Slowly grew inside him a powerful feeling that sometimes threatened to come hot out ofhis mouth in insults and accusations, while he smiled and was pleasant and compliant. It's not fair, it's not right, why do you have so much and you take it all for granted. It was that which ached in him, hurt, stung: they had no idea at all of their good fortune. And when he came home with Colin to the big house that seemed to him must be a palace (so he thought at first), it was crammed with beautiful things, and he found himself sitting in silence while they all joked and teased.
He watched the older brother, Andrew, and his tenderness to the girl who had been sick, and in his mind he was in her place, sitting there between Frances and Andrew, both so kind to her, so gentle. After that first visit it was the same as when he first heard about the scholarship. He couldn't cope with it, he was not up to it, half the time he didn't even know what things were for a bit of kitchen equipment, or furniture. But he did go back and back, and found himself being treated like a son in that house. Johnny was a difficulty, at first. Franklin had been exposed to Johnny's doctrines, his kind of talk, before, and he had resolved he did not want to have anything to do with these politics, that frightened him. Politicos had exhorted him to kill all the whites, but his experience of good had been through the white priests at the mission even though they were stern, and through an unknown white protector, and now these kindly people at the new school and in this house. And yet he burned, he ached, he suffered: it was envy and it was poisoning him. I want. I want it. I want. I want...
He knew that most of what he thought he could not say. The thoughts that crammed his head were dangerous and could not be allowed out. And with Rose they were not let out either. Neither Rose nor Franklin ever let the other into the lurid poisonous scenes in their minds. But they liked to be with each other.
It took him a long time to sort out what people were to each other, their relationships, and if they were related. It was not surprising to him that so many sat around that table to eat, though he had to go back for a comparison, to his village, where he was familiar with people being made welcome, expecting to be fed, given a place to sleep. In his father's and mother's little house at the mission, not much more than a meagre room and a kitchen, there was no room for the kind of casual hospitality of the village. When Franklin stayed with his grandparents for the school holidays, around the great log that smouldered all night in the middle of the hut, people lay wrapped in blankets to sleep whom he had not known before and might never see again: distant relatives passing through. Or relations down on their luck came for refuge. Yet this kindly warmth went with a poverty that he was ashamed of and worse could no longer understand. When he went back home after all this, would he be able to bear it? he thought, seeing Rose's clothes heaped on her bed, seeing what the children at school had: there was no end to what they possessed, what they expected to have. And he had a few carefully guarded clothes, which had cost his parents so much to buy for him.
And then, the books upstairs. At the mission were a Bible and prayer books and The Pilgrim's Progress, which he read over and over again. He had read newspapers weeks old that he found stacked for lining shelves or drawers in the mission pantry. He treasured an Arthur Mee Children's Encyclopaedia that he had found thrown on to a rubbish heap discarded by a white family. Now he felt as if dreams that had been with him since childhood had come to life in those walls of books in the sitting-room. He took down this book, turned over the pages, and the precious thing pulsed in his hands. He sneaked books down to his room, hoping Rose would not see, for she had shocked him with, 'They only pretend to read those books, you know. It's all just a sham. '
But he laughed, because she wanted him to: she was his friend. He told her that he thought of her as his sister: he missed his sisters.
Christmas was going to be a real one this year because Colin and Andrew would both be home. Sophie's mother had told her she didn't want to spoil her fun, and she herself would go to her sister's. She was more cheerful, no longer cried all day and night, and was taking a course in Grief Counselling.
Since Johnny was home between trips, Phyllida presumably would be looked after, and Andrew would not have to.
When Frances said there would be Christmas, a spirit offrivol-ity at once appeared in faces, eyes, and in jokes mocking the festival, though these last had to be subdued because of Franklin's joy. He felt he could not wait for the time to pass till the day of feasting, which he read about in every newspaper, saw heralded on television, and was filling the shops with bright colours. He was secretly unhappy because there would be present-giving, and he had so little money. Frances had seen that his jacket was of thin cloth, that he had no warm jersey, and gave him money to fit himself out, as a Christmas present. He kept the money in a drawer, and would sit on his bed, turning it over and over like a sitting hen on its eggs. That this sum of money was in his hands, his hands, was part of the miracle Christmas seemed to him. But Rose opened his door to check on him, saw him leaning over the drawer with the money, pounced, and counted it. 'Where did you steal this?'