by Lesley Eames
‘At last!’ Miss Huxtable muttered as a cart appeared, but a glower grew on her face when she saw it was uncovered. ‘You’re late!’ she hissed at the driver but he gave no sign of caring.
They climbed onto the cart and sat on narrow benches again. Miss Huxtable drew her skirts beneath the shelter of her umbrella but once again Lily and the boy were left uncovered. The cart set off and Miss Huxtable dug in her bag for a cloth which she opened to reveal two slices of dry bread and two small pieces of cheese. ‘Here,’ she said, offering them to Lily and then the boy.
Another dig into her bag resulted in a second cloth which she opened to reveal a pie. It had to be cold by now but it smelt appetisingly of meat and gravy. Miss Huxtable tucked into it with obvious pleasure and, after a moment, Lily and the boy ate their much less appealing bread and cheese.
It was September but the rain was chilly. Lily pulled the collar of her coat up to stop the rain from trickling down her neck. The boy simply sat and shivered, his nose growing pinker while his fingers darkened to raw purple. Lily wished she had something to put over him but couldn’t see even a sack to use.
In time there were fewer people and houses but more fields. Some had horses grazing in them while crops were growing in others.
The rain stopped and the air tasted cleaner. It tingled on Lily’s tongue and brought new smells to her nose – smells that she imagined came from the earth and all the greenery.
She was surprised when the cart turned between tall gateposts because they looked rather grand for orphans but a sign on the grass verge beside them announced that this was indeed Booth’s Cottage Schools. There was more writing underneath in smaller letters and Lily turned to read it as they passed: Founded and maintained by the Booth’s Charitable Trust.
They hadn’t gone far before the drive split into two. The carter took the right-hand fork, coming to a halt outside a house which was large by Lily’s standards and seemed to be one of several houses fronting the drive. ‘Out,’ Mrs Huxtable instructed Lily.
The boy looked unsure if he should get down too. ‘Not you,’ Miss Huxtable told him, irritably.
Lily climbed down and Miss Huxtable followed, grunting again. A woman emerged from the house and spent a minute or two in conversation with Miss Huxtable while Lily looked around. The house was fairly new and called Nightingale according to a sign over the big wooden door. It had a large porch with a pointed roof and windows on each side of it. There were more windows on the upstairs floor and still more windows in the attics. The house faced a green with trees in the middle. Beyond them Lily caught glimpses of more buildings. Were they the boys’ houses?
Miss Huxtable huffed and puffed her way back into the cart. ‘Behave yourself,’ she told Lily by way of farewell.
The cart returned along the drive, presumably to take the boy to the boys’ area.
‘I’m Mrs Henderson,’ the woman said. ‘You can call me Mother.’
Lily was taken aback by that, especially as Mrs Henderson didn’t look particularly motherly. She was a thin, nervous woman. Following her up the steps and through the door, Lily found herself in a wide hall which had several doors opening off each side as well as a staircase leading upwards. Of the two doors closest to Lily, one was shut but the other was ajar, giving her a glimpse of two long tables with bench seats. The dining room?
‘This way,’ Mrs Henderson said, leading the way further down the hall where she knocked on another door. A male voice bade her enter. Mrs Henderson beckoned to Lily to follow.
This room contained a sofa and two chairs arranged around a hearth. A desk stood near the window and a man sat behind it, neat and trim as far as Lily could judge. ‘The new girl, dear,’ Mrs Henderson said. ‘Lily Tomkins.’
Standing, he walked around the desk and looked down at Lily. ‘I’m Mr Henderson but you can call me Father. Mrs Henderson and I are the foster parents of Nightingale House though I work in the administration offices during the day. I’m the bursar of Booth’s.’
‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir,’ Lily said, though she wasn’t sure what a bursar was. Something to do with money and accounts?
‘You’re a fortunate girl to be sent here instead of being kept in the workhouse,’ he continued. ‘I hope you’ll show your gratitude by becoming a useful member of the household and learning skills that will allow you to make your own living in the world when you’re older.’
