Born to Trouble by Rita Bradshaw

Author:Rita Bradshaw [Bradshaw, Rita]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Historical
ISBN: 9780750532730
Publisher: Headline
Published: 2009-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

The next day was a Sunday. At eight o’clock in the morning Pearl was standing outside the locked workhouse gates insisting to the porter that she be allowed admittance. When he tried and failed to persuade the ‘stiff-necked little madam’ – as he later described Pearl to his wife – to see reason, he gave up and fetched the admittance officer on duty. The officer took Pearl to the Assistant Matron. When Pearl still continued to maintain that what she had to say was for the ears of Mr Fallow only, adding she was sure he would see her when he was told she had information regarding a Mrs Kitty Croft of Low Street, she was shown to a small brown-painted room which had a backless form running round three walls.

Half an hour later, half an hour in which Pearl oscillated between blind terror and controlled panic, the door to the room opened and Leonard Fallow walked in. He was alone.

Staring at the young slim girl standing so straight and still in front of him, he bit out one word. ‘You!’

She had wondered if he would recognise her. Eight years was a long time and she had been a child. Strangely, because she was trembling inside, her voice held no tremor when she said, ‘Yes, Mr Fallow. Me.’

He had shut the door behind him but now he turned and opened it again, poking his head out into the empty corridor beyond before he closed it again. Without any preamble, he said, ‘What do you want?’

Pearl’s face was deathly white but her manner was composed, even calm. ‘I want my brothers released into my care.’

‘What?’ The shiny brow wrinkled, his black eyes disappearing into the fat of his face. Whatever he had expected it clearly wasn’t this. ‘What the hell are you on about, girl?’

‘My brothers, James and Patrick, are in here and I’ve been told I can’t get them out. You’re the workhouse master, you can release them to me.’

Leonard Fallow found he couldn’t take his eyes off the girl in front of him. He didn’t desire her any more – once they reached a certain age that predilection was gone – but this girl had been an ache in his loins for years. She’d made him a laughing-stock with the group of men who shared his weakness; he’d told them about her and offered to share her with them, and then the mother had told him she’d vanished into thin air. He hadn’t visited the house again, but that hadn’t stopped him thinking about her, morning, noon and night. She’d been like a curse on his life.

His eyes as hard as bullets, he drawled, ‘And why would I do that, pray?’

Pearl’s anger was overcoming her fear. The Mr F of her imagination had assumed the power and ability of an omnipotent monster over the years. Mr Fallow, workhouse master, was just a man. A repugnant, oily, dirty-minded man who had ruined her life and been the means of her having to leave her brothers and ultimately them ending up in this hell-hole.

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