Amelia Page 9

  ‘Those Pims with their motor-car and their airs and graces! They live in a hovel off the South Circular Road and have gruel and skim milk for every meal.’

  ‘The Pim shouldn’t be here at all. The Monthly Meeting pays her school fees. That’s our money, you realise. Good money after bad, I call that.’

  ‘Pim the Poorie!’

  Bewildered, Amelia turned to Lucinda for comfort – funny, pretty, lively Lucinda, who would be sure to take Amelia’s side and make little of her tormentors.

  But Lucinda didn’t see things in quite this way. Lucinda was a fun-loving creature, with a sunny nature and quick to laugh, but she reserved her quicksilver dimples and her sideways smile for those she considered worthy of them. Amelia had never noticed before how carefully Lucinda chose her place every day in class. Most people had a favourite desk, near the stove or the hot pipes in winter, near the window in summer, which they made a dive for when the bell rang. But Lucinda slipped in and out of places like a goldfish – a shimmer and a slither and she had gone, a gleam and a glide and she was somewhere else, bestowing her favours where she saw fit, turning her open gaze on whoever seemed most interesting, most well placed, most useful, perhaps.

  This didn’t all dawn on Amelia in a single day, of course. She made several attempts to corner Lucinda for a chat, so she could pour her heart out to her, but every time she approached her old friend, Lucinda managed, oh so charmingly, to slip away – a music lesson here, an important engagement there, an errand to run for a teacher somewhere else. At last, Amelia got the message. Lucinda didn’t want to know her any more. She, Amelia Pim, was no longer worth knowing. She had lost not only a home, wealth and security, but she had lost position in the little society of the Grosvenor Academy.

  At first Amelia felt very miserable about this. She cried a lot at night, very quietly, after Grandmama had gone to sleep. One night, as Amelia was sobbing quietly into her pillow, she heard a low voice in the dark. ‘I think you’ve cried enough now, Amelia,’ Grandmama said calmly.

  Amelia sat up like a shot in bed and tried to peer through the gloom to Grandmama’s bed. Had she imagined it? Or had Grandmama really spoken?

  At last she raised a squeaky enquiry: ‘Grandmama? Are you awake?’

  ‘Well, of course I’m awake. I don’t talk in my sleep, Amelia. That’s a bad habit and I don’t approve of it.’

  ‘Oh, Grandmama!’ said Amelia with a soft giggle. ‘Talking in their sleep isn’t something a person can help!’

  ‘Is that so?’ said Grandmama.

  Amelia could almost hear her smile in the darkness and realised that Grandmama had only said that to make Amelia laugh. At that moment, Amelia realised she hadn’t laughed for quite a long time. This thought made her suddenly sadder than ever, and she had to make a big effort to swallow another sob.

  Grandmama heard the strangled sound though, and knew that Amelia was struggling not to cry. ‘That’s a good girl,’ she said encouragingly. ‘Don’t let ‘em make you miserable.’

  ‘But Grandmama,’ said Amelia, mystified, ‘how did you know people were making me miserable? I could have been crying about anything at all.’

  ‘Oh no, Amelia,’ came the wise old voice. ‘You are a sensible girl, and sensible girls only cry about things that are worth crying about. And it’s not worth crying about losing a fine house or a car or a lot of money. Those things are good, but they are not important. What’s worth crying about is when you lose a friend. So I conclude that you must have lost a friend, Amelia. Or maybe more than one friend.’

  ‘Yes, Grandmama,’ whispered Amelia, feeling very strange to be sitting up in her nightgown talking to someone she couldn’t see. She didn’t agree that it wasn’t worth crying over losing their lovely home in Kenilworth Square and the shining motor car and pots of money, but she knew Grandmama’s views too well to argue.

  ‘And was it a good, kind friend you lost, Amelia?’

  Amelia thought for a moment. ‘No, Grandmama,’ she said slowly.

  ‘So maybe it’s not as great a loss as you imagine?’

  ‘Maybe not, Grandmama,’ said Amelia, beginning to grin a little, as she could see that Grandmama was going to reason her out of her misery. What a very peculiar way to comfort a person! But it was working. Already Amelia was beginning to feel lighter and brighter and altogether less despairing.

