Diamond’s right hand dug into my shoulder as she shifted her weight and managed to free her left hand to wave. I took my own left hand off the handlebars, steering as steadily as I could, and waved too. Then we pedalled off into the wings.
Mrs Ruby clapped. I steadied Diamond, helped her clamber down, and jumped off the penny-farthing myself. We ran back on stage hand in hand and curtsied.
‘Well done, girlies!’ said Mrs Ruby. She stood up and clapped more.
‘Oh, Diamond, she likes us!’ I said, hugging her.
Mrs Ruby edged her way along the row of seats and hurried up the steps onto the stage, still clapping.
‘Diamond, you were superb. A true little star,’ she said, patting her on the head.
I smiled proudly and squeezed Diamond’s hand.
‘So who devised this new act?’ asked Mrs Ruby.
‘Hetty did,’ said Diamond. ‘She made it all up and got me to learn it, and we practised all the tricks on the penny-farthing again and again. She said we had to be absolutely perfect if we got another chance to perform for you.’
‘She’s a shrewd little sweetheart, then.’ Mrs Ruby nodded at me. ‘I reckon you’re a little star too. You’re a young woman after my own heart. You watched my show and worked out exactly what would work. And it’s paid off. You start on Monday. Pop into my room before the performance and we’ll sign a contract. Ten shillings a week for your double act. Does that suit you?’
‘It suits us splendidly!’ I said. ‘Thank you so much!’
‘Thank you, dear. I look forward to my new dress.’
‘I shall look at Miss Gibson’s latest patterns from Paris and bring you a selection to choose from,’ I said. ‘It will be the dress of your dreams!’
Mrs Ruby laughed again and waved us away.
Once we were off the stage I picked Diamond up and whirled her round. ‘We’ve done it, Diamond! We’ve actually done it. We really are going to be music-hall artistes!’
‘We’re Little Stars! Madame Adeline would love that,’ said Diamond. ‘Oh, will you write and tell her, Hetty? Maybe she and Mr Marvel will come to see us perform!’
‘And all the little monkeys too? How they will clap their tiny paws!’ I said.
I capered about like a monkey myself I was so happy. I only calmed down when we got near grumpy old Stan.
We rode the penny-farthing home. Miss Gibson was busy with a customer and could only nod at us, but the moment she’d finished her fitting she rushed into the back room and exclaimed joyfully when we told her the good news.
I was a little worried that she’d be cross with me for promising Mrs Ruby a new dress, especially as I was nowhere near as skilled as she was, but she didn’t mind at all.
‘Don’t you worry, dear. I’ll give you a hand with it,’ she said generously. ‘And now that you’re going to be a Cavalcade girl, perhaps you can put in a good word for me with the other artistes? Especially Lily Lark? How I’d love to dress her!’
‘I’ll work on it, Miss Gibson, just you wait and see,’ I promised. ‘And I’ll still act as your apprentice during the day. That’s what’s so wonderful about this job – it’s only evening work and yet it’s quite well paid.’
‘Can I get a new china dolly now?’ Diamond asked eagerly.
‘Very soon, I promise.’
‘And you’re the woman who keeps her promises, remember!’ she said. ‘Oh, I can’t wait to tell Bertie. He’ll be so pleased for us.’
I enjoyed telling him too. His whole face lit up and he danced a funny little jig. ‘There, girls! You lengthened the act, gave it some novelty, just as I suggested! And I was right, wasn’t I?’ he said.
‘Oh yes, it was all down to you, Bertie. I dare say you wrote the script and trained Diamond too,’ I said sarcastically, but he seemed so genuinely delighted for us that I couldn’t carp for long.
‘We’ll go out on Sunday to celebrate,’ he said.
‘All of us?’ asked Diamond.
‘Of course,’ said Bertie, but when she’d run off to fashion a dress for her doll Maybelle out of Miss Gibson’s scraps, he shook his head and sighed. ‘I was really hoping Miss Gibson would look after little Diamond so that you and I could walk out together, Hetty,’ he murmured.
I smiled and shrugged, not sure how to react. My heart was beating very fast again. I couldn’t understand why I felt so stupidly shy with Bertie now. We’d been such easy friends before. He’d kissed me on the cheek once, and that had seemed perfectly normal and natural, but now the very thought made me blush.
