Inside Outside

The Punishment

The days followed each other, always shorter, darker, full of rain and rags of cloud. In the fields, the sheep and cattle stood shivering inside their wet, matted coats. Even the wild geese, having migrated all the way from Siberia to winter down by the village loch, sat huddled in sullen defeat.

Sometimes, when no one was about, I’d go and pay them a visit. I always had a few bits of old bread in my pockets as an alibi. I liked that word, alibi. Some of my friends at school had started using it, I don’t know why, perhaps because of what they’d seen on TV. Not many people owned TVs in those days. We certainly didn’t. ‘Better a warm belly in a warm house than one of those empty boxes,’ my mother used to say, tugging open the stove door extra wide to throw in more coal.

The geese were resting. There were dozens of them, plump, round, silvery shapes whose gabbles were muffled by sleep and feathers. It was easy to sneak up on them. ‘Boo! Boo! Boo!’ I shrieked and stamped my feet, my arms windmilling me almost off balance. I laughed as they squawked, stiff-necked, then launched themselves at the loch with a clatter, churning the water into a hundred little whirlpools. Some had lifted into the sky, honking, their wings shredding the day’s gloom for one brief moment.

Afterwards I picked up some of the feathers they’d shed in fright; they were soft, almost warm, with a pearly greyness that shimmered in my hands. I put them into my skirt pocket. Then I brought out the crusts of bread and scattered them on the ground. My alibi.

Our house was long and narrow, built in one smooth curve to follow the main street as it sloped from the manse down to the pub and up again towards the school. At the back door I took off my shoes. I still felt bored; the chasing and yelling hadn’t helped. It was the middle of another grey Saturday afternoon. My best friend was ill with the chicken pox, my little sister was at a birthday party, and my older sister had gone into town with some other girls, no doubt to Woolworth’s for cheap make-up. Before she found my company ‘too silly’, we would sometimes dab clothes starch on our faces and redden our lips with beetroot, then sit on the sofa wearing our Sunday clothes and shoes, pretending to be ladies, expensively dressed, powdered and lipsticked, travelling on a train.

‘A train to bloody nowhere,’ I said out loud, without meaning to.

My mother looked up from the kitchen table where she was chopping vegetables for a stew. ‘Don’t swear, Cathy, I keep telling you.’ Her voice had an edge to it and I knew in a flash that my father must have gone to the pub again.

‘Where’s Dad?’ I asked innocently.

‘He had to do something,’ she said vaguely, glancing away. Then her knife hacked into a turnip, decapitating it. That was another word I liked, decapitate.

The radio was on in the background and a woman was saying: ‘Christmas decorations don’t have to cost the earth, you know. Get a can of silver spray, some sprigs of spruce and holly, dried flowers, cones and florist’s wire, and a generous supply of foil-wrapped sweeties - little red chocolate hearts are a winner with children -’

‘I’m starving.’

My mother smiled, ‘Go ahead, then. There’s a loaf in the cupboard and some raspberry jam.’

We always had to make a choice. Either butter or jam, the luxury of both was unthinkable. Except for my father.

As I ate my slice of bread, which I’d thickly smeared with jam while my mother’s back was turned, I wriggled my toes in time to the accordeon music that had replaced the radio lady’s voice. They stuck damply to my woollen stockings, and I wondered whether I shouldn’t have hidden my shoes instead of leaving them in plain view, clotted with wet, down-speckled earth. At the thought of this, my left hand crept into my skirt pocket to feel the feathers I’d gathered, and I imagined them gleaming in the dark.

‘I know what you could do,’ my mother said once I’d cleared away my plate. ‘Why don’t you light the fire in the sitting room and have a wee read, nice and cosy.’ She smiled over at me encouragingly. I shrugged and stared at the coals in the stove. They were a glaring yellow that made my eyes hurt. The stupid feathers weren’t enough. Not even their secret gleamings. Then suddenly I heard her add: ‘If you promise to be careful, Cathy, you can have a look at your father’s Bible.’

‘I promise,’ I said quickly and went off, feeling a little better.

My father had two Bibles, but I knew immediately which one my mother meant. Not the unwieldy heirloom with the stained and creaking calfskin and the flyleaf full of names, verses and dates like an ancient tombstone. No, this one fitted into my hands neatly. It was bound in delicately tooled, red morocco leather that had a musky, exotic smell, and its pages were the colour of ivory and as smooth as silk.

To me this small red Bible represented everything I secretly, and hopelessly, aspired to: sophistication, beauty, femininity. Here was a whole cluster of my most treasured words: femininity sounding all soft and contented, sophistication with its hint of sharpness underneath the finery, and aspiration as a key to both.