‘I will, sir. Thank you, sir.’
Nodding, he returned to his chair and Lily followed Mrs Henderson back into the hall. There was another door opposite but it was closed. So too was a further door at the end of the hall which Lily supposed led to the kitchen as she could smell cooking.
‘We rise at six,’ Mrs Henderson told her, starting up the stairs. ‘We encourage usefulness instead of idleness so we all have jobs to do.’
‘Yes, Mrs – Mother.’
Mrs Henderson opened a bedroom door and Lily counted twelve narrow beds inside it.
Where were the other children? Either they were extremely quiet or they were out of the house.
‘You’ll sleep here,’ Mrs Henderson told her, pointing to one of the beds near the door. ‘It’s your responsibility to make the bed each morning and I won’t have sloppiness.’
Returning to the landing, Mrs Henderson entered a large room which proved to contain three small cubicles for bathing. She turned the taps on in one of the baths and looked Lily up and down as though assessing her size. ‘I’ll fetch your uniform,’ she said. ‘Get undressed, child.’
Once again Lily felt self-conscious being naked in front of a stranger and having her hair inspected for lice. She was given a towel and a uniform of a dark red dress, white pinafore and boots that weren’t new but were in better condition than her own boots. She was also given a drawstring bag which contained soap, hairbrush and comb. ‘They’re all marked with a number that’s personal to you. Fix that number in your head and don’t take anything that has a different number.’
‘No, Mother.’
Lily got into the bath and washed.
‘Hurry now,’ Mrs Henderson urged, as chattering voices suddenly burst into the house downstairs.
Lily dried and dressed herself quickly then followed Mrs Henderson back to the dining room. Silence fell as Mrs Henderson entered. ‘We have a new girl today,’ she announced. ‘Lily Tomkins.’
Faces of all shapes and sizes turned in Lily’s direction. There were far more than twelve girls here. Clearly, Lily’s bedroom was only one of several.
Mrs Henderson signalled Lily to sit on the nearest bench. Mr Henderson swept in and the girls all stood as he and his wife walked to the top table.
‘Sit,’ he instructed, and they all sat down again.
Four older girls brought in the food and Lily was pleased to see that it was much better than workhouse fare – sausages with boiled potatoes, carrots and green beans. Gravy too.
Mr Henderson led them in a prayer then the girls tucked into the meal. Lily glanced around as she ate but cautiously, not wanting to be caught staring. She counted thirty-six girls’ heads including her own. Some of the girls looked younger than Lily and some looked older. It would take time to get to know them all but a few of the girls stood out for her.
One was the prettiest girl Lily had ever seen, a golden-haired fairy with bright blue eyes and soft, pink cheeks. Another was a tall, strong-looking girl with red hair that looked to be as stiff and wiry as the bristles on a scrubbing brush. A third girl was biting her nails while a fourth was sniffing from a head cold. A fifth girl had sharp, dark eyes and a mean little mouth. Lily decided to keep her distance from that girl.
The sausages were followed by tapioca pudding. Afterwards, everyone stood to attention as Mr Henderson walked out. ‘Half an hour of recreation for those of you who aren’t on clearing duties,’ Mrs Henderson announced.
The bigger girls began to stack the dishes and cutlery onto trays, presumably to return them to the kitchen. Not having been allocated a
duty, Lily went into the hall then waited to see where the other girls went.
Some moved down the hall to the door opposite the Hendersons’ room. Following, Lily saw rows of numbered hooks with coats hanging on them. She wondered if one of them would be for her but, glancing back, she saw that the door opposite the dining room had been opened and decided to return along the hall to investigate.
She found a large room containing tables, chairs and – oh, bliss! – shelves of books and games. Chess, draughts, dominoes… Some of the girls took the draughts and sat at a table to play. Others took books but Lily soon realised they were simply trying to look busy if one of the Hendersons came in because the books were ignored in favour of chatting.
