by Dilly Court
Cassy put her hand in her pocket and took out a silver shilling. ‘There might be another before the day’s out, guv. Little Freddie has the whooping cough something awful. I tried blowing flowers of sulphur down his throat but it made him sick. I dunno what else to do for him and that’s the truth.’
‘It ain’t right. Old Biddy Henchard should be strung up by the thumbs for the way she treats the nippers in her care and that includes you, young Cassy.’ Elias lifted the small body, holding it in the crook of his arm. ‘I’ll just settle this young fellah in with his new ma and sister. I don’t doubt he’ll be better off underground with them than raised in that rat-infested hovel. You should get away from there, girl. Take my advice and grab the first opportunity to escape from that old besom’s clutches.’
Cassy shrugged her thin shoulders. ‘You may be right, Mr Crabbe, but I got nowhere else to go, and if I left who would look after them poor children?’
‘You’re a good girl, Cassy. It’s a crying shame you ain’t got no one to look out for you.’
‘Oh, but I have, Mr Crabbe. There’s Bailey, he’s like the best brother a girl could have, and I ain’t no orphan. I got a ma but she’s an Indian lady, so Biddy says. I think she’s in service somewhere in London, and she comes once a year on me birthday to give Biddy the money for me keep. She comes in the dead of night so I ain’t seen her yet.’
Elias slammed his hand down on the coffin lid. ‘You earn your keep and more. It’s a disgrace that’s what it is, and if I ever sees your ma I’ll give her a piece of me mind.’
‘She can’t help it,’ Cassy cried passionately. ‘I’m sure she loves me but she has to earn her living and she can’t keep me, but one day I know she’ll come for me and take me home to India where it’s hot and sunny all the time.’
‘It would explain your looks,’ Elias said, squinting at her as if seeing her clearly for the first time. ‘It’s obvious you don’t come from round here, and with that black hair and them big dark eyes you’ll either end up on the stage or on the streets. It’s a crying shame but there’s not much chance for anyone raised round here.’ He opened a plain pine coffin and laid the tiny body carefully inside.
Cassy backed towards the door. The smell from inside the box was worse than the combined stench of the sewers and the horse muck, which was almost knee-deep on the streets beneath a frosting of snow. ‘Got to go, Mr Crabbe.’ She opened the door and stepped outside into the bitter cold. She shivered as she felt shards of ice piercing the thin soles of her boots, and snow melt seeped through the gaps in the worn leather uppers. She wrapped her shawl tightly around her head and shoulders as she started towards Three Herring Court and the only home she had ever known.
‘Ho, wait for me, Cassy.’
She stopped, turning her head with a ready smile. ‘Bailey. I thought you was sent on an errand.’
He caught up with her in long strides, his muffler flying out behind him like a pennant and his cap askew on his head. His cheeks were flushed and his eyes sparkled like chips of sapphire in his tanned face. Despite the fact that his jacket was a size too small, frayed at the cuffs and clumsily patched at the elbows, and his trousers barely came to the tops of his boots, he exuded warmth and vitality. ‘I had to put some money on a fight for Biddy, and I went to the market and got something for you. It ain’t your birthday every day of the week and you’re into double numbers now.’
Cassy puffed out her chest. ‘I’m almost a woman, ain’t I, Bailey?’
Hooking his arm around her shoulders, he leaned down to plant a kiss on the tip of her nose. ‘You’re still my little sister, Cassy. Don’t grow up too soon.’
She smiled up at him but she could not quite shake off the sadness that had enveloped her since the unnamed baby boy had died in her arms. ‘I wouldn’t be here at all if it wasn’t for you,’ she murmured. ‘If it had been left to Biddy I’d have been dead long ago, just like them other poor little mites.’
He gave her a hug. ‘Don’t talk like that. We look out for each other and that’s the truth.’ He thrust his hand in his pocket and pulled out a bulging paper poke. ‘Your favourite,’ he said, grinning. ‘Peppermint creams.’
Cassy tried not to snatch but her mouth was already watering as she anticipated the sweet minty taste. She popped one in her mouth, closing her eyes in ecstasy. ‘Mmm,’ she breathed. ‘That’s so lovely. I could eat peppermint creams all day.’
