The Comic
Katie moved the parcel on to her other hip. It was heavy; but not as heavy as the weight inside her; the weight was leaden. To go to the pawnshop with any parcel filled her with shame; to walk up the dock bank, under the knowledgeable stares of the men idling there against the railings caused her throat to move in and out; and to meet any of her schoolmates on the journey made her want to die; but when it was John’s suit she was carrying every tragedy of the journey was intensified a thousandfold.
When her mother asked, ‘Will you go down to “Bob’s”, hinny?’ Katie had stared at her, speechless. She wanted to say, ‘Our Molly should go, she’s bigger,’ but she knew from experience that Molly always got less on the clothes than she did, and generally too, she lost something, the ticket, or worse still, a sixpence. And because her mother looked so thin and white when she asked her she remained silent, and watched Mary Ellen go to the box under the bed and take John’s suit out.
It seemed such a shame that it was John’s, because he had started work only that morning. They all had, after being off weeks. But there was nothing in the house now to make them a meal, and although they would get subs, her mother was relying on these to pay the three weeks’ back rent. Katie felt that once the rent was paid, her mother would look less white.
Going through the arches into Tyne Dock she met Mrs Flaherty.
‘Oh, ye’re not at school the day?’ Peggy greeted her.
‘No, I was sick.’ Katie stared up into the half-washed face, criss-crossed with wrinkles, and her tone defied disbelief.
‘Oh, that’s a pity, it is. Ye shouldn’t miss your iducation. Some day, when ye’re old enough, I’ll lend ye one o’ me books; they’ll iducate ye like nothing else will. When ye’re old enough that is.’ She snuffled and caught the drop from the end of her nose on the back of her hand.
‘Thank you.’ For as long as she could remember Katie had been promised one of Mrs Flaherty’s books, and the promise meant nothing to her now. She said, ‘Ta-ta, Mrs Flaherty,’ and walked on, the parcel now pressed against her chest and resting on the top of her stomach.
Although she thought impatiently that Mrs Flaherty was always on about education, she wished her mother was a bit like her. She had almost given up talking to her mother about the examination and what Miss Llewellyn said, for her mother didn’t believe Miss Llewellyn meant what she said—last time, she had stopped her talking, saying, ‘Oh, hinny, you mustn’t take so much notice of things; your teacher’s only being nice. The examination she’s on about is likely the one you have every year.’ And when Katie had sat quietly crying, Mary Ellen said to John, ‘Look, lad. I can’t go down to the school and see what she keeps on about, I only have me shawl; will you go?’
‘What! Me? Not on your life. Now that’s a damn silly thing to ask me to do, isn’t it! What could I say to the headmistress?’
‘Well, will you go and see her teacher, then?’
John had just stared blankly at his mother, then picked up his cap and walked out of the house.
Katie thought the only one who understood was Christine. She liked Christine nearly as much as she liked Miss Llewellyn, but not quite. Life had taken on an added glow since Christine came into it; for Christine made her pinnies and dresses out of her own old ones. She gave her and Molly nice things to eat, too; and she had even given them money, real money, half a crown each. But only twice, for when they took their half-crowns into their mother the second week she made them take them back.
Katie could not understand her mother’s attitude of not speaking to Christine and her grandfather. She allowed her and Molly to go next door, but Mr Bracken and Christine had never been into her house since that terrible day some months ago when their mother was taken bad. John and Dominic, too, went next door; and she often sat on John’s knee while he and Mr Bracken talked. They talked about funny things, one of which stuck in her mind: Mr Bracken said you could have anything you wanted if you only used your thoughts properly . . . There were so many things she wanted, but she wanted above all to be a teacher. Should she do what Mr Bracken told John, lie on her back with her arms outstretched and think of being a teacher until she felt herself floating away? Eeh no! she’d better not, for there were some people who said Mr Bracken was the devil. He wasn’t; but anyway, she’d better not do it.
She always had a queer feeling when Dominic was next door when she would wonder if he were trying to do what he was doing that night she went in unexpectedly. He had Christine pressed in the corner and was trying to kiss her. Her blouse was open, and the ribbon of her camisole was loose. Katie knew that Christine was frightened, for she held on to her until Dominic went out. Then she told her not to mention to John what had happened; and Katie only too readily promised.
