She liked the house too, the way it was so full of beds. She never went inside, for there was no etiquette for such intimate visiting, but Lily had told her that upstairs there was a room for all the boys, and another for all the girls, while Lily’s mother and father slept in the big bed downstairs.
‘You playing with that Houghton girl again?’
‘She’s my best friend, Mammy!’
Violet thought the Houghtons were a disgrace, ungodly (for the parents rarely came to church themselves), idle, and shameless. She had delivered all ten children, including Lily herself, and so had some idea of the domestic disorder obtained beneath their roof.
‘Bad enough when she just had the five of ’em!’
If it had been her daughter Ruth hanging about with Lily Houghton, Violet would have been more forceful. But this was not Ruth. This was Grace. It had uncomfortably occurred to Violet that Grace might in some way need someone to look down on.
Officially Violet was egalitarian, for she knew that all were equal in God’s sight. But in her heart, in her unexamined feelings, she accepted worldly social ranking so completely that she hardly understood that it was there. Without thinking about it she constantly applied her own social level’s respectability-formula, to do with relative degrees of cleanliness, diligence and self-respect. Those far above her, like Dr Summers or Mrs Thornby, were automatically assigned absolute levels of cleanliness, diligence and self-respect, and were thus beyond all judgement; but everyone else might be seen to rise or fall. They generally rose slowly, due to quiet steadiness of purpose, a well-deserved promotion, a night-school certificate gained over the years, but dropped fast, when someone essential died or took to drink or lost their way in some other fashion.
Lily Houghton’s mother had been a Trewortha; she had once been a tidy local girl anyone might buy a packet of seeds from, as she stood behind the counter in her father’s general hardware shop off the square; but she had gone and taken up with Percy Houghton, and slowly slipped down with him to Silkhampton’s lower social depths, and did not appear to care about the broken perambulator in the front garden, or the rusting buckets, or the pile of woodwormy fence posts growing their own tall camouflage of nettles.
No one inside that house seemed to look at Grace Dimond with anything but pleased appreciation. Weren’t Lily’s friend a clever pretty little slip! Hadn’t her sainted Ma delivered them all!
The social formula working there, just as it should.
But then, thought Violet, Gracie’s eyes were as dark, or darker, than Mr Houghton’s own, or those of most of the children, all of them so gypsified. Mr Houghton was alien, in his way; but Grace was more so. Sometimes it even occurred to Violet, though it pained her, that the Houghtons might all of them take comfort from the presence of her own dear Gracie. There was surely no one else in the county who made Perce Houghton look like a local. So Gracie’s colour could turn the social formula upside down.
‘You playing with that Houghton girl again?’ Spoken in mere disapproval; never quite the full-blooded scolding and forbidding Violet would have preferred.
‘I don’t want to go to Sunday school no more.’
Violet at first took no notice. ‘Everyone goes to Sunday school.’
‘I ain’t,’ said Grace.
First defiance. Violet was shocked. ‘Who you talking to, young miss? You talking to me like that?’
‘I’m not going, I hate it …’
‘You can’t hate Sunday school, don’t talk so wicked!’
Grace burst out crying, and presently Violet thought to ask a few questions.
‘Someone hurt you? Someone hit you?’
Sniffing, Grace shook her head.
‘You quarrelled with Lily? She not your friend no more?’
‘No. I mean, she is my friend.’
Violet sighed. She was inclined to shrug and leave well alone. As she hesitated, Grace said, ‘Miss Pyncheon –’ and stopped.
‘Miss Pyncheon what?’ asked Violet, and at once there was a different quality to the silence in the room.
‘She –’ said Grace, looking down, as if she were ashamed. ‘She –’
‘What, you made her cross? What did you do? You do summat wrong?’
‘No!’ wailed Grace. ‘I didn’t do nothing, she just comes and she rubs all on my head like, and she laughs, and she says I’m like a –’ Grace’s voice failed her.
Violet took the child on to her lap. ‘Like what, lovely? Come on, you tell me.’
