Читать книгу Thursday’s Child - Noel Streatfeild - Страница 10

The train did not arrive at Wolverhampton until nearly six o’clock and then there was a long drive in a horse-drawn omnibus. As a result the children, who since breakfast had only eaten the slice of bread and the morsel of cheese, were so exhausted that they scarcely took in the orphanage.

To make everything more muddling the orphans appeared to be wearing fancy dress. They were having supper when the children first saw them. Forty-nine girls at one table, forty-eight boys at another, eating, the children noticed sadly, only bread and margarine and drinking what looked like cocoa.

‘Oh dear!’ Lavinia whispered to Margaret. ‘I did hope it would be soup and perhaps eggs.’

The ‘fancy dress’ was, the children were to learn, ordinary orphanage wear. It had been designed when the orphanage had first opened over a hundred years before and had never been changed. For the girls there were brown cloth dresses to the ankles, white caps and long aprons. For the boys there were loose brown trousers and short matching coats. Out of doors both girls and boys had brown capes. On Sundays the girls had white muslin scarves folded into their dresses and the boys wore white collars.

That first night the children seemed to see nothing but brown everywhere they looked – brown out of which rose the noticeably pale faces of the orphans. As the children stood in the doorway swaying with tiredness and hunger, they were startled by the harsh voice of the matron.

‘Don’t stand there gaping, sit down. There is room for you two boys there and you girls here.’

Lavinia pulled herself together.

‘I think perhaps,’ she suggested in her quiet but authoritative voice, ‘I had better sit beside my little brother just for tonight. He is so tired he may need some help …’

She got no further for she was confronted by Matron, a stout woman who looked as if she had been poured into her black dress and then had set inside it, so upholstered did she look. She had sandy reddish hair and a fierce red face.

‘I am matron here, young woman,’ she said, ‘and I give the orders. Off you go, boys, and you two girls sit. And do not forget to thank God for your good food.’

The bread was stale and hard to get down, but the children were ravenous, and the cocoa – if it was cocoa, for it tasted of nothing – was hot.

‘We can have two slices each,’ a little girl next to Margaret whispered to her, ‘and sometimes, if there’s any over, a drop more cocoa.’

Lavinia strained round to see how Horatio was getting on. Fortunately he was not crying for he was nearly asleep, but he was swallowing the pieces of bread soaked in cocoa which Peter was pushing into his mouth. Then she saw that Miss Jones, who was talking to Matron, was pointing to Margaret.

‘Expect a storm,’ she whispered to Margaret. ‘I’ve a feeling Miss Jones is telling Matron about your basket.’

Miss Jones was, and presently Matron came striding over to Margaret, her black, upholstered chest heaving with what appeared to be rage. She clapped her hands.

‘Silence, everybody,’ she roared. ‘What, children, is the orphanage rule about luggage?’

‘Bring no luggage,’ the children chanted, ‘everything needed will be provided.’

‘And is it provided?’ Matron asked.

‘Yes,’ answered the children.

‘But here we have a new orphan who has quite deliberately disregarded the committee’s rule.’ Matron beckoned to Miss Jones. ‘Bring Margaret Thursday’s basket.’

Miss Jones – a much meeker Miss Jones than the one who had met the children – scuttled out and was soon back carrying, as if it were a bomb, Hannah’s wicker basket. At the sight of it in Miss Jones’s arms, Margaret nearly broke out crying. Was it only last night that Hannah had so proudly shown her what she had packed? Lavinia slipped a hand into Margaret’s.

‘Don’t give that Matron the pleasure of seeing that you mind. I bet she likes seeing people cry.’

Clearly Matron was surprised, in fact, almost pleased, at the beautifully made and packed clothes. She had placed the basket on the end of the girls’ table and had tossed aside the tissue paper. But as she took out one garment after another she made no comment except an occasional mutter to Miss Jones. ‘Ridiculous.’ ‘Much too good for an orphan,’ and finally, ‘Lace! Look, Jones, lace!’ But as she repacked the little basket she laid a few things on one side.

‘Come here, Margaret,’ she said.

Giving Margaret’s hand a last squeeze, Lavinia moved to let Margaret get off the bench. Margaret, having scrambled over the bench, raised her chin in the air and marched over to Matron.

‘I have not yet decided what shall be done with these clothes, but you may keep your Bible and Prayer Book and your toothbrush. What is this tin for?’

Matron held out the now empty toffee tin. The much-loved cat’s head seemed almost to smile at Margaret. She swallowed a sob.

‘It’s to keep things in. It was a goodbye present.’

Perhaps because she had no use for it, for it could not have been from kindness, Matron laid the tin beside the Bible, Prayer Book and toothbrush.

‘You can go back to your seat. Take these things with you. Now stand, children. Grace.’

The orphans pushed back the benches and stood, hands folded, heads bent. Then they sang Bishop Ken’s Doxology.

Praise God, from whom all blessings flow.

