‘What’s this? What’s this? Ragamuffins knocking at my front door?’ His voice was as large as his frame, deep and resonant. He was dressed in a dark, sober suit, but a multi-coloured waistcoat, stretched tightly over his ample chest, lightened his otherwise sombre appearance. Looped across it was a gold watch chain. It was as if his position demanded that he dress with sobriety and authority, yet his waistcoat revealed a more flamboyant side to his nature.
Sarah quailed and Bobbie shrank against his mother’s skirts, but Meg stood her ground and gazed boldly up at him. She opened her mouth, but before she could speak the master boomed, ‘Round the back with you. You’ll find someone there to direct you.’ He seemed about to shut the door in their faces, but then he hesitated. His gaze roamed over Meg’s face and hair.
‘By,’ he murmured, ‘but you’ll be a beauty one day an’ no mistake.’ Then his glance went beyond Meg to Sarah’s face.
Though at present she was pale with distress and heavy with child, Isaac Pendleton, who prided himself on being a veritable connoisseur of women, could see beyond Sarah’s temporary weariness. She was undoubtedly feeling humiliated too, he thought, at having to present herself at his door, but she was a pretty, gentle-looking creature with lovely eyes.
Isaac smiled. ‘My dear lady, pray come in.’ He bent closer, as if sharing a confidence. ‘We’ll break the rules for once, shall we? This is the main door to the guardians’ meeting room and to my apartments. It’s not normally used by the – er – inmates. But come in – come in.’ He extended a long arm and ushered the reluctant little family inside.
Isaac Pendleton was not at all what Meg had expected the workhouse master to be like. From the imposing look of the building’s walls and windows from the outside, she’d expected the man in charge to be as threatening, treating people down on their luck as idle, good-for-nothings. Yet this man was leading them down a room, past the long, polished table to a door at the far end on the left-hand side. Reaching it, he paused and turned. Putting his finger to his lips, he chuckled, ‘Now, not a word to the others, mind, else they’ll all expect to use the front door. Go through here and out of the door on the right into the yard and then to the buildings on the far side. That’s the way you should have come in.’ He beamed benevolently down at them. ‘The porter’s lodge is at the end near the entrance gate. See old Albert Conroy. He’ll admit you and then arrange for someone to take you to the bath room and fit you out with uniforms.’ He took Sarah’s hand and raised it to his lips. ‘Don’t fret, my dear lady. You’ll be well looked after here. You and your little ones.’
For the first time since Reuben had brought home the dreadful news, Sarah managed a weak smile. ‘You’re very kind,’ she murmured and a faint tinge of pink touched her pale cheeks.
Three
They crossed the yard towards a door in the high wall – the door by which they should have entered the workhouse. Near it, at the end of a row of buildings, was the porter’s lodge. As they approached, an old man appeared. He was scowling at them, his bushy white eyebrows drawn together. Several days’ growth of grizzled beard gave him the look of an unkempt tramp. His clothes, crumpled and threadbare, hung loosely on him.
‘And where might you three ’ave come from? I didn’t see you come in.’ His voice was gruff and accusing. He walked with a limp that gave him a curious rolling gait, like a sailor who has just stepped ashore after weeks at sea.
Bobbie cowered behind Sarah, burying his face against her skirt. ‘Mam,’ he wailed. ‘Mammy!’
Surprised, the old man looked down him. ‘No need for that, little feller. I ain’t gonna hurt yer.’ His voice, though still growly, was now kindly.
Meg stepped forward, protective of her little brother as ever, protective now of her mother too. ‘We came to the wrong door,’ Meg explained and treated him to her most winning smile, ‘but we’ve been told to report to you. Are you Mr Conroy?’
The old man stared at her for a minute. White-haired, wizened and crippled with arthritis, Albert Conroy lived out his existence in the lodge near the workhouse’s back gate, by which the inmates entered and left. Each night it was Albert who admitted the vagrants and directed them to the bath room. From there they went to the casual ward, where they were allowed a meal and to stay overnight in return for several hours’ work the following day. And it was Albert who saw other folks enter the building, never to leave again until they were carried out in a plain, rough pauper’s coffin.
Few stayed to talk to old Albert and even fewer gave him the courtesy of addressing him by name. And now here was this pretty little thing calling him ‘Mr Conroy’ just as if he were some toff in fancy clothes. He rubbed the back of his hand across his nose and mouth and sniffed. He tried a toothless smile, but found he had almost forgotten how to summon one up.
