Hetty Feather (11 page)

We stared back at her earnestly, tipping our chins
up and stretching our necks. She gave us each a warm
kiss on the lips and then took us by the hand.

'Come then, my children.'

We emerged into the loud, hissing bustle of the
station. Mother led us outside, where the hansom
cabs were waiting.

'Please take us to Guilford Street,' said Mother,
fingering her fat purse to show she could pay the
fare.

'The Foundling Hospital?' said the cab driver.
He sucked his teeth and shook his head at us. 'Poor
little mites.'

We clambered inside his cab and peered out in
awe and terror at the crowded London streets.
Mother might have been a country woman, but she
proudly showed us St Paul's Cathedral as we passed
slowly over Waterloo Bridge. We could not believe
the traffic everywhere. We were used to seeing one
cart at a time in the village lanes. There seemed to be
hundreds
of cabs and carriages and carts and huge
omnibuses crowded with city folk. Men in smart dark
suits marched on foot over the bridge. I wondered
if they could be some strangely garbed army, but
Mother said they were simply businessmen on
their way to and from work. There were ladies
too, their skirts drawn up in comical bustles at the
back, trit-trotting in their tiny shoes. They had to
hold up their skirts and tread warily when they
crossed the streets, which were covered in horse
dung.

We were country children and used to horse
dung –
and
clearing out the pigsty – but we'd never
smelled it so strongly before. The river smelled sour
and strange too, with a greasy slick shining in the
water. What sort of city was this where you couldn't
stroll along the streets or swim in the river?

Once we were over the bridge, the cab travelled
through such a muddle of streets, some very broad
and big, some narrow twisting alleyways, so that
I was hopelessly muddled and confused. My heart
thudded whenever I spotted any great grey building
in case it was the hospital. At last the cab slowed and
came to a stop outside great iron gates enclosing a
plain wide building with many arched windows.

Mother drew in her breath and clutched our
hands tight. She didn't need to tell us. We were at
the Foundling Hospital.

Gideon and I huddled in the cab. Mother had to
pull us out.

'Please be so good as to wait,' she said to the
cabman, and approached the porter. 'If you please,
sir, I'm bringing my two foster children back to the
hospital,' she said.

He nodded and let us through the forbidding gates.

Mother walked us along the long gravel path
towards the doorway. We stared up at all the windows
but we couldn't see inside. There were no children
peeping out at us, no children playing on the grass,
no children anywhere. I strained my ears but could
hear no chatter, no singing, no laughter.

Mother rang the doorbell, and a tall woman in
a dark dress and white apron opened the door. She
had a white cap tied on her head and a long grim
face. She did not smile.

'Foundlings 25621 and 25629?' she said.

'Yes, ma'am,' said Mother huskily. 'This is Gideon
Smeed and Hetty Feather. They are such dear
children. Hetty is very bright indeed, and Gideon is
very good and loving, though he doesn't speak just
at present. He needs a little extra cosseting—'

'We treat all our foundlings in exactly the same
manner. We have no favourites here,' said the nurse.
'Come along, children.'

She held out her hands. We shrank backwards,
clutching Mother.

'Say goodbye,' the nurse said firmly.

I was struck as dumb as Gideon. I couldn't believe
it was actually happening. Not now, not so coldly
and quickly.

Mother gathered us together and kissed us, first
me, then Gideon. 'Goodbye, my dear lambs. Try to
be good and make me proud of you,' she whispered.
'Hetty, look after your brother.'

She straightened up and took a step backwards.
Then she turned and ran down the path, her hand
over her eyes.

'Mother!' I called.

Before she could look back the nurse shut the
door, trapping us inside the hospital. She clasped our
hands determinedly. Her own hands were icy cold
and startlingly smooth – we were used to Mother's
big work-roughened hands.

'I am Nurse Beaufort. Come with me,' she said,
setting off at a quick march.

We had to scurry fast to keep up with her. Gideon
tripped once and she jerked his arm impatiently,
hurting him. He started crying then, big tears
splashing down his cheeks.

'Don't cry so, Gideon. I am here. I will look after
you,' I said desperately.

'Ssh, child. You are not allowed to talk until outdoor
playtime,' said the nurse, yanking my arm too.

She pulled us up a long flight of stairs. There
was another nurse standing there, waiting. She
was dressed in an identical dark frock and white
starched apron, but she was smaller and very squat.
Her dress strained at the seams and her white cap
seemed too small for her dark-pink face. She had
little eyes, prominent nostrils and several chins,
looking for all the world like a pig in a bonnet. I
gave a little snort, half laughing, half crying.

'Be quiet, child,' she snapped. She seized me by
the shoulders and propelled me to the right. My
head jerked round. Tall, grim Nurse Beaufort was
propelling Gideon
the other way.

