by Sally Bayley
‘Young lady, I think it’s about time you chose a book, don’t you?’ Peggotty?! I turned around. The brown lady is standing right behind me; her glasses have slipped down her nose and her face looks very hot.
‘We’re closing in fifteen minutes and I need to sort the shelves. So come along, young lady. Off you go. Hop, skip and jump!’
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By the time I began reading David Copperfield I had become a full-blown detective, and I knew that the job of a detective is to explain things. Miss Marple always does this, right at the end of the story. She does it with everyone sitting around – with Dolly Bantry, Greta, the vicar, Inspector Flack (who always looks huffy), the Bradbury-Scott sisters, and whichever doctor has been called out to examine the body.
So let me explain a few things. David Copperfield is filled with people who aren’t family but behave as though they are. First of all there is Peggotty. Peggotty is a mix of my grandmother and Mary the maid from The Murder at the Vicarage, but with less banging about. This is Peggotty:
The first objects that assume a distinct presence before me, as I look far back into the blank of my infancy, are my mother with her pretty hair and youthful shape, and Peggotty with no shape at all, and eyes so dark that they seemed to darken their whole neighbourhood in her face, and cheeks and arms so hard and red that I wondered the birds didn’t peck her in preference to apples …
(David Copperfield)
Peggotty is David’s favourite thing. If she really were a thing she’d be a pillow, an old, raggedy pillow. Peggotty is the person who holds David’s hand when he’s falling asleep; Peggotty is the voice above his cot; Peggotty is the hand stroking his hair. Peggotty is the sudden explosion of laughter when he takes his first step and lands face-down in the vegetable patch. Peggotty is the crease on the side of her cheek. Peggotty can only be seen in small edges and outlines: the dip of her waist, the tightness of the string around her apron, the prick of her lip as she opens her mouth to say ‘Coo-chi-coo,’ the dent in her forehead when she frowns.
I can remember Peggotty by the smell of the kitchen, by the whiff of the cheese on toast she pulls from the grill when we come back from school, far too early to be called dinner and far too late to be lunch. ‘After-school food’, we say, food after school, food before bedtime, food before it gets dark, because we don’t ever really have a proper dinner. We just eat lots of cheese on toast and sardines on toast and scrambled egg on toast and pilchard sandwiches and boiled eggs because this is all protein and protein makes you grow as tall as Jack and the Beanstalk.
I remember Peggotty by what she did when: Peggotty who does all the chores, Peggotty with her hands deep in the kitchen sink, Peggotty with soap on her hands and in her hair, Peggotty who we make fun of because she counts the slices of cheese before she lays them out on the bread as though they were about to go missing.
‘Thieving hands, your naughty thieving hands.’
Peggotty who is never seen without an apron around her waist. Peggotty who stoops over slightly because she has been carrying so much shopping for years. Peggotty who spends a lot of time carrying things up and down stairs. Peggotty who complains about her creaking knees and at night asks us to fetch her slippers.
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When David’s mother is tired, Peggotty puts out the washing. She waits for a fine day and then carries out the wicker basket with the peg bag tied to her waist. She stands outside pouring herself forwards and backwards like a milk jug over a cup of tea. I watch her tip and turn and swivel as she moves around the line, turning the clothes to face the wind, whispering her laundry prayers.
‘This way round, not that. Hang from the bottom, not the top. Keep the crease nice and straight. Don’t mix up the colours, keep the socks together. Hang the pullover from the middle. Don’t let things hang too close to the ground. Turn the line every hour or so. Bring the washing in as soon as you feel it’s dry.’
It is a fine summer’s day and Peggotty is pegging out the washing. The washing blows across her face. Then the wind picks up. The washing flaps and flaps, and covers her mouth and her eyes. For a moment, things go blank. She can no longer see the little boy sleeping beneath the roses. Her face begins to furrow and she frowns. All this damn washing in the way! I can’t see the child. Where is the boy?