  ‘Well, then,’ said Grandmama, in a satisfied sort of tone, sounding for all the world like a barrister addressing a jury.

  Amelia waited for her to say some more, but she didn’t utter another sound. That was just like Grandmama. She wasn’t one to chatter inconsequentially, but she knew to speak when she had something worth saying and to remain silent when she hadn’t. It must have come of all those years of Quakerly silence at Meeting, Amelia thought. It was the first time she had ever seen the point of sitting still and silent. Yes, of course, it made sense all of a sudden. If you only spoke when there really was something to say, people would naturally take you more seriously when you did speak. Am I turning into a proper Quaker at last? Amelia wondered, turning her pillow over to the dry side and beating it into shape for sleeping on.

  After that, Amelia made a decision not to mind the jibes and jeers of her schoolmates. It was hard, at times, but she soon found that the best way to cope with teasing was to ignore it. Ignoring it meant not only not answering, but appearing not even to hear the insults and rude remarks they made to her or about her. When she met a girl in the corridor or sat beside one in class, she threw her a sweet, wide smile, as if they were old friends, and hurried on or buried herself in her work as if, in spite of being glad to see whoever it was, she had more important business to attend to and couldn’t stop for a chat. And sure enough, after a while, they started to leave her alone.

  ‘Grandmama?’ Amelia ventured one afternoon, bringing the old lady a cup of tea in the parlour, where she sat sewing most of the day.

  ‘Yes, Amelia,’ said Grandmama, not looking up from her work, but moving some spools of thread aside to make roon for the teacup with one hand.

  ‘Grandmama,’ said Amelia again. But then she didn’t quite know what she wanted to say next.

  Grandmama went on sewing for a few moments, waiting for Amelia to say whatever it was she needed to say. Amelia stood there, twisting the handkerchief Mary Ann had embroidered for her birthday. After a bit, Grandmama said: ‘Are you still missing your friend, Amelia?’

  For a moment, Amelia thought Grandmama meant Mary Ann. But then, Grandmama wasn’t looking at what Amelia was twisting in her hands, so she couldn’t realise that Amelia was thinking of the servant girl. No, Grandmama must mean Lucinda, who, as Grandmama had pointed out before, was no great loss, not being a good, kind friend.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘it’s not so much that I miss her exactly. It’s more that I just miss having a friend, Grandmama.’

  ‘It’s hard not to have a friend among your peers, Amelia.’

  This sounded very grave, so Amelia responded gravely: ‘Yes, Grandmama.’

  ‘And are they still teasing you, Amelia?’

  How did Grandmama know they’d been teasing her, Amelia wondered. She hadn’t mentioned that part of it.

  ‘Oh no, Grandmama, they’ve given up,’ she said.

  ‘Good. That means you must have been sticking it out bravely and seeming not to mind. Because that’s the only way to deal with bullying and meanness. If you seem not to care, they soon lose interest in teasing you. There is no satisfaction to be gained from teasing someone who appears not to mind. That’s a good strategy, Amelia.’

  Amelia smiled a pleased smile to herself. That was a long speech, for Grandmama. It didn’t make it easier to hear that she was doing the right thing, but it helped to make her feel a little better.

  In fact, not only had the girls stopped teasing her; some of them had actually begun to admire her. They didn’t go so far as to try to befriend her again – Lucinda wouldn’t tolerate that – but they sometimes returned
her smiles of greeting, or at least had the grace to look sheepish.

  Dorothea Jacob looked the most sheepish of all when she met Amelia in school. In fact, she looked not so much like a sheep as like a rabbit that’s had a scare, and she made an effort to scamper away every time she saw Amelia. Amelia sometimes wondered what it was about herself that seemed to unsettle Dorothea so, but she didn’t give it too much thought.

  What was exercising her mind now was how to make contact with Mary Ann. This was the subject she had wanted to raise with Grandmama, but she felt shy of asking. While the teasing and nastiness were going on at school, and as she smarted with the hurt of Lucinda’s rejection, Amelia’s thoughts turned more and more to Mary Ann. Mary Ann could always make her laugh when she was feeling low. She thought about the day she had comforted Mary Ann when her mother had been ill; she thought about the glorious day they had polished the orangery together; and she thought with special fondness and gratitude of the way Mary Ann had taken over when Amelia had gone to pieces at the birthday party; and she was filled with longing to see her friend.

