by Maggie Hope
The beef tea began to bubble and she hastily lifted it from the bar and poured it into a cup. Her hand trembled and she spilt a few drops on the saucer and had to fetch a clean one and wipe the side of the cup.
‘You couldn’t be a nurse, you’re too clumsy,’ she berated herself aloud.
‘Is it ready?’
Sister Mitchell had come through and was standing in the doorway watching her. ‘Only I have to be getting on and I want to show you how to support a patient so she can take a drink with the least possible distress to her before I go. I’ll come back about teatime.’
When Lottie peeped into Laura Green’s room, half an hour later, she found her mistress sleeping peacefully. Poor woman, she thought as she gazed at Laura’s face. Her skin had a translucent look, though her cheeks were flushed. A pulse beat erratically on the temple Lottie could see. It was hot in the room and the air smelled stale. She hesitated before deciding to open a window for a short while. The window was stiff and resisted her attempts at first, but in the end she managed to open it a couple of inches. Satisfied, Lottie tiptoed out of the room and closed the door quietly.
The whole house was quiet with both master and mistress in bed asleep. Lottie had tidied the kitchen and now had little that she could do without making a noise until the boys came home and she gave them their dinners. Today she had a pan of mutton broth ready and she had baked bread the day before so there was little preparation to the meal. She opened the back door and slipped out into the yard for a breath of fresh air.
She leaned against the yard wall for a few moments, closing her eyes and breathing deeply. Though there was the all-pervading smell of coal and soot in the air, it was cool and there was a slight breeze blowing. After a while she picked up the broom, which stood upended against the wall where the tin bath hung, and started to sweep the yard. It wouldn’t do for Mr Green to look out of the bedroom window and see her lazing about. As she swept, she dreamed of becoming a Nightingale nurse like Sister Mitchell. She would grow taller, she would, and she would learn not to be clumsy and she would save up her money and buy spectacles so she could see properly. (How much would they cost? She would have to find out.) But then the colliery hooter blew and returned her to the present. It must be twelve o’clock and the lads would be on their way back from school and the broth wasn’t even on the fire to warm yet.
Besides, she thought dismally as she went inside, her thoughts returning to her ambition to be a nurse like Sister Mitchell, she would have to learn to read and write and spell better; subjects the school in the workhouse hadn’t bothered a lot with. No, they had concentrated on teaching her to sew a fine seam and clean up after folk. After all, what did skivvies want with reading and writing? They would be sitting in a corner reading when they would never be good for anything but scrubbing floors.
‘Where’s me dinner?’ demanded Noah as he came through the door, closely followed by the two younger ones, Freddie and Matthew.
‘It’ll only be a minute,’ Lottie replied, stirring the broth in the pan to prevent it sticking as she heated it. She lifted the heavy iron pan with both hands and put it down on the iron stand on the table.
‘It should have been ready, I want to play with the lads,’ grumbled Noah. ‘You’re supposed to have it ready.’
‘It is ready,’ said Lottie, as she ladled broth into a bowl and put it before him, then did the same for the others. She started to cut slices from the loaf, giving them each a piece.
‘You’re not supposed to answer back. You’re not my mother, you’re just a maid. My da pays you to do it. You’re just a workhouse skivvy.’ Noah stared at her truculently, before stuffing bread in his mouth.
‘A workhouse skivvy,’ echoed Freddie and Matthew and they both giggled.
‘You have to do what I say or I’ll tell my da and he’ll send you back to the workhouse,’ said Noah. ‘Dirty clarty workhouse,’ he added.
‘Dirty, clarty workhouse,’ said Matthew.
‘Don’t say that, Mattie pet,’ Lottie said to Matthew.
‘You cannot tell us what to do, Noah says,’ said Freddie.
Lottie closed her eyes and bit her lip to stop her angry retort. After a moment she said, ‘I am looking after you while your mam is badly. I will have to speak to your da if you’re naughty.’
The three boys laughed uproariously. ‘My da calls you workhouse!’ Noah cried.
