Field of Dust

by Angela Jean Young

  ‘Congratulations, Florence,’ she said, handing over a money order. ‘You are a credit to Dr Barnardo’s and all that we stand for. I have great faith that you will shine and have pleasure in judging you first class.’

  Flossie flushed and thanked the stern woman who, for so long, had epitomised nothing but authority and discipline. The monetary award system was often talked about amongst the girls, but it had never dawned on Flossie that she might be considered one of the best. To enter the world of employment, first-class girls received an outfit to the value of five pounds, which they could keep, provided they did not change their job for a year. Second-class girls, found guilty of ill temper, disobedience, insolence or laziness, were given an outfit worth three pounds and ten shillings. Third-class girls – those deemed to have grave faults – were issued with an outfit costing three pounds, but had to pay the money back out of their wages. Dishonest, violent or vicious girls, and those uncontrolled in temper, were declared fourth class and sent from the village in disgrace.

  As Flossie stood up to leave, the governess stood up too. Her countenance softened slightly as she fumbled in her desk drawer.

  ‘I have something else for you,’ she said, handing her a grubby envelope. Flossie immediately recognised the postmark: Ipswich. ‘From your mother,’ the older woman said quietly. ‘I am already aware of its contents. Take it out into the garden and read it in peace. And take this as well…’

  Flossie looked stunned as a second, much larger envelope was placed in her hands.

  ‘You will have much to think about. You may come and talk to me again when you have had a chance to digest this information.’

  Finding a quiet spot beneath a heavily-laden apple tree, Flossie found herself trembling in anticipation of what she was about to learn. Slowly opening the letter, she saw a sheet of cheap, flimsy paper inside which she unfolded and began to read:

  Dearest daughter,

  I am truly bereft at what you must think of me and I will try my utmost to explain my reasons for leaving you and Lottie on that fateful day. I feel sure that once you understand, you will forgive me.

  I have charged those in power to find you a respectable position here in Ipswich so that I can make amends and I truly look forward to seeing you soon.

  Your loving mother,

  Mary Oxer

  For a moment, she found herself unable to breathe. So many thoughts whirred around inside her head that she felt quite faint. Looking again, she checked to see if the sprawling signature was really that of her mother. If it was from her mother, why the sudden change of heart towards her abandoned offspring? Dismissing the cloying sentiment present in those few lines as a ploy, Flossie quickly resolved to confront her mother face-to-face over her past actions. As for seeking employment in Ipswich, that was not on Flossie’s agenda. She had no intention of watching her earnings disappear behind the bar of the local alehouse.

  Turning to the larger envelope, she wondered what else she was about to discover. Lifting out a mass of newspaper cuttings tied together with string, the name OXER was written in capital letters on the front sheet. The reports seemed to be in date order. Scanning the lines of the first, she realised that she was reading an account of Henry Oxer’s arrest and appearance at the Magistrates’ Court for being drunk and disorderly. It transpired that, at only twenty-two years of age, this was the first of many such appearances leading to periods of incarceration in gaol.

  Not far down the pile, Mary Oxer’s name appeared. There were details of her arrest for stealing a shirt from a neighbour. The sordid story was difficult to take in. ‘I took it for want of bread,’ Mary had pleaded, but the magistrates showed little sympathy given the fact that she had neither sold, nor pawned the shirt until a full five days later. Her ‘need’ was in doubt and she was subsequently gaoled for fourteen days.

  The more Flossie read, the more unbearable the truth became. With tears trickling down her cheeks, she learned that due to debt and unpaid rent the destitute pair were sent for a spell in the workhouse, and there Mary had given birth to a girl. Scouring the scrap of paper for a date, Flossie faced the uncomfortable truth as to the place of Lottie’s birth. On release, and forced to live in lodgings in Bond’s Court, a mean corner above Rope Lane, Henry continued to be arraigned before the magistrates for drunk and disorderly behaviour. Then, after he was shopped by his own mother for stealing a family Ulster coat, he gave her a black eye, for which he received a month in custody.

