by Sylvia Waugh
“She can move, certainly. See how her hands grip the chair arms and make it rock, and she moves her head slightly as we speak, as if she were looking from one to the other. I have never seen her walk, but twice I have found her sitting on the floor in front of the rocking chair as if she had been making the effort but hadn’t succeeded. It will take time, Soobie. It would be very surprising if it didn’t.”
The two conspirators then discussed how they were going to take turns in looking after Pilbeam and coaxing her into life. By the time they had finished, it was growing dark.
“We should have a light in here,” said Soobie. “I’ll bring my torch up tomorrow. Candles would give more light, but they are risky at the best of times.”
“It might not be necessary,” said Vinetta. “If you look at the beam that crosses the middle of the attic, you’ll see that there’s a fixture for a light bulb.”
“Even better,” said Soobie. “All we have to do is find the switch. It’s probably near the door. I’ll fetch a bulb up tomorrow.”
The switch was actually outside the door. Soobie was pleased when he found it. The days would soon be shorter and a light would be needed to give them more time to work. There were, unfortunately, no sockets to be found, but the TV and the record-player were both able to work on batteries. This was a real job. Soobie took it very seriously. It was the first time he had ever been interested in anything that drew him away from his books and his chair by the window in the lounge.
21
* * *
Letters
IT WAS A very wet morning. Even the letters lying on the floor in the hall were damp. Tulip picked them up and scrutinised them. Only two letters this post – one a thin blue airmail addressed to Miss Appleby Mennym in the handwriting she immediately recognised as Albert Pond’s, the other a very thick, long envelope with Sir Magnus’s name on it. Tulip turned the thick letter over. On the back it said, “If undelivered please return to Cromarty, Varley and Thynne, Solicitors . . .”
“Mmm!” said Tulip to herself. “I wonder what that’s about.”
At that moment, Appleby came down the stairs, still dressed in her dressing-gown, although it was eleven-thirty and the letters had come in the second post.
“Letter for you,” said Tulip curtly. She looked at her lazy grand-daughter more closely. “I might feel like asking you why you’ve still got your dressing-gown on at this time of day, madam, but, what’s more to the point, why on earth are you wearing your jeans underneath it? Surely you haven’t slept in them?”
Appleby snatched the letter.
“None of your business, but, as it happens, I was half-way dressed when I heard the postman and I thought there might be a letter for me. It is at least eight weeks since I wrote to Albert Pond and I knew he would be writing back some time soon.”
“If that is the way you talk to your grandmother, don’t bother speaking again. It’ll be a long time before I speak to you!” Tulip’s crystal eyes glittered behind her little spectacles. She was very, very angry.
Appleby looked doubtful, even perhaps a little bit scared. As the years had gone by, she had grown more and more uppity, but it was not wise to have a big confrontation with Tulip. Even Appleby knew that.
“I’m sorry,” she said in a not very convincing voice. “It is just that everybody is always on at me. I can’t please any of you. You all think you can say what you like to me.”
“Very well,” said Tulip drily. “Apology accepted. Now read your letter and let us know what Albert has to say this time.”
“What’s that one?” asked Appleby looking at the bulky envelope Tulip was still holding in her hand.
“Letter for Granpa. I’m just going to take it up to him.”
She didn’t bother to mention the solicitor and Appleby took no further interest. Her own letter was far more important. She tore open the envelope.
“Listen, Gran, listen!” she cried, forgetting her earlier animosity. “Albert Pond wants me to pay them a visit in Australia. He says he’ll send me the fare and I’ve just got to name the date when I can go. Isn’t that marvellous?”
Vinetta came out of the kitchen to see what the excitement was about. Soobie swivelled round in his chair by the window and gazed in amazement through the lounge door at his dotty sister. Well, dotty was the only word he could think of at that moment to describe a rag doll who imagines that she could really take a trip to the antipodes.