Her shawl had slipped off her head and Bailey ruffled her hair. ‘Don’t make yourself sick, little ’un.’
Stuffing another sweet in her mouth, Cassy grinned as she offered him the bag. ‘Go on, take one. It’s no fun enjoying meself all alone and you did buy them with your own money.’ She hesitated, eyes widening as she watched him take one. ‘You didn’t use hers, did you?’
Bailey tapped the side of his nose, winking. ‘Ask no questions and you’ll be told no lies, young ’un.’
Cassy reached up to cuff him gently round the ear. Her hand was too small to inflict pain and she did not intend to cause him harm, but she faced him like a small tiger. ‘Call me that again and you’ll get what for, Bailey Moon.’
He responded by lifting her off the ground and setting her on his shoulders. ‘Let’s get you home afore you catch a chill and end up in old Crabbe’s parlour.’
She wrapped her arms around his neck as he jogged along the slippery pavement. His hands were warm on the bare skin of her calves as he held her in a firm grasp, but she felt safe with Bailey. He had been there for her as long as she could remember. He had protected her from Biddy’s volatile tempers and drunken rages. It was Bailey who had looked after her when she almost died of measles, the dreaded childhood disease that had taken the lives of three of Biddy’s youngest charges. He had wiped her nose when she cried and bathed her knees when she took a tumble. Bailey might not be her blood brother but he was something more to her; he was her whole family and she loved him dearly.
He set her down at the top of the steps leading into Three Herring Court. ‘Best not look too happy when we go inside,’ he said, setting his cap straight. ‘Hide them sweets too, or she’ll have ’em off you quicker than you can blink.’
‘I’m ten, I ain’t daft,’ Cassy said, tucking what was left of her treat inside her ragged blouse. ‘Let’s hope she’s dead drunk by now and we’ll get a bit of peace.’
Bailey took her by the hand as they negotiated the slippery stone steps that were treacherous even in summer, worn down in the middle by the passage of feet over two hundred years or more. Three Herring Court was a narrow street lined with run-down buildings that had had many uses over the centuries but now housed small businesses: a printer of religious tracts, a walking stick maker, a milliner who eked out a meagre living by taking in gentlemen lodgers, a pie maker of dubious repute, a candle maker whose small shop filled the street with the smell of hot wax and tallow, and an oriental gentleman who professed to practise Chinese herbal medicine but everyone knew he ran an illicit opium den. The rest of the dilapidated buildings were crammed with tenants, twenty to a room in some cases, and at the very end was Biddy Henchard’s tall and narrow house which she advertised as a nursery and board school, but Cassy knew that the locals referred to it as a baby farm.
The front door groaned on rusty hinges as Bailey thrust it open. The stench outside was as nothing compared to the smell that assailed Cassy’s nostrils as she followed him into the narrow hallway. Festoons of cobwebs hung from the ceiling and the walls had shed flakes of limewash to cover the bare boards like a powdering of snow. The mixed odours of dry rot, baby sick and the rancid stench of cheap tallow candles were almost overpowered by the fumes of jigger gin and tobacco smoke, which made the whole house reek like the taproom of a dockyard pub. Echoing throughout the building the wailing of infants came to a sudden halt, drowned out by a roar from Biddy’s gin-soaked throat. ‘Shut up you little buggers or I’ll beat your brains out.’
Not for the first time, Cassy wanted to turn and run away from
this nightmare place, but the sound of a child coughing and whooping put all thoughts of flight from her head. She hurried along the narrow passage that led into the one large room which served as a kitchen, living room and nursery for some of the youngest children. The bare floorboards were littered with scraps of half-eaten crusts, potato peelings and balls of fluff which might have been dead mice or simply an accumulation of dust and fibres. The furthest part of the room was in semi-darkness with a tattered curtain drawn across the window which overlooked the court, and it was here that the children were stacked in boxes and crates like goods in a warehouse. The smell of ammonia from urine-soaked bedding was enough to floor an ox, let alone a ten-year-old child. Cassy covered her nose and mouth with her hand, shocked by the noxious fumes even though she was used to living in such conditions. The air outside had seemed sweet in comparison to the rank odour in the nursery. She made a move to snatch Freddie from the wooden crate where he spent most of his time but Biddy, who had obviously been asleep in a high-backed Windsor chair by the range, rose to her feet clutching a gin bottle in her hand and she advanced on him with a ferocious snarl.
