Workhouse Angel

by Holly Green

  ‘You have never been taught your catechism?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Never been to church?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The child is a little heathen,’ Mother Mary Andrew said. ‘She has no business in a school like this.’

  ‘Come now, that is a little extreme. She has been baptised. Her father sent me a copy of the certificate.’

  ‘That’s as maybe, but since then she has been in the grip of heretics and apostates. Who knows what sinful ideas she may spread if she is allowed to stay here.’

  It flitted through Angelina’s mind that the nun’s speech had become like her mother’s when she was angry. She recognised it now as an Irish accent. Mother Mary Benedicta’s accent was different, more like some of the ladies who came to call on her mother.

  ‘You are suggesting we should send her home?’

  ‘I am saying she should never have been allowed to come here in the first place.’

  Mother Mary Benedicta stood up. ‘I think you are forgetting yourself, Mother Mary Andrew. The decision to admit her was mine.’

  Mary Andrew bowed her head. ‘Forgive me, Reverend Mother. But I believe you have been misled. This child is not suitable to mix with the girls we have here. They have been committed to our care to be given a good, Christian upbringing, not to mix with the likes of this.’

  While Angelina listened to this exchange, contrary emotions chased each other through her mind. She wanted to be away from this strange place where everything was so incomprehensible. But if she was sent home, her mother and father would be angry. They would say it was her fault. And what might happen to her next?

  Mother Mary Benedicta came round her desk and put her hand on Angelina’s shoulder. ‘Mother Mary Andrew, have you forgotten the parable of the lost sheep? “There is more joy in heaven for one sinner that repents than over ninety and nine just persons”. This is a little lamb who has strayed from the true path and it is our duty, and our joy, to return her to Christ’s flock. And to that end, I know that you will exert every effort. I am sure I can rely on you for this.’

  There was a momentary silence, in which Angelina heard Mother Mary Andrew draw a long breath. Then she said, ‘Of course, Reverend Mother.’

  Mother Mary Benedicta patted Angelina’s shoulder lightly. ‘Go along now. Mother Scholastic will assign you to your class. But sometime soon I shall send for you and we will have a long talk. Thank you, Mother Mary Andrew.’

  Back in the salle d’études, Angelina was given a timetable of lessons. She would learn English, geography, history, French, needlework and music. She greeted this last with delight.

  ‘Will I be able to go on with my piano lessons?’

  ‘You have learnt the piano before you came here?’

  ‘Yes. Well, I had only just started, but I want to go on.’

  ‘Well, we shall see. Mother Marie Therèse is in charge of music and we have a teacher who comes in twice a week to give piano lessons. If you are deemed worthy of such tuition it may be possible. But now, pay close attention to me. Each girl is awarded marks for various aspects of her behaviour. There are a possible twenty marks for conduct; twenty for silence; twenty for politeness; ten for exactitude; ten for order and ten for application. Marks can be lost for any failure to abide by the rules. Each Sunday evening these marks are read out for each pupil and for those whose marks reach seventy-five there are rewards. I should warn you that any loss of marks for conduct would result almost inevitably in your expulsion from the school. Do you understand?’

  ‘Not really. What does marks for silence mean? Do we have to be silent all the time?’

  ‘No. It means that at certain times of day, or night, you are required to maintain silence. If you break it, you will lose marks. Likewise if you are rude to anyone, you will lose marks. The other marks refer to the quality of your work and the tidiness of your person and your belongings. Now, come with me and I will introduce you to your class teacher.’

  For Angelina, her first weeks at the Convent of the Faithful Companions of Jesus was the beginning of a way of life that seemed at first unbelievably complex, but which resolved itself as the days passed into an orderly routine.

  She found she was behind most of her classmates in many subjects, with the exception of arithmetic and spelling, where Miss Drake’s drilling bore fruit; but the experience of being properly taught, by women who knew their subjects, instead of being made to learn by rote, was invigorating, and, for the first time in her life, she took pleasure in learning.

  The constant company of other girls was a challenge at first. Her only interaction with her peers had been the fraught contact with the Pearson sisters and brief meetings with other girls and boys at dancing class. The complex maze of different relationships was difficult to negotiate. There were intense friendships and bitter, though covert, enmities. Some of the older girls were looked up to, almost idolised. Others were dismissed as ‘common’. She was unsure where she fitted in this hierarchy and was aware that she was viewed in some quarters with a degree of suspicion, largely because of her English accent.

  There was little chance to escape these pressures by seeking solitude. Instead of a room of her own, she had to sleep in a dormitory with a dozen other girls. She had a curtained cubicle, which provided some privacy, but there were puzzling rules surrounding that, too. It was forbidden for any girl to go into another’s cubicle. Likewise, as she began to make friends, she was told that it was against the rules for two girls to be alone together at recreation times. This prohibition did not worry her too much. She got on well with Rosa and Anna and Wilhelmina and usually spent her time with them, but she did not have a special friend.