Praise Him, all creatures here below,

Praise Him above, ye heavenly host,

Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

‘Yes, indeed,’ said Matron. ‘Never forget how fortunate you are and how much you have for which to praise God. See them up to the dormitories, Jones, but leave Lavinia Beresford with me.’

‘Oh, couldn’t I see Horatio to bed?’ Lavinia pleaded. ‘He’s so little and so tired.’

Lavinia, from the tone of Matron’s voice, might have suggested having a bath in public.

‘Go into the boys’ dormitory! Are you mad, girl? Quick, children, march.’

The boys went first, each one as he passed Matron bowing his head as if before a shrine. At the end, dragged along by Peter, came Horatio. He was, Lavinia saw, really walking in his sleep so he at least would not suffer. The girls followed the boys, but they, as they passed Matron, each had to curtsey.

‘I won’t curtsey to anybody,’ Margaret muttered to Lavinia.

‘Don’t be a fool,’ Lavinia retorted. ‘What is the point of putting her back up?’

Margaret respected Lavinia’s opinion and anyway she was too tired and too miserable to have much fight in her. So, clutching her possessions, she followed the last girl and, in spite of having her arms full, succeeded in making the necessary bob.

‘I don’t like the look of that girl,’ Matron observed to Miss Jones, who was following the children. ‘She has a proud air, she must be humbled.’

‘Quite so, Matron,’ Miss Jones agreed. ‘I thought the same the moment I saw her, and the scene she made in the waiting room was disgraceful.’

Lavinia followed Matron into her sitting room. It was, she noticed, a surprisingly comfortable room to find in that desolate place, and though it was March there was a cheerful fire burning in the grate. Drawn up to the fire was a table laid for a meal. Evidently, thought Lavinia, she is going to have her supper. Matron sat down at her table, but she did not ask Lavinia to sit.

‘I have good news for you,’ she said. ‘The Countess of Corkberry, who has always taken a kindly interest in this place, needs a scullery maid. You are to receive five pounds a year, but Her Ladyship has agreed to advance part of that sum so that you may have a respectable wardrobe. I understand you have a tin trunk at the railway station. Does it contain any clothes suitable for a scullery maid?’

‘I don’t really know what a scullery maid wears,’ Lavinia confessed, ‘but I have some plain frocks, perhaps they will do.’

‘Nonsense!’ said Matron. ‘You will need print dresses, aprons and caps and a black outfit for Sundays. All the staff have to attend church.’ She looked at Lavinia’s fair plaits. ‘And of course you must put your hair up.’

‘My hair up!’ Lavinia gasped. ‘I’m only just fourteen.’

‘Fortunately in sewing classes our girls work at wardrobes for our leavers who are going into service, so you can be fitted out – at your expense, of course. I should think two days will be enough to provide everything. A carrier will bring your box here tomorrow.’

‘Two days!’ said Lavinia. ‘I had hoped perhaps a week to see the boys settled in.’

‘Two days,’ said Matron. ‘We have no room for you here. For tonight a mattress has been put on the floor at the end of the girls’ dormitory …’ Matron stopped for there was a knock on the door. ‘Come in.’

The knock had been made by a girl who looked no older than Margaret. She was wearing the orphanage uniform but her hair was screwed up inside her cap. She was carrying a laden tray.

‘Ah, Winifred! Supper,’ said Matron. ‘Good.’

Winifred put in front of Matron a large steak, a dish of potatoes and another of cauliflower. Then from a cupboard she fetched a bottle of porter.

Lavinia felt saliva collecting in her mouth at the sight of such good food.

‘That will be all, Lavinia,’ said Matron. ‘Winifred will direct you to the girls’ dormitory.’

Margaret, shivering with tiredness and lack of food, had accepted without question the bed pointed out to her. She had followed the other girls into an inadequate washroom in which were jugs of cold water and tin basins, in one of which they all cleaned their teeth. She had been shown a tiny shelf over her bed on which she was told to put her toothbrush and mug, her Bible and Prayer Book.

‘And when Miss Jones says “Pray” you stop whatever you are doing and kneel by your bed,’ her guide whispered, ‘or she hits you with a hairbrush.’

Margaret had just pulled on the ugly coarse greyish-coloured nightdress, which was lying on her bed, when the order came for prayer. She hurriedly dropped to her knees and buried her face in her hands. Evidently it was Miss Jones who decided how long prayers should be, for a few moments later there was another bark from her. ‘Up, girls, and into your beds.’

Margaret had hidden the tin Hannah had given her in her bed. In the dark she hugged it to her. It was a little bit of Hannah. Putting her head under the scratchy inadequate bedclothes, she stifled her sobs.

‘I can’t bear it. They’ve taken all my clothes. I’ll never wear lace on Sundays. Oh, Hannah! Hannah!’

But when a little later Lavinia crept up to the dormitory and found Margaret, though her face was wet with tears, she was asleep.