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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780712353380 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | British Library Publishing |
| Publication date: | 09/01/2021 |
| Series: | British Library Women Writers |
| Pages: | 304 |
| Sales rank: | 670,573 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.20(w) x 7.40(h) x 1.00(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
And thirdly, and lastly, brethren,” said Father’s voice. And I came to with a start. Lastly. That meant that in about ten minutes the sermon would be over and Mr Wister would be playing the organ for Onward, Christian Soldiers. Bother! I had just got the lovely pink-silk bow out of Rosie Day’s hat. It was all spread out, shimmering in the hot, noonday sunlight that filled the chapel, all ready to cut out into a new suit for my Little Man. Bother! Bother and Bust! There wouldn’t be time, now, to make a proper job of it, unless I did it during the hymn, and I didn’t want to miss the hymn. It was one of my favourites. I had asked for it specially; and because it was my birthday Father had said yes, with his far-away smile. I had promised my Little Man the pink silk last Sunday, but it had rained, and Rosie Day had come in her old black velvet. And the week before I had promised it, too, but there hadn’t been time, because I’d made him one from the brown satin off Mrs Bowers’ hat first. He would be terribly disappointed and a bit offended, and it really was all my fault. Because I knew in my heart that I didn’t really want to cut into the pink silk. It was such lovely ribbon; so thick and soft and yet crisp; so bright and glowing. My fingers itched to cut and snip and stitch; to fashion the stuff into a darling little suit, and trim it with some of the fascinating narrow lace that frilled the edge of Elsie Beedles’ leghorn. My Little Man would look sweet in it. I hugged the thought of how sweet he would look. But I didn’t really want to cut the silk. If I cut it, it would be finished. Done with. If I didn’t, it would always be there; the beautiful little suit that I could make any time I liked. … All the people were rustling, easing strained backs, clearing their throats for the hymn. So it was too late now, anyway. “Never mind,” I whispered to my Little Man, “I’ll make you one next Sunday. An extra special lovely one.” I took him off my lap and put him carefully on the yellow varnished ledge in front of me. He looked very hurt. “Never mind!” I said again. “Ssh!” said Mother, putting on her chapel face. I saw Sylvia peering round her, smiling the maddeningly superior little smile that I was always going to smack off her face, and never did. The organ began to play and the choir rose behind Father. Rosie Day’s pink bow flamed in the full light from the window; and now I was definitely glad I had not cut it. Some day I would cut it; feel the bright scissors go sheer through the lovely stuff and have my will of it. But not yet. I felt, confusedly, that while I never possessed it, it was most truly mine. Afterwards, it would be lost to me. “Onward, Christian soldiers …” The choir began to sing, and we all fell in behind them; faltering at first, but gradually falling into step and becoming one united whole. Te sun streamed on the coloured banners, the stones rang beneath our feet. And away in front shone the Cross, miraculously turned to gold. I let myself go, and Satan’s legions fled, Hell’s foundations quivered. Onward, onward, Christian soldiers … “Don’t shout so, Ruan,” said Mother in my ear. I stopped singing at once. Several people were staring at me in an amused sort of way, and I realised I had been Making Myself Conspicuous again. I felt myself going very hot and knew I was looking hideous. … Te banners faded, the Cross went on before and left me alone. There was no mighty army. Only Rosie Day and Miss Gault and Mr Binns and the Galloways stuck up each side of Mr Wister, bellowing away for dear life, and a lot of dull grown-ups wanting their dinners as soon as possible. I looked across at Sylvia. She was piping away demurely, not making herself conspicuous at all; behaving, as she always behaved, in exactly the correct way. She infuriated me. I stared until I caught her eye. “Mister Wister!” I mouthed, and had the satisfaction of seeing her falter. Poor Alfred Wister was a never-failing joke. He was choirmaster as well as organist, and he conducted with his head jerking and bobbing, playing wrong notes while he turned to glare at offenders, in a way we thought irresistibly funny. His very name was enough to send us into convulsions in chapel, though it never seemed half so funny at home. “Mister-Wister, Mister-Wister,” we would whisper