Hetty Feather Read online

  Dear Ida! She had chosen the smallest book she could find so I could hide it easily about my person. Thumbelina was even smaller than me, yet she was the heroine of her fairy tale, and when I peeked at the ending I saw she lived happily ever after.

  I was frozen solid when I eventually stole back to bed, but glowing inside, warmed by Ida's loving generosity. At breakfast I waited until she came to serve us our porridge and then I grabbed hold of her hand tightly.

  'Thank you, Ida!' I said passionately. 'I do love you so.'

  The other girls giggled, thinking I was simply thanking Ida for my porridge. But Ida understood. She gave my bowlful an extra sprinkling of brown sugar and patted my shoulder, smiling all the while.

  I marched off to chapel feeling very happy. For once I sat through the long, long service without fidgeting, because I had the wondrous Nativity tableau vivant to gaze at. The participating children kept still as statues. Even the newborn babe in the cardboard manger slept peacefully throughout. Mary was one of the big girls in Harriet's class, thin and dark and a little gawky, but strangely graceful now. She knelt before the baby, hands clasped in awe, her beautiful bright-blue dress draped decorously about her.

  Joseph was one of the big lads, tall as a man, splendid in his orange striped robe. The shepherds were arranged artistically on the left, some standing, some kneeling. There was even a stuffed sheep, and the smallest shepherd clutched a toy lamb. The three wise men paraded on the right, wearing large gold crowns studded with glass jewels. Each boy sported a long false beard to show they were very old and very wise. Oh, how I longed to have a beard too!

  Best of all, there were the angels, an entire flock of them, standing aloft upon the stable roof, in gauzy white with great feathery wings, Monica amongst them, pink and pious, her eyes raised upwards. There was one angel who seemed to be truly flying, dangling on a rope from the chapel rafters, his bare feet on the points of a silver star; the most wondrous angel, with a halo illuminating his dark curls. You will never guess who it was! My own little brother, suspended in mid-air, his arms gesturing gracefully, his toes pointed, dancing down from Heaven.

  'It's Gideon!' I whispered proudly to Polly. 'My brother Gideon.'

  I felt I could sit there in the chapel for ever. I was so happy for Gideon, and so relieved that he was well and making such a grand job of this angel acting. I glowed with pride when I heard the ladies and gentlemen talking as we ate our Christmas dinner afterwards.

  'Bless the children, they looked so splendid in the tableau vivant.'

  'They kept so still, even the tiny ones.'

  'The little boy angel was by far the best.'

  'Oh, I agree! A true little angel up there in mid-air!'

  I nudged Polly, and happily munched my way through my roast goose and my plum pudding. We each had an orange too. Some of us little ones were inexperienced orange eaters and tried to bite into the bright dimpled skin. I might have done the same because we never had oranges at the cottage, but I watched Polly and copied her as she peeled the skin away and divided her orange into segments.

  We had no official presents as such, but when we lifted our mugs to take a drink, we discovered a brand-new polished penny. I hid mine later on top of Jem's silver sixpence. I went to sleep that night with Polly's pen under my pillow, Harriet's doll tucked in beside me, and my tiny book clutched to my chest.

  15

  We were given an orange and a new penny the next Christmas – and the next and the next and the next. That was the worst thing of all about the hospital: the sheer sameness of every single day.

  If things did change, it always seemed to be for the worse. Harriet left the hospital to go into service as a nursery maid. She cried when she said goodbye, telling me she'd never care for any of her new nursery charges the way she cared for me. I missed her dreadfully. She had been so kind to me, and I'd loved sitting on her lap and being babied. Thank goodness I still had Polly!

  We moved into the upper school, into a different dormitory. Of course I remembered to transfer Jem's sixpence to my new bedpost. I had to say farewell to dear Nurse Winnie and Miss Newman. Thank goodness Ida could still serve me every day in the dining room, giving me illicit gifts of raisins and jam and knobs of butter when no one was watching.

  'How are you doing, Hetty?' she'd always ask.

  'I'm doing very well, Ida,' I mostly said.

  I wasn't doing well, I was doing very badly. I didn't care for my new teacher, Miss Morley, and she certainly didn't care for me – or Polly either. Miss Newman had been strict but she liked both of us. When we answered correctly or asked an interesting question, her eyes lit up behind her spectacles and she seemed delighted to teach us.

  Miss Morley stopped asking us to answer questions, because she knew we'd get them right, and this seemed to irritate her.

  'Don't sit there with that smug expression on your face, Hetty Feather. We all know you know the answer,' she'd say, and she'd give a false yawn and encourage all the others to laugh at me.

  I couldn't help knowing the answers because our lessons didn't progress. We could mostly all read and write by now, and do the simplest sums – and there we stuck, not working our way forward at all, going over the same dull facts again and again.

  There were maps all round our classroom wall and I'd stare at all the different countries and picture a flea-sized Hetty sailing across the blue sea and landing on each pink and yellow and green land.

  'Stop daydreaming, Hetty Feather, and attend to your dictation,' Miss Morley snapped.

  'Can't you tell us a little about the countries on the map, Miss Morley? I wonder what it is like in great big Africa or India or Japan? Do the children do dictation there? Do they wear long dresses and caps, or do they wear short clothes – or maybe if it's very very hot, no clothes at all?'

  The others sniggered and Miss Morley flushed, though I hadn't meant to be impertinent.

  'Stop these ridiculous questions, Hetty Feather. You don't need to know the answers. It's not as if you're ever going to voyage to foreign parts. You're going to be a servant like all the other girls. You only need to write a decent hand, read a recipe and add up your groceries correctly.'

  I felt I needed to do so much more! I still hated the idea of being a servant. I feared I would be a very bad one. We were taught how to wash clothes and scrub floors now, helping out with all the household chores in the hospital. I hated getting hot and wet. I was so bored I distracted myself by telling stories in my head, not concentrating on the tedious housework.

  'Use some more elbow-grease, Hetty Feather!' they'd scream at me. 'Watch what you're doing!' they'd yell when I started and knocked over my pail of water.

  Polly was as bored as I was, particularly in lessons. She could not bear our arithmetic sessions because Miss Morley frequently made mistakes. Polly pointed out a simple subtraction error on the blackboard early on, waving her arm earnestly.

  'What is it, Polly Renfrew? I haven't finished the sum yet.'

  'I know, Miss Morley, and I'm sorry to interrupt, but I don't think you've noticed that you've subtracted an eight from a three and put the answer as five, and yet you haven't borrowed ten from the next line so that nine is incorrect,' she said helpfully.

  She wasn't being impertinent. At this stage she didn't realize that Miss Morley's grasp of arithmetic was extremely shaky. She thought she'd simply made a silly slip and would be grateful for her intervention.

  Grateful! Miss Morley flushed an ugly scarlet and rubbed the entire sum from the blackboard. 'How dare you admonish me, Polly Renfrew! Come out here.'

  Polly stepped forward uncertainly.

  'Hold out your hand.'

  Polly held it out politely, as if Miss Morley was going to shake it. But she seized her long ruler instead and went whack whack whack across Polly's soft white hands.

  We all jumped. Our eyes stung. We'd been threatened with whippings and beatings many times in the infant school, but the only actual physical punishment any of u