In the early summer Eileen decided to take Chrissie into the Bullring to buy her some lighter clothes. It was their second visit; the first was when Chrissie was still fresh from the workhouse and not at all sure of Eileen. She had kept her head lowered most of the time and, thrilled though she was with the clothes, she had found it difficult to say anything and was glad that Eileen seemed to understand.
This visit to the Bullring was very different and, as they descended the incline, she said to Eileen (who always encouraged her to ask questions as she said that’s how a person learnt), ‘Who’s he?’
She pointed to a statue of Nelson, standing on a plinth with metal railings around him, the whole thing ringed by flower sellers.
‘Nelson,’ Eileen said. ‘He was a famous and very brave sea captain and so he is honoured with a statue.’ And she added, ‘When we pass by, sniff the air and it will be fragrant with the aroma of the beautiful flowers.’
Chrissie did just as Eileen suggested and thought she was right – the smell was just magnificent. But neither had money to waste on flowers and so they wandered down the cobbled incline with barrows piled high with produce of every kind lining the road.
Opposite the barrows was a shop called Woolworths, which, Eileen told her, sold everything for sixpence or less. An old lady was standing outside and her strident voice rose above the clamorous chatter of the customers and the raucous calls of the costers shouting out their wares. She was selling carrier bags and determined to let everyone know about it as she cried out incessantly, ‘Carrier bags. Handy carrier bags.’
‘Been there years,’ Eileen said in explanation to Chrissie. ‘She’s blind and every day, bar Sunday, her family bring her here and she sells the carrier bags.’
‘D’you think she minds?’
Eileen shook her head. ‘Doesn’t appear to. I should imagine she is looked after by her family and this is her way of making a contribution. The alternative if her family couldn’t afford to keep her would probably be the workhouse.’
‘Oh, I’d sell the carrier bags and gladly,’ Chrissie said so fervently that Eileen smiled.
But then Chrissie’s attention was taken by the shop next door to Woolworths. It was called ‘Hobbies’ and Chrissie gazed at the wooden models of the planes, cars and ships of all shapes and sizes.
Eileen told her: ‘People can buy kits inside to make the models themselves and lucky young boys might find one in their stocking at Christmas time.’
Chrissie was enchanted by the man selling mechanical spinning tops from his barrow. Seeing her interest, he wound one up and set it spinning.
‘On the table, on the chairs, the little devils go everywhere,’ he chanted. ‘Only a tanner.’
Chrissie had clapped her hands with pleasure at the sight of the brightly coloured tops weaving all over the table, but she had to shake her head.
‘They are lovely, but I have no money.’ Eileen said nothing, but silently decided one of them could easily find its way into Chrissie’s stocking at Christmas.
‘Now we are crossing the market to the Rag Market at the side of the church,’ Eileen said. Chrissie nodded and she went on, ‘Watch out for the trams. Some of them come hurtling round in front of St Martin’s like the very devil and there might be a fair few dray horses pulling wagons as well.’
Accordingly, Chrissie took care as they approached the church. It was beautiful, built of light-coloured bricks with stained-glass windows set in ornate frames and an enormous steeple pointing heavenwards. There were iron railings surrounding it, though these were mainly hidden behind trees, and here and there were more flower sellers.
They soon reached the Rag Market and after Eileen had bought Chrissie some summer-weight clothes – dresses and skirts and blouses and cardigans – Chrissie was so overcome with gratitude she could again barely speak. Eileen understood when she saw tears standing out in Chrissie’s eyes. To give the girl time to compose herself, and also distract her a little, she led the way to the Market Hall, for, as she remarked as they left the clothes stall, ‘We didn’t take time to see it last time we were here.’
The Market Hall was a very imposing building built in the Gothic style with large arched windows either side of the stone steps. But Chrissie barely saw the grandeur of it once she saw the men on the steps. All of them were shabbily and inadequately dressed, though some had threadbare long coats that Eileen explained were the greatcoats given to soldiers. Their boots were well cobbled and they had greasy caps rammed on their heads, hiding most of their grey faces, and all of them had trays around their necks selling razor blades and shoelaces and matchsticks.
Eileen watched Chrissie covertly but she said nothing till they were inside the hall itself where the noise was tremendous. Eileen had thought she might have been impressed by the building itself, knowing she would have seen nothing like it for the ceilings were lofty and criss-crossed with beams and poles led down from the beams to hold up the roof. High arched windows lined one side with smaller arched windows at the ends, spilling summer sunshine into the Market Hall and lighting up the stalls of every description that lay before them.
However, all this was lost on Chrissie, who turned to Eileen and asked her who the men were and why they had been on the steps. When Eileen explained that they were old soldiers who had no work, and that many had not had a job since being demobbed from the army, she felt sadness envelop her. She couldn’t tell Eileen why the sight upset her so much, for Eileen and Father John didn’t like her mentioning the workhouse, but she had seen men in there with deadened eyes and grey, pinched faces like the men on the steps.
