Perhaps the Matron was right, Maggie thought listlessly, and her suffering was her own fault, brought on by her wickedness. In the workhouse they called her proud and sinful and told her that God was punishing her for her past selfish life. When she had screamed for her daughter, they had slapped her and told her she would never be allowed near the child, for fear the girl would turn out the same.
‘As it is, there’ll be badness running through that child!’ Matron had prophesied. ‘Her only hope is to be brought up strict by godly folk - aye, and kept away from the likes of you.’
‘What’s left for me?’ Maggie had whispered in desolation.
‘You?’ Matron had snorted. ‘You’re beyond saving.’
Maggie had felt her spirit shrivel at the woman’s cold judgment and began to wonder if what she said was true. Had she really been too proud and stubborn in her life, too sinful? Had her persistence and defiance in the name of suffragism been a monstrous show of arrogance and ungodliness? The Master and Matron of St Chad’s firmly believed so and the spawning of a bastard child was merely confirmation of her deep wickedness. They held out no hope for her and swiftly Maggie had sunk into a blackness that surpassed even what she had experienced in prison.
A worried Millie came and stood over her as she lay motionless and gaunt on the narrow bed and did not cry for her stolen baby. She was frightened that Maggie had lost the will to live and she fretted as to what to do for her friend. For Millie had grown fond of the strident, humorous, spirited girl who had befriended her in this grim fortress when others had shunned her. Now, more than ever, she needed Maggie; this past month she had gained much comfort from being near her and she was determined she would not lose Maggie.
One early spring day at the end of February, Millie sneaked into the workhouse garden and plucked a small bunch of crocuses. She found Maggie curled up on her bed, her cropped black hair limp against her papery skin, her eyes huge and hollowed. Millie realised with shock that Maggie was quite deliberately starving herself to death, this time not for any great cause but because she had lost all her causes.
‘Look,’ Millie said, thrusting the small delicate flowers under Maggie’s pinched nose. ‘Spring’s here.’
Maggie closed her eyes.
‘Thought you’d like ’em - being your colours, hinny.’
Maggie’s eyes opened again, but her look was vacant.
‘Purple and white, with green stems,’ Millie persisted. ‘You know, suffragette colours.’
Maggie stared at them for a long while as if trying to remember something. Millie was not sure, but she thought she detected a glistening in the young woman’s eyes. Maggie’s lips opened and mouthed a silent thank you, but she did not attempt to take the flowers and her grey eyes retreated behind hooded lids.
Millie shook her gently. ‘Listen, hinny, it’s time you stopped your grieving and started to take a bit more interest in things. You’re nowt but skin and bone. You’ve got to get your strength back, hinny.’
Maggie opened her eyes. ‘Why?’ she whispered. ‘I’ve nowt to live for.’
Millie was suddenly very afraid. She was losing Maggie and the truth made her angry. Millie seized her friend’s bony shoulders and shook her so that the iron bedstead squealed.
‘How can you say that?’ Millie demanded. ‘Your daughter is alive somewhere and being looked after, even if it’s not by you.’
Maggie looked startled by the sudden violence in her voice. She raised her head from the pillow. ‘She might as well be dead,’ she answered bleakly, ‘for I’ll never see her again.’
‘You don’t know that,’ Millie cried. ‘You said you were going to fight for her. Well, where’s the fight in you now, ’cos I can’t see it?’
Maggie tried to turn her head away. ‘Just leave me alone, won’t you? Go and bother someone else.’
Millie leaned over and spoke inches from her face. ‘I don’t have anyone else,’ she hissed. ‘Annie died a month ago and now you’re the only family I’ve got! Don’t you die on me as well, you little bugger!’
Maggie’s face went tense with shock. ‘Annie?’ she gasped. ‘Dead?’
Millie nodded, unwanted tears pricking her eyes. She was breathing hard and could not trust herself to speak again.
Suddenly Maggie’s face crumpled like a small child’s as it dawned on her that Millie had lost her only daughter too, finally, irrevocably lost her. She had been far too deep in her own grief even to think about asking after Annie and now it was too late.
