Mrs Thornby’s smile went on smiling. Again she prompted: ‘May I?’
Of course, do forgive me were the words she was expecting, the sort of phrase that, as people said, went without saying. On the other hand when it actually did go without saying, how uncomfortable was the silence while it went on not being said!
But Violet had never in her life heard anyone gracefully beg forgiveness for some slight social error. She was not even sure what it was that Mrs Thornby was asking; the possibility that she had really meant Can I sit down made a sensible reply even harder to formulate.
‘So that we can have a little chat,’ said Mrs Thornby helpfully.
All the self-possession and restraint with which Violet Dimond usually met the world, dealt with life, with death, deserted her at these sinister words. She became frightened and flustered. The pies were in the hot oven, waiting. The floor was half-wet, there was washing-up to be done, a sick child asleep in the bedroom. It did not occur to her to ask Mrs Thornby to leave, to come back if she must at some better more convenient time; she could not conceive of questioning gentry.
‘Please,’ she said, and Mrs Thornby, taking this as permission, first turned to take in the Tuesday afternoon disorder – the flour bag gaping open, scraps of pastry rolled into an unpromising ball in a flour-scummed bowl, dirty saucepans still sitting stacked inside each other rimmed with gravy, the flecked wet floor and carelessly set-aside bucket – then selected one of the two wooden chairs, turned it so that it backed the window, and with a certain ceremony, with the merest hint of a gentlewoman at last treated properly, subsided her skirts upon it, and sat down.
Violet waited.
For a moment more Mrs Thornby waited too, hoping that Violet would also sit down, so that the little chat would feel less like an interview. Should she, could she, ask the woman to be seated, in her own home? She decided that in all conscience she could not.
‘Mrs Dimond, I am here, in my own small way, to represent His Majesty’s Government,’ she began, words she had been happily, if a little nervously, practising in her head for some time. At the sound of them finally in the air, being spoken, being true, she took heart.
‘As I expect you know, there have recently been many changes to the law in respect to the practice of midwifery. I refer of course to the Act of 1902. I take it that you are familiar with these provisions?’
‘I’m on the Roll,’ said Violet, beginning to tremble. ‘Bona fide.’ She pronounced this boney-fidey, as Mrs Thornby had been warned that she might.
Mrs Thornby managed not to smile. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘We know. That is, partly, the problem, d’you see?’
‘Dr Summers put me on the Roll. You ask him. He’ll tell you,’ said Violet. ‘I got the letter.’
‘Mrs Dimond, I have no doubt that you are at present admitted to the Roll, and therefore legally entitled to attend deliveries and to charge for your services. However, as I am sure you are aware, as an entirely unqualified person your admittance must be seen as a purely temporary measure. I feel quite sure that Dr Summers will have made these terms perfectly clear to you.’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ said Violet.
For to be permanent there had been a special training you had to go in for, so that you would understand the Latin that the doctors all used, and then you had to take a written examination, all of this costing, forsooth, upwards of forty pounds. Straight away Dr Summers had told Violet that he would personally advance her the money, not understanding, of course, that she would borrow from no one. Then a day or so later he had come back again and said that, having discussed the matter with Mrs Summers, who fully shared, he was pleased to say, his own very high opinion, Mrs Dimond, of her traditional experience and native skills, rather, he should be glad, indeed he should be honoured, ma’am, to pay for this training himself, if she would be kind enough to consider such an offer; what did she say to that, Mrs Dimond, hmm?
Of course it was partly that he was worried in the first place he would be called out all hours to deal with her cases, and not have so much time for the ones that paid full whack; and then any properly certified midwife would soon set herself up to rival him, and take not a fraction of his fee, as Violet did, but all of it. But it was like him, Violet thought afterwards, to ask her so gentle, as if she were a lady. To say he would be honoured.
Still, there had been nothing for it but to admit what she had thus far managed to keep entirely from him and from anyone else like him who did not absolutely need to know, which was that while she knew her numbers, and could read print well enough and sign her own name, she could write only slowly, having learnt so late in life.
‘We was taught so’s we could read the Book,’ she had explained to Dr Summers, hoping to ease his evident discomfiture. ‘We didn’t need the writing, see?’
So she might know the answer to every question in the examination, but writing them down legibly, and in time, and in public, would be entirely beyond her. She had had to be content with temporary admission to the Roll, on Dr Summers’ say-so; when the letter confirming this had arrived she had felt all the shame of it, had barely been able to bring herself to read it, but stuffed it back into its envelope and hidden it, badge of wholly inferior status, in the suitcase beneath her bed.
‘Yes, ma’am,’ said Violet now.
‘However,’ said Mrs Thornby with relish, ‘I am empowered by the plenary system of the Central Midwives’ Board, on the local committee of which I have the honour to serve, to visit and assess you and your standards of practice and your personal circumstances, and to make a report to that body on these matters. D’you see?’
Violet did not see at all. In a fog of bewilderment and distress she watched Mrs Thornby deftly remove her gloves fingertip by fingertip, then open the small embroidered bag on a strap round her wrist and extract from it a tiny elegant leather-bound notebook with a propelling pencil tucked into its spine in a special slender pocket. After she had opened it at the right page and smoothed it and written something down in it, she looked up with what was perhaps intended to be a reassuring smile.