Still, I was determined not to go all moony-eyed over Bertie. I had to focus on our act. We had to keep it polished and up to standard. So I worked us very hard indeed every morning, trying to devise new acrobatic tricks for Diamond, while making sure that the routine went like clockwork. Diamond didn’t complain, but she had violet shadows under her eyes and equally vivid bruises on her arms and legs from inadvertent tumbles. I felt dreadful, almost as cruel as Beppo, but I was even harder on myself. I let Diamond have the afternoons off. She played dressing up with discarded material, did a little ‘stitching’ for Maybelle, and lay on her tummy kicking her legs while I told her a story as I worked.
I’d started on the dress for Mrs Ruby. She’d chosen an amazing flame-orange satin with a gold slub thread. I privately thought it a little garish even for the stage, but I told her that it was a wonderful choice: she’d shine like the sun itself – which seemed to please her. Miss Gibson helped me with the cutting out – my hands shook as I scissored the material because it had been very expensive. Miss Gibson had had to loan me some money until I received my first Cavalcade wage. She made sure I didn’t pin any material inside out or back to front, and checked all my tacking on the complex pieces. Then I started on the sewing. I made each stitch minute because I knew Mrs Ruby was a terrible stickler. I pulled every seam when it was finished to check it for strength.
It would take days and days to complete: there were big bunchy sleeves that had to be gathered to fit into the bodice, and the skirt was another nightmare, hanging smooth at the front but bunched at the back. I needed to concentrate hard, but I managed to tell Diamond stories at the same time.
I was word perfect on Thumbelina. Mama had given me the story when I was at the Foundling Hospital, and I had read it every night for years. I remembered other fairy stories read aloud to us by dear Nurse Winnie and recited them to Diamond, and then made up elaborate variations of my own. I amused myself with fairy-tale alternatives, talking of beautiful princesses who were secretly evil and cruel, slapping their baby sisters and kicking their kittens. I invented hideous witches who were sweet as honey and soft as butter, handsome princes who ran in fear when attacked by dragons, gentle giants who cradled children in their massive hands, and scrawny servant girls who sailed the seven seas and became queens of all the pirates.
Diamond enjoyed all my stories, but the one she liked best was utterly prosaic. It was about two little girls called Hatty and Twinkle. Hatty had red hair and Twinkle had fair hair. They were dear sisters and lived with their mama and papa in a small house in the country. Hatty and Twinkle played all day, and then Papa read them stories and Mama tucked them up in bed, and they cuddled up close and went to sleep. That was it. The simplest story in the whole world, but Diamond wanted to hear it again and again, and protested if I ever tried to make Hatty and Twinkle go for a walk into the woods or ride on a farmer’s donkeys or visit the seaside. She wanted Hatty and Twinkle to stay safe inside their house. She certainly didn’t want them to run away and become music-hall artistes.
I worried about her, knowing that I was forcing her to perform when she didn’t really want to, but she seemed happy enough. She was always ecstatic when Bertie popped into the dress shop. He sat cross-legged like a mini tailor, telling us all sorts of stories about the other artistes. He seemed a little too keen to convince me that Ivy Green was a perfect sweetheart.
‘Your sweetheart, I gather,’ I said crisply.
/>
‘Not at all! She’s just a dear friend. You’re my sweetheart now, Miss Hetty Feather,’ said Bertie.
‘No I’m not,’ I insisted.
‘I am your sweetheart, aren’t I, Bertie?’ said Diamond, tossing her long hair and fluttering her eyelashes at him like a miniature coquette.
‘Oh, how lucky I am! Two sweethearts, one for each arm,’ he said.
I told him to run away if he had nothing better to do than talk nonsense, but I was grateful when he stayed and played card games with Diamond. He started off making her a card house, but then showed her a few simple games. She was surprisingly quick to learn, and chortled happily whenever she managed to trump him.
I knew he was deliberately playing poorly and felt very fond of him. I didn’t flinch away when he kissed me goodbye. Diamond was even more enthusiastic. She flung her arms round Bertie’s neck and kissed him back heartily on both cheeks.
BERTIE SUGGESTED WE go for a picnic on Sunday. He’d found a delightful spot which he knew we’d love. Miss Gibson had lived in town all her life and probably knew every likely picnic venue for miles around, but she clapped her hands and told Bertie he was a marvel. Diamond echoed this.
