by Gary Dolman
Elizabeth glanced into a small, round looking-glass fixed to the wall under a blanket shelf, and saw what looked to be a delicate young boy with bright, piercing blue eyes staring back at her through the film of dust. She smiled and the boy smiled back, but his smile seemed somehow hollow, somehow filled with pain. And when she looked through his eyes and deep into his soul, she shivered.
“I’m glad, Rachel; they can have it. They can be pretty instead of me. I don’t want to be pretty anymore. It just makes gentlemen think that you’re wicked.”
“Hush, child, don’ talk so. Thy hair’ll grow back soon enough an’ then ye’ll be beautiful again and some kind gen’leman will come an’ make ye a handsome husband.” Her eyes dropped for a second to the tiny bulge on Elizabeth’s naked belly. “Anyway, le’s get thy uniform for ye. Ye pretty clothes’ll be cleaned an’ disinfected in t’ sulphur cupboard an’ then nailed safely ont’ t’ wall until ye leave. Not that they need disinfectin’, mind ye; it’s just tha’ t’ regulations say tha’ they must.”
“I don’t want them, Rachel. If you like them, you can have them.”
The boy in the mirror shook his head frantically and the sudden glistening tears in his eyes made him seem even more delicate, yet more fragile.
Rachel’s wizened old face appeared next to it.
“Thank ye, Lizzie, but God himself couldn’ fit me into them clothes in a month o’ Sundays, no, nor half o’ t’ women in this poor-law. An’ if he did, we’d look nothin’ but a troop o’ music hall turns. No, me lamb, we’ll be nailin’ them up safe for ye, else they’ll be a-disappearin’ down t’ pop-shop – th’ pawnbrokers t’ ye – afore we know it. That way, when ye do want t’ leave wi’ ye kind gen’leman and ye little baby, well then, they’ll be still there waitin’ for ye, won’ they? Ye won’ want t’ go out still in ye workhouse uniform an’ ’ave everyone stare an’ shout names an’ t’ boys throw stones a’ ye, now would ye?”
The boy shook his head and Elizabeth felt a gnarled hand gently pat her shoulder.
“There’s a lamb. So ’ere’s thy new uniform then.”
She pointed to what Elizabeth had taken to be a pile of old blankets stacked on the shelf above the mirror. The boy in the mirror looked up and Elizabeth noticed a vivid yellow bruise just below his ear. In her other life, she remembered carefully and shamefully arranging her hair so as to cover it, and a single memory of Mr James fell from its place and made her flesh writhe as if it were crawling with maggots. For a moment she felt his suffocating weight on her back and his teeth, sharp as Mr Price’s, biting into her neck.
The hand patted her shoulder once more and the memory fled.
“Oh, Lizzie, I dare say t’ clothes aren’t wha’ ye are used with, but they’ll not be so bad, once ye ge’ accustomed to ’em. They last well enough in ’ere, anyway. Ye pretty clothes would be turned t’ rags in no time.
Look ye here; ye’ve got a good, strong grogram gown for every day, two shifts o’ calico, a petticoat an’ a pretty gingham dress for church on Sundays. T’ blue’ll set ye hair off lovely when it grows again, an’ this day cap’ll hide it until it does. There are worsted stockings for ye pretty legs an’ slippers for ye feet.”
As she spoke, she dropped each item into Elizabeth’s naked lap. The rough grogram scratched the skin of her legs, softer than ever from the bath water. She reached down and felt the cloth between her fingers. It was coarse and stiff. Uncle Alfie’s gardener, she realised in horror, put better clothes on the old scarecrow that stood in the kitchen garden.
She looked up and saw Rachel smiling at her in the mirror.
“Look sharp now an’ get thee dressed. Mr Wright t’ Medical Officer will need to examine ye afore ye can start work.”
The Reception Ward at the Harrogate Workhouse was empty, save for a single wizened old hag who occupied the farthest of a long line of wrought-iron beds. She was trembling and gently sobbing, as she lay curled on her thin flock mattress in what must have been a deeply tormented sleep.
“What is your name, please?” said a sudden, deep voice to her left, which made Elizabeth start and almost cry out in shock.
