I was still the baby, and acted accordingly, because it meant that sometimes Ma held me close or nursed me on her knee. She had no real interest in me. She adored her three harem-scarem boys and she needed Mary-Martha. She used me like a doll, cuddling me when her arms felt unbearably empty.
Pa favoured me though. I was little and lithe like Ma, my nose was small and snub, and my hair was fair and soon grew long. When Pa was in a good mood from the drink, he’d dance me round and round till we were both dizzy. He’d call me his very little Lizzie, making a song of it. Sometimes he brought me trinkets when he came back from his travels – a blue ribbon for my hair, a set of Indian baby bangles for my tiny wrist. I don’t know how poor Mary-Martha must have felt. Pa never brought her bright baubles.
I tried to tie my ribbon in her hair, but it would never stay in her straggly brown locks and my bangles wouldn’t fit over her fat little fists.
‘It’s all right, Baby. I don’t mind one bit,’ she said cheerily – but once or twice I came upon her peering anxiously into our cracked looking glass, sighing at herself.
Ma sighed too, seldom able to shrug off her melancholy. Pa brought home a pile of fairytale books, mainly bound in leather, and set Ma to colouring in the pictures. It was intricate work painting the gossamer wings of the fairies, the coils of the serpent, the alarming genie half in and half out of his bottle. It was far harder to keep the paint within the fine lines. The boys were too impatient and Mary-Martha and I not yet skilled enough, but Pa knew Ma had a careful, steady hand. If she tried hard and did her best, he could sell the volumes at twice the price.
Sometimes she managed perfectly – but then she would start daydreaming and went over the lines. She painted a picture of a fairytale christening superbly, putting in an extraordinary amount of detail, mixing her paint so cleverly that the child looked almost real, his soft pearly flesh carefully contrasted with the shaded folds of his christening robe.
‘That’s my girl, Lizzie! My, it’s a little masterpiece,’ said Pa. ‘I don’t think we’ll sell that book. We’ll cut out that colour plate and pin it to the wall.’
Ma smiled weakly, but she seemed troubled by the picture even so. She looked at it every day, the tip of her finger stroking the fairy baby, but then she realized that her hopes of another son were vain, and she seized the pot of black paint and obliterated the whole glowing picture in five frantic strokes of her paintbrush.
‘What’s wrong with you, Lizzie?’ Pa cried in despair. ‘Why hanker after yet another child when you have three fine sons and two dear daughters? Compared with many other women, you are so blessed! And you have your own snug little house and a husband who thinks the world of you. Why aren’t we good enough for you?’
‘You are good enough. You are too good to me, Sam. But I cannot help it. I am so frightened of losing you. If only I could have my little John, then I would feel that the angels were smiling at me and I would be in Heaven on Earth,’ Ma wept.
Mary-Martha and I cried too, because we hated to see her so unhappy, but the boys were restless and embarrassed by all her tears, and reared away from her like frightened ponies when she tried to embrace them.
‘Ma’s mad, Pa,’ said Matthew bluntly. ‘All this weeping and moaning! She’s sick in the head. Why can’t she be like other mothers?’
Pa whacked him hard about the head. ‘Don’t you dare talk about your poor mother in such a way! How dare you call her mad! She’s simply sad, boy. Don’t you see the difference?’
Ma didn’t have any real women friends because she’d always kept herself to herself, but she’d been close to the midwife. Pa invited the woman round to see if she could talk some sense into her. But Ma cried worse than ever when she saw the midwife with her white apron and her big black bag. It reminded her so painfully that she didn’t have the fourth baby boy she longed for. The midwife spoke to her softly, and then ferreted in her bag and brought out a little checked-cloth bag containing crushed seeds and herbs. It looked like the lavender ‘tea’ Mary-Martha and I made for our dolls, but it did not smell anywhere near as sweet.
‘Try my herbal tisane. It will lift your spirits, dearie – and you never know, it might just do the trick, though I shouldn’t be encouraging you to have another child. You’re in no fit condition.’ The midwife looked at Pa. ‘That will be five shillings, please.’
‘Five shillings for a bag of tea?’ he said. ‘Are you mad, woman?’
