Washerwoman's Dream Page 11

  She led Winifred upstairs, still wrapped in the towel, and handed her a clean chemise and pair of drawers. ‘Here, put these on.’ She took a red silk dress out of her wardrobe and held it up to the girl, but it was much too large. Eventually she found a printed muslin that someone had left behind. ‘You can wear it when your dad gets here,’ and she gave her a length of pink satin ribbon to tie round her waist. ‘Now run along and tidy up the parlour, but don’t get yourself covered in grime. You can leave the fireplace until your dad’s gone. I don’t want him to see you covered in ashes.’

  Winifred’s hopes of persuading her father to take her away were dashed when he kissed her, pleased to see her looking so pretty in the muslin dress printed with sprigs of pink roses. Then he glanced down at her feet and frowned. She was wearing a pair of down-at-heel slippers which had once belonged to Mother Sybil.

  ‘She needs new shoes,’ the woman said.

  Wilfred stared at her, ‘I thought … I thought our arrangement was that in return for my daughter’s work you would clothe and feed her, and give her two shillings a week.’

  Mrs Sybil smiled at him, her head on one side. ‘You men are all the same. I’m only a poor widow woman with no man to help, and your daughter, she eats her head off. And what do I get in return? Very little. I’ve had to teach her everything.’

  Winifred was silent, even though she knew this wasn’t true. Perhaps if she could get her father alone she could tell him what it was really like … but not in front of Mother Sybil.

  Her father drew a leather pouch out of his coat pocket and counted out five shillings. ‘Buy my daughter a pair of boots.’ He looked thoughtful and then added another five shillings. ‘See that she has everything she needs.’

  Mother Sybil’s eyes glinted as she pocketed the money. Winifred knew instinctively that the only boots she would receive would be ones that someone else had discarded. The best she could hope for was that they wouldn’t be too small.

  The girl went into the kitchen to make the tea and butter the bread, which she placed on a tray and carried back into the parlour where Mother Sybil was laughing at something her father had said, her hand on his knee. The stone jar was on the table and her father was drinking from a glass.

  Later, when her father rose to leave, Winifred followed him to the front gate, knowing that it was no use complaining, he would not believe her. As she watched his sulky disappear around the corner she steeled herself not to cry, knowing she would have to remain where she was until she was old enough to look after herself.

  * * *

  She woke one morning to a strangely quiet house. A thick mist swirled around the yard and she shivered, trying to burrow deeper into her bed, until she realised that she would be scolded if she didn’t rise and make breakfast for her employer. She had had a disturbed night, with people shouting and the sound of running footsteps, and later she had heard a horse whinnying at the front gate and then the sound of galloping hooves, but she had taken no notice. The house was often noisy at night and where they were situated there was a steady stream of horse-drawn vehicles at all hours — carts from out of town taking milk, cheese and butter to the railway station, and travellers coming and going.

  The water in the tap in the yard was icy as Winifred splashed it on her face and dressed hurriedly before going into the kitchen, looking forward to the warmth from the fuel stove once she had lit it. The first thing she noticed was that the black iron kettle and pots were gone. Then she noticed that the tea caddy was missing, and the bags of sugar, flour and oatmeal. She hurried upstairs to tell Mother Sybil, but her room was empty, except for a broken cardboard hatbox, a few sheets of crumpled tissue paper and an empty henna bottle lying on the floor. Mother Sybil had gone.

  Her first emotion was one of joy. She was free at last. But then the thought came to her that she had nowhere else to go. Her father had moved. Where, she had no idea. And she had nothing, only the blankets on her bed, a pair of second-hand boots that Mother Sybil had given her, and the worn-out dresses she had brought with her when she first came She searched in the upstairs rooms for the sprigged muslin dress she had been given, but it had gone, along with everything else in the house.

  Puzzled, the girl walked through to the shop. It, too, was empty except for a tray of toffees on the counter. She took one and began to suck it as she opened the front door and went outside.

  It was here that the local police constable, Harold West, found Winifred when he went cycling past on his morning rounds. He stopped, leaning his bike against the front fence. ‘Where did you spring from?’

