The crowd laughed again – but the mother got out her purse. By the time the stallholder came back from the alehouse I’d shifted practically a mile of material and created such a buzz around his stall that the other end of the market was empty.
‘Have I earned my bolt of linen, sir?’ I sang out loudly, giving him handfuls of coins so that everyone could see. I didn’t want him to cheat me out of it, pretending he’d never struck a bargain.
He handed over the material happily, with a flourish – and he let me have the blue velvet remnant too. ‘You’re a funny little lass, but you’re brilliant for trade. I’ve never seen anyone drum up a crowd like that. Do you want a job, by any chance?’
I wasn’t sure if he was joking or not, but I took him seriously. ‘I wish I could work with you, sir, but I’m needed at home,’ I said. ‘I can’t travel around with the market, much as I’d like to. But could we strike another bargain? Every time the market comes here, could I come and sell from your stall while you have your lunch break, in exchange for more material?’
‘You sell like you did today and you can have the pick of my stall,’ he said, doffing his cap to me.
I swaggered off with my bolt of material, happy as a lark. I didn’t have any money left for my lunch but it was easy enough to find good food in the market. I searched the gutter and found an apple and a pear that had rolled off a fruit stall, and someone else had dropped a big penny bun with only one bite taken out of it. I wiped them all carefully with my skirts and then had an excellent lunch.
I was a little hampered by my large bolt of material, but I cradled it like a baby and took a turn around the town. It was still an enormous thrill to wander up and down the shopping streets. I spent a very long time at the window of the draper’s shop. I was pleased to see that my market stall purchase really was a bargain. I took note of the fashion patterns for future reference, and sighed wistfully at the satin ribbons and flower trimmings – but I had enough sense to know that the dour-looking assistants inside would not be prepared to barter them for my selling spiel.
I ran in and out of the grocery store, delighting in the fact that I was no longer in service, sent by the cook Mrs Briskett to buy half a pound of raisins or a sugar loaf. I was almost mistress of my own house now.
I went past a butcher’s shop too, its doors decked with hanging chickens, its windows a rosy pattern of joints and chops coiled round with sausages. I was reminded painfully of Bertie. I’d promised I would keep in touch with him and let him know if I found my father, but I’d been so bowled over by doing just that I’d somehow had no time or inclination to write about it, not even to my dearest friends. Perhaps it wasn’t simple laziness. I’d been reluctant to write down my feelings about my father, even for myself in my own memoirs. I loved him dearly. He was a fine upstanding man. In many ways he was everything I could wish for, and yet somehow . . . he didn’t feel like a parent. I’d loved Mama with my whole heart and soul, but it was too strange meeting up with Father after such a long time. It was almost as if I’d pictured him out of my imagination. He didn’t seem real.
I still cared about him though. I would write to him, maybe visit again when I’d saved up enough money, but I didn’t think I could ever feel part of his home – especially not with Katherine there too!
My home was with Jem and Mother now. I could not wait to tell them of my triumph at the market.
Mother seemed pleased enough when I told her. She nodded, her eyes bright, though she could no longer smile.
Molly roared with laughter and clapped me on the back. ‘You’re a character, you are, young Hetty. Good for you! Well, you feel free to go off and strike similar bargains any market day you like. I’m happy to sit with Mother Cotton here. We get along fine and dandy, don’t we, Peg?’ she said, and Mother gargled agreement.
But Jem seemed curiously disappointed when I thrust my bolt of material at him and told him the tale of my triumph all over again. ‘I wanted you to spend those shillings on something you really wanted, Hetty,’ he said.
‘I did! Lord knows I wanted those extra yards or I’d never have risked making such a fool of myself.’
‘But it’s plain linen.’
‘It might look plain, but you wait till I’ve embroidered a yoke and cuffs. Mother will look as grand as a bride, I promise you. And with the extra yards I shall make you the finest shirt you’ve ever worn. You’ll be quite the dandy, you’ll see. All the village girls will be dancing round you,’ I said, reaching up and ruffling his hair to try to make him smile.
