The Girl From Pit Lane

by Gracie Hart

  ‘Eliza, you are so thoughtful. You’ve been thinking all this, even though at one time I was intent on not keeping her. Just look at the embroidery and the ribbons you’ve put on this nightdress.’ Mary-Anne picked up the cream-coloured long night dress and looked at it with tears in her eyes.

  ‘I’m on with lining one of the dresser drawers from out of the parlour, I thought it would make a good cot for her for the time being. I’m frightened to death that you’ll fall asleep and suffocate the poor little mite while she’s in bed with you.’ Eliza looked at the tiny face wrapped up warm in blankets next to Mary-Anne and smiled. ‘Aye, she’s bonny, but will we be able to cope? I’m frightened for us both and her.’

  ‘We’ll be all right, I’ll take her with me when I walk in to see Ma Fletcher and you can amaze the local gentry with your skills, and I’m sure Tom will return once he’s calmed down. He loves you too much. She’ll soon get up and make her own way in life.’ Mary-Anne looked at her sleeping baby. In truth she was frightened of the future. Would she make a good mother and be able to provide for her child? Life was hard enough without another mouth to feed. ‘Did the Eaveshams pay you for the wedding dresses? I’ve completely forgotten to ask.’ Mary-Anne leant back in her pillows and yawned.

  ‘Yes, with this one coming into the world, I forgot to tell you again. And you obviously didn’t hear when I returned from delivering them. We will be quite comfortable for the next month or two, providing Ellershaw doesn’t put the rent up or decide to evict us.

  ‘He wouldn’t dare, would he? Not now that I’ve had his daughter. And I would tell all the world that she is his, if he did rob us of our home. Besides, he’ll be concentrating on the upcoming wedding of his spoilt son.’ Mary-Anne yawned again. ‘Sorry, I’m still so tired.’ She closed her eyes.

  ‘I’ll leave you two to sleep. First though … you know she needs a name. What are you going to call our new baby?’ Eliza looked at mother and daughter as she went to close the door.

  ‘Victoria, after our queen’s visit in a fortnight. She’s my Victoria and she will be queen of all she surveys in another few years.’ Mary-Anne bent her head down and kissed her before pulling the covers over both of them. ‘But now we will sleep just a little while.’

  ‘Victoria, that’s perfect. We will always remember when the queen visited Leeds. Perhaps we could go and see her together, now her namesake is born.’ But Eliza’s words fell on deaf ears as both were asleep. It made no difference, she would go and see her and Prince Albert on her own if she had to, but see her she would because it would be a glorious day.

  Thirty One

  ‘Quiet Bert! Was that a baby I could hear crying next door?’Ada Simms listened intently to the noise coming from their neighbours’ house. ‘There it is again, and I’m sure I heard it yesterday.’

  ‘You are hearing things, woman. Get on with dishing my supper out.’ Bert held his plate in mid-air over the kitchen table as Ada stopped as if in a trance, ears pricked and the ladle filled with stew hovering like the latest trick from a magician’s bag. ‘Am I going to eat tonight or not?’ Bert swallowed, his mouth filling with saliva, imagining the beef and dumplings that were so tantalizingly near.

  ‘It is, you know! It’s a baby. One of ’em’s had a baby!’ Ada quickly dolloped a plate full of stew onto Bert’s plate and then pressed her ear up to the neighbouring wall. leaving him looking at a half-empty plate.

  ‘For God’s sake, woman … you need to get out more. All you do is bother about next door. What if one of ’em’s had a baby? It’s nothing to do with us. But that would account for their Aunt Patsy visiting the other day. I just caught a glimpse of her when that foul-mouthed Eliza was saying goodbye to her.’ Bert shovelled in his stew and looked at the expression on his wife’s face.

  ‘You never told me she was here. How could you forget something like that?’ Ada pulled up her chair and looked at her empty supper plate before helping herself to stew.

  ‘I’ll have a bit more, if there’s any left. You only gave me half a portion.’ Bert looked across at his wife.

  ‘You don’t deserve any,’ Ada growled, ‘forgetting to tell me she was there. You should have known something was up; she only turns up when folk are in bother.’

