Eliza's Child

by Maggie Hope

  ‘Are you really Tot’s mam?’ One burly man with his shirtsleeves rolled up over his elbows and striped braces asked Eliza. Before she could answer Annie butted in.

  ‘She is but she left him!’

  ‘I did not leave him,’ said Eliza. ‘Your son took him away and I’ve been looking for him ever since.’ She turned to the small crowd that had gathered. ‘I have some papers here—’ she began but Alfie’s mother shook her head.

  ‘Nay, lass,’ she said, ‘I believe you. The bairn’s the dead spit of you. And her,’ she pointed her thumb at Annie, ‘she’s proper hard-faced, aye and hard-fisted too. She brays the lad something shameful. No, I won’t help her, I’m glad you’re taking him, I am.’

  ‘Aye, me an’all,’ said the man. ‘That woman wants ducking for a witch.’

  The crowd surrounded Annie. ‘Hadaway while you can,’ a woman advised. ‘We won’t stop you. The lad cannot have a worse life than he has now. Good luck to the both of you.’

  ‘Thank you, oh thank you,’ said Eliza and walked quickly away with Tot trotting by her side. She was supremely conscious of his small hand in hers, warm and trusting. She didn’t care that there was no luggage with him, she would buy him new clothes in Durham. Except only—

  On the station platform before boarding the train she asked, ‘Did you have something you wanted to bring, Tot? A toy, a ball or anything?’ She would have gone back and braved Annie if there was something he loved. She would do anything for him.

  ‘No,’ said Tot. ‘I haven’t got a ball. Only—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’d like to bring Alfie,’ he said. ‘But he has to stop with his mam, hasn’t he?’

  ‘Aye, I’m sorry, Tot. When you’re older you can write a letter, to him though. Or I’ll help you write one when we get home.’

  Tot nodded, instantly accepting her words. ‘Lads belong with their mams, don’t they, Mammy?’ he said.

  Chapter Nineteen

  THOMAS WAS VERY quiet on the journey south. He sat gravely looking out of the window as the fields and hamlets of Northumberland went past at an almost steady forty miles an hour. Occasionally he peeped at his mother and she smiled encouragingly but wisely said little. Eliza never took her eyes off him for she couldn’t believe how easy it had been to get him back. She felt that if she looked away he would disappear and she would find it had all been a dream. They sat opposite each other and every few minutes she leaned forward and touched him for the reassurance it gave her.

  At Newcastle they alighted from the carriage and made their way to where the mainline London train stood, smoke and steam billowing as the footplate men steamed up for the journey. Tot watched the great engine in wonder but was apprehensive of the crowds scurrying about and held on tightly to her hand.

  ‘It’s not far now, Tot,’ said Eliza as they boarded and took their seats. Normally she would have ridden in the third-class wagon but even though she did not have a great deal of money to spare, she had bought first-class tickets. Third class was packed with labourers and there would not have been a seat for the child even if she had secured one for herself. Most passengers frowned upon children sitting while adults stood.

  The ride to Durham from Newcastle was fairly short; it took less than an hour. Soon they were coming out onto the streets of the old city and walking to the market place for the horse bus that stopped outside the gates of the Infirmary. Tot was still quiet though he answered when Eliza spoke to him.

  ‘Do you remember this place?’ she asked him as they waited for the horse bus.

  ‘I think I do,’ he replied gravely. Of course he couldn’t really, she told herself, it had been a daft question. If he remembered anything it would be the cottage at Haswell and maybe Blue House.

  Eliza hadn’t really thought beyond getting him back. Now she had to try to work out a plan for someone to look after him while she was working at the hospital. The horse bus drew in and the driver offered the horse a drink from a bucket and hung a nosebag filled with hay over his nose.

  ‘We’ll be going in ten minutes,’ he told the waiting passengers. Eliza came to a sudden decision. She still had a few days; she would take Tot to Blue House to her family while she decided what to do.

  ‘I’ve changed my mind, pet, we’ll go to see your grandma,’ she said and the lad looked startled and apprehensive for a moment then went along obediently beside her back to the train station. ‘Do you remember your grandma?’ Looking down, she realised he thought she was taking him back to Alnwick and she berated herself for her thoughtlessness.

