Never Look Back (28 page)

‘No, I don’t want to disturb Mrs Milson,’ he said. ‘I’ll use the scullery. I have to go over to New Jersey today. Would you like to come with me and see the children?’

Matilda’s heart leapt with excitement, but instantly plummeted again when she thought of her mistress upstairs. ‘How can I, sir? You must know Madam’s angry with me, and then there’s Tabitha.’

He half smiled, his dark eyes twinkling. ‘Sometimes a retreat is better than a battle,’ he said.

She knew then that Lily had repeated everything to him, and judging by his jovial mood, he was staying neutral.

‘I can’t apologize because I meant what I said,’ she blurted out quickly before she lost her nerve. ‘But I am sorry if I sounded ungrateful for all you’ve both done for me.’

‘Matty!’ he exclaimed and shook his head. ‘As far as I’m concerned no apologies are needed. You made your point last night, now you must just stick to it. Mrs Milson will probably be
a little cool for a day or two, but she’ll come round eventually. Now, let me have that hot water and perhaps you’d get us both some breakfast. I want to get an early start.’

Matilda’s feelings during the long wait to meet Flynn again swung like a pendulum between elation and extreme anxiety, and it wasn’t all caused by him.

She was overjoyed to find the Five Points children happy and well, Sidney had greeted her rapturously, showing her how he and a couple of the other bigger boys were helping Job dig the pasture at the back of the Home for vegetables, and he even spoke kindly of Miss Rowbottom, saying she was ‘decent enough’ to them. All the children had gained weight in the two weeks they’d been there, their faces had lost the gauntness, they had learned to smile and to play.

Miss Rowbottom was winning with them. Though harsh, she wasn’t cruel, and she had got all the children into a regular routine in which all of them had to help with the household chores, and the afternoons were set aside for schooling. She admitted that she relied on Sidney a great deal, as the smaller ones looked up to him and followed his lead. Through him they had all accepted her standards of hygiene and none of them seemed inclined to want to run away. But her biggest worry was provisions, the children were all eating heartily now, and supplies were running low. Job’s suggestion that they should keep a cow, a few pigs and chickens and grow their own vegetables was a good one, for the children could help with this while learning about farming, and if successful it could eventually make the Home almost self-sufficient. But in the meantime money was needed not just for food, but to implement the Home farm with buying animals, materials to build pens and winter foodstuff.

Giles had promised Miss Rowbottom that this money would be raised by the church, and volunteers brought over to build pens and put up fences, but his main concern was collecting up more children before winter set in. Although Matilda was in total agreement that this was a priority, Flynn’s words about the people of Five Points troubled her, and she sensed that the next foray into the slums wasn’t going to be as easy as the first. But without telling Giles about Flynn, she couldn’t tell him what she
feared, and her anxiety increased as he made plans with Dr Kupicha for a second run.

Meanwhile, at home, Lily had been very cool with Matilda. On the evening when they got back from New Jersey she had barely spoken, and on Sunday afternoon when Matilda suggested she took Tabitha out for a walk, for the first time ever Lily asked her suspiciously where she was intending to go, and curtly reminded her to be back within an hour.

From Monday through to Thursday, Matilda was on tenterhooks. Would Giles suddenly choose Friday as the day to go to Five Points, and so cancel her usual afternoon off, and if so how could she let Flynn know she couldn’t meet him?

On Thursday morning a letter came from Dolly telling Matilda that her father was recovering from being attacked by two ruffians late one night, and that they’d just got word Luke was in prison for burglary and was almost certain to be transported to Australia. The only really happy note in the letter was that James, Matilda’s older brother, had come back to England and had been to visit them. Dolly insisted that she mustn’t worry about her father, and that though he might not regain enough strength in his arms to row his boat for a living, he was talking about buying a couple of rowing boats to hire out during the summer.

The letter was dated four months earlier, back in June, so by now her father might have fully recovered, Luke been tried and convicted and sent off to Australia, while James was probably aboard another ship to heaven knows where. Yet the news was very upsetting, and for the first time since saying goodbye to her father and Dolly after their wedding, she gave way to tears.

