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 tolook 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?’