At last she reached the dark well of the pawnshop, and listened, her eyes wide and sad, as Bob said, ‘Only three-and-six, hinny. It’s getting a bit threadbare.’ He turned to a woman and asked, ‘Will you put it in for her?’ And the woman nodded, taking the penny Katie offered her. Katie wished she were fourteen, then if she had to come to the pawn she wouldn’t have to pay somebody for putting the stuff in—a whole penny just for signing your name! It was outrageous, and she disliked the woman intensely for being so mean as to take the penny.
As she was leaving the shop with the money tightly grasped in her hand, Bob said, ‘I’ve got something here that might interest one of your brothers. It’ll fit nobody else round these parts. It’s a top coat, and it’s a bobby-dazzler. Ten shillings, it is. And I only wish I had what it cost when it was new. Tell one of them to have a look in.’ Katie said she would.
She went on to the butcher’s, and from there to buy a gas mantle. In Mr Powell’s, she stood waiting while he hunted for the box which contained the turned down mantles. His search took him into the back shop, and Katie was left alone standing before an assortment of comics. They were arrayed on a sloping counter: Rainbow, Tiger Tim’s Weekly, Comic Cuts, and others. Her eyes dwelt on them longingly. It was weeks and weeks since she was able to buy a comic. She would likely get a penny off John on Saturday. But Saturday was as far away as Christmas, and there stretched before her the rest of the afternoon and the long, long evening. And she daren’t ask her mother for even a ha’penny out of the suit money. On the front of Rainbow, the Bruin boys were up to their games again: the tiger, the parrot, the elephant, and others, were playing one of their naughty pranks on Mrs Bruin. And inside the comic, Katie knew, would be the story of the little girl who was really a fairy and worked magic. Her eyes darted to the back shop. All she could see was Mr Powell’s feet on the top of a pair of steps. Her hand went up and touched the Rainbow. It hesitated for a second, then with one swift movement, the Rainbow was inside her coat, and for the first time in her life she found herself wetting her knickers. The combined horror was too much for her. She ran out of the shop, down the dock bank to the arches. She did not stop to look inside her coat; her sin had already obliterated the joy of the comic. She was a thief! She had stolen! Mr Powell would miss the comic and put the pollis on her track; her mother would be taken to court and her face would become white again, and all at school would know . . . Miss Llewellyn would know!
Standing over the gutter, under the high, bleak arches, she vomited, and the comic slipped down from beneath her coat and became fouled with the sick.
There was a long row of boys and girls waiting to go into confession, for tomorrow was the first Friday in the month, on which day they all attended communion. They nudged each other and fidgeted whilst bending over in grotesque positions in supposed prayer. They whispered and passed sweets, and showed one another holy pictures; yet there was no noise at all, so practised were they. It was three weeks since Katie was last at confession, the longest period between her confessions she could remember. Although the chill autumn air was filling the church she felt hot and sick. She had been sick a number of times since the day she took John’s suit to the pawn—she refused to think of it as the day she stole the comic. But now she had to think of the comic, for she was about to make her confession.
A teacher, not Miss Llewellyn, came and moved a row and a half of children down to the pews opposite Father O’Malley’s box, which were singularly bare of penitents. This left Katie the next to go to Father Bailey. She was filled with a mixture of relief and fear, relief that she had escaped Father O’Malley’s judgment, and fear that her turn was upon her.
A small, dark shadow emerged from one door of the confessional box, and Katie stumbled in. But for the faint gleam of a candle coming through the mesh from the priest’s side the box was black dark inside.
‘Please, Father, give me the blessing for I have sinned,’ she began. ‘It is three weeks since my last confession.’
‘Go on, my child.’ Father Bailey’s voice was like a soft balm falling on her.
‘I have missed Mass once.’
‘Through your own fault?’
‘No, Father. It was me clothes; me ma wouldn’t let me come.’
‘Go on, my child.’
‘I have spoken in church and I have missed me morning and night prayers.’
‘How often?’
‘Three times . . . no, four . . . perhaps a few more, Father.’
‘Why?’
‘’Cos the lino’s all cracked and it sticks in me knees when I kneel down.’
