Thursday’s Child. Noel Streatfeild
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‘Peter is going to write books when he grows up,’ she whispered to Margaret. ‘He’s very clever, he never stops reading.’
‘I keep hoping there’ll be books in the orphanage,’ said Peter, ‘then I won’t mind how awful it is.’
Horatio looked as though he might cry.
‘It won’t be awful, Vinia, will it?’
Lavinia sighed.
‘Why did you say that?’ she said to Peter. ‘Now he’s going to cry and I’ve no sweets left.’
That was Margaret’s moment. She climbed quietly on to the seat and took her wicker basket off the rack.
‘But I have,’ she said. ‘A whole box of toffees. Let’s share them out before she wakes, for I bet they won’t let us eat them when we get there.’
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