Alone Beneath The Heaven Read online

  ‘Sarah Brown.’

  She was brought sharply from the satisfying vision of watching Mother Shawe galloping by the side of the car, tears of remorse streaming down her shaking jowls, and into the stark reality of the classroom where, she now realized, all eyes were trained on her.

  ‘Everyone else has their book open and ready to start the lesson as I have requested, pray tell why you are different? Is there something about you we don’t know, something that makes you special perhaps?’

  The sarcasm was heavy and biting, and out of all proportion to the offence, but as Florence Shawe glared at the goldenhaired girl in front of her she wasn’t seeing a ten-year-old child, but the epitome of youth and beauty and bright tomorrows; everything, in fact, that had been denied her. Not that she had ever rationalized her resentment of Sarah in so many words, even in her mind, and if someone had told her the real reason for her persecution of this child she wouldn’t have accepted it, but it was true none the less. And Sarah wasn’t frightened of her, that was another thing that she found almost impossible to accept. She had used the formidable weapon of fear to cover her own insecurity and inadequacies with the children all her life, and to great effect, but with this particular child it was useless. And it wasn’t to be borne.

  ‘Well? I’m waiting for an answer, miss.’

  The class had relaxed as Sarah had whipped open her book and found the appropriate place with Rebecca’s prompting, but now, as the Mother’s tone made it clear she wasn’t going to let the matter drop, the atmosphere tightened again, most of the faces expressing anticipation. Not that any of her classmates had anything against Sarah personally, apart from Mary Owen that was, but any delay in starting the dreaded arithmetic was a bonus.

  ‘I didn’t hear you.’

  The light, bell-like voice was another acute irritation. How, Florence had asked herself countless times, could a child born in the gutter, as this one undoubtedly had been, possess such a voice? Admittedly she had been under the influence of Matron and the Mothers for the whole of her life, unlike some of their children who came in at a later stage of their development when they had picked up the dialect of the northern streets, but that still didn’t explain the - her mind balked at the word pure, and substituted clear - tone of that voice.

  ‘I didn’t hear you, what?’

  ‘I didn’t hear you, Mother Shawe.’

  ‘Everyone else heard me perfectly well as far as I am aware. Cissie, did you hear me?’ A small mousy girl nodded quickly. ‘And Kate, how about you?’ Another bobbing head. ‘So why not you, miss? I repeat, what makes you different?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Nothing, what?’

  ‘Nothing, Mother Shawe.’

  ‘Well for once I agree with you, Sarah Brown. It was your good fortune to come under the care of Matron Riley at an early age, and for that you ought to be down on your knees thanking God every night, because left to your own devices you would soon go astray, do you hear me? You are nothing, girl, worthless - you always have been and you always will be. You came from the gutter and to the gutter you’ll return—’

  ‘I didn’t.’ A voice in her head was telling Sarah to keep quiet and let the tirade pass, but she ignored it.

  ‘You didn’t?’ There was a note of vicious scorn in Florence’s voice as she baited the angry child facing her with blazing eyes. ‘Oh well, this is news indeed.’ She paused, her gaze flicking over the sea of small faces watching them with rapt attention, before she said, ‘Perhaps you’d care to enlighten us all as to your beginnings then, miss?’

  ‘I . . . I—’

  ‘Oh come, come, don’t be shy.’ The venom emanating from the scrawny body was tangible and had caused an electric silence no one dare break. ‘You obviously know more about it than me. Maybe you come from the gentry? Is that it, Lady Sarah?’

  Perhaps if the story she had told herself so often hadn’t been at the forefront of her mind, or if Florence Shawe hadn’t hit a nerve that seemed to confirm the dream, or if the day had started better - possibly then she might have kept quiet. But before she could stop herself Sarah was speaking out loud the words that opened Pandora’s box and changed her world for ever, destroying the innocence of childhood and revealing the world in all its ugliness.

