Workhouse Child

by Maggie Hope

  ‘Thomas?’ she said.

  ‘None other,’ he replied, smiling the old smile. ‘Aren’t you glad to see me?’

  ‘Where have you been?’ she asked, for all the world as though he had stepped out for a paper and taken longer than she had expected.

  ‘Ask me in and I’ll tell you,’ he said with a small laugh. ‘Or am I to stand here all day?’

  She stood back and pushed the bridge of her glasses up her nose in an unconscious gesture. Her thoughts whirled. Thomas stepped over the threshold and closed the door behind him. He was still smiling as he put his arms around her, but the smile faded as she stiffened, then shrank away.

  ‘Hey, now that’s not nice, Lottie,’ he said. ‘Here I’ve come home after being gone so long and you don’t want me to touch you. I’m your husband, Lottie, and you are my wedded wife.’

  ‘You ran away from me, remember,’ said Lottie. ‘You ran away and didn’t care what happened to me.’

  ‘Well, I had to get away,’ said Thomas reasonably. ‘I would have sent for you; I intended to send for you but the right time just didn’t come. Are you not going to even ask me how I am?’ He gave her a mocking smile as he walked past her and into the small sitting room without waiting for an answer. ‘Make a cup of tea, will you, lass? It’s a while since I had a decent cup of tea.’

  Lottie stared after him, unable to believe what was happening. She followed him into the sitting room. He was sitting on the only armchair there, taking off his shabby boots. Stretching out his legs and putting his feet on the steel fender, he sat back in the chair, and closed his eyes for a minute.

  ‘By, that feels good,’ he said. ‘I’ve dreamed of this all the way back from that hellhole I’ve been in. A room with a proper armchair to sit in and my dear wife by my side.’

  Lottie saw red. She went over to him and kicked his feet from the fender, then leaned over him and slapped him across the face with all her might.

  ‘God damn you, Thomas Mitchell!’ she screamed at him. ‘Where have you been? I said. Where? You’ve ruined my life! You rotten excuse for a man, you swine …’

  She got no further, for Thomas jumped up from the chair, caught both her hands in one of his and hit her so hard that her head rocked from side to side and waves of blackness swamped her brain. He swore as he pushed her down on to the hard, stone-flagged floor and tore the buttons from her shirtwaister in one movement, as he took it by the neck and wrenched it open.

  Her head bumped painfully against the stone and she was incapable of any resistance as he dragged up her skirt and forced her legs apart with his knee. He held her there as he unbuttoned his trousers and forced himself inside her. He had loosed her hands by now but they were pinned between her body and his. When she finally got one arm free, she managed to rake his face with her nails, yet he hardly seemed to feel it. He simply knocked her hand away and grasped her breast with a horny hand, squeezing and twisting at the soft flesh until he gave one last grunting thrust and collapsed on top of her. She lay there, barely conscious, unable to breathe until he rolled off her, panting heavily.

  Eventually, he got to his feet and buttoned up his trousers, before sitting back in his chair and put his feet back on the fender, crossing them negligently. Steam rose from his socks with the heat of the fire and the smell of him filled the air to the extent that she felt suffocated. Her vision cleared gradually and she sat up, pulling her shirtwaister together, wincing as her breast throbbed even more when she brushed it with her arm. Her thighs ached, her belly ached, there was a stabbing pain in her groin and a throbbing in her head. She pulled ineffectually at her skirt but it wouldn’t go down properly until she got to her feet.

  He turned his head and looked at her and she stared back with utter loathing.

  ‘You filthy beast,’ she said and paused, for her head was swimming again now she was upright. She sat down abruptly on a hard-backed chair she had bought at the second-hand market in Durham marketplace. It was the only other chair besides his in the room and had a carved back, which dug into her bruises, but she had to get off her feet before she fell down again.

  ‘Aye, well you don’t get a lot of opportunity to wash on a tramp steamer. Nor time either.’

  ‘You stink! God forgive you for what you’ve just done to me.’

  ‘Hey! I’m your husband, aren’t I? And you are my wife. I did nothing I hadn’t a perfect right to do, I did not.’

