Crow Boy (4 page)

‘How would you know that?' she asked him.

‘It's just a . . . hunch.'

‘Hmm. Well, anyway, here we are.'

‘Huh?'

Morag had come to a halt in front of a dark timber doorway, above which a crudely painted wooden sign hung. On it was scrawled one word:

ORFENAGE

Tom gazed up at it and shook his head. ‘Somebody can't spell,' he observed, pointing at the sign.

Morag looked up at it blankly.

‘It should be spelt with a P-H,' he explained and, once again, she gave him an odd look.

‘How would you know that?' she asked him.

‘It's easy,' he said. O-R-P-H . . .'

‘I don't have the book-learning,' she interrupted him flatly. She gestured to the door. ‘Anyway, I'm going in now. If you want to talk to Missie Grierson, I can take you to her. But I warn you, she doesn't suffer fools for long. It's up to you.'

Tom considered for a moment. He was completely lost here, out of his element, and Morag was the one person who connected him to the world he had just left. It seemed to him that, as long as he was stuck here, he had little choice but to go with the flow and see what happened.

‘I'll come in with you,' he said.

‘Suit yourself,' said Morag. She opened the door and led him inside.

Four

They were in a long, badly-lit corridor that smelled of cabbage and something much worse that Tom couldn't identify. A rickety-looking staircase rose up on their right, but Morag led the way straight ahead, clearly knowing exactly where she was going. Tom stumbled along behind her, hoping that, in a moment or two, something would happen, there'd be a sudden flash or a puff of smoke and he'd find himself back in more familiar territory. But, annoyingly, everything stayed just the way it was – dark, smelly and forbidding.

Morag pushed through a wooden doorway and led Tom into a big kitchen where two ragged children were at work. A lanky ginger-haired boy was peeling a mountain of vegetables stacked on a surface beside him and a skinny dark-haired girl was pushing a filthy-looking mop across an equally filthy floor, rearranging the dirt. They both looked as though they wouldn't dare to pause for breath.

Standing in front of a huge black cooking range was a middle-aged woman that Tom instantly knew had to be Missie Grierson. She was big and heavyset, her ample curves encased in a grubby black dress that seemed to be quite literally coming apart at the seams. It wasn't that she was fat but rather, very muscular for a woman. She had shoulders and arms that would not have disgraced a champion weightlifter and, as a result, her head looked somehow too small for her body. It was covered by an odd little frilly hat and from her mouth jutted a white clay pipe that was puffing out great clouds of fragrant smoke. Her steely grey eyes were flicking restlessly around the kitchen while she uttered terse instructions to the children all around her.

‘Come along, Cameron, it would be nice to have the soup on the boil some time this century! Alison, put more effort into that mopping; I want to see ma face in it when you've finished. Ach, girl, you'll no' get anywhere like that; use a bit of elbow grease, for goodness sake!' She noticed Morag's approach and gave her a long-suffering look. ‘Oh, you're back at last; I thought perhaps you'd left the country.' She pulled the pipe from her mouth and poked the stem of it amongst the sorry collection of vegetables in the girl's basket. ‘Is this the best you could get?' she muttered. ‘It all looks worm-eaten. It's barely fit for the pigs.'

Morag nodded. ‘Mr Hamilton said he'll no' give us anything better until you've settled his account in full,' she explained.

‘Is that a fact?' Missie Grierson looked annoyed. ‘The brass neck of that man! He knows I'm good for it; why must he vex me like this? You gave him the two shillings towards what we owe him?'

‘Aye. He made me drop it into a cup of vinegar and he counted to ten before he took it out again. He said it was protection against the contagion.'

‘Is that right?' Missie Grierson grunted. ‘Where do they get these notions?' she muttered. She noticed Tom for the first time and returned her pipe to her mouth while she studied him in detail. She didn't seem to care much for what she was looking at. ‘What've we got here?' she asked doubtfully.

‘Oh, this is . . .' Morag stared at Tom blankly. ‘I don't believe you told me your name,' she said.

‘It's Tom. Tom Afflick.' Tom held out his hand to shake, as he'd been taught to do when first meeting somebody, but Missie Grierson just looked at the hand, as though it wasn't clean enough for her liking. ‘What've I told you about bringing home waifs and strays?' she snarled at Morag. ‘Even ones dressed in fancy red jackets.'