“Appleby!” exclaimed her mother. “What are you thinking of? You going there would be as bad as him coming here, worse if anything.”
Appleby looked crestfallen.
“I could have seen Ayers Rock, and Perth and Melbourne and the Sydney Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. It would have been incredibly wonderful. A dream come true.”
“None of our dreams come true,” called Soobie sourly from the lounge.
“You shut up,” snapped Appleby. “Who asked you, anyway?”
Vinetta looked for a way to restore the peace. Even forty years’ experience had not made her any less hurt by discord than she had been in the dim and distant past when her children had fought their very first fight.
“Perhaps we could pretend that you’re going on holiday,” she suggested to Appleby. “You could pack some bags and we could say goodbye to you at the front door.”
Appleby seized on this idea at once. “And I could stay away for a month and you would all miss me, but I would send you postcards and I might even bring you some presents back.”
Soobie groaned.
“Where would you be for the month you weren’t here, mutton head? In the cupboard with Miss Quigley?”
Vinetta and Tulip were scandalised. No one was ever supposed to mention the cupboard. Miss Quigley lived in Trevethick Street. Everybody knew that.
“Well,” said Soobie, coming out into the hall and looking shamefaced, “she asks for it, going on the way she does. I’m sorry I said what I did. I shouldn’t have.”
“I can stay in the attic,” snapped Appleby. “Not that it’s any concern of yours, Soobie Mennym.”
Vinetta was beginning to wish she had never mentioned a pretend holiday.
“You can’t stay in the attic, dear. It is much too dusty,” she said quickly. “Don’t worry. We’ll think of something.”
And there they left it for the time being. Tulip went off upstairs with the other letter, the letter for Sir Magnus. She had no idea that what she was carrying was a bombshell.
22
* * *
The Inner Circle
THERE WAS AN emergency meeting of the senior members of the family in Sir Magnus’s room that evening. The family hour was over. The younger children were in bed. Appleby was in her room. Soobie had made his way secretly to the attic.
Miss Quigley attended the meeting.
“She must come,” Sir Magnus had said firmly that afternoon. “She has a right to be here. She’s a silly woman and I can’t abide her, but rights is rights!”
So Vinetta had gone, duster in hand, and given three quick, short taps at the cupboard door. Then she had immediately turned her back and started vigorously dusting the hall-stand.
The cupboard door opened behind her and Miss Quigley peeped out. Seeing Vinetta’s back, she understood at once what it implied. So she waited and listened.
Vinetta called to Joshua, who was in the little cloakroom sorting out a pair of wellington boots for work, “By the way, Josh, your father wants the Inner Circle to meet in his room at eight o’clock tonight. He knows you can’t be there, of course, but I gather it is something important. I’ve sent a message to Miss Quigley inviting her to come along.”
The door to the hall cupboard closed silently.
Joshua had not heard what Vinetta was saying, but it wasn’t really intended for his ears anyway.
“Why is it,” he was grumbling, “that whenever it rains I have such a job finding my rain boots? There’s tennis racquets, footballs and all sorts in here.”
&
nbsp; At twenty minutes to eight that evening, Miss Quigley, carrying her grey umbrella, sped out through the kitchen to the back door. Two minutes later, there was a ringing at the front door bell.
Vinetta hurried to answer it.
“You poor thing, having to come out on a night like this! I hope you’ve not got soaked. Let me take your umbrella. The fire’s on in the lounge. Do come and get warm and dry.”
Vinetta fussed over her visitor. Miss Quigley was mollified but still anxious.
“I got your message,” she said as they went into the lounge. “I knew it must be urgent. It’s not that Albert Pond again, is it?”
Vinetta shook her head.
“I haven’t the faintest idea what it is. Not even Tulip knows exactly. All we know is that he got a letter from a solicitor this morning and he’s been in a mood ever since. It must be important. He said you had a right to be here. In fact, he insisted upon it.”
Miss Quigley looked quite flattered, but still tremulous.
