Tracy Chevalier - Burning Bright

Lambeth children were different in other ways too – more aware and more suspicious. They reminded him of cats who creep in to sit by the fire, knowing they are barely tolerated, happy to be inside but with ears swivelling and eyes in slits, ready to detect the foot that will kick them back out. The children were often rude to adults, as Maggie had been to Miss Pelham, and got away with it when he wouldn’t have in his old village. They mocked and threw stones at people they didn’t like, stole food from barrows and baskets, sang rude songs; they shouted, teased, taunted. Only occasionally did he see Lambeth children doing things he could imagine joining in with: rowing a boat on the river; singing while streaming out of the charity school on Lambeth Green; chasing a dog that had made off with someone’s cap.

So when Maggie beckoned to him from the door of the Artichoke, he followed her inside, braving the wall of noise and the thick smoke from the lamps. He wanted to be a part of this new Lambeth life, rather than watching it from a window or a front gate or over a garden wall.

Although it was only late afternoon, the pub was heaving with people. The din was tremendous, though after a time his ears began to pick up the pattern of a song, unfamiliar but clearly a tune. Maggie plunged through the wall of bodies to the corner where her father sat.

Dick Butterfield was a small, brown man – his eyes, his wiry hair, the undertone of his skin, his clothes. A web of wrinkles extended from the outer corners of his eyes and across his forehead, forming deep furrows on his brow. Despite the wrinkles, he had a young, energetic air about him. Today he was simply drinking rather than attending a club. He pulled his daughter onto his lap, and was singing along with the rest of the pub when Jem finally reached them:

And for which I’m sure she’ll go to Hell

For she makes me fuck her in church time!

At the last line, a deafening shout went up that made Jem cover his ears. Maggie had joined in, and she grinned at Jem, who blushed and stared at his feet. Many songs had been sung at the Five Bells in Piddletrenthide, but nothing like that.

After the great shout, the pub was quieter, the way a thunderclap directly overhead clears the worst of a storm. ‘What you been up to, then, Mags?’ Dick Butterfield asked his daughter in the relative calm.

‘This an’ that. I was at his house—’ she pointed at Jem ‘—this is Jem, Pa – lookin’ at his pa making chairs. They just come from Dorsetshire, an’ are living at Miss Pelham’s in Hercules Buildings, next to Mr Blake.’

‘Miss Pelham’s, eh?’ Dick Butterfield chuckled. ‘Glad to meet you, Jem. Sit yourself down and rest your pegs.’ He waved at the other side of the table. There was no stool or bench there. Jem looked around: all of the stools in sight were taken. Dick and Maggie Butterfield were gazing at him with identical expressions, watching to see what he would do. Jem considered kneeling at the table, but he knew that was not likely to gain the Butterfields’ approval. He would have to search the pub for an empty stool. It was expected of him, a little test of his merit – the first real test of his new London life.

Locating an empty stool in a crowded pub can be tricky, and Jem could not find one. He tried asking for one, but those he asked paid no attention to him. He tried to take one that a man was using as a footrest and got swatted. He asked a barmaid, who jeered at him. As he struggled through the scrum of bodies, Jem wondered how it was that so many people could be drinking now rather than working. In the Piddle Valley few went to the Five Bells or the Crown or the New Inn until evening.

At last he went back to the table empty-handed. A vacant stool now sat where Dick Butterfield had indicated, and he and Maggie were grinning at Jem.

‘Country boy,’ muttered a youth sitting next to them who had watched the whole ordeal, including the barmaid’s jeering.

‘Shut your bonebox, Charlie,’ Maggie retorted. Jem guessed at once that he was her brother.

Charlie Butterfield was like his father but without the wrinkles or the charm; better-looking in a rough way, with dirty blond hair and a dimple in his chin, but with a scar through his eyebrow too that gave him a harsh look. He was as cruel to his sister as he could get away with, twisting burns on Maggie’s arms until the day she was old enough to kick him where it was guaranteed to hurt. He still looked for ways to get at her – knocking the legs out from the stool she sat on, upending the salt on her food, stealing her blankets at night. Jem knew none of this, but he sensed something about Charlie that made him avoid the other’s eyes, as you do a growling dog.

Dick Butterfield tossed a coin onto the table. ‘Fetch Jem a drink, Charlie,’ he commanded.

‘I an’t—’ Charlie sputtered at the same time as Jem said, ‘I don’t—’ Both stopped at the stern look on Dick Butterfield’s face. And so Charlie got Jem a mug of beer he didn’t want – cheap, watery stuff men back at the Five Bells would spill onto the floor rather than drink.

Dick Butterfield sat back. ‘Well, now, what have you got to tell me, Mags? What’s the scandal today in old Lambeth?’

‘We saw summat in Mr Blake’s garden, didn’t we, Jem? In their summerhouse, with all the doors open.’ Maggie gave Jem a sly look. He turned red again and shrugged.

‘That’s my girl,’ Dick Butterfield said. ‘Always sneakin’ about, finding out what’s what.’

Charlie leaned forward. ‘What’d you see, then?’

Maggie leaned forward as well. ‘We saw him an’ his wife at it!’

Charlie chuckled, but Dick Butterfield seemed unimpressed. ‘What, rutting is all? That’s nothing you don’t see every day you look down an alley. Go outside and you’ll see it round the corner now. Eh, Jem? I expect you’ve seen your share of it, back in Dorsetshire, eh, boy?’

Jem gazed into his beer. A fly was struggling on the surface, trying not to drown. ‘Seen enough,’ he mumbled. Of course he had seen it before. It was not just the animals he lived among that he’d seen at it – dogs, cats, sheep, horses, cows, goats, rabbits, chickens, pheasants – but people tucked away in corners of woods or against hedgerows or even in the middle of meadows when they thought no one would pass through. He had seen his neighbours doing it in a barn, and Sam with his girl up in the hazel wood at Nettlecombe Tout. He had seen it enough that he was no longer surprised, though it still embarrassed him. It was not that there was so much to see – mostly just clothes and a persistent movement, sometimes a man’s pale buttocks pistoning up and down or a woman’s breasts jiggling. It was seeing it when he was not expecting to, breaking into the assumed privacy, that made Jem turn away with a red face. He had much the same feeling on the rare occasion when he heard his parents argue – as when his mother demanded that his father cut down the pear tree at the bottom of their garden that Tommy had fallen from, and Thomas Kellaway had refused. Anne Kellaway had taken an axe later and done it herself.

Jem dipped his finger into the beer and let the fly climb onto it and crawl away. Charlie watched with astonished disgust; Dick Butterfield simply smiled and looked around at the other customers, as if searching for someone else to talk to.

‘It wasn’t just that they were doin’ it,’ Maggie persisted. ‘They were – they had – they’d taken off all their clothes, hadn’t they, Jem? We could see everything, like they were Adam an’ Eve.’

Dick Butterfield watched his daughter with the same appraising look he’d given Jem when he tried to find a stool. As easy-going as he appeared – lolling in his seat, buying drinks for people, smiling and nodding – he demanded a great deal from those he was with.