Tattycoram Read Free Page A

did.”
    â€œI’m sorry,” I mumbled, but in my heart I wasn’t — not even when he put his arms around me and cried that if I had to go he wanted to go too.
    â€œYou can’t,” I said, turning away from him. “It’s the rules.”
    Only later did I understand that Jonnie stayed because he wasn’t one of us, one of the Children of Shame.
    The night before I left was a night of shooting stars. I was allowed to stay up — “She’ll sleep on the way to London” — so Grandfather and I sat on the bench outside the cottage and waited.
    â€œHist!” he said. “There’s one now.”
    And there it was, streaking across the sky.
    â€œHow can you tell, Grandfather, when you can’t see them?”
    â€œI don’t know. Something changes.”
    â€œBut they are so far away!”
    â€œI can’t explain it, I just know.”
    Soon there were dozens of them, flashing this way and that; my head was on a swivel, trying to catch them all. Mother came out and put a big shawl across our shoulders; it was cool, now, at night.
    â€œWhat will they think if I send you back with the sniffles?” From out in the wood an owl hooted — whoo whoo — and Grandfather said at last that it was time to go in.
    â€œRemember this, Hattie,” he said. “Wherever we are, we are all under the same sky.”
    As I lay in bed, too sad to sleep and cross that the whole family wasn’t lying awake as I was, the smell of Grandfather’s tobacco came through the open window; I knew that he was still there, sitting in the dark and listening to the mad dance of the stars up above.

2
    The wagon came from Farnham and stopped in the square. I was dressed in my clean frock and a pair of shoes; my number was hung around my neck. I had to leave Baby behind — we were to bring no toys — but the Misses Bray had sent down a handkerchief baby, very tiny, with a face no bigger than a shoe button. Mother told me to tuck it in my pocket and perhaps Matron wouldn’t notice. Father and Sam were off in the fields; they said their goodbyes at an early breakfast, and I stood at the door and watched them walk away, become smaller and smaller and then disappear. Jonnie was to walk down with Grandfather, Mother and me, but at the last minute he ran back inside and refused to come out. Mother was anxious that we not be late — she was coming with me — so she said we must leave him be and hurried me away.
    The children from Farnham were already in the wagon, along with another foster mother.
    â€œClimb up, climb up,” said the driver, as he let down some steps. I clung to Grandfather even after Mother was seated and holding out her hands.
    â€œYou must go now, pet. There’s a good girl.” He lifted me up and my mother caught me.
    Most of the children were crying and sobbing and I began tocry as well, even though Mother was there beside me in her Sunday bonnet and shawl. She told me later that old Mrs. Shute, who was no longer right in the head, had heard the noise from her cottage nearby and come running out, convinced it was Judgement Day; she wanted to jump on and be taken to the place where the Lord would judge the quick and the dead. “’Tis the wailing wagon, ’tis the wailing wagon. Wait, wait for me!”
    Small boys, not yet gone to the fields, ran after us shouting and throwing stones, and indeed we must have seemed comical, even grotesque, a great wagon full of children crying as though their hearts would break. A strange harvest, fruit of our fallen mothers’ wombs, about to be delivered to the metropolis like a load of apples or melons.
    More children climbed aboard in Dorking and in Guildford, where we stopped for bread and ale. Then, in the early afternoon, the sky darkened, streaks of lightning shot from it and thunder, which made us cry out in fear, and then a torrential downpour, as though even God