Sapphire Battersea (7 page)

‘What is it? Did you bite your tongue?’

‘Oh, Mrs Briskett, we have to go back!’ I said, trying to clamber back into the hansom cab.

‘What are you doing? Don’t be so tiresome, child. We’ve finished with the cab. We have to go and catch the train.’

‘No! No! I’ve only just realized – that young man waiting at the gate! It might have been Jem.’

I couldn’t be sure. He had been very tall, a good six foot, with the strong shoulders of a man – but of
course
my Jem would be nineteen now, no longer a boy. I had had no contact with him – he hadn’t bothered to answer a single one of my letters – though Miss Smith had indicated that some at least of my letters had been confiscated. He had played fast and loose with me, filling little Eliza’s head with daydreams that he was going to marry her – but I had been his first love. Perhaps he had calculated when I was due to leave the hospital, and had come all the way from the country to meet up with me? And I had walked straight past him, not giving him a second glance!

How could I have been so cruelly ignorant? I had been boasting this very minute to Mrs Briskett about my powers of recollection, yet I had failed to recognize my dearest Jem.

‘Please, please,
please
let me return,’ I cried. ‘It is a matter of life and death. I
have
to see that young man, the one waiting for me at the hospital gates.’

‘I beg your pardon, missy? You surely cannot have followers already – you’re only a little girl!’

‘No, Jem is my
brother
– my foster brother. Oh, it was him, I am sure of it now. Please, Mrs Briskett, I will be a good girl for ever – I swear it – if you’ll just let me go back and tell him I haven’t really forgotten him.’ I seized hold of her meat-red sleeve imploringly.

She shook my hand off straight away. ‘You’re being ridiculous, Hetty Feather. Control yourself, otherwise I shall feel obliged to have a word with the master about your impulsive behaviour. Then you will have the unusual distinction of being dismissed before you have even taken up your position,’ she said. She wagged her fat finger in my face. ‘This is your last chance!’

I
knew
it was my last chance. I should have dodged away from her and run like the wind all the way back to the hospital – but I hesitated fatally. I did not know my way through the bewilderingly busy streets of London, but that was no excuse. I struggled, but not determinedly enough.

Mrs Briskett marched me into the great noisy station, pushing me so hard in the small of my back that I stumbled in my clumsy boots and nearly fell to the floor. She jerked me up and hauled me up the steps into a carriage. She seemed so powerful I feared she was going to hang me by my feet from the coat-rack like a skinned rabbit – but she thrust me into a corner seat instead, sitting down so close beside me I could not budge.

‘There now. Sit quiet and no more nonsense,’ she said firmly.

I sat with my eyes closed, thinking back to that moment outside the hospital gates. I tried hard to bring that tall brown figure into focus. Had it
really
been
my Jem? I could not be quite so sure now.

I thought back to my early childhood. I remembered Jem lifting me up in his arms, carrying me everywhere. I remembered our times in the treehouse, when he patiently played my childish pretend games. I remembered him teaching me my letters and reading to me night after night. I remembered the way he’d held me tight on that long trip in the wagon, when I was leaving home for ever. I kept my eyes shut, but I could not stop the tears seeping out from beneath my lids and rolling down my cheeks.

‘There now, child,’ said Mrs Briskett, her voice surprisingly soft. ‘Don’t you cry now. I can’t abide tears. No doubt this is all queer and strange to you. You’ll be feeling homesick for the hospital, but that’s only natural.’

It would have been exceedingly
un
natural for me to be homesick for the hospital, but it seemed simplest to let her think that. I was amazed by her sudden change of tone. She’d been so tart and testy previously.

She patted my shoulder in a comforting way. ‘I remember
my
first position, as a kitchen maid in a huge great house in the country. It was very grand, but it felt so dark and strange and gloomy compared to our cottage at home. I cried myself to sleep for weeks – and I cried in the daytime too because
the
cook in that kitchen was a truly terrifying creature. That temper! If you chopped the carrots unevenly or curdled the custards, my goodness, she’d start throwing the saucepans at you. The copper ones, mind, so if you didn’t duck sharpish you’d be knocked unconscious.’

