Noel Streatfeild - Thursday’s Child

‘Be quiet,’ she said in an angry whisper. Then, raising her voice for the benefit of the others in the room: ‘This is a very ungrateful way to behave for you are a lucky girl to be going to St Luke’s.’

At that moment there was a diversion. The waiting-room door opened and three more children came in – a girl and two boys. They were shabbily dressed in black and each was as golden-haired as Margaret was brown. The eldest, who was the girl, led her brothers towards Miss Jones. In spite of the shabby clothes, she had evidently known better days for she spoke in the clear voice of the well-educated.

‘Are you the lady from St Luke’s?’

Miss Jones nodded.

‘You must be the three Beresford children.’

‘That is correct,’ the girl agreed. ‘I am Lavinia. This’ – she pulled the elder boy forward – ‘is Peter, and this’ – she tried to pull forward her younger brother – ‘is Horatio,’ but Horatio refused to be pulled.

‘Don’t like that lady,’ he announced. ‘Horry wants to go home.’

Miss Jones made tch-tching noises. This really was her unlucky day. Now another child was going to make a scene. But she had reckoned without Lavinia.

She let go of Horatio’s hand and felt in her coat pocket and brought out a sweet and put it in the little boy’s mouth.

‘You mustn’t mind him,’ she told Miss Jones. ‘He’s only little, but he’ll settle down.’

Miss Jones opened her coat to look at her watch, which was fixed to her blouse with a gunmetal bow. Thankfully she saw it was time to eat.

‘Now sit down, all of you, and have some dinner. We have a long journey ahead of us.’ She opened the dinner bag and took out the food and a knife. She cut five slices of bread, smeared on a little margarine, then on each slice she placed a small knob of very dry cheese. She passed a slice to each of the children. Horatio looked in disgust at his slice.

‘Is this meant to be dinner?’ he asked.

Lavinia put an arm round him.

‘Eat it, darling,’ she whispered. ‘Then you shall have a sweetie.’

Margaret had received her slice but she made no effort to eat. She had succeeded in stopping crying except for an occasional hiccuping sob, but she had such a lump in her throat she knew she couldn’t swallow anything.

Lavinia, taking advantage of a moment when Miss Jones was repacking the food and the knife, leant across to Peter.

‘Put the little girl’s slice in your pocket,’ she whispered. ‘She’ll be hungry later on.’

Somehow the other children had got the food down them. Miss Jones took another look at her watch. She got up.

‘Come along,’ she said. ‘Pick up that basket, Margaret, and hold my hand. You three,’ she told the Beresfords, ‘follow me and be sure to keep close.’

In the train Margaret began to feel better. Presently she felt so much better she was able to eat her bread and cheese, now rather hairy after being in Peter’s pocket. They had a reserved compartment and Miss Jones sat in a corner as far from the children as possible, so in a whisper Lavinia and Margaret exchanged information.

‘I’m not going to St Luke’s except for a few days,’ Lavinia explained. ‘There were only vacancies for the boys. Anyway I’m fourteen, so I’m going into service somewhere near so I can see the boys on my half days.’

Margaret could not imagine Lavinia in service, she was not a bit like Hannah or that poor Martha at the school.

‘Will you like being in service?’

‘I want to learn how to run a house,’ Lavinia explained.

Peter broke in.

‘Our mother said you could never give orders if you didn’t know how a house should be run.’

Margaret had not supposed orphans gave orders, so Peter’s statement cheered her. She knew that she would be a giving-orders sort of person, but it was nice to think she would not be alone. Then she had another cheering thought. Perhaps if she made friends with these children Lavinia would see her as well as her brothers on her half days.

‘I’m ten, nearly eleven,’ Peter told her. ‘How old are you?’

‘I’m nearly eleven too,’ said Margaret. ‘How old is he?’ She pointed to Horatio.

‘It’s rude to point,’ said Horatio, ‘but if you want to know I’m six.’

Peter was determined Margaret should be well informed.

‘Our mother’s dead,’ he announced.

‘Yes, I suppose she is, and your father too,’ Margaret agreed, ‘or you wouldn’t be orphans.’

Peter started to answer that, but Lavinia evidently didn’t want him to.

‘No, we wouldn’t be, would we? Now tell us about you.’

‘Well,’ said Margaret, ‘I’m not properly an orphan. I was found on a Thursday in a basket on the church steps with three of everything of the very best quality.’

The Beresfords were thrilled.

‘How romantic!’ said Lavinia.

Peter looked admiringly at Margaret.

‘So you could be absolutely anybody?’

‘That’s right,’ Margaret agreed.

‘And until this Christmas every year gold money was left in the church in a bag to keep me.’

‘And nobody saw who left it?’ Lavinia asked.

‘Never.

‘My goodness,’ said Peter, ‘it’s like a book!’

Lavinia looked across at Miss Jones and saw she was asleep.

‘Peter is going to write books when he grows up,’ she whispered to Margaret. ‘He’s very clever, he never stops reading.’

‘I keep hoping there’ll be books in the orphanage,’ said Peter, ‘then I won’t mind how awful it is.’

Horatio looked as though he might cry.

‘It won’t be awful, Vinia, will it?’

Lavinia sighed.

‘Why did you say that?’ she said to Peter. ‘Now he’s going to cry and I’ve no sweets left.’

That was Margaret’s moment. She climbed quietly on to the seat and took her wicker basket off the rack.

‘But I have,’ she said. ‘A whole box of toffees. Let’s share them out before she wakes, for I bet they won’t let us eat them when we get there.’

The train did not arrive at Wolverhampton until nearly six o’clock and then there was a long drive in a horse-drawn omnibus. As a result the children, who since breakfast had only eaten the slice of bread and the morsel of cheese, were so exhausted that they scarcely took in the orphanage.

To make everything more muddling the orphans appeared to be wearing fancy dress. They were having supper when the children first saw them. Forty-nine girls at one table, forty-eight boys at another, eating, the children noticed sadly, only bread and margarine and drinking what looked like cocoa.

‘Oh dear!’ Lavinia whispered to Margaret. ‘I did hope it would be soup and perhaps eggs.’

The ‘fancy dress’ was, the children were to learn, ordinary orphanage wear. It had been designed when the orphanage had first opened over a hundred years before and had never been changed. For the girls there were brown cloth dresses to the ankles, white caps and long aprons. For the boys there were loose brown trousers and short matching coats. Out of doors both girls and boys had brown capes. On Sundays the girls had white muslin scarves folded into their dresses and the boys wore white collars.

That first night the children seemed to see nothing but brown everywhere they looked – brown out of which rose the noticeably pale faces of the orphans. As the children stood in the doorway swaying with tiredness and hunger, they were startled by the harsh voice of the matron.

‘Don’t stand there gaping, sit down. There is room for you two boys there and you girls here.’

Lavinia pulled herself together.

‘I think perhaps,’ she suggested in her quiet but authoritative voice, ‘I had better sit beside my little brother just for tonight. He is so tired he may need some help …’