Workhouse Child Read online

  She had exchanged one master for another, Lottie thought as she came down the stairs in the house on the end of a row in Sherburn Hill. It was half past five one morning a few weeks later. Mr Green was gruff and barely looked at her when he was barking his orders at her. He watched how much she ate as though she were stealing it from the mouths of his children.

  This morning as usual, she went into the kitchen at the back of the house and riddled the ashes in the grate and relaid the fire. Before she put a lucifer to it, she looked over her shoulder in case Mr Green should see her do it.

  ‘I’m not made of money, you know,’ he had said last time he saw her use a lucifer. ‘You should bank it on a night and then there’ll be a few embers to start the fire away.’ Lucifers were to buy from the grocer’s cart that came along twice a week, but as an overman at the pit Mr Green got a supply of coal every few weeks. It was tipped in the alley behind the house close to the coalhouse hatch and was to shovel in. The Green boys were too young to do the job: Noah, the eldest, was not yet ten and small for his age. There were always lads who would come and offer to ‘put in the coals’ for a penny but Mr Green would have none of it.

  ‘I’m not keeping a great lass like you and paying a lad to put in the coals,’ he said when she suggested it. So Lottie had to do it, getting the coal in before Mr Green came home from the pit, no matter what else she had to do that day.

  Lottie put the kettle on to boil and cut bread and butter for Mrs Green’s breakfast. While she waited, she sat down for a few minutes in the rocking chair by the hearth, the one that had been Mrs Green’s before she became bed-bound. This was her favourite time of the day, when she had a few precious moments before she had to make Mrs Green comfortable against her pillows and then prepare a meal for Mr Green coming in from fore shift or going out on back shift. Then the lads were to get up and feed with great bowls of porridge sweetened with sugar and with fresh milk poured over it.

  She was just lifting the heavy iron kettle from the fire when there was a cry from the front room that had been turned into a sick room for Mrs Green. Placing the kettle on the hearth, she ran through to see Mrs Green half out of bed, hanging precariously, with only her legs anchored beneath the bedclothes. She seemed quite incapable of righting herself and was moaning pitifully.

  ‘Mrs Green, what are you doing?’ asked Lottie in alarm. She hurried around the bed and for all her small stature managed to lift the woman back to the safety of her pillows, where she flopped with her mouth open, her breathing fast and shallow. Lottie grabbed the extra pillow from the chair by the bedside and propped her up a little better so she could catch her breath. Oh, she looked badly, Lottie thought. Mrs Green’s skin was blue around the mouth but her cheeks were flushed and her skin was hot to the touch. She brought the woman a drink of water from the pail in the pantry and held it while she took some. Only a few sips, for even that seemed to exhaust her.

  Then she wiped her face and arms with a cold flannel.

  ‘You’re a good lass,’ said Mrs Green.

  ‘Where’s my breakfast?’ asked Mr Green from the doorway. ‘Lottie? I don’t pay you to sit about on the wife’s bed.’

  Lottie jumped up quickly, dropping the flannel and having to bend down to retrieve it. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’ll do it now. Only Mrs Green needed me.’

  ‘Aye, well, be quick about it,’ said he. ‘A man shouldn’t be coming in after ten hours in the pit to an empty table.’

  ‘Alfred, the lass is doing her best.’ The voice from the bed was weak and fluttering.

  Mr Green regarded his wife, frowning. ‘Mind, you keep out of it, Laura,’ he said, but not roughly or unkindly. If he had a soft spot for anyone, it was his wife.

  ‘I’ll stay here, Lottie,’ he said, ‘while you get it ready. I picked some mushrooms on the way home; do them with a bit of bacon. Give us a shout when they’re ready.’

  Lottie fled to the kitchen and did as she was bid. By the time she was calling the boys down to eat with their father before they went out to the National School, the house was filled with delicious smells. They came down the stairs in a rush: Noah, the eldest, who was nine; Freddie, who was eight; and Mattie, six. Mattie was grizzling again, she saw, his shirt hanging out where his braces met his trousers, his feet still bare.

  ‘Freddie hit me,’ he said pathetically to his father. ‘I want my mam.’

