Lottie Project (3 page)

I slumped to one side with the boredom of all this just as Jamie stuck his hand up so violently I
very
nearly got two fingers impaled up my nostrils.

‘I live in a Victorian house, Miss Beckworth,’ he said, showing off like mad. ‘In Oxford Terrace.’

I sat up straight. I knew he was a right little posh nob – but I had no idea he lived in one of those huge grand houses in Oxford Terrace, all steps and little lion statues and incy-wincy balconies as if the people who live there might come and do a Royal Family and wave down at you.

Oxford Terrace is on our way home from the town. Sometimes when Jo and I are trailing back with our Sainsbury’s bags cutting grooves in our hands we make up stuff and we sometimes play we live in Oxford Terrace and we’re Lady Jo and Lady Charlie and we have champagne for breakfast and we go for a workout in a posh club every day and then we have a light lunch someplace snobby and then we shop until we drop, going flash flash flash with our credit cards, and then we eat out
and
go dancing in nightclubs and chat up film stars and rock stars and football players but we just tease them and then jump into our personal stretch limousine and whizz home to our five-storey half-million mini-palace in Oxford Terrace.

‘You live in Oxford Terrace???’ I said.

Even Miss Beckworth seemed surprised. ‘Do you live in a flat there, James?’

‘No, we’ve got the whole house,’ said Jamie airily.

‘Well, perhaps you can help us understand what life was like in a big Victorian house, James.’ Miss Beckworth rummaged amongst a whole box of books about the Victorians. She pounced on something about Victorian houses and held up a picture of a Victorian parlour. ‘I don’t suppose your house looks much like this inside, though, James?’

‘Actually my mum and dad have this real thing about the Victorians and they’ve tried to make the house as authentic as possible, so we’ve got stuff like William Morris wallpaper and Arts and Crafts tiles – though we’ve got ordinary modern things like televisions and computers and stuff.’

I felt I was sitting next to Little Lord Fauntleroy. He carried on in this sickening fashion for ages until eventually even Miss Beckworth got tired of it.

‘Thank you very much, James. If anyone wants to know more about Victorian houses then you’re obviously a mine of information. Now, we’ll be studying the Victorians all this term in class, but I want you all to work on your own special project at home too.’

I groaned. I hate home projects. ‘You don’t sound
ultra
-enthusiastic, Charlotte,’ said Miss Beckworth.

‘Well. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know anything about the Victorians. Not like some people,’ I said, glaring at Jamie.

‘I’ll copy a whole lot of suggestions for topics on the board. See if you can get your famously defective eyes to focus on them,’ said Miss Beckworth briskly. ‘It might be worth your while. I intend to award a prize for the best project at the end of term.’

So I copied out all her suggestions:

I didn’t fancy any of them.

‘Can we do more than one topic, Miss Beckworth,’ said You-know-who. ‘Can we do them
all
if we want?’

‘Yes, if you like,’ said Miss Beckworth.

He was quite sickening in his enthusiasm, grabbing all sorts of stuff from the book box, though he’s probably got his own private library in his Victorian mansion.

‘Here, it’s not fair, you’re bagging all the best books,’ I said, trying to snatch at a book on Victorian hospitals that looked as if it might be promisingly gory.

‘OK, OK. Here’s one specially for you,’ said Jamie – and he bungs me this book on Victorian domestic
servants
! ‘Know your place,’ he goes.

I was about to bash him on his big head with the servant book but Miss Beckworth got narky and told us to settle down and start the research for our projects with the books we had in our hands. So I was stuck with the servant book.

I flipped through it furiously – and then stopped. There was a photo of this girl about my age. She even looked a bit like me, skinny and pale. It was a black-and-white photo so it was hard to make out if her hair was red too. It was long, like mine, but scraped back tight behind her ears, with a little white cap crammed on top. She was surrounded by little kids, but they weren’t her brothers and sisters. She was a nursery maid. She had to look after them. She was their servant.

I was a bit stunned. I didn’t know they used to have children as servants. I read a bit about these nursery maids and kitchen maids and housemaids. They had to work all day and into the evening as well for hardly any money. Girls as young as eleven and twelve. No school. No play. No fun. Just work work work.

I decided I’d do a project on ‘Servants’. I was all set to write quite a bit about it actually. I decided I’d show that Jamie.

But Jo was already at home when I got back from
school
and she had such terrible scary news I forgot all about my servant project.

I didn’t remember until the next day when everyone was showing off their project books. Jamie had done ten whole pages about ‘School’ and he’d stuck in this old photo of kids in rows in a Victorian classroom and got his mum to do some lines of special copperplate handwriting.

‘I’ve finished my school topic already,’ he boasted.

So I whipped out an old exercise book and scribbled out a page at playtime.

‘I’ve finished my school topic too,’ I said, sticking my tongue out at Jamie.

SCHOOL

MY NAME IS
Lottie. I am eleven years old. I left school today.

My teacher, Miss Worthbeck, nearly cried when I told her I could not come back. She thinks the world of me. I am her most talented pupil. I am not being boastful, this is exactly what she said:

‘Dear Lottie, you are the best at English and writing and arithmetic, you know your geography and history perfectly, you play the piano well, you paint beautifully and you sing like a lark.’

There! I am also useful to Miss Worthbeck, because she is the only teacher at our school, and she has to control a class of forty mixed infants and twelve of us older pupils. I am not the eldest by any means. There is one great lad of fourteen, Edward James, but he is very slow. He is a head taller than Miss Worthbeck, and she finds it hard to control this boy. In fact many of the boys are great lummoxes, stupid and surly. Miss Worthbeck has to use her cane on them to keep them in order.

I do not need to resort to the cane when I am left in charge of the boys though I take delight in swishing it in front of them! But I usually instruct the little ones, and they all try hard for me and give me apples and bites of their gingerbread and scratch ‘I love Lottie’ on their slates.

Miss Worthbeck has always said I am a born teacher. She has always wanted me to stay on at the school until fourteen, and then she will give me a position as a pupil-teacher, with a proper wage. But I cannot wait two years. I need to earn a proper wage immediately.

HOME

JO AND I
haven’t always had a home. We lived with Grandma and Grandpa at first. That was pretty bad. Grandma is the sort of lady who keeps a damp flannel neatly folded in a plastic bag and she’s forever whipping it out and smearing round imaginary sticky bits. On me. Even at my age. That’s nothing. She does it to Jo too.