She turned to see a gentleman in a top hat and heavy cape coat bent over a desk in a shadowed corner of the room. The nib of his pen was scratching rapidly across a sheet of paper and he hadn’t looked up.
“Elizabeth Beatrice Wilson, if you please, sir.”
Elizabeth curtsied and felt the rough, stiff material of the uniform resisting the movement.
The scratching stopped abruptly at the sound of her voice and the gentleman looked up. His eyes roved languidly down her body and she hid her sudden discomfort in another, nervous curtsey.
“My name is Mr Wright,” said the man at last, “And I am the Medical Officer for this workhouse. It is my duty to examine you before you can gain any relief here.”
“Yes, sir,” said Elizabeth.
Mr Wright pointed the nib of his pen towards the nearest of the beds.
“Lay there, Wilson and take off your slippers and cap; I’ll be with you presently. Rachel, you may wait outside. I’ll call for you once I have completed my examination.”
The bed was narrow, crude and uncomfortable, and like the princess in the fairytale, she could feel every one of the narrow iron struts pressing into her back through the thin mattress. The door clicked shut behind Old Rachel and she looked up. Mr Wright’s long, black silhouette was looming over her. Blind, visceral panic gripped her and began inexorably to overwhelm her senses. Lizzie watched as his hands lifted and reached down for her. They were big hands, as big as Mr Price’s, and they were overpowering and unstoppable. She wanted to beg him to still them, beg him to let her go, to let her flee this bed, this ward, this workhouse, but the words she needed choked unuttered in her throat. She wanted to turn away, to push him back but her leaden limbs refused to heed the shrieking, shrieking screams of her brain.
“You’ve a nice manner and a quite beautiful face, Elizabeth,” Mr Wright purred as his fingertips trailed along the smooth line of her jaw. “Have you ever thought of going into domestic service?”
“No, sir,” Elizabeth whispered.
She needed him to stop talking to her. If he was quiet, if she didn’t need to listen to him or think of answers to his questions, she would be able to take herself away to her safe and special place, where it would seem as if all of this was going to happen to a different little girl.
“In this workhouse, Elizabeth, we discourage idleness by means of austerity, discipline and good, hard work. It can be a very, very cruel place for poor little girls like you.”
His fingers drifted down the length of her arm and slowly encircled her trembling hand.
“Your hands are so soft and so warm. I can think of a much better employ for them than hours and hours of scrubbing floors or picking oakum.”
He let her hand fall gently back onto the mattress and his hands floated to the hem of her dress.
“I know several gentlemen in Harrogate who would willingly employ a nice, pretty girl such as you, Elizabeth.”
Elizabeth closed her eyes tight as the coarse material of her dress scratched its way along the length of her shins, brushed her knee, lifted from her thighs.
“Those gentlemen are very wealthy. They would happily pay you pounds and pounds if you would play a special game with them.”
‘Please, Lord Jesus, please, Mama, please send your angel to make us die right now. Please take my baby and me into Heaven to be angels with you.’
“You have marks on your body, Elizabeth, that suggest that you’ve had a baby already.”
She opened her eyes straight into Mr Wright’s as he leered down at her with an expression somewhere between triumph and bitter disappointment.
“Yes, sir, I had a baby; it was Baby Albert but he was only little and he died.”
“Did you kill him, Wilson?”
“Oh lordy, no, sir; Mrs Eire took him away because she said that a boy was neither use
nor ornament to her or anybody else, and she gave him to a lady friend to fetch up. But Mary told me that he’d died and gone to be with his grandmama and grandpapa in Heaven.”
“I see.”
She felt his hand cup her breast, felt his fingers pressing into her.
“You have a heavy bosom for one so young.”
Another hand pressed hard on her stomach and then there was a sudden, sharp pinch on her nipple that made her yelp out in pain.
He said: “You’re due to have another baby soon aren’t you, Wilson? That’s what has brought you running to our door begging for relief. In that case, to use our friend Mrs Eire’s words, you’re neither use nor ornament to me either. My friends only want chaste, virgin girls around them, not some shameless harlot with someone’s bastard whelp growing inside her.”
She felt her dress being dragged back over her legs.