She had taken her father’s advice to ‘never look back’, but that didn’t stop her missing him and thinking about him and Dolly a great deal. Mail took such a long time to come from England, and that always emphasized how far away they were. She wished it wasn’t so, she would so much like to ask Dolly’s advice about Flynn, to know she could run to them if things went wrong here. She felt so very alone.

Tabitha was her consolation, and on Thursday afternoon when Lily went out to tea with a friend and Giles was off on his business somewhere, they were left alone. It was very cold so they stayed in the kitchen making jam tarts together.

‘Tell me about when you were a flower-girl’ Tabitha said much
later in the afternoon, when the baking was finished, the lamps trimmed and lit and they sat together by the stove in an easy chair.

Her fourth birthday was just a week away, yet she seemed much older, for she was a composed and thoughtful little girl. Matilda had taken to plaiting her hair now it had grown so long, and she wound it round the child’s head like a little crown. Although she couldn’t be described as pretty, her large dark eyes and the sweetness of her nature endeared her to everyone she met. She never stopped asking questions, and she never forgot anything she was told. It was around a month ago that she’d overheard Matilda speaking about selling flowers, and clearly she’d been waiting for an opportunity to question her further.

‘I used to get up very early in the morning and go to the market to buy some,’ Matilda explained. ‘Then I’d make them up into little posies and go off to sell them to people.’

‘That’s a nice job,’ Tabitha said. ‘Could I do that when I’m grown up? I like flowers.’

‘It wasn’t very nice when it was cold and wet.’ Matilda laughed. ‘Besides, you’ll be able to do something very much better than that because you are clever.’

‘But so are you.’ Tabitha looked up into Matilda’s face and frowned. ‘You can do sums, cook things, and you know about everything, just like Papa does. So why did you sell flowers then?’

The child’s belief in her was touching, and Matilda’s eyes prickled with tears. ‘I was very poor, and it’s hard to get a good job when you don’t have nice clothes. When you are five you’ll go to a real school, and you’ll learn all sorts of things I don’t know. But you won’t have to worry about having a job, you’ll marry a rich, handsome gentleman, and he’ll look after you.’

‘I don’t want anyone to look after me. I’ll be a doctor and make sick people well again.’

Matilda smiled. Dr Kupicha had come for supper earlier in the week and she guessed this was prompted by his visit and because he had shown Tabitha how his stethoscope worked.

‘That’s a really good thing to want to be, but ladies can’t become doctors.’

‘Why not? Ladies are kinder, they’d be better at it.’

Matilda thought she had a point. ‘Well, men kind of run things,’ she said, thinking of men like the Reverend Kirk-bright who considered all women were mindless. ‘But you’re a lucky girl because you have a papa who believes women are just as good as men. I’m sure once you’re grown up he’ll let you do whatever you want to.’

‘Then I shall be a doctor,’ Tabitha said with utter conviction.

It was only a few minutes later when her father came in. His face was red-raw from the cold wind and he had an excited glint in his eye. Matilda took his hat and coat and hung them up and added more coal to the parlour fire so he could warm himself in front of it.

‘I’ll make you some tea,’ she said. ‘Would you like a couple of Tabby’s jam tarts too?’

Tabitha was still in the kitchen, and when he moved in that direction, Matilda assumed he was going to speak to her. But instead he shut the door to the kitchen and turned back to Matilda.

‘We’re going in tomorrow,’ he said. ‘We’ve located ten children, all between three and six, and a baby who’s been left with another very young mother. It’s this young woman who has helped us, for she’s living in the same cellar with them all.’

‘Tomorrow!’ Matilda’s heart plummeted. ‘But it’s my afternoon off.’

‘You can have Sunday off instead,’ he said without even looking at her, and went over to the fire to warm his hands. ‘We’ll get them to Dr Kupicha’s by ten or eleven in the morning, on Saturday we’ll get them over to New Jersey. I think this time you ought to stay the night with the children because of the young baby. She’ll need to be bottle-fed. I’ll tell Mrs Milson I left you out at the Home and I’m going out the next day to check everything is all right.’

Matilda suddenly felt angry with him. He was as excited as a schoolboy, and he hadn’t for one moment considered that his wife was still cross with her, and this might make her even crosser, or that she might have arranged to do something on her day off. Sunday was an awful day to have off, unless you had family to visit, everything was shut!