‘Aye, I am.’ His voice quavered. ‘Long time since anyone called me “Mr Conroy”.’ He paused and then added wistfully, ‘Time was when I was “Albert” to mi friends, but now it’s just “Conroy” or just “eh-up, you”.’
Meg put her head on one side. ‘Wouldn’t it sound cheeky of someone like me to call you by your Christian name?’
Albert’s eyes watered. ‘Nah. Not a bit. I’d – I’d like to be called Albert by a pretty young wench like you.’
Meg held out her hand. ‘Albert it is, then. I’m Meg Kirkland and this is my mam and my little brother, Bobbie.’
The smile, long unused, quivered on his mouth and his voice was unsteady as he said, ‘Pleased to meet yer, mi duck, though I’m sorry to see you in a place like this.’
‘We won’t be here long,’ Meg said, forcing a cheerfulness she didn’t feel for the sake of her mother and Bobbie. ‘But as you can see –’ she gestured towards her mother’s obvious condition – ‘mi mam needs somewhere to stay.’ Then she added quickly, ‘Mi dad’s gone to look for work and then he’ll be coming back to fetch us.’
For a moment the old man looked doubtful, but then he said, ‘Aye, course he will, mi duck, course he will.’ More briskly, he added, ‘Now, let’s get down to business . . .’
They followed Albert into the porter’s lodge, a grand-sounding name for what turned out to be one small, square room where the old man obviously lived.
‘They let me sleep here and eat here,’ he said with a note of pride, as if to live in this cold, sparsely furnished room was a privilege. Perhaps it was, Meg thought, for him, though she couldn’t imagine a harsher fate than to end her days in such a way.
Just inside the door of his lodge was a table and open upon it was a ledger. A list of names was neatly written in copperplate script on each page. Albert picked up a pen and, poised to write, looked up at Meg. ‘Now, tell me your full names, starting with yer mam.’
He wrote down the information with painfully slow deliberation, yet he was justifiably proud of the finished result. He asked a few more questions and then stood back, looking down with satisfaction at the neat rows of writing.
‘It’s beautiful handwriting,’ Meg said.
‘I allus did have a good hand,’ Albert murmured. ‘And I like to keep mi book nice. The guardians always ask to see it when they ’ave one of their meetings here. I teks it across to the committee room and the master shows them it.’
‘I wish I could write like that,’ Meg said.
‘Oh, it’s just practice, that’s all,’ the old man said modestly, but Meg could tell he was gratified by her praise. ‘Right, now I’d better get her ladyship to tek you to the bath room and so on.’
‘Who’s “her ladyship”?’
Albert guffawed wheezily. ‘Waters.’
‘Is she in charge?’
‘She’d like to think she is. Nah. She’s an inmate – just like me. Mind you, the silly woman ’ad the chance to leave years ago, but wouldn’t.’
‘Wouldn’t leave?’ Meg was incredulous. ‘Why ever not?’
‘Ah, well now, it was like this—’ He seemed about to launch into a long story, but one glance at S
arah’s face, white with fatigue, changed his mind. ‘Mebbe I’ll tell you all about it one day, but now I reckon you’d best get yer mam settled. She looks fair done in. Ah, here comes Waters. How that woman knows when there’s new folks arrived beats me, but she always does. Nowt seems to get past her beady eyes.’
The woman coming across the yard towards them was more what Meg had imagined those in authority in the workhouse might be. Thin-faced with a beak-like nose and small, ferret eyes, she snapped, ‘How did you get in? I saw you coming across the yard.’
‘We came in the other way. Sorry,’ Meg smiled winningly, trying not to let slip that they’d come in by the front door. ‘We saw a gentleman who told us where to come.’
Waters looked puzzled and Meg hurried on, explaining. ‘He was very tall and – and big, but he was ever so nice and—’
The woman’s eyes widened. ‘Mr Pendleton? You saw Mr Pendleton?’
‘I don’t know his name, but he was very kind.’
‘It must have been Mr Pendleton.’ Then Waters gave a start, her mind obviously working fast. ‘You – you don’t mean you went to the front door?’ she asked, appalled by the newcomers’ audacity.
‘Er – well,’ Meg stammered.
