What Happened To Selina Smith

By Mary Valentine Williams

SYNOPSIS: What Happened To Selina Smith by Valentine Williams.

A novella for young readers 12 +
Based on real events in Market Drayton and surroundings in the 1880s.

SELINA SMITH, 13, oldest of four children, leaves school at 13 and attends the May Hiring Fair where she is taken on by MRS RODWAY, the rector's wife, as a laundress, sharing a room with MOLLY.

Her mother is ill and her father, a canal worker, cannot earn enough to keep the family.
When MRS SMITH dies and the younger children are sent to a relative, SELINA is distraught.

Visiting the town is WOMBWELL and BOSTOCK'S TRAVELLING MENAGERIE and to take her mind off her grief, SELINA pays them a visit, where she is comforted by MARCUS ORENZO, the African lion tamer, and BETTY, otherwise known as SERPENTINA, the python handler. Orenzo escorts her home after supper, but she is seen by the housekeeper, MRS BARTON, who does not approve. Arguments follow and the Rodway's son DAVID, causes trouble for her.

SELINA realises she can use her laundering and sewing skills in the Menagerie, and she has talent as a contortionist, both of which enable her to be taken on by BOSTOCK, the owner. She develops an act where she gets into a small suitcase and is released by BETTY before handling the pythons.

Other exhibitors at the Menagerie are MAJOR MITE TINY, CAPTAIN MURPHY, the giant, SHE, the Australian lion tamer, PROFESSOR LAWRAINE the reptile handler, and RAMASWAMY, the wild man. The python, JEZABEL, eats ALICE the bird woman's, dog, and DAVID, humiliated by ORENZO, tries to set fire to ORENZO'S wagon. Luckily he fails. SELINA is regarded as bringing bad luck to the Menagerie.

Travelling to Birmingham with the Menagerie, one of the lions excapes as they are setting up and ORENZO follows it into an open sewer, where, with SELINA'S help, it is enticed back to its cage, but not before it has mauled ORENZO. WALLACE, the oldest lion, dies. The Rodway's son, DAVID, puts in another appearance and there is almost a fight between ORENZO and DAVID. SELINA dares DAVID to enter the lion's cage.

There are several incidents where brave young Selina is able to assist her friends when danger threatens, once when the elephant undoes the catch to the lions' cage. She is rewarded by the mayor and BOSWELL for her bravery and is able to go back to see her siblings and pay for their future care. She is reunited with MOLLY.

Her father is shamed into being more sober and is reconciled with his daughter. ORENZO has earned enough money to go home, while BETTY decides to retire and the Menagerie is sold off. SELINA finds work in the London theatres as a wardrobe mistress.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mary Valentine Williams
• Release date: Aug 17, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463555156

Mary Valentine Williams

Mary V Williams was born in a Hampshire village and spent most of her early childhood playing outside with mud, sticks and a dog, before being captured and made to go to school where she discovered books, poetry and art, which was a small consolation.With an artistic, loving, but deaf mother, and a father who was an eccentric engineer and inventor, life was never dull. After school she devoured poetry and novels and began writing her own.A nice safe job in a bank was proposed when she left school. Hating it, she found herself work with a charity caring for Polish and Tibetan refugees instead. Later, she studied at Manresa College in Roehampton, accompanied, she feels, by the ghost of Gerard Manley Hopkins who had been a Jesuit novitiate there, and met her husband, Peter. Together they made the most of Sixties London and traveled around Europe and North Africa before getting married and settling in Stoke Newington, a melting pot of radical political activity in those days. Mary continued to write poetry and teach but missed green spaces and the outdoor life.After the birth of their two sons they decided reluctantly to seek quieter surroundings outside London and when Peter was offered a job in Lancashire the family moved Up North. Once the culture shock had worn off, the friendliness, scenery and the prospect of a larger house, made this a good move, despite the precipitation. She loved the humour and down to earth attitude of the people. She kept on writing and teaching.As a family, they swapped houses with a Danish family, traveled by coach to Moscow and Estonia, camped on the Belgium coast, shared a house in Holland and had annual camping holidays with other families. The addition of another son soon after moving north and then a foster son three years later entailed a lot of cooking and mucking out of rooms. Odd socks and raids on the fridge were repeating motifs. Mary felt she needed a different career, and psychotherapy training and an MA in English led to a commission to write self-help books. Later she worked in child mental health, and for the NSPCC, until the war between Psychiatry and Psychology got in the way, then for seven happy years was a staff counsellor in a University.Left with a huge, empty house once the children had left home, they sold up and moved south to Shropshire, where Peter had embarked on a career as an art therapist. Mary now had time and space to write. A series of books followed: The Poison Garden of Dorelia Jones, A Far Cry, Losing It, and recently The Marsh People (recently republished by Victorina Press). She won the Hippocrates Prize for poetry and the Ware Prize. Her poetry has been published in many journals and anthologies, and her published collected short stories, Unconfirmed Reports From Out There, is available as an e-book. She also founded the Drayton Writers’ Group.She and her husband presently live in an old cottage and try to keep the garden at bay, though there’s a well under the living room floor and anything could be lurking in that.

