Diamond Read online

  ‘Would we have been friends then, if I’d been at the hospital too? Would you have liked me almost as much as Polly?’ I asked.

  ‘I’d have liked you more,’ she said.

  ‘Tell me the games you played together. And tell me about the fierce matrons. And tell me about what happened when you were really naughty,’ I begged.

  ‘Perhaps I’ll simply read you little extracts from my memoirs.’ Hetty went to her leather suitcase and opened it up carefully. I saw a bundle of letters tied up with blue ribbon. She cradled them gently in cupped hands.

  ‘Who wrote the letters, Hetty?’ I asked. ‘Are they from a sweetheart?’

  ‘They are from Mama. They’re far more precious to me than any sweetheart’s love letters.’ She laid them carefully back in place and picked up a silver necklace.

  ‘That’s pretty,’ I said.

  Hetty held it up so that I could see it was a little sixpenny piece on a chain. ‘This is from a sweetheart,’ she said.

  I was sure this was Jem.

  ‘But you don’t wear it?’ I asked.

  ‘No, because I’m not anyone’s sweetheart now,’ she said, a little sadly.

  ‘And what’s this?’ I picked up a little black and white china dog. ‘Oh, I like him!’

  ‘Bertie won it for me at a fair,’ said Hetty.

  ‘Bertie? Another sweetheart?’ I said, a little crossly.

  Hetty laughed. ‘I dare say you will have sweethearts of your own when you’re a bit older,’ she said. ‘In fact I have a feeling young Tag is keen on you, Diamond.’

  ‘Tag?’ I exclaimed. ‘He hates me! He’s forever tormenting me.’

  ‘He’s just trying to get your attention,’ said Hetty. ‘He’s not a bad boy really. You could do worse than him.’

  ‘No I couldn’t! He’s the worstest worse,’ I said with feeling.

  I looked at the notebooks in the case. There were three thick volumes, one red, one blue, and one green, each page crisscrossed with Hetty’s tiny scribbly writing. ‘I can’t read it all,’ I said.

  ‘I will read a few pages aloud,’ said Hetty, flipping through the first volume. ‘Now, where shall I start?’

  ‘Start at the beginning,’ I said.

  So she did – and I wouldn’t let her stop. She read to me most of the day – and the next and the next. When she came to the first passage about Madame Adeline, I squeaked with excitement.

  ‘You must read it to Madame Addie too, Hetty!’

  ‘I think I am a little too candid about her at times,’ said Hetty. ‘I would not hurt her for the world.’

  I was even more excited when she came to the last quarter of the third book – and met me!

  ‘Are you going to be extra candid about me, Hetty? Are you going to write about this terrible, wretched girl who trails around after you and drives you mad?’ I asked.

  If Hetty had written any such thing, she didn’t read it aloud. She said lovely things about me!

  ‘Oh, you are such a special friend, Hetty! If I were ever clever enough to write a memoir, I’d fill page after page with all the things you say and do.’

  ‘Well, I’ll give you some more reading and writing lessons, and we’ll buy you a notebook and get you started,’ said Hetty.

  She was as good as her word. She bought a new notebook from a stationer’s in town, with a leather spine and edges, and a swirly violet pattern that reminded me a little uncomfortably of angels’ wings.

  ‘I haven’t always been a very good girl,’ I said. ‘Must I write down all the bad things I have done?’

  ‘You don’t have to, but it makes it a more truthful account,’ said Hetty.

  ‘But won’t I get into trouble and be punished?’

  ‘No one will be reading your memoir, Diamond, except me – and if you’ve been bad, I’m sure I’ll find it understandable, especially as I’ve been a very bad girl myself. I used to think folk might read my memoirs one day. I thought they might be good enough to be published as a special book, but I can see that was a ridiculous idea.’ Hetty sighed wistfully. ‘I don’t know why I’m bothering to write so much. No one will ever want to read about a foundling girl – or a kitchen maid or a fisher girl, or even a circus girl for that matter. Can you see Polly’s parents rushing to the bookseller’s to buy their precious daughter such an account?’

  ‘Yes!’ I insisted, though I could see she had a point. Then I suddenly remembered one of the fairy stories I had coloured. There were two contrasting illustrations: one of a girl in a sooty apron and ragged dress, weeping in a kitchen before a meagre fire, and another of the same girl in a magnificent evening dress hurrying in her sparkly slippers from a grand ball as a clock struck twelve . . . a number I now dreaded.

  ‘I know a story about a kitchen maid!’ I said, and described the illustrations to Hetty. I remembered them well: I had laboured hard to get the right shade of pale gold for the heroine’s hair and I’d patiently painted tiny jewels all over her Chinese-white ball dress. I’d talked to the girl all the while in my head, pretending that I was going to the ball too.

  ‘I think that’s the story of Cinderella,’ said Hetty.

  ‘Does it have a happy ending?’ I asked.

  ‘I suppose so. Cinderella marries a handsome prince.’

  ‘Then you might marry a handsome prince too,’ I said.

  ‘No, thank you very much,’ said Hetty. ‘You can have the handsome prince if he comes galloping up on his white horse.’

  I thought about it. I’d never met a handsome prince, of course, but I’d known quite a few handsome boys – my three big brothers, and Marvo, Julip and Tag. ‘I don’t think I want one either,’ I said.

  ‘Then we’ll be old maids together, and I dare say very happy ones too,’ said Hetty. ‘Here we are, Diamond. Here’s your memoir book. Get writing. I’ll help you with any hard words you don’t know how to spell.’

  I struggled hard for an hour or more, clutching my pen so tightly that it grew sticky with sweat. I had all the words in my head, but it took so long to get them out on the paper. Try as I might, my letters danced crazily up and down and were large and unwieldy, no matter how I struggled to keep them small and neat.

  My nam is Dimon. I use to be caled Ellen-Jane Potts, I wrote, filling a whole page with this uninspiring sentence – and then I burst into tears because I was so ashamed.

  I could not understand how I could paint so neatly when quite a little girl and yet could not even manage one proper sentence of writing now.

  ‘Don’t cry so, Diamond. You just need more practice, that’s all,’ said Hetty.

  ‘I hate practising!’ I wailed.

  ‘Well, tell you what: why don’t you tell me what you want to say and I’ll write it all down for you,’ Hetty suggested.

  ‘But you have your own memoir to write.’

  ‘I think maybe three great fat volumes are enough – for the moment, anyway. It is your turn now, Diamond.’ She took the notebook away from me and sat, pen poised. ‘Start talking!’

  ‘From the very beginning, as far back as I can remember?’

  ‘Yes!’

  So I started – and Hetty wrote it all down for me. She wrote and wrote and wrote, and said I’d had a very full life for such a young person.

  ‘So many things have happened, many of them dreadful,’ I said. ‘But now I have started a peaceful time where nothing much is happening at all, and that is quite heavenly. I wish we could stay in winter quarters for ever. Don’t you, Hetty?’

  ‘I don’t! I guess I’m more of a showgirl than you, Diamond, for all you’re so talented. I find I miss performing terribly. Don’t you feel cooped up here? I long to be on the road again.’

  Hetty was growing increasingly restless. She went on long walks every day, sometimes taking me with her, and carrying me piggyback when I couldn’t keep up. She had a fancy to take me back to London to show me the sights. Reading her memoirs aloud had made her dwell on the past and she wanted to show me the Found