Far To Go. Noel Streatfeild

and at the worst she was to have the understudy.

      ‘You will get two pounds a week to understudy,’ Tommy explained, ‘and four pounds if you play the part.’

      Sarah had been brought in to hear the arrangements and she plucked up her courage to ask a question.

      ‘If she is engaged could she have a small advance for clothes?’

      Margaret was furious. ‘I don’t need charity, thank you. I’ve got my skirt and jersey and …’

      ‘But no coat,’ Sarah pleaded, ‘and the winter coming on.’

      Sir John, who had stayed for this discussion, broke in: ‘I’m sure I can help there. I have a little girl just your age. I will speak to Lady Teaser. I’m sure she has cupboards full of frocks and fal-lals she will never use.’ He saw Margaret’s eyes beginning to flash. ‘Don’t be angry with me. It’s a very sensible suggestion, for I am sure Mrs Beamish here will be able to alter them to fit you. Then you can keep that red dress for parties.’

      ‘Study the part at the pages I’ve marked,’ said Tommy. ‘Then come back at three o’clock tomorrow and perhaps we will have some clothes ready for you.’

      Margaret had the last word.

      ‘I could manage, my jersey and skirt are quite good and I expect I could buy a second-hand coat.’

      When Margaret and Sarah had gone, Tommy and Sir John solemnly shook hands.

      Then Sir John said: ‘If she can lose her temper when she’s acting as she does in life that little girl is the find of the new century.’

      Katie was in her own way a beauty. She wore her hair cut very short, almost like a boy’s. It was rather fine hair and her mother believed that if she wore it short as a child it would be thick and glossy when she grew up. She was a quiet, studious child with her head always buried in a book. Her mother said she was a great reader, but Katie and her governess, Miss Grey, knew the books she read were mostly play scripts passed on to the schoolroom secretly by the theatre manager, whom she called Uncle Tommy. She also read and reread Shakespeare’s plays and knew most of the women’s parts by heart.

      Miss Grey was the daughter of a country parson. Her mother was dead and she came in the middle of a family of nine, and though the rectory where she was brought up was rent-free, the rector’s income was only one hundred pounds a year, so there were never even halfpennies to spare. But the rectory children had good brains and were determined to be educated. All the boys got scholarships to schools which offered special places to the sons of clergy, and the girls learned all the village school could teach them and then taught themselves from books. In addition they learnt a lot that no books could have taught them. How to stretch the hundred pounds so that they had enough to eat and were all covered, if not exactly dressed. As an aid to this the girls ran about barefoot even in the worst weather so that there were boots for the boys to take to school. Some sort of footwear they had every Sunday and for school, but these were curious homemade efforts. Those boys who were still at day school always walked to their school with their boots hung round their necks, only putting them on when the school was in sight.

      The girls were good, too, with food. Everything that was edible and that grew wild was gathered in. They caught fish in a stream and snared rabbits. Miss Grey could keep Katie happy for hours describing her childhood.

      ‘It was hard, I suppose,’ she would say, ‘but we were happy and people were good to us. They loved my papa and would pass it on to us in little gifts of vegetables or perhaps eggs, and the squire gave us the run of his library for books. And we have all done well. I have three brothers who are doctors and two are in the Indian Civil Service and all my sisters are well and happily married.’

      ‘I’m glad you’re not married,’ Katie would say. ‘I’m so glad you have come to look after me.’

      ‘Coming here was just what I wanted,’ Miss Grey would say. ‘Although as a child I never went to a theatre, I always longed to. I read whatever I could find about the theatre but there is not much written. Then I saw your father’s advertisement in The Times newspaper. It gave his name and I went for an interview. I never thought he would take me for, now that everybody is to be educated, teachers are expected to be trained and play the piano, and certainly have fluent French and perhaps dancing …’

      Katie laughed at the thought of Miss Grey in her thick shoes, worn sizes too big because she was used to running about barefoot, trying to teach dancing.

      ‘But I have outside teachers for all those, it’s you as a person I need. Papa was quite right, you are just perfect for me.’

      That evening Sir John asked Ada about Katie’s old clothes.

      ‘I am hoping the child will do. She speaks nicely but it seems she was brought up by two ladies, and there is some romantic story about being found in a basket. Tommy says it will do for the newspapers if the child proves suitable. But something must be done about her clothes, she could not even attend rehearsals in what she has. Has Katie any old clothes and could someone fit out the child?’

      Katie was charmingly dressed in soft fabrics in pastel shades, and to her mother dressing her was rather like dressing a doll, but the real fun was when there were new clothes to be made. Any day now she was planning to take Katie to the dressmaker to order her a winter wardrobe. Invariably, when a new season came round, what she always described as ‘that comical Miss Grey’ would say: ‘Oh, but there is a cupboard full of clothes scarcely worn.’ How convenient that this child had turned up now! She would give orders. Miss Grey was to fit the girl out.

      ‘You see to it, Miss Grey,’ she said. ‘Any of Katie’s old clothes should do, though not of course party frocks.’

      Miss Grey went back to the schoolroom where she had left Katie writing an essay. She had closed the door, but even so she lowered her voice just in case Lady Teaser should be passing.

      ‘This afternoon the child they think will act in the new play is coming to try on some of your old clothes. Your mother did not mention you, but knowing how you enjoy meeting theatre folk I thought you might help me choose frocks for her.’

      Katie seemed in one second to change from a rather bored child into a radiant one. The day which, like most days, had stretched drearily ahead for her, suddenly became special.

      ‘Oh!’ she said. ‘Thank you, Miss Grey. Wouldn’t it be perfect if we could become friends?’