Wordlessly, Maggie reached up and put her arms about the desolate woman in an attempt to comfort her and felt the sturdy arms grip her with an answering warmth. In that bleak dormitory they clung to each other and wept their pent-up tears until the noise brought shouts from the other patients and a stern reprimand from the attendant in charge.
‘Hoy, you!’ the woman shouted. ‘Get away from her.’
‘I’m that sorry,’ Maggie sniffed as Millie pulled away. Millie nodded.
Maggie looked down and saw the crocuses had been crushed. She picked them up and kissed them. The two women looked at each other in silent understanding.
‘You’ll not give up the fight, will you?’ Millie whispered as the nurse marched up the ward to remove her. ‘For little Christabel - for all us lasses?’
‘“Freedom’s cause till death!”’ Maggie croaked a snatch of the suffragette march with a weak smile.
Millie was hauled away, leaving Maggie shaking and tearful on the bed. But as Millie glanced back at the door, she saw with triumph that Maggie had swung her feeble legs over the side of the bed and was contemplating trying to stand.
***
It was many weeks before Maggie walked and months before she was fit enough to carry out menial tasks around the workhouse. Yet that day in February, when Millie’s robust kindness had penetrated her blackness, had been a turning point. Maggie pulled back from the abyss and determined to carry on living.
At twenty-four she had the creaking body of a much older woman and the limp she had acquired as a result of the brutal birth appeared permanent. But by the end of the year she was able to work in the kitchens, peeling vegetables and scrubbing tables and sneaking out scraps of food to Millie. The two were inseparable, sharing their meals and jokes among the simple and senile, trying to keep up their spirits in their imprisonment.
Their meals had become increasingly meagre as the effects of rationing and hardship from years of war took their toll. Inside the workhouse it was possible to live from day to day as if there was no war in France, so narrow was their existence. Yet Maggie noticed the changes - the decrease in the number of men catered for in the kitchens, the drop in numbers of vagrants seeking a night’s shelter, the shortage of trained staff and the number of women inmates working the gardens. Most obvious was the deterioration in rations - the absence of any meat, the tasteless bread, the thinness of the porridge and the scarcity of sugar.
On New Year’s Eve 1917, Millie became maudlin on the bottle of beer Maggie had smuggled out of the kitchen to celebrate the new Reform Bill, giving the vote to women over thirty.
‘Votes for women at last!’ Maggie toasted the news.
‘You still can’t vote, mind,’ Millie reminded her. ‘You’re too young.’
‘Aye, but it’s a step forward,’ Maggie insisted. ‘We’re being listened to at last.’ She took a triumphant swig and passed the bottle back to her friend.
‘Nineteen eighteen,’ Millie sighed. ‘What’ll it bring? An end to the Kaiser’s war and bad food?’
‘Maybes revolution, like in Russia,’ Maggie speculated. ‘People can only take so much of butchery and hard labour and going without. They see their men being killed off and their bairns dying of lack of food and the bosses have still got it all their own way. Folk won’t put up with that for ever.’
‘Hush!’ Millie ordered. ‘Don’t let the Kaisers round here catch you talking of revolution.’
Maggie pulled a face and took anothe
r sip from Millie’s bottle. ‘George would have been celebratin’ the workers’ overthrow in Russia, so why shouldn’t I?’
Suddenly Millie put an arm about her. ‘You still miss that lad of yours?’
Maggie set her face grimly. ‘I don’t think about him anymore, he’s in the past. Mind, I still worry for me brother Jimmy.’ All she knew was that he had survived the summer battles on the Somme, for a postcard had arrived the day she was evicted from Hibbs’ Farm. But that was an age ago and all she could do was pray for his safety. ‘No, the only thing I want out of nineteen eighteen is to have me bairn back, and I don’t even know where they’ve taken her.’
‘Why don’t you leave and find yourself work in the factories or summat?’ Millie suggested.
‘I’ll not leave without you, Millie, you’re me family now,’ Maggie answered.
‘Eeh, hinny, I couldn’t gan back to the streets at my age. I’m better off in here, for all it’s a prison.’
‘Then I’ll stay with you,’ Maggie declared. ‘I’ve been licking Matron’s boots to get a job clerking in the office; they’re short since that lad was called up and I’ve got the skills.’
