Amelia (3 page)

O
ur maid’s family circumstances are unfortunate,’ Amelia whispered to her friend Lucinda Goodbody between Geography and Geometry next day at the Grosvenor
Academy
for Young Ladies.

‘Oooh! Is she in trouble?’ asked Lucinda. ‘I mean, is she in the family way?’

Amelia wasn’t sure what ‘in the family way’ meant, but it sounded appropriate. She nodded gravely. ‘And Patrick’s in prison,’ she added.

‘Oh dear,’ said Lucinda, ‘that means she can’t get married so. Have you seen my set square?’

‘Yes, you’ve used it as a bookmark, look. Can she not? Get married, I mean.’

‘Well, not if he’s in prison. They wouldn’t allow it.’

Amelia was puzzled by this piece of information. Why should her brother’s being in prison prevent Mary Ann from doing as she pleased? How very odd the world was, to be sure.

‘No talking at the back, please,’ said Miss Reddick, the mathematics teacher, pleasantly.

And the two girls said, ‘Sorry, Miss Reddick.’

After Geometry was coffee break. Nobody ever had any coffee, of course, except the teachers. The children weren’t
allowed out to play, as it was only supposed to be a short break, just long enough to drink a cup of something. Some of the girls brought milk, in blue glass medicine bottles stopped with a cork. Mary Webb brought hers in a Baby Power bottle, which made them all laugh, because everyone knew that her father was a teetotaller. Mary protested that her mother bought a Baby Power every Christmas, but only for the plum pudding; still, the others teased her mercilessly all the same.

The girls who didn’t bring milk queued up to get a drink from the drinking-water tap in the corridor.

‘I don’t think Mary Ann wants to get married anyway,’ said Amelia, picking up her earlier conversation with Lucinda. ‘She’s very young.’

‘Well, she should,’ said Lucinda. ‘They marry young
anyway
.’

‘Who?’

‘The lower orders.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Servants,’ said Lucinda. ‘Poor people. They marry young and have too many babies. That’s why they’re poor.’

‘Oh. Is it?’

‘Of course, you ninny. Everyone knows that.’

‘But you said just now that she should want to get
married
.’

‘Yes, but that’s because she’s in the family way. That’s
different
. You have to if you are.’

‘Oh,’ said Amelia again, feeling she was rather missing the point. This conversation was getting more and more
confusing
, so Amelia thought she would change the subject to one she had more control over.

‘Can you keep a secret, Luce?’

Amelia didn’t wait for her friend’s answer. She had decided that the time had come to unveil her plan. ‘I’m
giving
a party!’ she said breathlessly.

‘Oh goody!’ Lucinda jumped up and down, waving the tin cup from the drinking fountain. But she found she couldn’t wave it sufficiently dramatically, because it was chained to the wall, so she resorted to tapping on it with her
slate-pencil
. It made a pinging sound. ‘Listen, everyone! Good news! Amelia Pim’s giving a party! Better keep on her good side, everyone, or you won’t get invited. Yippee!’ And Lucinda lifted her pinafore above her knees and did a little jig on the spot.

All the girls laughed and clapped and crowded around. Somebody lilted a tune in time to Lucinda’s steps. Lucinda was pretty and bubbly and had masses of wonderful auburn curls and was very popular. If she laughed about something, other people laughed too and said how funny it was, even if they hadn’t found it funny before, and if she made a little scene like this, everyone flocked around and gave it their full attention. And so Amelia’s plan, though it wasn’t fully formed at all yet, was suddenly shot from obscurity into the full glare of the attention of half-a-dozen twelve- and thirteen-year-old girls with nothing more interesting to look forward to than French verbs. And the funny thing was, Amelia didn’t even mind, although she had asked Lucinda particularly to keep it a secret. It was lovely to be a source of excitement among the girls.

‘Will there be young men, Amelia?’ asked Dorothea Jacob slyly. Dorothea was terribly interested in the opposite sex and was for ever trying out new hairstyles, but she wasn’t pretty like Lucinda, and people didn’t like her much.

Amelia hadn’t thought this far ahead at all. She stopped beaming, which she had been doing since she had, together with Lucinda, become the centre of attention, and she blushed. ‘Eh, no,’ she said nervously, for to tell the truth, she didn’t know any.

‘Ah!’ sighed everyone.

‘I mean, yes,’ cried Amelia.

‘Ah!’ sighed everyone again, but this time in a completely different tone.

