Sapphire Battersea (20 page)

‘I think I’d sooner go on that wonderful merry-go-round,’ I said.

‘Excellent!’

We stood watching for a whole turn so that I could work out which horse I liked best. They were all painted different colours – black and brown and grey like real horses, with great manes and flowing
tails
of proper horsehair. There was one splendid white beast with a black patch on his eye, just like Madame Adeline’s Pirate from that long-ago circus. I knew he was the one.

I pointed him out to Bertie, and as soon as the music slowed, he leaped onto the boards, dodging round other eager boys, and claimed the white horse as ours. He helped me up so that I could cling to the mane, while he sat at the back, holding the twisting golden pole.

The lad came for his pennies, the music started, and we were off, whirling round and round. It was almost as good as cantering about the ring on that real horse with Madame Adeline. I dug my heels into Pirate’s painted flanks and threw my head back. My clumsily arranged hair lost half its pins and came tumbling down past my shoulders.

When we stumbled off the merry-go-round at last, deliciously dizzy, I tried to pin my hair back into place.

‘Leave it, Hetty, it looks lovely loose like that,’ said Bertie.

‘It makes me look younger than ever,’ I said, sticking pins in willy-nilly.

‘What’s the matter with looking young? You don’t want to look like a wrinkled old lady, do you? You look all right to me. Better than all right.’ He touched a stray lock of hair, stroking it gently. I was
very
glad I’d taken the trouble to lather it thoroughly with Pears soap last night, even though it meant going to bed with sopping wet hair.

‘You’ve got lovely hair, Hetty,’ said Bertie.

‘It’s red, though. Everyone hates red hair,’ I said.

‘I think it suits you. It’s grand – so bright it dazzles your eyes.’

‘I think my eyes are my best feature. They’re sapphire-blue, do you see? My mama called me Sapphire before she had to give me away …’ I hesitated. ‘You can call me Sapphire, if you like.’

‘Sapphire. Mmm. Sapphire, Sapphire, Sapphire. Do you know what? I think Hetty suits you better.’ Bertie jingled the change in his pocket. ‘What next, eh? We can have another go on the merry-go-round – or try the swing boats – or I could buy us a poke of fried potatoes?’

I thought hard. ‘How about the darts stall? You win us something this time,’ I suggested.

So we tried our luck. With his second dart Bertie scored a bull’s-eye and we could choose any prize on the stand. I circled round and round, in an agony of indecision.

‘Have a goldfish. It matches your hair exactly, dearie,’ said the man running the stall.

‘Don’t you cast aspersions on my sweetheart’s hair,’ said Bertie.

This time I didn’t contradict him.

‘Why don’t you pick an ornament, Hetty?’ Bertie suggested.

‘Good idea,’ I said – but I still had to deliberate long and hard.

Eventually I chose a little black-and-white dog with floppy ears and an earnest expression. ‘He’s lovely, Bertie. Thank you so much,’ I said. ‘Well, if I’ve got a present, you must have my coconut.’

‘No, you take it home and share it with Mrs B and Sarah. That’ll please them – and that way Mrs B will let you out next Sunday without any argle-bargle, so long as you behave! What were you
doing
, shouting at your master? If I tried that trick with Jarvis he’d box my ears. Here, Hetty, this notebook of yours – do you record everything in it?’

‘Things that take my fancy,’ I said.

‘Will you write about me in it?’ Bertie asked eagerly.

‘Perhaps,’ I told him.

WE WERE A
little late getting home, and I got severely ticked off by Mrs Briskett. Sarah had already gone out for her mysterious Sunday evening engagement. I felt a little sorry for Mrs Briskett all the same, stuck indoors all afternoon and evening, so I produced my coconut.

‘Here’s a little present, Mrs B,’ I said.

‘Mrs Briskett to you! You’re just trying to get round me, you bad girl,’ she said, but she took it all the same.

She made a hole in it and poured out strange watery ‘milk’. I didn’t care for it at all, but Mrs Briskett drank it up eagerly.

‘It works wonders for the complexion, coconut milk,’ she said.

I stared at Mrs Briskett’s big red face, wondering if she was about to sprout bristly brown whiskers like the coconut, but nothing untoward happened.

She took her rolling pin, put the coconut on the
floor
, and attacked it vigorously. It smashed into small pieces, exposing the white inside. I gingerly tried the white meat.

‘Ah! I like this part!’ I said, crunching happily.

Mrs Briskett tucked in too.

‘We’ll leave some for Sarah when she comes back, won’t we?’

‘Of course we will,’ said Mrs Briskett, setting a fair portion aside on a saucer. ‘But I don’t think she’ll be back till late.’

‘Mrs Briskett, do tell me –
are
Sarah and that strange man with the moustache … sweethearts?’

Mrs Briskett snorted. ‘Oh, Hetty Feather, whatever will you come out with next? The very idea! And I don’t know what Mrs Arthur Brown would say if she thought her hubby was stepping out with our Sarah.’

‘Then why does she see him every Sunday?’

‘She doesn’t just see Mr Brown, she’s with a lot of other like-minded folk. But they don’t go to see each other. They’re there to meet up with something very queer. Oh, it gives me the shivers just to think of it.’

