Between My Father and the King

Between My Father and the King by Janet Frame Page B

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Authors: Janet Frame
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to Joan, ‘Into the bedroom,’ and she obeyed, I marvelled that she obeyed until I remembered that it was Mrs Gull, not my father, she was obeying. Mrs Gull had said there was no way out, and Joan had accepted her word. My father locked the bedroom door.
    â€˜That will put an end to the nonsense about going to the dance,’ he said sternly.
    I listened. There was no sound from the room. Was the dance dress in the pear tree or under the mattress? Joan couldn’t get out of the window even if she wanted to, for it was stuck with paint and wouldn’t open.
    She was very proud! She didn’t bang on the door or kick or scream or shout or plead. I think my father expected her to, for he had a listening look on his face and he was frowning and his eyes looked as if he’d been sent all the bills in the world and couldn’t pay them. She’ll be crying, I thought, to herself. In the silence of the bedroom she seemed to have gone so far away, beyond the bedroom, beyond me and everyone. She seemed to have gone where no one could touch her. To a secret place. I wondered what she was thinking about. I was envious of her thoughts. Was she thinking of Emily Gull? Had Emily Gull given her a magic spellto use? I listened and listened. Outside, the night was stern and dark and the edges of the holly leaves were stiff and sharp as if no wind could ever again shake them this way or that; and the light from the window of the nextdoor house was shining through them, not wavering as light does, but hard and firm like bars of gold set across a window. I grew afraid. There was still no sound from the bedroom. To be locked in and to make no sign that you were locked in meant that you had gone away, though you were still there. I think my father was afraid too. He must have sensed that by locking the door to prevent Joan from going out to the dance he had set her free to go wherever she desired, and he could never again prevent her.
    It was a silent gloomy house that evening. At times I thought my father was about to open the door and call out,
    â€˜Go to the dance if you want to, and enjoy yourself into the bargain.’
    Into the bargain.
    I wondered what would happen if Joan died in the room. I guessed that she might be thinking this too. And then I had proof that she must have been thinking about dying for she began to sing softly one of Emily Gull’s favourite songs that both Mum and Dad had forbidden us to sing.
    And when I die (and when I die)
    Don’t bury me at all (don’t bury me at all)
    Just pickle my bones (just pickle my bones)
    in Alco Hall.
    I did not think I had heard such a sad song. To lie in Alco Hall when you were dead seemed to me the loneliest fate anyone could choose; and Joan had chosen it. She was grown-up and had chosen it for herself and she was singing about it and it didn’t matter that she had been locked in and was not allowed to go to thedance and wear her purple lacy dance dress. When she died she would not be laid in a grave as Grandma and Grandad and Aunty Molly had been, nor Uncle John who died of typhoid in the war. She was never going to be buried. She would stay, and her bones would stay in Alco Hall. I did not know where Alco Hall might be nor what it might look like and I thought perhaps it was a vast place in the sky with a soaring roof like a railway station and an icy wind blowing, and clouds white as flour and black and shining as silk drifting in and out below the roof. And Joan would be there; but not quite alone, for Emily Gull would be there too when she died; and there might be other people, too, in Alco Hall.
    That night when I got into bed beside Joan she was asleep and I could see by the marks on her face that she had been crying, and I looked under my pillow, feeling a bunch in it, and the purple lacy dance dress was there, all crumpled, and I knew she’d been wearing it all the time in the bedroom, and her shoes too, and that when she died

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