What the Heart Keeps

by Rosalind Laker

  WHAT THE HEART KEEPS

  Rosalind Laker

  © Rosalind Laker 2014

  Rosalind Laker has asserted her rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 2001, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1984 by Methuen London Ltd

  This edition published in 2014 by Endeavour Press Ltd

  My grateful acknowledgements for help in my research to Jessie Lucas, sister of the late Agnes Twidle; Jeanette Taylor and Sue Donaldson of the Campbell River and District Museum; Peter and Andrea Paup of Seattle; and Ronald and Betty Watson of Raymond, Alberta.

  Table of Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Extract from The Fragile Hour by Rosalind Laker

  A tremor went through her. “I don’t like partings. I’ve had so many of them.”

  The pressure of his hand increased, firmly and surely. “It won’t be goodbye this time. I’ll come back to Toronto again to see you, if you’ll let me.”

  Her response was eager. “Oh, yes!” Then she added on a more subdued note: “But it is a long way away.”

  “There will be other sales to bring me here on business and I’ll get a vacation sooner or later. In the meantime, we can write to each other.” He whipped out a notebook from his pocket and took down her address as she gave it to him. Then he wrote down his own before tearing out the page to hand it to her.

  “Now we shall never lose touch again.”

  One

  She sometimes thought the colour of love must be gold. Not the hue of the precious metal but of the sun. Warm and rich and., between a man and a woman, holding a brilliance beyond measure. Standing in the dark-panelled hall of the orphanage, waiting in line with several other fourteen-year-old pauper girls, Lisa Shaw’s romantic train of thought had been stimulated by the porcelain plate propped on a shelf above the door of the superintendent’s study.

  Its pattern of yellow and gold and garnet-red never failed to draw her gaze magnetically. Drably clad in institutional clothing, she had grown from childhood into adolescence within a grey environment broken only by the plate’s radiance. Today, as always, it dazzled her. In her heart she coveted it. From the start it had stirred a latent yearning within her for some beauty in her life.

  She was slightly above average height for her age, which made visitors to the orphanage suppose her to be older. Her face was oval and her chin had a little tilt to it, which in itself was indicative of a strong will, but also had the seductive effect of making it appear that the weight of her long plait of fair, silky hair was the cause of its angle. The sharpness of bone through an ivory skin bore witness to meagre diet, accentuating the large hazel eyes with greenish flecks under fly-away brows. Yet she suffered no lack of energy, though thin stews and poor gruel and dripping-spread bread made up most of the meals on the bare boards of the long tables.

  Unlike her companions, some of whom were burdened with an unhealthy plumpness from the greasy food, she had a wiry resistance to infection and lassitude, for which she was grateful. Her mind was alert and eager, ever occupied. Musing over the porcelain plate, she was naturally composed in her stature, her stillness setting her apart from the agitation of those with her, every one of whom associated trouble with the summons to appear before the head of the orphanage at half-past four that afternoon.

  Suddenly Lisa received a thump in the spine.

  “Stop gaping at nothing, Lisa. Why d’you think old Mother Bradlaw wants to see us?”

  Lisa shrugged, not wanting to be drawn into talk just now. Her dread of any confrontation with Mrs. Dorothy Bradlaw was no less than anybody else’s, but she was perceptive enough to conclude that it was something more lenient than accusation and punishment that awaited all of them that day. And there was little she did not know about disciplinary situations. One of the most severe chastisements she had ever received had been caused by the sun-like porcelain plate. Her memory of the incident was as vivid now in this March of 1903 as when it had happened.

  Only six years old at the time, a recent arrival at the orphanage, she had managed to lift a stool onto a side table and clamber up to reach out her hand just to touch the plate. Her fingertips had barely brushed the gilded rim when the stool had toppled, throwing her backwards. Miraculously, she had suffered no broken bones. Yet her head ached for several weeks afterwards from its impact with the floor, and the bruises had been aggravated by the whipping across the legs she had received. Only fear that a further attempt to touch the plate would result in its removal, had prevented her from trying again for a few magical seconds of closer scrutiny. She was not easily deterred from any aim she set herself. It was the cause of many such skirmishes she had had with those in authority over the years.

  There came another sharp prod in the back. “You must have some idea, Lisa. There ain’t much you don’t know about what goes on in this place.”

  Lisa did not reply that it was simply a matter of using eyes, ears, and intelligence. Rosie, who had spoken to her, was showing every sign of being thoroughly afraid. “Don’t look so worried, Rosie. We wouldn’t have been told to put on a clean dress and apron in midweek for a ticking off. My guess is that we’ll find a visitor in the study with old Mother Bradlaw.” She was echoing the nickname for the superintendent that had been in current use among the inmates long before she or any of the other girls in the hall had been committed to the orphanage’s care. “I heard a carriage arrive when I was with the babies.”

  “You still smell of ‘em.” Pointedly Rosie held her nose in a taunting manner.

  Lisa refused to be needled. “I expect I do. I went straight to them when we came in from school, and I didn’t know I had to come here until it was too late to do anything except put on a fresh apron.”

