Chapter 2
Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow (Psalm 109)
This was where he belonged, thought Pert. He wriggled further under the pew, into the dust on the flagstones, and drew his feet in so they didn't stick out into the aisle. He felt at home down here. The familiar shadows pressed down on him, all the dark weight of the great empty church covering him and hiding him. Far overhead the saints and angels stared down, but they couldn't see Pert beneath the pew.
Ah, there it was, the sound of the Reverend Tench's feet as he stalked deliberately down the aisle, his narrow head peering from side to side, scanning the gloom. He had called Pert, but Pert didn't want to be found.
“Potts?” he creaked. “Pertinacious Potts? I know you're there. Come along, boy, work to be done!”
Pert shivered. Never any heat here, despite the furnace down in the crypt and the iron gratings in the floor. The worship of God was a chilly business. His groping fingers found something in the dust, a coin fallen from last Sunday's collection plate which he, as altar boy, had to carry in front of his surplice up to the vicar waiting before the altar. He had no idea what happened to the money after that.
The feet stopped at the end of Pert's pew. “Boy? Boy? I know you're there! Come on, you pestilential nuisance, show yourself!”
Pert lay still. Could Tench really know where he was? Did the thumping of his heart give him away, or his panting as he shivered on the floor? Then a hand on his ankle, and a strong pull dragged him backwards through the dust and out into the aisle.
He rolled over and looked up.
“I was just ...” he stammered, “... I thought I saw ...” His face brightened. “I finished in the vestry, sir! I hung up your cassock, and the hymn books are all neatly stacked. And I took the hymn numbers down off the board, and straightened all the hassocks, and then I thought I saw something glinting.” He held out the coin. It was a silver sixpence, bread for a week.
“Stupid child,” the vicar sneered. His beaky nose resembled a wading bird, a heron perhaps. “I've better things to do than chase around after you. You're nearly sixteen, you're not a baby any more. Stand up, boy!”
He slapped Pert round the head, using the hand with the big signet ring. It hurt.
“Christmas, Potts, Christmas to think about! Services, matins and evensong and midnight mass, Potts. Need you, Potts, need you for the services!”
Pert's heart sank. “Sir, not all, sir? You can't expect me to do them all, sir?”
“Why not? Why ever not, you idle wretch? I have to be here for every one, so why not you?”
“Because you're the vicar,” Pert thought, “and you're paid, and you'll sit down to Christmas dinner with the Widow Dolphin and Mrs.Wheable, and you won't do all the services anyway, because you'll go to Sir Humphrey Comfrey in the evening and sit by the fire and have port and chestnuts while poor Mr.Surplice takes evensong and nobody'll come. And I'll be with my mother and we'll eat potato stew same as always, and go to bed cold. That's why.”
But he said nothing. Some thoughts you couldn't voice, not if your mother relied on the good will of the neighbours and townsfolk for little bits of sewing and mending.
“There's an end to it,” creaked the vicar. “No more talk. You be here or I'll know the reason why.”
He thrust several envelopes at Pert. “Here, post these on your way home. And no more of your nonsense, creeping and crawling about. Sneaky child you are, like your father and his father before him!”
He turned and flapped back up the darkened aisle towards the vestry, lifting his feet very high.
“You didn't know my father,” Pert said under his breath. “And I'm not sneaky. I'm just ... private, that's all.” He fled to the great door at the back of the church and let himself out into the night.
Thin snow was falling, whirled into eddies by the wind from the flanks of Bodrach Nuwl. Pert's feet knew every uneven flagstone of the path to the stone arch, and then he was out into the Canonry. He turned downhill towards the Market Place, where the lights of the stalls gleamed on the cobbles and the paraffin lamps hissed as the flakes of snow struck them. Many stall-holders were closing up already, scowling and complaining that business had been slow. Others still stood, stamping their feet and flapping their arms against the cold, hoping for just one or two more customers.
The silver sixpence was still clutched in his hand. What could he buy with it? Brandysnaps? No, he'd get more for the money if he bought toffees, and they'd last longer too. Or ... with a funny feeling in the pit of his stomach ... he might buy a gift for Rosella. He could imagine her surprise as he gave it to her on the doorstep, and her eager curiosity as she unwrapped it, and the delight in her eyes as she thanked him ...
He was roused from this pleasant reverie by a bucket of cold, fishy water thrown at his feet. The fish-monger was closing up his stall and didn't care where he swept. He was eager to get off and down to the Drop of Dew to wet his whistle on this raw evening. He had thrown the left-over fish onto the cobbles and a crowd of squabbling gulls were fighting over them.
“Who eats fish at Christmas?” wondered Pert. Fish was for every day. This was a fishing town, and fish was plentiful – though not in their house, of course, with no man to go out in the boats and support them.
With a start he realised that the answer was staring him in the face. The sixpence must be spent, not on himself or on Rosella, but on his family. He thought of his younger sister, so grave and pale and serious. She never complained, she was never in trouble, and no one ever bought her anything. And his mother, always tired and quiet since his father went, scratching a living with her needle in the only way she knew.
Yes, that was it. A gift for each of them. Now, what had the market to offer? Many of the stalls were closed already, but there was still a light shining at Mrs.Toogood's stall, knick-knacks and fripperies, games and toys and ornaments, balls of wool and packets of needles, ribbons and silks and all the little things that Grubb's Emporium was too proud to stock.