I blinked at Mrs Briskett in alarm.

‘Don’t look so fearful, Hetty Feather. That was in the bad old days. Little servant girls are treated with kid gloves now. I won’t be throwing any saucepans, so long as you try hard, keep quiet and mind your p’s and q’s.’

I nodded, though I wasn’t at all sure what my p’s and q’s might be. Problems and queries? I seemed to have a lot of both.

I stared out of the sooty train window as the train chuntered its way out of London. At first I saw ugly great factories spouting thick smoke, then mile after mile of terraced rows of dark little dwellings – but soon these started to thin out. Now I saw green fields and trees all about us.

‘Is this the country?’ I asked, wondering if I might possibly be near my dear foster home.

‘No, no, we’re only in Wimbleton – it’s a while yet. We’ve a few stations to go through before we get to Kingtown. That’s where Mr Buchanan has his establishment. It’s a big fine house too, though
not
quite
as large as Waterloo Station.’ Mrs Briskett chuckled at my foolishness.

‘Is Mr Buchanan a kind man?’ I asked timidly, wondering if I might somehow cause offence again by my mild enquiry.

Mrs Briskett remained relaxed, undoing her bonnet strings and giving her grey hair a good scratch. ‘Excuse me, dear. My best bonnet’s very fine but it certainly sets me itching. Mr Buchanan? Oh, he’s kind enough, though he has his little ways, of course. He’s a very important writer, you know. You’ll often see his articles on education in the newspapers, and there’s a whole shelf full of his books in the best bookcase.’

‘Might I be able to read one?’ I asked.

Mrs Briskett looked at me, her head on one side. ‘Can you read then, missy? Proper reading, great long sentences? I’ve worked with several little girls from the workhouse and they couldn’t read to save their lives.’

‘I’ve been reading fluently since I was four years old,’ I said proudly. ‘My brother Jem taught me.’

I shouldn’t have mentioned his name. I felt my lip quivering.

‘Well, I’m not sure it’s suitable for you to be reading Mr Buchanan’s books, though they are all written for children, I believe. It will tickle him to know you’ve asked – but I don’t think there’ll be
any
time for book-reading, Hetty Feather. You’ll be helping Sarah and me from six in the morning till ten at night.’

I didn’t like the sound of this work regime at all!

‘I do so love to read. Could I not read when I go to bed?’ I said.

‘I’m not having you ruining your eyes and wasting candles,’ said Mrs Briskett. ‘And if you’re doing your job properly, you’ll be fast asleep the moment you clamber into your bed.’

‘Perhaps I could read during my recess?’ I said.

‘
Recess?
’ said Mrs Briskett, as if she didn’t understand the word.

‘My playtime,’ I said.

The hospital had divided our days rigidly – mostly work and very little play, so it was always particularly important.

‘Playtime!’ Mrs Briskett chortled. ‘Oh, Hetty Feather, you’re going to be the death of me! You’re not a schoolgirl now. There won’t be any playtime for you, my girl. It will be work work work, seven days a week, with Sunday afternoons off
if
you’ve been a good girl.’

I listened, chastened. It was upsetting to to discover how little I knew about everyday life. The matrons had told me they were preparing me for work, but they had only taught me to darn and scrub floors. These did not seem very useful
accomplishments
. An hour’s darning or scrubbing had seemed interminable. How was I going to keep going all day long? I so wished I could ask Mama’s advice. She had tried to prepare me. She had even taken to sending me her best recipes in her weekly letters, just in case they came in useful.

‘Do you happen to know if Mr Buchanan likes game pie or beef pudding?’ I asked hopefully.

‘I dare say,’ said Mrs Briskett. ‘The master’s partial to all kinds of pies and puddings.’

‘Then perhaps I could make him one specially?’ I suggested. ‘I have a very fine recipe.’

But Mrs Briskett was laughing again. ‘You – cook? Whatever will you come out with next?
I’m
the cook, missy – you’re just the little maid of all work.’

