A Wise Child

by A Wise Child (retail) (epub)

  She felt too restless to sleep, with all these thoughts tumbling about in her brain, and she went downstairs for a cup of tea. The hearth was covered with cockroaches which scuttled away as she lit the gas and more were under the table and by the sofa legs.

  I hate this house, Nellie thought. I’ll never get it clear of them things and the bugs, no matter what I do. And all I done to make it nice for Sam and for what? Her tears fell but she wiped them away angrily.

  The following morning she arrived at the hospital before nine o’clock and a nurse darted out to intercept her. ‘You’re Miss Hitchmough’s niece? Sister wants to see you.’

  She took Nellie to Sister’s office. ‘Sit down, Mrs er – I’m sorry to tell you that your aunt died at four o’clock this morning.’

  ‘Died,’ Nellie echoed. ‘But I thought – I thought she’d get better.’

  The sister sighed. ‘I warned you,’ she said with a long-suffering air. She picked up a piece of paper from her desk. ‘Before she died Miss Hitchmough told me that she had made arrangements for her funeral. She said that there is an envelope in the drawer with the details. Here is the name and address of the undertaker. You may collect her belongings and the death certificate later today.’

  She stood up and ushered Nellie to the door and Nellie left feeling dazed. So now she had lost the chance to hear more about her real mother. Why had Janey kept all this to herself for so long? she thought angrily. Just so that she could gloat over knowing something that no one else knew and because she was a sly and scheming old woman.

  Nellie felt no grief for the old woman, only anger and frustration that she had concealed so much until it was too late to tell all she knew.

  Back home she went immediately to Janey’s room and to the drawer in the dilapidated corner cupboard. There was a stiff manila envelope there stamped with the name of Rae and Dobson, the local undertakers.

  It was as grubby as the other papers in the drawer, but sealed, and Nellie decided to take it directly to the undertakers.

  ‘A grand old lady,’ Mr Rae said as he glanced quickly through the papers. ‘Not many reach the biblical three score years and ten and she lived nine years beyond that. You are not a relative, Mrs Meadows?’

  ‘No. She put me down as next of kin so I could get in to see her in the hospital but she only lodged with us. I don’t think she had any relations,’ said Nellie.

  ‘No, she thought not. That’s why she made these arrangements, with commendable foresight, I may say. She dreaded a pauper’s funeral. You may leave everything to me, Mrs Meadows.’

  As Nellie walked home she felt suddenly free. She could go where she liked and do what she liked without considering Janey or anybody else. She had no hope or expectation that she would ever see Sam again.

  The rumours flying about the neighbourhood about him and Madge Kenyon had made Nellie aware that he was now living with Madge in Southampton, and the fact that he had not written to her convinced Nellie that he had cut himself off from her completely.

  The Sam she had known was gone and a stranger had taken his place and Nellie’s hurt pride helped her to bear her grief.

  There’s just me and Tommy now and I can look out for us. I don’t need no one. Even our Bobby is only me half-brother. Maybe I’ll be like Janey and keep that to meself until it suits me to tell him and it’ll be long enough before I go near him again anyway, she thought.

  Maggie Nolan was at her door when Nellie walked down the street.

  ‘Have you been to see the old girl, Nell?’ she asked. ‘How is she?’

  ‘She died early this morning,’ Nellie said and when Maggie exclaimed she said, ‘She left word she’s paid for her funeral. With Rae and Dobson.’

  ‘Good God, when did she do that?’ Maggie exclaimed.

  ‘I don’t know. She never said nothing to me about it but I’m glad she did. Now I won’t have to do nothing,’ Nellie said.

  ‘Fancy never saying nothing, all the years she lived on your floor,’ Maggie said indignantly. ‘She was a crafty old mare, wasn’t she? Deep as a drawn well. People have kept asking me about her but I never see you these days, Nell.’

  ‘I know, Mag,’ Nellie said, putting her hand on Maggie’s arm. ‘I had to try and sort meself out. This on top of everything else. I’ve been moidered.’

