An Orphan's Secret

by Maggie Hope

  ‘Ah, he’s not fit to have tea in a lady’s room, Mother. Look at him, he doesn’t know how to behave, racketing on in the hall and then not man enough to take his punishment, sobbing and crying. Look at him, he’s as weak as his mother was!’

  ‘Ralph! Do not talk like that in front of the child.’ Mrs Grizedale didn’t often face up to her son but when she did it was usually in defence of Jonty. Now she lifted the child to his feet and wiped his eyes with a wisp of lacy handkerchief.

  ‘Now go up and wash your hands and face, Jonty, and when you come down again we will have tea. Go on.’

  The boy glanced at his father and turned to the stairs.

  ‘The back stairs! How many times have I told you? The back stairs for you, servant’s brat that you are.’

  ‘Ralph!’ cried Mrs Grizedale, but Jonty turned and ran to the back of the hall to the baize door which led to the kitchens and the back stairs. He was only glad to get away from his father without a beating. As he climbed the stairs he thought about Meg and her da. Meg loved her da and he loved her. Why wasn’t his da like his Uncle Jack? Jonty sighed and shook his head. He couldn’t understand why his da was always in such a rage with him.

  Now Jonty had gone, Mrs Grizedale reverted to her normal hesitancy when dealing with Ralph. He was so short with her sometimes. It was her fault usually, she knew she irritated him. She still mourned his father, her dear George. A tear rolled down her cheek as she thought of him, wondering why Ralph was so different. She dabbed at the tear with the lace handkerchief, still wet from Jonty’s tears, before tucking it back into the wrist of her black lace mittens. She looked at Ralph, hoping for a sympathetic word, but he had turned back into his study. Poor boy, she thought, he must be missing his father too, that was what made him short with his own son. She walked to the open door of the room and peered anxiously in.

  ‘Did you meet any of your friends, dear? On your ride, I mean?’ Oh, she did hope he hadn’t been drinking so early in the day.

  ‘What do you mean, meet any of my friends? What friends do I have in this hole? Do you never listen to anything I say? I have been to Shildon, to a meeting. I told you I was going, only this morning.’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course, dear,’ Mrs Grizedale said faintly. Why did she always say the wrong thing?

  Ralph stared at her. ‘You just stop spoiling that boy. It was a mistake letting you give him to that woman to wet-nurse when Nell died, though I was glad to get the sickly, puling brat out of the house at the time. If it hadn’t been for that strait-laced father of mine he would never have been here in the first place. Forcing me, his own son and a gentleman born, to marry a pitman’s daughter. Nell . . . common name for a stupid common girl. Just a pale imitation of her sister, too.’

  Mrs Grizedale stepped back, gasping in horror, and perhaps Ralph realised he had gone too far for he strode from the room without a backward glance.

  ‘I’m off to Darlington for the evening. Maybe I’ll get some better company there,’ he snarled, and a moment later she could hear his raised voice shouting for the stable boy.

  ‘Has Da gone?’ The small voice from the hall made Mrs Grizedale turn and cover up her shock and upset with a smile.

  ‘Yes, dear, he’s gone. We’ll have a nice time together now, won’t we? Cook has made scones, I know, and there’s strawberry jam.’ She hesitated, biting her lip. Maybe she had been wrong in giving him to Hannah to wet-nurse. He’d picked up some bad habits of speech.

  ‘It would be better if you didn’t call your father Da, dear. You must call him Father, that’s his proper name.’

  Jonty nodded his head slowly. His father wasn’t a da, any road, he thought, not like Meg’s. He took his grandmother’s hand and they went into her sitting-room. His normally sunny nature was reasserting itself; his father was gone out and Jonty didn’t have to worry about offending him for a while.

  ‘Strawberry jam?’ he cried, and smiled in delight as he ran into his grandmother’s room. Auntie Hannah had made jam once, from the wild raspberries growing alongside the lane, and sometimes she made rhubarb jam. But Jonty had never tasted strawberry jam until he came to live with Da and Grandmother, and by, it was lovely! Maybe he would be able to save a little from his tea and take it down to Meg’s house for her to taste, he thought happily, but then his brow creased with anxiety. If he did and his father found out, Da would hit him with his riding crop, he knew. That was what he had done last time Jonty sneaked out to see Meg. But he would sneak off, he vowed. Da was out and might not catch him. And Jonty’s heart ached from the pain of not seeing Meg and Auntie Hannah and the baby.