Lottie turned a fiery red, more from anger than anything else. But she did not reply for in the moment’s quiet after she heard the faint voice of Laura Green from the front room. She left her broth and hurried in to see her, to find that Laura had slipped down on her pillows and was unable to lift herself up.
‘I’m sorry, did they wake you?’ Lottie asked as she helped her back against the pillows. The woolly bedjacket she wore fell back and exposed her elbows, red and swollen with the disease. The sight filled Lottie with pity as she covered them back up.
‘No … yes, but I like to hear them,’ Mrs Green whispered as though she had no strength to speak louder. ‘Only, they’ll wake Alfred and he needs his sleep.’
‘I’ll remind them, they must have forgotten. You know what lads are like.’
‘Aye.’ Laura sank back on her pillows and closed her eyes, for the effort had exhausted her. ‘You see to them, pet, you’re a good lass.’
Alfred was already awake. As she came out of the front room he came downstairs in his bare feet, braces dangling by the side of his trousers and a collarless shirt open at the neck. He favoured Lottie with a furious glare before pushing past her to the kitchen. The boys were still laughing and making remarks about ‘workhouse lasses’ but they fell silent immediately they saw their father, no doubt suddenly remembering they were supposed to be keeping quiet. He belted all three around the ear, one after the other, and not varying the weight of the blow from the eldest to the youngest.
‘Hadaway back to school out of my sight!’ he snarled, not raising his voice but sounding just as threatening as if he had. Cringing and sniffling and with Mattie holding his ear, the three scrambled for the back door and ran down the yard to the gate. Only when they were out of sight did he turn to Lottie.
‘You, you little bastard,’ he said. ‘You’re supposed to be keeping them quiet. You’d best mend your ways or you’ll be back in the workhouse along of all the other bastards.’ He suddenly thrust out a hand and smacked her across the ear too, so that her head rang and a sharp pain shot through from one side to another, making her teeth chatter. She staggered under the blow and grabbed hold of the chair just vacated by Noah. But it was the insult to her mother that hurt the most.
‘I’m not a bastard,’ she said as soon as she righted herself and could face him again. ‘My mam and dad were married but he died.’
‘Oh aye,’ Alfred Green sneered, ‘o’ course they were. You lot all say that. But it doesn’t signify, you’re still bastards’ scum, expecting hard-working folk to pay the poor rate to keep you in the Big House. Well, it’s time I got a bit back from you and you’ll do as I say or I’ll know the reason why. Now, if I hear another sound the day I’ll be down here and belt the living daylights out of you. Do you understand that?’
Lottie said nothing. A deep resentment burned in her chest but she controlled it, for she knew she couldn’t bear to go back to the workhouse and say she had been let go for talking back to the master of the house.
‘I said, do you understand?’ Alfred caught hold of her front and raised his hand to her, ready to strike again.
‘Aye,’ said Lottie.
‘I cannot hear you, what did you say?’
‘Aye, I said aye, Mr Green,’ Lottie replied. She burned with a resentment that was stronger than the pain from the blow but she kept her voice controlled and her face expressionless. She had learned to do this over the years in the workhouse when confronted by an unjust authority. But all the time her thoughts were racing. She had to get out of this house. But how could she? There was poor Mrs Green who needed
her. And the lads. Young Mattie was not a bad lad, but he was influenced by his older brothers, of course he was. Besides, where would she go? Not back to the workhouse, which she had left with such high hopes. There would be no help for her there.
‘If I hear another sound from down here, I’ll take the belt to you,’ Alfred Green said, still in that quiet, menacing voice he was using so as not to disturb his wife. ‘Now, get on with your work.’ He stalked back up the stairs and Lottie watched his braces swinging his shirt tail, which was hanging out of his trousers.
