The Master smiled, and agreed, but rules were rules, he said, with such finality that the interview ended.
Frank’s joy at knowing she was alive was greater than his disappointment at not being allowed to see her. But he would see her – damn the Master – and he changed his round so that he would be near the workhouse gate at 4 p.m. when the girls returned from school. He hung around, shouting “whelks and eels” as the crocodile of girls marched past him. But he couldn’t pick her out. There were a couple of dozen little girls with blonde hair, about the age that she would be, but even though he went every day for a fortnight and looked carefully at them, he couldn’t recognise his sister. Several of the bigger girls giggled and nudged each other, winking at him as they marched past. Normally he would have flirted back, but he had no heart for flirting now. He changed his round again.
He sought another interview with the Master. On this occasion he had carefully prepared his questions. If he couldn’t see his sister because of the rules, what were the rules about taking her away altogether? The Master was surprised at the boy’s persistence and explained, condescendingly, that any relative could apply for the discharge of an inmate and, provided the applicant could prove that he could provide adequately for said inmate, the application would be considered favourably.
Frank’s quick brain translated. “You means, if I can support my sister, I can get her out of ’ere?”
The Master nodded.
“An’ what would you means by ‘support’?”
The Master looked at the eager fourteen-year-old sitting before him, and smiled at the impossibility of his hopes. “I would say, firstly, that the applicant must be of good character and must have decent accommodation. He must prove himself able to support the inmate for whose discharge he is applying, and should have a reasonable sum of money saved against illness or loss of work.”
“An’ ’ow much would you call a ‘reasonable sum’?”
The Master tapped his pencil, and smiled archly.
“Oh, I would say twenty-five pounds. That is a fair sum.”
Frank swallowed. Twenty-five pounds! Ask a working boy today to save £25,000 and he might swallow and turn pale, just as Frank did.
The Master concluded the interview and assumed that he would see no more of the boy.
Frank dragged his feet miserably back to the lodging house. The obstacles seemed insurmountable. Why couldn’t he just take her? When he entered the squalid doss-house, in which about twenty men slept and ate, he realised the Master was right. He couldn’t possibly bring a girl here. He would have to be able to provide for her and find somewhere decent to live.
Frank then worked as he had never worked before, spurred on by necessity. He did his fish round, as ever, but instead of knocking off when he had sold it all, he looked into the fruit-and-nut trade, and hawked them around the pubs and theatres and music halls until ten or eleven at night. He doubled his income. He changed his habits and became something of an outcast from his old mates, because he never gambled, never flashed his money around by joining them in the tavern. They resented it and ridiculed him. He opened a Post Office National Savings Account. No coster ever saved. Conspicuous spending each evening in the pubs and taverns was their habit. But Frank wasn’t interested in what the others did. He had opened the account because he knew that in a communal lodging house he would eventually be robbed. When he learned that he would earn four per cent on his investments he was thrilled and carefully worked out how many pennies that would be to every pound saved. By the age of fifteen he had saved eight pounds.
There is no doubt about it, Frank was a brilliant and imaginative coster. He went into the fried-fish market, arranging for the fish to be cooked at a baker’s and employing a lad to hawk it around at a fixed rate, plus the bunting system. He looked into the roast-chestnut market and worked out that the hire of the gear would pay for itself around Christmas time. He was right. By the age of sixteen he had twenty-five pounds in his Post Office account.
He then looked round for a room to rent for himself and Peggy. It had to be a decent room – on that point he was determined. His sister was not going to be dumped in any old hole. She would be twelve years old now, quite the young lady. He had not seen her since she was little more than a baby, but he visualised her as petite and pretty, and felt sure she looked like his mother. Mother and sister merged into each other in his imagination, a numinous female ideal, the guardians of his hopes and longings.
He found a room on the top floor of a house at eight shillings a week, plus two shillings for the rent of furniture. It was an upper-class house, he felt. There was a gas stove on the middle landing for everybody’s use, and a tap in the basement, There was even a lavatory in the yard. He was well satisfied.
Frank stood again in the Master’s office. He had on his best clothes and his Post Office book was in his pocket. The Master had not expected him, and was astonished when he saw the proof of twenty-five pounds saved in only two years. How had a boy of sixteen achieved it? He looked at him with new respect and said: “Your request will have to be considered by the Board of Guardians. They meet in three weeks’ time.”
He gave Frank the date and time of the Guardians’ meeting and told him to come back on that evening.
Frank asked if he could see his sister, and was told curtly that he would see her in three weeks’ time. Seething with frustration, he looked at his powerful fists and nearly knocked the man down. But he remembered he had to be “of good character”, so thrust his hands behind his back. He would never get Peggy out if he hit the workhouse master!
The Guardians debated the application. It was unusual, but they agreed to release the girl, if she wished to go with her brother. Frank was called into the boardroom and interrogated. They seemed satisfied and were especially impressed by the Post Office book. They told him to stand by the window, and Peggy was called away from her evening duties.
Peggy was in the washhouse, helping to prepare the younger girls for bed. It was a duty she loved – better than scrubbing the greasy old kitchen floors, or putting out smelly dustbins. She could play with the little girls, and there was always laughter when Peggy was putting them to bed. They had to laugh quietly, so as not to get into trouble, but, somehow, a bar of soap slithering across a stone floor seemed even funnier if you had to stuff a towel into your mouth to stop shrieks of laughter. Suppressed giggles double the fun for young girls.
Peggy was flushed with the steam and the laughter. Her blonde hair was damp and the wispy bits around her forehead curled upwards. Her apron was wet, and her arms soapy.
An officer came in. “The Guardians want to see you. Come with me.”