Cassy snatched the infant up in her arms as a paroxysm of coughing racked his tiny body. ‘Leave him alone, missis.’
Biddy squinted at her through half-closed eyes. ‘Where’ve you been?’ She took a swipe at Cassy’s head but her aim fell far short. She staggered drunkenly and would have fallen if Bailey had not caught her. He pushed her unceremoniously back onto her seat.
‘I think you’ve had plenty, missis. The drink will be the death of you if you ain’t careful.’
With the bottle still clutched in her hand, Biddy pulled the cork out with her teeth and took a swig. ‘I ain’t drunk enough. When I can’t see or hear them horrible brats, that’s when I stop.’ She closed her eyes, holding the bottle to her lips and tipping its contents down her throat as if it were water.
Cassy hitched baby Freddie over her shoulder, patting his back in a vain effort to help him breathe. ‘He ought to see the doctor,’ she whispered. ‘I dunno what else to do, Bailey.’
He angled his head, glancing from the suffering infant to the shapeless form of Biddy slumped in her chair. ‘He don’t look too good. I think it’s the hospital for young Freddie, if we ain’t too late already.’
‘Don’t say that,’ Cassy cried, hugging Freddie closer to her thin chest. ‘I won’t let him die. I won’t.’
‘Well, she’s dead to the world,’ Bailey remarked, jerking his head in Biddy’s direction. ‘C’mon, we’ll take him to Bart’s. They’ll see him for free, only it might be a long wait.’
Cassy bit her lip. She knew that Bailey was right, but it would mean leaving the other young children to Biddy’s tender care, and that was worse than nothing. She was torn between love and duty. She had formed a bond with little Freddie and he was clinging to her now as if his life depended upon it, which of course it did. ‘I’ll take him if you’ll stay here and look after the others.’
Bailey shook his head. ‘I ain’t no nursemaid, Cassy.’
‘Oh, please, Bailey.’ Her bottom lip trembled as she fought to hold back tears. ‘He needs me to hold him. He’ll be scared stiff of them men in white coats.’
‘Then I’m the best one to take him,’ Bailey said, gently prising Freddie from her arms. ‘I won’t stand no nonsense from them doctors and nurses. You stay here and tend to the babes; they need you more than he does just now.’
Cassy knew that he was talking sense but the sight of Freddie’s stricken face and the way he held his arms out to her almost broke her heart. ‘Take him then, and hurry.’
‘I’ll be quick as I can.’ Holding Freddie as tenderly as any woman, Bailey strode out of the room.
Tending to the remaining infants kept Cassy fully occupied, but her thoughts were with Freddie. She knew that doctors were clever coves who had spent years at school studying books, and that made them able to cure even the sickest person. Bailey had told her all manner of interesting things that he had learned at the ragged school. Biddy had sent him there, he said, because she could neither read nor write and she needed someone to answer letters from anxious mothers who had put their children in her care. Then there was the matter of sending out bills to those tardy in paying the cost of care for their offspring, although Cassy was painfully aware that Biddy accepted payment for infants long dead, and only admitted their demise if threatened with a visit from the parent or if they were in a position to reclaim their fostered child.
Cassy sat on a low stool with baby Anna in her arms, feeding her cow’s milk from a spoon. Head lice crawled through the infant’s thin blonde hair and Cassy’s scalp itched at the sight of them. They were all infested with parasites, including fleas and roundworms, but so were all the other children who lived in Three Herring Court. Cleanliness came a poor third to having enough to eat and keeping warm in winter. There was a pump on the corner of the court but the water was often contaminated with sewage, causing outbreaks of cholera and dysentery, and in summer Biddy forbade them to drink it. She provided small beer for the older children and milk for the infants, but both were in short supply and Cassy had to ration out their meagre allowance each day.
