Catherine dismissed the unwelcome thought. Flowers bloomed everywhere in this lush land, and glimpses of rippling tiled roofs in market towns whetted her appetite for her new home. The train clattered on to Colchester and the landscape flattened out into a patchwork of green meadows and interlacing streams. Slow herds of dairy cattle migrated towards milking sheds under a cloudless blue sky. Grassland, dykes, windmills and cattle passed to the rhythm of the train, lulling her into a dwam.
At Colchester the carriage emptied and Lily woke up. Two soldiers climbed aboard, smelling of hair oil, and sat down next to them. The younger one winked, making Catherine blush and stare more intently out of the window as they picked up speed.
‘Looks nice here, Lily,’ she said, scanning the skyline of church spires and timber-beamed houses. ‘We can visit on our day off. There are two ruined abbeys and a castle - said so in the guide book I got out the library.’
‘As long as we can look round the shops an’ all,’ Lily yawned, sliding a look at the soldier next to her.
‘You girls aren’t from round here, are you?’ the young man asked with a grin.
‘No, we’re from South Shields,’ Lily said proudly. He looked at her blankly. ‘On the Tyne.’
‘Where’s that then?’
Catherine answered shortly, ‘Near Newcastle. Up north.’
The soldier pulled out a packet of Player’s and offered them round. The women shook their heads.
‘What you come here for?’ he asked, lighting up a cigarette.
‘Work,’ said Lily. ‘We’re startin’ on at Tendring.’
The soldier blew out smoke. ‘Never heard of it.’
‘It’s an institution near Harwich,’ Catherine said, wondering at his ignorance.
He shook his head. ‘Can’t think why you want to work round here. Dull as ditch water.’
‘I think it’s very pretty,’ Catherine said in her most refined voice.
The soldier raised his eyebrows at Lily. ‘If you like grass and water.’
Lily smirked.
‘So what are you doing here if it’s so boring?’ Catherine challenged, annoyed at her friend.
‘Escaping for a night out in Harwich. Colchester’s full of tea shops and old farmers.’ He nudged Lily. ‘What’s your South Shields like then?’
‘A grand place,’ Lily said. ‘Big shops and picture houses and the yards - full of busy.’
‘Sounds like my sort of town,’ he grinned at her. ‘Harwich isn’t up to much, but I could show you the sights. Want to join us, girls?’
‘No we don’t, thank you,’ Catherine said at once.
‘What about your friend here? She looks like she needs cheering up.’
Catherine saw with alarm that Lily’s eyes were filling with tears. Talk of home had upset her.
‘She’s tired, that’s all.’ Turning her back on the soldier, she searched for a distraction, cursing the man for reminding Lily of Tyneside. After a while she cried, ‘Look at that - a boat stuck in a field!’ She pointed at the red-sailed vessel marooned in pastureland on the horizon. ‘Must be a barge or something.’
The older soldier beside her spoke for the first time. ‘It’s a sailing boat. The sea comes all the way inland. Used to be under the sea, that land over there. Call it Little Holland, it’s so flat.’
She glanced at him in surprise. ‘Fancy that.’ His face was serious but his look kindly. Curiosity overcame her and she began asking questions about the area. He told her about the lighthouses and light ships dotted along the treacherous sandbanks, and that Harwich was the final stop of the Great Eastern Railway and had boats to the Continent daily. People still made a living from catching wild fowl in the myriad creeks and waterways, and harvesting oysters. It sounded mysterious and romantic. Catherine felt a shiver of expectation to be going to the lip of England, just a short sail away from the Low Countries and the wide world beyond.
‘You want to get yourselves to Clacton-on-Sea,’ the younger soldier broke in. ‘Nice beach for bathing and a bit of entertainment on the prom this time of year. You can keep the rest of Essex.’ He winked at Lily. ‘Would you like me to take you to Clacton, Lily my girl?’
‘Maybes,’ Lily giggled.
Before they pulled into Harwich, the soldier had scribbled his name and address on a torn-off piece of his cigarette packet and pressed it into Lily’s hand.
