Chapter Sixteen #2
‘Yes,’ he replied, and without looking at her.
‘Mine too.’
‘Can I have it?’
‘You can borrow it, yes. I’ll need to make you a library card and then stamp the book for you. I’m allowed to do that.’ She made no effort to hide her pride in this admission.
‘You work in here?’ he asked, his eyes now meeting hers.
‘I help Mrs Mackenzie, our librarian, to organise the books and the card indexes. She also lets me use the stamp.’
‘Could I help in here, if I wanted to?’
‘Lady Constance decides what we all do. I used to help in the laundry and then the kitchen, and I’ve also helped in the greenhouse, which was fun, but I prefer it in here. I like the peace and quiet and putting everything in order.’
He scowled. ‘It sounds like she makes children work as slaves instead of paying somebody to do the job.’
‘No, that’s not fair,’ Venetia said, keen to defend the woman who was so good to them all.
‘Lady Constance likes everyone to carry out a job here, it’s to give us a sense of responsibility.
She likes us to learn skills that will be useful when we leave.
In exchange we’re given pocket money to spend in the tuckshop. ’
‘It still sounds like cheap labour,’ he muttered.
‘You can think what you like,’ she snapped, ‘but Lady Constance is one of the nicest and most generous people you will ever know, and you should consider yourself lucky to be here, and if you’re too stupid to realise that, I pity you.
’ And with that, she snatched the book out of his hands and returned it to the shelf. ‘It’s time to go for tea now.’
‘But I want the book.’
‘Tough!’ she said. ‘You need to learn some manners before you can borrow anything from this library.’
His scowl increased. ‘It’s not your library.’
‘It is while I’m on duty!’
‘I thought the war was fought to stop dictators like you from bullying the rest of us.’
‘The war was fought to defend democracy and our freedom to respect the rules that make life fairer for everyone!’ She’d learnt that from Mr Butler who was a friend of Lady Constance.
He’d been a pilot with the RAF and had lost a leg when his plane had been shot down by the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain.
He came in twice a week to teach them history.
He wasn’t a proper teacher, but the boys loved hearing his stories about the war and of the planes he’d shot down and the girls stared at him all dreamy-eyed because they thought he was so handsome. Even if he did only have one leg.
‘There’s nothing about life that is fair,’ the ungrateful boy said. ‘If life was fair, we wouldn’t be here.’
‘There are worse places you could be,’ she said, her tone now softened.
For a few moments he remained silent. ‘If I said sorry, would you let me borrow the book?’
‘I might, if it was a genuine apology.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
As sullen as he sounded, she decided to accept his apology. Taking the book he wanted, she carried it over to Mrs Mackenzie’s desk, pulled out a drawer and found a library card for him. ‘How do you spell Lucien?’ she asked.
‘L U C I E N,’ he spelt out for her, joining her at the desk.
In her best handwriting, she wrote his name in the space provided and beside that in another column The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.
She then wrote his name on a small buff-coloured ticket.
‘This is yours,’ she said, handing it to him, ‘keep it somewhere safe.’ With a flourish – she always enjoyed doing this part – she stamped the book and gave it to him.
‘Thank you,’ he said, clutching the book to his chest as though it were the most precious thing in the world. ‘And I meant it when I said I was sorry.’
‘Good,’ she said and being faithful to Lady Constance’s instruction, she added, ‘time for tea now. You’ll learn that it’s better not to be late.’
‘Yet more rules?’
‘No,’ she said firmly, ‘it’s good manners to be on time.’
‘Are you always so—’
‘So what?’ she prompted when he broke off.
‘So grown up?’
‘Better that than being a stupid idiot who can’t read properly unless his nose is pressed against the bookshelf!’
‘I’m not stupid!’ he said. ‘It’s because … because I can’t see properly.’
That stopped Venetia in her tracks. ‘What do you mean you can’t see properly?’
‘Now who’s being stupid by being unable to understand plain English?’
‘But if you can’t see, how are you going to read that book?’
‘I can manage,’ he said tersely. ‘If I hold it up close.’
‘Why don’t you wear spectacles, then?’
‘I had some but … but they got broken.’
‘When was that?’
‘Ages ago.’
‘So you need new ones? Have you told Lady Constance?’
‘No. And anyway, it doesn’t matter because I won’t be here for long. When she’s better, my mum will come for me.’
This wasn’t the first time Venetia had heard something like this. Children often arrived with some story or other that a member of their family would show up one day and take them home with them. The older a child was, the less likely it was to happen.
Feeling sorry for the boy, she checked the clock on the wall and decided there was just time before tea to take him upstairs to meet Edie Buckle. She would know what to do about him needing spectacles. Venetia couldn’t bear the thought of him struggling to read the way he’d just described.
