by Joan Aiken
‘There will be an inspection by the Education Officer this afternoon, so I want you all in the classroom at two o’clock sharp. Eighteen and ninety-eight, you must see that the night-workers are waked in time.’
She left the hall, and the children dispersed quickly and silently to their various tasks. Sylvia was led off by a thin, wiry, but quite friendly-looking girl of fifteen or so, who whispered that her name was Emma.
‘Don’t we do any lessons?’ murmured Sylvia.
‘Hush! Wait till we’re in the laundry, then we can talk.’
The laundry was a large external room, stone-floored and bitterly cold, built out from the back of the house. It contained many large zinc washtubs, scrubbing-boards, two huge iron wringers, and a great mound of coarse calico sheets and house-linen waiting to be washed. Eight or nine other children came with them and set to work doggedly, sorting the linen and filling the tubs at an outside pump, the handle of which creaked so loudly that conversation could be pursued under cover of its noise.
‘Don’t, whatever you do, let her hear you talking,’ warned Emma. ‘We’re only allowed to say necessary things to each other.’
Her obviously referred to Mrs Brisket.
Emma gave Sylvia a tub, a pile of sheets, and a bar of rough yellow soap.
‘But do the parents allow their children to be made to work like this?’ Sylvia asked in bewilderment.
‘They are all orphans. This is a charity school, and Mrs Brisket gets some money for running it. But as well she makes us do all the work, and take in outside work too. We do the washing for half Blastburn. Then when the Education Officer comes round we go into the classrooms and pretend to be learning lessons.’
‘Do you like it here?’ asked Sylvia, struggling to drag a bunch of heavy dripping cloth out of the cold water.
Emma glanced round cautiously, but no one else was very near, and the pump handle was going full blast. Leaning nearer she whispered:
‘It’s a horrible place! But don’t let anyone hear you say so! The school is full of tale-bearers. Everyone is always hungry – and Mrs Brisket rewards anyone who carries her a tale against another person. She gives them a bit of cheese. She has a big laundry-basket in her room full of bits of cheese, ready cut up.’
So that was why Alice had reported on Bonnie’s midnight visit. Sylvia herself, who was still just as hungry after breakfast as before it, felt her mouth watering at the thought of those bits of cheese.
When the sheets had been painfully scrubbed and rinsed three times by hands that were red and sore from the harsh soap and icy water, Emma showed Sylvia how to use the wringer.
‘Never touch it with your hands. One girl lost her fingers in it. Now we always poke the sheets through with a stick.’
She dumped the wrung-out sheets into a basket and carried them out to the yard behind the house, where there were long rows of henhouses and many washing-lines. When the sheets were hung up, she and Sylvia returned to the central heap for a new lot.
The morning seemed endless. Sylvia was soon almost exhausted from the heavy work, and soaked through with icy water from the wringer, which sprayed anybody who was using it.
Presently the bell went for dinner. Sylvia had hoped that as she and Bonnie were both to miss their meal, they might at least meet and talk somewhere. But she learned that people punished in this way were obliged to stand at the back of the dining-room and watch everybody else eat. Mrs Brisket sat at the head table eating grilled trout and plum pudding, and there was no chance to move a finger without being seen by her.
Bonnie looked tired and rebellious. She had a smear of coal-dust on one cheek, a cut finger, and grease-spots on her overall, but she grinned at Sylvia encouragingly. At the end of the meal she seized the moment when all the benches were nosily pushed back to whisper:
‘It wasn’t much of a meal to miss, anyway!’
Nor had it been. One thin slice of cold fat pork, a piece of beetroot, and a small withered apple.
After dinner Bonnie was summoned back to the scullery to help with the washing-up, while Sylvia and Emma went round with a bell to wake the night-workers. Then Sylvia realized that, as the beds were insufficient for the number of children in the school, half of them slept by night and half by day. The night-workers were always dropping with fatigue, as they were liable to be roused for duties in the daytime too, but just the same they were envied, as they performed their tasks without the fierce supervision of Mrs Brisket.
It was a hard job to waken them. One by one they were clanged out of their slumbers and dragged from their beds. At two o’clock sharp the whole school, yawning and shivering, stood lined up in the heatless classrooms.
