Michael Lomax

Michael Lomax, known as Mickey, is a young man raised in the Nuneaton workhouse who joins Biddy Spooner’s household after Tommy Branning leaves. His arrival creates a new place for him within a caring domestic community, but it does not shelter him from racial prejudice. The novel sets his quiet, practical contribution to the household against the contempt he meets beyond it, while showing Sunday Small’s friendship as a direct answer to that exclusion.

Identity and Background

Mickey has lived in the workhouse since he was two, after his grandmother died. By the time Verity Lockett brings him to the Spooner household, he is almost the same age as Sunday and painfully shy. He has dark skin, nearly black eyes, and tightly curled hair; when speaking to people, he tends to lower his head and avoid their eyes.

His reserve is connected to a history of rejection. Couples who visited the workhouse looking to give a child a home had repeatedly refused even to consider him because of his skin colour. He had consequently stopped hoping that he would become part of a loving family. His arrival at the Spooners’ is therefore more than a change of address: it offers a form of belonging he had come to believe was unavailable to him.

Arrival and Acceptance

Mickey joins the household to take Tommy’s place, though his arrival does not erase the family’s grief for Tommy or Daisy. He settles into the role quickly. Like Tommy, he enjoys working with the animals, and he also takes pleasure in gardening and odd jobs. His reliability helps the household return to an orderly routine.

His acceptance is not automatic. Annie is initially unsure whether he will fit into Nuneaton, where Black people are rare. Biddy Spooner persuades her to give him a trial, challenging the assumption that his skin colour should determine his place in the household. Annie changes her view as she sees that Mickey is a hard worker, and agrees that he may stay. The episode makes welcome a practical choice, tested in daily life, rather than a sentiment detached from the social prejudice around it.

Work, Friendship, and Protection

Mickey’s place in the household develops through ordinary work and companionship. He contributes through animal care, gardening, and general tasks, while the people around him begin to form attachments to him. Nell follows him about and takes more care with her appearance when he is near. Annie and Biddy notice her fondness, and Annie also observes that Jacob watches Sunday closely. These details establish Mickey within a household whose members form new bonds even as they continue to miss those who have left.

Sunday becomes particularly important to Mickey. At the cattle market, where they have gone to choose a small pony for Biddy Spooner, she sees people step away from him, sneer, and one man spit at his feet. Mickey responds by lowering his head in shame. Sunday places her arm through his and tells him to hold his head up and look back at those who demean him. Her gesture makes their friendship visible in public: rather than asking him to endure the hostility alone, she stands beside him and contests the behaviour directly.

Mickey is also included in the household’s efforts to protect its members. After Nell has been attacked and the Spooners suspect that a series of threatening incidents may be connected, Jacob offers to stay downstairs at night so Mickey can rest. Jacob proposes that Mickey accompany the girls when he is at work, so they will not have to go out alone. Mickey’s presence is treated as part of the household’s practical protection, not merely as labour in the home.

Prejudice and Narrative Significance

The hostility Mickey encounters appears in more than one setting. At the cattle market, strangers’ avoidance and open contempt expose the prejudice he has faced beyond the workhouse; at a later employment placement, a woman reacts to him with scorn when he accompanies Sunday. Sunday identifies him as her good friend and resists the insult. The scene echoes the earlier market encounter, showing that his acceptance within the Spooner household does not make the surrounding world welcoming.

Mickey’s story is thus shaped by a contrast between exclusion and chosen inclusion. The workhouse visitors’ repeated refusals taught him not to expect a family, while the Spooners give him a trial, recognize his contribution, and make room for him in their daily life. The narrative does not show prejudice disappearing or Mickey’s shyness wholly resolving; instead, it gives weight to the concrete acts that oppose it: offering him work, allowing him to stay, relying on him, and standing beside him when others look down on him.