by Maggie Hope
‘’Cos she cannot, she hasn’t got a key, that’s why,’ said Peart. ‘And I haven’t heard enough reason why I should let you in neither, you’re still as cheeky as you were as a bairn.’
‘Because if you don’t I’ll go straight to the guardians at Auckland, I will, and I’ll tell them you keep Jenny locked up. Where’s your wife anyroad? They don’t let bairns go to lone men, not nowadays,’ Elizabeth protested.
Peart stared at her then he hawked in his throat and spat into the rank grass by the door. ‘The wife’s ran off,’ he said flatly. ‘I’m not having Jenny doing the same. There’s nowt the matter wi’ the lass, though. I’ll open the door. I was going to anyway. But you needn’t think I’m frightened of the guardians, I’m frightened o’ nobody … so think on.’
He took an ancient iron key from under a pantile over the doorway and inserted it into the lock. The door swung open and brother and sister looked in, Elizabeth in some trepidation at what she might see.
‘Go on then, you might as well get on in,’ Peart said, in grudging invitation.
‘Thank you,’ she answered and stepped over the threshold straight into a large room. Her mind registered the fact that the flagged floor was newly swept, the table scrubbed and set for a meal. A fire burned in the ancient grate and a black kettle stood by the fire. The room was lit by a window set in the opposite wall. A clean window; without curtains or any other adornment, the paintwork cracked and in places the wood bare, but clean nevertheless. On the floor before the fire there was even an old rag rug.
For all this her attention was focused on the slight figure standing in front of the window, not five feet tall, a girl with black hair swept back from her face, a face Elizabeth couldn’t see properly because of the way she stood against the light.
‘Jenny?’ she said. ‘Jenny, is that you?’
The girl didn’t move but cast a look of apprehension over Elizabeth’s shoulder at the man. Peart strode in followed by his dog which slunk into a corner and lay down, facing the room.
‘What’s the matter wi’ you, lass?’ snarled Peart. ‘Do you not know your own sister? Here’s your brother an’ all, come to see you. Have you not got a welcome for them?’ His voice was loud, unnecessarily hearty, and the girl jumped and came forward.
‘By, our Elizabeth,’ said Jimmy. ‘She’s a scrawny wee thing, isn’t she?’
‘She gets her share to eat,’ Peart said sharply. ‘I don’t starve the lass, if that’s what you think.’
‘No, well, I’m sure the guardians keep an eye on you,’ Jimmy was stung into replying.
Elizabeth didn’t hear. She went towards her youngest sister, put her hands on her shoulders and gazed down at her. Jenny looked back timidly and Elizabeth leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. Jenny still hadn’t moved.
‘Don’t you know me?’ Elizabeth asked. But of course Jenny didn’t, she wouldn’t. Hadn’t she been no more than four when she was taken away from the Children’s Home? No more than three when their mother died?
‘She doesn’t look like us,’ said Jimmy. No more she did; though her hair was as dark as the others’, her eyes were brown, her skin olive.
‘Jenny’s like our dad,’ Elizabeth said softly.
‘Howay, lass, bestir yoursel’,’ said Mr Peart. ‘Where’s me tea?’
Jenny moved then, hurrying about pushing the kettle on to the embers of the fire, spooning tea into an old pewter pot. She brought half a loaf from a cupboard in the corner and a hunk of hard cheese. A jar of pickle completed the meal. Then Jenny glanced hesitantly at Elizabeth and Jimmy and back to her foster father. ‘Will I pour tea for them an’ all?’ she asked.
‘Aye, go on,’ he replied, grudgingly.
‘Don’t bother, we can’t stay long,’ Elizabeth said. ‘We just wanted to see …’
‘Aye, well, you’ve seen her,’ he snapped. ‘You can see she’s all right. Now you can be ganning away back home.’
But Elizabeth wasn’t about to turn tail and go on his say so. ‘I’d like a word with her first,’ she said. So far Jenny had said nothing at all to her or Jimmy.
‘I’m not stopping you,’ Peart retorted. He put his elbows on the table and sat forward over his meal, cutting chunks from the cheese and putting them in his mouth. He grinned, showing a mouthful of half-chewed food.
But nothing Elizabeth or Jimmy said brought a response from Jenny, though she did give a sort of half-smile once. And the day was getting on and brother and sister had to be back in Frosterley for the last train to Bishop Auckland. At last Elizabeth nodded to Jimmy.