Closing her eyes for a moment, she imagined Flynn. She could see his dark blue eyes, picture his thin shoulders hunched up
from the cold as he waited. When she didn’t turn up he would think she’d had second thoughts about him.

Yet vivid as that image was, and however painful it was to think she might never see him again, the image of a young baby in a cold, damp cellar was stronger.

‘Are you all right?’ Giles asked. He moved over to her and took her hands. ‘Don’t you want to come?’

All at once Matilda felt ashamed of herself. Giles was excited, but only because he was burning with desire to help these children. Why would he think of her needs? He didn’t even consider his own, only the health and comfort of those children.

‘I’m fine, just a bit shocked that you’ve got it arranged so quickly,’ she said, forcing herself to smile. ‘Of course I want to come.’

Chapter Eight

Giles and Matilda stopped to look up at the house in Cat Alley before going in. It had been half gutted by a fire during the summer and the upper floors and roof were gone, leaving only the corner brickwork and the chimney stack to show it had once been a three-storey house. But in Five Points that didn’t make it uninhabitable; a crude, tent-like structure had been erected over the remaining floor beams with an assortment of old doors and planks. Those upper-floor tenants who hadn’t perished in the fire had merely moved in with those on the ground floor.

It was a bitterly cold day, and as they picked their way gingerly over rotten floorboards down the narrow hallway, the wind was coming from all directions through gaping holes in the walls. The residents appeared to still be sleeping, as apart from loud snoring the only other sound was a baby’s weak cry coming from the cellar.

‘Down here,’ Giles said, stopping at the top of the cellar steps to light his lantern. ‘I’ll warn you now, Matty, it’s even worse than the other cellar. That’s the only reason no adults have taken it over.’

All at once Matilda realized that Giles didn’t tell her everything he did. To know his way round Five Points so well, he had to have been coming here alone on a daily basis, gaining information. She was astounded at his courage – a clerical collar might protect him in some places, but not here, if anything it was likely to single him out as a target. She had always thought him to be a very special kind of man, admired his compassion, dedication and easy-going nature, but until now she hadn’t realized he was brave too.

Giles went first, very cautiously, as some of the treads were missing. Matilda picked up her skirt to follow, but she had to breathe through her mouth because the smell was so vile.

‘Cissie!’ Giles called out once he was down to the bottom. ‘It’s me, Reverend Milson, with my friend Matty.’

As Matilda reached the bottom she gasped, in spite of telling herself she couldn’t be shocked after seeing Rat’s Castle, for the floor in front of her was seething with rats, devouring something which could only be a dead animal, or even an infant. The rats barely even turned to look at the lantern, much less scuttle away – clearly the food source was an unusually good one.

Water ran down the walls, it ran in streams round the mounds of debris on the ground and it was icy cold. Tearing her eyes away from the rats, Matilda saw the glint of small pale faces, huddled around a bigger girl at the back of the cellar. Their arms and legs were all entwined like plant roots, and like the rats, most of them didn’t even stir at the light. The girl was holding the crying baby to her shoulder, and another was at her breast feeding.

When Matilda saw this girl was even younger than herself, her eyes pricked with tears.

‘You’ve come then,’ the girl said in a flat voice. ‘I wouldn’t have given her me milk if I’d been certain.’

‘Which baby is yours then?’ Matilda asked.

‘This one.’ She inclined her head to the one crying on her shoulder. ‘Just hope there’s enough left for him an’ all.’

Matilda was even more moved to think the girl was feeding an orphan child at the expense of her own. ‘What are their names?’ she asked.

‘Pearl and Peter,’ she said. ‘Pearl’s ma was me friend. I always used to say she were a real pearl ‘cos she shared everything she got with me. So I called her little ‘un that when she died having her. You look after her proper for me, won’t yer? I’d keep her meself if I could, but it’s hard enough to keep body and soul together with one.’

Matilda had never heard anything so touching. Although it was too dark in there to see the girl clearly, she could make out that both babies were swaddled in blankets, and judging by the lusty sucking from the baby at the girl’s breast, and the angry cries of the other, they were both strong enough to survive if help was given now before winter set in. She turned to her master and caught hold of his arm. ‘Can’t we take Cissie and her baby
too?’ she whispered imploringly. ‘She could help in the Home and feed both of them.’