The Child From Nowhere Read online

  The Child From Nowhere

  Freda Lightfoot

  Freda Lightfoot (2011)

  Tags: Historical Fiction

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  Synopsis

  Events have taken an unexpected turn and Kate finds herself back in Poor House Lane with some heartrending decisions to be made, not least how to find her missing son. Somehow she must also make a living for herself and help the women being abused by the hated Swainson.

  But nothing is straightforward, and her sister-in-law Lucy isn’t done with her yet.

  The Child From Nowhere

  Freda Lightfoot

  Originally published 2004 by Hodder & Stoughton Ltd. 338 Euston Road, London NW1 3BH

  Copyright © 2004 and 2011 by Freda Lightfoot.

  All rights reserved.

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. Nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  ISBN 978-0-9568119-3-6

  Published by Freda Lightfoot 2011

  ‘The new series will be greeted with joy by the thousands of women who enjoy her books.’ Evening Mail, Barrow-in-Furness on Champion Street Market

  ‘You can’t put a price on Freda Lightfoot's stories from Manchester's 1950s Champion Street Market. They bubble with enough life and colour to brighten up the dreariest day and they have characters you can easily take to your heart.’

  The Northern Echo.

  ‘Lightfoot clearly knows her Manchester well’

  Historical Novel Society

  ‘Kitty Little is a charming novel encompassing the provincial theatre of the early 20th century, the horrors of warfare and timeless affairs of the heart.’

  The West Briton

  ‘Another heartwarming tale from a master story-teller.’

  Lancashire Evening Post on For All Our Tomorrows.

  ‘a compelling and fascinating tale’ Middlesborough Evening Gazette on The Favourite Child (In the top 20 of the Sunday Times hardback bestsellers)

  ‘She piles horror on horror - rape, torture, sexual humiliation, incest, suicide - but she keeps you reading!’ Jay Dixon on House of Angels.

  ‘This is a book I couldn’t put down . . . a great read!’

  South Wales Evening Post on The Girl From Poorhouse Lane

  ‘a fascinating, richly detailed setting with a dramatic plot brimming with enough scandal, passion, and danger for a Jackie Collins’ novel.’

  Booklist on Hostage Queen

  ‘A bombshell of an unsuspected secret rounds off a romantic saga narrated with pace and purpose and fuelled by conflict.’ The Keswick Reminder on The Bobbin Girls

  ‘paints a vivid picture of life on the fells during the war. Enhanced by fine historical detail and strong characterisation it is an endearing story...’

  Westmorland Gazette on Luckpenny Land

  ‘An inspiring novel about accepting change and bravely facing the future.’

  The Daily Telegraph on Ruby McBride

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Now read a sneak preview of the next in the series:

  Also by Freda Lightfoot available as ebooks Family sagas

  About Freda Lightfoot

  Events have taken an unexpected turn and Kate finds herself back in Poor House Lane with some heartrending decisions to be made, not least how to find her missing son. Somehow she must also make a living for herself and help the women being abused by the hated Swainson.

  But nothing is straightforward, and her sister-in-law Lucy isn’t done with her yet.

  Author’s Note:

  It has been a joy to revisit this series in order to prepare them as ebooks for a new market. The Girl From Poorhouse Lane suffered some criticism from readers for having too abrupt an ending, leaving loose ends dangling. I’d deliberately done it that way in order to leave the way open for the sequel, but it wasn’t popular. This time I’ve split the books into three, which resolves that issue and, I think, makes much more sense. Otherwise, I was pleased to see that it needed very little in the way of revision, apart from the odd clumsy sentence here and there. I hope my regular readers will enjoy revisiting this popular favourite and new readers will enjoy it too.

  Best wishes,

  Freda Lightfoot

  April, 2011

  Chapter One

  High in the Langdales where the sun was striking the pikes over Dungeon Ghyll, slanting silvered rays across to Hardknott Pass, a young boy, small for one very nearly six years of age, was carrying buckets of water from a nearby beck up to the farmhouse door where he poured it into a large boiler. He kept spilling it and soaking his legs and feet because he was in a hurry, knowing that if it wasn’t filled by the time the farmer’s wife came downstairs, he’d get a beating from her husband. He might get one anyway, simply for being there, for existing, although there were times when the boy felt he must be invisible, since it was rare for the farmer to even speak to him, and never by name.

  ‘Hey you,’ he would say. ‘Fetch t’milk in. Look sharp.’

  And young Alan would rush to carry out this order to the letter, fearful of what might befall him if he didn’t. He’d come not to expect praise or gratitude for the work he did. He knew that however hard he laboured, he was considered to be of no account on this farm, because he was of less use than the sheep and hens who produced meat and eggs, and the family cow who gave them rich, creamy milk. In comparison with the other children, who were the farmer’s own, he was seen as a second-class citizen.

