Tattycoram (2 page)

Jonnie and I went with Mother and the other women and children to gather rushes for the rushlights and laid them out, just so, for dipping. We gathered mushrooms and hazelnuts and, best of all, we picked the hurts when they were ripe. Oh, the hurts were lovely, and we quickly filled Mother's basket and then our own. We ate almost as many as we picked and came home with blue lips and blue tongues, Mother as well. There was nothing so good as a bowl of hurts, with a bit of milk if you could get it, hurt preserves if you had any sugar to spare.

It must have rained during my early years in the village — I know it did, for I can remember the sound of the rain on the thatch, as Jonnie and I lay in our little truckle bed upstairs; but when I look back like this, it is as though my childhood, from the time I was put into my real mother's arms until the day I left at the age of five and a half, my childhood was like some seamless garment which covered me lightly and kept me from all harm. I think if I hadn't had that I might have turned out quite a different person. Like poor Elisabeth Avis, perhaps.

A stream ran through the village, the Tillingbourne, very clear, shallow and fast-flowing. Sometimes Sam tied us both to a rope and the rope to one of the old trees, which leaned so far over the water they almost met their reflections. We were to sit there and be good while he went off somewhere with his friends. We did not like to be tied up, but Sam's knots were firm and we were stuck. We must not tell Mother; we must solemnly swear, and we solemnly did. I suppose we were about three years old at this time, so Sam would be twelve.

That was how we were the first to see the princess come
floating by. She had on a long white dress and was looking at something in the water so we couldn't see her face, just her hair, which was yellow, like wheat, her long hair streaming down her back.

We called to her to come and untie us, but she paid no attention and disappeared towards the bridge.

“A princess,” I said to Jonnie, and he nodded. How we wanted to get up and follow her, but the rope kept us prisoner upstream.

And then, after a while, we heard the women in the village crying out to her and greeting her, and we were cross with Sam because it was his fault we were missing all the excitement. No doubt at that very moment they were handing her the golden crown.

And then Mother's voice, frantic, calling, “Sam! Sam! Sam! Sam!” but of course he was far away and we had made a solemn promise not to tell.

She found us anyway and Sam got a beating when he came home. He told me later that he too was frantic when he arrived at the spot where he had left us and all that was there was the rope, still tied to the tree.

“I saw a princess,” I told Mother. But it wasn't, only a girl from one of the big houses over towards Gomshall, and nobody knew how she had fallen in or why she couldn't get up, a big girl like that. And so we learned a new word: drowned. The whole village went to the funeral at Gomshall — all the villages went — everybody wearing white, not black, because she was so young.

Mother hugged us until we hurt. For a long time we were not allowed to float our twig boats in the stream, standing on one side of the bridge and leaning over, then rushing to the other side to see whose boat came through first.

There was something called an inquest.

At Christmastime the rector's wife and the Misses Bray gave a party for all the children. That's when we got new clothes. What we liked best were the sweeties and the oranges, although oranges made me cry. I couldn't say why; I don't know why. The rector's wife said, “Well, who's an ungrateful child?” The moon had turned to ice and the ruts in the road were frozen. We sat close to the fire on our thrones while Grandfather told us stories. The bells rang in the New Year; we were allowed a sip of blackberry cordial before we went up to bed. Sam stayed up later now that he was nearly grown. Mother told us to go straight to sleep and never to look at the moon through glass.

And there was a lady, long ago, who was walled up in the church. All she had were two little places where she could look out and be handed food. She must have been very bad. I asked my mother, “What did she do?”

“She was a holy woman.”

“What's a holy woman?”

“Someone good, someone who wants to be alone and think about God.”

“But why did she have to be shut up to do that?”

“I don't know. There are other stories.”

“Tell me the other stories.”

“You're too young.”

“I am five.”

“Yes, I know that,” and her face went sad. I asked Grandfather.

“Grandfather, do you know any stories about the lady who was walled up in the church?”