‘And will we get a spin in your Papa’s new motor?’ asked Lucinda, her eyes shining. This was homage indeed, for Lucinda’s father had been the first to acquire a motor-car, and for a long time Lucinda was held in extra special regard on this account.

‘Of course!’ cried Amelia. And a cheer went up, ‘Hurrah!’, which quite startled Mademoiselle Félicité who was
scurrying
from the staff sitting room, already several minutes late for class.

‘Would you like to get married, Mary Ann?’ Amelia asked the maid that afternoon, meeting her on the stairs.

‘Married? I certainly would not like to get married!’ said Mary Ann, dabbing a duster at the newel post as if she would like to knock it right off its pedestal. ‘Haven’t I enough family responsibilities? Anyway, why do you ask? Have you anyone in particular in mind?’

‘Well, no,’ Amelia admitted. ‘I just thought maybe you were getting to an age when you might be thinking of it.’

‘But I’m only fourteen!’ exclaimed Mary Ann, taking another swipe at the newel post.

‘Oh, well, then …’ said Amelia, who was startled to learn that Mary Ann was even that old. She wouldn’t have put her above twelve. Really, though, she couldn’t see what Lucinda had been thinking of, insisting that Mary Ann should be
getting
married.

‘Maybe it’s yourself that’s starting to think about it,’
suggested
Mary Ann. ‘Is that the way it is? Are you starting to get interested in the boys?’

‘Boys!’ Amelia practically spat the word out. As far as
Amelia was concerned, boys were nothing but trouble. They were loud and selfish and, in her experience, dirty. Small boys like Edmund were bad enough, with their silly noisy games and their endless whining and demands for stories and games of draughts, and as they got older they dabbled around with disgusting things like frogspawn and earwigs, and they seemed to keep useless quantities of string in their pockets and they blotted when they wrote and they put worms in the salad or spiders in the bath. Then when they were older still they wanted telescopes and footballs and
air-guns
and the next thing you knew they were playing mucky games like polo and hockey, and they hadn’t a clue about how to dress or make conversation. The only boys Amelia could abide were tame ones, who went to dancing classes, but these were hard to come by.

Mary Ann didn’t press the point. The venom in Amelia’s voice was enough to convince her that she was on the wrong track here. ‘Keep your hair on!’ she said. ‘They are part of the human race, you know.’

‘Huh!’ said Amelia, as if she was not convinced on that last point. Then she remembered her resolution to be kind to Mary Ann. ‘Oh, Mary Ann, let’s go for a walk!’

‘A walk, Miss!’ Mary Ann sounded utterly astonished. ‘But I can’t go for a walk. I have work to do. It’s after four already, and I’ll have to get the tea soon, and then there’s the dinner to help Cook with, and the fire in Master Edmund’s bedroom to see to, and the drawing-room fire to check on, now I come to think of it, and …’

‘Goodness! Do you never get a rest, then?’ asked Amelia.

‘Yes, I do. After washing up after the dinner, me and Cook put our feet up and have a nice cup of cocoa, so we do, and a chat. It’s my favourite part of the day. I really enjoy that cup of cocoa. Only sometimes, I do think of the little ones at home, who don’t see cocoa from one end of the week to the
other, and then sometimes I have to admit, Miss Amelia, I don’t feel like finishing it, only I do, because I hate waste, and my ma hates waste and she brought me up like that. So for her sake, I drink it all up, even if it kills me.’

‘Why don’t they see cocoa, Mary Ann?’

‘Because there isn’t any. There isn’t money for luxuries like cocoa. There’s barely enough to pay the rent and pay for coal and food. Some weeks they do with less food because they’ve had to pay for fuel, and some days they don’t light the fire at all, because there’s no money left for fuel after buying in the food. And other times they try to dodge the landlord’s agent who comes for the rent, in the hope that they could have both fuel and food for once. When I got this situation, Miss, it was the first time they were able to pay the rent, arrears and all, and still have enough for both fuel and food. But now the money I send home every week has to go for medicines, because my mother …’

At this point, Mary Ann stopped for a moment, and there was a funny croaking sound in her throat. ‘Because my mother …’ she tried again. Then she sat down on the stairs and put her head on her knees and a little high-pitched
keening
sound came from her, the like of which Amelia had never heard before. She couldn’t be sure that Mary Ann was
actually
crying, because she couldn’t hear sobs or snuffles, and her shoulders didn’t heave at all.

Amelia stood for a moment looking at Mary Ann’s spiky shoulder blades, which were hardly moving, and then she sank down on the stair beside her and put a tentative arm over those bony shoulders. ‘What’s wrong with your mother, Mary Ann?’ she whispered. ‘Is she ill?’