Peggotty drags the damp washing away from her hands, from around her neck, from across her mouth. She screams. The grassy patch beneath the roses is dry and bare as a baby’s bottom.
10
Peggotty
The days when my mother and I and Peggotty were all in all to one another, and there was no one to come between us, rose up before me so sorrowfully on the road.
(David Copperfield)
Let me explain a few more things. First of all, Peggotty lives with David Copperfield’s mother (who is called Clara). They live like husband and wife because David’s dad is dead. Mr Copperfield died six months before David was born, which was very inconvenient for everyone concerned.
‘Selfish,’ Mum says. ‘Without a thought for anyone else … what timing!’ So now Peggotty and David’s mum share the chores; they share David.
David and David’s mum and Peggotty all live together in the house surrounded by dark elms. They are three and only one can ever divide three, because three is a prime number. So they can only ever be three or one, one or three, without any remainders. This is how it was once in my house too.
Sometime soon after I was born Maisie came to live with Mum. She came to help with the chores. Mum couldn’t manage all the nappies; she couldn’t face the washing up. Mum wasn’t coping, Maisie said. She meant Mum wasn’t copying very well what other people do when they have children. Mum wasn’t making the beds. She wasn’t taking out the nappies. She wasn’t feeding us beans on toast. She wasn’t getting out to the shops. So Maisie came and she stayed forever and this was our first house.
This was the house with the back door that never closed, the house that led into a garden with a path we turned into the river, the River Arun rushing out to meet the sea. And on that river we held boat races and imagined we were the speedboats on the harbour front racing through white spray towards the seagulls sitting on the end of the pier. And under the apple tree, which hadn’t yet been cut down, we threw our buckets up to see who could reach the highest branch. And we tied our boats to the tree trunk and sat and pretended to eat fish and chips off the front and laughed at the speedboats going by much slower than we were and waved and waved and waved. And the apple blossom fell on top of our noses and in our eyes and we saw the white stars come out again and we lay down beneath the tree and fell asleep until Maisie came out with her clippers and told us that the green beans needed tying up and that our feet were in the way.
And now I see outside of our house, with the latticed bedroom windows standing open to let in the sweet-smelling air, and the ragged old rooks’ nests still dangling in the elm-trees at the bottom of the front garden. Now I am in the garden at the back, beyond the yard where the empty pigeon-house and dog-kennel are – a very preserve of butterflies, as I remember it, with a high fence, and a gate, and a padlock; where the fruit clusters on the trees, riper and richer than fruit has ever been since, in any other garden.
(David Copperfield)
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In the first house, my grandmother and I shared a dark bedroom with pink shells. Some days she would pick up her shells and push them to my ear.
‘Listen to the sea. If you talk to the sea, it will talk back. Listen to the sea, and it will take you somewhere nice.’
I picked up the shell with its curly horns and put it to my ear. I thought I heard the faint sound of the sea, and behind that, the sound of my grandmother laughing. I push the shell harder to my ear. I can hear the lapping of the waves, and behind that, other things: voices, shrieks, a young woman giggling, a young woman kicking her legs through the air and flying; a young woman with spots of r
ouge on her cheeks smiling up at a man called Cyril.
‘Cyril, Cyril, you’ll make me fall!’ Her voice is high and squeaky. My grandmother is a pink-faced mouse tripping over her tail. The man in front of her is making her dizzy. She wishes he wouldn’t.
My grandmother misses a step and giggles. Edna May Turner is paying too much attention to the look of Cyril Cooper and his curly moustache, Cyril who keeps treading on her toes, Cyril who pulls her closer towards him, Cyril who lowers his face towards her and whispers, Cyril who keeps making her blush.
‘Cyril, stop it! I can’t concentrate.’
It is Saturday night and my grandmother is dancing the Charleston with two left feet and a long tail.
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Some Saturdays when she wasn’t dancing, my grandmother went to the beach. Sometime in the 1930s, my grandmother Edna May sat on Shoreham beach holding her hat tight to her head. The wind blew up her stockings and under her skirt and she fussed and fretted and giggled at the bumps of air running up and down her legs.
