Tom Appleby Convict Boy Read online

  Tupper gave a bark of laughter. ‘Not likely. A factory hand maybe. In the mines, most like.’ He gave Tom an assessing glance. ‘Not much meat on your bones, though you’d do to pull a coal truck. You’ll take what you’re given and count yourself lucky. Now be quiet.’

  chapter four

  The Workhouse, April 1785

  The workhouse was a long, two-storey building of grim brick, with bright flowers in beds along its gravelled drive. Tupper drove the cart around the side, then handed the reins to a groom lounging by the stables.

  ‘No need to unharness the horse,’ said Tupper to the groom. ‘I won’t be long.’

  Tupper rang the bell at a side door, not the front. The front door, Tom supposed, was for people more important than him or Tupper. A woman opened the door, letting out a smell of cabbage and turpentine. She was tall and her apron was starched white against the black of her dress. She glanced at Tupper, then down at Tom.

  ‘Not another of them!’ she sighed. ‘What a year. Orphan, I suppose.’

  ‘Father died in the stocks,’ said Tupper with ghoulish satisfaction. ‘A blasphemer, he was.’

  ‘Terrible. Terrible,’ said the starched woman automatically. She stared at Tom again. ‘I’ll take him from here. Best he goes to the office straightaway, for there’s one there who may take him off our hands, God willing, and spare me the trouble of a bed for him.’ She nudged Tom. ‘Say goodbye and thank you to the good gentleman.’

  Tom said nothing. Oxen couldn’t have dragged a thankyou from him. He looked at his boots instead. They were good boots, bought new from the cobbler last Christmastide.

  ‘Heathen brat,’ said Tupper. ‘Like father, like son. We’ll be glad to see the back of both of them in the parish, so we will.’ He touched his hand to his hat. ‘Good day to you, missus.’

  ‘And to you.’ The starched woman nudged Tom again. ‘That way,’ she ordered. ‘And mind your manners.’

  The corridor was long and narrow. Tom had never known a corridor could be so long before. It opened into another, wider this time, with polished floorboards under a red carpet. Three women in grey overalls scrubbed the far end of it. They didn’t look up as Tom and the woman passed.

  Finally they came to a polished wooden door. The starched woman opened it without knocking.

  ‘Another boy, sir,’ she said.

  ‘What?’ The man at the desk looked up. His round face was red and three strands of ginger hair dropped across his shiny pate. ‘Well, mayhap we have a lad for you after all,’ he said to someone across the room. ‘Come in, lad, come in. You may go, Mary,’ he added.

  ‘Thank you, sir.’ The woman dropped a curtsey and left.

  Tom stepped into the room. It smelt of porter, like the front room at the Cock and Hen, and floor polish, and something else as well. Old soot, thought Tom. It smells of soot.

  Another man sat in the hard wooden chair across from the desk and its armchair. This man’s face was long and very white, and curiously smooth. The only hair that Tom could see was poking out of the man’s nose. He wore a shiny black bowler and a leather waistcoat, and his trews were black and shiny, too, from long use.

  The soot smell seemed to come from him.

  The red-faced man glanced at Tom, assessing him. ‘Name?’

  ‘Thomas Appleby, sir.’

  ‘Age?’

  ‘I will be eight next month, sir.’

  ‘Well?’ The red-faced man ignored Tom now. ‘Will he do?’

  The black-and-white man looked at Tom with consideration. ‘He be a bit old, like. I like ’em younger. Easier to train. Once they get too big they won’t fit up the chimleys.’ His voice was high and hoarse.

  ‘He’s small enough. And he looks healthy,’ urged the red-faced man.

  ‘There is that.’ The black-and-white man assessed Tom as if he were a horse he was thinking of buying.

  ‘If you get them too young you risk them dying on you,’ said the red-faced man persuasively. ‘You lose all the effort you made in training them.’

  ‘There is that, too.’ The black-and-white man seemed to come to a decision. ‘I’ll give ye fifteen shillings for him.’

  The red-faced man shook his head. ‘Thirty, surely, a well set-up boy like this.’

  ‘Twenty, then.’

  ‘A guinea.’

  ‘Done.’ The black-and-white man spat in his palm, then held out his hand to shake on it.

  ‘You’ve got a bargain,’ remarked the red-faced man, smiling so his brown-rimmed teeth showed.