‘What Miss Pendleton’ll say, I don’t know,’ Waters muttered, sniffing her disapproval.
‘The man – Mr Pendleton – didn’t seem to mind,’ Meg insisted. ‘He was very nice about it. Who is he?’
The woman’s tone was suddenly reverential. ‘Mr Pendleton is the master of the workhouse. He’s a wonderful man.’ For a brief moment her eyes softened. ‘A wonderful man.’ But the look was gone in an instant and her eyes hardened again. ‘And you’d do well to remember it, girl.’
Waters moved into Albert’s lodge and ran her finger down the list of names in his ledger, noting the new arrivals.
‘So –’ her disapproving glance raked them up and down, taking in the faded work clothes, the shabby, dusty boots – ‘homeless, are you?’
Meg and her mother exchanged a glance and the girl’s mouth tightened as she was obliged to say bitterly, ‘Yes.’ Then in a rush she gabbled, ‘But mi dad’s gone looking for work. We won’t be here long. He’ll soon be back for us.’
‘That’s what they all say, but they’re still here years later.’
‘Well, we won’t be.’ Meg was belligerent. ‘He’ll come back.’ She turned towards her mother. ‘Won’t he, Mam?’
But Sarah only hung her head whilst the other woman sniffed yet again. ‘How old are you, girl?’
‘Fifteen.’
The woman grunted, dissatisfied with her answer. ‘You look older,’ she said, eyeing Meg suspiciously. ‘Sure you’re not trying to make out you’re younger than you really are just to get out of a bit of work?’
Meg tossed her head. ‘I’m not frightened of work. I’ve worked on a farm for three years. I’m sixteen next month.’
The woman’s lips stretched in what passed for a smile, though it did not reach her eyes. They were steel grey, cold and hard. ‘My name is Ursula Waters, but we’re all called by our surnames in here. That is –’ she paused and hesitated fractionally, before adding – ‘unless the master decides to call you by your Christian name.’
Pertly, Meg asked, ‘And do we call him by his Christian name then?’
Ursula Waters gasped. ‘The very idea! You’ve a mite too much to say for yourself, child.’
‘I’m not a child,’ Meg retorted hotly.
‘You’re a child in here if you’re only fifteen. It’s the rules.’ Ursula leant closer. ‘Are you sure you’re not older?’
For the first time, Sarah spoke. Haltingly, her voice husky with shame and despair, she said, ‘She is only fifteen, ma’am. I assure you.’
Meg turned and stared at her. Why was Sarah kowtowing to this harridan? It was obvious the woman was only an inmate too – though probably an inmate who held some sort of position. No doubt the woman enjoyed special privileges because of it. But Waters was no better than they were, Meg thought. She opened her mouth to retort, but caught her mother’s warning glance and closed it again, pressing her lips together.
Bobbie, sucking his thumb, began to whimper and tug at Sarah’s skirt.
‘I’d better fetch Miss Pendleton. She’s the matron and Mr Pendleton’s sister.’ Unbending enough to impart a little information in which she seemed to take great pride, Ursula Waters said, ‘Poor Mr Pendleton lost his wife some years ago and his sister came to take her place as matron. Of course, it’s quite unusual for that to happen. The master and the matron are usually man and wife, but the guardians’ committee gave special consent. They didn’t want to lose Mr Pendleton as master, you see.’
Meg nodded, pretending to understand.
‘Wait here whilst I fetch matron.’ Waters glanced down at Bobbie with distaste, sniffed once more and left the room.
‘What a dragon!’ Meg burst out, almost before the woman was out of earshot.
‘Hush, Meg,’ Sarah whispered. ‘Don’t make things worse than they already are, there’s a dear.’
Meg looked at her mother. ‘Mam, was it my fault . . .?’ she began, but Sarah was bending over Bobbie, trying to quieten his crying, and at that moment Miss Pendleton bustled in, followed closely by Ursula Walters.
