Empire's Legacy - Snippets of the Past

Snippet 2. Sophia: Natterby Close Home for Unwanted Girls and Boys

The Natterby Close Home for Unwanted Girls and Boys was a less than inspiring place for a child to grow up. Originally housed solely in a tall, narrow pre-Empire-era building of crumbling grey brick, overcrowding had over the years forced expansion into the once-empty lot next door, leading to an ugly and incongruous two-story extension built out of cheap pre-fab material that had (unheeded) been recalled for structural flaws. The matron of the Home, Beatrice Fitzpatrick, had looked after the building and its inhabitants for forty-seven years, since the former matron had unexpectedly died and Beatrice had felt called, at the age of 18, to step forward from her position as an inhabitant of the Home to take on the mantle of protector to the children she called her ducklings. The fact that she neither liked children nor knew anything whatsoever about running a children's home had not troubled her in the slightest; from the time she was small, Beatrice had been a disagreeable child with few practical skills and even fewer interpersonal ones, with virtually no chances of employment in society, and, conscious of this fact, she had seized the opportunity presented by the previous matron's death and clung to it with grim determination. The best that could be said of Beatrice Fitzpatrick was that she successfully managed to place several of her children in actual homes each year; the worst was that several of her children died each year. But neither of these occurrences was particularly remarkable when one considered the overall state of the children's homes on the central planets.

Sophia Davis was 12 when she first came to live at the Natterby Close Home. Her parents had died in a fire when a pilot in the Ninth Commissioner Squadron lost control of his bird and nosedived into the tenement district; Sophia had gone to live in the Twelfth District Commissionate Orphanage until a kitchen fire destroyed the building and forced the relocation of the children within. Her arrival at the Natterby Close Home coincided with a yearly inspection from the Commission's Board for the Welfare of Children, Disabled Persons, and the Poor, and as a result Sophia was more or less forgotten in Beatrice Fitzpatrick's manic rush to ensure that the Commission allowed the Home to remain open for another year. As this largely involved bribing the Inspector and ensuring he or she was not offered one of the rock-like muffins for which Beatrice was infamous, the inspection passed by smoothly, leaving Beatrice satisfied that she was (regardless of all appearances to the contrary) running her children's home to standard and with a degree of luxury unavailable elsewhere.

Left to her own devices from almost the moment she was deposited at the door and well versed in the way in which these homes were run, Sophia quietly moved herself into the building without bothering to check where Beatrice wanted her. Her life in the tenements had taught her many things, including the fact that pretty girls attracted trouble—and Sophia knew that she was a pretty girl, even if she was only 12 years old. With that in mind, she installed herself in the girls' dormitory on the first floor—the dormitory furthest from the older boys' rooms and the only one with a lock on the door.

As she sat on the thin mattress that first evening and carefully unpacked her bag of keepsakes, Sophia heard footsteps in the corridor and lifted her head as Beatrice appeared in the doorway. The matron stood for a moment, filling the space, a frown on her face.

"Your paperwork says you were one of those that lost their parents in that Helborne tenement fire five years ago," she said abruptly.

Sophia tucked her hair behind her ears and ducked her head. "Yes, miss," she said softly.

Beatrice huffed. Her puffy white fringe lifted with the expulsion of air and then drifted back down. "Well, don't expect you can come crying to me when you miss your parents. I don't have time to coddle children. I have a home to run."

"Yes, miss," Sophia murmured.

"You're a lucky girl," Beatrice continued, walking into the room. This caught Sophia's attention; startled, she lifted her head. Beatrice stopped beside the bed, smelling of old cabbage and sickly sweet cheap perfume, and studied the girl. "You're pretty enough; someone's bound to want you. No one ever wants the ugly ones." She caught Sophia's chin between her fingers and turned her face towards the light. "Someone will want you. If no one wants you when you're young, they'll want you when you're older." She released Sophia and patted her hard on the cheek. "You'll get by."