Emerald Star (Hetty Feather) Read online

  I was not sure how much this would cost. Under cover of my skirts I fingered the money left in my purse. I still had to buy the ticket for this last train trip. I wasn’t sure there would be enough for a cab as well. Perhaps I shouldn’t have spent the money on the pie, though I had felt sick with hunger.

  I decided I had better walk to Waterloo. I asked the direction outside Euston Station. First I was sent one way, and then the other. I was scared someone would try to snatch my suitcase away. I hung onto the handle so tightly that my fingers cramped. I tried to keep to the noisy main thoroughfare because I was frightened of what I might encounter in the dark alleyways.

  My ankle was starting to swell alarmingly with all this unwonted exercise. I sat right on top of my suitcase for safety and rebound it as tightly as I could. I was so tired I was tempted to lie right down with the case as a pillow and sleep in a shop doorway. There were a few poor ragged souls doing just that, but they looked so vulnerable that it did not seem at all wise.

  I gritted my teeth and limped onwards, dragging my case. I tried picturing in my head to divert myself from my pain and weariness. I imagined myself as a little girl again, playing with dear Jem in our squirrel tree. It had seemed a perfect fully furnished home when I was four or so. I remembered chairs and beds and tea sets, and a row of dear little squirrel babies tucked into their cots in their own snug nursery. I could see it all vividly, but perhaps we had just conjured them up from sticks and stones and mud and rags.

  I was so tired now I seemed to be walking in a dream. I was not even surprised when I saw a familiar large bleak building coming into focus in front of me. I saw the entrance, the long path, the imposing door, the girls’ wing on the right, the boys’ wing on the left. I was looking at the Foundling Hospital.

  I set my case down, stood still, and rubbed my eyes, thinking I had simply pictured it out of thin air. Surely it was simply an illusion. But no matter how hard I scrubbed at my eyes, the hospital stayed firmly in front of me, and as I watched, a dim light was suddenly extinguished upstairs, so that the whole hospital was in darkness. That must have been Matron Stinking Bottomly putting out her lamp after her final inspection of the dormitory. I pictured all those poor foundlings tossing and turning in their narrow beds.

  It was hard to believe I’d been one of them scarcely six months ago. So much had happened to me in such a short time. I had lost my dearest mother and yet found a kindly father. I had toiled extremely hard in a conventional place of work and earned a pittance, and had idled through the days simply displaying myself in a bizarre costume and earned a relative fortune. I had lived in a variety of dwellings, large and small, but I had yet to find one that truly felt like my home. But I knew one thing. No matter how lost and lonely I felt right this minute, I would never wish myself back in the hospital. I was free now, and I was never, ever going back.

  10

  BY THE TIME I had limped all the way to Waterloo the last train had already gone. I bought another pie from a man just closing up his stall. He told me there were several cheap boarding houses in nearby streets, but I did not want to waste a penny more. I ate my meagre supper, then trailed round the vast station looking for a likely spot to settle. Eventually I wedged myself right in a corner, my back pressed against the hard wall so that no one could creep up on me.

  The cold stone of the station made me shiver and I had no blanket, but I noticed that the sleepers in shop doorways had wrapped themselves in newspaper for warmth. There were any number of crumpled papers blowing around the platforms, so I gathered as many as possible and then set about making a newspaper nest in my corner.

  I read David Copperfield for a while. David was away at school now, but I was free as a bird, so I tried to console myself that my lot was far better than his.

  Other homeless souls shuffled around the station. I shrank away from them if they came near me, clasping my case to my chest, but no one actually accosted me.

  I heard one ragged old lady say to another, ‘Poor little kiddie – she’s new to this life. See how well-scrubbed she is?’

  I was feeling especially grimy after my long journey, and my hands were blackened with newsprint, but I supposed I did look clean compared to them, with their grey-brown wrinkled faces and sour smells.

  I wondered if I should offer them some of my newspapers, but they shuffled off, sharing several swigs from a brown bottle. They had other ways of keeping warm.

  I did not think I would ever sleep in that great cold station, but after several chapters of David’s adventures my head started nodding. I curled up small under my newspapers and dozed fitfully until at long last, at dawn, the first trains started hissing and puffing.

  I cast off my newspaper nest and visited the ladies’ room. When I emerged, my dress still needed a good iron, but I was scrubbed clean and my hair pinned up to make me feel older and in control. I’d peered at my face closely in the looking glass, to see if all the emotional turmoil of the Monksby weeks had left any mark. I rather hoped for little lines and taut cheekbones and wan skin tones to give me a look of weary maturity – but my brow was smooth, my cheeks round, my skin clear, and I looked disappointingly childish. There seemed no danger of my foster family not recognizing me.

  I went to the newly opened office and asked for a ticket to Gillford, the nearest town to our village. I had been right to be cautious with my money. I was left with only a few shillings. I was hungry and thirsty again, but I could not face yet another meat pie.

  I stepped outside the station and found a baker’s down the road. I bought two white rolls still fresh from the oven, and then, back in the station, a scalding cup of tea, and felt much better after I had breakfasted. I could not help feeling proud of myself. I had journeyed all the way from Monksby and spent the whole night in the station, and I had not cried or begged anyone for help.

  Well done, Hetty! Mama’s voice said within me. I am proud of you.

  ‘I’m not Hetty any more. I do not seem to be Sapphire either. I am Emerald now,’ I whispered. Mama didn’t answer. I had a feeling she was laughing at me.

  The train out into the country went a great deal more slowly than the big express train from York, and it stopped every five minutes at station after station. I peered eagerly at each sign, not daring to read David Copperfield in case I missed my station altogether.

  The carriage grew uncomfortably full and was continuously a-jostle with people coming in and others getting off. They all had pale faces and sleepy eyes, and many smelled of the stale bed they had recently vacated. I sat primly in their midst, waiting and waiting to see the right station. I dimly remembered making the same journey in reverse with my foster mother, who took my brother Gideon and me to the Foundling Hospital when we were just five. We’d been such babies then, with no idea of the rude awakening from our carefree childhood that awaited us.

  I wondered if Jem had also contacted Gideon, telling him about Father’s funeral. And then there was my foster sister Martha, a year above me at the hospital, and Jem’s own blood brother Nat, and Rosie and Eliza. I tried hard to picture them all in my mind, but apart from Gideon they were all a little hazy now, as if I were peering at them through a thick mist. I remembered the tall skinny young Jem with his tousled brown hair and bright eyes and ready smile. I remembered every detail of that Jem – the knots of muscle in his thin arms when he lifted me up, his childish bitten nails, his jaunty walk. I could picture him laughing, his head thrown back, or yawning hard, mooing like a cow, at the end of a long day. I saw him running with a smooth steady pace – sometimes he would spot me watching and raise his legs and clop like a carthorse, neighing and shaking an imaginary mane, while I squealed with laughter. I saw him drawing with a stick in the dust, teaching me my ABC, I heard him reading aloud to me from our one tattered book, I felt him squeeze me tight when I crept into his arms.

  I did not want to get his letters out of my case in front of everyone – but I could remember what they said. I repeated little phrases to m