by Maggie Hope
Contents
Cover
About the Book
About the Author
Also by Maggie Hope
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Copyright
About the Book
Elizabeth Nelson is only ten years old when her mother dies in childbirth. With her father gone, the siblings are separate; Her Aunt Betty takes baby Kit. Elizabeth and her brother, Jimmy, are sent to a children’s home and Alice and Jenny are sent into foster care.
Life in the home is hard, but Elizabeth is determined to look after her brother and make a better life for them both. Working as a nurse gives Elizabeth a purpose but she risks everything by falling for local mine owner, Jack Benson. Wounded at Gallipoli, Jack is far above her in wealth and station. Elizabeth cannot marry him and she risks losing her nursing place if there is any hint of impropriety about her conduct.
Then Elizabeth learns that her sister, Jenny, has been adopted by an abusive farmer. Torn between her hopeless love for Jack and her sister, must Elizabeth make an extreme sacrifice to reunite her family?
About the Author
Maggie Hope was born and raised in County Durham. She worked as a nurse for many years, before giving up her career to raise her family.
Also by Maggie Hope
A Wartime Nurse
A Mother’s Gift
A Nurse’s Duty
A Daughter’s
Gift
Maggie Hope
This book is dedicated to my sisters.
Chapter One
ON THE DAY that Elizabeth, Jimmy and their two younger sisters were to go to the workhouse, Elizabeth rose early, washed and dressed in her best dress, the one she had kept for school in the old days, the days before Mam had died. She was dry-eyed; after all it was too late. Both she and Jimmy had prayed and prayed for days now that their father would come back and say to Auntie Betty and Uncle Ben, ‘Of course the bairns aren’t going to the workhouse! What on earth were you thinking about? I’ve come back to look after them.’ And then he would open his arms and grin his bright, devil-may-care grin and hug all the children to him. Sometimes he would have a travelling bag with him and would open it and bring out presents for them all, just like Father Christmas did at the Sunday School Christmas party. But she didn’t really care whether he had presents or not, so long as he came himself.
Maybe it wasn’t too late, she thought as she combed her hair and tied it back from her face. Maybe he would still come before the man from the Welfare. She glanced at Jimmy, his teeth clenched together and his brow wrinkled with a frown even in sleep. Downstairs she heard the back door open and someone come in. Elizabeth hurried down. She hadn’t even lit the fire yet, her aunt might be angry. Auntie Betty was there, holding Kit against her shoulder for all the world as though he were her baby. And he wasn’t, was he?
‘Give him to me, I’ll give him his bread and milk,’ Elizabeth said, holding out her arms.
‘He’s had his breakfast,’ said Auntie Betty, and held the baby closer. She didn’t like giving him up at all. But this time, when Elizabeth gave her a hard stare, she did. Elizabeth sat down on her mother’s chair and rocked the baby gently. Kit put up a hand and patted her cheek and smiled, showing milky gums, and Elizabeth’s heart overflowed with love and grief, but she bit her lip hard and by sheer force of will didn’t cry.
Betty looked down at her niece and nephew. ‘I can’t help it, you know, Lizzie,’ she said. ‘I’ll take Kit but I can’t take the rest of you. Ben has put his foot down. When you’re older you’ll understand.’
Elizabeth looked hard at her. ‘Don’t call me Lizzie. Only my mam called me Lizzie. My name is Elizabeth – I was called after you, remember? And anyroad, I know you always wanted a baby. Now you’ve got our Christopher.’ She turned her attention back to the baby, cooing to him, and he gurgled back.
‘Don’t cheek me,’ said Auntie Betty, ‘I’m your mam’s sister, remember? Our Jane would have wanted me to look after Kit.’
Elizabeth turned her face away and Betty sighed and turned her attention to the fire, raking out the still-warm ashes, laying paper and sticks from a pit-prop offcut, placing cinders carefully on top. Elizabeth watched her silently. She touched the top of the baby’s head with her lips. The hair felt soft and downy.