At half past two Mrs Brisket came round with the Inspector. The children were well trained. As the door opened into each classroom they burst out in chorus:
‘A! B! C! D! E! F! G!’ and so on, until the visitors had left.
In the next room it would be, ‘One! Two! Three! Four! Five!’
‘Ah, I see they are getting on with their reading and arithmetic, ma’am,’ said Mr Friendshipp, the Inspector, comfortably.
‘Yes, Mr Friendshipp. As you see.’
‘As I might have expected, in such a well-run establishment as yours, ma’am.’
‘And now, Mr Friendshipp,’ said Mrs Brisket, when they had passed through the last room, where Bonnie and Sylvia were standing, ‘come and have a small glass of port wine to keep out the chill.’
After tea, which Bonnie missed, the children were set to mending. The meal had consisted of another small wedge of bread, dry this time, and a cup of water. Sylvia had contrived to save a half of her morsel of bread for Bonnie, and she pushed it into Bonnie’s hand later, as they sat working in the biggest classroom, huddled together for warmth. This was the only time of day when they were allowed to talk to each other a little.
‘The cook’s a tartar!’ whispered Bonnie. ‘If you say a word she hits you with the frying-pan, or anything that’s handy. And the kitchen is filthy – I’d sooner work in a pigsty. We can’t stay here, Sylvia.’
‘No we can’t,’ breathed Sylvia in heartfelt agreement. ‘But how can we possibly get away? And where would we go?’
‘I’ll think of some plan,’ said Bonnie with invincible optimism. ‘And you think too, Sylvia. Think, for all you are worth.’
Sylvia nodded. Then she whispered, ‘Hush, Diana Brisket’s looking at us,’ and bent her head over the enormous rent in the satin petticoat which she was endeavouring to repair.
They had already learned that Diana Brisket was someone to dread. Her sharp eyes were everywhere, ready to catch the slightest fault, which she would then shrilly report to her mother, and her bony fingers were clever to prod or pinch or twist as she passed on stairs or landing. She was cordially hated by the whole school.
After they had sewed or mended for two hours they were put to sorting bristles for broom-making, while Mrs Brisket read aloud a chapter of the Bible to them. Then there was supper – a choice of bluish skim milk or a cup of thin potato soup – and then they were sent to bed, most of them so bone-weary that in spite of hunger and the thin coverings they fell into bed and slept at once the dreamless sleep of exhaustion.
8
BONNIE DID NOT last long in the kitchen. The second time that the cook hit her with the frying-pan, Bonnie picked up a sauce-boat full of rancid gravy and dashed it in the cook’s face.
There was a fierce struggle, but the cook, one Mrs Moleskin, a large, stout woman with a savage temper, at last thrust Bonnie into the broom cupboard and reported her to Mrs Brisket.
Mrs Moleskin was used to having a dozen terrified small slaves running hither and thither at her beck and call, and announced that she would not have Bonnie working under her. Accordingly, after a punishment which consisted of losing all her meals for two days, Bonnie was put on to doing the outside work, which was considered a terrible degradation.
In fact, she did not mind it half so much as being in th
e squalid kitchen. Outside work meant fetching in coal and kindling, lighting fires, sweeping the front and back steps, cleaning windows and doorknobs, digging the front garden, and looking after the poultry.
Bonnie, who was as strong as a pony, bore her two days’ starvation with stoical fortitude. Twice Sylvia slipped her a piece of bread, but the second time she was caught by Alice, who snatched the bread and ate it herself, subsequently reporting the affair to Mrs Brisket. Sylvia then had to forgo her own supper, and after that Bonnie would not let her sacrifice herself.
One dark, foggy afternoon when Bonnie, shivering in her thin overall, was sweeping snow off the front path, she suddenly heard a familiar whisper from the other side of the front railings.
‘Miss Bonnie! Miss Bonnie!’
‘Simon!’ she cried out joyfully, almost dropping the broom in her surprise.
‘Miss Bonnie, why ever are you doing work like that?’
‘Hush!’ breathed Bonnie, looking back at the house to make sure that Mrs Brisket was not watching from one of the windows. ‘They’ve sent us to school here, Simon, but it’s more like a prison. We can’t stand it, we’re going to run away.’