‘And they all laughed,’ cried Grace wildly, all on one high note, ‘and then Tommy Dando brung one in, the next Sunday he brung one, and then today Sal did, and they jumps ’em about, they got arms like this and they do gurn like this. And they say “That’s you, that is, that’s you!” ’
‘No no, wait, I’m lost here. Who’s bringing what in?’
‘They are. Golliwogs. She said as I was like one, and they all laughed.’
‘Miss Pyncheon said you was like a golliwog?’
And ‘Bright little girl here, Mrs Dimond!’ this same long-nosed four-eyed Pyncheon piece had said smarmy as you please, just the week before!
Grace nodding.
‘Well, that’s what’s I call proper silly!’
Long practice at hiding her feelings soon enabled Violet to appear calm. ‘And daft of you too to take notice!’ she said. ‘Don’t you let them see you mind – you have to make out you don’t care, see? That’s the only way they’ll stop.’
Violet slid Grace down from her lap and got up, to look out of the window into the wet garden.
‘But do I have to go to Sunday school again, Mamma? Please, don’t make me!’
‘We’ll see,’ said Violet. ‘After dinner we must see to those sprouts,’ she added.
But as she dug she was thinking. It would clearly be no use to give Miss Pyncheon a row, though that had been her first hot intention. That might get Gracie banned, or spoken to unkindly. And perhaps after all the woman had meant no harm; many didn’t, for all their foolish questions about whether Grace could manage her own buttons like a Christian, or speak English.
So, what to do?
She remembered the mothers gathered by the George and Dragon’s portico, and how she had somehow found her sister Bea’s own keener wit. What would Bea do about the Pyncheon woman? It occurred to her, slowly, that she could simply find out, that she could write to Bea, and ask for advice.
It was rather a desperate thought. For one thing it was giving up something. The Dame School they had intermittently attended as children had taught Reading, so that all might come to the Good Book, but left out Writing altogether. Bea of course with her superior quickness had soon mastered it anyway, and besides had had years of practice writing to the people who had come to stay at the Red Lion, or at her harbourside cottage. But Violet had learnt so late in life that even now there were letters she was not completely certain about. To write to Bea would give her sister live ammunition.
Or would have; she remembered Bea looking up from the sewing machine, thinking We’re past all that at her. Could it be true? Over the years there had been several other occasions when she had decided to trust Beatrice, and those had never gone well. But this is for Grace, thought Violet. Perhaps it must take two of us to raise her. Perhaps that was why there are two of us in the first place, for who could guess at heaven’s wider plan?
The next day Violet went to the tobacconist and newsagent round the corner, and bought the smallest bottle of ink, several sheets of notepaper and two envelopes in case of mistakes, and began her first-ever letter to her sister. It took her all morning, as well as all the paper. Grace was busy too; Violet had found an old envelope, opened it out, and set the child to drawing a picture on it for her, of what these blessed golliwog-things looked like, for she was actually none too sure, toys having played so little a part in her own life.
‘Blue trousers, see. And the jacket’s got stripes and they big buttons. And black all woolly hair standing up.
My hair ain’t like that, is it? Is it, Ma?’ She seemed recovered.
‘Nothing like,’ said Violet, sitting back. She felt exhausted, and her fingers were covered in ink, it seemed to get everywhere, and there was an unfortunate blot on the last envelope, but the thing was finished. Before she posted it she had another inspiration, and sent Bea Grace’s picture folded into it as well.
Then there was nothing to do but wait, and hope that when it came Bea’s reply was not in that small slanting joined-up loopiness so many liked to go in for; Violet sometimes couldn’t read that sort of thing at all.
She would be quick, Violet was sure of that. So it was a surprise and a disappointment when the days went on sliding past, and no answering letter came.
Nearly a whole week went by, until late on Saturday afternoon, when the postman Joss Haine banged on the back kitchen window. He had no letter though, but a brown paper parcel, shoe-box size, and it was addressed, in Bea’s fine hand, not to Violet but to Grace.