‘Come with me,’ she said.
‘Where are we going?’
‘You need to be kitted out in the Hope Hall uniform and to do that, you must meet Mrs Buckle. She’s our matron but is also in charge of arranging what you have to wear. We all wear the same shirt, sweater and dungarees, boy or girl.’
‘I just told you I won’t be here for long, so I don’t need a uniform.’
‘But while you are you here,’ she said patiently, ‘even if it’s only a week, you might as well fit in. That’s important.’
His frowned deepened and he narrowed his eyes, perhaps to see her better. ‘I thought Lady Constance said uniqueness was to be encouraged. Wearing a uniform makes everyone look the same, doesn’t it?’
Clever-dick, she thought. ‘It’s what is inside a person that matters,’ Venetia said, ‘and right now you’re proving to me that what’s inside you isn’t worth a fig! And besides, didn’t you wear a uniform at the school you used to go to?’
‘Yes, but not one as stupid as the one you’re wearing.’ He gave her dungarees a long and disapproving look. ‘You look like some kind of farm worker.’
‘Oh, and I suppose you’re too posh to wear something like this? What would you rather wear, Little Lord Fauntleroy, velvet breeches and a frilly white shirt?’
He stared angrily at her, gritting his teeth, but at the thought of him prancing about in velvet breeches she suddenly snorted and then she laughed.
To her surprise, he smiled back at her, and he laughed too.
It was a funny gravelly kind of laugh, as if he wasn’t used to laughing and hadn’t yet worked out how to do it properly.
Or maybe he was recovering from a sore throat. It was none of her business anyway.
He was staring at her now, his eyes narrowed in a distinctly weird way. She supposed he was trying to focus on her, which had the effect of making her feel self-conscious about her appearance, which normally she never much cared about.
‘Come and meet Edie Buckle,’ she said, wanting him to stop looking at her. ‘You’ll like Edie, there’s nobody nicer than her in the whole wide world.’
‘You think everyone is nice.’
‘And you think everyone is horrid, don’t you? Including me probably.’
‘No,’ he said, as she opened the library door to let them out. ‘I think you’re okay. You say what you think. I like that. I don’t like people who say things they don’t mean.’
That, she thought, sounded almost like a compliment.
They found Edie on the top floor in her cosy little office sitting by her small electric bar heater with a mug of tea in her hand. If Lady Constance was tall and statuesque, Edie Buckle was like a lovely soft round dumpling. She was always so comforting and never had a harsh word for anyone.
‘Is this our new lad you’ve brought to see me, Venetia?’ Edie said.
‘Yes, Mrs Buckle. I’ve shown him the library and then I thought we just had time before tea to come up and see you so you could sort out a uniform for him.’
‘A very good idea. Now then, Lucien,’ she said, turning to look at him, ‘I’m delighted to meet you and my first piece of advice I’m going to give you is that I can’t recommend a better friend for you than Venetia.
I can see from the way you’re clutching that book, you’re fond of reading like she is. ’
Venetia had manoeuvred herself so she was standing behind Lucien and pointing to her eyes, she shook her head.
On her feet now, Edie gave her a puzzled look and gesticulating again with her hands, Venetia pointed at Lucien, then circled a thumb and forefinger around each of her eyes.
Just as the woman appeared to understand what she was trying to tell her, Lucien whipped round, but quick as a flash Venetia had already lowered her hands and was fiddling with the cuff of her woollen sweater underneath her dungarees, looking for all the world a picture of innocence.
‘Right then, young man,’ Edie said, while smoothing down her snowy-white apron, ‘let’s go and see if we can find you a smart uniform for you to wear. Then I’ll need to book you in for a few tests tomorrow.’
‘What kind of tests?’ he asked warily.
‘Oh, nothing to worry about, just the usual things. Come along now.’
It was two weeks later, following a visit to an optician in Cambridge that Lucien returned to Hope Hall wearing a pair of heavily black-rimmed NHS spectacles.
He said he hated them, that they weren’t as nice as his old ones, but by then Venetia was more than used to his ways.
‘Don’t be so ungrateful, Little Lord Fauntleroy! ’
By now they were firm friends and Lady Constance had welcomed Venetia’s suggestion that Lucien help in the library with her. He was, in truth, her first proper friend of her own age. A friend who eventually confided in her why he had ended up at Hope Hall.
‘My mother is never going to get better and come for me,’ he said. ‘She’s dead and so is my father.’
‘Wasn’t there anyone who could take you in and give you a home? Your grandparents?’
‘All dead,’ he’d said bluntly. ‘Or as good as.’ He never mentioned his family again. Not for all the time she knew him.