An Orphan's Dream Read online

A little frown touched her brow. She hoped Jenny wasn’t regretting her parting from Chris because Lily could never give him up now …

  CHAPTER 2

  The house in Little Lane was filthy; no one had cleaned it for months and it had never been a very pleasant place to live, although when Doris Bryant had been alive she’d waged a constant battle against the dirt and the vermin that crawled out of the walls. Since her death, however, the mould and the cockroaches had taken over and now progressed at their leisure with no one to stop them with a dose of carbolic or hot soapy water.

  Danny shrank into the dark corner next to the old pine dresser that was dented and scarred with the years, hoping to avoid detection as his drunken father lurched through the kitchen door. Jim Bryant had always been a violent man but, with the death of his wife in childbed six months earlier, his temper had grown worse and worse. At first he’d got drunk just on Friday and Saturday nights, drinking most of his pay away, but after he’d lost his job in the cardboard factory, where he’d been a packer for the past three years, he’d spent most of his time in the pub, scrounging drinks from the mates who felt sorry for him for losing his missus. And now that Doris Bryant was not there to demand the rent money and her housekeeping, Jim had ceased to bother paying his rent and there was no coal or food in the house. The house was freezing cold and there was nothing to eat in the cupboards and no money to buy any, although Jim had sold the brass candlesticks and the mantel clock his wife had been so proud of, along with her clothes and few bits of jewellery.

  ‘Bloody landlord,’ Danny heard his father mutter as he knocked into a chair and sent it crashing to the floor. ‘Who the hell does he think he is, demanding his money? If he thinks he can toss me out, he can think again.’

  Danny didn’t answer. He never did when his father was this way, just held his breath and hoped that his angry parent would go to bed without noticing him. If his father saw him cowering in the corner, he would drag him out and beat him. Danny’s school teacher – Miss Thomas – said that if Danny came to school with bruises all over him again, she was going to report his father to the welfare people. Danny wasn’t sure how he felt about that, because he’d heard of other kids being taken away from their family – not that he had any to rely on. His mother was dead, his elder brother Kenny had gone in the Navy and hadn’t been home for years, his grandparents were dead and his father was a vicious bully. He didn’t know what had happened to his mother’s only brother, because his father had driven him away with curses and blows when he’d come asking after his sister and nephew.

  Danny had eaten the last scrap of stale bread when he got home from school and his stomach ached from hunger. If the teacher at school hadn’t made sure he got a drink of milk and two of the sandwiches from her lunch packet every day, he thought he might have starved these past weeks. It was bad enough on school days, but at weekends he often had nothing to eat at all, unless one of the neighbours saw him kicking a stone in the street and brought him a bit of bread and dripping or, very occasionally, the woman from the corner shop gave him a bun that was going stale. He could hardly remember what it was like to have a hot meal and a proper cup of tea with milk and sugar.

  ‘What are you doin’ skulking there?’ His father jerked towards him, staring at him through bloodshot eyes and breathing beery fumes over him. ‘Come out here, you little rat.’

  ‘Please don’t!’ Danny cried but his father’s fist exploded in his face. Another blow caught his ear and a third felled him. He screamed as the heavy boot connected with his side over and over again, and then he passed out.

  Time passed and he lay on the floor where he’d fallen, only ignored because the man had collapsed in a drunken stupor. When Danny came to his senses again it was just getting light. He sat up gingerly, holding himself as he felt the pain in his head and his side where he’d been kicked. His mouth was sore and swollen and he could hardly see out of one eye. He was fearful of another attack, but the sound of snoring told him that his father had fallen asleep on the kitchen couch. Getting carefully to his feet, Danny felt his way to the kitchen sink and filled a chipped mug with water, drinking thirstily for a few minutes, before tipping the rest of the water onto a kitchen rag that had once been spotless white and used for wiping up crockery; now it was filthy but the cold dampness of it against his split lip and swollen eye felt good.

