The Moon's More Feeble Fire by Allan Gaw

Author:Allan Gaw [Gaw, Allan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

TEN

London: 6th May 1923

The St Pancras Workhouse was a very different institution from the Foundling Hospital. The five-storey red brick edifice was in the middle of a built-up site near the rail tracks north of the terminus.

On the February morning in 1912, when the three-year-old Robbie Compton was delivered there by his foster mother, she took the small amount of money that was owed to her for his upkeep, and she didn’t even look at him as he held up his arms to be picked up. He began to cry as he saw her leave the room, and he was taken to the children’s ward where he was put on the floor beside several other toddlers and babies.

The room was bright with large windows that also made it cold, but there was a nursemaid who tried to soothe his tears, and she fed him on her lap along with another small boy. The two looked at each other and held out their hands unsure of what they were seeing.

Both were new arrivals and had been weaned in isolation away from any other children. As their little fingers found each other, they giggled and lost interest in the spoonfuls of porridge the nursemaid was trying to feed them both. She allowed them to discover each other and smiled as they touched each other’s hair and faces.

Not long after Robbie arrived at St Pancras, the decision was made to move the younger children out of the city. The workhouse was overflowing, and the guardians of St Pancras had secured additional space at the Industrial School they had established to cater for the pauper children of the parish. This was in Leavesden near Watford, northwest of the city.

All the three to five-year-olds were duly dispatched to the quarantine cottage there, where they would stay for three weeks before entering the school proper, such was the concern that infectious fevers might be brought from the city. Soon, Robbie and the others settled into their new home, and the boys who had met on their nursemaid’s lap grew up together.

When they started their lessons, it was Robbie who took the lead, for he was a bright boy, eager to learn and interested in everything. The boys learned their scripture and about the expanse of the British Empire on the world map hanging on the classroom wall. They learned their times tables by rote and recited them each morning. There was singing and drawing, and they were encouraged to play football and cricket in the grounds.

When the two friends turned seven, they joined the other older boys and had to spend an hour a day, between breakfast and the start of lessons at nine o’clock, working either in the carpentry shop, the blacksmiths forge or the farm. Robbie always made for the farm and tried to feed the squealing piglets just so he could hold them and feel their warmth.

When they were 14, Robbie and his classmates were instructed on their future by the headmaster. He was a stern young man with a deep gruff voice, but the boys all knew he was fair.

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