  ‘My mam and da wanted me, they did, but I was stolen away.’ Her chin was up and she was facing the woman who loathed her, thrusting away Rebecca’s hands as they tried to pull her back down in her seat. ‘But they’ll come to get me one day and then you’ll see. They live in a big house, a great big house, and there’s white linen tablecloths and silver knives and forks, and a maid that answers the door—’

  ‘That’s enough.’

  ‘It’s true, it is.’ Sarah appealed to the rest of the class who were sitting with open mouths, swinging her arms wide and pivoting on the heels of her coarse leather boots. ‘My mam’s looking for me—’

  ‘Your mother left you in a filthy toilet to die of exposure when you were just a few hours old.’ Florence didn’t shout, she didn’t have to. ‘You were abandoned, do you hear me, not stolen. There is no big house, no maid - she didn’t want you.’

  Sarah knew she had to deny it. Mary was there, and Jane, she couldn’t let them believe such lies, but there was a sickness in her that was rising up in her throat and making her ears ring, and she couldn’t get the words past it.

  ‘You were left there and you were found, and brought to the foundling nursery that same night by the constable.’ Florence was growing uncomfortable now, there was something in the child’s face that was frightening and she found herself wishing she had never started this. But Sarah always brought out the worst in her, she told herself irritably. The child set out purposely to annoy her wherever possible. It was easy to bring the excuse to mind; she had used it often enough in the past when the little quiet voice of conscience had prevented sleep from coming.

  What would Matron say when she found out one of her Mothers had revealed confidential information? This last thought had the power to make her voice flat when she said, ‘So we’ll have no more of this storytelling, Sarah, and I think you’d better—’

  ‘Shut up, you.’ Sarah’s face was as white as a sheet, her blue eyes dilated and round. ‘You’re a rotten liar, that’s what you are, a dirty rotten liar.’

  ‘Sarah.’

  ‘My mam’s looking for me—’

  ‘We’ll talk of this later; children, page twenty please—’

  ‘And I wasn’t left in a filthy toilet, I was stolen and I had a silver rattle.’

  ‘Sarah, sit down at once.’ Florence had advanced to the child’s side with the intention of pushing her down in her seat, but something in Sarah’s face stayed her hand and actually caused her to retreat a step or two. ‘I shall take you to Matron if we have any more of this.’

  ‘I don’t care, I’ll tell her what you said and that you’re a liar.’

  ‘You’re being very silly. You know that, don’t you? Now, sit down and begin your work.’

  The ringing in her ears was worse, cutting out all conscious thought, and Sarah was as surprised as Florence when she found herself clinging to the teacher’s bony back as she tore and bit and kicked for all she was worth. She was aware of screaming, and a resultant pandemonium that was all noise and frantic movement, but even when she was hauled off the now prostrate figure beneath her flailing limbs she continued to fight, until the red mist before her eyes gave way to a deep consuming blackness that took her down and down.

  ‘Sarah? Sarah, lass, open your eyes. Come on now.’

  Sarah recognized the voice as belonging to Mother McLevy, her favourite Mother, who was big and buxom and had a northern accent so thick you could cut it with a knife. Most of the other Mothers tried to adopt the pseudo-upper-class intonation Matron favoured for her staff, but Mother McLevy was a northerner born and bred, and proud of it, besides being something of a rebel to boot.

  She was sitting by the side of Sarah’s bed in the in
firmary, and had been for nearly an hour despite the heavy cold that had confined her to bed earlier in the day, and her faded blue eyes were full of pity for the young girl lying so deathly still in the narrow iron bed. What a to-do, and all because of Florrie Shawe’s evil tongue, the wicked old bitch. What on earth had possessed her to go for the bairn like that? She shook her head at herself - why ask the road you know? The mere sight of the bairn had been like a red rag to a bull from the moment Sarah had left the confines of the foundling nursery and moved into the main house. Sarah was too beautiful, that was the trouble, and Florrie couldn’t stand it.