  Thomas was smiling now, a cold smile. She could hardly recognize him for the man she had married. There was nothing in him at all of the boy she had known before then. How could a man change so much? His personality was totally different. He was a stranger in Thomas’s body.

  ‘You raped me,’ she said, with no expression in her voice.

  ‘A man cannot rape his own wife, Lottie,’ he said, smiling in amusement. ‘Did you not know that? Well, you can believe me, I’m a lawyer.’

  ‘Well, you don’t look like one.’

  Suddenly Lottie couldn’t bear to remain in the same room as he was. She rose to her feet and went out of the room, though every step gave her pain. She went into the kitchen and felt the water in the set-pot boiler; it was barely warm but it would have to do, for she was desperate to wash off the stale male smell of him. Bringing in the tin bath from its nail in the yard wall, she used the ladle tin to empty the water from the boiler into the bath and began to take off her clothes.

  Hearing a noise from the other room she stopped undressing abruptly and took a chair and propped it under the handle of the door to hold it closed, before taking off the rest of her clothes and stepping into the bath. She scrubbed herself clean with lye soap and would have done it again but for the fact that she was worried he would manage to find a way through. She jumped uncontrollably as she heard his footsteps and again when he tried the door handle, rattling it angrily.

  ‘Lottie, let me in or it will be the worse for you,’ he said.

  ‘I will not!’

  Lottie hurriedly climbed out of the bath and rubbed at herself with a towel before pulling on her clothes over her still damp body. What she really wanted to do was throw the lot on to the fire but her clean clothes were upstairs in the bedroom closet.

  He had stopped rattling the doorknob, had he given up? As she hesitated, she heard a noise behind her.

  ‘Now then, Lottie, have you got the kettle on yet? I’m fair parched for a cup of tea.’

  She whirled to see him right behind her. He must have gone out of the front door and around the street and in through the backyard. Oh, why hadn’t she locked the back door?

  ‘Don’t touch me,’ she warned, backing away from him and picking up the brass poker from the fireplace. ‘I swear if you do, I’ll swing for you.’

  Thomas laughed and took a step forward. ‘Now, Lottie, you know you won’t use that on me.’

  ‘I will, I will indeed,’ she said as she took a tighter grip on the poker. The pain in her breast deepened and her heartbeat raced. She began to feel dizzy again and it took all of her willpower to stay upright.

  Thomas hesitated, gazing at her uncertainly, then he shook his head. ‘No, you won’t do that, Lottie,’ he said and stepped closer.

  It was done in a minute. She didn’t even think about it. She brought the poker up to hit him and he sidestepped away from the blow. His foot caught in the clippie rag mat Lottie had laid as a hearthrug and he fell on to the unemptied tin bath which was sitting there. His head hit the side handle, slipped from there to the fender and he lay, stunned. Lottie dropped the poker and it clattered on the tin hearthplate, resounding over and over.

  She had killed him. She had killed him. The phrase repeated and repeated in her head. God help me, she thought. She could hear herself screaming in her brain but nothing was coming out. She stepped back from the clippie mat and sat down by the table. Some water was still sloshing in the bath. The rest was soaking into the mat, some sizzling on the hot hearthplate, a trickle running over a flagstone to a groove then along the
groove to the next one. Some of it was pink. Why was it pink? Was there blood in it?

  He was so still, she thought – one thought among a chaotic jumble of thoughts. She couldn’t remember whether she had hit him with the poker or not. No, of course she hadn’t. Had she? Whether she had or not, she would have to tell the polis.

  She would swing for him, she had said. But she had not meant it, no, she had not. She was defending herself …

  Thomas groaned and she jumped into the air in shock and her heart beat even more wildly. Was it her imagination? She stared at him. His hand moved – he brought it up to touch his face, hold his forehead. She leaned over him and saw that his eyes were open and he was staring back at her.

  ‘Well, woman, I thought you were going to go for me there. Come on, come on, help me up, my head’s fit to burst.’

  ‘I will not.’

