Amelia Dee and the Peacock Lamp

by Odo Hirsch

  Amelia kept writing. From place to place the lamp was sold, and each time the house wasn’t good enough for it, too poor, too small, and the lamp hung in angry silence, wishing it was dead, until it was sold again. It never seemed to stay long in one place. Eventually someone bought it and took it across the sea, and the selling began once more. Finally it was brought to a big, green house, and was put up at the very top of the stairs. Even this place wasn’t good enough for it, a lamp that had hung in the Grand Palace at Ervahan. But here it stayed, for year after year, until almost fifty years had passed since that terrible night when the palace had been destroyed.

  One day the people moved from the green house, but I was left behind, and a new family came. They had a little baby girl. More years passed and she grew older. She was very inquisitive and she would stare at me from the other side of the banister. I didn’t know what she wanted. I didn’t care. She stared and stared. One day the girl . . .

  Amelia stopped. She turned around and gazed past the open door at the lamp, at the banister below it, remembering that day. She didn’t know whether she should tell about what happened next. She didn’t know who was going to see this story, or if anyone ever would. And she could always say she had just made it up, and it didn’t really happen. Still, she didn’t know whether she should say it. Yet she felt she had to. The funny thing was, she felt that everything she was writing was the truth, the absolute truth, even though she was making almost all of it up, and if she left out this one thing, this one thing that had actually happened, it would be the only lie in the whole story. And if there was even one lie in the story, the story itself would be worth nothing.

  She picked up her pen and continued.

  One day the girl tied a rope around her leg and got up on the banister. She put out her hands and grabbed me! Suddenly she jumped off the banister and she was swinging. She swung and swung. Ahhhhhhh! She wanted to kill me. Why? Did she hate me? What had I ever done to her? I could feel my chains straining. They were going to come loose, and I was going to fall all the way down and crash to pieces. She was going to be saved by her rope, and I was going to die. Ahhhhhhh! Ahhhhhhh! Then she jumped off, and somehow I was still there. I hadn’t fallen! I was alive!

  At that moment, I realised something. I wanted to live! All these years, I wished that I had died with the others in the palace. I must have made that wish millions of times. I thought my life was worse than death. But it wasn’t. When I was faced with death, I wanted to live.

  The girl didn’t swing on me again. The next time I saw her staring at me, I stared back at her. I could see she enjoyed looking at me. I felt something I hadn’t felt since those happy days in the palace all those years ago. So much time had passed that I didn’t recognise what the feeling was. But it was familiar, it was good. I had felt it before, I knew that.

  And then an even stranger thing happened. One day, the girl brought an old woman to see me. At first I saw her far below, looking up at me from the bottom of the stairs. Then she came all the way up, and she stopped on the other side of the banister. She stared and stared. I stared back. There was something familiar about her, something I knew. And then I had the shock of my life. That face . . . it was the Princess! The little Princess who had played beneath me in the palace all those years ago, who had looked up at me, who had run her tiny fingers over my panels in the arms of Ali El, who had giggled, who had laughed. The Princess I had last seen looking back at me as she was carried away on that terrible night when the mob came.

  But she had changed so much! Not only that she was old, but she was bitter. The kind of person who would walk straight past a girl curtsying on the pavement and not even give her a glance. Was this really the laughing little girl who once had looked up at me with wonder, filling me with delight? She stared at me, and I stared back. And suddenly, I understood. I had become just like her! I had been angry and bitter. In house after house, I had refused to look down, thinking I was too good to be there, thinking the people who took pleasure in me weren’t important enough for me to notice. I had become as bitter as the Princess. The bitterness was a poison, and I had poisoned myself.

  Suddenly I recognised the feeling I had after the girl swung on me, when I saw her staring at me. It was joy. The joy of giving pleasure to others.

  The Princess went away. I was sad for her, but not sorry to see her go. She wasn’t the girl I knew all those years before in the palace, she had changed into someone else. But I had spent enough time poisoning my life. Who could tell when the chains holding me might break and I might smash to pieces? From now on, I would take joy from the pleasure I gave. It didn’t matter whether the people who looked at me were princes or paupers. All that mattered was that they enjoyed my glow. I’m a lamp. I was made to give pleasure, I was made to give light. I would never forget that again.

