by Holly Webb
Sara shrugged. “I expect so. Mr Carmichael – Uncle Tom’s lawyer, you know – I’m sure his wife would present me.” She wrinkled her nose. “It takes hours, sitting outside the palace in a carriage waiting. All that fuss…”
“Yes … but Lavinia made such a thing of it, Sara. Her family were so delighted for her. And I thought – ” she swallowed – “what will I be like when I’m seventeen or eighteen? What will I do? I haven’t been back to my father’s house in so long, though I suppose that’s where I’ll go. I don’t belong there, Sara! I don’t want to spend another seven years at Miss Minchin’s, but there might be even worse. Now that I’ve thought of it, I can’t stop thinking of it, and every so often, it simply sweeps over me.”
Sara nodded. “Yes,” she said quietly. “It does. I remember.”
Lottie laughed, a little apologetic crow. “I know it’s nothing compared to what happened to you – and the way they treated you too, Becky. But sometimes I feel as if I don’t have a home either. No one … wants me.”
“But your father…” Sara faltered. “You have a father, Lottie.”
Lottie forced out a whisper. “He pays Miss Minchin a great deal to keep me here. I’ve never been home, not since he first brought me to the seminary when I was four.”
“Four!” Becky exclaimed. Then she flushed scarlet, leaning back as if she expected to be shouted at.
“I know.” Lottie sniffed. “Six years.”
“But why…” Sara stopped, uncertainly. “I remember, when I first came to Miss Minchin’s, it was only a little after you. You told me you hadn’t any mamma. You used to say it often. I suppose that’s why he sent you there, after your mamma died. He thought the seminary would give you somewhere more homelike, with other girls.”
“And Miss Minchin as a mother?” Lottie giggled, half-laugh, half-sob. “He wanted to get rid of me. He didn’t know what to do with me.”
“Perhaps – perhaps he was grieving.”
Lottie sighed and nodded. “Maybe. I don’t know. I’ve never talked to him about it – about her. I used to beg him in my letters to tell me about her, because I was forgetting what she looked like, even. But he won’t. He never mentions her.”
Sara frowned, a deep crease appearing between her eyebrows. “My papa used to tell me about my mamma often,” she murmured. “He spoke to me in French, because she was French, and he would tell me stories about her. Even though I never met her, she still seemed to me like a friend, just one who had gone away and might come back one day soon.”
Lottie smiled. “Do you remember telling me about her? That she and my own mamma were in heaven, gathering up lilies? Oh, and then Lavinia said that you were wicked, for making up stories about heaven.” She brushed the tears off her cheeks. “You told her she’d never know if they were true because she’d never get there.”
Becky snorted with laughter, and then pressed her hand over her mouth. Sara flushed pink. “Oh, I didn’t … did I? Lavinia always tried to be so superior. She did make me lose my temper sometimes, I suppose.”
“Yesterday I told her she ought to go and compare her diamonds with yours. That’s why she tried to box my ears. It would have been worth it, though, even if Ermie hadn’t stopped her.”
Sara shook her head, but Lottie could see that she was laughing.
“I dream about my mother, you know,” Lottie said suddenly. “About that story you told, that she’s in heaven. I see her walking through the fields of lilies. They’re tall and white and so is she. She’s walking towards me with a great armful of lilies and she sees me and she drops them and the golden dust of the lilies is all over her white dress, but it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters, she’s laughing and laughing because she’s so happy to see me.”
“Oh…” Sara whispered.
“Everything’s white and gold and green – and when I wake up, for a moment I can still hear her laughing. It’s so real, Sara.”
“Do you remember her at all, miss?” Becky put in.
Lottie blinked at her.
“For real, I mean. Before she was taken. I never lived with my ma, I had an aunt brought me up. But I do remember one or two things. That’s a comfort.”
“I – yes.” Lottie nodded. “Only a little. I remember her holding me. I do remember her laugh – I think. But I don’t know! What if it’s only the dream that I remember? I don’t even have a photograph.”
Sara stood up and crossed quickly to Lottie’s chair, sitting down on the arm and leaning over to hold her. “Do you remember what else I said, when I told you about our mothers and the lilies?”