  ‘I work here, I’m the skivvy … But everyone’s gone, and I’m hungry and I haven’t been paid for weeks …’

  ‘Did a moonlight flit, eh? Good riddance, I say. And who might you be?’

  ‘Winifred Oaten.’

  He wrote her name in his book. ‘And how old might you be, Winifred Oaten?’

  ‘I’m going on fourteen.’

  ‘I see, thirteen … too young to be here on your own. You’d better come with me.’

  ‘Am I being arrested? I haven’t done anything.’

  ‘Arrested? No, not you. You’re only a young lass, you ain’t done nothing wrong. You should be at school. We got to find where your folks is and get you back home.’

  ‘I don’t have any folks, only my father, and I haven’t seen him for a long time … he’s moved.’

  ‘Don’t worry your pretty little head about that. We’ll find him. I’ll help you get your things together, then I’ll take you down to the missus. You’re shivering. Do you not have a shawl? It’s mighty nippy this morning.’

  Later, wrapped in her blanket, her bundle of clothes balanced on the handlebars, Winifred perched behind Harold, clinging to his waist while he pedalled to the police station and took her to his quarters out the back where his wife was busy in the laundry.

  ‘I’ve brought a visitor, Mrs West. I found this young person abandoned. She needs a hot bath and a good feed of fried bread with sausages, and a mug of hot tea wouldn’t go astray either. After that I’ll work out what to do with her.’

  ‘I want to go home,’ Winifred said.

  ‘Easier said than done. We got to find your father first … And you can’t stay here, unless you want to go in the lock-up. A right proper bunch of villains — horse thieves, a few drunks that got in a fight and woke up feeling sorry for themselves — couldn’t even eat the nice hot oatmeal the missus cooked ’em — and there’s a murderer too. I try and keep ’em in order until their case is heard. You wouldn’t like it in there, I can tell you.’ He winked at Winifred and burst out laughing, but she looked at him and frowned, a tight knot of pain in her stomach, too worried about what would become of her to share the joke.

  He patted her on the shoulder, saying, ‘Cheer up, there’s nothing to worry about. I’ll see you right.’

  Later she tried on a dress the constable’s wife gave her. ‘My niece left it here when she was on a holiday. She grew out of it.’ And to wear with it she was given a pair of black woollen stockings and a knitted shawl.

  When Winifred looked in the mirror on Mrs West’s dressing table she hardly recognised herself in the navy serge dress with white braid down the front, which reached to her calves. And with the black woollen stockings on, her feet felt warm for the first time in weeks.

  The woman brushed the hair off Winifred’s face and braided it into one thick pigtail which she tied with a red ribbon. ‘You look like a real young lady,’ she said. ‘You must learn to take a pride in yourself,’ and she bent and kissed her lightly on the cheek.

  Late that afternoon Constable West took Winifred to meet the Jackson family. ‘You’ll like it there. Mr Jackson runs a small bakery at Drayton. It’s on t’other side of the railway line There’s three children in the family. You’ll be helping Mr Jackson with the pie-cart and they’ll give you two shillings and sixpence a week. What do you say?’

  ‘I want to go home.’

  ‘And
you will, but until we find your father you need somewhere to stay.’

  It was three weeks before the constable called to tell her that her father had taken up land near Evergreen and that he was rarely there, travelling long distances doing painting jobs on the outback stations. He had sent a message that he wanted Winifred to stay where she was and that he’d visit when he could.

  Winifred was surprised at her reaction. She had waited so long for the news, half expecting that her father would not want her back and yet unwilling to acknowledge it to herself. But now, instead of feeling resentful, she felt relieved. She had come to enjoy the work, the company of the younger girls when they returned from school, and most of all the time she spent on the pie-cart with Mr Jackson.

  It fell toWinifred to care for the pie-stand which sat in the back of an open dray drawn by a bay mare called Jezebel, though Mr Jackson referred to her as Jez, ‘Because,’ as he explained to Winifred the first time he took her out on the pie-cart, ‘Mrs Jackson don’t think Jezebel’s a proper name for a horse.’ He shook the reins lightly and Jezebel broke into a trot and then slowed down again.

