The Vivisector Read Online Free Page B

didn’t dare.
    Mumma was the one who dared, on a heavy Sunday evening. ‘Granpa loved ’is spirits. That was ’is downfall. That is why yer father never touched a drop.’
    She hung her head. Because of the laundries she was always doing, her skin stayed white and sort of steamy.
    ‘Stop, Hurtle! Oh, my neck! You’re hurting, dear!’ Then when they had rearranged themselves: ‘Your grandfather was a handsome man.’ She sighed.
    ‘Was Pa handsome?’
    After a pause, she said: ‘No.’
    ‘Were you pretty?’
    He could feel Mumma and the next baby kicking together. ‘Oh dear, I’m not the one to answer that!’ When they had settled down she said: ‘No. I think yer father married me because of a pair of earrins. They was corneelun. Mrs Apps give them to me when I worked a dress for her little boy. The staff used to say: “’Ere comes that young feller. Better put on your earrins, Bessie.” I lost one after we married.’
    ‘Did Granpa Duffield like the earrins?’
    ‘No, Oh, I don’t know. Granpa Duffield couldn’t forgive ’is Jim for marryin’ Bessie Tozer. At that time I was working at The Locomotive. Not in the saloon. Peugh! No, thank you! I was chambermaid. And help in the dinin’-room.’
    It was so beautiful on the grey splintery old veranda towards sunset.
    ‘Will I be a gentleman?’
    ‘That’s up to you.’
    ‘And handsome?’
    ‘I hope not,’ Mumma shouted. ‘You’re bold enough. Anythun more would be too much.’
    After they had fought and kissed together, she sighed and said: ‘It’s the edgercation that counts.’
    It sounded solemn, but he didn’t altogether understand what it meant, nor want to. Not as the sun and the sunflowers were melting together, and he lay against Mumma’s white, soapy neck.
     
    There was so much of him that didn’t belong to his family. He could see them watching him, wanting to ask him questions. Sometimes they did, and he answered, but the answers weren’t the ones they wanted. They looked puzzled, even hurt.
    He would play hard with the other kids in the street—Billy Abrams, Bill Cornish, William White, Terry O’Brien—then pull away, and start mooning about by himself. Out of desperation he began to read. He read Pears Cyclopaedia, the newspaper, Mrs Burt’s ‘books’, Eustace Burt had a dictionary (Eustace was a teacher), and Granma Duffield’s Bible. The Bible was the hardest. He didn’t understand not all of the words. It was the stories he went for: the blood and thunder. He drew too, in the dust of the yard, and on the walls. Perhaps he liked drawing best.
    ‘You and yer scribbles, Hurtle! A big boy like you! I’ll have Pa take the belt to yer if it ever happens again.’
    As if Pa would.
    So while Mumma scrubbed the wall—she only made it worse grey—he sunk his head and concentrated.
    ‘What’s that you’re up to now?’
    Seeing as she had the suds made, she was spreading them on the floorboards, and had almost reached the island of his chair, pushing the suds ahead of her.
    ‘Eh?’ she asked. ‘Are you deaf then?’
    ‘Reading,’ he said, when he couldn’t avoid it any longer, but he made it sound very low.
    Though Mumma was on all fours he could tell the shock she got. ‘Readin? You haven’t ever learnt. You’re still too young to read, love.’
    He didn’t answer, but ground his boots on the rail of the chair. She ought to have known he had been reading all this while, but Mumma was often too busy to notice.
    As she went on scrubbing and puffing, she asked in a tone of voice to please her little boy: ‘Whatever are you readin’, Hurt?’
    ‘The Bible,’ he had to admit.
    Mumma too, read the Bible, or liked to sit with it when she was tired.
    ‘Well, well,’ she disbelieved, scratching at the board with the brush which was almost bald. ‘There’s a lot of the Bible. I wonder what’s taken your fancy.’
    He said, even lower than before: ‘I’m reading how she smote him with the tent peg.’
    ‘I