‘Look, Gladys, look! There’s a mouse up my skirt. Get it out, Gladys, get it out!’
Her sisters Gladys and Peg poked and petted her and told her to stop all her squawking.
‘What would Cyril think if he were here? You’re behaving like a perfect ninny. Stop your squealing, Maze.’
I’ve seen a photograph of Maisie on the beach. She keeps it in her purse. In the photograph she has white gloves on. At least, they look white in the photograph. I stare at the gloves. I want to take them off and touch her hands. I want to feel the wet soft soap bubbles on her fingers. I want those bubbles to last forever, those little rings on the ends of her fingers that feel for the rough parts, that rub in the soap.
I have an impression on my mind which I cannot distinguish from actual remembrance, of the touch of Peggotty’s forefinger as she used to hold it out to me, and of its being roughened by needlework, like a pocket nutmeg-grater.
(David Copperfield)
11
Betsey Trotwood
And then, out of the blue, a long-lost relative comes to visit, a family remainder, somebody everyone had completely forgotten about. One day, a strange woman in a bulging hat suddenly appears at David Copperfield’s house.
That afternoon, David’s mother (whose name is Clara) looks out the window and sees a ‘formidable personage’ coming down the garden path. As a matter of fact, by the time we hear about the Formidable Personage she is already peering in through the window, which, when you’re wearing a large hat, is as good as inviting yourself in. The Formidable Personage catches the eye of David’s mother, who is sitting by the fire feeling dismal.
I should explain a few more things. At the beginning of David Copperfield, David’s mother is ‘low in spirits’ because she has no husband and any minute is expecting a baby. But David (who isn’t even born yet) won’t mind, because he has Peggotty. But Clara minds very much. She spends most of her time moping about and crying. ‘Pull yourself together, pet,’ says Maisie. ‘Stop all that stuff and nonsense,’ says Mum. ‘Men simply aren’t worth it.’
It is a windy afternoon in March when Betsey Trotwood marches up the garden path to visit her young widowed niece Clara Copperfield. Here is Betsey approaching the house:
My mother had a sure foreboding at the second glance, that it was Miss Betsey. The setting sun was glowing on the strange lady, over the garden-fence, and she came walking up to the door with a fell rigidity of figure and composure of countenance that could have belonged to nobody else.
(David Copperfield)
Betsey Trotwood arrives with the glowering sun. She arrives with ‘fell rigidity of figure’. ‘Full of bolsh,’ Mum says. Betsey Trotwood is full of bolsh and bravado (that’s being too sure of yourself). She walks up the garden path ramrod straight with her head held high. Above her head is the glowering sun.
Betsey Trotwood arrives like a change in the weather. But she’s more than just the weather; she’s a real mystery. Nobody knows where she has come from. She just arrives, suddenly, out of the blue, with no warning. No letter sent ahead, no telegram, no telephone call.
‘It’s all a bit much, really,’ said Mum when the lady with the notepad came round.
But Betsey Trotwood comes with no notepad and pen. She arrives in a muddle and a stew, but then her whole history is a muddle. ‘Here we go round the mulberry bush,’ Mum says.
Betsey Trotwood once had a husband. That husband, who was very handsome, went to India to escape his wife.
People usually marry because they like the look of one another. But Betsey Trotwood’s handsome husband clearly couldn’t stand his wife. So he ran away to India where he took up the extravagant hobby of riding elephants and spent some time ‘in the company of a Baboon’. Betsey’s handsome husband left Betsey in the lurch. Margaret Thatcher’s husband would never do that. Mum says that Denis Thatcher is as reliable as sliced white bread – what you see is what you get – whereas Betsey Trotwood’s husband is quite unpredictable. ‘A bit of a mystery,’ says Maze. ‘Nobody you’d want to rely on.’
