Clover Moon Read online

  I felt my eyes pricking with tears. Nobody had ever said I looked delightful before, not even dear Mr Dolly. If we’d been alone I’d have taken her hand and squeezed it, but the strange girl was staring.

  ‘This is Hetty, Clover. I’m sure you two are going to be great friends,’ said Miss Smith.

  I wasn’t so sure about that, for all everyone’s insistence. Hetty was eyeing me up and down. She didn’t look too sure either.

  ‘Come along, girls. I thought we’d go to the Northgate Tearooms in Piccadilly,’ Miss Smith said.

  ‘Oh lovely, my favourite,’ said Hetty, and as we went out into the alley she took hold of Miss Smith’s hand. ‘Then might we go to the stationer’s nearby? I have very nearly finished writing in the notebook you so kindly bought me.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Miss Smith. ‘If you’re a good girl.’

  ‘Miss Smith, I’m always good,’ said Hetty, laughing.

  I doubted that! The alley was narrow and there was no room for me on the other side of Miss Smith. I had to tag along behind. Hetty had long red plaits bouncing on her back, so tightly tied it was a wonder her blue eyes didn’t pop right out of her head.

  I wondered why she wore such strange clothing. People stared at her, and when we walked along the Strand someone pointed and said, ‘Look at that foundling child!’

  Hetty stuck her nose in the air, acting like she hadn’t even heard, but she went pink. She looked back to see if I’d heard.

  ‘This is the Strand, Clover,’ she said slowly, as if I were daft in the head. ‘It’s very busy, isn’t it? You mustn’t mind all the carriages and cabs. You’ll get used to the traffic soon enough.’

  ‘I’m used to it already,’ I said. ‘And I know the Strand very well. See that theatre over there? My dear friend Thelma dances on the stage there.’

  Miss Smith blinked a little at that, but didn’t seem as shocked as Miss Ainsley.

  ‘She dances on the stage?’ Hetty repeated. She let go of Miss Smith’s hand and walked in step with me. ‘Tell me, does she wear a pink sparkly dress and fleshings?’

  ‘No, she wears all different colour dresses with amazing red pointy boots with ribbons,’ I said.

  ‘Red pointy boots with ribbons!’ said Hetty, glancing down at her own clumsy footwear. ‘Oh, how I wish I had red boots!’

  ‘Me too,’ I said. ‘Though I have a beautiful pair of fine felt boots specially made for me. I’d have worn them today, but I have to save them for best. They were made to go with my coat.’

  ‘Yes, I can see it’s finely styled,’ said Hetty. It was sunny but with an autumnal bite to the air, and she was shivering in her short sleeves. ‘Pity it’s so plain though. And black.’

  ‘It’s plain and black because I’m in mourning,’ I retorted.

  Miss Smith was listening to both of us attentively. ‘Clover’s family were stricken with scarlet fever. She lost her little sister.’

  ‘That’s so terrible. I’ve lost a brother, and I felt so bad when he died. And what about your mother? She didn’t get the fever too . . .’

  ‘She died long ago, when I was little.’

  ‘Oh, you must miss her so,’ Hetty said.

  ‘Yes, I do,’ I said, truthfully enough, because I’d felt the lack of my real mother throughout my childhood.

  ‘I know just how you feel,’ said Hetty. ‘It’s the worst thing in the world to lose your mother.’

  Miss Smith was looking at her sympathetically. ‘Hetty has lost her mother too,’ she said.

  But when she was momentarily distracted by a flower girl on the steps of a big church, Hetty came close to me. ‘I had lost my mother – but now I’ve found her again! It’s a secret though. You won’t tell, will you?’

  ‘I promise,’ I said, touched that Hetty trusted me with such an important secret. I licked my finger. ‘See my finger wet.’ I wiped it on my dress. ‘See my finger dry.’ Then I drew my finger across my neck. ‘Cut my throat if I tell a lie!’

