Never Look Back (22 page)

‘At least there’s no one guarding it,’ Giles said. ‘But I don’t really know how to get in, Matty. I tried to get up that staircase once before a few weeks ago and one of the treads gave way on me.’

‘That man in the shop said he saw the boy crawling in,’ she said. ‘That might mean from outside somewhere.’

‘Let’s look around the side then,’ Giles replied and led the way through a thicket of tall weeds and straggly bushes.

‘It’s funny how quiet it is everywhere,’ Matilda said thoughtfully, picking her way carefully as there was human excrement everywhere.

‘I find silence more nerve-racking than hearing shouting and fighting,’ Giles said in a low voice. ‘Somehow it shows the depth of despair they’ve sunk into.’

As they skirted around a particularly large bush they suddenly found themselves in a kind of small clearing where the weeds
were stamped down. Ahead of them was a narrow but well-trodden path, presumably starting from somewhere behind the house.

‘Look!’ Matilda said, noticing what looked like a burrow dug into the ground at the base of the house. ‘I bet that’s the way.’

Gingerly she pulled at some branches lying over it. They came away easily to reveal a hole some two feet high by three feet wide in the lathe and plaster wall of the house.

Matilda looked at her master in consternation, but he grinned in reassurance and fished into his sack for the lantern he’d brought with him.

‘I’ll lower this in and take a look,’ he said in a low voice. Matilda watched as he lit the candle inside and knelt down in front of the hole. ‘Here goes,’ he whispered, and lowering the candle into the hole he leaned right inside.

He withdrew almost immediately. ‘They are there,’ he exclaimed with an expression of horror on his face. ‘Down in the cellar. Dozens of them.’

‘Let me see,’ she said, and as he got up she took his place, stretching out her arm so the light of the lantern lit up the dark cavern. But what she saw made her almost drop the lantern and her heart contracted with pity. Dozens of pairs of eyes fixed on the light from above, tiny white faces caught in the beam.

The smell from within there was appalling but she couldn’t back away. ‘I’ve come to bring you some food,’ she called out. ‘Can I come in?’

She didn’t wait for a reply or even to consult her master, but crawled on in holding the lantern firmly. There was some sort of box beneath the hole, then a crude and wobbly stairway made of crates down to their level, some fourteen or fifteen feet below, but her overwhelming desire to help these little mites wiped out her fear, and her disgust at the evil stench. As her feet touched the ground she found it was three or four inches deep in water.

Holding the lantern higher, she moved nearer to the children. They were huddled together so tightly in just one small spot that she could only assume it was the only part of the floor not under water. ‘I have a man with me from the church,’ she said, speaking slowly and clearly so as not to frighten them. ‘He is a good, kind man who wants to help you, and he has a sack of food with him, will you let him come in too?’

‘I knows you.’ A voice came from behind the main body of children. ‘You’re that lady what was scared in Rag-Pickers.’

‘Sidney?’ she said in astonishment. The voice was familiar, but it was too dark to see if it was the same red-headed boy.

‘Yeah, it’s me,’ he said, and she saw a movement as if he’d been lying down and was now getting up. ‘She’s the one that give me six cents,’ he said to his companions.

Suddenly there was a disturbing flurry of movement and for a moment she thought she was going to be attacked. ‘I haven’t any money on me,’ she said quickly. ‘But the man with me has bread and apples. I’m just going to call him in.’

She turned her head to see Giles was already gingerly climbing in.

‘This is Reverend Milson,’ she said, very relieved to find the children weren’t about to set upon her, but just sitting up. ‘He is a minister at Trinity Church. My name is Matty and we’ve both come to help you.’

She heard a splash as Giles reached the water. ‘I’m just going to light another candle so I can see you,’ he said, and Matilda noted his voice was shaking. ‘Then I want you all to tell me your names and how old you are. After that I’ll give you some food.’

‘I already know Sidney over there,’ Matilda said, thinking it might give Giles a little more confidence. ‘So perhaps he’ll tell us who everyone is. Will you do that, Sidney?’

‘I don’t know all the babbies’ names,’ he said.

