Hetty Feather Read online

  Ida had to serve the next table, and as soon as she was gone, three fine ladies stepped right up to our table and watched us eat.

  'My, they're so neat and dainty! See how they spoon their gravy so carefully!' said one.

  Of course we were neat and dainty. We knew that if we spilled anything down our Sunday tippets we'd get our knuckles rapped.

  'Aren't the little ones sweet! Do you see that one with the high forehead? That's a clear sign of intelligence,' said another, singling out Sheila, who smirked at her in sickening fashion.

  'I'm rather taken with the very little one. She's not much more than a baby,' said the third. 'Poor little scrap, I doubt she'll survive the winter.'

  I scowled at her, which was a mistake.

  'Oh dear, look at that expression! She's a surly little thing. No, no, my one's smiling prettily,' said the second lady, fumbling in her purse. 'Here, my dear, a little treat for you.'

  She put a wrapped sweet beside Sheila's plate. Sheila popped the sweet down the front of her tippet before anyone else could see. Aha! So that was why she'd smiled so.

  I knew how to play this game now. The three ladies trotted further down the dining hall, and their place was taken by a gentleman and a lady, arm in arm.

  'Oh, I do like the little ones,' said the lady.

  I sat up, opened my eyes wide, and smiled.

  'That's a dear little love, the one at the end. Look, she's smiling!'

  'Bless the child, she's taken a shine to us!'

  I grinned and gurned deliberately while they oohed and cooed – but they sauntered off without giving me anything. Sheila saw my face and laughed at me. She patted the tiny bulge in her tippet where her sweet was and licked her lips.

  But then another lady and gentleman came nearer, both so fat that his waistcoat buttons were a-popping and her corsets were strained to bursting point. They were exclaiming over the meagreness of our portions, though this Sunday fare was practically a feast to us.

  'I'm sure the children are half starving!'

  I sucked in my cheeks and looked mournful.

  'See the little one at the end! What a shame, she needs feeding up. Here, my dear, this is for you.' The gentleman pressed a slab of toffee in my hand. I gave him the greatest grin of my life and tucked it into my tippet immediately, with a triumphant little nod at Sheila.

  Dear Ida came back with a second course for us, a milk pudding with a splash of red jam. Ida served out the pudding and the preserve, so I got a whole spoonful of raspberry jam. My spirits lifted considerably. I hoped Gideon was faring equally well in the boys' dining room. Ladies often made a pet of him so I thought he might get singled out and given sweetmeats.

  I collected four more boiled sweets myself, so that I was growing quite a chest under my tippet. I planned to eat my feast in bed, but as soon as we got outside after our Sunday meal, the big girls pounced on us little ones.

  'Come on, give us your sweets, fair dos!' they said, feeling up our cuffs and down our tippets, practically turning us upside down and shaking us in their search for our sweets.

  One girl snatched my precious slab of toffee, another gathered up my boiled sweets. I cried and tried to fight them off but there were too many of them.

  'Poor little Hetty! Leave her alone, she's my baby!' Harriet shrieked, rushing to my rescue.

  She managed to save one last sweet, a barley sugar. 'There you are, my pet. Eat it up quickly before someone grabs it. Shame on you, girls, descending on the babes like a swarm of locusts!'

  She swept me off with her. I cuddled up close and sucked my barley sugar while she petted me.

  I learned to be more wily the next Sunday, stowing my sweets under my cap. They made my shorn hair a little sticky but I didn't care. It had a good scrubbing on bath night. Meanwhile sucking my sweets helped the long nights seem less lonely.

  I dreamed of home when I eventually fell asleep. It was so sad to wake and find myself imprisoned in the bleak hospital dormitory. I wondered how they were managing at home without me – especially Jem. I knew he would be fretting, frantic to know if I was all right. It gave me an added incentive in my writing class with Miss Newman. As soon as we could master our pens sufficiently, we were allowed to write home.

  It was a long letter and it made my hand ache terribly. Miss Newman wrote it on a board and we copied it out laboriously:

  Dear Mother

  I now have the greatest pleasure in writing these few lines to you, hoping to find you quite well and happy, as it leaves me at present. Please give my love to all the family.

  I remain

  Your affectionate girl

  Hetty

  We were told to copy it exactly, neither adding nor deleting anything. Older girls who were fluent enough occasionally tried to add a few more personal lines, but Miss Newman had to approve them before they could be sent.

  I was exhausted by the time I reached 'affectionate' and didn't concentrate hard enough. If I didn't insert enough fs and ts, or got my i and o the wrong way round, Miss Newman put a line through it and I had to start all over again. I longed to add my own personal message:

  I detest it here and I miss you so and Sheila is mean and I hate Matron Peters and she stole my rag baby and I don't wear drawers nowadays.

  However, I'd seen other girls have their letters confiscated if they so much as commented on the monotonous food or complained about being stared at on Sundays. I simply inserted two words after Please give my love to all the family – especially Jem.

  After I'd signed my name, I filled the rest of the page with kisses.

  Now that I could write, more or less, I tried hard to copy some of my picturings down on paper so that my stories were preserved. It was very hard to find any paper. I dared to steal a sheet from Miss Newman's special supply in the stationery cupboard, but it was mostly kept under lock and key. Harriet once obligingly tore a couple of pages from her exercise book, but my steadiest supplier was dear Ida. She slipped me paper bags and greaseproof paper from the kitchen. I stuffed them down my tippet and went around crackling all day until I could hide them in my mattress.

  It was hard to find a place to write privately. Sometimes I sat up in the middle of the night and scribbled in the dark with a stolen stick of charcoal, though in the morning I saw my lines of writing wobbled up and down and sometimes crossed right over each other.

  It wasn't enough to write my stories. I wanted to read new stories too. I had the Bible, and some of the stories were exciting, but the words were very hard to decipher. Miss Winterson lent me her book of fairy tales, and I read them over and over again. I went to the ball with Cinderella in my glass slippers, I let down my long hair like Rapunzel, I swam in and out of underwater coral palaces with the little mermaid.

  Ida spotted me reading on my lap during dinner time. 'Watch out or one of them nurses will be after you, Hetty,' she hissed.

  'I just love reading, Ida. I don't know what I shall do when I have to give the fairy-tale book back to Miss Winterson.'

  She chewed her lip. 'I'll see if I can find you some stories, Hetty. It's a wonder a tiny girl like you can read so well. You need encouragement.'

  'What's that you're saying?' Matron Pigface came waddling up, snout quivering.

  I quickly sat on my book, not wanting to get Nurse Winterson into trouble for lending it to me. I thought Ida would mumble something and move on, but she stood her ground.

  'I said she needs encouraging, Matron,' she said.

  'And why's that, pray? Matron Pigface enquired.

  'Because she's clever,' said Ida.

  'Clever as a cartload of monkeys, I'll grant you that,' said Matron. 'She needs watching all the time, that one. She doesn't need encouraging, she needs suppressing.'

  Ida still didn't give up. 'She learns so fast. I think she could become a real scholar.'

  Matron Pigface snorted with laughter. 'A foundling? Don't be ridiculous, girl. She'll be a servant, like all the others. That's all she's fit for and do