by Sylvia Waugh
“She has toe-nails!” exclaimed Tulip, and then on closer inspection, she added, in a voice of disapproval, “and she paints them!”
Appleby still could not speak but she gave her grandmother a withering look as much as to say, “They’re my toe-nails and I’ll do what I like with them.”
“Into the bath with you,” said Tulip as she and Vinetta tipped her into the clean water. This time the suds did not go grey and the scrubbing brush stayed white. After a final ducking under the shower, Appleby looked almost normal.
Almost, but not quite. Her limbs and torso, full of water, looked bloated. Her cheeks were abnormally plump so that the green button eyes were almost lost in their folds. She was dazed. Her movements, oh yes she was still moving, were slow and laboured. She looked like a spaceman. She still could not speak.
“Soobie,” said Tulip, “go and take the shelves out of the empty airing cupboard.”
Soobie went next door and quickly removed all the slats that formed the two shelves and stacked them in a corner on the landing.
In the meantime, Vinetta and Tulip together, using four very large bath-towels, dried Appleby’s hair and squeezed as much water as they could out of her limbs. Soon the towels were saturated, but, except for her hair, Appleby looked just as wet as ever.
“Now,” said Tulip when Soobie returned, “fetch Appleby’s basket chair from her room, and another couple of bath-towels from downstairs. Put the towels on the airing cupboard floor and the chair on top of them.”
By now, they had the terrified Appleby sitting on the bathroom stool, one either side supporting her. When Soobie had done his job, he helped the two women to manoeuvre his sister into the chair in the cupboard. Tulip explained to the dazed girl what was happening.
“You can sit here in the warm till you dry out. Go to sleep. No one will disturb you. It may take a week or two, but you must get completely dry. That is all you have to do. We’ll look in on you from time to time to see how you are doing. I’ll bring you my little brass bell. If you want anything, you can ring it.”
Oh, there were levels upon levels to that speech! Practical it was, and helpful. But Tulip was really putting on the biggest pretend of her life. She was pretending desperately that this bizarre situation was just a bit of ordinary, everyday life. And at another level, she had a quiet, malicious satisfaction in thinking that this adolescent, who had caused so much trouble, would be stuck in a cupboard for a considerable time to think over her misdeeds.
“You will be all right?” asked Vinetta diffidently, longing to take Appleby in her arms and make it all better there and then, but knowing that such instant relief was beyond reach.
Appleby gave her mother a look of cool resignation. The pretend had just about worked. She could almost believe that, given time, everything might be all right. And, to be truthful, she was longing for them to close the door and leave her to recover, or even to die, alone.
33
* * *
The Last Conference
IN THE DARKNESS, Tulip slipped quietly past her sleeping husband into the dressing room and changed into clean, dry clothes. Sitting in front of her mirror, with only the low light burning, she methodically adjusted her face and her hair till she looked her usual unruffled self. The damp, dirty clothing was hidden in her washing basket. No trace of the tussle remained.
On the floor below, Vinetta was cleaning the bath where Appleby had left so much dirt.
In the hall cupboard, Miss Quigley shifted uncomfortably on her cane-backed chair and felt aware that things were happening in the house at a time when things should not be happening.
Poopie was fast asleep, impervious to everything, even the Action Man making a lump in his pillow.
Wimpey heard noises in the dark, felt afraid, and covered her head completely with her quilt.
In her cot in the night nursery, the best baby ever invented was quietly sucking her thumb. Few and far between were the nights when Googles failed to sleep.
Joshua, of course, was still at work, sitting in his office and trying to make sense of all sorts of odd ideas. Forty years of utter simplicity had left him ill-prepared for all the complications of recent months. He half-wished that Vinetta had left him in ignorance of that other matter. There was just too much to worry about. His hands, cupped round the Port Vale mug, gripped it tightly as if he were trying to hold on to some last vestige of reality.
Tulip went and sat on the edge of the bed where Magnus still slept.
“Magnus,” she said softly but urgently, “wake up. Wake up.”
Her husband groaned and eased himself forward on his pillows.
“What is it now?” he asked in a less than friendly voice.
“It’s Appleby,” answered Tulip. “She’s come back. Soobie found her.”
Sir Magnus came fully awake at those words and sat bolt upright.
“Where is she? Bring her here. I want to see her,” he demanded, pulling the cord that switched on the ceiling light.
Tulip looked uncomfortable, a sixty-five-year-old child caught out in being exceptionally naughty. If only she could blame Vinetta!
“You can’t see her yet,” she said in an unusually timid voice. Then she gripped her husband’s large hand tightly and made up her mind to tell the whole truth.
“I’ve done something dreadful, Magnus,” she blurted out. “I thought it was for the best at the time, but now I don’t know what’s going to happen. I might have killed her.”
She told him all about bathing Appleby and getting her so wet that she looked as if she might never dry out. She did not blame anybody else but admitted freely that the idea had been hers.
Sir Magnus watched her, fascinated, as she told the story. When she described how bloated with water Appleby was, it was all he could do to stop himself saying, “How could you be so stupid? Why didn’t you at least take her clothes off first?” But he held his peace.