  It was the superintendent’s policy that the inmates of the orphanage should take part in the running of the establishment. Thus costs were kept down and the girls were trained in every branch of domestic work at the same time. Lisa’s duties were to keep an eye on the younger children and help in the nursery where the infants were mostly abandoned doorstep babies, or had been sent along from the local workhouse, which had no room for any more. Like every other section of the orphanage, the nursery was grossly overcrowded, often two or three babies to a cot.

  “You’ll catch it if old Mother Bradlaw sees you ain’t changed your garb as ordered,” Rosie stated with malicious satisfaction. Then, when her jibe was ignored, she pondered again on her own problems. Who was the visitor? What sort of carriage had arrived? Suppose it was the Law that had turned up in a Black Maria! A shiver went through her. Her trepidation echoed in her voice as she addressed Lisa again. “Ask Teresa up in front whether she can ‘ear a man’s voice or a woman’s in the study?”

  Teresa’s reply came back that it was a female visitor. Lisa drew a further conclusion for Rosie’s benefit. “It’s either a charitable person wanting to see some of us before donating money to the orphanage, or a prospective employer about to give any one of us our first chance to take the domestic work she’ll offer.”

  Rosie glowered. Lisa’s book reading enabled her to reel off high-falutin words that nobody else could manage. Half she said didn’t make sense at times to normal ears. “Then you’re real sure we’ve not been called ‘ere about nothing that’s been snitched?”

  Lisa gave her a sharp glance, able to tell she was seeking reassurance. Thieving was rife in the orphanage. To some it was a way of life.
To the pauper victims the loss of even the humblest possession was a major tragedy. Equally as devastating was the theft for sale of the rag rugs that all the inmates from the youngest upwards, had to make in their spare time. Rosie was notoriously light-fingered. Lisa delivered the truth to her forcefully. “If that were the case, you’d be waiting here on your own today, Rosie Taylor!”

  There was no chance of any foul-mouthed retaliation. Teresa, at the head of the line, had tapped on the study door as the clock on the wall struck the half-hour. Mrs. Bradlaw’s voice bade them enter and all fifteen girls filed in to stand in two rows in front of her desk. All eyes went to the visitor who sat elegantly in a wing chair at one side of the room as though detaching herself, for the time being, from any proceedings. She wore a well-cut brown serge costume with a swirl of Russian squirrel around the collar, a plumed toque crowning her waved reddish hair. Her name, as they were to discover, was Miss Drayton of the Herbert Drayton Memorial Society. At the superintendent’s nod, the girls introduced themselves to her in turn.

  Mrs. Bradlaw watched them, her hands folded before her on the desk’s blotter. She by no means deserved the derisive nickname that was no secret to her. At fifty, there was little grey in her dark hair; her complexion was smooth and her chin line firm. Had her expression been less stern and her mouth less severe, she might still have retained something of the good looks of her youth. But life had hardened her. Widowed by the Zulu War in South Africa, she had applied for the post of superintendent of the orphanage in her home town of Leeds and been accepted. Therein had commenced a battle that she sometimes thought was every bit as violent in its own way as any encounter with the enemy endured by her late husband and his regiment. Believing firmly in the adage that to spare the rod was to spoil the child, reinforced by the conviction that the devil found work for idle hands, she ruled the orphanage with an iron discipline while, at the same time, she fought unceasingly on the children’s behalf against ignorance, immorality, poverty, and disease. She did not waste time on pity or compassion. To be sentimental was to be weak. She fought the pious governors who had appointed her with as much ferocity as she showed towards all else. It had taken the staid and stolid gentlemen of the board a long time to adjust to her outspokenness, her exceptional frankness in subjects normally veiled in more genteel terms, not to mention her tenaciousness towards any course of progress she held to be right for the orphanage. Always she refused to accept defeat. Clashes were most stormy when she harassed them for more money when funds were sinking too low to feed the orphans at a subsistence level, or the overcrowding had reached alarming proportions, necessitating a flow into paid foster homes. She was an advocate of fostering, believing that every child had a natural right to be absorbed into decent family life. Sadly, there were far too many unwanted children, as well as too much social stigma attached to bastardy, and never enough money for an idyllic solution to housing the young and helpless. Any spare time she had went towards campaigning for new laws for the greater protection of children, and at least in this venture she had the board’s wholehearted support.

  Nobody suspected the bouts of depression that sometimes sapped her seemingly indomitable strength. She felt it today in the presence of Emily Drayton, to whom she had taken an instant and irrational dislike at their first meeting in the presence of the governors a few weeks ago. Womanly intuition was a phrase that she would normally have tossed aside with contempt, but the feeling nagged at her that the Herbert Drayton Memorial Society, in spite of its impeccable testimonials, was not exactly what it should be. It angered her logical mind that doubt should persist without a shred of evidence to sustain it. A Family Home for Every Homeless Child was the society’s slogan. How then could she quarrel with it when, as the governors succinctly pointed out to her after she had voiced her reserve, it endorsed everything she wanted for the children in her care.