  For the first time in fifty-nine years, I was happy.

  And a funny thing happened. As soon as I realised that, people started doing things. The lady who lived in the house started doing sculptures of me, although she called them interpretations – which was just as well, because they didn’look very much like me. The man who lived in the house started making strange inventions with light, or trying to, anyway. And another man created a special yoga pose, which was probably the most useful thing of the lot.

  But the Princess . . . Well, the Princess, I don’t know what became of her. I never saw her again. I wish she could have seen me one more time, now that I was happy. I wish I could have told her what I had finally understood. No one can make you bitter but yourself. I don’t know if she could have changed, but if I had been able to tell her that, at least I would have hoped that she could.

  But I never got the chance. So I suppose she stayed angry and bitter until the day she died.

  CHAPTER 21

  It was late when Amelia finished. The time had flown by. She looked at her clock. Time for dinner. Later than time for dinner! Amelia ran downstairs.

  Mrs Ellis shook her head as Amelia dashed past the kitchen. ‘Just like the parents,’ she muttered to herself. ‘And I thought she was the sensible one!’

  Amelia stopped in the doorway to the dining room. Her mother and father were already eating. That was odd. Why hadn’t they called her? They always called her. If she wasn’t downstairs, one of them, at least, always came up to get her. If the other was sculpting, or inventing, they would join later.

  ‘Reading again?’ asked Amelia’s father.

  Amelia nodded.

  ‘It must have been a very good book,’ said Amelia’s mother.

  Amelia nodded again. She sat down.

  ‘We didn’t want to disturb you,’ said Amelia’s father, ‘considering how good the book must have been.’

  That had never stopped them before. This was really weird. What was going on?

  Mrs Ellis came in with Amelia’s soup. ‘Reading . . . reading . . .’ she muttered, putting the bowl down in front of Amelia. She shook her head disapprovingly, and headed back to the kitchen, still muttering to herself.

  Amelia took a mouthful of her soup. Potato and cranberry, one of Mrs Ellis’ personal recipes. She glanced at her parents. They both quickly looked away, as if they had been watching her. They couldn’t know what she had been doing, could they? They couldn’t have sneaked up and secretly opened her door—

  Amelia could hardly breathe. The door! She had left it open to see the lamp. She never left her door open when she was writing.

  She looked at her parents again. Again, they quickly looked away.

  Amelia took another spoonful of soup. But she could barely bring herself to swallow. They knew.

  She put down her spoon. ‘I wasn’t reading,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Really?’ said her father. ‘What were you doing?’

  Amelia took a deep breath. ‘Writing.’ She stared at her soup, at the thick, pink liquid, frowning hard. ‘I’ve been writing a story.’

  ‘Well,’ said Amelia’s father, ‘I suppose i
t’s nice to try something new.’

  ‘No. Sometimes . . .’ Amelia could hardly bring out the words. But how long was she going to keep covering things up? At least her mother put her sculptures in the garden. At least her father installed his inventions, no matter how useless they were. ‘Sometimes I like to write stories,’ she said, her voice barely louder than a whisper.

  ‘So this isn’t the first?’

  Amelia shook her head.

  ‘Well, imagine that! Angeline, did you hear what Amelia just said?’

  ‘I did, Armand,’ said Amelia’s mother. ‘I heard exactly what she said.’

  Amelia frowned ever harder.

  ‘Amelia?’

  Amelia looked at her mother.

  ‘Are we going to see this excellent story, Amelia?’

  ‘It’s just a story,’ muttered Amelia.

  ‘I would love to see it.’

  Amelia didn’t say anything for a moment. She glanced at her father, then back at her mother. ‘You don’t mind?’

  ‘Mind?’ said her mother.

  ‘A Dee has to do something!’ exclaimed Amelia’s father. ‘Invent, sculpt, write. Something!’

  ‘And an Arbuckle, too, Armando,’ Amelia’s mother reminded him.

  ‘We were starting to get worried,’ said Amelia’s father.

