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  ‘I want to whisper, Pa,’ I said, clutching his head. ‘I can’t dance, Pa,’ I hissed into his large ear. ‘I don’t know how, not really.’

  ‘Well, do us a turn then! All these gentlemen want to see you perform. Go on, and I’m sure one of them will give you a penny.’

  ‘Go on! Go on, go on, go on!’ they chorused, though the barmaid tried to hush them.

  ‘Leave the little maid alone!’ She turned to me. ‘I should run off home to your mother, dearie.’

  But I couldn’t run with Pa holding me fast, and I was scared of returning with an empty tankard. Mary-Martha would be cross with me. She might hit me over the head – and if she happened to be wearing her sewing thimble, this hurt a great deal.

  So I stayed. I started to sing them a song, because there wasn’t much else I could do standing so precariously in a pool of beer, but Pa wrinkled his nose as soon as I’d lisped the first line of Praise My Soul, the King of Heaven.

  ‘No, we want none of that holy stuff. This isn’t a preaching house!’ he said. ‘Sing another song!’

  I didn’t know any songs that weren’t holy. Ma was the only one who sang in our house. I couldn’t sing, I couldn’t dance, so I did the only trick I could think of. I arched my back and lowered myself right over until my hands touched the ground and I was bent over backwards like a crab. Then I took the weight on my hands and stood upside down, hoping the ends of my long hair wouldn’t dangle in the spilled beer.

  There was an astonished silence. I hoped they weren’t too shocked. I’d tried to tuck my skirts between my knees so I wouldn’t show off my drawers. I started trembling, scared that Pa would think I was being immodest. Ma had always shouted at me when she caught me doing handstands. Mary-Martha had been very prim with me too, though Matthew, Mark and Luke had always egged me on and begged me to teach them how to do it.

  I didn’t know how to teach them. No one had taught me. I was just born like that. As soon as I’d learned to stagger about on my feet when I was one, I was forever rolling and tumbling. In a couple of years I could stand steady on my hands for a minute or more.

  Nowadays I could stand on my hands just as easily as on my feet, but when one of the men saw me trembling, he cried, ‘Set her the right way up, for pity’s sake, or she’ll tumble. Look, she’s shaking! She’s about to fall!’

  Pa seized hold of me and whisked me upright again. The men were all staring at me, jaws gaping. Then they started clapping and cheering with gusto.

  Pa poked me. ‘Give them a bow then!’

  So I bowed, and bobbed them a curtsy for good measure. This made them laugh and clap more. Even the barmaid clapped and told me I was a little wonder.

  ‘She should be a circus girl with a talent like that!’ she said.

  She really did say it, Hetty. And I was such a silly fool that I took it as a great compliment. I turned cartwheels around the room, till Pa grew impatient and the men went back to their beer.

  ‘Settle down now, Baby. No more pretty little turns. That’s enough now,’ he told me.

  But he still didn’t let me go. He held me tight while another hour or two ticked by. I had not learned to tell the time properly, but I watched the large grandfather clock in the alehouse with alarm even so, knowing it was getting later and later.

  Pa was watching it too, all the while drinking steadily. He’d long run out of money for his own beer, but the men in the alehouse treated him to wet the new baby’s head.

  ‘Will it be here yet, do you think?’ Pa asked me, ridiculously, because how would I know? ‘And your ma – she will be all right, won’t she?’

  ‘Yes, Pa,’ I said, because I was too small and foolish to know otherwise. I wasn’t really bothering about poor Ma, though I certainly hoped she’d stopped groaning. I was more worried about the witchy midwife, deprived of her pint of ale – and Mary-Martha and that thimble.

  ‘You’d think one of those pesky boys would have come running to tell me the good news,’ said Pa. ‘Useless lummocks, the lot of them. Beats me why your ma was so desperate to have another.’

  Here was something I was sure I understood. ‘She wants to have a John to have her full set of Holy Gospels, Pa,’ I said brightly.

  ‘Oh, don’t you start that madness too. Why my Lizzie had to get all holy in the head is still a puzzle to me, especially when I think of where she came from and what she was a-doing of then,’ said Pa.

  I didn’t know what he was talking about – I still don’t – but I stroked Pa’s coarse shirtsleeve in silent sympathy. When I saw the tears gathering in his eyes and rolling down his ruddy cheeks, I tried to dab them away with my sleeve.

  I was bewildered by his quick changes of mood and uncertain how to cope. I was feeling miserable too: worried about the situation at home – and, if I’m honest, even more concerned about my white kid shoes, which were clearly ruined now. I was close to weeping myself.

  ‘Look at the pair of you!’ said the barmaid. ‘Why don’t you take the little lass home, Samuel?’

  ‘Because I’m a-feared,’ he wept. ‘I’m not sure the baby will be borned yet.’

  ‘Well, there’s only one way to find out,’ she said. ‘Away with you!’

  So we shambled out of the alehouse, Pa swaying, clinging to me. He was tall and I was particularly small, so he staggered, bent over, all the way home. He fell twice, and I had to take a tumble with him, getting my pinafore covered in mud, which made me even more anxious about my reception at home.

  But when we turned the corner of our lane, we saw Matthew, Mark and Luke sitting on the wall outside our house kicking their heels, and Mary-Martha standing there too, with a white woollen bundle in her arms.

  ‘Oh, Pa! It’s all right! The baby’s here!’ I cried, and I started tugging him along.

  The white parcel contained a tiny baby bawling its head off. Its face was an extraordinary shade of tomato and I thought it very ugly.

  ‘Is it . . . John?’ I asked breathlessly.

  Mary-Martha nodded.

  ‘Oh, thank goodness!’ I said. But Mary-Martha was as white as the infant’s shawl, and my three big brothers all looked as if they’d just had a whipping.

  ‘How’s your ma?’ Pa asked.

  They looked at each other fearfully. Pa gave an extraordinary howl and blundered into the house. I followed him, terrified. I could hear him upstairs, groaning and crying. But Ma wasn’t making a sound.

  MA WAS DEAD. Somehow I felt it was all my fault. If I’d hurried back home with a full tankard of ale, then the midwife might have felt so refreshed she’d have figured out a way of saving Ma instead of letting her bleed to death. It was my fault for behaving like a little circus monkey when my poor ma was sinking fast. It was my fault because I hadn’t been brave enough to hold Ma’s hand and help her, like Mary-Martha. It was my fault because I’d been such a disappointing baby that Ma had been desperate to have another child. Oh, it was my fault, my fault, my fault.

  You’re very kind to tell me otherwise, Hetty, but whatever the truth is, I still felt dreadfully to blame. I’m afraid Pa blamed me too.

  I did not quite understand at first. I was kept busy running errands and helping Mary-Martha tend the new baby. He cried a great deal of the time, as if he were missing Ma too. A neighbour woman with a new babe of her own offered him a few feeds during the daytime and showed Mary-Martha how to give him a drink out of a bottle, but he was ailing and fretful in spite of all our efforts.

  Pa borrowed money for the funeral, sending Ma off in style and kitting us all out in black, even giving the newborn baby a black shawl and a little black bonnet for his head. The baby cried all through the ceremony, and I cried too, wishing I could climb inside the hard wooden coffin and beg Ma’s forgiveness. Mary-Martha didn’t cry tears but her nose went very red and she frowned excessively. Matthew and Mark blubbed a little in an awkward, furtive way, knuckling their eyes and wiping their noses with their fists, but Luke cried more decorously, tears rolling gently down his pal