The Invisible Wall Read online

  But the sacrifice was nothing at all to her. She was tremulous with excitement now as she put it on me. It was a Lord Fauntleroy suit, with short pants and a jacket, complete with a large white lace collar.

  “Oh, you look beautiful, so beautiful,” she exclaimed, standing a little distance away from me, and viewing her handiwork with hands clasped under her chin, her eyes shining.

  But I was scarcely interested in the suit. “Can I put me clogs on now?” I pleaded.

  “Yes.”

  She was ready at last, and now it was I who was trembling as she went to the cupboard, took out the white box stored there, and brought out the clogs. She let me touch them first before she fitted them onto my feet, smiling a little as she saw me fondle them. Perhaps there was a touch of regret in her smile. How she had resisted until the very last, hoping still there would be enough money for shoes. But her new shop, resurrected from that terrible first day, had disappointed her, bringing in enough for clogs, but not for shoes.

  But they were better than nothing, because my old shoes, Mr.Hamer had told her, were falling off my feet, fit for nothing but throwing in the midden. My mother had agreed with him.

  Still, I think, my happiness made up for a great deal in her mind, and her smile also contained a little of my feelings. “You’ll just have to walk very quiet and respectful when you go in the school,” she said, as she put the clogs onto my feet, kneeling in front of me on the floor. “If you don’t draw attention to your clogs, maybe the headmaster won’t notice them.”

  I wasn’t listening. I was fairly quivering with impatience to try out the clogs. As soon as she had snapped the buckles on tight, I sprang off the chair and began to stamp about like a young colt, but the real test would come when we were outside. Again I chafed while my mother got herself ready. She had put on her own best clothes, had brushed her coat carefully before putting it on, and finally had donned the hat with the feather. She also took an umbrella in case it rained.

  As soon as we got outside I began scraping my feet against the pavement. Nothing happened, and I broke free from my mother’s hand and ran out into the street and tried it against the cobbles. This time sparks shot up, and I screamed, “Look, Mam, look!”

  “Yes, I see,” she said, smiling, “but we’ve got to go, and I don’t want you to wear your clogs out before you get there.”

  We went up the street, but our progress was slowed by my trying to raise sparks every few feet. Then there were further delays as women came to their doors, curious about my outfit, and my mother had to explain to them what it was about. At the top of the street we crossed over to the other side. Mrs. Turnbull was just bringing her husband outside, and seating him in his chair. She turned at the sight of us, and exclaimed, “Well, look at him! A regular bloody little toff! And where’s he going all dressed up like that? To the King’s ball?”

  “No, I’m taking him to school, the one up the park,” my mother said.

  “St. Peter’s isn’t good enough for him,” Mrs. Turnbull said. “I can’t say it surprises me, though. He’s been acting like a rich gentleman’s son all summer long, buying sweets nearly every day.”

  “Has he?” said my mother.

  “Been in and out, in and out, nearly every day, bothering the life out of me, tapping on that glass counter with his penny. Hasn’t given me a minute’s rest. It’ll be a good thing for him to be off at school. Wish I could do the same thing with me ’usband. Between those two I’m a wreck. Well, at least I’ll be done with one of ’em.”

  “I’m sorry about ’arry bothering you,” my mother said. “Maybe he won’t now that he’s going to be at school all day.”

  “We can only live in ’ope,” said Mrs. Turnbull.

  My mother pulled me by the hand and we went on. After we had gone a distance, she said, “Does Sarah send you every day for ginger beer?”

  “Yis,” I said.

  “And do you always spend your penny on sweets in Mrs. Turnbull’s shop?”

  I nodded.

  “I think it’s time you stopped buying so many sweets,” she said. “Perhaps you should start saving up your pennies for something you need, like shoes. If I’d had just a few more pennies I could have bought you shoes.”

  “I like clogs,” I said.

  “Well, it isn’t good to eat so many sweets,” she said. “And I don’t think it’s good for Sarah to be drinking so much ginger beer. I’ll have to talk to her mother about it.”

