Amelia (10 page)

A
melia was getting more enterprising as she became more experienced in the kitchen, and one particular evening she was experimenting with potato cakes, and making excellent progress too. She heard Mama’s key in the door and she looked up, ready to smile at her and tell her all about the potato-cake recipe.

But it was Papa’s frame that filled the kitchen doorway, and Papa’s eyes she met when she looked up.

‘Hello, Papa.’ Amelia smiled up at him. ‘You’re early.’

‘Yes,’ he said, not moving from the doorway.

‘Well, do come in and sit down, Papa,’ said Amelia pleasantly. ‘There’s tea in the pot if you’d like to help yourself.’

Still, Papa didn’t move from the doorway.

‘Please, Papa, there’s a draught with the door open like that. Maybe you’re too tired to get your own tea. If you just sit at the table, I’ll pour you a cup in half a tick, as soon as I get this flour off my hands. It makes a dreadful mess, flour does, Papa. And the problem is that when you try to wash it off it all turns into paste on your hands, and it takes ages to get rid of it.’ Amelia was prattling away and scrubbing at her hands as she spoke. She had her back to Papa.

‘Now, then,’ she said, turning around with the kitchen towel in her hands and drying between her fingers. ‘Why,
Papa! Why on earth don’t you come in and sit down? I told you, you’re making a draught, standing in the open doorway like that.’

Something was wrong. It wasn’t quite like the afternoon of the bankruptcy, but there was something familiar about the way Papa’s eyes looked. He was standing stock still.

Amelia went to him, caught him by the elbow and drew him into the kitchen, shutting the door as soon as she got an opportunity. She guided Papa to the table and pulled out a chair for him.

‘Now, tell me what the matter is, Papa,’ she said in a soft voice, as if she were speaking to Edmund when he was
feeling
unwell.

Papa said nothing. He shook his head.

‘Is someone ill? Has someone had an accident?’

He shook his head again.

‘Well, that’s good,’ said Amelia. ‘That’s the worst it could be, and it’s not that. Isn’t that so, Papa? Now, have you a problem at work? You haven’t been dismissed, Papa?’ Her voice was lower than ever now. Amelia was convinced it was something like that. Perhaps Papa had been up to his old tricks, spending money he really hadn’t got. Surely, surely he wouldn’t actually steal money?

‘No,’ said Papa at last.

‘And it’s nothing at all to do with work?’

‘No,’ he said again.

‘Or money, Papa? It hasn’t anything to do with money or debts or a bill you can’t pay, Papa?’

He shook his head again.

Amelia thought for a bit. Then she stood up and poured her father’s tea. A cup of tea might do him good, and anyway she found it comforting to do something normal like pouring tea. But every time she made a pot of tea now or even poured a cup, Amelia would blush inwardly, remembering
the day Mama had announced so blithely to the shopboy in Findlater’s that they were Pims the tea merchants, when obviously the lad had been warned that the Pims weren’t to be extended credit any longer; there must have been a big unsettled account at that shop.

She put the tea in front of Papa, and stirred two spoons of sugar into it for him.

‘Drink it, Papa,’ she said.

He took the teacup in both hands and drank gratefully. Then he pushed it away from him and laid both arms on the table and sank his head onto them. He said nothing for a while, and Amelia sat and waited. Without sitting up, he started to pat the table blindly with one hand, as if looking for something. Amelia understood. She put her hand out, palm down, on the table, in reach of his patting hand. When he found it, he closed his big brown hand over her little one, and gave it a very gentle squeeze.

They sat in silence for a bit longer, then Papa sighed and lifted his head.

‘Your mother has got herself arrested for a breach of the peace,’ he said quietly.

Arrested! Amelia’s face flushed hot and her heart beat hard. Mama! Papa was the one Amelia had worried about getting into trouble with the law. Sometimes she had been afraid that the rumours she heard at school were true, and that Papa had not only made bad business decisions but had actually done something dishonest. She hadn’t wanted to believe it, but it was a niggling little thought that sometimes bothered her. But
Mama
! The last thing she had ever expected of passionate, concerned, philanthropic,
peace-loving
Mama was that she would get arrested. Amelia felt as if her world, already shaken by recent events, had now turned completely upside down.

