moon, but I’ll have to take her in case they come knocking on the door and see Mary Pascoe’s empty bed, the scrubbed table with the little charred spot on it from last night’s match, the earth that I’ve disturbed to dig Mary Pascoe’s grave. I murmur, ‘Good girl. Good girl now,’ and I begin to slow my strokes, making them longer, lighter, preparing her for the end.
My mother had two books: the Bible and Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol . They have her name written inside the front cover, in her fine handwriting. She was given the Bible as a Sunday School prize, and A Christmas Carol was a present from my father, on their wedding day. She wrote this on the flyleaf:
A Present from my Husband on the Occasion of our Marriage, 5th June 1897.
My father had no books, and never read any. He had only his wonderful memory for songs. He must have known hundreds, or, at least, my mother said that she never came to the end of his store. He had no family, only me and my mother. The magistrates in Bristol sent him to an Industrial School when he was seven years old, for begging on the streets. He never talked about it, my mother said; only told her once that he used to watch the ships going out of the docks, and think that one day he’d go with them. Maybe he did stow away, and ended up here, thinking he was in Australia already.
Each Christmas Eve my mother read aloud to me the story of the Cratchit family’s goose, and the pudding coming in from the wash-house. I knew it so well that I would say the lines along with her, under my breath. I had my father’s memory but I was a book-reader too.
My mother’s Bible was in the bundle of her possessions that was left for me. It’s in the deep windowsill at the back of the cottage now. I pick it up and take it out into the sunlight. She was given the Bible at Sunday School, when she was ten, as a prize for recitation. She did not need to open it in order to quote from it.
It’s a long time since I opened it. There’s a bookmark that has always been there, but right at the back, towards Revelation, there is another piece of thin card. The edge of it just shows above the edge of the pages. I take it out and turn it over. It’s my school photograph, the only one ever taken.
I remember the day that the photographer came in, with his stand and the black cloth under which he vanished like a conjuror’s rabbit. There had never been a school photograph before. Our teacher told the girls to wear clean pinafores and tie their hair with ribbons. If they had no ribbon, she would give them a length of white cotton tape. We boys must be clean and tidy, wear our Sunday clothes if we had them, and comb our hair down with water if it was unruly.
My mother polished my boots and scrubbed my face, neck and hands. We were to sit very still while the photograph was taken. If we moved, there would be a blur in the photograph instead of a face.
‘It will look as if you were never in the class at all,’ said our teacher. ‘As if you were rubbed out with an India rubber.’ She bared her teeth, smiling.
I was determined not to be rubbed out. I hadn’t been photographed since I was a baby. It was expensive to have a copy of the photograph, but my mother said we would order one. I had already taken the money into school in a brown envelope, and Miss Carlyon had put a tick against my name. I was proud of that tick, and glad that I wasn’t Charlie Bozer or Susannah Caddy, with no tick and no photograph to come.
In the photograph, my lips are pressed tightly together. Like all the children, I’m sitting cross-legged, with my arms folded on my chest and my shoulders braced to take the weight of being photographed. I stare straight ahead, frowning with concentration. I don’t remember anyone telling us to smile. It was a tense moment. We’d been drilled that when Miss Carlyon said, ‘Now, children!’ we were to keep still as statues. We could move again when she said the word. When I
My mother had two books: the Bible and Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol . They have her name written inside the front cover, in her fine handwriting. She was given the Bible as a Sunday School prize, and A Christmas Carol was a present from my father, on their wedding day. She wrote this on the flyleaf:
A Present from my Husband on the Occasion of our Marriage, 5th June 1897.
My father had no books, and never read any. He had only his wonderful memory for songs. He must have known hundreds, or, at least, my mother said that she never came to the end of his store. He had no family, only me and my mother. The magistrates in Bristol sent him to an Industrial School when he was seven years old, for begging on the streets. He never talked about it, my mother said; only told her once that he used to watch the ships going out of the docks, and think that one day he’d go with them. Maybe he did stow away, and ended up here, thinking he was in Australia already.
Each Christmas Eve my mother read aloud to me the story of the Cratchit family’s goose, and the pudding coming in from the wash-house. I knew it so well that I would say the lines along with her, under my breath. I had my father’s memory but I was a book-reader too.
My mother’s Bible was in the bundle of her possessions that was left for me. It’s in the deep windowsill at the back of the cottage now. I pick it up and take it out into the sunlight. She was given the Bible at Sunday School, when she was ten, as a prize for recitation. She did not need to open it in order to quote from it.
It’s a long time since I opened it. There’s a bookmark that has always been there, but right at the back, towards Revelation, there is another piece of thin card. The edge of it just shows above the edge of the pages. I take it out and turn it over. It’s my school photograph, the only one ever taken.
I remember the day that the photographer came in, with his stand and the black cloth under which he vanished like a conjuror’s rabbit. There had never been a school photograph before. Our teacher told the girls to wear clean pinafores and tie their hair with ribbons. If they had no ribbon, she would give them a length of white cotton tape. We boys must be clean and tidy, wear our Sunday clothes if we had them, and comb our hair down with water if it was unruly.
My mother polished my boots and scrubbed my face, neck and hands. We were to sit very still while the photograph was taken. If we moved, there would be a blur in the photograph instead of a face.
‘It will look as if you were never in the class at all,’ said our teacher. ‘As if you were rubbed out with an India rubber.’ She bared her teeth, smiling.
I was determined not to be rubbed out. I hadn’t been photographed since I was a baby. It was expensive to have a copy of the photograph, but my mother said we would order one. I had already taken the money into school in a brown envelope, and Miss Carlyon had put a tick against my name. I was proud of that tick, and glad that I wasn’t Charlie Bozer or Susannah Caddy, with no tick and no photograph to come.
In the photograph, my lips are pressed tightly together. Like all the children, I’m sitting cross-legged, with my arms folded on my chest and my shoulders braced to take the weight of being photographed. I stare straight ahead, frowning with concentration. I don’t remember anyone telling us to smile. It was a tense moment. We’d been drilled that when Miss Carlyon said, ‘Now, children!’ we were to keep still as statues. We could move again when she said the word. When I
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