Sapphire Battersea (17 page)

‘Perhaps not, sir,’ I said.

‘I believe that was how Miss Smith met
you
, Hetty,’ said Mr Buchanan.

‘Yes, sir,’ I said.

‘Well, child, perhaps you can tell me a few tales from the past? He was looking at me hopefully, his nose twitching.

‘What, right this minute, sir?’

‘Can you not remember clearly enough?’

‘Oh, I can remember every single detail, sir. Besides, I wrote it all down in my memoirs.’

‘Ah yes. Your memoirs. Do you still have them, Hetty?’

‘Yes I do. I was hoping Miss Smith might help me to get them published – but when she read them, she said it wasn’t possible because they sounded too harsh and ungrateful. It would upset the Board of Governors.’

‘I see, I see. Yes, you should show immense respect and gratitude, child. If the hospital had not taken you back, you might well be in the gutter now, living a life of wretched depravity. Instead of which you are safe and warm and well fed in a good Christian home, with not a care in the world.’

I had many, many, many cares – up at dawn, scrubbing my fingers raw, emptying his horrid chamber pot, working like a dog all day long, copying his stilted stories just to earn stamps to keep in touch with my dear mama … My eyes filled with angry tears.

‘Ah yes! I can see you are ashamed of your ingratitude, Hetty. But never mind, I dare say your childish literary efforts at least helped you to learn the lessons of application and discipline – and after so much practice you now write in a quick clear hand. Well, continue with your good work.’

I carried on copying his dire tale, my eyes crossing with boredom as little Miss Mimsie Marie and young Master Twaddle Tommy gave a penny to a starving, shivering beggar child and then went home to toast their toes in front of a roaring fire and stuff their smug little faces with buttered muffins.

When Mr Buchanan’s clock chimed five, I put down my pen and picked up his tea tray, ready to return to the kitchen.

‘That’s a good girl, Hetty. Run along now,’ said Mr Buchanan – but then, as I was going out of the door, he called me back.

‘I feel you should be encouraged, child. Show me these memoirs of yours. I will see if I can help you with your literary style. Perhaps you can rewrite a few passages. It will be an invaluable lesson for you, Hetty.’

‘So – so you think there might be a chance of getting my memoirs published after all?’ I said, my heart beating fast.

‘Now you’re being ridiculous, child.’ He saw my
face
fall, and checked himself. ‘But perhaps, if we reworked some part together, it might be possible to publish a small extract. I could perhaps write an article about foundlings for a newspaper or journal, with a paragraph from you – the first-hand account, as it were.’

I pondered. This wasn’t at all what I wanted. It certainly wouldn’t make my fortune so that I could free Mama from service and buy a fine home where we might live happily ever after, just the two of us. But a small extract in a newspaper was better than no publication at all … and perhaps some forward-thinking, truth-discerning radical publishing person might be so taken aback by the extract that they sought me out and offered me a publishing contract for the entire work.

‘Well, child, stop gawping, and go and get these little memoirs. I will see if I can find time to glance at it tonight,’ said Mr Buchanan.

I scuttled off downstairs with his tea tray, so excited I didn’t even finish his half-eaten cherry cake and shortbread. I slammed the tray down on the kitchen table and rushed to the scullery.

‘What’s up with you, girl? You’re not just leaving the tray there, are you, right where I want to roll out my pastry for tonight’s steak-and-kidney pie? And deal with the dirty crockery! It’s not going to wash itself now, is it?’

‘In a minute, Mrs Briskett. I’m just running an errand for the master,’ I said, taking my memoirs out of my shabby box. The red cover was faded now, and the spine broken. I had got into a fight with Sheila in the dormitory, and she had seized my precious manuscript book and thrown it the length of the room, the spiteful girl.

‘What’s that scrappy book, then?’ asked Sarah, following me.

‘My memoirs,’ I said, holding it tight against my chest as if it were my own dear child.

‘Your mem-what?’ said Sarah. ‘You’re such a tiresome girl for saying fancy stuff no ordinary folk can understand.’