  The final part of the wretched story concerned the welfare of Mary Oxer and her two daughters. They appeared destined for the workhouse again after Henry had deserted them following his release from gaol. When the workhouse guardians sought to get Henry’s father, Fred, to appear before them over the matter of contributing to the cost, he failed to do so.

  Flossie certainly did have more questions. She doubted that many of them could be answered by the governess, though. When did Samuel Grant get involved with Mary? Was he her knight in shining armour? Did Flossie and Lottie have the same father? Putting the paperwork back in the envelope, Flossie started walking back to the office; there was one question that could be answered now.

  Thankfully the governess was one step ahead and assured Flossie that she had no intention of carrying out Mary’s request to find the girl a ‘respectable position’ in Ipswich. She had been collecting the newspaper reports on the Oxers’ visits to their local Magistrates’ Courts for many a year and was under no illusions as to their motives. Barnardo’s policy was such that Mary could have taken her children back whenever she wished, despite signing to hand them over. Obviously, she had chosen not to do so. Now that Flossie was of age it was up to her where her future lay and the contents of the buff envelope would help her make an informed decision.

  Two weeks later, Florence Oxer passed through the wrought-iron gates that had insulated her from the world and all its influences for almost four years. Wearing a smart dress, coat and hat, she popped the Bible and pledge card given to her by Miss Adams into her carpet bag and turned into Cranbrook Road. The clatter of iron-shod hooves and the yells from street vendors were deafening as she turned her back on what she had come to know as The Largest Family in the World. Whatever revelations lay in store for her on her arrival in Ipswich, she was resolved to discover the truth about her parentage.

  11

  Flossie surprised herself by how easily she coped with the hustle and bustle of London. After making her way by tram to Liverpool Street station, she waited in an unruly queue to buy a train ticket to Ipswich. Having saved money from her five-pound voucher by settling for robust, practical clothing, she now had enough for travel, food and lodgings for quite a few days. Miss Adams had found her an old map of Ipswich, so during the journey she plotted a route to Mary’s address.

  Leaning back and staring out of the window, she considered her past life. Try as hard as she might, there were no fragments of memory that threw light on anything before Northfleet. It was hopeless; she was going to have to rely on others telling her the truth. Whatever happened over the next few days, she was determined to find out about her own and Lottie’s origins.

  Passing a row of malt houses as the train pulled onto the platform, the sweet caramel aroma made Flossie feel quite nauseous. It was a relief to be out of the enclosed station and in a busy thoroughfare, full of imposing shops and coffee houses. A fancy window display bearing a sign reading New Goods from China caught her eye and, unable to resist the temptation, she went inside. Laid out before her in this veritable Aladdin’s cave was an array of feminine items only previously seen on the pages of magazines. Combs encrusted with precious stones, ornate belt buckles, sleeve links, earrings and delicate ivory fans. Purchasing a tortoiseshell hairpin for herself and a dainty marcasite brooch which she thought might suit her mother if she felt inclined to give it to her, she watched excitedly as they were wrapped in decorative paper. Elated with her new-found se
nse of freedom, she continued on her journey, disappointed that the department stores came to an end as she turned into Eagle Street.

  With the pavements becoming dirtier and more crowded, she found herself being jostled by rough-looking people, some appearing the worse for drink. Hardly surprising, she thought, given the large number of alehouses she had already passed. She couldn’t fail to notice the numerous pawnbrokers with their golden spheres suspended above their doors, or the many shops in the vicinity with signs offering left-behind clothes.

  From Upper Orwell Court towards her destination, the streets narrowed alarmingly. Rowdy groups of street children disappeared down passages and alleyways as quickly as they appeared. She stopped momentarily to push her delicate parcel to the bottom of her old carpet bag for safekeeping and checked her street map to see where she was. Looking around, she spotted a jagged piece of wood hanging over an archway with the misspelt name Bond Cort roughly painted on it. With some trepidation, she entered what initially looked like a dark tunnel. Within a few feet a foul stench engulfed her, then, emerging into the light, she found herself in a small yard surrounded by a cluster of one-up, one-down, blind-backed cottages. All forms of life seemed to coexist there. A quick glance revealed mangy dogs, chickens and even a pig or two. There was clearly no proper sanitation. Finding Mary Oxer in this filthy rabbit warren of a place was going to be a solemn challenge.