  After tea, when Grandmother said he could go out and play in the shrubbery, as soon as he was out of sight from her window, Jonty tiptoed along the side of the hedges until he was away from the Hall and then flew down the bank to the little row of cottages by the old line, clutching a scone liberally spread with strawberry jam for Meg. But when he arrived, Meg wasn’t there. No one was. No children playing in the back lane, no smoke from the chimneys. Jonty walked round and round the row, and peered in the cracks between the planks of wood which were nailed to Auntie Hannah’s kitchen window. The kitchen was empty: no table, no chairs, not even Grannie’s rocking-chair. Out front again he found Meg’s peg doll lying on the path. He picked it up and looked around.

  ‘Meg?’ he called. ‘Auntie?’ But he knew it was hopeless. He walked back to the Hall carrying the doll, his eyes full of tears, not even caring if Da saw him and whipped him for going down there. They had gone away and left him, they didn’t care about him, they’d gone without even telling him, abandoning him, they didn’t care what his father did to him. Not Auntie Hannah or Uncle Jack, not even Meg.

  Arriving back at the house, Jonty went in the front door and climbed the main staircase, not bothered if Da saw him. The way he felt, he would almost welcome a beating. Maybe it would take away the awful emptiness which was there right in his middle. But Da wasn’t there, only Grandmother, who came into his room to hear his prayers.

  ‘I’m not saying prayers tonight,’ Jonty said firmly, and climbed into bed and turned his face to the wall.

  ‘Is something the matter, dear?’ Mrs Grizedale hovered anxiously but Jonty refused to say another word. After a moment she went to the door, closing it quietly after her.

  ‘Poor boy,’ she said. ‘Your short life hasn’t been easy. One night without praying won’t hurt.’

  And Jonty put his hand under his pillow and felt Meg’s dollie there and clutched it tightly to his chest.

  * * *

  Meg helped Hannah and Jack load up the hand cart for the journey to Marsden. She was bubbling over with excitement as she gathered Jack Boy’s clean clouts into a bundle and wrapped them in a blanket. It was a lovely day and they were going to live by the seaside, Da had told her. And hadn’t he got a fine new job, working in a quarry?

  It was Saturday morning and Da had been gone two days when he came home last night. Her mam had been worried he wouldn’t get a job, Meg knew it. She had been so upset she had sicked up all her breakfast in the sink in the yard. But that was yesterday. Today Hannah was bustling about piling things on the handcart while Jack Boy lay in his cradle by the gate.

  ‘Da, Da,’ said Meg, ‘tell us again about the sea and the rocks an’ all.’

  Jack laughed. ‘Wait till we get going, pet, then I’ll tell you all about it. By, it’s going to be grand. We’ll be living right on the cliff top, and further down there’s the sands and you can plodge in the water and look for shrimps.’

  ‘Eeh, Jack,’ said Hannah. ‘I hope it’s not too near the edge, mind. What about the bairn, is it safe?’

  ‘It’ll be all right, man,’ Jack avowed. ‘We’ll just have to watch until Meg gets used to it. She’s not daft, like.’

  At last they had finished loading the cart and were on their way, calling at the colliery offices for Jack to leave the key to the house they had only been in for a few days.

  Meg had got use
d to the travelling now. She thought they were going all the way with the handcart and maybe they would be able to sleep in a farmer’s barn again and she would see ducks and hens and cows. So she was a bit disappointed when their next stop was the railway station and she and Mam and Jack Boy got on a train for Sunderland, and then another smaller train for Marsden. But still it was nice on the train, too, they went so fast, and before teatime came they had arrived and were getting down at the station at Whitburn Colliery.

  And there was the sea, miles and miles of water. Meg had never seen anything like it. Her eyes widened with the wonder of it. Even though Da had told her about it, she had never thought it would be like that.