‘What is it? Tell me, Mrs Briskett! Who do they meet?’

‘I couldn’t possibly say,’ said Mrs Briskett. ‘But I don’t approve. I don’t approve
at all
.’ She gave a genteel shudder.

I was more bewildered than ever. Was she seriously suggesting that Sarah and Mr Brown, two rigidly respectable people, were somehow behaving in a reprehensible manner? I thought back to the vicar’s sermon in church. He had spoken out against the music hall, suggesting that it was not a suitable place for serious God-fearing folk – not quite a den of iniquity like a public house, but disturbing all the same. I wasn’t sure what happened in this mysterious music hall. I pictured Sarah gaudily made-up and provocatively dressed, singing a saucy song as she strutted across the stage, pursued by Mr Brown, waggling his eyebrows and twirling his moustache. This fancy was so comical I couldn’t help snorting with laughter.

‘It’s not funny, Hetty. I’m seriously worried about Sarah. It’s taken hold of her and she won’t listen to reason,’ said Mrs Briskett.

Then perhaps Sarah went to a public house after all? Again, I had only a very hazy idea of what they were like inside. I pictured Sarah slumped on a bench, downing a tankard of gin, while Mr Brown drank straight from the bottle, dribbling all down his droopy moustache. I snorted again – and then hurried off to the scullery to avoid another scolding. I made up my tiny bed and sat with half a candle, writing letters.

I wrote several pages to Mama, telling her about
my
new dress in some detail, and my plans for the pad at the back to turn myself into a fashion plate. I also told her about my trip to the fairground with Bertie –
but don’t worry, Mama, he is just a friend. I know I am much too young for sweethearts, but he is fun to be with and he seems to like me
.

I reassured her that I was in perfect health. She was always asking if I was eating properly, wondering if I had even the slightest cough. The doctor at the hospital had once said I had a weak chest, so Mama still worried terribly.

I wrote to Jem too, but this letter was considerably shorter. I knew he probably wouldn’t be interested in my new dress, and whether it should have a pad at the back or not. I did tell him briefly about my trip to the fair, but I did not mention Bertie as such. I said I went to the fair with a friend, and carefully did not specify the sex.

This only took a paragraph. I did not know what else to write. I kept trying to conjure up Jem’s adult face – but although I could picture that tall figure in brown corduroy, his features were a blur. It seemed safer to think of the long-ago Jem, so I filled my page asking if he ever strolled past the special tree where we’d played endless games of house together? Did he still fish in the stream where I’d paddled? Did he plough with Saxon and Sam, the
two
Shire horses I’d once taken such delight in feeding chunks of carrot?

I was wide awake and still had some candle left. I wished I could write a letter to Gideon, but I didn’t know where he was. He would have left the hospital by now and would be shut up in some faraway barracks, learning how to be a soldier. I ached for him, wishing I had some way of protecting him.

The letter to Jem had reminded me too much of the past. I thought of that little dark country cottage with all of us children tumbling around inside. Gideon had always come off worst in any free-for-all. He came last in our running races, though he had long legs like a colt. Our brother Saul could beat him, even though he was on crutches. I fingered my ribs automatically when I thought of Saul. He had had a terrible trick of poking me with the sharp end of his stick, leaving me all over bruises. Mother always insisted we be kind to Saul, but she forgot to tell
him
to be kind to
us
.

I knew it was a sin, but I had thoroughly disliked my brother Saul. Still, I had been very sad when he died of the influenza at the hospital.

I shivered. I did not want to think of the hospital any more. I might not be living the life of my dreams, publishing my memoirs and providing for dear Mama – but my new life as a servant with
Mrs
Briskett and Sarah in Mr Monkey Buchanan’s house was so, so, so much better than being shut up in the cold, forbidding hospital. And my Sunday afternoons with Bertie were positively delightful.

I wondered whether to start a new memoir book now that Mr Buchanan had purloined my old one. His wastepaper basket was often stuffed with crumpled discarded pages. I could straighten them out, maybe even smooth them with Sarah’s flatiron. Then I could stitch them together, strike through every sentence of his spidery scribble, and start my own memoirs on the blank backs.

No, perhaps I would always be too sharply truthful for autobiography. I could attempt a work of fiction instead – a novel about a young girl with eyes as blue as sapphires – but she would be tall and shapely and have tumbling blonde curls. Perhaps she had been brought up in a strict and severe (unnamed) institution and cruelly treated by terrible matrons. She’d be sent off at the tender age of fourteen to earn her living as a maid, in spite of her intelligence and obvious potential, and feel cast down by the dreary routine of being a general servant. But then she meets her true sweetheart, a former workhouse inmate, now cheerily earning his living as … a baker’s boy …? I blushed in the darkness of the scullery, ashamed to have let myself
get
so carried away. I blew out my guttering candle and tried to settle.

I heard Mrs Briskett’s footsteps as she paced backwards and forwards across the scrubbed flags of the kitchen floor. Every now and then she muttered to herself and sighed. It was clear that Sarah was still not home.

Then I heard the clop of hooves outside in the road, anxious voices, and sudden footsteps. There was a knock on the back door, then Mrs Briskett’s sudden exclamation: