‘Oh, are you indeed? And have you brought your calling card? We likes things done proper here! I shall have to announce you in the droring room!’ And he collapsed into a paroxysm of the most dreadful wheezing which I eventually realized was what passed for laughter. This soon turned into a proper coughing fit, so I patted the old fellow on the back and waited until he could speak again.
‘I shall unlock the gate, Your Ladyship,’ he gasped. ‘Stay there.’ And the door slammed shut again.
The porter’s lodge was set at one side of a gated arch, through which I could see the grey bulk of the workhouse itself. It was a forbidding stone building, with row upon row of narrow windows frowning down on to a bleak courtyard below. I shivered, and not merely because it was a cold, damp day that seemed to have frozen the very marrow in my bones.
‘The Archway of Tears, that’s what folks calls it around here,’ the porter said, shutting the gate behind me with a clang and locking it up again. ‘You’ll be glad enough to pass through the other way, I’ll be bound, but spare a thought for the poor souls who never will. Now come this way.’
He took me into his lodge through a door on the other side of the arch, then out by another door at the back into a passage which led along to a large bare room. It was empty except for a table, the chair behind it and a bench opposite. ‘Wait here for the matron,’ he said. ‘I’ve rung for her to collect you.’ I took a seat on the bench and tried to think of cheerful things so as not to lose heart completely.
Matron appeared a short while later, and any cheerful thoughts vanished right away. She matched the building very well, having a face that might have been carved from the same stone. ‘Unbutton your coat,’ she said, by way of a greeting. ‘If you’ve brought in any drink, it’ll be the worse for you.’ And she glared at me most severely while she searched for it, as though she could read on my face all the naughty intentions that were no doubt in my mind.
‘Right, follow me,’ she said when this unpleasant process was over, and marched briskly the other way down the corridor, which skirted the open courtyard. It was a little after mid-day, and we went past the open doorway of a dining hall filled with row upon row of women, all seated facing the same way and dressed in the same blue-and-white striped dresses, some with grubby calico shifts over them. The next room contained rows of men in striped cotton shirts. I wondered where the children were: they must have been in another part of the workhouse. Nobody spoke a word; the only sound to be heard was the scraping of spoons upon plates and an occasional shifting of benches. A thin, sour smell that might once have had something to do with boiled beef and turnips hung on the air.
We went on down the passage past a large laundry room, round a corner and then up two flights of stairs. At last the matron stopped at a door halfway along the upper landing. ‘This is where the unchaste women are. You can have half an hour with your sister and no more,’ she rapped out to me. ‘I will come back for you when the time is up.’ She opened the door, and in I went.
Iris was sitting in a chair facing the door, wearing one of those same striped dresses. Her face lit up when she saw me. ‘Polly! You came!’ She made as if to get up, though it was too much for her and she sank back in the chair. Although she was clearly overjoyed to see me, I could tell she was also ashamed that I should have had to find her in such a place.
‘Well, of course I did! Now don’t you go disturbing yourself on my account. You stay there and I shall sit beside you.’
Settling her back in the chair gave me a moment to gather my wits, because I should not have liked Iris to see how shocked I was at the sight of her. Her beautiful golden hair had been hacked short - the way Mother cuts our Tom’s when he’s been especially naughty - and the pink and white softness of her skin had faded to a dirty grey. She looked exhausted and ill, and every so often her body shook with a hollow, racking cough. What worried me most, however, was the desperate look in her eye: as though she had already endured more than a body ever should, and knew her troubles were not over yet.
‘You’ll have to sit on the floor, then,’ said a gravelly voice. ‘Not exactly set up for visitors, are we?’
A heavy, blowsy-looking woman was staring at us both with great interest from her seat on a low bed in a corner of the room. Her dark bedraggled hair stood out in all directions like a moulting feather duster, and when she drew back her narrow lips to smile at me in welcome, I could see that most of her teeth had rotted away to blackened stumps. She might have been forty or even fifty, yet there was a wooden crate on the dusty floor beside the bed with a swaddled shape laid in it that must have been a baby.
‘This is Miss Harker,’ Iris told me, and I knew from her face that she could tell what I was thinking.
