The Night Flower

by Sarah Stovell

  This surprised me, since Mrs M had made it clear on many occasions that my work did not meet with her approval, but perhaps she wrote about me favourably so someone would take me on quickly and she’d be spared the expense and trouble of keeping me. (I’m sure not even Mrs Murray would want my removal to the workhouse on her conscience.)

  The Rentons’ house, while large, is less grand than this one, and I will not be confined to the attic. The schoolroom is on the ground floor, with French doors opening on to a patio, so it is bright inside and cheerful enough.

  I thought Mrs Renton a kind, motherly woman. When she had finished showing me around, she said, ‘I have been told of your sad circumstances, my dear. I can imagine nothing worse.’

  I wasn’t sure whether she meant the loss of Charles, or the sorry situation of my own, but in any case I saw this gentle sympathy in her. ‘Being separated from my children has been the hardest thing in my life,’ I said. ‘I have done my best to cope, but I’m sure you understand …’

  She gazed at me and nodded slowly. ‘Of course.’

  I continued. ‘I wondered whether there might be any hope at all that I could bring my children to live with me here. I understand that it would require a drop in salary, for their keep, but it pains me a great deal when I think …’

  She looked a little surprised. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I should have to speak to my husband about it. How old are your children?’

  ‘My youngest is two. The elder ones are seven and four.’

  I saw doubt cross her face. ‘That is very young. If they were closer to my own girls in age, then perhaps we could think more about it. But what would you do with them during the day, when my daughters are having their lessons?’

  ‘I would need to speak to my family about that. Perhaps they could help me.’ I could see that I had asked too much, though, so I changed my approach. ‘If it’s not possible for them to live with me in the week, perhaps you would consider allowing them to stay at weekends – from Friday to Sunday, for example? They would cause no trouble at all that way.’

  She smiled and seemed happier with this suggestion. ‘Let me speak to my husband, Mrs Winter. I am not in the habit of separating mothers from their children, especially not a child as young as two. It might be possible for you to bring the youngest with you and to have the elder ones at the weekends. I’m sure we can come to an arrangement that suits us all.’

  She said she would let me know in the next few days, as her husband would be meeting with Mr Murray’s friend and can pass a message on.

  Friday, 16th July, 1841

  When I saw Mr M this morning, he was very keen to hear how my meeting with Mrs Renton had gone.

  ‘She was very nice, sir,’ I said.

  ‘And did she offer you the position?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  He looked relieved. ‘And you will be starting soon, I presume?’

  ‘Yes, sir. At the beginning of next week.’

  ‘Well, that’s good. You have plenty of work to keep you occupied until then? My wife tells me you have taken on all the sewing. Perhaps you could also sort out the old toys from the nursery one day and throw out anything that needs it.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Of course. I was wondering, though, whether I might have a chance to look after Isabella one day, perhaps on the nanny’s day off.’

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t think that would be wise, Mrs Winter.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘Please do not argue with me!’ he said abruptly. ‘You are no longer employed as Isabella’s nanny. You will carry out only nursery duties until your new position starts. Is that clear?’

  I nodded and backed away.

  Saturday, 17th July, 1841

  Mrs Renton and her husband have decided that I cannot take my children with me, but can have one to stay every weekend. I can’t say that this arrangement suits me at all. I have said I will accept the position and the Murrays say it is imperative that I leave here as soon as possible, but already I am thinking of alternative plans. There must be another way.

  I went down to the kitchen this afternoon to pick up some sewing from the maid. I couldn’t help noticing all the silver everywhere, and I thought how the sale of just a few items from this grand house would provide enough money to serve all my purposes.

  I have never done such a thing in the past, though. My heart races at the thought of it.

  Sunday, 18th July, 1841

  Last night, I crept up to the attic. The nanny was sleeping soundly, and I went to gaze over Isabella in her cot. She moaned a little in her sleep, then cried before opening her eyes. I held my breath nervously, but the nanny didn’t come. This was, to my mind, all the proof I needed that her care of the child is inadequate. I knew that if it had been me, I’d have woken at the slightest sound from the baby’s lips.