‘You must let us provide the picnic, Bertie, as you treated us to lunch at the chop house,’ I said.
‘I want to provide the meat,’ said Bertie. ‘If there’s one thing I know about, it’s blooming meat.’
‘You don’t have meat at a picnic, do you?’ I said.
‘You do at my picnics,’ he told me. ‘But I hope Miss Gibson might provide some cake and lemonade. And I know what I want from you, Hetty.’
‘What’s that?’ I asked warily.
‘One of your magnificent apple pies!’
I was startled. When I was a maid at Mr Buchanan’s, I had indeed made Bertie an apple pie, but I was astonished that he’d remembered.
‘Can you cook pies, Hetty?’ asked Diamond.
At the circus we had lived on stews, mostly scrag end or boiler fowl, and occasionally on dreaded horsemeat. There had been no pantries, no tables, no bowls and rolling pins, no ovens, so of course I couldn’t possibly make pies.
‘She bakes a superb pie. That old Mrs Briskett taught her well,’ said Bertie.
‘No, it was Mama who taught me to cook. Mama was the best cook ever,’ I said. ‘At the Foundling Hospital she even made our porridge taste good.’
‘Were you a foundling child?’ Miss Gibson asked, looking astonished.
I felt myself blush. It had just slipped out. What would Miss Gibson think of me now? So many folk looked down on foundlings and considered them little sinners. But she smiled at me and patted my hand with her own plump one, her fingertips calloused with constant sewing.
‘You should feel very proud of yourself, dear, to have come so far. And it’s fitting that you are now employed at the Cavalcade. Peg’s Periodical gives little biographies of music-hall stars, and many of them come from humble beginnings,’ she said.
‘Yes, I’ve heard that the magnificent Flirty Bertie himself was once a workhouse baby,’ said Bertie. He curled his hands into tiny fists, and went ‘Waa-waa-waa!’ like a tiny baby, which made us all laugh.
‘Oh, I’m so looking forward to Sunday!’ said Diamond when we went to bed. ‘Aren’t you, Hetty?’
‘Oh, I suppose so,’ I murmured casually. I was actually looking forward to it enormously.
Miss Gibson went to the early church service on Sunday morning. She didn’t seem to mind when we opted to stay behind. I rather wished she’d taken Diamond with her. She was very keen to lend a hand with the pie-making and was forever getting in the way, spilling flour over herself and rolling the pastry too thin when I let her have a go with the rolling pin. In the end I suggested we both make a pie at different ends of the scrubbed wooden table, and that was easier.
‘We’ll cut Bertie a big slice of each and he’ll have to choose which one he likes the best,’ said Diamond, putting an extra big knob of butter and two spoonfuls of sugar into her pastry mix.
‘Hey, don’t do that! You’ll spoil it!’ I said.
‘But I want mine to be extra tasty,’ she protested.
She worked long and hard at her strange pastry, and by the time she was ready to assemble her pie, it was grey with working.
‘Oh dear, it doesn’t look very nice, does it?’ she said. ‘I think I’d better put extra apples in to make it especially delicious.’
She tipped in so many slices of apple, she could barely cram the pastry lid on top.
‘Now for the fun part,’ I said. ‘We decorate our pies.’
I showed Diamond how to make a pattern all round the edge with the fork, and pricked the top in a neat circle to let the steam out. Diamond jabbed happily, and then grew particularly excited when I divided up my leftover pastry and said we could now make a pretty shape to sit in the centre of our pies.
Mrs Briskett had often made a pretty pastry rose – but Mama had once fashioned something very special. I copied her now, cutting out the shape and scoring it carefully with the tines of a fork.
‘What is it? Oh, I know! It’s a feather!’ said Diamond. ‘Right, I shall make a diamond to show it’s my pie.’
She tried hard, but could only manage to make the pastry look like a blob, so she poked out the centre and made it into a letter D instead. Then we put the pies in the oven and started the mammoth task of clearing up Miss Gibson’s kitchen. Diamond kept wanting to open the door of the oven to see how the pies were progressing, but I managed to make her leave well alone. The kitchen was soon full of the most delicious sweet smell.
‘They’re ready, I know they’re ready now!’ cried Diamond.