‘I didn't bring him,' protested Morag. ‘He followed me.'

‘Did he indeed?' Missie Grierson returned her attention to Tom. ‘If you're selling something, I'm not interested – unless, of course, it's tobacco. I can always use tobacco.'

‘I'm not selling anything,' Tom assured her.

‘In that case, I'll not detain ye a moment longer. Kindly close the door on your way out.'

There was a silence then, while Tom stood there unsure of what to do. He looked at Morag, seeking support and, after a pause she spoke up on his behalf.

‘But, Missie Grierson, Tom tells me he's a sort of orphan.'

‘Is that so?' Missie Grierson studied Tom with a ‘seen it all before' expression on her ruddy face. ‘What's a ‘sort-of' orphan exactly?'

Tom frowned. ‘It's complicated,' he said.

‘Try me,' suggested Missie Grierson. ‘Would that be you've ‘sort of' got parents and you've ‘sort of' got a home? That kind of thing?'

‘Well . . .' Tom racked his brains to try and think of something he might say that didn't sound crazy but in the end, decided he had no option but to tell the truth. ‘See, I was on this school trip to Mary King's Close . . .'

‘You go to school?' interrupted Missie Grierson. She seemed suddenly a lot more interested.

‘Er . . . yes, of course,' said Tom.

‘Does that mean you can read?'

Tom shrugged. ‘Sure,' he said.

‘Wait right there!' Missie Grierson turned away and hurried over to a wooden dresser, the shelves of which were literally stuffed with heaps of paper. She poked frantically through them until she found what she was looking for, then pulled out a single sheet and brought it back over to Tom. She shoved it into his hands. ‘Read that,' she demanded. ‘Aloud.'

Tom uncrumpled the thick, roughly textured paper. He saw that it was covered with fancy old-fashioned handwriting, the kind that would have been written with a quill pen. He studied it for a moment. Some of the spelling was distinctly odd and the hand was very ornate but he thought he could just about make sense of it.

‘Well, go on,' said Missie Grierson impatiently. ‘I thought you said you could read.'

‘I can. It's just the handwriting is a bit funny. Hasn't this guy ever heard of a compu . . .' He tailed off as he realised what he had been about to say. ‘Anyway, it goes something like this.' He began to read haltingly and was aware as he did so, that everybody in the room had stopped work and was gazing at him with what could only be described as utter amazement.

Dear Mistress Grierson,

The Trust has . . . considered your recent request for financial help with the . . . running of your orphanage and, after some . . . discussion, I regret to inform you that we cannot undertake to offer you our help in this matter. We trust you will . . . understand and respect our decision and, of course, we . . . wish you every success with your future enterprise.

Yours sincerely,

Lord Kelvin

President

There was a long silence and then Missie Grierson pulled the pipe from her lips and spat on the floor, narrowly missing Tom's feet.

‘It's just as I expected,' she announced to the room in general. She looked around at the children in the kitchen. ‘Nobody cares about you but me. What's going to happen to you after I'm gone? That's anybody's guess. Still, at least this time it hasn't cost me a shilling to be told such dismal news.' She considered for a moment and then asked them, ‘Why have you stopped working? I don't recall anybody telling you to take a break.'

The children fell back to their respective chores as though their very lives depended on it and Missie Grierson turned her attention back to Tom.

‘Where did you learn to read like that?' she asked him.

‘At school,' he told her, matter-of-factly. ‘It's no big deal.'

‘Hmmph.' She rubbed her gnarled chin between a plump thumb and forefinger. ‘A rich man's son, I'm guessing . . . and a
Sassenach
, judging by your accent. I've always maintained that Sassenachs are all . . .'

‘Thieves and rascals,' finished Tom. ‘Yeah, Morag told me. But I'm no thief and I'm not even sure what a rascal is.'

She seemed amused by this remark. ‘I'd say you fit the description well enough,' she observed. ‘So what happened to your parents?'

‘They . . . they're a long way away now,' he said, with what felt like absolute truthfulness. ‘My dad is back in Manchester and my Mum . . . well, she's in a different place altogether.'