  I lifted her out of the cot and took her back down to my own bed. She curled up contentedly beside me, and I nursed her.

  I cannot leave her.

  46

  My baby come earlier than what I was expecting. I didn’t have no idea what day of the week it was, or what time, except that it was light outside and not the grey sorta light of the early morning, but quite bright.

  It took me a while to work out what was happening. At first I reckoned I must of pissed myself because my dress and the floor was soaked suddenly. I was worried about how I was gonna clear it up before Mrs Hutchinson come in.

  But I soon come to realize this wasn’t no piss but my baby on its way, so I parked myself on the slops pot and sat there for a while.

  Then I banged on the window of my cell and called out, ‘Help,’ what seemed like the simplest thing to say, and a kushti way of getting my point across. Then I waited a while but nothing happened, so I decided to sit down again and get back to my work, as a way of taking my mind off things.

  The pain come after a couple of hours or more, and it wasn’t that bad at first, but even so, I did a bit more banging on the window to try and get someone. But no one heard. I wasn’t sure where all them harridans was, because they was usually out in the yard, getting on with their hard labour, but today they wasn’t. I reckoned maybe it was Sunday. And then I wondered if it was a kushti thing, for a baby to get born on a Sunday because maybe there’d be a bit more hope for that sorta baby than there’d be for just the ordinary Monday or Tuesday sort.

  Then I decided I couldn’t sit down no more, and I went walking instead, what wasn’t that easy when there was only ten feet of space.

  So I walked and walked, and the pain started getting proper bad, so I did some more banging on the window and some more shouting, but still no one come, and I started to think maybe I was gonna have to do this thing by myself. I didn’t know what I was s’posed to do, or if I might die.

  And I thought maybe it’d be a kushti thing if I did die.

  And then more pain come, so I didn’t think nothing for a while.

  In the end, I had to stop walking, because the pain was coming too often, and it wasn’t no easy thing to walk through. I took off my smock and sat down in the straw. And when the pain come, I cried out, but it wasn’t screaming – it was a strange sorta noise, like I hadn’t never heard before. I wasn’t sure it could of come from me.

  I kept hoping Mrs Hutchinson or someone’d hear me crying and come running, but no one did and I couldn’t bang the window no more because the pain was making a cripple outta me.

  So I just carried on sitting there, cross-legged in the straw, with my back leaning against the wall. I cried and grunted and shouted but no one come, and when my body said I had to, I started to push.

  The straw got a lot of blood and mess on it, but in the end the baby come. I caught it myself in my hands – a wrinkled-up, grey, crying thing, covered in white stuff what disappeared into its skin. Then the baby itself turned grey to red and screamed and I wasn’t sure what to with it, or if it was getting cold, or how I was meant to keep it alive. All I knew was that the cord needed cutting
and I didn’t have no scissors, and everything was a mess and not at all clean.

  So I put the baby down in the straw and picked my smock up off the floor. It was the only thing I had, and I thought I’d better cover the baby in it so it could keep warm, and when I did that, I saw how the baby was a girl.

  The baby went to sleep, and Mrs Hutchinson come eventually. I heard the key turn in the lock and the door open slow. I got a horrible feeling inside, like I’d done something bad and was about to get punished for it. And so I quickly moved the smock and made sure the whole baby was covered in it, and then I reached for my rope and went on picking oakum, like nothing’d happened.

  But the blood and the mess give it all away. Mrs Hutchinson looked round and said, ‘What has happened in here, Miriam? Have you had a baby?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ I said, but I said it in a quiet sorta way she might not of heard, because I was feeling frightened of the trouble I’d be in.

  ‘Where is it? Why didn’t you tell us?’