  ‘She was a real goer once, a racehorse. And then she got too old. I rescued her from the boiling-down works. You know about the boiling-down works?’ Winifred shook her head. ‘Well, when times is hard or beasts get too old to work, they send them to the boiling-down works to turn into tallow for soap … The stench is something awful. Once you’ve smelt it you’d never forgit.’

  The girl thought back to Lambeth and the blood and bone works by the Thames. She knew the smell but she had always thought they were just old bones that the rag-and-bones man collected, not live creatures like Jezebel.

  ‘Calling her Jezebel was a joke — the old girl ain’t got a kick left in her,’ Mr Jackson said. He was silent for a few minutes, watching the road as the horse laboured up the big hill, clicking his tongue and calling, ‘Steady as she goes, girl,’ until they reached the top and the horse turned into Rutherford Street. Then he turned to Winifred. ‘You’ve not read the Bible then?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘There’s lots of good stories in the Bible. I suppose you’ve not been to church either? I’m a freethinker myself. Mrs Jackson follows the Methodists. She don’t approve of me selling pies on Sunday, says it’s the Lord’s day of rest. But I say to her, if it’s good enough for the preacher to work on Sunday and get paid, it’s good enough for me.

  ‘See that church over there,’ he pointed with his whip, ‘that’s St Patrick’s where the Catholics go, every Sunday first thing, on an empty stomach … Now, after lots of prayers and a long-winded sermon, the priest goes home to roast mutton and a glass of port … as for the rest — Jackson’s pies hot from the oven and the smell wafting into the church to whet their appetite. I’d be a fool to miss out on all those thruppences.’

  Winifred gazed at the church as the horse stopped. She’d never been to this side of town before. She could hear music and voices and thought that perhaps when the music stopped hundreds of people would come running out the doors to where they were waiting all holding up threepences … a whole lot of people like she’d seen at the Cut, people pushing and shoving in case there weren’t enough pies to go round.

  She heard Mr Jackson say, ‘How old are you?’

  ‘I was eight when I left England and now I’m nearly fourteen.’

  ‘I was away to sea when I was your age … sailed round the world on a square-rigger. Many’s the time I expected to be drowned. The ship’d go down to the bottom of a wave and then up again … Sometimes they’d tie me to the mast … The waves’d crash over the deck and take everything with it that weren’t tied down, including the crew. First time I heard the cry “Man overboard!” I thought they’d fetch him back. Throw a rope or something. I soon learned there’s no hope in Hades of fetching him back … Swim like a fish, but in the end the sea wins.’

  There was something so engaging about Mr Jackson that Winifred couldn’t help smiling. He was so different from her own father, with his bad moods, his long silences. Mr Jackson was always talking and laughing. For the first time Winifred realised what it meant to be part of a family. She had been accepted by the two young girls, who hung on the stories she told them once the candle had been blown out after Mrs Jackson had heard their prayers and kissed them goodnight.

  The first time Mrs Jackson had come into the bedroom after their supper of bread and milk Winifred had stood watching as the children knelt by their beds and prayed aloud. ‘God bless Father and Mother, God bless my sisters and brothers, God bless Grandfather and God bless me.’

  ‘And God bless Winifred,’ their mother prompted gently. Then she turned to Winifred. ‘Do you not say your prayers?’

  Winifred shook her head.

  ‘Even though your father is far away you should pray to God to keep him safe.’

  Later Winifred had knelt beside her bed, closing her eyes and putting her hands together while she tried to concentrate on God, praying silently that He would make her father love her and then adding a prayer for Jezebel, the old horse that she had come to love, as well as her Aunt Lydia. She thought about Uncle William but decided not to mention him in her prayers because he did not deserve it.

  Her days fell into a routine. In the morning there was a bowl of hot oatmeal porridge which Mrs Jackson prepared, keeping some warm on the side of the stove for her husband when he woke. He spent most nights out on the pie-cart, moving from hotels to the railway station and back again, wherever there were people out and about.

