Hetty Feather (12 page)

'I am almost six,' I said.

'Excellent! Then I think you are old enough
to learn how to darn, Hetty.' She brought out a
stocking and a needle and wool from her desk. 'Did
your foster mother teach you how to sew, Hetty?'
she asked.

The word Mother made my eyes well up. I shook
my head wordlessly.

'Then I will show you.'

She threaded the big needle, squeezing the end
of the wool over with practised skill, and then put
her hand inside the stocking. She started looping
the wool across the hole in neat lines.

'There, do you see?'

Then she started weaving the wool the other way,
making the neatest, smoothest patch. I watched,
fascinated in spite of my misery. My head was itching
horribly after my haircut and I put up my hand to
scratch, knocking my cap sideways.

'Try not to scratch, dear, it's not very ladylike,' said
the nurse. She put down the beautifully darned stocking
and took my cap off. She smoothed my poor shorn hair,
drying now, and sticking straight up in the air.

'My goodness, I think I remember you!' she said.
'You were the smallest baby I'd ever seen – and you
had the reddest hair!'

She was the nurse who had cradled me when I
was newborn and wouldn't suck properly! She was
dear kind Winnie, though now she told me to call her
Nurse Winterson. She bade me sit on a stool beside
her while I struggled to darn a stocking myself. I
badly wanted to impress this gentle nurse and show
her I could act like a big girl, even though I was so
small – but I couldn't get the hang of darning at all.

I pulled the needle too hard so that it came right
off the wool, and then I had no end of bother re-
threading it. Nurse Winterson kept threading it
for me, and patiently guided my hands, but I could
barely do a single stitch. I was in such a state I came
near to flinging the stocking upon the floor.

I heard whispers and giggles from the other girls.
Every now and then I looked up from my wretched
task and glared at them. They all seemed identical
at first, but when I peered harder I saw some had
rosy cheeks and some had pale; some had snub
noses and some had freckles; some had blue eyes
and some had brown. There was one girl with a pair
of spectacles on her nose who had her head bent
right over her stocking, examining her stitches.
There was something familiar about the bend of her
head, the little frown lines above her nose . . .

'Martha!' I cried out. I jumped to my feet in my
excitement, my stocking rolling to the floor. 'Oh,
Martha, it's truly you!'

I ran down the line of desks and threw my arms
around her neck. The other little girls squealed and
squawked at my behaviour. Martha herself edged
away from me, looking alarmed.

'Hetty, Hetty!' Nurse Winterson came speeding
after me. 'You must not be so passionate, child! And
you have to learn to stay still in your seat like a good
little girl.'

'But it's
Martha,
my sister Martha!' I cried.
Martha still looked dazed. 'Tell them, Martha! I am
your sister Hetty.'

Martha blinked her poor squinting eyes. 'Hetty?'
she said. 'Did I have a sister Hetty?'

'Oh, Martha, you can't have
forgotten
me!' This
was such a terrifying thought that I burst into floods
of tears.

'Oh yes,' said Martha, nodding now. 'You were
the little one who cried a lot.'

She really seemed to have no other clear
recollection of me. The girls on either side of her
giggled, and Martha blushed and wriggled further
away from me, clearly embarrassed.

I let Nurse Winterson lead me back to my chair.
I picked up my stocking and applied myself to
darning, but tears kept brimming and the stocking
blurred in my hand. I was so shocked that Martha
had barely remembered me, her own sister. Did she
not remember any of us – Rosie, Eliza, Nat, Jem?
Surely she must remember Saul. I wondered when
we were to meet up with all the boy foundlings.

A bell rang at four and all the other girls stuffed
their stockings into workbaskets in their desks.
Nurse Winterson took my poor cobbled stocking
and held it up, examining my enormous stitches.

'Oh, Hetty, you've sewn the sides together! How
could anyone get their foot into this stocking?' she
said, wafting it gently in front of me.

The other girls giggled and grinned. I felt my
cheeks turn fiery red.

'We will try again tomorrow,' said Nurse
Winterson. 'Cheer up, Hetty. We will make an expert
seamstress of you yet. Now, run and play outside
with the other girls.'