“I think now,” went on Tulip, “that it might have helped if we had taken her clothes off first, but I just didn’t think. At the time, it seemed important to be quick and thorough.”
Sir Magnus was so used to Tulip running everything, seeing to everything, paying all the bills, being the most efficient member of the household, that he found himself feeling more kindly to her in failure than he had felt for many years. He was born knowing they had been childhood sweethearts, but that was something else.
“We all make mistakes,” he said gently, holding her little hand in his. “Besides, Vinetta was there. She could have stopped you. But it’s done now. There’s no use crying over spilt milk.”
Tulip gave a sigh of relief. The problem was no better, of course, but she felt somehow absolved of her guilt.
“Do the others know that Appleby is back?” was Magnus’s next question.
“They’re in bed asleep.”
“Get them up and bring them here. Miss Quigley too,” said Magnus.
“At this time?” queried Tulip. The clock on the wall said twenty to three.
“The time doesn’t matter,” her husband replied. “Appleby is back and they’re entitled to know. Besides, we will have to make it clear that they are to stay away from our airing cupboard.”
The Trevethick Street visitor ritual was omitted. Tulip knocked at the cupboard door and when Miss Quigley opened it she said abruptly, “We’re all to go to Sir Magnus’s room straightaway. It’s important.”
The twins were excited at being wakened up at such an odd hour and needed no second telling.
Vinetta by now had changed into her nightclothes and came hurrying up in her dressing-gown with Googles in her arms.
Only Soobie failed to attend. First of all he ignored Tulip’s knock.
Vinetta tried.
“Granpa wants us all there,” she said loudly, after Soobie had failed to respond to two heavy raps on the door.
“Well, I’m not coming,” he growled at last. “I’m tired out. What does he think I am?”
Vi
netta then noticed the pile of blue clothing in a heap just to the left of his door. That was proof against any further pleading. The clothes would have to be washed, dried, aired and ironed, before Soobie would leave his bed again.
“He should really have another set of clothes,” sighed Vinetta. “One set isn’t enough for anybody.”
Granpa had wanted personally to praise his grandson as the hero of the hour, but he had to be content with giving him his due in absentia.
“So,” concluded Sir Magnus, looking emphatically at the sleepy twins sitting on the ottoman in an unusual state of truce, “we will all have to stay away from that airing cupboard. In fact, if you have no business on this landing, don’t come upstairs at all.”
Suddenly, out of the blue, the end became a beginning. Just as they were about to leave and go quietly back to their beds, Wimpey piped up.
“Does Pilbeam know?” she asked innocently, and then bit her lip and gave a frightened look towards her mother.
“And who, may I ask, is Pilbeam?” asked Granpa Mennym.
Vinetta made up her mind.
“I think it is time you all knew about Pilbeam. It is a sort of miracle. In time, we will get used to it and accept it as if it had always been so, but, for now, there is no way of making the story sound other than fantastic. It should have happened at some other time, some quiet, uneventful time, but the time was not of my choosing. Time hardly ever is.”
Then she told them about the girl in the attic who was Soobie’s twin and who had slept for forty years. Only two other people knew, or were ever to know, the full story of the body in the trunk. One was Soobie, of course. The other was Joshua, for his wife had secretly told him everything because she always did. He had not really wanted to know, and he did not want to see this new daughter until she was ready to be seen.
“Does Joshua know?” asked Tulip sharply after Vinetta had finished. She herself resented deeply not being told before now.
“Yes,” said Vinetta and, for once, permitted herself a slightly insolent toss of the head.
“And when do we get to meet this grand-daughter?” demanded Sir Magnus.
“Not yet,” said Vinetta firmly. “I’ll decide when, or rather Pilbeam will. I think we should all go to bed now. There has been enough excitement for one night.”
With Googles still cradled in her arms, Vinetta led the way out of the room, without a backward glance.
34
* * *
Born Knowing
“I WANT TO talk to my grand-daughter – alone.”
Sir Magnus was sitting high on his pillows. It was noon on a very dull day at the beginning of February. Pilbeam had ‘come out’ and been introduced to everyone individually. Vinetta, after forty years of submitting to the farce of family conferences in the big front bedroom, had at last managed to impose a little of her own reasoning on her unwieldy family.
“There will not be any ceremony. My daughter – and she is my daughter remember – will not be forced to stand in that room and be stared at by half a dozen pairs of eyes. She will meet each one of you separately and get to know you slowly.”
Joshua said little as usual, but inwardly he applauded her decision.
Granpa was warned in advance of how it would be. He had not protested. He enjoyed the family conferences, but his store of wisdom told him that Vinetta was right.
“Pilbeam has met all of the family now, Granpa, except Appleby, of course,” said Vinetta when she finally brought the girl into his rather awesome presence.
“So I am the last to meet her,” the old man said.
“But you are the most important,” replied his daughter-in-law tactfully. “They say you should always keep the best till last.”
Mollified, Sir Magnus looked hard at the girl standing in the doorway. Their black eyes met. Pilbeam was not in awe of him. The look was a challenge. In it there was a definite family resemblance.
