by Renee Duke
“Nolly’s in your Canada now,” said Hetty. “He went a couple of months back. Minnow, too. Got a letter from him and all, but it were shorter than Nolly’s.”
“Are they…are they happy there?” Paige wanted to know.
“Seem to be. Nolly’s living with a minister. Minnow’s on a farm. His dad didn’t half kick up when he found out where he’d gone. Went about saying Dr. Barnardo had deprived a poor widower of his ‘dear, sweet little lad’. Huh. All he were bothered about was not having Minnow to graft for him. He’d put his mark on some kind of paper, though, so there weren’t nothing he could do about it.”
“What about Gladys?”
“Dunno. Not seen her since she went to that place Dr. Barnardo told her about. Must like it, though. She’d have run off if she didn’t.”
“Does Minnow like the farm he went to?” Paige asked.
“Likes the one he’s on now. His first were pretty bad. Farmer had him working all hours and belted him every time he got something wrong. He didn’t say that in his letter—don’t think they’s allowed to complain—but he did say the farmer were like his old man and his barge boss rolled into one, so I reckon he got some right good hammerings. It were another farmer what got him out of there. He’s with him now. Says he don’t have to work near as hard, and gets more to eat. The farmer’s missus thinks he’s a mite puny and wants feeding up.”
“There’s horses on his farm,” said Pip. “I’d like to be on a farm with horses.”
“Don’t start!” Hetty said sharply. “The school’s been on at me to go to Canada in a year or two,” she explained. “Said I’d have to get what they calls domestic training first, though. And that’s me, titch, not you. You’d have to stop here.”
“No, I wants to go with you.”
“Well, they’s not gonna let you.”
“They might.” Jack turned to Dane and Paige. “I’ve been thinking…you know how Daddy said that kids might be able to stay together if they were sponsored by people of influence? Well, what if Uncle Clive were to sponsor Hetty and Pip?”
“We don’t know Uncle Clive,” said Dane. “We only talked to him for half a minute.”
“We don’t have to know him. We have our own Uncle Clive.”
“Are you saying Granddad should impersonate him?” Paige yelped.
“Yes.”
“That just might work,” Dane said excitedly. “He’s known to make strange requests. People wouldn’t be too surprised if he wanted to do things differently.”
“What you on about?” said Hetty. “What’s im-per-son-ate mean?”
“That’s not important,” said Jack. “What’s important is, do you remember that old man we bumped into? The one who gave Paige half a crown? Well, we didn’t want to let on at the time, but he’s actually a relative of ours.”
“A relative?”
“Yes. You see, we’re…well, we’re not exactly poor, Hetty.”
Hetty snorted, and flicked at his shirt, which had been mended in several places and had sleeves that were bit too long for him. “You could fool me, mate.”
Dane took a deep breath. “We have been fooling you. We just dress like this so we can fit in around here and learn about your kind of life.”
For a moment, Hetty just stared at them. Then her eyes blazed with anger. “You telling me you’re filthy rich? That your parents haven’t come down in the world? That you live in some big, fancy, London house and have all the grub and whatnot you want? And that, every now and then, you like to chuck all that and go slumming?”
“We don’t live in a big, fancy, London house,” said Jack. “We live in a quite ordinary house in Windsor. And our family isn’t filthy rich. Just fairly well off, and very philanthropic. That means they like to support the work of people like Dr. Barnardo. They’re really interested in what he does and want to know what life is really like for street children.”
“So they’s got you wandering round the East End to find out? And on your own, to boot? I don’t believe it. Most nobs’ kids is so coddled they’s not even allowed to walk down the street without someone holding ’em by the hand.”
“Not us,” said Paige. “Our family’s okay with what we’re doing.” Well, some of them are, she thought.
“Even with that nutter running loose?”
“What nutter?”
“The bloke what’s been going around Whitechapel doing in poor working girls.”
“Jack the Ripper!” Jack exclaimed.
“Oh, got a special name now, has he? Well, me and Pip’s probably gonna lose our doss on account of him. Nellie’s in a right state. She wants to move somewheres else. Chances are, new folks won’t want us in that old shed.”