‘It’s like a journal. It contains the story of my life,’ I said grandly, my chin in the air.

I hoped Sarah would be suitably impressed, but she burst out laughing – and when she told Mrs Briskett,
she
started chuckling too.

‘The story of your life, young Hetty!’ she said. ‘You’re a caution! You haven’t even
had
a life yet – you’re still knee-high to a grasshopper, and you’ve been stuck in that hospital all the time.’

‘I have experienced many momentous things,’ I said indignantly.

This made them splutter more.

‘Oh yes? What exactly have you experienced, eh?’ said Sarah. ‘Met the Queen, have you? Sailed
all
round the world? Flown up in the sky to say how d’ye do to the Man in the Moon?’

‘I
have
met the Queen, as a matter of fact – or very nearly – on the day of her Golden Jubilee,’ I said haughtily. ‘That was certainly a momentous day for me, in more ways than one. So you can both stop tee-hee-heeing. I am going to see the master.’

I swept out of the scullery in what I hoped was a dignified manner, but I tripped over the bucket in the corner, which somewhat spoiled the effect. Mrs Briskett and Sarah laughed so hard they had to hold each other to stay standing.

I went up the stairs clutching my memoirs, starting to have qualms. I badly wanted to see my work published. Imagine hundreds, maybe thousands, of people reading it! That thought made me thrill with pride – but I felt very shy and shivery at the thought of one person in particular perusing every line. I suddenly did not want Mr Buchanan reading my memoirs. It would be like taking off all my clothes before him while he blinked at me beadily through his spectacles.

I paused halfway up the stairs, clutching my book to my chest. I couldn’t do it. I’d tell Mr Buchanan that I’d lost it somehow. I had to protect it. But then he suddenly poked his head out of the study door and peered down at me.

‘There you are, Hetty! I was wondering where you’d got to. Bring me these memoirs, child.’

‘I – I couldn’t find them, sir,’ I said.

‘What? Nonsense – there they are, you’re holding the book right there! Bring it to me immediately.’

‘But – but it’s a poor thing, sir – written years ago when I was a small girl. You will find it very tedious.’

‘I dare say, but I want to help you, child. Hand it over.’

I wanted to fling it far down the stairs, out of harm’s way, but instead I handed it over like an automaton. Mr Buchanan bobbed back inside his study, pocketing my memoirs.

I felt very queer and strange all evening, thinking of him turning the pages, reading every little detail about my life. I asked Sarah what mood the master seemed to be in when she served him supper.

‘A funny mood – very vague, almost vacant. He read as he ate, picking up his cutlery without concentrating, so that he tried to cut into his pie with his fork.’

‘Yes, but vague in a good way or bad? Was he frowning?’

‘How can I tell, when the master has such a wrinkled forehead?’

‘You’re worrying that he doesn’t like these
precious
memoirs of yours, aren’t you, Hetty?’ said Mrs Briskett. ‘What sort of things did you write in them, eh?’

‘All sorts of things,’ I said miserably.

‘Well, I hope you haven’t confessed to anything too dreadful, or the master will be obliged to dismiss you forthwith, and I’d have to start all over again with a new girl just as you’re starting to train up nicely,’ said Mrs Briskett.

I couldn’t concentrate on my letter-writing when I went to bed that night. I blew out my stub of candle and lay twitching in the dark, imagining Mr Buchanan two floors up, his nose in my notebook, glasses glinting as he read his way through my life.

I tossed and turned all night, and got up long before Mrs Briskett and Sarah. When they came down, I had the fire lit, the tea piping hot in the pot, and fried eggs and bacon sizzling in the pan.

They patted me on the head and told me I was a good girl.

‘A good girl who’s had very momentous experiences,’ Sarah couldn’t resist adding.

When she came back from serving Mr Buchanan his breakfast, I fell upon her.

‘What was the master doing, Sarah?’

‘What? Eating his breakfast, silly.’

‘Is he reading?’