  ‘I know, girl. That’s what Katy said to me and Gertie, you’d have to have time to yourself, but we was all worried about you, girl. Never mind. Time’s the great healer, so they say.’ She sighed. ‘I hope they’re right.’

  Nellie knew she should say something about Maggie’s grief for Johnny but suddenly she felt that she must be alone.

  ‘Tell people about Janey, will you, Mag?’ she said. ‘Mr Rae’s going to let me know about the funeral.’

  She escaped into her own house before Maggie could answer. Running upstairs she flung herself on the bed and began to bite at the bedspread, in order to stop herself from screaming hysterically. It all seemed more than she could bear.

  I must be going out of my mind, she thought when she was calmer, but she knew that hard work was the best cure for a troubled mind. She moved the black kettle over the fire for hot water and wrapped herself in an old pinafore and a sacking apron, before starting to clean out Janey’s room.

  I don’t know where to start, she thought, looking round the filthy room, but she decided to start with the bed. She could hear a rag man shouting and she gathered the dirty blankets and threw them out in to the entry for him to take.

  She was about to drag the mattress out there too when she felt a weight in one corner and thrust her hand inside the mattress. There was a canvas bag there and when Nellie opened it she saw that it was full of silver and gold coins and screwed-up notes.

  She had left the door ajar and the rag man looked in. ‘These for me, Ma?’ he asked. ‘Anything else?’

  Nellie thrust the bag in the drawer. ‘There might be. I’m only starting,’ she said. ‘Come back after.’

  She left the bag in the drawer and searched quickly for more money in the mattress before putting it out in the entry.

  Remembering how the man had lifted the shawl to take the jewellery, she systematically searched the room but could find nothing else. The papers from the drawer she put in her own coal bucket with the bag of money, then she called the rag man into the room when he returned.

  ‘You can clear all this,’ she said. ‘The bed and the bits of furniture. The old woman’s died.’

  The rag man gleefully loaded up his handcart with the truckle bed, the rickety chair and table and the corner cupboard. He even took the ancient rag rug and the neck shawl which had covered the jewellery but Nellie told him to leave the curtains. ‘I don’t want people nosing in,’ she said and the man paid her half a crown and left well satisfied.

  Nellie locked the door after him and went back to her kitchen. The bare parlour was filthy but it could wait, she thought, as she made herself a cup of tea, and the money could wait to be counted until after dark.

  Fleetingly she thought that even a few weeks ago she would have refused to touch the money because of the way it had been accumulated, but now she thought hardily, there’s nobody got more right to it than me, and I don’t care where it come from. It can be the rent she owed me. I’m finished with being soft.

  She suddenly remembered that she must go to the hospital and quickly washed and changed. When she reached there she was given the death certificate and a brown paper bag with Janey’s skirt and bodice and shoes and the pad she wore to support her fish basket.

  ‘What happened to her fish basket?’ Nellie asked but she was told to ask at the police station.

  She went there and was told that the basket had been stolen when Janey collapsed.

  ‘The word is there was a lot of money in it,’ the policeman said. ‘But we haven’t nabbed anyone yet. Was she a moneylender?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Nellie said. ‘I don’t know what she done when she went out. She never let on.’


  ‘That kind don’t,’ the policeman said. ‘Well, if she was, there’ll be a few people won’t be sorry to see her go.’

  Including me, Nellie thought as she walked away, but I’ll tell Maggie about this and she can spread it round in case any of them are wondering about Janey’s money.

  Maggie was talking at Bella’s step and Nellie told immediately where she had been. She showed the woman the brown paper bag and the death certificate.

  ‘You’ll want that for the insurance,’ one woman said, but Maggie and Bella said together, ‘She didn’t have no policies. She paid for her own funeral to Rae and Dobson’s.’

  ‘It was only when they give me the things and I saw the pad I thought about the fish basket. The sister told me to go to the police station and d’you know what the copper said?’ Nellie said. She paused dramatically and the women watched her eagerly. ‘He said the basket got stolen when she collapsed and the word was there was a lot of money in it but they hadn’t nabbed anyone yet. He asked me if she was a moneylender. I said I didn’t know but he thought she must’ve been because of all the money, like. He said people wouldn’t be sorry to see her go.’