  ‘She be barred from The Mitre Tavern and even The Cow and Pail, except on Saturdays when they put up with trouble,’ a grimy, dishevelled woman told her as she emptied a bucket of human dung into a storage tank in the corner of the yard. ‘Might find ’er in The John Barleycorn on Pottery Street, or even The Safe Harbour. Chequers be worth a try. That be a rough house. All else fails, she’ll be in The Angel. They ain’t at all fussy.’

  Seeing the smartly-dressed young girl’s dismay at the overflowing slop-tank, the woman cackled. ‘What you pulling a face at? There’s over an ’undred of us living in these eighteen cottages. We’re never short of this mess, and we gets a good price fer it. Farmer buys it to manure ’is fields.’

  At that point a swarm of flies, disturbed by the latest delivery, descended on both of them. Flossie waved her arms about to get rid of them when, as if on cue, a flypaper man appeared in the yard. Wearing a cone-shaped wizard’s hat, he demonstrated the value of his headdress as marauding flies were magically drawn to the sheets of sticky paper wrapped round it. Within seconds his teeth were visibly vibrating with the desperate buzzing of his trapped prey while a few lucky ones that had missed the target emerged from his grey, unkempt beard.

  Keen to escape into the fresh, early evening air, Flossie left the fly-man and the dishevelled woman arguing over his fee and headed off along Rope Walk. Living conditions couldn’t get much worse, Flossie thought. It was always the same in areas catering for the lowest strata of inhabitants – numerous shops and dwellings crammed together, plagued by open, stinking cesspits and disease. Unscrupulous landowners building poor-quality housing were never short of tenants, so desperate was the need to put a roof over their family’s heads that they often moved into unfinished premises.

  Children were out in the streets, skipping or playing hopscotch, their houses too hot for early bedtime. Flossie watched one lucky little boy playing with a whip and top as a water cart clattered into view, its contents slopping over the cobbles. Those with shoes stopped to remove them before joining the others running barefoot behind the cart, all splashing excitedly in the cascade. For a moment she felt ten years old herself, with uneven pigtails and smutty pinafore, innocently playing whilst waiting for her mother to leave The Huggens. It seemed like history was close to being repeated.

  Rounding the corner, a massive crenellated building overshadowed the street. Realising it was the town gaol – the place where Henry Oxer spent much of his time – Flossie felt a shiver run down her spine. The sight of disembodied arms hanging out of iron-barred windows may have served as a reminder to those below of the gravity of the law, but it shocked her to the marrow.

  In Pottery Street, the scene just got worse. In order to get to The John Barleycorn, she encountered a scene of horror before her. Several butchers were outside their shops hanging freshly slaughtered carcasses. Gutted rabbits with distorted faces dangled by their ears. A rag-and-bone man waiting nearby was offering purchasers tuppence for their skins. Flossie found the shrill animal noises issuing from the abattoirs simply terrifying, and she was forced to lift her skirts to avoid the river of blood running down the cobblestones. A dozen or more children were in a yard watching the poor creatures being dispatched, laughing as the beasts writhed and twitched. The sight and sounds of pigs feasting on the discarded offal and clotting blood made her retch. It was a great relief not to find Mary drunk at the bar at the down-at-heel alehouse here; the smell was as bad inside as out.

  On entering Woodhouse Street an assemblage of street entertainers – barrel-organ grinders, accordion-players, tin whistle and fiddle-players – helped Flossie regain her composure. It was obviously a popular meeting place and the crowds were reluctant to move on. A sad-looking bear was being made to stand on its hind legs and twirl around. But there was one act so intriguing that it prompted Flossie to open her purse and drop a penny in the collection pot. A man with ebony skin held a pair of animal rib-bones, about six inches in length, between the fingers of each hand. By moving his wrists in a certain way, they knocked against each other, creating a clickety-clack sound reminiscent of Harry Relph’s clogs on the cellar flaps of The Elephant’s Head in Rosherville. It made Flossie smile and brought more memories flooding back.

