Free The Peppered Moth by Margaret Drabble

Celanese dress with embroidery-garnished sleeves and embroidered panels in the bodice. She had thought it set off her fair complexion. But maybe, she now considered, it made her look insipid? Like that pale little Bessie Nobody? Perhaps she should try a bolder shade next time she went to Cole’s? Elsie Scrimshaw was said to have been seen at the Rialto in red. Rowena Barron would be the talk of the town if she were to sally forth in red, for she was in a different class from Elsie Scrimshaw. What could Phil see in small-time small-town Elsie? Rowena hoped Phil would not let himself be trapped by scheming Elsie from Wath. He could do better than Elsie. Would red suit Rowena? Breaseborough and Cotterhall are brown and grey and navy and brown and fawn and tan. A splash of red would cheer things up. Scarlet town, scarlet woman, Californian poppy. The Vamp, the Temptress.
    She yawned, as Joe came to the end of his rendering of ‘Barbara Allen’. ‘Hey, sister dear,’ she said commandingly, to Ivy, who was leafing through the sheet music looking for yet another ballad of broken hearts, ‘let’s have something a bit more lively. This is the twentieth century, you know.’
    But Ivy could not find anything more lively. The Charleston and the tango and the Black Bottom had not yet reached sedate Cotterhall. The Barrons had not yet purchased a gramophone. The raucous strains of ‘California, here I come!’ had, it is true, been heard in neighbouring Breaseborough, which to its own surprise had once boasted three music hails, of which two had recently been converted into picture palaces: but Bessie, Ada, Ivy and Joe did not frequent the music hall. So they were not well up in modern music, though they knew
The Messiah
and
Elijah
by heart. The wireless had not yet become a common household object, and the one remaining live theatre of Breaseborough, the Hippodrome, was more likely in those days to stage
Brigadoon,
or the works of Gilbert and Sullivan, or the Sequins and the Sunbeams, or the Merry Arcadians—already dreadfully old-fashioned nostalgic acts. The people of Hammervale, it was said, did not know how to enjoy themselves. Breaseborough was known in the business as the comedian’s grave, and even the hardened Carl Rosa Opera Company dreaded it. The legendary Gracie Fields said Breaseborough was the worst town she’d ever played, and that was saying something.
    At least it was saying
something, not
nothing. Breaseborough could be proud of being the pits.
    How had this come about? Could one blame a chapel-going puritanism, a contempt for and fear of the life of the senses, which had seeped into the soul and soil of the land, leaching out colour, poisoning the wells? Respectable people did not sing and dance. And if they must sing, let them sing hymns, or sacred oratorio, or lovesick ballads of betrayal and death.
    Perhaps this spirit was imposed from above, as a convenience, as an opiate for a depressed populace. Those that may not enjoy, let them not seek enjoyment. That thousand-fold increase in the nineteenth-century population of Breaseborough had not come there to have fun. It had been dragged in by need, as a servile workforce. Meekly it had taken itself underground to dig. Those who may not enjoy, let them not even wish to enjoy. No wonder the preachers born of the industrial revolution found texts in Isaiah, in Jeremiah, in Ezekiel. For what had the prophets said of Hammervale? ‘I will give it into the hands of strangers for a prey, and to the wicked of the earth for a spoil; and they shall pollute it. My face will I turn from them, and they shall pollute my secret place’ (Ezekiel 7:21-2). ‘And it shall come to pass, that instead of a sweet smell there shall be stink; and instead of a girdle a rent; and instead of glossy hair there shall be baldness; and instead of fine embroidery there shall be sackcloth; and burning instead of beauty’ (Isaiah 3:24). Why, the Old Testament must have been written with a