The priest made a noise in his throat and said, ‘To strengthen your soul it is important that you say your prayers—prayers are the food of the soul like bread is the food of the body . . . You understand, my child?’
‘Yes, Father.’
‘Then under no circumstances should you starve your soul.’
‘No, Father.’
‘Go on.’
But Katie couldn’t go on. Her clasped hands, pressed against the elbow rest on a level with her face, were stuck together with sweat. The confessional box seemed weighed down with the smell of incense and mustiness.
‘Is there anything more?’ the priest asked.
‘Yes, Father.’
‘Well then, what is it?’
Silence followed his question. And after a moment he went on: ‘Don’t be afraid, my child; there is nothing so terrible that God won’t forgive.’
‘I stole.’
The priest’s hand was taken away from his cheek and his face turned towards the mesh, and Katie looked up into two white bulbs. Then the hand was replaced again.
Katie shivered during the silence that followed; she felt her sin had been a shock even to the priest.
‘What did you steal?’
‘A Rainbow.’
‘A what!’ The hand was dropped again.
‘A comic.’
The priest coughed. ‘Now, my child, you know how it hurts our Blessed Lord when you do anything like that.’
‘Yes, Father.’
‘And will you do it again?’
‘No, no. Never, Father.’
‘No, I know you won’t. And if you could find a way to pay the shopkeeper for the comic it would put everything right, wouldn’t it?’
‘Yes, Father.’
‘Now, for your penance say one Our Father and ten Hail Marys, and tell Our Lord that never again will you hurt Him; and He will forgive you. And don’t forget to kneel when you are saying your prayers, in spite of the lino; for remember the nails in the cross.’
The priest made the sign of the cross and said the absolution, whilst Katie murmured, ‘Oh, my God, I am very sorry I have sinned against Thee, because Thou art so good and by the help of Thy Holy Grace I will never sin again.’
‘Good night, my child, and God bless you,’ said Father Bailey. ‘And worry no more; He understands.’
In a holy daze, Katie walked out of the box, and in the same state she said her penance, kneeling in the corner of the dark church, straining her eyes up to the statue of the Virgin and the Child, knowing that her sin was wiped away. And on walking out of the church, there was John, standing under the lamp. It all seemed part of God’s Grace. She ran to him and flung her arms about him, crying, ‘Oh John! Oh John!’ as if she had not seen him for years. Then she asked, ‘Are you going to confession?’
‘No,’ John said; ‘I was passing and I thought I’d wait for you.’
She knew this wasn’t true; he never had to pass this way; he had come to meet her because she was crying when she left home. She seemed to have been crying for weeks. She knew that her mother and John were worried about her, for she couldn’t tell them why she cried. But now she was free again—the dreadful weight was lifted from her.
John, looking down into her bright face, wondered what had wrought the change. He said teasingly, ‘Has Father Bailey given you a pair of wings?’
‘Eeh, our John!’ She shook his arm as she walked by his side. ‘But Father Bailey is nice, isn’t he? He’s so nice he makes me want to cry.’
‘Well, in that case, I’ll tell him to go for you the next time I see him, for you’ve done enough crying lately to last you a lifetime.’
Katie did not speak for a time. And then she said softly, ‘I won’t be crying any more, John.’
‘You won’t? Well, that’s something to know. Why have you been crying so much lately, anyway?’
There was a longer silence before she replied, ‘I stole.’
Her statement came as a shock, stunning him for a while.
‘You what, Katie?’ he asked.
‘I stole, and I was frightened. It was a comic from Mr Powell’s. And now I’ve been to confession and Father Bailey says it’s all right.’
‘You stole a comic from Mr Powell’s?’ There was incredulity in John’s voice . . . Mick and Molly could thieve; Dominic and himself could lift things from the dock, although his own lifting was a fleabite compared with Dominic’s—Dominic filled his trousers from the yorks up with grain, and sold it to anybody who kept hens; the only thing in that line he himself brought home was a few green bananas for the bairns, or an odd bit of fruit from burst boxes. Nevertheless, they all did it; but that Katie should lift anything seemed monstrous to him. It might only be a comic, but everything needed a beginning. ‘Have you done it before?’ he asked.