‘I’m not the one who’s mad, but if you don’t want to help your poor wife, then I’ll save it for those who are more grateful,’ she replied, snatching her bundle back.
Ma groaned – and Pa hesitated. ‘Can’t she have half the herbs for half the price?’ he asked.
‘She must take them all for them to have any effect,’ said the midwife. She dropped the bundle back into her bag.
Ma did not groan again, but she sank down, her chin on her chest, her face hidden by her long hair.
‘All right, all right, I’ll find you your five shillings,’ said Pa, sighing heavily.
It took him two days to sell enough tracts and angels to gather the money together. Then we had to endure two whole weeks of turnip stew and stale bread – but Ma got her herbal tisane and swallowed a cupful at every meal time. It was so bitter it made her shudder, but she gulped it down eagerly all the same. It acted just like a magic potion. She dressed with care, she braided her hair and pinned it into place, she joked with the boys and she taught Mary-Martha and me to sew. I was too small to do more than stitch fancy purses in bright wools, but Mary-Martha had nimble fingers and Ma taught her how to make nightcaps for Pa to sell to old-fashioned folk. Plenty of pedlars sold caps, plain or lace, but Ma stitched a tiny angel on each of ours to watch over the sleeper at night, and these proved very popular.
Soon she was sewing other clothes too: very tiny gowns, with lace and embroidery.
‘That’s beautiful, Lizzie dear, but I’ll have to charge dearly for all the fancy work and my customers are never going to fork out a fortune,’ said Pa.
‘These aren’t for sale,’ said Ma. A radiant smile lit up her face. ‘These are for our baby.’
Perhaps it was the herbal tisane, perhaps it was all those prayers to the angels, perhaps it was sheer chance – but Ma was going to have the child she longed for.
Pa was terrified she might lose the baby before her time, but she stayed strong and fit, and her stomach swelled until there was hardly room for me to climb on her lap.
I patted her big belly and pretended to talk to the baby inside.
‘That’s right, Ellen-Jane, say hello to little John,’ said Ma, laughing. ‘My sixth child, and my most blessed.’
Most sixth children in poor families like ours have to put up with cut-down nightgowns and old shawls, and sleep in drawers padded with an old pillow. But Ma prepared for the new baby as if he were a little princeling. She sewed his elaborate layette, and spent a mint of money getting an old woodcarver to make a special rocking crib.
Pa sighed at the sight of it. ‘The baby will grow out of it in six months, Lizzie!’
‘Don’t you think it’s beautiful though, Sam? Look at the shine on the wood! And the way the hearts have been carved. It’s a work of art!’
‘It’s fine enough, but it’s madness. What else are you going to order for him? A silver dish and spoon? A gold chamber pot?’ said Pa. ‘Do you think I’m made of money? Do you want your other children to starve?’
Ma bit her lip and looked as if she would crumple. She stroked the wooden crib, her hand trembling. ‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured. ‘Perhaps . . . perhaps the woodcarver will take it back?’
‘Oh, come now, you can keep your little crib. I can see how much you like it,’ said Pa. ‘Just don’t go in for any further nonsense.’
‘Oh, I won’t, Sam, I promise! Thank you, thank you! You’re the dearest, kindest husband in all the world. You’re so understanding. It’s just I’m so happy to be having my little John at last,’ said Ma, tender
ly rocking the cradle as if the baby were already lying there.
Pa took a deep breath. ‘Lizzie, what if the baby is another girl? You won’t be too disappointed?’
Ma stared at Pa as if he’d said something truly ridiculous. ‘Of course it won’t be a girl!’ she said, with utter conviction. ‘I know I’m having a boy.’
‘Let us hope you are right,’ said Pa fervently, and he glanced at all the angels, plain and painted, as if he were praying to them too.
MA STAYED STRONG and lively throughout her term. She kept the house immaculate, singing as she dusted and swept. She made sure she had a tasty stew bubbling on the stove every day, and made us children special jammy bread for our tea, smearing each slice with our initials in plum preserve. For once Mary-Martha and I did better than the boys, for M-M and E-J meant we had twice as much jam.