On the flyleaf it said in my grandmother’s elegant handwriting: ‘To our son Thomas on his twenty-first birthday. May God be with you always. Your loving parents.’ I envied my father. How could a man like him, a man who spent his days among broken-down machinery and his evenings wrecking himself with drink, possess something so perfect?

The fire in the sitting room was already laid, ready to be lit at a moment’s notice. I watched for a while as the flames tore into the kindling and balls of newspaper, then attacked the logs. It was time to sacrifice the feathers. The Bible had cancelled out my need for them. One by one they flared up, raining tiny sparks, before curling in on themselves with a stench like burning hair. Afterwards I settled in the armchair by the fire and began stroking and sniffing the red leather, flicking my tongue over one corner experimentally (it tasted sour), fingering the pages, and dreaming of cedar wood, milk and honey, of cream made into mountains of sweet butter, loaves and fish that multiplied to feed thousands, and water turned to wine.

For the past week I’d been pestering my parents to let me take the red Bible to Sunday School. To show it to the world or at least to my friends. Only the once, I’ll look after it, I swear - cross my heart and hope to die, please, please, please. Now, sitting with it on my lap, drowsy from the heat, I felt there was nothing I wanted more. Tomorrow was Sunday. If necessary, I would beg my parents on my knees.

Our Sunday School teacher had a wart stuck between the lashes of her right eye, and her spittle flew far and wide. At one time, she forced some boys to sit in the front row so they would behave themselves, and they opened an umbrella. Her fury made her spit even worse and we all ducked behind our large Sunday School Bibles.

Today I was early, though, and the teacher nowhere in sight. ‘Abracadabra!’ I called out as soon as I’d stepped inside the church hall, and out shot my hand with the red Bible. But no one bothered to look. They were all standing crowded round the wrought-iron stove in the middle of the hall. Not for warmth. The boys were having another game of spits and betting. The drops would run round the flat, sizzling hot stove lid like mercury, and whoever’s spit lasted longest won the bet. Somehow, Sunday school meant spittings, one way or another.

‘Abracadabra!’ This time I shouted and several of them glanced towards me, then turned back to their game. For a moment I stood quite still, staring down at the words HOLY BIBLE tooled in the beautiful red leather. And suddenly I was moving forward. I couldn’t help it. I just kept moving. Pushed my way past two thin girls from a neighbouring village. Then slammed into Joe, one of the bad boys.

‘Hey,’ he said, jostling me, ‘clear off, Cathy, I’m warning you.’

I ignored him. Now I was right in front of the stove. I held the red Bible up high. The heat seemed to singe my face. ‘See this?’ I screamed, my voice breaking, but there was no choice now, no choice. I’d finally caught their attention. They were staring at me.

‘Watch!’ I half threw, half placed the Bible on the stove lid. The bottom side shrivelled up almost at once. And it stank. God, how it stank.

Ron, Joe’s younger brother, yelled, ‘It’s a Bible! It’s a Bible!’ The boys roared, whistled. The girls shrieked.

Then Joe’s arm sliced past me and seconds later he’d brushed the smouldering, blackened and blistered remains off the stove and on to the floor. It sounded like a slap and there was a hiss as the Bible hit a wet patch.

‘I’ll tell Miss Rutherford,’ one of the thin girls squeaked.

‘Oh no, you won’t,’ Joe and the other boys chorused. ‘No one’ll tell her. Or else

…’

I sensed that they were all looking at me. I couldn’t see them. They were blurry figures. That’s when I realised I was crying, hot tears that sprang off my cheeks and landed on the Bible at my feet.

My parents never said anything. Not a word. They never beat me. Nothing. I kept waiting for punishment. Hoping for it. At night in bed. In the morning on getting up. In the afternoon, returning from school. And every so often, when I least expected it, I would come across the object of my shame, lurking in a cupboard, a drawer, on a shelf. One side of it quite intact, still red and beautiful, with the words HOLY BIBLE perfectly legible, the other charred and ugly.

Regi Claire is Swiss. English is her fourth language. Her first collection of stories, Inside Outside, was shortlisted for the Saltire First Book Award. Her first novel, The Beauty Room, was longlisted for the Allen Lane, MIND Book of the Year Award. Forthcoming are another novel and a new book of stories. Regi has received bursaries from the Scottish and the Swiss Arts Councils, as well as from Thurgau Canton and the UBS Cultural Foundation.

Copyright Regi Claire 2005.