Amelia (14 page)

T
he very next day, Amelia went back to school, for the first time in over a month. Her wardrobe was in a sorry state by now. Most of her dresses were simply too short or too tight or both. All they were good for now was cutting up for patches for other dresses, or making into dusters and
polishing
cloths. The few things that did fit her were patched and worn.

The last time Amelia had gone back to school after a
family
disaster, she had been able to pretend, at least for a while, that nothing very dramatic had happened, but this time, it was clear from just looking at her that there had been a change for the worse in the Pim family fortunes. In any case, Amelia knew from the way people had spoken at Meeting on Sunday that the story of Mama’s imprisonment was well known among the Quaker families. So Amelia didn’t even try to pretend. When Lucinda Goodbody asked loudly, so everyone could hear, ‘And where have you been, Amelia Pim?’ as if she didn’t know quite well where she had been, Amelia answered quietly: ‘I was needed at home, Lucinda. Hadn’t you heard?’

That took the wind out of Lucinda’s sails. She had been expecting Amelia to try to bluff her way with some story or other, and Lucinda had been determined to call her bluff. But
she didn’t quite know how to react when Amelia simply spoke the truth.

‘Well,’ said Lucinda loudly, regaining her poise after a moment, ‘I suppose
somebody
had to keep house while your mama was IN PRISON!’ She spoke the last words extra loudly, in case anyone might miss them.

A communal gasp ran around the classroom. Everyone knew, but no-one thought anyone would actually say it out loud. An excited little buzz followed the gasp, and a few people muttered encouraging remarks to Lucinda.

‘Exactly, Lucinda,’ said Amelia very coolly, though she didn’t feel cool at all, but on the contrary very turbulent and warm inside. ‘You’ve put your finger on it. That is exactly the case. When you have a heroine in the family, like my mama, you just have to make some sacrifices. That’s the way it is.’ And she went on unpacking books from her satchel and not meeting Lucinda’s eye. Another little buzz followed this reply of Amelia’s. The girls had gathered around now, in a wide circle, to observe the sparring match.

Again, Lucinda was taken aback by Amelia’s very simple strategy of agreeing with her. She cast about for something more hurtful to say, to see if she could goad Amelia into a row.

After a moment, she said, to the assembled class: ‘Well, girls, I suppose we shall have to welcome her back to the bosom of the class, Miss Amelia Pim. Poor thing, her father is a bankrupt, her mother is a jailbird, and she was seen one Sunday afternoon on Sackville Street in intimate
conversation
with a
fallen woman
!’

The gasp that flew around the classroom at this last remark was much bigger and more dramatic than the first gasp. All eyes were upon Amelia now, to see how she would react to this.

Perhaps fortunately for Amelia, she had no idea what
Lucinda was talking about, so she was able to look her in the eye and say: ‘I don’t know any fallen women, Lucinda.’

‘You most certainly do, Amelia Pim. You told me yourself your maid was in the family way.’

Amelia looked at Lucinda in great puzzlement. Lucinda must be talking about Mary Ann, but Mary Ann wasn’t a fallen woman. As far as Amelia was aware, Mary Ann had never worked in a laundry in her life, and even if she had, what was that to Lucinda? And what had her family got to do with it? Could Lucinda have heard that Mary Ann was
pinching
food from the Shackletons to feed her starving brothers and sisters? Well, even if she had, Amelia was going to stand up for her friend.

‘What’s wrong with having a family, Lucinda?’ she asked.

Lucinda replied: ‘Nothing at all, if you’re married.’

There she went again, obsessed with the idea of Mary Ann getting married. The last time Lucinda had brought this
subject
up, there had been something about Mary Ann not being able to get married because her brother was in gaol. Was Lucinda trying to bring the conversation around to people with family members in prison again?

‘Lucinda, you seem to be terribly interested in the
marrying
habits of other people,’ said Amelia grandly. ‘Really, one wonders if you aren’t a little young to be so interested in that sort of thing.’

This time it was a gasp of admiration that flew around the classroom, followed by a few mild titters.

Lucinda got pink in the face. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I’m certainly old enough to know that it is not the thing to consort with a servant in the street, especially not a servant in disgrace.’

‘Mary Ann is not in disgrace!’ exclaimed Amelia.

‘Well, she ought to be. She ought to be ashamed of herself, expecting a baby and not even old enough to be married.’

