by Anne Bennett
Chrissie looked at Angela, horrified. She’d intended never to say that to anyone, and certainly not this woman she still didn’t trust at all.
Angela smiled. ‘It was the look in your eyes that gave it away when you were talking about Eileen teaching you.’
Chrissie sighed. She couldn’t fight this, for she had no control over what her eyes were doing, and so she said, ‘All right, so what if I do? This has got to be a secret.’
‘A secret from who?’
‘Aunt Eileen. Well, everybody really, in case she gets to hear.’
‘But why?’ Angela cried. ‘I’m sure she’d be delighted.’
‘No, she wouldn’t,’ Chrissie maintained. ‘She’d be upset.’
‘Why on earth would she be upset?’
‘Because I know she can’t afford for me to stay on for those extra years at school, let alone the college fees and books and things. I don’t want her scrimping and scraping, trying to afford it and likely going without herself. So it’s better she doesn’t know what I want to do.’
Angela was silent when Chrissie finished, for she knew every word she said was true. Chrissie had a good grip of the situation at home. But Angela also knew she could get the money to fund Chrissie’s education, by selling her jewellery in the bank. She had always earmarked it for Connie to go to university, but she wanted to go in for librarianship, a course that the librarians had explained would be funded by the library. She knew, though, she would have to break her word to Chrissie and discuss it all with Eileen first.
A few days later Angela called to see Eileen. This was unusual, but Angela didn’t dislike the woman and anyway, she knew how much she owed her. Eileen made tea and as soon as the cups were before them Angela said, ‘Pardon me just calling like this, but I thought … I wondered …’
‘What is it, Angela? Why are you so agitated?’
‘I think you may think me presumptuous. Plus, I’m just not good at talking about the past. I suppose I had to keep quiet about so much to protect others, as well as myself. I was afraid if I began raking up memories, I might let something slip. For example, Mary started to tell Connie things and one day she mentioned the locket.’
‘The locket?’
‘Yes, the one that hangs around Chrissie’s neck.’
‘She is very taken with that locket,’ Eileen said.
‘Maybe that was because that locket was the only thing she had from me,’ Angela said, and at Eileen’s quizzical look she went on: ‘My real mother left that locket with Mary McClusky when Mary took me in to live with them to escape the TB my siblings were suffering from. When they all died, along with my parents, I stayed on living with the McCluskys, and Mary gave me that locket when I married Barry. I put it in Chrissie’s hand when I left her on the workhouse steps. It should by rights have gone to Connie, but Chrissie was being deprived of so much, and it was all I had to give her.’
‘Tell Chrissie that, just as you told me,’ Eileen advised. ‘She’d like that. She really wants to get to know you.’
‘I will one day,’ said Angela, ‘but what I really came to ask you was, if you would tell me how you came to take Chrissie from the workhouse, and what sort of child she was then? Just as she wants to know me better, I need to know her story too.’ Angela continued, ‘So I would be interested in hearing anything you have to tell me.’
‘John was in the workhouse that winter’s night when you left the baby,’ Eileen said. ‘He was there when they uncurled her hand and saw that she was still holding the locket. Masters, the superintendent at the workhouse, told him families sell everything saleable to prevent them going into the workhouse, and that children seldom arrive with anything even remotely valuable.’
‘I am surprised they let her keep the locket,’ Angela said. ‘Many times afterwards I thought I had been stupid to leave it with her.’
‘Well, they didn’t let her keep it as such,’ Eileen said. ‘Masters took charge of it because some of the trustees wanted to sell it and use the money for Chrissie’s keep, but he opposed that. John said he is quite decent, for a workhouse superintendent.’ Then she lowered her voice and said, ‘Not even Chrissie knows this, but when she first came to live with us, the locket was missing. We were very upset about it and the only good thing was that Chrissie knew nothing about it.’
‘Had someone taken it?’
