MARTHA'S HELL

I've got to admit I can be a miserable old git, and here's a tale of misery and pain and suffering, set a century ago.

When Martha stared into the cosy fire-lit room from the cold world outside she couldn't help wondering why she was out and the baby in the cot was in. And she noticed (who wouldn't in those hard times?) that the warm and squawking baby wore neat little booties, all knitted and fluffy and pink, on its tiny feet and she knew from the ice biting into her that her own feet were bare.

Martha shivered for two reasons. The most important one was that she was cold and her threadbare coat did nothing to alleviate the cold and the other reason was she was jealous, and she knew, the pastor had told them in the workhouse, that jealousy was a sin.

She glued her nose to the window with snot, and the baby squawked on. A woman walked into the warm room, all starch and stiffness and scowls, and noticed her and the dribbly mess she was spreading over the thin sheet of glass between them. She read the words “go away you filthy child” rather than heard them, and then the curtain was drawn, thick and black and warm, and she could read nothing.

The pastor had told them of an awful lot of sins, waving his stick around as if it was meant to draw blood like it so often did and swearing that God was so good they'd love it in Heaven if they ever got there, not that she would, he had told her one time when he had hit her, she was evil and poor, and wasn't it the veriest sin to be poor? Wasn't it an offence to the good Lord in His heaven when he had to look down on snivelling brats and see the way they were? The stick came down on her stinging backside when he said that, but God didn't mind. God wasn't for the likes of her " she'd been told that enough times, and that's why she had run away, at last, taken her opportunity when it came to her and skedaddled between the bread man and the beer wagon, through the gates and into the streets to get lost in the winter frost and fog and misery of a city made for sin.

She left her snot on the glass window and mooched on, her feet blue from the cold and her head aching like crazy like heads do when the world turns black and the cold has gnawing teeth. It was turning black now, what with the sun gone and moon struggling through a cloud that spilt its snow everywhere, and the gnawing teeth were sharp as splinters.

The pastor had warned about the cold. He'd said, when he was in a good mood, that Hell was hot with sulphurous fires and the endless eternal screaming of the damned, so a bit of cold did a person good. It meant they weren't in Hell, but, he had warned severely, thrashing it into one of the boys with his splintering stick, he had warned they weren't safe even if they were cold. The devil would see them and that would be that. Sulphurous fires and eternity and screaming and total, utter, agonising tongues of rancorous furnaces battering their skins for ever and ever amen, and they didn't want that, did they?

Now here she was, on the unknown streets and freezing worse than ever, and she just knew the devil was after her. He'd trap her, he would, trap her and make her sin. It always happened like that, and it always happened with eternal agony: the pastor had emphasised that much.

And she was tired. So tired with the cold, and even though it wasn't bed time here or in the workhouse or anywhere she just knew she had to find a place to lie down. Just for a moment, she thought, just for a freezing moment.

She wandered beyond the end of the street to where the countryside with all its fields and cows and stuff began, and searched for somewhere to lie down, to rest. Somewhere warm like the room where the baby squawked, she thought. But warm places don't come if you want them. The pastor had said that once, thrashing the smallest girl in the workhouse in order to push his point home. That smallest of girls had died that night, of the fever they said, and not of the thrashing, but everyone who daren't say knew otherwise. She'd died of the thrashing all right. A warm place had come for her when she'd wanted it because her coffin was warm, being made of old floorboards with the heat of posh rooms still in them. She'd seen that coffin and almost envied the smallest girl, but envying anything was a sin so she'd stopped herself.

Martha found a corner of a field where the snow didn't quite reach and lay herself down. For a moment, just for a moment, she thought, and closed her eyes.

If only there wasn't any sin, she thought, if only there wasn't any god with his big list of sins then the world would be a better place and a girl could die in peace...

But in her world there was a god with his big list of sins, so when she died that night, all alone in a filthy field with wisps of snow almost finding her, she knew she was on her way to Hell, and she didn't want that either.