What followed this remark was more than a gasp or a buzz
or a titter, it was a positive roar. Lucinda had gone too far this time. As the excitement died down a little, Dorothea Jacob piped up: ‘Really, Lucinda, I don’t see that it’s any business of yours what people’s servants do or don’t do, and if Amelia chooses to help out a poor girl in trouble, then I think we should all admire her. Good for you, Amelia!’

‘That’s right,’ murmured another brave soul.

‘Well done, Amelia,’ said a third.

‘Good egg, Amelia!’ said someone loudly, and in a moment the girls were crowding around Amelia, smacking her on the back and smiling and welcoming her back.

Amelia didn’t really understand what Lucinda had been saying. She didn’t know where Lucinda had got the idea that Mary Ann was going to have a baby from, but obviously it was some misunderstanding. Anyway, she wasn’t interested in pursuing the silly conversation any further, so she let it drop and she turned a smiling face to the girls who were
saying
kind things and she replied to their enquiries about Edmund and her mother, and ignored Lucinda for the rest of the morning.

Amelia had to concentrate hard during lessons, in order to catch up on all the schoolwork she had missed out on while she had been absent, so it wasn’t until coffee-break that she got a chance to seek Dorothea out.

Dorothea was sitting in a corner, reading a book. Amelia sat down next to her and said quietly: ‘Thanks for sticking up for me earlier, Dorothea.’

Dorothea turned a pair of frightened eyes on Amelia, and immediately looked away again, without saying anything.

‘And thanks for returning the watch,’ added Amelia.

‘Oh Amelia,’ said Dorothea in a small, tearful voice, still not looking up. ‘I didn’t mean to steal it. In fact, I didn’t really steal it. You dropped it when you were being bumped on your birthday. I just picked it up, and I was about to hand it
to you, when something made me not do it. I was feeling so jealous of you with your lovely fair hair and your fine
motor-car
and your party and your expensive watch. I thought I would just punish you a little, by keeping the watch for a while.’

Amelia nodded and said nothing. At last Dorothea looked at her.

‘I told my sister Elizabeth. I thought she would think it a great joke. But she was shocked at what I had done, and insisted on coming to the party with me, to make sure I gave it back. But then I fainted, and then you disappeared, and … well, then … I should have given it to you the next day at school, but then you seemed so upset about something, and I didn’t like to talk to you, so I thought I wouldn’t say
anything
about it for a little while yet, and then, suddenly, you stopped coming to school.’

‘That was when Mama was arrested,’ explained Amelia.

Dorothea stopped, embarrassed. Then she said in a low voice: ‘Whoever put your mother in prison made a great
mistake
.’

‘Thank you, Dorothea,’ Amelia said. And she really was grateful.

‘Anyway,’ Dorothea went on, ‘I was afraid to post the watch, in case it broke. So I just kept it in a little package in my pocket until I saw you again. I was so pleased when you finally came to Meeting on Sunday.’

‘Were you?’ This was nice to hear, even if the reason was a bit peculiar.

‘Oh, yes. You have no idea how dreadful I have felt ever since that day when I took it. Amelia, I’m very sorry.’

Amelia felt old and wise and kind.

‘Oh, Dorothea,’ she said, ‘it’s only an old watch. It doesn’t matter in the least.’

Of course it had mattered at the time, dreadfully. But
Amelia spoke the truth now when she said it didn’t matter in the least. Changed circumstances had changed her view of what mattered.

‘I’ve been longing to tell you for weeks,’ said Dorothea. ‘I feel much better now. Thanks, Amelia.’

Dorothea looked better too. At least she didn’t look like a frightened rabbit any more.

Now that she knew the full story of what had happened to the watch, Amelia felt she could talk about it. She showed the watch to Mama that evening, as they sat companionably in the parlour, after Edmund and Grandmama had both gone to bed, and while Papa was working at some figures in the kitchen, and she told her the whole story.

‘Poor old Dorothea!’ said Mama.

‘What about poor old Amelia?’ said Amelia indignantly. How very like Mama, to say such a thing! Amelia felt especially stung, when she considered how prettily she had forgiven Dorothea that afternoon.

‘Oh, poor old Amelia, then, too,’ conceded Mama. ‘I know you were very upset when the watch disappeared. You never said a word, but we did all notice. But somehow I don’t think the watch matters to you so much any more.’