Book preview

Table of Contents

What Happened to Selina Smith

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: The Hiring Fair

Chapter 2: The Rectory

Chapter 3: A Death in the Family

Chapter 4: The Menagerie

Chapter 5: Selina Meets the Menagerie Folk

Chapter 6: A Decision Is Made

Chapter 7: Menagerie Folk

Chapter 8: Selina leaves the Rectory

Chapter 9: Fire in the Night

Chapter 10: Selina Gives a Performance

Chapter 11: Tensions in the Menagerie

Chapter 12: A Lion Escapes

Chapter 13: On the Road Again

Chapter 14: Wallace

Chapter 1: The Hiring Fair

I slept really badly on the night before the Hiring Fair. That was a problem because I knew I had to be up early, looking tidy, with brushed hair and with my clothes well ironed. I had spent the day before trying to make the starch mix for my apron just the right thickness, so it would iron smoothly, adding a tiny spot of Reckitt's Blue to make it look whiter. I knew how to iron, and I didn't burn it once. I hung it over the rail at the end of our bed, but during the night it slipped onto the boards, so I had to get out of bed and hang it up again. It didn’t help that my sister Lizzie, who was sleeping next to me, twisted around on the mattress under the thin covers all night. If I’m honest though, it wasn't Lizzie who kept me awake.

In the morning, if all went well, I knew I'd have to leave home for the first time to begin my working life as a laundry maid or housemaid. That is, if I was lucky enough to be chosen. My teacher, Miss Mimms, tried to persuade me to stay on at school, but now I was thirteen I felt I had no choice but to leave school and go and find work.

I was hungry by now, and our cottage was cold. I shivered and tried to sleep again, but it was no use. What would it be like? Where would I live? A hundred thoughts streamed through my mind.

I was tossing and turning until I heard the farm cockerel crowing next door. It was just getting light. I slipped out of bed, trying hard not to wake the little ones, Peter and Martha, who were head to toe in the truckle bed next to mine and still sleeping soundly. Martha's cheeks were pink, but blotched where her nose had run, and she had fleabites on her little hands. Peter was paler and looked weary even when he was asleep. I'd say goodbye to them later. Leaving them would break my heart.

I knew they'd miss me, and I'd certainly miss them. Soon there'd be another baby to look after. Our mother was unwell during this pregnancy, and she wouldn't be able to work for quite a while. All these things kept me awake.

I'd done the washing for the family since Mother was ill, and it was this skill I was hoping to use by advertising myself at the Hiring Fair. Big houses in the area employed live-in laundry maids, but I expected to do other household chores as well, such as lighting the fires, polishing the brass and copper, or sewing for the family.

I washed outside with cold water from the pump – freezing! and dried my face and hands. All sorts of thoughts ran through my head. Would I have to live miles from home? Would the family manage without me there to look after the little ones? Lizzie, who was twelve, would help, but she wasn’t always reliable and could be short tempered. Would my father be able to care for mother as her pregnancy advanced? There were no easy answers.

I had to do what I could to add my earnings to the household, now that my mother could no longer work. I feared that father, without her around to keep an eye on him, would spend more time in the public house than here with us. He was already spending too much time there, I thought. I overheard them arguing about it:

We'll end up in the Workhouse, Albert, Mother had warned him, as the rent on the cottage became due again and there was no money in the biscuit tin on the mantle.

A man's got to have some comforts in life, Sarah, he retorted gruffly, as poor Mother turned away from him on the bed and closed her eyes in weariness.

I brushed my hair and tied it back with a ribbon, stolen from Lizzie, then I put on my clean gown, apron and bonnet, specially prepared for the Hiring Fair, and packed my nightgown in the small leather travelling case with my other clothes. Lizzie still didn't stir. My mother called me, still half asleep:

Selina!

Yes, Mother?

You're a good girl, Selina. Fetch me some water, dear. You look tidy; it'll be a lucky employer as gets you to work for 'em. I bent down and gave her a kiss. She was warm, but there were dark rings under her eyes.

Get some rest now, Mother. With luck, I may come back with good news.

Has your father already left for work?

Yes. He went an hour ago. Wish me luck, Mother. I had heard him go as I was washing at the pump and I felt angry that he hadn't come to wish me good luck. But he was like that.

Selina? I'm sorry you had to leave school. A clever girl like you... Good luck dear.

I knew Father was already at work on the early shift down at the Canal, shoveling anthracite and coal off the barges that came past early in the day. Sometimes I'd go down there before school and watch the barges move slowly along the wharf, tugged by the sway-backed old horses that towed the barges along. The lad holding the horse was usually a boy of about my own age and whole families lived in the grimy cabins on board the barges, moving from place to place, carrying wood, pig iron, coal and clay up and down the canal. I almost envied their lives.

I used to go down and watch the procession of narrowboats arrive at the weekends. My job was to carry Father’s dinner pail, so that he could have something to eat at midday with the other men.

Well, today I wouldn't be there to do that.

When the barges arrived at the wharf, the unloading began.

My father would stand on the wharf and take the heavy sacks from the boatman, put them over his shoulder, then stack them in the warehouse. His waistcoat would be blackened at the end of the day. Guess who had to wash it? When this was completed, the barge would moor up and the family could come ashore to buy food, drink and use the pump and trough for washing their clothes. After they had moored for the night and the horse was led into the pasture, the children were free to play and run up and down the canal, and their parents would light the stove and cook supper. I must admit I envied them, though it was often the lads who led the barge horses along the bank and used the switch to make them move when they stopped to feed on the grass and I saw that this could be hard work, especially in summer when the horse was pestered by flies and had to be stopped from walking into the canal.

The children of the barge families didn’t have to go to school. I knew I’d been lucky in learning to read and write, so I set off through the lanes to the May Hiring Fair with high hopes, but with real sadness too. I carried my washboard and a small iron with me. There were other people on the road, heading for the Fair,