  ‘He spoke a true word there,’ said Bella’s neighbour, Dolly Norton, and Nellie immediately thought of Janey’s tale of her twins who were not twins.

  ‘I’d better go,’ Nellie said. ‘I feel wore out with all the traipsing round.’

  ‘You’re a good girl, doing all the running round and going to see her in hospital when she was only your lodger,’ Bella said. ‘And all you done for her before that.’

  ‘She wouldn’t let me do much. Wouldn’t let me in the parlour to clean,’ Nellie said. ‘The rag man’s just cleared all her bits and you know what he give me? Half a crown. Carrying all that money round and she wouldn’t spend an ’a’penny to give herself some comfort.’

  ‘And never paid you an ’a’penny rent neither,’ Maggie said. ‘You was too soft with her, girl.’

  ‘She never offered and I didn’t like asking,’ Nellie said. ‘I don’t know what she done when me ma was alive.’

  ‘You won’t be any loss for her going, Nell,’ Maggie said. ‘The good fires she always had in her parlour, although she was never outa your kitchen sitting by your fire and eating your food.’

  ‘And spending her money on her funeral and carrying the rest round to get robbed,’ Dolly Norton said. ‘It was the price of her.’

  ‘She spent enough on her gin and rum,’ Nellie said. ‘She didn’t mind parting for that. I’m glad I took her a drop of rum in to the hospital. Sneaked it under me shawl in a medicine bottle. She said it never did her no harm, only the want of it.’

  The women laughed and Nellie left them, knowing that she had squashed any rumours about Janey’s money before they started. I’m getting as crafty as her, she thought.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Tommy showed little interest in Janey’s death and grumbled when his mother told him he must help to clean out the parlour. At any other time Nellie would have been dismayed by the rapid change in her son, by his rough speech and manner and his untidy appearance, but it all seemed part of the strange world in which she was living.

  Linoleum broken in places covered the floorboards and Nellie decided that they would take it up. ‘We can burn it,’ she said, ‘Then you can brush the walls down and I’ll scrub the floor.’

  Tommy worked enthusiastically once he had started tearing up the lino and stacking it in the coal place, and then he brushed the walls with such vigour that plaster fell from it in lumps and powder filled the air.

  ‘Leave it, leave it,’ Nellie said irritably. ‘The whole bloody place is falling down.’

  Tommy glanced at her in surprise but said nothing and he darted away when she told him he could go.

  She had noticed that a floorboard by the fireplace was loose and as soon as Tommy had gone she prised it up.

  In the cavity below there was a black box and an envelope and Nellie opened the envelope first. It was filled with ten-shilling and one-pound notes and four white five-pound notes, all badly chewed by rats or mice. The tin was full of silver coins with a few gold sovereigns among them and a small bag which contained five magnificent rings.

  Nellie hurriedly replaced the tin and the floorboard but she pushed the envelope into the pocket of her skirt. Janey must have left it undisturbed for ages, she thought, or surely she would have protected it from the rats.

  She went back into the kitchen, and making sure the door was locked and the curtains drawn sat down to count the money in the canvas bag. The sovereigns she put on one side, not sure whether they could still be used, but the rest of the money came to fifty-four pounds six shillings.

  Nellie felt weak. It was a fortune and there was still the money in the tin and the notes in her pocket. She felt frightened and wished that there had been less money. It was all more than she could manage and suddenly she felt more alone than she had ever been.

  She was trembling as she pushed the canvas bag under the coal in the bucket. She would have to find a safer hiding place for it but meanwhile she made herself a cup of tea and sat down to compose herself and try to plan.

  She smiled wryly as she thought of the savings she had so painfully scraped together for key money for a different house. Money that they were now using to live on.

  With that thought came another. This money could be the means of escape from this house! Now there was only herself and Tommy to consider. She was free. Free to do as she liked and now she had the money to do it. She jumped to her feet too excited to sit still.

