Although she no longer acted, Lady Teaser liked to know what was going on in their theatre. So when Sir John asked her if she would allow the little girl he hoped would play Anastasia to do lessons with Katie during the rehearsal period, she decided it was a good chance to have a look at the child. She did not suppose she would allow the girl anywhere near Katie for probably under the veneer of breeding, taught to all young actresses, she was a common little thing. However, the excuse that she was just seeing Margaret Thursday as a possible playmate for Katie was a good one, so she told Sir John, if he sent for the girl, she would see her.
In an old-fashioned way Margaret had been well brought up. So when she was shown into Lady Teaser’s drawing room she gave a bob curtsey and said politely, ‘Good afternoon.’
Lady Teaser noted with amusement how well Katie’s coat suited Margaret, but she also noticed that it had been beautifully altered.
‘Good afternoon,’ she said. Then she pointed to a chair. ‘You may sit, or is the coat too tight to sit down in?’
Margaret sat.
‘It was tight to begin with but Sarah – who I live with – she’s let it out and now it is lovely and comfortable. I wish Hannah, who brought me up, could see me now. She wished she could send me to the orphanage with nice clothes but we had to wear uniforms there, it was wicked what we looked like. These are the first nice clothes I ever had.’
Lady Teaser gave a gracious nod, accepting Margaret’s unspoken thanks. ‘Is it true you were found in a basket?’
Margaret was delighted to find a new audience. She was careful this time not to embellish the story as she often did, adding coronets on her baby clothes, for there was a look in Lady Teaser’s eyes which made Margaret feel she would notice any exaggeration.
‘It was the rector really who found me, it was on the church steps and he got the two old ladies, Miss Sylvia and Miss Selina Cameron, to adopt me and arranged that Hannah would look after me, but they got old and the fifty-two pounds a year, which had always come for my keep, stopped coming.’
‘So you were sent to an orphanage?’
‘Yes. The Archdeacon had a brother who was a governor of one. I was sent there but it was more terrible than you could dream it would be, so I and the boys ran away.’
Lady Teaser raised her eyebrows. ‘Boys! What boys?’
‘Well, at first they were just orphans like me, we hid on a canal boat and …’
Lady Teaser held up a hand. ‘Do not gabble, child. Who were the boys?’
‘Well, they were Lavinia’s brothers, Peter and Horatio Beresford. The boys were in the orphanage like me, but Lavinia was fourteen so she was found a place in Lady Corkberry’s kitchen.’
Lady Teaser was a great reader of social gossip columns so she knew where the Corkberrys’ stately home was. ‘At Sedgecombe Place?’
‘That’s it, so when the boys and I ran away from the orphanage that’s where we went, for I thought we’d find Lavinia and she would know where to hide the boys.’
‘Why did you want to hide the boys?’
Margaret, when telling people her history, usually left out the part about the elder of the two boys, Peter, but now she had to explain.
‘We’d been to tea with the Archdeacon’s brother, the one who got me into the orphanage, and we were driven over to tea in one of the Corkberry traps. I sat in front which was how I got to know Jem, because he was driving the trap. It was his father who had a canal boat, so when we escaped from the orphanage, Jem took us to his mother. Ma Smith she is called.’
‘And you hid on the canal boat. But why?’
‘Well, Peter had borrowed books from the Archdeacon’s brother without telling him and we were afraid he might have thought they were stolen and told the police. That’s why we had to run away but I’d meant to anyway, the orphanage was truly terrible.’
‘Why did you leave the canal boat?’
‘The work was very hard. You see, we were leggers.’ Margaret saw Lady Teaser did not know what the term meant. ‘You know how canal boats are pulled by horses? Well, we led the horses, cruel hard work it was in wet weather and Peter fainted, so Mrs Smith put him to bed and said we couldn’t go on being leggers.’
‘So what did you do then?’
‘Mrs Smith had a sister called Ida who called herself Mrs Fortescue, but it wasn’t their real name. She and Mr Fortescue had a fit-up company which played in a tent all the summer and we were put to work for them. Peter was meant to be Lord Fauntleroy but he couldn’t act, so instead I was Lord Fauntleroy, and Horatio, he was the little boy, acted the wrong Lord Fauntleroy.’
‘And where are the boys now?’
‘Oh, their grandfather, only they didn’t know they had one, came for them and took them all to Ireland where he has a castle.’
‘A castle! What is his name?’
‘The Marquis of Delaware. Their mother, who died, had been Lady Phoebe Milestone. Lavinia looked like her mother and Lord Corkberry guessed who she was and went to Ireland to tell Lord Delaware he had found her.’
Lady Teaser managed to hide her delight but it was difficult. She had always said that Katie was not to be an actress but be brought up to be a fashionable young lady but she had never been sure how she could do it and now, through this most unlikely source, she could see a way.
‘Do you ever hear from the children now?’
