The Forgotten Children

by Anita Davison

  ‘Di’nt ask.’ Ada rolled out of Lydia’s hold and rubbed the spot where her fingers had been.

  Flora found Lydia’s lack of sympathy puzzling. Firstly with Bertie’s uncle and now this scrap of a girl, whose only concern appeared to be the whereabouts of her friend, but this wasn’t the time to mention it.

  ‘I see, well, thank you, Ada. We’ll be sure to ask about Annie.’ Flora turned away, dismayed that they had yet another name to add to their list.

  ‘S’cuse me, miss?’ Ada called her back. ‘Can I have some o’ them little oranges?’ She indicated the basket hooked over Sally’s arm. ‘You’re giving them away aren’t cha?’

  ‘Oh, yes of course.’ Embarrassed she had not thought of it herself, Flora reached into the basket and retrieved four pieces of fruit, together with one of the paper-wrapped parcels. ‘There are some sausages too, I expect your mother can cook those for you.’

  ‘Don’t be daft.’ Ada gathered her skirt into a scoop to hold her prize. ‘Me mum’s doing a double shift at the pub. I’ll cook ’em meself.’ She shot Abel a steady stare before darting through a rickety gate into another faceless building opposite.

  ‘Remind me not to patronize children again,’ Flora said, tucking her free arm through Lydia’s.

  ‘They grow up fast round here.’ Lydia sighed. ‘She’s probably older than she looks too. Their poor diet means they grow slower than most children.’

  ‘That didn’t occur to me.’ Flora sighed. Her attitude to those less fortunate than herself needed some radical rethinking. Her own childhood had not been privileged by any standards, but she had never had to wear rags or go hungry. She realized then how she had taken her own advantages for granted and not paid enough attention to those who had so little. Poor didn’t just mean a lack of luxury, fewer choices, and sparser homes. Poverty was insidious, it hardened the spirit, killed the joy of life and withered souls. Flora had the freedom to walk away, but that child and many like her had no choice.

  ‘Are you all right, Flora?’ Lydia asked. ‘Not still worried about being robbed, are you?’ Before she could answer, Lydia went on, ‘Those three will have spread the word by now to give us a wide berth. No one will trouble us again.’

  ‘I doubt we’ll discover anything more here, so we may as well go back to Eaton Place.’ Flora gestured to Sally to retrieve the basket.

  ‘At least we can go home. We aren’t trapped in this place like that poor scrap back there,’ Lydia said, a half-joking remark that only increased Flora’s melancholy. ‘Are you sure you don’t you want to go to the hospital first and tell Miss Finch what we have found out?’

  ‘That was the plan, but this venture hasn’t been as successful as I imagined.’ Flora sighed. ‘All I want to do now is go home. Do you mind?’ She experienced an overwhelming need to retreat to her comfortable house where she could relax, cuddle her baby and feel safe in familiar surroundings. As they made their way back to the Old Kent Road and the promise of a cab back to Belgravia, she acknowledged this was a selfish need, but a real one.

  ‘Have you thought,’ Lydia said after a moment. ‘That the girl, Ada, might have made up the story about this Annie so you would hand over some food?’

  ‘Do you really think that?’ Flora searched her face for signs she believed this herself, but Lydia’s pragmatic calm persisted.

  ‘I’m not saying she’s deceitful, but you don’t know these people. A stranger’s finer feelings play no part in their fight for survival. Especially if that stranger is better off than they are. They do what they have to. I’m not judging, Flora, I’m simply stating the truth.’

  ‘I don’t really care if Ada did make it up, and at least she’ll get a decent meal inside her tonight.’ She slowed her steps as she gave the idea some thought. ‘I don’t think she made up the man with the squint. What was his name again?’

  ‘Swifty Ellis, I wrote it down.’

  Their walk had brought them to a short parade of shops with peeling paint, ancient posters and dusty windows which made it almost impossible to see what was stacked behind the glass. Wooden boxes of gnarled vegetables, fruit and racks of second-hand clothes were spread out on the pavements in front.

  ‘Lydia? How do you know so much about this place and how these people live?’

  She looked about to make some throwaway remark but checked herself and cast a quick glance behind her to where Abel and Sally followed as if establishing they were out of earshot. A few seconds passed as she appeared to come to a decision.