  ‘Only slightly,’ said her mother.

  Amelia stared at them in disbelief. ‘So you don’t think it’s . . . silly?’

  Amelia’s mother and father glanced at each other, and then they both looked back at Amelia questioningly, as if they had no idea what Amelia could possibly mean.

  Amelia felt an enormous sense of surprise. And confusion. And relief. And more confusion.

  ‘Well?’ said Amelia’s father. ‘Are we going to read this story?’

  Amelia frowned. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Can you tell us what it’s called?’

  Amelia shook her head. ‘I don’t know that, either.’

  ‘Perfect!’ said Amelia’s father. ‘Just like me. When I invented my insect powder, I thought it was for sneezes.’

  Amelia didn’t say anything to that.

  ‘I’m sure Amelia will let us see it,’ said Amelia’s father.

  ‘I hope so, Armando,’ said Amelia’s mother.

  Amelia couldn’t keep herself from smiling. Just slightly.

  Amelia really didn’t know what she was going to do with the story. She thought about it a lot that night, lay in bed wondering after she turned the light out. It wasn’t like the other story, horrible and angry and spiteful, trying to take a revenge it could never take. Maybe having written it was enough, maybe this one was like all the others and she could put it with them in the drawer and it wouldn’t try to get out. But it wasn’t meant to stay in the drawer, she knew that. Maybe she could show it to her parents. She wanted to. Now that she had told them, it seemed ridiculous that she had never told them about her stories before. She had always thought it would be so complicated to explain it, and yet it turned out to have been so simple. All her fears proved to be empty. But this story wouldn’t mean anything special to them. It would just be a story. There was only one person for whom it would be more than that.

  Yet it was one thing to realise that, and another thing actually to give it to the Princess. Had she really written it for the Princess? Amelia tried to remember what Mr Vishwanath had said in the conversation that had set off the idea for the story in her mind. Had he said that he thought she could write something better for the Princess, or had he just said that he thought she could write something better? Or both? Or neither? Amelia tried to remember Mr Vishwanath’s exact words. But even if she could, she knew, they wouldn’t give her the answer. She had to decide for herself. Amelia had come to understand that Mr Vishwanath only asked questions. He never gave answers. Or if he did, even his answers were just another kind of question. The whole point was that his questions were clever enough to make you want to think of an answer for yourself.

  Amelia sighed. She knew what she had to do. Deep down, she had known it from the moment she started writing. It was just that the Princess was so haughty, and so stern, and so . . . rude. That was the only word for her. Rude. She had made Amelia feel so small, and she had done it on purpose. Twice. She’d think the story was silly. She’d think that telling a story from inside a lamp was a fancy. Amelia could just hear the way the Princess would say it, full of contempt. In her accent. A fenceee. Even though Amelia knew perfectly well it wasn’t a fenceee at all.

  The thought of giving the story to the Princess was too scary. Maybe she wouldn’t give it to her. Maybe she just wouldn’t.

  Or maybe there was another way. Mr Vishwanath. He could give it to the Princess for her. Of course! Why not? He saw the Princess all the time.

  Amelia was glad she could stop thinking about that and think about the story itself. That was much more fun. She put on the light beside her bed and read it again. When she turned off the light, the sentences ran through her head, almost as if she could see them on a page in front of her. She was so excited about it she couldn’t sleep. There were all kinds of things she wanted to improve, all kinds of details, a word here or a sentence there, which is always the way it goes with a story. In fact, the better the story is, and the more you care about it, the more you want to work on it to make it better. And Amelia wanted to work on it, work and work on it, more than anything else she had ever written.

  But it needed a title. Amelia thought about that. One possibility after the other ran through her mind, but none of them was quite right. They ran through her mind, over and over, until somehow she fell asleep, still thinking about it. And in the morning, it was the first thing that came into her head as she woke up. But something must have happened in her mind during the night. Because now she knew.

  She opened her window and felt the cool morning air on her face. She leaned out and looked at the carved lady. The carved lady looked back with her sightless eyes. Her expression this morning seemed very tranquil, very understanding. Amelia felt very close to the carved lady at that moment. She felt bad that she had ever thought the carved lady looked blank and silly. She wished she could take that back. It had been her anger speaking, it wasn’t what she really thought. But she sensed that the carved lady knew it, and had even forgiven her.