  ‘Leave your mam alone,’ Mr Green ordered. ‘Sit down and eat your porridge.’ For the boys and Lottie had porridge for breakfast rather than bacon and mushrooms. But it was good porridge, made with real, fresh milk. The two older boys set to with a will and the only sounds were the occasional slurp and that of Mr Green’s knife against the plate.

  When he finished, he sat back in his chair and looked at Lottie. ‘I want you to go and get the doctor when you’ve got the lads away to school,’ he said. ‘Tell him the wife’s badly.’

  Lottie looked back at him in some alarm. He must think Mrs Green was very bad if he wanted the doctor to come back. He had only been to see her a few days before and Mr Green grumbled at the expense every time the doctor came.

  ‘Don’t look so gormless, lass,’ he said. ‘Hurry yourself and get on with it.’

  ‘Is Mam badly?’ asked Noah. ‘Can I go in to see her?’

  ‘Leave her alone, lad, she wants some peace. If I hear you bothering her I’ll take the belt to you. Now, away to school with the lot of you.’

  Lottie ate the last spoonful of porridge made with the skimmed milk left after taking off the cream for Mrs Green, for the boys had used up all the fresh milk. ‘I’ll go straight away,’ she replied. Grabbing her shawl from the back of the kitchen door, she ran off down the yard, thankful for the chance to get out into the fresh air before starting the clearing and cleaning in the house.

  ‘I think you should ask the Nightingale nurse to call and see your wife,’ said Dr Gray to Alf Green when he had returned with Lottie and had examined Mrs Green. ‘Sister Mitchell-Howe, her name is. Here, I’ll write it down for you.’

  ‘How much will that cost?’ Alfred Green asked. ‘I don’t begrudge it mind, but I’ve a lot of expense already what with having to have a lass to keep an eye on the lads as well as the wife. Will she not do? She’s good with Laura, I’ll say that for her.’

  Dr Gray looked at the pitman before him and sighed. The fellow was an overman and as such must be earning more than most miners. He was fond of his wife too, he could see that.

  ‘A trained nurse can see to your wife better than a young girl can,’ he said. ‘In any case, she will keep an eye on her if she visits every day until Mrs Green is over the crisis.’

  They were outside in the narrow passage that led from the front door past the room where Mrs Green lay to the kitchen at the back. It was Laura Green’s voice that decided the issue.

  ‘Lottie,’ she said, her voice too weak to penetrate to the kitchen where Lottie was scouring the porridge pan. ‘Lottie!’

  ‘Lottie!’ Mr Green shouted and the girl appeared in the passage, looking anxious. She had managed to get the boys off to school before the bell rang and ran to call the doctor and washed and changed Mrs Green before he came and now she was trying to catch up on her work. She was already thinking about the task after the next one and that was to prepare something filling for the lads’ dinner when they arrived back at twelve o’clock.

  ‘See to her, can you not hear her calling?’

  Lottie hurried into the sitting room where the patient, in trying to reach for a drink, had overturned the cup and spilt water on the bed sheet, which was a clean one, having been changed for the doctor’s visit.

  When Lottie tried to change her nightgown and sheets, Laura let out an involuntary cry of pain and both men in the passageway heard it.

  ‘I’ll help you in a minute, Lottie,’ said Mr Green and turned back to the doctor. ‘Why then,’ he said. ‘I reckon we’d best give that newfangled nurse a try. How much do you reckon it will cost me?’
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br />   ‘You’ll have to ask her that,’ the doctor replied. ‘But I think Sister Mitchell-Howe is reasonable. If you just have her coming in twice a day until your wife is over the worst it will do.’

  ‘Mitchell-Howe, what sort of a daft name is that? Well, we’ll see what she charges,’ Mr Green muttered as he showed the doctor to the door.

  Three

  ‘Dr Gray asked me to call to see Mrs Green,’ said the woman who was standing on the doorstep when Lottie answered a knock at the door. She was dressed in a funny hat with ribbons that tied under her chin and an all-enveloping cloak. She carried a bag something like the one the doctor carried but made of some cheap material, not leather. ‘My name is Sister Mitchell,’ she went on and smiled. She had a lovely, kind smile and Lottie warmed to her, for in her young life she had learned to differentiate between sincere and insincere smiles.

