by Joan Aiken
‘Don’t think about her, then,’ I said. ‘Drink your tea.’
She took another sip, eyes still shut, and said, ‘What would help, would help a great deal, would be if you were to give my hair a combing.’
‘WOW!’ I SAID. ‘That would be quite a job, Aunt Lal.’
Her hair, piled into a huge white mushroom on top of her head, looked as if it had not been combed for weeks, months, perhaps even years.
The very thought of tackling it made me feel weak at the wrists.
‘Your mother would do it like a shot,’ Aunt Lal said. ‘Got a real knack, your dear mother has.’
This was true. Mother has her own hairdresser’s shop in Abbott’s Yarn and I knew all her customers must be in utter dismay at the thought of having to manage without her till she came out of hospital. When I was younger I used to spend a lot of time in the shop, watching the wonders Mum did with ladies’ hair.
‘I’ll have a try,’ I said doubtfully.
‘Thank you, Neddy dear. You’ll find a comb in the drawer.’
There were about a dozen combs in the drawer. None of them looked as if they had ever been used.
I started, as I had seen Mum do many a time, teasing out the ends of the hair, gently unravelling a millimetre at a time. It was no use tackling the thick tangled mass in the middle until I had all the ends clear. And from the quantity there was piled on her head I guessed her hair must be at least a metre long – longer than my arm – it might easily hang down as far as her knees. I had to go at it very, very slowly, holding each tress tight between finger and thumb so as not to hurt her scalp, while I carefully drew out the snarls.
‘It looks as if gulls have been nesting in it, Aunt Lal,’ I teased her, not meaning to be taken seriously. But she was angry at the very notion.
‘That’s what Malot would like! That’s what she wants!’
‘Malot’s dead now, Auntie, remember? She’s in the sea. She can’t do anybody any more harm.’
‘No, but the harm she did still goes on. That’s the trouble.’
‘This job is going to take me hours, Aunt Lal,’ I said after a while. I was anxious to get away from the subject of Malot Corby. ‘Shall we take a rest? What would you like for your supper?’
‘Oh, your uncle will soon come home and take care of that,’ she said. But she did let me persuade her to get back on to her bed. No way would she agree to take the pill, though.
‘No more pills. Never any more pills.’
I fed Nibs who was grumbling that it was long past his supper-time and then Dr Masham arrived, looking tired to death. He had gone with Uncle Adam to the hospital which was up at the top of the town, and there, he said, they had a couple of other emergencies waiting for him, someone who had been hit by a flying tile and someone who had been struck by lightning.
He shook his head when told that Aunt Lal refused to take the pill and tried to reason with her.
‘You risk turning into a statue, you know, Lally.’
She was still lying on her bed, motionless, with her eyes closed.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘if that does happen, drop me in the sea. But the boy’s going to comb out my hair, and then perhaps my head will stop aching.’
Dr Masham sighed. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I can’t compel you. I’d better help Ned make some supper. I could do with a bit myself. They are keeping Adam overnight in the hospital, but he’s got nothing worse than concussion. Come on, young fellow, let’s see what we can find in the larder.’
Downstairs, I told him about the key in my pocket, and opening the lid of the statue shaped like a milk-churn, and finding Aunt Lal’s portrait inside. But, to my utter disgust, when I felt in my pocket for the picture I found nothing but some damp scraps of paper. I remembered how the gulls had pecked me specially hard on that side, in fact my left arm and leg were quite bruised and cut. Dr Masham gave me some stuff to rub on the sorest bits.
‘It all adds up,’ he said. ‘The gulls were Malot’s creatures. But just taking her picture out of that thing may have set off this change in your aunt. Keep on with the combing. If you can cure her headache, that’s important.’
‘In the picture,’ I remembered, ‘her hair was quite short.’
‘She used to wear it short, just to her ears, when she was younger.’
We found some fish in the larder, which Dr Mike fried. But Aunt Lal would take only soup, which she sipped with her eyes shut.
‘Even with my eyes shut I can see the lightning,’ she grumbled. ‘That’s quite bad enough,’
The storm was still racketing on, round and round.