to each other, and our insides would tie themselves into knots. Once, when the poor man was absent because he had boils and couldn’t sit down, and Father prayed for “Our suffering brother,” I was inspired to hiss at Sylvia: “Mister Wister had a blister!” It was no sooner out of my mouth than the rare beauty of my wit utterly overcame me, and I was led from the chapel choking and disgraced. This morning, however, the joke misfired, and Sylvia returned to her singing and I to my glooming until the hymn was over and Father pronounced the Benediction. “Te peace of God, that passeth all understanding, fill your hearts and minds with the knowledge and love of God …” I have never heard these words said more beautifully than my father said them. If I had nothing more to thank him for than that, it would be enough. He had an exceptionally sweet voice, deep and pure. And for one fleeting moment of each week, at least, the peace of God passing all understanding really did fill my small troubled heart and mind. But only, alas, for a moment. It always incensed me that right on top of my exaltation, hot, slow bodies should press against mine in an aimless meander down the aisle; that hateful, kid-gloved hands should paw me and even kisses be forced upon my cheeks. “Well, luv?” hearty voices would exclaim, and Mr Wister would play bright, twiddly tunes to encourage us. Polite laughter would cackle above my head, and I would shuffle and push and fidget until I was free of them all and out in the blessed air at last. But by that time the peace of God was gone for another week. … The chapel was quite two miles from home, but, unless circumstances were unusual, we had to walk it. Weather was not taken into account. We were well shod, and provided with waterproof capes and goloshes, and stupid little umbrellas that got in everybody’s way and served every purpose but that for which they were designed, and we were told we should take no harm. I am bound to say we never did. But it was far from an inspiring walk. The chapel lay in the oldest quarter of the town down by the canal, and was crowded by hideous factories and endless streets of mean little houses, whose open doors gave us glimpses of sordid and sometimes frightening existences beyond the ken of our nicely brought-up minds. Slatternly women stood at the doors of the houses and watched us walk by. Both Sylvia and I were terrified of these women and of their loutish children, who often leered or jeered at us, or made sudden movements to make us jump. We walked close together, hand in hand, and glad of it for once, and looked straight ahead as we had been told. Mother walked in front with Mrs Bowers and Mrs Galloway. How well I remember those streets on that hot June morning of my seventh birthday. Te crowded little houses of dark grey stone; the littered pavements, along which Mother picked her dainty way, maroon cashmere skirts held high; the smell of cooking cabbage and other, less agreeable smells; the noise of the Salvation Army at the corner; and a man’s laugh, coarse, indescribably brutal, growling: “Here come the holies!” “Does he mean us?” I asked Sylvia. “Yes.” “Are we holy?” “I expect so,” she replied complacently. Te thought disturbed me. Somehow I felt it wrong that we should parade our holiness before these people who were so obviously and inevitably damned. They would be well within their rights, I felt, if they tripped us up, or threw out their cabbage water over our new, cream alpaca coats. And then another, more terrible thought assailed me: my Little Man! I had left him sitting on the hymn-book ledge in our pew! I stopped and gasped: “I’ve got to go back. I’ve got to. Come with me!” “Go back? You can’t go back. Don’t be silly. You haven’t left anything.” “I have. I’ve got to go back.” “Well, I’m not coming. You’ll get into an awful row!” “Can’t help it, I’m going.” I pulled my hand away and ran. I heard Sylvia calling me, but I wouldn’t stop. I had never been in the street alone before, and I was frightened to death, quite unnecessarily. One loutish fellow called out ‘Whoa, Emma!’ but nobody touched me. Nearly all the people had gone, and I was afraid the chapel doors would be locked, but they were still open. I tiptoed into the porch and pushed open the inner door. It cracked like a gunshot. The chapel was dreadfully empty. I crept silently down the aisle and into our pew. Oh, my poor Little Man, sitting on the narrow ledge in his brown satin suit, crying, with his tiny knuckles screwed into his eyes! I picked him up and kissed him and put him into the pocket of my alpaca coat. Then I turned to go, and as I stood for a moment in the aisle I saw with a shock that I was not alone in the chapel, for Father was there, praying. I