Nine Days: Chapter 1: Kip Summary & Analysis

Kip wakes, not wanting to get up for the day, which seems a bad omen. Across the room he can see Ma, Jean, in the other bed, huddled under blankets and Kip’s old clothes. He shares a bed with Francis, who snores loudly and does not have to wake up for an extra two hours, so Kip is supposed to creep quietly out of bed so as not to “disturb his geniousness.” Despite the chill of the morning, Kip climbs out of bed, quickly dresses, and tiptoes his way outside to Rowena Parade, into the lane, around the corner, and to the Hustings’, where Kip is a working  boy.

Kip finds the Hustings’ horse, Charlie, in his stable, scratches him affectionately for a bit, and feeds him an old apple he found in the lane, though Kip takes a bite first as his “union dues.” Kip sweeps out the stable and shovels the manure before brushing Charlie’s coat down until he shines. Mr. Husting emerges from the back of the house, greets Kip, and ruffles his hair, which Kip allows even though he’s 14. Seeing how nice Charlie looks, Mr. Husting gives Kip a whole shilling, which seems like a huge sum of money to the boy, and he knows he’ll have to work out a way to hide it from Francis.

Mrs. Husting leans out an upstairs window. Kip greets her and compliments her shawl, but Mrs. Husting obviously despises Kip, calling him lazy and a “layabout.” When Mrs. Husting asks her husband if he just gave Kip money even though they already pay his wage to his mother, Mr. Husting lies and swears he did not. Before returning inside, Mrs. Husting briefly mentions dinner plans for the evening on account of Jack, their son, having just returned home—Kip has been cleaning their yard all week in preparation. Mr. Husting asks Kip to keep the shilling a secret just between them, and Kip shakes on it.

Kip wonders if his reputation as “chief layabout and squanderer of opportunities” in Richmond, their district of Melbourne, is a result of him being born seven minutes after Francis. If they were switched, maybe he’d be in school still. Even so, Kip enjoys working, and there is much he doesn’t miss about school.

With the morning past, Kip returns home for breakfast next door. When Connie asks him if he washed his hands, Francis remarks that he’s always dirty and should be made to eat in the alley, “as befits his station.” However, Connie checks his hands, pronounces them perfectly clean even though they are not, and kisses Kip on the head. When Kip makes a snide remark to Francis, Jean appears behind him and chews him out. Connie takes bacon out to cook Kip for breakfast, but Jean stops her and says the meat is only for Francis and Mrs. Keith, even though Kip has been working since 4:00 in the morning. She’ll only allow a little bread for Kip. Connie protests, but obeys.

As Kip eats bread and Francis eats bacon, Jean bemoans the fact that Kip is not as perfect as his twin brother. In Jean’s eyes, Francis will become a lawyer someday and is thus the only hope for their family, since Connie and Kip both had to drop out of school when their father died and they had to take Mrs. Keith in as a boarder. They speak of Hitler and possibility of war. Jean says that she’d rather hide her sons “in the ceiling” than see them off to war. Francis speaks authoritatively about the communist threat in Russia, but Connie dismisses him. Kip hasn’t kept up with such news since his father died, back when he used to read the newspaper, but he knows that all the working boys in Richmond are waiting for the war, too, “half afraid war’ll happen, half afraid it won’t.”

Trying to lighten the mood, Kip tells Jean that the Hustings will set him up in their antique shop soon—Francis dismissively calls it a “junk shop”—but Jean is uninterested, and disparages Mrs. Husting instead. Jean starts bemoaning their family’s “bad luck” and lamenting her own suffering and all her children know she’ll go on for a long time, and strike any of them who dare to interrupt her.

In the afternoon, Connie sends Kip to the butcher to fetch the shopping. While he waits for the butcher to prep the meat, he daydreams about himself becoming a butcher someday and admires the red of the blood against the blue and white tiles. Kip passes the bar on the way home and hears everyone talk about the war and the “plot against the working man.” As he continues on, parcels of meat under his arm, Kip hears Annabel’s voice drifting down the lane. His heart jumps and he tries to hide from her, but she spots him and introduces herself. He already knows who she is. She’s beautiful. Every boy in Richmond knows who she is.