‘Let me buy you a drink at the station hotel before you go,’ he pressed her. ‘That would pep you up.’
Catherine gave Lily a warning look. ‘We’re being met, thank you.’
The soldier shrugged. ‘Never mind, Lily, we’ll have that drink in Clacton.’ The two men helped them off with their bags, despite Catherine’s protestations that they could manage without the help of the army.
‘Thought we’d never get rid of them,’ she muttered as they left.
‘I thought the dark-haired one was canny,’ Lily said.
‘You shouldn’t have encouraged him. You don’t know him from Adam.’
‘You’re the one said we might find rich southern lads down here,’ Lily retorted.
‘Well, we’ll not find them in the barracks at Colchester.’ Catherine was dismissive.
Lily gave her a look. ‘You’re one to talk. Don’t think I didn’t notice you putting on your posh voice for that other lad. “Ooh, fancy that and fancy this.” ‘
Their arguing was interrupted by a stout man in a tweed jacket waving to them beyond the barrier.
‘I’m Mr Stanway, the master,’ he greeted them with a firm handshake. ‘Vines is laid up with gout - he’s the porter - so I’m here to fetch you. Follow me. The car’s outside. Missing my game of bridge, don’t you know.’
‘Sorry, sir,’ Catherine said, hurrying after him with her heavy bag.
‘Can’t be helped. Vines’s to blame. Swears he doesn’t drink, but he’s always bad after fair day. I’d see him out on his ear, but he’s related to one of the guardians. Here we are. Climb in. Just push the box of fish over. Mrs Stanway can’t live without her rolled herring.’
Squeezed in the back of the battered old Ford, Catherine tried to make conversation but soon gave up. The garrulous master kept it one-sided, throwing out questions but not listening to their answers.
Harwich looked a drab port in the evening gloom, shrouded in a sea mist that chilled after the heat of the train. Through it could be glimpsed a low muddy coastline bound by stone walls. As they meandered inland, the watery landscape turned to marsh caught in a web of wide ditches. Above, the pearly sky was vast and empty. Catherine soon felt queasy from the stench of fish in the box and the twisting country lanes. Glancing at Lily, she saw her friend was sickly pale too.
Winding down the window, Catherine breathed in gulps of damp, salty air. They bounced through small villages, mere straggles of cottages strung out either side of stone and flint churches. Mr Stanway rattled off their names: Little Oakley, Great Oakley, Stones Green, Thorpe-le-Soken. Just after leaving this last village, a wagon appeared in front carrying hay. The driver sat up high in a tall black hat, guiding his horse, and Catherine thought the sight quaint. She was wondering how they were going to get past it on the narrow road, when Mr Stanway picked up speed.
‘Careful!’ she cried.
The master did not swerve or brake. Heart in mouth, she peered into the fading summer light, but there was nothing there.
‘Where did it go?’ she gasped.
‘Where did what go?’ he called over his shoulder.
‘The wagon - in front - on the road,’ she stuttered.
‘Road’s been empty for miles,’ Mr Stanway snorted.
‘But I saw it,’ Catherine insisted. ‘The driver had this big black hat on . . .’
Lily was giving her a strange look.
‘Didn’t you see it?’
Lily shook her head.
Mr Stanway grunted. ‘Must’ve seen a ghost. People round here are always claiming they’ve seen things - the common folk.’
<
br /> Catherine flushed. ‘Was just a shadow, I wouldn’t wonder.’
The master continued, oblivious to her embarrassment. ‘Course, we’ve got a very famous ghost in these parts - St Osyth. Killed by the Danes. Still haunts the coast, dressed in white and carrying her head under her arm. Wouldn’t like to meet her on a dark night,’ he chuckled.
‘Priory’s worth a visit, though - magnificent gatehouse - near Clacton-on-Sea.’
Lily nudged Catherine. ‘Have to go there then, won’t we?’
But Catherine was left feeling uneasy by the incident. She had seen the man and his wagon clearly. There was a strange atmosphere about this flat, empty quarter that stole into her bones like the mist at dusk and seemed to bring the past with it.