‘Will you be all right here, Ned?’ said Dr Mike doubtfully. ‘I really ought to be back at my surgery and see a few more patients.’
‘I’ll be fine. I’ll keep on with the combing,’ I said.
‘Yes, do that! I’ll come round in the morning, as early as I can.’
When I’d washed the supper dishes I went up to Aunt Lal’s room with a couple of apples I’d grabbed from the garden, by the light of lightning flashes, and proceeded with the combing job.
It seemed queer to remember that this time last night I had been in my own bed, at home, in Abbotts’ Yarn. Now I felt as if I had lived in St Boan for months, for years.
Nibs came and settled on the end of Aunt Lal’s bed. I had heaped a big stack of pillows behind her and pulled the bed away from the wall, so I could work first on one side, then on the other. She seemed drowsy, half asleep.
Every now and then she’d half-hum, half-sing some queer little rhyme: ‘Line, twine, the willow and the dee,’ or, ‘Intery, mintery, cuttery corn, Apple seed and apple thorn…’ They made no sense at all to me.
I found canvas garden chairs in the back porch, fetched one of them upstairs, and was able to cat-nap in Aunt Lal’s room from time to time, waking up every hour or so to go on with the slow task of unsnarling her hair. The lights flickered on and off several times, and finally stayed off. I found some candles and lit them.
The storm continued to rage. Rain slapped and streamed down the window panes and the whole casement shook with the battering of the wind. Beyond the wind’s roar I could hear the thud and boom of the sea flinging itself against the rocks at the end of the point. And the voices of gulls, piercing and furious. I was glad to be ashore.
Around five o’clock, when faint dawn light was beginning to show, my work on Aunt Lal’s hair was beginning to pay off. I had the back and side sections unknotted and spread out over the pillows. But there still remained a solid mass in the middle, on the top of her head. I had to tweak it loose, almost hair by hair. And it seemed to me that in the middle of this mass there was a kind of lump or bump.
This made me nervous. I worked at it very cautiously, very gingerly, in case Aunt Lal had some sort of swelling or growth in there which might be very tender and need medical attention.
You can guess how amazed I was when, under my teasing, probing fingers, I began to see and feel a white smooth something – and when, with endless care and caution, I combed all the matted hair away from this something, it rolled sideways on to the bedclothes and proved to be an egg.
Too small for a chicken’s egg. I wondered if it might be a gull’s egg.
But how in the world had it got in among Aunt Lal’s tangle of hair?
And how long had it been there?
With this thought at the front of my mind, I took it down to the kitchen (Aunt Lal was asleep just then) and gently lowered it into a saucepan of water to hard-boil. I set the kitchen timer for twelve minutes.
Nibs had followed me down, and went out into the sopping garden.
I remembered Mum, in our kitchen at home, saying: ‘If you are ever in any doubt about an egg, don’t break it, hard-boil it. A rotten egg is the worst smell in the world, and you can’t get rid of the smell however much you wash and scrub and rinse. But once it’s hard-boiled it isn’t anything like so bad. You can just throw it away. And, if turns out not to be rotten – well, you ca
n always use a hard-boiled egg in some way or other.’
I didn’t see how this egg could possibly be fresh, not after months and months in Aunt Lal’s hair.
How had it got there? Could some gull have nested on top of her head?
I put the kettle on a low flame, then went upstairs and finished off the job of combing. Aunt Lal’s long, fine white hair now hung loose and straight, like last night’s lines of rain streaming down the dark window pane.
‘Oh!’ she sighed gratefully. ‘That does feel comfortable.’ And she suddenly scrambled out of bed to go and admire herself in the glass. Her eyes opened wide. Grey yesterday, they now shone bright blue.
On the floor lay a huge pile of combings and fluff and dust which I had removed from her head – no wonder she had a headache! It was enough to fill a large waste-basket. I had brought up a brush and dustpan and began sweeping all the heap together.
‘Do you know what I’d like now, Ned,’ said Aunt Lal, ‘I’d like you to cut off all my hair, cut it quite short.’