Lily walked to the bookcase. A Child’s Book of Sermons was the first in a row of similar books. Then there were history books, a child’s atlas, the same Flora and Fauna of the British Isles book that Mr Alderton had loaned to Artie, Household Tasks for Children, A Child’s Instruction in Sewing and Mending, The Life of Florence Nightingale (was the house named after her?) and a shelf of story books. Some of them were familiar – The Wind in the Willows and Just So Stories being among them – but others were new. Little Lord Fauntleroy, The Children of the New Forest…
Lily took Little Lord Fauntleroy off the shelf and carried it to the wooden bench that had been built under the bay window. Lily had every intention of trying to make friends once she was feeling stronger but it wouldn’t hurt to get to know the girls from a distance first.
The pretty girl had a sizeable group sitting around her. She was like a princess holding court because the others seemed to be hanging on her every word. They included the sharp-eyed girl who looked proud to be sitting at the fairy princess’s right hand. Lily was too far away to hear what was being said, but it seemed to involve a lot of whispering behind hands and laughter.
The recreation time was soon over. Lily returned her book to the shelf and joined the flow of girls heading for the door, soon discovering that it was time for chores. Lily’s job was to clean the bathrooms and she was relieved when Mrs Henderson found no fault with her work though other girls were chastised for poor floor-sweeping and leaving smears on brass door handles.
Tea was two slices of bread and margarine. A cup of cocoa too. Another period of recreation followed then the girls settled to sewing or knitting while Mr Henderson read to them from A Child’s Book of Sermons. Lily was required to sew buttons onto boys’ shirts in place of buttons that had fallen off. She hoped the boy from the cart was settling in well.
Eight o’clock was bedtime. Lily lay in the darkness, sifting through her first impressions of the school and the people in it. She’d heard names being mentioned in the conversations that had gone on around her. Rose, Agnes and Ivy were the names of the pretty girl, the sharp-eyed girl and another girl who’d sat on Rose’s other side. The red-haired girl was called Elsie. There were other names – Ann, Mary, Hannah, Edna, Jean – but Lily couldn’t fix faces to them yet.
Gran’s face came into her mind together with Artie’s. Lily had got through the day without crying but now she turned into her pillow and wept again.
She felt dull-witted with tiredness the following morning but got up, ate her porridge, found a coat waiting for her and joined the other girls as they walked to the school building which she learned was used by the girls in the mornings and the boys in the afternoons. Rallying her energies, Lily told herself that the lessons here were bound to be better than at the workhouse where children were coming and going all the time.
The schoolroom itself was a high-ceilinged hall filled with rows of wooden desks with benches behind them. There were portraits of King George and Queen Mary on one wall together with a decorative plaque announcing once again that the school owed its existence to the Booth’s Charitable Trust. There was a large map of the world between the windows on the opposite wall.
Unsure where to go, Lily waited as the younger children headed for the front rows while the eldest headed for the rows at the back. A teacher finally directed Lily to one of the middle rows.
There were two teachers. Miss Lee gave her attention to the younger girls. Miss Jones taught the girls of Lily’s age and older. Each teacher had a blackboard on an easel, Miss Lee’s being at the front and Miss Jones’s being halfway down the hall so it could be seen by all the girls in her class.
Lily was given a copybook, pencil and pen with instructions to take good care of them. Miss Jones didn’t mention what would happen if Lily failed to take care of them but left her in no doubt that the punishment would be severe. Not that Lily had any intention of incurring it. She’d only ever had a slate before and, being keen to learn, was equally keen to look after her things.
The school day began with a hymn – ‘Praise my soul, the King of Heaven’ – and a prayer. Then Miss Jones announced that her girls would start with spellings. She wrote two columns of words on the blackboard, directing her middle girls to learn the words in the first column and her older girls to learn the words in the second column.
Lily already knew how to spell the words she was supposed to learn – train, cart, ticket and so on. She knew how to spell the words the other girls were learning too – carriage, journey, passenger… Even so, she recited each letter of the easy words as Miss Jones pointed to them with her stick. ‘T-r-a-i-n…’
Eventually, Miss Jones rubbed the words off the board and began asking individual girls to spell the words out loud. One girl was asked to spell ticket. ‘T-i-k,’ she began, only to stop when Miss Jones frowned.
