Thursday's Child

by Sonya Hartnett

  ‘The only thing I’ve ever seen twitch the way you’re doing was a mutt that knocked open a hive. Have you been stung?’

  ‘Worse than that! You can keep your mutt, I’m more of a cat, and can’t abide my feet getting wet. They were wet from the start of the war till its ending and I promised them I’d never let them get that way again. Pah, imagine what winter will be like, if it’s this bad already. The road’s a bog and in town they’re talking about flooding. Here,’ he said, handing Da a damp envelope. ‘This was waiting for you at the dry-gooder’s, and I knew I’d be passing.’

  Da took the envelope and I saw his name written there, the words smeared by its journey with Mr Campbell. We children clustered as he opened it because we rarely got letters and this was exciting, but Da shielded the paper and would not let us see. Mam was finding a cloth for Mr Campbell and hanging his jacket near the fire, but her eyes kept flitting to Da. ‘Audrey, Devon, Harper,’ she said sharply. ‘Let your father have the light. Arthur, I’ll make a pot of tea.’

  ‘My father has died,’ said Da. ‘He’s dead and buried a month.’

  It made the room go quiet and we heard droplets splat from the cuffs of Mr Campbell’s coat. Mam said, ‘Oh, Court.’

  ‘Ah, I’m sorry, Court. I wouldn’t have come in carrying on so theatrical, if I’d known the news was bad.’

  Da didn’t look up from the letter. ‘You weren’t to know, Art. My father and I haven’t spoken for a good while, anyway: I’d be a hypocrite to go weeping and having hurt feelings.’

  ‘Is it our grandfather, Da?’

  ‘Of course it is, Harper, idiot –’

  ‘Hush, Devon.’ Mam had hung the kettle in the fireplace and was adding twigs to the flames, though the fire was already blazing and it was a waste of kindling. ‘Is that all the note says, Court?’

  ‘The estate needs to be settled. The lawyers want me to go to the city.’

  ‘What’s an estate?’

  ‘Harper. Does it say what’s to be settled, exactly?’

  Da shook his head. ‘Just says it needs doing.’

  ‘You’ll have to go.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘Oh, Da, can I go too?’

  ‘Will there be much to do, Court?’ asked Mr Campbell. ‘I mean, was your father … a man of means?’

  ‘He never went hungry,’ said Mam. ‘There’s a house.’

  ‘My mother’s jewellery.’

  ‘Other bits and pieces. Furniture.’

  ‘You got any brothers and sisters, Court?’

  ‘No. My mother was taken when I was the little one’s age. There’s only myself.’

  Mr Campbell nodded, biting his white cold lips. Da and Mam were gazing at each other. The kettle was bubbling ignored. ‘God bless him,’ said Mam suddenly. ‘God grant him rest.’

  ‘Aye. May he rest in peace.’

  Da folded the letter and slipped it into the envelope. ‘I’ll make a start tomorrow morning.’

  Mr Campbell kept on nodding, as if something had unsprung inside his scrawny neck. ‘Best not to keep these things waiting,’ he said.

  An estate is what the dead leaves behind and the living gets to keep. During the three weeks Da was in the city Mam told us about the house our grandfather had lived in, how it had an upstairs and a downstairs and a staircase bent like an elbow linking in-between, how it had windows back and front so some rooms got light in the morning and some in the afternoon, and how it had a space in the ceiling where Mam had lived with Audrey and Devon while Da was fighting the war. Devon said he wished he had a room like that now, way up hidden in the treetops, and I asked what room I could have, if Devon got the attic. Mam said I would probably have to share a room with Audrey because the smallest room wasn’t good for anything but a nursery and Audrey groaned on hearing that, as if she were being tortured. Mam said there was a kitchen with an oven big enough for piglets and if she was missing an ingredient there was a store half a mile down the road where she’d send me with a list. There was a table that had chess squares laid into its surface and Devon said if he had a table like that he would learn the rules of playing the game and Mam said Da could teach him. Thinking of teaching made me think unwillingly of school and Mam said there was a convent for young ladies that would take ten minutes to reach on foot and it was a very different school from my own, with hats and stockings and lessons lasting all day, even if the teacher got sick of our faces. I worried that none of the girls would be friendly to me, coming in as I would a stranger, but Mam said I was bound to find someone who would pity me. Audrey suggested we might need new clothes to match a life so glorious and Mam said we could all get new clothes for the city, because country clothes would not do. I looked at the dogs and said we’d have to find homes for them because it would be no good taking them with us and Devon asked then, ‘What about Tin?’