“None fit for your ears,” he said, and would say no more. Sam and Father worked every day in the fields. They got up before daybreak and came home at dusk. Our big brother had little time for us now. On Sundays he went roaming with his friends. Sometimes at night, if he came up and we were still awake, he made us shadow puppets on the walls, but mostly he just smiled at us in passing and patted our heads. We were old enough to scare off the birds by ourselves. We drove the small birds away from the turnip seeds and the rooks away from the peas. The rooks mocked us but the sparrows flew away from our clappers. “Away away, you black devils, away away! You eat too much, you drink too much, you carry too much away.”

When Grandfather worked at his carving, he would sometimes pause and touch my cheek. It was as though there were tiny hairs on the ends of his fingers, like the hairs on the bumblebee, collecting something from me that he might want for later use. I noticed he did not do this to Jonnie, but Jonnie was a boy and boys were not overfond of being touched.

Mother did mending and some fancy work for the Misses Bray. One day, she scrubbed us hard with yellow soap and took us with her. We saw a barn cat crossing the yard with a kitten in her mouth.

“It doesn't hurt them,” Miss Louisa said. ”The skin is very loose there, where she holds them.”

“Why is she moving them?”

“Oh, something has bothered her, she's decided they would be safer under the house.”

The kittens wore patches of brown and black and white; their eyes weren't open yet.

“Could we have one, Mammy? Could we have a little kitten?”

“They are too young to leave their mother,” Miss Amelia said.

“But when they are not too young? Could we have one then?”

I looked up earnestly from where my brother and I were squatting to admire the kittens not yet moved. I caught my mother and the two sisters exchanging glances.

“Please, Mammy. I'll take good care and Jonnie will help me.”

“We'll see.”

We said our goodbyes and walked away towards home, swinging our arms, my mother unusually silent, for she often sang when she was out on a walk with us.

That evening, after tea, they sat me down in my little chair, my throne.

“Hattie,” my mother said, “we have never made a secret of the fact that you are on loan to us from the good people at the hospital. We have loved you as our own little daughter and watched you grow. But now the time is coming when we must give you back.” Her voice broke and she sobbed into her apron.

“Why?” I said, frightened, looking from one to the other. Father shook his head and said nothing, Sam sat silent, but Grandfather lifted me up and set me on his knee.

“That's the rules, Hattie. You would have gone last year except you had the scarlatina, and the Governors waited to be sure you were fit again, wanted to give you some extra months here in the country before you were removed.”

“And will Jonnie go too?”

“No, Jonnie will stay here.”

“Why, why will Jonnie stay? I've been a good girl, I've been as good as Jonnie.”

“The rule doesn't apply to Jonnie, love, only to you.”

“Why only to me?”

“Because you were lent us, from the Foundling, but Jonnie — Jonnie comes from here.”

I slid down off Grandfather's knee.

“I won't go! I don't want to go!” I ran to my mother and pulled the apron from her face.

“Mam, don't make me go. I'll be gooder . . . I'll help. Don't make me go!”

“I can't change the rules, Hattie. I wish I could.”

“Is that why I can't have a kitten? I won't be here when they're old enough?”

She nodded.

“Perhaps,” said Grandfather, but without much conviction, “there will be kittens at the Foundling.”

I struck out, in my terror and helplessness, at the very people who loved me. I could not understand why they couldn't help me. I picked up Baby and threw her at Jonnie, who was allowed to stay. The doll hit him smack in the middle of the forehead and he began to cry. Good.

“I hate you all,” I cried, and rushed out the door, sobbing bitterly. Grandfather soon caught up with me. He took my hand and said nothing, just stood beside me until the worst of the storm had passed. Then he bent down, told me to climb onto his shoulders, and carried me home. Mother bathed my face with cool cloths, then took me up to bed. She brought Jonnie up; he had a lump on his head like his wooden egg.

“Hattie, tell your brother you are sorry for what you did.”

“I'm sorry,” I mumbled, but in my heart I wasn't — not even when he put his arms around me and cried that if I had to go he wanted to go too.

“You can't,” I said, turning away from him. “It's the rules.”

Only later did I understand that Jonnie stayed because he wasn't one of us, one of the Children of Shame.

The night before I left was a night of shooting stars. I was allowed to stay up — “She'll sleep on the way to London” — so Grandfather and I sat on the bench outside the cottage and waited.