‘I wanted you to buy something pretty for yourself. Why didn’t you buy something fine and frilly to be made into a dress? Or ribbons for your hair, or glass beads, or a little toy or trinket? I wanted you to have a special treat, because you’ve worked so hard and been so good to Mother and me. The shillings were for you, Hetty.’
‘Then when you’ve saved up two more I shall gladly spend them for you, Jem! But meanwhile, Mother will have a new nightgown and Janet will have an embroidered pocket handkerchief because she’s been so good to me. You’ve been best of all, so you will get a shirt, and I promise I won’t get too carried away. I know how much you’d hate frills or fancy collars – but inside, where no one can see, I’ll find space to embroider love from Hetty. Whenever you wear your shirt you’ll see it and remember just how much I love my dear brother.’
I thought at first he might cry. His face crumpled the way it had done at Father’s funeral. But then he smiled and hugged me hard.
‘And I love you too, my dear little Hetty,’ he said. ‘Oh, I do so hope you are happy here.’
‘Of course I am,’ I said. ‘I have come home.’
15
I TRIED SO hard to be happy. I settled into a routine.
I couldn’t help it. I rose early, I lit the fire, I made Jem porridge for his breakfast to warm him before he spent his day toiling on the farm. I washed and changed Mother and fed her too, then tackled the washing, the ironing, the sweeping, the baking, the stewing. I had to make the same simple meals day after day with the same ingredients – pork, rabbit, cabbage, carrots, turnip, onions, and endless bread and dripping, bread and cheese, bread and blackberry jam.
Long ago Mr Maple had carved a wooden toy for Janet. She still kept it on the windowsill in her bedroom. It was a little wooden girl in a cap and clogs alongside a line of tiny wooden chickens. When you turned a wheel, she threw out her wooden arm as if feeding them, and every chicken opened its beak wide. It was a clever toy, and when you saw it you simply had to pick it up and turn that wheel, so the little wooden girl fed her chickens again and again.
I couldn’t help feeling like that wooden girl, repeating my daily tasks again and again until sometimes I felt I could scream. I did not know what was the matter with me. I was surely used to routine. I’d had nine years at the Foundling Hospital when we did exactly the same things every single weekday, with chapel and public dinner on Sundays.
I tried my hardest to vary things a little, especially for Mother. Her life was far more restricted than mine, confined to her bed in that stuffy little room. I asked Molly if we might take Mother for a little trip out in her donkey cart, but it was a very cold winter and Jem worried that she might get a chill.
He tried lifting her up in his arms in the early morning and carrying her down the stairs so that she could sit in her old chair for a change of scenery. She seemed to like that a lot, especially when I chatted to her as I did my household tasks. It was impossible for me to move her from the kitchen to the living room and back because I simply could not carry her, try as I might. I stared at the legs of her chair, wishing they could walk for her. Then I thought of the wheels on Molly’s cart!
I went to have a word with Mr Maple the joiner. He came along and fixed four wheels to Mother’s chair, one on each leg. What a difference it made! I could lean on the stout back and bowl Mother along, choosing a different spot for her each day. She liked to look out of the window most, though it often sta
rted her up on her ‘Gi-gi-gi’ chant.
She was recovered enough to start speaking a little. Her first word was Jem, clear as a bell. She couldn’t seem to manage Hetty. When I told her my real name, Sapphire, and my performance name, Emerald, she glanced at me sideways with her old Mother look. It was obvious she was never going to attempt such frivolous names. She called me ‘Goo-gir’ instead. I think she meant good girl, and I truly tried to be a good girl for her.
I worked very hard on her nightgown. I knew Mother would have been perfectly content with a plain gown, straight up and down, with no frills or furbelows. She wouldn’t even have minded if the stitching was big so long as the seams held fast. But I sewed fancy stitches all the same, and finished the gown with three ruffles instead of an ordinary hem, and I embroidered an entire flower garden on the yoke: red roses, yellow daffodils, purple pansies and blue cornflowers, with a little green trail of ivy twining round all of them.
