This is a creative writing piece from the novel Mister Pip written by Lloyd Jones, from the perspective of Matilda
After living life 10 years after my Bougainville experience, I was using my spared life to help others to make sure that my knowledge wasn’t wasted after my traumatising experience. I am living on my own and am now a high school english teacher just like Mister Watts. A great man I once knew before his dreadful passing. He read my favourite book to me, well he read of most of it. Great Expectations. The book that changed my life and helped my survive the horrors I lived through. I hadn’t seen or read that book for years now and had moved past the horrible memories and grief of my past on Bougainville. I was very happy being able to read a large amount of different books, poems, novels, and other literature. Studying with my classes and helping them learn the wonders of life. One peculiar day one of my students strode into class eager to share a book with me she had found. Fortunately for me her book was a rarely known classic entitled Hopscotch. She told me about how she read the book and thought it was amazing. She told all about her thoughts on the old novel and asked if I had known of it or read it. I knew of the book but I hadn’t read it before. I said to the girl what I knew of it and encouraged her to share it with the class to start today’s lesson.
The modern age and day was upon me living the life of a stressed adult with a lack of money with intentions of trying to do others good. Bills having to be paid, food having to be brought, time being used up. I was trying my best to cope. A kind soul was already working a full time job that got the stress pushed aside, but the community. All I wanted to to help others inside and outside of my classes. I volunteered for a job at the local library and had been working there for almost a year. Many of my students had visited the library and found me there. Their reactions were priceless. While I was scouring the library’s collection of books putting the stacked mountain of returns back in the correct spot I saw a cover that looked familiar to me. It had a very distinctive sense from the image of it. A old looking book with a leather brown cover that still looked as if it was in a pristine condition. I knew I had seen it in the past but couldn’t quite figure out why the back of my mind was remembering it. I approached the book at a slight pace getting closer and closer to the intriguing odour forcing me towards it. I pulled the book from its selected spot and turned it over to the view the front cover. The book of course had the bold, shiny golden words engraved in the cover that read Great Expectations. I stopped for a second and remembered the story. I immediately triggered the memory of Mister Watts reading it to me in class when she was a little girl and laughing along with her students back on Bougainville. I looked away from the book to my side and standing next to me looking through the collection of books on the same isle as me was my old friend Mister Pip. I watched him for several seconds then sensed the presence of someone to my other side and saw Mister Watts doing the same thing while he wore his red clown nose. I then imagined Mister Watts towing Grace In a kart while the Bougainville people starred at them with me. The sudden harsh noise of a gun shot struck my mind causing me to have a slight jumping twitch. The gunshot that took Mister Watts life after claiming he was Mister Pip had me frozen and shivering in fear. The pace of my heart rapidly increasing in pace as my mind rushed through all the terrible memories of Bougainville, my heart pounding away faster and faster and faster. Stopped, my heart had stopped in a instant. I came back to reality and collapsed to the library’s filthy carpet floor as light filled my vision as I felt paralysed on the floor.
I couldn’t remember the events that got me here but I was the waking up to one morning I had remembered on Bougainville back when I was still a little girl… I didn’t know it yet but I relived the years I spent on Bougainville as I lay in a hospital bed in an coma.
cbrownorewa 