Sapphire Battersea Read online

  ‘But doesn’t she realize you’re ill?’

  ‘No! Well, she must hear me coughing sometimes, but she doesn’t comment. I take a spoonful of linctus every time I have to talk to her, and that helps a little.’

  ‘But doesn’t she see how pale and thin you’ve got?’

  ‘She’s an old lady, Hetty. She has cataracts and can barely see her own hand in front of her face.’

  Mama looked like an old lady herself as she shuffled around the kitchen preparing a tea tray. She let me make the pot of tea, but she cut waferthin slices of bread and butter and arranged them in tiny triangles on the plate, with a pot of blackberry jam.

  ‘I gathered the blackberries myself and then made the jam,’ Mama said proudly. ‘You shall have a big slice in a moment, darling. Though I don’t think you deserve it. You’ve clearly been a very bad girl. I thought you were happy working for this Mr Buchanan. You liked it that he was a writer.’

  ‘I’ve never liked him. He thinks he’s a great writer, but his stories are dull dull dull. And then he took my memoirs, Mama – my story, our story – and was using it to write his own story. So I confronted him.’

  ‘Hmm! You don’t “confront” your employer, Hetty.’

  ‘Sapphire! Won’t you call me by my true name, Mama?’

  ‘Sapphire, Hetty, whichever name. You’re still my dear, headstrong, wilful daughter, and goodness knows what I’m going to do with you!’ said Mama.

  A bell on the wall suddenly jangled, making us both jump. Mama started coughing again, holding her handkerchief over her face. ‘She’s … awake! Wants … tea!’ she gasped.

  ‘Oh, Mama, you poor thing, don’t try to talk. Look, sit down. Can’t I take the old girl her wretched tea? If she’s half blind, maybe she won’t notice it’s me and not you.’

  ‘Don’t talk … so daft,’ said Mama. She gave one last cough, clutching the handkerchief, then crumpled it up quickly and tucked it in her apron.

  ‘Mama?’

  She ignored me, took the tray, and carried it out of the kitchen, her poor stick arms taut and straining. I couldn’t bear it and tried to take the tray off her, but she glared at me ferociously and I had to give way. I watched her walk slowly up the stairs, her breath rasping, shoulders hunched. Oh dear Lord, this was my lovely young mother, my Ida, who had raced up and down the steep stairs at the hospital and lugged great vats of porridge around.

  When she came back, scarcely able to draw breath, I sat her down and poured her a cup of tea. I urged her to eat her own bread and jam, but she said she wasn’t hungry.

  ‘You must eat, Mama. Look how thin you are,’ I said, taking her poor little hands in mine. They were cold, though when I felt her forehead, it was still burning.

  ‘Mama, please. I can’t bear to see you looking so frail and exhausted. You’re very ill, no matter what you say. You must go to bed – and I must call a doctor.’

  ‘I can’t go to bed, Hetty dear. I have to make the supper. And we certainly can’t call the doctor. He charges a fortune! There’s nothing he can do for me anyway. I shall take another dose of my linctus. The only other medicine I need is you, my darling girl. Oh, Hetty, I still can’t believe you’re actually here!’

  I stopped trying to press Mama and helped her cook supper. I made an apple pie to show off my pastry skills, and basked in Mama’s praise.

  ‘Perhaps we might get you a job as a little cook after all!’ she said. ‘Miss Smith might be able to set you up again.’

  I kept quiet. I wasn’t going back to Miss Smith. I wasn’t going to be a cook. I wasn’t going anywhere now. I was going to stay right here and look after Mama.

  MAMA LET ME stay in her room that night. I crept quietly up the stairs, my shoes in my hand, while Mama gave Miss Roberts her nighttime cup of cocoa and settled her in her bed.

  Mama’s room was up in the attic. It made me want to weep, seeing all her modest possessions again: her little violet vase, her brush and comb, her special soap, her bundle of letters from me. She had a narrow iron bed, but I was sure there was just about room for two, especially if we wound our arms around each other. But Mama wouldn’t hear of it.

  She fetched fresh linen from the press, a cushion from the sofa in the drawing room, and a thick cashmere shawl belonging to Miss Roberts.

  ‘Here, Hetty, I’ll make you up a separate little bed fit for a queen,’ she said.

  ‘It’s lovely, Mama, but I’d sooner sleep with you.’

  ‘No, darling.’

  ‘But why? I used to creep into your bed sometimes back at the hospital.’

  ‘I don’t want you too near me, in case … in case you catch my cough,’ said Mama, and she wouldn’t be swayed.

  So I bedded down in my cosy nest on the floor, and Mama lay on her bed. I edged nearer in the night and put my arm up, so that I could just about reach her hand.

  ‘You’ll give yourself dreadful pins and needles,’ she whispered.

  ‘I don’t care if I get pins and needles all over. I need to hold onto you. Oh, Mama, I’ve missed you so.’

  ‘And I have missed you, my Hetty,’ said Mama.

  We clung tightly to each other’s hand. I think Mama might have been crying. I know I was.

  I woke very early. Mama was coughing, her hands clamped over her mouth to muffle the sounds. I got up and propped her up on my cushion as well as her pillows. It eased her chest slightly and made her cough less.

  ‘Better now, Mama?’

  ‘Much better, sweetheart,’ she whispered. ‘Now, I have been trying to work out the best way to get you a new position. I’m wondering whether I should write to Miss Smith to explain the situation, though I know my spelling leaves a lot to be desired. I don’t want to let you down, Hetty.’

  ‘You could never let me down, Mama! But I don’t see that there’s much point telling Miss Smith. I am sure she will take Mr Buchanan’s side, I just know it. He’ll tell her lies about keeping my memoirs to help improve my grammar and writing style.’

  ‘But she must be fond of you. She’s taken such an interest in you these last few years, and she’s been so kind forwarding all our letters. I’m sure she might give you a character to help you find another position.’

  ‘The only position I want is right here, Mama. I want to be with you.’

  ‘And I want that too, darling, with all my heart, but I’m not sure how we can keep you hidden away day after day. Miss Roberts is infirm, but she still totters from room to room using her walking stick. If she were to come upon you unawares, she’d be very shocked – and then I would lose my position.’

  ‘But you’ve said she’s a kind old lady. If you told her you’ve been reunited with your long-lost daughter, surely she’d be happy for you and want us to be together? I could work for her too. I would fetch and carry and do her sewing. I could even write her letters for her.’

  ‘Hetty, Hetty, you still don’t understand the ways of the world. I am her servant. I’m not expected to have a daughter, especially one born out of wedlock. She would think it terribly lax and immoral to condone such a situation.’

  ‘I think it’s terribly lax and immoral of her to let you wait on her hand and foot. Even if she’s totally blind, she can surely hear how ill you are every time you cough,’ I said hotly.

  ‘Ssh! She’ll hear you,’ said Mama. She swung her legs out of bed and tried to get up, but the movement made her cough again. Her hand searched all round the bed as she shook and gasped, looking for her handkerchief. She found it at last and held it to her mouth, while I stood beside her helplessly, patting her poor heaving back. She was so thin that her shoulder blades were as sharp as knives.

  ‘Please, Mama, get back into bed,’ I begged, but she wouldn’t listen. She stood up, still coughing, staggering over to her washstand in her old nightgown. She stood with one hand clutching the tiled top, her knuckles white. She gave one last heave. I saw the handkerchief at her lips suddenly darken with bright blood.

  ‘Mama!’ I stared i