Giving up the Ghost by Hilary Mantel

Author:Hilary Mantel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: fiction
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2010-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Here are some things that Jack did not agree with: breakfast, sport and illness.

He himself went out of the house in the morning on just half a cup of tea, which, my mother said, he could barely stomach.

Weaker people—that is, me—were allowed tea and toast.

Sport was rubbish, except for professional wrestling, which he watched on TV. History was bunk. Illness was bunk. In the entire course of his school career, he had been ‘never absent, never late’. But now Mr Neverill had become stepfather to Miss Neverwell, which was unfortunate for both of them. Jack had forgotten his colic, the colic he’d had something chronic. I had almost loved him, so long ago when he had told my mother to let me stay home. It was a near thing, quite near to love; that momentary tenderness, when I was nine, my baby body pausing at the foot of the slope of womanhood. But now he said, when I came downstairs one Monday morning, my uniform tie skewed, my flesh grey and my teeth chattering, feel ill, do you? Easy for you to say! I also feel ill on a Monday morning! But I have to bloodywork, don’t I? Have to do it!

I sat down at the table. Surely my mother would see what ailed me? It was the war between men and women; she had to pick sides, and I could tell by her face that she wouldn’t be taking mine. It was already a weakness in my case that I was hanging about, that I was sitting down and no doubt wanting some toast; for Jack was perfect and so was his morning nausea, a spiritual quality I should try to emulate. Accordingly, she drew back in her chair and frowned at me, her eyes running up and down my body, and found fault with my appearance altogether, my lank hair which was without its ribbon and the run in my stocking that I had twisted to the inside to disguise it. Could it possibly be true, she said, that the school said I should wear stockings? Mm, I said, s’true; perhaps my hand fumbled for the copy of the rules I kept always in the bottom corner of my satchel, the folded paper creased and worn and dyed a pinkish-tan where the colour of the leather had bled into it. She didn’t think it could be true, she said while I rummaged around among my books. She couldn’t see Sister taking that line at all. Should I not, at my age, still be wearing the uniform woollen knee socks, for which she had paid so dear at the approved supplier when I was in Form I?

It was a humiliating question. The answer was no; I was, by the rules, now graduated out of knee socks. Once you’ve graduated you can’t go back to them, any more than you can reverse your age and undo puberty. The difficulty in my life was that stockings were a continuing, unforeseen expense. I had no income of my own.

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