‘But you could do that outside,’ Millie said, baffled as to why Maggie should want to stay now she had recovered.
‘But if I work in the office I’ll find out where they’ve taken Christabel,’ Maggie said with urgency, her grey eyes lighting with determination.
Millie shook her head and drank the dregs. ‘So that’s your plan?’ she grunted.
‘Aye,’ Maggie nodded. ‘To think me bairn is already one year old. I sometimes try and imagine what she looks like, Millie. She must be dark-haired like me and George, but does she have his dark eyes? Or perhaps she’s like our Susan and me dad with fair hair and blue eyes.’ She turned suddenly to Millie, the tears springing to her eyes. ‘It’s terrible not knowing,’ she whispered.
Millie hugged her tightly. ‘I know, hinny, I know.’
***
By the spring, Maggie had wheedled her way into the office and set about organising the files and books that had been left in a shambles by a series of temporary clerks and untrained attendants. The Master was ageing and no longer took an interest in the running of the workhouse; he was almost a recluse in his house across the courtyard, confined by gout and lethargy. Maggie worked for the Senior Relieving Officer who kept short hours and drank from a bottle of whisky he kept locked in his desk. He seemed surprised by Maggie’s efficiency and diligence and was soon content to let her work alone while he became increasingly absent.
In March, Maggie heard rumours of dissatisfaction among the Board of Guardians that the workhouse was being badly run. She overheard an argument between the Master and Matron about the lack of trained staff and the shoddiness of equipment.
‘I’ve got inmates sleeping on the floors with only two nurses to control nearly three hundred women on the night shift,’ Matron complained. ‘It’s Bedlam!’
‘Then take some of the older girls from the children’s wing as probationers,’ the Master replied. ‘I don’t want to be bothered with your problems, woman, I’m a sick man.’
Matron had stormed off and Maggie had buried her head in her work in case anyone suggested she should turn nurse.
Disappointingly, she had found no reference to Christabel in the dusty registers and it occurred to her that the place was so lax they may not have recorded her birth or her subsequent removal. All she had to go on was a curt remark from the midwife who had been there at the delivery, saying that her baby had been taken from the workhouse soon after birth but she did not know where. Still, Maggie determined to go on looking.
Then in April a storm blew up around her when it was discovered that funds had gone missing. Matron warned her that she was under suspicion and that the Board of Guardians would be interviewing her the following day. Until then she was suspended from working in the office. Maggie waited, furious at the accusations and ready to give any fat Guardian who pointed a finger at her a piece of her mind.
She was ushered into a stark room in the Master’s house where three of the Board awaited her.
‘Margaret Beaton,’ Matron introduced her and left, banging the door.
Maggie stared boldly at the men before her. Then suddenly the man on the end raised his head and Maggie gawped.
‘Mr Heslop?’ she gasped and coloured in confusion at seeing the butcher.
‘Maggie!’ Heslop spluttered. ‘What in God’s name are you doing here?’
‘You know this inmate?’ the middle Guardian asked sharply.
‘Yes indeed,’ Heslop said, standing up. ‘Please, Maggie, come and sit down.’
The others muttered their disapproval but the butcher ignored them.
Maggie found herself shaking, all her resolve to be insolent gone. She answered their questions quietly and at the end John Heslop asked to question her alone for a few minutes. He led her out into the Master’s garden and sat her down on a wrought-iron bench surrounded by fading daffodils.
‘Tell me what happened to you, Maggie,’ Heslop asked gently, his whiskered face full of concern.
Maggie told him of her struggle to stay outside the workhouse and then how she had given in for the sake of the baby.
‘Why didn’t you come to me for help?’ he chided.
Maggie could not look at him. ‘I was too ashamed,’ she admitted. ‘I thought you would have despised me. Like the rest of my family.’
Heslop tutted. ‘I could have done something for you,’ he insisted. ‘It would have been better than this.’ He waved at their surroundings. ‘St Chad’s is a godless place. That’s why I agreed to come on the Board two months ago, to try and change things. If only I’d known.’
They sat in silence for a moment while two thin pigeons swooped about looking for food.
‘I’ll have this business about the money cleared up,’ the preacher continued. ‘The Relieving Officer is under suspicion but the authorities here would have preferred to blame an inmate. Then we must get you out of here.’
