Mister Pip Read Online Free Page A

Mister Pip
Book: Mister Pip Read Online Free
Author: Lloyd Jones
Pages:
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could slip inside the skin of another. Or travel to another place with marshes, and where, to our ears, the bad people spoke like pirates. I think Mr. Watts enjoyed the spoken parts. When he spoke them he became the voices. That’s another thing that impressed us—for the time he was reading, Mr. Watts had a way of absenting himself. And we forgot all about him being there. When Magwitch, the escaped convict, threatens to rip out Pip’s heart and liver if he doesn’t bring him some food, and a file for his leg irons, we didn’t hear Mr. Watts, we heard Magwitch, and it was like the convict was in the classroom with us. We had only to close our eyes to be sure.
    There was also a lot of stuff I didn’t understand. At night I lay on my mat wondering what marshes were; and what were wittles and leg irons? I had an idea from their sound.
Marshes
. I wondered if quicksand was the same. I knew about quicksand because a man up at the mine had sunk into it, never to be seen again. That happened years earlier when the mine was still open and there were white people crawling over Panguna like ants over a corpse.
    Mr. Watts had given us kids another piece of the world. I found I could go back to it as often as I liked. What’s more, I could pick up any moment in the story. Not that I thought of what we were hearing as story. No. I was hearing someone give an account of themselves and all that had happened. I was still discovering my favorite bits. Pip in the graveyard surrounded by the headstones of his dead parents and five dead brothers ranked high. We knew about death—we had seen all those babies buried up on the hillside. Me and Pip had something else in common; I was eleven when my father left, so neither of us really knew our fathers.
    I’d met mine, of course, but then I only knew my dad as a child knows a parent, as a sort of crude outline filled in with one or two colors. I’d never seen my father scared or cry. I’d never heard him admit to any wrongdoing. I have no idea what he dreamed of. And once I’d seen a smile pinned to one cheek and darkness to the other when my mum had yelled at him. Now he was gone, and I was left with just an impression—one of male warmth, big arms, and loud laughter.
    The shape of the letters on the headstone gave Pip the idea his father was a “square, stout, dark man with curly black hair.”
    Encouraged by Pip’s example I tried to build a picture of my own dad. I found some examples of his handwriting. He wrote in small capital letters. What did that say about him? He wanted to be noticed, but not too noticeable? There was that booming laugh of his, of course. I slept in the same room as my mum, and that night in the dark I asked her if Dad was a happy man. She said, “Never at the right time, though usually after he had been drinking.”
    I asked her if she thought he was a “stout man.” In the dark I heard her raise herself up on an elbow. “
Stout!
Where did you get that word from, girl?”
    â€œMr. Watts.”
    â€œPop Eye. Him,” she said as she let herself down again.
    â€œIt was in a book.”
    â€œWhat blimmin’ book?”
    â€œGreat Expectations.”
    I had given her three quick answers. The last one was the most stunning. I had lost her. I could hear her brooding next to me. She shifted on her mat. I could hear her angry breath. I don’t know what made her so angry all the time. As we lay there the night filled up with noise. We listened to the dogs growling at shadows, and to the ocean shuffle up the beach and draw out. We lay like that for a very long time before my mum spoke.
    â€œSo, Matilda, aren’t you going to tell me about that book?”
    This was the first time I had been in a position to tell her anything about the world. But this was a place she did not know about and hadn’t heard of. She couldn’t even pretend to know, so it was up to me to
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