  ‘I haven’t always lived in Kinnerton Street.’ She kept her gaze straight ahead so all Flora could see of her expression was her calm profile. ‘I was brought up not far from here, in Peabody Buildings in East Lane where the rope factory is.’

  ‘Really? I-I had no idea.’ Flora stared round at the faded buildings, the piles of ordure at the kerbs and the too thin horses who pulled carts and even thinner children. She longed to ask how a soft-spoken, gentle soul like Lydia had escaped from this place to a neat little house in Belgravia.

  ‘Why should you?’ Lydia shrugged. ‘I don’t talk about it. I put the past behind me a while ago so it wouldn’t colour the rest of my life. I got out. Many don’t.’ Her tone was flat, emotionless, as if she spoke about someone else.

  ‘What was it like?’ Flora couldn’t resist asking as she tried to imagine Lydia as a child with wayward brown hair and dirty bare feet like Ada, but the image refused to form.

  ‘My father was a foreman at the Peek Frean’s factory on Clements Road when I was a nipper. He earned a regular wage so my parents qualified for the Peabody. We rented four rooms on the first floor.’ Lydia paused in the road and lifted her face to the sky. ‘Can you smell that?’

  Flora took a tentative breath. ‘Sulphur, soot and manure?’

  ‘No not that.’ Lydia laughed. ‘That sweet baking smell is from the biscuit factory. It carries all the way back to Jamaica Road. It’s stronger on some days, depending on the direction of the wind.’

  Flora recalled something Bunny had said about this area being known as ‘Biscuit Town’ but had to concentrate on keeping up with Lydia who had not slowed her pace as she talked.

  ‘In summer, my friends and I would walk home from school past the open doors of the factory. Rows of girls in white aprons packed the biscuits and we’d beg for broken ones.’ Her smile turned wistful. ‘I cannot look a garibaldi in the face to this day.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Perhaps I shouldn’t have asked you to come with me this morning.’ Flora tucked her arm through Lydia’s and pulled her closer.

  ‘I wanted to. If children are being taken, I want to help. Most people here are honest, hard-working folk who live for their families and care for them as they should. Then there are the others. Those who can never hold down a job for more than a few weeks, who get poorer and less caring, but the children keep coming and they don’t know how to stop it. Each year there’s another mouth to feed, or in some cases, another pair of hands to send out to thieve for them. There’s no one for them to complain to, much less care.’ She slowed her steps, her chin lifted as she met Flora’s gaze. ‘I don’t ask for sympathy, Flora, I thought I had left all this behind, but seeing young Ada reminded me of some things that are too much part of me to forget. I’m not saying it was that bad for me because it wasn’t. I was lucky. My parents loved me, and I was an only child, so I didn’t have to share a pallet bed with three or four others. Some of the children at the school where I taught came from homes like Ada’s.’

  ‘You taught school here?’

  She nodded. ‘I began my teaching career in Bacons Free School, founded by the guild for the tannery workers at Weston Street. If you want to know what life in a place like this really means, ask Sally. She was raised in Whitechapel, so her childhood must have been similar to mine. Probably worse, at least there are jobs to be had here.’

  ‘Perhaps I shall.’ Flora looked back over her shoulder to where Abel and Sally walked about ten paces behind; the top of
Sally’s head bobbed in line with Abel’s shoulder, her face animated as she chattered with the basket slung between them. She had tended to dismiss Sally’s outrageous-sounding claims as an exaggeration, or a call for attention. Something she would never do again.

  ‘I wish you had told me, Lydia. Why did you feel the need to hide your upbringing from me?’ Flora couldn’t help feeling slightly hurt, and that she was being condescended to. ‘I’m hardly gentry. I was raised in a servants’ hall.’

  ‘You were a governess, an upper servant, which isn’t quite the same thing. You also lived in the country, with fresh air, clean water, space to run and play and the best food available. Now look at you. The daughter of a gentleman, married to a solicitor and your uncle is an earl.’

  ‘I suppose you’re right. But whatever you had told me about your past I wouldn’t have judged you for it.’

  ‘I know that, but it was more about me than you. I found it hard enough telling Harry.’

  ‘How did he take it?’ No wonder Lydia felt inadequate to Harry’s previous fiancée, who had been a considerable heiress.

