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.
‘We will always remember you,’ said Matron Pigface Peters. ‘You are undoubtedly the wildest and most wilful girl we have ever had in our care.’
‘You will come down to earth with a bump once you’ve had a taste of the working world outside,’ said Matron Bottomly. ‘Beware, Hetty Feather! If you stick to your sulky ways, you will be dismissed for insolence, without a character, and then where will you be?’
‘Following in the footsteps of your mother, I dare say,’ said Matron Peters, and they both sniggered.
‘I’ll thank you not to bad-mouth my mother,’ I said. ‘I don’t have to listen to either of you ever again. I shall be off now. Goodbye.’
‘Goodbye and good riddance!’ they said in unison, like Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Nurse Winnie had read us the two Alice books in her sewing class when I was little.
They accompanied me along the landing and down the stairs. Nurse Winnie came running up. She took no notice of either matron and threw her arms around me.
‘Good luck, little Hetty! I can’t believe it’s fourteen whole years since I held you in my arms and tried to comfort you. I’ve never known a babe scream so much! But I knew even then that you were a very special child, and would go far.’
‘Oh, dear Nurse Winnie! Thank you so much for being so very kind to me over the years. I will never forget you,’ I said, suddenly close to tears.
‘Come along, Nurse Winterson. There’s no need to single the girl out. She has a high enough opinion of herself already,’ Matron Pigface snapped.
‘It seems to me you thoroughly spoiled her and ruined her character when she was in the junior school,’ said Matron Bottomly. ‘It was very hard for me to make a serious impression on such an imp of Satan. You must heed the warnings of the Good Book, Nurse Winterson – spare the rod and spoil the child.’
‘That’s nonsense!’ I cried. ‘Nurse Winterson is the only nurse here who shows us real love and care. That’s the only way any of us have thrived in this grim prison!’
‘Hush your mouth, Hetty Feather! How dare you talk to us like that!’
‘I dare say anything I wish, because neither of you have any power over me any more,’ I declared.
‘Don’t be so sure of that! We will be checking up on you vigorously. If you fail to please your new employer, we have the power to call you back to the hospital to retrain you,’ Matron Bottomly threatened.
That certainly unnerved me! I didn’t want to risk going to Mr Buchanan’s now. I’d start afresh, where no one could keep track of me. I wasn’t going to be Hetty Feather any more. I was Sapphire Battersea, only child of dear Ida. I would show these pig-faced stinking matrons. I would make my own way in the world, no matter what. I had to make a bolt for it now.
But my spirited plans were instantly thwarted. There was a strange woman lurking in the entrance hall – strange to me, and certainly strange in appearance. She was a very large woman. She made even Matron Pigface Peters appear sylph-like. She was dressed in a bizarre dark-red costume that made her resemble an immense slab of bloody meat. She wore a bonnet to match, trimmed with white, like mutton chops with paper frills. I stared at her in astonishment. She seemed equally bewildered by me.
‘This scrawny little creature cannot possibly be Hetty Feather!’ she said, hands on her hips. ‘I thought you said she was fourteen and a good strong girl? This child is barely ten – and her arms and legs look as if they should be in a box of Bryant and May.’
‘This is Hetty Feather, ma’am, and her fourteenth birthday was three full months ago – isn’t that correct, Hetty?’
I hesitated. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t like the look of this great meaty woman at all. I felt a further few weeks in the hospital might even be preferable. What was she doing here? Why had she come to fetch me? Where was Mr Buchanan?
‘I thought I was going to be Mr Buchanan’s servant,’ I mumbled.
‘Indeed you are, child. If you are of age.’
‘Speak up, Hetty, and reassure the lady. You’ve never held your tongue for long previously,’ said Matron Bottomly.
‘I’m fourteen. I’ve always been very small.’
‘With carrot-coloured hair too! I hope you don’t have a temper to match. Lord knows why we’ve been lumbered with you,’ said the meaty one, giving me a prod in the chest. ‘Come along then, child. We’ve got quite a journey ahead of us.’
‘Goodbye, Hetty Feather. Try your hardest to be dutiful and diligent. Might I suggest, ma’am, that you treat her severely right from the start. She has wild ways,’ said Matron Bottomly.
‘Frankly speaking, she could do with a good whipping every now and then,’ said Matron Peters.
I glared at them. My lips were pressed tight together. I wouldn’t even say goodbye. I clutched my box in both hands. My heart was beating fast. I decided to run for it the moment the great door was opened, but the large woman seized me by the shoulders, her fat fingers digging into my flesh, kneading me like bread. She marched me down the long pathway to the outside gate. I twisted my neck to look one last time at the hospital where I had been locked up for so long. I stared at the barred attic window and saw a ghost of myself looking down.
I shivered in the cold air because I didn’t have any kind of mantle or shawl.
‘Ah, you’re not quite so bold now!’ said Mistress Meat. ‘You’re quivering like a jelly in a mould.’
‘I am simply a little cold, ma’am,’ I answered, my chin up – but she only laughed at me.
She called to the porter at the gate. ‘I
s that hansom cab still waiting? Come along, Hetty Feather – he’ll be charging us a fortune as it is.’
