Mister Pip

Mister Pip

By Lloyd Jones

What I am about to tell results, I think, from our ignorance of the outside world. My mum knew only what the last minister had told her in sermons and conversations. She knew her times tables and the names of some distant capitals. She has heard that man had been to the moon but was inclined not to believe such stories. She did not like boastfulness. She liked even less the thought that she might have been caught out, or made a fool of. She had never left Bougainville. On my eighth birthday I remember thinking to ask her how old she was. She quickly turned her face away from me, and for the fist time in my life I realized I had embarrassed her.

Her comeback was a question of her own. “How old do you think I am?”

When I was eleven, my father flew off on a mining plane. Before that, though, he was invited to sit in a classroom and watch films on pouring tea: the milk went in the cup first – though when you prepared your bowl of cornflakes the milk went in after. My mum says she and my father argued like roosters over that last one.

Sometimes when I saw her sad I knew she would be thinking back to that argument. She would look up from whatever she was doing to say, “Perhaps I should have shut up. I was too strong. What do you think, girl?” This was on of the few times she was seriously interested in my opinion and, like the question concerning her age, I always knew what to say to cheer her up.

My father was shown other films. He saw cars, trucks, planes. He saw motorways and became excited. But then there was a demonstration of a pedestrian crossing. You had to wait for a boy in a white coat to raise his sign with “stick up!”

My father got scratchy. There were too many roads with hard edges and these kids in white coats had the power to control traffic with their stop signs. Now they argued again. My mum said it was bi different here. You couldn't just walk where you liked. There was a clip over the ear if you strayed. “Cause, she said, it was as the Good Book says. You might know about heaven but it didn't mean you had entry as of right.

For a while we treasured a postcard my father sent from Townsville. His is what he had to say: Up to the moment the plane entered the clouds he looked down and saw where we lived for the very first time, From out sea the view is of a series of mountain peaks. From the air he was amazed to see our island book no bigger than a cow pat. But my mum didn't care about that stuff. All my mum wanted to know was if where he had gone to there were pay packets.

Affection. Illustration by Elena.