‘You.’ Miss Jones pointed to Lily who spelt it correctly but quietly, not wanting anyone to think she was showing off.
Spelling was followed by dictation, maps, times tables and arithmetic, all of which were easy to Lily. But she wouldn’t despair. Here she had books to read and who knew? If she proved herself a good and attentive pupil, maybe her teacher would be willing to set her harder work, even if Lily had to do it in her own time outside of regular lessons.
A dinner of stew followed by suet pudding with jam awaited them back at the cottage. It was much better than anything else Lily had eaten recently, not just at the workhouse but at home too because money had been so tight.
Afterwards she went into the recreation room, hoping to read a few pages of Little Lord Fauntleroy then spend a little time outside but the room fell silent as she entered. Lily stopped in her tracks, surprised and confused, then her gaze came to rest on Rose, the dainty fairy.
There was nothing fairy-like about her expression now. She was glowering at Lily and so were her followers. She held Lily’s gaze for a moment then lifted her nose and made a great show of turning away as though Lily were a disgusting slug.
Bewildered and upset, Lily walked to the bookcase but Little Lord Fauntleroy wasn’t there. Looking around, she saw that the sharp-eyed girl, Agnes, was pretending to read it, a challenging sneer on her face.
Lily headed outside to lean against the cottage wall and try to work out what she’d done to earn such hostility. Another girl walked up and leaned beside her. It was tall, big-boned Elsie with the red hair. ‘You’ve put Rose’s hackles up,’ she remarked.
‘I don’t see how.’
‘You’re clever. Rose likes to be the clever one. You made a fool of Agnes too.’
Lily didn’t understand.
‘You spelt ticket right after Agnes had got it wrong.’
With Agnes sitting behind her, Lily hadn’t seen which girl had made the error. ‘Someone had to spell it right!’ Lily protested.
‘Someone in Rose’s group. Or Rose herself.’
Lily was appalled. ‘Rose is really that mean?’
‘She’s a lot meaner than that. Look after yourself, new girl.’ Elsie straightened and walked unhurriedly away.
How on earth was Lily going to learn anything if she had to hold herself back all the time? Loneliness rushed over her. If only Artie would write to her soon.
NINE
L
ily realised she had two choices. She could try to make friends with Rose and her group by saying sorry and being careful not to outshine them again, or she could ignore them and go her own way, putting up with their meanness as best she could. The possibility of three years of friendlessness was daunting but Lily still chose to go her own way. How else could she learn anything and stop herself from becoming as nasty as they were? And how else would she stand any chance of keeping up with Artie?
Not that she could keep up with him exactly. With Mr Alderton teaching him that was probably impossible. But she didn’t want to fall so far behind that her ignorance raised a barrier between them.
Lily kept to herself all through the following day, desperately unhappy but vowing not to give in to self-pity because Gran would have hated that. She attended her lessons, ate the food she was offered and carried out her chores without even attempting to make friends though she didn’t let her manners slip. She thanked the girls who brought in the meals, returned a dropped handkerchief to its owner, and stood back to let another girl go through a door ahead of her.
Little Lord Fauntleroy was missing from the shelf again at recreation time but Lily didn’t bother looking around to see which of Rose’s cronies had taken it. Instead she began to read Life of the Saints because she guessed it was the sort of book that Rose and her cronies would find horribly dull. It was amusing to think of one of them having to pretend to read it so as to deprive Lily of the book.
Sure enough Life of the Saints was gone when Lily went to the shelf the following day. Seeing Ivy sighing over it, Lily smiled and took The Wind in the Willows instead though she’d read it before.
The day felt long and lonely. Painful, too, when her arm was pinched as she came out of school. Lily couldn’t be sure who’d pinched her, but Agnes was nearby and Lily saw her talking to Rose afterwards as though reporting what she’d done.