She didn’t say anything. She couldn’t. She moved her
small hand, where it still lay under Papa’s, and she in her turn squeezed his hand.

‘How did you hear, Papa?’ she asked at last.

‘From Bertie Fry. He sent a telegram to the office. You’re allowed to send for your solicitor if you’re arrested. So Mama sent for Bertie, and he sent me a telegram to tell me she was in Mountjoy Gaol.’

Arrested! The word, and the idea, struck Amelia again, more forcefully than before. This was worse than
bankruptcy
. In Mountjoy! Mama was in prison! Like a common criminal! Oh, how would they ever live it down! Everyone would get to hear about it. There might be policemen
arriving
at their door at any minute. The neighbours would see. What ever were they going to do?

‘I’m going to go over to Mountjoy now,’ said Papa, ‘and see if they’ll let me talk to her. She’s appearing in court in the morning.’

Tomorrow morning. That meant … that meant Mama was actually going to have to sleep in the prison. What would that be like? Would she have a proper bed with a mattress? Would she have to share with other people? Would she have a WC, or would she have to use a smelly old bucket? Would she have to drink out of a little tin cup, like a child? Oh, poor Mama!

‘I’ll get her things,’ Amelia said at last, standing up.

‘What things?’ Papa looked stupidly at his daughter. He must be quite worn out, thought Amelia.

‘A nightgown, Papa, clean things. A toothbrush, a
hairbrush
, a nailbrush, a hand-mirror.’ Amelia was imagining Mama with no-one to tell her that her hair was coming down. ‘Extra hairpins, some rosewater, cotton wool, face cream.’

‘Face cream! Your mother has been arrested and is in prison and you want to send her face cream!’

‘Oh Papa! I don’t know what else to do!’ Amelia wailed.
Sending face cream to Mama was the best she could think of. It wasn’t fair of Papa to upbraid her for that; if she were in prison, she’d like someone to send her face cream. If she could think of something more useful, why, she’d send it.

But that wasn’t what Papa meant at all.

‘I told her!’ he went on angrily, ignoring Amelia’s reply. ‘I told her it would come to this. I warned her, over and over. I said the authorities wouldn’t put up with it. They’ve done it before, you know, arrested these suffragettes with their chains and their stones and their ridiculous placards. Votes for women, indeed! If they stayed at home and looked after their families they wouldn’t need votes. They’d be happy, doing the work God intended women to do. They shouldn’t be out on the streets trying to disrupt the natural order.’

Amelia gaped at Papa. She had never heard him express opinions like this. The most he’d ever done before was rag Mama gently about her activities, and she would smile at him and ruffle his hair and tell him he was a boring old fossil.

Something happened inside Amelia’s head, or perhaps it was inside her heart, when she heard Papa say these things. Quite suddenly, she stopped feeling ashamed to be the daughter of a person who was in prison. She was confused about Mama’s feminist views, she wasn’t at all sure whether she agreed with votes for women, and she certainly
disapproved
of people making asses of themselves on the streets; but when she heard Papa making disparaging remarks about Mama’s deeply held convictions, she felt hurt and angry on Mama’s behalf, and she wanted to rush to Mama’s defence.

She was quite sure Mama hadn’t done anything foolish or outrageous or violent. She wouldn’t throw stones at
policemen
or shout insults at members of parliament or break windows or any of those things. She would deport herself with decorum, even if she were carrying a placard on the streets. And if Mama felt strongly enough about votes for
women to be out on the streets carrying placards, well, then, it must be important. That was good enough for Amelia. All at once she understood that Mama’s views must be worth fighting for. Not fighting for in the way Mary Ann’s brother felt he had to fight for his Nationalist beliefs, but fighting for in Mama’s gentle, pacifist, protesting way. And if Papa didn’t agree, then that was a shame – but it was a shame about Papa, not a shame about Mama.

She left the kitchen without saying anything and went upstairs to her parents’ room. She got together all the things she had mentioned to Papa, packing the toiletries into a spongebag and stuffing the lot into the smallest suitcase she could find. She looked around to see what else Mama might like. There was a pile of books by Mama’s bed. She chose two:
A Vindication of the Rights of Women
by somebody called Mary Wollstonecraft, and Mama’s well-thumbed copy of the Bible.

