Stone Cradle (5 page)

‘I’ll ask them if you can stay here, at least,’ he said, and went out again.

I looked at Dei. At least?

Turned out it was more trouble than it was worth, apprehending us. I heard one say it to the other, as they hitched our
vardo
to the horse. They had to send for a cart from Eye for us and all our things, on account of the back axle. Then they took us to Whittlesey and we spent the night in the
vardo
in the yard and they fed us quite well with a sort of stew. In the morning, they said we were going down to Ramsey but they wouldn’t say why. Well, they weren’t going to bother with the
vardo
all that way, so they put us in a huge wagon with a load of others.

I don’t think I understood even then how bad it was, on account of how Dei and Dadus kept saying to me I wasn’t to worry. I should have realised, they said it so often, that worry was exactly what I should have done. But looking back on it, even though I had a baby, I was still something of a child. Dadus told me he had been
apprehended
four or five times and nothing had ever come of it. Quite cheerily, he said it.

The others in the big wagon were mostly loose women and tramps from round about, so we wouldn’t lower ourselves to speak to them. We went the back route, across Glass Moor, and they stopped at another village and picked up a Travelling family like us. We rokkered to them right enough and they said something
about how there’d been a load of trouble down at Pondersbridge and across the Fens on account of it being such a bad winter, and how the gavvers were going around picking up Travelling people all abouts. They said how they had been part of a big camp, and their horses were all tethered in the next field and a whole gang of local men had come and untied the horses and flapped umbrellas at them to frighten them away. And some of them had run away on foot but they hadn’t as they had old folk with them who were poorly.

We were in Ramsey a week, kept all together in a lock-up, a filthy, low place. I don’t care to describe it. I suppose it was then I began to realise this might be bad. There wasn’t a proper courthouse, so the magistrate held our hearing in the local pub one morning, in the top room. It’s all a bit strange to me now. A woman came and said how a
gipsy
had come to her door and she’d turned her away, and later her chickens had gone poorly and started staggering about, then another pair had come and offered to buy them off her cheap. I was only half listening. Then she said the second two was a young ’un and an old ’un and they had a baby with them, and she pointed at me and Dei. I wanted to laugh out loud, it was that foolish. I had never seen the woman in my life.

The magistrates called her the
prosecutrix.
When she went to the back of the room, she stood next to a big fella, and I saw he was the farmer that had spat at us as we sheltered underneath the oak tree.

There were so many other people in the room saying things that I lost track. I just held my Lijah. But I could feel Dei and Dadus either side of me getting stiffer on the bench in a way that meant they were upset. Then we were all standing, and the magistrate in the middle, a white-haired fella, was saying, ‘One week hard labour followed by five years in a reformatory,’ and Dadus was stepping forward with his hat clutched in his hands and tears were running down his face and he was talking about Lijah and saying how I was still a nursing mother and so young and all – and it was
only then I realised they were talking about me. I looked at Dei, and she was crying too, with her eyes closed and lips a-flutter, which meant she was praying.

We all sat down again, and the white-haired fella goes into a huddle with the others.

There is a way to get through being told something terrible, and that is not to believe it until it is proved to be true. At least, I thought so’s at the time, although I have since changed my mind and am more into plain speaking.

I think we were let out the room for a bit. I can’t rightly remember. I know that, some time that day, the lady who ran the public house came up to me with some bread and cheese and said I was nobbut a child myself and had not a scrap of flesh on me and if I was to look after that babby I needed feeding up. I gave some to Dei and Dadus but they wouldn’t take it.

We were back in the room then. It had a lot of windows and a low ceiling. They probably had wedding parties and such when it wasn’t for the magistrates. The white-haired fella said how he had been moved by what my Dadus had said and the fact as how Dadus had been a licensed hawker and had not been in trouble before spoke something. But he could not let people like us think it was all right to go around poisoning people’s chickens just whenever we felt like it. But he was mindful of how to take an infant from a nursing mother was not right. As such, I was getting a fine. Our
vardo
and things would be sold to pay for it if we did not have no money. But he had to make an example of all miscreants and because of that Dei would get four weeks’ hard labour, not two, and I understood she was doing my hard labour for me and I started to cry but Dei and Dadus were quite calm by then because I wasn’t going to the reformatory neither. Dadus got a fine for not being licensed.