She hustled me through the gate towards a horse and cab. I couldn’t help feeling a little thrill of excitement at the thought of such a journey. She pushed me up inside the cab and followed me close, spreading her dark-red skirts all around me. I had a glimpse of her legs in pink silk stockings, like vast pork sausages. I wriggled away as far as possible in such an enclosed space, while the driver above us clicked to his horse. As it started trotting I heard shouting. I couldn’t make out the words clearly, but I was almost sure that someone was calling my name.
I struggled round, half hanging out of the cab window, and saw a young man in brown corduroy running after us, waving his arms and shouting.
‘Sit down, miss! You don’t want to tumble out and break your head,’ said the meaty one.
‘But that man is calling me! He’s waving as if he knows me,’ I said, bewildered. ‘Please let’s stop the cab and see what he wants.’
‘Don’t be so silly, child. We’re not stopping the cab for you to chatter with any Tom, Dick or Harry. We have work to do! I came to fetch you out of kindness, in case you were confused on the journey – but I shall be terribly behind all day long now.’
She commanded the driver to get a move on. We soon rounded the corner of the street, going at such a pace that there was no way the young man could catch us.
Whoever could it have been?
I LOOKED LONG and hard at the meaty woman as we rode along together, squashed up like two pigs in a poke.
‘Why are you staring at me? Have I got a smut on my face?’ she asked.
‘No, ma’am. I was just wondering who you are,’ I said truthfully. ‘What is your name?’
‘I am Mrs Briskett,’ she said, announcing her name as proudly as if she were the Queen of England.
Mrs Briskett? Wasn’t brisket a type of beef? Oh, what a glorious name for this great bovine woman! I felt the most insistent giggles tickling my inside. I had to clench my teeth and suck my cheeks to stop myself erupting. I set myself to thinking why she was a Mrs Briskett. If she was Mr Buchanan’s wife, why did she not bear his name? Was she perhaps a neighbour of his, come to fetch me as a favour?
‘Excuse me, ma’am, but do you live at Mr Buchanan’s house?’
‘Of course I do, you silly girl.’
‘And – and Mr Briskett?’
‘There is no Mr Briskett. It is a courtesy title,’ she said.
I thought on. I remembered all the cook’s Police Gazettes I had secretly read at the hospital.
‘Then are you – are you under Mr Buchanan’s protection?’ I asked.
I thought I’d asked the question delicately, but she coughed and spluttered, her face flushing darker than her bonnet.
‘How dare you suggest such a thing! I can’t believe my own ears!’
‘I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to cause offence. I didn’t understand. I simply thought—’
‘I am Mr Buchanan’s cook-housekeeper,’ said Mrs Briskett. ‘I cannot imagine how you could possibly have dreamed otherwise. However, you are a poor ignorant orphan, Hetty Feather, so I suppose you simply do not know any better.’
‘Oh no, I’m not an orphan, ma’am. I have a very dear mother, Ida Battersea. In fact, I’m not really called Hetty Feather at all – that was just the name the Foundling Hospital inflicted on me. My name is Sapphire Battersea. Please may I be called by that name? It could be my courtesy title.’
‘Sapphire? What kind of ungodly, fanciful name is that for a little servant girl? Don’t be ridiculous, child. Were you christened when you arrived at the Foundling Hospital as a babe?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘And what name did they christen you?’
I took a deep breath. ‘Hetty Feather, but—’
‘No buts! That is your name, and you will not be known by any other. Sapphire indeed!’
Yes, Sapphire, Sapphire, Sapphire, I said silently inside my head. It is a beautiful name and it is my name, and you can ‘Hetty Feather’ me a thousand times a day, but I know my real name now and you cannot take it away from me.
‘I don’t care for that expression on your face, Hetty. I hope you are not a sullen girl. Do you realize how lucky you are to be given this opportunity?’
I felt like the least lucky girl in all the world, but I rearranged my face into an ingratiating smile and nodded vigorously. It was clear that Mrs Briskett had a quick temper and her fingers seemed as sharp as meat hooks. I was sure my shoulders were all covered over with bruises.
The horse slowed down and stopped, and Mrs Briskett nudged me to climb out of the cab. We were in front of a vast, imposing building, practically as big as a palace. It seemed dimly familiar.
‘Is this Mr Buchanan’s house?’ I asked doubtfully.
‘Dear goodness, how can you be so stupid, child? This is Waterloo Station! We are continuing our journey by train.’ She paused, then said slowly, as if speaking to a simpleton, ‘A train is a huge carriage with a massive engine at the front, powered by steam.’
‘I know what a train is, Mrs Briskett,’ I said with some satisfaction. ‘I travelled in one when I left my foster home in the country.’
She snorted. ‘You must have been only five or so at the time. I doubt you can remember anything about it.’
‘Indeed I can! I remember it all very vividly,’ I said. ‘Mother took Gideon and me, and we were so sad. My dearest brother Jem came with us to the station, and he told me to be a good brave girl, and he promised he would come and fetch me home one day–’ And then I stopped and moaned as if in pain.
‘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, bu
t 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 unnatural 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.’