She came downstairs to the kitchen and looked about for some food to pack. She had heard that prisoners were expected to live on bread and water. She found an orange and a slab of chocolate Grandmama had bought as a treat for Edmund, and she cut two rounds of bread. There wasn’t
anything
to make a sandwich with, so she just spread blackcurrant jam thickly on the bread and she wrapped it up in wax paper. She almost wished Mama were a man, because then she could send her some tobacco. At the last moment, Amelia had a thought. She tore a strip off a stout paper bag and made a little poke out of it, into which she carefully poured a handful of sugar. They’d be sure to give her tea in prison – surely the stories about bread and water couldn’t be true, not in the twentieth century – but they mightn’t give her sugar for it, and Mama had a sweet tooth. She packed all the foodstuffs into a little egg-basket.

‘There!’ she said, handing the lot over to Papa.

Papa took the small battered suitcase and the little basket of food, and he smiled sheepishly at Amelia, apparently a
little
ashamed of his earlier outburst.

‘You’re a good girl, Amelia Pim,’ he said in his best Papa-ish voice. ‘You’re a princess,’ he added.

He hadn’t called her that for a long, long time. Then he leant over and kissed his daughter lightly on the forehead. Amelia forgave him at once: she knew he’d said those hurtful things only because he was worried about Mama, and
worried
about the family having to soldier on without her while she was away.

‘Give her my best love, Papa,’ said Amelia. ‘And tell her I’m proud of her.’

Papa gave her a strange look, but he said nothing.

At the door Papa turned. Amelia had gone back to her potato cakes.

‘Save me some supper,’ he said.

‘Yes, Papa.’

‘Papa!’ Amelia called, as he turned away again. ‘What’ll I tell Grandmama? Oh Papa,’ and her voice became tearful as she suddenly thought of her little brother, ‘what ever shall I say to Edmund?’

Papa looked back at her, a long, weary look.

‘Tell Grandmama the truth, of course,’ he said at last. ‘But Edmund … I don’t know, Amelia. Whatever you think. I leave it up to you. Say whatever you think best.’

P
apa was allowed to see Mama that evening, but only
because
she hadn’t appeared before the magistrate yet. He came home late, carrying the little brown suitcase Amelia had given him. In it were most of the things Amelia had sent to Mama. She was only allowed a minimum of personal effects, and hairpins and hand-mirrors were apparently considered dangerous in the hands of prisoners.

But Mama had evidently been glad of the food Amelia had sent. At least, it hadn’t come back with the other things. She had been allowed to keep the Bible also. Amelia was glad about that. It wasn’t a book she read much herself, but she knew Mama liked to find solace there at times. Amelia wished with all her heart that it would bring Mama some comfort in that dark, clanging place where they had locked her up.

Papa attended the court hearing the following day. Mama was convicted of a breach of the peace and sentenced to sixty days in prison. Now she would have to wear prison clothes – a coarse cotton skirt and blouse, printed with arrows. Amelia wept at the thought.

Sixty days didn’t sound too bad, but it was a long time for the family to be without a mother, and a long, dreary time for Mama with no-one to talk to and nothing much to do, and
visits from Papa only very seldom.

Amelia got angry every time she thought of Mama being locked up for doing nothing more riotous than carrying a placard. Some of the other women she had been with at the rally outside the Vice-Regal Lodge had apparently got a little excited and had waved their placards rather fiercely, and one of them had threatened to bring hers down with a smash on a policeman’s helmeted head. But, exactly as Amelia had imagined, Mama had done nothing more offensive than chant ‘Votes for Women’ as she walked up and down, and not even the police or the courts could say otherwise.

Amelia knew all this because there was an account of the trial in the newspaper. The report didn’t say anything about how the women should have been at home making their husbands’ tea, even though that might have been what the reporter thought privately. The editor even went so far as to say that it was a poor day for Ireland when protesting peaceably was considered a crime worthy of imprisonment, even if it was outside the Lord Lieutenant’s gate. ‘Good for you!’ Amelia whispered to the editor as she read this bit, and she hoped there was some spiritual system whereby feelings of goodwill could be transmitted to the appropriate quarter.

