda sniffed. ‘She’s just a kid who’s been brought up all wrong. She doesn’t know about love because no one’s ever given her any’

  ‘You’s got too much love sometimes.’ Dolores pulled Matilda round and cradled her against her bony chest. ‘Some people they just born bad. You can’t fight that.’

  ‘I’ve got to try,’ Matilda sobbed. ‘I shouldn’t have smacked her.’

  ‘Sometimes a kiss will do it, sometimes a smack does, either way you done your best. I don’t reckon you’ll crack that one, she’s too tough. But I loves you for tryin’.’

  Matilda looked up, and for the first time noticed that Dolores was turning into an old woman. Her crinkly hair was streaked with white, she had lines on her face. It shocked her, and reminded her that in all the time they’d been together, for all the things they’d shared, she still knew so little about her friend, not even her exact age.

  ‘I’ve never even asked you if you want to be here,’ she said, all at once ashamed that she had never really considered what Dolores might want. All she ever did was make plans and expect that Dolores would go along with them. ‘You aren’t so young any more, and this place must be too much for you. But I could get someone else to run it, and you could come back to my apartment and have an easier time.’

  Dolores gave a rich belly laugh. ‘What would I do with myself up there now?’ she said. ‘These girls is like the children I never had. Only way you’s gonna get me outta here is when the good Lord comes a-callin’ for me.’

  ‘Even when some of them are nasty like Polly?’

  ‘You buy a dozen eggs and one is broken,’ Dolores said with a resigned sigh. ‘But you can still use that broken one if you’s quick. Maybe you gotta whip it up some, but you sure as hell don’t throw it out.’

  ‘Reckon I whipped her up enough?’ Matilda whispered.

  ‘Maybe, time will tell. Now, you dry those pretty eyes and go and see the other girls. Reckon what they heard you say will be all around town by tomorrow, It won’t do your reputation much good when folk hear you’ve got a heart after all.’

  Matilda laughed. The legend of her being hard was one she enjoyed. It was a darn sight better than being taken for a sucker.

  Matilda failed with Polly. Just two weeks later, while Dolores was out, the girl slipped out of the house in Folsom Street taking the housekeeping money Dolores kept in a tin with her, and leaving Abraham behind. Two days later, they received a report she had been seen boarding a stage-coach to Denver. Matilda guessed she was intending to try her luck in the brothels there. Although she was saddened by the failure, she wasn’t really surprised. Polly had a heart of stone.

  It was tough having to make the decision to turn Abraham over to the Foundling Home, but as Dolores pointed out, ‘We ain’t in the business of minding babies, Miz Matilda. And I ain’t gonna stand by and watch you git attached to him. You’ve got to be ready to have babies of your own when Captain James comes home!’

  It was that thought alone which gave her a shred of comfort when she woke one morning to find Peter had gone too, leaving her a note to say he was going out to Kansas to join James’s regiment. ‘Don’t worry about me, Aunt Matty,’ he wrote almost as an afterthought. ‘James and me will lick the rebels and be back in no time.’

  A year later, on Sunday, 6 April 1862, James was woken by bright sunshine coming into his tent, checked his watch and found it was just after six. He had been here, with 42,000 troops under General U. S. Grant, in wooded ravines on the west side of the Tennessee river near Pittsburg Landing for almost a month, waiting for General Buell and his Army of the Ohio to join them. The plan was to plunge into the heart of Mississippi, routing out the rebels.

  Not for the first time James wished he’d chosen some other career than soldiering. Here he was in the middle of a war, dying to get on with it and then go home, but instead he had to wait upon decisions from generals who seemed more preoccupied with their image and convoluted strategy than getting out in the field and fighting. Eight out of ten of his men were green farmers’ boys and he suspected that however hard he trained them they would never acquire the killer instinct of real soldiers. He was very glad he hadn’t been at the first humiliating defeat at Bull Run. When he’d heard it described as the ‘Greatest Skedaddle’, he’d blushed with shame that the Union men had run from battle. It was no wonder Confederates were laughing up their sleeves at them.

  At least back in Kansas he’d felt a sense of real purpose. Civilians had to be protected, and those murderous Missourian ruffians who burned their cabins and laid waste their crops, all in the name of secession for their state, had to be hunted down and punished. Under Brigadier General Nathaniel Lyon, a fearless man he much admired, he’d seen the kind of action he believed in. But even that had ended in failure, they had chased those men over 200 miles across Missouri to Wilson Creek, only for Lyon to be killed and the Union army driven back to St Louis.

