The Orphan Collection

by Maggie Hope

  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 icy 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.

  ‘Where’s Da?’ Meg asked at last, thinking how he would hate the pit. He was even nervous of being in the pantry if the door was shut. Poor Da didn’t like to be shut in.

  ‘He’s gone to see the carrier. He can’t go traipsing about the country with a handcart nowadays, there’s too much stuff for that. And your da and you can ride with the carrier. That’ll save the fares on the train, any road.’

  ‘We’re not going tonight?’ Alarm rose in Meg. ‘What about my job at the lighthouse?’

  ‘Oh, aye, you’ll have to run along and tell them. You’ll mebbe lose a day’s pay, but it can’t be helped. If we go, you have to come with us.’

  ‘We’re going tonight!’ Meg couldn’t believe it. ‘Why didn’t you tell me before? Are we doing a flit?’

  ‘No, we’re not going tonight – tomorrow we’re going. An’ we’ll pay the rent an’ all, we’ll leave no debt behind us. Not like that lot down the street who did a flit. Now, hadaway with you to the lighthouse and take the bairn with you. It’ll keep him out of my feet.’

  ‘But why didn’t you tell me?’

  Hannah bit her lip. ‘Eeh, lass, we didn’t want to upset you, not till we heard from our Phoebe that it was all right. But mind, you’ll like it there. Phoebe says she’s got us a grand house with a backyard and a garden. Howay now, there’s a lot to do, I’m telling you.’

  Meg wiped most of the coal dust from Miley’s chubby cheeks and settled him on her hip. Then she walked along to the lighthouse, to see the keeper. At least he was understanding when she stood before him and told him she was leaving.

  ‘Me da’s got a job inland,’ she mumbled, still hardly believing it herself yet. ‘Can I have the day’s pay?’

  The lighthouse keeper regarded the sturdy young girl with her brother straddling one hip and sighed regretfully.

  ‘Aye, well, if you have to go, you have to,’ he said philosophically. And he handed her the day’s pay she was owed. After all, there were plenty of young lasses who would jump at the work. But would he find another worker like Meg?

  She loitered a little on her way home with the pennies clutched in her hand. By, Mam would be pleased she’d got her money after all. She felt a rush of affection for the kindly lighthouse keeper. He didn’t have to pay her, she knew, not when he’d had no notice.

  Walking slowly home, with Miles holding on to her hand and toddling unsteadily beside her, Meg took a good look round at the place where she’d been happy. The bright sea now shimmered in the evening sunlight, calmly rolled in on the soft sands, made the barest splashing on the rocks. She passed the school where she had learned to write in an elegant copperplate and read the religious primers, all for threepence a week. The money had been hard to find but Hannah, who could neither read nor write, was determined that her children would get the chance.

  Meg stared up at the grim stone building, remembering the rapped knuckle
s she had often received from the master, mostly for talking and laughing in class; the list of rules pinned up in the entrance.

  ‘Children must be punctual and attend some place of worship on the Lord’s day,’ had been the first and most important.

  So Meg and Jack Boy and later Alice had attended the Wesleyan Methodist Sunday School every Sunday morning, promptly at ten o’clock. She would miss the friends she’d made there, Meg thought sadly. But never mind, she would make new friends at Winton Colliery. For that was where Uncle Tot and Auntie Phoebe were living now, Uncle Tot with a grand job in the pit there.

  Miles started to whimper for his tea and Meg lifted him up and settled him on her hip again. ‘Whisht, babby,’ she said, and dropped a kiss on the fine, baby hair on top of his head. ‘We’ll soon be home now.’

  In the overcrowded kitchen of the cottage which had been the family home for the last five years, she found the meal was already begun. The shrimps were cooked and piled on a plate in the middle of the table, liberally seasoned with salt and vinegar. For Da there was a slice of cod, bought from the fisher boats at South Bents and fried over the open fire so that the smell filled the room and spilled over into the rest of the house.

  ‘I got paid, Mam.’