  ‘Well, it isn’t Eliza, because she swore at me and told me to piss off when she caught me watching them. So if there’s a baby in the house it must be Mary-Anne’s, but I didn’t think she was like that. She always struck me as keeping herself to herself, although she did have that Irishman visiting her for a time.’ Bert sighed as Ada held back on the stew; he hadn’t been given enough to fill a rat.

  ‘Well, there’s definitely a baby, so one of them has been up to no good. I think it’s much more likely to be Eliza’s, dirty-mouthed little devil she is. It didn’t take Tom Thackeray long to realise what sort of lass she was and get himself home to his mother’s. Perhaps it’s his; perhaps we’ve not been hearing it for a day or two and Eliza was thanking her aunt for her help with her birth. You said you couldn’t make the lad see sense over her. And I’ve seen both lasses pass the window of late and neither have looked in the family way. His mother won’t be happy if it is. Oh! Lordy, old Mrs Thackeray a grandmother and she doesn’t know it.’ Ada tucked in to her dinner and thought of her latest morsel of gossip, which would be something to share on Sunday.

  ‘You hold your tongue, woman, until I’ve talked to Tom. He should be the first to know if it’s his. I’ll have word on the quiet and tell him he should stand by her; I thought better of him than that.’ Bert could never quite understand how much delight Ada got out of other folks’ hardship. The baby obviously hadn’t got a father, whoever its mother was, and if it was Tom’s he needed to be told to do the right thing. His father, if he’d been alive, would have done just that, so he would give him some fatherly advice – before the whole village knew, if it was up to his Ada.

  ‘I’m not bloody well responsible, it’s nowt to do with me. I didn’t even know she was having owt.’ Tom looked at the old man who had collared him in a quiet moment when they were on their own. ‘I never did owt with her like that, so it can’t be mine. Happen a kiss and a squeeze, but nothing else. She must blame the fella I found paying for her services one evening, not me. That’ll be the bastard you need to talk to.’ Tom looked hurt and shocked. A baby … Eliza’s baby. Everybody would think it was his and look at him and think he hadn’t done right by her.

  ‘Aye, lad, was I right? Was she having men at her home? Then it will be his and Eliza the mother! We wondered if it could be Mary-Anne’s but she’s a decent enough soul and we couldn’t see her getting herself in that way.’ Bert rubbed his head and knew the young lad in front of him was hurting.

  ‘It won’t be Mary-Anne’s. Eliza used to always make fun of her sister for being reserved with John Vasey. I think that’s why he’s left her to go to Liverpool. He couldn’t get what he wanted. Obviously the opposite to Eliza.’ Tom sighed. A baby … how had she managed to conceal it so well?

  ‘Aye, that sounds about right. You should have heeded my words those few months back and then it wouldn’t have hurt you this bad. Still, she’ll be the one who finds out what it’s like to be free and easy with her ways. She’ll have to bring the bairn up by its bootstraps and perhaps not get another man to look at her but that’s not yours to worry about, lad, if your conscience is clear.’ Bert patted him on the back and shook his head, as he could see the regret in Tom’s eyes.

  ‘Just as she was doing so well with her sewing and business. What a fool.’ Tom looked down at his boots and couldn’t help but feel turmoil for Eliza whom he still loved.

  ‘Aye, best left alone, lad. Look for a decent lass, someone you can take home to your mother. That’s what she would like.’ Bert smiled as as he turned to make his way back to work.

  ‘Aye, you are right, and thanks for telling me. I’ll steer clear of Pit Lane, I want nowt to do with her from now on.’ Tom’s heart was broken. How could she? She had b
etter not name him as the father, because it was most definitely not his doing, but that was not for the want of trying.

  Thirty Two

  Edmund Ellershaw looked at himself in the hallway mirror at Highfield House and didn’t like what he saw looking back at him. Time, coal dust and old age was beginning to catch up with him. He fastened his cravat yet again and checked that he looked respectable enough to be the father of the man who was about to marry into the Eavesham family. Not that they had any money, but his wife had been right: they had connections and were respected in the area and now that his father-in-law had taken over High Watermill and put William in charge of running it, he’d better look the part.

