Thursday’s Child. Noel Streatfeild
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me, that suit is very big for you.’ She turned to Peter. ‘Bring him in here in middle morning break and I’ll stitch the sleeves up.’ Then she looked at the trousers flapping round the child’s ankles. ‘Do you think Matron would mind if I shortened the trousers?’
Peter was a good-looking boy with large blue eyes. Now he turned these anxiously to Margaret.
‘Would she mind?’
Margaret felt something she had never felt before. A sort of warm feeling round her heart. All her life people had looked after her, now somebody needed her. It was nice to be needed.
‘I shouldn’t think she’d notice.’
Miss Snelston evidently thought that sensible.
‘You are Margaret Thursday?’
‘That’s right,’ Margaret agreed. ‘It’s not my real surname. You see it was a Thursday when the rector found me. I was in a basket with three of everything packed with me, all of the very best quality. And there was a card which said my name was Margaret and that fifty-two pounds would come every year to keep me – and so it did until last Christmas.’
Miss Snelston would like to have heard more but the school needed her.
‘Can you read and write?’
Margaret thought that a foolish question.
‘Yes.’
Miss Snelston turned to Peter.
‘And you?’
‘Oh yes, of course.’
There was something about the way Peter answered that caught Miss Snelston’s ear.
‘What do you read?’
‘What I can get. Before …’ Peter hesitated, then said: ‘Before we were sent here I was reading David Copperfield.’
Miss Snelston held out a hand to Horatio.
‘You and Margaret can sit next to each other,’ she told Peter. ‘Horatio will be in the next room with the little ones – or can you read too, Horatio?’
Horatio shook his head.
‘But I can draw pictures.’
‘Good,’ said Miss Snelston, longing to give him a hug. ‘If you draw a good picture we will put it up on the wall.’
Back at the orphanage, Lavinia had been sent to what was called the linen room. There on a trestle table were piles of print dresses, aprons and caps made in sewing time by what Miss Jones described as ‘the female orphans’. She held a dress up against Lavinia.
‘Mostly these fit anyone,’ she said. ‘The apron ties them in.’
Lavinia turned the dresses over. ‘There are so many pretty prints in the shops,’ she thought. ‘I wonder why they have to choose such ugly ones.’
‘I think I’ll just take two dresses,’ she said. ‘They’ll do to start with and I can buy some prettier ones later on.’
Miss Jones jumped as if she had been bitten by a snake.
‘Prettier! Prettier! Who do you think you are? Pretty indeed! It is not prettiness that Her Ladyship is expecting from her scullery maid.’
But Lavinia was not easily cowed.
‘Did you never hear the proverb, “He who pays the piper calls the tune”? Just now I am paying the piper and I say I only want two print frocks. I have a black dress and coat which will do for Sundays, but I will take four aprons and caps.’
Miss Jones could have shaken her. It was, she thought, foolish of Matron to have told Lavinia she had to pay for the dresses. Better to have fitted her out and then sent the bill to Lady Corkberry’s housekeeper for payment to be deducted from her wages.
‘Very well,’ she snapped. ‘Take what you want and then follow me. I will show you where you can sew.’
The orphans came home at twelve for their dinner. This was the big meal of the day. A regular amount of food was allowed for each orphan each week and from this ration Matron was supposed to select the meals. But Matron was fond of her food so she made a point of never weighing the meat the butcher sent or the fish from the fishmonger, well knowing she would be rewarded by tasty steaks and delicate soles. As a result the main meal, though eaten to the last lick, usually left the orphans hungry. That day the meal was a stew which should have contained at least a quarter of a pound of meat per child, but in fact was mostly turnips, parsnips and potatoes, with fragments of meat floating around. However, there had been complaints that the children went back to school hungry, so the stew was followed by a slice of suet pudding served with a teaspoonful of treacle. The suet puddings were so solid it was said if you threw one against the wall it would not break up but would bounce back to the thrower.
Margaret and Lavinia succeeded in sitting next to each other and in exchanging a little conversation.
‘The school’s nice,’ Margaret whispered. ‘Miss Snelston turned up Horry’s suit. Nobody can read as well as Peter. We are made to point to each word as we read it.’
‘I’m going tomorrow,’ Lavinia told Margaret. ‘My trunk is coming this afternoon and there are things in it I want to tell you about. I’ll have to wait until everybody is asleep, but I’ll come and talk to you tonight.’
Afternoon school was given up to the lighter subjects. First there was dancing, which Margaret loved, then there was two-part singing and finally drawing. ‘If only it was all school and we never had to go to the orphanage, wouldn’t it be lovely?’ Margaret thought, but soon school was over and Miss Jones was outside shouting ‘Get into line. One two. One two. No talking.’ Sadly, out of the corners of their eyes, the orphans watched the village children laughing and pushing each other about as they ran home to their teas.
For the orphans, work was not over for the day. After tea, which was a slice of bread and margarine and a cup of milk and water, there were what were called ‘tasks’. Some of the girls were sent to sew, others to the kitchen to peel potatoes. For the boys there was wood to cut and bring in and what was called ‘repairs’, which meant mending any piece of furniture which needed it.
The youngest children, of whom Horatio was one, were turned loose during this time to play. There were no toys in the so-called playroom, but the children managed without, so almost at once Horatio was seized on by two small girls who told him he was their little boy for they were going to play ‘Home’. ‘Home’ was an immensely popular game with the smaller children, who could spend hours pretending they were mothers and fathers – creatures few of them had seen.
Margaret, because it was an unpopular task, was sent by Miss Jones to the scullery to peel potatoes. This was supposed to be done in silence, but the cook and her assistant were out so only Winifred was in charge, and of course nobody paid any attention to her. Occasionally she squeaked:
‘Oh, be quiet, do. If Matron was to hear she wouldn’t half wrought me,’ but mostly she kept darting to the scullery door to hear what was going on, for she was only thirteen and had, before Matron took her on to work in the kitchen, been an orphan herself.
Margaret was holding the floor. Apart from the fact that she was new so no one knew her story, she loved an audience and knew how to keep them amused. Of course she told the story of her arrival in a basket, but on this occasion she added a few touches.
‘And every one of my baby clothes was embroidered with – what do you think?’ It was clear the little girls couldn’t think. ‘A coronet. And amongst my baby clothes was a beautiful diamond brooch.’
Susan was amongst the potato peelers.
‘Oh, Margaret, you are a fibber!’
‘I’m not then,’ said Margaret. ‘I’ll write to the rector to tell you it’s true. Then you’ll see.’
‘Who