Tattycoram

Tattycoram Read Free Page B

Book: Tattycoram Read Free
Author: Audrey Thomas
Tags: FIC019000, FIC014000
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were saying, “Don’t do this. Turn back, turn back.” We were not very wet, for the wagon had a tilt, but the sound of the rain and the early darkness just added to our misery. One of the horses slid and stumbled in the muddy highway, and for a terrifying moment it seemed as if we might all be pitched out onto the road. The driver shouted and cursed and laid about with his whip, and then we were all right again.
    There were other wailing wagons on the road that day but I didn’t know it then. Small boys and girls, all frightened, all headed for the same place — cartloads of little bastards.
    The great roar of London began even before we crossed the river, and now we were just one vehicle among many as wemoved through the clogged streets towards Bloomsbury. The rain had stopped, but the air did not smell fresh, the way it did in the country after a rainstorm. It smelled of coal fires and decay and dung, a smell I would never get used to. But soon enough, the great iron gates swung open and our wagon rolled inside. The tilt was pulled back, my mother and the other women were helped down, and then we were lifted away and brushed clean of straw. Matron and her assistants were there to greet us. I clung to my mother, and they had to pry me loose while I screamed, “Mam, Mam, I’ll be good, I promise,” which set the others to crying as well. “Ma, Maa, Maaa,” we bleated as we were led away, washed and fed, dressed in long muslin nightgowns and put to bed early in our little iron cots, the girls in one wing, the boys in another. Tomorrow, Matron said, would be soon enough for uniforms.
    I had never slept alone in a bed before, and my small cot seemed enormous and cold too without Jonnie’s warmth next to mine; no one had kissed me goodnight or told me they loved me. Even my handkerchief baby had been found and taken away from me. I twisted up a corner of the pillowcase to make another baby and sobbed myself to sleep. They could not really have loved me — Father, Mother, Grandfather, Sam, Jonnie — or they would not have cast me off like this. That was the terrible thing; they hadn’t cared enough to rescue me.
    â€œWill I ever see you again?” I had asked my mother, and she, her eyes red-rimmed from weeping, said, “Of course, I promise you. We shall come to visit on your birthday, and when you learn to read and write, perhaps you will write us letters.”
    â€œBut who will read them to you?”
    â€œThe rector or his wife. One of the Misses Bray. Don’t you worry about that.”
    But I no longer believed her — or not on that dark night. I knew I would never see any of them again. My mother could cry all she liked; she’d soon forget me.
    Years later, when Sam told me about his first days on the convict ship, I thought, yes, I might just as well have been condemned to transportation for the wretchedness I felt that night and for many nights to come. Cut off from the family I loved, the landscape I loved, and the freedom I had enjoyed in our little village, I might just as well have been confined to prison. At least poor Sam knew what his crime had been; I did not yet understand mine.
    Nurse slept at the end of the ward, behind heavy curtains. Once she started snoring, we could whisper, and we soon discovered that our beds were just close enough together that we could reach out and hold hands. That was how we often comforted ourselves at night, with whispers and a hand to hold, for when the moon was bright, its flickering light came through the barred windows and cast dreadful shadows on the walls. A chain of little girls in rough muslin nightgowns, holding hands, up one side of the ward and down the other, until one by one the hands dropped away, and we fell asleep.
    The wet-beds didn’t hold hands. They slept in special canvas cots right at the very end. They stayed there until they learned their lesson.
    My new life at the hospital

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