“Come on, the girls are rather keen to see you – though they’re meant to be working in the kitchen.” They started down the stairs, but after three steps the boy stopped, startled by the gang of five girls that had gathered at the bottom.
“It’s a boy,” said a voice rather dismissively.
“Quiet, Dot,” hissed one of her companions, but Dot wouldn’t be silenced.
“I wanted it to be another girl,” and with this announcement she led the posse of girls away, disappointed.
One of them seemed to linger for a moment. Was she smiling at him? It was difficult to tell, because the girl herself seemed no more than a shadow.
“Am I the only boy, Mrs Timmins?”
“No, no, the boys are outside, doing their chores.” She looked pointedly towards the girl. Then she led him down the remaining stairs and through a large kitchen. “Come on, Robert,” she called when he lagged behind.
Robert? Yes, of course, that’s me, he thought. He stepped into the sudden brightness of a cloudless day. The sunshine felt good on his skin and he turned his face towards it, hoping that the sun, at least, would recognise him.
A tall boy, almost a man, came striding towards them. “This is my son, Albert,” said Mrs Timmins. “He’s in charge of all the outside work that’s usually left to our boys.” Albert was rather proud of his role, judging by the grin that filled his face, a face already crowded with an unsightly rash of pimples. “He’ll give you jobs to do as well, but not today, since you’ve only just joined us.” She glanced at Albert to be sure he had understood.
“No, not today,” he agreed readily enough. “Come on, I’ll gather all the boys to meet you.” He walked to the well in the middle of the courtyard and shouted, “Boys, boys, come here!” Before long, half a dozen boys had joined them in the courtyard.
“This is Robert, everyone,” called Mrs Timmins. “I hope you’ll make him feel at home.” She picked out two of the older boys. “Hugh and Dominic, I’ll leave him in your hands, so you can show him around.”
After an awkward moment or two, a boy stepped forward. One of his legs was shorter than the other, making him limp noticeably as he moved. “I’m Dominic,” he said, offering his bony hand like a man. The boy shook it warily, but the hand was warm and the gesture friendly.
He relaxed a little as a second orphan introduced himself. “My name’s Hugh.” He put his hand to his mouth to stifle a sickly cough. Hugh didn’t have a limp but he didn’t have much else either. His arms and neck were skinny, the bones visible beneath the skin. His face was painfully narrow too.
“Do you want to join them, Fergus?” Mrs Timmins added, bringing a sterner tone to her voice. “It’s not so long ago that you were the new boy.”
This Fergus was a head taller than the rest and broad-shouldered. He nodded politely to Mrs Timmins but then turned to the younger boys around him, rolling his eyes in mockery. They sniggered uncertainly. “What’s your name again?” he asked bluntly.
The new boy hesitated, as though even this simple question were too much for him.
“You do know your name, don’t you?” Fergus urged him.
“Robert,” he answered finally, not sounding quite convinced.
“Of course it is,” said Mrs Timmins a little too eagerly. “Well, come on, Dominic, introduce the others. I have work to do if you lot expect to be fed.” She bustled off towards the kitchen. Albert lingered a moment, but he didn’t seem one for words and soon he had disappeared as well.
Dominic turned to the waiting circle and fired off names faster than they could be matched to faces: Watkin, Oliver, Jonathan…
“Where do you come from?” asked Hugh.
Where do I come from? he asked himself. He wished he could remember.
Hugh tried again. “What happened to your mother and father?”
“I’m not sure. I think my mother’s…” Something held him back. It was in his mind, yes, as hard as a stone. His mother was dead, but still he didn’t feel it.
When he said nothing further, Fergus wandered away, uninterested, and the younger boys went with him, leaving only Dominic and Hugh.
“I suppose we’d better start showing you around,” Hugh said. “That’s the stables over there.” An arm waved vaguely towards the low, ramshackle building that faced them across the courtyard. “Old Belch lives in there, in one of the stalls.”
“A horse?”
“No, a man,” Dominic said with a laugh, “but he smells like a horse. Worse, really.”
“Why’s he called Old Belch?”
They glanced at each other, smirking. “You’ll find out when you meet him,” said Hugh.
While they were talking, a tall girl had walked past them to the well in the middle of the yard, where she filled a bucket with water. Now she sloshed that water heedlessly over the sides as she returned to the kitchen. She was much older than the girls he had seen near the stairs – older than he was, he guessed. She was brushing the end of her long ponytail with her free hand as she went, paying more attention to this than the bucket. He said hello, but she didn’t even look at him.
“What’s she being so high and mighty for?” he asked.
“She’s always like that,” said Hugh. “Did you see the way she was spilling the water? She’ll have to go back for another load.”
“What’s her name?”
“Nicola. Only been here a few weeks. No one likes her much.”
“She was sent back,” said Dominic. There was something about the way he said this that made the newcomer raise his eyebrows, puzzled.
Hugh tried to explain. “A family in Fallside wanted someone, a bit like a servant, but more like a daughter really.”
“Except she was hopeless. Too proud to do anything useful so they sent her back,” Dominic continued bitterly.
Hugh dropped his voice to a whisper. “It’s a terrible thing to be sent back.”
“She lost her chance,” said Dominic, and suddenly the new boy understood why he spoke so savagely. Dominic’s limp meant he would never be offered a home.
After Nicola had disappeared haughtily through the kitchen door, the tour continued. They headed for the back of the house, past a vegetable garden, and beyond it a field with two well-fed cows. They rounded a pond where ducks quarrelled and a family of geese strutted proudly at the water’s edge.
“This is the orchard,” Dominic said as they walked between rows of apple trees that ran all the way to the stone wall bordering the orphanage. “Albert and Mrs Timmins sell the fruit in the village. That’s how we buy the food we need.”
They showed him the rope they swung on and their favourite climbing tree among the oaks on the other side of the house. But since the conversation about Nicola the new arrival had sunk into a reverie, and no matter how hard Hugh and Dominic worked to make him feel at home, he remained distant.
“Will we show him the waterfall?” asked Hugh.
“We’re not supposed to cross the wall,” Dominic replied cautiously.
“Oh, come on, Albert’s not watching,” Hugh insisted. The gleam in his eye showed a spirit far stronger than his withered body.