  After the children had left for school Winifred would go out into the yard, wearing a pinafore over one of her old dresses, and talk to Jezebel, filling her nosebag with chaff and her dish with water before taking the currycomb and brush to the horse’s coat until it gleamed. Sometimes she would plait Jezebel’s mane and tail like the horses on the hackney cabs in London, later holding out her palm with a teaspoon of sugar on it, feeling the rasp of the animal’s tongue as it licked up the last grain. Next she scrubbed the inside of the pie oven and polished the brass corners until they shone, a picture in her mind of the ginger beer machine on Clapham Common like a shining little piano.

  Once Mr Jackson was dressed and had eaten his porridge and sometimes a plate of streaky bacon, wiping out the dish with fried bread, then washing it all down with great draughts of milky tea, he would turn to Winifred and say, ‘Ready for the baking?’ Together they would go out to the bakehouse, where Mr Jackson had already lit the fire, to begin the real work of the day.

  First he chopped the huge mound of beef into small pieces while Winifred peeled the onions, a job she hated because it made her eyes tingle until tears fell and she had to wipe her face with her apron. She never complained though; she was afraid that if she did they might send her away. While the meat and onions were simmering in a huge iron saucepan, to which Winifred had added a tablespoon of salt and two teaspoons of black pepper, Mr Jackson measured the flour into an enormous mixing bowl, sometimes upending the flourbag and sending up a cloud of white dust that turned his hair and eyebrows white.

  Next began the task of adding great chunks of beef dripping; then, with his sleeves rolled to his elbows, he plunged his hands into the mixture, squeezing and turning it until he thought it was just right. He would make a well in the centre of the mixture while Winifred stood by with a dipper of cold water. When he said the word she began to pour it in slowly, until the mixture had formed into a large ball of dough which he would divide into three portions.

  Mr Jackson would wipe his hands on his leather apron and then pour a dipper of flour onto the table. Placing one of the portions of dough onto the flour, he would pick up the rolling pin and begin to roll the pastry, stretching it thinner and thinner until it was almost transparent. ‘It takes muscle,’ he’d say. ‘Folks don’t want a big lump of pastry … Light and flaky with plenty of meat and gravy … Jackson’s pies is special.’

  When he had finished rolling out the pastry Winifred cut i
t into circles, which she placed in pie tins she had greased with dripping. Once this was done Mr Jackson would lift the partly cooked meat mixture off the stove to cool and then spoon it into the pie cases, while Winifred busied herself with cutting smaller circles for the tops which she later brushed over with cold water.

  The pies would be left to stand while Mr Jackson tipped a large bowl of dried peas, which had been soaking since the night before, into a boiler filled with water from the tank, adding a tablespoon of sugar, a dash of vinegar, a big piece of butter and a handful of mint from the backyard. These would be left to simmer all afternoon, then at about four o’clock Mr Jackson would begin to cook the pies so that they would be hot when he began his nightly round.

  Winifred would wipe the sweat from her forehead with her apron when the work was done, the bakehouse hot from the stove, the air full of the smell of baking pies. When she saw the pies laid out in rows in the kitchen ready to be loaded into the pie oven where a brazier full of hot coals kept them warm, she could hardly speak because she felt so happy. She would run outside and hug the old horse and say, ‘I wish I could come with you.’ But Mr Jackson had said, ‘Staying up all night, going round hotels — it’s no place for a young person, especially a girl.’

  * * *

  One morning after breakfast Mrs Jackson stopped Winifred as she was about to go out into the yard to clean the pie-cart. ‘Mr Jackson won’t be going on his rounds today.’

  Winifred knew he’d come home last night because she’d already been outside to say good morning to Jezebel. ‘Is he sick?’

  ‘No, child. He’s gone to collect his father.’

  ‘Will he be baking today?’

  Mrs Jackson shook her head. ‘He’ll be gone all day. You can help me clean out the boxroom. The old man will need somewhere on his own.’

  Winifred picked up the broom. ‘I’ll go and sweep down the cobwebs.’