Tattycoram (4 page)

One day, when I was folding linen with Matron, I asked her about the mothers.

“Do the mothers ever come back to claim their children?” She looked at me over her half-spectacles. Matron had a harsh manner when we were all together, but I had discovered she could be pleasant when alone with one or two.

“Why do you ask?”

“We . . . I was just wondering.”

She put down her pen; she was marking the new sheets with waterproof ink, according to the ward for which they were destined.

“There have been cases — a few. A very few. If she marries a good man who is willing to take on another man's by — another man's child, then perhaps.”

“Are the children asked? We heard that the children are asked.”

“Asked what, Harriet?”

“Asked if they want to go.”

“They are. I believe most of them say yes. But I remember a young lad a few years ago who chose to say no. He was in the band and wanted to join an army band when he was old
enough. It was to his advantage to stay where he was, but his was a special case.”

I thought about that mother. Settled with a kind and decent man, she tells him her story. Perhaps there were already other children, perhaps not.

“Well,” says her husband, “we must be off to get him at once!”

They send a letter to Mr. Brownlow, Secretary, The Foundling Hospital, London: they will arrive on such and such a day to claim No. 825, a boy, and will bring the certificate with them. (No. 825 is now called Jeremiah Brown.)

When they arrive, Jem, who has been learning to play the cornet, is called out of his lessons and taken to the court room. Mr. Brownlow is there with Matron, one of the Governors, and a strange man and lady.

“Jem,” says the lady, stretching out her arms, “dear John, I am your mother.”

Jem looks down at his boots and says nothing.

“Jeremiah,” says the Secretary, “this lady is your mother and she has come to take you home. How do you feel about that, my boy?”

And Jem says to the carpet, “I do not wish to be reclaimed, sir, I wish to remain here.”

The mother's heart has been struck with a hammer. Her boy, her first-born child! He does not wish . . .

Mr. Brownlow, whom everybody knows was once a foundling himself — he makes no secret of it and we love him for this — says gently, “Is there any particular reason for this? Would you like time to think it over?”

Jem shakes his head; he will not look up. He thinks of his golden cornet; he thinks of marching in an army band.

“Jem,” says his mother, “look at me, dear. Look at your poor mother who has always loved you.” The paintings in their gilt frames mock her:
Pharaoh's Daughter Finding the Infant Moses
;
Christ Blessing the Little Children
. . .

At this cry, Jeremiah Brown raises his head and gives her such a look that she faints dead away.

Even this kindles no compassion in his heart; he does not know these strangers. In two years he will be old enough to join the army.

“May I go now, sir?”

And he leaves without a backward glance.

The Secretary turns to the stricken couple. Matron's smelling salts have brought the woman round, and she is quietly sobbing.

Mr. Brownlow shakes his head. “I'm sorry.”

“Perhaps,” says the stepfather, twisting his hat round and round, “he will change his mind? Perhaps the shock was too much for him, finding his mother after all these years.”

“No. I don't think he will change his mind.”

“Oh God,” cries the mother, “could you call him back? Could I see him just one more time?”

But that is against the rules. The kind husband thanks the Secretary and leads away the weeping woman.

Could I do that? If my first mother came to reclaim me? Once I had seen her and satisfied my curiosity on that score? What name had she given me, before I became No. 19,176, Harriet Coram? Perhaps she simply called me Baby.

“Harriet,” said Matron, “you are daydreaming again. You may go back to the sewing room — unless you have any more questions.”

“No, Matron, thank you.”

(But I did have one. The children who were claimed, were they happy? A ridiculous question and I knew better than to ask it. We were not brought up to think of happiness; we were to concentrate on Obedience and Duty.)

On Founder's Day, in October, we were given roast beef and plum pudding for dinner, and on Christmas Day we had the same, as well as an orange and a new penny under every cup. I had ten pennies tied in my handkerchief when I left the hospital, for what was there to spend them on?

We received new clothes once a year, before the May meeting of the Governors. As we grew we exchanged one ugly brown uniform for another.