  ‘Not your granny, pet, never. I won’t take you back there, no. To your other grandma, my mother. Do you remember her?’

  Tot gulped and rubbed tears from his eyes with his free hand. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Is it far?’

  It was a very tired little lad who stumbled by her side along Alice Street an hour or so later. It was almost dark for the nights were already beginning to cut in. Only the lights from the pithead relieved the gloom and the dim glow of tallow candles from the tiny cottage windows.

  ‘By, our Eliza, what brings you here at this time of the night?’ Mary Anne looked up as the door opened, still with a pan lid in her hand, for she had been checking on a pot pie bubbling in an iron pan on the fire. Tommy would be in from the pit in an hour or so along with Albert. Harry had been on first shift and was sitting on the settee reading a pamphlet and beside him sat Peter Collier, the union man. Peter rose to his feet as Eliza came forward with Tot. All three stared at the boy.

  ‘You found the lad!’ said Peter. ‘Heaven be praised, you found the lad.’

  ‘I did,’ said Eliza. ‘He was with his granny in Alnwick. Tot, step forward and say how do to your granny and Uncle Harry. And Mr Collier too.’

  ‘What about Jack?’ Mary Anne asked.

  Eliza put a hand on Tot’s shoulder before answering simply, ‘Jack’s dead.’

  ‘Well. God rest him whatever he did,’ said Mary Anne piously. ‘How did he die?’

  ‘He fell off a cliff,’ said Eliza. ‘I didn’t know, his mother just told me today.’ Mary Anne stared at her daughter, correctly interpreting her warning look.

  ‘Well, howay in, lass, and have a bite to eat. Then I’ll put the lad to bed. He’ll have to share with Harry, mind. He looks dead on his feet, poor bairn.’

  ‘I was waiting for Tommy and Albert,’ said Peter Collier. ‘But I can come back in the morning before the shift starts.’

  Eliza turned to him. ‘No, stay, Mr Collier. Don’t let me upset your plans. How are you? You look well at least.’

  ‘Oh I am, and the union is off the ground an’ all. It won’t be long before the yearly bond is a thing of the past. But I’ve come here tonight to see if Tommy will put his name forward for union man here at Blue House.’ He paused and looked at Tot. ‘I’m right glad you got the bairn back after all this time, Eliza,’ he said in an undertone. ‘You’ve done well for yourself an’ all. Who’d have thought it that night you came to my house for help these five or six years ago?’

  ‘I’m grateful to you, Peter,’ she replied. ‘I couldn’t have done it without your help.’

  ‘Get away, I did nothing. You would have got on any road. You have the brain for it, just like your father has a good brain. That’s why we want him for union man.’

  Eliza nodded. ‘He has. The pity of it was he didn’t have the chance before.’

  ‘What’s that you’re saying?’ demanded Mary Anne. ‘Talking about Tommy, are you?’

  Before Eliza could answer the door opened and the two pitmen came in, taking off their helmets to show startlingly white patches of skin above the rest, which was black with coal. They were in their pit clothes. They were short of stature but with powerful shoulders and arms from working in narrow seams, some of which were no more than two feet six inches high. Consequently, most of their working shift was spent lying on their backs, wielding a pick.

  ‘Wotcher, Peter,’ Tommy said. ‘You been
waiting for us?’

  ‘I have,’ Peter replied. ‘I wanted a word before the meeting the morn.’

  ‘You having a bite with us? There’ll be enough meat pudding, I think?’ Tommy raised an eyebrow at his wife and Mary Anne nodded. She had boiled extra potatoes when her visitors arrived. The meal would go round, she reckoned.

  ‘I’m beholden for the offer,’ Peter replied, ‘but I have to get back. There’s still work to do for the meeting. I’ll talk while you eat, though.’

  Tommy and Albert sat down at the table still in their black. Neither had eaten anything but a jam sandwich that Mary Anne had packed in their bait tin nor drunk anything but cold tea from the tin bottle she had filled for them twelve hours ago.

  So far Tommy had not spoken to Eliza, but before eating his meal he looked at her as she sat on the settee with Tot falling asleep on her lap.

