Burning Bright (10 page)

Mr. Blake cocked his head to one side, his eyes fastened on his opponent. “That is one way to consider it.”

At that Philip Astley shouted with laughter, clearly pleased to have had such a thought all on his own. “Well then, sir, I would say that the world needs us both, don't it, Fox?”

John Fox's mustache twitched. “That may well be, sir.”

Philip Astley stepped forward and extended his hand. “We will shake hands on it, Mr. Blake, won't we?”

Mr. Blake reached over and took the circus man's proffered hand. “We will indeed.”

When Mr. Blake and Philip Astley had said their farewells, Mrs. Blake took her husband's arm and they walked toward the alley without speaking to Jem or Maggie or even acknowledging them. Maggie watched them leave with a feeling of deflation. “Could've said hallo, or at least good-bye,” she muttered.

Jem felt similarly, but did not say so. He walked with Maggie to sit back against the wall where they had been before Mr. Blake arrived. There was not much to see, however—the argument between Philip Astley and Mr. Blake seemed to be a signal to the performers to take a break. The tumblers and horse riders had stopped, and there was only a troupe of dancers rehearsing a scene from the upcoming pantomime. They watched for a few minutes before Maggie stretched, like a cat rearranging itself mid-nap. “Let's do summat else.”

“What, then?”

“Let's go and see the Blakes.”

Jem frowned.

“Why not?” Maggie persisted.

“You said yourself that he didn't say hallo to us.”

“Maybe he didn't see us.”

“What would he want with us, though? We wouldn't be any interest to him.”

“He liked us well enough when we were up on the bridge. Anyway, don't you want to see inside? I bet he has strange things in there. Did you know he's got the whole house? The whole house! That's eight rooms for him and his wife. They han't any children, nor even a maid. I heard they had one, but she got scared off by him. He do stare with them big eyes, don't he?”

“I would like to see the printing press,” Jem admitted. “I think I heard it the other day. A great creaking noise it made, like roof timbers when a thatcher's climbing on them.”

“What's a thatcher?”

“Don't you—” Jem caught himself. Though he was constantly amazed by the things Maggie didn't know, he was careful not to say anything. Once, when he teased her for thinking that cowslips referred to animals falling, she wouldn't speak to him for a week. Besides, there was no thatch in London; how could she be expected to know what it was? “Dorset houses have thatched roofs,” he explained. “Dried straw bound together all tight and laid over timbers.”

Maggie looked blank.

“It's like if you took a bundle of straw and made it even and straight, then laid it on the roof instead of wood or slate,” Jem elaborated.

“A straw roof?”

“Yes.”

“How can that keep the rain out?”

“It do well, if the straw be tight and even. Have you not been out of London?” He waved his hand vaguely south. “It's not so far to proper countryside. There be thatched roofs just out of London—I remember when we first came. We could go out one day and see 'em.”

Maggie jumped up. “I don't know the way out there.”

“But you could find the way.” Jem followed her along the wall. “You could ask.”

“And I don't like bein' alone out on them little lanes, with no one round.” Maggie shuddered.

“I'd be with you,” he said, surprised by his protectiveness toward her. He had not felt that way about anyone but Maisie—though this was not exactly that brotherly feeling. “'Tis nothing to be afraid of,” he added.

“I an't afraid, but I don't fancy it. It'd be boring out there.” Maggie looked around and brightened. Stopping where the wall backed onto the Blakes' garden, she pulled her mop cap from her wavy dark hair and threw it over the wall.

“Why'd you do that?” Jem yelled.

“We need an excuse to go and see 'em. Now we have one. C'mon!” She ran along the back wall and through the alley to Hercules Buildings. By the time Jem caught up with her, she was knocking on the Blakes' front door.

“Wait!” he shouted, but it was too late.

“Hallo, Mrs. Blake,” Maggie said when Mrs. Blake opened the door. “Sorry to trouble you, but Jem's thrown my cap over the wall into your garden. Is it all right if I fetch it?”

Mrs. Blake smiled at her. “Of course, my dear, as long as you don't mind a few brambles. It's gone wild back there. Come in.” She opened the door wider and let Maggie slip inside. She gazed at Jem, who was hesitating on the step. “Are you coming in too, my dear? She'll need help finding her cap.”

Jem wanted to explain that he had not thrown Maggie's cap, but he couldn't get the words out. Instead he simply nodded, and stepped inside, Mrs. Blake shutting the door behind them with a brisk slam.

