stage looks to Porgy, the cripple. He looks to Bess, who shrugs, then nods.
Porgy nods too. He opens his door wider.
the history of history
My mother was sitting on the top stair with her arm round the neck of the dog, whose front paws were up on her knees. She was reading a Georgette Heyer book. There was no tea on. There was no sign of anything to do with tea in the kitchen. My father would be home in an hour.
I stood at the foot of the stairs for a while. The dog looked down at me, wagged her tail. My mother turned a page and yawned. I slung my schoolbag strap round the knob of the banister, opened the bag, took my books and pencil case out and went through to the living room. I had homework for tomorrow. Write a newspaper report of the death of Mary Queen of Scots. Translate pages 31 – 33 of La Symphonie Pastoral by André Gide. I hated La Symphonie Pastorale.
It was a load of sentimental rubbish about a blind girl. I called my father at his work from the living room phone. I lifted the receiver carefully so the hall phone wouldn’t make the little ting that would give away that someone was on the other phone.
You’ll need to bring chips, I said.
I can hear you, my mother called down the stairs. If you’re telling him to bring chips, tell him I want a haddock.
She wants a haddock, I said.
Couldn’t you put something in the oven? my father said. We’ve had chips three times this week.
Actually I can’t put something in the oven because there’s nothing in the house, I said over by the door, loud enough for her to hear me.
There’s people in the house, not nothing, my mother called down. And there’s a dog. That’s not nothing, people and a dog.
I can’t hear you, I said to my father. She’s shouting stuff.
I hung up and went back to the table and wrote up what we’d taken notes on in double history.
A hush came over the crowd as the doomed queen was led to the place of execution. She was dressed in black satin and velvet and she undressed, saying, ‘I have never put off my clothes before in front of such a company.’ Underneath her clothes she was wearing red underclothes, and her handmaidens then put long red sleeves on her arms and pinned them to her underclothes. She smiled and prayed and said goodbye to those who had served her all her life. There was much crying in the room. Her handmaidens fastened a white cloth across her eyes and she stumbled forward to lay her head on the block. In fact she also put her hands on the block, but luckily someone noticed at the last minute or these would also have been cut off as well as her head. Then the executioner tried to cut her head off, but the first time he missed and only cut her head a bit open. The execution was properly executed the second time and when the executioner held her head up it fell out of his hands and all that was left in his hands was a wig, and the beautiful queen was revealed to everybody as an old lady with very short grey hair. Legend has it that her lips were still moving many minutes after her head was cut off and that her little dog, which was of the breed of Skye Terrier, hid in among her skirts and then curled itself round the place between her shoulders where her head had been, and then it later died as well, of sorrow.
It was only a first draft. The idea was that we were meant to make it as much like a real newspaper report as possible. I went through it again and decided what was important and what wasn’t, if it was for a newspaper, and gave it suitable headings and columns.
VERY FASHIONABLE
The doomed queen was led to the place of execution. A hush came over the crowd when it saw her. She was dressed very fashionably in black satin and velvet. Many ladies nodded at her fashion taste.
EMBARRASSING
The crowd held its breath while she took off nearly all her clothes. All the people there could nearly see what she would look like with no clothes on. It was embarras-sing. She was wearing bright red underwear. Goodbye! she said to everyone. She smiled a queenly smile. The