  We didn’t say any more about it, and I was glad, because for some reason the subject always made me feel uncomfortable. There was still something secretive about it when Sarah sent me on the errand, and if Florrie was in the shop she always gave me a glowering look. Mrs. Green, too, started muttering when I passed her house going to or from the grocery.

  We began to climb the steep hill that ran alongside the park. In the winter it was used as a toboggan run during the few times that it snowed. In the summer courting couples holding hands made their way up the hill to the entrance of the park. The trees, I recall, had just begun to turn yellow and red, and some of the leaves had already fallen off and had filtered through the iron rail fence onto the ground. When we reached the top of the hill, we paused, both of us out of breath. We turned to look back. There was a view of the whole town beneath us, the streets slanting downward to the mills and the river behind them, the rows of houses staggered one below the other, with slate roofs shining from the damp, and curls of smoke coming out of the short, stubby chimneys. A yellowish pall hung over the scene, and the tall, slender stacks of the mills were half buried in its density.

  I tried to make out our street and our house, but they were all so much alike it was impossible to do so. At last, rested, we continued on our way. The ground had flattened out and it was easier walking. Soon we had entered into a new world. There were no more rows of houses, but individual ones with little fenced-in gardens around them, and each one different from the other. I looked at them in awe, as did my mother.

  “Someday,” she said, “we’ll have a home like these. Would you like that?”

  “Oh, yis,” I said. “When will we have one?”

  “Soon, I hope. Very soon if the shop is a success.”

  She still believed in her shop, despite the fact that she was struggling with it. That day her hopes were high. A slight drizzle had begun, and she opened the umbrella, and we both walked under it, briskly. Once again I became conscious of my clogs and exulted in the sound they made as the iron rims on the soles struck the paving. I would look back at the sparks that shot up from them occasionally, and laugh with joy, and sometimes my mother would laugh with me, and her hand holding mine would squeeze tightly.

  “There it is,” she said, suddenly. “There’s your school.”

  It was a redbrick building with a rhododendron garden in front, and a large play yard at the side, with goal posts. We both became silent, and a little frightened too, I think. The entrance door was big and wide and imposing, with large black hinges, and an arch over it. It must have been very heavy, because my mother had some difficulty pulling it open, and then we stepped into a wide hall with a shiny wood floor.

  My mother had been here once before, and knew where to go. The headmaster’s office was at the very end of this hall. Classrooms were on either side of us, and through the glass panes in the doors we could see children seated at their desks, and teachers standing up in front of blackboards. Except for the faint murmur of voices that came through the doors, it was very quiet. As soon as we began to walk down this hall, though, the quiet was shattered by the clumping of my clogs. My mother had forgotten her own warning, and quickly put a finger to her lips. But it was too late. The faces of teachers stared at us through the glass of the classroom doors. Then suddenly a door at the end of the hall flew open, and out burst a short, potbellied man with a shiny bald head. The head was bent down slightly, and he came charging toward us like a mad bull.

  “What’s this?” he shouted, as he came clo
ser to us. “What’s all this noise about? Clogs?” His eyes had caught my feet. They lifted with fury in them. “Clogs in my school, scratching my floors? Never! Out with you. Out, this minute!”

  My mother was terrified. She stood there trembling. “But you promised,” she said. “You promised you would take him if he was nicely dressed. Look at him. Look how nicely dressed he is.”

  “I’m looking, madame, and all I see is clogs. I don’t care if he’s wearing the mantle of a prince. Clogs aren’t permitted in this school. Never! I take a few Hebrews, but never once have I taken one with clogs. It costs me far too much to have my floors polished to have some young Hebrew scratch them up with clogs. So out you go. Come, madame, don’t waste any more of my time.”

  He literally pushed us toward the door, using both hands, and out we went into the rain. It was coming down quite heavily now, but my mother forgot to put up the umbrella. She was walking swiftly, and hardly even seemed aware of my presence beside her. I trotted to keep up with her, and looked up anxiously at her face. I wasn’t too sure I knew what had happened in there, but I knew my mother had been badly hurt, and I saw the signs of it on her face. I could tell she was struggling to keep the tears back. She was looking straight ahead, and her lips were tightly compressed, and the rain fell on the brim of her hat with a little drumming sound, and some of it struck her eyes, and mine too.

