Tattycoram

by Audrey Thomas

When Grandfather worked at his carving, he would sometimes pause and touch my cheek. It was as though there were tiny hairs on the ends of his fingers, like the hairs on the bumblebee, collecting something from me that he might want for later use. I noticed he did not do this to Jonnie, but Jonnie was a boy and boys were not overfond of being touched.

  Mother did mending and some fancy work for the Misses Bray. One day, she scrubbed us hard with yellow soap and took us with her. We saw a barn cat crossing the yard with a kitten in her mouth.

  “It doesn’t hurt them,” Miss Louisa said. ”The skin is very loose there, where she holds them.”

  “Why is she moving them?”

  “Oh, something has bothered her, she’s decided they would be safer under the house.”

  The kittens wore patches of brown and black and white; their eyes weren’t open yet.

  “Could we have one, Mammy? Could we have a little kitten?”

  “They are too young to leave their mother,” Miss Amelia said.

  “But when they are not too young? Could we have one then?”

  I looked up earnestly from where my brother and I were squatting to admire the kittens not yet moved. I caught my mother and the two sisters exchanging glances.

  “Please, Mammy. I’ll take good care and Jonnie will help me.”

  “We’ll see.”

  We said our goodbyes and walked away towards home, swinging our arms, my mother unusually silent, for she often sang when she was out on a walk with us.

  That evening, after tea, they sat me down in my little chair, my throne.

  “Hattie,” my mother said, “we have never made a secret of the fact that you are on loan to us from the good people at the hospital. We have loved you as our own little daughter and watched you grow. But now the time is coming when we must give you back.” Her voice broke and she sobbed into her apron.

  “Why?” I said, frightened, looking from one to the other. Father shook his head and said nothing, Sam sat silent, but Grandfather lifted me up and set me on his knee.

  “That’s the rules, Hattie. You would have gone last year except you had the scarlatina, and the Governors waited to be sure you were fit again, wanted to give you some extra months here in the country before you were removed.”

  “And will Jonnie go too?”

  “No, Jonnie will stay here.”

  “Why, why will Jonnie stay? I’ve been a good girl, I’ve been as good as Jonnie.”

  “The rule doesn’t apply to Jonnie, love, only to you.”

  “Why only to me?”

  “Because you were lent us, from the Foundling, but Jonnie — Jonnie comes from here.”

  I slid down off Grandfather’s knee.

  “I won’t go! I don’t want to go!” I ran to my mother and pulled the apron from her face.

  “Mam, don’t make me go. I’ll be gooder . . . I’ll help. Don’t make me go!”

  “I can’t change the rules, Hattie. I wish I could.”

  “Is that why I can’t have a kitten? I won’t be here when they’re old enough?”

  She nodded.

  “Perhaps,” said Grandfather, but without much conviction, “there will be kittens at the Foundling.”

  I struck out, in my terror and helplessness, at the very people who loved me. I could not understand why they couldn’t help me. I picked up Baby and threw her at Jonnie, who was allowed to stay. The doll hit him smack in the middle of the forehead and he began to cry. Good.

  “I hate you all,” I cried, and rushed out the door, sobbing bitterly. Grandfather soon caught up with me. He took my hand and said nothing, just stood beside me until the worst of the storm had passed. Then he bent down, told me to climb onto his shoulders, and carried me home. Mother bathed my face with cool cloths, then took me up to bed. She brought Jonnie up; he had a lump on his head like his wooden egg.

  “Hattie, tell your brother you are sorry for what you did.”

  “I’m sorry,” I mumbled, but in my heart I wasn’t — not even when he put his arms around me and cried that if I had to go he wanted to go too.

  “You can’t,” I said, turning away from him. “It’s the rules.”

  Only later did I understand that Jonnie stayed because he wasn’t one of us, one of the Children of Shame.

  The night before I left was a night of shooting stars. I was allowed to stay up — “She’ll sleep on the way to London” — so Grandfather and I sat on the bench outside the cottage and waited.

  “Hist!” he said. “There’s one now.”