stood in the aisle awkwardly shuffling my shoes and wondering what to do. The sight of Father praying as a preacher was familiar enough; but Father praying as a man embarrassed me. I knew I ought to go away, and yet I couldn’t. Something made me tiptoe down the aisle and stand beside him. He knelt in the front pew, facing the ugly varnished pulpit where he stood week by week, high above us all, and his face was sunk in his long, thin hands. There was something terribly pathetic about him; and for the first time I realised that Father was just an ordinary man, like Mr Day and Mr Wister and Dodds, who came to the back door with greengroceries twice a week. It was a shock, but rather a comforting one; and I came nearer to loving Father in that moment than ever before—or after. Presently he lifted his head. And, child though I was, my heart dissolved in pity for the sheer misery written on his face. “Oh, Father,” I whispered, “what is the matter?” He got up quickly, and his face was at once the stern, aloof mask I knew. “What are you doing here, Ruan?” he asked. I gasped and breathed heavily. With anyone else I would have edged round the truth or lied outright; but not with Father. Such a thing never occurred to me. “I came back for my Little Man,” I whispered. “Dolls in chapel, Ruan?” “No, Father.” “What, then?” I did not hesitate. Father might be angry, but he would neither fuss like Mother nor laugh like Sylvia. There was even the faint hope that he might understand. “It’s a—a pretend Little Man. He’s my friend. I take him everywhere with me and we talk about all sorts of things. I left him in our pew, so I had to come back, you see.” “All alone?” “Yes, Father.” For a long moment he regarded me thoughtfully. “But if he is a ‘pretend’ Little Man, you could surely have pretended you hadn’t left him.” I shook my head. The faint hope that he might understand died its inevitable death. “Well, we had better get home as soon as possible. Your mother will be very worried.” We went out into the hot, odorous sunlight once more. Father walked quickly and I had to run by his side to keep up. I wore too many clothes for either comfort or hygiene. When I see the youngsters of to-day, in their brief, sensible garments, I sigh for that sturdy little figure in its petticoats and frills, its buttoned boots and woollen stockings and tight cotton gloves, its alpaca coat well and truly buttoned to the chin and its hard straw hat with the tight elastic. But it didn’t occur to me to grumble. In those days, in our family, at least, if grown-ups walked fast, you ran to keep up with them, and that was that. “Ruan,” Father said suddenly, “imagination is a wonderful gift from– 9 – God and it should be used wisely. Control it, and it will be your friend. Give it rein and it will destroy you. Like fire, it is a good servant and a bad master. I think you must get rid of your Little Man.” “Oh, Father—no!” I whimpered. “Before next Sunday,” he went on implacably. “Will you give me your promise?” “Yes, Father.” “And for running away from Mother, and causing her distress, you must learn the hundred and twenty-first psalm, and repeat it to me to-night.” “That isn’t a punishment,” I said promptly. “I know it already.” And I began to repeat the green, sweeping cadences: “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. “My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth. …” Words. They have always been the very stuff of my life. Lovely, shining words, in whose fire the tongue may burn and yet be unscarred; at whose trumpets the heart lifts to ecstasy or falls to hell; in whose colour, shape, and texture the mind sinks, drowned in beauty. … “Te sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night. “Te Lord shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul. “Te Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for ever more.” Father’s long, jerky stride slackened. He began to repeat the words with me. When we had finished the psalm we went on to another: “Te Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.” And after that, the fierce clarion of: “Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands.” So we went through the noisome streets together, saying our lovely words; and an odd couple we looked, I dare say: the tall, black parson with the emaciated, saint’s face and the prematurely white hair, and the square little girl plodding in her buttoned boots. But if any laughed or sneered at us we were unaware of it—so what matter? “Where did you learn all these psalms?” Father asked. “You say them in chapel, Father. And I can read,” I told him proudly. “H’m. How old are you, Ruan?” “Seven. I’m seven to-day.” “Ah, yes. Well, beware of the sin of pride, my child,” he remarked austerely.