Though Margaret had been busy trying to hear in which direction they were going, she had also made a plan for her arrival. ‘It’s a busy part of London,’ she thought. ‘She may think she’ll take me in without anybody seeing but if I can’t shout I can wriggle.’
It was a very rough, horribly dirty lane in which the cab stopped. Because the fog was at last lifting, the women were gathered outside gossiping about how bad the fog had been.
Although there were frequent street brawls when they knocked each other about, as a rule the women were friendly for they shared two things in common: grinding poverty and a detestation of the police. About this last they ganged together. They might know a lot the police would like to hear but they never said a word that might incriminate their neighbours. So when a cab drew up outside Number Four and the driver carried a struggling child, tied round the legs with rope, up the steps and into the house they all scattered. Only when the door was shut, and Margaret and Matron inside, and the cab had driven away, did they draw together again to mutter, ‘Poor kiddie.’ – ‘That’s another for ’er to starve.’ – ‘It’s a shame.’ – ‘Somebody did ought to report ’er.’
When the driver threw Margaret on to the floor she knocked her head so badly that for a few seconds she was unconscious. When she regained her senses Matron was muttering at her.
‘I suppose you think you are somebody, acting a big part at The Dolphin Theatre, but you’ll learn different here. What I need in this house is a skivvy, to clean the place and wait on me. If you don’t do exactly what I say you’ll be punished, and you know what my punishments are like. Now, I am going to untie your legs and wrists so you can make a start on the stairs, the dirt’s that thick there it might be a carpet.’
While the ropes were being untied Margaret tried to think what it would be best to do. It was certain if she did not do what she was told she would be beaten. It was no good thinking of escape for she had heard Matron lock the door after the cab had left. On the other hand, not for one single second was Matron to get away with the idea that she was giving in. She knew a skivvy was a very common way of describing a general maid. The poor little orphans that Matron had kept on after leaving age to work in the orphanage, they were skivvies, and what a life they had led! She, Margaret Thursday, would be nobody’s skivvy, let Matron do what she liked with her.
Because Margaret did so love having lace on her petticoats, for Christmas Sarah had made lace for all her underclothes, something which pleased Margaret every morning when she put them on. That day she was wearing the warmest of what had been Katie’s frocks: a darkish blue wool with a velvet band at the neck and a frill at the bottom of the skirt. Now, lying on what smelt like a very dirty floor and feeling Matron’s hands fumbling with the ropes round her ankles and wrists, she was lifted out of her personal misery by pride. Wait until Matron saw how she was dressed. That would surprise her. She would pretend she was the Little Queen in the play, that would keep her chin up even if Matron dragged her all the way back to the orphanage.
The last knot was untied and the dirty gag taken out of Margaret’s mouth. With an effort, for she was stiff from being tied up, she sat up and all she wanted to say boiled up in her: then she saw Matron and the boiling stopped.
Matron, as she had known her, had been a cruel-faced woman, rather plump because she fed herself well, and very well dressed for her position. The woman Margaret was now looking at was scraggy, with grey hair hanging in rats’ tails round her shoulders. She wore a dirty, torn, woollen dress, and over it a large black shawl. Margaret would not have recognized her except for her snappy beady eyes and her terribly cruel mouth. It was those eyes that kept her silent. ‘She’s mad,’ she thought. ‘Whatever has happened to her, she’s mad.’
Back in the village where Margaret had been brought up there had been a mad woman. If left alone she did no great harm, though her mutterings scared people. Margaret’s guardian, the rector, made a point of visiting the mad woman regularly. ‘I don’t do any good,’ he would say, ‘but I like her to feel she has a friend.’ Margaret had no wish that Matron should be looked upon as a friend but, if she was mad, she must not be made madder. She must be treated with cunning. Matron pointed to a door.
‘You’ll find a tap in there and a dish rag and basin, then get on your knees and scrub those stairs.’
Margaret, with immense grandeur, her chin high in the air, went to do as she was told. ‘It’s not me doing this,’ she comforted herself, ‘it’s Anastasia.’
Poor Margaret needed all her imagination to believe she was Anastasia. The house was appallingly squalid; just to touch the dishcloth when she found it made her think she was going to be sick. There was no hot water and nothing on which to heat a kettle so she filled the basin with cold water from a dripping tap. She had no chance to explore for before she had filled the basin Matron was shouting:
‘Hurry up, Margaret Thursday, or you’ll get a beating you won’t forget.’
For the rest of her life Margaret remembered cleaning those stairs. When she was filling the basin she had noticed a broken knife on the floor. She had picked it up and hidden it under the dishcloth thinking a weapon would come in handy. But its first use was to scrape the stairs, which had dirt so thick on them, it was, as Matron had described, like a carpet.
Before the stairs were half done Matron was screaming at Margaret to hurry.
‘I’ve got to go out to the shops and I can’t leave you loose, so get on with it now.’
Margaret decided that if Matron could live with stairs in that state she wouldn’t notice if the last part was only wiped over, so in a few minutes she got thankfully up off her knees. Her pretty frock was creased and dirty where she had knelt on it. ‘But I don’t care,’ she thought. ‘The first thing I shall do when I escape is to burn every scrap of clothing I have worn in this terrible house.’
Matron had always been a strong woman, but now her madness seemed to give her extra strength. Though Margaret fought every inch of the way, she dragged her into the room where she had been sent to get water and, with the rope that the cabman had tied round her, she fastened her securely to an old mangle.
‘Pull that over if you want to,’ she said. ‘It will fall on you, so if you’re hurt, you’ve only yourself to blame.’
Margaret could see that Matron was not in her right mind, but she still could not imagine why she was in such a fury with her.
‘I’m not a fool,’ she said. ‘I can see it would do no good to pull your mangle over – but why me? What have I done to you?’
A curious noise came out of Matron, more like the screech of a big bird than a human cry.
‘What have you done? Who told lies and put that Lady Corkberry on to having me dismissed without money or a character? Who put the orphans on to throwing vegetables and that at me as I drove away? Who put the police on to me pretending to be drowned in the canal?’
Margaret was astonished. ‘I didn’t know you weren’t Matron at the orphanage any more. Thank goodness you aren’t, for you were mean and cruel, but I didn’t know.’
Matron slapped Margaret’s face. ‘Be quiet, you. There’ll be more work for you to do when I get back.’
Margaret heard the front door key turn in its lock. She was horribly uncomfortable, for at the slightest movement her wrists ached from the rope that tied them. There was nothing for it, she decided, but to be perfectly still. It was then she heard a sound, a sort of scuffling and rustling. Margaret stiffened, and for a second her courage deserted her. Then she managed to raise her chin a little.
‘All right,’ she called. ‘I can hear you.’ She managed to keep the tremble out of her voice. ‘I am Margaret Thursday and I’m never afraid of anything – not even rats.’