  Meg grinned in triumph as she handed over the money to her mother before sitting down at the table with Miles still on her lap. She began spooning shrimps on to her plate. Hannah was cutting thick wedges of bread. Meg watched as she buttered the loaf before holding it to her clean apron to cut it. There was a mug of milk for Miles, and for the other children weak tea with a spoonful of condensed milk stirred into it.

  ‘Thank God for that any road,’ said Hannah wearily, slumping down into her chair. She looked tired, thought Meg, and there was still a lot of work to be done and the tiring journey tomorrow.

  ‘Here, I’ll take the bairn.’ Hannah held out her arms for Miles. ‘You get your tea, Meg, I’m not very hungry.’ She thickened a crust with butter and put it in the child’s hands. He sucked it, absorbed in the taste.

  Meg stared at her mother in quick concern. Hannah’s not being hungry meant only one thing, she had discovered very early in her young life. Oh, she had guessed that there was a new baby on the way, but usually the sickness and lack of appetite had gone after the first few weeks. Except those times when Mam had lost a baby … Eeh, she thought, feeling a little fluttering of fear for her mother, why do mothers have to be always having bairns?

  Meg looked across the table at Da who was quietly eating his meal, sitting with them but somehow apart from them, taking little notice of the others. Jack Maddison had aged in the last five years. There was a defeated look about him too. Lines had appeared on his forehead and down his cheeks, and he had developed a stoop.

  Poor Da! He would hate it down the pit. He must have felt her eyes on him for he looked up and half-smiled at her.

  ‘Well, pet, we’re on our way again. You’ll have to help your mam as much as you can. But there, I know you will, you’re a good bairn.’

  ‘I will an’all, Da, I will,’ put in Jack Boy. At six years old he was a thin, wiry boy with an open, freckled face and hair so fair it was almost white.

  Jack smiled at them both, feeling impelled to lighten their earnest sympathy. ‘It’ll be all right, it will, I’m telling you. An’ plenty of lads have had to go down the pit whether they wanted to or not, let alone a man grown like me. I’m not the first by a long chalk. Now eat your tea and get the little ’uns to bed, we have a lot on the night. The carrier’s coming at eight the morn.’

  At eight o’clock sharp the carrier was indeed by the door and by nine the cart was loaded and on its way. Meg and her father were riding with the carrier but Hannah and the younger children caught the Marsden Flyer to Sunderland, where they changed for Bishop Auckland. Hannah should be at the new house fairly fresh from the train ride rather than bumping along in the cart. A letter had come just before they left Marsden, reassuring them that a job was waiting for Jack and a house, right next-door to Auntie Phoebe’s.

  ‘A good house, it is, Hannah,’ she wrote, ‘two bedrooms and a room besides the kitchen downstairs. And a copper setpot in the yard, and a good garden at the front.’

  Jack had read it out to them all to cheer everyone up. And it did, so that the children were happy and excited, looking forward to going on the train, and not just one train, but two.

  Meg had mixed feelings, though, as she and Da set out on the carrier’s cart. Jack sat in front with the driver, a garrulous man who spoke continually around his clay pipe which he never seemed to take out of his mouth. Meg was fascinated but couldn’t understand a word he said though Da seemed to make sense of it which was just as well. It was a good long journey to have to go trying to answer someone when you hadn’t understood the question, she thought.

  She herself was sitting behind, snug between boxes of clothes and Grannie’s rocking-chair. She’d wanted to sit in the chair but Da said it wasn’t safe, she might fall off, and if they were travelling at any speed she would hurt herself and how would he face Mam if she did that? Meg had looked doubtfully at the placid cart-horse. He wasn’t going to travel very fast, she thought, but she knew better than to argue with Da and so had climbed into her niche obediently.

  They soon left the coast behind and were travelling across country to Winton Colliery. The way was hilly and often Meg and the two men had to climb down and walk beside the cart while the driver talked encouragingly to the horse.

  ‘Howay then, lad, giddy up, giddy up. Come away then, Benny, we’ll have a bit of a blow when we get up t’d top and then there’s a nice easy road down. Howay, Benny lad, I’ve a bag of oats ready for thoo, just keep on, lad.’ And he would take his pipe out of his mouth to talk to the horse as they both puffed and panted up the hill.

