Orphan of Angel Street (3 page)

‘Miss O’Donnell’ll be up here any minute,’ the woman hissed in her ear, trying to prise Mercy’s hands away from the bedstead. ‘And then you’ll be for it. I ’ope she flogs you within an inch of your life, you evil little vermin.’

She managed to yank Mercy off the bed and started slapping her, only to have the child slide through her hands like blancmange and continue raging on the floor, pummelling it with her fists.

The woman landed a violent kick in Mercy’s ribs and suddenly everything went quiet. Mercy gasped, then groaned. To Miss Eagle’s satisfaction she at last saw tears start to roll down that normally inscrutable little face. The child finally opened her mouth in a roar of pain.

‘What in the name of God is going on?’ Miss O’Donnell loomed in the doorway of the dormitory, walking stiffly as if she were attired from head to foot in cardboard. Her long black outfit was topped by a black feather-trimmed bonnet and her cheeks, already florid, were plastered with circles of rouge. She was quivering, more with nerves it seemed than anger.

‘D’you not know himself will be here on the hour? Get that child downstairs immediately and stop this horrible commotion she’s making!’

Miss Eagle blushed a nasty red. ‘I can’t. Since Amy Laski went she’s been impossible to handle.’

‘In God’s name she’s only – what? – seven years old and a third the size of you!’ Miss O’Donnell clearly had no intention of risking the pristine state of her garments either. ‘If you can’t sort her out go and get Dorothy Finch. She’s the only one can knock any sense into that one.’

Mercy was left alone on the cold stone floor. She raised her head and looked up, surrounded by the black bedsteads with their threadbare candlewick covers from which the colours had long been washed out.

Her large grey eyes looked dazed, as if she’d returned from another existence somewhere. She could find no satisfactory way of expressing her need, her sense of being utterly lost. She longed to be held, loved, cared for, yet so alone was she in the world, had seen so little of such care that she scarcely knew for what it was she hungered. Pain speared at her ribs. She lowered her head again and started banging her forehead with a steady rhythm against the floor, muttering to herself, ‘Hate you, hate you, hate you . . .’ This was how Dorothy Finch found her when she arrived, flustered, upstairs.

‘Mercy! Oh Mercy, you silly babby. You’ve got to stop this!’ She swooped down and pulled the girl off the floor hearing her give a squeal of pain. ‘Mr Hanley’s coming today and the minister’s already ’ere. They’re all waiting for you. Quick, wipe your face on this.’ The woman held out a hanky and brushed the dust from Mercy’s clothes. She avoided looking straight at Mercy, as if unable to face the raw pain in her eyes.

Dorothy had come to work at the Hanley Home when Mercy was still the smallest of infants, about four months old. She had watched her grow into a toddler with a solemn, appraising face and dead straight hair. Dorothy remembered how Mercy had gone everywhere with her hand thrust into Amy’s, looking up at her with adoration and absolute trust, trotting along beside her to keep up.

When Amy left, for three days Mercy had spoken barely a word. At first no one noticed, not even Dorothy, for she was always a withdrawn child. But one day when the older ones had gone to school, Dorothy found her lying on Amy’s old bed, absolutely silent and still, her face a blank.

‘Mercy?’ Dorothy had come upon her cheerfully. ‘You didn’t ought to be ’ere, eh, bab? You’ll get it from Miss O’Donnell if she catches you!’

Mercy raised her arm back behind her head and started banging her wrist, hard on the metal bedhead until she cried out and there were tears in her eyes.

‘What the ’ell d’you do that for?’ Dorothy shouted at her in alarm. ‘What you playing at? Go on, get off with you downstairs. I’ve got quite enough to get on with without you playing me up!’

The rages began and grew wilder. They could strike any time and burn through Mercy with an intensity that no one could control or penetrate. They found her throwing her body about, screaming, biting, banging her arms or legs or head on hard objects.

‘She’s got the devil in her,’ Miss O’Donnell decreed. ‘Plenty of hard work, that’s what she needs.’ She set out to file down Mercy’s will and temper by physically exhausting her. As soon as they were big enough to manage it the girls were expected to carry out nearly all the domestic chores. Mercy spent long periods of her days mopping floors, scrubbing floors, polishing floors. But still her unhappy soul flared in outbursts of pain and frustration. Only Dorothy could soothe her, by grasping the little girl’s flailing body, holding tight and talking about any old nonsense until the fight suddenly dropped out of her and she surrendered to being quiet, being held.

