‘Hey, hey! Not so fast! What about our agreement? Come back here!’ he yelled.
I ran fast, in spite of my pain – through the gate, full tilt towards the startled woman. ‘Mother!’ I shouted again. Then I whispered to her, ‘Please, please, pretend you’re my mother. I have to get away from that awful man!’
She stared at me, she glanced at him – and then, wonder of wonders, she clasped me in her arms. ‘My little daughter!’ she said, and she embraced me close, along with an armful of wet shirts and combinations.
‘Come back here, you little vixen,’ the man shouted. ‘You owe me!’
‘I gave him all the money I had for a lift to the village but now he wants me to kiss him too,’ I gabbled.
‘Then he’s a dirty old man,’ said the woman, and she shook her big fist at him. ‘Be off with you, you vile old fool,’ she shouted. ‘Trying to steal kisses from my girl! And you old enough to be her grandfather! Just wait till my menfolk get to hear of this! They’ll poke you with their pitchforks till you look like a human colander. Be off with you!’
The old man waited a few seconds, his whole face contorted with rage. Then he shouted out a whole stream of rude and abusive words, spat furiously, urged his horse round, and went back down the village lane.
‘Well, he’s no gentleman!’ said the washerwoman, laughing. ‘Whatever were you doing, cosying up to a dirty old varmint like that!’
‘It was needs must, missus,’ I said. ‘I’d never have got here otherwise. Thank you so very much.’
‘So who are you, girl? It seems like you know the village, yet I’d have remembered that red hair of yours if you’d grown up in these parts.’
‘I did grow up here, until I was five. I’m John and Peg Cotton’s foster child,’ I said.
‘Oh my Lord! Then you’re here for the funeral tomorrow? Such a shame – John was such a good man, and so gentle, even though he was so big. My, it’ll be a hard job fitting that fine figure of a man into a coffin. And poor Peg’s been taken bad too, I hear. It’ll be a house of sorrow right enough. I don’t know how they’ll manage.’
‘Well, I am going to do my best to care for everyone,’ I said. ‘Jem wrote and begged me to come.’
‘Ah, Jem,’ said the woman. ‘He’s a lovely lad, steady as they come. They’re lucky to have a young man like that in the family.’
‘I know,’ I said proudly. ‘Jem and I were always particularly close. Well, I had better go to them now. Thank you so much for rescuing me.’ I twitched my skirt up and stepped round the little pool of spittle, and then hobbled on my way, leaving her to hang up her damp washing.
I walked back through the village. It already felt familiar to me. Whenever I saw someone in their garden or watching from a window, I gave them a merry wave, though they all seemed startled. I longed for someone to exclaim, Why, it’s Hetty! Dear little Hetty who used to skip about and play in the stream! but I seemed a stranger to everyone.
11
I HURRIED ONWARDS, in spite of my sore ankle, desperate to reach the cottage now. I turned down the pathway and made for the little door, half hidden by the tangle of honeysuckle and cluster roses, though none were flowering now. The only flowers in the November garden were Michaelmas daisies, a whole abundant purple bed of them. My floral posy seemed pointless now.
I could hear a hum of talk inside the cottage. I was suddenly too timid to march straight in. The door did not have a knocker, so I rapped on it with my knuckles. I waited, standing on my good leg. Then the door opened and a stout young woman stood there.
She stared at me. ‘Yes?’ she said, frowning.
‘It’s me, Hetty,’ I said hoarsely.
To my horror she looked blank.
‘You are . . . Rosie?’ I said.
‘Yes I am. But I’m afraid it’s not a good time for visiting. My father’s to be buried tomorrow and the family’s gathering.’
‘I’m family. Surely you remember me, Rosie? Gideon and I came together when we were babies in a basket.’
She stared at me. ‘Oh my Lord, you’re one of the foundlings! What are you doing here? Have you run away from the hospital?’
‘I left the hospital long ago,’ I said. Though it was only last spring it certainly seemed long ago. ‘I have been living with my own dear father. Did Jem not tell you? Where is Jem?’
‘He’s working on the farm,’ said Rosie. ‘He’ll not be home till dark.’
