Mister Pip (10 page)

I would have to wait for the right moment to ask my questions. I didn't want to appear dumb. The book's magic hold on me was no secret, and often Mr. Watts singled me out to discuss something to do with the story. So, rather than shatter that confidence in me, I kept my mouth shut.

For several days after the final reading of
Great Expectations
our class felt flat. There was nothing to look forward to anymore. The story was at an end. So was our journeying in that world. We were back to our own. Without any prospect of escape, our days lost their purpose. We waited for Mr. Watts to come up with something new to fill that hole in our lives.

His solution, no doubt spurred by the rows of glum faces, was to read
Great Expectations
a second time. Only this time we would share the task of reading it aloud. He thought it would be good for our English. Maybe. But nothing would change for our reading it a second time. The story was set. Pip would disappoint Joe Gargery, but Joe being Joe would find it in his heart to forgive. Pip would also chase after Estella—a rotten choice, but one he was committed to forever. Reading it a second or third or fourth time, as we did, would not change those events. Our only consolation was that by reading it a second and third time we would still have another country to flee to. And that would save our sanity.

We watched Mr. Watts walk to the desk and pick up his book. We waited to be chosen to begin the reading. As Mr. Watts turned around to face us, the book open at the graveyard scene, Daniel stuck up his hand.

“Yes, Daniel?” said Mr. Watts.

“What's it like to be white?”

Daniel immediately turned in his desk to look in my direction. Mr. Watts followed the trail, and chose to drop his gaze just short of my desk. So he knew where the question had come from. I knew he knew. Nevertheless he addressed his answer to Daniel.

“What is it like to be white? What is it like to be white on this island? A bit of what the last mammoth must have felt, I suppose. Lonely at times.”

Mammoth?
We had no idea what he meant. Even though Daniel's question was of great interest, we pretended we didn't care. We didn't want any part of that ambush, so we kept our follow-up questions to ourselves. Mr. Watts, though, had one of his own.

“What's it like to be black?”

He'd asked it of Daniel but now he looked at the whole class.

“Normal,” said Daniel, for all of us.

I thought Mr. Watts was about to laugh. Maybe he was about to, before changing his mind and dropping his face into
Great Expectations
.

“I see,” he said.

We got a better answer to Daniel's question a week later when the redskins came back to our village.

They arrived before dawn. Their helicopters put down way up the beach by the point and this side of the river. So we didn't have the same warning as last time. This time we were woken by voices and high whistles.

We had been waiting for this moment. Crazy as this may sound, we had willed it.

There are days when the humidity rises and rises and gets heavier and heavier until, at last, it bursts. The rain falls and you breathe again. That was how the tension of the past few weeks had felt. This is what happens, you wait and wait. Until you wish the redskins would just come so that the waiting can be over with.

It felt like something we had rehearsed, the way we came out of our houses. It was funny how we seemed to know what to do without being told or asked. The redskins had painted their faces black. We saw their eyes shift. There was no shouting. There was no need. Everyone knew what to do. The soldiers and us. We were already known to one another.

When the redskin in charge spoke we were glad to hear it was a pleasant voice; we were expecting him to shout at us. What he wanted was simple enough. He wanted the names of everyone in our village. He said it was for security reasons, and we mustn't be afraid. He asked for our cooperation. We should give our names and our ages. He never once raised his voice. What he asked for was a simple thing to comply with—our names were not dangerous in any way: they were not explosives, they did not contain hidden fishhooks.

Two soldiers walked along our line taking down our names. In one or two cases we took the pen from the soldier to write our name correctly. We smiled as we did so. We were happy to help, especially with the correct spelling. The names did not take long to collect.

Two sheets of paper were handed to the officer. We watched him look slowly down the list. He was after a particular name, perhaps one from our village who had joined the rebels.