  ‘Sister Mitchell-Howe?’ asked Lottie, for that was what Dr Gray had said. She peered up at the woman a little fearfully despite her smile, for the way she was dressed reminded her of the matron at the Big House.

  ‘You can call me Sister Mitchell,’ the woman said, smiling again and Lottie forgot her small trepidations, for she had a very pleasant face when she smiled, this newfangled nurse.

  ‘Howay in.’ Lottie opened the door wider and the nurse followed her into the house and through to the front room. Her voice was little more than a whisper, for Mr Green had gone to bed and he could get very angry if he was woken. Even little Mattie never spoke above a whisper when his da was in bed.

  Lottie was impressed with the nurse’s treatment of her mistress. Sister Mitchell took off her cloak and laid it over a chair before donning a large white apron. All her movements were careful and controlled and she managed to change the bed sheets and sponge Mrs Green down causing the minimum of discomfort to her patient.

  ‘Watch now,’ Sister said, ‘be as gentle as if you were washing a new baby.’

  Lottie watched and helped where she could but she was hesitant and fearful of hurting Laura Green, whereas Sister Mitchell was deft and sure in all her movements.

  ‘Bring Mrs Green some beef tea if you have any,’ Sister said, when at last she was satisfied that her patient was as comfortable as possible. Lottie ran to do her bidding. By, she thought as she watched over the pan of brown liquid heating on the bar, she would like to be a nurse when she grew up. A proper Nightingale nurse like Sister Mitchell, that was what she would be. Could you be a Nightingale nurse if you were a skivvy from a workhouse and only 4 foot 10? She glanced into the mahogany-framed looking glass, which hung over the mantel shelf. Her skin was thin and white and her brown eyes peered back at her because she couldn’t see a great deal more than a blur from a few feet away and she was small and the looking glass high up. Her cap had slipped down on her forehead and she pushed it up over her unruly hair. Hair so fine and soft that no amount of hairpins would hold it.

  The beef tea began to bubble and she hastily lifted it from the bar and poured it into a cup. Her hand trembled and she spilt a few drops on the saucer and had to fetch a clean one and wipe the side of the cup.

  ‘You couldn’t be a nurse, you’re too clumsy,’ she berated herself aloud.

  ‘Is it ready?’

  Sister Mitchell had come through and was standing in the doorway watching her. ‘Only I have to be getting on and I want to show you how to support a patient so she can take a drink with the least possible distress to her before I go. I’ll come back about teatime.’

  When Lottie peeped into Laura Green’s room, half an hour later, she found her mistress sleeping peacefully. Poor woman, she thought as she gazed at Laura’s face. Her skin had a translucent look, though her cheeks were flushed. A pulse beat erratically on the temple Lottie could see. It was hot in the room and the air smelled stale. She hesitated before deciding to open a window for a short while. The window was stiff and resisted her attempts at first, but in the end she managed to open it a couple of inches. Satisfied, Lottie tiptoed out of the room and closed the door quietly.

  The whole house was quiet with both master and mistress in bed asleep. Lottie had tidied the kitchen and now had little that she could do without making a noise until the boys came home and she gave them their dinners. Today she had a pan of mutton broth ready and she had baked bread the day before so there was little preparation to the meal. She opened the back door and slipped out into the yard for a breath of fresh air.

  She leaned against the yard wall for a few moments, closing her eyes and breathing deeply. Though there was the all-pervading smell of coal and soot in the air, it was cool and there was a slight breeze blowing. After a while she picked up the broom, which stood upended against the wall where the tin bath hung, and started to sweep the yard. It wouldn’t do for Mr Green to look out of the bedroom window and see her lazing about. As she swept, she dreamed of becoming a Nightingale nurse like Sister Mitchell. She would grow taller, she would, and she would learn not to be clumsy and she would save up her money and buy spectacles so she could see properly. (How much would they cost? She would have to find out.) But then the colliery hooter blew and returned her to the present. It must be twelve o’clock and the lads would be on their way back from school and the broth wasn’t even on the fire to warm yet.

  Besides, she thought dismally as she went inside, her thoughts returning to her ambition to be a nurse like Sister Mitchell, she would have to learn to read and write and spell better; subjects the school in the workhouse hadn’t bothered a lot with. No, they had concentrated on teaching her to sew a fine seam and clean up after folk. After all, what did skivvies want with reading and writing? They would be sitting in a corner reading when they would never be good for anything but scrubbing floors.