I’m nearly ten, she thought. If I’d been older they would have let me keep the bairns here. But I’m not and Auntie Betty has given us away to the Welfare and we’re going to the workhouse. It is a fact, and Miss High says facts can’t be changed. Miss High was her headmistress at school and so knew everything.
Betty sat back on her heels, watching the flames lick round the cinders and coal, listening to the sticks crackling. A faint warmth crept into the kitchen.
‘You’re letting us go to the workhouse,’ said Elizabeth, her tone accusing. She had screwed herself up to say it and Kit, who had been leaning against her thin chest, felt the rapid increase in her heartbeat and looked up into her face uncertainly. She took his little hand in hers. ‘Mam always said she would do anything but let us go to the workhouse. That’s what she said.’
And that was why she had been working in the turnip field when she died and Elizabeth had been working with her. She shut her mind to the memory though, it hurt too much.
‘Elizabeth, it’s not the workhouse where you’re going. How many times do I have to tell you?’ Betty rose to her feet and picked up the iron kettle, taking it to the tap in the wall by the door, bringing it back full and settling it on the fire. ‘It’s the Children’s Home, the one along Escomb Road. It’s a nice new building, and you’ll like it there.’
She sighed again. What was the good? She could say it as often as she wanted but Elizabeth and Jimmy had it set in their minds that they were going to the dreaded workhouse, the place most feared by the pit folk. And yet surely Elizabeth, never mind Jimmy, wasn’t old enough to know what the workhouse was? She blamed it on their mother.
Betty had had one last try with Ben the evening before. ‘We’ll get help from the Welfare,’ she’d said. ‘Howay, Ben, think of the little ’uns.’
‘One’s enough to have in the house.’ He had gazed steadily at her. ‘If you hadn’t been barren, me girl, we’d have had one of our own by now and then they’d all have gone. Think yourself lucky you’ve got to keep one. I’m not one for bringing up other men’s bairns.’
Now, as she watched Elizabeth holding Kit so possessively, thinking what a proper little mother she was and no mistake, Betty hardened her heart. It was no good, the others had to go, Ben wouldn’t let her keep them. But she could keep Kit. That was the most important thing, not to have to give him back to anyone now that Jane was gone. Kit was hers and these last few d
ays had been so sweet with a baby of her own to fill her empty arms, stilling the hunger. Before, Jane had always taken them back.
After all, the other children were only going a couple of miles away into the town; they could still see their brother occasionally. People said the new Children’s Home was a great improvement on the old system, they would probably like it there. Times had changed. It was 1910, the old Victorian poor laws were going. The old folk had pensions now. The Poor Law Guardians were enlightened folk, more humane. Yes, the children would be well looked after and Elizabeth would get to go to school instead of slaving in the fields with her mother. She was doing them all a favour, Betty reckoned. The bairns would thank her for it when they were old enough to understand properly.
So Betty excused herself but in her heart she knew she would send the others to the opposite ends of the earth, anywhere, just so she could keep her baby. That’s what he was now, hers. And Elizabeth had held him long enough.
‘Now then, Lizzie, give me the baby and you go and get the others out of bed. It’s nearly time for us to go.’ Betty’s voice was confident, happy, she had convinced herself she was taking the right course and going about it the best way. That was one thing she’d promised them: the workhouse cart wouldn’t be calling for them, showing them up in front of the neighbours. No, she was going to take them into Bishop Auckland herself, say goodbye properly.
Elizabeth nodded and did as she was told, though as she handed the baby over she said, ‘Don’t call me Lizzie, my name’s Elizabeth,’ yet again to her aunt.
‘Oh, Lizzie … Elizabeth … what does it matter?’ said Betty impatiently.
Elizabeth went upstairs and woke little Jenny, who was only three and didn’t know what was happening, and Alice who was four and cried for her mam every day and all day. Jimmy was awake, lying at the foot of the bed which had his sisters at the top, curled up so that his legs didn’t disturb them.
