Letters from Alice: A tale of hardship and hope. A search for the truth.. Petrina Banfield

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СКАЧАТЬ the city: the summer diarrhoea of 1911 claimed the lives of 32,000 babies under the age of one, the plethora of flies attracted by horse manure on the streets speeding up the transmission of disease. The Redbournes’ youngest, a boy of around a year old named Henry, had fallen sick with pneumonia soon after recovering from his bout of dysentery. According to the physician who treated him, he had been lucky to survive.

      As a porter on the railways, Mr George Redbourne earned a reasonable wage, one that, according to Miss Campbell, should have been sufficient to allow the family to contribute sixpence a week towards the cost of their medical treatment. A typical wage for someone like Mr Redbourne in the early 1920s was around thirty to forty shillings a week (in old money, there were twelve pennies in a shilling, and twenty shillings to a pound).

      The Redbournes insisted that the rest of their income, after the eight shillings and sixpence a week they paid out in rent, was swallowed up by tram fares to and from work, payments to elderly parents and other essentials. So far, not a penny of the costs of the family’s treatment had been recouped.

      Trouble with nerves prevented Mrs Redbourne from working, or so she claimed, but she was a reluctant interviewee, and her word was not entirely trusted. The margin of the Redbournes’ file was marked with the letters ‘NF’: the almoners’ code for ‘Not Friendly’. It was a practice taught in training, one that forewarned visiting staff to be on their guard.

      Across the river, a barge billowed steam into the air. Frank stopped abruptly as a horse cantered past, its cart loaded with coal. ‘Miss Hudson, you’ve made your point,’ he said, tilting his head towards the briefcase. ‘You’re as capable as any man, I accept it. I just wish you’d give up your desire to become one.’

      Alice stopped, resting the briefcase on the ground and shaking her hands to get the blood flowing again. Tentatively, she loosened the silk scarf she was wearing, wincing as she tucked the end inside her cape. A collection of scarves in assorted colours hung in Alice’s wardrobe back in her room. She alternated them throughout the seasons to conceal the burn injury she sustained in the trench fire that had sent her home to England, the rough scars running across her left shoulder, up to the nape of her neck and over the back of her left hand.

      ‘Don’t worry, Frank,’ came the curt reply. ‘If ever I had such ambition, you are more than enough to contain it.’ Frank chuckled and set off again through the resulting cloud of smoke, unburdened but for the folded umbrella he tapped on the ground in front of him.

      Alice picked up pace, the bells of Southwark Cathedral jangling in time with her steps. As they neared Whitechapel, walking the same streets stalked by Jack the Ripper a few decades earlier, they passed several tenements, silent but for the distant yowls of a stray dog. With shoeless children using stones for marbles on the icy pavements and coatless beggars huddling against crumbling walls, it was an area well known to the almoners.

      Hurrying past the destitute with nothing to offer but a concerned smile must have been demoralising for a committed social reformer like Alice, but the almoners soon learned the difficult and humbling lesson that all social workers through the ages come to accept: you can’t help everyone.

      Frank slowed as they neared a warren of three-storied houses with overhanging eaves. The smoke rising from chimneys all along Dock Street would likely worsen the weather conditions, but at least offered the promise of a room warmed by a log fire.

      Alice reached Frank a few doors away from their destination. The trail of acrid smoke he left in his wake caught in her throat and she gave a sudden cough. Frank stopped mid-pace, draped the handle of his umbrella over the crook of one arm and held out his other hand to take possession of the briefcase. ‘May I?’ he asked, pipe dangling from between his teeth. With a slow roll of her eyes, Alice relinquished the suitcase. Frank immediately stood aside, gesturing for her to take the lead with a flourish of his brolly.

      The Redbournes’ rickety wooden gate gave a resentful moan on opening, the yard empty but for a skinny cat curled up inside an old cardboard box. Lifting its head, the creature eyed them sorrowfully and then gave a mournful yowl. Alice crouched down, stroked its cold, velvety ears and whispered a soft hello.

      The rug appeared out of the door without warning, just as Frank reached the front step. With a pitiful yelp he dropped both briefcase and brolly and staggered backwards to the gate, flapping his hands madly at his hair and face. Seemingly oblivious to her visitors, the woman brandishing the rug continued with the task, shaking it violently, eyes and mouth pinched tight against the spiralling dust.

      It was only when Alice rose to her feet that Mrs Redbourne noticed them.

      ‘Oh,’ she said, staring at them agog. Frank, doubled over and gasping as he clutched at the fence post for support, looked for all the world as if he’d just left the battlefield. Alice’s mouth twitched as if stifling a giggle. A movement of the curtain at next door’s window, and the appearance of an elderly woman with curly grey hair on the other side of the glass, was a reminder of the need for discretion.

      ‘I am sorry to trouble you, Mrs Redbourne,’ Alice said softly. The cat raised itself and coiled her ankles in a figure of eight, disappearing beneath the hem of her skirt and reappearing at intervals. A passer-by stopped outside the house. Hat in hand, the elderly gentleman stared unabashedly at their small party. Alice lowered her voice still further. ‘We are from the Royal Free Hospital. Would you mind if we came in?’

      Mrs Redbourne gave Alice a long look. The files back at the Royal Free stated that she was in her early forties, but her stern expression made her appear much older. Her hair had been combed into a grid-like pattern, each square grey tress curled, secured with pins and kept in place with a dark scarf. The rim of the scarf pulled tightly on the lined skin around her forehead, rendering her pink-rimmed eyes severe. She began to work her mouth as if chewing and then she said: ‘We’re in the middle of things just now.’

      ‘We shan’t take much of your time. We would like to check a few facts with you, and leave you with some information about our subscription scheme.’

      The woman’s face contorted further. ‘That won’t be necessary. We have all the information we need, thank you very much.’ Steadfastly blocking their entrance with her wide girth, she folded the rug against the apron she wore like a shield, her lips stretched into a thin line.

      Alice opened her mouth to speak. Before she managed to say a word, however, Frank, recomposed, grabbed his umbrella and nudged it against her skirt, half-pointing, half-thrusting it into the hall. ‘If you’d be so kind, Madam,’ he said, easing Alice aside with a fractional movement of his wrist. The expression on Mrs Redbourne’s face suggested that she wasn’t going anywhere, but a few moments later the woman flattened herself against the open door and let them through.

      Alice met Frank’s satisfied look with another curt nod. She followed him into the hall, hovering at the open door for a fraction of a second before moving aside to allow Mrs Redbourne to close it behind them.

      The almoner ran her eyes around the Redbournes’ hall. It was bright and clear of debris, the floor recently swept. There was a darkened rectangle where a rug must have been, the rest of the space dominated by a large coach pram.

      In the front room, several logs glowed brightly in the fireplace. A pot of water bubbled away over the flames, children of varying ages playing close by. The high number of children arriving at hospital with severe burns and scalds meant that Alice frequently offered strong words of advice about the use of fireguards. It was one of the warnings that often fell on deaf ears, probably because finding the money for a guard was low down on the list of priorities for families who were worried about where their next meal might come from.

      After eleven СКАЧАТЬ