‘Well, now. Shall we begin? I should like first to see your record book, please.’
‘You can’t do that, not rightly,’ said Violet.
‘And what do you mean by that?’ Mrs Thornby was brisk. Allow no nonsense, that was the advice she had been given. She had arrived expecting some: and here it was.
‘You can’t see my book,’ said Violet, ‘because I ain’t got one.’ She had no idea of being impertinent. But as she spoke she realized in baffled dismay that anyone happening to catch this exchange might well have sniggered.
Oh, sorry, that sounded rude, but it’s simply the truth!
It was no more possible for Violet to say this sort of thing, or even think of saying it to gentry, than it was for her to produce a detailed written record book. She was left in wretched silence, while Mrs Thornby absorbed the unintended snub, took it to heart. Noted it down, indeed, with her nice little propelling pencil.
Nor had Mrs Thornby liked the special bag. When Violet had fetched it, at her request, she had shrunk back from it with a little start of horror. Nor would she take it in her hand, but Violet must describe its contents, which Mrs Thornby then checked against a list she had ready in the back of her little leather book. She had also asked who did the rough work, and how often Violet changed her bedclothes, and whether her windows opened, and whether she considered her drains effective, and how much she drank.
It was at this stage that a strange high-pitched mewing sound came from the other room, whose door stood ajar.
Mrs Thornby looked up. ‘What was that? Was that a cat?’
More curious noises followed. Violet, appalled, thought that she recognized them all too well. ‘No, that’s … that’s my –’
Wailing incoherently, Grace suddenly appeared in the doorway, her face all blubbered with tears, and bringing with her as she stumbled towards them a powerful smell of vomit. Clearly she had been
very sick in her sleep, for the thin yellow sourness seemed to be everywhere, in her hair, her neck and all down the front of her petticoat.
Violet, almost giddy with embarrassment, jumped up to catch hold of her, trying to steer her away from the visitor, who rose smartly, but still spoke pleasantly enough over Grace’s whimpering: ‘I see I have kept you from your duties long enough, Mrs Dimond. Forgive me. No, don’t trouble, please, I shall see myself out. Good day to you.’
And she was gone.
When she had finished tidying Grace, and changed the bed, and put everything in to soak, Violet remembered the pies. Eighteen steak and mushroom still in the oven! There was nothing for it but to throw the whole smoking trayful out of the back kitchen window, where they lay in a pile of sooty ruination until the birds found them next day.
‘Nine shillings down the drain,’ Violet told Grace. She was still in the dark about the whole visit. Why had the lady come in the first place? Mrs Thornby! Why had she taken so many notes?
‘We ain’t a charity case,’ said Violet, puzzled. Over the next few weeks the thought of Mrs Thornby and her little propelling pencil kept coming back to her. She couldn’t think why the picture made her so uneasy.
8
The months passed, slowly, quickly: Grace grew out of her beloved boots, and into the coat Bea had made her. She could still wear it the following spring, when she started Sunday school.
Violet had checked first, with Mr Godolphin.
‘Oh, now, I’m not at all in charge of that. That’s our admirable Miss Pyncheon’s concern,’ he had said at once.
‘I know that, sir,’ said Violet mildly. ‘I was hoping maybe you’d speak to her for me. Make sure she reckons Grace ain’t too young.’
She saw him hesitate, and almost felt for him. Because she knew by then that there was just no way of knowing beforehand, no matter how sensible someone usually was. Sometimes educated folk asked questions made you want to clock them one; sometimes even gentry forgot themselves, and passed by staring; then, say a few minutes later, some work-worn tough in hob-nailed boots would stop to smile down at Grace, and tell her what a pretty little maid she was.
Perhaps the tough would have spoken just so had Grace been white; on the whole Violet thought not. Would frank admiration make up for unkindness elsewhere, cancel it out in some way? Maybe, thought Violet. But lately she had begun to wonder whether the admiration and the unkindness were not after all just two sides of the same coin.
Well, there was nothing to be done about that, except take precautions where you could.
‘I’ll speak to her,’ said Mr Godolphin, and he had done so, and Miss Pyncheon, he reported later, had graciously indicated that all were welcome to the St George’s Sunday school.
(‘… even niggers, I suppose,’ Miss Pyncheon had added doubtfully, but there was really no reason, thought Mr Godolphin, to quote his young supervisor word for word.)
The Sunday school met in the old tithe barn. Mr Godolphin had been trying to raise funds to build a proper church hall for years now, one with proper plumbing and other modern conveniences, but in the meantime the tithe barn just about served. The children Grace’s age were kept safely penned into a corner by painted screens, with someone’s big sister (one of mine, noted Violet) keeping an eye on them.
‘This here’s Grace!’ That first time, the children already there looked up, staring with the absolute but vague curiosity of the very young. Violet felt a little clip of triumph: it was clear that none of them saw Grace as different. It did not occur to her that for the moment Grace herself would see no difference either.