  I pulled back my smock and showed her the baby, what was lying there in the straw. ‘I tried calling, ma’am, but no one heard me. I s’pose it must be Sunday.’

  She didn’t say nothing, but she picked up the baby and held it close to her, and said hello to it, what was more than I’d done myself. But it was a difficult thing, to know what you’d gotta say to a body what’d just come outta you, and what you hadn’t never wanted in the first place.

  The next day, a doctor come to see me. I knew him as being the same one what checked over the convict mothers at the nursery after they’d give birth, and I was pleased in a way to know they still reckoned me as being worth a visit from him. I was expecting to just get left here in my cell, with my straw and my slops pot and my oakum, and told to get healed on my own.

  The doctor said, ‘It was a brave thing you did – to deliver your own baby.’

  I said, ‘I didn’t have no choice in it, sir. It ain’t brave if you’ve got no choice.’

  ‘Did no one help you? Did no one come and check on you, despite knowing how close you were to birth?’ he asked.

  ‘No, sir. I banged on the window a few times and called for help, but it was Sunday, see, and they was all off praying, so no one heard.’ Then I thought there might be trouble for telling tales on em like that, so I added, ‘And it was a couple of weeks earlier than what we was thinking it was gonna be.’

  He nodded, then he picked the baby up off the straw where it’d been lying asleep. It’d got a blanket now for getting wrapped up in, and a small dress like a nightie, but nothing more. Mrs Hutchinson’d brung em to me and I was glad of em, for all what they was old and stained. I’d been afraid the baby was gonna go and die from the cold, and that was something I didn’t want.

  The doctor said, ‘How much more of your sentence have you got to pass here, Miriam?’

  I shrugged. ‘I ain’t sure. They give me six months altogether, but I ain’t sure how long I’ve already done. Feels like a long time. Maybe six weeks or something like that. I find it don’t do to count away the days, sir.’

  ‘And your baby will be staying with you?’

  ‘I don’t reckon they’ve decided on that one, sir. Of course, you know my circumstances …’ I said, and looked up at him, a bit uncertain, because I wasn’t sure he knew about John Sutton and all the sorry tale of it.

  He nodded his head. ‘I am aware of a story, yes.’

  ‘I ain’t wicked, sir,’ I said.

  ‘No one is completely wicked,’ he said.

  That was some sorta comfort – to know he didn’t think of me as being bad through and through. But I’d of preferred him to think of me as a kushti sorta girl, like what I knew Evelyn’d think of me, or Rose. Though I s’posed Rose might of changed her mind by now.

  Then the doctor said, ‘I shall call a meeting with the superintendents and the governor to decide what can be done with you. You can’t live like this, not with a baby.’

  I tried to stop my voice sounding too eager. ‘You gonna get me outta here, sir?’ I asked him.

  He said, ‘I can’t make any promises.’

  And then he went away. I sat on the straw next to my baby and looked at it a while, and I thought it looked a lot like John Sutton, what I hoped might be a helpful thing, if I wanted folk to believe in my story and not listen to the reverend and his wife.

  The baby shuffled a bit, and waved its arms like it didn’t know who they belonged to, and then it started crying so I covered it up with my smock.

  Mostly after that, I just put the baby in the straw and got on with my oakum picking. There wasn’t nothing else to do. The baby didn’t cry much in them first few days. It mostly slept, and when it woke up, I covered its face with a blanket and put my fingers in my ears and then, eventually, the crying would stop and sleep come again, what was good.

  Sometimes, I got a sight of the baby when I’d reckoned it was asleep, and I’d see it wasn’t asleep at all, but just wide awake and silent, watching me in the dark. Its eyes made me afraid a bit, like they was the eyes of a terrible fish.

  Mrs Hutchinson still brung my food box in the mornings, but she never said nothing much, except to ask how me and the baby was. I’d say we was both fine, thank you, and she’d go away again. But one time she said, ‘Remember to feed the child, Miriam.’