I followed them forlornly. I did not want to play
with any of them and I was sure they did not want to
play with me. They scurried along the corridor and
down the stairs, calling to each other, though they
subsided abruptly when another nurse appeared on
the stairs. She clapped her hands crossly.

'Quietly,
girls! No talking at all until you get
outside,' she said. She noticed me skulking at the
top of the stairs. 'Come along, child, don't loiter. The
girls' playground is down the stairs and through the
big door.'

'Please, miss – Nurse – mayn't I go to play with
the boys?' I asked.

She drew herself up, hands on her hips. 'Of course
not, you bold little girl!'

'But I need to see my brother Gideon. He will be
so wretched without me. Please, Nurse, I need to
see my brother so badly,' I begged.

Nurse Winterson came and stood beside me, her
hand on my shoulder. 'Perhaps it will help Hetty
settle down if we let her see her foster brother for a
few minutes,' she suggested.

But the other nurse shook her head firmly.
'Really, Winnie! Will you never learn? You can't
afford to be so soft-hearted with the children. If
we change a rule for just one child, they will all be
clamouring for special privileges.' The fierce nurse
turned to me. 'Now run away and play or you shall
be whipped!'

I ran because I certainly did not want to be
whipped. The other girls were playing games of tag,
or strolling around together arm in arm, or sitting
in little circles telling secrets. I did not have anyone
to play with.

I peered around desperately for Martha. She was
walking with a girl on either side, all of them singing
a song. I sidled nearer until I was walking two steps
behind. One of the girls craned round.

'Stop following us!' she said.

'I'm not following
you,
I'm following my sister,'
I said fiercely. I ran round them and stood right in
front of Martha. Her eyes blinked anxiously behind
her spectacles.

'I am so happy to find you, Martha. I have so much
news to tell about Mother and Father and dear Jem,
and did you know that Gideon is here too, we travelled
together in a big steam train, and there is a new little
baby Eliza, and do you ever see Saul, and that horrid
matron took all my best clothes and my rag baby,
and I've been to a real circus and ridden on a white
horse . . .' I was babbling now, trying to get some kind
of reaction from poor Martha. She looked bewildered.

'I don't really remember,' she said. 'That was
long ago. I only remember
now
.'

'But now is so horrid!' I said, starting to cry again.

'Don't cry!' said Martha. 'Please don't. It hurts
my head. All right, Hetty, you can walk with us. This
is Elizabeth and this is Marjorie.'

They both sighed, but let me trail after them.
When they resumed their silly song, all tra-la-la's
and tootle-tootles, I did my best to imitate them.

Nurse Winterson rang the bell at the end of
playtime. She smiled at me. 'There, Hetty, you've
made friends already,' she murmured to me.

She didn't understand that Martha was simply
trying to be kind because of our dimly remembered
kinship – and Elizabeth and Marjorie certainly did
not wish to be friends.

We were all marched to the privies, where we took
it in turns to relieve ourselves, ten girls at a time.
We then washed our hands with the horrible carbolic
soap. I could barely reach up to the basin and got
water right up my arms, wetting the uncomfortable
cuffs on my sleeves. My hidden sixpence was rubbing
a bruise on my skin, but I bore the pain proudly.

Then we were marched again – one two, one
two, one two – into a large echoing dining room
set with very long tables. The little girls scrambled
onto benches. I stood bewildered in the crush and
lost my chance of sitting next to Martha. I had to
squash right on the end of a bench next to a fierce-
looking fair girl with a high forehead, who dug me
hard with her elbow when I took a bite of the bread
on my plate.

'You're not
allowed,
not yet!' she hissed.

We had to wait as endless lines of big girls filed
in too, until the whole hall was filled with girls girls
girls, all scarily alike in their brown dresses and white
caps.

My stomach was rumbling because I'd missed
having any dinner on this most terrible day, but I
still had to wait until Matron Pigface said, 'Let us
say grace, girls.'

I did not understand and mumbled, 'Grace.' The
fierce girl snorted derisively.

'For what we are about to receive may we be truly
grateful, amen,' she chanted with all the others.