  And there it was, streaking across the sky.

  “How can you tell, Grandfather, when you can’t see them?”

  “I don’t know. Something changes.”

  “But they are so far away!”

  “I can’t explain it, I just know.”

  Soon there were dozens of them, flashing this way and that; my head was on a swivel, trying to catch them all. Mother came out and put a big shawl across our shoulders; it was cool, now, at night.

  “What will they think if I send you back with the sniffles?” From out in the wood an owl hooted — whoo whoo — and Grandfather said at last that it was time to go in.

  “Remember this, Hattie,” he said. “Wherever we are, we are all under the same sky.”

  As I lay in bed, too sad to sleep and cross that the whole family wasn’t lying awake as I was, the smell of Grandfather’s tobacco came through the open window; I knew that he was still there, sitting in the dark and listening to the mad dance of the stars up above.

  2

  The wagon came from Farnham and stopped in the square. I was dressed in my clean frock and a pair of shoes; my number was hung around my neck. I had to leave Baby behind — we were to bring no toys — but the Misses Bray had sent down a handkerchief baby, very tiny, with a face no bigger than a shoe button. Mother told me to tuck it in my pocket and perhaps Matron wouldn’t notice. Father and Sam were off in the fields; they said their goodbyes at an early breakfast, and I stood at the door and watched them walk away, become smaller and smaller and then disappear. Jonnie was to walk down with Grandfather, Mother and me, but at the last minute he ran back inside and refused to come out. Mother was anxious that we not be late — she was coming with me — so she said we must leave him be and hurried me away.

  The children from Farnham were already in the wagon, along with another foster mother.

  “Climb up, climb up,” said the driver, as he let down some steps. I clung to Grandfather even after Mother was seated and holding out her hands.

  “You must go now, pet. There’s a good girl.” He lifted me up and my mother caught me.

  Most of the children were crying and sobbing and I began to cry as well, even though Mother was there beside me in her Sunday bonnet and shawl. She told me later that old Mrs. Shute, who was no longer right in the head, had heard the noise from her cottage nearby and come running out, convinced it was Judgement Day; she wanted to jump on and be taken to the place where the Lord would judge the quick and the dead. “’Tis the wailing wagon, ’tis the wailing wagon. Wait, wait for me!”

  Small boys, not yet gone to the fields, ran after us shouting and throwing stones, and indeed we must have seemed comical, even grotesque, a great wagon full of children crying as though their hearts would break. A strange harvest, fruit of our fallen mothers’ wombs, about to be delivered to the metropolis like a load of apples or melons.

  More children climbed aboard in Dorking and in Guildford, where we stopped for bread and ale. Then, in the early afternoon, the sky darkened, streaks of lightning shot from it and thunder, which made us cry out in fear, and then a torrential downpour, as though even God were saying, “Don’t do this. Turn back, turn back.” We were not very wet, for the wagon had a tilt, but the sound of the rain and the early darkness just added to our misery. One of the horses slid and stumbled in the muddy highway, and for a terrifying moment it seemed as if we might all be pitched out onto the road. The driver shouted and cursed and laid ab
out with his whip, and then we were all right again.

  There were other wailing wagons on the road that day but I didn’t know it then. Small boys and girls, all frightened, all headed for the same place — cartloads of little bastards.

  The great roar of London began even before we crossed the river, and now we were just one vehicle among many as we moved through the clogged streets towards Bloomsbury. The rain had stopped, but the air did not smell fresh, the way it did in the country after a rainstorm. It smelled of coal fires and decay and dung, a smell I would never get used to. But soon enough, the great iron gates swung open and our wagon rolled inside. The tilt was pulled back, my mother and the other women were helped down, and then we were lifted away and brushed clean of straw. Matron and her assistants were there to greet us. I clung to my mother, and they had to pry me loose while I screamed, “Mam, Mam, I’ll be good, I promise,” which set the others to crying as well. “Ma, Maa, Maaa,” we bleated as we were led away, washed and fed, dressed in long muslin nightgowns and put to bed early in our little iron cots, the girls in one wing, the boys in another. Tomorrow, Matron said, would be soon enough for uniforms.