Eileen might not have understood why Chrissie had been so affected by the old lags, but she knew she was truly miserable. The first place she led her to was Pimm’s pet stall and, when they reached it, Chrissie’s mood lifted immediately and she stared at the animals, enthralled. She’d never even come near an animal of any description. The canaries twittered around them in their cages and Chrissie was enchanted, then knelt down to look into the large boxes on the floor. One held mewling kittens that she stroked gently and in the other one boisterous puppies tumbled over one another in their eagerness to get to Chrissie and she laughed when they nipped her fingers playfully. She saw fish swimming serenely around in large tanks and cuddly baby rabbits and guinea pigs in cages. She was allowed to cuddle some of the smaller creatures and they left the pet shop reluctantly to find the cacophony of noise outside had decreased a little.
There was an air of expectancy in the air and Eileen said, ‘They must be waiting for the clock to strike.’ She indicated the clock on the wall edging towards ten o’clock. It was a beautiful device made of wood and very intricately carved. Suddenly Chrissie watched fascinated as three knights and a lady emerged to strike a bell ten times, causing a tantalising tune to play before the hours were struck.
‘Oh, isn’t it just lovely?’ Chrissie breathed.
‘It is,’ Eileen agreed. ‘And a pity the man who made it wasn’t paid in full for it.’
‘Oh, surely that’s wrong?’
‘Of course it’s wrong but it happens. The clock was in an arcade in Dale End then. The man was supposed to put a curse on it – not,’ Eileen warned, ‘that you and I believe in such things, but people say that’s why the arcade failed to thrive and now it’s here.’
All in all, Eileen judged the trip to the Bullring a success, but she knew Chrissie could still be marked out as different for she had seen and done nothing outside of her workhouse walls for eleven years. Therefore she set about taking Chrissie out and about. They went to Calthorpe Park and Cannon Hill, and one day took a train to Sutton Park, and they visited museums and places of history around Birmingham and even visited the cinema a couple of times. Chrissie had been astounded by Eileen’s generosity of spirit and she felt her mind extending with the kind of education that she wouldn’t find in books.
Not that the library wasn’t still important to them both and, all through that long summer, whenever Chrissie went to the library, the girl with the golden curls was there. She was usually not choosing books herself but replacing books on shelves and Chrissie had even seen her behind the counter stamping the books to go out. She was far too shy to talk to her though and, as if the girl knew this, one day she smiled at the younger girl and said, ‘Hello. My name’s Connie. What’s yours?’
Chrissie was so awed at this beautiful girl talking to her that she was almost struck dumb. Fortunately, she recovered herself enough to answer and tell the older girl her name and to say what pretty hair she had. Connie said she had inherited both the colour and the waves from her mother and she added, ‘Your hair is a lovely dark brown and very shiny. Maybe you take after your mother too.’
For a split second, Chrissie almost told this girl the truth about her parentage, but she stopped herself in time, sticking instead to the story Eileen had thought up to explain her appearance at the presbytery.
Connie was intrigued. ‘Growing up with a priest,’ she said incredulously. ‘Never heard of that before. Is it interesting or is it grim? Is he very strict?’
Chrissie’s laugh was almost too loud for the hushed library and she went on in a whisper, ‘Father John is soft and, if it wasn’t for his sister, Eileen, he would allow himself to be walked over and never have a minute to himself. She can be strict about that sometimes, but she is kindness itself to me.’
‘I’m glad about that at least,’ Connie said.
‘Not as glad as I am,’ Chrissie said and the two girls smiled at one another.
The summer eventually drew to a close and in September Connie began at St Paul’s grammar school where she would stay two years to do her Highers. There, for the first time, she met girls who worked as hard as she did. She was no longer thought an oddity or called a ‘swot’, and so she was much happier at school.
At the same time, Chrissie began at St Catherine for her last two years of basic schoolwork. Although the school was told the truth of where Chrissie had come from, they agreed that no one else needed to be informed, and Chrissie fitted into school seamlessly. Many had seen Chrissie at Mass and were intrigued because she lived in the priest’s house, and because Eileen had taught her well she didn’t find the schoolwork unnecessarily arduous.
As the days folded one into another, she looked forward to her twelfth birthday just before Christmas and the birthday tea Eileen had planned for her.
‘Maybe next year you can have a few pals to share your birthday with you,’ Eileen said.
‘Maybe,’ Chrissie said, for she was making friends, which was a novel experience for her. Her innate shyness had prevented her from inviting anyone this year as she’d been afraid no one would come.
One night, Chrissie was in bed and Eileen was saying goodnight when the knock came to the door. This wasn’t an unusual occurrence, for there always seemed to be someone in need of a priest somewhere and so Father John opened the door with a slight sigh and was surprised to see Benedict Masters outside.
‘Come in, come in,’ he said.
‘I will,’ Masters said. ‘And I think I can safely say that you will be very glad to see me before you are much older.’ As Father John ushered him into the living room he pulled a small box from his pocket and placed it in his hand. ‘Open it.’
Father John opened it with fingers that shook and there, nestling on a bed of cotton wool, was the lost locket. Eileen heard her brother’s gasp of surprise and entered the room as Father John lifted the locket from the box and held it dangling from his fingers.