'Oh no, if you please, Nurse, Gideon and me, we
have to stay together!' I said, struggling.

'I am not a nurse! I am Matron Peters. Now come
along,
child. You cannot go with your brother. The
small girls' wing is
this
way,' said Pigface Peters.

'But you don't understand! He's only little. He
can't manage without me.'

'Nonsense.'

'It is
not
nonsense!' I shouted, stopping in my tracks.
'I have to look after Gideon. I promised Mother.'

'You must forget all about your foster mother
now. You are a foundling child and you will obey
our
rules. Our boys and girls live separately – and so
will you.'

'Then let me say goodbye to Gideon! Let me
explain to him. Oh
please
!'

'Stop this ridiculous fuss this instant, Hetty
Feather!'

'I
won't
stop! You are very cruel and wicked and
I hate you!' I cried.

I twisted my wrist out of her grasp and ran the
other way, after Gideon.

'Gideon! Oh, Gideon!' I shouted.

He was dragging his feet and drooping, his boots
barely supporting him. He looked round, his eyes
wide, his mouth a great O of terror.

Then fat pig-trotter fingers seized me by the
shoulders. She hauled me along, kicking and
screaming, marching me to the right, away from my
poor brother.

'How
dare
you behave so atrociously! You will be
sorry, my girl, very sorry.'

She pushed me into a strange cold room with
small bathtubs in orderly rows.

'Right, missy, take your clothes off instantly. You
need a bath.'

I stared at her. 'But I've
had
a bath. I'm clean as
clean, look!'

'Country
clean,' she said scornfully. 'You need a
good scrubbing to get rid of all those nasty bugs and
beasties. Get those clothes off while I fill the tub.'

I took off my coat and then sat down to start
unlacing my boots. The matron crumpled my
good coat up into a little ball and dropped it into a
basket. I gave her one boot and she threw it on top
of my coat, careless of the muddy soles. She saw my
shocked expression.

'You won't need these any more,' she said, giving
the basket a contemptuous shake.

I blinked at her. Were the foundling children
required to run around
naked?

'You will wear our uniform now,' she said.

'Can I wear my best clothes on Sundays, miss?'

'You must call me
Matron.
No, you wear your
white tippets and aprons on the Sabbath, with
bands around your cuffs, specially snowy white. And
woe betide you if you get them dirty. Now hurry
up,
child. Get the rest of your clothes off and step into
the bath this instant.'

While she was topping up the bath, her back
turned, I took Jem's precious sixpence out of my
pinafore pocket. I stuck it inside my mouth for
want of a better place to hide it. The coin tasted
unpleasantly metallic and felt as big as a dinner
plate against my cheek, but it couldn't be helped.

I was right to be so cautious. Once I had my
pinafore and dress and drawers off, standing
shivering in my shift and stockings, the matron
darted at me, snatched my rag baby and threw her
in the basket too.

'She's not clothes! She's my baby!' I protested,
though it was hard to talk distinctly with the
sixpence wedged in my cheek.

'It's nasty and dirty. And you're not allowed
dollies here.'

'But I can't sleep without her!'

'Then you will have to stay awake,' said the
matron.

She pulled the shift over my head, plucked my
stockings from my feet, lifted me up and plunged me
into the bath. Then she took a cake of red carbolic
soap and started scrubbing me viciously. I wriggled
and squirmed at the indignity, especially when she
started washing my long hair, digging her fat fingers
into my scalp and kneading it as if my head was a
ball of dough. I put my hands up, trying to protect
my poor head. My fingers scratched her wrists and
she dug harder, furious.

'Keep still, you fiery little imp,' she said, lathering
me into a foam. She fetched another jug to rinse
the suds away. 'This will quench that fire!' she said,
pouring icy cold water over me.

I gasped in shock and would have screamed at
her, but I had to keep my mouth stoppered because
of the sixpence. Then she hauled me out onto the
cold floor and wrapped a thin towel round me.

'Well, dry yourself, child, hurry up, hurry up!'

When I was halfway dry she sat me on a stool and
picked up a pair of scissors. I started trembling. What
did she intend to do now? Cut off my fingernails?
Cut off my
fingers?

She attacked my head with a hairbrush,
smoothing out all the tangles so that my hair fell
in a silky curtain past my shoulders – and then she
started snip-snip-snipping, cutting my hair off right
up to my ears.

'Oh,
please
don't cut my hair!' I begged, but she
paid no heed. She snipped until my hair was shorter
than a boy's and I was covered in damp red tendrils.
She brushed them off me with the towel and then
fetched another basket, the clothes inside this one
neatly folded.

'This will be your clothes basket, Hetty Feather.
You are to keep your clothes in it at night, and woe
betide you if you rumple them.'

She pulled out boots and stockings and bade me
put them on. The stockings were stiff and bunched
at the toes with repeated darning, and the boots
were much too big for my small feet. I told Matron,
but she didn't appear to care.