  But how was she going to arrange it? She’d been hoping and hoping for a letter. Every morning she got up early – she wasn’t sleeping well anyway in the new house, not being used to living practically on the street – and crept downstairs before the others were up, every morning expecting to find a letter from Mary Ann. But every morning there was no letter. Every morning that there was no letter increased the chances that there’d be one on the next morning, Amelia told herself. But as the weeks went by, with still no sound from her friend, Amelia had to face it: either Mary Ann didn’t know where Amelia lived now, or she just didn’t want to write. She couldn’t bear to think that Mary Ann didn’t want to keep in touch. She had promised, after all. It must be that she didn’t know the address. The only thing for it was for Amelia to find out Mary Ann’s address and to write to her or visit her instead.

  She knew Mary Ann worked for a family called Shackleton, acquaintances of her parents, but she didn’t know exactly where they lived. The obvious thing would be to ask Mama if she could find out and arrange for Amelia to visit Mary Ann or for Mary Ann to visit them. But she was a little afraid of asking Mama. Mama mightn’t think it was such a good idea. Of course Mama had what were known as very ‘advanced’ views, which meant that she treated her servants like human beings and didn’t hold with old-fashioned notions of whom it was appropriate to mix with, but even so, she might think it would be unsettling for Mary Ann in her new situation to be approached by Amelia. And then, if Amelia did ask Mama, and Mama forbade her to contact Mary Ann, she’d be stumped. No, she wouldn’t say a word to Mama, just in case. She wouldn’t want to risk being told that she mustn’t. She would just have to think up some other way of tracking Mary Ann down.

  Mama’s Speech

  One afternoon, there was no sign of Mama when Amelia came home from school. This was not unusual. If she got time, Mama often slipped out in the afternoon and went to a meeting or a rally in town. She was usually home by five or so. When Mama hadn’t turned up by half past five, Amelia bustled into the kitchen and looked for an apron to cover her school smock with. She found one Mama had stitched out of old flourbags, tied it around her body and set to getting the family’s evening meal ready.

  Separate supper for the grown-ups had been done away with long ago, and no-one had proper tea any more. Everyone helped themselves to a cup from the teapot on the little low range when they came in, and cut themselves a slice of bread, if there was any, and whoever happened to be around took a cup to Grandmama, who sat in the tiny front parlour most of the day. And then they all had a hot meal at about seven. Sometimes there was bacon or kippers or stew with a lot of onions and a little meat. Occasionally there was a nice lentil or split-pea soup, if there had been bacon earlier in the week and Mama had remembered to save the bone for stock. Sometimes there was only potatoes and cabbage. One awful Friday, when Papa had dropped into the pub and forgotten to come home, there had been only porridge.

  Amelia first put on the kettle to boil and then she took a coarse basket from under the sink and went out to the shed, where a sack of potatoes leant darkly against a corner. She fished out the heavy, earthy vegetables one by one, counting under her breath as she filled her basket. They were cold and crumbly to the touch and mouldy to the nose. Amelia didn’t like the smell of earth and sacking, but she knew the potatoes underneath would be clean and fresh. Even though there was no meat today, Amelia was determined to make a tasty meal. She knew there was a nice half-pound of butter keeping cool in the safe in a sunless corner of the yard, and with a pinch of salt and a lump of that good yellow butter, the potatoes would be delicious, washed down with some milk. Was there enough milk, she wondered, or would she have to water it a bit to stretch it? She was becoming quite the little housekeeper.

  As Amelia scrubbed away, trying not to notice how black her fingernails were getting from the spuds, Mama whirled in, hot and breathless, her cheeks on fire and her hair coming down on one side as usual. She threw herself into a kitchen chair and gasped for breath. She’d clearly been running. She must have realised she was late.

  ‘You are a darling child, Amelia,’ she said when she got her breath back.

  Yes, thought Amelia proudly, I am rather, aren’t I? Well, she was a good cook, and what was more she was a willing cook, and she did get on with what had to be done without even being asked.

