A Song of Sixpence Read Free Page A

miserable acolyte of the Scarlet Woman, burner of candles and incense, potential kisser of the big toe of St Peter. Not only so, my parents and I were the sole adherents of that reviled religion, and worse, the only ones ever to have established themseles in the staunchly, exclusively true-blue Protestant village of Ardencaple. We were as conspicuously out of place in that tight little community as would have been a family of Zulus. Equally, we were outcasts.
    Whatever the public attitude towards my father, which he delighted to provoke rather than to appease, I suffered nothing beyond that certain pitying or even sympathetic curiosity bestowed upon an oddity. Nevertheless, on this Monday morning when I faced the prospect of school, this had its part in lowering my morale. And when, after final admonitions from Mother, Maggie grasped my hand firmly and we set off up the road to the village, my mind was in a dither. A horse was being shoed in the smithy amidst an enticing fume of burnt hoof, yet I scarcely noticed it. The windows of the village store, against which I liked to press my nose, investigating the rich display of boiled sweets, peppermint oddfellows, slim jim and apple tarts, were passed unseen. It was a dolorous way, made more harrowing by Maggie’s low-toned recital of the fearful punishments exacted by the schoolmaster Mr. Rankin, whom she designated by the name of Pin.
    â€˜He’s a cripple,’ she kept deploring, with a shake of her head. ‘And a stickit minister. No more nor that! But he’s a terror with the tause.’
    Although we went slowly, only too soon did we reach the school.
    This was a smallish old red-brick building with an open yard of beaten, stony earth in front, and here, but for Maggie, I should certainly have run away. In this playground a mimic battle was being waged. Boys darted about, struggled, shouted, kicked and fought; girls, flailing with ropes, skipped and shrieked; caps were torn from heads and sent skimming through the air, tackety boots slid and scraped, sparking living fire from the stones, the din was ear-splitting. And suddenly noticing me, the biggest of the ‘bad’ boys let out a wild and ribald yell: ‘Look wha’s here. The wee Pope! ’
    This sudden elevation to the throne of the Vatican, far from sustaining me, produced in my innards a further apprehensive sinking. In a moment I should be surrounded by a crowd seeking to exact more from me than my apostolic blessing. But from this and other dangers, pressing through with her sharp elbows combatively extended, Maggie protected me until suddenly a clanging quelled the tumult, and the schoolmaster appeared, bell in hand, on the steps of the entrance.
    Undoubtedly this was Pin, his right leg deformed and sadly shorter than the other, supported by a twelve-inch peg fixed to a queer little boot by an iron stirrup, the lower end capped with rubber. Surprisingly, he did not strike me as alarming. He was, in fact, though given to sudden explosions and choleric rappings of his desk with his knuckles, a mild, prosy, defeated little man of about fifty with steel-rimmed spectacles and a short pointed beard, seen always in a shiny black bobtailed suit, a celluloid dickey and a tucked-in black tie, who in his youth had studied for the ministry but, by reason of his deformity and a tendency to stammer, had failed repeatedly in trial sermons and become in the end a melancholy example of that supreme Scottish failure, the ‘stickit minister’ turned dominie.
    However, it was not to him that I was delivered. Pushing away from the main turbulent stream, Maggie finally entrusted me to the assistant mistress in the lowest class, where with some twenty others, many younger that myself, I was given a slate and seated on one of the front benches. Already I felt better, since I had recognized our teacher—a warm-looking girl with soft brown eyes and an encouraging smile—as one of the two