A Little, Aloud

by Angela Macmillan

  ‘Off you go immediately!’ she called, cold and proud.

  They did not need telling twice. Burning with shame, shrinking together, Lil huddling along like her mother, our Else dazed, somehow they crossed the big courtyard and squeezed through the white gate.

  ‘Wicked, disobedient little girl!’ said Aunt Beryl bitterly to Kezia, and she slammed the doll’s house to.

  The afternoon had been awful. A letter had come from Willie Brent, a terrifying, threatening letter, saying if she did not meet him that evening in Pulman’s Bush, he’d come to the front door and ask the reason why! But now that she had frightened those little rats of Kelveys and given Kezia a good scolding, her heart felt lighter. That ghastly pressure was gone. She went back to the house humming.

  When the Kelveys were well out of sight of Burnells’, they sat down to rest on a big red drain-pipe by the side of the road. Lil’s cheeks were still burning; she took off the hat with the quill and held it on her knee. Dreamily they looked over the hay paddocks, past the creek, to the group of wattles where Logan’s cows stood waiting to be milked. What were their thoughts?

  Presently our Else nudged up close to her sister. But now she had forgotten the cross lady. She put out a finger and stroked her sister’s quill; she smiled her rare smile.

  ‘I seen the little lamp,’ she said, softly.

  Then both were silent once more.

  THE LITTLE DANCERS

  Laurence Binyon

  Lonely, save for a few faint stars, the sky

  Dreams; and lonely, below, the little street

  Into its gloom retires, secluded and shy.

  Scarcely the dumb roar enters this soft retreat;

  And all is dark, save where come flooding rays

  From a tavern-window; there, to the brisk measure

  Of an organ that down in an alley merrily plays,

  Two children, all alone and no one by,

  Holding their tattered frocks, thro’ an airy maze

  Of motion lightly threaded with nimble feet

  Dance sedately; face to face they gaze,

  Their eyes shining, grave with a perfect pleasure.

  READING NOTES

  A woman in a residential home for the elderly was delighted to remember that she had once owned a doll’s house with a beautiful set of sweet jars with real sweets in them. Another remembered that her cat used to like to sleep squashed into the doll’s house. The group talked about how children can often be cruel to one another and thought about why it was that some children were picked on more than others. James thought that the Kelveys were picked on because their mother was a washerwoman; he blamed parents for teaching their children to be snobs. The children in the poem reminded Molly of the Kelveys at the end of the story: ‘face to face they gaze, / Their eyes shining, grave with a perfect pleasure.’ Then the group talked of pubs and barrel organs, of the monkeys that sometimes belonged to organ grinders and how children never used to be allowed in public houses. Everyone remarked on the special atmosphere of the poem and the children in a world of their own.

  Strange Ladies

  GREAT EXPECTATIONS

  (EXTRACT FROM CHAPTER 8)

  Charles Dickens

  (approximate reading time 18 minutes)

  Pip is a young orphan living with his much older sister and her husband, the village blacksmith. In this extract he has been summoned to Satis House by Miss Havisham, a wealthy old woman who, having been jilted by her fiancé on the very day of her wedding, has lived out the rest of her life as if in a state of suspended animation, never leaving the room in which she received her terrible news . . .

  I knocked and was told from within to enter. I entered, therefore, and found myself in a pretty large room, well lighted with wax candles. No glimpse of daylight was to be seen in it. It was a dressing-room, as I supposed from the furniture, though much of it was of forms and uses then quite unknown to me. But prominent in it was a draped table with a gilded looking-glass, and that I made out at first sight to be a fine lady’s dressing-table.

  Whether I should have made out this object so soon, if there had been no fine lady sitting at it, I cannot say. In an armchair, with an elbow resting on the table and her head leaning on that hand, sat the strangest lady I have ever seen, or shall ever see.

  She was dressed in rich materials – satins, and lace, and silks – all of white. Her shoes were white. And she had a long white veil dependent from her hair, and she had bridal flowers in her hair, but her hair was white. Some bright jewels sparkled on her neck and on her hands, and some other jewels lay sparkling on the table. Dresses, less splendid than the dress she wore, and half-packed trunks, were scattered about. She had not quite finished dressing for she had but one shoe on – the other was on the table near her hand – her veil was but half arranged, her watch and chain were not put on, and some lace for her bosom lay with those trinkets, and with her handkerchief, and gloves, and some flowers, and a Prayer-book, all confusedly heaped about the looking-glass.

  It was not in the first few moments that I saw all these things, though I saw more of them in the first moments than might be supposed. But, I saw that everything within my view which ought to be white, had been white long ago, and had lost its lustre, and was faded and yellow. I saw that the bride within the bridal dress had withered like the dress, and like the flowers, and had no brightness left but the brightness of her sunken eyes. I saw that the dress had been put upon the rounded figure of a young woman, and that the figure upon which it now hung loose, had shrunk to skin and bone. Once, I had been taken to see some ghastly waxwork at the Fair, representing I know not what impossible personage lying in state. Once, I had been taken to one of our old marsh churches to see a skeleton in the ashes of a rich dress, that had been dug out of a vault under the church pavement. Now, waxwork and skeleton seemed to have dark eyes that moved and looked at me. I should have cried out, if I could.