  ‘Did you remember to fill the kettle first, though?’ Mama went on.

  ‘Yes, Mama,’ said Amelia.

  Mama was terribly keen to show off how good she was in the kitchen. Only last week she had worked out that it saved time if you put on the water for the potatoes first, before you scrubbed them. That way the water boiled as you scrubbed, and you didn’t have to sit around waiting for it. She had pointed this out to Amelia as if it were a revolutionary idea. Amelia very kindly didn’t say that this was perfectly obvious to any but the most incompetent person.

  Mama eased off her boots and reached under the chair to where she kept an old pair of indoor shoes, shabby and shapeless and quite disgraceful to look at, but very comfortable.

  ‘Have you been to a meeting, Mama?’ asked Amelia, tilting the great iron kettle to fill a saucepan for the potatoes.

  ‘How did you guess?’ Mama looked genuinely surprised.

  ‘Oh, it’s the particular way your hair hangs down when you get excited. Was it exciting?’

  ‘Well,’ said Mama, drawing on her indoor shoes, ‘it was certainly invigorating. I’m afraid I made a speech, dear.’

  ‘On the rights of women, I suppose,’ said Amelia, with a resigned air. She tolerated Mama’s feminist views, but she found it all very dreary.

  ‘No,’ said Mama, and paused. ‘No. This speech was on the rights of all human beings. It was on the right to stay alive, as a matter of fact. You know the Countess Constance Markievicz?’

  ‘Oh yes. The one with the soup-kitchen and the army of little boys. The one that dressmaker disapproved of, the day I went to have my dress fitted. Do you remember my green silk?’ Amelia’s voice took on a dreamy tone. She almost over-filled the potato pot.

  ‘Well, she and a group of other women have got together to form a women’s society. Cumann na mBan they call it. That means the company of women. Isn’t that a fine-sounding name?’

  Amelia didn’t think so. She thought it sounded deadly dull, a lot of earnest women in serge skirts and horn-rimmed spectacles smelling not quite fresh and dainty, endlessly talking, so she didn’t say anything.

  ‘I wanted to see Constance again. I hadn’t spoken to her since we worked together at Liberty Hall during the lock-out, feeding the men who were out of work and their families. And I thought this Cumann na mBan business might be interesting. I mean, I knew it was for Nationalist women, but I thought that as women, they might bring a fresh way of thinking to the whole Nationalist issue.’

  ‘What do you mean, a fresh way of thinking?’ Mama
said the oddest things sometimes, Amelia thought.

  But Mama wasn’t listening. She was bursting to tell her daughter about the meeting.

  ‘But oh, Amelia!’ she exclaimed. ‘They want to make soldiers of themselves! To fight the British.’

  This was a strange idea. Women soldiers. Amelia tried to imagine battalions of women, marching in battle dress, carrying guns, but she couldn’t.

  ‘That is not what women should be doing.’ Mama was thumping the table and speaking in a loud, rousing voice, as if she were addressing a meeting, not her own daughter in her own kitchen. ‘Women should be trying to persuade their men-folk not to go to war, not encouraging them in their daft and bloody ideals.’

  ‘Mary Ann says that Ireland unfree will never be at peace,’ Amelia said, suddenly making a link between what Mama was saying and her old friend. Mary Ann was always going on about the Nationalist cause and making veiled remarks about guns and fighting.

  Mama didn’t seem to notice how Amelia had slipped Mary Ann’s name into the conversation.

  ‘I am as anxious to see Ireland free as the next person,’ she went on, still addressing an imaginary audience. ‘But this isn’t the time to start a revolution. And anyway, I shall never believe that you achieve peace through violence.’

  At this point, Mama smacked her boot, which she was still holding in one hand, smartly down on the table top. Her eyes were shining and her lock of escaped hair had slapped itself across her face and plastered itself over her mouth, so that she looked as if she had been gagged. ‘Eugh!’ she exclaimed, poking hair out her mouth.

  Amelia was at a bit of a loss. She wasn’t entirely clear what Mama was on about. So she asked what seemed to her the obvious question: ‘Did you speak to the Countess?’

  ‘No. She gave me a fiery look when I said my piece and she swept past me when she left.’