'Put your dress on now – the
right
way round,
you silly child. I will tie your apron for you.'

I hesitated. Where were my new undergarments?
I saw something white in my basket, but it was
simply a strange old-fashioned cap. There was no
shift, no drawers, nothing!

I sidled over to my old clothes.

'Leave them alone! They're going to be disposed
of straight away.'

'But, miss – Matron – I have no drawers!' I
said, agonized.

The matron's pig face went even pinker. 'You do
not wear such garments here,' she said. 'Now put
that dress on at once.'

I stuck my poor shorn head through the stiff brown
serge. It felt hard and scratchy against my scrubbed
skin. She did up my buttons at the back for me, tied
on the apron, and then stuck the cap upon me.

'There!' Matron marched me over to a speckled
mirror above the stone slab sinks. 'Respectable at last!'

I stared at the forlorn figure in the mirror. Was
that weird little creature in the cap really me? I
shook my head violently, but the girl in the mirror
shook her head back at me.

'Now you will join the other infant girls. Come
with me.'

I hung back, fidgeting. 'Please, miss – Matron – I
need the privy,' I blurted.

She consulted the watch pinned to her chest.
'The infant relief break is not for another hour. You
will have to wait.'

'But I need to go
now
! Please, I'm nearly
wetting myself!'

She sighed impatiently. 'The privies are outside in
the yard. I'm not trailing you all the way there. You
will have to use a chamber pot. Go in that little room
and be quick about it. You must learn to control your
bladder as well as your temper, Hetty Feather.'

I ran into the room, selected an ugly pot and sat
on it, trembling. What sort of a madhouse was this?
I put my fingers up under my cap and felt the shorn
ends of my hair. I gave a little sob. Even if I managed
to run away back to Jem, maybe he wouldn't love
me any more because I looked such a fright.

'Hurry up, child!' Pigface grunted outside.

Safe behind the door, I took the sixpence out of
my mouth, stuck out my tongue and waggled it at
her. Then I hid the sixpence in my new tight cuff
and jumped up from the pot.

'Now wash your hands!' she said as I came out
of the little room. 'Dear goodness, do you know
nothing of hygiene?'

I didn't think it at all hygienic to run around
without underwear. I wondered if the matron
wore drawers herself. I imagined her big piggy-pink
bare bottom.

'What are you smirking at?' she said suspiciously.

I lowered my eyes and shook my head. 'Nothing,
Matron.'

'Then come along with me. You will join your
class at their afternoon tasks.'

She took hold of me by the wrist. I looked back
at the little basket of my Sunday clothes, so lovingly
washed and pressed by Mother. They were all in a
muddy jumble now, my poor rag baby sprawling on
top, arms and legs akimbo.

'Come on! You've no need of those nasty old
clothes any more, I've told you that already,' said
Matron Pigface.

'Mayn't I just kiss my baby goodbye?' I begged.

'I've never heard such nonsense. It's only a
bundle of rags!' she said, and she would not let me.

I pictured my poor baby so forlorn without her
mother. I heard her wailing, abandoned in the
basket. I wished she was little enough to hide about
my person, like the sixpence. But there was nothing
I could do. I had to leave her there, tumbled about
in my clothes. I never saw her again.

As Matron Pigface marched me along to my class,
I thought at least I would meet up with Gideon again
– but there was no sign of him. I was thrust into a
room of some forty or fifty girls of five or six or seven,
but there was not a single little boy. The girls were
sitting at small wooden desks, all startlingly similar
in their white caps and mud-hued dresses. They
all stared hard at me and then whispered. I shifted
from one sorely-shod foot to the other, feeling so shy
and strange.

'This is Hetty Feather,' said Pigface.

Several of the little girls giggled. My hands
clenched into fists.

'Thank you, Matron Peters,' said a starch-
aproned nurse at the front of the class. She wasn't
pink and pig-faced, she wasn't grim and pale.
This
nurse had rosy cheeks and dimples and wisps of
curly hair escaping from her cap. She was as sweet
and fresh-faced as Rosie or Eliza or any of the village
girls. She smiled at me.

'I would watch this one. She's got a
very
contrary
way with her. Redheads are always little vixens,'
said Matron Pigface Peters. 'She needs that temper
quelled. Spare the rod and spoil the child, remember!'
She shorted, and then waddled out of the room, her
stays creaking loudly.

'Hello, Hetty dear,' said this new nurse, beckoning
to me.

I crept up to her desk. I saw a leather strap lying
across it. Oh Lordy, was she about to punish me
already?

No, she leaned towards me and said gently, 'Do
not look so fearful, child. It must seem very strange
your first day here, but I promise you will soon get
used to life at the hospital. You seem very small. Are
you turned five yet?'