I knew that Ma had a baby in her tummy, of course, but I had no idea how it got out. I believe I had a notion that Ma might open some secret door in her stomach and let the baby out when it was big enough. I did not know that having a baby hurt, though I’d heard that Ma had been increasingly ill when she gave birth to each of us.
When she started her pains, I was terribly frightened. I had experienced bad stomach aches myself when we’d bought cheap meat on the turn from the butcher’s – but I could see by the way Ma was groaning, doubled-up, that this was far worse.
Pa seemed terrified. He ran for the midwife and then went off in a flurry, his hands over his ears to block out the moans. Matthew, Mark and Luke were frightened too, and went off to swing from the lamppost, their current favourite game.
Mary-Martha made bread and cheese for lunch, but the boys had all disappeared from the street, playing further afield.
‘Boys are useless,’ I said. ‘I don’t know why Ma wants another one.’
I secretly wanted to run away too, because it was so dreadful having to listen to Ma upstairs, but it didn’t seem right to abandon her. Mary-Martha busied herself running for hot water and clean linen at the midwife’s request. She was allowed into the bedroom with Ma and the midwife.
I couldn’t help being glad that I was shut outside. The midwife was a fierce-looking woman with a great pointed nose and chin, very much like the picture of a wicked witch in a fairy story. Her tisane was like a magic potion after all. I was very wary of her – and now that she was moaning like a wounded animal, I was scared of Ma too.
I stayed hunched up downstairs under the baleful eyes of the angels. I could not read, but I looked at the brightly coloured tracts on the walls and tried to take courage from them. My hands kept fidgeting, so I found a length of string and tried to play cat’s cradle by myself, but I ended up knotting my hands together, and when I needed to go to the privy I had to call out for Mary-Martha to help me.
‘Really, Ellen-Jane!’ she said, clipping me free with Ma’s big scissors. ‘Why do you have to be such a baby? You must try to be a big girl like me now Ma’s having a baby.’
‘Why is it taking so long?’ I asked, shivering at the sound of Ma’s groans up above us.
‘You took two days to get born,’ said Mary-Martha. ‘Now hurry up and use the privy. Then you must go to the alehouse and buy a pint of beer.’ She pressed a few coins into my hand and gave me the tankard from the dresser.
‘For Ma?’ I said.
‘No, silly. For the midwife. She says she needs a bit of sustenance – and I know she means drink.’ Mary-Martha tutted primly and quoted one of the tracts in a whisper: ‘Beware the demon drink!’
‘I don’t want to go to the alehouse. It smells funny and I don’t like the men there,’ I said.
‘Don’t be silly,’ said Mary-Martha. ‘One of those men will be our pa. Now go.’
‘You go. You’re bigger than me.’
‘I have to stay and help Ma.’
I hesitated, wondering which would be worse. Then Ma groaned again, and I decided I’d sooner trail to the King’s Arms than go upstairs to my poor mother.
I went to the privy and then set off, clutching the halfpennies so tightly that they embedded themselves in my palms. It was the first time I’d even been out in the street by myself. I wasn’t used to going anywhere without Ma or Mary-Martha holding my hand. It felt so strange I very nearly started crying.
I ran along the gutter, one foot on the pavement so that I stumped along lopsided. I imagined being lame like Limpy Dan with his wooden leg who lived nearby. I was scared of Limpy Dan too. He disliked all children and brandished his crutch if you got near. I looked around hopefully for my brothers, but there was no sign of them.
I waited a full five minutes outside the King’s Head, trying to pluck up courage to go in. The King himself grinned down at me from his sign, his face very red and leering under his crown. It looked as if he’d supped a barrel of ale himself. I didn’t know why he hung there. I might not have been to school, but every child in England knew we didn’t have a king, just a very old queen.
An old woman came hobbling up the road in broken boots, clutching her own tankard to her chest. She frowned at me. ‘What are you doing hanging around outside?’ she said sternly. ‘This is no place for a little girl.’
‘Please, missus, I’ve come for a pint of ale for the midwife,’ I gabbled.
‘Well, in you go then,’ she said gruffly, and gave me an impatient push.
I staggered through the open door into the dark alehouse. The smell made my nose wrinkle. It was so dark inside I could barely see, but I was horribly aware of the men – their bleary eyes in the dim gaslight, teeth gleaming as they quaffed their beer, big red noses shining in the powerful heat. And there was the biggest, reddest, shiniest nose of all right in front of me!