Promptly at eight o’clock, the Inner Circle gathered in Granpa’s room.
Sir Magnus was sitting up in bed, well propped up by pillows. The purple foot dangled listlessly. In his hands he held the letter.
“This letter,” he said, “is from a firm of solicitors. They’re not our solicitors. Strangers to me altogether. But I gather from what they have to say that we are now the owners of this house, or, at least, I am. There are various papers for me to sign and send back, but when the palaver’s over, the house is mine.”
“That’s wonderful!” exclaimed Vinetta. “How generous of Albert! No more rent to pay! No more worrying about our future here!”
Yet Granpa did not look at all happy. He had not looked happy all day, come to think of it.
“There is a snag?” asked Tulip anxiously.
Miss Quigley, seated upright on the high-backed chair near the door, said helplessly, “Perhaps the authorities will want to know more about us if you start signing things for strange solicitors.”
“I’ve spent too many years bamboozling bureaucratic incompetence for that to be a problem,” said Sir Magnus. “Everything that needs doing can be done by telephone or by post. I’ve phoned my own solicitor already and he’ll see to it. That is the least of my worries.”
“Well, what is troubling you then, Magnus? You’re being very irritating. You’ve got the three of us very worried, and we don’t know what we are worrying about,” protested Tulip.
“It is Albert Pond,” said her husband. “He doesn’t exist.”
“What on earth do you mean?” demanded Vinetta. “Has he died?”
“No, I mean he doesn’t exist. He has never existed. There is no such person as Albert Pond.”
The three women looked at him blankly.
“What makes you say that?” asked Vinetta.
“I know it is hard to believe,” said Granpa. “It has taken me all afternoon to grasp it. But it must be true. I have been left this house in the will of Mr Chesney Loftus who died just three months ago in Australia. So if Chesney Loftus was alive a year ago when we first heard from Albert Pond, Albert Pond can’t be real.”
“So this Albert, whoever he was or is, must be some sort of hoaxer,” said Vinetta, exploring the possibilities.
“A hoaxer who knows all about us?” Sir Magnus was directing them gradually towards the truth he had already deduced. “I have spent hours trying to put the pieces together. The only conclusion I can come to is that this, in the parlance of detective stories, is an inside job. Albert Pond has to be one of us.”
“Us!” said the startled women, looking from one to another. It flitted through Miss Quigley’s mind that she had been asked most particularly to be there. Surely she was not under suspicion!
“Well, not exactly us,” said Granpa, “more likely, them!” He nodded grimly towards the door beyond which were the younger members of the family.
“Which one?” asked Miss Quigley, relieved of her momentary embarrassment.
“Well, not the twins,” said Granpa. “Poopie might be capable of doing something like that out of pure mischief, but he is not clever enough.”
“So,” mused Vinetta, “it would have to be either Appleby or Soobie.”
Granpa suddenly looked very, very old and very, very sad. The black button eyes had a film of grey. The white walrus whiskers drooped.
“It can only be Appleby,” he said. “Even I have to see that. Soobie is too honest and straightforward. He never pretends anything. A monstrous pretence like this is beyond him.”
“But what about the letters?” faltered Vinetta, trying to grasp what the old man meant.
“She must have written them herself, disguising her handwriting. She is clever, you know. None of you realises how clever she is.”
“They were posted in Australia. You can’t get away from that,” put in Miss Quigley.
“They had Australian stamps on them,” corrected Sir Magnus. “That is another bit of evidence. Who is the stamp collector of this family? Who always goes to the Post Office?”
“The envelopes had proper postmarks,” Miss Quigley persisted, remembering the letter she had scrutinised as she handed it over to Vinetta.
“No problem for Appleby,” sighed Sir Magnus, shaking his head. “Forgeries. Very good ones at that. I’m not saying they would have fooled Stanley Gibbons, but they were certainly authentic enough for us.”
