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9

David Copperfield

By the time I was ten I had read all of Agatha Christie and I practically knew Jane Eyre off by heart. I was ready for something new. ‘Proper Literature!’ Mum said. ‘Now go and find some Dickens! None of this murder mystery nonsense!’

So I went to the library with a list of names. Oliver Twist … Barnaby Rudge … David Copperfield. I thought I’d try a book about a David. This was difficult, because the lady at the desk was watching me like a hawk.

‘Young lady, can I help you?’

‘I’m looking for a book by Charles Dickens,’ I said.

‘Dickens! What does a child like you want with Dickens? You can’t be more than nine.’

‘Actually, I’m ten and a bit. I’m an August birthday.’

‘Don’t be so silly,’ said the brown jumper and hair. ‘You aren’t ready for Dickens.’

‘Mum says I am!’

‘Does she now? Humph.’

‘Well, I can’t keep reading Jane Eyre, can I? Mum says I need to start something new.’

The brown glasses lifted and a pair of dark narrow eyes and wispy eyebrows flew towards me. Worms, bookworms, I thought. Urgh!

‘Well, I don’t mind you going to have a quick browse. But be sure that you don’t take any more than two books at a time. We have limited copies and I don’t want our adult readers left …’ The eyebrows were wriggling fast across the floor. Soon they would be on top of my toes and I would have to run. ‘… wanting.’

Wanting what, I wondered as I skittered into the large reading room. Wanting what exactly?

Charles Dickens was easy to find. He had rows and rows of old bound books with titles that were hard to read because they were written in gold lettering and the lettering had nearly come off. D—d Copp—f-eld. I picked up the book and opened the pages. The paper was so thin I thought it would tear. My hands were hot and sticky and stuck to the small print. I let go and the pages fell open. I peered at the words, which were small and narrow and pressed tight together. I started to read.

There comes out of the cloud, our house – not new to me, but quite familiar, in its earliest remembrance. On the ground-floor is Peggotty’s kitchen, opening into a back yard … Here is a long passage – what an enormous perspective I make of it! – leading from Peggotty’s kitchen to the front door.

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What comes first when you begin to remember – the person or the place, or is it their face? What do you see first when you close your eyes and press upon their lids? When do those purple circles start to come, along with the white dancing stars? If you want to remember, you have to travel back through those dark purple pools, back to the stars.

Lie under the trees in the back garden and press your fingers tight over your eyes. Start dreaming back past the dark spaces, past the blur and the whirr of other people’s voices and faces, back to the child lying beneath the tree in the summer sun, back to the green and the blue and the shapes you know how to draw because they are easy: dark-brown tree trunk, blue sky, green prickly grass, legs in shorts, feet in sandals, a bucket hanging from the tree that someone has thrown up there – your brother. His shout. Then your mother’s face looming over the top of you and around her white stars, your mother shooting white stars from the top of her head and the clouds scudding quickly away.

‘Young lady, I think it’s about time you chose a book, don’t you?’ Peggotty?! I turned around. The brown lady is standing right behind me; her glasses have slipped down her nose and her face looks very hot.

‘We’re closing in fifteen minutes and I need to sort the shelves. So come along, young lady. Off you go. Hop, skip and jump!’

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By the time I began reading David Copperfield I had become a full-blown detective, and I knew that the job of a detective is to explain things. Miss Marple always does this, right at the end of the story. She does it with everyone sitting around – with Dolly Bantry, Greta, the vicar, Inspector Flack (who always looks huffy), the Bradbury-Scott sisters, and whichever doctor has been called out to examine the body.

So let me explain a few things. David Copperfield is filled with people who aren’t family but behave as though they are. First of all there is Peggotty. Peggotty is a mix of my grandmother and Mary the maid from The Murder at the Vicarage, but with less banging about. This is Peggotty:

The first objects that assume a distinct presence before me, as I look far back into the blank of my infancy, are my mother with her pretty hair and youthful shape, and Peggotty with no shape at all, and eyes so dark that they seemed to darken their whole neighbourhood in her face, and cheeks and arms so hard and red that I wondered the birds didn’t peck her in preference to apples …

(David Copperfield)

Peggotty is David’s favourite thing. If she really were a thing she’d be a pillow, an old, raggedy pillow. Peggotty is the person who holds David’s hand when he’s falling asleep; Peggotty is the voice above his cot; Peggotty is the hand stroking his hair. Peggotty is the sudden explosion of laughter when he takes his first step and lands face-down in the vegetable patch. Peggotty is the crease on the side of her cheek. Peggotty can only be seen in small edges and outlines: the dip of her waist, the tightness of the string around her apron, the prick of her lip as she opens her mouth to say ‘Coo-chi-coo,’ the dent in her forehead when she frowns.

I can remember Peggotty by the smell of the kitchen, by the whiff of the cheese on toast she pulls from the grill when we come back from school, far too early to be called dinner and far too late to be lunch. ‘After-school food’, we say, food after school, food before bedtime, food before it gets dark, because we don’t ever really have a proper dinner. We just eat lots of cheese on toast and sardines on toast and scrambled egg on toast and pilchard sandwiches and boiled eggs because this is all protein and protein makes you grow as tall as Jack and the Beanstalk.

I remember Peggotty by what she did when: Peggotty who does all the chores, Peggotty with her hands deep in the kitchen sink, Peggotty with soap on her hands and in her hair, Peggotty who we make fun of because she counts the slices of cheese before she lays them out on the bread as though they were about to go missing.

‘Thieving hands, your naughty thieving hands.’

Peggotty who is never seen without an apron around her waist. Peggotty who stoops over slightly because she has been carrying so much shopping for years. Peggotty who spends a lot of time carrying things up and down stairs. Peggotty who complains about her creaking knees and at night asks us to fetch her slippers.

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When David’s mother is tired, Peggotty puts out the washing. She waits for a fine day and then carries out the wicker basket with the peg bag tied to her waist. She stands outside pouring herself forwards and backwards like a milk jug over a cup of tea. I watch her tip and turn and swivel as she moves around the line, turning the clothes to face the wind, whispering her laundry prayers.

‘This way round, not that. Hang from the bottom, not the top. Keep the crease nice and straight. Don’t mix up the colours, keep the socks together. Hang the pullover from the middle. Don’t let things hang too close to the ground. Turn the line every hour or so. Bring the washing in as soon as you feel it’s dry.’

It is a fine summer’s day and Peggotty is pegging out the washing. The washing blows across her face. Then the wind picks up. The washing flaps and flaps, and covers her mouth and her eyes. For a moment, things go blank. She can no longer see the little boy sleeping beneath the roses. Her face begins to furrow and she frowns. All this damn washing in the way! I can’t see the child. Where is the boy?

Peggotty drags the damp washing away from her hands, from around her neck, from across her mouth. She screams. The grassy patch beneath the roses is dry and bare as a baby’s bottom.