‘Yes,’ came the hoarse reply. Amelia could hardly hear Mary Ann, so she leant closer to the maid, until the fair head was touching the brown, and she patted Mary Ann as she had seen Mama pat Edmund when he hurt himself. ‘It’s
consumption, Miss,’ said Mary Ann in a very low voice.

‘Is consumption very bad, Mary Ann?’ asked Amelia.

‘Yes, Miss. You die, Miss.’

‘Oh, Mary Ann!’ And Amelia felt a hot tear trickling down her own face.

She tried to imagine her own mama ill and dying, but though she could imagine Papa distraught with grief, and Grandmama silent in prayer, and Edmund whingeing and whining, and Dr Mitchell striding swiftly through the house with his black bag, she couldn’t picture Mama at all. Her mother was fairly bouncing with health and energy. Amelia just couldn’t imagine her weak and dependent, and she
certainly
couldn’t imagine the house without her. Poor Mary Ann, Amelia thought.

And this time she meant it.

A
melia and Mama were going to Clery’s to buy material for the frock of Amelia’s dreams. Amelia loved town, with all its hustle and bustle, and Clery’s was her favourite place to go. The shop was very near the Pillar, where the trams started from. The trams all had little clanging bells, and they made clanking noises as they started off, and sometimes the
conductors
hung out at the back, shouting witticisms to their mates on other trams. Although Amelia admired her papa’s car as a very handsome piece of machinery, and she was very proud to ride in it, really, if the truth were told, she preferred to travel by tram, where you could get a good look at your fellow-passengers and listen in to a few conversations. There were always women trying to juggle children and shopping, and old people tottering along the aisle and shaking their walking sticks at the conductor, and naughty little boys throwing lollipop sticks over the top rail, and families
squabbling
over who should sit on whose knee. Amelia always
insisted
on riding on the upper deck, if it wasn’t raining. The trams were roofless, and it was a bit like riding on an open boat. She liked the view from up there, and sometimes the cherry trees in people’s gardens snowed pink blossom on her hat and shoulders as she sailed by.

Mama and Papa had been mildly surprised to hear that
Amelia was giving a party.

‘Are you, dear?’ Mama had said in her exasperatingly vague way. ‘How nice.’

The least Amelia had expected was whole-hearted
opposition
to her carefully hatched plan. But she didn’t even get much interest. ‘For my birthday, Mama,’ she said slowly and carefully as if speaking to a small child or a deaf person.

‘Of course, darling,’ said Mama, looking up for a moment from a letter she was reading.

‘I’m going to be thirteen in a few weeks, Mama,’ said
Amelia
.

‘Yes, dearest, I know how old you are. I was there when you were born, remember.’

Amelia blushed. This was just the sort of indelicate remark you could expect from Mama.

‘So that’s the reason for the party, Mama,’ she went on, feeling as if she were swimming with all her clothes on or trying to walk through treacle in her gumboots.

‘Well, of course. Amelia, my darling, why are you making such an
announcement
of all this? We always have a little tea-party in the schoolroom when one of you children has a birthday. Cook bakes one of her special Victoria sponges and she spends ages decorating it with curlicues and
whirligigs
and what-have-you, and sometimes your cousins from Chapelizod come, and maybe one or two girls from school, and we all sing Happy Birthday, and Edmund usually eats too much and has an upset tummy in the night.’

‘Oh, Mama!’ exclaimed Amelia. ‘That’s not the sort of party I mean. Not a
tea
- party. Not in the
school
room.’

‘No?’ said Mama, taking off her reading glasses and putting them down beside her plate.

Amelia automatically picked up the spectacles and put them in the little case where they lived, because she knew they would come to grief if she didn’t. Mama was always
losing her spectacles or else leaving them where someone sat on them or trod on them. They weren’t likely to get
trodden
on on the breakfast table, but they could get smeared with butter or marmalade, or they might even get cleared away with the breakfast things and get taken to the kitchen.

‘No,’ said Amelia shortly, pouting at her reflection in the teapot.

‘Well, what sort of party did you have in mind, Amelia?’ asked Mama. ‘You’re a bit young for a ball, don’t you think? And it’s too cold for a garden party.’

‘Just a
party
party, Mama. With streamers and pretty
napkins
and nice things to eat off trays and everyone in their best clothes and music. I know I’m too young for a ball, but we could have a dance or two, couldn’t we?’