  ‘Who is it?’ said the lady at the table.

  ‘Pip, ma’am.’

  ‘Pip?’

  ‘Mr Pumblechook’s boy, ma’am. Come – to play.’

  ‘Come nearer; let me look at you. Come close.’

  It was when I stood before her, avoiding her eyes, that I took note of the surrounding objects in detail, and saw that her watch had stopped at twenty minutes to nine, and that a clock in the room had stopped at twenty minutes to nine.

  ‘Look at me,’ said Miss Havisham. ‘You are not afraid of a woman who has never seen the sun since you were born?’

  I regret to state that I was not afraid of telling the enormous lie comprehended in the answer ‘No.’

  ‘Do you know what I touch here?’ she said, laying her hands, one upon the other, on her left side.

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’ (It made me think of the young man.)

  ‘What do I touch?’

  ‘Your heart.’

  ‘Broken!’

  She uttered the word with an eager look, and with strong emphasis, and with a weird smile that had a kind of boast in it. Afterwards, she kept her hands there for a little while, and slowly took them away as if they were heavy.

  ‘I am tired,’ said Miss Havisham. ‘I want diversion, and I have done with men and women. Play.’

  I think it will be conceded by my most disputatious reader, that she could hardly have directed an unfortunate boy to do anything in the wide world more difficult to be done under the circumstances.

  ‘I sometimes have sick fancies,’ she went on, ‘and I have a sick fancy that I want to see some play. There, there!’ with an impatient movement of the fingers of her right hand; ‘play, play, play!’ But, I felt myself so unequal to the performance that I stood looking at Miss Havisham in what I suppose she took for a dogged manner, inasmuch as she said, when we had taken a good look at each other:

  ‘Are you sullen and obstinate?’

  ‘No, ma’am, I am very sorry for you, and very sorry I can’t play just now. If you complain of me I shall get into trouble with my s
ister, so I would do it if I could; but it’s so new here, and so strange, and so fine – and melancholy –’ I stopped, fearing I might say too much, or had already said it, and we took another look at each other.

  Before she spoke again, she turned her eyes from me, and looked at the dress she wore, and at the dressing-table, and finally at herself in the looking-glass.

  ‘So new to him,’ she muttered, ‘so old to me; so strange to him, so familiar to me; so melancholy to both of us! Call Estella. You can do that. Call Estella.

  To stand in the dark in a mysterious passage of an unknown house, bawling Estella to a scornful young lady neither visible nor responsive, and feeling it a dreadful liberty so to roar out her name, was almost as bad as playing to order. But, she answered at last, and her light came along the dark passage like a star.

  Miss Havisham beckoned her to come close. ‘Let me see you play cards with this boy.’

  ‘With this boy! Why, he is a common labouring-boy!’

  I thought I overheard Miss Havisham answer – only it seemed so unlikely – ‘Well? You can break his heart.’

  ‘What do you play, boy?’ asked Estella of myself, with the greatest disdain.

  ‘Nothing but beggar my neighbour, miss.’

  ‘Beggar him,’ said Miss Havisham to Estella. So we sat down to cards.

  It was then I began to understand that everything in the room had stopped, like the watch and the clock, a long time ago. I noticed that Miss Havisham put down the jewel exactly on the spot from which she had taken it up. As Estella dealt the cards, I glanced at the dressing-table again, and saw that the shoe upon it, once white, now yellow, had never been worn. I glanced down at the foot from which the shoe was absent, and saw that the silk stocking on it, once white, now yellow, had been trodden ragged. Without this arrest of everything, this standing still of all the pale decayed objects, not even the withered bridal dress on the collapsed form could have looked so like grave-clothes, or the long veil so like a shroud.

  So she sat, corpse-like, as we played at cards; the frillings and trimmings on her bridal dress, looking like earthy paper. I knew nothing then, of the discoveries that are occasionally made of bodies buried in ancient times, which fall to powder in the moment of being distinctly seen; but, I have often thought since, that she must have looked as if the admission of the natural light of day would have struck her to dust.

  ‘He calls the knaves, Jacks, this boy!’ said Estella with disdain, before our first game was out. ‘And what coarse hands he has! And what thick boots!’

  I had never thought of being ashamed of my hands before; but I began to consider them a very indifferent pair. Her contempt for me was so strong, that it became infectious, and I caught it.

  She won the game, and I dealt. I misdealt, as was only natural, when I knew she was lying in wait for me to do wrong; and she denounced me for a stupid, clumsy labouring-boy.

  ‘You say nothing of her,’ remarked Miss Havisham to me, as she looked on. ‘She says many hard things of you, but you say nothing of her. What do you think of her?’

  ‘I don’t like to say,’ I stammered.

  ‘Tell me in my ear,’ said Miss Havisham, bending down.

  ‘I think she is very proud,’ I replied, in a whisper.

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘I think she is very pretty.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘I think she is very insulting.’ (She was looking at me then with a look of supreme aversion.)