  ‘Now, lass, what brings you here?’

  ‘I’ve got the bairn back,’ said Eliza. ‘I’m a widow now, you’ve no reason to be ashamed of me.’

  ‘I can see you’ve got the lad,’ said Tommy. He took a long swallow from his pint pot of tea and smacked his lips. In truth he was very proud of his daughter, for hadn’t she pulled herself up in the world? But once having shown his disapproval of her leaving her husband he didn’t know how to get out of it. But it was different now, Jack was gone and Eliza was entitled to go her own way. He hadn’t liked Mary Anne taking money from Eliza when she wouldn’t go back to her man.

  ‘Well, I reckon I wasn’t ashamed of you, I was disappointed, that’s all,’ he said. ‘Take the lad to bed, he’s fair tuckered out.’ Having declared peace, he turned his attention to Peter. ‘Now then, Peter, what’s it about?’

  Eliza didn’t hear the conversation because she went upstairs with Tot and put him to bed. Afterwards she went into the tiny room that had been built on the back of the house to accommodate Miley. It was a wood and stone structure built by Tommy and his marras with whatever materials were to hand. The uprights were old wooden rails from the wagon ways and the stone had been gathered and sometimes quarried from the fields around. Mary Anne had lime-washed the walls but there was no window and the only light was through the door cut in the original back wall of the cottage.

  Miley was asleep. He spent a lot of his life asleep now, since the pain in his back had worsened. Laudanum was the thing to bring his relief. He lay, or rather reclined, against the cushions, his face pale in the light of the taper Eliza had brought in with her. Even in his sleep his face was twisted with pain. Pity welled up in her for the little lad; though he was fourteen he seemed no bigger than when he was six. There was absolutely no flesh on his bones and his skin was translucent.

  With a shock, Eliza realised he was not long for this world. He had the look she had seen so often in her years on the wards, the look of someone near death. And she admitted to herself that it would be a good thing if he was taken but it would be devastating for her mother. She pulled the covers up over his thin shoulders and went back into the kitchen.

  Peter Collier was just leaving. ‘Think well about it. Tommy,’ he was saying to her father. ‘The union is legal, we know, at least it is now. But if you should have to look for another job you will be lucky to get one when you are a union man.’

  ‘Mr Moore cannot sack me for it, though, not now,’ Tommy protested.

  Peter smiled. ‘You know and I know he’ll find another pretext.’

  ‘Aye well, the Lord will look after us.’

  Eliza forebore to ask why the Lord hadn’t been looking after Miley when the corve came off the rails and fell on him in the pit. Just lately in her work on the wards she often wondered why. Especially when the patient was a dying child or a mother leaving a young family. She shook herself mentally; it was not a bit of use getting morbid.

  ‘Good night then, Sister Mitchell,’ Peter said. ‘I’m glad you have your lad back at last. I’m happy for you, I am.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Eliza replied. ‘Good night to you.’

  Lying on the settee after the family had gone up the ladder to bed and she was alone, she watched the shadows made by the last flickers of firelight on the walls of the room. She was comfortable enough on the settee though the horsehair prickled a little, but she lay with her head on her hand to keep it from her cheek so it didn’t bother her too much.

  It had been an extraordinary day, indeed. She thought about Jack with some sadness though she found it hard to forgive him for taking her son away from her. But they had been happy at times. Still she was free now, she was a widow. She needed to plan what she was going to do for she had Tot to care for now. She couldn’t stay in the nurses’ home. Perhaps she couldn’t stay at the Infirmary. Perhaps she could earn a living nursing on the outside. That might be the only option.

  ‘A nurse’s first duty is to her patients. I am very disappointed in you, Sister Mitchell-Howe. Very disappointed indeed.’ Matron sat behind her desk and stared unblinkingly at Eliza. Indeed, she would be very sorry to lose her, she thought. The sister was a very good nurse, she had proved herself over and over in her work. She was intelligent and caring and seemed to anticipate the needs of her patients before they realised them for themselves. But evidently she had been living a lie. She had been married and had a child. She would never have been accepted for training if she hadn’t lied about that. Well, she hadn’t exactly lied but she hadn’t admitted the facts.