It was at that moment that Sir Magnus dismissed Vinetta so that he could talk to his grand-daughter alone.
“Sit there,” he said to her as Vinetta reluctantly left the room. He pointed to Tulip’s armchair. Pilbeam sat down.
“What do you make of us?” he asked her. His white whiskers twitched and he waited for a shrewd answer to his shrewd question. He could remember Pilbeam now, the honest one, Soobie’s twin. In the days before age and illness had confined him to his bed, he had played with her in the garden, pushing her in the swing, such a pretty child and so good-natured.
“You are my family,” said Pilbeam simply. “What should I make of you?”
“Did they tell you that, or was it something you were born knowing?”
Pilbeam was pleased with the question. It opened the floodgates.
“Yes, Granpa, I was born knowing so many things. I know you are my family, just as I know this is my hand. I have vague memories of being a child, but I know that that must be all embedded pretend. I have sat in that attic for months, trying to figure it out. There are things I was unaccountably born knowing, things Mother and Soobie have told me, and a myriad of things that I don’t know yet. I know things I shouldn’t know. I am ignorant of things that should be common-sense and general knowledge.”
“Do you know the town we live in?” asked Granpa. “Do you know anything outside this house?”
“Yes,” said Pilbeam eagerly, relieved to talk to someone who was wise enough to ask the right questions. “I know the town inside out. I know where the Market is, and Woolworths, and the Post Office. And yet it came as a surprise to me that the doors were rectangular and not all wedge-shaped like my attic door.”
“Adjustment,” murmured Granpa. “You have slept for forty years. You are adjusting to reality. Did you dream?”
“No,” said Pilbeam, “or if I did, I must have forgotten. I have a vague, uneasy memory of looking at Soobie’s face as if it were the first thing that I had ever seen. Yet I remember the park and the lake and feeding the birds. It hurts to think about it. I am not clever enough to understand it. Though I am not sure that anybody would be.”
“Adjustment,” repeated Sir Magnus. “Yet perhaps the best thing for you now is to forget the paradoxes. We have all lived with just such paradoxes for so long that we are totally adjusted to them.”
“Soobie’s not,” interrupted Pilbeam.
“Ignore Soobie,” Granpa advised. “Excessive introspection is no good to anyone. Know only that we are in this world, but not of it. Do you still sit in the attic?”
“Naturally,” said Pilbeam, her chin tilting defensively. “That’s where I belong.”
Magnus leant forward on his pillows and, taking his stick, thumped it hard on the floor.
“You most certainly do not belong there, young woman. You live in the house with your family. Yours is the room next to Appleby’s. It always has been. I’ll have no more nonsense about brooding in the attic. You’ll never adjust if you stay there.”
Vinetta came in.
“Did you want something, Magnus?” she asked.
“What?” said Magnus, raising his voice.
“You banged with your stick. I thought you wanted something.”
“Take this girl to her room,” he ordered. “And make sure she does not go back to that attic. Your own sense should tell you, it’s not good for her.”
To Pilbeam he added more kindly, “When you’ve got used to your room, come back here. I have some letters for you to post – and whilst you’re out you can fetch me a newspaper. You might as well make yourself useful.”
Vinetta looked horrified.
“It’s all right,” said Pilbeam, looking at her mother with a firmness and a confidence reminiscent of Soobie. “I know how to do that. I’ll wear the tinted spectacles and take my pink umbrella. It looks like rain.”
“The tinted spectacles?” queried Vinetta. “Your pink umbrella?”
“Yes,” said Pilbeam, “they’re in my room.”
“Your room?” echoed Vinetta again.
> “The room next to Appleby’s. It is mine. It has always been mine.”
Vinetta too needed to adjust.
“Of course,” she said. “What am I thinking of?”
In a surprisingly short time, Pilbeam became part of the family as if she had always been there. Some members tactfully pretended she had never been asleep in the attic, others, better skilled in pretence, totally forgot. In their corporate adjustment, the graceful girl with the jet black hair and smouldering eyes developed as complete a past as any of them. They all did their share, threading Pilbeam into the family history until she became part of the fabric.
It was a very complex procedure, because, like them, she could remember being the child she had never been; but unlike them, her memory also had to invent experiences for the past real forty years. They all co-operated.
“Do you remember when Dad was Santa Claus?” asked Wimpey one day.
“Yes,” said Pilbeam truthfully, “and Appleby took you both to see him. I told her not to, but she wouldn’t listen to me.”
And Wimpey remembered well the argument and Pilbeam’s exasperation. The long sleep in the attic had never happened. Pilbeam had always been with them.
35
* * *
Appleby’s Progress
PILBEAM HAD NOT been allowed to see Appleby. The airing cupboard door was kept shut.
“You understand, don’t you, Pilbeam?” Vinetta said. “It wouldn’t be fair to let you see her as she is now. In a little while she should be ready to meet you.”
“Does she know about me?” demanded Pilbeam.
Vinetta sighed. Life was so complicated now. She had never reckoned on life being complicated. It was like knitting on a dozen different needles.