The Black Joke

by David Bramhall

  Chapter 3

  When I remember thee upon my bed, and meditate on thee in the night watches (Psalm 63)

  They ate at the kitchen table, the warmest place in this narrow house. Supper was the usual, a thin broth with a potato in it, and a hunk of hard bread that hurt your teeth. His sister watched him eat out of the corner of her eye. She loved her big brother. He was strong and quick and not so scared of the big boys at school as she was. He couldn't fight them, but he could taunt them and run away. Her own skinny legs wouldn't carry her fast enough, usually. Just the day before, Darren Durridge and Batty Bunt had cornered her in the playground and tried to lift up her skirt. She had cried and crouched down, but Mr.Merridew came past so they left her alone, with whispered threats to see her again soon. She wondered whether to tell Pert, but knew that he'd probably want to fight them and they'd hurt him. They were big, almost seventeen, and would be leaving school soon and going for the fishing. Perhaps they'd leave her alone then.

  After the meal their mother cleared the plates and settled down to some more sewing, and Fenestra went to her room where she would light a candle, wrap herself in the bedclothes and write her secret thoughts in some paper she had stolen from school. She never got into trouble, but she was good at squirrelling away spare paper and pencil ends. One day she would fill out and become a woman, but that day was far in the future. For now, her elbows and knees showed her thin bird-bones and behind the large spectacles her eyes were too big for her face. As Mrs.Toogood said, she looked about ten though she was actually thirteen. She had beautiful skin and a great deal of love to give, but as yet no one to lavish it on except her brother.

  Pert went to the attic to see his mouse. He had saved her the crust of his bread. The attic was Pert's kingdom, the place where he slept and could be alone. It was a cold, narrow space under the eaves where the wind lifted the slates in winter and snow would seep in, making little piles on the boards, but as long as he kept his bedding in the middle it usually stayed dry.

  His father's old chest was here, a battered thing bound with iron corners and brackets. Pert had annexed it and dragged it up the ladder to the loft, and his mother had never asked after it. In it he kept his books, a few tattered old volumes – “The Seaman's Vade Mecum”, “Ye Dredful Crimes and Justifiyd Execution of ye Blak Pyrate, Benido de Soto by A Sea Captain”, the back half of a book in Spanish which he couldn't read, but enjoyed looking at the little maps of headlands and harbour installations, and an old Bible which had been in the sea at some time. Many of the pages were stuck together, but in the end papers were notes in pencil by some long-dead sailor: “Ye 13th June '56 fetched Finisterro & laid for Ply'th”, and “This day three casks ' beef found spoild & ransid”, and “Wm.Tabitt ows to me 3 pence for licor”. The writing was crabbed and the spelling peculiar so Pert had not been able to decipher many of the entries, even those not spoiled by sea water, but he lived in hope of finding a sentence that read “Ye tressur is beried 13 paces north by east of ye mark”, so he could sail off and find ye tressur and return loaded with gold, and buy beautiful dresses for his mother and Fenestra, and stroll into Grubb's Emporium and look Mistress Grubb in the eye and call her “my good woman” as Sir Humphrey Comfrey did, because he had ye tressur safely locked away, and there were a lot of things you could do when you had ye tressur that were impossible without it.

  Also in the chest were some of Pert's favourite things: a cow's bone carved with tiny figures by an idle seaman, an empty bottle made of green glass which made the world green and a funny shape if you looked through it, a handkerchief dropped by Rosella Prettyfoot at school. He liked to hold the handkerchief to his face and imagine that he could smell her, though in fact it had no scent at all except that of the chest, for he had first put it in there when he was only eleven and Rosella was ten.

  Pert always wondered whether Rosella's family, her mother and father and four little sisters, ought to be called “the Prettyfoots” or “the Prettyfeet”. Rosella had blonde hair cut short, and a strong fair face, and strong fair limbs that flashed as she ran, and she took no nonsense from anyone. Once in the infants she had kicked the teacher in the shins, and her parents had to be sent for, but she defied even them and teachers had been wary of her since. Pert was wary of her too, although she had never kicked him. In fact, they had never spoken, though they were in the same class.

  He broke the bread crust into several pieces and scattered it on the floor near the chimney breast. His mouse lived in a hole in the brickwork. She had got used to Pert and his candle, and would come out every night to see what he had brought her, sitting up like a little old lady and nibbling delicately with the crumbs held between her paws. If he had nothing to give her she would wait until he was asleep and nibble the candle instead.

  She was a very ordinary mouse, but evidently some male mouse didn't find her ordinary, for once a year and sometimes more she would escort from her hole a little clutch of baby mice as big as your thumbnail. Pert loved to see the babies scampering around the floor, picking up crumbs and exploring. He didn't even mind when they explored his bed, leaving little black gifts for him. But he did draw the line when they attempted to eat his Bible and Rosella's handkerchief, so he kept the chest firmly shut when he was not there. Where the babies went to, Pert did not know. Perhaps when they were big enough they set off on an adventure to find their larger family in the house below, rather than stay in this draughty attic.

  But the mother mouse, Pert's mouse, was always there and Pert felt responsible for her, as he felt responsible for his sister. The mouse's needs were simple, just a place to stay, some warm bedding to nibble and drag back to her nest, and the odd crust. Fenestra's were more complex. He knew she had a hard time at school, but didn't know what to do about it. He had quite a hard time himself. It was part of being a Potts, he supposed. People hated the Potts family because of Grandfather Mascaridus, and that was all there was to it.