‘No, not yet. We want them to get beautifully golden brown. Patience!’ I said. ‘Shall we go out in the yard and practise our penny-farthing tricks for ten minutes?’
‘Shall we not!’ said Diamond. ‘Oh, I’m so hungry because of the lovely pie smell.’
She ate a fingerful of butter dabbed in sugar, all the apple peelings, and even a piece of raw pastry, though I said it would give her worms.
‘You’re such a bossy big sister,’ said Diamond, laughing at me.
She seemed to have started believing that we really were sisters. Well, I was certainly closer to her than my own foster sisters, all of them grown up now, and Rose and big Eliza were certainly very bossy indeed. But of course I had a younger foster sister too, little Eliza, still languishing in the Foundling Hospital. I felt a sudden pang. I’d been so thrilled when she first arrived at the hospital and made her my special pet straight away, but when she started babbling about Jem and how she would marry him one day, I was so wounded I found it hard to have anything to do with her.
I should have tried to keep in touch with her when I left the hospital. I resolved to find her again when she turned fourteen and could leave as well. She would probably be devastated when Jem didn’t come to marry her after all. He would be married to my friend Janet by then. Perhaps he was even married to her already!
I was so deep in thought that I might have let the pies burn to a cinder, but luckily Diamond begged to take a peep into the oven at just the right moment. Both pies were golden and smelled splendid. Diamond’s was oozing syrup, which had burned a little.
‘Oh dear, mine’s leaking!’ she wailed. ‘And the juicy bits have gone dark brown!’
‘It’s leaking because it’s extra juicy. The juice outside will taste of caramel – it’ll be extra delicious,’ I assured her.
‘Do you think Bertie will really like it, then?’ she asked.
‘He’ll love it. I expect he’ll want to eat it all up himself,’ I said.
‘Well, he can’t!’ said Diamond. ‘I shall make sure you have a big slice, Hetty, because you’re really my favourite. And Miss Gibson had better have a slice too because she’s being so kind to us.’
Miss Gibson admired both our pies when she got home. ‘I must set to myself now, girls,’ she said.
She too
k off her going-to-church jacket, rolled up her black satin sleeves, covered herself in a large white apron, and got started. She made two big jugfuls of fresh lemonade, pouring them into old ginger beer bottles, and put them in the pantry to cool. Then she brought out more flour and sugar and butter.
‘What sort of cake shall I make? A nice Victoria sponge? A Swiss roll? An angel cake? What’s your favourite cake, girls?’ she asked.
Diamond and I exchanged glances.
‘They all sound lovely cakes, but there’s one kind in particular that we both like,’ I said. ‘I don’t know the name, but it’s checked pink and yellow.’
‘Yes, and wrapped all around with marzipan!’ said Diamond. ‘Oh, we love that cake, don’t we, Hetty!’
‘Battenberg,’ said Miss Gibson. ‘Yes, I love it too. And it’s a good little cake to take on a picnic because it won’t squash easily or lose half its cream. Right, Battenberg it is.’
Diamond and I sat at the kitchen table watching her make Madame Adeline’s special cake. I knew Madame Adeline bought hers from a bakery, so I worried that Miss Gibson’s home-made version wouldn’t be quite the same, but when at last it was cooked and assembled, it looked and smelled perfect.
It made us both miss Madame Adeline so much that when we went up to our room to tidy ourselves and get ready, we had a little hug.
‘I do wish we could see Madame Adeline and Mr Marvel,’ Diamond sighed.
‘I shall write to them tonight and tell them we are going to be music-hall artistes. They will be so pleased and proud,’ I said.
‘But I wish they were here,’ Diamond wailed, nearly in tears. ‘I especially miss Madame Adeline.’
‘Well, shut your eyes and I’ll see if I can conjure her up,’ I told her. ‘Go on, hide your head in the pillow – and absolutely no peeking.’
Diamond did as she was told. I hitched my dress right up to my thighs, kicked off my boots and stockings, and loosened my hair. I seized a floor mop, straddled it, then struck an attitude, arms out, toes pointed.
‘I am Madame Adeline, and I am about to perform my amazing acrobatic routine on my beautiful horse!’ I cried in Madame Adeline’s accent. ‘Wake up and watch me, my little twinkling Diamond.’