  ‘Where’s me dinner?’ demanded Noah as he came through the door, closely followed by the two younger ones, Freddie and Matthew.

  ‘It’ll only be a minute,’ Lottie replied, stirring the broth in the pan to prevent it sticking as she heated it. She lifted the heavy iron pan with both hands and put it down on the iron stand on the table.

  ‘It should have been ready, I want to play with the lads,’ grumbled Noah. ‘You’re supposed to have it ready.’

  ‘It is ready,’ said Lottie, as she ladled broth into a bowl and put it before him, then did the same for the others. She started to cut slices from the loaf, giving them each a piece.

  ‘You’re not supposed to answer back. You’re not my mother, you’re just a maid. My da pays you to do it. You’re just a workhouse skivvy.’ Noah stared at her truculently, before stuffing bread in his mouth.

  ‘A workhouse skivvy,’ echoed Freddie and Matthew and they both giggled.

  ‘You have to do what I say or I’ll tell my da and he’ll send you back to the workhouse,’ said Noah. ‘Dirty clarty workhouse,’ he added.

  ‘Dirty, clarty workhouse,’ said Matthew.

  ‘Don’t say that, Mattie pet,’ Lottie said to Matthew.

  ‘You cannot tell us what to do, Noah says,’ said Freddie.

  Lottie closed her eyes and bit her lip to stop her angry retort. After a moment she said, ‘I am looking after you while your mam is badly. I will have to speak to your da if you’re naughty.’

  The three boys laughed uproariously. ‘My da calls you workhouse!’ Noah cried.

  Lottie turned a fiery red, more from anger than anything else. But she did not reply for in the moment’s quiet after she heard the faint voice of Laura Green from the front room. She left her broth and hurried in to see her, to find that Laura had slipped down on her pillows and was unable to lift herself up.

  ‘I’m sorry, did they wake you?’ Lottie asked as she helped her back against the pillows. The woolly bedjacket she wore fell back and exposed her elbows, red and swollen with the disease. The sight filled Lottie with pity as she covered them back up.

  ‘No … yes, but I like to hear them,’ Mrs Green whispered as though she had no strength to speak louder. ‘Only, they’ll wake Alfred and he ne
eds his sleep.’

  ‘I’ll remind them, they must have forgotten. You know what lads are like.’

  ‘Aye.’ Laura sank back on her pillows and closed her eyes, for the effort had exhausted her. ‘You see to them, pet, you’re a good lass.’

  Alfred was already awake. As she came out of the front room he came downstairs in his bare feet, braces dangling by the side of his trousers and a collarless shirt open at the neck. He favoured Lottie with a furious glare before pushing past her to the kitchen. The boys were still laughing and making remarks about ‘workhouse lasses’ but they fell silent immediately they saw their father, no doubt suddenly remembering they were supposed to be keeping quiet. He belted all three around the ear, one after the other, and not varying the weight of the blow from the eldest to the youngest.

  ‘Hadaway back to school out of my sight!’ he snarled, not raising his voice but sounding just as threatening as if he had. Cringing and sniffling and with Mattie holding his ear, the three scrambled for the back door and ran down the yard to the gate. Only when they were out of sight did he turn to Lottie.

  ‘You, you little bastard,’ he said. ‘You’re supposed to be keeping them quiet. You’d best mend your ways or you’ll be back in the workhouse along of all the other bastards.’ He suddenly thrust out a hand and smacked her across the ear too, so that her head rang and a sharp pain shot through from one side to another, making her teeth chatter. She staggered under the blow and grabbed hold of the chair just vacated by Noah. But it was the insult to her mother that hurt the most.

  ‘I’m not a bastard,’ she said as soon as she righted herself and could face him again. ‘My mam and dad were married but he died.’

  ‘Oh aye,’ Alfred Green sneered, ‘o’ course they were. You lot all say that. But it doesn’t signify, you’re still bastards’ scum, expecting hard-working folk to pay the poor rate to keep you in the Big House. Well, it’s time I got a bit back from you and you’ll do as I say or I’ll know the reason why. Now, if I hear another sound the day I’ll be down here and belt the living daylights out of you. Do you understand that?’