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10

Peggotty

The days when my mother and I and Peggotty were all in all to one another, and there was no one to come between us, rose up before me so sorrowfully on the road.

(David Copperfield)

Let me explain a few more things. First of all, Peggotty lives with David Copperfield’s mother (who is called Clara). They live like husband and wife because David’s dad is dead. Mr Copperfield died six months before David was born, which was very inconvenient for everyone concerned.

‘Selfish,’ Mum says. ‘Without a thought for anyone else … what timing!’ So now Peggotty and David’s mum share the chores; they share David.

David and David’s mum and Peggotty all live together in the house surrounded by dark elms. They are three and only one can ever divide three, because three is a prime number. So they can only ever be three or one, one or three, without any remainders. This is how it was once in my house too.

Sometime soon after I was born Maisie came to live with Mum. She came to help with the chores. Mum couldn’t manage all the nappies; she couldn’t face the washing up. Mum wasn’t coping, Maisie said. She meant Mum wasn’t copying very well what other people do when they have children. Mum wasn’t making the beds. She wasn’t taking out the nappies. She wasn’t feeding us beans on toast. She wasn’t getting out to the shops. So Maisie came and she stayed forever and this was our first house.

This was the house with the back door that never closed, the house that led into a garden with a path we turned into the river, the River Arun rushing out to meet the sea. And on that river we held boat races and imagined we were the speedboats on the harbour front racing through white spray towards the seagulls sitting on the end of the pier. And under the apple tree, which hadn’t yet been cut down, we threw our buckets up to see who could reach the highest branch. And we tied our boats to the tree trunk and sat and pretended to eat fish and chips off the front and laughed at the speedboats going by much slower than we were and waved and waved and waved. And the apple blossom fell on top of our noses and in our eyes and we saw the white stars come out again and we lay down beneath the tree and fell asleep until Maisie came out with her clippers and told us that the green beans needed tying up and that our feet were in the way.

And now I see outside of our house, with the latticed bedroom windows standing open to let in the sweet-smelling air, and the ragged old rooks’ nests still dangling in the elm-trees at the bottom of the front garden. Now I am in the garden at the back, beyond the yard where the empty pigeon-house and dog-kennel are – a very preserve of butterflies, as I remember it, with a high fence, and a gate, and a padlock; where the fruit clusters on the trees, riper and richer than fruit has ever been since, in any other garden.

(David Copperfield)

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In the first house, my grandmother and I shared a dark bedroom with pink shells. Some days she would pick up her shells and push them to my ear.

‘Listen to the sea. If you talk to the sea, it will talk back. Listen to the sea, and it will take you somewhere nice.’

I picked up the shell with its curly horns and put it to my ear. I thought I heard the faint sound of the sea, and behind that, the sound of my grandmother laughing. I push the shell harder to my ear. I can hear the lapping of the waves, and behind that, other things: voices, shrieks, a young woman giggling, a young woman kicking her legs through the air and flying; a young woman with spots of rouge on her cheeks smiling up at a man called Cyril.