Annabel tells Kip she knows Francis from dancing class at school, though Kip seems quite different from his brother. She asks why Kip is not in school anymore, since she heard he won several prizes for English composition and art, but Kip says he’d had enough of school already. Annabel thinks this a shame. Although he was nervous, Kip thinks he’s doing pretty well talking to Annabel, until she smiles at him and he’s so overcome that he forgets how to swallow and nearly faints. Annabel asks if he’s walking back to Rowena Parade, and when Kip realizes that she wants to walk home with him, he panics and says he’s going somewhere else.

Annabel leaves and Kip makes his way home, kicking himself and thinking of all the clever things he could’ve said to her. Distracted, Kip nearly walks into the “four stooges,” the town bullies: Mac, Cray, Pike, and a kid he doesn’t know. Kip feels that their reckoning has finally come; he feels like d’Artagnan. The boys mock Kip for crying when he quit school after losing his father, who got drunk and hit his head. Two of the boys grab him by the arms while they talk, and one kicks him hard in the back of the calf. Kip yawns to cover the pain, and has a brief flashback of the last time his father left for work: Kip’s nose was so deep in a book he didn’t even wave goodbye, and that evening Jean was in hysterics and his father’s body was laid out in the kitchen.

Kip jests that the two boys are cuddling him real tight, which jars them just long enough for him to slip their grip and run down the street, scooping up his meat parcels as he goes. The boys chase after Kip, but he imagines that he’s a professional sprinter who’s outrunning the “Nazi hordes.” He turns a corner, slips, and crashes hard, but is immediately up again. He makes it home, locking the gate behind him. Connie steps out of the house and finds him bloody and the parcels filthy, but she puts an arm around him and comforts him. To Kip, she feels warm and safe. Connie helps Kip clean the scrapes on his legs, chatting about nothing to distract him.

Before she can finish, Kip grows impatient and says he needs to go back to work at the Hustings. Connie tells him to at least take his shorts and shirt off so can wash the mud out before it stains, and he changes into another pair and ventures back out. While Kip is doing his work at the Hustings however, he reaches his hand in his pocket and realizes that he’s left his shilling in his other shorts, and he doesn’t trust Francis not to steal it. He’d wanted to use it to take Annabel to the “Glaciarium” with him, though this desire to go skating with her will cause his “so-called life to hit the skids.”

Kip gets home early in the evening and sneaks to the laundry trough in the yard. While he’s fishing around for his shorts and shilling, he pulls out a huge pair of women’s underwear, belonging to Mrs. Keith. They’re so large they look like a parachute. He tosses them in the air and they land down on his face. Just as they do, a light switches on in the house and Kip hears Mrs. Keith let out a loud, long scream.

Kip and Francis listen from the hall as Mrs. Keith is in hysterics in the kitchen, as she has been for a long time. Connie and Jean are there trying to calm her down, but Mrs. Keith has convinced herself that Kip is a vile pervert who’ll be a predator when he grows up. Francis unsympathetically whispers that if Kip does grow up to be a predator, at least their family will make the papers. Kip can hear Jean refuse to defend him, which confuses him, since he’s her son. However, Connie berates Mrs. Keith and calls her a “cow” for saying such wretched things about her brother. Jean begs Mrs. Keith to stay while Connie tells her “good riddance.”

Kip and Francis sneak back to their room. Through the door they can hear Mrs. Keith stomping around as she packs her belongings. After she’s gone, Kip sees Jean and Connie in the kitchen. Jean is furious at Connie for being so rude to Mrs. Keith, and thinks that without the money Francis will have to quit school too. However, Connie insists that instead, she’ll go get herself a job at the newspaper where their father worked, though Jean is doubtful.