For a Mother's Sins (2 page)

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.

‘Please, sir, my ma says can you come quickly – my baby brother’s died.’

Doctor Thistlethwaite paused, needle in hand, and turned to face her. Lizzie couldn’t suppress a gasp of horror. The front of his apron was covered in blood.

‘For God’s sake, child, it’s the living I’m bothered about. Can’t you see I’m sewing this man up to stop him from dying?’ He waved a hand at his
patient, groaning in agony on the pallet bed. ‘Tell your mother I’ll be over as soon as I can. If the baby’s dead there’s nothing I can do anyway.’ With that he turned
away, intent on getting back to his work.

He was interrupted by a tug on his coat.

‘Please, please come and look at my brother. Ma will kill me if I don’t bring you back with—’

There was a curse from the doctor as a jet of blood spurted from the injured man, spattering the walls and ceiling. ‘Now, look what you’ve made me do!’ the doctor roared,
desperately trying to staunch the flow.

Two nurses came running from the other end of the ward. While one went to help the doctor, the other grabbed Lizzie by the shoulder, wheeled her around and started to march her out of the ward.
The doctor, still focusing on his patient, shouted, ‘Go with her and see if there’s anything that can be done. Tell the mother I’ll be along later today with a death certificate.
I suppose it’s been hungered to death.’

It was all the chubby nurse could do to keep up with Lizzie. She puffed and panted behind the girl as she sped homeward, muttering curses all the way. If there was one thing she hated it was
having to set foot in the shanties of Batty Green. How these people could bear to live in such conditions, lost in filth and sin, was beyond Nurse Gladys Thompson. No wonder the baby had died, she
thought. It was probably best out of the world it had entered.

‘What have you been doing with this, Ma?’ A frown creased John Pratt’s fair mud-streaked brow as he lifted the bottle with the teat still attached to it from
next to the fire where he was warming his toes while his mother bustled about making tea. ‘You’ve not fed anything with it, I hope. This is the bottle I keep the rat poison
in.’

‘Oh my Lord, it isn’t, is it?’ There was a clatter as Rose Pratt dropped the milk jug, her hand flying to her chest. For a moment she stood frozen in place, blood draining from
her face as an image flashed in her mind’s eye: little Lizzie feeding her brother as she sat next to the fire.

‘Where you going, Ma?’ called John, as his mother hurriedly threw on her shawl and bustled out of the front door.

But Rose was too distracted to hear his question. Slamming the door behind her, she set off as fast as her legs would carry her, hurrying along the track in the direction of the Masons’
shanty.

She was almost there when she saw a lamp approaching from the opposite direction. It was the carpenter. Rose slowed down and waited in the shadows; she would prefer not to encounter the man if
she could avoid it. She despised the way he profited from others’ misfortunes, doing a roaring trade in shoddily built coffins made of the cheapest wood. Then she realized he was carrying a
coffin now. A small one, just big enough for a baby.

Rose clapped a hand over her mouth to suppress a cry of anguish and looked on from the shadows as the carpenter delivered the tiny coffin to the Masons’ hut. When the door opened, Molly
Mason’s cries seemed to split the night. Rose turned away, sick with guilt. The next thing she knew, she was back at her own front door, having walked all the way home without realizing what
she was doing. But what else could she have done? What could she have said? It was too late to do anything for little Tommy Mason now. Poor mite probably wouldn’t have survived another winter
anyway. The way things were going, he’d have died of starvation.

Burying her guilt deep within her, Rose resolved to remain silent. God would forgive her, she told herself. She hadn’t meant to kill the poor little soul, He would know that.

Three days after Tommy’s death his little coffin was carried down the dappled glade to the burial ground. The air was filled with the smell of the wild white garlic and
the delicate bluebells that lined the path to the ancient church of St Leonard’s. For centuries the small church had served the dale’s dwindling farming community, but since
construction started on the railway it had seen an alarming number of funeral services as the navvy population buried their dead.

Tommy was laid to rest alongside the remains of his father. Lizzie watched as the vicar gave a blessing over the tiny coffin. Then the gravedigger hurriedly filled in the small hole before
moving on to the next grave, where mourners wept for the man the doctor had been operating on when Lizzie went to the hospital the night Tommy died.

Numb with grief, Lizzie tried to smile through her tears as members of the community hugged her or squeezed her shoulder, at a loss as to what they might say to comfort her. She wouldn’t
have heard them anyway; ever since her brother died it was as if all other sounds had been drowned out by her mother’s cries echoing over and over in her head:
What have you done, Lizzie?
What have you done to Tommy? He’s not breathing.

While her mother lingered to shake the vicar’s hand and thank him for his blessing, Lizzie wandered on to the bridge. On the river a small bird was hopping about on the mossy wet stones,
dipping up and down with a beakful of worms for its young. For a few moments she lost herself, watching its progress, before her mother brought her back to reality by shaking her shoulder.

‘Come on with you,’ she said, her voice hard and devoid of emotion. ‘The Welcome Inn’s put a bit of a tea on in remembrance of Tommy. Any excuse to make money out of us
hard-working souls. Still, I shouldn’t complain. They’ve not asked for anything towards it, so we might as well get fed for nothing.’

‘But I don’t want to go in there,’ complained Lizzie. ‘Everyone smells of beer and they talk loud.’

Ignoring her protests, Molly dragged her daughter up the winding path from the church and to the rutted road that led from Ingleton to Ribblehead. It was all Lizzie could do to keep up with
her.

When they got to the Welcome Inn and she caught a whiff of the beer and tobacco smoke billowing out from inside, Lizzie sat on the steps and refused to go any further. Molly’s response was
to cuff her on the ear and snarl, ‘Now listen here, my girl, if it wasn’t for you, we wouldn’t have had to go through that today and I’d still have my son. So shut up and
get in here with me.’

Reluctantly, Lizzie let herself be shoved into the dark, low-ceilinged inn. ‘Go sit in the snug,’ ordered Molly. ‘I’m only going to have an odd one and a bite to eat
– show my thanks, like – and then we’ll toddle off home. We’ve got to have a wake for our Tommy, it’s expected of us.’

Lizzie did as she was told and took a seat in the corner of the snug. It was a dark spot; even on the brightest summer’s day the sun would never penetrate the thick glass of the windows,
which were stained a brownish colour. The inn, a solid squat building of weathered limestone, seemed as old as time itself. Nestling in the lee of the fellside, its thick walls kept out the blasts
of freezing wind that blew down the dale, offering the drinkers some respite from the harsh conditions.

Alone and forgotten, Lizzie watched as people came forward to console her mother, buying her drinks in a show of respect. Then the singing began. All other voices in the room fell quiet as one
of the gangers sang ‘Danny Boy’ in a lilting Irish accent. After the final verse there was a hush in the inn as the mourners remembered the little soul that they had buried.

‘Are you his sister then? Me mam says I’ve to make sure you get something to eat.’

Lizzie looked up to see a plump girl with red rosy cheeks.

‘Well, are you going to have a bite of something?’

Lizzie shook her head.

Refusing to take no for an answer, the girl continued in her dry Yorkshire accent: ‘It’s no good me and my ma cooking all day if the thinnest one in the bar isn’t having any.
Move up a bit and I’ll bring us both a plateful. I’m blinking starving myself. I’ve been rushing about all day, helping out.’

With that the plump figure turned and bustled off through the tall figures of the navvies lining the bar, leaving Lizzie to shuffle deeper into the corner, making space for her new friend.