The Link by Robin Maugham

Author:Robin Maugham [Maugham, Robin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Valancourt Books
Published: 2022-02-28T16:00:00+00:00

Part Five

I was born in a back street of Lambeth, across the river in South London, in March 1830. So I’m half a year younger than Jimmy – though I believe I look older. (How anyone can drink as much as Jimmy does and look so young, I don’t know.) My father was a butcher by trade, and my mother kept house for him and looked after me, when I was a kid. I was the only child. I don’t know much about my grandparents. My father’s people, the Ashbys, had been ship’s butchers and had then retired to Essex somewhere. My mother’s parents were both dead by the time I was born. They had run a pub at one time, and my mother had been a barmaid.

When I was twelve, I was taken away from school and made to work for my father in his butcher’s shop. I hated the work, and I loathed the stench of meat. But I had plenty of friends of my own age, so life wasn’t too bad.

When I was fourteen I had my first girl. She was sixteen years old, with long soft legs, I remember, and her skin seemed to burn me when I had her. Jennie, her name was, and at the time I was quite struck with her – even though I knew that at least three other boys in the street had been with her.

Though I went with Jennie quite often, I’d never given her a present, so I’d made up my mind to give her something really pretty for her seventeenth birthday. I’d seen a garnet brooch in the pawnbroker’s shop on the corner which I was sure she’d like. The trouble was it would cost seven shillings. (The old man had marked it at nine shillings, but from various talks with him I knew he’d go down to seven.) My father didn’t pay me a proper wage. He just gave me pocket-­money, and at the time I’d only got two shillings in the world. But I was determined to buy that brooch. So I tried to get an advance from my father. But it was useless, and I didn’t like to ask my mother because she was very touchy about money. My mother used to keep the house looking perfect. She always dressed well, and she always saw to it that I had good clothes to wear. But I knew she had to make a tremendous effort to pretend we were quite well off – when in fact my father’s business wasn’t doing well. People weren’t going to his shop, because they said the quality of the meat had gone off and that my father was always charging them too much to keep himself in booze. My mother now in secret had begun to take in old lace to mend in order to bring in some extra money. I knew the long hours tired her because at that time I’d begun to notice she wasn’t young any more.

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