Daytime Stars
By Laura Schiller
Based on: Little Dorrit
Copyright: Charles Dickens' estate/BBC
1.
As a small boy, Arthur sometimes imagines that Affery is his mother. Every time she slips him some bread after he's been sent to his room without supper, or comments wistfully on how tall he's growing, or smooths his jacket down with more gentleness than necessary, he wishes he and the timid housekeeper could live together by themselves, somewhere Mrs. Clennam's cane and Flintwinch's rough hands could never reach them.
It is wicked and ungrateful of him, he knows, considering how hard Mrs. Clennam works to teach him to be good. If she knew, she would certainly add this to the many sinful traits he has in common with his father.
2.
The parent he resents most when looking back at his trapped childhood is not his mother, but his father. Mrs. Clennam, to him, is a force of nature; she could no more stop herself from crushing a weak child's spirit than the rain could from drenching him in water. But there should have been somebody with a metaphorical house to shelter him, or at least an umbrella. Flintwinch wouldn't; Affery couldn't, for the sake of her livelihood; but Mr. Clennam was the man of the house and the head of the firm, and even he trembled before his wife like autumn leaves in a thunderstorm. When he hadn't even tried to defend his son, how could Arthur defend himself?
3.
The first time he sets eyes on Amy Dorrit, he envies her. She is settling a napkin on her wheelchair-bound mistress' lap, and proud Mrs. Clennam, who would have slapped Arthur's hand away for even trying to help her, accepts the gesture without batting an eye. She calls Dorrit a good girl, gives her a kinder look than Arthur has seen her wear in decades. He pauses by the doorframe in disbelief.
"What do you still do here?" Mrs. Clennam snaps. "You are not wanted."
In that moment, he would give his soul to be in that little seamstress' place.
4.
He has more empathy with Tattycoram than he would ever admit. Mr. Meagles is a good man and a dear friend, but the way he sees her somehow as innately tainted ("Might have been lost and ruined if she were not among practical people"), and presumes on her gratitude ("She'll fetch it for you and be happy to do it, eh, Tattycoram?") is familiar to Arthur in a way that sets his teeth on edge. He, too, has been called a "vessel of sin" in need of correction. He, too, has been ordered all his life to be obedient and grateful. On the day he learns of Tattycoram's flight, he is almost proud of her. If she had flown to anyone but Miss Wade, he would be proud.
Between Miss Wade and the Meagleses, however, even he can see which is the lesser of two evils, and so he does his level best to help his friend in the search.
5.
On the night after confiding in Little Dorrit about his love for Pet Meagles, it is not golden ringlets and pink roses he dreams about. Instead, for some unaccountable reason, he dreams about Little Dorrit as she smiled up at him by the river: that constellation of freckles on the soft skin beneath her eyes, barely visible even in sunlight.
It's such an innocent dream, he never even considers that it might mean something. Yet many months later in his cell at the Marshalsea, he only has to close his eyes to fall back into her blue sky and its daytime stars, as if he had never stopped dreaming in the first place. At last, he understands.