  True to his word, he would slip the nosebag on Benny for a while when the top was crested and they would all have a rest and a bite to eat and cold water out of a lemonade bottle.

  It was already evening and the light beginning to fade when Da shook Meg gently to waken her from her tired dozing so that she could get off the cart and begin the walk up the last hill.

  ‘Will we be long now, Da?’ she asked as she plodded up the steep gradient to the accompaniment of the carrier’s soft voice as he talked to his horse. Her feet felt like lead weights and it was getting more difficult to put one foot in front of the other all the time.

  Jack glanced at her. Her face was pale and drawn and there were dark patches under her eyes. She shivered as they passed under the shadow of a great winding wheel, briskly turning as it brought its load to the surface. It was no different to many another they had passed on the way but Meg was sensitive to her da’s feelings and saw when his glance slid from her to the pithead buildings. She tucked her small hand in his with an instinctive need to comfort him and he squeezed it with his own, the skin rough and dry with working the magnesium limestone of Marsden Quarry.

  ‘No lass,’ he said, ‘just up this bank and down the other side. We’ll be home before dark.’

  Home! How could this place ever be home? They reached the top and gazed down at the straggling pit village with its pit yard at one end. An aerial flight was strung out across the field to a towering mountain of a slag heap and the air was heavy with coal dust. There was coal dust in the air at Marsden but not like this. A sad longing for the tang of sea air beset her, or maybe the sight of the kittiwakes wheeling over the cliffs.

  A cold wind rattled round the houses as they reached the colliery rows. They were all recently built with dirt roads bare of tarmac but footpaths paved with flagstones and yards opening on to the back lanes. They turned into the last row, the only one with gardens to the front, a row with a larger house on the end where Uncle Tot and Auntie Phoebe lived, for he was a colliery overman.

  ‘Eeh, there you are, we were wondering where you’d got to.’

  Auntie Phoebe must have been on the look-out for them for she came rushing out o
f the house and down the garden path to the road. ‘An’ this is our Meg. By, what a big lass you are now. An’ I bet you’re a good girl an’ help your mam? Eeh, it’s good to see you, Jack, an’ all. Howay in then, I’ve got a nice knuckle of ham and fresh pot of pease pudding all ready for you. An’ you an’ all, Mr Carrier, I know you’ll be ready for it.’

  Meg was dazed by this time, what with tiredness and Auntie Phoebe’s overwhelming questions which didn’t seem to need any answers. She mumbled a greeting and followed her aunt up the path.

  ‘I’ve put the bairns to bed upstairs for now, Jack, that’ll give you a chance to see to things next-door. Howay in then, what’re you waiting for?’ This last was addressed to the carrier who was quietly unharnessing his horse.

  ‘Oh, aye, the galloway. You can stake him out in the garden next-door, man, it’s not turned over yet and he’ll find a bit of grazing there. He’ll be right as rain. No need to pay livery stables, there’s not.’

  Jack breathed a sigh of relief when the carrier agreed to this. That would be a sizeable chunk off the bill and the horse would be fine, the grass was fresh and the night mild enough.

  ‘Run round next-door for your mam. She’s been scrubbing the floors before the furniture came,’ Phoebe said to Meg, and obediently she went and there was Hannah, just throwing a bucket of dirty water out into the garden. She looked up when Meg came through the gate and the girl was shocked to see the violet shadows under her eyes and the weariness etched into her face. Her own tiredness was forgotten.

  ‘Have you finished, Mam? Auntie Phoebe said to go for our supper. I can finish for you if you like?’

  Hannah smiled wanly and put down her bucket and brush. ‘Aye, I’m coming, pet,’ she said. ‘There’s no need for you to do anything, I’m about done. Howay, I’m fair clemmed and you must be famished an’ all.’

  She put an arm around Meg’s shoulders. ‘It’ll be grand here, pet, see if it’s not. Look, a good flagged floor in here and a wooden one in the other room. And two big bedrooms – we’ve plenty of room. An’ we can grow a few taties and leeks in the garden, mebbe a few flowers. I mind the smell of the stocks and roses at the Hall, they were grand of an evening. Oh, aye, we’ll be fine.’