There was some real happiness for me, however, within those stern walls, for I sang in the choir, and music was the one great blessing at the Foundling. Music on Sunday mornings helped me to endure Sunday dinner and being gawked at by the fashionable ladies. I would slip an anthem into my head and shut out the rest of the world.

Our choirmaster had been at the hospital for years — a fat, rosy man who I later thought looked more like a publican than a man who had dedicated his life to music. But it was music he loved, music he was passionate about, and, unlike the rest of our teachers — who seemed to suffer collectively from a lack of imagination, and hence imparted nothing to us of the magic of numbers or the pleasures of reading; who, I sometimes suspected, could barely read and write above the infant level themselves — Mr. Standfast was inspired. Because of him, our choir was famous throughout London, and the old masters,
Handel (who had done so much for the hospital) and Mozart and Haydn, were as familiar to us as our friends. He had infinite patience, and he cared so much he made us care as well. No one was ever late for choir practice. No one ever fidgeted or whispered. He spread a golden net around us and drew us in.

On Sundays and at special concerts four professional singers joined us: Miss Hackett, Miss Phebbs, Mr. Cantarella and Mr. Evans. But our choirmaster told us (“and you must never let it out, my dears, that I said this”) that it was our voices the audience came to hear.

When I sang, when I was surrounded by others singing, when I watched Mr. Standfast's baton and threw my whole heart into the music, my misery dropped away, the walls of the hospital fell flat and the iron gates melted, and my spirit was free. The long sermons, the awful Foundling Hymn, the hated uniforms, none of them mattered. My soul soared and I was full of joy. I held on to that feeling — or tried to — for the rest of the day.

Such strange Sundays, looking back — a mixture of Heaven and Hell. I could understand that boy, Jeremiah Brown, choosing his cornet over his mother.

One of the girls, Mavis Carboy, was blind; she wore a green band over her eyes. The story was that her mother had dosed her with laudanum before she was brought in, so the apothecary, who did not wish to wake her, never examined her eyes. Perhaps because of her blindness, the Creator had given her an exquisite voice, just as He had given Grandfather the gift of seeing with his hands. She was older than me by a few years, nearly old enough to leave, but who, we wondered, would take her? Where would she go?

At practice she stood with her hands clasped in front of her while Mr. Standfast played the melody over and over until she had it by heart. Then we all learned the words by rote; she was often quicker than the rest of us. Once, when we were practising
Messiah
, and Mavis's voice soared so effortlessly up to the high notes, Mr. Standfast said, with tears in his eyes, “The people that walk in darkness have seen a great light.”

Once, when Miss Hackett was in hospital with a burst appendix, Mavis was allowed to sing a solo. The Governors were furious and Mr. Standfast nearly lost his post because of it.

“But they know better than to dismiss him,” said Amy. “It's solely because of him that so many fashionable people rent pews in the chapel.”

“Not
solely
,” Caroline said. “They also come to stare at us.”

“That novelty would soon wear off,” Amy said, “if it weren't for our splendid music. They'd be fools to let him go.”

“But what will become of Mavis when she leaves here? Will she stand on a street corner singing for coppers?”

“The Governors would never allow that. Somebody will think of something.”

Nurse Gaynor, who slept at the end of our ward, had two nephews who sometimes came to visit her. One day the older of the two walked through the ward while we were dressing. We immediately turned our backs on him. I don't know where Nurse was, or why he chose to stop by my bed, but he did.

“Turn around,” he said, but I remained as still as a statue.

“Turn around, whatever yer name is.”

I did not move.

He grabbed my shoulder as though to turn me, and I wheeled around and hit him in the face.

He yelled and the other girls cheered, and Nurse came running, horrified to find her “nevvy” on the ward. She dragged him away, a satisfying stream of blood gushing from his nose.

And then she came back to plead with us not to tell. I was still shaking with outrage.

“It were all a mistake, he took a wrong turning.”

“He touched me,” I said.

“He never did.”

“They all saw it. Why do you think I hit him?” My shoulder still burned where he had dared to put his hand on my bare flesh.

“I suggest,” said Amy to Nurse, “that you start packing.”

Oh how she pleaded with us, and oh how we stood there in our shifts, as cold as statues.

We were late going down to breakfast and Matron came to see what was wrong.