As Giles lit the second candle and Matilda saw the full horror of their condition and ages, her stomach heaved. They were only little tots, yet their drawn faces and bleak eyes made them look like little old wizened men. Not one she could see wore anything which resembled clothes, just rags draped about them. Their hair was matted and their limbs like sticks. One small boy who had stood up to look at her had only a piece of sacking round him and his rib-cage protruded like the dogs’ out in the street. At a quick count she thought there were eighteen children, and Sidney at six or seven was by far the eldest.

He rolled out the names of the older ones, ‘Annie, John, Oz, Harry, Meg,’ then went on to use nicknames which suggested that perhaps these children had been orphaned or abandoned so young they didn’t know their real name. ‘Blackboy, Pig, Rat, Fish and Injun.’

Matilda took the sack of food from Giles and began to hand out the bread. A sea of hands waved at her and a chorus of ‘Me’ broke out, but the moment they had a lump of bread in their hands silence fell as they devoured it.

Matilda’s stomach lurched again, but this time it was purely from horror that anyone could eat in such conditions. She guessed that the water they were standing in was sewage – Giles had told her a couple of nights before that all the cellars around here were flooded with it when it rained. Hearing a squeak, she looked up to see a beam across the cellar roof was teeming with rats. When she cast her eyes nervously around there were dozens more, on ledges, in corners, their bright beady eyes watching her intently. Shudders ran down her spine and she just had to hope that the unexpected candlelight would keep them at bay.

At the back of the cellar was a door. She wondered what lay behind it. Only after all the bread was gone and the apples handed out did she dare to ask Sidney.

‘The old ’uns don’t let us go in there,’ he said. ‘They don’t use this one ’cos it’s always wet.’

‘Do you always sleep in here?’ Giles asked him.

‘Not likely,’ he said, managing a surprisingly cheerful grin. ‘Mostly I goes down Battery Park. Only come here ’cos it’s raining. See, we built a platform for us.’ He bent down to pick up some rags under his feet and revealed planks laid on top of bricks. ‘We would have done it all, but the old ’uns would turf us out and take it.’

Matilda’s feet were turning to ice now that the water had seeped right into her boots. She was wearing warm clothes, yet she felt very cold, she supposed it was only by huddling together that the children managed to sleep. It didn’t bear thinking what it would be like for them in winter.

‘Have any of you got mothers and fathers?’ Matilda asked. Most shook their heads, but the youngest just stared at her with large, sad eyes.

To try to find out for certain, she began asking them individually, getting them to say their name, age and what had happened to their parents. Sidney said he was eight. Annie said she was six, and her mother had died a while ago, she didn’t think she had a father. Oz, whose full name was Oswald Pinchbeck, said
he had lived with his aunt but she went away, and he wasn’t sure how old he was.

Each child was so much like its neighbour – the dirt, rags and emaciated body – that Matilda thought she’d never be able to put a name to each face. They could tell her so little about themselves, ‘dunno’ was the most common word. She thought that this building was aptly named ‘Rat’s Castle’ for they were like rats, foraging for food and sleeping in packs, so ignorant of the way the rest of the world lived that they had no conception of the idea of families, care, and certainly not love.

She let Giles tell them about his plan to take them to a ‘Home’. He spoke well, painting a picture of comfort and warmth and happy futures for all of them. Yet although it should have brought joy into their little faces, Matilda was distressed to see their eyes narrow with suspicion.

‘It isn’t a prison like The Tombs,’ Matilda said, bending nearer to the group. ‘It’s a real house with warm fires, beds and good food. You’ll have a school there, wear real clothes and boots on your feet. You can learn to read books, have toys to play with. No one will ever hurt you again.’

There were no questions, just blank stares, but some of the older ones looked to Sidney as if expecting him to be their spokesman.

‘Sidney,’ she said in a commanding voice. ‘You’ve met me before and I trusted you enough to lead me out of Five Points. Do you think you can trust me?’

He nodded.

‘That’s good. I knew you were a smart boy, so I want you to take charge of all the others. In two days’ time we’re going to come back here at the same time and wait outside. I want you to bring all these children with you and we’ll take you to a doctor’s house close by, where you can all have a big dinner, a wash and some new clothes. Then later we’ll take you to that new Home we’ve told you about. Now, do you think you can make them all come with you?’