  ‘Wonderfully well.’ Lydia laughed. ‘His family are high society now, but he told me when he was a boy, he discovered his great-grandfather earned his fortune from cotton mills and mining. He was a self-made man who treated his workers abominably. The family don’t want it remembered or talked about, which is why they were so keen for him to marry Evangeline, whereas I’m a bad influence.

  ‘You’re no such thing, and Harry doesn’t have anything to apologise for.’

  ‘That’s what I said, but somehow he feels he owes something to the common working man. He’s an advocate for the Member of Parliament for West Ham, whose name escapes me for the moment. Keen something.’ She tapped her bottom lip with a finger. ‘No, Keir, Keir Hardie, that’s it. He’s Scottish, I think. Harry’s parents were scandalized when he expounded the man’s policies over dinner.’

  ‘Oh dear, that must have been a difficult meal. Will Harry join the Labour Party?’

  ‘I doubt he would go that far, but he might consider running for a Liberal seat. That way there would be less risk of him being thrown out of his club.’ Lydia smothered her laugh with a gloved hand. ‘Sorry, I’m being flippant, which isn’t fair as Harry is quite serious. He feels the country will undergo vast social changes before long.’

  They had reached the corner where the main road teemed with fast moving traffic, where no less than three road sweepers were kept busy clearing manure from the paths of pedestrians.

  ‘I think that’s enough about me for one day, don’t you?’ Lydia said, halting at the kerb. ‘We have more important matters to deal with. I’ve been thinking about that Ellis character. He could be a local bully boy. He probably works for someone who can afford to hire henchman to do his dirty work.’

  ‘What kind of dirty work?’ Flora felt out of her depth, having only a vague idea of what Lydia was talking about.

  ‘If he’s the man who was seen outside the hospital, he might be what is called a procurer. What we need to know is, for whom.’

  ‘Like a gang, you mean? That makes sense. How do we find out?’

  ‘I don’t know. We’ll have to think about it more.’ Lydia beckoned to where Abel and Sally had caught up with them and had paused a few feet away. ‘Abel, could you flag down a cab?’

  ‘Thank Gawd for that,’ Sally released a heartfelt sigh, dropped the basket on the pavement and slumped onto a discarded packing case set against a wall. ‘Me plates are killin' me.’

  ‘What did she mean by that?’ Flora whispered.

  ‘I’ll explain later.’ Lydia smiled and patted Flora’s arm.

  Chapter 13

  Locating a hackney in the bustle and clamour of Jamaica Road proved more difficult than Flora had imagined, even with Abel doing the hard work for them. Thunder groaned ominously overhead and a sudden burst of rain drove them to shelter beneath a shop awning.

  Lydia indicated a horse bus that had pulled up several feet away. ‘Never mind a cab, Abel. We can take that, it’s going our way.’

  ‘I’ve never been on one of those before.’ Flora gazed at the open upper deck, where four men in suits sat beneath raised umbrellas against the rain.

  ‘Regard it as a new experience.’ Lydia dragged her by the arm through a rapidly forming stream of water that ran along the gutter and onto the rear platform of the horse bus. Flora worked her way along the narrow aisle, avoiding elbows and wide hats to the empty seat Lydia had selected near the front. Flora’s rear end had barely touched the slippery upholstery next to Lydia before the driver pulled away.

  ‘Abel appears to have taken a liking to your Sally.’ She turned her head, nodding to where he had hoisted Sally onto the platform beneath one arm at the last second before the vehicle had moved off, somehow managing to keep hold of the basket with the other.

  ‘Would it be selfish of me to hope I don’t lose her too soon?’ Flora sighed.

  ‘Yes, it would.’ Lydia pressed her arm in sympathy. ‘Not that I don’t understand your point of view. She’s become your friend.’

  ‘More than that. She saved my life last year too.’

  Lydia smiled, possibly remembering the occasion the previous year when Flora and Sally had been trapped in a cellar waiting for a killer to come and finish them off. It was Sally’s optimism and quick thinking that had saved them.

  The thirty-minute horse bus ride proved to be more enjoyable than Flora had anticipated, despite frequent stops and the steady rainfall that flowed in rivulets down the windows, obscuring the view. By the time they reached Hyde Park Corner, the deluge had stopped as quickly as it had begun, carving a rainbow in the sky where clouds parted to reveal patches of blue.