“You will go
now
,” she told the trembling woman, “and take your nephews with you. You will not work here another minute. And you will go without a character, God help you.”

That night we had no nurse, and Matron, distraught, trusted us to look after ourselves.

“She's upset,” Amy said, “because she is in charge of hiring the female staff. In the end, she's responsible for what happened. She may go as well.”

We liked Matron and felt relieved that it didn't come to that.

The other girls on the ward considered me something of a heroine, but I felt no triumph, just a terrible anger at the way I had been treated. Although they wanted to whisper all night, I
crawled into bed and turned my face away. I kept hearing his ugly voice: “Turn around, whatever yer name is.” He spoke to me as though I were nothing, and it came home to me that day that there might be men who would always see me that way in the outside world. I was thirteen years old, and this was the knowledge that made me turn my face to the wall.

The sewing mistress, who was lame, took a liking to me because, thanks to my foster mother, I was clever with my needle. She taught me to tat, and I took to it so quickly I was soon making doilies and runners and edgings for collars and cuffs. These she sent to a shop in Southampton Row, along with knitted goods and other items made in sewing class. She could not pay us — that was not allowed — but she would often, towards the end of class, produce a bag of sweets and pass them out. One Christmas she gave each of us a sugar mouse.

She was our youngest mistress and quite pretty. We thought she was wasted at the hospital in spite of her nice bed-sitting room and the lavender scent on her handkerchiefs on Sundays. Phoebe was sure that she had a tragic background, and indeed she had a slight air of melancholy that suggested something mysterious in her past. Caroline thought she was probably a clergyman's daughter, one of a large family, and did not wish to be a governess or work in a shop. Being lame would make it hard for her to stay on her feet all day.

“But if she worked in a shop, she would meet people.”

By people, of course, we meant men.

Sometimes I was invited into her parlour to look at a new tatting pattern and take a cup of tea. She had a lovely embroidered
shawl thrown over a table, always a small bunch of flowers in a vase and real beeswax candles, which smelled heavenly when lit.

She gave me a crochet hook and showed me how to join up the circles, making the edgings even more interesting, and I loved to lean near her and study her long, fine fingers as they demonstrated a stitch.

The other girls in our ward teased me and said I was her pet, but they were just jealous and knew better than to tease me too far.

When Mother came next — so lovely and familiar in her old bonnet and shawl — I showed her my shuttle and crochet hook and presented her with a collar with a fancy edge. She had changed a good deal since the boys had gone, and her hair was now completely grey. There had been only one letter from Sam, in all the years, and from Jonnie she had heard nothing. Her voice trembled when she spoke of her sons.

“Is it all right here, Hattie? Are you resigned to it now?”

“Never resigned, Mam, but I suppose I've got used to it.” I told her about my special friends, Caroline, Amy and Phoebe, and about the music master and the girl who was blind like Grandfather, except that she had been blind from birth.

“God takes away,” she said, “but He gives back.”

I couldn't see what he had given back to her — all those dead babies in the churchyard and her living children gone forever.

“I love you, Hattie,” she said as she was leaving. “We all love you. Never doubt it for one minute.”

All my bravado vanished and I threw myself into her arms and wept.

Grandfather was dead; I would never see him again in this life.

“Why, Harriet, you're crying,” said Nurse. “I never thought I'd see the day.”

“Leave her alone,” said Amy. “Have you no heart?”

I have not mentioned boys. We saw them, of course, on Sundays, at choir practice and at their end of the playground, but we were not supposed to speak to them. They ate in a separate dining hall and slept in a different wing. Boys grew up to be men and men had got our mothers into trouble. When Matron talked to us about such things, she was very severe. Kind as she was, I believe that in her heart she thought that, given our origins, we had a natural tendency to stray from the beaten path. Thus it was up to her, now that we were becoming women, to strike the fear of men into our hearts. We would have a harder time than most, she hinted, and must always be on guard. Once we left the hospital and were engaged as domestic servants, we would have days off, or at least half-days off, and we should be planning ahead what we would do with such idleness. We must never talk to strangers, we must walk briskly, backs straight, eyes straight ahead. It would help to carry a Bible.