He found himself in a passage that led back through an archway to a set of stairs. Jem had the odd feeling that he had been in this passage before, though it had been darker. A doorway to his left was open and threw light into the corridor. That shouldn't be open, he thought, though he didn't know why. Then he heard the rustle of Mrs. Blake's skirts behind him, and the sound reminded him of another place, and he understood: This house was the mirror image of Miss Pelham's; this was the passage, and that the set of stairs that he used every day. Hers were darker because she kept the door closed that led into her front room.

Maggie had already disappeared. Although he knew how to get to the garden—like Miss Pelham's, you passed through an archway, then jogged around the staircase and down a few steps—Jem felt he shouldn't be leading the way through someone else's house. He stepped into the doorway of the front room so that Mrs. Blake could pass, glancing inside as he did.

This was certainly different from Miss Pelham's, and from any room he'd seen in Dorsetshire too. On first coming to London the Kellaways had had to get used to different sorts of rooms: They were squarely built, with more right angles than an irregular Dorset cottage room, walls the thickness of a brick rather than as wide as your forearm, larger windows, higher ceilings, and small grates with marble mantelpieces rather than hearths with open fires. The smell of coal fires was new too—in Dorsetshire they had an abundant and free wood supply—and with it the constant smoke that fogged up the city and made his mother's eyes go red.

But the Blakes' front room was different from either a snug, crooked Piddle Valley kitchen or Miss Pelham's front parlor with its caged canary, its vases of dried flowers, its uncomfortable sofa stuffed with horsehair, and its low armchairs set too far apart. Indeed, here there was no place to sit at all. The room was dominated by the large printing press with the long star-shaped handle that Jem had seen from the street. It stood a little taller than Jem, and looked like a solid table with a small cabinet sitting on it. Above the smooth, waist-high plank hung a large wood roller, with another underneath. Turning the handle must move the rollers, Jem worked out. The press was made of varnished beech, apart from the rollers, which were of a harder wood, and was well worn, especially on the handles.

The rest of the room was organized around the press. There were tables full of metal plates, jugs, and odd tools unfamiliar to Jem, as well as shelves holding bottles, paper, boxes, and long thin drawers like those he had seen in a print shop in Dorchester. Lines of thin rope were strung across the room, though nothing hung from them at the moment. The whole room was laid out carefully, and was very clean. Mr. Blake was not there, however.

Jem stepped out of the front room and followed Mrs. Blake. The back room door was shut, and he sensed a muscular presence behind it, like a horse in a stable stall.

Maggie was down near the bottom of the garden, picking through a mass of brambles, nettles, thistles, and grasses. Her cap had got caught on a loop of bramble well off the ground and was signaling to her like a flag of surrender. She jerked it free and hurried back toward the house, stumbling over a bramble and scratching her leg. As she reached out to steady herself, she brushed against a nettle and stung her hand. “Damn these plants,” she muttered, and slashed at the nettle with her cap, stinging her hand even more. “Damn damn damn.” Sucking her hand, she stomped out of the wildness and into the patch of garden near the house, where there were orderly rows of seedlings planted—lettuce, peas, leeks, carrots, potatoes—and Jem inspecting them.

He looked up. “What's wrong with your hand?”

“Damned nettle stung me.”

“Don't suck it—that don't help. Did you find some dock leaf?” Jem didn't wait for her answer, but pushed past and picked through the undergrowth to a bank of nettles growing near the summerhouse, where two chairs had been set just inside its open doors. “Look, it's this plant with the broad leaf—it grows next to nettles. You squeeze it to get some juice, then put it on the sting.” He applied it to Maggie's hand. “Do that feel better?”

“Yes,” Maggie said, both surprised that the dock leaf worked and pleased that Jem had taken her hand. “How'd you know about that?”

“Lots of nettles in Dorsetshire.”

As if to punish him for his knowledge, Maggie turned to the summerhouse. “Remember this?” she said in a low voice. “Remember what we saw them doin'?”

“What'll we do now?” Jem interrupted, clearly discomfited by any talk of that day they saw the Blakes in their garden. He glanced at Mrs. Blake, who was standing in the grass by the back door, hands in her apron pockets, waiting for them.

Maggie gazed at him, and he went red. She paused a moment, enjoying the power she held over him even if she wasn't entirely sure what that power was, or why she had it with him and no one else. It made her stomach flutter.

Mrs. Blake shifted her weight from one hip to the other, and Maggie looked around for something that might keep them from having to leave. There was nothing unusual about the garden, however. Apart from the summerhouse, there was a privy by the door and an ash pit for the coal ash from the grates. The grapevine Miss Pelham was competing with grew rampant along the wall. Next to it was a small fig tree with broad leaves like hands.

