Workhouse Child

by Maggie Hope

  ‘Aye, go on, you’ll take no notice of me,’ said Mary Anne bitterly, but Tommy didn’t hear her. He was striding down the back street, jumping the puddles in the dirt road and feeling as good as he did when coming to bank after a shift. Released, that is.

  ‘Mam, it didn’t matter to me,’ said Harry. He glanced across at Lottie, who had her head bent over a sock with a wooden egg inside it. Carefully she threaded the needle across a hole and pulled the wool through and peered rather short-sightedly at her work. Her cheeks were a becoming shade of rose as though she were blushing, or was it just the heat from the fire? He couldn’t tell.

  ‘Do you think it’s serious?’ Mary Anne asked, changing the subject.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Our Albert and this lass,’ said Mary Anne.

  ‘I don’t know. He tells me nowt,’ Harry replied. ‘Do you fancy a game of dominoes, Lottie?’

  ‘Indeed she does not!’ snapped Mary Anne. ‘Who is it, any road?’

  ‘Who is what? Lottie, howay, have a game.’

  ‘I don’t know how,’ said Lottie shyly. She had finished her darning and now she rolled up the sock with its twin and put the wooden egg in the sewing basket by her side.

  ‘I’ll show you,’ said Harry, then to his mother, ‘It won’t hurt if we’re not gambling, will it?’

  ‘Aw, go on then,’ Mary Anne replied. ‘The lass, who is the lass?’

  ‘You mean the lass our Albert is going out with? Why, it’s Dora Parkin. Her da’s the horseman at the Co-operative Society. Howay then, Lottie, let’s play.’

  ‘Just one game,’ said Mary Anne. ‘I’m wanting me bed.’

  The two young people didn’t question that. Both knew there was no way Mary Anne would leave one of her sons on their own with Lottie at this time of the night. During the day it had to happen sometimes, but that was different. There would be no carrying on in her house, no there would not. Mary Anne did not say it aloud but she might as well have done. Not that she thought Lottie was that type of lass but human nature being what it was, well …

  The lay preacher taking the service the following Sunday was master at the Wesleyan School. He was a middle-aged man who came from Durham City; he had come from a family converted to Methodism early in the century. His grandfather had been a hard-drinking, bad-tempered man who had rolled into a camp meeting more by accident than on purpose and offered to fight the preacher to show him how wrong he was. In his cups, Josiah Bateman was the sort of man who enjoyed a punch-up. He rarely made it down the pit on Mondays as a result of his riotous behaviour over the weekend. But Josiah left that meeting sober and having seen the light, something his long-suffering wife thanked God for every day.

  Josiah Bateman the third was a very different sort of a man, for the family had risen steadily, being sober and industrious. He had attended the Methodist College and was an upstanding member of the burgeoning community built around West Stanley mine. He was in his late twenties and sported luxuriant sideburns a shade darker than his light brown hair.

  ‘I have decided, along with the committee, of course, to start an intermediate class for adult literacy,’ he said.

  Lottie had been searching in her pocket for her penny, for the offering always came after the notices, but she stayed her hand and gazed up at Mr Bateman. She was not sure what intermediate might mean, but was it any good for her?

  ‘I know that most of you can read a little and sign your names even, but I want to be able to introduce you – or those of you who are, let’s say, disadvantaged in this way – to the world of literature. Anyone who wishes can come along at eight on Wednesday evening. To the schoolroom, that is. Er, for those who can afford it the cost will be one penny per week, the money to go to the Relief of Widows and Orphans Fund.’

  Lottie stared at him as the plate was passed around by the stewards. He used a lot of words she was not sure of the meaning of, but she thought she had got the gist of what he was saying. This was her chance to learn to read a proper book.

  ‘Can lasses come as well as lads?’ she asked him as he shook her hand at the door. ‘I mean to the classes?’

  ‘Why, you will be very welcome,’ Mr Bateman beamed at her. ‘Can you read at all?’

  ‘A bit,’ said Lottie and blushed. She was ashamed of her lack of reading; in these modern times nearly everyone was learning to read. Why there was a National School in nearly every community.

  ‘Wednesday, eight o’clock, do not be late,’ he said and turned to the next person waiting to leave the chapel.

