The Miner’s Girl by Maggie Hope Page B

pressed on her top lip to stop herself crying. Crying did no good, she just had to get on with things.
    Doctor Gallagher was in the entrance of the workhouse when Merry walked in, standing talking to Matron who was also the workhouse mistress.
    ‘You should come in by the back door, Trent,’ Matron said sharply.
    ‘Sorry Matron,’ Merry mumbled.
    ‘How is your grandmother, Miss Trent?’ the doctor asked and Matron looked disapproving. It was not for a doctor to make conversation with the domestic staff; she would have to have a quiet word with him about it.
    The question took Merry by surprise, even shock. She looked properly at him. ‘Granma died, Doctor,’ she said and, her guard down, her eyes filled with tears.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ said Tom and she was further upset by the kindness in his blue eyes.
    ‘Yes, well,’ said Matron, ‘go to your work now or you will be late.’ Merry turned blindly away and hurried off to the ward on Block 3 where the infirm and bedridden were housed.
    ‘It’s no good letting these girls get too emotional,’ said Matron. She was tired having been got out of bed by the night nurse an hour earlier than usual because one of the patients who was suspected of having typhoid had died. As it happened Dr Gallagher had called in to see the old man in any case and he issued the death certificate. Though what he was doing there at this godforsaken hour of the morning Matron couldn’t think. She disapproved of it though. There was no real need for doctors to be cluttering up the wards except at the appointed times for the rounds.
    Tom Gallagher went out in to the cold morning air to where his horse and trap were tethered close by. At theother end of the site he could hear the noises made as the men from the workhouse began their stone-breaking work in the stone yard. He felt thoroughly depressed.
    That little girl, for she was no more than that, had looked so woebegone. She was so pale and her dark eyes looked enormous, the lids pink where she had wept. Her dark hair was drawn back unbecomingly under the enormous cap the hospital made her wear. In fact he wouldn’t have recognised that it was dark but for the small lock that had escaped onto her neck at the back. He wondered if she was left on her own now in that tumbledown huddle of miners’ hovels. God help her if she was.
    Tom climbed onto the seat of the trap and clicked at the horse to get him going. His thoughts wandered back to the old man he had just seen die. His hands had been gnarled and marked with blue scars from the coal, his lips drawn back in a permanent half-grin from the effort to breathe after a lifetime breathing in coal dust. And he had ended a pauper.
    The horse took little direction for he knew his own way home. They turned into the entrance of Tom’s father’s house and Tom drove round the back to the stable.
    It was still very early, only just breakfast time so he washed his hands in the downstairs cloakroom which had a newly installed washbasin decorated with greenivy leaves, and even hot water from the copper boiler in the kitchen. Oh yes, he thought, the agent’s house has all the latest conveniences, even a water closet on the upstairs landing.
    ‘Good morning. What on earth were you doing out at this time of the morning?’ asked Miles as Tom went into the dining room and began to help himself from the dishes of bacon and eggs kept hot over a candle burner. Tom filled his plate and sat down at the table before replying.
    ‘I wanted to see an old man at the hospital. He was pretty poorly last night.’
    ‘How was he?’ asked Miles. At least it was a way of making conversation with Tom, he thought, though he wasn’t the least interested in how a pauper in the workhouse infirmary was. Sometimes Tom seemed like a stranger, and he never knew what to say to him.
    In fact Miles strongly disapproved of Tom attending the paupers. Goodness knows what he might pick up. He buttered a piece of toast and added