‘Pleased to make your acquaintance,’ the lady said. ‘But call me Lily. We don’t stand on ceremony here, do we, Iris?’ She smiled again. ‘Iris and Lily, two flowers in a field.’ And she laughed, which was not a pleasant sound.
Then I noticed another wooden box on the floor, not far from where I was kneeling beside Iris’s chair. She nodded proudly. ‘There is my Ralph. Take a peek at him, Polly, if you’d like.’
Of course I would. I have always loved babies - their soft downy heads and the sweet milky smell of them - and I could not wait to see Iris’s. Such a wise round face looked back at me from the depths of the blanket! He was wide awake but not making a sound, just gazing up at that cracked, cobwebby ceiling as though it was the bluest, most heavenly sky in the world.
‘Oh, there’s a dear,’ I whispered, stroking his peachy cheek with my little finger. ‘Iris, he’s perfect!’
‘You can pick him up if he’s awake,’ she said. ‘He seems to like being cuddled.’
Lily tutted in exasperation. ‘Why can’t you leave him alone for five minutes? I’ve told your sister a hundred times, she’ll spoil the bairn, always petting and fussing over him.’
I ignored her and lifted up the little bundle to settle him against my shoulder. If only Iris and I could have been alone together! There was so much to say but we could hardly talk with that dreadful Lily there.
Iris watched me hungrily as I held her baby. ‘Here, you have a turn,’ I said, offering him over, but she shook her head.
‘No, you keep him.’ I could see she was close to tears. Then she raised herself up a little in the chair, cleared her throat and said, ‘Mrs Henderson gave you the day off? That’s a wonder.’
I didn’t go into the full story behind my coming to the workhouse, not wanting to worry her. I had had to tell Mrs Henderson that my mother had suddenly been taken ill (which I hated to do, being superstitious about lying over such things) and plead with her to be allowed home for the day. She hummed and hahed about it, but at last she said yes, so then all I had to do was persuade someone to lend me the train fare - not an easy task with Christmas coming up. Luckily Megan came to my rescue, having some money put aside for a rainy day.
So Iris and I wasted time talking about this and that, while the minutes of my visit ticked by and Ralph nuzzled into my shoulder. Now it seemed as though she could hardly bear to look at the baby, which was strange.
‘Don’t think I’m going to be carrying him around all day,’ Lily said, watching me walking to and fro with obvious disapproval.
‘Lily is to leave the workhouse next week and she’s offered to keep Ralph for a while, until I can come for him,’ Iris explained. ‘I am sure it won’t be for long, but I need to get a little stronger before leaving myself.’
I looked at her for a moment without speaking, trying to understand what she was trying to tell me with her eyes. Something important, it had to be. Luckily, Lily’s poor child set to wailing just at that moment - a thin reedy cry that did not seem to hold out much hope of an answer. The noise went on, and Lily went on ignoring it. I laid Ralph back on the rough, straw-stuffed mattress in his cot and took out my purse.
‘Your baby must need feeding,’ I told Lily, ‘and I’m sure you won’t want a stranger looking on. Perhaps you could take the mite downstairs for a moment? Here’s a shilling for your trouble.’ It was all the money I had left.
The sight of my purse made Lily a good deal more considerate, and she took herself off the bed in quite a hurry to test the coin with one of her few remaining teeth. ‘Just for a few minutes, then,’ she said, and yanked the baby up out of its box - which gave the poor thing such a shock that it stopped crying immediately.
As soon as they had gone, Iris started talking more freely. ‘I don’t want Lily to take Ralph, Polly. She’s no fit person to look after a baby, anyone can see that. I’ve a little bit of money put aside, you see, for after he was born. I had to give it to the matron for safekeeping when I came in here, and now Lily knows about it too – she and the matron are thick as thieves. She says she’ll take care of Ralph if I pay her five shillings a week, and I can come for him when I’m feeling better.’ Her words ended in a fit of coughing which she tried to stifle with a grubby handkerchief. ‘They mean to take him away from me, I know they do, and what will become of him then? I’m not strong enough to stand up to them.’