  ‘Can I have Wednesday night off?’ Lottie asked Mary Anne when she got back to Burns Row. ‘Only there’s a class at the schoolroom and it’s about books.’

  Mary Anne rarely went to chapel these days. The minister visited her instead.

  ‘You can, pet. Only, I cannot pay you any more. You know how things are.’

  ‘No, no, I’ll manage, I will. I’m grateful for what you’ve done for me any road.’

  ‘We suit each other, Lottie. You’re one of the family now,’ said Mary Anne warmly.

  Wednesday evening came around and Lottie made her way to the schoolroom in good time for the class. In fact, she was too early in her eagerness and had to wait by the chapel door for the steward to come and open up. When he did, she sat down on a form at the back, where she hoped Mr Bateman would not take too much notice of her. If he asked her to read anything aloud she would die of embarrassment, she was certain of that. She kept her head down. The forms were filling up and there was a buzz of conversation around her.

  ‘Do you mind if I sit here, Lottie?’

  Harry’s voice close to her ear made Lottie look up in surprise. His shift at the pit had finished barely half an hour ago. He must have run home, had his meal and his bath and then come out to the chapel in that time. Automatically, Lottie shifted up on the form to make room for him.

  ‘I didn’t know you were coming,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know you were interested in liter … er, books.’

  ‘Well, I am,’ said Harry. His hair, still wet from his bath, glinted in the light from the hanging lamps above.

  ‘But you went to school, you can read,’ said Lottie.

  He shook his head. ‘Not too well. I went down the pit when I was seven, so after that I didn’t have much schooling except for Sunday School.’

  A hush descended on the schoolroom as Josiah Bateman climbed the few steps to the platform. He had a sheaf of papers and books under his arm and he spent some minutes arranging them on the lectern. The class watched him in silence, for there was not a person there who wasn’t a little in awe of him, despite his kindliness.

  Lottie even forgot her shyness with Harry as she listened raptly to Josiah Bateman’s opening talk. She couldn’t see him too well as she was at the back of the class and he was on the platform, but she could hear him perfectly and by, he had a lovely voice, a voice that made you interested in what he was saying. He spoke for almost half an hour on the advantages of being able to read fluently enough that you did not have to spell out the longer words; something not very common in the rows.

  ‘This is an age of opportunity,’ he said, his voice so fired with enthusiasm that he carried everyone in the schoolroom along on its tide. ‘We must seize every chance for improvement. I will read a short piece from the work by Mr Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist. I believe everyone in the room will want to know what happened next, even if it means deciphering it for oneself.’

  Lottie was enthralled to the extent that she even forgot who it was sitting by her side. Harry, though he was interested himself, could not help himself glancing sideways at her face, tilted so that she could peer at the platform and the man at the lectern reading so expressively from a large, leather-bound book.

  Lottie was struck by the similarities between Oliver and herself. He was a workhouse lad; she was a workhouse lass. She burned with trepidation when he asked for more food, for she knew too well that was unheard of. He had been put out to work in the commun
ity and so had she. No one had considered the welfare of the young boy Oliver; he had had no one to turn to and neither had she had anyone to protect her from Alfred Green.

  The evening was almost over. Mr Bateman was closing the book and Lottie desperately wanted to know what happened next. But she was no nearer to improving her reading, she realized. He had given out no tips on reading – none at all – he had simply read out the tale of the workhouse lad.

  ‘I’ll walk you home, Lottie,’ said Harry. ‘Did you enjoy it now?’

  ‘I did, oh aye, I did,’ she replied fervently. There was a buzz of conversation as people began rising to their feet and putting on mantels and coats. They stilled as Josiah Bateman called from the platform.

  ‘If you want to know what happened next in Mr Dickens’s story, I have booklets with the next chapter at the door. They are free but when you have finished with them I want them back to pass on to others.’

  Outside, the spring evening was turning cold. Frost sparkled from the ruts in the dirt road and the moon had a ring of white around it. Lottie pulled her shawl closer around her shoulders and folded her arms beneath it. The booklet, issued by the Institute for Adult Literacy, was clutched in her hand. She could hardly wait to get home so she could look at it.

