The Curse of the Clan

Chapter One ~ 1822-2

She took it from him gratefully and, having drunk half of it at a gulp, lay back in her chair gasping for breath and fighting for self-control.

“I promise you one thing,” Mr. Falkirk said quietly, “I will leave you enough money to employ some better help than you have at the moment and I will make it my duty, as soon as I return to Scotland, to see that a larger grant is made by His Grace for the upkeep of this Orphanage.”

He felt that his words placated Mrs. Barrowfield to a certain extent, but she continued to stare into the fire breathing heavily.

“Perhaps you could tell me what you know about this girl,” Mr. Falkirk asked. “Has she another name?”

“Another name?” Mrs. Barrowfield repeated scornfully. “Have you forgotten, Mr. Falkirk? This is The Orphanage of the Nameless. Of course she has no other name, nor have any of the rest of the wretched creatures who are pushed in on me day after day, week after week.”

She snorted before she went on,

“‘I’ve got another little bastard for you,’ Doctor Harland says to me only last week. ‘Well you can keep it,’ I answers. ‘I’ve not another hole or corner to put a mouse in, let alone a child.’

‘Come along, Mrs. Barrowfield,’ he says. ‘You’re a kind woman and you wouldn’t want to see this scrap of humanity end up in the river.’

‘I don’t care where it ends up,’ I replied, ‘it’s not coming here and nothing you can say. doctor, will make me change my mind’,”

“Did he take it away?” Mr. Falkirk asked.

“No, it joined the rest,” Mrs. Barrowfield answered in a weary voice. “I thought I’d convinced him that there was no room, but Tara tells him that the baby could share a cot with another and so she squeezes them in together.”

“I said to her afterwards, ‘You’re a fool! You’re only giving yourself more work’.”

“But she did not mind?”

“It’s me who has to mind!” Mrs. Barrowfield said sharply. “It’s me that has another mouth to feed and not a penny piece to pay for the food they gobbles up. ‘Gold dust, that’s what you’re eating,’ I've said to the older ones over and over again, but they’re always whining and saying they’re hungry.”

Mr. Falkirk was drawing a wallet from the inner pocket of his well-cut travelling coat.

He took out some notes and laid them on the table in front of Mrs. Barrowfield.

“Here is twenty pounds,” he said, “and it only has to last you until I have been able to reach Scotland and make better arrangements for the future.”

He saw the glint of greed in the woman’s eyes and wondered how much of the money would be spent on food for the orphans and how much on drink. But for the moment, he told himself there was nothing he could do but placate this blowsy drink-sodden woman.

“Before you send for Tara, will you tell me what you know of her?” he asked.

“You really intend to take her away?”

“I am sorry, Mrs. Barrowfield, there is nothing else I can do unless you have another girl of a suitable age.”

Mrs. Barrowfield made a gesture of helplessness and said in a sulky tone,

“What do you want to know?”

“The actual day she came here. You keep records, I suppose?”

He saw the woman’s eyes flicker and knew that if she had records they had certainly not been kept up to date for some time and doubtless he would learn very little from them.

Hastily, and he was sure it was because she wished to divert his attention, Mrs. Barrowfield said,

“As it happens, Tara is different from the other children. She was born here. Born in this very building.”

“How did that happen?”

“You may well ask. It was in the summer of 1804, just a little later in the year than now, the beginning of July, I think. I was sitting where I am at this moment when I hears a rat-tat enough to wake the dead on the outside door. I jumps to my feet, I was younger in those days and could move quicker and goes to see what the noise is all about.”

Mrs. Barrowfield paused to finish her glass of port, before she continued,

“There was quite a crowd outside and two men supporting a woman who was either dead or unconscious.”

“What had happened?” Mr. Falkirk asked.

“There’d been an accident. A carriage had knocked her down in the street. The wheel had passed over her, but the coachman had driven on without stopping.”

Mrs. Barrowfield held out her glass invitingly and Mr. Falkirk refilled it.

“That’s them private coachmen all over, arrogant and overbearing they be and they don’t care who suffers.”

“Do go on with the story,” Mr. Falkirk suggested.

“Well, they carried the woman in and I sends a boy for the doctor. He only lived three streets away. That was a Doctor Webber who was attending the Orphanage in those days. Disagreeable man, I never cared for him.”

“And the woman?” Mr. Falkirk asked trying to keep Mrs. Barrowfield to the point.

“I thought she was dead,” Mrs. Barrowfield said, “but then before the doctor arrives she begins groaning and moaning and finally I realise to my astonishment that she’s in labour.”

“You did not notice at first that she was pregnant?”

“As a matter of fact, I didn’t,” Mrs. Barrowfield confessed. “Perhaps I wasn’t as observant then as I am now. She was wearing a loose gown and being a slight creature she didn’t show it as a heavier woman might have done.”

“What happened?” Mr. Falkirk asked.

“It was hours before the doctor got here. They couldn’t find him or he wouldn’t come. Heaven only knows what the explanation was. But I did my best and the baby was almost in the world before he even walks through the door.”

Mrs. Barrowfield spoke scathingly.

Then she said,

“Casual and offhand he was about the whole thing. You know what doctors are like when there’s not a fat fee about. Anyway he delivers the baby and a nice mess he makes.”

Mrs. Barrowfield sipped her port ruminatively, as if she was looking back at the past.

“I’d never been present at a confinement before. It both shocked and embarrassed me. I've never had children of my own, you see, not ever having been married.”

Mr. Falkirk made no comment.

He remembered that it was a question of courtesy to give the Matron of an Orphanage the prefix of ‘Mistress’ whether or not she was entitled to it.