  The clock on the outside of the Baptist chapel served as a reminder of her mission. The Safe Harbour alehouse had a welcoming name, at least. She forged on, passing densely populated terraced houses with front doors opening directly onto the pavement. Hawkers working out of lodging houses were everywhere selling small quantities of coal, wood, fish and poultry. Despite passing at least two milk shops, a crowd of small children were crowding around a barrow to buy a farthing’s worth to drink on the spot. Behind them, a sign outside Cant’s the Baker advertised its bake office, where you could get your meat or pudding cooked for a penny. For many women without the means to slow-cook meat, this was where you came to cook your piece of clod for Sunday dinner.

  It was getting late. Mary wasn’t in The Safe Harbour, but someone had just seen her holding forth in The Chequers Inn. It was just as well because a trawl around any more of the fifty or so inns and beer houses of Ipswich was unthinkable. Cheap drink was available literally a step or two away from every labourer’s workplace or front door. It was no wonder that drunkenness and domestic violence were such a problem.

  Flossie braced herself for the reception she might receive as she pushed open the heavy, glazed door of The Chequers. Mounds of sawdust heavy with spilt beer and spit made it slippery underfoot as she fought her way through the crush. Trying not to catch anyone’s eye for fear of confrontation, she was on the verge of retreating when a familiar voice stopped her in her tracks.

  ‘Well, you’re a sight for sore eyes, that be sure. All grown-up and fancy-looking.’

  Plonking her glass down on the bar, a tall, intoxicated woman with dirty clothes and unruly auburn hair held out her arms. ‘Come closer and give your ma a kiss.’

  Flossie had imagined this moment a thousand times. Raw emotion took hold. Sorrow, anger, disapproval and embarrassment surged through her as she stood rooted to the spot. If this was a demonstration of motherly affection, it had failed. It felt more like an attempt to impress the gang of cronies at the bar.

  ‘Well now,’ Mary spat, with hands on hips, ‘I see you’re as stubborn as ever. Maybe you’ll be buying me a drink instead.’

  The bar fell silent as Flossie approached the landlord and purchased a large gin. Mary snatched at the glass, but Flossie pulled it away and, fixing her mother with a cold stare, proceeded to pour
it very deliberately onto the floor in front of her.

  ‘That’ll be your last drink tonight. When you’re ready, I’ll be waiting for you outside.’

  The slow walk home to Bond Court was excruciating. Mary stumbled and cursed, shouting abuse at her daughter for having shown her up in front of her friends. Flossie ignored it all, intent only on getting the inebriated woman off the streets. On entering the house, she was horrified to see the filthy conditions her mother was living in alongside her husband Henry’s parents, Mary Ann and Fred Oxer. Henry’s latest incarceration had left the family in dire straits.

  It was then that Flossie discovered she had a brother, Henry George. At two years old, he still wasn’t walking and appeared weak and emaciated. It occurred to Flossie that had his grandmother not been there to look after him, it was unlikely the boy would have survived this long. They all shared two tiny rooms without a window and Flossie realised she now faced having to bed down in the scullery with her mother, listening to the cockroaches running between the cracks in the poorly-constructed walls. It was a far cry from the spotlessly scrubbed Primrose Cottage she’d just come from, but at least she had the comfort of knowing that she wouldn’t be there long. Just long enough to get some much-needed answers.

  Mary had wasted no time in touting her daughter’s superior domestic-service training and fully intended to reap the rewards. Ipswich girls generally worked on the premises of tradesmen, shopkeepers and publicans, while country girls became servants to the middle-class households in Church Street. But Mary was aiming for something grander than this. She had her eyes on Holywells at the top of Bishops Hill. This large residence and park belonged to the Cobbold family, owners of the Cliff Brewery and its many public houses. Having frequented them all, she had obtained some useful contacts. There was talk of a new chambermaid being sought soon.