Sapphire Battersea (5 page)

Every Sunday in the chapel we sang:

‘
The rich man in his castle

The poor man at his gate
,

God made them, high or lowly
,

And ordered their estate
.’

Why did I have to be stuck being lowly? Why couldn’t Mama and I be rich women in our castle?

‘You wait, dearest Mama,’ I whispered as I sat in bed my last morning. ‘I will earn our fortune with my writing one day, no matter what Miss Smith says. Then we
will
have our castle. Well, maybe not a
castle
exactly, but a grand villa with our own pretty bedrooms, where we will live very happily and harmoniously together, just the two of us. We will be rich enough to have a whole troop of servants, but we won’t employ a single one. We will not want any poor girls working for us. We will look after ourselves splendidly. I will clean for you, Mama, and you will cook for me, and we will be private and cosy and comfortable.’

I slid out of bed and walked down the long dormitory, past all the sleeping girls. I tiptoed out onto the landing, and then down the long wooden staircase, the grand portraits staring at me sternly.

‘Frown all you like. I’m not afraid of you. I shall
never
have to stare up at you ever again,’ I declared.

I crept right downstairs, across the girls’ dining room, the table already set for our meagre breakfast. There was no clattering from the kitchen. The cook must still be sleeping. I moved as silently as a shadow through the great room, which still reeked of yesterday’s mutton, and proceeded along the servants’ corridor.

I halted outside Mama’s room. I could not go in. There was another maid living there now, a large, clumsy girl called Maud. She was harmless enough, but I hated her simply because she had taken Mama’s place. I could not stand the thought of her gimcrack possessions littering Mama’s chest, her dirty brush and comb on Mama’s washstand, her fat, ungainly body sprawled all over Mama’s bed.

I stood outside the door, leaning my head against the varnished wood, remembering all the precious times I had spent with Mama within those four walls.

I wrote on the door with my finger:
I love you, Mama
, and then crept away. I returned to my bed undetected. If only I had been so lucky before! We would have had some chance of regular meetings if Mama were still employed at the hospital in London and I were not too far away in the suburbs. A simple bus ride, perhaps.

My heart started beating faster at the thought of my journey today. I had Mr Charles Buchanan’s address written inside my journal:
8 Lady’s Ride, Kingtown
. I had no idea how I would reach this destination. I had only been outside the hospital grounds once, when I was ten – the day of Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee. We had been escorted all the way to the great children’s celebration in Hyde Park. I had seen the circus there, and had run away to try to find my childhood idol, Madame Adeline, the magical spangled woman who had let me sit on one of her rosin-backed horses and had won my heart for ever. I had taken an omnibus ride that day, as bold as brass. I tried hard to remember how I had hailed it and how much money I had paid. What happened when you wanted to get off? Did you ring some kind of bell? How would I know where 8 Lady’s Ride was? How would I know anything at all in the outside world?

I remembered how the children in Hyde Park had pointed and jeered at me. Would people still point me out and ridicule me? I clenched my fists. I would make them sorry if they did. I was Sapphire Battersea, and I would show everyone. I was not content to be a common servant. One day my name would be famous, recognized all over London.

I shut my eyes and saw
Sapphire Battersea
in big fancy lettering on advertising posters,
Sapphire
Battersea
in bold print in newspapers. I heard the name
Sapphire Battersea
shouted through loudhailers,
Sapphire Battersea
acclaimed by thousands of mouths.

Then a handbell clanged along the corridor – and I was Hetty Feather again, back in my dismal dormitory. All the girls groaned and yawned and struggled out of their beds, hopping from one bare foot to another on the cold linoleum. They tugged on their brown frocks and fumbled with their aprons and cuffs.

I stood too, pulling on my new grey dress. It smelled so different, fresh and clean. Although the material was brand new, it felt remarkably soft after my thick, itchy uniform. The other girls circled me enviously, stroking the folds, holding out my skirts admiringly, while I brushed and plaited my hair.