  His eldest, getting wed … he wasn’t even fit to look after himself, let alone a wife and a few hundred employees. He still thought his son was a useless waste of space, but this was his father-in-law’s doing and what he said went if Catherine had anything to do with it.

  He sighed and held his stomach in; he could do with losing a few pounds. Nay, better make that a stone, he thought, at he looked at the heavy dark lines under his eyes and expanding waistline … the darkness under his eyes not made any better by hearing the gossip at the Rose, that there had been a baby born on Pit Lane.

  No one was quite sure to which of the Wild girls it had been born to, but he knew all too well and now on his son’s wedding day he was hoping that the silly bitch would keep her mouth shut and not name him as the father if she went to the parish or The Friends Society for financial help.

  As it was, she and her sister had had enough out of his family already, with his son’s bride and his foolish daughter Grace purchasing their wedding attire from them. He’d rather she had got married in rags than give the both of those two money, but he’d not had much say in the matter as it wasn’t him paying the bill but his father-in-law as part of the deal he had struck on behalf of William. How they had wheedled their way into supplying the dresses was unbelievable, but he had to admit when he’d seen Grace trying hers on it had looked stunning. Who would have thought that a dress like that could have come out from such a filthy little shop, owned by two whores?

  ‘Edmund, are you ready?’ Catherine Ellershaw looked at her husband who seemed to have the worries of the world on his shoulders as she watched him looking at himself for one more time.

  ‘Aye, I’m as right as I’ll ever be.’ Edmund put on his top hat and reached for his cane. ‘Is everybody else waiting on me?’

  ‘Yes, dear, they are all waiting in the carriage. William went a while ago, he’s at the church waiting for his Priscilla. It’s such a big day for him – I do hope that he’ll be happy. Are you not proud to see him striking out on his own? A married man with responsibilities, and who knows … a family of his own soon perhaps.’

  ‘We haven’t done raising ours yet. With you being caught with George, we’ve still a baby in our family, let alone him having any yet. Steady on, woman, don’t make me feel older than I am. A grandfather, me … God forgive.’ Edmund grunted as he opened the front door to the sound of the chiming church bells. ‘Let’s be away then to this mockery of a wedding.’

  Catherine looked at Edmund. ‘Well, didn’t you marry me for the same thing as them? Money! If I remember rightly.’

  ‘Aye, happen that, along with the baby you were carrying in your belly and the fact that your father threatened to blow my head off my shoulders if I didn’t make you an honest woman.’ Edmund held his arm out for her to take.

  ‘But we do love one another now, and I’m sure William will grow to love Priscilla in the same way with time.’ Catherine smiled at her husband. He wasn’t handsome, he wasn’t that rich but he had, as far she was aware, been always true to her.

  ‘Time will tell, lass. Now let’s see our lad get wed and get him into that bloody big house that your father now owns.’ Edmund stepped out with Catherine on his arm. His lad was going up in society; he only hoped that the scandal of his own doing would never come to the surface and that the brat on Pit Lane would never know its real father. That, he knew, his own marriage would not survive – Catherine could never handle the shame of his secret life. Why had the bitch not got rid of the brat she was carrying and make both their lives easier. It’s not as if she didn’t have her aunt and all her potions to hand. Instead, the brat would always be there to remind him of his secret, unbeknown to the world.

  John Vasey looked around the lodging house that had been his home for nearly three months, glad to be leaving it. The vermin and the fleas and the rough dock workers coming to bed drunk and snoring had taken its toll on him. But now he’d earned enough for his passage to America, he’d done what he’d set out to do.

  He lifted his bag over his shoulder and stepped out onto the busy docks. With his cap at an angle and set in his mind of his destination to a new life, he made the first few steps of freedom from a life on the dockside and work in England. He’d done it, and now it was up to him how his life was to continue and with whom.

  Thirty Three

  ‘I can’t believe how small she is, Mary-Anne. Just look at her tiny feet.’ Eliza held the baby on her knee and examined her tiny toes and smiled down at the baby she was proud to be aunt to. ‘I’m glad you didn’t get rid of her; now she’s here I don’t know how either of us could even have thought it.’