Her apprehension only increased on their arrival at Tendring. The village was no more than a handful of plain cottages, and a glimpse of a white-washed church surrounded by horse chestnut trees. Driving a further half-mile, they arrived outside a high-walled enclosure and a solid pair of rusting gates. They waited several minutes while Mr Stanway bawled for entry and a hobbling old man in old-fashioned breeches loomed out of the dark with a bunch of keys and let them in.
‘Is it always locked at night?’ Catherine asked.
‘Of course.’ The master was brusque. ‘No one comes in or out after seven o’clock - or four in winter. There are that many vagrants wandering about these days, we can only take so many.’
‘What about visitors?’
‘Visitors?’ He sounded surprised.
‘If we wanted to invite friends . . .’
‘You can see them on your day off - every other Saturday. The guardians don’t encourage visiting. The inmates can see family members on Wednesday afternoons. But Mrs Stanway will explain all this to you in the morning. I expect you just want to get to your beds now.’
The friends exchanged wary glances as the vast gates clanged behind them, but said nothing. They were too tired to notice much of their surroundings that night, except the chill gloominess of the high-ceilinged gothic building and the starkness of their narrow bedrooms, little more than cubicles, a long corridor apart.
Catherine fell into a fitful sleep and dreamt of runaway wagons hurtling her down to the sea at terrific speed, waking only on the point of drowning. The next morning, she still felt the queasiness of motion from the long journey and the final car ride.
‘Miss McMullen?’ An elderly woman with a face deeply scored with wrinkles, and wearing a starched cap, knocked on her door and looked in before she answered. ‘I’m Mrs Atter. Show you where the dining hall is.’
‘Thank you,’ Catherine said, hastily buttoning up her cardigan and following. ‘Can I call for my friend Lily?’
‘Miss Hearn’s had breakfast.’ The woman spoke in a slow, deliberate way, as if she used words sparingly. ‘Assistants eat first, then the officers. The mistress wants to see you straight after chapel.’
They passed a dormitory of iron beds with coarse grey blankets where two women were mopping the floor. Yellow light filtered in through dusty screens at the high-up windows and Catherine wondered why they were needed. They turned down another long corridor that overlooked a bare yard. Three old women in faded blue overalls sat on a bench contemplating the worn flagstones.
‘Airing yard for the old females,’ Mrs Atter said. ‘Next one’s for girls.’
Catherine stared in surprise as they reached the far end and looked down into an identical yard where a group of young girls was running around in a mass game of skipping. It was the first real sound of life she had heard in this echoing labyrinth of wards and yards.
‘Don’t they have a separate home for the children? Their own school and that.’
Mrs Atter shook her head. ‘Girls this end, boys the other. Idiots go to the asylum at Colchester.’
Breakfast was porridge and tea, but Catherine’s stomach was so knotted with apprehension, that she hardly touched hers. She felt she had stepped back fifty years in one night.
Mrs Atter noticed her lack of appetite. ‘We get sausages for breakfast twice a week now since inspector came round. And roast dinners Sunday and Thursday.’
Catherine smiled weakly, wondering what they got the rest of the week. At least at Harton they had been well fed. She filed into chapel with the others, too overawed to protest her Catholicism. It smelt pleasantly of polished wood, and someone had put a vase of pink carnations and sweet peas by the vestry door. The chaplain gave a hasty service of prayers and a hymn, then dismissed them to their day’s work. She was able only to flash a quick smile of encouragement at Lily as her friend was led away by the relieving officer.
Mrs Stanway was waiting for Catherine. She was a tall, handsome, middle-aged woman with a quick walk, who talked over her shoulder as she hurried out of the building and across a large cobbled drying ground.
‘Wash house, drying rooms, laundry.’ She pointed at a row of buildings opposite. ‘You’ve met your assistant already, I see.’
‘Have I?’
‘Mrs Atter.’
‘Oh, she didn’t say,’ Catherine exclaimed.
‘She’s very experienced - been here since the eighties, when the Kettlewells ran the place - they were the original overseers. Can’t say things have changed very much since. But as Mr Stanway says, “If it isn’t broken, don’t mend it”. That’s the view of our Board anyway. Inspector shook them up a couple of years back, but things change very slowly in this part of the world.’