‘Golly Moses, Aunt Lal – wouldn’t it be better to wait and go to a proper hairdresser. I’m sure Mum would do it for you?’
‘No, no,’ she said impatiently. ‘I want it done now. Go and look in the red leather bag in the front room downstairs, among my lace-making tools you’ll find some sharp scissors with red handles. Your mother can style it for me later.’
So I hunted among the lace-making equipment in the room below and found an impressive pair of scissors with big round red handles and razor-sharp blades.
Then I checked in the kitchen. All was calm there. The white egg in the pan was bubbling away gently, the timer said three minutes to go, and the kettle was about to boil.
I made a pot of tea, left it to brew, and ran upstairs again with the scissors. Aunt Lal had sat herself on her dressing-stool with a big white bath-towel draped over her shoulder.
‘Quick, now!’ she ordered. ‘I can feel the weight of the hair hanging down all round me – it’s pulling me down to the floor – starting another headache. Someone else might come and build a nest on my head. Just you snip it all off, between my ears and my shoulders.’
So I snipped. The blades were so sharp, it was like cutting through cobwebs, and the soft white masses of hair fell away to the floor in sheaves, thick as corn at harvest time.
‘Oh, that feels wonderful,’ sighed Aunt Lal, moving her head and shoulders. ‘So light! So free! And now I’ll tell you what I’d really fancy for my breakfast when you’ve swept it all up, a nice boiled egg …’
Just as she said the word egg there came a terrific bang from downstairs. Simultaneously the window blew open on a wild gust of wind.
‘OH MY DEAR heavens!’ gasped Aunt Lal. ‘Has the boiler burst? Quickly, go and see what’s happened, Ned dear, but take care – I’ll see to shutting the window.’
I ran down to the kitchen. I could easily guess what had happened, and I was right: the egg in the saucepan had exploded.
Bits of white eggshell were all over the kitchen, and also little shreds of black feathers, bits of claws and beak. I didn’t like the look of them at all. Whatever had been in that egg, I was glad it had come to no good. I was glad it hadn’t hatched out on top of Aunt Lal’s head.
But it was going to take hours to clear up the kitchen.
I heard a shriek from upstairs.
‘Ned – help – help! Come quick!’
I dashed up again. Coming from Lal’s room I could hear a violent flapping of wings and the raucous cries of gulls, dozens of gulls, from the sound …
And in fact when I burst into her bedroom the air seemed to be entirely full of black-and-white bodies and yellow beaks circling and thrashing about, savagely pecking and swooping and snatching. Crouched in the middle of it all was Aunt Lal, who had wrapped the white towel round her head and shoulders to shield herself. The air was thick with white whirling hair and fluff as well. The scene was like an Arctic blizzard.
I grabbed the scissors in one hand, Aunt Lal’s hairbrush in the other, and began dealing out bashes and stabs.
‘Lie down, Aunt Lal!’ I shouted. ‘Lie on the bed!’
‘Hair spray!’ she gasped, doing so. ‘Your mother gave me. On the bureau.’
It took me a couple of seconds to understand her, then I fought my way to the chest of drawers where there was a big red can with white stripes and a spray nozzle and orange lettering saying that it was somebody’s vitamin-hair-something. I had seen similar cans in Mum’s shop. Plainly Aunt Lal had never used it for it still had a protective label over the nozzle which I tore off. Then I began squirting the gulls with the gluey, sweet-scented stuff, which got into their eyes and beaks and soon had them flopping on the floor in dismay.
As fast as they did so, I flung them out of the open window. At last there were only a few left.
Nibs came back just at this moment, damp from the garden and disapproving. One of the gulls dived at him, but he caught it in mid air, doing a spectacular leap and pounce, digging his claws into its back. His green eyes blazed with triumph.
‘All right, Nibs, I’ll chuck it out of the window,’ I panted and did so.
