A Cornish Orphan, page 18
‘Where’s their father?’ Sister Jill asked.
‘Dead and gone.’ Jenny started to tremble. ‘Almost two years ago now.’ She tried to sit up. ‘I’m a widow, you see . . . and . . . and I can’t possibly stay here in this hospital. I can’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘I’ve no money. I can’t possibly pay for treatment.’
‘You’ll have to stay – you can’t walk, dear, can you?’
‘It’ll get better – won’t it?’
Sister Jill shook her head. She held Jenny’s hand tightly. ‘It COULD get better, dear, but not for a long time. You are very seriously ill, Mrs Lanroska. I’m afraid you have polio.’
‘Polio? But . . .’ Jenny’s eyes filled with desperate tears. ‘Then . . . you must let me die. There’s no money for treatment, I keep telling you. Just let me go home, please. Lottie’s nearly twelve. She can look after me, and the neighbours will help. But . . . I don’t want my children to watch me die.’
‘We can’t let you go home. You need special care and treatment.’
‘But I can’t pay for treatment,’ Jenny repeated and added miserably. ‘Just put me out in the street and let me die . . . please, just let me die.’ She turned her head away from Sister Jill’s kind face. Again the terrible giddiness gyrated around her head, sucking her into a whirlpool of darkness. The starched white pillows seemed to reach up and engulf her. Jenny felt smaller and smaller, like an insect curled up and dying in the hot sun. The faces of her children whizzed past her as if going down a tunnel, but they were speeding towards the light while she was racing into a place of shadows.
Sister Jill let go of Jenny’s limp hand and stood up. She called down the ward. ‘Doctor – can you come quickly, please.’ And the white-coated tribe hurried back to Jenny’s bed.
A flight of cold, wet granite steps led up to the front door of Treskirby House. A few squares of light glowed from nearby windows but the rest of the house was hidden by the mist. P.C. Roach opened the car door and brandished the handcuffs at Matt. ‘Don’t you give me any trouble, young man.’
‘He won’t,’ said Lottie firmly. ‘We’re going to stick together.’ She took Tom’s hand and offered the other one to Matt. Surprisingly, he grasped it and the three of them shivered as they climbed the steps between the two policemen.
The doorbell clanged far away and from somewhere in the huge building came the creak of heavy, no-nonsense footsteps. P.C. Roach peered through the iron keyhole. ‘Here she comes.’
In the light of P.C. Roach’s torch, Lottie noticed another set of glistening cobwebs, one with a fat spider crouched in the centre. Nobody had opened that door for a while.
‘Is this a prison?’ Tom asked.
The door swung open, tearing the delicate cobwebs with utter disregard for the devastated spiders who had worked through the night making them.
‘Come inside quickly. Before the fog gets in.’
They were bundled inside and the policemen let go of the children’s hands. A weather-beaten woman with big feet turned her slow-blinking reptilian eyes on the three shivering children. ‘What is that SMELL?’ she asked, her lip curling in disgust.
‘Sorry, ma’am,’ said P.C. Roach. ‘The youngest lad, Tom, was sick in the car.’
‘Couldn’t you have stopped?’
‘Not on Wheal Buller Hill, ma’am.’
Tom hung his head and pressed closer to Lottie.
There was a brief, disgusted silence.
‘So who have you brought me this time? Who are these children? Where are they from?’
‘From S’nives,’ P.C. Roach said. ‘This is the Lanroska family. Matt, Lottie and Tom. They’re not orphans. Their father was a fisherman and he was tragically drowned a couple of years ago. Now their mother’s been taken to hospital.’ He lowered his voice. ‘It’s going to be a long haul – she has . . . polio.’
The reptilian eyes flickered. ‘I hope they are not infectious.’
‘No. The doctor’s wife took them in. Fine healthy children, she said they were.’
‘Hmmm.’ The woman manufactured another silence, this time a sceptical one. Distant groans and thuds came in, as if the big house was clearing its throat around them.
‘Can you take them?’ P.C. Roach asked in his patient voice.
‘I suppose we shall have to. Isn’t there a relative they can go to?’
‘No.’
‘Our grandad lives in a beach hut down Newlyn,’ Tom spoke up, bravely. ‘He’s got no room to swing a cat.’