Lottie turned back to the kitchen and her work. After a while she began to feel a little less despairing and even started to sing as she worked, though very, very quietly. In her young life she had found that despair got her nowhere, she just had to get on with it. But she could dream, couldn’t she? She cleaned the kitchen and washed the passage and sandstoned the front step, working energetically and with a thoroughness that had been drummed into her in the workhouse. But in her thoughts she had escaped into the world of her imagination and there she had gone to a proper school and learned to do things and she had friends like Sister Mitchell and she was making something of herself. Maybe not a Nightingale nurse but something else. Like working in a posh shop up by Castle Chare and all the nobs came in and asked for her to serve them.
‘Miss Lonsdale is so good, so knowledgeable about the latest fashions,’ the bishop’s wife said to the manager of the shop, for Lottie had decided it would be a dress shop selling fine silk dresses and bombazines. Lottie wasn’t sure what bombazines were, but she had heard them being admired by two ladies who were looking in the window of a shop in Silver Street. One day she might even become the manageress of the shop, even the owner. And she would take Betty on as an apprentice and they would live together in the rooms above the shop and they would have a red velvet-covered sofa and …
‘Afternoon, Lottie, how is my patient?’
Lottie scrambled to her feet from where she had been kneeling by the front step as she applied the sandstone to the sides. It was Sister Mitchell, back already!
‘G-Good day, Sister Mitchell,’ she said, feeling a pang of guilt, for she hadn’t looked in on Laura Green for at least an hour. ‘Em, she is asleep I think.’ She dropped the scouring stone into the bucket and followed the sister indoors, wondering if she should apologize for leaving the step scouring until so late in the day. It was a morning job but the morning had been so busy.
‘You see to that, Lottie, I’ll call if I need any help,’ Sister Mitchell said and watched as the diminutive figure in the oversized cap and apron hurried out to the back of the house. Poor Lottie, she thought, the lass reminded her so much of her friend Bertha when she was that age.
Mrs Green was awake and moaning softly to herself but when she saw the nurse she smiled slightly, a smile that transformed her worn face. ‘Sister,’ she whispered. Was her fever lessening? Or was this just the onset of the crisis?
Chapter Four
Lottie sat in the flickering light of a candle that stood in a holder on the bedside table. Outside, rain pattered at the windowpane and the wind blew down the chimney, making the small fire in the grate blow out sudden flurries of smoke. Lottie’s head nodded and eventually her chin fell down on her chest as she succumbed to sleep. Her upper body slumped on to the bed and she slept until her usual getting-up time, which was five o’clock.
Her neck ached when she woke and her eyes felt as though there were cinders in them. It was cold in the room, as there was only a tiny red glow left in one corner of the grate; the rest was grey ashes.
‘Mrs Green?’
Suddenly awake, Lottie jumped to her feet and leaned over the bed. The candle was gutted and only a pale shaft of moonlight came through the thin curtains.
She touched Laura’s forehead with her fingertips: it was cold. Her temperature had broken, praise be.
It was only after she had mended the fire with some sticks from an offcut of pit prop and added a few pieces of small coal so that it flared up, crackling, that Lottie turned back to the bed and an awful suspicion entered her head. Mrs Green had not moved, though her eyes were open. Lottie fetched the candle from the kitchen mantelpiece and lit it at the fire and held it to Laura’s face. Laura was gone, passed away, gone to live with the angels. The usual euphemisms raced through Lottie’s head. Sometime during the night, she had died.
Her husband Alfred was at the pit and the boys were in bed. Only Lottie had stayed up beside her, in case she needed anything during the night; but Lottie had been exhausted by all she had had to do the day before, for it had been washing day. Still, she had sat on a chair by the bed and sponged Laura’s face and hands at intervals. Her skin was hot and dry and Lottie had to be very gentle so as not to hurt her. But Mr Green had given Laura an extra dose of laudanum before going out and she had seemed to be sleeping fairly peacefully.
Lottie had seen dead people before in the workhouse. She had even helped the old woman who laid them out; had done so since she was eleven. She knew that Laura was dead. But she was only thirteen and she was nervous. She stood by the bed, filled with guilt besides the nervousness. She should have been awake, she knew she should have been awake. Even the paupers usually had someone keeping vigil with them when they died. Poor Mrs Green had had no one.
