He was a little man and he wore cycling stockings under his trousers. Every fine night he put on an old Norfolk tweed jacket and went out into the garden with the two ends of the waistband dangling behind him. He would bend down and make minute examinations of plants. He would twine sweet-pea tendrils round their sticks. Sometimes he would pounce upon a weed and remove it with cruel precision.... On Saturday afternoons he took a bucket and went into the roads to collect horse-manure. To Catherine Saturday afternoon was always signalized by the hard scraping of the kitchen shovel on the gritty surface of the roadway.
Mother was big and billowy. She kept her hair in papers during the mornings and wore stays whose ribbed outline showed through the back of her blouse. She talked more than father. At the Duke Street Methodist Chapel she appeared in the front row of the choir, whilst father took round the collection-plate. She was vaguely religious and vaguely patriotic and vaguely sentimental. When she said “John!” very slowly, father knew he had better be careful.
Catherine sat in the front pew on a Sunday morning, and wondered what it was all about. Why had mother got her hat on? ... Why did everybody come here once a week? What was the man in the round box talking about? Her mother had said, “About God, Cathie.” But he didn’t say God; he said Gahd. Sometimes Ch-artinevin was mentioned and Catherine caught the words with enthusiasm. It was plain that Ch-artinevin was a well-known personage.
The little boy next to her had curly hair. He was eating peppermints. During the prayer he kept taking them out of his mouth to see if they got smaller. Once he gave her one. It was very nice, but she cracked it during the benediction, and it was a loud crack.
Father stood at the door shaking hands with people. He said: “Good evening, Mrs. Lawson”—“Good evening, Ethel”—“Good evening, Miss Picksley, shall we be seeing you at the Band of Hope on Tuesday?”
And to Catherine he said:
“Go and wait in the back pew; there’s a Kermunion.”
A Kermunion, at any rate, was interesting....
§ 4
Father, being an elementary schoolteacher, did not send Catherine to an elementary school. She went to Albany House (principal, Miss Leary, L.R.C.P.). Miss Leary wore her hair in a knob and said to Catherine: “Darling, if you do that again I shall have to smack you hard.”