The girls were standing in the dining hall after breakfast and everything was ready.
The Mistress entered. “Right, now. Form a line and march out quietly. We will proceed to the station.”
The girls stepped forward.
“Not you. Stay where you are.”
The Mistress pointed at Jane. The other girls marched out.
Sick disappointment took possession of Jane. She saw the last girl leave, as she stood in her place. She heard footsteps echo down the corridors and doors banging. Then silence.
Now it was that Jane’s heart finally broke. Hitherto her suffering had been physical. Now the torture was mental, emotional, and spiritual. The utter desolation of rejection was hers to savour. Her daddy was not going to take her away. Her daddy did not love her, or want her. That was why she was there in the workhouse. He had put her there because he did not want her and she would never see him again. She knew it in her heart.
Throughout the long weeks, alone but for the porter’s wife who brought her food twice a day, Jane lived with this bitter knowledge. She had nothing to do, day after day; no books, no toys, no pencils and paper. She cried herself to sleep alone in the dormitory; ate alone in the huge refectory; went out alone in the yard (euphemistically called a playground) and walked around the walls. She spoke to no one except the porter’s wife, twice a day.
The other girls returned, sun-browned and happy. Jane heard stories of the seaside and paddling and catching crabs and building sandcastles. She didn’t say a word.
The knowledge of rejection, of being unwanted, is more terrible to live with than anything else, and a rejected child will usually never get over it. A physical pain entered Jane’s body, somewhere in the region of the solar plexus, which ached all the time and from which she would never be free.
Unknown to Jane, Sir Ian and Lady Lavinia had visited the children’s holiday camp. They had played with the children by the sea, organised races for them across the sands, hired a man with a donkey to give them rides and read stories to them in the evening. They were very happy with their work.
At the end of the day, Sir Ian asked the Master: “I have not seen that pretty child who came up to thank me when I first met you. Where is she?”
The Master was nonplussed, but his resourceful wife stepped forward with a curtsey. “The child has an aunt, sir, who always takes her on holiday each year. I assure you, sir, that at this very moment the child is playing happily on a beach somewhere in Devon.” She curtsied again.
“I am glad to hear it,” said Lady Lavinia, “but for my part, I am sorry not to see the child. My husband spoke most highly of her.”
After they had left, the Master said. “What a blessing we did not bring that wretched child. If she had gone running up to that man in front of his wife, and clung to him and called him Daddy, heaven knows what trouble it would have stirred up.”
And on this occasion – who can tell? – the Master may have been right.
FRANK
Give me a boy for the first five years
of his life, and I will make the man.
Frank had but a dim recollection of his father. He remembered a tall, strong man, whom he held in awe. He remembered his big voice and huge, rough hands. He could remember once tracing the veins on the back of this vast hand with his little fingers, and looking at his own smooth white skin and wondering if he would ever have hands like that. To be like his father was his only ambition and he worshipped him. In the later, sadder years of his childhood he tried desperately to remember what his father had been like, but a phantom that comes and goes could not have been more elusive and only the dimmest memory remained.
He remembered his mother much more clearly; his sweet, gentle mother who was never strong because she was always coughing. He remembered the sound of her voice as she sang songs to him and played with him. Above all, he remembered her cuddles as she put him to bed and lay down beside him.
In the winter his mother hardly went out of doors because of her weak chest and his father would say, as he went off to work, “Now you look after your mother while I’m away, Frank lad. I’m relying on you to take care of her for me.” And Frank would look up at his god with big solemn eyes and accept the task as a sacred duty.
When a tiny baby was born – so tiny that everyone said she would not live – Frank was four years old. He had been an only child all his life and could not conceive of any other child entering his world. Many boys of that age become very jealous of a new-born baby, but not Frank. He was mesmerised by this tiny creature, hardly bigger than a teacup, who could move and cry, and who needed so much care. Not for a moment did he resent the hours of attention given to the baby. In fact, he liked to help. The most fascinating thing of all was to watch his mother breast-feeding the baby, and he tried never to be far away when this mysterious and beautiful ritual was going on. He kept very quiet, crept close to his mother and watched, spellbound, as the baby sucked and the milk oozed from the nipple.
The baby was premature and sickly, and for a long time her life hung in the balance. His father said to him, many times: “You’ve got a special job to do, young man. You’ve got to look after your little sister. That’s your job now, lad.”
So Frank watched over her, and hardly went out to play with the other boys in the court, because he was so busy looking after his little sister.
The baby didn’t die. She gained strength and became quite robust, although she always remained small. She was christened Margaret but was called Peggy, because Margaret seemed too long a name for such a small baby. After the christening Frank’s father said, “You done a good job there, son; and I’m proud of yer.”
Then catastrophe struck. In those years typhoid was raging through East London. His huge, strong father, who had never known a day of illness in his life, was hit by the disease and died within a few days. His mother, who had never been strong, was spared and so was the baby. His mother went out to work, cleaning offices. She left home in the early hours each morning, and again each evening, leaving Frank to look after Peggy, who was by now a toddler.
One day Frank ran home from school (he didn’t think much of school, regarding it as a waste of time) to take over the domestic responsibilities from his mother, so that she could go out to her job. It was cold and she was coughing badly, but she went nonetheless. Money had to be earned, or they would be homeless. Frank did as he had so often done before: he put some wood that he had found on his way home from school onto the fire, made some tea for himself and Peggy, played with her and, as the fire was dying, he undressed her and put her to bed, creeping in beside her for warmth.
In the middle of the night he woke up, aware that something was wrong. It was pitch-black, and the quiet was terrifying. He could hear Peggy breathing, but that was all. Something was missing. Nausea seized him as he realised that his mother was not there. In a panic he felt all over the bed, but the side where his mother usually slept was empty. He called out in a small voice so as not to wake Peggy, but there was no reply. He crept out of bed and found the matches. He struck one and the flame leaped up, lighting the whole room momentarily. His mother was not there. Blinded by tears, he crept back into bed and held Peggy in his arms.
The cold had badly affected his mother as soon as she stepped outside. She was asthmatic and bronchitic, and had been fighting off a chest infection for several weeks. She had a mile to walk to the bus, and the freezing mist rising off the river had got into her lungs. She was thankful for the brief respite of sitting in the bus, but by the time she got to the building where she was employed, she felt more dead than alive. She went to the cleaning cupboard to get out her things, but the bucket felt so heavy that she could hardly move it. She asked permission to make herself a cup of tea, saying she would feel better with something warm inside her. The tea was indeed comforting, but the building was cold and she sat shivering in the basement, pulling her shawl around her shoulders and coughing. One by one the office workers left and she found herself alone.