“But the postman brought the letters. Appleby is always in bed when the postman comes,” objected Tulip.
Then Vinetta remembered, with a sinking feeling, the snowy morning when she had come across her guilty-looking daughter in the hall. Tulip thought about the jeans she had glimpsed under Appleby’s dressing-gown just that morning.
“But what about the photograph of Hildegarde?” asked Miss Quigley. “She showed me that the last time I came to tea.”
Vinetta looked grim.
“She’s made fools of all of us,” she said. “I should have known better. She has a shoe-box full of fashion photos. I even bought her a photograph album for her birthday so that she could set them out nicely. She’ll have been having a good laugh at the lot of us.”
Vinetta was furious, but at the same time she felt as if the bottom had dropped out of her world. She could not understand how a daughter of hers, well-loved to the point of being spoilt, could do such a thing. She had inflicted a year of agony on the whole family. It was beyond any understanding.
“What shall we do about it?” she asked, looking expectantly at her father-in-law.
“I don’t know yet,” said Sir Magnus. “You have the facts. I suggest we all think about it. Tell Joshua as soon as he comes in tomorrow morning. He’ll be at home tomorrow night. So I suggest we have a full family conference tomorrow evening at seven o’clock. Maybe by then we’ll have sorted something out.”
Miss Quigley looked a bit uncomfortable.
“Of course you must come too, Miss Quigley. My grand-daughter, for whatever reason, has caused you a lot of worry and misery.”
Miss Quigley’s prim mouth twitched. Her whole face looked crumpled. Then suddenly she stood up, looking taller and ramrod straight.
“I don’t think I can go on pretending to live at Trevethick Street,” she said bitterly. “I shall go back to my cupboard in the hall and sleep till I am wanted again.”
She turned and went out of the door and down the two flights of stairs to the hallway. Habit inclined her to turn left towards the front door, but with fierce determination she turned right and walked firmly along the passage to her cupboard. Tulip and Vinetta, looking over the banister, clearly saw her open the door and disappear inside.
“I wish she hadn’t done that,” said Vinetta. “It seems like the end of an era.”
Tulip felt much the same but she said briskly, “Don’t worry. She’ll get over it. We all will. You’ll see.”
“We could ask her to come and live with us properly. We have plenty of room after all,” suggested Vinetta fe
eling guilty.
“Oh, no we couldn’t,” said Tulip. “She would be unlivable with. I can take her in small doses, very small doses. And the same goes for the rest of the family. We have our rights too.”
23
* * *
Alone in the Attic
THE NEXT MORNING all of the grown-ups were subdued and anxious, determined not to say a word about Appleby’s misconduct till the evening meeting. The four children were told simply to come to Granpa’s room at seven o’clock. Their questions as to what it was about met with very vague replies. Even Soobie, who might have expected to be given an honest answer, was left in the dark.
Whilst the rest of the household was marking time, the girl in the attic took a huge step forward.
For weeks, Vinetta and Soobie had talked to her and guided her. They told her all about the family and its history, repeating things over and over again in different ways. They read to her. They played all sorts of music on the little record-player. They pulled her wicker trunk over from the other side of the attic and put the portable television set on it. Being in the attic, reception was remarkably good. Her watching was always supervised, and when the guardians left the attic, the set was switched off. Both of them treated her like a very important, fragile invalid.
Pilbeam rocked in her chair and carefully watched everything around her. She learned how to smile and to frown. She had walked, yes walked, uncertainly from her chair to the round table. Vinetta had been delighted when she did this, but worried in case trying to do too much too soon might send her back to being inanimate.
But on the morning of the letters, nobody was with Pilbeam in the attic. The rain was pattering on the skylights. The day was dull and gloomy, the corners of the attic staying in complete darkness. Usually when she was alone like this, Pilbeam just rocked the chair from time to time and gazed rather vacantly at everything and nothing, wishing that Vinetta or Soobie would come. She had learnt very rapidly how to wish.