  She found it hard to accept that some girls were better at certain things than she was, or seemed to get more of the teacher’s attention than she did, and there were occasional flair-ups that resulted in a severe reduction in her marks for politeness; and she frequently lost marks for breaking silence. But slowly she came to terms with her new situation and learned to comply with its demands. After a few weeks her marks improved. Her biggest complaint was that at dinner they were all required to speak French. Her few phrases meant that she had to spend a good deal of the meal in silence, but slowly, by a process of something like osmosis, she began to understand and then to make stumbling efforts to join in. It helped that the French teacher was an amiable elderly nun who never scolded her.

  Most of the girls came from families who lived in the surrounding area and on Sunday afternoons, provided their marks were good enough, they were allowed to meet their parents in a room designated as the parlour. It was expected on those occasions that the parents would bring sweets and cakes and afterwards these could be shared with friends. Angelina had no visitors and she was acutely aware that if she was offered such treats there was no way she could repay them. Her friends were generous and never left her out, but it was a source of embarrassment, and a keen reminder of her estrangement from her family.

  Religion remained her chief stumbling block. Mother Mary Benedicta sent for her, as promised, and questioned her gently about what she knew and believed about Christianity. Finally she said, ‘You are old enough to be confirmed, but first there is much for you to learn. Mother Mary Andrew will teach you your catechism and when she feels you thoroughly understand it we will ask Father O’Reilly to prepare you for your first confession. But that will not be for a while yet.’

  The sessions with Mother Mary Andrew were the least enjoyable part of her week. She had never been required to deal with symbols or abstractions and her only acquaintance with the supernatural came from the fairy stories Lizzie had read to her. It was clear from the beginning that the Mother Scholastic disapproved of her and was only teaching her under sufferance, and that made Angelina more inclined to question what she was told.

  ‘In the Commandments it says we should only have one God. The trinity sounds like three gods.’

  ‘How could Mary have a baby when she di
dn’t have a husband?’

  ‘How can bread turn into someone’s body, or wine into blood?’

  Mother Mary Andrew gritted her teeth. ‘It is a matter of faith. You are not here to question the word of scripture.’

  Once a week, Father O’Reilly, who was the parish curate, came to lecture them on Christian doctrine and they all had to assemble in the salle d’études, wearing their Sunday dresses and white gloves. He was a young man, and quite good looking, which was the cause of much whispering and giggling among the older girls. He was clearly aware of it and often blushed scarlet. Angelina felt sorry for him. As to the substance of his lectures, most of it went over her head. She stopped listening and spent her time looking around her and observing the reactions of her fellow pupils.

  As at home in Liverpool, the highlight of her week was the music lesson. Mother Therèse taught them to sing the psalms and responses used in the chapel, and, soon after Angelina joined the class, she stopped them in the middle of a psalm.

  ‘There is a new voice here, one I have not heard before. Where is the new girl?’

  ‘Here, Mother.’

  ‘Angelina, come forward. Now sing that phrase again, solo.’

  Angelina sang.

  ‘Truly the voice of an angel. You are well named, child. We must cultivate this gift.’

  From that day on she was often asked to sing a few bars alone and was soon recruited into the choir. There she found she had a rival. Eloise McLaren also had a good voice and hitherto had been Mother Therèse’s pet, but Angelina’s clarity of tone and innate musicality put her in the shade. She clearly resented her demotion and it was only the tight discipline of the convent that prevented an unseemly row.

  Eight

  Freshfields

  Rutherglen,

  Victoria,

  Australia

  March 30th 1868

  Dear James,

  Your letter arrived this morning and as always gave me great joy. I am so glad to know that you are well – or at least were so when you wrote. Oh, how long the time seems between writing and receiving! I was glad, too, to learn that your mother’s condition seems a little better. It is so difficult for both of us, knowing that you cannot come to join me while she still needs your care, but please believe me when I say that. She was kind to me when I worked at Freeman’s, especially when I had that trouble with Mrs Connor McBride, and it was largely due to her that I did not lose my job. And it was through her help then that I met you, so I cannot wish her anything but well. I know she does not approve of our engagement and would much rather see you married to a young lady of a suitable background and education to be the wife of a rising solicitor; but she only wants the best for you and I cannot blame her for that. I would say give her my best wishes, but I think you may not have told her that we are writing to each other. Do not, on any account, say anything to her that might disturb her.

  So, what news can I give you of our life here? The grape harvest is in and Pedro says we have a bumper crop. The grapes have been pressed and now the complicated business of fermenting the juice and making wine is in process. I don’t understand much of what is going on but Gus is becoming very knowledgeable. For a boy whose only interest was in seafaring he is turning into a remarkably dedicated vintner! He, Father and Pedro spend their days poring over the vats, and seem to be very happy in each other’s company, which pleases me greatly.

  The more I come to know my father, the more I love him. Whatever faults or foolish mistakes he may have committed in the past, he is a good man, kind and generous and full of humour. We have had many long talks and he has told me about the smuggling for which he was convicted to be transported. He knows it was a very wrong, and very foolish thing to do, but I think he was led into it by others who took advantage of his good nature. He only wanted to have a little extra money, to make life easier for us, and for our mother. He talks a lot about her and I’m sure he loved her very much and was terribly hurt when he had no letters from her while he was serving his sentence; but he understands now how the shame of his conviction affected her and why she chose to tell us he had been ‘lost at sea’. He convinced himself that she must have married again, which is why he chose not to return when his sentence was up.

