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Authors: Margot Livesey

BOOK: Homework
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“A Bible?” my mother had said when I told her. “I don't know if we have one, darling.”
“But I have to have one,” I said.
My mother looked up from her book. “Ask your father when he comes home.”
While I waited, I struggled with my homework. I had twelve problems in division, and although I understood the principle, I could not keep things straight in my head. The number 14, for example, remained obstinately opaque, as opposed to disclosing its separate parts of 2 and 7. I sat at the kitchen table, chewing the end of my pencil, writing numbers down and rubbing them out, until at last I heard my father. I rushed to meet him. “Daddy, do you have a Bible?”
“What's this?” he demanded. “Are you turning into a Christian?”
“It's for school. We're writing a play. Do you have one?”
“Of course I do. Let me get a drink first, Celia.”
I was staring at the next problem, 360 ÷ 9, when my father came in, carrying a drink in one hand, a book in the other. “Here you are,” he said. “Be careful of it. It belonged to my mother.”
The Bible was the most beautiful book I had ever seen. It was small and heavy and bound in soft black leather with the
words “Holy Bible” inscribed in gold letters. The pages were edged in reddish gold, and the paper was tissue fine. I opened the book and stared at the flyleaf in wonder. There, written in black ink, was my name: Celia Gilchrist.
“Look,” I said to my father.
“Yes, it was my mother's,” he repeated.
I had known before that I was named after my grandmother, but I had never understood what this meant. I could not help being troubled at the idea of sharing something that I had thought of as uniquely mine.
Every day we worked on our play. First we discussed an episode, and then we wrote a scene. We took turns reading our work aloud, and Miss Dobbey always seemed to single out my efforts for praise. “Well done, Celia,” she would say. “That's very nice.” As the weeks passed I grew increasingly certain that I was going to be Mary. I worked extra hard at her speeches, and at night I fell asleep imagining myself in a blue dress, hugging Baby Jesus and pretending to ride a donkey.
Finally the day came when Miss Dobbey announced the casting. I was not Mary; I was not even an angel; I was a shepherd. Instead of a blue dress I would wear a beard. A tediously pretty girl named Lucinda would be saying the eloquent speeches I had written. Once rehearsals were under way I minded less. I spent several happy afternoons making my flock by sticking cotton wool onto cardboard boxes. And my mother was going to play the piano for the performance; I basked in her reflected importance.
The play was on a Wednesday afternoon, and my father had promised to attend. As I left for school that morning I reminded him that I would be the shepherd in green. “That sounds very pastoral,” he said. “Good luck.”
When I was dressed in my robe and beard I joined the rest of the cast, peering round the curtains. My mother was
playing “The Holly and the Ivy,” and I found myself murmuring the familiar words as I searched the audience for my father. He was not there, but people were still arriving.
“Children,” called Miss Dobbey, “we're beginning in three minutes. Go to your places.”
A tall man wearing a raincoat came in. I felt a spurt of hope, until he turned to face the stage.
“Celia,” came Miss Dobbey's voice, “go and join the other shepherds.” I clung to the edge of the curtain. A couple of women in head scarves hurried in. I gave the audience one last despairing glance. With sudden conviction I knew that he was not coming. If I had been Mary, I thought, he would have come. I watched my flock, I talked to the angel, I knelt down in front of the Holy Family, all in a daze. I did not remember saying a single one of the speeches I had so painfully memorised.
That evening my mother and I were in the living room when my father came home. “So how did it go?” he asked.
“It was fun,” said my mother. “Miss Dobbey had done a very nice job with the children. Celia made an excellent shepherd.”
“It's too bad that I couldn't be there,” said my father. “Lunch with the Petries seemed to go on and on. Did you have fun, Celia?”
I nodded.
“Don't forget to bring the Bible home,” he said. “It's a family heirloom.”
Next morning as soon as I arrived at school I sorted through my desk, arranging the papers in neat piles. There was no sign of the black leather binding. I looked wildly around the room, then ran to Miss Dobbey. “I lost my Bible,” I burst out.
“It can't be lost,” she said. “You never took it out of this room. Let me have a look.”
Such was my confidence in Miss Dobbey that I fully
expected her to produce the Bible, but she too rummaged through the books and papers to no avail. “Someone must have taken it by mistake,” she said. “Does it have your name on?”
I hesitated.
“Now, Celia, you know the rule. Everything you bring into the classroom has to have your name on, and it's precisely so that things won't get lost.”
“It has ‘Celia Gilchrist' written in it,” I said.
“In that case it's sure to turn up.”
Quite how it was that the inscription of my name would bring this about was unclear, but temporarily my anxiety was allayed. Towards the end of the afternoon Miss Dobbey came over to where I was tidying the class library. “Was the Bible important?” she asked.
“It belonged to my grandmother.”
Miss Dobbey shook her head. “I don't suppose you took it home and forgot about it.”
“No,” I said. My eyes filled with tears.
When I arrived home I told my mother what had happened. “Oh, dear.” She shrugged. “Never mind. I'm sure your father wouldn't have given you anything valuable to take to school.”
“Will you tell him?”
“I think you ought to,” she said.
By the time my father came home I thought that I would rather be hung, drawn, and quartered than wait another second. I told him as he was taking off his coat. “Damn,” he said. “Can't you be trusted with anything?”
I rushed upstairs to my room and threw myself sobbing onto the bed. The awful anger in my father's voice made me feel as if I had been cast out into some desolate place, a great plain where I must wander in endless solitude. I would never again go downstairs, I thought.