Amelia had had a little moment of panic when she first saw the report in the paper. She thought of all the breakfast tables this very report would be read at. She imagined Lucinda and Dorothea and Mary and the others, all hearing their papas reading the newspaper account out to a hushed family, and the little smiles of satisfaction that might be
hidden
behind breakfast napkins. The Pims were well and truly disgraced now. The father had escaped prison by the skin of his teeth, but now the mother had gone and landed herself in Mountjoy, and that was even worse. How extremely
unladylike
of her!

But then Amelia shook herself hard and resolved to hold
her head up and not to allow herself to think such thoughts. The girls at school could look down on her all they liked, but she knew her mother had done nothing wrong. All she had done was express her opinions, a little publicly, perhaps, but that was no crime – or at least it jolly well oughtn’t to be.

Amelia hadn’t gone to school the previous day of course. She had waited with Grandmama for Papa to come home with the news from the court. Edmund was playing in the hall. He’d found an old wooden crate and he was sitting in it, swaying from side to side with a serious expression on his face and making chuff-chuff noises. When Papa had come in, he’d had to pretend to be the station master and blow an imaginary whistle, on Edmund’s instructions. It was some time before he could slip away and break the news to the womenfolk, who sat patiently in the kitchen.

‘Amelia had better stay home from school for a bit,’ Papa said. ‘Somebody has to keep house until Roberta gets home. Edmund needs looking after and there’s the cooking and everything.’

‘What about the girl’s education?’ said Grandmama in an outraged tone. Grandmama was a great believer in girls’ education.

‘It’ll have to wait,’ said Papa. ‘She’s needed here now.’

‘Well, I can’t say I approve,’ said Grandmama. ‘Schooling’s important.’

‘Home’s important too,’ said Papa. ‘Especially for a girl.’

Amelia wasn’t sure what he meant by that, and
Grandmama
glowered, but staying at home appealed to Amelia. She didn’t set much store by education herself, though she quite enjoyed school, and she was terribly pleased to be needed at home.

Of course, she was sorry not to have the opportunity to hold her head up in front of the others, but she knew she would get that opportunity eventually, and in the meantime
she would practise holding her head up at home, on the streets and in the shops. Her neck would develop enlarged muscles, she thought ruefully to herself, from all the holding up it was going to have to do.

One evening, as Amelia was putting the porridge oats to steep for the next morning’s breakfast, the last of the evening chores, and longing to slip off to bed, she heard a sudden thump upstairs. The stairs went up at the back of the house, rising from the kitchen, where Amelia was working, so she could hear what went on on the landing almost as if it were in the same room.

‘Edmund!’ she called out. The little boy had picked at his dinner even more fitfully than usual that evening and he had dragged himself off to bed early.

There was no reply. Amelia wondered if Edmund had dropped a book. Yet it had sounded too muffled a thump for a book. Yes, a falling book sounded sharper, more defined. This was more like – well, it was more like a body collapsing. Surely Edmund was too old for falling out of bed!

Amelia yawned and put the porridge pot on the drainer by the sink. She wiped her hands quickly on her apron and skipped up the stairs to investigate.

But she didn’t get as far as Edmund’s room. She almost fell over him on the landing, where he lay in a heap, with his dressing-gown partly on and partly off. For a moment, Amelia stood looking down at him, wondering how he could have got there. If he’d fallen out of bed, he could hardly have rolled all this way.

But of course, Edmund couldn’t possibly have fallen out of bed. He had been pulling his dressing-gown on when he fell. He must have been on his way to the lavatory, or
downstairs
for a drink.

Amelia bent down and lifted up the little body. He was surprisingly light, like a rather large doll. She carried him into the bedroom, laid him on the bed, and ran downstairs for the oil-lamp, as Edmund’s candle was out. When she arrived back in his room, Edmund was moving about, like a fish on a riverbank, floppy and nervy. Well, at least he was alive. She leant over him and spoke his name. He opened his eyes, but he didn’t seem to see her, even though she was holding the lamp. She stood the lamp carefully on the tallboy and came back to the bed. ‘Edmund!’ she called again. This time his eyes seemed to focus on her, but after a moment they closed again, as if the effort was too much for him. He was only half-conscious, she realised, and his breathing was very rapid. She felt for his pulse. It was racing. And he must be feverish. His cheeks were pale, but his forehead was hot to the touch, and his hair was plastered over his brow with perspiration.

