Admonition

by Chris Throsby

  With an emphasising rap on my desk, he handed me back the slate; I was already holding the chalk as he had. Starting the first downward stroke was the hardest, but once I sat back and saw it mirrored Mr Deeming’s, I grew more confident and the other lines followed easily. Though he made no comment, I think Mr Deeming was surprised at how quickly and accurately I completed the letters. Finding no fault, he took my slate, wiped it clean and gave me the next five to copy. I found copying letters quite easy and it wasn’t long before I was copying simple sentences. I don’t know exactly when it was I started reading what I was writing, but I do know that within a year I was trying to read anything I could lay my hands on. In time I also gained a working knowledge of numbers, but it’s a love of reading that has stayed with me all my life.

  The first bell of the day was at six. On a Monday morning, it was followed at half past by dormitory inspection and it was the Monday after we’d first talked that I witnessed the Master’s treatment of Joe. I not only discovered the reason he treated him differently from everyone else but also why Joe had befriended me.

  Before the bell stopped clanging, Joe leapt out of bed and ran for the broom which stood behind the door. Running back and whilst urging me to get up, he swept all around and under his bed. By the time I was dressed, the rest of the dormitory were up as well and as Joe handed me the broom, others started calling for it.

  Joe, who by now was tugging furiously at his sheet, trying to make sure it was tucked in as tightly as possible, looked up at me and in a loud whisper hissed,

  “Hurry up.”

  There was an edge of panic in his voice.

  “They want the broom and you’ve still got to make your bed.”

  His fear was infectious and I swept frantically around and under my bed. After handing over the broom, I’d only just finished making my bed when the door burst open and the Master strode in. To my alarm, he was followed closely by Platt.

  We all stood nervously by our beds and whilst the Master began pacing slowly between each pair, Platt remained standing silently in the doorway.

  The floor and apparently every bed passed inspection until he reached Joe’s. Standing with his hands gripped behind him, after first glancing at Platt to make sure he had his full attention, he turned to Joe’s bed and said,

  “So, let’s see if the dirty Jew has done any better this week.”

  With that, he kicked Joe’s mattress which of course raised a great cloud of dirt. In anger, he released his hands from behind his back and with one pull, removed Joe’s sheet. Disdainfully, he said,

  “Once a dirty Jew, always a dirty Jew, can’t make a bed, can’t clean a floor. Simple things any boy bought up civilised learns from when they can walk. What say you, Mr Platt?”

  “You’re right as always, Master.”

  “So why do you think this boy ain’t been bought up civilised then, Mr Platt?”

  “’Cos he’s the son of a Jew Master, that’s why.”

  "Exactly, Mr Platt, exactly. But not any Jew, oh no, he’s the son of a workhouse Jew. All of ‘em are either robbin’ you blind with their money lendin’, or in the workhouse takin’ advantage of the Parish’s generosity.

  Though you can’t really blame the boy, you just have to teach him. Ain’t that right, Mr Platt?"

  “No one else is going to teach him, Master. ’Specially not that mother of ’is.”

  “Why’s that then, Mr Platt?”

  They were obviously working together, walking down a well–worn path. Joe’s face had reddened, but he’d said nothing, just stared at the wall opposite. But then Platt must have strayed from the path and entered forbidden territory because when with venom he said,

  “Because she’s a dirty whore, Master, as well as an uncivilised and ungrateful Jewess.”

  Joe went past the Master so fast that there was no chance he’d be stopped. He flew into Platt, fists flaying and shouted angrily,

  “You shut your filthy mouth. My mother’s a good woman and it’s not her fault we’re in here. You’re only working here because the Parish pays you to look after us; otherwise you’d be livin’ in here just like the rest of us.”

  With the first volley, Platt had stepped back in surprise and although Joe stopped hitting him quite quickly, he carried on shouting and for a fleeting moment, I wondered whatever happened to ‘bending with ’em’. But I suppose things had been building up inside him for a while.