  Danny stared at his father as he snored and hated what he saw. But the beating he’d endured that night would be the last that bully would give him, he promised himself. He couldn’t go to school as he was, so he would run away. Glancing around the kitchen, Danny saw an old overcoat that had belonged to his grandfather. He took it down from the hook together with the rucksack that hung underneath it. His father hadn’t left much of value in the house, but Danny knew that his grandfather had left a silver watch and chain to his mother and, so far, his father hadn’t discovered her hiding place. But Danny knew it and he would take the watch, haversack and coat and then he would leave this house for good.

  He lifted the floorboard in the bedroom that hid the watch and a brass tin with some old coins in it and placed them in the haversack along with his spare jumper and his one extra pair of socks. It would be bitterly cold sleeping out under the arches, but that was the only place Danny could think of to go. He knew that vagrants slept under the arches every night, because he’d seen them there when he’d been on a bus with his mother. She’d told him he shouldn’t look down on homeless people the way some did, because they were more to be pitied than scorned. His mother had been a lovely person; she’d loved Danny and his brother and even his father, who had always been a bit of a bully – but she’d stood up to him, protecting her children.

  ‘We don’t know what’s brought them down, Danny love,’ she’d told him that day on the bus, when speaking of the vagrants. ‘Some of them had homes once but ill fortune or the drink took them low. The demon drink is an evil thing, Danny. Your father used to drink too much but I won him from it and he promised me he would never get drunk again when we wed. He’s fallen once or twice but mostly he’s kept his word to me – I’d box his ears if he didn’t and he knows it.’

  Danny felt the sting of tears as he remembered. His mum had been a good ’un and she’d loved him. She’d stood up to his father and for some reason the big man had always backed down before the small woman. Danny could still remember the smell of the lavender water she sprinkled on her clothes and the sheets too, because she said it helped you to sleep.

  Why did she have to die and leave him alone with his father? Danny knuckled his eyes to stop the tears as he walked away from the house. The gutters were choked with filth, paint peeling on windows and doors, and at this early hour no eyes peered from behind grey net curtains. His face hurt and his body ached all over, and he had a sick feeling inside. He wanted to get as far as he could away from his father and the misery of the past few months. He knew it was going to be cold and he might often be hungry, but he’d got his grandfather’s trinkets and his coat, and he would manage somehow. Mum had said the tramps went to a soup kitchen at the Sally Army every day to be fed, and Danny’s mouth watered as he thought of hot soup and thick bread, and a mug of strong tea. His belly ached with the need for food, because he hadn’t eaten much for days and he wasn’t sure when he would eat again. He wasn’t even sure how far it was to the place he’d seen with his mother, where the tramps had been sitting around a fire in an old steel drum, drinking from bottles and huddling into their blankets. If he could find them, perhaps they might share their fire and tell him where the Sally Army handed out their soup and bread.

  Danny knew the archway was down by the river so he reckoned he just had to head for the dockyards and keep walking until he found somewhere to sleep. Perhaps he might even find someone who would give him food for running an errand or carrying things. Danny was twelve, thirteen in August, but he was tall for his age and, though thin, well built; if he lied, he could get away with pretending to be fourteen and there
fore old enough to work. He wouldn’t mind working if he got the chance and would do anything that was asked of him. Danny wasn’t going to be like his father and drink his life away!

  Mum wouldn’t have liked to think of her son living rough, but Danny didn’t know what else to do. He couldn’t stay with his father any longer, because one of these days Jim would kill him in a drunken fit. He’d rather take his chances with the tramps under the arches. One of them had seen him watching them that day with his mum, and he’d grinned at him. Danny had thought he looked approachable. If he could find someone like that to teach him how to go on, he would be all right – the only other alternative was to go to school and let his teacher report him to the welfare.

  Why should he let them send him away to a home somewhere when he was nearly old enough to leave school? Danny wasn’t sure what orphanages were but he knew his mum didn’t approve of them, so they couldn’t be good. He would be working in another year or so and he might as well find a job now if he could. Brushing the tears from his cheeks, Danny stuck his head in the air and strengthened his stride. His father wasn’t going to break him and he didn’t want to be packed off to Canada or Australia, like some unfortunate kids his mother had told him about.