‘Oh, Hetty, it’s a work of art, not a nightgown!’ said Janet when I showed it to her.
She had started to come calling every day after school. I made the three of us a cup of tea, and Janet talked slowly and sweetly to Mother, telling her about all the children’s funny ways and little escapades. Mother loved Janet’s company, but usually tired after ten minutes and nodded off to sleep, and then we girls could chat more naturally.
I made Janet her handkerchief. I think she was expecting floral embroidery, but I chose little child motifs instead. I stitched infants skipping right round the handkerchief in a circle, curly-haired girls in lilac dresses, mischievous boys in pale blue, with tiny babies in cream frocks crawling in each corner.
‘Oh, Hetty! Well, I can’t possibly use my handkerchief. I couldn’t wipe my nose on these dear little children,’ said Janet. She had her father make a special wooden frame for the handkerchief and hung it in her bedroom like a picture.
Jem grew a little nervous when I started making him a shirt. ‘It’s so good of you, Hetty. You do such fine embroidery, but I’d really sooner you didn’t sew flowers or babies or suchlike on my shirt,’ he said.
‘Don’t worry, Jem. I have a different design in my head for you. I thought a farmyard theme would look well – chickens around the collar and cuff, a row of fat pink pigs trotting across the chest and a big plough horse plodding along your back,’ I said – and then I burst out laughing when I saw his face. ‘I’m joking, Jem! I won’t do any embroidery, I promise.’
I kept my word. The shirt was perfectly plain, no flowers, no frills, no fripperies of any sort – though I stitched the promised love from Hetty inside the collar where it didn’t show.
‘It’s the most beautiful shirt in all the world,’ said Jem. He wore it very proudly every Sunday, easing his collar and airing his cuffs in church to show it off to the whole village.
I made more shirts, handkerchiefs and nightgowns throughout the winter. The villagers started giving me orders and paying handsomely for my stitch work.
I had a fine supply of materials because I went to market most Thursdays. Jim the stallholder let me drum up trade for him each time. It was my little lunchtime show and I enjoyed myself enormously. I was almost too successful, so that Jim grew a little resentful, even though his Thursday takings increased dramatically. The other stallholders hated me royally. They seemed anxious that I might set up my own stall and put them all out of business, but I did not want to be a professional market girl. I did not even want to be a seamstress, though I enjoyed sewing, and loved fashioning new outfits for folk.
I wanted to be a writer. Every day now I worked at my memoirs, recording my current thoughts and feelings and rewriting my earlier childish jottings in my new market notebook. I used up every scrap of paper in the notebook and had to buy myself a new one. I bought one for Janet too. She had seen me scribbling away, page after page, and had watched in wonder.
‘How can you write so quickly, Hetty? You never seem to pause to think what to say!’
‘I don’t have to think, I just write it!’ I said. ‘Haven’t you ever kept a journal, Janet?’
‘Well, I did start one once when I was little. I began each entry with I got up and finished with I went to bed, and there was scarcely anything in between,’ she said, laughing. ‘It was the silliest record ever.’
‘Perhaps mine is silly too, but it’s a great comfort and joy to me,’ I said.
Janet peeped over my shoulder and glanced at my page. ‘Is that Jem you’ve written there?’ she said.
I snapped my book shut. ‘You should never read anyone else’s journals!’ I said.
‘It was about Jem!’ said Janet.
‘It might have been. I write about everyone. I write about you!’ I said.
‘Do you really? What do you say? Do you say I know a girl called Janet and she is very dull?’
‘I write lovely things about you because you’re such a good kind friend,’ I said.
‘No you don’t!’ said Janet.
I flipped back through my memoir until I found the passage where we first met and let her read a paragraph.
‘Oh, Hetty, that’s such a sweet passage! You make it all come alive as if it’s a real story,’ she said.
‘It is a story – the story of my life,’ I said. ‘Anyone can write one.’
The next market day I bought a pretty new notebook in green and white check, and wrote very carefully on the first page: Janet Maple – The Story of Her Life.