  ‘I’m sorry, Matron,’ said Eliza.

  She gazed down at the floor. Last night, lying in bed or rather on the settee, she had decided to confess it all to Matron. After all, she needed a letter of good character from her for the future. Now, seeing the older woman’s shocked reaction she was not sure if she had done the right thing. Oh well, it was too late now. She would have to look for work as a jobbing nurse and if Matron would not give her a character she would have to work among the poor. That would not pay very much but they would have to manage on whatever they had.

  ‘I don’t know what Miss Nightingale would say about this,’ said Matron.

  ‘No, Matron.’

  Miss Nightingale would have something to say and it would probably be caustic, Eliza thought. Miss Nightingale had something to say about everything. She did not allow that nurses were persons in their own right, she did not. At least that was the impression she had gained from the lists of rules and regulations that Eliza had had to learn by heart during her year of training.

  ‘Your training will be wasted,’ said Matron.

  Eliza didn’t contradict her outright, she didn’t dare. ‘I intend to work among the sick in their own homes,’ said Eliza. ‘I will use my training.’ She glanced up and caught Matron’s eye. ‘I must look after my little boy.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Matron. She appeared to have reached a decision. ‘Come back tomorrow at nine in the morning,’ she said. ‘I will write a reference of good character for you. You will not be required to work a month’s notice. I do not think you should go back on the wards.’ She rose to her feet and nodded dismissively.

  ‘Thank you, Matron.’

  Eliza found herself outside the closed door of Matron’s office. She leaned against it for a second or two and breathed a sigh of relief. If Matron had held her to the working of her notice she would have had to leave Tot with her mother, and Mary Anne had quite enough to do.

  It was still early in the morning for it had been necessary to catch Matron before she set off on her daily rounds of the wards. So Eliza went to the nurses’ dining room to try to see Bertha, who would still be serving breakfast to the night staff. She managed to get a few words with her as the meal was almost finished.

  ‘I want to thank you, Bertha, you don’t know what you’ve done for me,’ said Eliza. ‘I’ve got Thomas back with me, I’m so happy.’

  ‘It was the lad then,’ said Bertha, smiling. She glanced in the direction of the kitchen but there was no sign of the cook. ‘Tell me about it.’

  So Eliza told her about Jack’s d
eath, about finding Thomas with her mother-in-law and all that had happened since.

  ‘I have given notice to Matron this morning,’ she said. ‘But I had to see you before I went.’

  ‘Went where? Where are you going? Sister?’ There was alarm, even panic in Bertha’s tone. ‘What about me?’

  Eliza gazed at her. Indeed, what about Bertha? An idea was forming in her mind. Bertha regarded her if not as a mother then as an older sister, for she had no family of her own and clung to Eliza.

  ‘Would you like to come with me, Bertha? Between us we could look after Thomas, couldn’t we? I could work as a visiting nurse and we would rent a little house. What do you say, Bertha?’ Eliza was warming to the idea. It would work all right; she knew it would.

  Bertha’s eyes shone. ‘Do you mean it? We can live together and I’ll earn some money somehow. I can take in washing, mebbe, or mending, I’m good with mending, I am, aren’t I?’

  ‘You are.’ Eliza smiled at the little woman in the all-enveloping apron and large cap that was always falling over her eyes.

  ‘Bertha? When you’ve finished talking to Sister Mitchell-Howe perhaps you will come and start the washing-up,’ Cook snapped from the kitchen door. ‘Or do you want to be turned off.’

  ‘If you like, Cook. Will I go now or do you want me to wash up first?’ said Bertha. ‘You’re not turning me off, I’m leaving any road.’

  Chapter Twenty

  1872

  ELIZA DROVE BRISKLY along the road out of Gilesgate to Sherburn in her tub trap. It was a lovely fresh morning in spring and Dolly, the pony, trotted along with her head up at a spanking pace considering the rutted road. Puffs of dust came from beneath her hooves, dust sparkling with coal particles. Dolly’s pace slowed as she approached the hill and Eliza clucked at her in encouragement. Dolly was a bit too plump on the spring grass, she thought to herself.