Milk dribbled out of the corners of Anna’s mouth and she closed her eyes with the barest breath of a sigh. Cassy laid the baby in the wooden orange box that served as her crib. Anna was probably six months old, although like the others she had not come with a birth certificate and her exact age was a matter of conjecture. She had been frail and puny right from the start and she would, Cassy thought sadly, be unlikely to see her first birthday whenever that might be. She changed the baby’s soiled rags and put her down in her box on a bed of straw covered by a thin piece of blanket. Anna looked like a wax doll, and it seemed to Cassy as though she was already laid out in her coffin. A cold shiver ran down her spine, and she turned her attention to Samuel who was bawling his head off. At nine months old he was already displaying the qualities of a fighter. She knew instinctively that he would survive against all odds, and she gave him a cuddle as she lifted him from the tea chest where Biddy insisted that he must be kept since he was trying to crawl and might otherwise come to harm.
Samuel stopped crying and tugged at her hair with surprising strength. She set him on her knee and fed him on tiny morsels of stale bread soaked in the milk that Anna had not managed to drink. When he had eaten his fill, Cassy changed his rags for clean ones and allowed him to crawl around the flagstone floor for a while, although when he tried to put a dead cockroach in his mouth she decided it was time to put him back in the tea chest. He protested loudly, but with his belly full he soon fell asleep. There were two more tiny tots, twin girls who had been brought to the house a few months ago by a young woman with a painted face and tragic eyes. She had sobbed brokenheartedly, begging Biddy to be kind to her newborn babies and promising to return once a month with money for their keep. Biddy had nodded and made the appropriate noises but as soon as the door closed on the unhappy mother, she had thrust the infants into Bailey’s arms. ‘That’s the last we’ll see of her,’ she had said grimly. ‘Stow them in a box and give them enough just enough to keep the little buggers quiet. If they should take sick and pass away, no one will be the wiser.’
This callous remark had upset Cassy more than she had words to express, and Bailey protested loudly but was silenced by a clout round the head from Biddy that sent him reeling backwards against the kitchen wall. He had clenched his fists and threatened to retaliate but on seeing Cassy’s stricken face he had seemingly changed his mind, and had put the twin girls to bed in a herring box filled with fresh straw. He had waited until late that night when Biddy staggered back from the pub and had fallen into a drunken stupor, and Cassy had helped him feed the infants with warm milk. They continued to succour them in secret and the twins clung stubbornly to life, much to the delight of their mother who confounded Biddy’s fears by turning up regularly once a month with money for their keep. Cassy watched the
young prostitute cradle her babies in her arms, crooning to them and kissing their tiny wrinkled faces as if they were the most precious things in the world.
‘They ain’t got no names,’ Cassy said shyly. ‘What shall you call ’em, missis?’
The light dimmed in the young woman’s eyes. ‘I doubt if I’ll be here to see my babies grow up, but they should have good names. Heaven knows I’m a sinner, but what choice did I have?’ She fixed Cassy with a questioning stare as if expecting her to offer a benediction.
‘I dunno, missis,’ Cassy murmured, shuffling her bare feet on the cold flagstones.
‘None, I tells you, little girl. I was sold to an evil man when I were not much older than you. Now I makes me living the only way I knows how, and it ain’t what I wants for me girls.’
Cassy looked up into the raddled face of the woman, who might have been any age from sixteen to thirty. Tears had made runnels in the paint on her face and her eyes were red-rimmed. Cassy said nothing and the woman clutched her babies to her breast.
‘Charity and Mercy,’ she murmured, closing her eyes. ‘I ain’t seen much of either, so I hope they fare better than their ma.’ She kissed each one on the forehead and laid them back in their box. ‘Goodbye, my little dears.’
The words sounded final even to Cassy’s ears and she was alarmed. ‘But you’ll be back to see them soon, won’t you?’
‘I’m sick, dearie. Something you wouldn’t know nothing about. I’ll come if and when I can, but I want you to promise to look after me babes.’ She reached out to grasp Cassy’s hand. ‘Promise.’
‘I’ll do me best.’
The mother had returned one more time, and Cassy could see a startling change in her appearance. Without the paint, her face was white as the snow outside except for livid bruises around both eyes and a split lip that could not disguise the gap where two of her front teeth were missing. She was even thinner than before and her eyes were sunken. She looked old, Cassy thought; older even than Biddy. The poor creature had wept when she said goodbye to her babies and her sobs had echoed round the court as she limped away.