  The two people walked with a careful distance of about a foot between them. Even so, she was as aware of him as if they were actually touching. Harry was a canny lad, she thought; a canny lad and a bonnie one an’ all. But there was plenty of time for lads. She had little time to herself but she was determined she was going to improve on her reading so she could read a whole book like Oliver Twist. Up until now she had not realized that all she needed was practice: the more she tried to read the more she would be able to. At least that was what Mr Bateman had said. Oh, he was a lovely man, Mr Bateman. A man like her father might have been if he hadn’t died. Well, he could have been like Mr Bateman, couldn’t he?

  ‘Well, was it a good night?’ asked Mary Anne as they came into the warmth of the kitchen and Lottie shed her shawl, hanging it behind the back door.

  ‘Aye, it was,’ Harry replied. ‘The teacher read us a story by that Mr Dickens.’

  ‘But did you learn anything?’

  ‘Well, not really.’ Harry rubbed his hands together and walked around the tin bath, still standing on the floor before the fire with dirty water and floating coal dust in it. He held his hands out to the fire to warm them. ‘It’s a bit parky out there,’ he observed.

  ‘I’ll empty the bath and then make us cups of cocoa,’ said Lottie. She was brought down to earth by the fact that there were still jobs to be done before she could lie down on her makeshift bed on the sofa and dream of being able to write stories like Mr Charles Dickens. Or even of being able to write at all, anything.

  ‘I will do it, I should have done it afore but I was in a hurry,’ said Harry. So once again his mother was scandalized by the sight of him doing what should have been done by a woman: emptying the bath and taking the water outside and the bath too, hanging it on the nail on the outside wall while Lottie spooned cocoa into mugs and poured in hot water. A dollop of condensed milk and the drink was ready.

  ‘What about you, lass, I can see you liked it by your face,’ said Mary Anne as they sipped their cocoa.

  ‘I did, oh yes, I did,’ Lottie said fervently. She thought of the booklet waiting for her. She would try to decipher it by the light of the fire as she waited for the time to come around when she had to wake Tommy for his fore shift.

  Nine

  1876

  ‘I want you to be my girl properly,’ said Harry. He carried on walking, not even looking in Lottie’s direction, but his face was suffused with red.

  Lottie stopped walking and stared at him, biting her lip. ‘I don’t want to be anyone’s girl, Harry,’ she said. ‘Not really. We are friends, aren’t we? That’s enough. We have plenty of time.’

  Harry finally looked at her properly. ‘I’m eighteen coming up, Lottie. Albert was courting when he was eighteen. Why shouldn’t we?’

  ‘And look at them, Harry,’ said Lottie. ‘Albert and Dora aren’t happy, are they? And there’s war on between the families, what with Dora having a bairn and them not wed yet. I don’t want to be courting seriously, Harry. I don’t want to have a bairn yet and I don’t want to get wed neither. Not for ages, years and years.’

  ‘All lasses want to get wed,’ said Harry. ‘What else can they do? Go and be someone else’s skivvy?’

  Lottie began to walk on rapidly. ‘Like me, you mean?’ she called back to him over her shoulder.

  ‘Aw, Lottie, you know I didn’t mean it like that,’ said Harry, hurrying after her. ‘You’re not a skivvy, You’re … you’re …’

  ‘A skivvy,’ said Lottie.

  ‘No, nay. You’re one of the family,’ Harry protested.

  Lottie relented and stopped walking. She turned to face him. ‘No, I know you didn’t mean it.’ She looked down at the book in her hand. It had been lent to her by Josiah Bateman. Jane Eyre, it was called – the story of an orphan girl.

  ‘I know you like this sort of story, Lottie,’ he had said to her. ‘And Charlotte Bronte was an excellent writer, though a trifle sensational.’ He bit his lip. Perhaps he should be encouraging her to read Charles Kingsley instead.

  Harry was slightly jealous of Mr Bateman’s influence on Lottie. He didn’t like the way she gazed up at the older man with such rapt attention. He didn’t like it that Mr Bateman had taken Lottie in to Durham to be fitted with spectacles either. But he didn’t mind the happiness he saw on her face when she came back wearing them. Lottie had always had good near sight and could read now and do close work, stitching and mending. She could sew as fine a patch as his mother, if not better. But she had not been able to recognize anyone from only a few feet away before she got glasses.