Eileen nodded her head. ‘A dishonest employee,’ she said. ‘He’d taken it and pawned it and pushed the pawn ticket into a hole he had bored in his mattress. Then when the convalescence ward at the hospital was set up in the aftermath of the Great War, they needed more beds and asked the workhouse if they had any spares. The bed belonging to the man who stole the locket was nearly thrown to one side because the mattress was torn and packed with paper. Closer examination revealed the pawn ticket!’
‘I’m so glad you got it back.’
‘Oh, so were we, for Chrissie’s sake really,’ Eileen said. ‘When we gave it to Chrissie and told her that her mother had left it with her when she left her at the workhouse, she was speechless, overwhelmed that she had something that might have belonged to her mother.’
‘I remember feeling that way when Mary gave it to me,’ Angela said quite wistfully as she recalled the love Mary had freely given her as far back as she could remember. And she realised Eileen had done that for her daughter. ‘Thank you for rescuing Chrissie from the workhouse. I don’t think I have ever thanked you.’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Eileen said. ‘You’ve had a lot on your mind. But back to the necklace, I think Chrissie hoped there would be some clue in that locket. She really wanted to know two things: Why, in her eyes, you didn’t want her; and why you left her on the steps. “I often felt like a bag of washing from the laundry,” she once said to me, “that comes every week and is left on the steps in a wicker basket, just as I was.”’
‘Oh, how unloved she must have felt,’ Angela said as another pang of guilt smote her heart.
‘The workhouse staff don’t think love is necessary to be doled out along with the sparse, inadequate food they are given,’ Eileen said. ‘It’s wrong, of course. Love was something we gave a lot of to Chrissie when she came to live with us. If you are loved as a child, you feel you are worth something, valued. Unless you know that, why would you try to make your life better? In fact, what would be the point of anything?’
Angela shook her head helplessly as she imagined her child growing up behind those grim walls – unwanted, unloved, totally uncared for. She realised Stan must have felt that anguish too, being forcibly separated from his son for years. She remembered how overjoyed he was when they were reunited and could make up for the years they had missed out on.
‘We couldn’t adopt Chrissie in the normal way,’ Eileen said. ‘As you said, that’s never done, but people do sometimes have a girl brought out to help them in some way. It’s seen as a good thing, a sort of training for going into service, which is all the workhouse children are deemed fit for – the girls, at any rate. The average age to take a girl out is usually twelve.’
‘Chrissie wasn’t twelve, though, was she?’
‘No,’ Eileen said, ‘we couldn’t wait until she was twelve because the workhouses were closing, with the children being sent to any orphanages that had space. That could have been anywhere in the city, or further. As I said, John kept a surreptitious eye on Chrissie and didn’t want to lose touch altogether, so he suggested we take her into our house. Both of us wanted to give at least one of the children the chance of a better life. Of course, we couldn’t get her out using that as a reason, for no one does that. People might have become suspicious, so John said that my arthritis was bothering me and we wanted a young girl to help me. Chrissie was then almost eleven. I don’t know how John squared that with his conscience, because he is a stickler for the truth.’
‘But you do have arthritis?’
‘Yes, but it’s not bad all the time. Anyway, Chrissie was nearly eleven and had three mo
re years at school.’
‘At least you gave her the chance of some proper schooling,’ Angela said. ‘I don’t know for sure, but judging from the way the workhouses are in providing adequate food and clothes for the children, I wouldn’t have said educating them was high on their list of priorities.’
Eileen smiled. ‘And you are so right,’ she said. ‘However, I didn’t send her to school initially. I taught her at home.’
‘Oh,’ Angela said, for she hadn’t been aware of that.
‘I am a qualified teacher,’ Eileen said. ‘And I didn’t want to subject Chrissie to the rigours of school until she had more flesh on her bones and adequate clothes for the weather. Also, though your daughter is far from stupid, as you presumed, any education she got at the workhouse was very basic. I also didn’t want her to be too far behind her peers. There was no need for her to be, because she is a very bright girl.’