Missie Grierson clearly misunderstood the last part. A sad look came to her grizzled face. ‘I'm very sorry for your loss,' she said. ‘Wherever she is, I'm sure the angels are with her.'

Not in Fairmilehead
, thought Tom, but he said nothing.

‘And there's no way you can get back to your father?'

Tom shook his head. If things didn't go back to the way they were before the fall, he wouldn't be seeing any familiar faces.

‘Well, I'll admit that having somebody who can read letters would be handy enough,' admitted Missie Grierson. ‘But the need doesn't arise that often. And look around you, laddie; I already have three mouths to feed and it doesn't get any easier.'

‘Couldn't he take wee Davey's place?' asked Morag.

There was a deep silence after this was said. Tom glanced nervously around the room to see that the other children had stopped working and bowed their heads as though disturbed by the very mention of the boy's name.

‘Who's wee Davey?' he asked.

‘Ach, he was just a boy who was here before,' said Morag. She sounded evasive. ‘We all loved wee Davey. He made us laugh.'

‘What happened to him?'

‘He . . . well, he died.'

‘Oh.' Tom frowned. ‘Was it the plague?' he asked.

‘No it was not!' snapped Missie Grierson, leaning forward to glare at him. ‘It was the consumption, everyone knows that. We've no plague here.'

‘But I thought . . .'

‘Oh aye, there's plague in the Close, sure enough; you'll see the white sheets hanging in the windows and some of them not so very far from here. But with wee Davey it was the consumption, and don't you be telling anyone any different, d'you hear me?'

Tom nodded. ‘Sure, I was only . . .'

‘The thing about wee Davey, as you'll have guessed by his name, he was only small but he was strong too. He could carry sacks full of potatoes without breaking a sweat. Could you do that?'

‘Well,' said Tom. ‘I
suppose
I could. I've never really had much call to do it. Tesco always delivered ours.'

‘Tess who?'

‘Never mind,' said Tom. He reminded himself that he really should think before he opened his big mouth. ‘I'm pretty strong,' he said, trying to change the subject. ‘I played rugby at my last school.' He saw the blank look on her face and corrected himself. ‘I played
sports
!' He bunched his hands into fists and lifted his arms, strongman style. ‘Check them out,' he offered.

‘I'll take your word for it.' Missie Grierson puffed on her pipe a bit more and then seemed to come to a decision. ‘I suppose we can try you out, see if you measure up. But let me warn you, any slacking and you'll be out on your backside; there's no room for that sort here. We all pitch in, isn't that right, children?'

‘Aye!' came back the reply, as though they'd rehearsed it.

‘So, do you think you could fit in with us?' asked Missie Grierson.

‘I'll give it my best shot,' said Tom.

Morag couldn't seem to stop smiling. ‘Shall I show him where he'll be sleeping?' she asked.

‘No you will not! The very idea!' Missie Grierson crooked a finger at the red-headed boy. ‘Cameron, you take a break from that peeling and let Morag earn her supper for a change. Then you take Tom upstairs and show him his bed.' She looked at Tom. ‘Where are your bags?' she asked him.

‘I haven't got any,' he told her.

‘Oh, come along now, you must have a knapsack or something? A cloth bundle, maybe. Everybody has to carry
something
with them.'

Tom shook his head. ‘I . . . left in kind of a hurry,' he said.

She gave him a suspicious look. ‘Oh, hang on a minute. You're no' in trouble with the constables, are ye?'

‘Oh no,' he assured her. ‘Nothing like that.'

‘I hope not, because if I find out that there's something you haven't told me, there will be trouble, of that I can promise you.'

Tom ran it through in his mind.
Well, actually, Missie G. there is something I haven't mentioned. You see, I'm from the 21st century and I've ended up here and I've no idea how it happened or how I'm ever going to get back . . .

But she was already gesturing to him to get moving, so he followed the lanky red-headed lad towards the door through which he had first entered the kitchen. Behind him, he heard Missie Grierson giving orders again.

‘Right, you lot, that's enough standing around for one day, get to work! Morag, put down that basket, stop gawping like a fish out of water and start peeling those tatties. I don't know about you lot, but I am starving!'

Her words were the last thing he heard as the door closed behind him and he followed the boy called Cameron along the entrance hall and up a dark and rickety staircase.