‘Is it time to go?’ he asked Elizabeth. His dark blue eyes, fringed with long black lashes that Mam had said were a waste on a boy they were so beautiful, were open wide with fright, his face white.
‘It’s time,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Howay, pet, you get dressed while I see to the bairns.’ Jimmy was six and quite capable of dressing himself, though the laces of his boots were often trailing on the ground; he couldn’t get the knack of tying the knot. So his sister, who was nine and almost grown-up – for hadn’t their mam left school and gone to work when she was nine? – dressed Jenny and the grizzling Alice and tied Jimmy’s laces.
‘Lizzie! Howay now, we have to go,’ Auntie Betty shouted, and they went down the stairs to where she was waiting to take them away from Morton Main.
‘Don’t call me Lizzie,’ Elizabeth said again to her aunt, but Betty didn’t look at her. They drank hot tea with condensed milk and ate a slice of bread with the last of Mam’s plum jam, then Elizabeth took a hand of each of the girls and led them out of the house, Jimmy trailing behind.
‘Ta-ra, pets,’ said their neighbour Mrs Wearmouth who had come out to the back gate to see them off. ‘You look after yoursels, mind.’
‘Ta-ra,’ chorused the children politely.
Elizabeth pulled on the thick, black, hated cotton stocking and fixed the garter above her knee. Then the black boy’s boots with the toe caps and steel segs in the heels and toes to prolong wear. The boots she hated even more than the stockings. It was almost a year since she had come to the Home and had to wear the stockings and boots but still she hated putting them on in the mornings. Not but what she’d worn black boy’s boots at home in Morton Main, she conceded as she pulled on the other, but these were worse somehow, heavier.
‘Pit boots,’ Julia Perkins called them, smirking sideways at the group of girls who always followed her around. Like a queen’s court, Elizabeth thought, having just done the Tudor queens in history class. Julia was the daughter of a builder in the town and lived in Cockton Hill, the posh end. She was the scourge of the girls from the Home, her contemptuous tongue as sharp as a knife.
Elizabeth took no notice of her, not outwardly at any rate. As she always told Jimmy whenever she got chance to have a talk with him, which wasn’t very often, the boys being in a separate building: ‘Never let them see they had got to you.’ She would have told Alice and Jenny an’ all, but they had left the Home, been fostered. Elizabeth had found out where they were, though. Oh, yes, she’d been determined on that. When Matron had refused to tell her she had managed to get into the office early one morning, slipping in when the cleaner went to the cloakroom for a pail of hot water, and she’d found the records. It hadn’t been so hard. Elizabeth had worked out what she would do for days beforehand, getting up early and watching and listening.
Anyway Alice was fostered with a shopkeeper and his wife out Coundon way, and Jenny (at the thought Elizabeth’s heart raced with worry) miles away up the dale, on a sheep farm. Jenny was so little and she had a bad cough. What would she do on a cold, bleak moor up in Weardale? And how could she, Elizabeth, keep an eye out for her there? Jimmy had been fostered there too for a while but he had run away and gone back to Morton Main. Uncle Ben had dragged him back to the Home, though, after first giving him a clout around the ear which made it ring and still gave him trouble.
‘You should have stayed!’ Elizabeth had shouted at him. ‘You should have looked after Jenny.’
‘Eeh, it was bloody awful, man,’ said her brother. ‘I had to sleep in the barn wi’ the cow, I never got a hot dinner neither. And I had to work all the time. The farmer wouldn’t let me go to school and when the kiddy-catcher came, he said I’d been playing the nick!’ He gazed at Elizabeth with eyes now definitely too big for his face and she saw how thin he was.
‘You’re just after a bit of sympathy, you,’ she said. ‘The guardians wouldn’t let it happen.’