Lottie sighed and leaned against her. “That you’d be my mamma and your doll Emily would be my sister. But that was only because I was a horrible little brat of a four-year-old having a tantrum about brushing her hair.”
“You were very cross.” Lottie could hear that Sara was smiling – her voice changed. “Miss Amelia was quite desperate. But, Lottie, I loved fussing over you. Pretending that you were my little girl meant that I had someone to love when I was missing Papa so badly. And when everything changed, you stayed, you and Becky and Ermengarde. Even though you were only seven, you climbed all the way up the stairs to the attics and found me.”
“The sparrows,” Lottie snuffled.
“Yes, we fed the sparrows.” Sara hugged her tighter. “Perhaps sisters instead, Lottie, now that you’re too old to want a pretend mamma? Then whatever happens with your papa, you will have someone. All of us are motherless, you and Becky and Ermengarde and I. We should be sisters.”
Lottie sighed and rubbed her cheek against the smooth green silk of Sara’s sleeve. “Yes,” she whispered.
Dearest Papa,
I went to visit Sara at Mr Carrisford’s house today. He had given her a pretty howdah for her dog Boris, like an elephant wears, and we played with Boris and Mr Carrisford’s monkey.
Papa, would you come to visit me soon? It will be my birthday next month, in July, I shall be eleven. I would so love to see you. Perhaps I could even come home to visit you? I have been counting up and I realize that you haven’t seen me for two years, not since my ninth birthday.
I want so much to talk to you about Mamma and what she was like. I know it seems odd to say I miss her now, when she’s been gone such a long time, but I do find myself thinking about her more and more. Do you have a photograph of her that I could keep here at school? Sara and I were talking about our families and I find I can hardly remember what Mamma looked like.
A tear splashed on to the letter, blotching the writing she had tried so hard to keep neat, and Lottie laid down her pen with a frustrated sigh. This was the third draft already, and it wasn’t any better than the previous two, even without the blotches. She had been trying to write this letter ever since she had returned from Sara’s house, and she was beginning to think it would never be done. What she really wanted to write was, Why do you never mention her? Why do you keep me shut away here out of sight? Are you ashamed of me? Don’t you love me?
But if she sent a letter like that to her father, he would be furious. He would probably write at once to Miss Minchin, demanding an explanation. Miserably, Lottie crumpled the sheet of writing paper and aimed it at the fireplace. The fire wasn’t lit yet, but one of the maids would come soon, she expected. Yesterday’s sunshine had disappeared and there was a chill rain falling. Her bedroom felt cold already.
Slumping back in her chair, Lottie wondered if she should bother to start the letter again. She would have to write to Papa on Sunday afternoon, anyway; that was when everyone wrote letters home, with Miss Minchin patrolling between the rows of desks so that she could read over their shoulders.
There was a clattering at the door, and the same small scullery maid she had noticed the day before came in with a coal box. She muttered something about, “Make up the fire, miss,” and Lottie nodded. She didn’t look at the girl – she still wasn’t sure whether the maid had seen her watching from the window. Perhaps she had laughed at
Lottie bumping her head on the frame. Instead Lottie snatched up another sheet of notepaper, jabbed her pen into the inkwell and tried to start the letter again.
My dear Papa,
Would you consider coming to visit me soon? It will be my birthday shortly and I will be eleven. I would very much like to see you.
She stopped, resting her chin on her hand and staring vaguely across the room, until a faint rustling sharpened her gaze.
The maid was kneeling by the fireplace, reading her letter!
“How dare you?” Lottie meant to shout, but it came out as a squeak.
The girl hurriedly shoved the letter on to the sullenly glowing fire, and stared at Lottie, her face a smooth blank.
“You were reading it! You were! That’s a private letter!”
“I just picked it up, miss. There was papers all over. I just picked them up and put them in the fire.” She gazed back at Lottie, widening her eyes a little, as though she didn’t understand.
Lottie shook her head furiously. “Don’t lie! It was all crumpled up. I crumpled it and you flattened it out. I saw – you were reading it.”
