The Bright Side of My Condition by Charlotte Randall

Author:Charlotte Randall [Randall, Charlotte]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781742539584
Publisher: Penguin Random House New Zealand
Published: 2013-03-04T00:00:00+00:00

2

It’s true I were a unhappy sandboy, I weren’t jes objecting to what Fatty say. It were the job I have in London after I visit with Mary’s mother. I take the job so I can save and go to the convent. Yer can steal many things but yer can’t steal a sea journey unless yer become a stowaway. That weren’t a thing that ever enter my head until I meet the crooks I’m now joined to. Course I cud of stole a silver teapot and paid for my trip by selling it, but a great fear come upon me that I get catched and locked up in jail, never more to see my love before an absurd vow marry her to Christ.

So I join with them sandboys and spend my days bringing sand to the taverns and spreading it on the floor after raking away the dirty stuff I spread the day before. The sandboys were a rowdy bunch, always drunk as fiddlers’ bitches, they spend as fast as they earn, and soon I find they earn plenty. As for me I don’t do no drinking, I put my coins in a tin and count the days till I can book my passage. But it weren’t a pleasant job. It were cold as fuck on the beach, and the digging and hauling turn out very heavy work. Also there were that large disgusting part, the raking out of the filthy sand that them drinkers do everything in. It were studded with oyster shells and chicken bones and equal parts piss and vomit. The only way I cud keep doing it were to promise myself that after I rescue my girl I never have to work again.

Time pass in the hole while I remember my sandboy days. Lunch turn up. Toper bring it, proud of what he cook. I’m jes glad I have a break from Gargantua and his lectures about how to cope with a hole. It seem to me he don’t ever find one he can squeeze into so who’s he to give advice? After I et, Toper help me out for my toilet break but he aint got time to talk much. He say he have to collect the firewood as well as cook and clean, he say he’s sure trying to convince them other stubborn bastards I need freeing to do my job.

It’s a long afternoon in the hole. The cold and boredness turn me glum, and soon as the glumness come on, out come the face of Mary. She have a white sad face, the same one I seen on her when at last I find her in Paris. Of course I dint speak the French and have to employ a man to make enquiries at the convents. The Monsure I employ keep on coming back to me and saying no. No, she aint at them last five places I enquired at, no. Do French nuns lie? I ask him. At which he do appear very shocked and declare they do not.

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