‘Come on, stand proper now,’ Dorothy urged. ‘Look at the state of you!’ With her deft fingers she straightened out Mercy’s clothes. There wasn’t time to retie Mercy’s plaits and the little girl looked quite dishevelled with her rumpled hair and blotchy face. She was small for her age, and with her pale skin and large eyes, very like a delicate, china doll.

‘Come on – Violet’s waiting,’ Dorothy fibbed. ‘She wants to walk in with you.’

Silent now, one hand clenched to her burning ribs, Mercy followed her along the corridor to the main stairs. From the dayroom they heard a man’s voice in the hall and the eager-to-please twittering of the women, ‘. . . so nice . . . such an honour . . .’ before the nod was given to file into the hall under the Union Jack.

A visit to the orphanage by its benefactor Joseph Hanley was a rare occasion. His Home for Poor Girls (1881) had been built shortly after the Home for Poor Boys, a mile further out of the city. Joseph Hanley had been in his forties then, and was now a rather corpulent sixty-six-year-old, who had recently passed on his brass foundry on Rea Street to his twin sons and moved to the clearer air of the Staffordshire countryside.

Every so often he made ritual visits to his ‘ministries’. He was an intensely religious man, a passionate nonconformist who had incorporated in the homes a more than average number of washrooms to inculcate Cleanliness and Godliness, and established close ties with the Baptist church on the Witton Road, roughly halfway between his two institutions. On most Sundays the girls and boys – about fifty of each – were frogmarched along to morning worship, swelling the local congregation no end. Every six weeks or so the minister, Mr Ezra Vesey, held a service for them in the orphanage.

Mercy sat cross-legged on the floor which smelt of fresh polish. The staff sat on chairs at the ends of the rows of children. There were windows along one side of the hall and a longer one at the end through which could be seen young horse chestnut trees, the late summer sunlight casting the restless shadows of leaves on the parquet floor. It was on this window that Mercy kept her gaze throughout most of her time spent in the hall, on its shadowland of changing light.

Violet, who was eight, turned and peered at her to see if she was still crying, but the tears were wiped away now, and Mercy’s face solemn, eyes raised to the light. Violet elbowed her in the ribs to get her attention.

Mercy’s face contorted. ‘Ow!’ It was almost a yelp. ‘Gerroff!’

Immediately Miss Eagle’s head snapped round at the end of the row, her face wearing a vindictive scowl. You again, it said. I’m going to get you later on.

Mercy stared hard at the window. When I’m a princess, she thought, I’ll show all of them . . . I’ll have lovely clothes and a hat for every day of the year and my own carriage and Miss Eagle’ll be on ’er hands and knees doing my floors all day every day and I’ll have a great big horse whip to keep ’er in order. And I’ll keep the people I want living there. And the only one who can do nowt is Amy ’cos she’ll have her own rooms in my castle, with . . .

‘Stand up!’ Violet was pulling at her pinafore. Everyone else was on their feet and the almost tuneful piano started to thump out, ‘
What a Friend we have in Jesus
. . .’

The younger girls had been placed nearer the back of the hall, no doubt as they were expected to be less well behaved than the older ones. Standing on tiptoe Mercy could just glimpse Mr Hanley, crouched in a special chair at the front. She could see the bald, porridge-coloured circle at the back of his head and his stooped little shoulders. Every now and then he let out a wheezy cough.

Mr Vesey was a very tall man with almost no hair left on his head but lots on his face, as if it had somehow slipped down round his chin, and great big spidery hands. He sang much louder than everyone else except Miss O’Donnell who almost seemed to be vying with him, loudly and off-key, the feathers on her hat quivering.

‘This is the day that the Lord hath made!’ Mr Vesey declared in a nasal Rochdale accent. ‘We shall rejoice and be glad in it.’ His hands traced webs in the air.

Eventually they sang ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’ and the piano plinked out the tune until they ran out of verses.

‘Now girls.’ Miss Rowney moved as if on wheels to the front of the hall. She had a gruff voice, more like a man’s. ‘Before we go from here you are all going to come to the front and shake Mr Hanley by the hand to show him how ve-ery much you all appreciate all he has done for you. Come on now – from the front!’ She beckoned with a beefy finger, directing the older girls to move forwards. Mercy couldn’t hear what Mr Hanley was saying to them, only the high, squeaky tone of his voice. Inside she boiled and bubbled. I hate . . . I hate . . .

