Gorphwysfa
Philip must have noticed, because he places a hand on his arm, surprisingly large and strong.
“You’re bound to be nervous, Dad, but they’re good people here. You came and looked round with us, remember? You liked your new neighbor, Mrs. Brewster?”
He grunts, shrugging his arm out from beneath the hand. If he doesn’t like it, he can always leave. They can’t stop him. He might be old but he’s still a free man.
The room they show him to is nicer than he expected, and once he’s settled into an armchair with a cup of tea on the table next to him—in the rose china, the set Margaret inherited from her mother—he’s forgotten all about his plans to escape.
Philip potters about the place in that busy way of his, never taking a minute to stop and talk, unpacking and dusting and moving things and complaining.
He likes to find fault with things, always did.
He’s never known a kid to be so quick at Spot the Difference.
“What was that, Dad?”
He doesn’t know how or when Philip crept up on him, but he waves his hand as if brushing him away. “Nothing, I’m fine. Quit fussing so much.”
“I thought you said something. It’ll all seem a bit different at first, try not to feel overwhelmed. You’ve got your things here, and they said someone would look in on you tonight, make sure you’re settled. If you need anything just ask. We’re paying them, it’s not an imposition.”
He waves his hand again, but less vigorously this time, then reaches for the tea. It’s stone cold.
“Why have you given me cold tea? You know I like it hot. Whoever drinks tea cold?”
“I’ll get you another one. Give me a minute.”
Then Philip’s back to his pottering again, and Allan feels his head nodding, his eyelids so heavy. It’s easiest just to let it wash over him, a thick, dark blanket that obliterates everything.
When he wakes, his head jerks back painfully.
The room has gone dark and he can barely see the walls.
He ends up shuffling his backside forward to the edge of the chair, then tipping onto the carpet and crawling on hands and knees toward what he assumes is a lamp.
He finds the base with his fingers, traces the edges of it, gropes around for the wire.
That’s where they put the switch these days, isn’t it?
He can hear someone breathing, a phlegmy, rasping sound. Just in case, he calls out, “Philip?” but there’s no answer. Something creaks in the darkness, as if someone’s walking around above his head.
Once he finds the wire, he runs his hand up it, fingers the switch.
The light flickers on, guttering like a candle flame, before settling on a pale luminescence.
Sitting on the floor he looks around the empty room, wondering where he is.
Then he stands and picks up the teacup at the foot of the chair, its contents now a brown stain on the carpet.
Hobbling slightly, his knees slow to awaken, he sets off to find the kitchen.
* * *
I don’t know the town when I come to it, though it’s possible I’ve been here before.
I’d set out for Swansea, but a farmer whose cart stank of piss and onions gave me a ride, and when he let me off, I was so turned around I couldn’t tell you which way the wind blew.
Asking some ripe old wench at the crossroads, she tells me they have a poorhouse, and that is all I needed to know.
These feet aren’t treading a mile more today and a place to lay my head is as good as any other.
Her directions aren’t worth shit, but I stumble across it finally, the one big building in a town full of hovels.
A grand entrance, wings off to either side—men’s and women’s, I reckon—the whole thing spreading its arms like a giant about to crush me.
They like to make an impression, the unions.
Put the fear into you before you even step inside.
I’ve been in enough workhouses to know they’re all the same: fire and brimstone covering greed and lies.
Takes me a moment to find the signs behind a hawthorn, those spiny boughs grown right across them.
It must have been a year or two since they was left there.
The stones of the wall have been scratched with something hard, maybe a flint or the like.
Deep enough to last. I scrape off a layer of lichen with my thumbnail, to see them better.
The oval shape of a loaf—good for food. The curve of a sickle, signifying work.
Then something I struggle to make out: a circle with a star in it.
I scrape at it but there’s nowt else to see, just a crude circle then four lines crossing, an eight-pointed star.
Eventually, I realize what they’ve done: the circle and cross means a Christian household, but they’ve put a second cross through this, meaning…
what? Not a Christian establishment, I suppose, which is fine by me.
They won’t be minding my cussing so much if God isn’t in the house.
When I ring the bell I’m met by a tall man, his body thin as a bundle of sticks. The skin hangs from his cheeks in two flaps that quiver when he talks.
