Emerald Star (Hetty Feather) Read online

  ‘And thank you so much for my lovely necklace, Jem. It was so thoughtful of you. I shall treasure it too.’

  ‘I’ll keep it polished for you,’ he said.

  He reached up and plucked a handful of ivy from the mantelpiece. I’d decorated it with holly and ivy to make the cottage look festive. He started fashioning it this way and that.

  ‘What are you doing? You’re spoiling my decoration!’

  ‘I’m making a kissing bow,’ said Jem.

  My heart skipped a beat. ‘Isn’t that meant to be mistletoe?’ I said.

  ‘We haven’t got any mistletoe, so ivy will have to do for now,’ he said. ‘Here, Hetty, you do it. Your fingers are more nimble than mine.’

  ‘Oh, Jem, don’t be silly. Let’s go to bed.’

  ‘Wait!’ Jem fashioned the ivy into the clumsiest of bows and then held it above our heads. ‘We must have a Christmas kiss.’

  I heard the church clock at the end of the village starting to chime. ‘No, sorry! It isn’t Christmas any more,’ I said, and made a bolt for it up the stairs.

  Jem didn’t try to follow me or call after me. When I went downstairs the next morning, the ivy kissing bow had been unravelled and threaded back into the greenery on the mantelpiece.

  He didn’t mention trying to kiss me when he came home. He couldn’t expect it either, because he’d been carting manure to the wintry fields and reeked of it, even though he stripped off and washed himself thoroughly.

  I felt so sorry for him having to work in the bleak fields all day long. He was put to digging ditches for most of January – really hard labour as the ground was frozen.

  He caught a chill and yet refused to take time off, going to work even though he had a fever and his nose was streaming. I made him thick soups and wrapped Lizzie’s shawl around him for extra warmth when he came home – simple little gestures, but he was heartbreakingly grateful.

  ‘You’re so good to me, Hetty,’ he said thickly.

  Mother caught the chill too, though I struggled hard to keep her warm and comfortable. She had a fever, and for a few days frightened me because she seemed so ill.

  ‘I reckon we’d better get the doctor to her,’ said Jem.

  The doctor’s visit cost a great deal, and was a total waste of money, because he told me to make sure Mother was well covered and had plenty of fluids. What did he think I was doing with her – sitting her out in the frosty fields and refusing her a drop to drink?

  He also said something so dreadful that Jem and I were dumbfounded.

  ‘It might be better for the poor soul if her lungs gave out altogether. She’s no use to man nor beast in that state,’ he said, wiping his boots on our mat and marching out.

  I felt as if he’d wiped his boots on me, and given me a good kicking into the bargain. ‘How dare he say such a wicked thing!’ I said furiously. ‘I’ve a good mind to go after him and give him a good slapping.’

  ‘Hey, Hetty, hold onto your temper. I don’t want you had up for assault!’ said Jem. He put his arms round me.

  This time I clung to him in the old easy, natural way. ‘How could he say such a thing about Mother – and him a doctor too!’ I said.

  ‘I know, I know. It’s wonderful that you love Mother just the way I do, and want to keep her here as long as possible. On her last visit even Eliza seemed to think that it would be a blessing to us when Mother goes.’

  ‘I don’t care for Eliza too much – I never did. But I do care for Mother. I tried so hard to keep my own mama alive, but I couldn’t manage it. I shall always have a huge ache in my heart for her. But I will try and keep our mother as long as I possibly can,’ I said stoutly.

  ‘The ache will lessen one day, Hetty,’ said Jem, cuddling me close.

  I knew he was simply trying to comfort me, but I pulled away from him. ‘How can you talk such nonsense?’ I said. ‘You can’t possibly understand how I feel about Mama.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Hetty. I didn’t mean to upset you. Please don’t be offended,’ said Jem.

  He’d always been so used to telling me things that I’d accepted without question. It was painful for both of us when I argued back – but I couldn’t seem to help it now.

  At least we were united in our attempts to nurse Mother back to reasonable health, though of course she would never be well again. Mrs Maple made her various herbal tisanes that seemed to ease her lungs and stop her coughing, and we rubbed goose grease on her chest, binding it with flannel.

  Mother was still very poorly for weeks, which was a strain on all of us. I did not feel I could go to market on a Thursday and leave her with Molly. I felt very guilty but I missed those market days so much. The only material I had left was the red worsted and I didn’t want to make anyone else a waistcoat like Jem’s, so it stayed untouched. Instead, during those long anxious hours sitting beside Mother while she took such painful breaths, I rewrote my memoirs. I kept to the truth but arranged them like the three-decker novels Janet lent me, with lots of conversation and a proper story structure.

  The first volume dealt with my time at the hospital. I carefully did not give it its full name now. I finished that volume with my bolt for freedom the day of Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee. There was a lot of repetitious material thereafter about the hardship and injustice of my hospital life during the next four years, so I discarded those pages and started the second volume when I was just fourteen and leaving the hospital. I wrote about my life in service, my jaunts with Bertie, and then that sad summer at the seaside, watching over Mama. I ended with her telling me I should go and find Father.

  Now I was writing the third volume, keeping my writing as small as I could to cram all my story onto the pages. The first part of this volume dealt with finding Father. I felt the wind in my hair and tasted fish on my tongue as I wrote. When I described my return to the village and my meeting with dear Jem, my pen slowed down and I did not know how to continue. I’d caught myself up. I wasn’t sure how my story was going to end.

  All Janet’s three-decker novels ended identically – with the heroine marrying the hero and then hopefully living happily ever after. I was clearly the heroine, because this was my life, my story – and the hero was probably Jem.

  Why did I write probably? Of course he was my hero, the boy who had looked after me so sweetly when we were both children, who had continued to care for me, and had now taken me happily into his home. He was waiting patiently for me to grow up. Then my story would finish traditionally, with a wedding.

  I put my notebooks away, feeling troubled. I loved Jem dearly as a big brother, but I wasn’t at all sure I could love him as a husband. I hated realizing this now, when it had always been my childhood dream. It seemed particularly perverse when poor Janet was silently suffering, longing to marry Jem herself.

  I grew oddly subdued and withdrawn. Jem worried about me, wondering if I was going down with the chill myself. He asked Mrs Maple for a tonic for me, which I drank obediently every day, but all the herbs in the world could not lighten my heavy heart.

  I was very tired all the time and yet I couldn’t sleep properly. I tossed and turned all night, wondering what I should do. ‘Oh, Mama, why can’t you still be here?’ I said, starting to cry. ‘I need you so!’

  I’m always with you, Hetty, you know that, Mama said in my heart.

  ‘What am I going to do about Jem?’

  Wait and see, she said. You don’t know what’s going to happen next.

  ‘But I do know, Mama. It’s always the same here in the village. It’s only the seasons that change. I do the same thing every single day, and every night Jem and I say the same things. It’s as if we’re little wind-up dolls and can’t do anything else. It’s not what I want, Mama.’

  So what do you want?

  ‘I don’t know! I want . . . I want . . .’ I stretched out in my bed as if I were literally trying to grow.

  It’s a long winter, said Mama. Wait for the spring.

  It seemed as if spring w