Noel Streatfeild - Thursday’s Child

‘What do they do with our own clothes?’

Susan looked scared, peering round to see that Miss Jones was not within hearing distance.

‘We don’t know.’

‘But they must be kept somewhere.’

Susan whispered so low that Margaret had to strain to hear.

‘Some of them say Matron sells them.’

‘For herself?’

Susan nodded.

‘But that’s only what they say. We don’t know.’

‘They won’t sell mine,’ said Margaret. ‘I’ll ask Matron for them.’

Susan clutched at Margaret’s arm.

‘Don’t. Just for asking you get a terrible punishment, you could …’

They were outside the school playground. Miss Jones, red-faced, was standing by Susan.

‘What were you saying? You know talking is forbidden.’

Susan might look meek, but she evidently knew how to fool Miss Jones.

‘I was only telling Margaret what work we shall do in school this morning.’

‘Oh!’ Miss Jones turned away. ‘Quick march. Straight to the classrooms, children. No playing in the yard.’

A Miss Snelston was head of the village school and from the first the children liked her. It was not easy with only one pupil-teacher to assist her to teach children of all ages in two rooms, but somehow she managed.

Most of the pupils other than the orphans were the children of farm labourers, red-cheeked and solidly built on a diet largely composed of vegetables, eggs, milk and bread, for at that time farm labourers’ wages were very low so meat was a rarity. All the children, urged on by their parents, had one aim which was to pass the labour exam as early as possible so that the girls could go into service and the boys get work on the farms. Miss Snelston, of course, knew this was their ambition and she accepted it. ‘After all,’ she would say to her pupil-teacher, Polly Jenkin, ‘they may as well leave when they are twelve for you and I know, however long we keep them here, very few would learn any more, and of course it’s hard for the parents to find the school money.’ School money was twopence a week, which in those days was paid as school fees.

It was Miss Snelston’s hope each time there was a new batch of orphans that a really intelligent child would turn up. That was how she had found Polly Jenkin. She had taught her since she came to the orphanage at the age of four and had discovered in her a real fondness for learning, so the moment she had passed her labour exam she had applied to the governors for her. She arranged that Polly was to receive two-and-sixpence a month and would live in her cottage, in return for which she would help with the housework.

The school morning started with prayers and a hymn, then, leaving Polly to get the school work started, Miss Snelston called Margaret, Peter and Horatio into her little office and gave them their slates.

‘These are your very own,’ she explained. ‘You must look after them carefully for on them you do your sums and sometimes dictation. My aim is to see four sums right on every slate.’ She smiled at the three children, hiding from them her deep pity for well she knew how hard their lives would be. ‘You,’ she said to Peter, ‘must be Peter Beresford and this must be Horatio.’

Horatio, looking very tiny in his brown uniform, which was at least two sizes too large for him, smiled back at Miss Snelston.

‘That man that washed me put soap in my eyes,’ he told her.

‘I’m sure he did,’ Miss Snelston thought, looking at Horatio’s still bloodshot eyes and tearstained cheeks. She turned up the sleeves of his jacket which entirely hid his hands.

‘Dear me, that suit is very big for you.’ She turned to Peter. ‘Bring him in here in middle morning break and I’ll stitch the sleeves up.’ Then she looked at the trousers flapping round the child’s ankles. ‘Do you think Matron would mind if I shortened the trousers?’

Peter was a good-looking boy with large blue eyes. Now he turned these anxiously to Margaret.

‘Would she mind?’

Margaret felt something she had never felt before. A sort of warm feeling round her heart. All her life people had looked after her, now somebody needed her. It was nice to be needed.

‘I shouldn’t think she’d notice.’

Miss Snelston evidently thought that sensible.

‘You are Margaret Thursday?’

‘That’s right,’ Margaret agreed. ‘It’s not my real surname. You see it was a Thursday when the rector found me. I was in a basket with three of everything packed with me, all of the very best quality. And there was a card which said my name was Margaret and that fifty-two pounds would come every year to keep me – and so it did until last Christmas.’

Miss Snelston would like to have heard more but the school needed her.

‘Can you read and write?’

Margaret thought that a foolish question.

‘Yes.’

Miss Snelston turned to Peter.

‘And you?’

‘Oh yes, of course.’

There was something about the way Peter answered that caught Miss Snelston’s ear.

‘What do you read?’

‘What I can get. Before …’ Peter hesitated, then said: ‘Before we were sent here I was reading David Copperfield .’

Miss Snelston held out a hand to Horatio.

‘You and Margaret can sit next to each other,’ she told Peter. ‘Horatio will be in the next room with the little ones – or can you read too, Horatio?’

Horatio shook his head.

‘But I can draw pictures.’

‘Good,’ said Miss Snelston, longing to give him a hug. ‘If you draw a good picture we will put it up on the wall.’

Back at the orphanage, Lavinia had been sent to what was called the linen room. There on a trestle table were piles of print dresses, aprons and caps made in sewing time by what Miss Jones described as ‘the female orphans’. She held a dress up against Lavinia.

‘Mostly these fit anyone,’ she said. ‘The apron ties them in.’

Lavinia turned the dresses over. ‘There are so many pretty prints in the shops,’ she thought. ‘I wonder why they have to choose such ugly ones.’

‘I think I’ll just take two dresses,’ she said. ‘They’ll do to start with and I can buy some prettier ones later on.’

Miss Jones jumped as if she had been bitten by a snake.

‘Prettier! Prettier! Who do you think you are? Pretty indeed! It is not prettiness that Her Ladyship is expecting from her scullery maid.’

But Lavinia was not easily cowed.

‘Did you never hear the proverb, “He who pays the piper calls the tune”? Just now I am paying the piper and I say I only want two print frocks. I have a black dress and coat which will do for Sundays, but I will take four aprons and caps.’

Miss Jones could have shaken her. It was, she thought, foolish of Matron to have told Lavinia she had to pay for the dresses. Better to have fitted her out and then sent the bill to Lady Corkberry’s housekeeper for payment to be deducted from her wages.

‘Very well,’ she snapped. ‘Take what you want and then follow me. I will show you where you can sew.’

The orphans came home at twelve for their dinner. This was the big meal of the day. A regular amount of food was allowed for each orphan each week and from this ration Matron was supposed to select the meals. But Matron was fond of her food so she made a point of never weighing the meat the butcher sent or the fish from the fishmonger, well knowing she would be rewarded by tasty steaks and delicate soles. As a result the main meal, though eaten to the last lick, usually left the orphans hungry. That day the meal was a stew which should have contained at least a quarter of a pound of meat per child, but in fact was mostly turnips, parsnips and potatoes, with fragments of meat floating around. However, there had been complaints that the children went back to school hungry, so the stew was followed by a slice of suet pudding served with a teaspoonful of treacle. The suet puddings were so solid it was said if you threw one against the wall it would not break up but would bounce back to the thrower.