“Which is all the more reason you should go to Dr. Barnardo,” urged Paige. “With help from, uh…Uncle Clive, we really might be able to fix it so you and Pip can stay together.”
“In Canada?”
“I don’t know about that. Nolly and Minnow might be doing all right, but some kids didn’t, I mean, don’t, get good places. They go to people who beat them, and starve them, and—”
“Think I’d let ’em do that to our Pip?” cried Hetty, hugging him to her fiercely.
“There wouldn’t be much you could do against adults, Hetty.”
“Then we’d hop it.”
“You can’t ‘hop it’ in the middle of a Canadian winter,” said Dane. “You’d freeze to death.”
“And you don’t have to go to Canada,” put in Jack. “Lots of Barnardo kids stay here. The main thing is to keep you two together. Uncle Clive might be able to arrange that.”
“You think so? I doesn’t like lying to Old Rosie. Be good if we really was being took care of like I told her.”
“I wants to go where there’s horses,” said Pip. “I…” Excitement triggered a bout of coughing.
Hetty patted his chest. “Steady on, titch. You’re talking too much.”
“Horses,” he repeated stubbornly.
“We’ll see. In the meantime, have this ’un.” She took the horse-shaped paper clip of her purse and handed it to him. “We still has that clip thing from the satchel,” she told the others. “He were that taken with it, he wouldn’t let me sell it.”
Pip’s coughing subsided as he played with the clip, the older children eyeing him with concern.
Then Dane said, “We’re supposed to meet ‘Uncle Clive’ at ten o’clock. Maybe Jack and I should do that, Paige. You can follow on with Hetty and Pip after we’ve explained things to him.”
“It may take some explaining.”
“Oh, I think Granddad’ll be up for it.”
“I thought you said he was your Uncle Clive,” said Hetty.
“They’re twins,” Jack said quickly. “Even we can’t tell them apart sometimes.”
Hetty looked confused for a moment. Then she shrugged and gave her sack a speculative shake. “All right, then. You two go off and meet whichever one it is. Paige can come along with Pip and me and help us get shot of this little lot.”
She started off, glancing back over her shoulder at Paige.
Paige held up one finger to show she was coming, but wanted a moment.
She then turned to her cousin. “Twins? And all that stuff about going undercover to learn about street life for our philanthropic family? Lying obviously doesn’t bother you the way it does Hetty.”
“I don’t lie,” said Jack, offended. “Not exactly. I just use my imagination to construct plausible tales as the necessity arises.”
“And you have quite an imagination. But I suppose we had to tell them something.”
She hurried after Hetty and Pip. As soon as she’d gone, Dane and Jack made their way to St. Paul’s Cathedral. They sat by the statue to wait for Granddad. He arrived at quarter to ten, just as it started to rain.
“Did you have a good time, Granddad?” Dane asked as he and Jack ducked under his umbrella.
“I did. But where’s Paige?”
“W
ith Hetty and Pip. They’ll be here soon. They’re just giving us time to ask you something.”
They explained Jack’s scheme.
“I don’t mind being Uncle Clive for a spell,” Granddad said afterward, “but we’ll have to go back to our own time first. Pinching the old boy’s name is one thing. Pinching his money’s another. I’m not about to forge his name to get funds, and if we want these people to keep Hetty and Pip together, we’ll have to come up with a half decent donation. Fortunately, I know where we can get our hands on a fair number of Victorian bank notes.”
“I knew you’d be useful,” Jack said with a grin.
Paige and the others arrived just as the rain stopped.
“Pleased to meet, you, gov,” Hetty said after Paige had introduced them to her grandfather.
“And I you, my dear. But we’ve already met, haven’t we? Outside my solicitor’s?”
“Oh, you are that one then. I were getting a bit muddled up.”
“My brother and I have that effect on people.”
Paige shook her head. “No wonder you’re so good at lying,” she whispered to Jack. “You trained at the feet of a master.”
Hetty told Granddad about her background. “We’ve been ’larking close to two years now. Can’t say we really likes it. Pip’s often poorly, and I don’t think it’s good for him. Neither’s sleeping rough, which we might be doing soon.”