I stared out of the train window again, dispirited. I didn’t
want
to be the maid of all work. There were bigger houses built right up close to the railway track now, so I could spy straight into their back gardens. I saw a girl about my own age in a bright blue dress swinging in her garden. Why couldn’t I be that girl, kicking up her heels without a care in the world? Why did
I
have to be the maid – and Mama too. Oh, if only we could live in a little house together –
our
home.

I gritted my teeth. I vowed there and then that I would make it come true some day. I knew I could
never
achieve such a thing on a meagre maid’s wage. Even Mrs Briskett could not afford her own establishment. Was Miss Smith really right when she said my memoirs were unpublishable?

‘Don’t frown, child, it makes you look disagreeable,’ said Mrs Briskett, tapping me on the forehead. ‘Gather your things up now. We alight at the next station.’

I had hoped that Kingtown would look a little like the country village of my early childhood, but when we emerged from the station I saw we were in a smart town of big emporiums, very much like London itself.

I stared around curiously, startled anew by the noise and bustle, the rattle of the carriages and cabs, the clatter of the folk in the street, the blinding colour of everyone’s clothes, when I was so used to the drab brown of our foundling uniform. Even Mrs Briskett’s extraordinary dress seemed muted and ordinary amongst the purple and peacock-blue and emerald-green gowns and bonnets.

I whirled round, staring after this lady and that, with their great long skirts swirling about their boots, rows of flounces cascading down their behinds at the back. I had thought my own new dress bright enough, but now it seemed drab in the extreme. I caught a glimpse of myself in a shop window and saw what a scarecrow I looked, my
sleeves
so long they hid my hands, my skirts skimped and unadorned, my cap bizarre.

‘I’m not dressed at all fashionably, am I, Mrs Briskett?’ I said forlornly.

‘Of course you’re not, Hetty Feather. Servants don’t follow fashion! You just have to look neat and serviceable,’ said Mrs Briskett, but she couldn’t help glancing admiringly at her own reflection.

A horse-drawn omnibus went past quickly, the wheels sending a mound of horse dung spraying up in the air, perilously near us on the pavement. Mrs Briskett jumped nimbly aside, mindful of her red skirts.

‘That’s a
bus
, Hetty Feather,’ she announced, as if I were a toddling child.

‘I know, Mrs Briskett. I journeyed in one once,’ I said. ‘Will we be catching a bus now?’

‘No, it’s only a shortish walk to the master’s house. This way!’

I trotted along beside her, looking all around me. I passed several buildings with comical names: the Dog and Fox; the Wheelwright’s Arms; the Three Fishes. They all had the same strange, pungent smell. I hung back, peering curiously through the coloured-glass windows.

‘Come along, child. You don’t want to go peeking into those dens of iniquity,’ said Mrs Briskett, giving me a firm tug.

‘Dens of iniquity?’ I repeated.

‘They are public houses. Gin palaces. Wicked places where foolish men waste their money on strong drink and weak women lose their self-respect,’ she told me, twitching up her long red skirts, as if she could not bear to share the same pavement with such people.

These horrific dens looked rather cosy places to me, but I knew better than to argue. I was conscious of another even more pungent smell emanating from a huge brick building. I wrinkled my nose. It smelled worse than the hospital privies. Could it possibly be a huge public convenience? I buried my nose in the cuff of my sleeve.

‘It’s just the tannery, Hetty. Step lively and we’ll soon be past,’ said Mrs Briskett.

A tannery? When Matron Pigface Peters had been really angry, she’d say, ‘I’ll tan your hide for you, you cheeky varmint.’ Was the tannery a grim place of correction? I shivered.

‘You don’t know what a tannery is, do you, Hetty Feather?’

‘I know it’s something dreadful,’ I said.

‘What? It’s where they tan the cow hides to make your boot leather, silly child.’

I peered down at my stout boots. I had had no idea they were made out of dead animals. I felt my
toes
wiggling in disgust. There was so much I didn’t know about the outside world. The hospital had always boasted that they were giving us an excellent education, but now I realized I was as ignorant as a newborn babe where most things were concerned.