  So I opened up my food box and took out the bread, and went over to where the baby was lying on the floor and held the crust to its mouth. It sucked and sucked on it, and its eyes got wild, as if it was running half mad, and I was afraid.

  So I left it there with the bread, and went to sit in the corner with my oakum.

  I s’posed Rose would of give the baby milk and arrowroot, but I didn’t have none of that. The mothers in the nursery’d used to just suckle the babies emselves, but I didn’t much want to go picking it up and holding it to me like they all did because I’d got a lot of fear in me about doing it wrong. So I just give it bread and some water now and then, and it didn’t die, so I reckoned I must of been doing all right, though it was sick a lot. I remembered the babies at the nursery was always being sick, so I didn’t reckon as it mattered too much.

  Mrs Hutchinson’d brung me some napkins for it, and showed me how to put em on, but I mostly just let it go in the straw, then swept it out and asked Mrs H to get rid of it and bring me some more, what she did. She didn’t ask too much in the way of questions, and that was a kushti thing. She didn’t offer me no help, neither, and I come to decide they was all hoping I’d go and kill the baby or something and save em the bother of deciding what to do with it. But I didn’t kill it.

  Part Five

  47

  After Miriam had been gone from the nursery for three weeks or so, a letter arrived from Cascades. The maid brought it to Mrs Sutton while the two of us and John were having lunch together in the dining room. The reverend was away.

  ‘You read it, John,’ Mrs Sutton said, and she eyed the envelope as if she were afraid of what might be inside.

  John tore it open quickly. We knew it could only be news of Miriam. ‘Dear Reverend and Mrs Sutton,’ John began.

  ‘I am writing to inform you that the servant previously held in your employ has lately given birth. The child is a girl. It is unfortunate that the convict mother’s labour began earlier than any of us had anticipated, and she did not call for help, so had the baby alone in solitary confinement. This appears to have brought about the effects of shock, in both her body and mind, and we are concerned that the baby is not being given the right care. Indeed, it is already quite underweight, having been born too soon and also because its mother cannot feed it. We do not have the necessary feeding equipment at the factory because, as you know, all our convict mothers have previously been dealt with at your nursery.

  ‘I am aware that there are some difficult issues surrounding your employment of the child’s mother, which is why she has had to spend her confinement here, but I fear we do not have the appropriate skills to help either the m
other or the baby. Both of them have been seen by Dr Marsh, and he has expressed his belief that the child is very weak and might not survive without swift removal to a place where it can be cared for.

  ‘I would ask you to consider taking the baby and its convict mother back into your care, for a short time at least.

  Yours,

  Mary Hutchinson’

  John finished reading and put the letter down on the table in front of him. I stood up as if to leave, so they could see I knew it to be none of my business and didn’t wish to intrude.

  John touched his hand to my arm. ‘No, Rose,’ he said. ‘There is no need for you to go.’

  I sat down again.

  ‘What do you think, John?’ Mrs Sutton asked.

  He sighed. ‘I believe we have no choice, Mother. We must bring them here. It is our duty. We can’t leave the baby to starve, or Miriam to be sent mad through her experience. They must come back and be cared for like the human beings they are, not abandoned like wild creatures that no one cares for.’

  ‘But your father …’

  ‘He’s not here. And by the time he gets back, it will be too late.’

  ‘But he will be dreadfully angry.’

  ‘I am more afraid of Miriam’s circumstances than I am my father’s anger.’

  There was silence for a while. I thought of Miriam coming back here with the baby. I imagined her feeding it and caring for it. I imagined her loving it and being a mother to it. I shook my head. It wasn’t possible. The baby was … It wasn’t hers. I imagined that it belonged to this island. A convict child.

  Mrs Sutton clasped her hands together nervously. ‘John, dear,’ she said. ‘May I ask a question?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘This baby … Is it really the progeny of an unknown visitor to the Black Horse, or is it …’

  He looked her square in the face. ‘Miriam is not a prostitute, Mother.’