“Anyway,” Mrs. Barrowfield went on, “the doctor puts the baby down and says, ‘That’ll live if you take care of it, but the mother’s dead!’”

“He could not save her?”

“If you ask me, he didn’t try,” Mrs. Barrowfield sniffed, “and it’s only when I looks at the mother before they comes to take her away for burial that I realises how young she is and in fact different from what I might have expected.”

“What do you mean by different?” Mr. Falkirk asked.

“Well, if I didn’t suppose to the contrary since no one seemed to be worried about her or care whether she was alive or dead. I’d have said she was a lady. She certainly looked as if she was of gentle birth. Pretty she was with red hair and a white skin and clothes that must have cost a pretty penny, there’s no doubt about that.”

“Did you keep any of them?”

Mrs. Barrowfield shook her head.

“Nothing gets kept in this place. The orphans will steal anything they can get hold of in the winter when it’s cold, and I expect her petticoats if she had any, they weren’t fashionable at that time, were torn up as bandages. There’s always one of those little varmints bleeding in some part of his anatomy.”

“And there was nothing to distinguish her or give you an indication of who she might have been?”

“As far as I knows the doctor made enquiries,” Mrs. Barrowfield said. “Looking for his fee, he was, if you asks me. He told me he'd asked if there had been any notification of a missing person in the neighbourhood, but nobody comes here to look for the baby, so I surmises he had no reply.”

“Why did you name her Tara?” Mr. Falkirk asked.

“That was just what I was about to tell you,” Mrs. Barrowfield replied. “You asked if the dead woman had any identification on her? She'd not so much as a handbag although if she had it would have been stolen when she was knocked down in the street.”

Mrs. Barrowfield paused for effect and then went on,

“I can tell you one thing she didn’t have and that was a Wedding ring! It may have been intentional that she’d come to the right place with her nameless child.”

“Why did you name it Tara?”

“That was just what I was about to tell you,” Mrs. Barrowfield answered. “The dead woman had a locket round her neck! I suppose you’ll think I’m sentimental, but I kept it even though if I’d had a bit of common sense I’d have sold it. Even a shilling or two would have helped at times when food was short.”

“May I see the locket?” Mr. Falkirk asked.

If he found himself irritated by Mrs. Barrowfield’s garrulous manner and the way she wandered from the point, he showed no sign of it.

His face was expressionless as she rose unsteadily to her feet to go once again to the piece of furniture that she had taken the bottle of port from.

It was a badly made cheap cupboard supported on a table that contained two drawers.

Mrs. Barrowfield pulled one of them open and from where he was sitting Mr. Falkirk could see that it was filled with bills, some creased ribbon, hair-combs, patterns of material and a number of nameless objects which could be of little significance and no value.

Mrs. Barrowfield foraged about in the back of the drawer and finally came back with a small trinket box in her hand.

“This is where I keeps my treasures,” she said with an ugly laugh. “As you can imagine. I’ve not many of them and, if I left them lying about, those young devils would soon have their fingers on them.”

She sat down again on the chair and opened the box on her ample lap.

Mr. Falkirk could see that it contained a number of loose blue beads from what had once been a necklace.

There was also a brooch without a pin, cheap bangles of the type that could be bought for a few pence in any fairground and a piece of withered mistletoe that he thought must be a souvenir of Mrs. Barrowfield’s youth, although it was hard at the moment to imagine her experiencing any form of romance.

“Why here it is!” she exclaimed.

She rummaged under the beads and brought out a small locket attached to a chain.

“That was round the poor woman’s neck,” she said holding it out to Mr. Falkirk.

It was gold, not of good quality and could not have cost very much money.

Inscribed on the outside was the word ‘Tara’ and when he opened the locket it contained a curl of dark brown hair.

“Honest, that’s what I am!” Mrs. Barrowfield said. “As I told you, Mr. Falkirk, any other woman would have sold it, but I always thought perhaps one day it’d come in useful and sure enough you’re finding it interesting.”

“I am indeed, Mrs. Barrowfield,” Mr. Falkirk said, “and you will understand that I would like to take it with me.”

“I can hardly imagine that His Grace would be interested in such a trumpery,” Mrs. Barrowfield said. “Why does he want the girl taken to Scotland? You haven’t told me that yet.”

“To tell you the truth I don’t know, Mrs. Barrowfield,” Mr. Falkirk replied. “I am merely obeying the orders His Grace gave before he left for the North.”

“It seems strange to me,” Mrs. Barrowfield commented.

Mr. Falkirk agreed with her, but he was not prepared to admit it.

“Now perhaps,” he said in his quiet voice, “you would send for Tara. I should like to make her acquaintance.”

“When will you be taking her with you?” Mrs. Barrowfield asked.

There was a sharp note in her voice, but, having put down the trinket box, she picked up the notes from the table and Mr. Falkirk was quite certain that they were a tangible consolation.

“I am leaving this afternoon,” he replied. “As I pass the door after leaving Arkcraig House, I can pick up Tara.”

“She’s travelling with you in your carriage?”

“There is no other way for her to journey North and, as I do not anticipate that she will have much luggage, we should not be overcrowded.”

“Luggage! She’ll have little enough of that!” Mrs. Barrowfield replied.

“If I could just see her before I leave – ?” Mr. Falkirk said rising to his feet.

Mrs. Barrowfield, however, remained sitting in her chair.

“I feels a bit faint after hearing the bad news you’ve brought me,” she said. “Just go to the door and shout her name. She’ll hear you right enough.”