  The black-and-white man grinned. ‘No more than have ye. No sooner does the lad step into your parlour than ye’ve sold him off. Yer not even a bread and water dinner poorer. You, lad—what was ye name again?’

  ‘Thomas Appleby,’ said Tom, then added, ‘sir.’

  ‘Hoity-toity, will you listen to the voice on him? We’ll soon knock that out of you,’ said the man, his own squeaky voice filled with good humour now at a job well done. ‘No room for airs and graces up the chimleys.’ He touched his hat to the red-faced man. ‘Good day to you, milord.’

  Three seconds later they were in the corridor again; a minute later in yet another cart outside. Tom had been in the workhouse for no more than ten minutes.

  The cart smelt of soot as well, and soot lingered in its corners. This horse was young, but pitiably thin, its ribs showing and its tread slow and hesitant. The black-and-white man pointed to the back of the cart.

  ‘But, sir…’

  ‘Ye’ll call me Master Jack, not sir. What’s wrong?’ ‘But, sir—I mean, Master Jack—it’s dirty.’ Master Jack shouted with what seemed genuine amusement. ‘Hark at him!’ He cuffed Tom about the ear almost absent-mindedly. ‘Ye won’t be worrying about a bit o’ soot like that tomorrow. Soot means money, and the more o’ both the better. Now in with thee, before ye feel my boot.’

  Tom climbed into the cart and huddled against the back of the seat. Master Jack hauled a bottle from behind the seat and took a deep swig. He sighed in relief and shoved the bottle back where it came from. Tom heard the flick of the reins, the clop of the horse’s hooves. The workhouse slowly disappeared behind them.

  chapter five

  Murruroo, Australia,

  15 April 1868

  ‘Happy birthday, Father! Many happy returns of the day!’

  It was Joshua, his muttonchop whiskers neatly trimmed. Thomas had overheard Joshua telling a friend that his father came from ‘an old English farming family’. Joshua had always been very careful never to inquire too deeply into his father’s past.

  Thomas snorted. Joshua, he thought with some amusement, would never see a ghost. He would be afraid it was not the done thing.

  ‘Thank you, Joshua,’ he said, as Joshua very correctly gave his father his arm to help him down the stairs.

  I don’t need help, thought Thomas. But he took the arm anyway. Joshua was a good enough boy.

  Thomas grinned to himself. Boy! Joshua was sixty-eight. But Thomas still thought of him as a boy.

  Suddenly he realised that Joshua was taking him into the breakfast room. He took his hand from Joshua’s arm. ‘Thank you, my boy. But I think I’ll take the air for a while before I breakfast.’

  Joshua stared. He would never think of going for a walk before breakfast. But all he said was, ‘As you like, Father. Would you like me to accompany you?’

  Yes, he was a good boy, thought Thomas. But so dull.

  ‘No, thank you, Joshua,’ he said gently.

  Thomas worried sometimes about what would happen to Murruroo after his death. Joshua was capable, but he had no urge to love the land. His son, Thomas’s eldest grandson, was the same. And Joshua’s younger brother, Marcus—he’d told the family gaily he had no wish to stare at sheep bums all his life and joined the army. He was Captain Marcus Appleby now.

  This land has given me so much, thought Thomas. I wish I could know that I will leave it in safe hands when I die.

  Thomas walked carefully down the hal
l and down the stairs to the drive, then turned and crossed the drive onto the neatly mown terrace and looked around.

  There was no-one there. Thomas snorted again. What did I expect? he thought. The ghost had probably been Mrs Henderson, checking to see if the windows needed cleaning, or the gardener—what was his name?—checking all looked neat for this afternoon’s party.

  Thomas turned to look at the house himself. It was a good house. A grand house: eighteen rooms and seven chimneys. Big, solid chimneys they were too, he’d insisted on that. Make them wide and make them straight, he’d said, the sort of chimney you can poke a brush up easily.

  Those chimneys gave him almost as much pride as owning 4000 acres. That’s where it had all begun, of course, with chimneys, more than eighty years ago.

  Thomas turned to go back into the house. As he turned he caught a flash of movement. Someone was in the rose garden, on the other side of the house.

  chapter six

  London, 1785

  There were four of them in the cellar that first night, the soot piled at one end of the cold, damp room, the boys at the other, huddled on empty soot sacks.