Maggie looked at him directly. ‘I don’t want to go. Not until I’ve discovered what’s happened to Christabel.’
He briefly covered her hand with his own. ‘They won’t let you keep her. The child may very well have been adopted by now.’
Maggie drew her hand away and glared. ‘They’ve no right to keep her from me! I want to bring Christabel up as my daughter so she knows where she comes from, who her father was, to know that she’s loved.’
She saw Heslop flush at her directness.
He gripped the back of the bench. ‘Let me find you a position outside the workhouse,’ he pleaded. ‘Since inheriting my uncle’s house in Sandyford, I’m in need of a housekeeper myself. I’ve delayed moving into it because domestic help is so difficult to find these days.’
Maggie was touched by his offer. ‘You’re a kind man, Mr Heslop, but all I ask of you is help in finding Christabel.’
The butcher sighed and shook his greying head. ‘Come and keep house for me, Maggie, and I’ll do what I can to discover your daughter’s whereabouts.’
Maggie smiled for the first time and touched his hand fleetingly. ‘Thank you, Mr Heslop.’ As he stood up, she added, ‘There’s just one other thing you should know.’
Heslop looked at her.
‘I promised Millie Dobson I would take her with me when I left.’
‘Millie’s here too?’ he exclaimed. ‘And Annie?’
Maggie shook her head. ‘Annie died over a year ago. Millie’s on her own, apart from me.’
Heslop answered without hesitation. ‘Then she must come and live in Sandyford too. I seem to remember she could cook soup after a fashion.’
‘Between the two of us we can manage,’ Maggie smiled. Walking back with the lanky butcher, feeling the spring sun on her shoulders, Maggie felt a tug of optimism. She no longer believed Matron’s pronouncements that God was punishing her for her wickedness, for such a God would not have
allowed Millie to be there to comfort her in her blackest hours. And it could just be possible that this benign God had sent Heslop to rescue her from the workhouse and set her on the road to finding Christabel.
Chapter Twenty-Six
‘Why don’t you go and see her, Maggie?’ John Heslop suggested.
They were sitting having tea in the drawing room of the house in Sandyford, the August sunshine spilling in through the lace curtains of the bay window. Maggie had still not grown accustomed to living in such a beautiful house, with its view onto the ornate railings and pocket gardens of the terraced row opposite. She inhabited the attic rooms with Millie but John Heslop insisted that they share their meals and that the women should have the use of the drawing room in the afternoons and evenings.
Increasingly, while Millie went out at night to find company in the town pubs, pretending to Heslop she went to visit a cousin, Maggie would spend her free time reading - newspapers, books, pamphlets - whatever she could lay her hands on. It was as if she had been starved of words for two years and now could not devour enough of them.
She looked up from the newspaper which had been telling her of the new offensive by the Allies on the German front line.
‘She’d not want me to,’ Maggie countered. ‘Not after all this time.’
‘I think she would. You wouldn’t have to explain about anything, Susan knows you’re working for me.’
Maggie looked across at the gaunt-faced man in the winged brocade chair by the unlit fire and marvelled at how he tried to solve everyone’s problems. Often in the past she had thought of him as interfering, trying to order people’s lives when they did not want it, trying to save them from what he saw as their mistakes. But there was a deeper quality to John Heslop that Maggie had discovered while living under his roof. He cared nothing for the wagging tongues at chapel who disapproved of his taking in the women from the workhouse; he just went ahead and did what he saw to be right and just.
A week ago he had come home from the shop in the west of Newcastle to genteel Sandyford fulminating about Richard Turvey’s treatment of Susan. The feckless Londoner had finally run off with Helen, having pawned most of Susan’s possessions and left his wife with three young infants to care for alone. Maggie could well imagine the fear and humiliation that her husband’s going had brought Susan. It would be the final shattering blow to all her unattainable dreams of respectability and prosperity. Yet Maggie dreaded returning to her old neighbourhood, for fear of stirring up past ghosts. It suited her to live quietly and industriously in distant Sandyford where she was known only as the housekeeper at number 28, biding her time until she found Christabel.
No Greater Love Page 37