  SO I WENT TO ST. PETER’S, after all, and the neighbors agreed it was perhaps best for me, and there was no use trying to keep up with the swanks up the park. My mother said nothing. She packed my velvet suit away, and put my ordinary clothes on me, and got me up in the morning with all the others and struggled to get us dressed and breakfasted, and stood in the doorway watching us go.

  She would be there waiting for us too, when we came home. She was forever filled with anxiety over us, and perhaps there was good reason for it. My brothers had often come home with bloody noses and black eyes and clothes torn. The trip itself was dangerous. You never could tell when one of the ragamuffins who went to St. Peter’s might turn on you.

  We clung close together, with Lily always urging us to go faster. She was in a permanent hurry to get to school, and she was far less afraid of the batesemas than we were. The first morning I went, she held my hand, on orders of my mother, and kept pulling me along at a fast pace. We were all forced to keep up with her.

  There were other children from our street trailing behind, and then we noticed Arthur Forshaw striding ahead of us with his books under his arm. At the sight of him, Lily increased her pace still more, and my two brothers complained. Rose sneered, “She’s trying to catch up with Arthur Forshaw because she’s in love with him.”

  Lily halted and whirled on her furiously. “You keep your big mouth shut,” she said.

  “She is,” said Rose, ignoring her and continuing to address Joe and Saul. “She’s always talking about him.”

  Lily lifted a hand to smack her, then changed her mind and walked on, but noticeably lessening her speed. Arthur, with his long stride, was soon far ahead of us. He disappeared from sight altogether when we reached the Devil’s Steps, climbing up them, and then, I suppose, on to Wellington Road and up that street about a mile to the grammar school.

  We walked on, past Mersey Square, and up the hill where the cab stand was. Here you had to be careful. I was instructed to walk close to the wall, as far away from the cabbies as possible. Although they seemed oblivious to your presence, and sat high on their perches looking innocently ahead and swinging their whips idly to and fro, they would sometimes manage to catch you with a little flick of the whip on the tip of your ear, and it would sting for hours afterward.

  We went past them without any mishap that morning, and passed the soot-blackened statue of St. Peter set in the middle of the busy roadway called St. Petersgate. A short distance ahead was St. Peter’s Church and the vicarage, and next to it the school, a low, redbrick building. The boy’s play yard was in front, and it swarmed with children and echoed with their screams and the shouts of their voices.

  Both Joe and Saul paled as we approached the gate that led into the yard, and held back a little. I would soon understand why. In the meantime, Lily led me into the school to be registered by the headmaster. His office was simply a high desk in a corner of the standard seven classroom. He sat there now, long and thin, with an enormous pair of red ears that I discovered later he could wiggle freely back and forth. He was busy writing in a ledger book, but he paused to look down at me as we came up to the desk.

  “So this is another one of the Woodenlegs,” he said.

  For some reason he always called our family the Woodenlegs. We never knew why, but it seemed to be used affectionately. “Yes, sir,” said Lily.

  “And he’s the last one of the lot?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “The best or the worst?”

  “I don’t know, sir. I suppose you’ll soon find that out for yourself.” She was smiling. She was not afraid of him. In fact, she was his favorite, and she liked him too, and had often spoken of him at home.

  “I suppose I will.” He was smiling a bit himself. Yes, he liked her, and had made her his ink monitor, the highest honor anyone could achieve at the school. He was also tutoring her for the scholarship exam. But his attention was concentrated on me at the moment. A severe look came over his long, thin face as he looked down at me. A frown appeared on his forehead. “You just behave yourself, and you’ll be all right,” he said. “Because if you don’t, you know what’ll happen, don’t you?”

  I nodded.

  “What?”

  I stared stupidly up at him. I didn’t know the answer.