  Big Bill was the oldest at thirteen. He coughed wetly through the night, his body racked with ulcers from years of soot. He screamed now when he had to pee, and lived most of his life in sullen exhaustion from the pain.

  Master Jack ignored the screams mostly, though if he was in a good mood he’d give Bill some gin to dull the agony. But even after seven years of starving, Big Bill was growing. Soon he’d be too large to fit up the chimneys, and after that Master Jack would have no use for him at all.

  Little Will was six and mostly silent. Sometimes Tom wondered if he’d been born with half a mind, he was so quiet. Other times he thought the boy had known so few words in his life of dark cellars and darker chimneys that he simply had no words to say.

  Jem was a few years older than Tom, but not as large as Bill. He was silent too, but his silence was different. Jem seemed to assess the world and keep his opinion of it to himself.

  But there were no introductions that first night. Tom stumbled down the cellar stairs, half-stupid from hunger and fatigue; he had found the pile of legs and arms almost by instinct. Sleep had been like a hammer blow, as though he had no strength to go further, rather than the gentle softness of sleep at home, and it was dreamless too, as though the memory of home hurt too much even to dream of it.

  It felt like he’d only been asleep for a minute when light erupted into the dank room.

  ‘Time to get up, brats.’ It was a woman’s voice. Tom heard her sniff at the top of the cellar stairs. ‘They’d sleep all day and night too left to theyselves, so they would. Look lively now, or there’ll be no supper for the lot of ye!’

  The arms and legs suddenly separated and turned into boys again. Footsteps hurried to the stairs and disappeared upwards. Tom followed them, confused.

  It was hard to see after the dark of the cellar. Tom blinked. The world suddenly cleared. The room had a fireplace, but no fire; a table, splintery and with shaky legs; a lantern; two chairs with mended legs, and a bed piled with coats and dirty blankets.

  Chimney brushes, shovels and long rods leant against one wall. The table was piled with broken crockery—cracked mugs, bowls, a jug with half a spout, another with no handle. The smell of dirt and sweat and soot was overpowering.

  Master Jack sat at one end of the table. His eyes were shut as he slowly swigged from the brown glass bottle Tom had seen the day before—or one just like it—letting the liquid pour down his throat with a look of curious dedication. Today he wore a long coat roughly tied with string, and another tall black hat with a battered brim.

  The woman sat beside him. She was short and squat as an iron pot, her nose and chin as red as Jack’s were white. Her feet bulged in tatty slippers. Her legs under the ragged skirt were blotched with purple. She took a gulp from one of the jugs, then set it back on the table with a gasp.

  ‘Needed that,’ she puffed. She beckoned Tom towards her, then pinched his chin between her dirty fingers. ‘Got some meat on him,’ she remarked. ‘Well, what’s your name then?’

  ‘Tom,’ he replied.

  ‘And are ye a good boy, Tom?’ She cackled like she’d said something funny, as Big Bill broke into another fit of coughing behind them, then wiped a gob of bloody mucus on his sleeve.

  ‘I try to be,’ said Tom.

  The woman laughed again. Her breath smelt sour and sweet at the same time. She looked down at Tom’s boots, then at his stockings and his breeches.

  ‘Worth a guinea,’ she remarked. ‘Mebbe more.’ She clicked her finger. ‘Off with ’em, boy. And you shut up!’ she yelled to Bill. ‘Fair makes me ears ache to hear ye.’

  Tom stared. ‘My—my boots?’

  ‘And ye socks and ye britches and ye shirt.’

  ‘But I have no others,’ stammered Tom.

  Someone grabbed him from behind. It was Master Jack. ‘When the missus says off with ’em, you off with ’em, you understand?’ Master Jack gave him a casual blow across the face that sent him crashing into the bed across the room.

  ‘And thank ye stars that was me hand and not me whip,’ added Master Jack, though there was no anger in his tone. ‘Shall we get a few things straight, eh, lad? I am thy master and I will be for seven years. And for seven years ye’ll do what I say and when I say or know the reason why. Now strip. Lettice will bring thee sommat else to wear.’