‘Will you put your hair up now, Hetty?’ Emma Baxter asked. She was a kindly, helpful girl who slept in the bed next to mine.

‘Of course,’ I said, but I had no hairpins, and my flimsy new cap could not easily accommodate all my hair. I tried for two minutes, and then had to give up and keep my schoolgirl plaits hanging down my back.

‘Oh dear, you don’t look very grown up,’ said Emma.

I knew she was speaking the truth. I was no
bigger
than the ten-year-olds at the hospital and I didn’t look much older either. Emma herself had grown curves, whereas I was as straight up and down as any of the boys.

I drew myself up as tall as I could, my head held high. ‘I shall just have to
act
grown up,’ I said.

The other girls gathered round to wish me luck. Some sighed enviously, but the timid ones clutched each other, glad that it wasn’t their turn just yet.

‘Aren’t you scared, Hetty? I’d be all of a tremble, going off to the outside and being with all those strangers.’

‘I’m not the slightest bit scared,’ I lied.

I tried to eat a hearty breakfast in the dining room just to show them. I remembered that Monica had been in such a state she’d had to rush outside to the privies to be sick after a few spoonfuls of porridge. Even fierce Sheila had been very pale, her high forehead wrinkled with anxious frown lines. She had given me a sudden hug after breakfast and murmured, ‘Don’t ask me why, but I shall miss you, Hetty Feather.’

I did not feel the same way for any of these girls I had grown up with, but I felt a terrible squeezing of my insides when I looked down the long, long table and saw Eliza, craning her neck to peer at me forlornly.

We were not allowed to get up from the breakfast
table
till the bell went, but it was dear Nurse Winterson on meal duties, and she was never strict. I clambered off my bench and shot along the room to Eliza. I threw my arms around her and hugged her hard.

‘Oh, Hetty!’ she wailed, pressing her face against my flat chest. ‘I shall not be able to bear it here without you!’

‘Of course you will, Eliza. You have many, many friends,’ I said, which was true enough. Eliza was a sunny, cheery little creature with curly hair and dimples. Everyone wanted to be her friend. Even the fierce matrons softened when they saw her. No wonder my Jem had found it easy to forget me and lose his heart to Eliza.

Nurse Winnie came over to us. She was shaking her head, but smiling too. ‘Now, now, Hetty dear, I know it’s your last day, but you know the rules well enough. Go back to your bench, dear.’

Eliza burst into floods of tears.

‘Oh, please may I kiss Eliza one more time?’ I begged.

‘Of course,’ said Nurse Winnie. Her own eyes were brimming. ‘Do not worry about Eliza, Hetty. I promise I will look out for her.’

I kissed Eliza five or six times on her rosy cheeks, wiping away her tears with the soft cuffs of my new dress. ‘There now, darling. Don’t take on
so
. You will be fine,’ I promised.

Nurse Winnie put her arm round me as she walked me back to my bench.

‘I will miss her so,’ I said, struggling not to weep myself. ‘But I will not worry about her. It’s poor Gideon who breaks my heart. Oh, Nurse Winterson, please, please, please may I go and find him and say goodbye?’

‘Oh, come now, Hetty! You know perfectly well that I can’t let you go to the boys’ quarters!’

‘No, but you could perhaps turn your back and not notice if I slip out. I promise I’ll be ten minutes at the most. Oh
please
, dear Nurse Winterson. I shall miss
you
so much. You’ve always been my very favourite nurse.’

‘And you’ve always been the most artful of my girls,’ said Nurse Winnie – but she turned her back.

I rushed right out of the room before she could change her mind. I thought I would still have difficulty in getting to the boys’ dining room. I passed several nurses, but none of them stopped me. Then I caught sight of myself reflected in a window. I didn’t look like Hetty Feather the foundling any more. I looked like a maid in my grey dress, albeit a very miniature version. I stood staring at myself for a full minute, turning this way and that. It was exciting being this new person, but very odd, as if my own head had been stuck on an
entirely
different body.