  ‘Tin will come too,’ Mam said, but I could tell by the way she said it that she had forgotten all about Tin – forgotten to give him a room in the house, forgotten to send him to school and buy new clothes for him, forgotten to carve his share of the piglet. ‘Don’t crowd me so, Harper,’ she said, and pushed me away.

  ‘Tin couldn’t dig in the city,’ Devon decided. ‘The ground is covered with stone. There’s cobbles and drains that would get in his way.’

  ‘Tin will come with us,’ Mam said sourly.

  When Da came home we pounded down the hill to meet him and we hung off his arms as if he were the key to that house with the elbowed stairway. He took Caffy from Audrey and ruffled my hair. ‘I’ve missed you all,’ he told us, and I gazed up eagerly into his coal-coloured eyes. Three weeks in the city, in that wonderful house, three weeks near the school and the store just along the road, should have made him different – I dreamed it would make him sparkle – but he looked just the same, save for his hair’s mourning trim. All of us were biting our tongues against our questions because Mam had told us to let him tell it as he wished. Even so, she couldn’t help asking, ‘How did it go, Court?’

  ‘There was more to be done than I expected.’

  Mam’s hands were clasped so tight that her fingernails were going white. ‘Such as?’

  ‘All the furniture had to be sold.’

  She blinked, her hands went still. ‘Sold?’

  ‘He had debts. I was surprised. I always thought he was pretty careful, that way. No doubt that’s where my mother’s wedding ring went. His own was gone.’

  ‘What about the chess table?’

  ‘That went in the auction. It brought a fair price.’ Da frowned, and turned to Devon. ‘How did you know about that?’ he asked. ‘I’d forgotten the chess table.’

  ‘I’ve been telling them about the house,’ said Mam.

  Da was carrying Caffy and walking slowly up the hill, his clean black boots squelching through the mud. ‘The house. That’s another thing I believed wrong about. I always thought he owned that house. He never said a thing to make me think otherwise. Can you believe, he was renting. Renting, and I never knew. He was a crafty old bugger, he never let on about things like that. Always kept his cards close. Always wanted to appear grand in the eyes of others.’

  No one said anything so I asked, ‘It’s our house now though, isn’t it, Da?’

  He beamed at me. ‘We’ve got a house already, chicken. What would we want with another?’

  ‘But – aren’t I going to the school? Da?’

  ‘Harper, you’ve got a school –’

  My heart started thumping. ‘But – what about us going to the city? Da? Da, Mam said we were going to live in Grandda’s house – ’

  ‘I didn’t, Harper. I only told you what it was like, there. Don’t tell such lies.’

  I swung to look at her, but she wasn’t looking at me. She wasn’t looking at Devon or Audrey, who were staring at her too. She was looking at the sky, at nothing, her dark hair blowing across her face. My eyes were filling with tears, so I put my hands over them. Mam said, ‘Well, that’s done with, any
way.’

  ‘Yes. It was a fiddlesome business.’

  ‘And he’s well buried?’

  ‘I saw the grave, left orders for the stone.’

  ‘Good,’ said Mam. ‘Good.’

  ‘There was a few quid left over, after everything was done.’

  I peeped over my fingertips at this, but Da had turned to Devon. ‘It’s to go to you, Devon,’ he said. ‘That’s what the will stated, that anything left over was yours. It’s not much, but it’s something.’

  Devon’s jaw lolled. ‘Is it enough to buy the pony?’

  ‘I reckon there’s enough to buy the pony.’

  Da had brought the money home in his swag, a pile of notes locked safely in a flat carved wooden box. There seemed enough to swim in, I thought, but Da said that was just my unaccustomed eyes. He said that someone used to seeing money would say there wasn’t much at all, but that, if Devon was careful, he’d find he could make it spread pretty well. ‘Save it,’ Da advised him. ‘Get your pony, because you’ve been busting your gut for that, but save what remains. That’s the wise way of doing things.’

