For a Mother's Sins Read online

  This book is dedicated to my parents, who always encouraged my love of reading.

  Also my brothers Donnie and Jack, brothers-in-law Eric and Clifford, who were all dearly loved and are missed every day.

  One day we will meet in our own summer meadow of daisies.

  Contents

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  11

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  1

  Batty Green, Ribblehead, Yorkshire Dales, 1870

  ‘Is that baby never going to shut its gob? Take it out of here, Lizzie. Drown it if you want – I’m past caring.’

  ‘But, Mam, he’s only hungry, poor little man. Can’t you give him a quick feed?’

  ‘No, I bloody well can’t! I’ve all this washing to do and then I need to hang it out to dry while the sun’s shining. If I don’t get some money in my pocket before the end of the day, that baby’s not the only one who’ll go hungry. He’ll just have to wait.’

  Molly Mason, soapsuds up to her elbows and face red and sweating from the steam filling the wooden hut that she called home, was in no mood for a bawling baby. Piles of workmen’s washing beckoned and the sun was shining and the wind blowing – such fine drying weather was a rare event on the bleak moors at Ribblehead and she intended to take advantage of it.

  Lizzie cradled her baby brother protectively in her arms. How could her mother be so hard, leaving her youngest to cry his heart out with hunger?

  ‘Give him a drop of gin with a bit of sugar mixed in, that’ll keep him quiet until I’ve done.’ Molly swiped an ample arm across her brow, cuffing away the sweat that was running down her forehead and dripping from the tip of her nose. ‘Do something, Lizzie, just shut him up till I’ve got this done.’

  Knowing that her mother would only lose her temper if they stayed, Lizzie wrapped little Tommy in a railway-issue blanket and took him out into the early summer sun. Clutching the tiny screaming bundle close to her, she used her body to shield him from the blustery wind. These days, her mother seemed to be angry all the time. Truth be told, she’d not been herself since Dad died. Tears sprang to Lizzie’s eyes as she thought back to the terrible day last winter when her world had stopped with the death of her father. Her heart still hurt, indeed she thought it would never mend, she missed her loving father so much.

  ‘By ’eck, Lizzie, that little brother of yours can make a fair din. What’s to do with him?’ Old Mrs Pratt stopped and pulled down the corners of the coarse grey blanket and peered at the screaming red face within.

  ‘He’s hungry, but me ma hasn’t got time to feed him. She’s loads of washing to get out.’ Lizzie tried to hush Tommy, but he only screamed louder. She was on the verge of bursting into tears herself, desperate to quiet him but not knowing what to do. ‘Ma says to give him a drop of gin, but I don’t like it, so I’m sure Tommy won’t.’

  Rose Pratt looked from the baby to the bedraggled fourteen-year-old. From beneath an unkempt mop of curly black hair, worried eyes peered out at her. ‘Aye,’ said Rose, taking pity, ‘I think we can do a bit better than that, lass. Come on, bring him into mine and we’ll give him a drink of cow’s milk – that’ll fill his belly.’

  Thankful for the offer, Lizzie followed the plump form of her neighbour as she shuffled along the furrowed ruts of the cart tracks that passed for a road in Batty Green. Though the rough shanties that made up the settlement all appeared bent and worn, they had been standing only a short time. Thrown together in haste to provide shelter for the families of the men building the railways, their tin roofs had been lashed by the westerly winds, and what little paintwork there was had been stripped by the driving rain. In this unforgiving wilderness high on the moors, churned to mud by the numerous residents that now made it their home, the wild elements prematurely aged buildings and occupants alike.

  Folk didn’t settle in Batty Green to live like kings. The menfolk were there to build the railway and viaduct, while their families did their best to scratch out a living and survive in this remote and hostile place. Ingleton, the nearest market town, was a good five miles away down an exposed moorland track. Few in Batty Green could even name the nearest city.