The bell rang for the end of breakfast, and I came to my senses and scurried off to the boys’ wing. They were swarming out of their dining room, along the hall, up to their classrooms. They were mostly silent, but they still made much more noise than us girls. They stomped harder with their boots and thumped about bizarrely. I looked all about me, jostled as I threaded my way through them. It was so hard to distinguish one particular boy amongst this vast crowd of brown figures. But then I saw him, sloping along by himself, his head bent.

‘Gideon! Oh, Gideon!’

He looked over in my direction, his eyes still blank.

‘Gideon, it’s
me
, Hetty.’

He came rushing towards me and stood over me, a full foot taller than me now, though as little babes we had once fitted together in a basket.

‘Oh my goodness, Hetty! You look so different out of uniform. So, are you going today?’

‘Yes, I am to be a maid to a gentleman called Mr Buchanan. He writes children’s books.’

‘You might like it there, then.’

‘No I shan’t.’

‘Well,
I
would like it. I’m leaving at the end of the month, to go to Renshaw Barracks.’

‘Oh, Gid, I would give anything to change with
you
. It will be such an adventure for you. Just think how fine you will look in a soldier’s uniform. You might even get to travel abroad!’

‘Yes, what splendid fun – to be shot at and blown to smithereens,’ said Gideon bitterly. ‘It’s all right for you, Hetty. It’s so all
wrong
for me. I am a coward.’

‘No you’re not! You can be ever so strong and brave and stoical. My goodness, you couldn’t survive
here
if you weren’t.’

‘All the other lads mock me. I don’t blame them – I’m so very different. It will be worse at the barracks. I’ve heard such tales.’

I could not bear to see my dear foster brother in such torment. ‘Then do not go!’ I said. ‘You could just walk right out of the hospital! You’ve got the whole of London to hide in. You’re tall and smart. You will be able to bluff your way, find some kind of work and get lodgings. It’s so much easier for a boy.’

‘I have thought of it often. Perhaps I will find the courage to do that – but I rather think not. I told you, Hetty, I am a coward. We should have swapped places with each other when we were in that baby basket. I should have been the girl and you the boy.’

‘Come along there, Smeed! Stop dallying with the servants and get to your lessons, boy,’ someone shouted.

Gideon flinched.

I held his hand fast. ‘Remember, Gideon, I am your dear sister and I love you very much. I will always care for you. Maybe one day when you are on leave, you can come and take me out. I should love to be escorted by a fine soldier in a splendid uniform,’ I said earnestly.

‘
Gideon Smeed!
Are you listening? Head in the clouds as always!
Move
, or I’ll prod you!’

‘I have to go, Hetty,’ said Gideon desperately.

‘Goodbye, dearest Gid. Good luck!’ I said, and I reached right up and kissed him on the cheek.

The boys surrounding us jeered and whistled, and Gideon went as red as his waistcoat, but he blew me a very quick kiss in return. Then he went on his way and I wondered if we would ever see each other again.

I felt so cast down that I nearly lost my courage. I almost wished I were staying at the hospital. It was a cold, cheerless place, especially without dear Mama, but it had been my home for nine full years. I tried to have faith in Miss Smith and her writing gentleman, but I wasn’t at all sure that this was a good move. Maybe I should take my own advice to Gideon, and make a run for it the moment I stepped outside the hospital gates.

I had survived my two or three days of freedom when I was ten. In many respects I had had splendid adventures – and even earned enough to
feed
myself too. I was much better equipped now to find myself some desirable employment. Perhaps I should take this one and only chance! I felt badly about Miss Smith, but perhaps she would understand.

I gathered my few possessions in my small brown travelling box, ready to go. But Matron Bottomly called me to her room first. Matron Peters was there too, both of them shaking their heads at me.

‘Well, Hetty Feather, you are leaving us at last,’ said Matron Stinking Bottomly.