‘Aren’t the County Council responsible for running the institution now?’ Catherine asked. ‘At home, the guardians are being replaced - since the new law’s come in.’
Mrs Stanway gave a snort of laughter. ‘As I said, things take time.’ She turned in the doorway and gave Catherine a good look over. ‘I must say, you’re a lot younger than I thought you’d be. You’re just a slip of a thing.’
Catherine bristled. ‘I’ve been assistant head laundress for two years in a large city laundry and I’m as strong as an ox.’
The mistress laughed again. ‘Good, I like that. You certainly came with a spotless reference. Though it defeats me why you’d want to leave the city for a backwater like this. Why have you come?’
Catherine was taken aback at her directness. ‘I - er - wanted a change - to get on - see a bit of the world.’
Mrs Stanway pulled a face. ‘A bit is all you’ll see.’ She saw her dismay. ‘Don’t listen to me. I come from London and nowhere measures up after you’ve lived there.’
She showed Catherine into the laundry and introduced her to the staff. It was suffocatingly hot, even that early in the day.
As she was leaving, the mistress turned and asked, ‘Is there anything you wish to ask?’
Catherine mustered her courage. ‘Is there a Catholic church in the area? I can’t miss Mass on a Sunday and I like to make me confession regularly.’
Mrs Stanway said, ‘There’s a priest in Great Bentley, I believe. But I can’t promise to get you there. Won’t our chapel do?’
Catherine could just imagine old John fulminating at such a suggestion. ‘Lily and I don’t mind walking,’ she answered.
Her superior gave a dismissive wave. ‘I suppose you could borrow the bicycles.’
Catherine felt a flush of relief.
‘Oh, by the way,’ Mrs Stanway added as an afterthought, ‘I’ll need to see your birth certificate. Just for the paperwork.’
Catherine froze. ‘I -I haven’t got one -I mean -I haven’t got it with me - didn’t bring it.’ She was burning under the woman’s scrutinising look.
‘Well, perhaps you could write home and ask your family to send it. You do have family?’
‘Yes, yes, of course,’ Catherine stammered. ‘Ka— me mother will send it.’
Mrs Stanway stared at her a moment longer, then nodded. ‘Good.’
Catherine was left, heart hammering, trying to compose herself enough to listen to Mrs Atter’s slow voice over the din of the laundry. The woman mu
st have thought her dim-witted, for she could not concentrate on anything except the thought that she could not produce a birth certificate.
She had never been asked for one until now, and had never wanted to question Kate about it. Did illegitimate offspring have them? Probably not. And if one did exist, what would it say? Father unknown? Born out of wedlock? Or would it give John and Rose’s names as her parents, and contradict the information on her application about Kate McDermott being her next of kin? Why had she never asked Kate before?
Catherine was engulfed by waves of panic. She had taken this huge step to escape the shame of her past and start afresh, only to find it catching her up before her new job had even begun. Familiar nausea rose from the pit of her stomach. What was she going to do?
Chapter 23
Catherine dealt with the mistress’s request for a birth certificate by ignoring it. From time to time, Mrs Stanway would raise the issue and Catherine would act as if it had totally slipped her mind.
‘I’ll mention it the next time I write home,’ she promised. ‘I’ve been that busy.’
And she had. The workhouse laundry was large and antiquated, the machinery constantly breaking down and needing repair. She tried to befriend her workers, but they were sullenly suspicious of her openness. A mix of country girls who knew nothing of the world beyond the adjacent villages, and the elderly infirm who had lived there half their lives, they struggled to comprehend her northern accent. So used were the old women to institutional life that they never ventured beyond its walls and talked about ‘the Queen’ as if Victoria had not been dead for nearly thirty years.
Mrs Atter, with whom she clashed daily over how things should be done, did not approve of her attempts at familiarity either.
‘They need to know who’s boss,’ she scolded. ‘Give ‘em an inch and they’ll take a yard. Mrs Kettlewell was never one for mixing the classes.’
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