  Tom glanced at the three other boys, their faces so thick with dirt it was even more difficult to tell their colour. All three stood back against the wall, Big Bill’s hands slowly writhing as they always did from pain; Little Will staring at the food on the table. Only Jem stared at Tom, though his expression told Tom nothing of his thoughts at all.

  Tom sat on the floor and slowly pulled off his boots and then his breeches and his socks. He held them out as the woman, Lettice, reached over.

  She felt the breeches lovingly. ‘Worth ’alf a guinea for the lot of ’em, mebbe,’ she gloated as she heaved herself up from the table, Tom’s clothes in her hand. She gestured to the boys. ‘You, eat if you’re goin’ to! There be work to be done for some this night.’

  The three other boys fell upon the table as though starving, each lifting a cracked and filthy bowl to their lips. After the first gulp Jem hesitated, then handed a similar bowl to Tom.

  ‘Better eat,’ he said. His accent was strange, so strange that Tom found the words difficult to understand. But the meaning was clear.

  Tom looked at the contents of the bowl. Watery milk, more blue than white and already speckled with yellow, and soggy bread. But suddenly he was too hungry to care.

  Tom lifted the bowl and drank, just as Lettice lumbered in with a pile of rags in her arms. She threw them down to him.

  The clothes were thin and crusty. Tom put them on anyway. His feet already screamed with cold.

  Master Jack grinned at him, then coughed, and spat a gob of mucus on to the floor. ‘That’s more like,’ he said approvingly. ‘The chimleys’ll know thee now.’ He nodded to the three boys, who grabbed the chimney brushes, the rods, the scrapers, the shovels, empty sacks and buckets obediently. ‘Let’s you say hello to ’em then, shall we?’

  chapter seven

  London, 1785

  It was almost night outside, not the daylight Tom had expected. Chimney sweeps in London often worked at night, when the house-owners were asleep and the fires extinguished.

  He had been too tired to notice much before. Now the horror of London struck him like a blow: the high wooden tenements that looked like a gust of wind would knock them down; the flies thick on piles of human excrement; the pigeons scrabbling in the horse dung on the cobbles in the last of the light; and all around the gabble, the street cries and the stench.

  ‘Don’t stand there gawping, boy,’ said Master Jack.

  It was a long walk. No-one spoke, unless you counted Bill’s wet coughs or the gulping as Master Jack swigged
from the bottle in his pocket. Tom felt the filth of the street ooze cold between his toes. He couldn’t stand this. He couldn’t!

  But he had to. Tom shut his eyes for a second and felt the courage cloak wrap around him again. He opened his eyes and walked on.

  The streets were narrow and made narrower still by food stalls selling chestnuts and hot potatoes (the smell made Tom’s head swim with hunger), sprawled drunks—or were they dead or sleeping, their bottles of gin still clasped in their hands?—women with thin faces and ragged shawls and a look of desperate invitation to any man that passed. The houses loomed above them, so it was only possible to see the smallest stretch of smoky sky between them.

  It was a world of shadows, black clothes, brown cobbles, shadows and the ever-present coal fog, thick in some streets, thin in others, but always choking at your lungs, as though London grudged you every breath you took.

  Finally the streets grew wider as the night grew darker. Master Jack stopped and prodded the boys down a lane and up a flight of stairs.

  It was a big house, though nowhere near the size of the magistrate’s back home; a tradesman’s house, perhaps. They entered through the back door and trod on sacks the housemaid put down before them to keep their sooty feet from the floor.

  ‘The master and missus are from home,’ said the cook. ‘But mind ye leave no mess. If there’s mess I ain’t paying,’ she added to Jack.

  The small party stopped in the kitchen first, while Master Jack fitted the rods into one of the brushes.

  ‘Up ye go, boy,’ he said heartily to Little Will, handing the child a soot scraper as well.

  The boy placed his tiny hand on the wall by the kitchen chimney. ‘’Tis still too hot,’ he mumbled. ‘’Twill burn me up.’

  ‘All the better on a cold night,’ said Jack with a grin at the cook. ‘Scamper up there and there won’t be time to burn. And there’ll be plum cake for thee at the top.’

  The small boy gave him a look of disbelief, then clambered surprisingly quickly into the hearth. In two swift movements he’d braced his legs against one side of the hearth, his back against the other, and wriggled upwards. Master Jack leant into the chimney and handed him the brush and soot scraper.