‘Hush, hush,’ I said, wiping the hair off her damp brow. ‘Don’t upset yourself.’ Poor thing, she was burning up! Then I saw to my horror that the handkerchief at her mouth was spotted red with blood, and had to look away so she wouldn’t see the tears in my eyes.
‘Ralph is all that matters. Give him to me, Polly.’
I put the baby gently into her arms and she laid her hollow cheek against his soft round one. ‘I cannot help loving him,’ she whispered. ‘They say all my wickedness has been passed on to him, but how can that be? He is an innocent child, sent from God.’
‘And what of his father?’ It was an awkward question, but I had to ask.
She smiled sadly. ‘His father gave me the money to get rid of him. Not such a fine gentleman after all, as it turned out.’ For a second she clutched the little scrap to herself as though she would never let him go, then tenderly she kissed the top of his head and passed him back to me. ‘You take him,’ she said. ‘Please, Polly! This is no place for a baby, and I’m too sick to care for him now.’
‘Take him where? Whatever are you asking me to do?’
‘Take him away from here! I thought your mother might agree to bring him up until he has grown into a lad, and then perhaps he could be apprenticed in some trade - ’ The handkerchief went up to her mouth again. ‘He will be such a fine young man,’ she went on when she had recovered herself a little. ‘Every night I dream about him living in your cottage, with your brother Tom for a playmate. I know it is a lot to ask, but for the love of God, Polly, please help me!’
I’d never in my life seen anyone so desperate. The baby had started fussing on my lap, so I gave him my finger to hold and looked down into his solemn blue eyes while I tried to decide what to do. He had a strong grip, that was for sure - as though he were going to hang on to whatever chances came his way.
‘If you tuck him into your shawl and then button up your coat, no one will know he’s there,’ Iris went on. ‘Hurry, please! Lily will be back in a minute - she doesn’t trust me an inch. And don’t let the matron see you, whatever happens. Go now! Quickly, Polly, or you’ll meet her on the way out!’
What else could I do? Even though I knew my mother would never in a month of Sundays take Iris’s baby, even though there was little chance of us leaving the workhouse undiscovered, even though I would end up in terrible hot water, I laid Ralph against my chest and Iris dragged herself out of the chair to help me bind the shawl tightly around him. For a second we clung to each other with the baby between us.
‘Will you tell him about me?’ she whispered. ‘Tell my little boy he had a mother who loved him dearly, however weak and foolish she might have been.’
I nodded, not being able to speak. Then she took something out of the folds of her dress and pressed it into my hand. ‘This is all I have to give him.’ It was a tiny photograph of herself behind the still-room table, smiling out at Master Edward’s camera as though she hadn’t a care in the world. ‘Oh, but it will get crumpled and torn!’ She fell back into the chair with her hands over her face. ‘He will never know me. It is all for nothing.’
I knelt beside her, careful not to squash the baby. ‘Remember my locket? I shall put your picture in there and give it to Ralph so he can look at it when he’s grown into that fine young man and see what a lovely mother he had. He won’t forget you, Iris, I will make sure of that. And neither shall I. God bless you.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, a hand still covering her eyes. ‘Now, go. Run!’
I understood why she could not bring herself to look at Ralph for one last time. Her heart was breaking in front of my eyes; if I didn’t take the baby now, she would lose the courage ever to let him go. So I left the room without another word.
I ran into trouble straight away. The sound of a heavy tread on the stairs and a dispirited wail alongside it told me that Lily was coming - and she wasn’t far away. If I carried on down the passage, we would run straight into each other. Quickly, I turned the other way and tried the door of the next room along. It was not locked, thank the Lord; I slipped inside to hide for a moment, praying the place would be empty.
The room was completely bare, with only the narrowest slit of a window set high up in the far wall. This wall, like the other three, was covered from top to bottom with some sort of heavy material, and a pair of leg irons was chained to the floor. I shuddered and hugged Ralph to me, as much for my comfort as his. We had fetched up in a padded cell, designed so the poor souls who ended up there wouldn’t be able to injure themselves or anyone else. Iris was right: the workhouse was no place for a baby.