Do Mr and Mrs Bader have that cold, cracking silence between them? Does Otto hear his daddy shouting in the night? She’s never asked. She never could. She dresses and goes home. Daddy’s there, his whisky and his newspapers out in front of him on the table. On Sundays he doesn’t go to the pub but he brings out the whisky bottle, sitting with it beside him on the table, keeping up a steady sup.
Still it’s quiet enough between them and Ma looks all right when she brings the bread and the jam and the pot of tea to the table. Pansy eats up quickly and goes to bed. She lies there, looking up at the ceiling, going over in her mind the poem Miss Appleby has set for her to learn and how it should be said. ‘“My Kingdom”, by Robert Louis Stevenson.’
She hears Daddy through the wall, ‘Don’t you go telling me when I can talk to my girl, missus.’ She hears the pots clang as Ma hangs them on the hooks.
Down by a shining water well
I found a very little dell,
No higher than my head.
The heather and the gorse about
In summer bloom were coming out,
Some yellow and some red.
‘It’s not for you to make the rules.’
Ma’s opening up the range; she hears the grind of metal on metal as the door is pulled back.
I called the little pool a sea;
The little hills were big to me;
For I am very small.
‘It’s the man makes the rules,’ he’s slurring out the words, ‘in his own house.’
I made a boat, I made a town,
I searched the caverns up and down,
And named them one and all.
She hears the rattle, now, of coal. Ma will be bending down, her back turned to him. Ma’s right hand will have the filled shovel in it, the other hand will be opening up the door.
And all about was mine,
I said, the little sparrows overhead,
The little minnows too.
‘It’s me makes the bloody rules and don’t you forget it.’
She hears the clunk as Ma pushes the damper in hard so that the fire will last the night. Everything ordinary. Everything the same as on other nights; Ma setting up the place before she goes to bed.
This was the world and I was king;
For me the bees came by to sing,
For me the swallows flew.
If Ma will only stay with that, stay quietly going about her jobs, Daddy might be calmed by it and ease up on her.
I played, there were no deeper seas,
Nor any wider plains than these,
Nor other kings than me.
‘Are you listening to me, missus?’
‘I’m listening.’
Ma’s voice is soft and patient-sounding, too soft and patient-sounding to Pansy’s ear, so it’s hard to know what he’ll do about that, whether he’ll let it go or whether it’ll make his blood boil up.
At last I heard my mother call,
Out from the house at evenfall,
To call me home to tea.
‘I’m telling you now, don’t you be saying what I can and can’t say in my own house. It’ll be me says when’s enough.’
If Ma stays quiet he might give it up. Her mother can fight back, not with her fists — Pansy knows if she raised a hand to him Daddy would kill her — but she has her words sharpened and ready to let fly out and she’ll use them, too, when she’s riled up enough. Don’t get angry, Ma, don’t get angry. It’s quiet now. She hears the door open and shut, the sound of the kettle being set on the range. Ma’s been out the back filling it from the pump. It’s quiet now. It’s quiet.
At last I heard my mother call,
Out from the house at evenfall,
To call me home to tea.
And I must rise and leave my dell,
And leave my dimpled water well,
And leave my heather blooms.
There’s the flat, hard thud of his hand on the table and his voice rising up, ‘Don’t you leave the room when I’m talking to you! Don’t you turn your back on me!’ She can see him, his eyes glazed and wild from the drink and the anger and his face flushed purplish at the edges of his cheeks. She hates Daddy when he’s like this. She hates him.
‘I’m not having some dried-out old bitch telling me what to do.’
‘Well, aren’t you a fine upstanding man, calling your wife a bitch?’ Ma’s voice comes harsh, now, and raised up high.
Well, and now it’s started. Pansy feels the coldness settle over her.
‘My wife. My wife, ha.’
‘Yes, your wife, pity though it is. I’m not having you telling the girl things she should never hear. Bad enough you filling her head with rubbish.’
‘Rubbish, is it? You’re saying to me I’m telling my own girl rubbish?’
‘Yes, rubbish, it is, letting her think she’s a beauty and she’s clever. Much good that’ll do for her.’
‘You want her for the Church, don’t you? Couldn’t get my boys for the priests so you’re trying to get my girl.’
‘Better for her than this.’
‘I heard you going on to them, don’t think I didn’t. You drove my boys away with all your bloody beads and Hail Marys.’
‘It was you drove them away with your shouting and your fists and the stories around the town about what you get up to. They had to leave for the shame of it. Pity your fancy women can’t see what goes on in this house, what kind of charmer you are here.’
‘Charmer enough for you to drop your knickers for me. No talk about your Church then, was there? Oooh I love you, Danny, ooh I love you. Put it there, Danny, put it there.’
And now Ma is shouting, ‘It was you with all your wheedling and promises. More fool me, believing you.’
‘More fool me, being led on by a bitch out to trap a man.’
‘Call yourself a man—’
There’s the chair falling back, the thud of the first blow, the slap of hands on flesh, fists hitting bone.
And I must rise and leave my dell. And I must rise and leave my dell. And I must rise and leave my dell.