  Rose Pratt opened the door to her home and beckoned for Lizzie to enter. Eyes wide with awe, the girl hesitated on the threshold, taking it all in. Although the Pratts’ shanty was built of the same shoddy materials and stood only a little way down the rutted furrow that divided the camp in two, it was a world apart from the one Lizzie called home. There were curtains at the windows and it was tidy and spotless, with separate sleeping and living quarters. Most of all, it was cosy, lit by a small blazing stove in the corner of the living area.

  ‘Right, I’ve put the milk on the stove top to warm,’ said Mrs Pratt, pushing a grey curl away from her rough red cheeks. ‘Now let’s see what we can find to give him it in.’ She rattled about in a cupboard and came out with an empty bottle, then began rummaging in a drawer. ‘Somewhere in here there’s a teat our Jim used for nursing a couple of orphan lambs the other year. That ought to do the job, if I can find the blessed thing.’

  Muttering under her breath, she carried on pulling out various bits of string and odds and ends that her husband kept in the drawer until at last she gave a triumphant cry and held up the teat. ‘There, that’ll do. We’ll soon have him quiet.’

  She fitted the teat to the bottle of warm milk and handed it to Lizzie. The moment the teat was thrust into the baby’s eager mouth, his screaming stopped. Soon he was sucking contentedly at the warm liquid.

  ‘There now, that’s better. Poor little devil was starving!’ Rose Pratt smiled at the tiny bundle as Lizzie fed him. ‘Do you want a drink of tea, Lizzie? And I’ve got some freshly baked biscuits, I bet you won’t say no to one of those?’

  Lizzie eagerly said yes to biscuits. At home, such things were a luxury only to be had at Christmas or birthdays. She had heard that the Pratts wanted for nothing; with four of her menfolk working on the railway line and none of them allowed to drink, Rose Pratt’s home was always warm and the occupants well fed. Unlike the rest of the navvies’ huts, where fires went unlit and mouths unfed as everyone struggled to live from day to day.

  Rose poured the tea into a gilt-rimmed china cup decorated with violets and set it down on the table in front of her. It was so delicate compared to the plain earthenware mugs they drank from at home, Lizzie didn’t know if she dared pick it up.

  ‘Here, give me the baby,’ said Rose. ‘I’ll hold him while you have your tea and biscuits.’

  She leaned over and took Tommy, holding him close to her huge bosom. ‘It’s been a long time since my lads were this small,’ she said with a smile. ‘At least your mother knows where she’s got him – not like my lads. Bye, they do take some keeping in order! I blame this place. Sins of the Devil are being nurtured out here, drinking and gambling. They’ll all go to hell!’

  Lizzie said nothing. She was too busy gazing around her at all the pots and decorations in the hut. Her mother reckoned Rose Pratt was an interfering old do-gooder who wanted her Bible throwing off the top of the viaduct. But Lizzie didn’t mind the old woman – though she didn’t care for it when she started preaching from the ‘good book’, as she called it. Rose’s talk of hellfire and damnation always
made Lizzie think about her own life, wondering whether she was going to be eternally damned for some transgressions she’d unknowingly committed in her short life.

  ‘Is your mother keeping all right? I was only saying to Jim the other night, I don’t know how your mother does it, bringing up two children alone in this place. She must be thankful that you’re getting old enough to help her. It’s no place for a woman on her own. She’d be better off back in Bradford. At least there you’d be able to find work in the mills or in service, then it would be one less mouth for her to feed. Have another biscuit, there’s plenty left for my boys.’ Rose rattled the brightly decorated biscuit tin under Lizzie’s nose, tempting her to a biscuit and hoping to elicit some gossip in return.

  ‘My mam likes it here,’ said Lizzie. ‘She says it’s wild and untamed, just like her. And she’s near my father here. We couldn’t leave him all by himself in the graveyard and us go back to Bradford.’ Lizzie’s thoughts flitted back to the grimy streets of Bradford and the smoking mill chimneys. She’d hated it there, living in a crowded house where they’d had to share an outside lavvy with the rest of the street.