  By this time, the Master, who had got over his initial surprise, snapped at the porter,

  “Get hold of him, Mr Platt, and take him to the refractory cell. We’ll see if a couple of weeks in there won’t teach him to show some respect for his elders and betters.”

  The Porter was a big man, well–fed and used to carrying heavy loads. Joe, on the other hand, was a wisp and like most of us, short for his age. So once Platt had recovered from the initial onslaught, Joe was no match for him. In fact, after that first outburst, the fire seemed to go out in Joe and even though roughly handled by Platt, he put up no resistance as he was marched away.

  Joe had gone, but the rest of us still stood transfixed, wondering what would happen next. Once again, the Master paced slowly up and down the dormitory. As he went, he looked directly at each boy. I think he wanted to ensure we were equally affected. He needn’t have worried; we were all terrified.

  Finally, as his gaze landed on me, I noticed Platt, still puffing from his exertions, had returned and was again standing in the doorway. Later I discovered from Joe that Platt had raced him to the lock–up, thrown him in and without another word locked the door. Joe said he’d heard him moving rapidly away and guessed that he must have known he was still needed – an opportunity he clearly had no intention of missing. In fact, I think the Master and Platt knew exactly what they were going to do next and they also knew it would involve me.

  The Master walked slowly to the end of my bed and to a small boy he looked fearsome as he thundered,

  “So, here’s the boy who says he’s been abandoned by his father. What do we think about that, eh, Mr Platt?”

  With one movement, the Master pulled the sheet off my bed and let it fall to the floor.

  “We think he’s a liar, Master. Said he was ill. Put on a great show to play on your generosity.”

  “Well boy, what do you think of what Mr Platt has to say? Are you a liar playing on my generosity?”

  What I thought was, ‘why does he keep talking about the Master’s generosity? Him and his wife get paid to run the workhouse. We’re not costing them anything.’

  But all I said was, “No sir.” My heart was racing.

  “Then are you calling Mr Platt a liar?”

  He glanced at the Porter; I thought I saw a smirk flicker across his face.

  I remembered Joe’s advice.

  “No sir. I just think he’s mistaken.”

  "Did you hear that, Mr Platt? He thinks you’re mistaken. We’ll just have to see about that, won’t we? I’ve got my eye on you lad, so you’d better watch your step.

  Now you get the floor swept and make that bed up properly. If I’ve got time, I’ll be back to check and if you haven’t done it properly, you’ll be joining that Jew in the cells."

  With that, he marched back up the room and left, followed closely by Platt and leaving us unsure if he would return.

  One of the others swept under the bed for me and Ben helped me make it again. Of course the Master never returned. He knew he’d had the effect he wanted and I’d learnt Joe’s words of advice had been good ones, even if he hadn’t followed them himself.

  The Master had picked on me because I was the new boy, but because I’d taken Joe’s advice and provided no reaction, offered no resistance, the Master paid me no further attention.

  It was a pity the same could not be said for Joe.

  Joe returned to us after two weeks, a little thinner perhaps but otherwise unchanged. He thought the Master might leave him alone now, but he couldn’t have been more wrong; the Ma
ster was about to persuade Joe to sign his own death warrant.

  He said that the worst thing about the refractory cell was boredom. The cell contained just a stool, a thin mattress and a bucket, the tedium broken only once a day by an early morning delivery of bread and water. For the first couple of days, Joe tried to talk to the pauper who brought him his food, but the old man just kept his eyes cast down, said nothing and only once on the first Wednesday, looked up and shook his head; it was clearly part of Joe’s punishment that he was forbidden to talk to anyone.

  The only variation from the daily monotony happened on the first Sunday of Joe’s incarceration. The Chapel Bell had just announced Morning Service when Joe heard the cell door unlock. It burst open and in strode the Master. He seemed to enjoy the drama of bursting into rooms, and Joe told me he entered the cell with a smirk on his face and a Bible in his hand. He placed the Bible carefully on Joe’s mattress with the front cover open and then, saying nothing, left.