When the officer finally looked up it was clear he wasn't interested in us kids. He was only interested in grown-up faces. He took an interest in each one. Whenever one of our parents dropped their eyes he counted this as a victory. When he'd finished with staring down the last one he announced that he had a question. He said it wasn't a hard question and that all of us would know the answer. He smiled to himself when he said this. He asked why there were no young men in the village. There were girls, so why not young men?

He folded his arms and looked hard at the ground, as if sharing a curious puzzle with us. I felt he knew the answer but that wasn't really the point of the exercise. He wanted
us
to tell him. We also understood that to tell him what he already knew would be an admission of wrongdoing. We were being pecked at—the way a seabird will turn over a morsel of crab with its beak. He had all the information at his fingertips. But it wasn't enough. He wanted more.

For the moment we were saved from giving an answer. A soldier came jogging in from the beach. He spoke with the officer. We were too far away to hear what was said, but we saw the effect of the news on the officer—the wince at the corner of his mouth, the way his hand slapped his thigh. We watched him walk with the soldier in the direction of the beach. In a few minutes he came striding back. His light taunting mood of earlier was gone.

He walked along our line staring into our faces. When he got to the end he came and stood in front of us, clenched his hands behind his back, and rocked on his feet.

“Who is Pip?” he asked.

No one answered.

“I asked for all your names,” he said. “You did not give me them all. Why?”

Those of us in Mr. Watts' class knew the answer. And my mum. But she had closed her eyes and ears. I thought she was praying. So she didn't see us kids catch one another's eye. Or the one beaming with the answer.

“Pip belongs to Mr. Dickens, sir,” Daniel blurted out.

The officer walked over to where Daniel stood. “Who is this
Mis
ter Dickens?” he sneered.

And Daniel, who looked so proud to be giving the answers, pointed in the direction of the schoolhouse. We all knew where he meant; it wasn't the schoolhouse but the old church mission buried out of view by the vegetation.

The officer said something in pidgin to a number of his men. As one they looked off to where Daniel had pointed. The officer hadn't forgotten him. He snapped his fingers for Daniel to leave the line. He jogged into position as he had seen the soldiers do. The officer gave him a queer look. I thought he might hit Daniel for being insolent. Instead he placed a hand on Daniel's shoulder and instructed him to go with the soldiers to fetch this Mr. Dickens.

We were used to Mr. Watts in his suit. We were used to his eyes that wanted to leave his face, and the lean skinny frame that his clothes hung off. We had forgotten the shock of white in our sweating green world. And this we experienced all over again when Mr. Watts and his wife were rounded up by the soldiers.

The officer stood with his back to us, and as the parade approached from the direction of the schoolhouse he folded his arms. Daniel led the way. He looked so proud. He marched, swinging his arms at his sides. Now I saw Mr. Watts through redskin eyes. I saw all those things we had grown used to fresh again. Mr. Watts towered over the soldiers. He blinked in the sun, even though the light was not that strong at this hour. But then I don't think his blinking had to do with the sunlight. I'd seen Mr. Watts do this whenever my mum said something directly insulting. On those occasions I thought he was fighting back hurt feelings.

I may have got that wrong, however, because when he arrived at the clearing I saw blinking was his way to avoid eye contact. He looked everywhere but at us, the people and faces he knew. If you wanted to be critical you might have said he looked like the important and self-regarding white men that my grandfather had become part of a human pyramid for; he looked like a man about to make a speech, who was simply waiting to be invited to step forward.

There were other, smaller changes too. It was a while since we had last seen him wear a tie. His left hand fidgeted with where it was tied around his throat. He had found a shirt that buttoned up. He wore shoes. He was dressed like someone going to catch a plane.

The redskin soldiers seemed to forget about us. They stared at Mr. Watts, isolating him with their stare. Once more we saw what a strange fish had washed up on our shore.

They must have seen whites before. In Moresby there are plenty of whites. In Lae and Rabaul too. For years, until the hostilities, the whites from Australia used to run and operate the mine. We used to see their helicopters and light planes. We saw their pleasure craft out to sea. And if I had been older at that time, then I would have noticed, as my mum did, that whenever our men returned from the white world they came back changed in some way.