‘We’ll have to go,’ she said. ‘Is it all right if we come back next week?’
‘Please yoursels,’ said Peart. Jenny started forward as though she was going to object but she checked herself and said nothing, simply glanced again at her foster father.
They went out quietly, going to the door on their own. Peart didn’t even get up from the table. Outside the afternoon was turning into evening. They hurried up the yard and out by the rowan tree, on up where the path branched. They didn’t speak until they finally got on to the metalled road which led to the station.
‘A queer set up that, isn’t it?’ Jimmy commented, glancing sideways at his sister.
‘She was all right though,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Did you notice? She was clean, her dress was clean too, and it wasn’t worn. It was him that was filthy.’ She shuddered and wrinkled her nose at the memory of him.
‘Never mind, pet,’ said Jimmy, in the tones of a father comforting his child, ‘we’ll go back. She’ll be better next time.’
Chapter Five
‘CAN I HAVE a word, Miss Rowland?’
Elizabeth stepped inside the office and closed the door quietly behind her. Miss Rowland, her dark hair all but covered by the enormous ‘Sister Dora’ cap she had taken to wearing since coming to Newcomb Hall the month before, looked up from the papers she was studying and smiled at the girl. Encouraged, Elizabeth stepped up to the desk and gazed earnestly at the woman who had been the only one she could talk to in the Children’s Home, and who was now Matron of the convalescent hospital. By, she thought, she blessed the day Miss Rowland got the transfer, she would never have dared ask the old Matron.
‘Yes, Elizabeth?’ Miss Rowland prompted.
‘I would like to be a nurse’s aide,’ said Elizabeth, rather baldly.
‘Don’t you like it in the laundry then?’
‘Oh, yes, it’s all right, and Mrs Poskett is nice, but I want to be a proper nurse when I’m old enough. I know I can’t until I’m eighteen, though. I think I would be a good help to the nurses now. I’m strong and fit …’ Her voice tailed off in a fit of anxiety that Miss Rowland might not agree.
‘Oh, I’m sure you would do well, Elizabeth. But if you’re needed in the laundry, you may have to stay there, at least for a while.’
Elizabeth’s face fell. She had keyed herself up to ask and now it looked as though Miss Rowland would refuse her request. The disappointment was so crushing she hardly heard the Matron start to speak again.
‘You may have to stay in the laundry until I get another girl.’
‘Oh, yes, I can do that,’ Elizabeth cried when it sank in that she was going to be allowed to transfer after all. She jumped to her feet. ‘I’ll work hard, you see if I don’t, Miss Rowland.’
‘Indeed, I know you will.’
Elizabeth was elated when she left the office. She took the washing out to the lines, quite forgetting to keep a weather eye open for Private Wilson, and hummed ‘Dolly Grey’ under her breath as she pegged out the sheets, taking pleasure as she usually did in the sight of them blowing in the wind.
Jack Benson did not forget how the soldier had behaved; he sat in his window and watched, on guard for Private Wilson almost, as he had been wont to do since the last incident with him. He hardly knew why he did except that it was something to do to fill the empty hours. After all, girls from the mining villages were usually well able to look aft
er themselves, but still …
As he watched, he pondered what he was going to do when he went back to his own home. The Manor was only a mile away from the pit head and mining village but it was a world away in reality, hidden away in its own grounds, at the end of a long drive.
‘I really don’t know how we will manage, Jack,’ his mother had said on her last visit. She had walked beside his wheelchair, which was being pushed by a VAD, to a bench on the lawns of Newcomb Manor. ‘It’s so difficult to get servants these days. Things have changed a lot since you went away, you’ve no idea.’
‘Yes, Mother, I’m sure you’re right,’ Jack had answered mildly.
Now he watched the girl outside as she picked up the washing basket and came back to the garden path. Even in her ugly overalls she was attractive and moved with a natural grace. Tendrils of hair had escaped from her cap. She pushed them back with a reddened hand, which was slim and shapely for all its apparent roughness.
She had approached him after the incident with the orderly, when he was out in the grounds sitting on his own.