Janet was so pleased. She gave me a kiss on both cheeks and declared I was the kindest girl ever.
‘It’s for your thoughts and feelings, remember. If I peek at it and find an entry starting I got up, I shall score it out,’ I said.
‘You said yourself, you should never ever read anyone’s journal,’ Janet laughed.
I loved Janet’s company so much, though I was happiest of all with Jem, of course. He came home every night at dusk, when I liked to have supper ready, Mother fresh, and the house clean and welcoming. I couldn’t pick flowers for the table because it was winter, but sometimes I arranged little branches in a jar in a decorative fashion, tying tiny scraps of painted paper to each stem to look like flowers. I tried to be as imaginative as possible with food too, though the ingredients for our meals were so limited. I put each portion on the plate in a particular pattern, or spelled out the initials of our names with thick gravy or sauce.
I varied Mother’s dress too. One day I played Lady’s Maid and dressed her up in her newly trimmed bonnet and mantle, with a string of beads around her neck. I styled my long red hair a dozen different ways, even though it usually came tumbling down by the time I was halfway through my meal.
‘I never know what I’m going to find next!’ said Jem. ‘Oh, Hetty, it’s a delight to come home to you and Mother now.’
He was so sweetly appreciative of the simplest little thing. He ate his meals as if they were royal banquets. He had fine table manners for a man, cutting things carefully with his knife and fork and chewing with his mouth closed. He didn’t bolt his meal, he took his time, and he often helped give Mother hers, gently feeding her each spoonful and skilfully wiping her lips and chin so she stayed clean and dainty.
It was so much nicer now she could join us at the table in her chair. Although she couldn’t join in our conversation properly, she nodded and took it all in. Jem fed her snippets of gossip as well as food, telling her about all the different farm lads and their wives and children.
But the best times of all were when Jem and I had put Mother to bed and could sit together by the fire. Jem had used up all his stories over supper, so I did most of the talking, spinning him tales of this and that. There was nothing different to tell about my daily life, so I generally went off into a world of fancy. I tried to get him to join in with my games. ‘Jem, if a fairy flew right in that window and landed on your head and spun round and round and awarded you three wishes, what would you ask for?’ – or ‘Suppose you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go and what
would you do?’ – or ‘If you were digging in the potato patch and suddenly came across a crock of gold, what would you spend it on?’
Jem always smiled fondly at my silly questions but never gave satisfactory answers. ‘I’d wish we were as happy as this every day. I’d wish it three times over. I don’t want to travel anywhere else. I like it here with you, by my own fireside. I don’t need a crock of gold. I don’t want for anything.’
‘Oh, Jem,’ I’d say, wishing he’d join in my games.
He seemed happy enough for me to chatter on, but he didn’t often join in with ideas of his own. I kept thinking back to our childhood. Jem was always the one telling me things, pretending, helping me picture . . . Why wouldn’t he do it now?
Then I remembered how young I had been. When you’re four, your big nine-year-old brother knows so much more than you, and whenever he tells you something it’s new and fresh and exciting. But when you’re fourteen you’re not so very different to a nineteen-year-old, especially if you’ve had a bleak upbringing and nine chaotic months trying to get on in the world. Jem only knew this village life.
‘Don’t you ever long to travel, Jem? To see a little bit of the world?’ I asked.
‘I saw London the day you left the hospital and I didn’t think much of it,’ he said.
‘I’m so sorry I walked straight past you. I was just in such a daze. I never thought you’d be there, waiting for me at the gate,’ I said.
‘I said I would come for you. Surely you didn’t doubt me?’
‘But that was when we were both little. I thought you were just telling me stories.’
‘I’ll always keep my word to you, Hetty. I thought you’d know that,’ said Jem, a little stiffly.
‘Don’t make me feel bad, Jem,’ I begged.
‘I won’t do that either,’ he said, smiling at me. ‘It doesn’t matter now anyway. You’re here. I wrote to you and you came. It means the world to me.’