All I understood was that I wasn’t going to be put away and Lijah would not be taken from me. I didn’t really understand about
Dei. She was being sent to the House of Correction in Huntingdon, they said. Dadus and I would have to stay in Ramsey to sort out our fines.

When we got outside, it was cold and sunny. There was the same wagon waiting. Dei went forward and I went to go with her, but Dadus put his hand on my arm and said, ‘No, Lem, you and me are staying. It’s just Mother is going.’ And I stood holding Lijah and staring at her as she climbed up. There were windows in the wagons, and I waited for her face to appear at one, but it didn’t, which was perhaps for the best.

‘When we’ve sorted out the fines we’ll go down to Huntingdon and find somewhere to stop until she gets out,’ Dad said.

Hard labour
,
our Dei? ‘They won’t make her lift rocks or anything, will they?’ I asked Dadus but he wouldn’t reply.

C
annon balls. It wasn’t rocks, we found out, it was cannon balls.

We were lucky, and managed to get the fine paid up in a fortnight. Dadus found some local Lees who helped us out a bit, and we stopped with them while we came to an arrangement. They paid our fine and then kept our
vardo,
which was a beautiful bow-top, while we set off on the horse for Huntingdon. They would keep the
vardo
for us until we returned with Dei and paid them back. We were that relieved, as to have sold it outright would have been the end of us.

We had a little money left over after we’d paid the fine, so when we got to Huntingdon, we tried to get a room at an inn called The Sun. I could tell the inn was called The Sun, as I could see the sign swinging in the wind and the bright yellow sun a-painted on it, with pointy rays. There was sleet falling, at the time.

They turned us away, even though we could see there were no horses in their stable, but the woman came out after us and said there was another place at the bottom of St Peter’s Hill that took
what she called
all
sorts.
It was worth us trying, she said, on account of it being close to the House of Correction. She didn’t like to think of the baby having nowhere to lay its head what with the sleet coming down an’ all. We thanked her right enough.

The other place had a sign that was a dog raised on its hind legs snarling at a bone that was flying past in the beak of a big black bird. The downstairs bar was dark and crowded and there was a terrible noise of shouting coming from upstairs, and the young man who spoke to us said there were eight to a room but only six in one of them so we could have that. At this, Dadus told some story of how Lijah was awake all night and the young man would get complaints in the morning and wasn’t there a shed or something out back, next to the stables? He looked at us a bit funny but of course we could have told him that we would rather stop by the horses than with a bunch of stinking, drunken
gorjers
any day. We didn’t like paying for it when there were any number of stables in the town we could have slept in for free if we’d left the sneaking in until dark, but considering the position we was in we could not risk getting into trouble. Dei would be depending on us.

As it turned out, there was a shed with a hayrick behind the stables which was as cosy as anything and we saw to the horse first and then the young man gave us some blankets and a talking-to about not lighting a fire, as if we were stupid. Dad went off and came back with the good news of having found a baker’s shop where they would give us bread each day if he was there two hours before dawn to help unload the furnaces. And this piece of luck was so large that I felt almost cheerful as we settled down at the bottom of the hayrick and ate fresh rolls, and talked about how the next day we would queue at the prison with the other relatives and send a parcel of rolls in to Dei. We talked about how pleased she’d be to get them.

The next day, after Dadus had done his shift at the baker’s, we set off for the prison.

There was a right old crew queuing at the gate of the House of Correction. You’ve never seen such a bunch in your lives. There was the bony women with their bony children waiting to see the Debtors, and the loose women with their faces painted and even some gentlefolk, standing to one side, who were let in first, of course. Dadus said how he heard one say his brother was in there for
sedition.

‘What’s that?’ I asked quietly.

‘Talking about not liking high-up folk,’ Dadus replied.

I had never been near such a place before, and it felt strange to see the whole world there, and to think that such calamity could happen to anyone. It made me feel a bit better, I suppose, like even high-up folk had their bad luck sometimes. Maybe that was one of the reasons why I stayed hopeful, even then; why I was not on my knees in fear.