‘I wanted to thank you, sir,’ she had begun hesitantly. ‘For stopping him … I mean, Private—’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Jack had said coldly, and the girl had blushed and stepped back. He had returned to his book, staring at the printed page though not taking in a word. Why had he acted like that? Only a prig could be offended at a laundry maid daring to speak to a gentleman. Oh, blow the girl! He would forget about her. The trouble was he hadn’t enough to occupy his thoughts.
She had disappeared now, back to the laundry room no doubt. Jack sat back in his chair and contemplated starting another book. But the nurse would be in in a moment, he was going to have his stumps measured for artificial feet. He touched one with the other, experimentally. It was only a little sore. He sighed. No doubt it would be painful getting used to wooden feet. But marvellous if he could walk.
Elizabeth was happy as she worked. She had been unaware of Captain Benson’s scrutiny. She scrubbed at stained collars and cuffs with a will and threw the garments into hot soapy water. ‘“Goodbye, Dolly, I must leave you”,’ she sang, ‘“though it breaks my heart to go”.’
‘Mind, you’re in a good mood,’ said Mrs Poskett.
Elizabeth looked up from a yellow-stained nightshirt. ‘I am,’ she said. ‘I’m going to be a nurse, Mrs Poskett. As soon as Miss Rowland can get a new laundry maid.’
Mrs Poskett sighed. ‘I’ll never get anyone else as good as you,’ she replied. ‘All the best lasses are working at the munitions. The pay’s better there.’
‘Somebody’ll come, Mrs Poskett,’ said Elizabeth. ‘I know it. Maybe someone from the Home.’
Her own pay would go up, she thought, even nurses’ aides got more money than laundry maids. A whole two shillings more. That was enough for the fare to Weardale, to see her sister.
She stopped singing as she thought of the broken-down, impoverished farm on Bollihope Common. And Jenny, little Jenny. She went over and over in her mind everything she had seen there, particularly the way her sister jumped to do that man’s bidding. Like a beaten puppy. And how thin she was. The worried expression she seemed to wear all the time had haunted Elizabeth’s dreams. Oh, she wished she could go up there this Sunday, see her sister again. Alice was all right, she was happy at Coundon. Kit would be all right, she knew, with Auntie Betty. (Her mind shied away from the memory of Uncle Ben.)
She had decided she would go to Morton Main this coming Sunday as she couldn’t go to Weardale; she could walk there over the fields. She would go to Mrs Wearmouth’s first, make sure Auntie Betty was at home. She had let too much time go by without seeing Kit, she knew that.
‘I’ll come with you,’ offered Jimmy. ‘Me and Tommy Gibson’ll both go.’
‘That’s grand, Jimmy,’ said Elizabeth, delighted that he should be so thoughtful. It was not until they were sitting on Mrs Wearmouth’s settee in her kitchen in West Row that she realised why the boys had really come.
They had drunk tea and eaten a slice each of Mrs Wearmouth’s excellent cake which the boys had praised lavishly until their hostess had simpered with pleasure and pressed another slice on them.
‘Mrs Wearmouth,’ said Jimmy, ‘we’ve got jobs at the pit.’
Elizabeth stared at them. She had been about to question Mrs Wearmouth about Kit and Auntie Betty and, if she could say it nonchalantly enough, where she thought Uncle Ben was likely to be this fine afternoon. Elizabeth fervently hoped he would be out behind the pit heaps playing pitch and toss ha’penny, along with the crowd of men they had seen on their way to West Row. Now all that was driven out of her head.
‘You haven’t!’ she exclaimed. The boys ignored her.
‘Have you, lads? Well, your dad was a pitman before he went off, Jimmy,’ Mrs Wearmouth said. ‘And both your grandads an’ all.’
‘Aye, I know,’ he replied. ‘But what I wanted to ask you is, do you know where we could get lodgings, like? I mean, we’d love to stay here, wouldn’t we, Tommy? We’d be no trouble, Mrs Wearmouth, an’ we’d pay the going rate an’ all.’
‘Eeh, I don’t know,’ she answered. But Elizabeth could see she was thinking seriously about it.
‘I mean, I know widows don’t get a big pension. It would help you an’ all,’ said Jimmy, gazing earnestly at Mrs Wearmouth.
Half an hour later they were on their way to Auntie Betty’s house and the boys had completed their negotiations for lodgings successfully. ‘Mind, you’re only bairns. I know a lot of lads start in the pit when they’re thirteen, and my man, he started when he was nine. But that doesn’t make you men, you know. I want you in at decent times an’ I want you to mind what I say.’