  Sometimes he dreamed of what it must be like to have a mother. There were times when he could see her in his mind’s eye. She had glorious red coloured hair, rather like his own only brighter and it fell in soft tendrils about her neck and shoulders. Her eyes were a clear grey and her skin soft and pale as silk. He loved that face, nursed it in his heart whenever he was weeping with cold and loneliness, when the bruises stung too much.

  Later, when the boiler was filled he would have to turn the handle on the mangle, pitting his scrawny muscles and sticklike limbs against the weight of the rollers. Unlike the farmer’s own children Alan didn’t go to school, but stayed all day on the farm to help with the chores: chopping thistles, picking stones, mending walls and endlessly filling water troughs and fetching feed for the sheep. Alan never went anywhere, save occasionally to market with the farmer, and then only to fetch and carry, or to be used along with the sheep dogs to guard and shepherd the sheep. Sometimes he’d go into Keswick or Ambleside with Mrs Brocklebank, the big fat farmer’s wife, to help her carry the butter and eggs she had to sell, or mind the stall. He lov
ed these outings, as they were the only bright moments in what was otherwise a dull and lonely life.

  He was certainly never allowed to eat in the big, warm kitchen, but took his meals in the cold, draughty barn which was also where he slept, among the cobwebs, which he really didn’t mind as the spiders were his friends. He would talk to them for hours, telling them of things which might have been memories, or then again only dreams. Sometimes, if there were ewes brought in after lambing, he’d creep down very quietly and sleep beside them where it was all warm and cosy. They never seemed to mind, and even a sheep as a mother was better than none at all.

  ‘I’ve decided what I’m going to do,’ Kate announced to Millie one day. It was some weeks after the birth of her child, the baby girl who was the result of a guilty indiscretion with Eliot Tyson, her erstwhile employer, and the man she loved. Not that she’d give him the satisfaction of letting him know that fact. He’d demanded to know if the child was his and she’d refused to tell, insulted that he could think so little of her when they’d been through so much together. Hadn’t she trusted him with her own son’s life, allowed him to adopt the boy when she’d found herself with no other way to feed him? At least she’d been allowed to stay on as Callum’s nursemaid, if not as his mother. Amelia, Eliot’s late wife and unable to have children herself, had taken on that role. Kate remembered her sweet mistress with great affection. Which added to her shame of having lain with her husband, albeit if it hadn’t been until after the good lady’s sad death.

  And here in her arms was the result of that union. Kate had named the child Flora because she looked as sweet and precious as a flower, hoping with all her heart that this new life would help her to carry on. She would never forget the child she had lost, her lovely Callum who had disappeared one bright autumn afternoon ,never to be seen again. But at least now she had a reason to go on living. And one day, if she kept looking hard enough, she believed she would eventually find him. She had to believe that, if she was not to fall into that dark pit again.

  The soreness of a difficult birth was easing, even the bleeding was starting to dry up and Kate was feeling well enough now to think about the future. In her hand was an envelope addressed to her. It had come days ago but she hadn’t yet plucked up the courage to open it although she recognised the handwriting. She knew it was from Eliot, could feel the bulk of a key inside and guessed it was for the cottage he’d promised her.

  In these last few weeks while she’d been recovering from having Flora, she’d made up her mind to accept his offer, for the baby’s sake. Much as she now hated him for all he’d done, not least for taking Callum from her in the first place and now accusing her of being some sort of whore who slept around, she knew Eliot was right when he said the pair of them couldn’t stay here, in Poor House Lane. Without Kirkland Workhouse at the end of the yard to protect them, it was more dangerous and soul-destroying then ever. They’d be better off living on the open fells, which she could always do if it came to that, Kate thought with a show of her old defiance. Except that she’d made other plans. ‘I have everything all worked out, to be sure.’

  Millie looked up from her work with interest, glad to hear a brighter note in her friend’s voice. ‘You’ve decided to tell him he’s the father then, have you?’

  ‘I have not! If he can so easily think me capable of lying with another man so soon after being with him, he doesn’t deserve to be given a second chance.’ Kate settled the baby in the Moses basket and came over to sit by Millie, watching the stubby, stained fingers work the needle and thread in and out of the leather sole of the shoe she was making. ‘No, no, I’m going to beat him at his own game. Since Eliot refuses to listen to a word I say against Swainson, that despicable little swine of a man who thinks he can control us just because we’re women and poor, then I’ll find another way to fight him. Fight them both, so I will, if it takes me last breath.’

  Millie stopped her sewing to listen, jaw slack as she took in the vehemence of her friend’s anger, panic rising in her breast. ‘Fight him in what way? What are you saying, Kate? And what’s Swainson got to do with your future? Nay, don’t you do owt you might regret, summat we might all regret.’

  ‘Indeed, I wouldn’t regret a thing, I do assure you.’

  ‘Just remember that I depend upon the work I get from that swine of a man as you call him, to feed me childer. Don’t ever forget that.’