“I never.” But the girl – Sally, Lottie remembered her name was now – was starting to look shifty. She swept the hearth quickly and banged her dustpan and brush back on top of the coal box. Then she stood, making a fuss of wiping her hands on her apron so she didn’t have to meet Lottie’s eye.
“You’re not going,” Lottie snapped, jumping up from her writing table and darting across the room to the door. “Not till you tell me what – ow!”
“Oh lord, miss!” Sally was staring at her in horror now. “What did you do? I never touched you, honest I didn’t.”
“It wasn’t you,” Lottie snarled, made furious by the pain. “It was me. I tripped over that stupid rug.” She scrambled up, rubbing her bruised knee and hissing to herself, and limped over to the door. “Why were you reading it? Oh, I’m not going to complain to Miss Minchin, I just want to know. Do you think she’d listen to me anyway?”
“I picked it up to help light the fire, that’s all. I didn’t mean to read it. It caught my eye, about the elephants. I saw a picture of one of them, in a book. I thought for a minute you meant they had an elephant next door, miss, I swear that’s all it was.”
“How could they have an elephant?” Lottie rolled her eyes and snorted. “In a house?”
“Well, they’ve got a monkey, ’ent they? And that great monster of a dog. I didn’t know.” Sally glared at her sulkily.
“Did you read the rest of the letter?” Lottie demanded, and Sally shifted her feet. “Most of it,” she admitted. “I just sort of kept on.”
“Oh…” Lottie blushed scarlet and pressed her hands to her cheeks. “How could you?” The thought of this girl feeling sorry for her, reading her pleading letter. It was horrible. “You’re not to pity me,” she snapped.
“Pity you?” The maid stared back at her, her mouth hanging a little open. “What would I pity you for, miss?”
“For … for not having seen my father,” Lottie faltered. “That I’ve been here for so long, without going home.”
Sally pressed her hand against her mouth, and Lottie thought for a moment that she was shocked – horrified, perhaps, by Lottie’s awful situation. But then she realized that the girl was laughing. Definitely, this time. She was laughing at her!
“Oh!” Lottie stamped her foot angrily. “Stop it! Stop it, or I will tell, I will!”
Sally’s face hardened. “You said you wouldn’t. You’re all the same. Spoiled little princesses, the lot of you.”
“I’m not…” Lottie shook her head. “You don’t know anything.”
“I know you’ve got a room like this,” Sally retorted. “And it’s my job to sweep it and make your bed and lay your fire and carry your washing downstairs. Who do you think empties your chamber pot?”
Lottie flinched. Miss Minchin and Miss Amelia were always complaining about her manners, but she would never speak about something like that.
“What would I pity you for?” the maid snarled. “Your father’s paying for all this, miss, even if he isn’t taking you out to tea like the other precious young ladies.”
Lottie looked around the room, at the comfortable bed and the writing table and the glowing fire. Her wardrobe, the door hanging a little open. Her frocks were chosen for her by Miss Amelia, and paid for in her father’s bill. Lottie complained about them – Miss Amelia liked white for young ladies, or pale, pretty colours, and too many frills – but they were good and they fitted her nicely. The bed was plain and a little battered and the rug had an ink stain on it, but Lottie had seen the attic where Sally slept, when it had been Sara’s. It was cold and there were rats in and out of the holes in the walls. There was never a fire in the iron grate. Sally’s dress was too big for her and one of her boots was losing its sole. Her face was smudged with coal dust, and under the dirt it was pale and thin, with bruise-like smudges of tiredness under the eyes.
Lottie looked down at her soft white hands and muttered huskily, “I didn’t think.” Even after what Becky and Sara had told her, she had hardly thought of the maid as a girl like herself. Until she’d realized that Sally might be thinking about her.
“I got to go, miss. I got other rooms to do.”
“Yes. I’m sorry, you should go.” Lottie stood away from the door, and then leaned over to open it as Sally picked up the heavy coal box.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured again, as the other girl slipped out. But Sally didn’t even look back.
