In a Good Light by Clare Chambers Page A

taken hostage and very nearly murdered.
    I don’t think Mother would have made a good chaplain. She wouldn’t give a man a pack of cards even if he was on Death Row: she’d have him knitting blankets for earthquake victims. She refused to go to our local church, saying that it was just a club for middle class people who liked singing hymns. Instead she had a very intense and personal relationship with God that didn’t require her attendance at acts of public worship. She was happy rattling collecting tins or knocking on doors for a good cause, but you wouldn’t get her within half a mile of the Young Wives or the Mothers’ Union. Not that they were exactly clamouring to have her.
    I remember one incident in particular. It was the year after the headlice and the departure of Cindy, so I would have been six. Christian had been dragooned into the church pantomime owing to a desperate shortage of males,and we went along to watch his performance as 1 st Footman in Cinderella. We were sitting near the back of the hall, and even perched on top of my folded coat I could only see the actors if they advanced to the very edge of the stage. Just before the interval I had begun to weary of my obscured view, and the elderly lady in front had twice turned round and asked me not to kick her in the back, so my parents allowed me to slip around to the back to see Christian. It was coming up to the big chorus number at the end of Act One, so most of the cast were on stage or in the wings. There was no one in the dressing room except the women who were helping with wardrobe and make-up. They were whisking between the rails of costumes, picking up discarded clothes and putting them back on hangers. Before I had a chance to make my presence known one of them held up a limp, grey rag.
    â€˜Look at Christian’s shirt!’ she said, holding it up, to display its many rends and missing buttons and dark tide-mark around the collar and cuffs. ‘Did you ever see anything like it?’ Her companions laughed and shook their heads.
    â€˜He must have had it on all week. Do you think she ever does the laundry?’ one of them said.
    â€˜Too busy worrying about the ragged urchins of Timbuktu to notice the ragged urchin under her own roof,’ the first woman replied.
    â€˜Such a nice boy,’ said the third woman, who had not so far contributed. ‘But, oh those shoes! It wouldn’t surprise me if they’d never been polished since the day he got them.’
    I didn’t hear any more on the subject, because at that moment there was a loud burst of applause from the auditorium and the three women looked up and flinched violently when they saw me.
    â€˜Esther!’ said the first to recover. ‘Why aren’t you watching the show?’
    â€˜I can’t see over people. I’m looking for Christian.’
    â€˜He’ll be out in a minute. It’s the interval now.’ One of them fetched me a drink of squash from the cast’s tray of refreshments, and they all said wasn’t I getting tall, and how nice my hair was looking now that it had grown back, until Christian came out and told me I wasn’t supposed to be backstage.
    â€˜Did you see my bit?’ he asked.
    â€˜No, but I heard it.’ I glanced down and noticed for the first time that his shoes were rather bald and tatty, and that mine were just the same. For the rest of the interval I kept my eyes fixed on people’s feet, counting the shiny shoes as they passed, until at last I saw a pair of scuffed and gaping pumps more disreputable even than ours, and I looked up with a belated jolt of recognition into Mother’s smiling face.

5
    ON SUNDAY EVENINGS mum and dad went down the lane to Mrs Tapley’s to watch the Classic Serial, leaving Christian and me alone in the house. We took this opportunity to stay up late and play Monopoly and pontoon, and other games regarded by Mother as liable to encourage