  ‘Eeh, Mam,’ she said, as they walked up the path past the tall building which Mam said was a lighthouse and on towards the rows of houses which made up the pit village of Marsden. ‘Eeh, Mam, wouldn’t it be lovely if Jonty could come? By, wouldn’t he be surprised if he saw the sea?’

  ‘You forget about Jonty,’ said Hannah. ‘Jonty won’t be coming here, there’s nowt so sure. Now stop chattering, do.’

  Mam sounded tired and cross and Meg’s excitement dimmed a little. Mam didn’t mean it. Jonty would come sometime, Meg knew he would. But she obediently stopped talking and contented herself with watching the birds wheeling over the rocks and calling loudly to one another, great big birds like she had never seen before. Why, they were nearly as big as ducks!

  Four

  Meg loved the sea. She loved the sound of waves breaking on the rocks below the cliffs, loved to lie in bed at night and listen to it. After her day at school Meg liked to lie on the cliff top near Souter Lighthouse and watch the seabirds feeding their young in the nests on the sides of the sea stacks and down the steep-sided cliffs. And she would talk in her head to Jonty, telling him about the cormorants and the kittiwakes flying about their business and taking no notice of the people living on the cliff top. But only when she was not needed at home, for there was a new baby soon after they moved to Marsden, and then another. And Mam wasn’t as strong as she used to be, always weary and tired.

  Meg was plagued by a nightmare, always the same one, where she and Mam and the babby were running up an uneven road black with coal dust and someone was chasing them. Meg knew it was the candyman and he was catching up with them, no matter how hard they ran, and she would wake up screaming, just as the candyman put out a hand to get her.

  And then, the next day, the nightmare would put her in mind of Jonty, her lost brother Jonty, and she would ask Mam about him.

  ‘Forget about Jonty. He’s your cousin, not your brother, any road,’ Mam would say every time she asked. But Meg didn’t want to forget Jonty. She would go over in her mind the last time she had seen him. He had come back to see her. Jonty’s da had come to their house then and dragged him away. But first Jonty had stood up straight and defied him, and his father had cuffed him and Jonty had gone flying into the wall. Jonty had gone very white and Meg had run to him but she had been pushed roughly out of the way.

  ‘I told you not to come here!’ Jonty’s da had roared, and tucking his son under his arm like a bundle of rags, had flung him over Cal’s saddle.

  Hannah had stood by quietly after her first shocked protest. She had clutched the baby to her and Meg had gone to her and held on to her skirt for comfort.

  ‘Mam!’ she had whimpered, and Hannah had put down a hand and pressed her daughter’s head to her, clucking her tongue in automatic shushing. ‘It’s no good, Meg, I can’t do anything about it,’ she’d said.

  That was all Meg could remember of Jonty and even that was fading from her mind. So she made up conversations with him when she was on her own, and a little glow would rise in her.

  * * *

  Meg was nine years old when she began working. She was by Souter lighthouse one day with her little sister Alice on one hand and two-year-old Miles on the other. Meg was keeping them out of Mam’s way for a while so she could get the baking done. Miles was gurgling and laughing, tugging at Meg’s hand because he wanted to go to the edge of the cliff after a seabird.

  ‘No, Miley, no. You have to be a good lad and stay with me or we’ll have to go back home.’ Meg pulled him back and his chuckles threatened to turn into tears. ‘Look how good Alice is, pet,’ urged Meg. ‘Alice keeps hold of me.’ And it was true. Alice was standing quietly, watching Miles with the superior expression of a three-year-old for a baby of only two.

  ‘Aren’t you at school today?’

  Meg looked round to see the head keeper of the lighthouse on the other side of the wall. Meg knew all the keepers by sight, this was a favourite haunt of hers, and they all knew her.

  ‘I’ve left school now,’ she confided. ‘I’m going to get work.’

  The head keeper looked at her speculatively. ‘Why, I might be able to put you in the way of a position,’ he said thoughtfully. He liked the little lass and she might just do. ‘Our step scrubber’s leaving on Friday. How would you like to take on the work? There’s a lot of steps, mind.’

  Meg looked up at the lighthouse. It was tall, she thought, she’d not been inside it before. And no doubt there were a lot of steps, there would be in a building like that. But she wasn’t afraid of work, she was used to it, being the eldest.