“It’s not good for you, either,” said Dane. “You’d both be better off at Dr. Barnardo’s.”
“Not if they puts Pip one place, and me another, we wouldn’t. We wants to be together. Think you can manage that, gov?” she asked Granddad.
“Perhaps. I certainly intend to try. I shall talk to someone about you as soon as possible. I don’t know how long the arrangements will take, though. Would you be able to meet us here, on this very spot, in three days’ time?”
“Expect so. We’ll come about midday.”
“Will the medallion let us make a specific arrangement like that?” Paige asked after Hetty and Pip had gone on their way.
“It should. It always did for me and Uncle Edmond. And now I think we should return home and see what we can find that might help us deal with Victorian bureaucracy. It will take more than mere money. You three will have to be smartened up, for a start. You don’t look nearly genteel enough to be related to a prominent citizen such as myself. Grantie can help there. Wolvertons never throw anything out. She’s probably got boxes and boxes of fashionable children’s garments from this—and other—eras.”
“They’d be in one of the rooms that are shut up now,” said Jack. “She calls them her auxiliary attics.”
“Handy things, attics,” said Granddad, re-opening his umbrella in response to another shower. “It was whilst rummaging about in my own that I found the wad of banknotes we’ll be using to finance Operation Hetty and Pip. My attic harbours several Hollingsworth family heirlooms your grandmother refuses to have on display. Can’t say I blame her. They are rather ghastly. I’m sure Auntie Norah feels the same about some of the stuff Uncle Edmond’s inherited, but we’ve both got too much Wolverton blood to get rid of them. Sister Meredith doesn’t. She auctioned off her share. Got a pretty penny for them.”
“Were the banknotes hidden in something?” asked Jack.
Granddad nodded. “A vase belonging to one of Clive’s sisters. Griselda, I think.”
Paige made a face. “Griselda?”
“Awful isn’t it? Grantie said you didn’t think much of Penleigh and Primrose, either, but Wolverton parents weren’t the only ones to blight their offspring’s lives with hideous names. The Hollingsworths did their share of it.”
“Including you,” Jack said accusingly. “Mummy wasn’t too thrilled about being saddled with Augusta.”
“Yes, well, that was your grandmother’s doing. Besides, she was born in August. She could hardly expect two Roman enthusiasts not to call her Augusta if she was silly enough to be born in August. If she’d hit July, she’d have been a Julia. Wasn’t our fault she was late.”
Dane laughed. “What about our mum? What excuse do you have for Britannia?”
“As before, nothing to do with me. We were in Italy serving as underpaid and overworked research assistants when she was born. We’d been there well over a year, and even for Roman enthusiasts, the heat was beginning to take its toll. As was the surly disposition of our employer. Your grandmother was missing this green and pleasant land.”
Paige edged under the umbrella. “It’s only green because it rains so much. But getting back to Griselda and her vase, how much was in it?”
“Just over five hundred pounds. She must have squirreled it away as a sort of nest egg.”
“Some nest egg. That was a lot of money back then. Bank notes from that era would be worth even more now.”
“Yes, I suppose they would. I just shoved them in a pouch. Being busy with this and that, I never got round to starting a feeding frenzy among the people who collect such things.”
“And despite what they’d fetch, you’re willing to give them up for Hetty and Pip?”
“Of course. Though I expect two or three hundred will serve our purpose.”
Paige squeezed his hand. “I love you, Granddad.”
Chapter Eleven
Back in their own time, they made their way to Paddington Station, where Granddad bought them each a chocolate bar. While they were eating them, he took out his large-buttoned senior’s phone.
“That’s the kind of mobile Daddy should get,” said Jack. “It’s not as complicated as some, is it?”
“No. Even I can use it. But I don’t use it much, and I think the battery’s going.”
It was, but he managed a couple of calls before it finally died. One was to Grantie Etta. As soon as the children got back to Rosebank, she told them Mrs. Purdom had found some Victorian clothes for them.
“There was a whole trunkful,” she announced. “We’ll have to air them out, though. They smell very strongly of mothballs.”