  I had never slept alone in a bed before, and my small cot seemed enormous and cold too without Jonnie’s warmth next to mine; no one had kissed me goodnight or told me they loved me. Even my handkerchief baby had been found and taken away from me. I twisted up a corner of the pillowcase to make another baby and sobbed myself to sleep. They could not really have loved me — Father, Mother, Grandfather, Sam, Jonnie — or they would not have cast me off like this. That was the terrible thing; they hadn’t cared enough to rescue me.

  “Will I ever see you again?” I had asked my mother, and she, her eyes red-rimmed from weeping, said, “Of course, I promise you. We shall come to visit on your birthday, and when you learn to read and write, perhaps you will write us letters.”

  “But who will read them to you?”

  “The rector or his wife. One of the Misses Bray. Don’t you worry about that.”

  But I no longer believed her — or not on that dark night. I knew I would never see any of them again. My mother could cry all she liked; she’d soon forget me.

  Years later, when Sam told me about his first days on the convict ship, I thought, yes, I might just as well have been condemned to transportation for the wretchedness I felt that night and for many nights to come. Cut off from the family I loved, the landscape I loved, and the freedom I had enjoyed in our little village, I might just as well have been confined to prison. At least poor Sam knew what his crime had been; I did not yet understand mine.

  Nurse slept at the end of the ward, behind heavy curtains. Once she started snoring, we could whisper, and we soon discovered that our beds were just close enough together that we could reach out and hold hands. That was how we often comforted ourselves at night, with whispers and a hand to hold, for when the moon was bright, its flickering light came through the barred windows and cast dreadful shadows on the walls. A chain of little girls in rough muslin nightgowns, holding hands, up one side of the ward and down the other, until one by one the hands dropped away, and we fell asleep.

  The wet-beds didn’t hold hands. They slept in special canvas cots right at the very end. They stayed there until they learned their lesson.

  My new life at the hospital bore so little relation to the life I had led in the country — I was going on for six when I arrived — it was as though I had to start all over again. To begin with, there was the uniform, made of a heavy brown material which scratched our necks raw. On top of that was our apron and bib, and on our heads a strange tall, frilled cap. Almost as bad as the scratchy dress were the high laced shoes. Our feet were not used to shoes and they dragged us down. Just lacing them up to Nurse’s satisfaction made us weep with frustration. Nurse scolded us: “You don’t know how lucky you are.” I soon taught myself never to cry in front of any of them, no matter what happened, no matter what the punishment. By the time I was eleven, I was known as “iron hands.”

  In the spring and summer we arose at six (five when we grew older), washed and dressed ourselves and were marched down to breakfast. In autumn and winter we could stay in bed until seven. Breakfast was always milk pottage or water gruel; dinner at noon depended on the day. Three times a week we had butcher meat, either beef or mutton; three times a week, for supper, we had bread and cheese. We never had fish or poultry, nor an egg, except on Good Friday or if our foster parents brought some on their annual visit. Mondays were always meatless. The food was adequate, more meat, in fact, than any of us were used to, but food does not taste the same when you are marched down to a dining hall to eat it, when a rap on the table tells you when to sit, another rap tells you when to begin, and you eat in silence. All our natural high spirits were pushed down by the countless rules and regulations. We never raised our voices; we girls never ran. Spontaneous gestures of any kind — a shout, loud laughter, an inappropriate giggle — usually led to reprimand and often to punishment. It was made clear to us, right from the beginning, that we were not like other children; our previous life in the country had been necessary for our bodily health, but that life was over now, just a brief interlude in a life that was to consist of service of one kind or another. Although we would learn to read and write and cypher, we were not, because of this, to think ourselves above our station, which was low, very low indeed. The lowest.

  For me, Sundays were both the best days and the worst. On Sundays we had chapel and the delight of singing in the choir, but on Sundays the ladies also came to visit. I can hear them still, their skirts going swish, swish, swish, as they moved around the dining hall, examining the dear little foundlings at their Sunday dinner. Swish, swish — and many with pretty children. We were as exotic to them as baby animals at a zoo.

