The girl smiled happily. “You’re like a little doll. I’ve never had a doll, but I’ve seen them. And you’re better than a doll, because you’re real, and dolls are only pretend. Will you be my friend? My name’s Jane, and I’m four. What’s yours?”
Peggy didn’t say anything, but her tears stopped. Jane sat quietly, cuddling Peggy, and laughing to herself as she watched the fight.
The boys were roughly the same weight, but Frank had the advantage of cold, calculated fury and his need to defend his sister. He glanced at the other boys who were egging them on, and knew instinctively that if he lost this fight, Peggy would never be safe from their torments.
After a few minutes Frank’s adversary was on the floor in a corner. “Truce. Give in. Hold ’im off,” he called out.
Frank turned to face the others. He raised his fists defiantly. “Anyone else want a go?”
No one stepped forward.
Frank swaggered over to the corner where Peggy sat on Jane’s knee. “Thanks,” he said. “She’s only two, and she’s scared. Her name’s Peggy and I’m Frank.”
The girl had a merry laugh, open features and piercing blue eyes. Frank liked her, he liked the way she was nursing Peggy, and he saw the contentment with which the little girl responded to the older one. He knew that he could trust her. “Let’s be friends,” he said.
Over the next few weeks, the reality of his mother’s death dawned upon Frank.
He would never see her again and pain inside reduced him to tears. Other boys laughed and jeered at him, but he only had to stick out his jaw and raise his fists aggressively, and they quickly backed off. Peggy did not seem as unhappy, because Frank was always there for her. Also, Jane had taken to her and petted and fussed over her, calling her “my little doll”. Jane was indisputably the leader among the girls, so her protection meant a good deal.
Jane was good for Frank also. He liked her with the instinctive affection that recognises a kindred spirit. He approved of her gentle ways with Peggy, and he also liked her naughtiness. She was always playing tricks and pranks, making everyone laugh. She would jump out from behind a door when the officer opened it, shouting “boo”, and then run away laughing. She was always caught and smacked, but nothing seemed to quench her high spirits. The day she climbed the water pipe in the playground and sat on the gutter and wouldn’t come down was one of the funniest things Frank could ever remember. Fat old Officer Hawkins had been on duty that day and got onto a ladder, then lumbered up it, with all the boys crowding around underneath, trying to see her knickers. When she finally got Jane down, she thrashed her soundly in the playground, and then again in the evening before bedtime, but Jane just rubbed her bottom, shook her curls defiantly, and did not seem to care.
The night times were the worst for Frank. Alone in a small, hard bed, with darkness all around, he sobbed silently for his sweet mother, whom he had adored with all the passion of boyhood. He missed the warmth of her body, he missed the smell of her skin, the touch of her hand, the sound of her breathing. He would creep over to Peggy’s bed and get in beside her, where the smell of her hair would numb his pain, and they would sleep together till morning. This became their one comfort in the first months of their life in the workhouse.
A year passed. After breakfast one morning, Frank and two other boys were taken to the Matron’s office. She said abruptly, “You are big boys now that you are seven, and we are taking you to the boys’ section today. Wait in the hallway, and the van will come for you at nine o’clock.”
The boys did not know what she meant, and the three of them sat on the bench, engaged in mock fights and ribaldry.
At nine o’clock, a man entered the front door and enquired, “Are these three to go?”
They were taken outside to a green van and told to climb in the back. It was all very exciting. They had never been in a van before, so they clambered in willingly, ready for adventure. The van started with a jerk, and they were thrown off the bench onto the floor. They shrieked with laughter. This was going to be a good day. A ride in a van! You wait till we get back and tell the others. The van stopped twice, and other boys of their own age climbed in. Soon there were eight boys, all shouting and skidding around the floor of the van as they turned corners, or pressing against each other to see out of the small back window in order to wave at people as they passed. Everyone turned to look, because motorised transport was comparatively unusual in those days. The boys felt very privileged, and infinitely superior to the people walking or travelling in horse-drawn carts and wagons.
Eventually the van stopped and the back door opened. Frank saw a very large, grey-stone building in front of him, and he did not much like the look of it.
“Where am I?” he asked.
“This is the boys’ section. You come here when you are seven and stay until you are fourteen,” said a tough-looking man, who was a workhouse officer.
“And where’s Peggy?” he demanded.
“I don’t know who Peggy is, but she’s not here.”
“Peggy is my sister and I look after her. My dad told me to.”
The officer laughed. “Well, someone else will have to look after her. There’s no girls allowed in here.”
Still Frank did not understand. He was unsure, frightened, and he felt like crying, but he wasn’t going to let the other boys see him, so he squared his shoulders, clenched his fists and put on a swagger as they were taken to the Master’s office.
The interview was brief. They were told that they must obey the rules, obey the officers at all times, and that if they did not do so they would be punished. The Master then said, “You will be given your duties and lunch is at one o’clock. You will start school tomorrow.”
Frank had wanted to ask about Peggy, but the Master so terrified him that he did not dare speak. He followed the officer to the dining hall with a feeling of panic in his heart that he had not known since the night when he had awoken to find his mother’s side of the bed empty.
Lunch in a huge refectory with about a hundred and fifty other boys, some of them very big, was terrifying and he could hardly eat. He ate half a potato and drank some water, but it nearly choked him, and he could not stop his tears from falling. Some of the bigger boys pointed at him and sniggered. None of the male officers showed any sympathy. The three new boys who had come together were all considerably more sober now. The fun and high spirits of the van ride evaporated as the reality of the situation began to dawn upon them. They had left the small world and comparative kindness of the nursery, where there were women officers and nurses, for the harsh, often brutal world of the workhouse proper, where, for the next seven years, they would encounter only male officers.
Back in the nursery, after breakfast, Peggy looked around for Frank, but could not find him. She looked in the lavatory and the washroom, but he was not there. She looked in the classroom and under the stairs, but he was not in those places either. Bewildered and frightened, she stood on the bottom stair hugging the banister, and stamped her feet. An officer came up to her, but she screamed and stamped her little feet even faster.
“Poor little thing,” remarked the officer to a colleague, “she’s going to miss her brother, they were very close. She’ll just have to get over it in her own time. There’s nothing we can do.”
Peggy was three years old and Frank had been with her all her life. She had not noticed the loss of her father, when she was eighteen months old, and had only the vaguest memory of her mother. But Frank was her world, her life, her security and she was utterly devastated. All day she stood on the bottom step, hugging the smooth, round balustrades, sometimes silent, sometimes sobbing. Sometimes she kicked the stairs and hurt her toe. Twice she wet herself, but still she wouldn’t move. Jane tried to talk to her, but Peggy shook her shoulders and screamed, “Go away.”