She’s sorry for Ma but she shouldn’t have talked back like that. She shouldn’t have.
And she shouldn’t have asked.
It’s quiet again. She hears the bedstead squeak as Ma eases herself down on it. She hears her ragged breathing. Daddy will go to sleep at the table most likely, slumped down, his head resting on the newspapers. You want her for the Church, don’t you? You want her for the Church, don’t you? You want her for the Church, don’t you?
Pansy will never be a nun but nor will she ever be worn out and gloomy like Ma. Because Pansy is going to run and hide and play for all her life and she’s never getting old, she’s never getting married, never never never living in a house with a coal pile out the front of it.
She’s going to be friends with Clem and Otto and they’re going to live in the caves and hunt. They’ve already agreed on it and made their plans; they’re saving things up, old tools and pots and cups and plates, anything they find they can fix up and they’re making hunting equipment and fishing lines up in their secret place so that by the time they’re old enough they’ll be ready to start. They’re going to forage and wear animal skins once their own clothes have worn out and swim in the holes they make from the great dams they’ll know how to build by then to keep the river back and they’ll light their fires at night and tell stories and Pansy will say the poems and they’ll sing and make whistles. ‘We’ll be together always.’ Otto says it as if it’s a fact nobody could ever argue with, like London is the capital of England and twelve times three is thirty-six. It’s going to be exactly like in the story books at school about the folk who’ve been shipwrecked. It’s agreed. It’s agreed.
4
It’s the beginning of the day.
Miss Appleby has called out the roll and now there’s times tables. They’re chanting the numbers out while Miss Appleby walks down the schoolroom, row after row, listening that they’re all joining in. She stops by Pansy. ‘You’re to stay after school, Pansy.’
She feels her face turn hot. She has her arms folded right and she’s learned her tables every night and she’s done her best for her special reading for Miss Appleby and she’s got her spelling ten out of ten and all. Clem turns around and she can see from his face he’s worried. She’s worried as well. It’s only the bad ones stay behind.
What has she done wrong? There’s nothing she can think of. Though at home she gets the stick from Ma for not minding her, she knows Miss Appleby thinks she’s a good girl. She always listens to what Miss Appleby says and watches her carefully as she writes the letters up on the blackboard and tries her best to copy them out. She’s never been hit at school, not ever.
Pansy would never want to upset Miss Appleby who’s so clean-looking and pretty with her shining brown hair, twisted and tied up but for the curls soft around her face and her hands so little and smooth. Miss Appleby’s skirts and blouses are clean and pretty as well and her boots sit tight and snug and glossy on her feet. Pansy likes to look at Miss Appleby and to get up close to her and sniff and sniff, quietly, so she won’t know, because she smells like special soap. The big boys shout to Pansy she’s Teacher’s Pet and Adeline Jenkins and Alice Horne shove her when they’re in line but she doesn’t care. She loves Miss Appleby and that’s all there is about it.
What could be wrong? Almost every day Miss Appleby calls Pansy to her desk and gives her lists of words that get harder and harder the further you read on: alligator, almanac, amphibian, appropriation, archaeological. She tries her hardest with the words and Miss Appleby always praises the way she sounds out the letters and does her best to get them right. And when Pansy has finished copying her letters and numbers, she gives her books to read as well. Pansy knows she’s lucky because most of the other children in the class have to be content with Whitcombe & Tombs’ Imperial Readers, one book a year, a page a week, said altogether on Friday mornings. I am on an Ox, Lo! It is my Ox, is it my Ox to go on? On, Ox, on we go.
Miss Appleby brings her own books for Pansy. At home when a chook has stopped laying, Ma wrings its neck for the pot and they had a piglet once that Daddy brought home to have its throat cut soon as it was fat enough. It must be different in England, where animals talk and wear clothes and live in snug little homes. She doesn’t tell Daddy or Ma about those stories because wouldn’t they scoff and laugh about mice given proper names and rabbits let to trick folk and run about eating their vegetables?
The children in England are different as well, picking their bluebells in woods and wearing wellington boots and going to the seaside. Different from her and Otto and Clem running up Hilton Street across the bridge and past the black swallow of the mine opening. Through the gully and past the stone cliffs that run up above the creek and the moss and the fronds of fern curling and the fuchsia and the blackberry and the trees pushing together, trying to fill up every inch of the ground and to blot out every inch of the sky.
They have lawns and brooks in England while here they have the creek whispering and blathering over stones and the dredge clanking and shrieking and birds warbling out over the top of it all. And they have the tailings to climb and fossick in as well as going up past your knees into the swampy squelch at the sides of the river, pushing through the bulrushes and the flax and the willows.
She loves Miss Appleby and she likes her books and her poems well enough, and the boys and the girls in England must like the way it is well enough there and all, but wouldn’t it be dull for those children with their nurseries and nannies and well-behaved animals? Oh, but she loves the wildness of her own place, the wild way she feels in her heart as she runs, ducks and hides and her hair all loose and slapping against her back. Ninety-one, ninety-two — there, there, down, down or they’ll see you — ninety-three, ninety-four, rolled up tight as she can in the flaxes, ninety-nine, one HUNDRED.
Got you.