  “And do you enjoy your dinner, dear?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Stand up when spoken to and do not scrape your chair! Remember always who you are and how lucky you are to be here, for weren’t you saved from the workhouse, a fate worse than death, or even death itself?

  (Sometimes I lay on my back in the playground, risking punishment for grass stains on my clothes, just to see the sky and the free-ranging clouds.)

  “Mama, why do all the children dress alike?”

  “Because it’s their uniform, darling.”

  “But Mama, do they wear it every day?”

  “Of course.”

  “But why is it so ugly? Wouldn’t they rather wear a pretty frock like mine?”

  “I should think they are grateful to have anything to wear at all.”

  “But Mama —”

  “Come along now, that’s enough questions.”

  Every plate and mug had a picture of a lamb on it, a lamb with a sprig of thyme in its mouth. He shall feed his flock.

  We went for walks with Nurse in the fields at the back of the hospital, but we girls were never allowed outside the gates. The servants gave us snippets of news from time to time, especially the cooks and the kitchen maids. We discovered that London was a big city full of lovely things to see and do: Punch and Judy shows and organ grinders with their monkeys, pie men and muffin men and halfpenny ices in the summer. Pleasure gardens and big parks right in the middle of the city. Once Cook had even seen the moon, close up, through a long glass. All life seemed to lie just outside the gates. We heard horses’ hooves and distant laughter and, often, the urgent bells of fire engines as they hurried to a fire. London — the rest of London — was like fragments of a dream.

  Mother came on my birthday, as promised, with kisses and hugs from all and a packet of hoarhound drops I was to share if Nurse approved. Jonnie had turned six the month before and was a big help to all. When he reached ten, he was to be apprenticed to the blacksmith and, eventually, would become a farrier.

  “Mammy,” I said, “I don’t like it here. You must take me home.”

  She turned her face away and squeezed my hand.

  “Is there
another girl, now, Mammy, sitting on my throne?”

  “Oh no, lovey, you were the last little girl. Your chair has been put away in Grandfather’s shop, and Baby is wrapped up and put away as well.”

  “For when I come home?”

  “For when you are all grown up and perhaps have little ones of your own.”

  And then our time was up.

  She did not come on my seventh birthday, although I looked out for her all afternoon. I did not know it, but Sam had been caught poaching, with his leg stuck in a mantrap. Jonnie had been with him, but Jonnie got away and ran off God knows where. Sam was locked up in one of the hulks, his foot all torn and twisted. There had been a trial and he was to be transported.

  “Father suspected,” Sam told me later, “and Grandfather knew in the way he always knew everything. They warned me more than once, but at first it was only hares we went after, and surely rabbits and hares belonged to all of us, like the birds of the air, not just to those in the big houses. Times were hard at home, and even with Grandfather’s carving and Mam’s bits of sewing and Father and me working from dawn till dark, there were days when it was kettle broth and barley loaves. We were saving for Jonnie’s apprenticeship, a few coppers at a time. There were many men on the tramp, whole families even, as wages fell lower and lower. And I confess I liked the excitement. You had to be quick if you wanted to get away with poaching. The gamekeepers were pretty swift — and they had guns as well. Each side tried to outsmart the other.

  “The first time I brought home a hare, Mam would have nothing to do with it. She dug a deep hole and buried it and put a pile of stones on top. It made me wild to see her taking less and less of her share of the dinner, making excuses.

  “She could have fostered more children, using a bottle and spoon — they called it ‘the metal mother,’ she told me — but Father wouldn’t let her, she suffered so when you left. It was like a game, really, the poaching. If she wouldn’t accept what I snared, then I would sell it. There was a man in Gomshall who would buy anything, flesh or fowl, for the London market, no questions asked. I began a little store of coppers of my own, and I bought a gun. And gradually I got bolder and went after game birds. The birds were my undoing, and taking Jonnie with me when I knew better. He begged and wheedled until I said all right, just this once.