  ‘Aye, well it’s certainly wild and untamed. I’ve never known gales like it, and the winters are bitter enough to freeze a body to the ground. No doubt there’ll be a lot more joining your father in that graveyard before the tunnel and viaduct are finished.’ Rocking baby Tommy in her arms, Rose watched as Lizzie nibbled the edges of her biscuit, savouring every mouthful. ‘Does your mother keep company with anybody, now you’ve no father?’ she pried, pushing the biscuit barrel towards the child in the hope of teasing information from her in return.

  ‘Na, me ma says there was only one for her, and no one will ever replace him. I hear her crying of a night when she’s had a drop to drink. I think she gets lonely.’

  ‘Aye well, that’ll be the demon drink. Better your mother kept away from that stuff,’ Rose sniffed disdainfully. ‘It makes women wanton and men lustful – I’ll not have it in my home. All I need is the good book to give me solace.’ Realizing that she was rocking the baby a little too violently, Rose got up and began pacing the floor with the dozing Tommy clasped to her.

  Lizzie’s eyes followed Mrs Pratt for a moment and then returned to the biscuit barrel. Just one more biscuit, and then she’d better go. Otherwise she’d have to listen to the old woman going on about her Sunday School again. The last thing Lizzie wanted was to join the holier-than-thou band of Methodists that sang outside pubs, trying to save souls. Their children always looked as if they’d been scrubbed to within an inch of their life with carbolic soap. From what she’d heard, they even washed their mouths out with soap.

  Wincing at the thought, Lizzie crammed the biscuit into her mouth. Barely able to speak through the crumbs, she thanked Mrs Pratt before taking possession of her baby brother, hurriedly making good her escape before she was cornered.

  Stepping out into the sun and wind with Tommy fast asleep in her arms, Lizzie made her way home. In the distance she could see her mother pegging out washing on the lines that she had erected across the moorland on the edge of the shantytown. Molly Mason was battling against the cold spring wind, clothes pegs clamped in her grimly set mouth and long auburn hair whipping across her face. Lizzie knew her mother hated it when she had a mix of washing, especially when people sent her their whites for laundering. Then the work was even harder than usual, because the women of Batty Green wanted their whites washed in Dolly Blue – a whitener to keep the white sharp and clean – instead of just being scrubbed with the usual carbolic soap.

  The empty dolly tub had been put back in its usual place under the eaves of the hut, along with her scrubbing board, mangle and posser. They’d be back in use again tomorrow when the next lot of laundry would have to be tackled. Before Dad died, doing the washing was a once-a-week chore, but now it seemed to take up all Ma’s time because she did other people’s things as well as their own. ‘I’ve got to make a living somehow,’ she’d say. Lizzie had tried to lend a hand, fetching water to fill the copper, plunging the posser into the dolly tub to churn up the soapy water, turning the mangle to wring out the water before hanging the clothes on the line, but it was exhausting work and her mother would soon lose patience with her feeble efforts. So Molly soldiered on alone, pounding the posser and bending over the scrubbing board until her back ached and her hands were chapped and raw from the bleach and strong soap.

  Her arms aching from carrying Tommy, Lizzie opened the door and stepped into a hut that seemed very unwelcoming after the plush surrounds of the Pratts’ home. Here there were no ornaments, no delicate pieces of china, no curtains at the windows. The nearest thing to a curtain was the sheet hanging from a wire strung across the room to screen off their sleeping quarters. The stove had been lit to boil the water for the laundry, so the place was warm at least, but it was sparsely furnished with only the bare necessities. Since her dad died, the hut had lost the homely feel it once had. They’d not had much, even in those days, but Dad had always made the little hut feel like a proper home. When he came home of an evening the house would be filled with laughter as he told funny stories or played jokes on them. With him gone, it was as if the heart had been ripped out of their home.

  Lizzie placed her baby brother in the packing carton that doubled as his cot, wrapping him up tight in his blanket. He was still fast asleep; now that he had a full stomach he’d probably sleep for an hour or two.

  She picked up the kettle and filled it up from the big wooden butt outside the hut. She had to make several trips to the spring in order to top it up each day. That was Lizzie’s job: fetching and carrying water so they’d have enough for drinking and their daily ablutions. Not to mention the dozens of trips back and forth to keep the butt replenished on laundry days. Her arms and legs would ache from carrying the heavy buckets, until it was all she could do to lift them.