After a while, we were let into a yard. It was rutted and muddy but the mud was frozen so at least we weren’t ankle deep. Some of the people who were waiting were squatted against the wall but it was so cold I had to keep moving, up and down, bouncing Lijah on my arm. One of the loose women came over and started pulling faces at my Lijah over my shoulder, to play with him. I was for putting up with it, but then she lifted a finger to touch his cheek with her long scratchy nail. I turned away, for I would not have my child touched by such a woman. She cursed me under her breath and went back to squat against the wall.

I cradled Lijah’s head with my hand, and kissed him, and whispered to him, ‘Well, at least we’re out of the wind now, aren’t we
chavo
?’

We waited and waited and Lijah began to cry on account of wanting feeding. I didn’t want to leave Dadus but I couldn’t feed Lijah in the yard with all the hungry eyes that would stare at me.
Eventually, he’d had my knuckle to chew and all the dandle I could manage and I said to Dadus, ‘Dadus, I’ll have to go off and feed him,’ and he said, ‘Right you are, Lemmy.’

So I left Dadus in the yard and slipped out the door past the others still waiting in the wind and went and found a lane and a fence with a gap. It was freezing, but for all that it was nice to be out of that yard for a few minutes. It was just me and Lijah, and the good feeling of making him completely happy, his little mouth a-pulling at me, and his fist a-clenching ‘round my finger.
Biti.
Little. It was all I could think, looking down at him. You are so
biti.
I let the shawl around his head drop back so’s I could stroke his fine baby hair while he fed.

I winded him, then he was asleep on my shoulder for a bit, and I think I must’ve dozed a bit myself with my back against the wooden fence, for I started awake and the light felt different, so I sorted myself out then hurried back to the yard.

There was no sign of Dadus, and it was only by asking that I found out he had gone in. I thought the warder might not let me past but he took pity on me and I found Dadus was still queuing but in a stone corridor now.

Came our turn, right enough, and we went into a room with a faraway ceiling, where the windows were so high up too you couldn’t see out of them even if you stood on a table and jumped. There was a man with a big book behind a desk and when we told him who we were there to see he frowned, still looking down at the book. He asked us to repeat the name. Without saying anything, he got up, slammed the book shut and left the room by another door.

Dadus and I glanced at one another.

Eventually he came back and said we’re to go away again, but that we’re to come back the next day, only not to join the big queue in the yard but to go to a side door. After that he wouldn’t say nothing, only opened his book again and made it clear he wanted us to tell the next one to come in.

‘What d’you think’s happened to Dei?’ I asked Dadus, as we walked away from the prison, and I knew he thought it bad for he snarled, ‘Leave it, Lemmy,’ then strode off down the dirt road that led to our lodgings, leaving me to hurry after, clutching Lijah to me.

I tried not to think on’t, but that night I lay awake, and heard by the silence next to me that Dadus was awake too, there on the straw. In the gloom, I could see the shape of his broad back. He was turned away from me, and I felt frightened then, frightened of everything.

The next morning, soon as Dadus was back from the baker’s, we went back to the House of Correction and found the side door and rang the bell, and at the little tinkle of it my Lijah jerked his head.

The warder who opened the door to us was a cheery sort of fella. He had a beard that ran from one ear, down to the chin, then up to the next ear, just on the edge of the face like, with no moustache, so’s it looked like his beard was a strap that was holding the rest of his hair atop his head. He took us down a narrow corridor and into a little room that was the warders’ room. One wall of it was shelved and on the shelves was jars of beer. In the other corner was a barrel, with two other warders sat either side.

The two other warders were reading a newspaper and looked up at us, unfriendly like. Normally, I would’ve stared back, but I dropped my gaze, as I knew how important it was that we were on good terms with them so that we could find out what had happened to Dei.

Dadus was staring at the jars, and said to the bearded one, ‘D’you not lay your jars on the side, on account of the sediment?’ I realised he was being friendly too, for the same reason.

‘The shelves are not deep enough,’ the warder replied.

‘That’s a fine load of beer, anyroad,’ Dadus said, ‘You fellas must have a fine time in here,’ and the seated men’s faces cracked into smiles.

