“When she was good, she was very, very good, · But when she was bad, she was horrid.”

“When she was good, she was very, very good, / But when she was bad, she was horrid.” is a nursery verse that appears among Gerry Fenn’s notes. Nancy Shelbeck reads it after Fenn falls asleep, and its sharp division between good and bad gives the passage a compact, unsettling refrain without the narrative identifying a particular child as its subject.

Text and Attribution

The verse follows a four-line description of a little girl with a curl down the middle of her forehead. Its final contrast makes goodness sound complete and badness equally absolute: the child is either very good or horrid. The passage prints the title attribution as “Jemima,” Anon.

The Reading Scene

After an intimate encounter with Gerry Fenn, Nancy hears his breathing deepen and realizes he is asleep. She slips out of his arms, washes, puts on a bathrobe, drinks cold milk, and carries his fallen notes to the living room. There she arranges them into three piles, lights a cigarette, and begins reading; the nursery verse is the first item shown. The quiet, deliberate sequence makes the rhyme part of Nancy’s private examination of the papers rather than dialogue between the couple.

Narrative Function

The verse’s neat opposition between a good child and a horrid one resonates with the surrounding narrative’s concern about a child who may be used, but the passage does not say that the poem describes Alice Pagett or supplies a direct explanation of its relevance. Instead, its placement creates a suggestive transition: after Nancy reads the rhyme, the narration shifts to Monsignor Delgard walking toward the convent and worrying about the child there. The verse therefore sharpens the scene’s moral unease while leaving its application open.