Pert spent a long time deciding, picking up first one thing and then another. Rosy-cheeked Mrs.Toogood watched him tiredly. She always tried to keep cheerful but it was the end of a disappointing day, her feet felt like blocks of ice and she was anxious to get home. Still, even a boy's pocket money was worth having with sprats at threepence a pound and firewood like gold dust.
“Is it a present, dear?” she asked. He nodded.
“For your Mum or your sister Fenestra?”
“Both. I've got sixpence ...”
“Well, dear, that won't go very far. Let's see ... how about this for your sister?” She held up a rag doll.
“Oh no, she's too old for that! She's thirteen, you know.”
“Is she? She always looks younger, poor lamb. What about this?”
It was a little wooden puzzle. You had to twist it this way and that, and little by little the carved pieces would slot into place, and in the end you had a tiny model house with windows and carved flowers up the wall and a little carved cat sitting in the open door. Pert thought Fenestra would like it. She was clever with her fingers, and she could show her friends at school.
“Perfect,” he said, and smiled at Mrs.Toogood, who beamed back.
“Now, for your Mum ... how is Potentia? Is she managing?” Pert smiled and nodded. He supposed she managed. They ate, they had a roof over their heads, the rent was paid. That was managing, wasn't it? Or should there be more?
“I'll let you in on a secret,” said Mrs.Toogood, leaning over the counter and lowering her voice, “people always buy their Mums useful things, like saucepans and forks and darning needles. But what a Mum really wants is something pretty, something that doesn't do anything but is just for them and no one else. I had just the thing here somewhere ...”
She rummaged through her stock, muttering to herself while Pert fidgeted. “Ah!” she said. “I knew it was here!” She held up a small white box. “Look, she can keep buttons in it if she wants .
.. but really ...”
She opened the box. It was small enough to fit in one hand and made from something natural, with a grain like wood, but not wood for it was too white, almost creamy. Inside the lid and right across the bottom were the smallest little fish you'd ever seen, nosing among seaweed, and shells lying about on the floor, and a crab hiding behind a rock.
“Hold it to your nose,” she said. He did, and for a moment there was a brief hint of the sea – not the fishy, weedy, muddy smell down at the quay, but a fresh, clean, salty smell of sun and wind and far away places. “Now listen,” she said, and faintly in his ear he heard the swish of the waves and moaning of the great winds that blow across the ocean. It was a wonderful box.
“How much, please?” he asked.
“Just six pence for the two,” she said. And she took his money and wrapped the gifts in the prettiest yellow tissue paper, and tied a little length of yellow ribbon round each parcel, and didn't charge him any extra.
“Merry Christmas, thank you!” he said, and ran on. She looked after him for a minute. A polite lad, she thought. Pity about his family.
At the post-office he slapped the hated letters down on the counter. Miss Throstle got as far as “Pertinacious Potts, how dare you …” before he was out of the door. He knew all about the rudeness and lack of consideration shown by the young today, and what else could you expect from that family, and he'd come to a bad end like his father and grandfather before him, you see if he wouldn't. Let her complain about it to her crony Mistress Grubb.
He crossed the street so as not to walk too close to Grubb’s Emporium, Fine Fashion, Drapery and Haberdashery. Nobody cared to approach that shop unless they actually had business there.
It was surprising how many people did have business there, though. It was the only haberdashery in town. No other shopkeeper would dare compete with Mistress Grubb. He thought of the wan little shop-girls who had to work there. His mother had already hinted that Mistress Grubb had her eye on Fenestra. He didn't want his sister to go there and sleep in the garret and run round like a frightened rabbit all day. It was rumoured that Mistress Grubb beat them, and the idea of his frail, wide-eyed sister being beaten was too awful to think about.
Rosella would never submit, he thought fondly. She'd shout and kick and run away. She was good at running, and she always wore big boots. You didn't forget a kick on the shin from Rosella Prettyfoot.
He drew his coat around him as he turned into the Bearward. Trudging up the hill the snow hit him in the face, coming straight from Bodrach Nuwl, dark in the twilight over the little town. Up there the wind would be a howling, solid thing carrying the snowflakes horizontal through the darkness, and a man would not be able to keep his footing on the turf. Even down here the gusts whipped round the street-corners and whirled the snowflakes in the lamplight. Wherever you went in the town, Bodrach Nuwl was always there.
He paused at Rosella's house, and looked at the windows. A comfortable light shone at the edges of the curtains. Rosella was in there somewhere, doing something interesting, always busy and self-contained. In his head he played again the scene where he knocked and presented her with a tissue-wrapped Christmas gift, and she smiled and invited him in, and they stood in the hall quite close together while she unwrapped it and kissed him on the cheek. The packet with the white box was a lump in his pocket. Rosella would love the white box. She'd like him, and smile at him in school.
Pert shook himself. Silly daydreams, he said under his breath, silly, silly. One of his shoes was leaking water so he ran up the narrow hill between the houses and swooped into Pardoner’s Alley. As he crashed through the back gate a large seagull on the fence did not so much as flinch. He waved an arm threateningly but it simply hunched its shoulders a little more and gazed at him with a malevolent yellow eye. He went in through the back door and behind him it flapped heavily down onto the dustbin and started to peck and pull at the handle.
“Pert, is that you?” called his mother. She came out of the kitchen wiping her hands. Her hair had come down and she looked tired. She always looked tired since his father went.
“Yes. Sorry I’m late. The old crow made me post his letters for him”.
“Dear, you mustn’t talk about him like that. He’s the Vicar. He’s an important man, and you should pay him some respect. Now before you take your coat off, please will you go to the woodshed? The parlour fire’s nearly out.”
The Black Joke Page 2