‘Be quiet.’ The woman stamped one of her big feet at Tom. ‘No one asked you to speak.’ She opened a hard-backed navy-blue book. An ancient pencil hung from it on a frayed string. ‘Right. Names. In full please, and ages.’ She looked at Lottie. ‘You first.’
Lottie straightened her spine. ‘Lottie Lanroska. Eleven and three quarters.’
‘What is Lottie short for?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Don’t be insolent.’
‘I wasn’t. I’m called Lottie, at school and everywhere else,’ Lottie said in her clear voice, ‘and I go to the Grammar School. I passed the exam.’
‘Well, you can’t do that here. We have our own internal school. You will learn all you need to know.’
‘I doubt that,’ Lottie said, and P.C. Roach’s eyes twinkled with amusement. He shook his head at her and put a finger to his lips. Lottie bit back what she wanted to say next. She turned her attention to Tom and gently wiped the smudges from his bewildered face with her hanky.
The boys mumbled their names and ages and the woman wrote them carefully in the book with the ancient pencil. She went to the wall in two beefy strides and pulled a cord which rang a bell deep inside the house.
‘What should the children call you, ma’am?’ P.C. Roach asked.
‘Miss Poltair. At all times.’
‘Right – thank you, Miss Poltair.’ P.C. Roach nodded respectfully. He looked at the children with deep concern. ‘We have to leave now. Try to be good Cornish children – eh? And try to be patient. It could be a long time, a very long time. You stick together and look after each other.’
Lottie looked into his eyes. She didn’t want him to go. In this bleak, forbidding house, P.C. Roach and his long eyelashes seemed to be her last link with home, with loving, friendly Jenny and beautiful St Ives. And Morwenna. And Nan. Mufty and Bartholomew. The art of how to cry in silence was a skill Lottie had mastered long ago. She felt the pain and drew it in, a bitter tide soaking through the pores of her skin. It gave her headaches. She could feel one now, throbbing at her temples. Even the roots of her beautiful hair were hurting.
She watched the two St Ives policemen go out, letting in a grey wisp of weather, a skein of mist and a scent of bracken that fled into the waiting corridors. The three Lanroska children clung together, scared but proud, finding comfort in their closeness. Stick together. Stick together, Lottie thought.
But it was not to be.
A man with a bunch of keys came in through a side door and walked up to them. He was short with wide shoulders and a head shaped like a mushroom. He even smelled like a mushroom. His eyes darted everywhere and his fat fingers never stopped twiddling the keys or drumming the sleeve of his nicotine-encrusted jacket.
‘Mr Gorda runs the boys’ department,’ Miss Poltair explained, and her expression softened just a little as she looked down at the children. ‘Let go hands now and say goodbye. Matthew and Thomas, you will go with Mr Gorda. And Lottie will come with me.’
In the instant before all hell broke loose, it was Matt who Lottie turned to first. They looked into each other’s eyes in horror, and beyond the horror there was love. Undiscovered and now forbidden.
‘Excuse me but . . . can’t we stay together?’ Lottie pleaded looking at Miss Poltair’s forbidding slab of a face.
‘Certainly not. Boys live in the boys’ home. Girls in the girls’ home.’
‘Please?’ Lottie begged even though she knew it was useless.
‘No.’
She saw the word ‘No’ multiplying and growing, filling those grim, waiting corridors. The scars on her back tingled. She looked at Matt. She’d never told him about those scars. Perhaps she never would. But when she looked at Matt now, Lottie saw something new. Courage.
‘Say goodbye to your sister,’ Mr Gorda jingled the formidable keys, ‘and you boys come with me.’
Matt gazed at Lottie as if he would never stop. Then he did something he’d never done before. In one swift, decisive, Arnie-like movement, he leaned forward and kissed Lottie on the cheek.
It was Tom who went berserk. He roared and howled and clung to Lottie, almost pulling her over. ‘I want to stay with Lottie. She’s my big sister. Why can’t we be together? You’ve got to let us.’
Mr Gorda dragged him away and Tom lay on the floor yelling and kicking, making himself heavy and unmanageable. ‘Get up!’ Mr Gorda snarled, but Tom wouldn’t. ‘You little demon. And you – Matthew – don’t just stand there, boy. Help me with your brother. What a baby!’ Mr Gorda had a voice like rusty nails and Lottie could see the curve of his biceps straining the sleeves of his jacket. When Matt didn’t move, he added, ‘Or do I have to drag the pair of you? Because I will, and I don’t care how much it hurts.’