‘No, only that once!’
‘Why did you do it?’ The question was ridiculous; as if he didn’t know why she had done it!
‘I hadn’t had a comic for weeks, and I hadn’t a ha’penny.’
‘If you want a comic, ask me. Don’t ever do that again, will you?’ He stopped and looked down on her.
Katie couldn’t see his face clearly, but she knew by his voice that he was vexed, more vexed than Father Bailey had been. ‘Oh no, John, I’ll never do it again . . . never.’
Yes, she could say that now, but there would be times, many times, when she would be without a ha’penny . . . and he too. What would happen then?
They walked on in silence, and he told himself it was only a kid’s trick . . . Yes, it might be . . . any kid’s, but not Katie’s. It was this blasted, soul-shrivelling poverty, where a bairn was driven to steal because she hadn’t a ha’penny! The thought persisted that because she had done it once she would do it again, and that by the time she left school and was ready for a place she’d be a dab hand at lifting. And then there’d be more scope. Nothing big perhaps; just a few groceries, an odd towel, or a hankie . . . Oh, he knew what would happen . . . Well, it mustn’t; not to Katie, anyway. He must try and get more work, or different work, or something. He must see that never again would she be short of a ha’penny. But would that solve the problem?
He slowed his pace, and Katie, silent and apprehensive, glanced up at him. Suddenly he stopped again and said, ‘What about this exam your teacher’s on about? What have you got to do?’
She peered up at him. ‘Miss Llewellyn says that if I pass this examination I can do pupil training after I’m fourteen; and do another examination, and perhaps then I may be able to . . . to go to . . . a college.’ The last word was whispered, and John whispered back, ‘A college?’ He sighed, and they walked on again. It was fantastic . . . College! Yet why should it be? What did Peter Bracken say, not only say but lay down that it was a law? Anything to which you applied your thought you could bring into being. Peter had urged him again and again to put some of his methods to the test, but he had laughed at him, saying, ‘No, Peter, I’m a Catholic; a poor one, I admit, but nevertheless that’s my religion, and I’m trying nothing else.’
But Peter had said, ‘This has nothing to do with religion, John; it’s merely using your thought in a proper way.’
Well, here was a test . . . Could he think Katie to a college? It sounded as daft as if he had said he would think her into being the Queen of England. Yet hadn’t Peter given him proof of his power of concentrated thought? His mother was living proof. And she was aware of it too; that was why she never spoke of it, or to Peter; to her simple mind it was something too terrible for probing.
Peter said that once you set your mind and heart on something and concentrated on it day after day, things came to your aid in what seemed a mysterious way but which was simply your positive thought reaching out into the realm of all thought and making contact with its own kind.
John did not profess, even to himself, to understand half Peter’s words, let alone their meaning, but this much he could, perhaps, believe . . . if you wanted a thing badly enough you could get it. But as Peter warned, beware of what you want, for sometimes that which you felt you wanted most could, in the end, wreck you.
Well, it would certainly be to Katie’s good if she became a teacher, and he couldn’t see that wrecking anyone. It was a wild and almost impossible dream, yet he would will it. But first he must know what he was up to. He would go and see Miss Llewellyn.
For the third time he stopped. Was he mad? Go and see that lass! She’d scare the yorks off him. Well, he wouldn’t wear yorks. No, he wouldn’t. To Katie’s astonishment, he hurried on again, and now she had to run to keep pace with him.
Only Mary Ellen was in when they got home, and Katie stood listening to John with an astonishment equal to that of her mother’s as he said, ‘Look, Ma, there’s fifteen shillings’—he placed the money on the table—‘I was saving it up towards a suit. I want you to pay the seven-and-six off that top coat and get me a new shirt . . . one with a collar.’ He did not look at Mary Ellen when saying this, for never before had he asked for a shirt with a collar; it had always been a striped flannelette one and a new muffler. ‘Get a good one,’ he added, ‘about five shillings. And get me a cap too, a grey one, darkish.’
‘What’s up, lad?’ Mary Ellen asked quietly when he had finished.
‘Nothing much.’ He turned and smiled at Katie, and punched her playfully on the side of the head. ‘I’m going to see her teacher about that examination, as you asked me, and I want to be decent.’