Even now, when I could understand that my father had
been merely irritated, I felt the pain of that moment. I stood up to poke the fire and put on more coal. It was a quarter to ten. Stephen was going out for an end-of-term drink with Deirdre, and I did not know when he would be home. I turned on the television. There was a programme about whales. The narrator described how the huge mammals nursed their young for over a year. The screen showed a family of humpback whales, mother, father, and child swimming in unison through the blue-grey water. Safe between its enormous parents, the baby rolled from side to side.
A faint smell feathered my nostrils. I looked at the fire, wondering if there had been some rubbish among the coal, but there was no sign of foreign matter. I sat back, thinking that it must be coming from our neighbours. The narrator was discussing violations of the international laws protecting whales: charts appeared, detailing the decline in their population.
The smell was growing stronger, and I wondered if I could have left the oven on. I stood up, walked across the room, and opened the door. The hall was full of dark, churning smoke. Hastily I stepped forward, shutting the living room door behind me. There must be a fire, I thought. I was oddly unsurprised, as if this was what I had been expecting. The smoke seemed to be coming from beneath the closed door of Stephen's and my bedroom. I turned the door handle. There was something pressing against the door; perhaps a book or shoe lay on the floor. I pushed it open. Smoke poured out. Even before I stepped inside, I could feel the heat. The bed was ablaze from end to end, and as the draught came through the open door the flames surged.
For a moment I simply stood there, bathed in heat. There was a noise like a high wind in a forest, a large roaring full of smaller sounds: snappings and creakings. The fire emptied me of everything. I did not think that what I was witnessing was the destruction of my possessions.
Suddenly the paper lampshade on the light above the bed burst into flame. I came to my senses. I backed out of the room, shutting the door behind me to cut down on the draught.
For some reason the smoke was thicker in the hall than in the bedroom, and my eyes smarted so that I could scarcely see the phone. I dialled 999, and on the third ring a woman answered. In phlegmatic tones she asked for the necessary details. Never once did her voice break into urgency. She insisted on checking everything twice, and all the time she was talking I thought only that I must rescue Jenny.
As soon as I hung up, I opened the door of her room. I switched on the light, and rushed towards her bed. There was no one there. In fact it looked as if Jenny had never got into bed; the sheets were drawn tightly up to the top. Then I noticed a bare space on the wall. The poster of the boyish pop star that had been among Jenny's most treasured possessions was gone. I looked around the room, thinking stupidly that she could be there—at her desk, playing on the floor, curled up in a chair. But no, the room was empty, almost uninhabited. Was it possible she could somehow be in our room?
I ran back across the hall, pausing only to put on my winter coat, the thick material of which would offer some protection. I took a deep breath and flung open the bedroom door. Even in my brief absence the blaze had grown hugely. The heat was blinding, the fire a living, raging animal which could not be confined for long.
“Jenny, Jenny,” I shouted.
In the midst of all the other sounds I thought I heard a tiny sound, a whimper.
“Jenny,” I called again.
But nothing, only the ferocity of the flames, answered me. I began to edge along the wall. It was hot to the touch. I had to be quick. The open door increased the flames, but I was afraid to close it; I needed to know that I could escape. I held
my breath as I groped my way around the room. The farther I got from the door, the hotter it was and the more afraid I became that I would be trapped, or overcome by smoke. My hair crinkled. I kept my eyes on the floor but saw nothing. When I reached the far corner without finding her, I turned. The journey back around the room seemed infinitely long. My lungs felt as if a steel band were being slowly tightened around them.
Back in the hall I drew breath. I looked into the bathroom, then ran to the dining room, the kitchen. Nothing, no one. In the kitchen I wondered briefly about Tobias and then dismissed the thought. He could take care of himself.
As I ran back through the house I heard the noise of sirens. I burst out of the front door just as the fire engine drove up. A fireman climbed down from the back. I ran towards him. “There's a little girl. I can't find her,” I cried.
“Don't worry, miss. We'll have this out in no time.”
I turned back towards the house, and a figure stepped out from beside the front door. “Celia,” she said, “here I am.”
I enfolded her in my arms as if she were the only living being for miles around. She reached up and kissed my cheek.
“Stand back,” said one of the firemen, as he took a hose into the house. Jenny and I separated. The team of firemen ran in and out of the house, manhandling the hoses and other equipment, then they all disappeared inside. I turned to Jenny and was about to ask if she was all right, when her appearance stopped me. She was neatly dressed, with coat, gloves, and outdoor shoes. On the ground beside her were two large carrier bags. From one of them a white tube protruded.
I was staring at the poster when a voice behind me said, “Celia, you're safe?”
It was Irene. “Yes,” I said. “We both got out in time.”
“Thank goodness. What's on fire? From out here you couldn't tell that there was anything the matter.” Beneath her coat Irene was wearing pyjamas and slippers. At the sight of
her, I almost burst into tears. I explained that the fire had started in the bedroom and as far as I knew was confined to there.
“That's an odd place for a fire to start—usually it's the kitchen. Of course you'll come and stay the night with us.”
I thanked her, and she offered to take Jenny back to her house. Jenny, however, refused to leave. “I want to see what happens,” she said. “I want to be here when Daddy gets home.”
In a few minutes, the firemen had the blaze under control, and within a quarter of an hour it was totally extinguished. I stepped forward and, climbing over the hoses, made my way inside. The hall was severely blackened, but when I opened the living room door it was like another world. Save for the smell, there was no sign of the conflagration. The television was still on; in the grate the fire still glowed. Jenny's room too was unmarked. I was approaching the bedroom, when the fireman whom I had first accosted came out.

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