The one with the beard explained how’s they were allowed to brew the beer that got sold to the prisoners, and how it was only the most trustworthy of them did such a thing. He made it sound like an honour, but one of the seated ones gave the game away by saying, ‘We wouldn’t be able to keep our rent up, otherwise, not on what the County give us, you know. You’d be amazed if we told you how little it was.’ Later, Dadus explained to me how the men were paid very bad and that was accounting for how they were often the lowest sort and behaved in an evil way towards the prisoners sometimes, but I still don’t think it makes it right.

Then, the two seated fellas stood up and put on their top hats and buttoned their jackets as to leave, and the bearded one said, ‘Bateman, should I get the nurse to take these two down?’ and the other said, ‘She’ll not be allowed to leave the sickroom, you’d best do it yourself, but not just yet as she’ll still be attending to them.’

Third one said, ‘Best leave it ’til she’s done.’ And two of them went out.

At the mention of a nurse, I saw Dadus go pale and I felt myself start to sweat and I took the liberty of sitting down where one of the other wardens had been sitting – luckily the bearded fella didn’t seem to mind.

‘Can you tell me what has happened to my wife?’ Dadus asked the question as casual as if he was asking the hour of day.

Bearded fella looks surprised. ‘Did they not say?’

Dadus shakes his head.

I was glad I was sitting down then, for what the fella said was so horrible I think my knees would have given had I been standing.

There had been an accident. Both her legs were broken. It happened on the tread-wheel, the second week she was here. The first week of hard labour was always shot drill, the fella said. There was never enough room for all the hard labourers on the tread-wheel, so everyone got put on shot drill for a bit when they first arrived.

‘What is shot drill?’ my Dadus asked, and I could hardly believe how he could keep his voice so steady.

So the bearded fella told us and afterwards I wished he hadn’t.

Shot drill was where you took a cannon ball from a pile in the yard, stacked up against a wall, and you carried it over to make another pile, and it was a pyramid, and there had to be ninety-one cannon balls in each pyramid. And if there weren’t you did it again.

I imagined my tiny, little Dei counting as she staggered across the yard in the bitter cold, ‘
Axis
…
nevis
…
tay
…
enin
…’ I imagined her counting to stop herself from thinking of the pain of it.

I thought of how she must have been relieved when they told her a place was found for her on the tread-wheel.

It was on account of the water, the warder told us, that the accident had happened. He didn’t agree with the use of water on tread-wheels. He had been a warder up at Kirkdale where they had the biggest tread-wheel in the country and they used it to grind wheat and some others used theirs for weaving. But ours is used to turn water, he said, and that makes the steps a-slippery and accidents are not uncommon, I’m afraid.

It was only later that I thought, I never asked him what the turning of water was for. I had these strange thoughts of rivers and streams being turned over and over, in the way you might air an eider, but for no good reason – and my Dei having been crippled on account of this turning of water for no good reason. And that, of course, was even worse than her being crippled for the milling of wheat.

I think he must have realised what bad news this was for us, because he said then, ‘I’ll just leave you for a minute and go and see if the nurse will have you,’ and went outside.

Dadus came and sat next to me and we couldn’t even look at each other. He put his hands over his face, and I knew he was
struggling with himself for my sake. And I felt our lives fall away from us, like water through my fingers, for whatever happened after this we would never be the same as before.

After a while, one of the ones with a top hat came back in. He took six of the beer jars down from the shelves, one by one, and stacked them by the door.

Dadus said to him, lightly like, ‘So how do accidents happen on the tread-wheel, then?’

‘Folk slip, go under,’ was all his reply, then he started saying how we shouldn’t believe everything the first fella had said on account of him having once been a felon himself and that was how he thought himself an expert on the tread-wheel. He claimed to have been a warder elsewhere but it was well known that he had served three months for bastardy up at Kirkdale and only got out when he had paid the four pound fine to the workhouse for the upkeep of the child.

This took my mind off our current anxiety, for a bit, as it astounded me to think that a man could go to prison for the getting of a child and I couldn’t help thinking how much I would have given all the gold in the world to have taken my Dei off that tread-wheel and put there a certain man who shall remain nameless.

Top-hat fella went out again, with two of the jars of beer, and we sat some more for what seemed like a long while. Lijah was asleep the whole time. Eventually, Dadus got up and went over to the small, square window in the wall next to the shelves of jars. He stared out of it for a while, and the light on his face showed me how old he was, and I thought,
he looks an age older than he did this morning.