‘I know you encouraged her to go to the library, for Connie often saw her there,’ Angela said. ‘Is she still as keen?’
‘Oh yes,’ Eileen said. ‘And she told us about your daughter too, though of course we didn’t know whose daughter she was then, and Chrissie just called her the girl with the golden ringlets.’
‘And the girl that she was so drawn to is her sister,’ Angela said. ‘That might take some getting used to, for both of them.’
‘Yes,’ Eileen agreed. ‘But it’s lovely, and I am sure that one day they’ll be the best of friends.’ And she went on to tell Angela of the places she had taken Chrissie in order for her to gain new experiences that she could maybe share with her peers when she did start attending school.
Angela listened to all the things Eileen had done for her daughter with tears in her eyes and eventually she said, ‘Eileen, you have floored me, and I really don’t know how to thank you.’
‘There’s no need,’ Eileen said. ‘I enjoyed it.’
‘But … but I was even selfish enough to feel upset because you seemed to know more about my daughter than I did. I had no right to feel that at all.’
‘I’ve never had a child of my own,’ Eileen said musingly. ‘I never felt the lack, for I was almost grown when John was born and I helped my mother rear him and loved him dearly. Then I met my husband and began to look forward to welcoming our own family, but before we could do that he was killed in the Great War. Then I heard John’s cook and housekeeper had left to work in the more lucrative munitions factories, and I was glad then I had no children to see to, because I was able to come and look after my brother. But when John brought Chrissie into the house, I looked at that scrawny, undersized child – so nervous, terrified of putting a foot wrong and getting into trouble – and something twisted in my heart. Angela, Mrs McClusky, I love your daughter as if I’d given birth to her. But she is not my child and I do understand any bitterness you might have towards me. I have loved your child too much.’
Angela suddenly felt immensely sorry for Eileen, who had been robbed of her husband and children of her own, and yet she didn’t appear to feel sorry for herself. Angela recognised that she was a selfless and compassionate woman, willing and able to open her heart and her home to a destitute, abandoned waif from the workhouse.
‘Eileen, you are too gracious,’ Angela said. ‘You cannot love a child too much. Love is expandable. When you have your first child, you love that child with all your heart, and when you have a second child you love them too, but you don’t love the first one any less. Chrissie has chosen to live with you now, which is perfectly understandable.’ She hesitated and with a sigh went on: ‘Eileen, I’m breaking a confidence telling you this, but I think you ought to know, for it concerns Chrissie. But I’d rather she didn’t know I had shared it with you.’
‘Mrs McClusky,’ said Eileen, ‘though it is John who hears confessions, I am often trusted with many secrets from women of the parish, and I never reveal these to anyone. So Chrissie will never know what we speak about this day.’
‘Right,’ Angela said. ‘Do you know Chrissie would like to be a teacher like you when she grows up?’
‘I did think that at one time,’ Eileen said. ‘But when I asked her, she said definitely not.’
‘She said that because she didn’t think you could afford it.’
‘She’s right,’ Eileen said. ‘It would be a real struggle to. I thought of maybe getting her into a secretarial college somewhere.’
‘She wants to be a teacher like you,’ Angela said to Eileen, ‘and I could fund it, if … if you wouldn’t mind.’
‘Why should I mind something that helps Chrissie?’ Eileen said, although secretly she did mind very much. She didn’t begrudge all the years of providing for Chrissie, but she felt resentful that her natural mother could now pop up and give Chrissie her heart’s desire, when Eileen couldn’t. What a daft attitude! thought Eileen to herself. Stop being silly and just think about Chrissie.
Angela heard Eileen’s words but watched her face as she fought to control her conflicting emotions. She said gently, ‘You don’t think I am doing this to buy Chrissie’s affection?’
‘Well, aren’t you?’
‘No,’ Angela said. ‘I couldn’t do that if I wanted to, for it’s you Chrissie loves like a mother, and that will never change.’
‘If you don’t mind my asking, how do you have the money to pay for Chrissie’s education?’