‘I had one letter from Lavinia but I haven’t answered it yet. I wanted an address to give her. Lord Delaware wanted me to go to Ireland too, he wanted to adopt me. But I wouldn’t go. He said if I’d go he would treat me as a daughter. But I don’t want to be treated as anybody’s daughter. I’m Margaret Thursday and I’m going to make my name famous.’
Lady Teaser got to her feet.
‘I’m sure you will, dear. Now come up to the schoolroom and make friends with Katie. I hope you two will do lessons together and become great friends.’
The stage-door keeper at The Dolphin was a well-known figure in his own right. To his inferiors – such as window cleaners, inexperienced dressers, tradespeople who delivered at the stage door and any persons he did not accept as his equal – he was known as Mr Todd. To the actors and countless others he was just Bill. Sometimes, when he could step out to have a glass of porter, a friend full of good spirits might slap him on the back and call him Toddie. When this happened he would say quietly, ‘The name is Bill.’ No one ever argued with this.
Sarah had been left at the stage door while Margaret was up with Lady Teaser, so Bill had to think what would be best to do with her. He had what was called ‘his room’ at the stage door, but it was little more than a box with no room for a second chair, but there was a packing case on which he could sit, so he opened his door and invited her in.
‘I’m afraid I don’t know your name, ma’am, but if you’d care to sit down while waiting for the little girl I would be pleased.’
Sarah was also pleased so she stepped in and sat.
As Bill always said of himself he had a rare nose for picking out who was who. Even as Sarah was sitting down, he knew Margaret was not related to her. A nice good woman he was sure, and certainly a theatrical, but as different from the little girl as chalk from cheese. On a ledge in the corner of his box Bill had a gas fitment on which he could do a little cooking or boil a kettle. Now he got up and lit it.
‘I expect you could do with a cup of tea. There’s a nip in the air which is, I suppose, only natural with winter coming on. Soon we’ll be havin’ fogs, I can’t abide the dirty things. A real pea-souper clears the theatre like a dose of salts.’
‘I know,’ Sarah agreed. ‘But I’ve been working outside London recently and though, of course, fogs do come up, they aren’t the terror they are in London.’
‘I’m glad to hear the Guv’nor is giving the part to little Miss Thursday. This play what’s running here is finishing, so we ought to start rehearsals for the new one if we are to be settled in before Christmas. Could be quite a holiday attraction with a little girl playing the Queen.’
‘And what a little girl!’ said Sarah proudly. ‘Why, the moment she stepped on the stage as Little Lord Fauntleroy we all knew. Real find she is.’
‘Where was she found, ma’am?’ Bill asked.
Sarah waited while Bill heated the teapot. ‘On a Thursday in a basket on the steps of the church. With the baby was a wardrobe of three of everything all of the very best quality. There was a note with her which said: ‘This is Margaret whom I entrust to your care. Each year fifty-two pounds will be sent for her keep and schooling. She has not yet been christened.’’
Bill stared at Sarah. ‘Is that the truth? You aren’t ’avin’ me on?’
‘It’s the truth,’ said Sarah. ‘And it seems, up to this year, the money always came but this year there was only a card on which was printed: “No more money for Margaret”.’
Bill made the tea and handed a cup to Sarah, offering at the same time milk and sugar. ‘Is that how she came to be on the boards?’
‘Oh, no. There was, it seems, the rector of the church in charge of her, though she was brought up by two old ladies. No, she joined the Fortescue Comedy Company, which is a fit-up where I worked, by accident like. As there was no more money for her keep this rector sent her to an orphanage. Of course we all know there’s bad orphanages about, but from what Margaret says the one the rector chose was just about as bad as it could be. So Margaret ups and runs away taking two little boys along of her. They joins one of those canal boats as leggers, which it seems is what they call those that lead the horses.’
Bill felt Sarah was being too gullible. ‘Do you believe all what she says?’
‘Oh, yes. You see, the boys was not suited to the legging and the barge people asked Mrs Fortescue – sister she is to the barge owner – to take the boys to be actors. Well, we wanted a clever boy to play Little Lord Fauntleroy but Peter, the elder of the two boys, just could not act at all.’
‘There are some like that,’ Bill agreed.
‘Yes,’ said Sarah, ‘so Mr Fortescue lost patience and threatened to beat him, and that’s when Margaret rushes in and in a flash they sees where the talent is. So Margaret’s in and Peter’s out. Not that it mattered to the boys for their grandfather comes for them, by all accounts …’
Bill put up a hand to stop Sarah. ‘Don’t tell me. He’s a Lord and the boy was the missing heir.’
Sarah laughed. ‘Truth is often stranger than fiction.’
‘I’ll say,’ Bill agreed, ‘but this Margaret’s story is enough to be goin’ on with. Found in a basket, sent to an orphanage, escapes on a canal boat and finishes in a theatre. Stone the crows but I believe you, though thousands wouldn’t.’
‘It’s all true,’ said Sarah, ‘but, mind you, I think that’s just the beginning of her story. You wait until this play comes on. I’ve a feeling in my bones somebody is going to recognize her.’