  Thomas pushed himself into a sitting position using the fender as a prop. He breathed out heavily and groaned. ‘My head is fit to burst, Lottie,’ he said and suddenly he sounded just like the old Thomas to her so that she moved towards him, hesitated for only a second or two, then helped him up and into the fireside chair. He leaned back, his head on the bentwood frame that held the rails together. He closed his eyes and seemed to slip into sleep.

  Lottie watched him for several minutes but he did not move. After a while she emptied what was left of the water from the bath into a bucket and took it into the yard and poured it down the drain, then took out the bath itself and hung it on the nail in the wall. She took the soaking mat outside too and dried up the water slopping about on the stone flags. In all the time it took her to clear the mess in the kitchen he did not wake up.

  It took all her willpower to make herself touch him. She felt his forehead; it was cold and clammy but not icy. There was a pulse beating at his temple. She felt quite detached somehow, as though he really were a stranger, a tramp who had wandered into the house. Stepping back from him, for the smell was overpowering now with the heat of the fire drying out his clothes, she pondered what to do about him. Eventually, she went upstairs to her bedroom and changed her clothes.

  Downstairs again, she saw he had moved only a little and seemed to be in an even deeper sleep.

  She would fetch Eliza, she thought. Eliza was a Nightingale nurse besides being his mother; she would know what to do. She covered him with a blanket and left him.

  It took twenty minutes for her to get to Eliza’s house, and only ten for them to get back, for they came in Eliza’s trap. On the way, Lottie gave her mother-in-law an edited version of what had happened, with no mention of the rape.

  ‘But how did he fall? Surely he hadn’t been drinking?’

  ‘No, at least I don’t think so. He tripped over the clippie mat and hit his head,’ replied Lottie.

  By this time they were pulling up in the street outside Lottie’s little house and Eliza couldn’t ask her anything more. They climbed down from the trap and Eliza put the nosebag on the pony.

  ‘He’s in the kitchen,’ said Lottie. ‘I couldn’t move him on my own.’

  ‘No, of course not,’ Eliza replied as she hurried in front of Lottie through the house to the kitchen at the back. ‘Where? Where is he?’ she asked.

  ‘In the chair by the fire,’ said Lottie, surprised she should have to ask. She pushed past Eliza and stared. The kitchen was empty. There was no one there, no one at all.

  ‘Where is he?’ she echoed Eliza.

  ‘He must have wandered off,’ Eliza said, more to herself than Lottie. ‘He must have been suffering from concussion and when he woke up didn’t know where he was. We have to find him. You go the back way and I’ll go the front.’ She started back the way she had come but when she looked back, Lottie had not moved.

  ‘Howay, Lottie! Goodness knows what he’ll do, where he’ll go, don’t you realize that? He could get himself hurt; killed even, if what you said was true.’

  ‘Aye. Yes, I’m going.’

  Lottie ran out to the backyard gate and looked up and down the back lane. The only things in sight were a couple of lines of washing strung across the lane, for there were only two more cottages along this way. But there was a coal merchant’s cart going along the end road and she hurried to catch it up.

  ‘Have you seen a man going along here?’ she asked.

  ‘A man? I’ve seen a few, missus, but not going along here. Will I not do for you?’ He grinned to show he was joking.

  ‘Oh, don’t be soft, this is serious,’ said Lottie, her voice breaking into a shout in her anxiety.

  ‘Aye. Well if your man’s ran away from you I’m not surprised, missus. I bet you gave him hell.’ He was offended but she couldn’t take time to placate him now. She turned and ran the other way and down towards Prebends Bridge. Please God, don’t let him have fallen into the Wear, she prayed.

  There was no sign of Thomas in among the trees and bushes that lined the river. Nor on the footpath, which ran alongside it. She went over on to the opposite bank but there was nothing there either, not that she could see. There were a few people walking along and a lone fisherman with rod and line sitting on a stool.

  ‘Have you seen a man coming along here?’ she asked everyone she met but most stared at her as though she were mad, which made her realize that it was a daft question to ask. ‘A man dressed like a tramp?’ she added.

  ‘You been robbed, pet?’ one man asked.

  Lottie shook her head and carried along the path for a short distance before turning back to the bridge and crossing over again. She climbed the bankside towards the cottage. Perhaps Eliza had found him.