  On a slightly lighter note, he is full of anecdotes about his fellow prisoners and some of the more amusing or uplifting events that occurred, both while he was a prisoner and afterwards when he was working as a prospector. I am sure he has not told me the bad things that happened, but when he is not talking I see a shadow come into his face and I know that he is a man who has suffered a great deal. He worries that we blame him for not coming back to save us from the hardships we suffered in the workhouse and afterwards, but I tell him that we do not and never have. There is nothing that I regret about the past, and Gus feels the same.

  I saw my first snake the other day! I was walking with Gus on the far side of the lake and it came straight across our path. It gave me quite a shock, I can tell you. Father says they are more afraid of us than we are of them and will always get out of our way if they hear us coming, or feel the vibration from our footfalls. But I still find it hard to accept that whenever I go out I need to keep a wary eye open, just in case. I also saw my first echidna in the woods. They are like great big hedgehogs and burrow around in the undergrowth. The animal life here never ceases to amaze me.

  We are beginning to get to know our neighbours. There are several other vineyards in the area, most of them owned by settlers from Britain. They come from all sorts of backgrounds but they all have one thing in common, they came here for a new life and they want to make a success of it.

  I thought there was no snobbery here, but I have discovered there is one element that disturbs me a little. There is a division between those who came here voluntarily and those who were sent here, as my father was. Those who came of their own free will tend to look down on the ex-convicts, though Gus says that is much more marked in Melbourne than it is out here. Fortunately, our neighbours do not seem inclined to make a distinction and we have been invited to dine with several of them. That, of course, means that we have to entertain in our turn. Imagine me, as hostess at a dinner party! For once, I am grateful for what I learned in service. At least I know how to set a table, and which cutlery to put out. Not that that matters much out here. Most people seem to have a pretty happy-go-lucky attitude to things like that.

  If I have one complaint, it is the lack of occupation. I am not used to idleness and I feel guilty if I am not busy with something. Maria cares for the house and she is a far better cook than I am, so I would not presume to interfere in that department. I do do the household accounts, for which I am grateful to Miss Bale who drilled me in arithmetic back in the workhouse, but that does not take up much of my time. There is one good thing. I have gone back to drawing and painting. I’m so glad you encouraged me in that direction. There is certainly no shortage of fascinating subjects to paint here. By the time you get here I should have quite a gallery to exhibit to you!

  Please take care of yourself, my dearest. I hope your studies are going well. You have to pass those examinations to become a fully-fledged solicitor. I am looking forward to being a lawyer’s wife.

  Write soon.

  All my love,

  May

  Nine

  As winter gave way to spring, the girls at the convent were allowed to take their recreation periods outside and Angelina discovered that the house stood in extensive grounds, which fell away to the shores of a large lake. There were lawns and flower beds, shrubberies and a rose garden, and a kitchen garden and a yard where chickens were kept. Ancient trees spread their branches protectively over the whole. In the open, grassy area designated as a playground for the girls of Preparatory Two, Angelina learned to play rounders and discovered she could run much faster than she thought.

  Lent brought certain puzzling restrictions: no sweets, and a more limited diet than the French lay sister in charge of the kitchen was norm
ally proud to provide.

  Angelina struggled with the story of the Crucifixion and Resurrection. Mother Mary Andrew told her repeatedly that it was a matter of faith and hinted at dire consequences for those who refused to believe, but she found it hard to accept.

  As Easter approached, however, religious faith was not the consideration uppermost in her mind. The other girls were talking about going home for the holidays. Those whose parents lived too far away to visit on Sunday afternoons wrote home regularly and received letters in return. No one wrote to Angelina. Even her birthday passed unremarked. Now she watched with mixed feelings for a letter telling her that her father was coming to take her home. When he left her at the convent she had longed for the day when he would return to fetch her, but now she was not at all sure that she wanted to go home. Rules here were strict, but not difficult to understand, and no one was ever beaten. There were nights when she dreamed that she was back home again and her mother was flourishing the cane and threatening to punish her, and she woke shaking. But on the other hand, she had a vague feeling that to be left behind when the other girls went would be somehow shameful. She would be the odd-one-out: an object of pity or worse.

  On the last day of term all the other girls were packing their trunks. Angelina had not seen her case since the day she arrived, so she asked Sister Berthe where to find it.

  ‘What do you want that for?’ the lay sister asked. ‘You’re not going anywhere.’

  ‘Am I not going home for the holidays?’ Angelina asked tremulously.

  Berthe stopped what she was doing and looked shocked. ‘God help us! Has nobody explained to you? Your father thinks the journey is too long for you to be going backwards and forwards. You are to spend the holidays here.’

  That night Angelina fell asleep with a sense of relief. When the other girls expressed surprise, she pretended that she had always understood the arrangement.