  “This,” he said, and he opened a drawer in his desk and took out a stick. It was a thick one. “Hold out your hand,” he said.

  I hesitated. I’d heard of canings. Tears began to come to my eyes.

  “Go on, ’arry,” said Lily. “Don’t be afraid.”

  I hesitated a little longer, then fearfully half-raised it with my palm upward. The stick swished in the air, and I could almost feel it as it came down, expertly missing the tips of my fingers by a fraction of an inch.

  “I missed you that time,” said the headmaster. “But I won’t the next. So you just behave.”

  Lily was smiling. She hadn’t been deceived by the act, one he practiced on all new pupils. She gave him the information about me that he needed to write in his ledger, then was about to lead me back into the yard when he stopped her.

  “Lily,” he said, “I’ve got a paper here that I was going to give you later, but you can take it now. It’s the permit for the scholarship exam you’ll be taking soon. You’ve got to have your father sign it.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Lily, taking it from him, and I noticed a strange look on her face as she did so.

  “Be sure you get him to sign it as soon as possible. Otherwise you won’t be able to take the exam. Remember that.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Lily.

  She took me back into the yard, searched for Joe and Saul, and left me with them. They were standing with their backs against the wall that separated the vicarage from the school yard, trying to keep out of the way of the ragamuffins, some of them in bare feet, racing madly about the yard at various games or fighting or chasing one another. I pressed against the wall with them, and began to feel fear too. What we did not notice was the gang of boys balancing on the parapet of the wall a short distance away, and approaching us with grins on their faces. Suddenly, a heavy weight fell on my shoulders and I was knocked to the ground. Simultaneously, I heard yells from Saul and Joe. All three of us were on the ground being pummeled.

  It was a whistle that saved us. They sprang off quickly at the sound and disappeared into the crowd as the three of us got to our feet and dusted ourselves off, more frightened and bewildered than hurt.

  Our rescuer was Cocky Rawlings, the standard five teacher. Only you didn’t call him Cocky to his face. It was a nickname given him by the school be
cause of his choleric temper and fierce manner. He was a rather short, stocky man with a dark complexion, dark curly hair, and rimless glasses that flashed threatening looks in every direction. He carried a stick in one hand, a whistle in the other, and as soon as he came out into the yard and blew the whistle, there was quick obedience from everyone.

  The screaming, the shouting, the mad racing about ceased. The yard grew strangely quiet. Everyone lined up in rows, each with his own class. I was told where to stand among the youngest of the boys, the little ones like myself who were in the “baby” class. Cocky stood, jaws tight, one hand clenching the stick, the rimless glasses fixed upon us, daring anyone to utter a sound.

  Then, in a military command voice, he barked, “Forward march!”

  We marched like soldiers, bodies held erect, knees lifted, and woe to anyone who put the wrong foot forward. One by one the lines entered the building, winding their way through the cloakroom, where those who possessed hats and coats could hang them up. We then moved into the school proper and to our respective classrooms. The girls joined us from the back part of the building.

  In the morning, the folding partitions that separated the different classrooms were pushed back so that the school became all one large room. We were not allowed to sit yet. We remained standing. Facing us was the headmaster, tall, thin, and grim-faced. He too held his stick in one hand. Behind him, at the piano, sat a pale, blonde young woman, the standard six teacher, Miss Penn.

  When the last of us had marched in, the headmaster allowed a full minute to pass, during which complete silence reigned. Then, in a voice that was clearly audible throughout the school, he spoke. “Everyone will rise.”

  This might have been puzzling to some of us since we were already on our feet, and those of us in the “baby” class hesitated until we heard a rustling sound sweep through the room and saw everyone mounting the low benches on which we sat at the desks. We followed suit, and in that moment, as all of us rose to full view, all the sadness of the Lancashire poor was revealed in the rows of thin bodies, the pinched, half-starved faces, the tattered clothing, the bare, dirt-blackened feet, the sores and scabs on knees and legs. How clearly and horribly all this showed, and no wonder they sometimes called St. Peter’s the Ragged School.