Welshed
By Laura Schiller
Based on: Bleak House/David Copperfield
Copyright: Charles Dickens' estate/BBC
Author's Note: This is a Bleak House fanfiction, but the character Mr. Creakle and his colleagues are borrowed from another Dickens novel, "David Copperfield", mostly because the practice of labeling reminded me so much of David's "beware of him, he bites". The Welsh Notes, unfortunately, are a genuine practice of 19th-century English schools; the moment I read about this in a Wikipedia article, I couldn't resist writing about it.
One autumn afternoon, Allan Woodcourt came home late from school with street dirt on his jacket, his hair standing up in all directions, and his left hand wrapped in a none-too-clean handkerchief. As soon as his mother saw him standing on the doorstep of their flat, he raised that hand in an apologetic shrug. She rolled her eyes.
"Iesu Mawr," she muttered. "Not again."
She pulled him inside, marched him into the kitchen, and used the kettle of hot water she had meant to make tea with in order to wet a towel. He sat patiently while she dusted off his jacket, smoothed his hair, and untied the handkerchief to clean the cut on his hand. Being used to the procedure, he barely flinched as the boiled water, followed by a splash of brandy, stung his palm.
"And who was it this time, then?" she asked him in accented English, in a voice much sharper than her touch. "The master or the other boys?"
"Both." Knowing she was not angry at him, Allan almost smiled at her fierce expression. "It was the Note," he added. "I was supposed to pass it on, but they couldn't make me."
Beneath the pain, there was a certain note of triumph in his voice. Sioned Woodcourt, who'd had to call herself Janet ever since their move to London, nodded back to her son in grim understanding.
The Welsh Notes were a new development, but simple enough to understand: whenever a student was caught speaking Welsh in school instead of the Queen's English, he or she was labeled with an accusatory wooden plaque, which they could then pass to the next child – and so on, until the one wearing the plaque at the end of the day was punished by the teacher. In theory, it was supposed to encourage Welsh children to acclimate to English culture. In practice, it became a lesson in bullying and backstabbing, and the weakest paid the price.
"I was only helping Bryn with his lesson," Allan burst out in rapid Welsh, furious all over again as he thought of the younger boy's tapping feet, his milk-white face with its dark freckles, his barely audible whisper across their shared desk.. "His family's fresh from Cardiff, he can barely order a hansom cab in English! How is he to learn if no one helps him? And I already had the Note, anyway. So when old Creakle asked what we were saying, I – I lied." Returning to English, "I know it's wrong to lie, Mother, but I couldn't welsh on Bryn, now could I? Not when I was only trying to help."
"Welsh on him?" his mother repeated, black eyes wide with disbelief.
"Let him take the beating for me," said Allan, looking down at his neatly re-bandaged hand. "That's what all the boys are calling it."
Sioned's own hands were beginning to tremble, now that she no longer needed them to work on the bandage. She locked her fingers tightly together in the folds of her skirt.
"I take it," she said, her accent clear and musical, as it only was during times of strong emotion, "That Mr. Creakle took his – enthusiasm – a little too far? Which would explain the bleeding, of course."
Allan nodded. "He broke his cane on me," he explained matter-of-factly. "And it splintered. Don't worry, Mother, it's not my writing hand. If I don't use it much, it should heal in a few days."
Bodies made sense, he thought; when they were hurt, they healed on their own, or if not, there was usually a way to fix them. It was the other kinds of pain that were harder to fix.
"It's not my hand that bothers me," he confessed, half-ashamed and half-relieved. "It's … They tripped me. Later, in the street. Two English boys, bigger than I am, and they laughed. Maybe if Bryn had been there … but he was too far ahead of me to notice, and so they laughed."
Sioned, sensing what he could not express, stroked his hair back from his face and kissed him on the forehead.
"You make me so proud," she told him, in Welsh. "Do you know that?"
"Do I?"
"Oh yes." She beamed and placed two fingers under his chin. "You showed honor and courage today, as befits a true son of the line of Morgan ap Kerrig. Do you know why those English boys tripped you? Because they envy you. You are better than they are, little Allan. Remember that."
His heart sank. Why did she have to be like this – so loving and kind one moment, and completely unreasonable the next?
"But Mother," he argued, "I can't be better than every Englishman, surely? Some of them are really kind, like … like Mr. Mell, for example."
Remembering the lanky young assistant teacher, his gentle explanations and his atrocious flute playing, made Allan smile again, a real smile, for the first time in hours. Sioned folded her arms and did not smile back.
"He tried to stop Creakle from having the … the Welsh Note made. He needs his wages terribly much to help his mother, Mr. Mell does, and he's always afraid of being given warning, but he spoke up anyway. Well, a little."
Are you certain that this method will do no harm, sir? had been Mr. Mell's exact words. Knowing these boys, you don't suppose they might – At that point, Creakle had interrupted with a wheeze and Tungay with a shout, leaving him overruled in every sense of the word.
Sioned's eyebrows rose in reluctant admiration, but then she shook her head.
"Be that as it may," she replied tersely, "However decent they can be as individuals, as a nation they have been oppressing us for centuries. Have I taught you nothing about our history? How long do you suppose any kindness can endure between the lion and the lamb?"
Allan sighed, and only the utmost depth of filial piety kept him from rolling his eyes as well.
"But people are people, Mother," he argued. "Not lions or lambs, no matter where they live or how they speak. Mr. Mell is kind, old Creakle is a brute, Bryn is all right but not especially brave, and I … I don't know what I am, but either way, all of us are different. Isn't that what Father used to say?"
Sioned took a deep, irritated breath, lifted up her plump hands for a gesture – then let them fall, putting on that too-bright smile. She always looked like that when she wanted to talk about something unimportant – dinner; his school; her latest complaints about the wealthy cousin who supplied the annuity they lived on; her beloved ancestors dating back to the great Morgan ap Kerrig – anything but the husband she had lost so long ago.
"Well!" she said briskly, snatching up the brandy bottle to put it away at the opposite end of the room. "I suppose you'll understand when you're older. Would you be a dear and put that towel away for me?"
"Yes, Mother," Allan replied.
"And in the meantime, please remind me to write a note to Mr. Creakle. No matter how cheap and convenient that place may be, you are not going back there. Over my dead body," she said this in the same bright, casual tone as before, "Will I send my son to any school that will try to steal his language."
And there she was again, the sweet, levelheaded, fiercely protective mother he knew and loved, speaking words that made sense to him once again. He stood on tiptoe in passing to kiss her on the cheek, making her giggle. After all, who knew how much longer this mood would last?