When the laughter died down it was quiet. No carriages passed. Jem stood awkwardly with Maggie by the balustrade. Though she had clearly been hurt earlier in the Abbey, she did not show it now. He was tempted to say something, but didn’t want to ruin the fragile truce that seemed to have been established between them.
“I can show you some magic,” Maggie said suddenly.
“What?”
“Go in there.” She pointed to one of the stone alcoves that stood above the piers all along the bridge. The recess was semicircular and about seven feet high, designed so that passersby might shelter there out of the rain. A lamp was attached to the top of the alcove, and shone down around the recess, making it dark inside. To please Maggie, Jem stepped inside the dark space and turned to face her.
“No, stand with your back to me, with your face right up to the stone,” Maggie ordered.
Jem obeyed, feeling foolish and vulnerable with his back to the world and his nose close to the cold stone. It was damp in the recess, and smelled of urine and sex.
He wondered whether Maggie was tricking him. Perhaps she had gone to get one of the whores and thrust her on him in the alcove where he wouldn’t be able to get away. He was about to turn around and accuse her when he heard her seductive voice in his ear: “Guess where I’m talkin’ from.”
Jem whirled around. Maggie wasn’t there. He stepped out of the alcove and searched around it, wondering if he had imagined the voice. Then she stepped out of the darkness of the alcove opposite his, on the other side of the road. “Go back in!” she called.
Jem stepped into the alcove again and turned to the wall, thoroughly confused. How could she have whispered in his ear and then run across the road so fast? He waited for her to do it again, thinking he would catch her at it this time. A carriage passed by. When it was quiet he again heard in his ear, “Hallo, Jem. Say summat nice to me.”
Jem turned around again, but she wasn’t there. He hesitated, then turned back to the wall.
“C’mon, Jem, an’t you going to say nothing?” Her voice whispered around the stone.
“Can you hear me?” Jem asked.
“Yes! In’t it amazing? I can hear you and you can hear me!”
Jem turned around and looked across at the other alcove. Maggie shifted slightly and he caught a flash of the white shawl over her shoulders.
“How’d you do that?” he said, but there was no answer. “Maggie?” When she still didn’t answer, Jem turned to face the wall. “Can you hear me?”
“I can now. You have to face the wall, you know. It don’t work otherwise.”
Two carriages passed and drowned out the rest of what she said.
“But how can it be?” Jem asked.
“Dunno. It just works. One of the whores told me about it. The best is if you sing.”
“Sing?”
“Go on, then-sing us a song.”
Jem thought, and after a moment he began:
The violet and the primrose too
Beneath a sheltering thorny bough
In bright and lively colors blow
And cast sweet fragrance round.
Where beds of thyme in clusters lay
The heathrose opens its eyes in May
And cowslips too, their sweets display
Upon the heathy ground.
His voice was still high, though it would break before too long. Maggie, her face turned toward her own curved wall, was glad to be alone and in the dark so that she could listen to Jem’s singing without feeling obliged to smirk. Instead she could smile, listening to his simple song and clear voice.
When he was done they were both silent. Another carriage passed. Maggie could have made a clever remark-teased him about singing about flowers, or accused him of missing the Piddle Valley. With others around, it would be expected of her. But they were alone, cupped in their standing stones, sheltered from the world on the bridge yet connected by the sounds bouncing back and forth, twisting into a cord that bound them together.
So she did not make a smart comment, but sang back her response:
What though I be a country clown,
For all the fuss you make,
One need not be born in town
To know what two and two make.
Then don’t ye be so proud, d’ye see,
It weren’t a thing that’s suiting;
Can one than its opposite better be,
When both are on a footing?
She heard Jem chuckle. “I ne’er said the country were better’n the city,” he said. “Dunno as they be opposites exactly, either.”
“Course they are.”
“Dunno,” Jem repeated. “There be lanes in Lambeth where you find the same flowers as in the Piddle Valley-cowslip and celandine and buttercups. But then I’ve ne’er understood opposites anyway.”
“Simple.” Maggie’s voice floated around him. “It’s the thing exactly different from t’other. So the opposite of a room pitch black is a room lit bright.”
“But you still have the room. That stays the same in both.”
“Don’t think of the room, then. Just think of black and white. Now, if you’re not wet, you’re what?”
“Dry,” Jem said after a moment.
“That’s it. If you’re not a boy, you’re a-”
“Girl. I-”
“If you’re not good you’re-”
“Bad. I know, but-”
“And you won’t go to Heaven but to-”
“Hell. Stop! I know all that. I just think-” A coach rumbled past, drowning out his words. “It’s hard to talk about it like this,” Jem said when it was quieter.
“What, on opposite sides of the road?” Maggie’s laughter rang around Jem’s stone chamber. “Come over to me, then.”
Jem darted across the road as Maggie came out of her alcove. “There,” she said. “Now we’re a boy and a girl on the same side of the road.”
Jem frowned. “But that’s not opposite us,” he said, waving at where he’d just come from. “That’s just t’other side. It don’t mean it’s different. This side of the road, that side of the road-they both be part of the road.”
“Well now, my boy, they are what make the road the road,” said one of two dark figures walking toward them from the Westminster side of the river. As they came into the pool of light, Jem recognized Mr. Blake’s broad forehead and wide eyes that penetrated even in the darkness.
“Hallo, Mr. Blake, Mrs. Blake,” Maggie said.
“Hallo, my dear,” Mrs. Blake replied. Catherine Blake was a little shorter than her husband, with a similar stocky build. She had small, deep-set eyes, a broad nose, and wide, ruddy cheeks. The old bonnet she wore had a misshapen rim, as if someone had sat on it while it was wet with rain. She was smiling patiently; she looked tired, as if she were indulging her husband with a walk out at night rather than going because she wanted to herself. Jem had seen that look on other faces-usually women’s, sometimes without the smile, waiting while their men drank at the pub, or talked to other men in the road about the price of seed.
“You see,” Mr. Blake continued without even saying hello, for he was concentrated on making his point. “This side-the light side-and that side-the dark side-”
“There, that’s an opposite,” Maggie interrupted. “That’s what Jem and me were talkin’ about, weren’t we, Jem?”
Mr. Blake’s face lit up. “Ah, contraries. What were you saying about them, my girl?”
“Well, Jem don’t understand ’em, and I was tryin’ to explain-”
“I do understand them!” Jem interrupted. “Of course bad’s the opposite of good, and girl the opposite of boy. But-” He stopped. It felt strange talking to an adult about such thoughts. He would never have such a conversation with his parents, or on the street in Piddletrenthide, or in the pub. There the talk was about whether there would be frost that night or who was next traveling to Dorchester or which field of barley was ready for harvest. Something had happened to him since coming to London.