show when they are being interviewed. What happens when you turn your back on them?’
‘You are very scathing,’ he said. ‘You ought not to brand them all with the same iron. Some do their best.’
‘I am sorry. I am a little too outspoken sometimes.’
‘Do not be sorry. It is good to speak one’s mind occasionally.’
She laughed. ‘I do it a little too often, I think. But the question does not arise here because you cannot take this child anywhere if his parents are looking for him.’
‘I shall do my best to reunite them. The Home is full to overflowing as it is; finding more room will be difficult.’
The area around Covent Garden was extremely busy, with stall holders, costermongers, porters and farmers with loaded carts all rushing about as if they did not have a minute to lose, and he wondered why he was persevering. He could just as easily have taken the boy straight to the Hartingdon Home and squeezed him in somewhere, but, like Mrs Meredith, he imagined the boy’s mother frantically searching for him. On the other hand, she might not be searching; she might have abandoned him as many another mother had done who could not cope. In which case, the Home it would have to be.
They went from stall to stall, spoke to several of the little urchins who congregated there because there was a chance that they might either be given or filch some food from the stall holders, but no one recognised Joe. ‘Now what?’ Kate asked. She had been right about the needle in a haystack. London was a very big haystack and perhaps they were looking in the wrong area after all.
‘Let us try over there.’ He pointed to the steps of a church, surprised that she was still with him. He had expected her to have given up and gone home long before now. He wondered what she would have done about the little urchin if he had not been there. She was evidently very fond of children and not afraid of a little dirt.
Young Joe gave a sudden cry of recognition and wriggled to be put down. Simon set him down and he ran to a woman sitting on the tail of a cart, nursing a mewling infant, surrounded by squashed fruit, cabbage leaves and horse droppings. She looked up from contemplating the baby’s head to address the boy. ‘Where ‘ave yer bin, you little devil?’ she said, clipping him round the ear with the flat of her hand. ‘I’ll tan your hide, that I will. I told you not to run off, didn’t I?’
Kate was surprised how young she was. Her hard life made her look older than she was, but she could not have been more than twenty. She must have conceived Joe when she was about sixteen and was probably at that time a pretty little thing, probably could be again if her circumstances were different.
The woman stopped berating the boy to look up at Simon and Kate, her eyes widening at what appeared to be a couple of gentry. ‘Did you fetch him back?’
‘Yes, he had wandered quite a long way from here,’ Simon said.
‘Then I am beholden to you.’ She paused. ‘I reckon I’ve seen you around ‘ere afore.’
‘You may have,’ he said. ‘I am Dr Redfern.’
‘I’ve ‘eard of you. I ‘eard tell you take children and give them a good ’ome, clothes and food and learnin’.’
‘Yes, but only under certain circumstances and if their parents agree.’
‘Oh, is that why you brought ’im back, so’s you could take him?’
‘No, I thought you might be worried about him.’
‘So I was, but I can’t keep an eye on ’im and do me work at the same time. I have to mind the stall. And there’s the babby to look after too.’
‘Do you want me to take him?’
‘Be better than runnin’ wild about ’ere.’
‘Will your husband agree to that?’ Kate asked, horrified that she could even think of parting with her child.
‘You c’n ask ’im if you can find ’im,’ she said flatly. ‘I ain’t seen ’ide nor ’air of ’im these last six months. I’m at my wits’ end.’
It was just the sort of family the Society had been set up to help and Simon, having discovered her name was Janet Barber, asked to be shown where they lived.
Mrs Barber led them from the market into the area known as Seven Dials, a notorious slum where seven of the meanest roads in the city converged. Here she took them down Monmouth Street, lined with second-hand clothing shops, pawnbrokers and cheap food shops, and into an alley, where she stopped outside a tenement whose front steps were black with grime and whose door hung drunkenly on one hinge. ‘There,’ she said, pointing.
Kate, who fully expected the doctor to turn away in disgust, was surprised when he indicated the woman should lead on. They had attracted quite a gathering, but none seemed hostile and she supposed it was because the doctor was well known and respected. They simply stood and stared.
Kate, worrying about the little boy, was even more concerned when she saw the filthy room, which was hardly fit for animals, let alone human beings. There was a bed of sorts, heaped with rags, a table and a couple of chairs, a few pots and pans on a shelf and that was all. Everywhere was covered in a thick layer of grime and the smell was nauseating.
‘You goin’ to take ’im, then?’ Mrs Barber asked, as Kate stood on the threshold, reluctant to venture inside.
‘If you are sure, I will take him until you can get on your feet again. If your circumstances improve, then Joe can come home again.’
She laughed. ‘Pigs might fly.’
He gave her half a crown, which she gleefully accepted, then told the boy to say goodbye to his mother and hoisted him once more on his shoulders. It was not a satisfactory state of affairs and he wished he could do more. He wished with all his heart that such poverty did not exist and that all children were as plump and happy as those Mrs Meredith had been playing with earlier in the day.
‘I hate separating families,’ he told her as they set off for the Hartingdon Home. ‘And would not do so, if any other way could be found.’
‘Could they not be helped with a little money, so they could stay together?’
‘That might be possible, but a decision like that is not mine alone. The Committee have to consider all aspects. If the father is a wastrel or a drunkard, then it would be throwing good money after bad. If there is some hope, then we will do what we can and the boy can return to his parents. That is where we differ from the Foundling Hospital. Once children are taken in there, their names are changed and they rarely see their mothers again. We do our best to restore them to their families.’
The Hartingdon Home was situated in a converted building in Maiden Lane. It was a busy area, being so close to Covent Garden market, but it was certainly a step above Seven Dials. Joe was handed over to the housekeeper who gave him a slice of bread and jam and a glass of milk, which he downed with relish.
Simon waited until he was settled, then took Kate to the office where he invited her to be seated while he completed the necessary paperwork for Joe’s admission. ‘Keeping accurate records is an important part of the work,’ he explained. ‘If it is not done immediately, it might be forgotten. Do you mind?’
‘Not