  Now he was here in Tennessee just waiting, while the rebels were just twenty-two miles away in Corinth. While the generals argued among themselves and kept stalling, the Confederates gained time to enlist more men, organize themselves better, and became more confident.

  It was rumoured that even Lincoln himself had written to General Buell, saying that ‘Delay is ruining us.’ In some regiments the men drank and fought among themselves, many had run off home believing their wives, children and farms needed them far more than their country. James couldn’t blame them either, there had been times when he’d looked longingly westwards.

  But perhaps now that General Grant appeared to be running the show, things would move. Grant had already won two important victories, at Fort Henry on the Tennessee and Fort Donelson on the Cumberland. Within a week he’d won Nashville and the Confederates had been forced out of Kentucky.

  James picked up the letter to Matilda he’d begun writing the night before and read it through. She was with him always, in his head. He went to sleep thinking of her, woke to find she was the first thing which popped into his mind. He often wondered if other men loved as deeply as he did. It was loving her which kept him sane and gave him purpose. He could while away long hours in the saddle imagining how and where they would live when the war was over. His plan was to buy a farm somewhere in California where he could breed horses, nothing fancy, just a nice comfortable house with a big shady veranda, an English-style garden for her, complete with rose beds, and paddocks beyond. He hoped it wouldn’t be too late for children of their own, but if it was, maybe they’d adopt some. He liked to imagine Sidney, Peter and Tabitha coming for holidays, later on bringing their husbands, wives and children. He thought he would get hold of an old covered wagon and make it into a play-house. The children would love it, and sometimes he’d take Matty out to it and make love to her there, under that old patchwork quilt she had which meant so much to her.

  He pulled himself up sharply and tucked the letter away, remembering he had to go out and see his men. Many of them were suffering from dysentery, or, as they liked to call it ‘The Tennessee two-step’. He paused by his tent, heartened by the sight in front of him. It had rained earlier, and the now bright sunshine was glinting on the trees surrounding the camp like thousands of diamonds. A smell of fresh coffee wafted to his nostrils, and the men were all busy either cleaning and polishing their muskets, or brushing their jackets. It was just like it was a Sunday back home.

  He wondered if the rebels were similarly occupied. Their commander, Albert Johnston, was in James’s opinion the ablest soldier in the Confederacy. If he were in Johnston’s boots, he’d launch an attack now, before Buell’s troops arrived to swell the Union’s numbers. He’d voiced this opinion only yesterday to General Grant, but it had fallen on deaf ears.

  James spotted Peter Duncan across the camp, sitting on a log, polishing his boots. His cap was pushed back on his head, and he was engrossed in his task. Peter had turned up un
announced at Fort Leavenworth last summer on a mail coach, his young, fresh face so full of eagerness that James hadn’t the heart to take him to task for slipping off without saying a proper goodbye to his aunt.

  It was fortunate that James had just arrived back from Missouri. If he hadn’t been there, Peter could very well have been marched off immediately with the rest of the raw recruits to Tennessee and the battle at Fort Henry, and been killed, even before Matilda knew where he was. But as it was, James was able to take him under his wing and give him some basic training and a taste of combat in Missouri before the march down here.

  James couldn’t be seen to be singling the lad out for special treatment, but Peter expected none, nor had he told anyone of his connection with the Captain. James thought he had the makings of a fine soldier. He didn’t complain, he was a crack shot, and popular with the other men. James just hoped he could stand up to heavy fire, for he hadn’t been tested in that yet.

  At half past nine the peace and tranquillity of the camp was shattered by gunfire and that distinctive rebel yell, half-shout, half-foxhound frenzied yelp. James had heard it many times before, but he still found it sent a curious tingling sensation down his spine. As the men rushed to pick up their weapons, fasten buttons and even put boots on, James felt some pleasure in knowing he had second-guessed General Johnston, and that they would now see some action, but angry that he’d been ignored by his own general who surely should have received some warning the Confederates had marched out of Corinth overnight.

  As the ripping, roaring sound of gunfire and cannons came ever closer, James leaped on to his horse and led his men to thickets that grew along a winding sunken road. The rebels would reach it before long, and if he and his men could just hold their position there until the reinforcements arrived, they had a chance.

  The rebels came much sooner than he expected, a bad sign as it meant the troops further down the line hadn’t been able to hold them. A Union cannon fired on them and three men fell, but the rest just stepped right over them, blasting away to left and right with their rifles.