‘Ellen-Jane!’ he said, banging his pint pot down on the table top.
‘Hello, Pa,’ I whispered.
‘Saints alive, is it born? Is your ma all right? Tell me, child – don’t just stand there dithering.’
‘She’s not finished yet, Pa. She’s still groaning,’ I said.
‘Oh my Lord,’ said Pa miserably, and gulped his beer. ‘Then why are you here? I thought you’d been sent to tell me the good news.’
‘No, Mary-Martha sent me to get a pint of ale for the midwife,’ I told him.
‘She sent a little tot like you?’
‘I have the pennies safe, see . . .’ I showed Pa my clenched hand. ‘And I won’t spill a drop on the way back, I promise.’
‘My, did you all hear that?’ Pa roared. ‘This baby scarcely out of long dresses is trotting around the town running messages, God bless her. See my little maid? Isn’t she a darling? The dead spit of her mother – who is right now giving birth to my sixth child. Raise your glasses and drink to my baby!’
Folk didn’t seem sure whether he meant me or his coming child, but they raised their glasses all the same. Pa downed his beer in great gulps, seemingly incredibly thirsty, though he’d already been drinking there for hours. He scrabbled his fingers in my hot palm and seized the coppers.
‘And another one, if you please,’ he said, reeling over to the barmaid at the counter.
She poured him a full pint, and he raised it to his lips.
‘No, Pa! That’s for the midwife,’ I said, thinking he’d simply made a mistake.
Pa bent down until his head was next to mine. His huge nose seemed to grow even larger, like a vast parrot’s beak. I was sure he was going to peck me with it any second.
‘Now listen here, Ellen-Jane. I’m not letting you take any ale back to that midwife. She needs to be stone-cold sober. I love your dear mother more than life itself. I’m not having some drunken old biddy in charge of her. The very idea! I don’t want to come home and find your ma in hysterics and the midwife passed out on the floor!’
The only one who seemed in danger of passing out was Pa himself, but I knew better than to argue with him in his present state.
‘Do you understand?’ he said, poking me in the chest.
‘Yes, Pa,’ I said hurr
iedly.
‘That’s my baby.’ Pa subsided back onto a chair. He drank deeply again, and then wiped his wet mouth with the back of his hand. ‘The spitting image of your mother, that’s what you are, Ellen-Jane,’ he said, suddenly jovial again. He lifted me up so that I found myself standing on the table, my white kid shoes in a puddle of spilled beer.
I was very fond of those shoes. Ma had found them at the bottom of a basket in a rag shop and had wrangled to buy them for tuppence. She’d intended them for Mary-Martha, but the shoes were made for rich folk with fine, dainty feet. Mary-Martha could barely squash her toes in. So I got the new shoes, though I had to stuff each with a handkerchief because they were still too long. I didn’t care. My new shoes looked beautiful even so. But now brown beer was seeping upwards and staining the kid.
‘Set me down, please, Pa,’ I said, standing on one foot like a stork.
‘No, no, I want to show you off, my little maid. My, you’re the very spit of your poor ma, even down to your long hair.’ He ran his fingers through my curls like a comb, fluffing it up. ‘See my little baby wife!’ he shouted, so loud that all the other men stopped sipping and spitting and stared at me.
‘She’s like a fairy girl,’ said one. ‘Will you grant me a wish, little lass?’
‘Yes, grant me a wish too, little fairy,’ said another.
I’d never been told any fairy stories and I couldn’t read them for myself, but I’d seen Ma painting the illustrations.
‘I can’t grant you any wishes. I haven’t got a magic wand with a star on the end,’ I said.
I was being serious, but the men guffawed with laughter. Pa roared so much, he nearly spilled his precious beer.
‘She’s a card, my little lass. No fairy wand indeed!’
‘You could do us a fairy dance though,’ said another old man.
‘Yes, give them a dance, Baby. You’re forever skipping about the house, so dainty. Give them a little dance!’
I tried to clamber down, but Pa held me firm.
‘No, no, stay on your little stage where we can all see you,’ he said.