Thursday’s Child. Noel Streatfeild
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Margaret was established as the queen of storytellers.
Margaret was almost asleep by the time Lavinia felt it safe to come to her bed. She brought with her two books, David Copperfield and A Tale of Two Cities.
‘These are Peter’s. I can’t get them to him as I can’t get into the boys’ dormitory. Anyhow, I don’t believe he’d know how to hide them. Could you?’
‘I can try. I made my tin box into my bed this morning and nobody noticed, but I don’t know if they look sometimes. Really I ought to get them to school, they can be safe in Peter’s desk.’
‘Well, do what you can.’ Lavinia put the books into Margaret’s bed. ‘He must have something to read. He’d rather read than eat. And here,’ she put a piece of paper into Margaret’s hand, ‘is my address. If anything goes really wrong get a message to me there. Perhaps that Miss Snelston would help, she sounds nice.’
Margaret rummaged round and found her tin box and opened it.
‘I’ll keep it in here. I may take this to school. I’ll see. It depends if they search our beds.’
Lavinia found and held Margaret’s hands.
‘Don’t run away, will you? It’s awful enough going off and leaving Peter and Horry, but if you weren’t here I think I’d die.’
‘I won’t run away without telling you, I promise you that. But you will come every other Sunday? Promise.’
Lavinia kissed her.
‘I promise, or at least, if they won’t give me every other Sunday, I’ll find another place to work. I can promise you that.’
‘Good,’ said Margaret. She lay down again and, hugging her box to her, she was soon asleep.
Lavinia drove away the next morning in an estate cart belonging to the Corkberrys. The children did not see her go as they were at school. The young man who drove the cart shouldered her tin box and, though Miss Jones saw her drive away, she neither waved nor smiled. It was a dismal departure.
Lavinia tried hard not to cry but she had to gaze out over the fields so the driver would not see that her eyes were brimming with tears. But if he could not see the young man guessed.
‘Don’t ’ee take on now,’ he said. ‘You’ll like it up to Sedgecombe Place. They be good employers, His Lordship and Her Ladyship. And the grub’s good – far better than you would get in that old orphanage. Cruel hard on the little ’uns they say that be.’
The driver told Lavinia his name was Jem and he worked with the horses. He was a cheerful youth and made Lavinia feel better.
‘Do you think I shall see Lady Corkberry today?’
Jem shook his head.
‘No – not her. There be a Mrs Tanner, she be the one you’ll see. She be the housekeeper. Bit of a dragon seemingly, but they say if you do your work right she’m fair.’
Lavinia’s heart sank. Would Mrs Tanner want to see if she worked well before she promised her every other Sunday?
‘Is it far from Sedgecombe Place – I mean from the orphanage? You see, I want to get back there on my time off, I’ve two little brothers there.’
‘Not far,’ said Jem, ‘maybe four miles – not more. Walk it easy, pretty walk too all along the canal bank.’
Lavinia looked round.
‘I can’t see a canal.’
‘Not from here,’ Jem agreed, ‘but this is canal country, it’s near here where the Shropshire Union Canal runs into the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal. I did ought to know for I was born on a canal boat.’
‘Were you? What made you leave it to work at Sedgecombe Place?’
‘The pneumonia,’ Jem explained. ‘Cruel sick I was and down at a place called Autherley my dad had to call the doctor. Well, there wasn’t no hospital near so the doctor told her ladyship about me and she fixed it so I was put to bed in the house. Well, when I was better like, the doctor he said I wasn’t to go back on the canal no more, so that’s how I come to work with the ’orses. I see me dad and mum often enough when they’re passin’. All the way to London my dad goes.’
Lavinia knew nothing about canals. She thought it very odd to be born on a boat.
‘Have you got a lot of brothers and sisters?’
‘Five. Tight squeeze it was when we was all there, but now my eldest brother he has his own boat and the next he give up same as me, then me two sisters got married so now there’s only young Tom left, eleven he is, he leads the horse – not the same one, of course, but the one they give you at the stables.’
‘Doesn’t Tom have to go to school?’ Lavinia asked.
‘No – canal people don’t go to school. I can make me mark because one of the men I work with showed me. Young Tom would have gone to school if he could have been spared, but a course ’e couldn’t be, not with there bein’ nobody else for the ’orse. He don’t like the canal life, Tom don’t. Dad’s dead scared he’ll run off some time.’
‘I must get someone to show me the canal path,’ said Lavinia. ‘It will be nice walking by the water now the spring’s coming.’
‘You’ll see me around,’ Jem promised, ‘and if you tell me when you have time off I’ll put you on your way.’
At the next bend in the road they could see Sedgecombe Place – a grey battlemented building lying in a great park.
‘My word!’ said Lavinia. ‘It is a big place, there must be a lot of servants needed to keep it right.’
Jem whipped up the horse.
‘You’ve said it.’ He did not speak again until he drove the cart through some wrought-iron gates. ‘We go up this path here, it leads to the back door.’
Just as Jem had predicted, Lavinia was taken at once to be interviewed by Mrs Tanner. She was a tall rather severe-looking woman in a black dress with a black silk apron over it. Round her waist was a chain on which hung a bunch of keys. The housekeeper’s room in which she saw Lavinia was, however, cosy, with pretty curtains and primroses in a vase, so perhaps, Lavinia thought, she is gentler than she looks. Mrs Tanner sat upright in a stiff chair while Lavinia stood just inside the door.
‘You are Lavinia Beresford?’
Lavinia curtseyed.
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Have you worked in a kitchen before?’
‘No, ma’am. This is my first place.’
‘I see. This is a big place and we all have to work hard. You will receive five pounds a year less what you have had advanced for your uniform. You will share a room with the under kitchen-maid. Between you there will be your room to do and you have to look after the rooms of three footmen. You will rise at six for, as Mrs Smedley the cook will explain, you will have the kitchen range to see to so that the water is hot by the time she comes down. Otherwise your work is to wait on her and, of course, wash up. At night, before you go to bed, there will be the range to blacklead and the kitchen and scullery to hearthstone. At all times you will call Mrs Smedley ma’am. That is all, do your duty and you should be very happy with us.’
Lavinia could see she was meant to curtsey and say ‘Thank you’, and she wished she could have, but she must arrange her days off.
‘Please, ma’am,’ she said,