Song of the Sea Maid Read Free Page A

schoolroom for a lengthy sermon by our founder. Here we are read stories from the Bible and are taught of hell, omens and to be suspicious of fanatics, as they began our civil war after all, not so very long past. He makes quite clear to us his views on the poor.
    ‘When you leave this place in apprenticeship, we will have chosen a place for you in a respectable and useful profession, to be nurtured by those of the working classes who appreciate religious moderation and our noble nation. Together we will make good citizens of you and force the kingdom of darkness to totter. And hear this: never shall a child from my institution be sent to fester with porters, higlers, chair-men, day-labourers or market folk, as these people are one and all an insolent rabble who encourage revolt and, what is more, they never go to church on Sundays.’
    I ask Matron afterwards if poor people have a day off from work.
    ‘Sundays for some.’
    Say I, ‘No wonder they do not go to church if it is their only day free from work. They might want to go for an airing or sport and play.’ I am smacked on my leg for this, for blasphemy and cheek. But I notice Matron fidgets during churchtime and always disappears after for a little and I wager she would welcome the extra morning of freedom.
    Lunch is the same as breakfast – bread and cheese – for five days of the week, with boiled tripe on Saturdays and some sort of brown soup on Sundays. Supper is bread and cheese again, though at times we have boiled greens if someone has found some dandelions to pick. Once a month we have one small potato each with our Friday supper. After lunch, we are given a brief period of fresh air, whatever the weather may bring, in the walled yard behind our building. There are grey walls and a dusty floor to it. Not quite room enough to run and jump, so some of the girls skip about, little ones play pat-a-cake, and the older boys form animated knots and brag of exploits. Sometimes I creep along each of the four walls, counting my steps, and thereby roughly calculate the area of the yard. Most often, I find a corner and watch. I am alone, yet surrounded by others. From my first day, I continue my silent stand against them and feign to revel in my solitude. The boys ignore me anyway, and the older girls ensure the younger ones have nothing to do with the street rat. One time in this yard I find a magpie with a broken wing. I cup it in my hands and take it to Matron who says, ‘One for sorrow, two for mirth, three for a wedding and four for death,’ and promptly breaks its neck. ‘You orphans have enough room for sorrow in your lives, without inviting it in.’
    In the afternoons, we are instructed in trade. The girls are split into small groups and assigned to a maidservant, where we are taught the art of domestic service, the hundred small skills it takes to become a charwoman or laundry maid. The boys are permitted to leave the building to pursue grander trades, such as boot black or sweep. It is hard, busy work and the only junctures at which we stop are mealtimes, but I am so empty when I sit to eat that I do not enjoy this moment of stillness but think only of my belly and the food that barely fills it. It is never enough and we are always hungry, all of us.
    Our only moments of rest are the minutes in bed before sleep steals our minds till morning. I lie and think of my brother and where he may be; I think who my mother and father might have been and if they are dead or in the workhouse or hanged from the gibbet; I think of how the window in our dormitory is split into four squares and that each pane has four sides and I multiply the four sides by the number of panes and I imagine if the room had four windows or eight or sixteen or thirty-two windows how many panes of glass there would be altogether and how such as glass is manufactured and what ingredients might be needed to make glass and whether it is a material one finds in the ground or the fields or the