‘Try not to run with the mob, Matthew. Make your own decisions, your own choices. And read. Education is power. Read history. It’s the only rehearsal we have for living. And novels so you understand people. In great novels you will find all the people you have known. They act out the stories of their lives and it is also our story. If we do not understand the past or people we can make dreadful mistakes—like this war.’
Margaret had returned to the kitchen. Dejectedly she stacked Victor’s plates in their separate cupboard.
‘What airy-fairy notions you put into Matthew’s head. Education is power! A dreamer’s fantasy, Mother. To be free to make choices Matthew needs money and social position. And how are we to give him those?’
Confused, Matthew looked from one to the other. ‘Gran,’ he asked, ‘Mother wants me to go with her today. Should I?’
‘Of course you should!’ Margaret snapped. ‘I’m your mother and sometimes, just sometimes, I’m entitled to choose what I think is right for you. You’ll enjoy it. Lots of bands and marching music. The city decorated. We’ll go to Rundles. They have an upstairs balcony and we can drink lemonade spiders while we watch.’ She hustled him around, finding him a clean shirt, trousers and jacket, helping him polish his shoes. Gran went on with her chores silently. Occasionally Matthew glanced at her.
‘Mother,’ he said anxiously. ‘Mother, all the men whose names are in the paper in the black, black print are dead. Gran says that if we go to the March Past today, in a few weeks all those soldiers will be dead, too.’
‘For heaven’s sake, Matthew! What nonsense! Our going to the March Past won’t make the slightest difference to what happens to them. We’re just going to enjoy the celebration. If they get killed it will be a long way from here.’
‘“But that was in another country”,’ Sarah quoted sadly.
‘I don’t think I want to go.’ Despite his mother’s reassurances Matthew felt a guilty apprehension about those names. They sank under the weight of the print like heavy stones sank into soft earth. The soft earth which slid over coffins lowered into holes in the ground. Matthew felt his breath stick in his throat and shake in his chest.
‘Do I have to go, Mother?’
‘Yes, you do. Sometimes I want a say in what I do with my own child.’ And she glared angrily at Gran who suddenly, to Matthew, looked littler and paler.
‘Gran, are you all right?’ he said as he ran to her.
‘Yes, darling, of course. I’m tired today, that’s all. Your mother’s right. You go with her.’
‘But you said …’
‘Yes, I said. And your mother said. We both say too much. Just go with her. Have your lemonade spider.’
‘But the men in black print who will die?’
‘Too big a burden for you, darling. I was wrong. You can’t make choices you are not ready for. Now run along. It’s time I had one of my private days with your grandfather.’
‘Your key to the shades.’
‘If I can find it today. I’m afraid the shades are becoming so numerous that your grandfather will think he’s back on earth again.’
‘Then he won’t be lonely, Gran.’
‘No. I don’t think he’s lonely, darling.’ And she kissed him.
Mother hummed a little tune as she held Matthew’s hand and strode along the footpath to the tram stop. The cable tram was festooned with three-cornered coloured flags and a Union Jack fluttered at either end. The tram could not cross the barricaded Main Street so Margaret and Matthew walked again, through the thickening crowd. Margaret was a tall woman and her hat and head bobbed and dipped to her stride on a level with the hundreds of other heads and hats, but Matthew could see nothing except the white or pastel blouses of women and the grey, black or brown woollen fronts of the men. Women’s bodies smelt sweet and light; men’s bodies smelt thick and hot and dense. Sometimes bodies were so close that his nose rubbed against the suffocating texture of suits.
When he looked down he saw shoes, skirts, trousers. When he looked up he saw a nose, a piece of hat brim, the jut of a chin, the plane of a cheek, a beard. He clutched his mother’s hand and followed her, even when she became locked in a group of people moving ahead like articles on a conveyor belt. He felt his arm pulled to its full length as she disappeared and wondered how far it would stretch without toppling him off balance. Corseted by encircling bodies his lungs shrank and he breathed in gasps so agonisingly compressed that he thought he would suffocate. Isolated from his mother by yet another group of people he panicked and using his head butted his way through the crowd in front of him.
‘Easy does it.’
‘Go easy, son.’
Voices from above reproved him but he continued butting, pushing, wriggling, eeling until once again he was able to walk beside his mother. Oblivious to his difficulties she admonished him to keep up, not to loiter or get lost. He caught fragments of music muted by the bodies around him. Once when the crowd parted he was ejected into an open space where the sun felt suddenly and brilliantly hot and a roll of drums and a blare of trumpets so assaulted his ears that his hands rushed to cover them. A band was swinging past and the sun blazed from a shock of brass trumpets all held at right angles to marching faces. The music, harsh and domineering, ricocheted around the street bouncing off the front of buildings in hideous after sounds.
People cheered and men threw their hats into the air. In front of Matthew the bass drum whoomed, boomed, whoomed, boomed. This was not Mr Werther’s music or Mr Schubert’s or