  ‘I’ve heard all sorts of stories over the years, Danny love,’ she’d told him, scraping marge and jam on a thick slice of her freshly-baked bread for him. ‘Terrible it is. They’re taken from their family and sent all that way on a ship. Now I think that is a disgrace. We might be poor but I wouldn’t let them send my boy to a home or a place I’ve never seen. Them folk think they can do what they like with you, Danny. Once they’ve got you, you’ve had it – it’s what they say that goes.’

  Danny’s mother hadn’t liked orphanages. She said people did things to the kids there, things they didn’t ought to, so Danny would live rough and eat whatever he had to eat to get by, but he wouldn’t go in one of those awful places. But he wasn’t going to be a tramp all his life. He was going to find proper work and then he’d have a room of his own and he’d be just fine. His dream of having a warm comfortable home with a mother and father that loved him was just that, an impossible dream. There was only him now and he had to learn to look after himself.

  CHAPTER 3

  ‘Thank you, Kathy,’ Mary Thurston, Matron of the Rosie, said to the young woman who had brought up a tray of tea. She’d remembered to use their best china in honour of their visitor and that was well done in Mary’s opinion. ‘That is most welcome, my dear.’

  The girl blushed, smiled and left, closing the door behind her. Mary looked at her visitor as she poured tea for them both. ‘Milk and one sugar I think?’

  ‘Yes, thank you, Mary.’

  Mary handed her one of the best cups reserved for important visitors. ‘So, what can I do to help you, Rosalie?’

  ‘I don’t think there is anything much just now. I really came to update you, Mary.’ Lady Rosalie sighed as she took a file from her large leather bag. ‘Sometimes I think the list of homeless children is never-ending,’ she said as she gave Mary Thurston a sheet of paper. ‘This is my list of possible foster carers. There are twelve on the list and I think we may get eight or nine good families from it. We have to be so very careful, Mary. I don’t want a repeat of what happened to young Charlie!’

  ‘No, indeed,’ Mary said. Charlie and his sister Maisie had been in her care at the Rosie and they’d found him a foster home when his sister was ill but he was badly treated and ran away and since then Lady Rosalie had been even more careful about vetting prospective foster parents. ‘And how many homeless children have you at the moment?’

  ‘Twenty-five,’ Lady Rosalie replied and sighed. ‘All of my children are older – the adoption societies take the babies and very tiny children for whom they can find adoptive parents easily, but the children of six years and older are more difficult to place, particularly when they come from broken homes and are inclined to be difficult.’

  ‘Yes, I do understand how hard it must be,’ Mary said. Being Matron of the Rosie infirmary seemed an easier task compared to the one her friend faced. Placing a child with a bad foster parent could lead to all sorts of problems, even death at times – and it was so difficult to find enough of the right people, because it wasn’t just a matter of background or even how well off they were: character and kindness were far more important in a foster parent. ‘I am still looking for candidates for your list of carers, but unfortunately, I seem to add to your list of children needing care more often than I do your kind and honest carers.’

  ‘Yes, and I’m glad you do tell me about necessary cases,’ Lady Rosalie said and smiled. ‘Well, keep your ears open for suitable foster families, Mary – and ring me whenever you need to.’

  ‘Yes, I shall.’ Mary smiled at her. She glanced at her watch and tutted; how fast the time went when she had company! ‘I must make a tour of the wards – and I dare say you have another meeting to attend?’

  ‘No, for once I’m going out to lunch with a friend,’ Lady Rosalie said and smiled. ‘Geraint was a friend of my husband. He lost his wife eighteen months ago and had to come up to London for some business today and so we decided to have lunch together.’

  ‘Well, that will be a nice change for you,’ Mary nodded approvingly. ‘I’m sure you deserve to be taken out for lunch – and I hope you have a lovely time.’

  ‘Yes, of course I’m bound to,’ Lady Rosalie replied. ‘One sometimes forgets one is still young enough to enjoy life.’