  ‘I don’t forget it, and I don’t like it any more than you do. So pin back yer lug-holes and listen.’ She leaned closer, dropping her voice as if the filthy walls themselves had ears, or the vermin that scratched within them could comprehend her plan. ‘I was thinking that Eliot Tyson was right, that we should get out of this stinking pit.’

  ‘Oh aye, and pigs might fly.’

  Kate chuckled and held up the key, reading the note which went with it to Millie. It urged her to accept the cottage, if not for her own sake, then for the child’s. ‘If he weren’t such an arrogant, opinionated bastard, wouldn’t I still be in love with him?’

  ‘You still are in love with him.’

  ‘I am not!’ She held up a hand as Millie would have pressed the matter further. ‘Are you going to listen to me, or what? I was thinking of that money he so kindly put into a bank account for me. Not that I know much about how banks work, but I dare say they’ll explain how I can get me hands on it. I didn’t want to touch it at first because I was soft in the head over him, still suffering from that girlish crush I had.’

  ‘Girlish crush my aunt Fanny, it were more n’ that. Didn’t you love the bones of him?’

  ‘Are ye going to listen to what I have to say, or sit there and keep interrupting?’

  ‘All right, go on. I’m listening.’

  ‘I was thinking that all these women who work for Swainson could just as easily work for me, that there are men too in these yards who’d be glad of a bit extra and have the skills at their fingertips.’

  ‘Help you with what? How can you find ‘em work? You don’t have any orders for shoes? Have you lost yer mind, Kate O’Connor?’

  Kate chuckled. ‘Mebbe I have but I never felt better in me life, so help me. If Eliot Tyson can get orders for shoes, so can I, with a good work force to back me up, particularly if we undercut him on price. I swear I could do better than Tyson’s lot any day of the week.

  ‘And what about Callum?’

  Kate took a few moments to answer this, needing to get that undertow of emotion under control, as always, before she could speak normally about her son. ‘Oh, I’ll find him one day, so I will. He’s somewhere around. I just have to find out where. In the meantime, I have another child to feed, and life must go on, for her sake. In case you haven’t noticed, Millie, there’s a war coming, and what is it folk need on their feet in wartime? What did they need in the Crimea?’

  Millie looked blank. ‘There won’t be no war. That’s just talk. Anyroad, folk don’t wear shoes in wartime, Kate. They wear boots.’

  Kate beamed. ‘Exactly! So all I have to do is get an order from the army to make boots, then rent a room in which to make them, and we’re away, so we are.’

  ‘And what do you know about making boots?’

  ‘Not much, but I can learn. I can find someone who’ll teach me what’s needed. Mebbe I could get our Dermot to come back from Ireland and help.’

  ‘It won’t happen,’ Millie insisted, scoffing at the very idea. ‘Even if you did succeed in making a load of boots, there won’t be no war, and then where would you be? With a load of stuff you couldn’t even sell.’

  ‘The important thing is not if war will start, but that we’re ready for it when it does. In the meantime, we make boots. Lots of them. I learned that much from Eliot Tyson. Get a warehouse and put stock in it, and once shop keepers know you have goods ready and waiting, they’ll buy it. We won’t be going in for fancy shoes, nor them posh Napoleons or whatever they call them hunting, shooting and riding boots Tyson’s make for gentlemen. We’ll make good, sol
id, working men’s boots. We can make ‘em for farmers or factory hands as well as soldiers, for anyone who needs the dratted things. I’ll use the money Eliot Tyson gave me to buy whatever machinery we need, get meself some men, and women, to operate them, and set up in competition to him. It’d be worth it just to save the women from that nasty piece of shite.’

  Millie’s mouth was gaping open in shock. ‘You’re serious, aren’t you? You’ve thought this all out.’

  ‘To be sure, I’m serious. I’ve been thinking on this for weeks while I’ve been laid up here. If Eliot Tyson can steal my son off me, neglect and lose him, take advantage of me and then accuse me of sleeping with another chap when I’ve just given birth to his daughter, his first and only child, mind, he deserves everything I can throw at him. He deserves for me to steal his business in return.’

  ‘Ooh, Kate, ye’ve lost yer senses.’

  ‘No Millie, I’ve just found them. Eliot Tyson is about to learn that Kate O’Connor is not the sort of woman who takes ill treatment lightly, not on me own account, nor for the women in his employ. We’ll put him out of business, see if we don’t.’

  Getting started was the hardest part. Kate’s first problem was to persuade people to trust her. Everyone thought her quite mad. She went round the neighbouring yards seeking workers, but many bluntly told her she’d lost her mind and slammed the door in her face. Others politely declined on the grounds they daren’t take the risk. Women such as Sally Wilshaw, Joan Enderby and Nell Benson told her that anyone would be mad to give up secure employment to go and work for her; untried, unsafe and ignorant as she was.