  ‘What do you think about the title?’ she murmured.

  The carved lady stared encouragingly.

  ‘Yes.’ Amelia nodded. She went to her desk and picked up her pen. Above the first line of the story she wrote three words.

  The Happy Lamp

  She gazed at the title for a moment, and then nodded again. Perfect.

  She went onto the landing and turned on the lamp. She looked at the glowing metalwork, the two peacocks with their feathers fanning out around the bottom, golden light streaming out of thousands of tiny slivers of space.

  ‘Happy lamp . . .’ murmured Amelia Dee, and she smiled.

  CHAPTER 22

  Mr Vishwanath was in the garden, dressed in his yoga nappy, holding one of his one-legged poses in the sunlight near the lamp sculpture. After a couple of minutes he changed to a different pose, and then held that one. Amelia sat on her chair and waited. There was no way to hurry Mr Vishwanath, she knew.

  She got up when he had finished.

  ‘Mr Vishwanath,’ she said, as he came towards her, ‘I’ve got something for you.’ Amelia held out the pages of the story.

  ‘Is this something else for me to read?’

  ‘No. It’s for the Princess.’

  ‘Oh, I thought you said it is for me,’ said Mr Vishwanath, and he continued towards the door to his studio.

  ‘Mr Vishwanath!’

  He stopped.

  ‘I wondered if you would give it to the Princess,’ said Amelia.

  Mr Vishwanath smiled. ‘Now I understand.’

  Amelia smiled as well. She held out the pages again. But Mr Vishwanath didn’t take them.

  ‘If you h
ave something to give the Princess, Amelia, you should give it yourself.’

  ‘You mean you won’t do it?’

  ‘Why should I do what you can do yourself?’

  ‘Well, it’s just the Princess isn’t very . . . I mean . . . Mr Vishwanath, you see her anyway. I thought you could just give it to her and say it’s from me.’

  Mr Vishwanath didn’t reply.

  ‘I thought . . .’

  Mr Vishwanath shook his head.

  Amelia frowned. Deep down, perhaps, she had known this wasn’t going to work. She tried one more time. ‘Won’t you give it to her, Mr Vishwanath? It won’t take you long.’

  ‘This isn’t the way, Amelia,’ said Mr Vishwanath quietly.

  ‘But you don’t even know what I’m giving her!’

  Mr Vishwanath raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Amelia. ‘It’s just . . .’

  ‘What, Amelia?’

  ‘She’s so scary!’

  Mr Vishwanath smiled. ‘No one is truly scary, Amelia. And the most scary people, they themselves are the ones who are the most scared inside.’

  Not half as scared as she herself was, thought Amelia. She looked at Mr Vishwanath doubtfully. ‘You took the other story, Mr Vishwanath.’

  ‘That was to read, not to give to the Princess. I will gladly read this one if you want. But I think you don’t need me to do that, do you?’

  Amelia shook her head.

  ‘No.’ Mr Vishwanath chuckled. ‘Be brave,’ he said, and he went inside, leaving Amelia under the verandah.

  She stood there, clutching the pages of the story. From inside the invention shed came a loud pop, followed by a shout of ‘Yes!’ Then there was another pop, even louder, and this time a shout of ‘No!’

  Amelia tried to be brave. The next time she saw the cream-coloured car coming down the street she took the story and ran down the stairs and opened the door a fraction and waited for the Princess to appear. But when the Princess actually got out of the car, when Amelia actually saw her there on the pavement, marching past her driver towards the door of Mr Vishwanath’s studio with her nose in the air and her black eyebrows fixed in a hawk-like scowl and not the slightest thought for anything around her, Amelia’s nerve failed. She could almost hear the words the Princess would utter. ‘This is a fenceeee! A stupid, stupid story! Why do you give it to me?’ Before Amelia knew it, the Princess had gone by and her driver had scurried past her to open the door to Mr Vishwanath’s studio, and Amelia herself hadn’t even come out of the house.