She didn’t know what the summons meant and had no time to feel alarm. She was shown into the big boardroom, where a group of gentlemen sat around an oval table.
Frank, standing inconspicuously by the window, watched her every step. She was taller than he had expected. He had imagined a tiny creature, because he remembered a tiny baby. But this was a grown girl in early puberty. He liked her dishevelled hair and laughing features, still damp from the washhouse. He saw, with a stab of pity, the fear and uncertainty as she stepped towards the oval table.
The Chairman said, not unkindly, “Your brother has made an application to remove you from the workhouse.”
“My brother?” Peggy looked bewildered.
“Yes, you have a brother. Didn’t you know?”
She shook her head. The anguish inside Frank made his legs turn to jelly. He leaned against the wall.
“Well, you have, and he asks permission to take you out of our care and to look after you himself. Do you wish to go with him, or do you prefer to stay here with your friends?”
Peggy didn’t say anything, and a member of the Board said sharply, “Speak up, child, and answer the Chairman when he is good enough to speak to you.”
Peggy’s lip trembled and she began to cry, but still she said nothing. Frank’s anguish had turned to dread. What if she did not want to come? It was a possibility he had not even considered.
The Chairman, who was kindly, with daughters of his own, said gently, pointing to Frank: “This is your brother Frank. It is to be regretted that you have not seen him since you were three years old, but now he has applied for your discharge and we, your guardians, are satisfied that he can provide for you. Do you wish to go with him?”
Peggy looked over towards the window, and saw a tall stranger. He did not mean a thing to her. Insecure children are terrified of change. She thought of the happy laughter in the washhouse, and her friends at school and in the dormitory. She stared at this unknown, unknowable young man, and her heart was set on her friends and the routine she had always known.
Frank saw rejection in her eyes and panic spurred his movements. Before she could speak, he stepped swiftly across the room.
“Stay where you are, you have no right—” shouted the Master.
Frank took no notice. He walked straight up to Peggy and stood looking down at her. Everyone in the room was hushed as brother and sister looked at each other for the first time in nine years. Then, slowly, he extended the little finger of his right hand and curled it round the little finger of her right hand. He held it close and grinned. “Hello, Peg.”
The action stirred her memory as nothing else could have done. Holding little fingers was a special and intimate gesture from a childhood almost lost to her now. No one else had ever done that to her. She had forgotten all about it, but now she remembered. A dim, far-off memory of loss and longing stirred within her. She looked at this tall lad and the love that she had not known for years flooded her heart.
She squeezed his little finger in return, and smiled a smile of secret understanding. He saw the dimples in her cheeks, and knew that he had seen them before. Then with sudden, impetuous warmth, she threw her arms about his neck and leaned her head on his shoulder. The Guardians watched with breathless wonder. Even the Master was silent. The intoxicating smell of her hair sent a thrill through Frank’s tense body and he relaxed, knowing that she was his sister, and that all would be well.
She did not hold him for long, but turned to the Chairman and curtsied. “I will go with my brother, if you please, sir.”
Memories of early childhood dwell in a limbo that is neither forgetting, nor quite remembering. As Peggy danced along the pavement, looking up at Frank, she tried desperately to recall him, but could not. She looked up at his face, his hair, his smile, and tried to persuade herself that she knew him and could remember him when they were little, but she had to admit to herself that he was a stranger. Yet somehow he wasn’t. His big, rough hand grasping her own felt familiar, his arm round her shoulders as he led her down a dark street was familiar too. Something in his touch struck a chord within her that she knew and responded to.
Frank was jubilant. He felt like a king. None of his mates could have done what he’d done. He had got her out of that place, his little sister, and he would never let her go back. She did not look as he had imagined, but that did not matter; she was better than he had imagined. He greeted several of his friends, who nudged each other and shouted, “Who’s yer tart? Where’d ’ja find ’er? Any more like ’er fer us?”
Frank replied, good humouredly, “She’s my sister, and there’s no one in the whole world like her.”
He took her back to the lodgings – in a respectable street, he pointed out. He was proud to show her the facilities of the house. He led her up to the second floor and showed her the last word in luxury: the gas stove on the landing, where she could cook. They climbed two more flights of wooden stairs, and he proudly flung open the door.
It was a small attic room with a sloping roof and a garret window, in which a broken pane had been patched up with cardboard. The walls were unpainted and bits of plaster were falling off. The ceiling was yellow and stained with damp. The furniture, rented for two shillings a week, consisted of a rough wooden table and chair, a narrow iron bedstead with coarse grey army blankets, a wooden box, a candle stuck in a milk bottle, a jug and washbowl and a chamber pot. It looked fairly bleak, but children like small rooms, and to Peggy it seemed like heaven.
She threw her arms around Frank. “It’s lovely, lovely. Are we really going to live here?” Her eyes filled with uncertainty. “Will I have to go back? Don’t let me go back. I want to stay here with you.” He folded her in his arms and said fiercely, “You’ll never go back. Didja hear me? Never. Not as long as I can see to it. We’ll be together, always. Vat’s a promise, an’ all. Now, let’s see vat smile o’ your’n, so I can see them dimples.”
She smiled with trusting confidence, and he put his little fingers into the dimples.
“You’ll ’ave to smile a lot more offen, yer know.”
He brought in some wood and lit a fire in the narrow grate. Red and yellow flames leaped up, filling the little room with colour. He had bought some muffins and some real butter, and they sat on the floor by the fire, toasting the muffins on the end of a knife. They were so delicious she couldn’t stop eating them and the butter ran down her chin. He chuckled and wiped it off with his finger. She took hold of his hand and licked the butter off his finger, looking up at him with melting eyes. A thrill ran through him, and he did not know what to say.