  There were some, like herself, who had come in as Mothers from a life outside. A life that had been full - a darn sight too full in her case, she thought wrily, bringing her to a place where she needed food and shelter and didn’t mind working all hours of the day and night for the security it represented. And then there were the other sort, like Florrie. Born and raised in the workhouse, Florrie had been institutionalized from birth, and looking like she did there’d been no man prepared to take her on. So, to Florrie and others like her, the Home was a step up from the workhouse and to be grabbed at, but resentment and frustration were always there just under the surface. But this was the last time Florrie was going to vent her bitterness on this bairn, by all that was holy it was, Maggie promised herself grimly. She’d see to that.

  ‘Mother McLevy?’ Sarah’s whisper brought Maggie’s eyes to her face. ‘I feel funny and . . . and my head hurts.’

  ‘Aye, I know, lass.’ There’d be a darn sight more than her head hurting before Matron was finished with her, Maggie thought grimly. That particular lady wouldn’t let a little thing like provocation or justice interfere with her punishment at such a severe and public flouting of her rules. The reflection prompted her to say, gently, ‘Whatever made you do it, lass?’

  ‘She said . . . she said . . .’

  ‘Aye, I know what she said, lass.’

  There was silence for a full minute and then the whisper came again, ‘Mother McLevy, it isn’t true, is it, what - what she said?’

  Now how did she answer that? Maggie took one of the limp hands lying so still either side of the small shape and thought rapidly. She was under no illusion as to why Matron had sent for her to sit with the child. The old biddy was sharp-eyed and cunning with it, she knew the little lass would accept the truth from her when she might continue to fight against it if anyone else spoke to her. Aye, she was a cunning old biddy, the Matron, but she ruled her little empire with an iron hand and it wouldn’t do the lassie any good if she was to lie to her now, much as she’d like to. Matron wanted the lid placed back very firmly on this can of worms. The smooth running of the institution had been affected this morning, and order and discipline must be re-established immediately, whatever the cost to the individual.

  ‘Is it?’ Sarah’s eyes were beseeching her to lie. ‘My mam did want me, didn’t she? She didn’t try to do away with me like Mother Shawe said, and leave me in - in . . .’

  ‘Look, you listen here, lass.’ All right, the truth had to be told, but how she did it was up to her, and a little embellishment after all the lass had gone through was only human.

  ‘The fact is, you were found in a public place, an’ that don’t suggest to me that you was tried to be done away with, now then. How you got there, an’ who put you there, no one knows; not Flor—Not Mother Shawe, not no one. Life was hard for a lot of folks a few years back. There was the General Strike of 1926 an’ the Depression. I know whole families who were put out on the streets to starve, an’ starve they did, bairns too. Perhaps your mam was tryin’ to save you from that, eh? You considered that?’

  Sarah shook her head, tears seeping out of her eyes as she kept her gaze fixed on the old woman by the side of the bed.

  ‘You think it’s hard here, lass, you want to see what I’ve seen out there.’ Maggie inclined her head towards the window. ‘Why do you think half the bairns in here have their mams or other kin visit ’em of a Saturday, eh? It’s not that they’ve got no family, but their folks can’t afford to have ’em.’

  ‘I don’t have no one come to see me.’

  ‘No, I know you don’t, lass.’

  ‘Even Mary Owen’s mam comes.’

  Maggie thought of the big blowsy woman who worked the roughest streets of Sunderland and was notorious amongst even the foulest-mouthed sailors, and shook her head slowly. ‘You don’t want the likes of her visitin’ you, now then.’

  She did, right at this minute she did, and that humiliating self-knowledge, when added to the leaden sorrow and despair that was a burning pain in her chest, was unbearable. Her mam hadn’t wanted her. Whatever Mother McLevy said, her mam hadn’t wanted her, and she’d left her in a dirty old lavatory somewhere, where anyone could have taken her. She curled up into a little ball in the narrow bed, jerking her hand from Maggie’s and stuffing one fist into her mouth to stop herself screaming out loud. She wanted to die. If she prayed right now for the Lord Jesus to let her die, was that like taking your own life and a mortal sin? She didn’t care anyway, she wanted to die. She should have died ten years ago, that’s what Mother Shawe had said.