Chapter Three
“It looks terribly … serious,” Ermengarde said doubtfully, examining a coloured plate of Henry VII Crowned on Bosworth Field. “Like a history lesson.”
“Well, it was rather long,” Charlotte admitted, glancing at her sister. “But so grand! There were five hundred people singing, weren’t there, Bella?”
“And the costumes!” Bella sighed dramatically, and Lottie remembered that she had been one of those most impressed by Lavinia’s absurdly feathered hat. “Velvet cloaks and crowns and swords. Even the horses were dressed up. We were there all day, looking at everything, and then we spent the night at a hotel with our grandmamma. It was lovely, even if we did have to keep running in out of the rain showers. Will you go to the Festival, Ermie?”
“If it’s improving and educational, I expect my uncle might take me, or Papa,” Ermengarde said gloomily. “They’ll probably expect me to know about all the history. Could I borrow this, Charlotte? If I read it first” – she stared down at the tiny print unenthusiastically – “I might at least have some idea of what’s happening. Enough not to look a complete dunce.”
Lottie looked at Charlotte’s souvenir booklet. She didn’t desperately want to watch a pageant all about the history of London, but the Festival of Empire itself sounded exciting. She would like to see the showground at the Crystal Palace, and the buildings from all over the Empire. There were so many exciting entertainments being put on for the coronation and it seemed that she wasn’t going to see any of them. Her papa hadn’t sent her a souvenir medal or even a mug painted with George V’s face. What was the point of living through what all the newspapers were calling “a momentous event in British history” if you weren’t allowed to see any of it? Perhaps I’ll buy my own mug, she thought to herself. Even if I do think George V is rather ugly, with that horrid pointed beard.
“Girls!” Miss Amelia was in the doorway, looking flustered. “Since the weather has cleared, we shall go out for a walk before your dinner. Fetch your hats, please, and umbrellas, in case we should be caught in another shower like yesterday’s.”
There was a chorus of moans – lessons were finished for the day and most of the girls had been gossiping or reading or writing letters. Walks at the seminary were neat and tidy affairs, with all the girls walking two by two in a crocodile, led by Miss Minchin or Miss Amelia, and with another mistress at the back to chivvy everyone along. There was no chance to run and bow
l a hoop in the park or stroke a passing dog, or even to stop and look at anything interesting in the shop windows. But Lottie jumped up eagerly. At least they would be outside, and the dry, dusty pavements were rain-washed now. There would be the strange musky smell of wet dust, and the poor stunted London trees would be fresher and greener for the storm. Lottie dashed upstairs to her room to fetch her jacket and hat, so keen to get out of doors that she almost knocked over someone coming down.
“Oh! I’m sorry, Sally.”
The maid was almost invisible behind a large wicker basket of washing that she had obviously been collecting from the girls’ rooms. Lottie retrieved a fallen petticoat and balanced it back on top of the pile. “I didn’t see you,” Lottie explained apologetically.
Sally peered at her around the washing. “Blind, are you?” she muttered irritably. Then she seemed to catch herself at it and bobbed a curtsey awkwardly with the basket. “Excuse me, miss, for getting in the way.”
“You didn’t, it was my fault, I wasn’t looking. Don’t pretend to be all polite when I know you aren’t.” Lottie caught hold of one handle of the heavy basket, seeing Sally struggle with the weight of it.
“Thank you, miss,” Sally muttered. “I need to get this down to the scullery, miss, it’s my afternoon off.” She pulled away from Lottie as the other girls began to straggle up the stairs to fetch their things.
Lottie watched her go, then hurried on up to her room, wondering what Sally would do on her free afternoon. Would she meet up with friends from her orphanage? There must be other girls out in service, who had been in the same home. But then, there was no saying that they would be anywhere close. Perhaps Sally would just walk in the park or go staring in the windows of the shops. Lottie pulled on her flowered straw hat and frowned to herself. Sally would probably snap at her again if she said it, but she envied the maid. No one was going to make her walk in a neat crocodile, with no swinging of that umbrella, young lady, and polite topics of conversation chosen by Miss Minchin. She had the afternoon to herself, to wander wherever she liked.