  We shook hands solemnly. Miss Smith looked round and saw us.

  ‘I see you two are friends already,’ she said, smiling. ‘Look, girls, this is the great church of St Martin-in-the-Fields.’

  We looked. I couldn’t see St Martin and there were no fields anywhere in sight, but I tried to look impressed, and Hetty did the same. We decided we preferred the four great bronze lions in Trafalgar Square. Hetty wanted to climb on them but Miss Smith wouldn’t let her. She hurried us towards Piccadilly and the tearoom and we skipped along, though Hetty stopped once, catching sight of herself in the plate-glass windows of a large shop.

  ‘Oh my Lord, I look such a guy,’ she said. ‘You’re so lucky to have fancy clothes, Clover.’

  It was the first time in my life that anyone had envied my clothes.

  ‘You should have seen me a few weeks ago. I wore old rags and my boots were so worn out the soles flapped,’ I said.

  ‘I wish these blooming boots would wear out,’ said Hetty, stamping her big foot. ‘And my frock has no doubt been passed down from foundling to foundling for the last hundred years at least!’

  ‘Do you have to wear that get-up all the time?’

  Hetty nodded. ‘But when I’m grown up I shall wear silks and satins and smooth velvets in beautiful bright colours. I am going to be a writer and I shall publish books and make sacks of gold so I will be able to afford a fine dress for every day of the week,’ she declared.

  Miss Smith raised her eyebrows. ‘Where are my sacks of gold, hmm?’ she asked, laughing. ‘I doubt I’ve earned half a sack throughout my entire career! But at least I’ve made a comfortable sufficiency, enough to treat two dear girls on their best behaviour.’

  And treat us she did, taking us into a beautiful tearoom with golden doors and window frames, and a burly gentleman standing to attention on the steps to welcome customers and keep away the riff-raff. The walls were papered rose pink, with a deeper rose carpet on the floor. The tables were covered in white damask cloths and there were gold chairs with rose velvet cushions.

  ‘Oh my!’ I said, looking about me in awe.

  ‘Oh, we go to all the finest tearooms, don’t we, Miss Smith?’ said Hetty, sitting at the nearest table and lolling back in her chair, examining the menu, totally at ease.

  I still felt flustered, particularly when a waiter tried to take my coat. I held on to it for dear life, sure he was trying to steal Mr Dolly’s masterpiece. Miss Smith whispered that he only wanted to hang it up for me, and promised he would give it back at the end of our meal, but I still clung on determinedly.

  ‘I don’t blame you, Clover. If I had a fine coat like that I’d want to keep my eye on it,’ said Hetty. ‘Now, which tea are we going to drink? Do you fancy Earl Grey or Darjeeling or Gunpowder or Orange Pekoe or Rose Petal?’

  I thought she was making up these strange names – surely tea was tea. I wasn’t sure she’d be able to read the fancy writing anyway, but when she passed me the menu I saw the listed teas for myself.

  ‘My goodness!’ I said. ‘I think I’ll have Rose Petal! Then my drink will match this lovely room.’

  ‘And I’ll have Gunpowder, and if anyone strikes a match my tea will explode!’ said Hetty.

  Miss Smith chose Earl Grey, the dullest. Hetty and I were a little disappointed when our teapots arrived. Hetty expected her tea to be fizzing ominously but it seemed perfectly tranquil, and I’d hoped my tea would be pink and fragrant but it looked an ordinary brown, though it did smell a little of roses.

  The food was far more astonishing. Miss Smith ordered a plate of sandwiches for us to share. I expected a hunk of bread with dripping or jam. Instead there were slithers of soft snowy bread without any crust containing mashed-up egg or grated cheese or pink ham, all delicately garnished and set out on the plate in such a beautiful pattern that it seemed criminal to take one.

  But Miss Smith bade us eat up, so we did, and each filling was delicious. I thought she had forgotten her promise of cakes and buns and had chosen sandwi