Scenes From Provincial Life - J. M. Coetzee [19]
There is also the radio. He has outgrown Children’s Corner, but is faithful to the serials: Superman at 5.00 daily (‘Up! Up and away!’), Mandrake the Magician at 5.30. His favourite story is The Snow Goose by Paul Gallico, which the A Service broadcasts again and again, by popular request. It is the story of a wild goose that leads the boats back from the beaches of Dunkirk to Dover. He listens with tears in his eyes. He wants one day to be faithful as the snow goose is faithful.
They perform Treasure Island on the radio in a dramatized version, one half-hour episode a week. He has his own copy of Treasure Island; but he read it when he was too young, not understanding the business of the blind man and the black spot, unable to work out whether Long John Silver was good or bad. Now, after every episode on the radio, he has nightmares centring on Long John: about the crutch with which he kills people, about his treacherous, sentimental solicitude for Jim Hawkins. He wishes Squire Trelawney would kill Long John instead of letting him go: he is sure he will return one day with his cutthroat mutineers to take his revenge, just as he returns in his dreams.
The Swiss Family Robinson is much more comforting. He has a handsome copy of the book with colour plates. He particularly likes the picture of the ship in its cradle under the trees, the ship that the family has built with tools salvaged from the wreck, to take them back home with all their animals, like Noah’s Ark. It is a pleasure, like slipping into a warm bath, to leave Treasure Island behind and enter the world of the Swiss Family. In the Swiss Family there are no bad brothers, no murderous pirates; in their family everyone works happily together under the guidance of a wise, strong father (the pictures show him with a barrel chest and a long chestnut beard) who knows from the beginning what needs to be done to save them. The only thing that puzzles him is why, when they are so snug and happy on the island, they have to leave at all.
He owns a third book too, Scott of the Antarctic. Captain Scott is one of his unquestioned heroes: that is why the book was given to him. It has photographs, including one of Scott sitting and writing in the tent in which he later froze to death. He often looks at the photographs, but he does not get far with reading the book: it is boring, it is not a story. He only likes the bit about Titus Oates, the man with frostbite who, because he was holding up his companions, went out into the night, into the snow and ice, and perished quietly, without fuss. He hopes he can be like Titus Oates one day.
Once a year Boswell’s Circus comes to Worcester. Everyone in his class goes; for a week beforehand talk is about the circus and nothing else. Even the Coloured children go, after a fashion: they hang around outside the tent for hours, listening to the band, peering in through gaps in the canvas.
They plan to go on the Saturday afternoon, when his father is playing cricket. His mother makes it into an outing for the three of them. But at the ticket booth she hears with a shock the high Saturday afternoon prices: 2/6 for children, 5/-for adults. She does not have enough money with her. She buys tickets for him and his brother. ‘Go in, I’ll wait here,’ she says. He is unwilling, but she insists.
Inside, he is miserable, enjoys nothing; he suspects his brother feels the same way. When