  ‘Come on, hinny, don’t take on so. You believe what you want to believe, about your mam an’ things. No one knows for sure anyway.’

  But they did. Sarah stared straight into the round fat face as she gnawed on her knuckles. Mother McLevy was being kind but she wasn’t talking like she usually did, her voice was too quiet and soft, and that alone told Sarah that this old friend of hers, the only adult in her small world she had any real affection for, believed what Mother Shawe had said. It was the truth. A sorrow so ageless and elemental as to be unexplainable filled her mind, and she felt herself shrinking, reducing down into a tiny quivering speck, into nothing. She shut her eyes tightly but the feeling was in her head, her bones, and she couldn’t escape it.

  ‘How about if I go an’ get you a sup of tea, eh? An’ after you’ve had that, I’ll come along with you to Matron an’ we’ll face her together?’ Maggie’s eyes were soft with pity but her voice was brisk now, it wouldn’t do any good to let the child mope.

  However, it was a full minute before Sarah opened her eyes and then her voice was small and flat when she said, ‘All right, but I’m not sorry I went for Mother Shawe. I hate her, and Mary Owen and - oh, everyone.’

  ‘No you don’t, hinny, it just seems like it.’

  The mild response wasn’t like the Mother, and when a reassuring hand was placed lightly against her cheek for a moment before the plump figure rose creakily to her feet, the enormity of the trouble she was in hit Sarah for the first time, piercing the anguish in her soul. She was going to get wrong for this. The thought began to churn her bowels, turning them to water. She couldn’t remember anyone ever going for a Mother before; what would Matron do to her? Various possibilities brought her sitting upright in the bed, her arms crossed and her hands under her armpits as she swayed back and forth in a state of animal panic.

  Sarah, like every other resident of Hatfield Home, adult and child alike, with Maggie McLevy perhaps the only exception, had a deep and abiding fear of the matriarchal Matron Cox. Tall and thin, with iron-grey hair pulled tightly into a bun and almost opaque pearl-blue eyes, the lady in question had a presence about her that was undeniably threatening. In the twenty years in which she had been Matron she had changed the Home from a poorly run, flyblown hovel of a place, into three separate units that ran like clockwork. Her three Es - expediency, efficiency and enlightenment - which she drummed into her staff and their charges every Sunday morning before prayers, were the code she lived by. She was by nature a frosty, unsympathetic character, with a will of iron and an unshakeable belief in her own judgement that was awesome, added to which she didn’t like children. These attributes had made her the perfect candidate for the post of matron in the eyes of the governors who had taken over the running of the Home shortly before she had been appointed. They had been ho
rrified at the slipshod disorganization, and had asked for a tight, disciplined ship that kept the children in their place - seen and not heard - with the minimum expenditure.

  Hatfield consisted of three grey-stone buildings surrounded by several acres of land and enclosed within a seven-foot wrought-iron fence, that both repelled intruders and kept the inmates securely confined within its fold. The foundling nursery cared for the newly born infants and children up to the age of six, at which time they graduated into one of the two main houses - boys to West House and girls to East - regardless of family ties. The two sexes would rarely meet from that day on, unless it was on a Saturday afternoon between the hours of one and five, when children from both houses who had no visitors would be expected to work in the Home’s extensive vegetable garden.

  The interiors of all three buildings were painted throughout in dark sombre green, and each was devoid of even the smallest home comfort, the ground floor in each building being of bare stone which gave off a chill on the warmest summer day. The first and second floors, used as classrooms and dormitories, had exposed floorboards, paper window-blinds and no heating of any kind, the only relief on the dark walls being religious tracts promising dire admonishment in the hereafter to all and sundry.