Emerald Star (Hetty Feather) Read online

  I’d only known simple cottages with sparse makeshift furniture and Mr Buchanan’s overstuffed modern villa, so full of gimcracks and whatnots that you sent half a dozen flying if you whirled past too quickly.

  ‘I love your house, Janet!’ I said, running my hand admiringly over the curved back of a chair.

  ‘Oh, say that in front of Father and he will love you, because he’s a joiner. He made that set of chairs to give to Mother as a wedding present. Come and meet Mother. She will be baking for tomorrow.’

  We went into a fine airy kitchen with a proper range. Mrs Briskett would have loved to cook there. Mrs Maple, Janet’s mother, was a dear, plain, earnest woman, very like her daughter. Her hair was plaited in a girlish braid, though it was now silver-grey. She wore a long white apron and her sleeves were rolled up as she beat eggs into a bowl of cake-mix.

  ‘Mother, this is Hetty – do you recall, Jem’s foster sister? She lived here until she was five, and then she had to go to the Foundling Hospital.’

  ‘Oh yes, the little one with the bright red hair! I remember Peg carrying you around when you were a babe. You had a twin, did you not?’

  ‘That would be Gideon. We’re not related, but I always thought of him as my brother. He is gone to be a soldier now.’

  ‘And are you here for poor John’s funeral?’

  ‘Yes, that’s why I’ve brought her here, Mother, because there’s no more room to bed down in Jem’s cottage. I said Hetty could stay overnight with us. Is that all right?’ asked Janet.

  ‘Oh yes, dear, Hetty’s more than welcome. Take her up to the guest room,’ said Mrs Maple.

  ‘Guest room’ sounded very grand. A room just for me, their guest! It was right upstairs at the top of the house, a strange little room with iron ribs stretching across the ceiling and rows of hooks all around the walls. I fingered them curiously and Janet laughed.

  ‘Whenever my sisters and I were naughty Mother always threatened to take us up here and hang us on the hooks,’ she said. ‘Oh, Hetty, your face! They’re bacon hooks – this used to be a bacon loft long ago. They hung the smoked bacon here after it was cured.’

  Now that she’d told me that, I fancied I smelled a slight whiff of salty bacon about the room, though the bed was fragrant with lavender sachets and there was a bowl of dried rose petals on the linen chest. The smell reminded me of the room where my poor foster father was lying in his coffin and I shivered again, pulling Lizzie’s shawl tight around me.

  I was glad when we went downstairs to the warm kitchen and sat chatting while Mrs Maple baked. She made a Victoria sponge which she spread with her own homemade strawberry jam, two dozen little custard tarts, and an elderflower madeira cake laced with her own home-brewed wine.

  ‘Do you think that’s enough, Hetty?’ she asked me anxiously. ‘I’ll gladly make up another batch, for I know poor Peg isn’t up to baking at the moment – but I reckoned your big sisters would be fixing the funeral feast themselves.’

  ‘They have been baking, but not lovely cakes like these!’ I said. I paused, looking at them hopefully.

  ‘Perhaps you two had better try them for me, just to be sure they’re up to standard,’ said Mrs Maple, giving us each a warm custard tart and sprinkling it with sugar and nutmeg.

  I had had only a small bowl of broth for my lunch. My custard tart disappeared in seconds. ‘Oh my!’ I said, with my mouth full.

  ‘Mother’s custard tarts are the best,’ said Janet.

  ‘I don’t suppose you need to test your sponge or your madeira?’ I asked.

  ‘Absolutely not, you saucy girls,’ said Mrs Maple. ‘Now go into my pantry, you two, and pick a couple of jars of fruit. I dare say they will come in useful tomorrow too.’