  ‘Did you see him?’

  As Lottie turned into the lane she met Eliza, who was wringing her hands, frantic with worry. ‘Eeh, man,’ she went on when Lottie shook her head. ‘Why did you leave him on his own when he’d hurt his head? I thought you had more sense, Lottie. I should have come with him. I could have driven him over in the trap. I’m his mother, I would have known he wasn’t right, not well.’

  ‘He was asleep,’ Lottie replied. ‘It wasn’t my fault, it wasn’t.’ She was sorely tempted to tell Eliza the whole story about her precious son. But she could not, of course she couldn’t. How do you tell a mother that her son is a wastrel and a rapist besides being a thief? And Eliza had been so good to her. Eliza and her whole family had been good to her. Even if she told her mother-in-law, Eliza would not believe her.

  ‘You could have asked a neighbour to look in,’ said Eliza. ‘Why didn’t you? If anything has happened, anything worse to my Tot, it will be all your fault. It will, it will!’

  She had thought he was dead and today he had come back and despite everything she had been so glad to see him. It was a load lifted from her heart. But now he had gone again and goodness knows what might happen to him. It was all the fault of this lass she had taken into her heart and home and this was how she repaid her.

  Lottie was stricken with remorse. It was true she should not have left Thomas by himself. If he had concussion he could be wandering anywhere, falling down the bank or, worse, off a bridge. There were so many bridges in Durham. By this time he could have been swept away to Sunderland and the North Sea.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I really am sorry, Eliza.’

  ‘It’s no good being sorry now, is it? You’re an ungrateful little bitch, you are. Why Thomas married you I don’t know. You’ve ruined his life.’

  ‘I ruined his life! Why if you knew …’

  Lottie stopped. It was senseless, the two of them fighting like this. What they had to do was find Thomas.

  ‘If I knew what?’

  ‘Nothing. Look we must find Thomas. He could have gone over to your house. It’s worth checking. Why don’t you go there and I’ll look elsewhere, around the town. He can’t have gone far.’

  Eliza nodded. ‘Aye, you’re right. I’ll go now. You fetch Peter, will you? And if you don’t find him in half an hour go to the polis. Or no, maybe I should go to the bobbies
now.’

  ‘No, don’t get the polis,’ said Lottie. ‘Not yet, any road.’

  Eliza glanced keenly at her. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well, you know there was a misunderstanding with the law firm in Newcastle. I don’t think Thomas would want the polis.’

  ‘Aw, getaway, it cannot have been anything much. I brought Thomas up to be honest.’

  ‘Still, I’ll get the polis but not until I have to. Any road, we might find him any minute. He’s probably just sitting down nursing his headache, somewhere by the Wear.’

  Oh God, she shouldn’t have said that, Eliza would be imagining him falling in the Wear. But Eliza agreed to Lottie’s suggestions and agreed to seek Thomas at home. The two women pulled on their shawls and went out looking for Thomas once again.

  Twenty-Seven

  It was the police who found Thomas almost three weeks later. Lottie had scoured Durham City and its environs, looking for him from first light until the dark of night made it impossible for her to see. She searched the riverbanks in all their twists and turns and she searched the streets and the outskirts, even the mining villages close to the city. Peter and Eliza searched too, and when they didn’t find him, advertised in the Northern Echo for him but with no result.

  ‘I am going to the police,’ Eliza said to Peter. ‘I don’t care what happens. I have to know where his is and whether he is alive or not.’

  ‘I’ll find him. I’ve asked all the girls at school to keep a lookout for him and you know, they come from all over Durham,’ said Anne, then a thought struck her. ‘You don’t think his head got better, do you? He might have joined the army or run away to sea or taken himself off to Australia …’

  ‘Anne! Of course he hasn’t,’ snapped her mother. ‘He must be hurt, that’s what. He could be anywhere, lying hurt. He would have got in touch with me at least, if he was going away.’

  ‘He didn’t last time,’ said Anne.

  ‘Anne!’ Peter said sternly.

  ‘Well he didn’t …’

  ‘Go to bed, Anne,’ said Peter. ‘It’s past your bedtime anyway.’