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Begging to go back.

The workhouse was a grim place, made more so by the devilish master, his wife and his cretinous dogs, Wilf and Dick. The master loved his status in the area, which he conferred upon himself by his stove-pipe hat, lamb-chop sideburns, long black moleskin coat and impossibly booming voice, which could raise the dead, and often did.

Rodney Bayte and his wife Repra had run the work house with an iron fist for 10 years. Inmates knew if they stepped out of line all kinds of ills would visited upon them.

“God’s will be done,” Bayte’s mantra could be heard across the valley at the home for waifs and strays, where a similar regime existed.

“Life is a vale of tears, and then you die,” said Bayte to a journalist who was doing a feature about the workhouse master for the local newspaper, the Hollow Haranguer.

“It’s our job to get vagrants off the streets, give them hard work in exchange for gruel and lodging, and bring some discipline into their [useless] lives. They’ll all go to hell of course, but at least when they get there, fewer surprises will await them.”

“I’m told there are sinners from the other workhouses in the area who have repented and gone on to live, hrmmph, shall we say a slightly less worthless existence, but not here, I’ll not have that. Our motto is Abandon All Hope.”

Bayte was in full flow, and in the next room was Repra, who had her own views, but seemingly preferred to follow her husband’s humourless, desperate example rather than return to her own rather murky past

The master went on: “You see it is very simple. Some of us are born to rule, and some are born to be wasters and vagrants. Brute force, austerity, a loud commanding voice and hidden hypocrisy are the only things that keep them in line. What would the countryside be like if they were allowed to wander around, dying, drunk in the fields, sponging off others, spreading disease and illness with gay abandon?”

“We take them in, show them Christian charity, and make them work for a change. Work makes you free. It cleanses the soul and keeps me in the manner to which I’m accustomed. The inmates who have been here for years are very lucky, because Wilf has stopped biting their genitals. I wouldn’t mind, but sometimes he goes too far and we have to call in the nurse. I kick him hard and he cowers, but he seems to take it out on other vagrants, rather than jump on the shovel when I shout excrement.”

“Have you lived a good and pure life yourself Mr Bayte?” enquired the journalist.

“What do you mean, you cheeky little swine?” gasped Bayte who then paused, wrinkled his brow and went on, “Haven’t I seen someone who looks like you in here?”

“Most certainly you have, my father spent a few seasons here about 10 years ago.”

Bayte felt that warm, familiar glow of power rush through his parts. He knew now that he could say what he wanted, and the journalist would have to write exactly what he wanted printing. But before he could unleash his full manipulative, sadistic and condescending verbal might on the Haranguer’s finest, he was stopped in his own tracks.

“My father knew Mrs Bayte, as did a number of workhouse people.”

In the next room, howls and barking broke out. Wilf and Dick were fighting. Like Bayte, Dick thought himself a superior breed to mongrel Wilf, who had been abused all his life by Bayte. Wilf did anything Bayte told him to, or he got kicked. Dick was really a mongrel himself, but Bayte had convinced everyone he was a pedigree. He kept Dick for decoratively trotting around the workhouse grounds, as he was ‘retired.’ It was just the distraction Bayte needed.

“That will be all now, I’ve work to do myself. I can’t sit here all day. If you think about writing anything I don’t like, I’ll get your editor to take it out before publication.”

“I am the editor Mr Bayte. So, we’ll do a feature on the amazing coincidences which have brought us all together shall we? My father getting out of the workhouse, experiencing the sickening stench of hypocrisy which motivated him to get clean, get his life in order, and eventually buy the Hollow Haranguer. Your lovely wife leaving a life of poverty to marry one of Cheshire’s finest.

You thought no-one would ever tell about your trips across the valley, your ‘just repairing the lawnmower’ excuses for servicing half the local women.

What shall we do then about the fine, upstanding workhouse master, the only one who will leave here to go to heaven? The guardian of morality, appointed by God to lord it over the genetically deficient fools who without the workhouse would turn the Hollow into a cess pit of syphilis, illegitimacy, fecklessness and sloth?”

Bayte was incandescent: “I have done nothing wrong. Only God can judge me, not the son of a vagrant. Your rag is read by no-one who matters. Who would believe your word against mine? Print anything about me and I’ll sue.”

“I’m sorry to have to bring this news to you myself Mr Bayte, the son of a vagrant may not have been your idea of a celestial messenger, but I’m told this workhouse is to close and be turned into a place of healing, a hospital. You are to be banished to the wilds of Crim, miles from civilisation, where you can no longer harm or defame people.”

The thunderous, appalling visage that struck fear into the hearts of Wilf and the unfortunates changed to a sulk deeper than a canyon as quick as you could say ‘zip.’ Bayte collapsed like a burst balloon.

“So you know before the rest do you? I’ve been meaning to move to Crim for years. I’ve had it with this pond life. My resignation was posted last week” gasped Bayte like a fish thrashing about on dry land. But then he turned, clutching at the arrogance which had served him so well: “The story of Repra and me moving out in a quality newspaper will eclipse any piece of trash you can come up with. We’re safe.”

“No doubt you are Mr Bayte, no doubt. Move to Crim, and it may be years before they find you out. Indeed you may even find ‘friends’ there, you are not without oily charm.

History is full of con artists and liars who seemingly cut a swathe through life at no cost to themselves. But you and I know different don’t we? I wonder how much time you will spend on your own there, with only your thoughts for company?

Will thoughts of the past be pleasant? If you can’t bear them, you can always imagine the future when you are once again aroused. Will you be good company for yourself? How’s your health now? You seem to collect things that remind you of the past.

Before you descend into the abyss, why not follow Repra’s example? Drink and prescription drugs numb the pain. Does heaven have an annexe for those so addicted?

I wish you well at Crim. Once my father has mentally purged you from his life, no doubt he will forgive you, as resentment harms the persecuted more than the persecutor. Maybe my father ran a workhouse in the 18^th century, and you were a vagrant. I hope he reincarnates to a better life than yours when he leaves the earth plane.

There is still time Mr Bayte, even for Wilf. So far, he’s down to come back as a mole, and you a sacked Liverpool docker.”

“B*******”, cried Bayte, “I hope I’m dead meat when I die. Heaven hasn’t any room for hypocrites; it was always a forlorn hope. How could I be in heaven with ex-vagrants?”

A voice boomed out from the clouds, even louder that Bayte’s:

“We are all ex-vagrants my son, but only a few of us want to return to begging.”

JS, February 2007.