  ‘I bloody well do … did you not hear her crying in the middle of the night? I think it’s because she was hungry, I don’t seem to be giving her enough milk, and, besides, I hate getting my tit out for her to suck. It’s just the most embarrassing thing you can think of. That’s why I’ve hunted this old bottle and teat out that our mother must have used for us. I’ll fill it with cow’s milk, that’ll fill the little bugger up.’ Mary-Anne lifted the copper pan of the fire and poured it into a jug and then filled the glass bottle half-full with the tepid milk, pulling the rubber teat tightly on and testing it before she held out her arms for baby Victoria to come to her.

  ‘No, I’ll feed her, let me. I’d like to try and do it.’ Eliza looked down at the little baby that was beginning to get cross with herself as her hands and feet fought with one another in the only way, along with her cries, that she had to express that her stomach was empty.

  ‘Well, you try then. Anything for a bit of of peace. I’m exhausted. I don’t think I’m going to be the best mother in the world, I’ve no patience.’ Mary-Anne passed the bottle over to Eliza and watched as her sister smiled down at the little red angry face that was beginning to sob. ‘Oh, for God’s sake, shut her up. Stick the teat in her mouth and let her suck.’

  Eliza gently rubbed the teat over the baby’s lips and let a drop of milk flow out into her mouth and almost in the same instance the baby opened its mouth, liking the taste of the milk, and realising to latch onto the rubber teat.

  ‘There you go, my little one. Your ma has no patience, has she? You were just hungry.’ Eliza beamed down at the suckling baby and then across at Mary-Anne. ‘You worry too much. She’s as new to the world as you are to motherhood, you both need time to get to know one another.’

  ‘Do you know, I’m trying to remember when you were a baby. I can’t recall you making so much noise, but then I wasn’t that old myself. And Mother would know just what to do – she always did, not like me.’ Mary-Anne watched Eliza feeding her baby and thought how much more patience she had when it came to the child. In truth she was finding it hard to go near the baby, let alone let her suckle on her breast.

  The bond between them, now she was in the world, was not that strong and Mary-Anne was beginning to have doubts about keeping her. She wished she had taken her Aunt Patsy’s advice and left her on the poorhouse steps. She did love her in her own way, but was frightened that she could not bring her up in a decent lifestyle.

  ‘There, see, look at her now. She can hardly keep her eyes open. She’s even fallen asleep still sucking.’ Eliza kissed the small content face as she pulled the teat from Victoria’s mouth and wrapped her tightly in a blanket before pl
acing her in the cupboard drawer that was acting as a temporary cot. ‘She was only hungry, poor thing. You must not have enough milk,’ Eliza suggested gently.

  ‘I don’t like her on me.’ Mary-Anne pulled a face. ‘I think about her bastard father nearly doing the same thing to me and I feel sick with the thought of it.’

  ‘Well, bottle it is then from now on. She’ll not take any hurt.’ Eliza bent down and stroked the dark-haired baby before she went to the sink to wash the bottle out. ‘It’ll have been the big day for the Ellershaws, I heard the bells ringing. I hope our dresses looked all right. I nearly thought of going to watch and then I thought better of it.’

  ‘That poor dizzy Priscilla doesn’t know what she’s marrying into. He’ll never be faithful; he’ll just be like his father.’ Mary-Anne stood next to the sleeping Victoria and looked down at her, thinking that she was part Ellershaw, a part she hoped would never raise its head.

  ‘I don’t know, he might just be the opposite – it sometimes works like that. I don’t think he takes after his father so much. Can you not remember Bill once saying that Ellershaw was in a mood because his lad wanted nothing to do with the pit, and that he wasn’t worth anything?’ Eliza sat down next to Mary-Anne and her baby and looked at both of them. ‘Perhaps he’s different.’

  ‘No, he’s not. They are both made of the same stuff.’ Mary-Anne had no intention of telling her sister about the younger Ellershaw’s offer to her now. ‘I only hope this one takes after me.’ Mary-Anne gazed into the fire, she was feeling low and could have cried easily if Eliza had not been there She felt used and dirty and there was nobody there to love her.