‘Aye, well, they did. They don’t believe me, do they?’ he answered. ‘Our Jenny’ll be all right, man, o’ course she will. She sleeps in the house. She doesn’t have to go out on the moor after sheep, does she?’
‘She’s only little.’
‘Aye. Well, I tell you, she’s all right. The missus there, she’ll look after our Jenny.’ And with that, Elizabeth had to be content.
Sighing, she pulled on the blue and white checked dress which all the girls in the Home wore. It was cut straight, with just some bunching at the back of the waist, and reached to the top of her boots, showing every ugly little bit of them. She pulled on her apron and combed her unruly hair, tying it back as best she could with cotton tape. Ah, well, she thought as she joined the other girls in her room, standing in a long line at the foot of the beds, waiting for Matron to do her rounds, there was nothing she could do about her dress or her boots or stockings so there was no use fretting about them.
The door opened and Matron swept in, tall and stern, her eyes raking the room so that every girl there felt guilty and cast an involuntary glance back to make sure her bed was made properly, every personal possession packed away neatly in a locker.
‘Good morning, girls,’ Matron boomed and without pausing walked round the room.
‘Morning, Matron,’ chorused the orphans as they did every morning but Sunday. That was Matron’s day off and the highlight of the week because her deputy ruled that day. Miss Rowland was everything Matron was not: warm and loving with the young ones, always ready to talk and smile and even laugh with the older ones. And, best of all, she was always ready to listen to them, interested in all their doings. Elizabeth had asked her why Jenny was to stay on the farm up Weardale when Jimmy had said how awful it was but Miss Rowland just said she thought the guardians would have checked the farm out and Jenny would be fine.
Today, though, was Saturday and Auntie Betty was coming to take Elizabeth and Jimmy out. It was the first time for three months and Elizabeth could hardly contain herself, waiting to see little Kit. Betty was coming at two o’clock sharp and right on the dot Elizabeth and Jimmy were waiting in the entrance of the H
ome. Half an hour later their aunt was there, walking along Escomb Road as if she had all the time in the world. But what could they say? Kit was walking by her side, his hand in hers. After all, he was only eighteen months old. Elizabeth’s heart swelled with love as she saw him.
‘Hello there, you two, I see you’re ready and waiting,’ Auntie Betty said cheerfully. Jimmy’s eyes were a bit too bright. He found it so hard to wait about, and he’d been waiting since early morning for the clock to get round to two and every minute after that was as long as an hour to him. He’d thought Auntie Betty wasn’t coming, like the time she hadn’t turned up at Easter, just sent a couple of dyed eggs for them. She looked away now and pretended she hadn’t noticed his tears so close.
‘By, it takes a long time with our Kit,’ she remarked to Elizabeth, ‘his little legs don’t go very fast.’
Kit was hanging back, hiding his face in Betty’s skirts. She pulled him round and swung him up into her arms. ‘Look now, Kit, see who we’ve come to see. It’s your sister Lizzie and that’s your brother Jimmy. Don’t you remember them?’
Elizabeth held out her arms to him. ‘Hello, Kit,’ she said. ‘Mind, what a big boy you’ve grown, haven’t you?’ But he buried his head in his aunt’s neck and refused to look and Elizabeth was cut to the quick even though he was changing from a baby into a little boy already and she wouldn’t have recognised him herself if it hadn’t been for his eyes, the same dark blue as his mam’s had been. And, of course, his Auntie Betty’s and Jimmy’s and her own too.
‘Are we going for a picnic in the park, Auntie Betty?’ asked Jimmy, looking doubtfully at the empty basket she was carrying.
‘Well, I haven’t got much time …’ she began, but stopped as she saw the disappointment in his and his sister’s expression though Elizabeth’s was quickly masked. Kit began to struggle in her arms and she covered the moment by bending down to stand him on his feet.
‘You hold his other hand, Lizzie,’ she invited. ‘In fact, you can hold one of his hands each.’