‘God rest you, Mrs Green,’ she whispered. Then she went out of the front door and around to the next door, which stood side by side with the Greens’. There was a faint light in the window and she knocked on the door and Mrs Bowron came.
‘I think Mrs Green has passed away,’ Lottie said, her eyes wide, for she could barely see Mrs Bowron’s face in the near dark.
‘Eeh, lass, I think she might have been gone for a while,’ said Mrs Bowron when she followed Lottie into the house and laid a hand on Mrs Green’s cold forehead. ‘Get Noah out of bed, now, and send him up to the pithead to tell his da.’
Lottie hurried to do her bidding, though she paused by the door. ‘I fell asleep,’ she mumbled.
Mrs Bowron looked at the girl’s white face. Why, she was nobbut a bairn, she thought. ‘It doesn’t matter, she would have gone any road,’ she said, trying to offer some comfort to the girl. ‘Hadaway and get Noah.’
But Noah sobbed and cried when she told him and the other boys woke and they cried too, all three huddling together and wailing and sobbing. In the end, Lottie had to put on her shawl and run up to the pithead. The only person she could find at that time of the morning was the engine winder and he was busy with the engine, winding up the cage with tubs of coal. The noise was deafening and there was an overall stink of coal dust and sulphur that made Lottie gag. She had to shout to make herself heard.
‘Here’s the under manager now,’ he said when at last she succeeded in getting her message across. ‘Tell him.’
The under manager frowned when he saw her. ‘What’s up, lass?’ he asked. ‘Thou shouldn’t be here.’
Lottie explained again and he glanced at the clock on the wall of the engine house. ‘Send a message, Potter,’ he said to the engine winder. ‘Best stand outside out of the road,’ he advised Lottie. He didn’t hold with women cluttering up the engine house.
Potter tapped on the iron casing of the engine with a spanner and again a few minutes later, and an answering tap came. Lottie was diverted for a minute, wondering how those few taps had sent the message for the overman. But still, the fact was the engine noise came louder and the overhead wheel began to whirr and the cage came up again, but this time with Mr Green in it. He dipped his head and stepped out into the yard.
‘Well? What’s happened?’ He sounded irritable and impatient. Evidently the taps had not told him his wife was dead. Lottie had hoped that they had.
‘Mrs Green has gone,’ she said. She began to shiver for it was, after all, a cold October pre-dawn.
‘Gone? Gone where?’ Then comprehension dawned and he gazed down at her. His expression didn’t change; it seemed to have frozen on his face. Maybe he didn’t ca
re that his wife had died, Lottie thought dismally. Did men not cry? Paupers did sometimes, she remembered. Maybe that was the difference between men like Mr Green and paupers. She folded her arms across her thin chest, trying to make them as small as possible so they would be covered by her short shawl.
‘I’ll come back wi’ you,’ he said and strode out of the yard, the metal studs in his pit boots ringing on the stones of the yard. Lottie had to trot to keep up with him.
Mrs Bowron met them at the door. The noise of the boys crying was still coming from upstairs. ‘I’m that sorry for your loss,’ the neighbour began, but he cut her short roughly. ‘Aye, thanks, missus,’ he said. ‘Lottie hadaway up and stop the lads making that racket.’
The next few days, until the funeral, Lottie was run off her feet preparing food and tea for the neighbours and family calling to pay their respects to the deceased. She somehow got through them despite her permanent haze of tiredness, until in the end she was hardly aware of what she was doing, be it slicing bread and butter or cleaning the house from top to bottom before relatives descended on them.
Sister Mitchell called. ‘If I can help you with anything, Lottie,’ she said, ‘I will.’ But Alfred Green heard her. Lottie had asked her into the house when she knocked, but now Alf put a firm hand on the Sister’s elbow and ushered her out.
‘Nay, she can manage,’ he said. ‘I can’t afford nurse’s prices now that I have a funeral to pay for.’
‘I wasn’t asking for pay,’ Eliza gasped.