“Does your fig bear any fruit?” Maggie asked.

“Not yet—it's too young. We're hoping next year it will,” Mrs. Blake answered. She turned to go inside, and the children reluctantly followed.

They passed by the closed door of the back room, and again Jem wished he could go in. The open door of the front room was more inviting, however, and he paused so that he could peek in once more at the printing press. He was just summoning up the courage to ask Mrs. Blake about it when Maggie said, “Mrs. Blake, could we see that song book of Mr. Blake's you told us about up on the bridge? We'd like to see it, wouldn't we, Jem?”

Jem started to shake his head but it came out as a nod.

Mrs. Blake stopped in the hallway. “Oh, would you, my dear? Well, now, let me just ask Mr. Blake if that will be all right. Wait here—I'll just be a moment.” She went back to the closed door and tapped on it, waiting until she heard a murmur before she opened the door and slipped inside.

When the door opened again, Mr. Blake himself appeared. “Hallo, my children,” he said. “Kate tells me you want to see my songs.”

“Yes, sir,” Maggie and Jem answered in unison.

“Well, that is good—children understand them better than everyone else. ‘And I wrote my happy songs / Every child may joy to hear.' Come along.” Leading them into the front room with the printing press, he went over to a shelf, opened a box, and brought out a book not much bigger than his hand, stitched into a mushroomcolored wrapper. “Here you are,” he said, laying it on the table by the front window.

Jem and Maggie stood side by side at the table, but neither reached for the book—not even Maggie, for all her boldness. Nei-ther had much experience with handling books. Anne Kellaway had been given a prayer book by her parents when she married, but she was the only family member to use it at church. Maggie's parents had never owned a book, apart from those that Dick Butterfield had bought and sold, and Bet Butterfield couldn't read—though she liked having her husband read old newspapers to her when he brought them back from the pub.

“Aren't you going to look at it?” Mr. Blake said. “Go on, my boy—open it. Anywhere will do.”

Jem reached out and fumbled with the book, opening it to a place near the beginning. On the left-hand page was a picture of a large burgundy and mauve flower, and inside its curling petals sat a woman wearing a yellow dress with a baby on her lap. A girl stood next to them in a blue dress with what looked to Maggie like butterfly wings sprouting from her shoulders. There were words set out in brown under the flower, with green stems and vines twined around them. The right-hand page was made up almost entirely of words, with a tree of leaves growing up the right margin, vines snaking up the left, and birds flying here and there. Maggie admired the pictures, though she couldn't read any of the words. She wondered if Jem could. “What do it say?” she asked.

“Can't you read them, child?”

Maggie shook her head. “I only went to school a year, and forgot it all.”

Mr. Blake chuckled. “I didn't go to school at all! My father taught me to read. Didn't your father teach you?”

“He's too busy for that.”

“Did you hear that, Kate? Did you?”

“I did, Mr. Blake.” Mrs. Blake was standing in the doorway, leaning against the jamb.

“I taught Kate to read, you see. Her father was too busy as well. All right, my boy, what about you? Can you read the song?”

Jem cleared his throat. “I'll try. I only had a little schooling.” He placed a finger on the page and began slowly to read:

He read in such stops and starts that Mr. Blake took pity on him and joined in, strengthening and quickening his voice so that Jem was trailing him, echoing his words almost like a game:

From the picture Maggie worked out that the song was about a baby, and Mr. Blake sounded like a doting father cooing, repeating phrases and sounding daft. She wondered that he would know this was how fathers sounded when he had no children of his own. On the other hand, he clearly knew little about babies or he'd not have one smiling when only two days old; Maggie had helped with enough babies to know the smile didn't come for several weeks, until the mother was desperate for it. She didn't tell him this, however.

“Here's one you'll remember.” Mr. Blake turned over a few pages, then began to recite, “When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy,” the song he'd sung to them on the bridge. This time he didn't sing it, but chanted quickly. Jem tried to follow along with the words on the page, chiming in here and there with a word he was able to read or could remember. Maggie frowned, annoyed that he and Mr. Blake shared the song in a way she couldn't. She looked at the picture that accompanied it. A group of people were sitting around a table with glasses of wine, the women in blue and yellow dresses, a man colored in mauve with his back turned, raising a cup of wine. She did remember one part of the song, so that when Mr. Blake and Jem got to the line, she joined in to shout “Ha, ha, he!” as if she were in a pub singing along with others.

“Did you make this book, sir?” Jem asked when they'd finished.