  She brushed out Janey’s room then took a bucket of water and scrubbed furiously at the floorboards. By the time she had finished she felt exhausted but calmer and when Tommy came in she could behave normally.

  She had still not counted the money in the tin but the rings in it made her feel nervous about taking it out again.

  Mr Rae had written to Nellie with details of the funeral arrangements and suggested that as Miss Hitchmough had provided for six mourners, Nellie might select five friends or neighbours to accompany her. ‘If you have anything to ask me,’ he wrote, ‘please don’t hesitate to call.’

  Nellie asked Maggie and Katy but Bella refused, ‘Because of me legs, girl,’ she said, and Gertie was working. Nellie thought of asking two of the women whose secrets had been told to her by Janey and wondered how they would feel as the coffin was lowered, but she decided to ask two of Bella’s daughters to make up the number.

  Everyone was surprised at the magnificence of the funeral. Janey had arranged for a glass-sided hearse, horses with black plumes and bearers in top hats and frock coats. Two horse-drawn cabs were provided for the mourners and a funeral breakfast at a local cafe. Nellie was thankful when it was all over and she could start afresh, but Mr Rae’s kindness encouraged her to ask his advice about the rat- gnawed notes.

  She sat down nervously in his office. ‘It’s not about the funeral really,’ she said. ‘Only Janey – Miss Hitchmough – she never paid me rent, like, but she said I could have this money she saved.’

  She felt herself blushing as she told the lie but Mr Rae appeared to notice nothing. She drew out the envelope with the tattered notes. ‘The trouble was she left them where the rats could get at them so I don’t know if they’re any use.’

  Mr Rae sorted them out. ‘Eighty pounds!’ he said. ‘But all the numbers are here fortunately.’ He put the notes in a firm’s envelope and scribbled a note for Nellie.

  ‘If you take this to the bank across the road they’ll give you fresh notes for these,’ he said. ‘A pleasure, Mrs Meadows,’ as Nellie thanked him profusely.

  She exchanged the notes with ease in the bank and put them in the tin box when she returned home. She had decided that this was the safest hiding place and the box now held all the silver coins which she planned to exchange gradually for notes.

  The sovereigns from the tin and the bag she had put together in the canvas bag and hidden it
in her own mattress, unsure whether they were legal tender. Altogether she now had nearly two hundred pounds plus the sovereigns and the five rings.

  I could buy a house! she thought, but she told herself she must be cautious. No one must guess how much money Janey had hidden away. At present the neighbours believed that the lavish funeral and the money stolen from her fish basket accounted for the savings which they believed Janey had and Nellie decided that she must show no sign of sudden affluence.

  Some of the neighbours felt that they should have been chosen as mourners and one of them grumbled to Bella. ‘We’ve known her longer than what your daughters have.’

  ‘You know very well, Sarah Jones, that you’d only go to dance on her grave,’ Bella retorted. ‘Along with a lot more round here,’ and nothing more was said.

  Nellie was unperturbed by the comments, obsessed as she was with the thought of leaving the house.

  She was still living on her own savings although they were now almost used up but she told her friends that Sam had left her money from his pay-off.

  ‘A good job, girl,’ Maggie said. ‘You’d have been on Queer Street otherwise with no job or nothing.’

  Nellie had not forgotten the idea of making pies and immediately after Janey’s death she had thought that she and Tommy could live in the parlour and she could keep the kitchen for pie-making. Now with the discovery of the money her plans were changed.

  She had rebuffed Katy and Gertie when they tried to console her after Sam had gone, and only used Maggie to spread the tales she wanted spread, and they were hurt, but tried to be understanding.

  When she announced that she was taking two rooms for herself and Tommy in Grey Street Katy and Gertie both came to see her.

  ‘It’s not the time to go away from your friends, Nell,’ Katy said. ‘We’d help you out the way you helped me out if you was short.’ She looked at Nellie so anxiously that for a moment Nellie was touched, but then she hardened her heart.

  ‘I had to stay here while Janey was here,’ she said, ‘but I’m sick of this place. The bugs and the cockroaches and it’s falling down round me head.’