Hetty Feather Read online

  I heard laughing and cooing and clapping. I was left in the basket by myself! I screamed – and more hands came back for me.

  'No chance of forgetting this one. Miss Hetty Feather. I'm not sure you'll want her, missus. She might be little but she's a shocker for screaming. She's been squealing like a pig ever since we left London.'

  'Oh well, it shows she's got spirit,' said a voice. 'Let's have a squint at her then.'

  I was placed in strong arms, my face pressed against a very large soft chest. I snuffled against her. She smelled of strange new things, lard and cabbage and potatoes, but she also smelled of sweet milk. I opened my lips eagerly and I heard laughter all around.

  'There! She's smiling at you, Mother! She's taken to you already!'

  I was stunned. This was not my real mother. Was she a new mother? She held me in one arm, my basket baby brother in the other. Her large hands held us safe as she walked out of the station, children clamouring about her.

  'I dare say you'll do a good job with them, missus. You bring on the scrawny ones something wonderful,' said the basket-carrier.

  'It's a bit of challenge, two little ones together, but I dare say I'll manage,' she said. 'Let's take you home and get you fed, my poor little lambs,' she murmured in our ears.

  We had a home. We had a mother. We were safe. We never had to go back to the great chill baby hospital again.

  Don't mock, I say! I was only a few weeks old. I didn't know any better.

  2

  My new home was a small thatched cottage with whitewashed walls, and roses and honeysuckle hanging around the front door. It was small and dark and crowded inside. It smelled of cooking all the time, plus strong yellow soap on a Monday, washday. That was our washday too. When the sheets and all our shirts and frocks and underwear were flapping on the line, our mother, Peg, popped all us children in the clothes tub. Gideon and I were tossed in first. Gideon always cried, but I bobbed up and down like a duckling and only wailed if Mother rubbed soap in my eyes.

  Gideon was my foundling brother, my baby travelling companion in the basket. He was not much bigger than me, a pale, spindly baby with a thatch of black hair and large eyes that fixed you with a mournful stare.

  'There's not enough meat on these two together to bake into a pie,' said our new father, John.

  He poked both of us in our belly buttons. It was a playful poke but we both shrieked. We weren't used to big, loud father people. All men were big and loud to us babies, but when we were older we saw that John was the tallest man in the village, with arms like tree trunks and a belly like a barrel. His voice was so loud his holler could carry clear across five acres. He was as strong as the huge shire horses he used to plough the land. No man dared argue with him because it was clear who would win – but Peg wasn't the slightest bit frightened of him.

  'Get away from my new babies, you great fat lummox,' she said, slapping his hands away. 'You're scaring them silly. Don't cry, my lambkins, this is just your father, he don't mean you no harm.'

  'Chickee-chickee-chickee, coochie-coochie-coochie,' said Father, tickling under our chins with his big blunt fingers. We screamed as if he was a storybook ogre about to snap our heads off our necks.

  'Get out of it,' said Peg, flapping at him with a towel. She gathered Gideon and me up out of our improvised bathtub and wrapped us together in the towel, warm from the hearthside. She held us close against the vast pillow of her bosom and we stopped crying and snuffled close to our new mother.

  'My muvver!' said Saul, swotting at us with his hard little fists.

  He was just starting to walk, though he had a withered leg so that he limped. Father had fashioned him a little wooden crutch. Saul used it to prod Gideon and me. He hated us because he wanted Mother all to himself.

  'There now, my little hoppy sparrow. You come and have a cuddle too,' said Peg, hauling him up into her arms alongside us.

  'And me, and me!' said three-year-old Martha, burrowing in. Her eyes were weak, and one of them squinted sideways.

  Jem held back, his chin held high.

  'Don't you want to come and join in the cuddle, Jem dearie?' said Mother.

  'Yes, but I'm not one of the babies,' said Jem stoutly. 'I'm five. Nearly.'

  'Yes, my pet, you're my big boy – but you're not too big to say no to a cuddle with your old mum. Come here and meet your new brother and sister.'

  I was wriggling and squirming, squashed by Saul.

  'Here, Jem, you take little Hetty for me,' said Peg. 'Ain't she tiny? You were twice her size as a baby. She's had a bad start in life – both the babies have, bless them. Still, we'll soon fatten them up, just you wait and see.'

  I nestled in Jem's arms. He might still be a little boy not yet five but he seemed as strong as our father to me – but nowhere near as frightening. Jem's hands cupped me gently.

  'Hello, little Hetty. I'm your brother Jem,' he said softly, rubbing his face against mine.

  I couldn't speak but my lips puckered and I gave him my first real smile.

  Jem wasn't the eldest. He was the youngest child who really belonged to Peg and John. They also had Rosie and Nat and Eliza, and there were more still – Marcus, who'd gone off to be a soldier, and Bess and Nora, who were away in service.

  All these children – so many that your head must be reeling trying to keep count of them all! I find it hard enough to sort them all out in my head. The older ones kept themselves separate from us younger fostered foundlings, though Eliza sometimes liked to play schools with us.

  She lined us all up in a row by the front step and asked us to add two and two and recite the alphabet. At first Gideon and I couldn't even sit up by ourselves, so we clearly had no chance of coming top in Eliza's school. She lisped our answers for us, and answered for Saul and Martha too. She didn't have to invent replies for Jem. He knew simple sums and could read out of The Good Child's ABC.

  'A is for Apple. B is for Bear. C is for Chair. D is for Daisy. E is for Elephant.'

  I could chant my own way through by the time I was two. Eliza fancied herself a teacher and sat us in the corner if she felt we were stupid and caned us with a twig if we protested.

  Jem was the true teacher. He showed me how to eat up my porridge and my mash-and- gravy and my tea-time slices of bread and jam. 'That's right, you're a baby bird. Open your beak,' he said.

  I opened my mouth wide and then smacked my lips together, swallowing every morsel, though I was a picky eater and fussed and turned my head away when Mother tried to feed me.

  We didn't have any toys. Mother would have thought them a waste of money. She didn't have any money anyway. However, Jem found a red rubber ball in a rubbish heap. He washed it well and polished it so it shone like an apple. He flung it high into the air and caught it nine times out of ten, and then kicked it from one end of the village to the other.

  'Me, me, me!' I said, on my feet now, but still so little that I toppled over when I tried to kick too.

  The others laughed at me, especially Saul, but Jem held me under my arms and aimed me at the ball until one of my flailing feet connected and gave it a feeble little kick.

  'There, Hetty, you can kick the ball, just like me!' he said, hugging me.

  He sat beside me on the front step and drew me pictures in the dust with his finger. His men and women were round blobs with stick arms and legs, his babies were little lozenges, his animals barely distinguishable one from the other, but I saw them through Jem's eyes and clapped and crowed delightedly.

  He helped me toddle down the road to the stream and then held me tight while I splashed and squealed in the cold water. If I kept my legs still while he dangled me, the minnows would come and tickle my toes.

  'Fishy fishy!' I'd shriek.

  Sometimes Jem turned his hand into a fish and made it swim along beside me and nibble titbits while I laughed.

  When I grew bigger, he pushed me in a little cart all the way to the woods and showed me red squirrels darting up the tree trunks.