memories are always obscured by accumulations of later knowledge. He made himself walk to the counter again, this time remembering nothing but the moment, push his sweaty coin across the cool marble, and ask, ‘What can I have for a ha’penny?’
There was a white apron round Beattie’s waist with two pockets, stained black from the coins inside them. These coins smelled very strong when she emptied them on to the table to count them, a dark, dank, heavy smell.
‘What can I have for a ha’penny?’
Beattie’s voice, patient as if she hadn’t said all this a million times before, reeled off the list: aniseed ball, sherbert delight, liquorice stick, a packet of thousand-and-ones, and finally – his favourite because it lasted so long – a gob-stopper.
Towers’s eye lay in the palm of his hand. ‘What am I supposed to do with this gob-stopper?’ Logan’s hand reached out, grasped his shaking wrist, and tipped the eye into the bag .
Don’t think about it , he told himself. It was too late in the day to risk thinking about that.
He had no memory of Beattie’s face. She’d been an object then, a mountain, the side of a house, vast, taken for granted, not a person to whom you could attach adjectives. Though he could attach them readily enough now: lively, opinionated, intelligent, uneducated, foul-mouthed, impulsive, generous, quick-tempered, kind. Prior’s mother, his gentle and, it had to be said, genteel mother, hated Beattie Roper, though, when his mother became ill with suspected tuberculosis, it was to Beattie he’d been sent. That must have been his father’s decision.
For almost a year, when he was five or six years old, he’d lived with Beattie and played with her two daughters, Winnie, who was now in Leeds Prison, and Hettie, who’d been charged with conspiracy to murder, but acquitted. He’d been the baby, when they played houses; the customer, when they played shops; the pupil, when they played schools; the patient, when they played nurses; and all these roles had been extremely boring, except, now and then, the role of patient.
They’d played under the big table in the kitchen, because its green tasselled cloth hanging down all round them made a separate world. Particularly on wash days, when the house was invaded by smells of soda, Dolly Blue and wet wool, and the wind blew grit in from the yard, the table was their refuge. Between the green tassels they looked out at adult boots coming and going, and felt a pleasant sense of power.
Mr Carker’s boots. Mr Carker was secretary of the Independent Labour Party, and sometimes he and Beattie sat together at the table, discussing politics. These discussions had been, in every sense, above Prior’s head, though he remembered one remark of Mr Carker’s to the effect that the suffragettes simply exploited working-class women like Beattie. ‘It’s all very well, talking aboutsisterhood, but when they go home at night and drop their knickers, it’s somebody else’s job to pick them up.’
Probably it was the reference to dropping knickers that had made that particular remark stick in his mind. Perhaps it excited Mr Carker too, for shortly afterwards his boot crept along the floor and brushed against Beattie’s foot. She moved her foot. The boot followed, accompanied this time by a hand on her knee, a hand that just lifted the green tassels. Prior looked round and saw Hettie’s stricken face. It was a house with no father, and all the children, but particularly Hettie, were passionate in defence of their mother. For the first time in his life, perhaps, Prior was aware of another’s pain. Stealthily, he reached out and tied Mr Carker’s boot laces together, so that when, finally, he got up to go, he tripped and measured his full length on the floor.
The disciplining of children must have been the only subject on which Beattie held no advanced views. She’d hauled him out of his hiding place, tipped him over her knee and tanned his arse;
There was a white apron round Beattie’s waist with two pockets, stained black from the coins inside them. These coins smelled very strong when she emptied them on to the table to count them, a dark, dank, heavy smell.
‘What can I have for a ha’penny?’
Beattie’s voice, patient as if she hadn’t said all this a million times before, reeled off the list: aniseed ball, sherbert delight, liquorice stick, a packet of thousand-and-ones, and finally – his favourite because it lasted so long – a gob-stopper.
Towers’s eye lay in the palm of his hand. ‘What am I supposed to do with this gob-stopper?’ Logan’s hand reached out, grasped his shaking wrist, and tipped the eye into the bag .
Don’t think about it , he told himself. It was too late in the day to risk thinking about that.
He had no memory of Beattie’s face. She’d been an object then, a mountain, the side of a house, vast, taken for granted, not a person to whom you could attach adjectives. Though he could attach them readily enough now: lively, opinionated, intelligent, uneducated, foul-mouthed, impulsive, generous, quick-tempered, kind. Prior’s mother, his gentle and, it had to be said, genteel mother, hated Beattie Roper, though, when his mother became ill with suspected tuberculosis, it was to Beattie he’d been sent. That must have been his father’s decision.
For almost a year, when he was five or six years old, he’d lived with Beattie and played with her two daughters, Winnie, who was now in Leeds Prison, and Hettie, who’d been charged with conspiracy to murder, but acquitted. He’d been the baby, when they played houses; the customer, when they played shops; the pupil, when they played schools; the patient, when they played nurses; and all these roles had been extremely boring, except, now and then, the role of patient.
They’d played under the big table in the kitchen, because its green tasselled cloth hanging down all round them made a separate world. Particularly on wash days, when the house was invaded by smells of soda, Dolly Blue and wet wool, and the wind blew grit in from the yard, the table was their refuge. Between the green tassels they looked out at adult boots coming and going, and felt a pleasant sense of power.
Mr Carker’s boots. Mr Carker was secretary of the Independent Labour Party, and sometimes he and Beattie sat together at the table, discussing politics. These discussions had been, in every sense, above Prior’s head, though he remembered one remark of Mr Carker’s to the effect that the suffragettes simply exploited working-class women like Beattie. ‘It’s all very well, talking aboutsisterhood, but when they go home at night and drop their knickers, it’s somebody else’s job to pick them up.’
Probably it was the reference to dropping knickers that had made that particular remark stick in his mind. Perhaps it excited Mr Carker too, for shortly afterwards his boot crept along the floor and brushed against Beattie’s foot. She moved her foot. The boot followed, accompanied this time by a hand on her knee, a hand that just lifted the green tassels. Prior looked round and saw Hettie’s stricken face. It was a house with no father, and all the children, but particularly Hettie, were passionate in defence of their mother. For the first time in his life, perhaps, Prior was aware of another’s pain. Stealthily, he reached out and tied Mr Carker’s boot laces together, so that when, finally, he got up to go, he tripped and measured his full length on the floor.
The disciplining of children must have been the only subject on which Beattie held no advanced views. She’d hauled him out of his hiding place, tipped him over her knee and tanned his arse;
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