Here was a quandary. All Violet’s instincts as a sister were to open the parcel herself, in case Bea had sent something she disapproved of. But the writing, no matter how she held it up to the window, went on saying ‘Miss G. Dimond’ plain enough, and to open someone else’s mail, Violet understood, was actually against the law of the land, since unopened all of it belonged in some way to the King himself.
But Grace wasn’t yet five years old, if you used the doctor’s birthday. And the King was in London: he could mind his own business. Violet snipped through the string, her heart beating fast with guilt. Beneath the lid, folds of material, fine check gingham; beneath those, lying full-length, a soft little figure, a rag-doll; pinned to its front a note, in small but clear print.
Violet was not much of a one for presents. By and large, Christmas and birthdays she gave decent blouse or skirt lengths, items undone and re-knitted from something else, pincushions, or handkerchiefs, so Grace took the re-wrapped parcel with some surprise.
‘What is it?’
‘Look and see,’ said Violet lightly, and with an effort added, ‘It’s a present from Aunt Bea.’
‘Oh, Ma!’
‘Some might say as it’s a rag doll,’ said Violet, as Grace shook the doll free once more from its gingham wraps. ‘We know it’s a golliwog, that’s white.’
Grace looked up. ‘Can you get white golliwogs?’
‘You got one right there,’ said Violet. She held up Bea’s note, and read it aloud: ‘Hello, I am a white golliwog.’
Apart from his colour the golliwog clearly looked as much like Grace’s picture as Bea could manage, further embellished with boots of brown felt laced with green wool, button-fly trousers, a tight jacket with smart lapels – ‘Oh, it comes off!’ cried Grace, in delight – a ribbon tied in a bow round his neck and a big flat blue-eyed smiling face of embroidered creamy-pink flannel, surrounded by a halo of wild yellow woollen hair. Sticking neatly from the perfect miniature pocket of his jacket was a starched lace-trimmed handkerchief, embroidered in one corner.
‘Look, Mammy, oh look at the hanky, it’s so fine!’
It was a minuscule bee, Violet saw, when she had her spectacles on, a bee in flight, above a tiny purple flower. A violet, she realized, after a moment.
‘What d’you reckon then?’ she said.
‘Should I take him to Sunday school?’
‘If you want to. He’s yourn.’
‘Won’t they be – well, angry?’
‘Might be,’ said Violet, smiling. The bee, and the violet! She hardly knew what to think herself. ‘Tell you what,’ she went on, ‘don’t you take him in tomorrow; but just talk about him, let ’em all get up an interest, like. Then maybe let them talk you into taking him in next week, see what I mean?’
‘I do like him though. He’s lovely! What shall I call him?’ Grace bent the doll’s legs, and made him sit upon her knee.
Violet pretended to give the matter thought.
‘Ooh, I don’t know. How about, let me see – how about Tommy?’
And was rewarded with giggles.
The doll was too precious, it turned out, to be taken to Sunday school at all. Its sheer existence helped; the other golliwogs seemed to pain less. At any rate, Grace no longer mentioned them.
But in fact, said Grace, her own white version was really a little girl-doll, whose name was Miss May. Miss May was unhappy in her button-fly trousers, and presently, told of this, Bea made her petticoats, and a little ruffled frock, helped Gracie make her a pinafore to go over it, with a special patch pocket for her fine handkerchief, and changed the hair for flowing yellow wool tresses. On the back of the head Bea embroidered another face, one with eyes closed, and smile more dreamy, to be hidden by day by Miss May’s new mob cap, so that at bedtime the doll could go to sleep too.
‘Mammy, can we make Miss May a proper little nightdress?’
Violet was puzzled. If Bea had made Miss May brown, in Gracie’s own real colour, would it still have been an insult? It seemed to Violet that it would. But why was Grace so delighted with a dolly of creamy-pink? But then Violet herself was a different colour from her foster child – was that the connection Gracie saw, just the other way round?
