Shadows of the Workhouse

children’s holiday camp. They had played with the children by the sea, organised races for them across the sands, hired a man with a donkey to give them rides and read stories to them in the evening. They were very happy with their work.
    At the end of the day, Sir Ian asked the Master: “I have not seen that pretty child who came up to thank me when I first met you. Where is she?”
    The Master was nonplussed, but his resourceful wife stepped forward with a curtsey. “The child has an aunt, sir, who always takes her on holiday each year. I assure you, sir, that at this very moment the child is playing happily on a beach somewhere in Devon.” She curtsied again.
    “I am glad to hear it,” said Lady Lavinia, “but for my part, I am sorry not to see the child. My husband spoke most highly of her.”
    After they had left, the Master said. “What a blessing we did not bring that wretched child. If she had gone running up to that man in front of his wife, and clung to him and called him Daddy, heaven knows what trouble it would have stirred up.”
    And on this occasion – who can tell? – the Master may have been right.

FRANK

    Give me a boy for the first five years
of his life, and I will make the man.
    Rousseau

    Frank had but a dim recollection of his father. He remembered a tall, strong man, whom he held in awe. He remembered his big voice and huge, rough hands. He could remember once tracing the veins on the back of this vast hand with his little fingers, and looking at his own smooth white skin and wondering if he would ever have hands like that. To be like his father was his only ambition and he worshipped him. In the later, sadder years of his childhood he tried desperately to remember what his father had been like, but a phantom that comes and goes could not have been more elusive and only the dimmest memory remained.
    He remembered his mother much more clearly; his sweet, gentle mother who was never strong because she was always coughing. He remembered the sound of her voice as she sang songs to him and played with him. Above all, he remembered her cuddles as she put him to bed and lay down beside him.
    In the winter his mother hardly went out of doors because of her weak chest and his father would say, as he went off to work, “Now you look after your mother while I’m away, Frank lad. I’m relying on you to take care of her for me.” And Frank would look up at his god with big solemn eyes and accept the task as a sacred duty.
    When a tiny baby was born – so tiny that everyone said she would not live – Frank was four years old. He had been an only child all his life and could not conceive of any other child entering his world. Many boys of that age become very jealous of a new-born baby, but not Frank. He was mesmerised by this tiny creature, hardly bigger than a teacup, who could move and cry, and who needed so much care. Not for a moment did he resent the hours of attention given to the baby. In fact, he liked to help. The most fascinating thing of all was to watch his mother breast-feeding the baby, and he tried never to be far away when this mysterious and beautiful ritual was going on. He kept very quiet, crept close to his mother and watched, spellbound, as the baby sucked and the milk oozed from the nipple.
    The baby was premature and sickly, and for a long time her life hung in the balance. His father said to him, many times: “You’ve got a special job to do, young man. You’ve got to look after your little sister. That’s your job now, lad.”
    So Frank watched over her, and hardly went out to play with the other boys in the court, because he was so busy looking after his little sister.
    The baby didn’t die. She gained strength and became quite robust, although she always remained small. She was christened Margaret but was called Peggy, because Margaret seemed too long a name for such a small baby. After the christening Frank’s father said, “You done a good job there, son; and I’m proud of yer.”

    Then catastrophe struck. In those years typhoid was raging through East London. His huge, strong father, who had never known a day of illness in his life, was hit by the disease and died within a few days. His mother, who had never been strong, was spared and so was the baby. His mother went out to work, cleaning offices. She left home in the early hours each morning, and again each evening, leaving Frank to look after Peggy, who was by now a toddler.
    One day Frank ran home