“Come on, darling, go play with the other children,” Charlotte says to Lucie. The child shakes her head and stares, clinging to her mother’s leg. There is a piano at the far end of the hall, a fat woman sitting at it, belting out tunes: “Baa Baa Black Sheep,” “Ring a Ring o’ Roses,” “Incy Wincy Spider.” The children are meant to join in and sing along, but nobody pays the music any attention and it becomes just another booming, clanking noise in the general cacophony of boys making engine sounds or banging drums made from old biscuit tins and babies crying and small girls whining for their mothers, who now sit in three neat lines along the edge of the hall, sipping scalding tea from tiny china cups and shuffling uncomfortably on the small wooden school chairs. Some talk over the noise. “And which is yours?” “How many did you say?” “Lovely weather,” says the woman beside Charlotte. But for the most part the women do not look at each other.
What do You think about The Other Side Of The World?