And that was just like Mama too, to put into words what Amelia had been trying to think herself.

‘And,’ said Mama, ‘it sounds to me as if you’ve made
yourself
a friend in Dorothea. So perhaps losing the watch wasn’t such an ill wind after all.’

Amelia thought about this for a while. Dorothea wasn’t as pretty or as popular as Lucinda, or as witty as Mary Ann, but she had stuck up for Amelia in a crowd, and she had been brave about the watch. She was quite nice, really, when she wasn’t being rabbitty.

‘Mama,’ said Amelia, after she’d been thinking for a while about what had happened in school that morning.
‘What’s a fallen woman?’

Mama explained that that was a not very kind expression to mean a woman who had been got into trouble by a man, especially an unmarried woman who had a baby.

‘Oh,’ said Amelia. ‘I thought it meant somebody who worked in a laundry.’

‘Amelia!’ Mama said with a gasp that turned into a giggle. ‘Oh yes, I see now.’ And she explained that sometimes poor girls in trouble got taken in by the nuns who ran the
laundries
, and were given jobs to do to earn their keep.

‘Often these girls stay on and work in the laundries for the rest of their lives,’ Mama continued, ‘long after their babies have grown up. It’s a sad business. But why do you ask, Amelia? Who’s been talking to you about “fallen women”?’

‘It was Lucinda Goodbody, Mama. She keeps calling Mary Ann by that ugly name, and saying she is going to have a baby.’

‘What a nasty little mind she must have, to be sure. Where could she have got the idea that our Mary Ann was in the family way?’ Mama wondered aloud.

‘Oh, Mama!’ cried Amelia. ‘Is that what being in the family way means? I thought it just meant having a family, you know, being part of a family, like you and Papa and Edmund and Grandmama are my family. Oh Mama, I must have given Lucinda the wrong idea about Mary Ann!’ And Amelia clapped her hand over her mouth.

Mama smiled at this, but Amelia was too embarrassed at her dreadful mistake to see the humorous side of it.

‘Never mind, Amelia,’ said Mama. ‘I’m sure Mary Ann won’t ever get to hear of it. I don’t suppose she is ever likely to meet Lucinda Goodbody socially. I wonder how Mary Ann is getting on in her new position,’ she added.

Amelia had been wondering whether to come clean about
the telephone call and the meeting at the Metropole and the visit to Mary Ann’s family home. She was a bit worried that Mama might not approve of what she had done. But she did want to pass on Mary Ann’s message. So now she told the story of the meeting and how Mary Ann had said they couldn’t go on meeting just now because Mary Ann had so many family responsibilities. Finally she told her about Mary Ann’s mother.

‘Poor old Mary Ann!’ said Mama. ‘And poor Amelia, too!’ she added before Amelia got a chance to pout. ‘I didn’t
realise
you had been missing Mary Ann so much. And now you’re missing her again!’

‘It’s not so bad now that I know where she is and we can send each other letters,’ said Amelia. ‘Hers are very scrawly because she has to write when she’s tired, but you can hear her laughing when you read them.’

‘I have an idea,’ said Mama. She had that gleam in her eye that she got when she saw an opportunity to do good works. ‘I’ll tell you what, Amelia, we must find out which home Mrs Maloney is in. I’ll write to Mary Ann in the morning and find out. I’m sure she would be pleased if we paid her mother a visit, and brought her some fruit or cake. And you can tell her you’ve been talking to Mary Ann recently, and that she is well. That’s the friendliest thing you could possibly do for Mary Ann, because she can’t go and visit her mother herself.’

Amelia didn’t know if she wanted to go on an errand of mercy to see a strange, dying woman, but she knew Mama wouldn’t be deflected, and she knew also that Mama was right – that
was
the best possible thing she could do for Mary Ann.

‘Why are some families so very poor, Mama?’ she asked, ‘when others are so rich?’

‘It’s not very fair, is it?’ said Mama.

‘Could it be, Mama, that poor people don’t try hard
enough and don’t look after their money well and save it? Like Mrs Kelly.’

‘Who is Mrs Kelly, Amelia?’

‘The woman who was to come and help in the kitchen on the day of my birthday party, Mama. She didn’t bother to turn up. How can she expect to get money if she doesn’t come and earn it when it is offered to her?’