Letitia Pendleton was younger than her brother. Meg guessed she was about forty, but Isaac Pendleton had looked over fifty. The matron was small and round, and dressed in an ankle-length, dark blue dress with broad, starched white cuffs. A white bib apron covered the dress and she wore thick dark stockings and lace-up shoes with small heels. Her hair was completely covered with a starched white square of cloth, which fell in a triangular shape at the back of her head. Her face was plump, her cheeks round and rosy, but it was not the rosiness of good health, rather of too much indulgence, especially from a bottle. Young as she was, Meg recognized the signs. Farmer Smallwood had just such a look. Like her brother, Letitia Pendleton had hazel eyes that twinkled merrily. Once again, Meg was surprised. To her, Ursula Waters was the epitome of workhouse authority – the type everyone on the outside dreaded – not this buxom, smiling woman, who reminded the girl more of a fat and jolly farmer’s wife. Not that Mrs Smallwood had been like that; she had been thin and wiry and shrewish. Meg pushed away the painful memories that threatened to overwhelm her.
‘Now then, who have we here?’ the matron greeted them.
Her glance lingered a moment on Sarah’s swollen stomach. Then her gaze fell upon Bobbie, whose cheeks were now stained with tears. He was hiccuping miserably and sucking his thumb hard.
Letitia Pendleton’s eyes softened. ‘Poor little chap,’ she said, taking his hand. ‘I bet you’re hungry, aren’t you? You come along with me.’
‘Oh, I don’t think—’ Sarah began.
‘I’m sorry, my dear,’ the matron said, but there was understanding in her tone. ‘It’s the rule in here. You all have to be segregated. Women, men – and the children.’
‘You’ll do as you’re told,’ Ursula put in sharply. ‘It’s the master’s rules.’
‘I tell you what,’ Miss Pendleton said kindly. ‘Maybe he can stay with you until the medical officer has seen you tomorrow morning, but then I’m afraid he will have to go with the other children.’
Meg noticed that Ursula’s lips pursed even more tightly and her eyes flashed with anger. But she said nothing.
Sarah was close to tears, desperation on her face, but Bobbie, with his small hand in the matron’s plump grasp, had stopped crying. He was looking up at Miss Pendleton and she was smiling down at him with such compassion in her eyes, such fondness, that, to Meg’s surprise, a tremulous smile hovered on the child’s mouth.
‘Do you look after the little ones, Matron?’ she asked.
Letitia looked up, reluctantly dragging her gaze away from the little boy, but before she could answer, Ursula snapped, ‘Mind your tongue, girl. Just remember who you’re talking to. It’s not your place to be asking quest
ions. Not in here.’
‘It’s all right, Waters. The girl is concerned for her brother. That’s only natural and very commendable too.’
Again Ursula sniffed her disapproval but said no more. Letitia turned back to Meg. ‘The schoolmistress and I have care of the children between us. She teaches the younger ones during the day, whilst the older ones go to the local school. Outside school hours we share the supervision of all the children.’
‘The schoolmistress?’ Meg asked. ‘Is she –’ she glanced meaningfully at Ursula – ‘nice?’
Meg saw that the matron pursed her mouth to prevent a smile. ‘Louisa Daley? Oh yes, she’s nice. Only young and the little ones love her.’ Letitia glanced at Ursula. There was something pointed in the look that Meg couldn’t understand as the matron added, ‘We all do.’ And she noticed that an angry flush crept up Ursula’s scrawny neck and into her face.
Meg felt herself relax. She turned and touched her mother’s arm. ‘That’s all right then, isn’t it, Mam? Bobbie will be all right.’
Sarah’s eyes lingered on her small son. She touched his hair and then, not trusting herself to speak, she nodded.
‘Now,’ the matron said briskly, ‘Let’s get you admitted to the receiving ward. Waters, have you got all their details from Conroy?’
‘Of course I have.’
Meg was surprised at the insolence in Ursula’s tone. It was almost as if she was in charge – not the matron – and yet Meg knew that this could not be the case.
‘They were all born within the county.’ She sniffed – a sound that Meg was already coming to know very well when the woman was expressing her disgust. ‘Though they’ve moved about a lot. Like gypsies.’ On Ursula’s lips the word implied disgrace.
‘Mi dad’s a farm worker. A wagoner,’ Meg retorted defiantly, lifting her chin higher. For a brief moment there was a note of pride in her tone as she spoke of her father, remembering the position he had held, the respect his skill with horses had commanded. But then the pride faded from her tone when she relived the moment he’d told them that he’d been dismissed. ‘We – we moved about a bit with his job, but we’ve been at – at the last place –’ she couldn’t bring herself to say the name of Middleditch Farm – ‘for the last three years.’
Without Sin Page 2