The officer walked across to Mr. Watts. He positioned himself half a step closer than he needed to do and peered up at his face.

“You are Mister Dickens.”

Now, there was an obvious response available to Mr. Watts at this point. I expected him to clear up the confusion over Pip without fuss. Even Grace might have said something. But, as with my mum, she had closed her eyes, shut herself down to the point where she was physically present but otherwise not there.

Whatever Mr. Watts might have said changed the moment his eyes rested on Daniel, beaming, a step behind the officer. I think that's when he realized where the misunderstanding had come from, and a whole different set of circumstances resulted in Mr. Watts saying, “Yes, I am that man.”

That was a lie that any one of us kids could have put right, and I understood, we all must have, the tremendous trust he placed in us at that moment. Daniel was the only one unaware of what was at stake. Either he didn't understand or simply failed to hear Mr. Watts step lightly into the skin of the greatest English author of the nineteenth century.

Here also was my mum's chance to squash her enemy, but she said nothing. Her eyes remained closed. The adults who could have corrected the situation were afraid of being singled out. A distance had opened up between us and Mr. Watts, between his whiteness and our blackness, and none of us wanted to have to stand next to where Mr. Watts stood all alone.

“Where is Mister Pip?” asked the officer.

Another white might have laughed out loud, but Mr. Watts showed the question respect.

“Sir, if I may explain. Pip is a creation. He is a character in a book.”

The officer looked angry. The interrogation was drifting away from his control. He would have to ask what character, which book, and thereby reveal his ignorance. I could see those questions brewing in his face.

“I understand the confusion,” Mr. Watts said at last. “If you allow me to, sir, I can show you the book and you will see that Pip is a character out of
Great Expectations
.”

For the first time Mr. Watts looked to where the rest of us were. He singled me out. “Would you, Matilda? The book is on the desk.”

I didn't move until the officer gave a quick nod.

I thought he would pick a soldier to go with me but he didn't. One soldier, his weapon cradled in his arm, turned to watch me run to the schoolhouse. For the short distance I had to go I did not forget those bloodshot eyes or his gun. I knew what I had to do. I had to carry out the task as quickly and faithfully as possible.

I ran into the empty classroom and stopped.
Great Expectations
was not where Mr. Watts had said it was. I walked up the aisles. I looked over the desktops. I crouched down to see if it had fallen on the floor. I looked up at the ceiling. The family of pale geckos was stock-still from when my rushing feet entered the room. Their black eyes, which watched me on so many other occasions, were flat and blank. Those lizards would not help even if they knew where the book was.

Now I knew fear as Pip had known it when Magwitch threatened to tear his heart and liver out if he didn't return in the morning with food and a file. I felt singled out by this darkness that had descended over our lives. As I left the schoolhouse I saw all the village, the soldiers, the officer, and Mr. Watts looking in my direction. I ran past the soldier with the bloodshot eyes. I did not speak to the officer. I ran up to Mr. Watts. I almost made the mistake of addressing him as Mr. Watts.

“The book is not there, sir,” I said.

If ever there was a time for Mr. Watts to show his fear, this would have been it.

“Are you sure, Matilda?”

“It is not on the desk, sir.”

Mr. Watts looked mildly surprised. He gazed off into the nearby trees while he considered where the book might be.

The officer glowered at me.

“There is no book?”

“There is a book, sir. I cannot find it.”

“No. I have been lied to. There is no book.”

The officer shouted out an order to his men to search every house. Mr. Watts tried to say something but the redskin cut him short. He jabbed his finger at Mr. Watts' chest.

“No! You stay here. All of you stay here.”

He chose two soldiers to watch over us with their weapons, then joined his men in their search for Pip.

We watched them enter our houses. We heard them breaking up our things. They began to pull things out of our houses. Our sleeping mats. Our clothes. The few possessions we had. They put everything in a big heap. When they had done that the officer gave an order to the two men watching over us. They were to march us over to the pile.