Amelia wrapped the dressing-gown more closely around her brother and she tucked him under the
blankets
. She felt around for the crockery jar she had filled for him earlier. It was still warm, making a hard lumpiness under the bottom sheet, where she put it to protect his feet from being scalded by it.

Leaving the lamp burning in the room and the door open so she could benefit from its light, she groped her way in the shadows down the stairs to get her coat and hat. Then she went in to Grandmama, who was nodding in an armchair by the embers of the parlour fire. ‘Grandmama,’ she
whispered
loudly, shaking her by the shoulder. ‘Grandmama!’

Grandmama awoke with a start.

‘Edmund’s collapsed. He’s running a fever.’

Grandmama blinked, as if she couldn’t quite take in what Amelia was saying. ‘Edmund?’ she said in wondering voice.

‘I’m going down to Kavanagh’s pub to get Papa and send
him for the doctor,’ Amelia went on. ‘Do you think Dr Mitchell will come out so late?’

Grandmama was wide awake now. ‘Of course he will, child,’ she said. ‘It’s an emergency. He’s been our doctor and friend for years.’

‘I don’t know if there’s money to pay him.’

‘He won’t want paying immediately. We’ll pay him when we can.’

Grandmama was already on her feet, ready to go upstairs to Edmund. ‘Hurry back, Amelia,’ she said. ‘I’ll be worried about you out on the streets so late.’

Amelia didn’t give herself time to worry about being out on the streets at night. There were surprisingly many
people
about, gathered in laughing groups under gas-lamps and behaving quite differently from the daytime inhabitants of the streets, who always seemed to be in a hurry
somewhere
. She broke into a trot as soon as she reached the main road, and she kept up the pace until she came in sight of the pub.

It was a warm night, though the summer hadn’t quite arrived yet, and the pub door was open to the street. A square of light fell onto the pavement from inside the pub, and shadows moved constantly across the field of light, like a magic lantern show. Laughing voices and loud hulloos reached Amelia’s ears from the pub, and as she approached the door she was assailed by a stench of beer and tobacco. The air was blue with smoke and thick with noise and smells. She felt foolish standing there, shifting from foot to foot, wondering how she was going to find Papa in that loud mêlée and imagining herself shouldering her way through the laughing, half-drunken men, peering around for a glimpse of him in the murky light. Just as she was preparing to plunge into the smelly, noisy public house, one of the
customers
caught sight of her.

‘And who have we here?’ he called to her, not unkindly, over the heads of his companions.

‘Amelia Pim,’ she replied from where she stood in the doorway, taking his question literally.

‘I see,’ he said with a smile. ‘And who is Amelia Pim looking for?’

‘My father,’ she answered gratefully. He could so easily have used the occasion to tease and embarrass her.

Her friend inside the pub looked all around. Then he raised his voice to the rafters and sang out: ‘Young lady for Charlie Pim!’

A surge of laughter went up at this, and Amelia blushed, but she stood her ground, and presently a knot of drinkers opened and disgorged Papa, almost at her feet.

He knew immediately he saw her that something was up. ‘What is it, Amelia?’ he said.

She knew by his voice he hadn’t been drinking long. Thank God, she thought.

‘It’s Edmund, Papa, he needs a doctor. Can you go for him?’

‘Edmund!’ There was a strange crack in Papa’s voice. ‘Oh my God! What is it, Amelia? What’s wrong with him?’

‘I don’t know. Oh hurry, Papa. He’s very ill. I don’t think he’s conscious.’

‘Just a minute, Amelia,’ said Papa, and disappeared back into the browny-yellow maw of the pub. Now what was going on? The seconds ticked by, and Amelia shifted from one foot to the other uneasily. She had lost sight of Papa as soon as he went back into the pub, strain as she would to see him. Her friend who had called her father for her caught her eye again and winked at her. But it was a friendly wink. To her own astonishment, and in spite of her worried state, Amelia winked back.

Just then she started at a clip-clopping sound behind her.
She turned to see Papa atop a spanking dog-cart, with a whip in his hand.

‘The publican was just back from some business in town,’ Papa called down to her as he turned towards Rathmines, where the doctor lived. ‘He hadn’t even unhitched the horse. I’ll get the doc to Edmund as fast as I can, Amelia. You hurry on home now to him. You’re a topping little girl, you know.’ And with that he was gone, with a crack of the whip and a whirr of the large, elegant wheels.