“From start to finish, my boy. Wrote it, etched it, printed it, colored it, stitched and bound it, then offered it for sale. With Kate's help, of course. I couldn't have done it without Kate.” He gazed at his wife and she gazed back. To Jem it felt as if they were holding the ends of a rope and pulling it tight between them.

“Did you use this press?” he persisted.

Mr. Blake put a hand on one of the handles. “I did. Not in this room, mind. We were living in Poland Street then. Across the river.” He gripped the handle and pulled it so that it moved a little. Part of the wood frame groaned and cracked. “The hardest part of moving to Lambeth was getting the press here. We had to take it apart, and get several men to move it.”

“How do it work?”

Mr. Blake beamed with the look of a man who has found a fellow fanatic. “Ah, it's a beautiful sight, my boy. Very satisfying. You take the plate you've prepared—have you ever seen an etched plate? No? Here's one.” He led Jem to one of the shelves and picked up a flat rectangle of metal. “Run your finger over it.” Jem felt raised lines and swirls on the smooth, cold copper. “So. First we ink the plate with a dauber”—he held up a stubby piece of wood with a rounded end—“then wipe it, so that the ink is only on the parts we want printed. Then we put the plate on the bed of the press—here.” Mr. Blake set the plate down on the table part of the press, near the rollers. “Then we take the piece of paper we've prepared and lay it over the plate, and then blankets over them. Then we pull the handles towards us”—Mr. Blake pulled the handle a little and the rollers turned—“and the plate and paper get caught up and pass between the rollers. That imprints the ink onto the paper. Once it's gone through the rollers, we take it out—very carefully, mind—and hang it to dry on those lines above our heads. When they're dry we color them.”

While Jem listened intently, touching the different parts of the press as he had been longing to, and asking Mr. Blake questions, Maggie grew bored and turned away to flip through the book once more. She had not looked much at books—since she couldn't read, she had little use for them. Maggie had hated school. She'd gone when she was eight to a charity school for girls in Southwark, just over from Lambeth, where the Butterfields had lived before. To her it had been a miserable place, where the girls were crowded into a room together to trade fleas and lice and coughs, and where beatings occurred daily and indiscriminately. After roaming the streets, she had found it hard to sit still in a room all day, and could not take in what the schoolmistress was saying about letters and figures. It was all so much duller than being out and about in Southwark that Maggie either wriggled or fell asleep, and then was beaten with a thin stick that cut through skin. The only cheering sight in the school was the day Dick Butterfield came to school with his daughter after finding yet another set of welts on her back that he had not made himself, and walloped the schoolmistress. Maggie never went back after that, and until Jem and Mr. Blake recited the song together, she had never regretted not being able to read.

Mr. Blake's book of songs surprised her, for it didn't look like any book she had ever seen. Most books contained words with the odd picture thrown in. Here, though, words and pictures were entwined; at times it was hard to tell where the one ended and the other began. Maggie turned page after page. Most of the pictures were of children either playing or with grown-ups, and all of them seemed to be in the countryside—which according to Mr. Blake was not the big, empty, open space that she'd always imagined, but contained, with hedgerows as boundaries and trees to shelter under.

There were several pictures of children with their mothers—the women reading to them, or giving them a hand up from the ground, or watching them as they slept—their childhoods nothing like Maggie's. Bet Butterfield of course could never have read to her, and was more likely to shout at Maggie to pick herself up than reach out a hand to her. And Maggie doubted she would ever wake to find her mother sitting by her bed. She looked up, blinking rapidly to rid her eyes of tears. Mrs. Blake was still leaning in the doorway, her hands in her apron. “You must have sold a lot o' these to stay in this house, ma'am,” Maggie said, to hide her tears.

Maggie's statement appeared to bring Mrs. Blake out of a reverie. She pushed herself off of the doorjamb and ran her hands down her skirt to straighten it. “Not so many, my dear. Not so many. There's not many folk understand Mr. Blake, you see. Not even these songs.” She hesitated. “Now I think it's time for him to work. He's had a fair few interruptions today, haven't you, Mr. Blake?” She said this tentatively, almost fearfully, as if frightened of her husband's response.

“Of course, Kate,” he answered, turning away from the printing press. “You're right, as ever. I'm always getting distracted by one thing or another, and Kate's always having to pull me back.” He nodded to them and stepped out of the room.

“Damn,” Maggie said suddenly. “I forgot Mam's beer!” She left
Songs of Innocence
on the table and hurried to the door. “Sorry, Mrs. Blake, we've to go. Thanks for showing us your things!”