‘Dancing! Amelia, are you serious?’

‘Yes, of course I’m serious. A little dancing doesn’t do any harm. We have all those tedious dancing lessons at school, don’t we? Well, what’s the point if we don’t dance
occasionally
? It’s as bad as learning all those awful French verbs even though we’re never likely to meet a single French person ever in our lives and if we did, what could we say to them?
“J’aime, tu aimes, il aime …”
Any sane French person would run a mile. And there’s all that absurd geometry too. Who cares about the square on the hypotenuse, Mama? What
difference
is it going to make whether I can
prove
that it’s equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides? Isn’t it enough that I
know
it is? Is it even worth knowing?’

‘But it isn’t,’ intervened Papa, looking up over the top of
The Irish Times
, ‘not unless it’s a right-angled triangle. And you do know a single French person, or certainly I am led to believe that the instruction in French for which I pay not inconsiderable fees is administered by a lady of the French persuasion, and if I am mistaken in this, I shall be very annoyed with your headmistress.’

‘Oh, Papa, you are so
hateful
!’ said Amelia, and she burst into tears.

Even as she sniffed into her handkerchief, Amelia was rather shocked with herself for this outburst. She had never in her life called her papa hateful before. And he wasn’t
hateful
at all; he was the kindest, handsomest, funniest papa in the world. At this thought Amelia wept even more fiercely into her hanky, and then she jumped up from her chair and ran to bury her face in Papa’s waistcoat.

Papa put down his newspaper and laid his hand on her head. ‘There, there, my princess, it’s all right, it’s all right.’

But this only made Amelia weep even more stormily. Why couldn’t someone be mean and nasty to her, so that she could have a proper fight with them? What did they all mean by being so wretchedly
nice
?

‘Poor ‘Melia!’ piped up Edmund in a wobbly voice. And then he burst into tears too, unnerved by the unaccustomed scene. So Mama had to take him on her knee and comfort him.

Papa gave Amelia his handkerchief, because hers was already sopping. It smelt of Sunlight soap and tobacco, which was Papa’s own special smell.

Amelia knew she should apologise, but she didn’t trust herself to say anything. If she opened her mouth, more wails might come out. So she said nothing, but did her best to mop up her face with Papa’s hanky, and let a quiet little sob escape every now and then.

So Papa and Mama had agreed that if Amelia really wanted a party so badly, then she should have it. And if she wanted dancing, well then they would borrow a
gramophone
from somewhere and she could have music. ‘Perhaps Grandmama might be persuaded to go to the country for a day or two,’ said Papa, for everyone knew what Grandmama would think of something as frivolous as a party with
dancing. Luckily, Grandmama took her breakfast in her room and never appeared in public before noon, except on Sundays, and was not present at these discussions.

‘And I’ll need a party frock, Mama,’ said Amelia, striking while the iron was hot.

‘Well,’ said Mama. ‘Well, if you like, you could have one instead of a birthday present.’

Amelia always got a surprise present on her birthday. She loved coming down to breakfast on her birthday morning and seeing a special package with a big bow by her place at table. For a moment Amelia wavered. She would miss that lovely sense of anticipation before she opened the present. But it was more important to her to have the new frock.

‘Thank you, Mama,’ she said. ‘That would be a lovely present.’

And this was the reason that Amelia and Mama were on the tram, swaying through Rathmines, over the canal at
Portobello
, down Camden Street and Dame Street, skirting the gates of Trinity College and on past the Houses of
Parliament
, over the Liffey to Sackville Street and the Pillar.

The air was fresh and sweet with spring as they left
Kenilworth
Square, and it gradually filled with the thronging sounds of the city as they approached the river. Sackville Street itself was alive with people scurrying about their
business
, but none of them, Amelia was sure, were on such happy business as she and her mama.

Inside Clery’s it was warm and muffled, after the noisy street. The lady shop assistants wore black skirts with deep belts and trim white blouses, and they all wore their hair neatly pinned up. Some of the more dashing ones wore neckties, like men. A gentleman with an enormous
moustache
and an ebony cane paced up and down, keeping an eye out for shop-lifters, pick-pockets and trouble-makers.

In the fabric department, they were served by a shop
assistant with a linen measuring tape around her neck. She rolled out bolts of material with a flick of her wrist. The silks and satins and lacy materials cascaded in glorious colours over the counters. Mama fingered all the materials and shook her head. This one was too coarse and that one was too fine and the other one was too expensive.

