Shadows of the Workhouse

bigger girls giggled and nudged each other, winking at him as they marched past. Normally he would have flirted back, but he had no heart for flirting now. He changed his round again.
    He sought another interview with the Master. On this occasion he had carefully prepared his questions. If he couldn’t see his sister because of the rules, what were the rules about taking her away altogether? The Master was surprised at the boy’s persistence and explained, condescendingly, that any relative could apply for the discharge of an inmate and, provided the applicant could prove that he could provide adequately for said inmate, the application would be considered favourably.
    Frank’s quick brain translated. “You means, if I can support my sister, I can get her out of ’ere?”
    The Master nodded.
    “An’ what would you means by ‘support’?”
    The Master looked at the eager fourteen-year-old sitting before him, and smiled at the impossibility of his hopes. “I would say, firstly, that the applicant must be of good character and must have decent accommodation. He must prove himself able to support the inmate for whose discharge he is applying, and should have a reasonable sum of money saved against illness or loss of work.”
    “An’ ’ow much would you call a ‘reasonable sum’?”
    The Master tapped his pencil, and smiled archly.
    “Oh, I would say twenty-five pounds. That is a fair sum.”
    Frank swallowed. Twenty-five pounds! Ask a working boy today to save £25,000 and he might swallow and turn pale, just as Frank did.
    The Master concluded the interview and assumed that he would see no more of the boy.
    Frank dragged his feet miserably back to the lodging house. The obstacles seemed insurmountable. Why couldn’t he just take her? When he entered the squalid doss-house, in which about twenty men slept and ate, he realised the Master was right. He couldn’t possibly bring a girl here. He would have to be able to provide for her and find somewhere decent to live.
    Frank then worked as he had never worked before, spurred on by necessity. He did his fish round, as ever, but instead of knocking off when he had sold it all, he looked into the fruit-and-nut trade, and hawked them around the pubs and theatres and music halls until ten or eleven at night. He doubled his income. He changed his habits and became something of an outcast from his old mates, because he never gambled, never flashed his money around by joining them in the tavern. They resented it and ridiculed him. He opened a Post Office National Savings Account. No coster ever saved. Conspicuous spending each evening in the pubs and taverns was their habit. But Frank wasn’t interested in what the others did. He had opened the account because he knew that in a communal lodging house he would eventually be robbed. When he learned that he would earn four per cent on his investments he was thrilled and carefully worked out how many pennies that would be to every pound saved. By the age of fifteen he had saved eight pounds.
    There is no doubt about it, Frank was a brilliant and imaginative coster. He went into the fried-fish market, arranging for the fish to be cooked at a baker’s and employing a lad to hawk it around at a fixed rate, plus the bunting system. He looked into the roast-chestnut market and worked out that the hire of the gear would pay for itself around Christmas time. He was right. By the age of sixteen he had twenty-five pounds in his Post Office account.
    He then looked round for a room to rent for himself and Peggy. It had to be a decent room – on that point he was determined. His sister was not going to be dumped in any old hole. She would be twelve years old now, quite the young lady. He had not seen her since she was little more than a baby, but he visualised her as petite and pretty, and felt sure she looked like his mother. Mother and sister merged into each other in his imagination, a numinous female ideal, the guardians of his hopes and longings.
    He found a room on the top floor of a house at eight shillings a week, plus two shillings for the rent of furniture. It was an upper-class house, he felt. There was a gas stove on the middle landing for everybody’s use, and a tap in the basement, There was even a lavatory in the yard. He was well satisfied.

    Frank stood again in the Master’s office. He had on his best clothes and his Post Office book was in his pocket. The Master had not expected him, and was astonished