‘Dear Jem! He’s always so conscientious. Imagine working at a time like this,’ I said.
Rosie looked at me strangely, as if she thought it queer I should know anything about Jem.
‘Well then, Hetty, you’d better come in,’ she said. ‘It’s a good job you’re so small. We can scarcely squeeze anyone else into the cottage.’
I followed her inside and saw that she was not exaggerating. A big circle of women were squashed together in the living room, sitting on an assortment of chairs and small bales of hay, all sewing, while little children played all about them, and twin baby boys toddled back and forth, grabbing at the shining needles.
‘Stop that, you two! Naughty! You’ll hurt yourselves,’ said their mother, swiping at them. They dodged her, squealing with merry laughter. ‘I’ll give you a good caning before you’re much older, you bad boys!’ she said.
‘Eliza!’
She turned and peered at me. When we were all little, Eliza had fancied herself a teacher. She’d made Jem and Gideon and Saul and Martha and me chant The Good Child’s ABC, and if we stumbled, she’d caned us with a twig and sent us to stand in the corner.
‘I’m Hetty,’ I said, limping over to her. ‘Don’t you remember me either, Eliza?’
I was devastated. I had felt such a part of this family. How could Rosie have totally forgotten me – not even remember my name? But Eliza was nodding now.
‘Ah, Hetty, you were the little naughty one!’ she said. ‘Always stamping your foot and screaming. Well, welcome home, dear, though it’s a sad time for all of us.’
I looked around all the women in the sewing circle. There were several who were elderly, holding their sewing close up to their eyes, their fingers swollen at the knuckles, but none looked at all like Mother.
‘Where’s poor Mother?’ I asked.
‘Oh dear. She’s upstairs in her bed. Bess is tending her. She’s . . . she’s not well, Hetty,’ said Eliza.
A little ripple of sympathy went through all the women. They clucked and shook their heads and murmured.
‘I will go to her,’ I said. I limped over to the steep staircase.
Eliza watched me, looking puzzled. ‘You’re the one with the bad leg – yet I thought that was one of the boys,’ she said.
‘Yes, that was Saul,’ I said. ‘He had a bad leg from birth and limped all the time.’
‘Oh, poor lamb,’ said Eliza vaguely.
She didn’t remember Saul either. Oh Lord, this was so terrible. We had all looked on this cottage as our true home and on these people as our family. Yet to these two Cotton sisters we were dim memories at best, pitiable little foundlings, interchangeable with each other.
Well, Jem remembered me vividly enough, didn’t he? And my foster mother would surely remember me too. She had lavished such loving care on all of us. She had taken particular care with me. I was never her favourite (that was strange, shy Gideon, who always needed special protection), but she did her best to give me lots of cuddles – and lots of correction too. I had been paddled hard throughout my little girlhood, but I dare say I deserved it.
‘Mother!’ I called as I scrabbled up the shaky stairs.
The curtains were drawn as a mark of respect so her room was very dark and smelled mustily of dried lavender and rose petals. There was the large bed I remembered, with someone lying in it, and a figure on a chair by their side. But there seemed to be another bed too – thin and long. I stumbled nearer, and then gasped when I realized it was an open coffin.
I stared fearfully inside. There was just the flickering light o
f a candle on a wooden box beside the bed, but even so I could make out the stern features of my foster father. His hair was brushed and oiled back from his face in an unnaturally neat fashion. His white brow was exposed, so much paler than his brown, weather-beaten face. At first I thought his eyes were wide open and gave another gasp, but then I realized they were each covered with a round penny. His great square jaw was firmly tied up with a silk scarf so that his mouth should not sag in an ungainly fashion. Only his big beak of a nose seemed relatively normal. I remembered him snorting like a bull through it to amuse us little ones. It seemed so dreadful that he was now incapable of drawing breath in or out of those wide hairy nostrils.
Father lay eerily still in his Sunday best suit. It must have been such a trouble and trial fitting those great stiff limbs into trousers and slotting the still arms into the tight jacket. He had never felt comfortable in his Sunday clothes and was forever easing his starched collar and wriggling his legs. Why weren’t they burying him in his everyday smock and soft cord trousers? And where were his big, honest boots with their knotted laces and mudcaked soles? Father had acquired a brand-new pair of patent leather shoes, their soles still as shiny as their uppers. I felt so sorry for him having to mince around in tight new shoes for all eternity.