‘Dunno,’ he said doubtfully.

‘They’ll think you are a real hero when they see where you take them to,’ she said persuasively.

‘I dunno if I wants to live in a Home,’ he said. ‘Ain’t got much time for folks telling me what to do.’

Matilda remembered how she had been reminded of her brother Luke when she first saw him. Clearly he had a similar mentality.

‘Well, you’re such a big boy that maybe you can manage without warm clothes and good food. So I’ll do a deal with you. You bring the little ones and have some dinner with them, but if you don’t want to stay, you can come on back here.’

He didn’t reply, just looked at her with hard eyes.

‘The little ones will get sick this winter if they stay here,’ she said, pointing to the tots at the front of the group. ‘Even if you think there’s nothing in it for you, let them have a chance to be fed and mothered.’

Knowing she’d said enough to make him think, and any further attempts to tempt him might create suspicion, she turned to go.

‘Just think, warm beds, big hot dinners and proper clothes,’ she said as she clambered up the wobbly stairs behind her master. ‘No more old ’uns to push you about. No rats climbing over you!’

An hour later Giles and Matilda had both washed and changed back into their own clothes, and were sitting with the doctor in his consulting room having a cup of tea and discussing what they’d seen.

Dr Tad Kupicha was from Poland, a slender, frail-looking man of over sixty with sad blue eyes and thinning white hair. He had come to America some thirty years ago with his young wife Anna. They had three daughters; one had died from measles as an infant, then ten years later he lost the other two and his wife in a cholera epidemic. Losing his entire family had turned him into something of a crusader for the poor.

Giles had been introduced to him through Darius Kirkbright, and in just a few weeks they had become close friends through their shared interests. Kupicha was one of the few doctors in New York who ran a free clinic, and he campaigned tirelessly against slum landlords and the lack of sanitation in the city.

‘Do you think this boy Sidney will get the children to come?’ Giles asked him.

The doctor shrugged. ‘I can’t say, Giles. They learn at an early age never to trust adults. But I’m hopeful from what you’ve told me. It was a stroke of luck Matty had met the boy before, I
daresay he was impressed by her bravery at going in there, and felt he could trust her. But we’ll just have to wait and see.’

‘Could we manage them all, if they do come?’ Matilda asked with some eagerness. The room in the basement where she had changed had been prepared already with two large tin baths, innumerable pails standing in readiness, and enough children’s clothes donated by church people to dress them all. But eighteen children, each one lousy and possibly some of them sick too, was a tall order to deal with all at once.

‘Of course we’ll manage.’ Kupicha smiled at her. ‘And when we see them clean, and their bellies full, with hope in their little faces, the struggle will all have been worthwhile.’

It was only later that evening that Matilda became aware that by entering into this clandestine act of mercy with her master, her relationship with him had changed irrevocably. While she saw nothing heroic about climbing into that cellar, he did. On the journey home he falteringly tried to tell her that if she hadn’t gone in there first, he would have made some excuse and turned tail. He also said that he could never have put his plan to the children as succinctly as she had.

While she didn’t believe that, she was aware the children might have bolted if he’d gone in alone, and it made her glow to think she’d been so useful to him. Then when they reached home, she found another surprise waiting for her. Lily had the evening meal all ready, the table laid, and she almost
waited
on Matilda. Later, while they were washing the dishes together, Lily confided in her that she felt terribly ashamed that she hadn’t offered to go with her husband, but talking to children who had just lost their mother was so desperately sad, and she knew she’d be more of a hindrance than help. She tentatively asked what the children were like and what age they were. Matilda said they were little raggamuffins, aged between three and seven. She even told her the eldest was called Sidney, with red hair, and that they would be calling to collect them in two days’ time to take them out to New Jersey. She hoped that omissions weren’t as bad as lies.

Late that night as Matilda lay in her warm bed, listening to the rain hammering down, she found she couldn’t sleep. It seemed so shameful to be lying in warmth and comfort while those poor
little waifs were huddling together like piglets in a sty, and her conscience was pricking her at entering into a plan with her master which involved deceiving her mistress.