  ‘We’ll walk the rest of the way.’ Flora was appreciative of the cleaner air refreshed by the rain after the cloying atmosphere of the ugly, rubbish-strewn streets they had recently left.

  At Eaton Place, she invited Lydia to avail herself of the well-appointed bathroom to remove the street grime from her face and hands, leaving Sally to entertain Abel in the kitchens.

  ‘When we’re married, Harry will have to make do with a bowl and pitcher to shave in at my house,’ Lydia said. ‘I wonder how he’ll cope with the outside privy?’

  ‘Won’t the renovations to his uncle’s property in Kensington be finished before the wedding?’ Flora handed her a towel from the pile on her dresser.

  ‘I very much doubt it. The property is in a poorer state than poor Harry imagined.’

  ‘Even so, it’s wonderful that you’ve been given a home in which to begin your married life,’ Flora said as she led the way back down the stairs to the dining room.

  ‘I know, although I shall miss my little house in Kinnerton Street. I love it, but Harry’s mother thinks he’s lowering himself by even visiting me there.’

  ‘Your house is darling, Lydia, and that’s a ridiculous attitude.’ Flora sniffed appreciatively at the plate of hot, sliced pork and potatoes Stokes set out on the table between them. ‘I must say, it’s good to be home. I’m still shaky after that encounter in the stairwell. I don’t know what I would have done had Abel not been there.’

  ‘It was nice of you to invite him to take his midday meal in the kitchens with Sally.’ Lydia spooned vegetables onto her plate.

  ‘Sally looked fit to burst, didn’t she? I expect she’ll be on her best behaviour for the rest of the week. How long have you known him?’

  ‘Abel? He’s lived at the end of our street since we came to live there and was so kind to Mother during her final illness. He would even look in on her on occasion when I was at the Academy.’ At this mention of her mother, Lydia’s mouth worked as she fought for control. Mrs Grey had been ill for over a year, but her death five months before had still come as a shock.

  ‘I must remember to recompense Abel for his time,’ Flora said briskly, aware Lydia was not the type to indulge in public emotion.

  ‘You don’t have to di
stract me, Flora. I’m all right, really.’ Lydia applied her cutlery to the meat on her plate. ‘I’m sorry I was so maudlin earlier, but I didn’t expect Bermondsey to generate so many memories. This might sound odd, but I didn’t see the filth and squalor in quite the same way when I was younger. It was simply home and I knew no better.’

  ‘Don’t feel you have to talk about it if you don’t want to.’ Flora slid the condiment dish towards her.

  ‘It’s hardly a dark secret.’ Lydia picked at her food with a fork. ‘Life wasn’t so bad at the Peabody. Though as is the nature of philanthropy, they set strict rules. The worst one for me was having to be vaccinated against smallpox before we were allowed to move in. They scraped a layer of skin off my arm and rubbed it with a quill. Quite painful actually.’ She rubbed her upper arm through her sleeve as if reliving the event. ‘I still have the scar. It must have worked though, as there wasn’t one case of smallpox in the buildings all the time we lived there.’

  Flora toyed with her cutlery while contemplating whether or not she ought to have Arthur vaccinated. ‘I expect the Peabody Buildings were more comfortable than one of those draughty little cottages?’ She shuddered as she recalled the bare walls, cracked door frames and the insidious mildew smell that made her nose itch.

  ‘We had what we needed,’ Lydia said. ‘There was a cast-iron range, an oven, and a boiler. We had to share a toilet block with other families. Our treat for the week was when Dad took Mother and me to the public baths built for the dockers in Spa Road,’ she added without a trace of self-pity.

  ‘You had to go elsewhere for a bath?’ Flora asked, astonished.

  ‘Oh Flora, what a sheltered thing you are. This is London. Even some well-off families use public baths. Better than a tub in the scullery. The hot water is pumped through pipes, not heated in pots on a range. Far more convenient, especially for larger families.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Flora mused, wrestling with the concept.

  ‘We had to walk through the railway tunnel to get there.’ After Lydia’s first hesitant steps into her past, she had got into her stride. ‘If there was a train coming when we were on our way back, I refused to enter the tunnel until it had gone by in case I got dirty again.’