  I’d been in pantries before. I’d crept into the one at the hospital when I was in the kitchen helping Mama, and she’d slipped me a handful of raisins or a spoonful of sugar. I hadn’t dared sneak morsels of food from Mrs Briskett’s pantry. She might have chopped my fingers off if she’d found me with my hand in her sweetmeat jar. But those pantries were as nothing compared to Mrs Maple’s. It was crammed with jars of fruit, preserves and pickles, arranged in glowing tones of colour, from the palest creamy-beige honey to the deepest purple damson. I stroked the shiny jars reverently, unable to choose.

  ‘We’ll have two jars of the yellow plums – Jem loves them so,’ said Janet. ‘Remember, Hetty? Jem always used to give himself a stomach ache. He’d pick them straight from the tree and eat two pounds at a time.’

  I didn’t remember. I couldn’t help resenting the fact that Janet knew Jem so much better than me. I had only had five years with him, but she had had her whole life. But even so, Jem was my brother, not hers. I had ‘married’ him wearing a long nightgown with a daisy chain crowning my hair when I was four. He had been happy to call me his sweetheart then.

  I thought of Jem’s letters. They weren’t exactly love letters, but they were so fond, so dear, so full of affection. I would be living with Jem now, tending Mother, cooking and cleaning, washing his shirts and darning his socks. I would be acting like a little wife already. Perhaps, in the fullness of time . . .

  I had my supper with the Maples – chicken and cabbage and potatoes, a simple enough meal, but beautifully cooked, with a rhubarb pie for pudding. Mr Maple ate with us, but said very little. He was a tall, broad man wearing old corduroys, as plain and strong as his furniture. He sat at one end of the table, Mrs Maple at the other, while Janet and I sat at each side. Four of the chairs stood empty. Janet was the youngest of five, but all her sisters had left home to get married.

  ‘But don’t you worry, my petal, it will be your turn soon,’ said Mrs Maple.

  ‘Mother!’ said Janet, going very pink.

  ‘Don’t you think it’s likely, Hetty?’ said her mother, turning to me.

  ‘Oh yes, very likely,’ I said politely, because Janet was a sweet kind girl, and if she’d been taught her mother’s culinary skills she’d make any man a fine wife.

  Mrs Maple was a magical healer too. She saw me limping, and after we had washed the supper dishes she bade me take off my boot and stocking so she could examine my ankle. ‘Poor Hetty! It looks very angry and sore,’ she said, touching it very gently.

  ‘Yes, indeed it is,’ I said.

  At the hospital we had learned very quickly not to complain of our ailments. We never got any sympathy, and sometimes a complaint would actively aggravate a matron, and we’d get a slap on top of our sore throat or tummy ache. I had tried to bear pain stoically – but I’d had to be very brave all that very long day, and now my whole leg ached and throbbed, and the bruising was still deep purple.

  ‘I will do my best to ease it,’ said Mrs Maple. ‘Janet, run to the cupboard and fetch me dried elderflower and chamomile.’

  She bathed my ankle with vinegar and water, which felt very soothing, though I did not care for the smell. Then she made up a poultice, mixing the dried flowers with crumbled bread, and bandaged it into place. I don’t know whether it was the vinegar bath, the herbal poultice, or Mrs Maple’s kindness, but the throbbing calmed and my ankle felt almost as good as new.

  ‘But you must rest it, Hetty. I don’t know how you’ll cope walking in the funeral procession tomorrow. Perhaps you’d better stay resting here . . .’ she said.

  ‘I shall go even if I have to hop all the way,’ I said. ‘And I will do my best to get Mother there too.’

  The thought of her poor twisted face and her gargled speech made the tears spring to my eyes. I did not love her the way I loved my own dear mama, but she had cared for me like a true mother for five whole years and she meant a great deal to me.

  I lay awake for hours that night in the bacon loft. The bed was very comfortable, with three feather mattresses as soft as thistledown, but I tossed and turned all the same. I thought of Mother lying immobile on her bed and Father even more stiff and straight in his coffin.

  Then I thought of Mama in her coffin under the earth in f