I reached out, my hand shaking, and touched the very tip of his nose. It felt waxy and strange, and my hand flew up again as if I’d burned myself.
‘He looks so peaceful, doesn’t he?’ said the plump woman sitting by the bed.
I peered at her as she sat there, her wild, curly hair scraped into a tight bun, her large chest forming a great cushion in the front of her print dress.
‘Mother?’ I whispered.
I approached her, slowly at first, and then rushed the last couple of steps and put my arm around her neck in the heedless way I’d done as a child. ‘Oh, Mother!’ I said, choked.
‘What? I’m not Mother!’ she said. ‘I’m Bess, the eldest.’
‘Oh! But you’re so like Mother. Then . . .?’
Bess drew back the sheets a little and held the candle up high. I saw the face in the bed. Was this poor sad twisted creature lying prone really Mother? She looked so old – far older than Father nearby in his coffin. She seemed like an ancient of old, her face furrowed and seamed with care – a face that had slipped sideways so one half of her mouth hung down alarmingly.
‘Mother?’ I said again.
She made a terrible strangled grunt. I could not tell if it was in pleased recognition or total distress.
‘Oh, poor Mother,’ I said, sitting down on the bed beside her and taking one of her hands in mine. I could feel her trying to clasp it back, but her fingers barely moved. ‘Poor Mother! What has happened to you?’ I whispered.
‘It was when they told her Father had died. He was walking about the farm and then just dropped dead in his tracks. Felled like a great oak, that’s what they said. The boys in the fields rushed to tell Mother, and the moment she heard the news she cried out and collapsed. She can barely move now, and Heaven knows what we’re going to do. We’re never going to be able to get her to the funeral tomorrow.’
‘I shall help,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry, Bess, that’s why I’ve come home. Jem sent for me. I am Hetty. I think you left home before I came to live here, but I love this family dearly. I have come to pay my respects to Father and I will happily help tend Mother, because I care for them as if they were my own flesh and blood.’
‘Well, God bless you, Hetty,’ said Bess. ‘Would you mind sitting beside Mother right this minute? I need to go and see what my little girls are up to downstairs. They’ve been fretting to go and see the farm animals – the horses and the cows and all the chickens – and I should like to take them. They’ve been good little souls up till now.’
I would have liked to take the little children to see the animals rather than sit up here in the gloom with my dead father and my half-dead mother, but as I had offered my services so determinedly I could hardly back out now.
‘Of course, Bess. You go. I will take my turn,’ I said.
It seemed so much darker when she went. I hated the way the candlelight made such stark shadows, turning everyday items like the chest and wardrobe into malevolent demons, pressed against the wall, ready to pounce.
‘It’s all right, Mother. I am here to look after you,’ I said.
I could see her eyes swivelling in the dark, looking at me.
‘You know who I am, don’t you?’ I said shakily. ‘I am bad little Hetty, remember? I’m sure I was more trouble to you than all the others put together, but I loved you so, Mother – almost as much as my own dear mama. I am sure Jem must have told you I found her – and I found my own father too. I tried to be a good daughter to him, but now I am here to be a good daughter to you. I had not realized you would have so many other daughters here to help you, but I will do whatever I can to cheer you up while you are poorly. It must be very sad for you to be lying here so helpless, but don’t you worry, I’m sure you’ll get better before too long.’
I wasn’t sure at all, but I was desperate to reassure Mother. She made a strange gargling noise, her mouth working hard.
‘I’m sorry, Mother, I can’t understand,’ I said.
She tried again, but I had no idea what she meant. She sounded like a great sad baby, going ‘Gi-gi-gi.’ Did she mean get up?
‘Yes, I’m sure you’ll be able to get up soon,’ I said. ‘And tomorrow perhaps you will be able to ride to Father’s funeral. They are all downstairs sewing black finery. I am sure they are making something special for you. I will sew too when I go down to join the others. I can sew very neatly now, Mother, and fashion my own clothes. I can also darn socks and stockings. You will see, I can be very useful. Are you just a little bit pleased that I have come back?’