  She knew every one of the girls standing before her far better than any one of them realised. Teresa, the practical. Rosie, the dishonest. Nellie, the impulsive. Elsie, the indolent. Adelaide, the lonely. Myrtle, the optimist. Beatrice, the kindly. Lisa, the warmhearted. Her piercing dark eyes travelled on from face to face along the two lines. She was well aware of striking awe into them all. Some even quailed visibly as her glance reached them. Little did they suspect her deep concern for them. It was a tragic fact that conditions for lower-class working women were so bad, their wages so poor, and their prospects so bleak on the overcrowded labour market that a percentage of this youthful group was destined to end up on the streets. Why then did she distrust the Herbert Drayton Memorial Society which was to lift them from that dreadful future, and give each one a sound chance in life? Strain must be playing tricks with her mind. She would put all nonsensical notions from her completely and break the news she had to tell without further delay.

  “Girls. You have had the honour of presenting yourselves to our distinguished visitor, Miss Drayton. She is here on a special mission, one that is going to change the whole course of your lives. Now you may, or you may not, have heard of many charitable schemes operating in this country to give secure work and good homes to orphaned and destitute children overseas. The good Dr. Barnado, whose work I admire most sincerely, is a leading light in this movement. Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa have all taken large numbers of children and absorbed, them into these thriving corners of our great British Empire.” She was speaking at a slightly slower pace than usual, wanting everything to sink. in. “British North America has not

  lagged behind. You have learned about Canada in your geography lessons. Only last week, at my special request, you were given an extra lesson at school on that country’s history and development. The Herbert Drayton Memorial Society, of which Miss Drayton is the trustee and administrator, was formed to take suitable young emigrants and settle them in domestic work there. All fifteen of you have been selected for this wonderful opportunity. With you will go ten of the younger ones who will be adopted into families.” She proceeded to read out the names of those in the whole party from a list on her desk. Then she put it aside, looking at the girls again. “Every one of you will receive a welcome in your new land.”

  She paused to watch the effect of everything she had said to them. A stunned silence reigned. Some of the girls actually gaped, their mouths dropping open. Lisa’s face had turned ashen, the cheeks drawn in, her pupils dilating with shock. It would be prudent, Mrs. Bradlaw decided quickly, to follow up at once with some reassuring details. Probably the girl was imagining the scheme to be an offshoot of the sentence of transportation meted out to young criminals in decades long gone by. Only Lisa, with her avidity for reading, would know enough history to make a comparison with what was happening in these more enlightened times.

  “Your journey, in Miss Drayton’s personal charge, will be by ship from Liverpool and by train from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to a very fine residence in Toronto. I have a picture of it here that Miss Drayton kindly brought with her for you to see.” She held up from her desk a large photograph of a tall brick house of grand proportions with a pillared entrance in a setting of lawns and flower-beds.

  Mummer The exclamation came involuntarily from the back line.

  “Yes, Myrtle?” Mrs. Bradlaw prompted, seeing that the reaction had been highly favourable. Since the fate of the girls was sealed into emigration, she must hasten all goodwill towards it.

  Blushes and embarrassment. “It’s posh, ain’t it? Would we live there?”

  “Until the right domestic employment is found for you. The house is the society’s Distribution Home, and you would always be able to return there for advice or help if any unexpected difficulties should arise.”

  Mrs. Bradlaw went on to explain how the Canadian residents put their names down on a waiting list to take a young immigrant. Good English servants were always in demand. She gave information about how interviews would take place, what hours of work and payment could be expected, and listed the social activities in which the gir
ls would be permitted to join. In order to widen the whole picture for them, she spoke of boys in their own city of Leeds who, in the company of others from London and elsewhere, were going out in a steady stream to learn farming in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, either with a farmer and his family or at special farming schools.

  From the chair where she sat, Miss Drayton listened and observed, an elbow resting on the mahogany arm, cream-gloved fingers supporting her chin. A benevolent expression softened temporarily the sharpness of her features, a gracious smile etched slightly on the thin-lipped mouth. She always found it best for the information to be given out by someone whom the chosen candidates for emigration knew and trusted. Or feared, as the case might be. It eradicated all preliminary uncertainties.

  A sudden commotion among the listening girls gave her quite a start. One of them — was her name Lisa? — had pushed forward to the desk, looking as frantic as a foal about to bolt.

  “I’ve made my own plans for the future, Mrs. Bradlaw! I’ve always known what I wanted to do with my life! I won’t be sent away from England!”

  Lisa’s pent-up outburst had interrupted the superintendent in midsentence. Miss Drayton stiffened ominously in the chair, the feather on her toque set aquiver into peacock shades. She was no longer benign. Her expression had hardened into one of intense hostility at the showing of such blatant ingratitude towards the society’s generosity. Fanatically reverent towards her late father’s memory, she took the girl’s rejection as a deadly insult to him. Had she been given a free hand, she would have struck the defiant girl to the floor.

  Mrs. Bradlaw’s face remained impassive. One dissentient was enough to upset everything. The situation must be handled mercilessly for the sake of the others. “Well, Lisa,” she commented in freezing tones, “what position have you secured for yourself that makes you dare to interrupt while I am speaking?”