The Peppered Moth Read Free

one cannot suppose that Freud and his contemporaries would have found this modest, undeveloped case of much interest—might have diagnosed a problem in the making. A withdrawal, perhaps a psychosis. Why was this child not out on the street with her playmates, throwing her bit of slate at the chalked hopscotch grid, or skipping, or winding through the branched arms of in-and-out-the-windows, or creeping up on her friends in a scary game of grandmother’s footsteps? Was she afraid she might always be It? For she was not very strong, nor very agile, though she was not clumsy. (Pelmanism, the memory game, is the only game at which she will excel.) Why did she choose this secondary cavelight, when out there on Slotton Road the sun shone bright, and at night the moon’s brightness glimmered through the smoky air? Other children played on the street. Why was Bessie sitting there intoning verses to a cotton bobbin instead of sitting by her mother’s knee and helping her with the peg rug? Did her parents abuse her? Did they neglect her? Was she jealous of her harmless little sister?
    No, her parents did not abuse her. And they were attentive, in their own ways. But their ways, one might now say, were not very good. Bessie Bawtry’s mother Ellen did not know how to play and did not understand children. She did not like children, as a class. Nobody had played with her when she was a child, for in those days childhood had hardly been invented, and now she did not play with her own children. She sometimes rocked the baby when she woke and cried, but Bessie was now, at the age of five, considered far too big to sit on her knee. Ellen never sang to her children, for once upon a time, or so it was said, her husband had mocked her—once, once only—for singing out of tune. And she had never attempted a lullaby since. She kept an apologetic, a vindictive silence, and never sang again.
    Dora, Bessie’s sister, was sleeping now, in a corner, in the Moses basket which she was fast outgrowing. Ellen Bawtry, born Ellen Cudworth, was happy with this, for Ellen liked her children to be quiet and good. She did not like Bessie to play on the street with the rough ones. She claimed that the street was dirty. And she was right. Anything beyond her own carefully whitened doorstep was dirty. Ellen, like her daughter Bessie, disliked dirt. They were at one on this. Ellen had always been at war with dirt. She lost, but she fought on. Bessie would not respect her for these battles, because she was to observe only the defeat, not the struggle. Therefore she was to despise her mother. That is the way it is with mothers and daughters.
    Dora, unlike Bessie, was a robust and placid baby. She was never much trouble. There was not
room in one family for two
delicate children. One was quite enough. Dora chose her destiny wisely.
    Mrs Bawtry, if asked, would have said that she loved her daughters. But she would not have expected the question, nor would she have liked it, and indeed in all her life it was never to be put to her. Emotions were not her forte. It was hard to say what her forte was. She is not even very good at pegging that peg rug. One cannot go far wrong with a peg rug made of coarse strips of old trousers and worn-out jackets, in shades of navy and grey and brown. One cannot go far right either. And she went wrong.
    Bert Bawtry—his christened name was George, but for some forgotten reason he was always addressed as Bert—had a talent or two. He was good with the electrics. This was just as well, for he was by trade an electrical engineer. He worked at Bednerby Main, but was on call in many local domestic crises, and achieved popularity by his ability to fix, for free, the power failures at the cinema down the road. He loved his motorbike and sidecar, and belonged to the Automobile Association Motorcycle Club. He also wrote in a good, clear copperplate script which would have put the illegible scribblings of his grandchildren to shame. And,