  Mary nodded. She would be here at the infirmary the rest of the day and the evening too. Her little apartment was in what would be termed an attic by some but was comfortable and had all she needed; it meant she was able to be the first in every morning and only left the building to go for a walk in the fresh air or to seek some sleep when she could no longer continue at her desk. Her life had little of interest outside the Rosie these days and she occasionally thought that she really ought to take a holiday but thus far she hadn’t found the time.

  Sister Rose smiled at her colleague, Staff Nurse Alice Burwell, as they prepared to swap over for the night. Alice was taking her turn on the late shift and had come in fresh and bright to check the records for the children’s ward.

  ‘Just three cases to watch at the moment, then,’ she said. ‘It looks like being a quiet night.’

  ‘Yes, providing you don’t get any sudden admissions,’ Rose said and yawned. ‘Oh dear. I’m tired. I’m going straight home to bed.’ She smothered another yawn.

  ‘Have a good rest. It is sometimes good to be single, isn’t it, and not have a husband and children to look after?’

  Rose nodded and left her, switching her thoughts from the busy day in the ward and for a moment allowed herself to think of the man she’d once loved – or thought she did, until she learned that he was already married and cheating both her and his long-suffering wife. The worst thing of all was that he’d had four young children and he’d vowed that he would leave them all for Rose!

  ‘I think that is terrible, Mike,’ she’d told him, outraged. ‘It isn’t just that you deceived me, it’s your wife and children – how could you ever think of deserting them? I could never love a man who could do that!’

  ‘I couldn’t help falling in love with you, Rose. You’re so wonderful.’ He’d gone on and on, extolling her beauty and her character, trying to flatter her into taking him back.

  Rose hadn’t listened to his excuses. He’d begged and pleaded but she’d left him standing there in the street and hadn’t looked back. Later, in her bedroom, the tears had come, her heart breaking because she had loved him desperately.

  Were all men as shallow as Mike Hardy? If they were, then, she, Rose Harwell, wanted nothing more to do with them.

  She would never have gone for that first drink with him if she’d guessed he was married and had children and it was no wonder she hadn’t trusted anyone enough to love again since. Yet she had no real desire to be single, and though she would mis
s nursing desperately, would much prefer to be at home with a husband and perhaps a couple of kids. Or was it too late for her to have that sort of life? Should she accept that she had nothing but her nursing and her friends?

  A sharp tingle went down Rose’s spine as she thought about the clever doctor she’d started to like – more than like, if she told the truth, but she was still wary, still unsure that she could trust Dr Peter Clark.

  Most of the time, Rose was sure about what she wanted in her life. She liked Peter a lot and she wanted children of her own; she hadn’t realised how important that was to her until she held her brother John’s first daughter, Harriet, in her arms. The feeling it had given her made her melt inside and she’d realised that perhaps her job wasn’t going to be enough for the rest of her life. Rose wanted marriage and children. Perhaps deep love wasn’t necessary. She’d been hurt too much that first time and she didn’t intend to let anyone hurt her again that way. Much better to marry because you liked someone and you got on well – much safer.

  Just as she reached the bottom of the stairs, she saw someone entering the front door and stopped, catching her breath. It was as if she’d conjured him up by thinking of him! What was he doing here? None of the children were sick enough to warrant a doctor being called out. ‘Sister Rose.’ Dr Peter Clark looked at her anxiously. ‘Matron asked me to call. One of her patients is very ill – a woman in her seventies I understand?’

  ‘I’m on the children’s ward at the moment.’ Rose smiled at him, brushing a strand of her flame-red hair away from her face. ‘I’m glad to say we don’t have any children who need urgent attention from a doctor just now.’

  He smiled and his face lit up, the serious look banished. ‘I’m glad about that,’ he murmured.’ His eyes were very blue as he looked at her and she noticed that his dark blond hair was too long again and fell forward into his eyes; he brushed it back impatiently. ‘I’d better go and see what Matron wants.’