Hetty Feather Read online

  Two or three years! I'd been in the Foundling Hospital for less than a day and yet it already felt like a lifetime.

  'Do you know your way around all this great big building, Harriet?' I asked.

  'Of course I do. Don't worry, you'll learn your way around soon too.'

  'Do you know where all the boys are?'

  'Yes, they are in the west wing.'

  'Do you know how to get there?'

  'Yes, but I have never been. It's not allowed.'

  'Have you never seen the boys?'

  'Oh, yes, yes, sometimes we see them across the yard at play, and we watch their sports day once a year. We see them in chapel too, though we're not supposed to peer round.'

  'Couldn't we go together now, just to have a peep at them?'

  'Of course not, Hetty. We would be seen and then we would get into fearsome trouble.'

  'I don't care. I need to see my brother,' I said.

  'Ah.' Harriet was silent for a moment. 'I had a brother. Two brothers. They are here too. Michael and John.'

  She said their names uncertainly, as if she wasn't sure. I felt my throat tighten. She didn't seem to remember them properly, and yet she was a big girl, not a small girl who was easily muddled, like Martha. I resolved even more strongly that I would never never never forget my dear brothers (especially Jem) or my sisters, and that somehow I would find the boys' wing and seek out Gideon.

  Harriet wouldn't take me to the boys' wing but she did take me to the big girls' room. There was no nurse keeping order so the girls chatted as they mended clothes, sewing up split seams in the ugly brown dresses and hemming torn aprons.

  'Come here, Hetty, let me show you something,' said Harriet.

  I feared I was in for another sewing lesson and I'd already proved myself spectacularly untalented at darning – but Harriet pulled off a long length of cotton thread, tied it together, and then placed it round her outstretched hands.

  'Watch carefully! I will teach you how to play cat's cradle.'

  I watched, though I didn't see a cat or a cradle, just strange patterns forming as Harriet fiddled the cotton with her fingers. She tried her best to show me what to do, and praised me extravagantly when I managed to flip the thread into the right zigzag pattern.

  'Clever baby!' she said.

  I felt a little indignant – she seemed all too ready to treat me like a two-year-old – but I didn't protest. It was wonderful to have found a friend in this huge and horrifying hospital, two friends, if I counted kind Nurse Winterson.

  But at night-time I was utterly friendless. All the little girls were lined up and washed by a big girl. She had long plaits like my Harriet, but she was nowhere near as kind. She scrubbed at our hands and faces with the horrid carbolic soap, not caring in the slightest if it went in our eyes.

  Then we were led to the infant dormitory, a vast room of fifty iron bedsteads. I was taken to a bed right beside the door and my clothes pulled off me by another big girl. She stuck a nightgown over my head. It was so long it trailed on the floor. My shorn hair stuck out wildly in all directions. Some of the other girls laughed and pointed. I licked my fingers and tried to make the tufts stick to my scalp.

  'Stop doing that, you look so silly!' said the big girl. 'Fold your clothes up neatly – neatly, I said – and put them in your basket at the end of the bed.'

  I did as I was told. I hid my lucky sixpence in my basket too, resolving to find a safer hiding place when no one was watching.

  'Now say your prayers. Don't take too long about it, mind. Then get into bed.'

  I knelt down, put my hands together and shut my eyes. 'Dear God, please get me out of this horrid, hateful place,' I prayed. 'Please don't let the matron and the nurses and the other boys be plaguing Gideon. I know it is all my fault he cannot speak any more and I am such a sorry girl. Please bless my dear family at home and don't let me ever forget them. Please especially bless Jem. Please—'

  But the big girl was tugging me impatiently. 'That's enough. Into bed. Now!'

  I opened my eyes and saw that all the other girls were already under their covers. I hurried into bed myself. The big girl dimmed the light and said, 'Goodnight! No talking now.'

  She went out of the door and closed it tight. Immediately a whispering started. The girls called each other, chatting about their day. They started talking about me as if I wasn't there!

  'What about the new girl, Hetty Feather?'

  'She looks a sight. That hair!'

  'She's so small and scrawny.'

  'I saw her sucking up to Harriet.'

  'She's so stupid at darning.'

  'She went down on her knees to pray, pretending she's so holy.'

  'She's just acting monk to make people sorry for her.'

  'I don't like her at all.'

  I jumped out of bed and ran to the nearest girl. 'Well, I don't like you!' I cried, and I pulled her ear hard. She screamed and I ran to the next bed. 'And I don't like you!' I pulled another ear, then ran on. 'Or you – or you!'

  They all set about shrieking, and then the door burst open and someone stood there, an oil lamp held high, illuminating her ugly features. It was Matron Pigface!

  'What is this terrible noise? How dare you behave so badly! And who is this child out of bed?'

  She seized me, shining the lamp in my face. 'Hetty Feather! Behaving like a child of Satan on your very first night here! Get back into bed this instant, and if you put so much as a foot on the floor all night you will be whipped severely.'

  She smacked at me as I dodged past her and dived into my bed.

  'Now you are all to go to sleep this instant!' Pigface commanded.

  After she'd waddled out of the room there were several muttered remonstrances, but soon every girl was breathing heavily. Some murmured as they dreamed, some snored. I was the only one awake.

  I lay on my back, feeling so wretchedly lonely in my narrow bed. I longed to snuggle up beside Jem or Gideon. My arms ached for my dear rag baby. I lay trembling hour after hour. I felt so small in this huge room of spiteful girls. I seemed to grow smaller and smaller as I lay there. I clutched myself in fear that I was actually shrinking. I did not seem myself any more. I gripped my elbows tightly and gritted my teeth. I had to hang onto myself. I was not going to become just another foundling girl in hideous apparel. I might have to wear the dress, cap, apron and tippet, I might have to obey all their dreadful rules, but inside my head I still had to stay Hetty Feather.

  11

  I woke to the clamour of a bell. A new big girl strode up and down the dormitory, shouting at us to get up. It was cold and my bladder was bursting, but I had to strip my bed, roll up my mattress and put on my hateful uniform before I could shuffle to the privy. A big girl – yet another, so many, how would I ever learn who was who? – washed our hands, inspected our necks and brushed our hair. Then we had to line up and walk two by two to the dining room. I did not have anyone to walk with. I decided I did not care. I pictured to myself another Hetty, and we held hands and walked downstairs together, whispering to each other. Several times the other girls tried to elbow me out of the way, but Hetty and I elbowed back. We had small arms but very sharp elbows.

  'Stop pushing and poking each other!' a nurse called. 'Who is that girl there, the little one?'

  'Hetty Feather,' the other girls chorused, triumphant that I was in trouble again.

  'You must learn patience and decorum, Hetty Feather. We expect little girls to queue up quietly for their food at the hospital, not trample and grunt like little pigs in a sty.'

  She said it humorously but she nearly set me off crying again, because I thought of our pig in the sty, and Jem and Mother, and a wave of homesickness washed over me.

  'So you're a new little girl,' said the kitchen maid at the end of the table, serving out bowls of porridge. She was small and slight – if it wasn't for her careworn face I might have mistaken her for one of the big girl foundlings. Her maid's uniform hung about her, her skirts trailing pa