Four Children and It Read online

  ‘Come with me,’ she said, pulling me in.

  ‘Please, ma’am, I am a girl – and I haven’t done anything wrong. It’s all been a terrible mistake,’ I said. ‘I just want to go home.’

  ‘So where is your home?’ she asked.

  I could hardly expect her to believe my two homes were more than a hundred years in the future. Mum’s flat and Dad’s house hadn’t been built yet. They hadn’t even been born. Their parents and their parents’ parents hadn’t been born either. I wondered wildly whether I had great-grandparents who might somehow recognize me as some kind of kin and take me in, but it seemed extremely unlikely.

  ‘Well?’ said the matron.

  ‘I – I don’t suppose I have a home now,’ I said.

  ‘Then come with me to the receiving ward,’ she said.

  It was a small grim room with two large stone baths at the end.

  ‘Get those dirty rags off, quick sharp,’ she said.

  ‘But – but I – I don’t want to!’ I said feebly.

  ‘You need a bath. You’re filthy dirty and no doubt infested too. I can’t have you infecting all my other residents,’ she said, running the tap in one of the baths.

  Shrinking with embarrassment, I took off my jeans and T-shirt and underwear. She stared at my clothes in astonishment, shaking her head, then gathered them up with the tips of her fingers and deposited them into a wicker basket.

  ‘So you are a girl – though why you choose to wear strange boy’s garb I’ll never know,’ she said. ‘Come on, stir yourself. Get in that bath and start scrubbing hard.’

  I put one foot gingerly in the bath and shrieked.

  ‘It’s freezing cold!’ I gasped.

  ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, get in and stop making such a fuss,’ she said. ‘Do you think we’ve got time to heat a bath for each new inmate? Now get a move on – there’ll be ten more coming before midnight, I’ll be bound.’

  I bathed myself as quickly as I could in the terribly cold water, crouching instead of sitting, because the bottom of the bath was gritty and disgusting. The soap smelt terrible and stung my eyes.

  ‘Give that long matted hair a good scrubbing too,’ said the matron.

  There wasn’t any shampoo so I had to wash it as best I could with the soap and then duck my head in the bathwater to rinse it out. I was given such a small frayed piece of cloth to use as a towel that I was still dripping wet when I put on the clean clothes the matron provided: a strange harsh petticoat and long scratchy drawers, a coarse grey dress and apron much too big for me and a pair of boots that didn’t fit.

  ‘Excuse me, I don’t think these are my size,’ I murmured, but the matron didn’t care.

  ‘Come with me,’ she said, pulling me along.

  She led me through a nursery full of infants and small children, but she must have thought me too old for this category because she hurried me through the room. One little girl about Maudie’s age tried to clutch at my skirts, clearly wanting to be picked up and cuddled, but the matron unhooked her, tutting.

  We ended up in a long bleak room full of women sitting in neat rows. Most of them were very old with white hair and toothless mouths. They were all dressed identically in institution grey.

  ‘There now, you can sit here until supper time,’ said the matron. ‘You will be number one hundred and twenty-one. You will sleep in that designated bed in the dormitory. Then tomorrow we will put you in the French-polishing unit. Don’t look like that! It’s really quite easy pleasant work. You will soon get used to it.’

  ‘But what about lessons? Won’t I go to school?’ I asked.

  ‘Can you read and write and figure?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘Then you don’t need any lessons, do you?’ She shook her head at me and walked off briskly, out of the room.

  I didn’t like her at all, but I wished she would stay even so. I was left with all these strange immobile old women and I didn’t know what to say or what to do. I crept up and down the rows, trying to find a spare chair. Did I have to find chair number one hundred and twenty-one? None of them seemed marked in any way.

  One old lady nodded at me in a vaguely kindly way, so I bent down beside her.

  ‘Please, can you tell me where to sit?’ I whispered.

  ‘Sit right there, my child,’ she said, gesturing as if there were several comfortable armchairs to choose from.

  ‘Thank you, but where exactly?’ I said, dithering.

  ‘Pray join me in my humble repast,’ said the old lady, regally offering me an invisible plate.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Don’t take any notice of old Sarey, she’s totally dottled,’ said the woman beside her. She was much younger, maybe only in her thirties, but her face was hard and pinched and there were sharp lines creasing her forehead. ‘Half the old girls here are dottled,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘Maybe it helps.’

  ‘Is it truly awful here?’ I asked.

  The woman shrugged. ‘Well, it ain’t my idea of home – but I have no other,’ she said.

  ‘Do we have to stay here? Are we locked in?’ I asked.

  ‘Where are you going to go then? The gutter’s even harder than a workhouse bed, and a sight colder too,’ said the woman.

  ‘But – but can’t we work hard and earn enough to get our own places?’ I asked.

  The woman stared at me. ‘You don’t get no earnings, missy. You work for your bed and your board.’

  ‘But it’s just like prison, and I haven’t done anything wrong, truly,’ I said.

  ‘You’re poor and you’re homeless. You don’t need to do anything wrong to qualify,’ said the woman. ‘You’ve got a lot to learn.’

  ‘Can’t we ever start again outside?’ I said.

  ‘Well, if you’re one of Matron’s favourites she might just recommend you if a job in service comes along, but you have to suck up to her something chronic, and that ain’t my way.’

  ‘You mean, be a maid?’

  ‘Well, what else could you do?’

  I thought of all the different alternatives I had in my own life in the future and felt sick with despair. I looked up at the windows. I kept looking at them all that long, lonely evening as the light gradually faded.

  We were led into another large bleak room with long tables and benches, where we sat in rows again, eating stale bread and drinking watery cocoa with lumps that made me shudder as I swallowed. No one talked at the table. Perhaps it wasn’t allowed. There was just the sad sound of old mouths munching their bread to pap.

  Then a bell rang and all the women got up obediently and shuffled off again. There was a visit to an unspeakably disgusting privy block, queuing for ages, and then we were led off to bed, though it still wasn’t completely dark. I thought we would sleep in a great dormitory, but we each had a separate cubicle, very like a cell. Cubicle one hundred and twenty-one was so small I could touch both walls as I lay on my hard cot. There were no sheets, not even a pillow, just a dirty grey blanket.

  There was no proper window, but a small air vent in the brick above my head showed a tiny patch of sky. I watched it desperately until I could see nothing but black. It was obviously well after sunset now – but I was still here, in the workhouse, in the past. I was trapped here forever.

  I started crying again and someone banged on the wall. ‘Stop that snivelling! You’re keeping me awake!’

  I tried to cry more quietly. I could hear several other women weeping too, and further away a baby wailed forlornly. I curled up tight, my hands over my ears, wondering how I would ever bear this dreadfully bleak life. Then it suddenly got much darker. I was tumbled out of my bed, tossed and turned in the air, and then I fell and landed with a great thump … in my own bed at home! There was Smash, sitting on the end of my bed, grinning at me.

  ‘Oh, Smash! Am I truly back? Oh, you’ll never believe what happened! I was stuck in the past because of my own stupid wish and it was so awful. I ended up in the workhouse! I thoug