“We’ve no room for vagrants,” he says, those cheeks wobbling like aspic. “House is all full, be on your way.”
I put on my best face, the one that says I’m honest but hard-working.
“I hear you, sir, I do, but I have nowhere else to go tonight and nothing to eat. You wouldn’t condemn me to a ditch, would you? Give me one night’s bedding and a bite to eat, please sir, and I’ll be on my way come morning.”
I roll up my sleeve as I’m speaking, so he can see the muscles in my arms, taut and strong like good rope. This works better with the ladies than the men, but it never does you harm. They like a man who can work his way.
Sure enough, he looks at me proper now. I’m no giant—I barely come past his shoulders—but there’s a strength in my body that he knows they can use. Workhouses is all about making money, no matter their talk of charity, and it’s like he sees those shillings sticking out of my skin.
“Can you break rocks?” he asks, his eyes still on my arms. “You’ll need to earn your way if you want to stay. And not one night only, but two or three. We’ll give you a pile to break down to gravel, you can leave when you’re done.”
“Aye, boss,” I say, knowing the deal is sealed. “Happy to. You feed me and I’ll break them rocks for you, as many as you say.”
He pauses for a moment then nods, beckoning as he walks through the door to the left-side wing of the house.
“Come, then. We’ll get you settled for now since it’s late, and you’ll work in the morning. Our rooms are basic here, but it’s a roof over your head, and you’ll need that on a night like tonight. You’ve missed dinner but I can find you a heel of bread, most likely.”
He isn’t joking about the rooms. The bed he shows me to has nowt but a chaff mattress, no more than an inch thick in places, atop rough boards. As I sit on it, the bones of my arse touch the wood beneath. Still, I’m weary enough that I’d sleep on a mattress of bones if needed.
His truth about the rooms is cancelled out, though, by the lie he told when he said they was full.
There are two ranks of five beds in our room, and of those, only three are taken.
In the far corner there’s a young man with a misshapen head, like a bear has sat on it, one eye bulging while the other is barely more than a slit.
I learn later that he’s known as Silas, and he’s lived here since he was a babe.
His ma abandoned him on the workhouse steps when she saw what she’d birthed, and the guardians took him in.
There’s a thick chain wrapped around his left leg, ending in a rusted manacle that’s chafed his ankle raw. The other end is bolted to the floor.
The rest of us lie huddled together in the other corner, doing our best not to bunk up near the cripple.
Adam is the oldest, his wiry limbs poking out from a pot-bellied torso like four pieces of straw stuck into a potato.
It bodes well for the grub, if they’ve managed to fatten up an old hog like him.
I imagine he might be fifty years, although with the wear the workhouse adds, he might be only a month over forty.
Then there’s Eddie on the bed next to mine. His arms look too short for his frame, and his legs are too long, but there’s a wiry energy to him that I like. He holds himself like a man who refuses to bow to anyone, despite being little more than a boy.
After the tall man—Mr. Armitage, I’m told—brings me a hard, stale heel of yesterday’s bread to chew on, the lamps are snuffed out and I hear a key turn in the lock.
I’m not sure if that’s for my benefit, or if they always lock these poor souls in at night.
Eddie is still tossing and turning on his bed, the chaff rustling beneath him like someone’s tipped it into a threshing machine.
“You still awake there, new face?”
“I am.”
There’s rustling again, and I can just make him out, sitting up on his mattress.
“You’ve landed a right stinker here, and no mistake,” he says, sure to keep his voice low and level, so the sound won’t carry beyond our room.
“These are queer folks, and mean. You staying, or tramping?” I told him the latter.
“Then do your work, break your rocks, and move along. You don’t want to tarry in an odd house like this.
I’ve been here two days, and I’ll finish breaking my share tomorrow.
You won’t see me for the dust from my heels when the time comes. ”
“Is it Armitage?” I ask. I know from experience that a mean-spirited overseer can make life a misery if they’re left unchecked. It wouldn’t have surprised me to hear that he kept all the choice cuts and the cheese for himself, though his physique barely suggested it.
“Old string bean? He’s alright. But did you see the small building out back? That’s the pesthouse. You don’t want to get sent there, no matter what. There’s a sickness here?—”