“Hist!” he said. “There's one now.”

And there it was, streaking across the sky.

“How can you tell, Grandfather, when you can't see them?”

“I don't know. Something changes.”

“But they are so far away!”

“I can't explain it, I just know.”

Soon there were dozens of them, flashing this way and that; my head was on a swivel, trying to catch them all. Mother came out and put a big shawl across our shoulders; it was cool, now, at night.

“What will they think if I send you back with the sniffles?” From out in the wood an owl hooted — whoo whoo — and Grandfather said at last that it was time to go in.

“Remember this, Hattie,” he said. “Wherever we are, we are all under the same sky.”

As I lay in bed, too sad to sleep and cross that the whole family wasn't lying awake as I was, the smell of Grandfather's tobacco came through the open window; I knew that he was still there, sitting in the dark and listening to the mad dance of the stars up above.

The wagon came from Farnham and stopped in the square. I was dressed in my clean frock and a pair of shoes; my number was hung around my neck. I had to leave Baby behind — we were to bring no toys — but the Misses Bray had sent down a handkerchief baby, very tiny, with a face no bigger than a shoe button. Mother told me to tuck it in my pocket and perhaps Matron wouldn't notice. Father and Sam were off in the fields; they said their goodbyes at an early breakfast, and I stood at the door and watched them walk away, become smaller and smaller and then disappear. Jonnie was to walk down with Grandfather, Mother and me, but at the last minute he ran back inside and refused to come out. Mother was anxious that we not be late — she was coming with me — so she said we must leave him be and hurried me away.

The children from Farnham were already in the wagon, along with another foster mother.

“Climb up, climb up,” said the driver, as he let down some steps. I clung to Grandfather even after Mother was seated and holding out her hands.

“You must go now, pet. There's a good girl.” He lifted me up and my mother caught me.

Most of the children were crying and sobbing and I began to
cry as well, even though Mother was there beside me in her Sunday bonnet and shawl. She told me later that old Mrs. Shute, who was no longer right in the head, had heard the noise from her cottage nearby and come running out, convinced it was Judgement Day; she wanted to jump on and be taken to the place where the Lord would judge the quick and the dead. “'Tis the wailing wagon, 'tis the wailing wagon. Wait, wait for me!”

Small boys, not yet gone to the fields, ran after us shouting and throwing stones, and indeed we must have seemed comical, even grotesque, a great wagon full of children crying as though their hearts would break. A strange harvest, fruit of our fallen mothers' wombs, about to be delivered to the metropolis like a load of apples or melons.

More children climbed aboard in Dorking and in Guildford, where we stopped for bread and ale. Then, in the early afternoon, the sky darkened, streaks of lightning shot from it and thunder, which made us cry out in fear, and then a torrential downpour, as though even God were saying, “Don't do this. Turn back, turn back.” We were not very wet, for the wagon had a tilt, but the sound of the rain and the early darkness just added to our misery. One of the horses slid and stumbled in the muddy highway, and for a terrifying moment it seemed as if we might all be pitched out onto the road. The driver shouted and cursed and laid about with his whip, and then we were all right again.

There were other wailing wagons on the road that day but I didn't know it then. Small boys and girls, all frightened, all headed for the same place — cartloads of little bastards.

The great roar of London began even before we crossed the river, and now we were just one vehicle among many as we
moved through the clogged streets towards Bloomsbury. The rain had stopped, but the air did not smell fresh, the way it did in the country after a rainstorm. It smelled of coal fires and decay and dung, a smell I would never get used to. But soon enough, the great iron gates swung open and our wagon rolled inside. The tilt was pulled back, my mother and the other women were helped down, and then we were lifted away and brushed clean of straw. Matron and her assistants were there to greet us. I clung to my mother, and they had to pry me loose while I screamed, “Mam, Mam, I'll be good, I promise,” which set the others to crying as well. “Ma, Maa, Maaa,” we bleated as we were led away, washed and fed, dressed in long muslin nightgowns and put to bed early in our little iron cots, the girls in one wing, the boys in another. Tomorrow, Matron said, would be soon enough for uniforms.