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘I think I should like to go home.’

  ‘And never see her again, though she is so pretty?’

  ‘I am not sure that I shouldn’t like to see her again, but I should like to go home now.’

  ‘You shall go soon,’ said Miss Havisham, aloud. ‘Play the game, out.’

  I played the game to an end with Estella, and she beggared me. She threw the cards down on the table when she had won them all, as if she despised them for having been won of me.

  ‘When shall I have you here again?’ said Miss Havisham. ‘Let me think.’

  I was beginning to remind her that to-day was Wednesday, when she checked me with her former impatient movement of the fingers of her right hand.

  ‘There, there! I know nothing of days of the week; I know nothing of weeks of the year. Come again after six days. You hear?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘Estella, take him down. Let him have something to eat, and let him roam and look about him while he eats. Go, Pip.’

  I followed the candle down, as I had followed the candle up, and she stood it in the place where we had found it. Until she opened the side entrance, I had fancied, without thinking about it, that it must necessarily be night-time. The rush of the daylight quite confounded me, and made me feel as if I had been in the candlelight of the strange room many hours.

  ‘You are to wait here, you boy,’ said Estella; and disappeared and closed the door.

  I took the opportunity of being alone in the court-yard, to look at my coarse hands and my common boots. My opinion of those accessories was not favourable. They had never troubled me before, but they troubled me now, as vulgar appendages. I determined to ask Joe why he had ever taught me to call those picturecards, Jacks, which ought to be called knaves. I wished Joe had been rather more genteelly brought up, and then I should have been so too.

  She came back, with some bread and meat and a little mug of beer. She put the mug down on the stones of the yard, and gave me the bread and meat without looking at me, as insolently as if I were a dog in disgrace. I was so humiliated, hurt, spurned, offended, angry, sorry – I cannot hit upon the right name for the smart – God knows what its name was – that tears started to my eyes. The moment they sprang there, the girl looked at me with a quick delight in having been the cause of them. This gave me power to keep them back and to look at her: so, she gave a contemptuous toss – but with a sense, I thought, of having made too sure that I was so wounded – and left me.

  But, when she was gone, I looked about me for a place to hide my face in, and got behind one of the gates in the brewery-lane, and leaned my sleeve against the wall there, and leaned my forehead on it and cried. As I cried, I kicked the wall, and took a hard twist at my hair; so bitter were my feelings, and so sharp was the smart without a name, that needed counteraction.

  IT WAS LONG AGO

  Eleanor Farjeon

  I’ll tell you, shall I, something I remember?

  Something that still means a great deal to me.

  It was long ago.

  A dusty road in summer I remember,

  A mountain, and an old house, and a tree

  That stood, you know,

  Behind the house. An old woman I remember

  In a red shawl with a grey cat on her knee

  Humming under a tree.

  She seemed the oldest thing I can remember.

  But then perhaps I was not more than three.

  It was long ago.

  I dragged on the dusty road, and I remember

  How the old woman looked over the fence at me

  And seemed to know

  How it felt to be three, and called out, I remember

  ‘Do you like bilberries and cream for tea?’

  I went under the tree.

  And while she hummed, and the cat purred, I remember

  How she filled a saucer with berries and cream for me

  So long ago.

  Such berries and such cream as I remember

  I never had seen before, and never see

  Today, you know.

  And that is almost all I can remember,

  The house, the mountain, the grey cat on her knee,

  Her red shawl, and the tree,

  And the taste of the berries, the feel of the sun I remember,

  And the smell of everything that used to be

  So long ago,

  Till the heat on the road outside again I remember

  And
how the long dusty road seemed to have for me

  No end, you know.

  That is the farthest thing I can remember.

  It won’t mean much to you. It does to me.

  Then I grew up, you see.

  READING NOTES

  One group talked about Dickens’ description of Miss Havisham’s room and what it must have been like for a small boy to find himself in such an extraordinary place with people he could never have imagined in his wildest dreams. Someone picked out the line ‘I saw that the bride within the bridal dress had withered like the dress, and like the flowers, and had no brightness left but the brightness of her sunken eyes.’ What were Miss Havisham’s reasons for going on living in such a pitiful state? Estella’s cruel treatment of Pip concerned people, especially the way in which Pip is made to feel ashamed.

  In the poem, as in the story, a small child comes across a strange old woman. Somebody remarked that the poem is about memory; meeting the woman that day had such a powerful effect that it became part of her life and the group wondered what lifelong effect the meeting with Miss Havisham would have on Pip. They wondered why we remember some things and not others, and discussed how, in the poem, the memory is more than just a picture in the narrator’s head – it is constructed of smells, tastes and the feel of things as well.

  What do you make of the line ‘It won’t mean much to you. It does to me’?

  The Unloved

  AT THE END OF THE LINE

  Penny Feeny

  (approximate reading time 14 minutes)

  She’d been laying the fishing tackle out on the table when they arrived: the lengths of the rod to be fitted together, a box of cruelly barbed hooks, a choice of floats and weights, a fine translucent coil of line.