  She had come home from the oculist in Silver Street in Durham wearing the spectacles and exclaimed about everything she saw, not least the dust on the brown boards of the kitchen ceiling. She exclaimed over the sheep and lambs she saw on the hillside behind the village; she exclaimed at the beauty of the colours of the gases she saw rising from the coke ovens when they were at work.

  ‘Think about it, Lottie,’ Harry said now.

  ‘Think about what?’

  They were turning into Burns Row. The sun had sunk behind the houses and there was a slight haze in the air as the colliery chimney belched out smoke.

  ‘Lottie!’

  Lottie, who had been thinking of the pleasures to come, when all the family were in bed or at the pit and she could sit before the fire with a stub of candle and read from her book, heard the outrage in his voice and brought her mind back to the present and what Harry had been talking about.

  ‘I will,’ she said, then stopped before turning in at the back gate. ‘It would worry your mam. You know how bad she is these days. Albert will be moving out, it’s not right they should be living in separate houses, not when they have little Bertie. If we moved out, Tommy and Mary Anne would be left on their own.’

  ‘I didn’t say we should get wed,’ said Harry. He kicked at the wall by the gate with the steel cap of his pit boot. ‘I’m only eighteen yet. But I’m earning good money hewing. We could get wed when I’m twenty-one, but I’m just saying we could be courting now. Be my lass, Lottie.’

  ‘Aw, Harry,’ said Lottie, and hurried into the house before he could say any more.

  ‘Mind, you’re a bit past your time, aren’t you?’ demanded Albert as they went in. ‘I said I’d meet Dora at nine o’clock, she’s going to be mad.’

  ‘I told him to go,’ said Mary Anne tiredly. ‘Lord’s sake, I can be on my own for a few minutes. Any road, Tommy will be up soon.’

  ‘Mary Anne, I’m that sorry,’ said Lottie. ‘I didn’t realize it was so late.’ She put her book down on the table and took off her shawl. ‘We got talking.’

  ‘Talking, were you?’ Albert was already on his feet and pulling on hi
s jacket. ‘Well, that’s all right then.’

  ‘Albert …’ Harry started to say, but stopped as he saw his mother’s face. Mary Anne’s eyes were ringed with a dark brown discolouration and her face and neck were puffy, as were her hands and feet. Her heart was failing, had been failing for a long time, but now the process seemed to be getting faster every day. She could no longer lie down in bed but had to be propped up to breathe. They were afraid to leave her on her own in the house.

  ‘You should be in bed, Mam,’ he went on. ‘Howay, I’ll carry you through and Lottie will undress you.’

  ‘I was trying to let Tommy sleep as long as he could,’ Mary Anne said, fighting for breath.

  ‘Aye well, it’s time now.’

  Lottie looked in the oven to check on the bacon and potato panacklty. It was bubbling away fine, so she pushed the iron kettle from the bar on to the fire. Before long she and Harry had Tommy up and, dressed in his pit clothes, eating his supper, and Mary Anne safely tucked up in bed in the front room.

  Albert was away to see his lass and bairn. The minister had been giving them a bad time, saying they should get married. Dora had been in tears about it last time he’d seen her.

  ‘Mam’s badly, Da,’ said Harry. ‘Real badly. What are we going to do?’

  Tommy shook his head. ‘We’ve had the doctor and he did nowt. I thought he might have done. Bloody witch doctor, that’s what he is. I mean, there’s still smallpox about for all their talk of being able to stop it with this newfangled vaccination.’ Tommy shoved a forkful of bacon into his mouth.

  ‘Da, that’s got nowt to do with Mam and her heart. The dropsy’s getting worse, you must see that.’

  Tommy pushed his plate away and sat down by the fire to lace up his pit boots. Harry and Lottie watched him, waiting for his response.

  ‘Da?’

  Tommy straightened up. He pulled on his cap and tied his muffler around his neck. Then he spoke.

  ‘I tell you what I’m going to do. I’m away to Durham the morn and I’m going to fetch our Eliza back wi’ me. She’ll have to help out for the now.’