‘Mm? Yes, and a very bad habit it is. He gets so
absorbed
he’ll likely drop egg and bacon all down his front, and I shall be the poor soul who has to try to get the stains out.’

‘
What
was he reading, Sarah?’

‘
I
don’t know. I’m not in the habit of snatching his book up so as I can see the title.’

‘It was a book, then? It wasn’t …?’

‘Your illustrious memoirs? Yes, I believe it was – and of course … it’s coming back to me now … he held it up solemnly and said to me, “Sarah, this is a veritable masterpiece. I’m going to have it bound in finest leather with gold-embossed lettering.” ’

I was sure she was teasing me, but I couldn’t help hoping that she
might
just be telling the truth.

‘He really seemed to like it?’ I asked tremulously.

Sarah and Mrs Briskett laughed their silly fat heads off. I tossed my own head and stomped off to clean the bedrooms. Mr Buchanan was in his study with the door closed. I longed to peep in and see for myself if my memoirs intrigued or irritated him. Perhaps he had already cast them aside on one of his cluttered tables. They would be entirely forgotten and I would lose even this extremely slim chance of publication …

I was in such a fever about my wretched memoirs I couldn’t settle to anything. I think Sarah was a little sorry she had mocked me so, because she let me work on my Sunday dress after lunch instead of
helping
her sides-to-middle a pile of worn sheets. Mrs Briskett had donated her Sunday outfit of several years ago. It was emerald-green velvet, startlingly bright, but Mrs Briskett and Sarah said it set off my red hair a treat. The velvet had gone shiny at the back, worn smooth by Mrs Briskett’s formidable bottom, but there was so much material that Sarah helped me cut the pieces for a frock from the unsullied front.

She fashioned me a pattern too, but she based it on my work dresses and they seemed very plain to me. I had looked very carefully at the girls in the street on Sunday. I wanted a fitted bodice and a waist.

‘Then you will need stays, Hetty!’ said Sarah.

I saw that she had a point, but I couldn’t possibly make do with Mrs Briskett’s second-best whalebone stays – indeed, you could comfortably fit a whale itself inside them. I would just have to hold my breath, suck in my stomach and stick out my meagre chest in my new dress.

I had observed a faded pair of curtains in the mending pile in Sarah’s cupboard. They had dark gold tassles and trimmings. I decided on a few secret snips so that my dress could have the perfect finishing touches.

I wondered what Bertie would think of me in my new frock. I smiled as I stitched, because it was
very
pleasant to be liked, and it diverted me a little from fretting about Mr Buchanan – but then Mrs Briskett started preparing his afternoon tea: little cucumber sandwiches and honey cake. It was time for me to go and confront him!

I trembled so much that the cup and saucer and plate played a tune on the tray as I stumbled up the stairs. When I knocked on the study door, my hand was slippery with sweat.

‘Come in,’ Mr Buchanan called.

I’m not sure what I expected. My thoughts ran wildly between two options: he would either seize me, strike me, tell me I was a wicked, ungrateful girl to tell such tales of the hospital and turn me out of his house forthwith –
or
he might clasp me to his bosom and tell me I had written a compelling work of genius, not a word of which needed changing, and he would see that it was published immediately.

He did not react in either of these ways. He barely raised his head. He was scribbling in his spidery writing in a new manuscript book. He did not stop when I balanced the tray precariously on an edge of his cluttered desk. I poured his tea and handed it to him. His hand went out for it automatically, but he was still intent on his writing and he spilled half of it. He jumped as scalding tea shot up his smoking-jacket sleeve.

‘Oh, take care, sir, you’ll burn yourself,’ I said.

‘Yes, yes. I’m fine, it’s fine,’ he said, flapping his wet sleeve.

‘Shall I fetch you a dry jacket, sir?’

‘No, no, don’t fuss.’ He carried on writing, reaching out blindly again and stuffing a sandwich into his mouth. He could just as easily have stuffed the plate in instead, and crunched up the china with equal absent-mindedness.

‘You seem very busy, sir,’ I said.

‘I am indeed, Hetty Feather. I have started writing my new book.’