Lottie winced as Tom was hauled roughly across the enormous hall, kicking and cursing. The last she saw of him was his tear-stained, screwed-up face and the soles of his shoes which were full of holes. The door slammed on both her brothers and Tom howled even louder. ‘I don’t want to go with my brother. He hates me. I want to stay with Lottie.’ The grey, granite walls soaked up his cries and the space rang with the sound of Mr Gorda’s hard boots marching into the distance.
In deep shock, Lottie stood still, the feel of Matt’s kiss lingering like a butterfly on her cheek.
‘I hope you’re going to be a good girl.’ Miss Poltair’s eyes had a sheen of satisfaction as if she’d actually relished the sight of Tom being dragged away.
Numbly Lottie walked beside Miss Poltair’s flat black laced-up shoes in the opposite direction from where the boys had gone.
‘Mr Gorda will soon knock some sense into those two,’ Miss Poltair said. ‘You will all be cleaned up, disinfected and de-loused. You will be given a clean set of clothes, a bed to sleep in, and a set of rules. See that you obey them at all times. Can you read?’
‘Yes.’
‘Yes, Miss Poltair.’
‘Yes – Miss Poltair.’
‘You will be kept in isolation until you have memorised the rules and repeated them to me. There they are on the wall.’ She took Lottie into a gloomy room with a hard chair placed in front of the framed set of rules on the wall. ‘You sit there and start learning them right now, and I shall send Matron to clean you up.’
‘I’m perfectly capable of washing myself,’ Lottie said.
‘Read that first rule. Go on. Read it to me.’
Humiliated, Lottie began to read, theatrically. ‘One – Respect your elders and don’t answer back. Two – Girls are strictly forbidden to enter the boys’ side of this house.’ She paused to ask a question. ‘So how are we supposed to communicate? And when can I see my brothers? Matt and Tom are important to me.’
The reptilian eyes blinked. ‘Read those two rules again and I shall be back to test you in one hour. If you haven’t learned and understood all ten rules, you will go to bed with no supper.’
‘That’s unreasonable,’ Lottie argued. ‘What about my little brother, Tom? He can’t read well enough yet to do that. Is this a children’s home, or a children’s prison?’
Miss Poltair looked shaken. She didn’t seem to have an answer, so she leaned down with her hooky nose uncomfortably close to Lottie. ‘If you don’t conform,’ she hissed, pointing a finger at the middle of Lottie’s chest, ‘you will have it beaten out of you.’
The scars burned on Lottie’s back as if they were alive, warning her. Seeds of rebellion rooted in her soul. She kept her mouth shut and let Miss Poltair think she had won, when she hadn’t.
Left alone in the grey little room, Lottie made up her mind that she would pretend to conform while her inner mind dreamed of escape, of going home to St Ives. She’d find a way of taking Tom and Matt, leading them on the long journey, walking and hiding and stealing food, surviving, believing they could do it. Inside the dream was another dream, curled up and far away, a dream of going to America and finding her mother.
Chapter 15
A Family – Gone
Nan had become increasingly reclusive in the time since Arnie’s death. She spent February huddled indoors by the fire, reading her favourite books, making sachets from her jars of dried herbs, and knitting bobble hats to sell from Mufty’s cart when the weather was warm enough to go out. She was plagued by a stubborn chest infection, and no matter how much honey and hot herb tea she took, it wouldn’t get better. Every day she dragged herself out to care for Mufty and the chickens, and on bright days she wandered around the garden enjoying the mats of yellow celandine and the first violets along the base of the hedge. She put food out for the wild birds and retreated inside to watch them from the window, seeing flocks of yellowhammers and cirl buntings, and winter visitors like the beautiful redwings who sat around in the cold, fluffed out in their speckled plumage.
Nan had another reason to be standing at her window, always in the late afternoon when children were coming home from school. She was watching and hoping to see Lottie come running up Foxglove Lane. Nan had only seen her twice since Christmas. She missed the little girl’s company, her bright chatter, her questions. The peaceful cosiness of reading a book with her by the fire were times Nan loved and treasured. She didn’t want to lose touch with Lottie, especially now she was growing up fast. It must be the homework, and the dark evenings, Nan reasoned.
