things led me helpless back into the past, memories pulling at me strong and smooth as a steel chain, each link hard and bright and obdurate, so that I was hauled out of my frail, pallid, eighteen-year-old body, and forced to live, as I live today as I write, within my ten-year-old self, rosy-skinned but rigid with fear, on my way by bus to take my entrance exam for the Holy Redeemer.
The surprise – if it was a surprise – had already occurred; I’d known something was up that day I’d seen my mum with Karina’s mum, linking each other on Eliza Street. ‘I’m sitting for the Holy Redeemer too,’ Karina had said boldly, one morning as we went through the school gates.
‘You are not!’ I said.
‘I am so! You can like it or lump it.’
That same night my mother said: I am determined that child should have her chance in life. Why not? She’s as good as anybody, isn’t she? My father grunted. He was doing a jigsaw puzzle; he did them many eveningsnow. She has to be a bright girl, my mother reasoned, she must be: running on in her most decisive tone, convincing the empty air. Look at the way she helps Mary in the house. Does all the shopping. Poor Mary doesn’t know the price of an egg.
‘Why doesn’t she?’ I said.
My mother frowned. ‘Mary has enough to do, working shifts. She has a good capable girl to do her shopping for her.’
I had lost half a crown, once, when I had been sent out on a Sunday for a block of Neapolitan ice-cream. This had never been forgotten, it never would be.
‘And she’s capable enough to roll up her sleeves when she comes in from school and get her own tea and her father’s as well if he’s there for it.’
I could get the tea, I thought. My mother didn’t need much food – she ran on wrath – and she didn’t see that other people might need what she herself didn’t. Getting our tea only involved slapping corned beef on a plate, and quartering a tomato. But there was a special way of slapping, a special way of quartering, and any modifications of it I might introduce were subject to my mother’s scorn. If I were to fail my Eleven Plus and go to St Theresa’s up Pennyworth Brow, with the model kitchen Sister Monica had told us about, I would be doing domestic science. That’ll show her, I thought. ‘Do they have domestic science at the Holy Redeemer?’ I asked.
‘Domestic science?’ My mother’s eyebrows – or the pencil marks which represented them – flew up into her hair. ‘Latin and Greek, that’s what you’ll be doing. Physics and chemistry.’
We had received a booklet, called a prospectus. Among the lines of grey print there were some grey photographs, of two big girls handling test-tubes, supervised by a nun in spectacles; of a hockey team, grinning widely, arranged in a row with their sticks at a regulated angle, and the girl at the centre hoisting a beribboned cup. ‘How will I learn to play hockey?’ I said. ‘I don’t know how to do it.’
‘Don’t worry,’ my mother said. ‘It’ll come to you. When the time is ripe.’
I went to look over my father’s shoulder. He was in the early stages of his jigsaw, so you had to look at the lid of the box to see that it represented a thatched cottage on a village green. There was a church spire, and some rambling roses and a bicycle leaning against a gate. ‘Be a good girl and you can help me fill in the sky,’ he said.
‘I’d rather do the duck pond.’
‘We’re not up to the duck pond yet. We’ve got to get the edges in first. Can’t run before we can walk.’
‘Well, will you give me a shout when you’re up to the duck pond?’
‘Get upstairs, lady,’ my mother said, ‘and get your homework done, never mind duck ponds. And don’t let me come up and catch you gawping out of the window, neither.’
My father looked at his work, just a gap fringed with blue: ‘A happy home,’ he said, unemphatically.
I went without looking back, up the steep stairs to my room. I closed
The surprise – if it was a surprise – had already occurred; I’d known something was up that day I’d seen my mum with Karina’s mum, linking each other on Eliza Street. ‘I’m sitting for the Holy Redeemer too,’ Karina had said boldly, one morning as we went through the school gates.
‘You are not!’ I said.
‘I am so! You can like it or lump it.’
That same night my mother said: I am determined that child should have her chance in life. Why not? She’s as good as anybody, isn’t she? My father grunted. He was doing a jigsaw puzzle; he did them many eveningsnow. She has to be a bright girl, my mother reasoned, she must be: running on in her most decisive tone, convincing the empty air. Look at the way she helps Mary in the house. Does all the shopping. Poor Mary doesn’t know the price of an egg.
‘Why doesn’t she?’ I said.
My mother frowned. ‘Mary has enough to do, working shifts. She has a good capable girl to do her shopping for her.’
I had lost half a crown, once, when I had been sent out on a Sunday for a block of Neapolitan ice-cream. This had never been forgotten, it never would be.
‘And she’s capable enough to roll up her sleeves when she comes in from school and get her own tea and her father’s as well if he’s there for it.’
I could get the tea, I thought. My mother didn’t need much food – she ran on wrath – and she didn’t see that other people might need what she herself didn’t. Getting our tea only involved slapping corned beef on a plate, and quartering a tomato. But there was a special way of slapping, a special way of quartering, and any modifications of it I might introduce were subject to my mother’s scorn. If I were to fail my Eleven Plus and go to St Theresa’s up Pennyworth Brow, with the model kitchen Sister Monica had told us about, I would be doing domestic science. That’ll show her, I thought. ‘Do they have domestic science at the Holy Redeemer?’ I asked.
‘Domestic science?’ My mother’s eyebrows – or the pencil marks which represented them – flew up into her hair. ‘Latin and Greek, that’s what you’ll be doing. Physics and chemistry.’
We had received a booklet, called a prospectus. Among the lines of grey print there were some grey photographs, of two big girls handling test-tubes, supervised by a nun in spectacles; of a hockey team, grinning widely, arranged in a row with their sticks at a regulated angle, and the girl at the centre hoisting a beribboned cup. ‘How will I learn to play hockey?’ I said. ‘I don’t know how to do it.’
‘Don’t worry,’ my mother said. ‘It’ll come to you. When the time is ripe.’
I went to look over my father’s shoulder. He was in the early stages of his jigsaw, so you had to look at the lid of the box to see that it represented a thatched cottage on a village green. There was a church spire, and some rambling roses and a bicycle leaning against a gate. ‘Be a good girl and you can help me fill in the sky,’ he said.
‘I’d rather do the duck pond.’
‘We’re not up to the duck pond yet. We’ve got to get the edges in first. Can’t run before we can walk.’
‘Well, will you give me a shout when you’re up to the duck pond?’
‘Get upstairs, lady,’ my mother said, ‘and get your homework done, never mind duck ponds. And don’t let me come up and catch you gawping out of the window, neither.’
My father looked at his work, just a gap fringed with blue: ‘A happy home,’ he said, unemphatically.
I went without looking back, up the steep stairs to my room. I closed
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