I paused, and Mother gargled again. She could have been saying yes, she could have been saying no. She could have been saying Who on earth are you? Get out of my bedroom and send me one of my real daughters.
But I patted her poor heaving shoulders and gave her a kiss on her flushed cheeks. She smelled of sick old lady, but there was still a hint of the sweet Mother smell I remembered, which brought tears to my eyes.
Mother was crying a little too, tears seeping slowly down her cheeks.
‘Poor Mother,’ I said, very gently wiping them with the cuff of my sleeve. ‘You must feel so sad to lose Father. He was a fine, hard-working man, a husband to be proud of.’ It sounded strange to be using the past tense when he was here in the room with us, even if he was immobile. ‘But you mustn’t worry. Dear Jem will step forward as head of the household.’
Mother seemed slightly soothed at the mention of Jem’s name, so I started reminiscing out loud about my childhood. I reminded her of how I’d tagged after Jem, following him everywhere like a shadow. I turned the little anecdotes into proper stories.
I had told tales in the darkness during bleak nights in the dormitory at the hospital – but they had been lurid tales of crime and murder. Now I told Mother sunlit stories of my country childhood with Jem. She stopped twitching and fretting and weeping, and lay very still. I wondered if she could be asleep, but her eyes were still open. Perhaps she was just listening intently.
I told stories until I grew hoarse, and then at last Bess came back upstairs.
‘Ssh now, Hetty. You shouldn’t really be talking so. You’ll upset Mother because she can’t respond, and it’s disrespectful to Father,’ she said.
‘I was telling Mother stories about the past and she liked it, I could tell,’ I said indignantly.
‘All right, Miss Hoity-Toity! And keep your voice down. Now, they’re having a luncheon break downstairs. You’d better go and get some. Off you go.’
It was a relief in some respects to leave that dark musty room and go down into the cramped living room, but it was hard trying to sort out who everyone was and whether they were related to me in any kind of way.
I tried to assemble my f
oster family in my head and then checked them off: Mother and Father were upstairs, with Bess, the eldest. I knew there was another sister, Nora, but Eliza said she was in service in a grand country house and they wouldn’t give her leave to come home for the funeral.
‘She’s written to say she’s that upset, but it’s such a good position she’s not going to argue and risk being dismissed,’ said Eliza. She sighed. ‘I think she’s sweet on a footman there, but I doubt anything will come of it. She must feel it so, being the only one of us girls not spoken for.’
‘I’m not spoken for,’ I said.
‘Don’t be silly, Hetty. You’re still a child – and you’re not really a sister,’ said Eliza, squashing me.
She saw she’d hurt my feelings and poured me a bowl of broth and gave me a hunk of bread. ‘Here now, it’s good chicken barley soup. Our Rosie made it, and she’s a good cook. She’ll be baking for tomorrow.’
‘I can bake too. I could make apple pies. I’ve a very light hand with pastry,’ I said, eager to be of use.
‘No, dear, I think we’ve already got plenty of pies. Half the village have brought them,’ said Eliza, gesturing around the room.
She told me who all the women were, but I found it hard to distinguish one from another. None seemed to remember me, though several said they knew that my mother Peg had had a spell fostering foundlings. It was a shock to hear Martha, Saul, Gideon, little Eliza and me talked of so casually and collectively, as if we were a flock of chickens.
‘What about Nat?’ I said, remembering the little wooden horse he’d whittled for me just before I was sent off to the hospital. ‘Is he working on the farm with Jem?’
‘No, he’s gone to be a soldier. He can’t get home either – his regiment won’t give him leave.’
‘Oh, Gideon is a soldier now. Do you think they might be together?’
‘Gideon? He was the simple one that didn’t talk, wasn’t he?’ said Eliza.
‘He isn’t simple, and he did talk – he talked to me,’ I said.
‘I’m surprised he could get a word in edgeways,’ said Eliza drily, and some of the other women sniggered.
Emerald Star (Hetty Feather) Page 12