Then I felt a sharp stab in my neck. The leader of the flock, the biggest bird, had swooped on me and jabbed me; now he skimmed up to the ceiling, hovered, and came fiercely down at me again. I still clutched the scissors in my left hand, point upward; diving down at me he landed full on the point, which ran deep into his chest. He dropped dead on the floor and Nibs, who had felt cheated when I threw his prey out of the window, gave me a warning growl and dragged the big gull out of the room.
I could hear it going thump, thump, thump, all the way down the stairs.
‘Oh my dear Ned!’ said Aunt Lal faintly. ‘What a very lucky thing that you were in the house!’
‘Well,’ I croaked, ‘I’m not so sure about that, Aunt Lal.’
What I felt in a vague muddled way was that if I hadn’t come to the house in the first place, none of these things would have happened. But, to set against that was the undoubted fact that Aunt Lal seemed so much better today – quite well, in fact – brisk and clear-headed, and looked twenty years younger than she had yesterday. She even had a trace of pink in her cheeks.
But the house!
‘You go back to bed, just for now, Aunt Lal,’ I suggested. ‘And eat this apple – look, I’m having the other one – and I’ll do a bit of clearing up. Then, in about twenty minutes, I’ll bring you a nice boiled egg. I’ll just fetch the vacuum cleaner. You do have one, I hope? Then I’ll give this room a bit of a tidy.’
The room looked as if a hurricane had hit a hair-shirt-and-feather-bed factory.
When, reluctantly, Aunt Lal had agreed to my cleaning programme – yes, she said, there was a Whizzo vacuum cleaner in the cupboard under the stairs; it didn’t always work because of the thunder but perhaps it would today as the storm seemed to have passed over. I fetched up the Whizzo and cleared all the mess in the bedroom and stuffed the hair and feathers in two bin bags which I tied tightly and put outside by the garden wall.
The sun was trying to shine.
‘Such a piece of luck,’ Aunt Lal said happily. ‘It’s Clear-up Day.’
Despite my urging her to stay in bed she had dressed and while I was hauling out the bags she came downstairs.
‘Dustbin day, do you mean, Aunt Lal?’
‘No, better than that. Every six months we have it, in St Boan. Anybody can put anything outside their house that they are tired of and want to give away – books, LP records, old clothes, furniture – anything – and anybody else can take it, if they fancy it. Then, at the end of the day, the Town Council picks up whatever is left, things that nobody wants.’
‘And what happens to those things?’
‘Well, I’m not quite sure,’ she admitted. ‘I suppose they are put on a dump somewhere.’
Aunt Lal did seem a trifle startled when she saw the mess in the kitchen.
‘An egg with s
ome black feathered thing inside?’
‘That was what you had on your head, Aunt Lal!’
‘No wonder my head ached,’ she said. ‘Malot must have put it there, some time when I was asleep in the garden – maybe she was in that egg herself?’
‘Let’s not think about it,’ I suggested.
‘But where is your uncle all this time? Where is Adam?’
So I had to explain all over again what had happened to him. She had clean forgotten what Doctor Masham had told her before. Then we began on the job of clearing up the kitchen.
Nibs had retired to the garden with the dead gull, but he soon decided that gulls were not a fit diet for cats and so I stuffed it into yet another dustbin bag with all the black feathers and claws. There seemed to be far more than could have come from one small egg.
In the middle of this activity a car pulled up outside and Doctor Mike got out escorting Uncle Adam with a bandaged head.
The two men were utterly thunderstruck at the sight of Aunt Lal.
Dr Masham kept walking round her, round and round, saying, ‘I wouldn’t have believed it possible! No; I wouldn’t have believed it!’
Uncle Adam hugged Lal and kissed her and had to sit down hurriedly on a kitchen chair because his legs were still weak from his concussion. I boiled four eggs and made some toast and put on the kettle again for more tea.
‘Adam, it’s Clear-Out Day,’ said Aunt Lal happily. ‘Do you know what? I’m going to get rid of all my lace. I’ve made enough lace. I’m going to find something better to do. Perhaps I’ll help you in the shop.’
‘Get rid of your lace?’ he said, astonished. ‘But it’s so beautiful!’
‘No. I only made it to annoy Malot. Because I knew that she couldn’t make lace.’