‘I should think so, too,’ said Simon with indignation. ‘Sweeping paths, indeed! And in that thin apron! It’s downright wicked.’
‘But Simon, what are you doing in Blastburn?’
‘Came in to sell my geese of course,’ he said winking cheerfully. ‘But to tell the truth, I was looking for you, Miss Bonnie. James and Pattern asked me to come. We was all uneasy about you and Miss Sylvia. What’ll I tell them?’
At that moment a coal-cart appeared and stopped outside the house. The coal-man banged on the front door, shouting, ‘Coal up! Coal up! Coal up!’
Mrs Brisket came out and ordered thirty sacks.
‘Here, you,’ she said sharply to Bonnie. ‘Help the man carry them to the coal-cellar. Who is that boy?’
She eyed Simon suspiciously.
‘Geese for sale, geese for sale. Anybody want my fine fat geese?’ he called, displaying the two geese he was carrying under his arms.
Mrs Brisket’s eyes lit up. She strode down the garden to the gate and prodded the two geese with a knowing finger.
‘I’ll give you five shillings each for them, boy.’
‘Ten!’ said Simon.
‘Ridiculous! Not a penny more than seven shillings!’
‘Fifteen shillings the pair, ma’am – and it’s a special price for you because I never can resist a handsome lady,’ said Simon impudently.
‘Guttersnipe!’ said Mrs Brisket.
But she paid over the fifteen shillings and told Bonnie to put the two geese in the fowl-run. In fact, the price was a ridiculously low one, as she well knew.
‘I’ll carry in your coal for a brown, ma’am,’ Simon suggested.
‘Very well.’ She dug in her purse for another coin. ‘You can help the girl – the School Inspector is coming to dinner in half an hour, and I don’t want children running to and fro and getting in the way when he arrives.’
Simon picked up one of the sacks without more ado and humped it across the garden to the coal-cellar entrance, a flap-door directly under Mrs Brisket’s drawing-room window. Mrs Brisket unlocked the door and he tipped the coal down the chute and ran back for another load. By the time he returned Mrs Brisket had gone indoors, leaving the key in the lock.
Simon glanced round to make sure that he was unobserved. The coal-man, considering that his help was not necessary, had climbed back on to the seat of his cart and gone to sleep. Simon scooped a handful of snow aside and, pulling a knife out of his pocket, carved from the ground a hunk of yellow clay which he warmed and rubbed in his hands until it was soft. Taking the large key from the cellar lock, he pressed it vigorously into the clay, first on one side, then on the other, until he had two clear impressions of it. Then he put the key back in the lock, whipped off his muffler, damped it with snow, and wrapped it carefully round the lump of clay, which he placed under some bushes.
By the time Bonnie came running back from shutting up the geese, he was hard at work carrying his fifth sack of coal.
‘Don’t you try to carry one, Miss Bonnie!’ he said with horror, as she went matter-of-factly to the cart. ‘They’re far and away too heavy for you.’
‘I’ll take them in the wheelbarrow,’ Bonnie said, and fetched it from the shed. ‘Mrs Brisket would dock me of my supper if she looked out and saw that I was letting you do all the work.’
‘Does she do that?’ Simon was horrified. ‘Does she starve you?’
‘Not me,’ Bonnie said cheefully. ‘I soon found out what to do. When she cuts one of my meals I make up on raw eggs. I didn’t much like them at first, but when you’re really hungry it’s surprising what you enjoy.’
‘You mustn’t stay here!’ Simon exclaimed.
‘Will you help us to run away, Simon?’
‘That I will!’
‘But, Simon, if we’re to escape we shall need some clothes. That’s what has been worrying me. She has taken our own things, and our purses with our money, so that we can’t buy other things, and if we walked about in these overalls everyone would know that we were escaped from the orphan-school.’
‘I’ll bring you clothes,’ he promised.
‘Boys’ things would be best. I go to feed the hens every evening at six. You could meet me then, by the henhouses, as soon as you’ve got the clothes. If you went to Pattern, I’m sure she could give you something.
‘The difficulty will be to get Sylvia out of the house, for she never has an excuse to come outside except in the morning when she’s hanging up washing, and it would be too dangerous then.’
‘Wait till next week and I’ll have a key made to get you out. Can you get into the coal-cellar from inside?’