  When Joe looked more closely at the open cover, the Master had written, “1 Thessalonians 4 11–12.” Joe’s mother had taught him a lot from the Old Testament, but he had never even looked inside the New Testament, but as he said, he had all the time in the world to look. I told him that I knew a little about the New Testament but I had never heard of Thessalonians. Fortunately, Joe had found and memorised the passage, so with a deep breath he pronounced,

  “And to aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, so you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one.”

  Neither of us really understood the passage, nor why the Master had especially chosen it for Joe. But shortly afterwards, it became clear that it was nothing more than a cruel hint of what was about to befall Joe and I’m sure he used a passage from the New Testament just to rub salt in Joe’s Jewish wounds.

  Over the next fortnight, Joe came to believe his punishment had truly been served; and he had good reason. At consecutive inspections, both he and his bed had passed without comment and of much greater importance to Joe, that meant he’d been able to spend time with his mother. Family meetings, if they were allowed to happen at all, were on Sundays straight after Chapel and although neither Joe nor his mother attended Chapel, they still had to wait until the Service was finished before they could meet.

  Joe didn’t talk too much about those meetings, although he displayed a new calm that told me they had gone well. One thing Joe did say with great enthusiasm was that his mother was very keen to meet me. So on the third Sunday following his release, I joined Joe, who’d been waiting impatiently for me outside Chapel and met his mother in the yard.

  Like most paupers, the strains and worries of life had clearly taken their toll on Mrs Levy. Thin, even by workhouse standards, her hair was grey and her face bore a crisscross of worry lines drawn by that enthusiastic artist, poverty. Her face nevertheless lit up when she saw Joe and her smile temporarily erased some of those lines. Joe ran to her and I must confess feeling a twinge of envy when they hugged. Mrs Levy, who stood facing my direction, looked past Joe and saw me standing there. Though she may not have recognised my envy, she must have seen my awkwardness, because she peeled herself away from her son and said,

  “Joe, we’re forgetting your friend. Now, aren’t you going to introduce me?”

  Joe blushed; in the excitement of seeing his mother again, he’d forgotten I was there. So in a desperate attempt to regain what he felt was his adult status, he put a finger and thumb to his mouth, whistled loudly and hailed me over. This would have been fine, had I not been less than twenty feet away from him and looking straight in their direction. Mrs Levy smiled at me knowingly and cuffed Joe lightly round the back of his head. Joe looked disgruntled as I sidled over, but I think he would have felt better had he realised that by his actions he’d already broken the ice between me and his mother.

  Joe had explained to his mum that my mother was dead and that my father had left me at the workhouse gate. In fact when Mrs Levy finished telling all she knew about me, there was little more that I could add. Lowering her voice, she said,

  “Now Joe, there’s something I need to tell you. You too Jabez; come close both of you. I don’t want us to be overheard.”

  We moved close, her sudden change of tone making us curious,

  “What is it Mum?” Joe said.

  “Now look, I don’t want to raise your hopes,” all humour had left her face, “because nothing may come of it.”

  Joe was used to disappointment, but I could see something in his mother’s tone had raised his expectations and her warning went unheard.

  “What Mum? What’s happened? Are we getting out of here?”

  Mrs Levy looked concerned at Joe’s reaction. Taking hold of his shoulders, she spoke firmly.

  “No, nothing has happened – not yet anyway. It’s just that I’ve written to my cousin Abram who I haven’t seen for over twenty years. I was still a child when he moved to London with his parents. His father fell out with your grandfather, over what I never knew. I don’t know how Abram heard of your father’s death, but when he did, he sent us a note of condolence and the note contained an address. Now, although I don’t know how matters lay with Abram, it may just be that he’s a little better off than us. I’m hoping so and that the note containing an address means he wants to let matters from the past rest in the past. Anyway, I’ve written to him explaining our plight in the hope that he’ll be able to help us. I can’t say anything will come of it, Abram may not be in a position to help us and even if he is, he may not want to.”