A sense of having been abandoned hovered over Nan, and she worked hard to keep herself busy and positive. She missed Vic, even though she understood why he needed to be away from St Ives and the memory of Arnie. He’d been to see her at Christmas. The sea in winter was too rough for him to bring the boat round to St Ives. So Vic had walked from Newlyn over the high, gorse-covered hills, and along the spectacular coast road that wound through Zennor. He’d spent Christmas Day chopping wood for Nan’s fire and mending broken storm shutters on west-facing windows. On Boxing Day, he managed a brief early morning visit to Jenny and the children before tackling the strenuous hike back to Newlyn with the wind and the rain in his face, and the pressure of having to get home before the breath of winter darkness misted the hills. It was the last time Nan had seen Vic.
It was mid March before Nan felt well enough to harness Mufty, load the cart and go into St Ives. Sod Jenny, she thought, I’m going to see the children and give them a hat each. Driving Mufty along the lane between billows of pale yellow primroses, Nan felt optimistic. The sun was warm, the sea quiet, and the seagulls loud over the town as they nested on the rooftops. It was nearly Easter and a scattering of tourists and artists wandered around the town, many of them pausing to admire Mufty’s bright cart and his harness decorated with tassels of coloured wool and some of Lottie’s pompoms.
Nan found a place to park at the side of Wharf Road, thinking she would stay there until the church clock chimed four and the children would be home from school. Then she would go to the cottage in Downlong, give the children their hats and perhaps have a sing-song with them, if Jenny would let her. The piano accordion was in the cart and the tunes came floating into Nan’s mind. She’d planned what she was going to say to Jenny. She’d look directly into those hurt, hostile eyes and tell her it was time to sing again, if only for the children’s sake.
Selling her wares happened more by accident than effort. Shouting and bantering like a market trader wasn’t Nan’s style. She heaved herself onto the back of the cart and sat motionless like a huge Buddha. Only her eyes moved. Tourists were fascinated by her and would openly stare at her in disbelief. In previous years, Nan had enjoyed chatting with them but since Arnie’s death, and the row with Jenny, she felt disinclined to talk to anyone, except Lottie. Everything hurt. The way the locals seemed to scurry past, avoiding her. The sight of a little fishing boat chugging home across the emerald water with seagulls wheeling and swooping, wanting their share of the shimmering basket of freshly caught fish. It could have been The Jenny Wren.
Nan felt marooned on an island of grief.
She managed the flurries of selling and the questions people asked her, mostly about Mufty who stood patiently in the sun enjoying the attention. When, at last, the church clock struck four, Nan packed up and headed for Downlong, leading Mufty and the cart slowly through the steep and narrow streets. She was unprepared for the shock that awaited her.
Her footsteps got slower and slower as she approached the silent cottage, sensing a change. In disbelief, she stood in front of it. The windows were boarded up, the door locked, the chimney smokeless, the washing line torn from the wall and coiled up against the doorstep. There were no children’s voices, no clatter of tea cups, no smells of baking. Just an accusing emptiness.
My family, Nan thought, and the oncoming army of feelings hit hard in the centre of her being. Rage. Why wasn’t I told? Terror. Are they all dead? Self-hate. I should have helped.
Shading her eyes from the sun, she struggled to read the small print on a white sheet of paper glued across the door. The key words jumped out at her. BY ORDER OF . . . and REPOSSESSED, and AUCTION.
Bewildered fury took hold of Nan. It was Arnie’s own cottage. He’d worked day and night to buy it for his family. How could anyone have a right to repossess it? What wickedness, in St Ives of all places. Beside herself, Nan began to rant in the street. ‘WHO is responsible for this . . . this outrage?’
Predictably, no one ventured out to face Nan. She lumbered to and fro, wringing her freckled hands, shouting at the sky, shouting at everyone who should have been there and wasn’t. She grazed her knuckles on the cottage door. Her knocking sounded hollow and precarious as if the floorboards upstairs were being shaken loose. Nan squatted down awkwardly with her painful knees and peered through the letterbox, smelling the cold, damp air inside. She could see the stairs still covered in sand and Lottie’s school blazer hung from a peg, next to Arnie’s old cork lifejacket and the boys’ caps. Arnie’s driftwood cart stood in the living room with two filthy sacks of coal on it. And Tom’s treasured marble tin lay on the floor, the lid flung to one side, the glass marbles gleaming in the dim light.