  While the kettle heated on the stove she went to check on Tommy. At the sight of the red-cheeked baby sleeping contentedly she let out a yawn. It had been a long day already, she’d been up since six and the biscuits and drink had made her sleepy. She curled up in the Windsor chair, pulling her shawl around her. Soon her eyelids were drooping and her head lolling on the armrest as she dozed off.

  The screams awoke her. In the first hazy moments between sleep and being awake, she wasn’t sure whether she was having a nightmare or if the screams were real. Lizzie rubbed her eyes and peered through the gloom until she could make out her mother, standing over the makeshift cot and clutching baby Tommy.

  ‘What have you done, Lizzie?’ she wailed. ‘What have you done to Tommy? He’s not breathing.’

  Her face was contorted with fear as she held the tiny body in her arms. As she clutched him tighter to her breast, Tommy’s little white arm dropped lifeless out of the shawl.

  Lizzie leapt from the chair, her heart pounding. ‘I didn’t do nothing, Ma, honest. He was fine when I put him down, he was right content, ’cause he’d had some milk off Mrs Pratt.’ A lump formed in her throat and her breath was coming in ragged gasps. ‘I didn’t hurt him, Mam. It wasn’t me, I swear. I would never do anything to hurt our Tommy – I love him,’ she sobbed, tears streaming down her face.

  Rocking Tommy back and forth as if this would somehow restore life to his cold, still body, Molly tried to fight the panic rising within her. Her heart felt as if it would burst with grief. She looked from her son’s face to her sobbing daughter. ‘Stop blubbing!’ she screeched. ‘Fetch Doctor Thistlethwaite – he’ll be in the hospital on the green. Go on, run! Fetch him now. Can I trust you to do that?’

  As the door banged shut and the sound of Lizzie’s running footsteps faded, Molly Mason sank into the chair her daughter had just vacated. Hugging the lifeless bundle to her, she rocked back and forth, trying not to give vent to the grief, knowing that if she did she would howl and scream and cry, unable to stop. What had Lizzie done? What was she thinking of, taking her precious baby boy to Mrs Pratt’s?
Leaving her to find him dead in his cot? Deep down, she was blaming herself for being too busy. Over and over again, the words she’d spoken only that morning kept repeating in her head as she clutched the silent baby to her breast: Drown it if you want. . . just shut him up. It had been the drink from the previous night talking. Her hangover had made her say things she didn’t mean. All she’d wanted was to make enough money to feed them all, with perhaps enough left over for another gill of gin to dull the pain. It wasn’t her fault. She’d done her best to make a good life in this world, but death was always lurking at her shoulder, especially in this godforsaken place.

  All the gin in the world couldn’t numb the raw pain she was feeling now.

  Lizzie raced along the rutted track through the shanties, tears coursing down her cheeks, lungs burning and a pain in her chest so bad she thought she would burst. She ran as she had never run before, desperate to reach the crossroads and the Midland Railway Hospital. Like the workers’ housing it was built of wood, but its sturdy walls and imposing size set it apart from the hastily erected shanties. The planners had known that this building would see lots of use, but they had situated it far enough away from the dwellings to prevent residents being disturbed by the screams of injured workers as their limbs were amputated. Even though the railway construction was still in its early stages, amputees were a common sight in Batty Green and Lizzie knew that this was where the men were operated on. It was also the place where her dad had been taken when he got hurt. The place where he died.

  On reaching the door, Lizzie hesitated. The last time she’d crossed this threshold was the day her father was brought here. She didn’t want to go in there ever again, but if little Tommy’s life depended on it she had no choice. Wiping her eyes, leaving tracks of her tears down her cheeks, she gathered up every ounce of courage she could summon and opened the door.

  Doctor Thistlethwaite was stooped over the end bed at the far end of the building. Hardly able to breathe, and careful not to look to either side of her at the groaning men in the beds, she walked the length of the ward.