INTERLUDE

The Andover Workhouse was in uproar.

Mrs M’Gregor was outraged.

M’Gregor himself was conducting a thorough search of all the grounds, rooms, chattels and persons within the misery-dulled precincts of that grey and thankless institution. Beds were upended, cupboards rifled and even the ominous piles of bones awaiting grinding in the work-yard were being picked over by the smallest and most nimble-fingered of the inmate children.

All the men were lined up and stripped, their clothes checked and then returned by the male under-wardens. The women suffered the same indignity with the female under-wardens, this time assisted by their male counterparts whose presence infinitely deepened the humiliation. It was perhaps only because they were already so ground down, ground finer than the bones in the work-yard, that there was no boisterous rebellion at this, but other than mumbling and whispered curses, the search went on without obstruction or objection.

It also continued without result.

This made Mrs M’Gregor’s outrage burst its banks, and she, one of the least ground down and most sharp-edged of women, unleashed her invective on the assembled ranks of inmates. She enumerated the many kindnesses she and her husband had lavished on them, how nutritious the gruel was, how hard-wearing their blankets were, how sturdy the wooden clogs with which they were furnished at no extra charge! She extolled the virtues of the regimen under which they lived, praised the modernity of the system of daily work and the avoidance of that notorious free time in which the devil might otherwise find work for their idle hands. She lauded the warmth of the one sea-coal fire they provided in the winter and generally launched herself on a wide-ranging panegyric on the virtues of fresh air (in the dormitories) and the high walls with which they were surrounded, as being necessary to protect them from the shame of being viewed by those worthy and munificent parishioners whose hard labour furnished the funds with which she and her husband–a brass-bound saint of a man–were charged with paying for their board and lodging. Charity, she said, began at home, but this home, their home, had been outrageously and burglariously predated upon. In short, someone had stolen her hand mirror, and since charity provided the most admirable and nutritious gruel (known to the inmates, but not to her, as “old sweat and bone”) the same gruel would be withdrawn from their board of fare and replaced with stale bread and water as their only sustenance until it was returned.

Mrs M’Gregor could not abide the thought of a thief in their midst. Her hand mirror had a silver clasp on its handle.

It had belonged to her mother.

This was not true.

Her mother had handed it over on her death-bed.

This was only true in Mrs M’Gregor’s mind.

It was her most precious possession.

This was only true if you did not count the strong-box in which the money she and M’Gregor had not spent on the inmates of the workhouse was hidden. It was of course easy not to count this money because it had already been officially if only theoretically counted in the yearly accounts of the institution where it publicly appeared to have paid for necessary meat and medicines, things which the M’Gregors had privately considered less necessary than the need to provide for their retirement.

And so it was that the greatest thief in the establishment harangued the innocent poor unfortunates who had been left in her and her husband’s care on the subject of their rank ingratitude and unforgiveable dishonesty. She shouted and spat at them in a most unladylike way until she was unattractively red in the face, her double chins wobbling furiously like the wattles of an especially discommoded turkey.

The other smaller thief sat abstractedly at the back of the room, head bent to the thin light filtering in the windows high above, her fingers endlessly moving in her lap, as if sewing something invisible.

She knew in a moment someone would rush in, having found the mirror handle in the bone piles.

She knew there would be a moment’s celebration.

And she knew this would turn to consternation as they saw the handle was blind, that the mirror it had contained was gone from the frame.

She knew they would then fear someone had taken the shards to fashion a knife.

She knew some of the least-liked under-wardens would tread carefully for the next few weeks, worried about someone rushing upon them to revenge any of a score of past unkindnesses and humiliations.

She thought that was no bad thing.

She also knew the mirror lay at the bottom of the water butt in the vegetable garden, and that it would not be found.

She knew the next hand that would touch it was at present making a daisy chain in her lap.

And though her mind was too wrapped in fog to know how precisely it was that she knew, she was also sure it would soon be time to escape.