Read Online After Hours by Jenny Oldfield - Free Book Online

quakerish in her navy-blue uniform. She looked tense, but under control. Her two sisters signalled they would wait by the refectory door until the soup queue was served. Hettie nodded and wielded the big metal ladle, though the smell of potato and mutton from the steaming pot was as much as she could stomach. Doggedly she worked on, dealing kindly with the row of shuffling, dejected tramps.
    â€˜Oh my God!’ Sadie breathed. It was her first view inside the Mission, and it struck her as a picture of hell. The refectory was a long, bare room with arching roof beams and high, narrow windows. Tables were set out in rows along the length of the room, and hunched shapes huddled over their meagre rations.
    These men, segregated from the women and children, were clothed in rags. They sat to eat, wrapped in old trenchcoats tied around with sacking, padded out with newspapers. Bundles of rags perched on the benches beside them; they were reluctant to be parted from one scrap of their belongings. Their feet, under the bare wooden table, were shod in old, misshapen boots, stuffed with paper that was worn to a waterlogged pulp. Many were caked in mud. They scoured their empty enamelled bowls with crusts or dirty fingers, chewing with toothless gums. Their faces were caved in by poverty; unshaven, shadowy, suspicious.
    â€˜They’re the lucky ones,’ Frances reminded her sister. ‘At least they got a bed for the night.’
    Sadie looked on in horror, her gaze flicking from one face to the next, praying that this wasn’t the man claiming to be Wiggin; or the next, or the next.
    At last Hettie finished her work, wiped her hands on a linen towel and came across the hall. She was composed, pausing when an inmate stuck out his hand to accost her and accuse her loudly of some uncommitted crime. ‘It’s a crying shame!’ the old man shouted. ‘So it is. It’s a shame, and I want something done about it!’
    Hettie bent to soothe him, promised that everything would be all right if he took his empty bowl to the hatch and picked up his bed ticket for a good night’s sleep. She patted his hand until he released her and she could go on her way. She woke another man, fast asleep at the table, and helped him to his feet, not flinching at the sight of a livid, distorting burn that scarred one side of his face.
    Sadie came forward almost in tears. To her, Hettie was an angel. She could solve everything, find a way through for these hopeless cases. She would be able to dissolve away this small problem over Wiggin. ‘Hello, Ett.’ Sadie gave her a brave smile, aware that Frances had come up quietly beside her.
    â€˜We came as quick as we could,’ Frances said. ‘Where is he? Do you want us to try and get some sense out of him?’
    Hettie nodded. She led the way out of the refectory, down a long cream and brown corridor towards the men’s sleeping quarters. The dormitories, well aired, with rows of bunks to either side, were a step up from the old workhouses, but offered few luxuries. A warm blanket, a promise of breakfast in return for a chore successfully carried out, was what persuaded the homeless to stay on after their spartan suppers. Included in the bargain was a close of hymn-singing and allelujahs, which most considered a price worth paying in return for refuge from the elements.
    Hettie turned right, up a narrow flight of stone stairs. The thing is, he keeps coming back regular as clockwork, every Saturday night,’ She spoke quietly over her shoulder to her two sisters. ‘First off, I hoped it’d be just the once. They drift off and we never slapeyes on them again, some of them. But he came back the next week, I think it was the last Saturday in November, and I hoped to goodness he’d change the tune and stop going on about this woman called Annie. It was a load of rubbish mostly, but it put the wind up me.’
    Frances listened carefully. The upper storey