We'd never said grace at home, we'd just grabbed
our bowls from Mother and started spooning, but I
was
truly grateful for my slice of bread and my wedge
of cheese. I wolfed them down in four bites and waited.
And waited. There didn't seem to be anything
else,
apart from a mug of watered-down milk.

I was a country child. We might have been poor
but Mother believed in giving us big platefuls and
our milk was always creamy rich. I wondered if my
helping was minute because I was the smallest girl
here, but when I peered around, I saw that even
the very big girls with chests filling out their tippets
had the same size slices.

I wondered how I was going to bear the enormous
emptiness inside my stomach. I didn't realize that it
wasn't simply hunger, though that was a small part
of it. An entire loaf of bread and a round of cheese
could not have eased the ache of my loneliness.

I wondered how Gideon was faring in the boys'
wing, unable even to ask for what he wanted, and
my tears brimmed again. The fierce girl beside me
took no notice, but a big girl with long plaits came
over to our table.

'You can go and play for a little, you babies,' she
said. She stopped in front of me. 'Oh dear! Are you
feeling monk?'

'She's new today,' said the fierce girl. 'They're
always
monk when they're new.'

I didn't know what monk meant exactly, but I
certainly felt it.

'Don't cry, baby,' said the big girl, and she lifted
her own apron and dabbed at my eyes. 'You're so
weeny.
Don't worry, I'll look out for you. My name's
Harriet.'

'My name's Hetty.'

'My, they're very similar. Some of the girls call
me Hatty.'

'I had long hair like yours,' I said, taking hold of
her long silky plaits. 'But that nasty horrid matron
with a pig face cut it all off.'

Harriet giggled but put her hand over her mouth.
'You mustn't talk like that about the matron! She
wasn't being deliberately nasty or horrid, all the
new girls have their hair cut off, it's the rule, in case
of lice. But don't fret, yours will be as long as mine
in two or three years.'

Two or three
years
! I'd been in the Foundling
Hospital for less than a day and yet it already felt
like a lifetime.

'Do you know your way around all this great big
building, Harriet?' I asked.

'Of course I do. Don't worry, you'll learn your
way around soon too.'

'Do you know where all the boys are?'

'Yes, they are in the west wing.'

'Do you know how to get there?'

'Yes, but I have never been. It's not allowed.'

'Have you never seen the boys?'

'Oh, yes, yes, sometimes we see them across the
yard at play, and we watch their sports day once a
year. We see them in chapel too, though we're not
supposed to peer round.'

'Couldn't we go together now, just to have a peep
at them?'

'Of course not, Hetty. We would be seen and then
we would get into fearsome trouble.'

'I don't care. I need to see my brother,' I said.

'Ah.' Harriet was silent for a moment. 'I had a
brother. Two brothers. They are here too. Michael
and John.'

She said their names uncertainly, as if she wasn't sure.
I felt my throat tighten. She didn't seem to remember them properly, and yet
she was a big girl, not a small girl who was easily muddled, like Martha.
I resolved even more strongly that I would never never never forget my dear
brothers (especially Jem) or my sisters, and that
somehow
I would find
the boys' wing and seek out Gideon.

Harriet wouldn't take me to the boys' wing but
she
did
take me to the big girls' room. There was
no nurse keeping order so the girls chatted as they
mended clothes, sewing up split seams in the ugly
brown dresses and hemming torn aprons.

'Come here, Hetty, let me show you something,'
said Harriet.

I feared I was in for another sewing lesson and
I'd already proved myself spectacularly untalented
at darning – but Harriet pulled off a long length of
cotton thread, tied it together, and then placed it
round her outstretched hands.

'Watch carefully! I will teach you how to play
cat's cradle.'

I watched, though I didn't see a cat or a cradle, just
strange patterns forming as Harriet fiddled the cotton
with her fingers. She tried her best to show me what
to do, and praised me extravagantly when I managed
to flip the thread into the right zigzag pattern.

'Clever
baby!' she said.

I felt a little indignant – she seemed all too ready
to treat me like a two-year-old – but I didn't protest.
It was wonderful to have found a friend in this huge
and horrifying hospital,
two
friends, if I counted
kind Nurse Winterson.