“She’s having a baby.”
The wizened old hag from the bed at the end of the ward suddenly appeared next to the Medical Officer, peering down with startlingly bright eyes from the shadows of her shabby poke bonnet.
“Hold your tongue, woman,” Wright growled without looking round.
“She’s having a baby,” the woman repeated.
She cackled and began to sing in a high, trill voice.
“Hush-a-bye baby, on the tree top,
When you grow old, your wages will stop.
When you have spent, the bit money you made.
First to the poorhouse, then to the grave.”
“Will you hold your tongue, woman?” Wright roared, “Or do you wish to start your time in the workhouse in the refractory cell?”
“Her baby died so she’s having another,” the woman persisted.
She knew it would come: the memory, the very worst memory of them all.
She knew it was surely coming to hurt her again and there was nothing she could do to stop it. The panic that had been waiting to overwhelm her ever since she had first felt Wright’s shadow falling across her started to rise still further. She didn’t have her Bible with its comforting Book of Revelation; she couldn’t run to Mary, she was just lying here, on a bed, trapped beneath a man who was surely going to punish her. He had already hurt her nipple, and she could still feel it stabbing with pain. She closed her eyes, and concentrated with all her might on the hurt, on the pain, letting it flood her consciousness, letting it block out everything else.
And the worst memory of all didn’t come. This time – mercifully – it stayed. It remained festering in that remote part of her mind she kept especially for it and for its foul and loathsome kin. This time, it didn’t come to hurt her as it always did. The only pain she knew was the throbbing ache in her nipple and it was oh, such a relief.
“Bless me but t’ child’s fallen asleep!”
She opened her eyes. It was Old Rachel.
“I’m not a wicked girl, Rachel, truly I’m not.”
“O’ course ye aren’t, Lizzie.”
“The Medical Officer said that I was. He said that I was a shameless harlot.”
Old Rachel slowly eased her body down until she was perched on the edge of the narrow bed frame opposite.
“Well we both know t’ truth of it, don’ we?” she murmured. “An’ God knows t’ truth of it, and Jesus knows t’ truth of it, an’ ye mammy an’ daddy know t’ truth of it, so why do ye worry abou’ what t’ Medical Officer thinks?”
Elizabeth smiled and blinked back sudden tears and Old Rachel patted her stomach.
“Ye jus’ be a-worryin’ ’bout this little ’un, child. They say there’s enough worry a-comes from one little child to last their mammy a lifetime. Now, rouse thyself, I’m to take ye to t’ girls’ ward an’ old Leah there to t’ refractory cell for t’ night. Oh, an’ Mr Wright ’as ordered that ye wear one o’ these.” She held up a stiff, grogram jacket. It had been dyed to a bright yellow colour.
“But why would he wish me to wear one of those, Rachel? I’m getting quite used to the chill and the colour – well it would make me look just like a little duckling. No one else wears one.”
“I know, me lamb, but t’ jacket ain’t t’ keep thee warm, it’s… well, it’s t’ show that ye’re not a chaste girl, Lizzie. Mr Wright said that t’ other girls needed warning abou’ ye ‘lack o’ moral virtue.’”
She mimicked his voice perfectly and chuckled.
“But don’ worry, it be more t’ other way about, an’ none o’ t’ other girls won’ take any notice o’ ‘t anyway, not really.”
Chapter 20
It had seemed longer – much longer – than the three hours the library clock had tried to pretend it had been before at last they heard Dr Roberts’ voice echoing beyond the hallway door. It was answered almost immediately by a woman’s – Mary Lovell’s – speaking in equally urgent, muffled tones.
Lucie Fox quickly closed the thick tome on phrenology she had been using to help pass the time and mirrored the lurcher Gladstone as he pricked up his ears and stared intently at the green baize lining of the door.
“He’s returned from the magistrate’s at last,” Atticus said, carefully setting down a large African tribal mask he had been examining.
The brass handle of the door rattled and twisted and Roberts burst in, followed by a tearful and strained-looking Mary. Gladstone gave a great bark and bounded to his feet.
“Hello, old fellow.”
Roberts bent and rubbed the dog’s shoulder for what seemed like an age before he stood straight and tall again.
