Thursday’s Child. Noel Streatfeild
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Hannah has too much to do. It has broken her heart to admit this but it is true. So even before Christmas I had agreed to find you a new home.’
Margaret felt like Alice must have felt as she fell down the rabbit hole. A new home! But Saltmarsh House was her home, her only home. How could she be going to a new one – children never did that.
‘I suppose you didn’t know,’ she said, ‘but I help Hannah. Often and often I cook the supper and I do lots of other things – not as well as I cook, but I do them.’
The rector took one of Margaret’s hands.
‘It is not a question of helping in the house, it’s everything. The two old ladies are all Hannah can manage. She admitted this before Christmas and we discussed plans, thinking you still had an income of fifty-two pounds a year. But now the situation has changed. The Miss Camerons are, as you know, very far from rich, and now you have no money …’ The rector broke off, looking at Margaret with great love but also with a childlike confusion.
The rector’s worried face pulled Margaret together.
‘If I still had fifty-two pounds a year where were you going to send me?’
‘Nothing was decided, but we had thought of a boarding school.’
‘Well, I’m glad I haven’t got the money for that for I’d hate it. Couldn’t I live with you? I could do all the things Mrs Price does and I’d work in the garden as well as I’d eat very little.’
The rector looked more worried than ever.
‘I thought of that, but Mrs Price refused to consider it. She is a great sufferer with bad legs and …’
Margaret had her own opinion about Mrs Price’s bad legs, which she thought were used as an excuse not to work.
‘Well, send her away. I can look after both of us – truly I can.’
The rector gave a little groan.
‘It can’t be done, pet. You see, there’s Mr Price. He doesn’t really charge me, as you know, he throws me in, as it were, with his position of verger. But I did speak to the archdeacon about you, asking his opinion as to whether you could possibly live here. But he said he thought an old bachelor like myself was a most unsuitable guardian for a little girl.’
Margaret made a face.
‘How silly of the archdeacon. Well, if I’m not staying at Saltmarsh House and I’m not staying here, where am I going?’
The rector had spent many hours on his knees asking God for advice and help in handling this interview. He was convinced help and advice would be given to him if only he was spiritually able to receive it. Now, with Margaret’s brown eyes gazing up at him, he felt painfully inadequate and ashamed. Why was he so ineffectual a man that he had not risen in the world so that he had the wherewithal to succour children such as Margaret?
‘I’m afraid, pet, you are not going to care for either of the two solutions I have to offer. You are, I know, a brave child, but now you will need all your fortitude.’
Margaret stiffened to take what was coming.
‘Whatever it is,’ she said, ‘I’m still me – Margaret Thursday. Go on, tell me.’
Since Margaret had no surname it was the rector who had chosen Thursday, the day on which he had found her. He thought it touching that she was so proud of it.
‘I have, of course, tried everywhere to find you a home in this parish. I have succeeded in only one case. Your school. I know you do not much care for your teacher, but though perhaps she has a difficult nature she is a good Christian woman.’
‘I have never seen anything very Christian about her,’ said Margaret. ‘I think she’s hateful.’
The rector shook his head.
‘You must not make such harsh judgements, pet, especially now that she is trying to help. She has offered you a home in the school. Her suggestion is that you should do schoolwork in the mornings and housework in the afternoons and …’
But there the rector stopped for Margaret, her eyes flashing, had jumped to her feet.
‘I’d never live there, I’d rather die. You should see that poor Martha who works there now. I think she beats her and there are black beetles in the kitchen. Anyway, do you think I’d be a maid in my own school where, whatever anybody else thinks, I know I’m not just as good as anybody else but a lot better? Remember I came with three of everything and of the very best quality.’
The rector screwed himself up to tell Margaret his alternative suggestion.
‘The archdeacon has told me of an institution of which his brother is a governor. It is an orphanage, but an exceptionally pleasant place, I understand. He has offered to speak to his brother about you.’
Margaret swallowed hard, determined not to cry.
‘Where is it?’
‘Staffordshire.’
Margaret tried to recall the globe in the school classroom. She was now in Essex, surely Staffordshire was miles away.
‘Near Scotland?’ she suggested.
‘Oh, not so far as that. The orphanage is near a town called Wolverhampton. I do not know it myself.’
Margaret was so dispirited her voice was a whisper.
‘Would they take me for nothing?’
‘Yes.’
‘And I would be treated like all the other girls?’
‘Girls and boys – orphanages take both.’
Margaret gulped hard but she would not cry.
‘Then that’s where I’ll go. If I can’t stay here I’d rather go to a place where I am treated as a proper person.’
The orphanage – called St Luke’s – was, so pamphlets pleading for funds said, ‘A home for one hundred boys and girls of Christian background’. The building had been given and endowed by a wealthy businessman who had died in 1802. He had stipulated in his will that though the actual building was near Wolverhampton no child from any part of the country who was an orphan and a Christian was to be refused a vacancy provided they were recommended by a clergyman of the Established Church.
‘So splendid of the archdeacon to recommend you,’ the rector said to Margaret, ‘for he carries more weight than I could hope to do, and then, of course, there is his brother who is a governor.’
One of the worries of the committee who ran St Luke’s was how to collect their children. Most of them were too young to travel alone, especially if the journey included changing trains and crossing London. So a system had been devised by which new arrivals were collected in groups. When possible, new entrants were delivered to London by their relatives or sponsors, and there they were met by someone from the orphanage.
The rector came up to Saltmarsh House each time there was news about Margaret, but it was March before he arrived with definite information. Hannah always considered it unseemly that the rector should come into the kitchen, so he was led into the drawing room, which was cold, for neither Miss Sylvia nor Miss Selina came down until teatime so the fire was never lit until after luncheon.
‘Stay and hear the news,’ the rector told Hannah, ‘for it concerns you.’ He opened a letter from the archdeacon and read.
I have now heard from the chairman of the committee of good ladies who run the domestic affairs of the orphanage. She says there are two members of one family