Tom Bedlam

CHAPTER ONE TURNING THE OTHER CHEEK It is quite possible that emily bedlam was simply a very good woman, but to her son, Tom, she appeared insane. She was the embodiment of Christian virtue. "God Bless!" she would say to the surliest stranger with a giddy and well-meaning smile. When she received a fearsome oath in reply, Mrs. Bedlam held no grudge. She tried again the next day. And the next. She never spoke in scorn, nor did she gossip or disparage her neighbors. She provided for her only son through her employment at Todderman & Sons Porcelain & Statuary, and remained faithful to her husband though he had deserted her many years before. Never had the boy met a woman as selfless and self-effacing. She had been robbed, sworn at, and gossiped about, but she always turned the other cheek. Since Tom had never seen an angel, he was tempted to assign his mother's virtues to a category of folk he had seen on the rough city streetsthe simple, the touched, the witless. In Vauxhall, southwest of the City of London, Tom accompanied his mother to the factory every morning. Through the wrought-iron gates and across a windswept courtyard, they would pass Mr. Todderman greeting his employees from a parapet on the second floor of his domain. Behind him, two smokestacks from the factory released a black smear across the London skyline, while next to him, the cripple, Brandy Oxmire, clutched a slate for the purpose of marking down absences and latecomers. "Morning, Mrs. Bedlam!" her employer shouted. "God Bless, Mr. Todderman!" came the gay reply, "and thank you for Mrs. Todderman's shoes!" Then she'd pause to display the gaudy red-leather shoes on her feet. Todderman acknowledged them with a weary growl. "It was a pleasure, Mrs. Bedlam." She'd been thanking him for his wife's castoffs for weeks, even though he'd subtracted a small fee from her wages in compensation for them. "You need not thank him," Tom had whispered many times. "Nonsense, Tom," replied his mother. "D'you know what these shoes are worth? If nobody acknowledged a good turn, just imagine what an unkind city London would be." Tom needed no imagination. He'd seen their tenement landlord turn out folk on the second of the month for missing the rent; there was always a supply of desperate faces at Mr. Todderman's gates looking for work; and of course, there was the daily unkindness of the streetthe strangers who mocked his mother's patrician manners because she wore secondhand clothing, the neighbors who joked about her married name, and the factory biddies who told his mother to bless herself, for she needed more blessing than they did. Was she stupid? No, for there was a solid Christian philosophy behind her disposition. Three dog-eared Bibles on her bookshelf confirmed it: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you; and Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. But as Tom accompanied his mother through the glazing rooms and the clay shops of Todderman's factory, he couldn't prevent her cheery greetings to her co-workers. "Morning, Esther! Hello, Mary! God Bless, Bonnie! . . . Oh, Mrs. Mudd, you look very nice today!" The replies were rare. As for Mrs. Mudd, her pudding faceround, mottled, and grimy at the edgesdidn't acknowledge the compliment; she grunted and spat, striking the heel of one of Mrs. Todderman's precious shoes with a milky clod of phlegm. Mrs. Mudd knew her workmate was more valued and chose to believe that it was not Mrs. Bedlam's skill with clay but her genteel accent that earned her a shilling more a week. "You're diHagen, George is the author of 'Tom Bedlam ', published 2007 under ISBN 9781400062225 and ISBN 1400062225.