She let go of the child’s hand, and watched her hesitate at the opening, then move towards another little girl sitting on the rug with a family of peg dolls in knitted skirts; watched her wait until the little girl looked up at her; watched Gracie’s tentative smile, which was surely irresistible, thought Violet, and yes, there, the other little girl (one of those Houghtons, wasn’t it? Lily, perhaps? One of hers, she had delivered them all) was already smiling back, so that was alright, Violet told herself.
Then back to the anteroom, to give Miss Pyncheon, beaky and bespectacled behind her desk, nearly all of the usual rigmarole, for all she was a young lady: Yes, Grace was staying with her for a while; yes, an orphan; yes of course baptized (possibly re-baptized, the Reverend Godolphin had maintained, but since this was impossible to confirm, it wouldn’t hurt, Mrs Dimond, to make absolutely certain, would very early next Thursday morning suit?) and no, regular English same as anyone else, why, getting her to stop talking was the difficulty these days! No, she ate ordinary food. Yes, knife and fork. No, not India, Dr Summers thought, Africa probably, but no one knew for sure; yes: a little girl, just the same as any other.
More time slipped by. Grace began to go out by herself, to join the other children playing in the street or in the nearby market square, where the uneven set of the cobbles made a rubber ball bounce at satisfying random, where boys might play football, but where girls might unfurl great lengths of washing-line skipping rope.
Once one of the big girls brought a rope twenty feet long, so heavy that it took two at either end to turn it effectively, and for a while the fashion for skipping through it was so powerful that even the boys joined in; it was hazardous play, for the heavyweight rope could catch anyone mistiming their leap a sharp crack on head or shoulder, and often did.
Oh, the glamour of those endless summer evenings, watching the big boys and girls haul the rope high into a great turning almost-shape, the smack as it struck the cobbles, and the queue of heroes and heroines each waiting in turn to hurl themselves fearlessly through it and out again! Grace sitting on the kerbside with Lily Houghton, admiring, sometimes allowed to join in some smaller game where extras were needed, often begging in vain.
‘No, buzz off you two: ain’t for littluns.’
Games played across the street, using both pavements as refuges, games of pretending to creep up on someone whose back was turned, of ritual exchanges: British Bulldog; Cat and Mouse; England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales on the paving stones; games played by street lamplight.
These were out-of-school children, with different groupings and alliances, differing ages, and often boys and girls together; those blithely tagging one another across the market square one evening might well coolly ignore each another at school the next day. There was an after-hours loosening of the usual social school rules; it was perhaps partly due to this loosening that Grace at nearly five was able to slide so easily into the shifting crowd. One day all the children were white, the next day there was a brown one; at first several noticed her colour, and made comments, and argued over who had first heard tell of the darkie Mrs Dimond had brought home, and when; but there was a furiously competitive game of Chiggy-Backs going on at the time, and presently Grace’s strangeness had somehow ceased to be remarkable without going through any preliminary stage of being news.
‘That a darkie out there playing with you?’
‘What? Oh no, that’s just Gracie Dimond.’
‘Mamma, when I grows up, will I look like you?’
‘How d’you mean, my lovely?’ Alert at once, Violet went on busily rubbing suet into flour.
‘Will I look like you? Will I be white, when I grows up?’
A pause. How to answer this? ‘Why? Do you want to?’
‘Well, everyone else is. Lily is. Same as what you are. And I’m not, I’m not right, am I?’
‘What you talking about?’ said Violet crossly. She had not imagined this; had thought only about the reactions of others, their unkind nonsensical ideas; had never for one moment imagined that the child might take on such ideas herself. ‘The good Lord made you as you are,’ said Violet, with less heat. ‘You’re His doing, so how can that be wrong? There ain’t nothing wrong with you.’
‘But I’m not the same. I’m not the same as what everyone else is.’
‘No, my lamb, you ain’t. And nothing we can do about it.’ Sh
e turned back to the flour bowl.
‘So I won’t – change?’
‘There’s lizards change their colour,’ said Violet, ‘so I’ve heard. And lobsters, when you boil ’em. But not people. We don’t change. You’re stuck the way you are, and I’m stuck the way I am. ’Cause d’you know what,’ said Violet, changing tack, ‘if I could change to be the same as what you are, I’d do it straight off.’
‘Would you?’ Smiling now: picturing it, no doubt.
‘I would.’
‘Why? Why would you?’
So’s you wouldn’t be the only one, thought Violet, but she could see that this might be the wrong answer.
‘’Cause I like your colour better than anyone else’s in the whole wide world,’ said Violet. ‘So there.’
‘Do you? ’S’at why you chose me?’
‘I didn’t choose you. The Lord led me to you.’
A pause. Did the child seem a little easier? At any rate she seemed ready to change the subject: ‘What you making?’
‘Leek pud – want to help?’
Lily Houghton was the youngest of ten, and soon Grace began going to play with her and one or other of the family in the big grassy meadow outside their battered cottage. Grace liked Lily’s garden, its forecourt full of broken bits and pieces of things Mr Houghton hoped might one day come in handy. Mr Houghton had gypsy blood, which was held by many to explain his fecklessness and idle disposition, and was in some way, Grace gathered, also connected with the fact of the nine brothers and sisters.
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