‘Ah,’ she said, satisfied at last, when a pale blue glazed cotton stripe was rolled out. Amelia looked at it in horror. It was quite pretty – the sort of thing you might make a couple of light summer dresses for a small girl out of – but not what Amelia had in mind at all.

‘But, Mama,’ she whispered fiercely, ‘I want silk – crimson silk, or cherry.’

The shop assistant looked from Amelia to Mama. ‘Is it for yourself, Miss?’ she asked.

Amelia nodded.

‘Do you not think you should take whatever your mammy chooses?’

Amelia’s face got hot and tears stung her eyelids. She said nothing.

‘Oh no, no,’ Mama said gamely. ‘This is for a party frock. It’s a birthday present. My daughter must have whatever she prefers – within reason, of course. She seems to have her heart set on crimson. Show us something suitable, if you please.’

Amelia looked up at Mama in astonishment. She had been sure her mother was going to insist on something sensible.

The shop assistant said nothing, but rolled out bolt after bolt of red fabric. There was every shade of red, in silk, satin, cotton, damask, velvet and chiffon, and now Amelia started to finger the fabrics, rubbing them between her fingers to feel the quality. Every now and then, she would pick up a length of material that had dropped over the edge of the counter and hold it up to her body and take a look in the
glass. But no matter how many fabrics the shop assistant
produced
, there didn’t seem to be one that was right. She looked pale and miserable in the mirror, and her green eyes looked dull and watery and pinkish around the rims. Amelia looked at her mother in despair. ‘They don’t suit me, Mama,’ she said in a strangled voice.

‘No, they don’t,’ said the shop assistant flatly. ‘Someone with your colouring should wear yellow or green.’

‘Well, why on earth didn’t you say so earlier?’ said Mama mildly.

‘But you said, Madam, that the young lady was to have whatever she preferred.’ The shop assistant smirked.

‘Well, perhaps she will prefer what you show her next,’ Mama said in an unusually severe voice.

So then the assistant brought golds and marigolds,
primroses
, lemons and buttery colours and then she brought bottles and jades and limes and leafy greens, some sprigged with tiny flowers, some patterned with stripes and plaids, some plain.

‘That’s it!’ shouted Amelia in excitement, when the
assistant
rolled out a deep emerald silk. She snatched a handful of the cloth and pulled at it until she had several yards of it, then she wound it around her body and turned triumphantly to Mama.

Her eyes were shining, and her hair hung over her
emerald
shoulders like spun gold. She looked wonderful, and she knew it, even though she was only wrapped in the material. It rustled and sighed against her as only silk can, and it glowed against her skin.

Mama flinched when the shop assistant told her the price per yard, and even Amelia was shocked at how expensive it was. All the same, Mama asked the assistant to cut enough to make a dress for Amelia and to assemble whatever
haberdashery
items would be needed to complete it.

The assistant measured out the silk on a brass yardstick that was screwed to the counter, and cut it with a pinking shears that made a crisp sound. Then she made up a paper twist with hooks and eyes, bias binding, small pearl buttons and a spool of deep green thread, laid it on the folded fabric and made the lot into a neat brown-paper parcel tied with string. She knotted the string into a bow so that Amelia could carry it, and handed it over. Then she wrote a docket and read out the total to Mama. Mama took out her purse and counted out the amount to the nearest shilling. The shop assistant put the money and the docket into a little wooden vessel, and then she shot it off on the pneumatic money transfer system to the cash office. Presently another little wooden vessel came whizzing back, and the shop assistant unscrewed it and handed the contents to Mama – a sixpenny bit and her receipt. Mama folded up the receipt and put it in her purse, and she handed the sixpence to Amelia.

Amelia gasped. A whole sixpence! And it wasn’t even her birthday, not yet. She picked up the parcel, and together they left the shop, Amelia swinging her precious package on its loop of string.

‘Oh, thank you, Mama,’ she said fervently when they got out on the street, and there and then she flung her arms around her mother.

Mama didn’t seem a bit surprised, though it had been months since she had had a spontaneous hug from Amelia. She squeezed Amelia back and she whispered in her ear in wicked imitation of the assistant, ‘But you said, Madam, that she was to have whatever she preferred.’

Amelia giggled and, extricating herself from the hug, replied in Mama’s icy tones, ‘Well, perhaps she’ll prefer what you show her next.’

And mother and daughter held their sides and laughed and laughed under the clock outside Clery’s. People passing
by smiled to see the two of them, so gay and carefree on a Wednesday afternoon in the spring sunshine.