It was strange, watching Grace look after Miss May, talking to her, making her cosy in bed, or scolding her for idleness. Violet had thought the dolly would be a sort of weapon, even an instrument of revenge, as Bea had surely intended. But Grace had turned it into a well-loved toy, a source of innocent pleasure and contentment; a mystery Violet could only take to church with her.
Violet had given the idea of schooling some thought, and in the last week of the summer term steeled herself, and made an appointment to see Mr Vowles the Headmaster. It was an awkward interview, for Violet was very frightened indeed of this august and learned personage, a gentleman in his place of work; she had no idea that Mr Vowles felt rather the same way, uneasy in her presence; without giving the matter any clear thought, he knew her to be mistress of physical events he himself had only sketchy and fearful knowledge of. At the same time she was only a poor local woman, with the accent he still found mildly comical, despite several years in the county.
‘I don’t want the child picked on,’ said Violet, sitting stiff with anxiety on the other side of the desk, her shopping basket clutched on her lap. ‘She’ll need looking out for.’
‘I must say, I think you’re rather looking on the black side!’ Mr Vowles said jovially, and then blushed, in case Mrs Dimond thought the double meaning intentional, though in fact it had taken him entirely by surprise. He was disappointed she had not brought the little dark child with her, since he had never yet met a negro. He pulled himself together.
‘Especially for the Infant classes,’ he went on. ‘And they have a very nice, safe, separate playground.’ On the whole he was pleased; he felt that admitting this exotic would make his school seem a wider more interesting concern; something he could perhaps lightly mention to old friends whose careers for the moment sparkled more brightly than his own.
‘I look forward to meeting Miss Dimond,’ he said, with perfect truth. And it would be so interesting, he thought, to consider those things one heard: whether, for instance, the child would be gifted in terms of musicality and rhythm – certainly the only black people he had seen himself so far had been singers – and whether as she grew up she would evince other signs of the so-called typical negroid character, such as light-heartedness, and irresponsibility, and of course an exaggerated sensuality.
In fact Mr Vowles prided himself on suspecting that racial characteristics overall were a piece of modern nonsense, one seized upon, moreover, by a self-serving establishment; for Mr Vowles was liberal in outlook, and despised the Empire, though he was careful about saying so.
‘Be frightfully jolly,’ he said to his wife that evening, ‘if the kid turns out to be a tone-deaf intellectual,’ and they both laughed.
She had been knitting so long that it was hard for Violet to explain how it was don
e; her hands knew what to do so effortlessly that describing their movements was almost beyond her. She had to keep taking the tight knots of Grace’s earliest efforts away from her, to let her hands talk for her, at the same time trying to slow them down enough for Grace to follow, though this often meant that she somehow lost track herself.
I’m getting old, thought Violet, for the first time. But still Grace learnt quickly.
‘In … round … through … off. In, round, through, off.’
‘That’s the way!’
Presently Grace sat every evening on her little stool on the other side of the fire, the strip of blue between her needles slowly lengthening, growing more even. Violet had forgotten the pleasant cosiness of childish talk, the delight in daily minutiae. She heard about Lily Houghton’s brothers and sisters, and games they had all played together in the orchard where Mr Houghton had bestirred himself to put up a swing, and where Sidney Houghton had run after Gracie and Lily with a grass snake as was dead; Sidney liked animals, said Lily, but they did go a-dying on him; and once picking blackberries he had stood on a wasps’ nest and got all wasps crawling up his legs, and run about roaring and leaping and trying to pull his britches down all at once, the funniest thing you ever saw, Lily’s older sister said, as had seen it with her own two eyes.
Violet herself said little. Without noticing it she had fallen into her own oldest role, that of receptive audience, for once long ago her sister Beatrice had sat just so, turning the world for their private entertainment.
‘Can I do a different colour, Mamma? Can I do patterns?’
‘In a little while. Give me your hand a minute … good …’ Violet was knitting Grace matching mittens, a matter of some urgency, as every other little girl at Sunday school was currently sporting them. Couple more rows, she thought.
‘Won’t Aunt Bea be surprised, when I shows her my own scarf! Can Aunt Bea knit? Can she knit as good as what you can?’
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