They filed slowly along the middle, shook hands and dispersed round the sides, some making a little bob, almost a curtsey, all trying to turn their mouths up as hard as they could. Miss Rowney and Miss O’Donnell stood by watching with steam-powered smiles as well.

Mr Hanley sat enthroned on his chair, scrawny legs placed apart to fit his well-rounded belly between, his weskit buttons laced with a gold chain which strained across his front. He had an amiable, ruddy face and, as she drew nearer, Mercy saw that one of his eyes was clear, the other rheumy, and he kept dabbing at it with a large white handkerchief.

A girl called Daisy was in front of her. Shyly she held out her hand.

‘Well, my dear,’ Mr Hanley said. This didn’t seem to be about to lead to anything else so Daisy gave a confused little bob and scuttled off.

‘Ah,’ Mr Hanley said as Mercy stood before him. ‘What a pretty little lass.’

‘Yes, now.’ Miss Rowney suddenly swooped forward, gushing at Mr Hanley in a voice that suggested he was very sick, very foolish or possibly both. ‘We wanted to tell you particularly about Mercy. She’s a true foundling. Abandoned at birth – not even a full name. So in your honour, sir, we have taken the liberty of giving her the surname Hanley.’ Miss Rowney smiled with great satisfaction at having conferred this extraordinary favour.

Mr Hanley saw two large, and disconcertingly cold grey eyes fix on him, fringed by pale eyelashes.

‘Well, my dear,’ he said again. ‘So you’re my kith and kin, so to speak!’ He gave a snuffling laugh. ‘Won’t you shake hands, child?’

A gnarled hand with veins like purple rivers came towards Mercy. She stared at the hand, looked hard for a moment into Mr Hanley’s eyes, then caught hold of the end of his fingers. All around the chapel every person’s mouth jerked open into a horrified, gasping Oh! as Mercy leant down slowly, almost reverently, and sank her teeth into the loose, fleshy bit between Mr Hanley’s finger and thumb. His skin felt stringy between her teeth. The old man let out a yelp of pain and surprise, trying to fling her off.

Mercy’s next view of life was of the wooden floor rushing past her eyes, door jambs, alternating shadow and brighter light and the furious swish of black taffeta as Miss O’Donnell seized hold of her and swung her upside down over one shoulder like a newborn calf. The other girls’ heads swivelled, some apprehensive, some gloating, as Miss O’Donnell speedily whisked her offensive presence from the hall.

The cellar was almost completely dark. Only the palest lines of light seeped round the upper part of the door.

Mercy sat crouched on the wide top step right next to the door, arms clenched round her knees, rocking back and forth. She was hurting so much, her ribs from Miss Eagle’s kicking, her cheeks raw from Miss O’Donnell’s violent slaps after she had dumped her down hard on the floor outside the cellar door with a force that jarred right up into her back.

‘There – you evil little rat!’ she snarled between clenched teeth, her great hands slapping her again and again. ‘You don’t deserve to live – you’re a bloody disgrace. I’ve half a mind to throw you back on the streets where you came from and good riddance. Now then.’ She unlocked the cellar and yanked Mercy up into her arms again, holding her with her head facing down. ‘Right down at the bottom, that’s where you can go, my girl.’ She clumped down blue-brick steps into the dark, cavernous cellar. Inside were ghostly shapes, some long and thin, the shadowy outline of an old mangle against the far wall, then fading to a solid blackness at the back. Miss O’Donnell forced her down on the damp floor against the wall.

‘And you can stay in there ’til you rot!’

With heavy tread she hurried back up the steps and slammed the door with such force that the planks reverberated. Mercy heard the bolt rattle across. And then it was dreadfully quiet. All she could hear was her own jagged breathing and a slow dripping sound from somewhere in the blackness.

She stretched her eyes wide, trying to see any speck of light, but there was none at first. After a few moments, at the far end she made out a block of grey, strained light from a grating on the street. Mercy pulled herself up while she still had the courage to move and crawled up the cellar steps where there was a crack of light from under the door. She sat on the top step, hugging herself. From here she couldn’t see the ghostly light from the grating. The darkness in front of her was like a gaping well, full of invisible, whispering presences.

She felt a twinge in her belly and realized her bladder was urgently full. Pulling her legs in even closer, she sank her teeth into her forearm, rocking back and forth, making a little moaning noise to herself, needing to hear a sound from somewhere because if she stopped it was so silent and there would be nothing but the dark. She clenched her eyes shut and kept rocking, rocking . . .