A short time later, Grantie Etta’s living room was covered with an assortment of upper class Victorian children’s garments. When they had been sorted by size, Paige had a selection of styles to choose from. The boys were limited to sailor suits and the velvet and lace ensembles Victorian mothers had inflicted on their sons after a book entitled Little Lord Fauntleroy made such outfits fashionable.
“I’ll take a sailor suit,” Dane said at once.
“And me,” said Jack.
“Oh, but why?” Paige picked up a dark green velvet suit and held it against her brother. “You both wore fancy get-up when we were in the Middle Ages.”
“So did everyone else.” Dane pushed the suit away. “Times change. By the Victorian era, guy’s clothes were a lot more conservative. Boys who wore sissy stuff…well, trust me, they didn’t fare too well in the company of other kids.”
Grantie Etta confirmed this. “No, they didn’t,” she said. “These belonged to some cousins who were much older than me. Uncle Neville’s boys. I didn’t know them as children, but my father told me how much they hated wearing the things. They were killed in the Great War.”
“All of them?” said Paige.
“Yes. Only one was married. He left a wife and daughter. And they both went in the ’flu epidemic that followed. That’s why both Rosebank, and full control of the family business, eventually passed to my father. He was a scholar and didn’t really have much in the way of business acumen, but, fortunately, Mama did.”
The trunks also contained coats, caps, hats, bonnets, stockings, boots, shoes, and a great many undergarments.
“What’s with all the petticoats?” said Paige. “Having to wear a dress is bad enough. Do I have to put all that on as well?”
“Yes.” Grantie Etta chuckled. “The Victorians believed in having lots of layers. Thought you’d catch your death of cold without them.”
“Even in summer?”
“At any time. Summer clothes tende
d to be a bit thinner, but there were still just as many of them.”
“We’d better go with winter ones,” said Granddad. “We’ll be going back to the same time of year as before, and from what I managed to ascertain while walking around, that was the first week of September, eighteen-eighty-eight.”
Grantie Etta frowned. “September, eighteen-eighty-eight. Wasn’t that when Jack the Ripper was at large?”
“Yes, I believe it was. But he worked at night. We shall be conducting our business during the day.”
“Did you say we? And that you were walking around?” She gave her great-nephew a sharp look. “Are you trying to horn in on this adventure, Avery?”
“They said I could,” Granddad came back defensively. “Besides, I’m being useful.”
Dane backed him up. “He really is, Grantie. We have an idea on how to help Hetty and Pip, and it’ll probably work better if we’re with someone of influence.”
“Such as the Clive Hollingsworth he bears such a striking resemblance to?”
“It would be a pity not to capitalize on it,” reasoned Granddad. “I’m just going to give my name as Mr. Hollingsworth. If someone then happens to mistake me for him, I …ah…just won’t bother to correct the error.”
“You’re incorrigible. So’s your brother. I’m surprised he didn’t go along as well.”
“Oh, he wanted to, but as soon as Trevor and Max’s departure freed up the guestroom, Norah moved some friends of hers into it. She’s insisting that he play the gracious host for the next few days. That’s probably him now,” he added when Mrs. Purdom came in to say he had a telephone call. “I asked him to look through our family records and see if Uncle Clive ever gave anything to the Barnardo charities. If he did, our additional donation won’t seem out of place.”
He returned with confirmation that Clive Hollingsworth had supported a number of Barnardo initiatives.
“Great. When can we go back?” asked Dane.
“Tomorrow. Your grandmother and I happen to have an invitation to a charity do taking place in the same part of London we want. A fête-like affair is being held to benefit an African mission that’s been operating for a hundred and fifty years. To commemorate its founding, fête-goers will even be in period dress. Granny was going anyway. She’ll be pleased to hear I now want to accompany her. Having you along will please her even more. If your parents have other plans for you…well, don’t worry, I’ll talk them into it. If necessary, I’ll do my deprived grandparents routine and demand to know how they could possibly refuse to let a poor old couple spend a little time with their only grandchildren. Two of whom they barely know because their callous daughter has chosen to raise them thousands of miles away.”