Angela told Eileen about the jewellery her old employer, George Maitland, had gifted to her. He had put it in the bank for safe keeping. The bank manager had told Angela the jewellery had belonged to Mr Maitland’s mother and he was leaving it to Angela as a personal gift, totally separate from his will.
‘Such a kind man, he must have been,’ Eileen said. ‘And yet you have no idea of the value of the jewellery?’
‘None at all,’ Angela said. ‘The bank manager said there were some nice pieces amongst it, but he admitted he was no jeweller. He has since offered to have them valued for me, and I am sure he will sell them for me if I wished him to.’
‘And this money was to be for Connie?’
‘Yes, for her education.’
‘Have you told Connie of your change of plans for the money?’
‘Connie doesn’t need the money. She said as much.’
‘But she knows about the jewellery?’ Eileen asked.
‘Yes, my mother told her.’
‘They are, of course, your jewels, and you can give them to whoever you like. But I beseech you, please tell Connie of your change of plan. More than anything, I want Chrissie and Connie to continue building a strong, sisterly relationship. If Connie is left in the dark on this matter, it could disrupt that completely.’
‘I shouldn’t think Connie would object,’ said Angela, who had been so excited about the opportunities she could provide for Chrissie, she hadn’t given much thought to how Connie might feel about it all.
‘You know your daughter much better than me, but she might feel a bit pushed out,’ Eileen said. ‘I know things between Connie and Chrissie are good just at the moment. Let’s make sure we keep it that way.’
‘You think I need to explain it to Connie in ways that she will understand, before I mention it to Chrissie?’ Angela said. ‘Yes, that’s what I will do. Eileen, you are a very wise woman.
‘And I still would like to get to know Chrissie a little better,’ continued Angela, ‘and I know you will help me do that, because you are that kind of person. We both love her, so with no jealousy or resentment between us, together we can watch over her as she leaves childhood behind and begins her journey as an adult, and both of us can take joy in it.’
Shortly after this, the doctors told Angela that Connie was able to come home. ‘She’ll have to come back often for physiotherapy, but we really think she will recover quicker at home, especially with all the support you seem to give her.’
Chrissie was visiting Connie when she received the news that she was to be allowed home, and she was thrilled for her sister. ‘I’ll still c
ome and visit you, even when you’re not in hospital, Connie, for you won’t be properly back on your feet for a while, I wouldn’t think.’
Feeling that she had cleared the way with Eileen, Angela wasted no time in asking Chrissie if she wanted to go for a walk one day.
‘If Connie is coming home tomorrow, why don’t you come over for tea on Friday afternoon?’ she suggested. ‘In fact, come a bit earlier, and we can go for a walk. It would be lovely to get some fresh air after spending so much time in this hospital. And then we three can all sit and have tea together.’
Angela was desperate to make up for lost time with the child she’d given away, but she was also aware that the best way to develop a relationship with Chrissie was to take it slowly. She had been so nervous the night before, fussing around Connie even more than usual in a bid to take her mind off it. Stan had noticed and tried to reassure her that it would all be okay, but Angela couldn’t help the nerves. She had originally just thought of inviting Chrissie in for tea, but as Stan said, sometimes it was easier to talk when you were doing something else as well.
It was a bright day – cold, but sunny – and Angela and Chrissie set out at a leisurely pace. ‘This seems a real treat, somehow,’ Angela told Chrissie, ‘walking just for the pleasure of it, not to deliver something, or buy anything.’ Chrissie is such a sweet-natured child, thought Angela. Chrissie chatted away quite happily, answering Angela’s questions and asking questions about the shops they passed.
Angela knew she should be thoroughly enjoying her company, and yet couldn’t help but feel a sense of unease. It was the same guilt she’d carried for the last twelve years, she thought, that had churned her stomach every day and every night. Just because she had been reunited with Chrissie, didn’t mean that all was forgiven and forgotten, but Angela didn’t know how to even start making amends.
