Free Sapphire Battersea by Jacqueline Wilson Page B

was overly occupied already, stuffed full to bursting with trunks and old chairs and pictures in frames, and box after box of old ornaments and curtains and cushions and whatnots.
    ‘This is the box room, the only room in the house you don’t have to bother with,’ said Sarah.
    ‘Am I to sleep here?’ I asked, in a small voice.
    ‘Of course not, you ninny. I know you’re tiny, but I think we’d have difficulty bedding down even a little mouse in here,’ said Sarah.
    ‘So where
am
I to sleep?’ I said, bewildered, because we’d inspected every single room in the house.
    Sarah put her head on one side, looking at me. ‘Well … perhaps if you curled up very small, you could sleep on the privy floor?’
    ‘
What?
’
    Her eyes were twinkling, and as I exclaimed in abject horror, she burst out laughing. ‘Oh, Hetty, your face! Dear Lord, you thought I was serious!’ she chortled, clutching her sides and heaving with laughter.
    I did not feel inclined to join in. And when she told me where I was in fact to sleep, it didn’t seem an especially superior alternative. I was to go to bed in the scullery! This was a little dark room off the kitchen. It had a big lead sink, a wooden draining board, a mangle, hooks for all the assorted dusters, mops, brooms and brushes, and several dark depressing cupboards full of matches and candles and cakes of coal-tar soap, Nixey’s Black Lead and Japan lustre shoe-blacking. Sadly, there was no food. Mrs Briskett kept all her edible supplies in the larder, and she locked it up each night with the key she kept round her neck.
    There was a small fold-up bed in the last cupboard, and Sarah pulled this out with a flourish. ‘There we are, Hetty. Don’t look such a sour-puss. See, you have a proper bed, and you can use the sink to wash in.’
    I hoped she was joking again, but she was serious this time. I felt my eyes filling with tears.
    ‘Lord help us, what’s the matter now?’ said Mrs Briskett, coming to inspect my ‘bedchamber’.
    ‘I don’t want to sleep in the scullery! It’s like the punishment room!’ I sobbed. ‘I haven’t done anything wrong yet!’
    ‘Hey, hey, don’t be so dramatic. I jolly well hope you
don’t
do anything wrong. Little maids have to be as good as gold or else they get dismissed! Sleeping in the scullery isn’t a punishment, silly. I slept in the scullery when I had my first job as a kitchen maid,’ she said. ‘It was practically the selfsame bed.’
    I looked at her. ‘But – but you wouldn’t fit it,’ I said, between sobs.
    Sarah burst out laughing again. I realized I had not been tactful.
    ‘I was a slip of a girl then, missy, not much bigger than you,’ said Mrs Briskett, looking offended.
    ‘I am sorry – I didn’t mean …’ I stammered. It was impossible to imagine Mrs Briskett as a slip of a girl. I was sure that she was vast even as a babe in arms. I pictured her in meat-red swaddling clothes, at least half the size of her poor mama … I found I was laughing too, but I pretended my snorts were still sobs.
    ‘Now, now, calm down, child, do. I’m going to start baking or we’ll have no tea – and Mr Buchanan will start complaining bitterly if he has to do without his cake. You come and sift the flour for me, Hetty, while I change out of my good clothes,’ said Mrs Briskett. ‘Cheer up, dearie – you know I can’t abide tears.’
    I did cheer up considerably that afternoon. I had worked with dear Mama in the hospital kitchens, and was quick and capable. I sifted flour, I cut up butter, I cracked open eggs and whisked them to a froth. I measured currants and cherries and walnuts, taking a sly nibble every now and then, while Mrs Briskett was staring at the stove and Sarah’s head was bent over her mending.
    She set me to darning an old torn nightshirt when I had finished helping with the baking. It seemed strange to hold the nightshirt in my lap, knowing that it had covered Mr Buchanan’s bony body, but I darned