I am a Source of Worry to my Parents

'I don't know what to make of you, Peter. I really don't!' Mum shook her head.

'Leave the boy alone, Ma. He's all right.'

'But, really! Throwing up a good job at Moore's to go back to that funny little place. You liked it at Moore's, didn't you son?'

'Peter's got to decide for himself.'

'Not if he's going to go doing silly things like that.'

'It's not silly if it's what he wants to do. Don't you see that, Ma?'

'No I don't.'

I crept out of the room. I was sure that my parents would continue discussing me and my prospects whether I was there or not and I was seriously wishing that I hadn't made this trip home. They might go on for hours yet. I knew my brother Tom was about somewhere, so I tried his room. No sign of him there. Well, if he wasn't in his room there weren't many other places he could be, so I tried the most obvious one. Letting myself quietly out of the back door I followed the footpath down to the end of our road, turned right into Spooner's Lane and then left down the gravel track which led to the towpath.

'Hello, Peter.'

'Thought I'd find you here.' Tom and his mouse-daemon Tessie were sitting by the side of the canal; he with a fishing rod in his hand, looking into the water.

'Knew you'd come. Are they talking about you again?'

'Yes.'

'That's all they ever do. Peter this, Peter that, Oxford the other.' Tom shook his head, fair-haired like mine.

'Are they still calling you Peter instead of Tom?'

'Yes!' That was no surprise. Tom looked just the way I had when I was his age. 'It's not bloody fair!'

'What?'

'You know.'

'Look, Tom…'

'Oh, don't explain!' My brother glared at the end of his fishing line. 'I've had enough explanations and understanding already, if you don't mind!'

'Tom, listen…'

'Shut up!' I turned to leave. 'No… don't go.'

I wished he'd been born a girl. If he'd been my baby sister, I'd have hugged him and everything would have been all right. Instead, I sat next to him while he fished, catching nothing and lifting his rod out of the water when the boats passed, to avoid getting the line tangled up. I wondered idly if I would see the Maggie and the Jimmy puffing by, on their way to London or Rugby, Arthur Shire at the tiller of the lead boat and Harry taking care of the butty behind. I knew that was very unlikely.

Should I tell Tom what I had so nearly told my mother and father? No, in his present mood he would only get more upset. But it was buzzing around in my head. I had to tell someone, but I couldn't, so I'll have to tell you, Jim. You'd better bloody well keep it to yourself, though.

It was the morning after that awful day, nearly four weeks ago now, when I had pawned Lyra's alethiometer and settled our outstanding debts with the Middlewich Bank. Mistress James called me into the office and asked me to shut the door behind me. I stood there, feeling very awkward. Which Mistress James would I be talking to? Would she be the angry and desperate woman who had screamed at me in that same room only the day before, or the sad and tragic widow who had sought comfort in my bed?

'Peter, there's something you should see.' She was businesslike, yes, but she smiled briefly as she handed over an envelope, bound in black tape, to me.

'Go on, read it.'

I carefully removed the tape, opened the envelope and took out the document inside. It was a will – Master James' will, dated two years previously. That was about the time I'd left Oxford and gone to work in Brummagem.

'Mistress, why are you showing me this?'

'Read it. You'll see.' Mistress James sat down in her chair by the desk and crossed her arms, waiting. I took one of the wooden seats and began to read.

It was full of lawyer's talk – "whereas", and "reference the first party above" and "by gracious permission of his Majesty the King" (what had the King to do with it?) and there was no punctuation anywhere, but the meaning was clear enough. Everything that Master James owned was to pass to his wife, for her to dispose of as she saw fit. There was no mention of his brother, nor the Middlewich Bank. I am sure that, when he drew up the will, Master James had expected that the debt the firm owed to the bank would have been paid off in full. No doubt he also felt that his brother would have had no expectations of any kind from his estate.

I say; everything Master James owned, but I am only referring to material objects – pots and pans and armchairs. There was another clause; and as I read it I gasped. It was difficult to make out as someone had, at one time, attempted to erase the writing with a piece of caotchuc. It read:

All my interests in the business known as James and James Fine Clocks and Instruments and presently located in Shoe Lane Oxford I leave to my erstwhile apprentice Peter Carlton Joyce and Viola to take forward in trust as a going concern and to become solely his on the occasion of his attaining his Mastery in the Guild of Temporalists.

I looked up at Mistress James. 'Did you try to rub this out?'

She flushed a little and inclined her head.

'Why?' Don't you know why? said Viola.

'It should not have been you. There… there should have been a son. A son, to inherit the shop from his father, as he inherited it from his.'

I sat in silence. Things were starting to become much clearer to me.

'Instead – you came along. I could see it straight away, the way he looked at you.'

'I loved Master James very much.'

'I know.'

'He was like a father to me. A wonderful father.'

We were quiet for a minute or two. I read the will again. Then:

'Didn't you try to have more children? After Emily was born, I mean?'

'Yes. Yes, of course we did.'

'But without any luck.'

'No. No, we had no luck at all.' Mistress James put her head in her hands.

'I'm sorry. It's none of my business.' I slipped the document back into the envelope, re-tied the tape and handed it to Mistress James. I turned to leave, but as I opened the door she spoke again, so quietly that I had to strain to catch the words.

'We called him Charlie. Not Charles; that would have been too grand a name for someone so very small as him.'

I felt myself trembling on the edge of a precipice of revelation.

'He was so beautiful, my son. After he was born they put him in my arms and I held him close to my breast and I looked, and looked, and looked into his lovely violet eyes and waited for him to become known to us.'

Become known. Oh no. I was beginning to understand.

'His head was resting in my arm and his face was turned to mine and – I know everyone says it's not real, not a real smile – he was smiling at me. I know it. And I waited, and I waited…'

And.

'And she never came. His daemon… never came.'

'Mistress, there's no need to say any more. I understand.'

'You don't! You don't! You can't understand! You weren't there when the doctor and the priest came and took him away from me. You weren't there when my husband came into the room and stood next to the bed and I had to tell him that there was no baby, no son for him, no one at all for him, just a stupid girl that was no good to anybody.'

'Emily's not stupid.'

'She's a girl. She can't join the Guild.'

Mistress James paused. 'Do you know what they do with children who are born… like that?'

'No. They don't tell us.'

'They are burned. Put on the fire, and burned.'

'Not while they're still alive?'

'They are not alive. Not according to the Church. They are dead. Their sin must be cleansed by fire, you see.'

'Oh…'

I remembered. I remembered Lyra telling Miss Morley that she would have been born daemon-less in our world, she was so inhuman and cruel. She had died by fire too, either in the ruins of the Boreal offices in Cropredy, or Lyra's rooms in Jordan College. I remembered too, the day that Lyra told me that Mrs Coulter, who had stolen children from their families and taken them north to a place called Bolvangar and cut their daemons away from them, had been her mother. There had been a boy called Tony Makarios there, she'd said. Hadn't he been burned too? Didn't Lyra say? Had he been inhuman? Had Charlie?

'Bad blood, my husband called it. Meaning his brother, I suppose. Bad blood. He never… troubled me again after that. We slept in separate beds. We couldn't risk another thing like that happening.'

'Mistress…'

'It's all right. Go to your workshop, Peter. I'll be better presently.'

'Are you sure?'

'Yes, yes. Go on, now. There's work to do.'

I closed the door behind me and walked downstairs. Your workshop, she had called it. It wasn't Master James' workshop any more, but mine.

And there was work to do.

'Come on, Tom,' I said to my brother. 'Let's get back. I've got to leave for Oxford soon.' We walked home, to find Mum and Dad still arguing over my future, completely oblivious to my absence.