  Devon couldn’t hold that box tight enough. He let me sniff the money but not feel it. Da went to sleep with the juice of his dinner still on his lips and Mam turned the lantern down low. I washed the plates in the basin, the nails of the floorboards nipping into my knees, and listened to Devon prattle. Mam mended by the lamp’s light, patching Da’s raggy shirtsleeves. Audrey was ironing in silence, and even Caffy was sitting dumb. It was only Devon who wasn’t aching like he’d taken a bait.

  ‘Course colour doesn’t make a difference, but I believe I’ll get a chestnut. I was wanting a grey, but now I think a chestnut.’

  ‘You want a healthy one, that’s what.’

  ‘True. A saddle and bridle, I can get them secondhand. I don’t think the horse will mind, long as the tack’s comfortable.’

  Audrey smacked the iron on dampened cloth; you could see the steam roll through the air.

  ‘We’ll need a yard for him so I’ll start building it tomorrow, and somewhere to keep the feed. And I’ll save what’s left over, as Da said. There might be a day when I want something else. I reckon there will be, probably.’

  He hugged himself, excited; Mam licked the cotton and rethreaded the needle. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘you’ve had the last laugh on Mr Cable. You got your horse without him, after all.’

  Audrey snorted fiercely, pressing the iron home hard. ‘Grandda didn’t even know Devon,’ she said stonily. ‘He should have left that money to Da. At least then we wouldn’t have to listen to that blockhead’s bragging.’

  ‘It was Grandda’s money,’ Devon said hotly. ‘He could leave it to whoever he liked.’

  ‘Hush, you’ll wake your father. Devon’s right, Audrey, it was Grandfather’s money, to do with as he chose.’

  ‘Well it was mean of him, and it isn’t fair. It isn’t fair to me or Harper or Caffy or Tin –’

  ‘What’s not fair? Why would Tin or Caffy need money?’

  She slammed the iron on its heel and wheeled to hiss at him. ‘It’s not fair because now you can get what you want, Devon, but we won’t be getting anything. Things are staying just the same, for all the rest of us. Da will go out trapping rabbits tomorrow, and that hole in Harper’s shoe will be letting in the rain. Mam will be wearing that same old dress and she’ll give Caffy half her dinner so he’s got the food to make him grow. So go and spend your money, Devon, and I hope you enjoy doing it. Just don’t tell us about it, that’s the favour you can do for me.’

  Devon pressed against the wall, clutching the box in his lap. ‘You’re being spiteful, that’s all.’

  ‘Haven’t I the right to be? Wouldn’t you be?’

  ‘Let him alone, Audrey,’ Mam sighed.

  Audrey swung toward the fire, her blue eyes sparking flames. Caffy was snivelling at the raised voices; I dashed my hands and scooped him up and huddled, with him, between the legs of Mam’s chair. It bothered me, what Audrey said. The hole in my shoe let in water, but I was used to it and it would dry out at the end of the rain. Mam’s dress, I thought, was soothingly familiar as the touch of her hand; she shared her meals with Caffy because he was too clumsy for a plate of his own. Da trapped rabbits because that was what Da did – that was his calling and place in the world. These things had never seemed wrong to me, and it troubled me that Audrey thought another way. Audrey was clever – cleverer than me – and sometimes she knew things that I didn’t know. I chewed my lip thinking and, with Caffy quelled and Devon petulant, the room was silent except for the flames. Then Devon asked, ‘Why did Grandda leave the money to me, Mam? Why didn’t he give it to Da?’

  ‘Your father and grandfather disagreed.’

  ‘What about?’

  Mam lowered her mending. ‘A disagreement isn’t always about a particular thing. You know how, when you come across something that makes you queasy, you avoid that thing as best you can? The two of them felt that way about each other.’