Jimmy and Tommy had glanced at each other but agreed with little hesitation. It was no more than they had expected.
‘And,’ said Elizabeth, ‘I didn’t want you going down the pit – remember that when it’s hard. And you’ll have to square it with the guardians.’
‘We’ve already asked them,’ said Jimmy. ‘For goodness’ sake, our Elizabeth, don’t be such a worrit. Anyroad, we won’t be going down the pit at first, we’ll be working on the bank.’
Mrs Wearmouth had assured them that Auntie Betty would be at home and that Uncle Ben always spent all afternoon on Sunday behind the pit heap with the pitch and toss players. So Elizabeth tried to forget about Jimmy and the pit, she was going to see her other brother after all this time. It was Kit who answered the knock on the door, it could only be him. There he stood, a seven-year-old boy, holding on to the door handle and looking out at them, so exactly like Jimmy had been at his age that Elizabeth felt her heart do a sudden flip.
‘Who is it, Christopher?’ a female voice called from within the house.
‘I don’t know, Mam,’ he answered.
Mam … he called her Mam, Elizabeth had time to think with a stab of pain. But of course he would, wasn’t Betty the only mother he knew? It was his so-called mam’s fault he didn’t know his own brother and sister.
‘I’m your sister Elizabeth,’ she said firmly to the child. ‘And this is your brother Jimmy.’ Kit stared at her, uncomprehending. ‘It’s Elizabeth,’ she called more loudly for Auntie Betty’s benefit, and stepped past Kit and into the kitchen in time to see the look of surprise and anger on her aunt’s face, swiftly masked.
‘You’d best come in then. Christopher, open the door properly, pet,’ Auntie Betty said.
The two older boys came in after Elizabeth, looking decidedly uncomfortable. They were not asked to sit down. Elizabeth stood by the hearth. Auntie Betty had an oven cloth in her hand. She had been lifting a tray of fairy cakes from the oven. Her face was flushed, whether from the heat or the surprise, Elizabeth didn’t know.
‘By, what a surprise,’ Betty said at last.
‘Yes, it’s a long while since we saw you,’ said Elizabeth.
‘Now then, our Lizzie, it’s not been easy for me, you know.
An’ I knew you were being well looked after at the Home.’ Auntie Betty sounded aggrieved at the implied criticism. Kit went and stood beside her. He stared at the two boys solemnly. ‘Time goes by anyroad, almost before you notice. I was always going to come and see you,’ Betty went on.
‘Aye, well,’ said Elizabeth. ‘But don’t call me Lizzie.’ She smiled at Kit. Oh, he was a bonny lad, well set up and tall for his age. Betty was doing a good job of bringing him up and he seemed fond enough of her. She could forgive her aunt a lot for that.
‘I’m your sister – Elizabeth, Kit,’ she said again.
‘I haven’t got a sister, nor a brother neither,’ he replied, and she was shocked.
‘Auntie Betty! You didn’t tell him that, did you?’
‘No, I didn’t. I suppose he just thought it.’ Betty was on the defensive now. She put an arm around the boy’s shoulders.
‘You didn’t tell him about us neither,’ Elizabeth said bitterly.
‘You leave my mam alone,’ said Kit. ‘An’ my name’s Christopher.’ His little face was flushed and he stood in front of Betty, fists doubled up. Jimmy and Tommy stood by the window, looking embarrassed, as though they would like to be anywhere but there. Elizabeth glanced at Jimmy, seeing how he felt. She would get no backup there, she realised.
‘You two go on out, if you like,’ she said. ‘I can get back to Newcomb Hall on my own.’ They turned as one for the door. Elizabeth wasn’t ready to give up yet, though.
‘Kit – Christopher, I am your sister, pet,’ she repeated. ‘I just came to see if you were happy.’
‘Why shouldn’t he be?’ demanded Betty. ‘We do our very best for him, me and Ben.’
This had the unfortunate effect of reminding Elizabeth of the last time she had seen Uncle Ben, three years ago now but still fresh in her mind.
‘Do you like Uncle Ben, Christopher?’ she asked the boy.
‘Dad. He calls him Daddy,’ Betty put in. ‘You love your dad, don’t you, Christopher?’