  She gripped Joe’s shoulders even tighter and said,

  “So it’s important you don’t get your hopes up; do you understand me?”

  She held his eye until he nodded and muttered,

  “Alright Mum.”

  She let go of his shoulders and, turning to me, said,

  “And Jabez, if you like, should Abram write back, I can tell him I want to adopt you. Then perhaps he’ll take you as well. No promises, mind.”

  She gave me an encouraging smile, but I was dumbstruck. I didn’t know what I thought. But before I could say anything, Joe spoke.

  “Mum, does that mean he’d be my brother?”

  Mrs Levy looked a little taken aback.

  “I’m not sure Joe, but I suppose it would. Anyway, we don’t know whether Jabez would want you as his brother. You’d have to ask him.”

  Joe turned to me and for the second time that morning, his face reddened. Mind you, my face felt hot, so I suppose we were both blushing.

  “Well, what do you think?” he muttered.

  Too embarrassed to meet his stare and with my eyes fixed firmly on my feet, I just said,

  “I s’pose it’d be alright.”

  And with that understated reply, it seems that at least briefly, we became family.

  The rest of the time we had that morning, Joe and I spent excitedly planning our future lives together, probably in London. Neither of us had anything but the vaguest idea of what London was like, but that didn’t stop us from taking the smallest fragment we had and building a world around it.

  The Tower of London was our main topic of discussion. Neither of us new very much about it, but we did know that it held England’s darkest criminals. We knew of it from class, where Mr Deeming had an illustration on the classroom wall. He used to point at it, especially the nightmarish Little Ease cell, and tell us how in there, even for small boys like us there wasn’t enough room to lie down or stand upright and if we misbehaved, it was where we would end up.

  In the way young boys unite, Joe made us both laugh whilst remaining just a little afraid. Imitating Mr Deeming, he pointed at an imaginary picture on the yard wall and with a voice full of menace, said,

  “Remember boys, anyone who’s sent in there never comes out alive.”

  Mrs Levy left us to dream and play and I’m sure it gave her great pleasure to see us taken out of our workhouse lives, ev
en if it was only for a short while. But all too soon, the dinner bell rang and we had to part. I waved goodbye to Mrs Levy and told Joe I’d see him inside. Deliberately I didn’t look back. I knew Joe would be embarrassed if he thought I’d seen their inevitable farewell hug. But, unbeknown to both Joe and his mum, that meeting was to be their last.

  Next day’s class was interrupted by the Master who, in his usual manner, burst into the classroom and announced,

  “Mr Deeming, the boy Levy needs to come with me.”

  Though clearly annoyed by the manner of the interruption, Mr Deeming just said,

  “Alright then, Levy. You heard the Master. If you’re not back by the end of lessons, I’m sure Payne will clear your desk and bring back to the dormitory anything that’s yours.”

  Looking straight at Joe and in a menacing tone, the Master said,

  “Oh, he won’t be back. You can be certain of that Mr Deeming. In fact, he won’t ever be coming back.”

  Joe, who had already stood up, looked excited.

  “Has my mum heard from her cousin? Are we going to London?”

  The Master was a little taken aback. This quite obviously was not a response he had expected, but recovering he said,

  “I don’t know about any cousin but you’re certainly not going to London. I’ve got somethin’ special for you m’lad. You’re off to be a pauper apprentice in the lead works at Gladlys; keep you nice and warm that will.”

  He laughed to himself. We all failed to see why but I noticed Mr Deeming wasn’t sharing the joke.

  “If I’m leaving, I’ll have to tell my mother. I don’t know where Gladys is and Mum will need to know where I am.”

  “You don’t need to worry about that. I’ll make sure she knows; and it’s Gladlys, not Gladys. You don’t want to start by giving a bad impression, do you?”

  Without waiting for a reply, he said,

  “Right, come along then boy. There’s a cart waiting for you at the gate.”