‘Is that the locket you told me about?’ she asked.
‘The very same,’ said Father John. ‘Praise be to God.’
His eyes stung and a lump formed in his throat. He was overcome with happiness that the locket had turned up.
‘I’ll tell you how I came upon it,’ Benedict Masters said. ‘First of all, as I lost my job when the workhouse closed, I am employed at the hospital as an administrator – which means general dogsbody. Anyway, when the workhouse was cleared out, although all the inmates’ beds went for scrap, I retained some of the staff beds – those in good condition – and had them stored in the cellar. I did wonder if it was a waste of time because they had all special hospital beds on the wards.
‘And then this year they built an annexe for those patients who were recovering but not yet fit to go home. They were talking about buying beds for this annexe so they could transfer the patients there and free up the hospital beds for the more seriously sick and suddenly I remembered the mattresses in the cellar. The hospital said they were more than suitable. We’d just begun carrying the mattresses up to the annexe when I noticed a slit in one of them and put it aside to dispose of it. But then I noticed inside the slit was a small folded piece of paper and I pulled it out and it was a pawn ticket.’
‘A pawn ticket?’
‘Yes,’ Masters said. ‘Not that I thought it had anything to do with the locket, but the address of the pawn shop was on the ticket. It was a dingy little place in Needless Alley and there was the locket. I couldn’t have been more delighted and lost no time in redeeming it.’
‘Nothing is missing at any rate,’ Father John said, opening it. ‘Look Eileen, there’s the photograph of some long-ago wedding one side and those blonde ringlets tied with a red ribbon in the other.’
‘Chrissie will be delighted to have this,’ Eileen said. ‘It’s a beautiful piece of jewellery anyway, but what is inside must be something to do with the family she came from. Oh thank you, Mr Masters, this will mean so much to one young girl.’
And so it proved. The following morning, as they sat eating breakfast, Father John said, ‘Chrissie, what do you know about the day you arrived at the workhouse?’
Chrissie was surprised at the question because both Father John and Aunt Eileen had said she must wipe her years at the workhouse from her mind as if they didn’t exist. She hadn’t been able to do that fully, but she knew they wouldn’t want to hear that so she never mentioned it to them. Now she said, ‘Someone left me on the workhouse steps and I was called Christine, because it was nearly Christmas, and Foley because that was the name of the warder who found me.’
‘It was your mother who left you there,’ Father John said. ‘But it wasn’t her fault. Without betraying the things she admitted to me in confession, I can say no more, apart from telling you she gave you the most precious item she owned to show you how much you were loved, and how sorry she was that she was unable to care for you herself.’
Perplexed, Chrissie asked, ‘What did she give me?’
Father John withdrew the box from his pocket and took out the locket.
‘This,’ he said. ‘You were holding it in your hand when you were found.’
Chrissie stared at the locket, awestruck. She withdrew it from the velvet box and dangled it from her fingers, overcome that she was holding something that her mother had given to her. Even if she was never able to trace her, the locket would always remind her that out there somewhere was a mother who loved her.
‘You weren’t allowed personal possessions in the workhouse,’ Father John said. He didn’t wish to go into the business of someone stealing it and pawning it, and just said, ‘When the workhouse closed down it was mislaid and Mr Masters found it and brought it round yesterday.’
‘Open it,’ Eileen suggested.
Until then, Chrissie hadn’t been aware it opened, and she gave a cry of surprise as she did so. The golden ringlets reminded her of the girl in the library, but the picture at any rate took all her attention.
‘It’s a wedding at a guess,’ Eileen said.
Chrissie looked at the dour faces and the odd clothes and said, ‘My parents, do you think?’
‘Grandparents more likely.’
‘Oh,’ Chrissie breathed. ‘Somewhere, I may have a whole proper family.’
The emotion in Chrissie’s voice and the wistful look in her eyes caused Eileen’s own eyes to water and to cover herself she said to Chrissie, ‘Shall we put it in the box now to keep it safe?’
‘Oh no,’ Chrissie said. ‘I want to wear it near to my heart always.’
Eileen didn’t argue with the child, she just fastened the locket around her neck. Chrissie smiled, touching it with her fingertips and thinking about the mother who loved her enough to leave her this keepsake.
Angela stood outside George Maitland’s old shop and marvelled at how bright and neat it looked from the outside. All the bad years when Matilda and her sister had left it to wrack and ruin were just a distant memory and Harry, and now Stan, were doing her old boss proud.
Through the glass windows Angela could see Stan serving customers inside. In his pristine white overalls he looked a little different and with a few more grey hairs too. She patted herself down, wondering what he would make of her now and hoping that the time that had passed had allowed some of his feelings to soften towards her.
She didn’t know if she could ever tell him the truth about Chrissie and the child at the workhouse, but she was determined to make amends, to be the friend to him that he had been to her, for herself and for Barry. She could see now that she had let all the emotions over her workhouse child cloud everything else. But now that Chrissie was safe and cared for, she could see more clearly.
Angela pushed a stray hair out of her eyes and, holding her head high, stepped inside Stan’s shop …