  ‘I’ll have to ask me da,’ she said.

  ‘Gan on then, ask him,’ said the lighthouse keeper, well pleased that he had found a new steps scrubber so quickly.

  So Meg came to the lighthouse every morning and scrubbed down the steps with hot water and soda to keep them free from any grease and dirt which might cause the keepers to slip in their frequent journeys up and down to the light. And she got paid, two shillings a week, which she proudly took home to her mother. For not only did her leaving school and finding a job so soon mean there was an extra two shillings in the house, it also meant that the threepence a week she’d had to pay for her schooling was saved too.

  Working on the steps was lonely work, though the keepers usually had a word with her as they passed. But Meg had a lively imagination and she would amuse herself with day-dreams. Most of her dreams were about Jonty – not a Jonty she remembered, not really. It was so long since she had seen him that his image was blurred as she tried to picture him in her mind. But she knew more about who he was now. Mam would sometimes pause in what she was doing and look pensive, and when Meg asked what she was thinking about, she would say, ‘I wonder how Jonty’s getting on? Eeh, my own sister’s lad and I can’t get to see the bairn.’

  Or Meg would hear Mam and Da talking about days gone by and Da would say, ‘If it weren’t for Ralph Grizedale . . .’ and the name would strike terror into Meg’s heart for she knew he was Jonty’s da and the Candyman and maybe she would have the nasty dream again.

  But Jonty, Jonty had become her knight, the man who would find her one day, perhaps as she emptied her bucket over the rocks and paused for a moment, letting the fresh sea breeze off the North Sea lift her hair away from her damp forehead, cooling and soothing. He would ride up on a big grey horse and lift her up in front of him. And he would look after her so that she didn’t have to go back in the lighthouse and start scrubbing yet another flight of steps.

  Usually at this stage her day-dream would falter for there was a shadowy figure behind Jonty, large and black and menacing. And Meg would plunge her brush into the water and go on scrubbing the everlasting steps.

  Meg was walking along the shoreline one day after her work was done, her shrimping pail in her hand. By, she thought, with the uplift to her spirits she always felt when she gazed out to sea and saw the birds wheeling above the collier boats heading into the mouth of the river Wear to Shields, free as air, birds are. Plenty to eat and no one to bother them. It must be grand to be a bird. She grinned to herself. It was grand to be Meg Maddison, though. She was lucky to be living here by the rocks where she could gather shrimps and maybe a crab to take home to tea. And the feel of the wet sand between her toes was grand, and even the shock of the ic
y waves breaking over her feet. And she was never bad with the cough like Alice, she was never ill.

  So why, she pondered, had she had the nightmare last night? Why did she have this feeling that something was going to happen? She shook her head. Mebbe she was just being daft and fanciful. Mam said she often was.

  Meg found her question answered when she arrived at the back door with her pail of shrimps.

  ‘Howay in, pet, I’m glad you’re back. We have a lot to do tonight,’ Hannah greeted her. She was on the floor packing a box with the children’s clothes and Meg stared in surprise as she dropped the latch behind her.

  ‘A lot to do? Why, like?’

  ‘We’re moving.’

  Hannah saw the stricken look on Meg’s face and rushed into explanations. ‘Now, don’t take on, there’s nowt we can do about it. Your da’s had a bit of bad luck, he’s got turned off, and we can’t live on air. So we’re going over to Cousin Phoebe’s. She’ll put us up till we find a place. There’s work going down the pit.’

  ‘Da’s going down the pit? But he hates the pit. He won’t be able to stand it down there!’

  ‘Aye, well, hate it or not, he’ll just have to get used to it,’ Hannah said flatly. ‘There’s nowt else for it.’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘Aw, stop standing there with your mouth open and come and give us a hand. The bairn’s crawling into everything.’

  Numbly, Meg did as she was told, scooping up baby Miles from under the table where he was sucking a lump of coal purloined from the coal bucket by the fire, his face as black as any pitman’s. With the child on one hip, she filled the iron pan with water from the bucket in the pantry and put it on the fire to boil the shrimps. Then gently she took the coal away from her brother and, to still his protests, gave him the bleached bone which was doing duty as a teething ring.