Echo of a Footfall

Patricia Scampion

Description

In 1926, having cared for her sick mother on her own for some years, 16 year old Mary gives birth to a baby boy in the Workhouse. Abandoned by her mother, unsupported by the child's father, and behaving in ways the Workhouse finds difficult to manage, her baby is taken from her and she is sent to the local mental hospital (previously the lunatic asylum). Here, with the help of other inmates, and encouraged by an ambitious young woman seeking her vocation as a nurse, she begins a long process of discovery and development, learning to read and write, and then to cook and cater for the staff and patients in the institution that becomes her home.Set against a backdrop of changes in attitude to, and treatments for, mental illness, and reflecting developments in post warsocietal structures, particularly those involving immigration from the Empire, Mary's story spans over 50 years, as, dischargedfrom the hospital, she continues to strive to find her identity, to understand where she belongs, and ultimately to find her baby.While the influence of the Great War on the lives of those who survived it echoes over the lives of the generations that follow,Mary yearns for a caring and tolerant community to support the family she finally creates for herself.

Sujets

• Historical fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 28 novembre 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781838597498
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Copyright © 2019 Patricia Scampion

The moral right of the author has been asserted.


Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.


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ISBN 978 1838597 498

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.


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For Claire and Helen
Contents
Part I
Asylum
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII

Part II
In the Shadow of the Bell Tower
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII

Part III
Kittens and Community Care
I
II
III
IV
V
VI

Part IV
High Windows
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X

Epilogue
Acknowledgements

Part I
Asylum
I
1926
The floor was cold and the bedstead hard as pokers that first day. I were sixteen and I’d birthed my baby not a three night before. They’d brought me there from the workhouse at the end of the day: my baby were snatched from me and they’d marched me, one on each arm, bumragged me, out of the room where I’d borne him. My belly ached and I were bleeding; I was crying and I couldna’ see for the tears in me eyes. I kept asking for them to give him back, to let ’im suckle; but they brought me here and laid me on a bed, and told me to keep quiet or I’d waken them ladies in t’ other beds. And my chest was worst: hot and swollen, and tingling with sharp needle points when the milk came. I just wanted my baby. I wanted to suckle him. They’d let me feed him after he were born, said it was good for him to have his ma’s milk, and it had been sore painful, but so good to feel his little mouth searching for and suckin’ on me. I wanted him back but they’d taken him from me. They said I couldna’ care for him, though I told them me ma would help. But they said: now where was she gone, and I didna’ know. She’d taken me to workhouse when the pains started, but then they’d sent her away.
I lay on top o’ bed all night, then in the morning I slid down behind and peeked out to see what was to do. But I were so cold. And I wanted to sleep an’ all. I saw I was in a great room with a great high ceiling, like as I’d never seen before, and the sun were shinin’ in through long, high windows, but it didna’ warm me; and there were beds down both sides and a great many women getting up and dressing. They put on long woollen skirts, down to the floor, like as old biddies wear, ’n like as I’d not seen for years, and aprons and shawls, and some had shoes and some clogs and some ankle-Jacks, and they brushed each other’s hair, and some of them didn’t seem to know what to do and others cared for ’em. And they talked and sometimes they laughed, and I didna’ think they saw me, so I stayed quiet. But I didna’ want to be there, I didna’, I didna’.
Then two of ’em came and told me, “Get dressed”, and they left me some clothes, but I just stopped where I was and held on to the doll they gave me last night. He were wood with metal hooks to join his arms and legs, and he had a face painted on him as was wearing away so you could only see a bit o’ his eyes. I didna’ know when they gave him me, or why… perhaps it was when I wouldna’ let go of my baby’s blanket. I’d never had a doll like that before, not even when I were a wee little girl, but he gave me a bit o’ comfort. Even the pain of his metal joints diggin’ in me when I held him tight was a bit o’ help, felt better than the pains in me belly and me chest: made me forget ’em a while.
Then the ladies all started to leave. I could hear the echoes of their feet out the door and down the stairs. Everything were echoing in here, voices, feet, and the laughing, jumpin’ off the walls at you. And they were all hard sounds, like metal spoons in a drawer: nothing soft and comforting. Then, as they left, one of them came o’er to me. She bent over to look at me from under the end of the bed, and I wanted to laugh and cry, all at same time: she looked like an ole boggart with her head all upside down. But she looked kindly. I couldna’ tell like that if she were old or young, but her hair were grey and pulled back from her face, and her eyes were grey as well, and soapy soft. I knew from her eyes she wouldna’ hurt me. I wanted her not to hurt me, I couldna’ be hurt no more, please.
“Sure, an’ my name’s Liza, Leeeeeza, mind, and not short for owt. ’Tis from the Russian. Call me by my name and I’ll answer ye, but call me Elizabeth or some such nonsense and I’ll not be for bothering. And will ye be comin’ out o’ there, so we can see what y’re at?” I started crying again and the milk and the needles in my chest came, but mebbe she might help me, so I crawled out of my hidey-hole and stood up.
And she stood up as well, and she were taller than me and quite thin, and she frowned at me and mebbe she were cross, but she tut-tutted and reached out to stroke my cheek, ever so gentle.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph, now what’s a waif like you doing here? Come, come with me.”
And she led me through a doorway to a row of white basins in the next room with taps above ’em, and she took the clothes off me as if I were a child. And I let her take ’em, and I let her wash me. I didna care: they’d done worse to me when the baby were comin’. Then she took the doll from me and found me rags for the bleeding, and she bound my chest with strips o’ cloth, and I put on the fresh chemise she gave me, and a skirt like t’ others.
Then she looked in my eyes and shook her head and gave me the doll back and led me back to my bed. “Now, go with the nurses: they’re surely waiting for you. But stop.” She caught my arm. “Be tellin’ me your name first.”
“’Tis Mary, Liza.”
“Mother of God! Ye were well named. Another virgin birth, no doubt, and an Angel Gabriel wi’ sovereigns in his pocket and idle promises on his lips. Go!”
And she were right: the nurses were waiting, though they looked to me just like t’ other ladies, with their long skirts and their aprons, ’cept they had caps on their heads, and collars on their necks, and their aprons were starched stiff and shiny white. But they didn’t smile. “Silly girl, you’ve missed your breakfast but you have to see the doctor this morning. Come with us. This way.”
And Liza was gone, so what should I do?
One of them took my elbow and the other gave me a push in the middle o’ me back, and they took me, so fast I couldna’ keep up, out the door I’d come in through last night and down a flight of stone stairs to a long corridor with windows all along one side, high up so I couldna’ see out, and then into a room wi’ wood on all the walls, and benches round it, and a great polished wooden door. I were glad to get there for I were out o’ breath and I kept trippin’ on the hem o’ me skirt. Then when the door opened they led me through it in front of a great desk, where a man, must’ve been the doctor, though I’d not ever seen a doctor before, was writing in a ledger, like the grocer totting the bill.
He didn’t look up so all I could see were ’is balding head, his high starched collar, and his long fingers holding the pen. There was another woman in the room and without looking at me he waved his hand at her, and she shuffled me off to the side of the room and undressed me, pulling off the bindings as Liza had put on me with cold rough hands. She made me stand on the weighing scales. “Stand straight or I can’t see how tall you are, and don’t snivel.”
I was cold and I felt shamed, standing naked holding the doll, with the step of the scales rattling as I shivered. But it were worse when she took t’ doll and led me back in front of the doctor.
Then he looked me up and down and turned me round, poked me and prodded me, and put tubes in his ears from like a trumpet he put on my chest, but he never ever looked in my eyes. It were discomfiting being looked at but yet not being looked at.
When he’d had enough of me, he started writing again, not stopping as he asked, “Name?”
“Mary, sir, Mary Pearson.”
“How old are you, Pearson?” His voice was cold and ’ard and I was afeared.
“Sixteen, sir.” I swallowed so as to try and stop me tears.
“And can you read and write?”
“No, sir.”
He looked up, sighed, and turned to the nurse. “Moral defective. She has clearly just given birth and is underweight, but I see no sign of disease.”
“She gave them trouble in the workhouse, sir. Mania, they thought. Couldn’t control her. Wouldn’t let go of her babe. They feared for its safety. And prattling all the time of her mother.”
“Ah. Well, she’s calm now. She needs to eat a healthy diet to fatten her up, to breathe fresh air and take some exercise, and, above all, she needs a sober Christian routine.