Bonnie nodded. ‘All too easily. She locks us into it as punishment quite often.’
‘Then I will give you a key to the outside door, and you will only have to contrive to be locked in.’
Bonnie flung her arms round his neck. ‘Simon, you are wonderful! Now I must fly back or I shall be punished for loitering.’
Simon watched until she had run indoors. Then he shied the last lump of coal to wake the driver of the cart from his beery slumbers, carefully took his piece of clay from its hiding-place in the laurel bushes and, holding it as if it were die most precious gold, walked swiftly away to find the nearest locksmith.
Sylvia was obliged to miss her tea. She had been given a dress of Diana Brisket’s to mend, and the task had taxed even her skilful needle, so disgracefully torn were its delicate flounces. Her head ached, and her cold fingers were less nimble than usual: consequently the dress was not finished when Diana wanted it. She flew into a passion, slapped Sylvia, and told her mother that number ninety-eight was lazy and refused to work. In consequence, Sylvia had to stand at the back of the dining-room with the other wrongdoers at tea-time, while Bonnie burned with sympathetic fury.
During sewing-time after tea, Bonnie chose a moment when Mrs Brisket was out of the room, crept round to Sylvia, and pressed something into her hand.
‘Eat it, quick, before she comes back!’
Sylvia looked at what was in her hand and saw with amazement that it was a little cake, crisp and hot from the bakery.
‘Where did you get it, Bonnie?’
‘It must be from Simon! I found two of them in the nesting-boxes when I went to collect the eggs. If I’d known that horrid wretch Diana would make you miss your tea, I’d have saved mine for you, too.’
And she whispered to Sylvia the news of Simon’s plan for them.
Sylvia was pale already, but she became paler still with excitement.
‘Escape? Oh, Bonnie, how wonderful! Here, you finish this cake. I think I’m too excited to eat it.’ And she coughed.
‘No, you must eat it, Sylvia. You had no tea.’
‘I can’t, my throat is too sore. Where shall we go, Bonnie?’
‘Well,
’ Bonnie whispered, frowning, ‘we can’t very well go back to Willoughby Chase, for they’d search for us there at once. And if James and Pattern tried to help us they’d get into trouble. What do you say to trying to get to London to see Aunt Jane?’
‘Oh, Bonnie, yes! Dearest Aunt Jane, how I long to know if she is all right.’ Sylvia spoke with such enthusiasm that she coughed again. ‘But how shall we get there, Bonnie? It is such a long way, and we have no money for train tickets.’
‘I have thought of that. Very soon Simon will be driving his geese up to London for the Easter Fair at Smithfield Market. Easter falls at the end of April this year, and he will want at least two months to get there –’
‘ – And we could go with him!’
‘Hush,’ whispered Bonnie, for at this moment the door opened and Mrs Brisket re-entered the room.
She cast her usual suspicious glance round the assembled children before beginning to read aloud from a volume of sermons, and they bent their heads and pretended to busy themselves over their work.
Every night that week, when Bonnie went to feed the hens and collect the eggs, her pleasantest task of the day, she felt a tremor of excitement. Would the key and clothes be there? But Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday evenings went by without her discovering anything unexpected in the henhouse.
On Saturday there was another inspection by the Education Officer, this time in the morning. He had really come to invite Mrs Brisket to dine with him next day, but she always seized the opportunity of showing him how well-behaved and biddable her pupils were, and she had them all standing in rows for a hour before his arrival. The strain of this was too much for poor Sylvia. Drenched through every day with cold water in the icy, draughty laundry, she had taken a bad cold and was flushed, heavy-eyed, and feverish. Just as the Inspector entered the room where she stood, she fainted quietly away.
‘That child, ma’am, is ill,’ said Mr Friendshipp, pointing to her with his cane.
‘Very likely it is all a pretence!’ exclaimed Mrs Brisket, looking at Sylvia with dislike. But on inspection it was plain that Sylvia’s illness was genuine enough, and Mrs Brisket angrily directed two of the big girls to put her to bed in a small room on the ground floor, where sick children were kept so that they should not give the infection to others. A basin of cold porridge was dumped in her room and, as she was much too ill to eat it, she would have fared badly had Bonnie not come to her aid.