You’re in, Pansy.
Perhaps that’s it. She’s been trying to hide from Miss Appleby what she really thinks about those books but all the time, while Miss Appleby has been asking her the questions about what happened in the stories, she was just like the boys creeping up, ready to catch her out. Perhaps she won’t give the books to Pansy any more and that’s why she has to stay behind, so Miss Appleby can tell her.
At dinner-time Adeline Jenkins and Alice Horne are making faces and calling out, ‘You’re in for it, Pansy Williams is in for it.’ She stays sitting at her desk after the bell rings and everyone has left. Miss Appleby has gone as well; perhaps she’s forgotten, perhaps she’s not in trouble after all, but then she comes back and Mr Kennedy is with her and they’re both looking at Pansy. She feels her hands tremble. What could she have done so wrong that Mr Kennedy has to be brought into it?
But Miss Appleby is smiling at her. ‘Pansy, come up here please. I’d like you to read for Mr Kennedy.’
First of all, Miss Appleby puts the word lists in front of her. She reads through the As and the Bs but then Mr Kennedy stops her. ‘I can see that you know the first words in the lists well enough. I’d like you to skip those, Pansy, and go to the ten words at the end.’
cultivate, culmination, dynamic, expediency, experimentation, homogeneous, physiology, spontaneous, territorialism, xylophone, zoology, zygophyllaceous. Zy-go-phyll-aceous
Does she have the sounds right? She likes working out the words, taking each little part to reason out, and then putting them all back together again, tidy and complete like a puzzle.
When she has finished, Mr Kennedy puts his hands together and knots his fingers. ‘How do you know these words, Pansy?’
‘Sir, I don’t know them all, I only know the sounds.’
‘Well, look now at this word you’ve just read to me. How do you know the y has the i sound? Or about the ph sounding like an f? How do you know the c is soft here?’
‘I don’t know, sir. Sir, it sounded right to me.’
‘I give Pansy extra reading,’ Miss Appleby says, smiling. ‘I can’t keep up with her.’
Mr Kennedy frowns. ‘You cannot keep up with a—. How old are you, Pansy?’
‘Ten, sir.’
‘You cannot keep up with a ten-year-old? Surely not, Miss Appleby, surely not. She has an aptitude for making out words but she says herself she does not know what they mean.’
‘But I do when they’re in books. I do, sir. I can work out the meanings then.’
The words trip out before she thinks of what she is saying and she feels her face turn hot. Don’t you go pushing yourself forward, missy, nobody wants to hear your blathering.
‘We’ll see, shall we?’
Mr Kennedy goes through the door into his own room where he teaches the big children and comes back with a book. He opens it up. On one side of the double pages is a photograph of the side view of an old man with curly hair, thick eyebrows and a curly beard who Pansy thinks looks very grave and stern. On the other side is a picture of a boy wearing a black hat with his hand resting on what looks to Pansy to be some kind of rough suitcase. He has his head dipped forward and his hand against his chest and he looks as if he is lost.
Mr Kennedy points to the title. ‘The Personal History of David Copperfield by Charles Dickens,’ she reads, ‘with sixty-one illustrations by J. Barnard. London. Chapman and Hall. 193. Piccadilly.’
Mr Kennedy turns the page. ‘The Personal History and Experience of David Copperfield the Younger,’ she reads. There is another picture, this time of a table with a candle on it and a lady wearing an apron sitting beside it and sewing. She looks happy and nice and appears to be talking to the boy sitting across from her who has his head resting on his hands, as if he is listening very hard to what sh
e is saying. Perhaps she’s telling him a story.
But isn’t this boy the same boy who appears lost in the first picture? Pansy looks at it closely. Surely it is, except in the other he’s bigger, older. What could have happened to him? This is such a fancy book, such a special book. She wants to hold it for herself and trace her finger around the lines which frame each page and read each one and look for a long time at each of the pictures. Mr Kennedy points again. Oh, and the lovely W, all decorated with coils and leaves.
‘Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. To begin my life, I must record that . . .’ She reads on. Sometimes Mr Kennedy stops her and points to a word and asks for her to explain the meaning. She doesn’t like the interruptions because she’s busy finding out about the poor, sad mother and Miss Betsey Trotwood and Peggotty.
She wants to go on reading but after a while Mr Kennedy tells her to stop. ‘Extraordinary,’ he says, taking off his spectacles and rubbing the glass.
‘Please, sir?’ She can hardly dare ask him. ‘Could I read the book, sir?’
He strokes its cover, thinking, and then looks sternly down at her. ‘Yes, Pansy, you may, but you must remember this is a privilege. Miss Appleby, I will give the book into your keeping and when Pansy has completed to your satisfaction all the work you have set, and only then, she may read it. And Pansy, you must take the greatest care with it.’
‘I will, sir.’
Miss Appleby follows Mr Kennedy into his classroom. She hears their voices low behind the wall and then Mr Kennedy’s comes louder. ‘A girl, Miss Appleby, and a miner’s daughter into the bargain? It is a pity, yes, it is a very great pity but there is very little chance of that. Very little chance.’
Through the Lonesome Dark Page 3