  And then she told us how Grandda had been a clerk who’d always expected to be made something more prestigious and how he secured for his son Da the job as junior clerk so he would know the man he was boss of, when the company moved him up and away. But the company didn’t move Grandda anywhere, not sharing the old man’s dreamed-up destiny; more galling was the trust they put in Court, the capable, when it should rightly have gone to Grandda. And Grandda hated it, and seethed over his mistake. When war was declared Grandda told Da to enlist, but Da did not want to. He was a married man with a baby and hordes were volunteering anyway, there was no call for an underweight thing like him. But Grandda kept the subject simmering, reading aloud the headlines every day. Volunteers started to die overseas and dwindle away at home. Grandda encouraged and hounded, saying the company didn’t need Da but the nation certainly did, saying the child on its way would be born safely without him lurking, saying it was a privilege to be given an opportunity to fight and go, hurry, go. Still Da refused and Grandda said the bones of the dead were crying out for vengeance, Mam and Audrey and the not-yet-born baby could live in the attic of Grandda’s house and he would take proper care, the army was begging for anyone now, married or single, old or young, and did Da like it, behaving like a coward? Did he like making his father look the coward by having a coward for a son? People, he said, were whispering, and soon would come the white feather blown in under the door. ‘Your own children,’ Grandda warned him, ‘will forever hang their heads in shame.’

  So Da went to France, where the mud was, and realised, when he got there, that his father had sent him away to die.

  Inside I felt all knotted with rage. ‘He should have come home – Mam, I wish Da had come home –’

  ‘But he was a long way away. Too far to come home.’

  ‘He should never have listened to that horrible man.’

  ‘Hush up Harper, you don’t understand.’

  Mam had written letters to him, cheerful letters finished off with crossed kisses telling him of newborn Devon and Audrey’s first sentence and her lovely flaxen curling hair, never breathing a word of how Grandda growled at the sight and sound and smell of children or how he judged Mam’s housekeeping slovenly and child-rearing faulty and begrudged every scrap she put in the little ones’ mouths. In three years Mam never wrote a word of complaint, posting her letters faithfully each fortnight and praying he received at least some. But she remembered things, for later.

  Throughout those years the company kept Grandda pinned in his lowly position and now and then made mutterings about the strength of his memory: when Da returned in one piece from the war, Grandda knew his days at the company were numbered. A bullet-wound in the foot would not stop a young man from doing sums. So when the government offered land to the soldiers as a signal of its great gratitude, unused land that should with industry become sprawling prosperous farms, Grandda started singing his old tune. The country life is a splendid one for children and Da would have fello
w-feeling for his neighbours, them being soldiers too. Don’t get sunk in the same pit as your father, Grandda cautioned him: don’t spend your life thanklessly drudging for others, as bullied as a mule in the shafts.

  Da didn’t trust Grandda as far as he could boot him, but he wanted to go. He’d come home sickened and sallow, the endings grated from his nerves. The country sounded like salvation to him, like rest and finally refuge. He and Mam had been apart a long time, and to his children he was a baffling stranger. In the seclusion of the countryside, they could recollect one another in peace. But more than that, Da wanted to see with his own eyes a place where ruined spectres did not loom, to walk on earth that was not spiked with bone, to breathe air that did not reek of blood, to see birds scoop unhurried through unbroken empty sky. Together he and Mam took up the offer of settlement and from the first they were thankful for the shanty and the kindness of the neighbours, for the relief and serenity. It was only later they remembered that they had never been farmers.

  Audrey said, ‘And Da and Grandda never spoke after that?’

  ‘They knew each was a blight on the life of the other. Occasionally there was a letter, but they never saw each other again.’

  ‘I will never stop talking to you, Mam,’ I said stoutly.

  Mam smiled and ran a hand over my head: her hands were made of the toughest skin, and snaggled in my hair.

  THE NEXT MORNING DEVON gave the box and the money to Da. His chin was quivering and he kept shifting so the floorboards creaked beneath his weight but his words came out clearly, clouded only with the cold. He must have spent the night planning what he was meaning to say.

  ‘Mam needs a new dress,’ he said. ‘Harper needs new boots. Other things, we need. Maybe some things to make a farm. A proper farm, I mean, with crops and animals. You said this money would spread pretty good, if it was spent carefully. I don’t think there’s enough for much, but we could make a start. One day, we could have a better farm than Mr Cable.’