But if you keep reading, it turns out that Betsey Trotwood’s handsome husband wasn’t seen in the company of a baboon, but with a ‘baboo or begum’. A baboo or a begum are types of people, not monkeys. A baboo is a high-class Indian gentleman; a begum is a high-class Indian lady. In any case, by the time you’ve gone through all of that, you’ve stopped believing anyone about anything. It all sounds like a lot of nonsense. You might as well say that Betsey Trotwood’s husband went off to join the circus. That the circus was in India is neither here nor there.
Still, the Formidable Personage has a definite reason for visiting: she’s come to see the newborn baby. The trouble is David Copperfield hasn’t been born yet, and Betsey Trotwood is cross about this. She wants to hold the baby and whisk him away. She likes babies; she wants to cuddle one. At least, she likes the idea of this baby. She’s not really interested in anyone else.
‘Why, bless my heart!’ exclaimed Miss Betsey. ‘You are a very Baby,’ she says to David’s mum. All Miss Betsey’s comments are meant for babies, but because there aren’t any babies at this point, Miss Betsey soon runs out of things to say.
So she turns her attention to the house, which is called The Rookery, and begins to complain about the name, which she thinks is silly. ‘Where are the birds?’ asks Miss Betsey, and looks out the window again. But as for the birds, you’ve got to admit Miss Betsey has a point. You shouldn’t call a house The Rookery unless you’ve got some birds to show for it. Our house is called Grasmere, which is a place somewhere in the Lake District. Poets went there to rest and write and pray. William Wordsworth wrote ‘Daffodils’ there, which is Mum’s favourite poem.
But all of this talk of names is delaying tactics. By now Betsey Trotwood is very agitated, and the trees outside begin to stir. The evening wind made a disturbance just now, among some tall old elm-trees at the bottom of the garden, that neither my mother nor Miss Betsey could forbear glancing that way.
All of this wind and disturbance is leading to something. Elm trees are dark and sinister. There are elm trees on the edge of the golf course near West beach; they are too tall for the rest of the space and they make everything around look flat and ugly. Whenever there’s a storm they turn into screaming banshees. They lash and lash about, their necks flailing around so viciously I think they’re going to snap. When I pass by on my bicycle, I hold my breath for fear they will lean down and grab me.
Whenever the wind whips around the windows my grandmother begins to get agitated. ‘A storm is coming on,’ says Maze. ‘Close the window, dear. Push it down hard. Mind your fingers. For goodness’ sake, put something under that gap. There’s a dreadful wind coming through.’
Thankfully, a few pages later the doctor arrives. Mr Chillip (that’s the doctor’s name) goes upstairs to deliver the baby. But the baby takes a while in coming, and Betsey Trotwood becomes impatient again. She’s restless
. Poor Mr Chillip is made to feel ever so uncomfortable. Betsey Trotwood makes him feel that it’s his fault. I’m sure he makes excuses to go upstairs more, to check on the baby, to avoid sitting by the fire with Betsey Trotwood, who keeps sighing and tutting away.
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Doctors were never seen in our house. Mum didn’t believe in them and she wouldn’t let us near hospitals, not since Great Aunt Matilda had been butchered alive on the surgeon’s table in Worthing General at the turn of the century.
No, babies shouldn’t be delivered by doctors but by midwives, and midwives were easy to come by if you just went a little further along the coast.
Two miles away on Sea Lane in Rustington was the Zachary Merton where babies were dragged from their mothers’ bellies by women in brisk blue uniforms and white caps. Between 1968 and 1969 my grandmother was setting out on her bicycle along the sea front, past the retirement home, beyond the elm trees on the edge of the golf course, past the pebbled beach and the battered beach huts, before turning into Sea Lane towards the Zachary Merton and the strong arms and thighs of the matron, Cynthia Mary Grouse, who had once raised a farm full of albino goats. The Zachary Merton, Mum said, wasn’t a hospital but a maternity centre; it was a place for women expecting babies and nothing else. She meant doctors; there were only matrons, and no doctors at the Zachary Merton; and then there was Maze, who was an auxiliary, and auxiliaries help matrons and matrons have long strong arms.