His face was unreadable and he said: “Thank you for your patience Atticus, Mrs Fox; I’m so sorry to have been away for so long.”
“Never mind that,” Atticus snapped, “What did he say?”
Roberts’ face broke into a grin. “He said – and the police superintendant didn’t object one bit – that Aunt Elizabeth may stay here at Sessrum House in my care and keeping until he decides whether or not she must stand trial.”
“That’s wonderful news.” Lucie beamed too. “But surely there can be no question whether she’s fit to stand trial?”
Roberts’ grin tautened and became as strained as Mary’s.
“I’m afraid that’s where the superintendant and I did disagree. Apparently the constable who accompanied Aunt Elizabeth to the police station swore that she gave signs of perfectly understanding what he was saying to her. He’s pushing for her to stand trial anyway and to let the judge and jury decide what happens to her.”
“But that’s preposterous,” Atticus roared.
“I know, Atticus,” Roberts said, “But that battle is for another day. At least she’s coming back here for the present. Mary is going to fetch her from the police station presently, and walk her back across the Stray. I won’t have her ride in a carriage; she’s done enough of that already to last a lifetime. Then, once she’s safely home, we can push for the McNaughton rules to be applied, and if we can achieve that, I cannot see any other outcome but that she will live out her final days here, in peace.”
Chapter 21
“Here’s the Stray, Lizzie; do you remember the Stray?”
Mary and Elizabeth looked like just another pair of elderly ladies taking the light exercise that, along with the taking of the mineral-rich spa waters, comprised such an important part of ‘The Harrogate Cure.’
“The whin bushes are pretty,” Mary added. “Look at the whin bushes, Lizzie.”
Elizabeth turned and gazed in the direction in which Mary was pointing, toward a dense thicket of bright yellow gorse.
“Am I to help Rachel?” she asked.
Mary sighed wearily.
“You don’t understand one word of what I say, do you, Lizzie? Rachel’s long-since dead, my love; she’s dead and buried in her grave. I’m Mary.”
“The Master mus’ like ye, Lizzie,” Old Rachel cackled as she handed her one of a pair of heavy implements she was carrying. It consisted of a large, brutal-looking blade, attached to a stocky wooden handle, and Ra
chel called it a ‘slasher.’ It looked to Lizzie like one of the great medieval weapons her Uncle Alfie was so fond of collecting, and that he kept mounted in their dozens on the walls of his hunting lodge in Northumberland.
“E’s sendin’ ye out wi’ me to cut whin bush on t’ Stray,” Rachel went on. “We’re to go out an’ cut it an’ then t’ men will haul it back ’ere at t’ end o’ t’ day.”
She looked carefully round and then whispered: “It’s a hard job an’ yer pretty arms will get scratched t’ bits on t’ spines, but we’re out o’ t’ workhouse an’ oftentimes, t’ overseers will let them that’s been a-doin’ it go to t’ Stray horse races as a reward.”
She looked around again and cackled merrily before she winked and added: “Sometimes they even let us ’ave a little drop o’ gin too, while we’re on.”
“What do you do with whin bush, Rachel? Is it for table vases?”
Old Rachel stared at her, her expression fluid as quicksilver.
“For table vases?” she stammered at last, “For flowers ye mean?”
Lizzie nodded.
Rachel seemed to suddenly be having some kind of fit, and Lizzie worried if she should be running for Mr Wright or the Matron. Rachel’s face went puce, her eyes began streaming with tears and she stooped, hanging onto the handle of her slasher as her ancient shoulders shook and shook.
“Oh, me poor, innocent lamb,” she gasped at last, and Lizzie realised she had been laughing, “Table flowers in t’ refectory is it?”
She doubled up once more and cackled as if she would never stop. But then she did and she took a hold of herself.
“We use t’ whin bush for animal food mainly, Lizzie. T’ farms ’ereabouts buy as much as we can cut. But we use it for makin’ brooms as well, an’ for a-dressin’ the soil in t’ garden. Th’ flowers go to make pretty yellow dye, so by then, there’s generally nothin’ left for t’ table vases.” And then she erupted into peels of laughter once more.