by Sylvia Waugh
“I really don’t know,” she answered. “I have tried telling her, but I don’t know how much she has heard. She seems to be in some sort of coma. I look in two or three times a day and I talk to her a little but there is never a response. Her arms still ooze a little water when I squeeze them. We’ve changed the bath-towels under her chair every week. They are drier now than they were at first, of course, but there is still a dampness about them.”
“I wish I could help,” said Pilbeam.
“Your turn will come,” said Vinetta wisely. “When she is better she will be glad of a friend. It could be the making of her. Aunt Kate always intended the two of you to be friends. Memories of things I was born knowing are expanding to include your friendship.”
“I know,” said Pilbeam emphatically. “The same is happening to me. It will be so much easier when she is well again; things will slot into place better. I hate pretending. I wish the pretend bit were safely over.”
In the months she had spent in the airing cupboard, Appleby had never spoken. The little brass bell on the floor beside her chair had never been rung. She made no attempt at all to communicate with anybody. Vinetta worried and worried, but the worrying achieved nothing.
Then one day, towards the end of March, there was a glimmer of hope. The towels on the floor were, for the first time, bone dry.
It was mid-morning. Everybody else in the house was about their business. Vinetta always made sure of that. The airing cupboard door was open and the light from the landing window shone in. Appleby, looking immaculately clean and, outwardly at least, absolutely dry, turned her head and looked at her mother. It was so unexpected that Vinetta was taken by surprise.
“You are looking at me!” she exclaimed. “You are really looking at me!”
Appleby’s look became fixed and Vinetta’s hopes felt crushed. The head had definitely turned, the eyes had flickered intelligently. But now it was gone again.
Just as Vinetta was closing the door, a strangely cracked little voice said, “I think I’ll go to my own room now.”
Vinetta was careful not to show any surprise this time. She opened the door wide again and grasped Appleby’s right arm.
“Let me help you,” she said in a voice that combined comfort with matter-of-factness. Without another word, she took her daughter to her bedroom and settled her down on her own bed.
“I’ll bring your chair back now,” she said, trying to return everything to normal.
“No,” said Appleby looking petulant. “I never want to see that chair again. You can buy me a new one.”
“I’ll buy you anything you want,” promised her mother rashly. “I must go and tell the others you are better. We have all been so worried about you.”
“Don’t let them come here,” snapped Appleby. “I don’t want to see any of them yet. And I don’t want to see you either. Go away. And stay away.”
It was the old Appleby, no mistaking it! After all she had done, anyone else would have been subdued at least, ashamed, apologetic, pleasant. Not Appleby Mennym. She was as defiant and unpleasant and as independent as ever.
Vinetta left the room without another word, but she came back a few seconds later with Tulip’s brass bell in her hand. She put it down on the table beside Appleby’s bed.
“If you want anything,” she said, “just ring.”
She longed to hug her daughter and rejoice that she was on the mend, but the green eyes glowered and warned her to keep her distance. Vinetta looked like a faithful spaniel, happy but deeply hurt. On due reflection the hurt might turn to anger, but this bitter-sweet sorrow was uppermost for now.
“All right, all right,” said Appleby, looking uncomfortably at her mother’s sad face. “Now you can go away and leave me alone.”
Christmas had come and gone in the time Appleby spent in the airing cupboard. A bleak Christmas it had been too, with no presents and no celebrations. Soobie, with no word to anyone, had gone to the church and managed to light a candle. That was all. Easter came and went whilst Appleby stayed in her room, and the brass bell never rang.
“Don’t look in on her,” advised Sir Magnus when Vinetta told him of Appleby’s hardness. “You’ll only provoke her more. When she is ready, she will come out. She will come out more quickly if she thinks no one is taking any notice of her.”
“But she’s been ill, Magnus,” protested Vinetta. “She’s been very ill. Not one of us has ever been so ill before.”
“She’s not ill now,” said her grandfather. “If she is being cheeky to you, she’s well on the way back to health. All you have to do now is wait.”
“I could take her some pretend beef tea,” suggested Vinetta. “She has always liked pretends.”
“No,” insisted Sir Magnus. “Wait. Do nothing. Be patient.”
“Waiting is not easy,” said Vinetta.
“It won’t be easy for her either,” said Magnus shrewdly. “Now you’ll have to leave me. I have work to do. My publisher is not waiting for an article on the life and times of Appleby Mennym.”
36
* * *
More Letters
Sir Magnus was the first to think of it. One afternoon, at the beginning of April, he called Tulip to his bedside.
“Take this,” he said “and push it under Appleby’s door. Don’t go in. Don’t even knock.”
It was a small brown envelope with ‘Miss Appleby Mennym’ written in neat script on the back.
Tulip raised her eyebrows but said nothing. As she passed Appleby’s room she slid the letter under the door. With her usual quickness, she went straight on and about her own business. Vinetta, no doubt, would have waited and listened for sounds from inside the room, but not Tulip.
Appleby, lying on her bed and getting more and more bored by the minute, saw the envelope edge its way through the door. She waited at least half an hour before going to pick it up. She wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of hearing her move, if that was what they were waiting for. She did not trust any of them.
“My dearest Grand-daughter,” she read, when at last she decided to retrieve it and open it, “We have had enough of this stuff and nonsense. It is making your mother very upset. Pull yourself together, girl, and come and join the family. There’ll be no reference to things past, no recriminations. No one will ever mention the name of Albert Pond.
Your loving Granpa,
Magnus Mennym
“SOME HOPES!” EXCLAIMED Appleby. “The minute I’m out of that door it’ll be ‘Why ever did you do it?’, ‘Where did you go?’, ‘How did you get so dirty?’ and those twins might even ask if it was fun.”
Taking the airmail stationery, of which she still had a fairly large supply, she tore off a flimsy blue sheet and wrote in large letters the words:
GET STUFFED
Then she put it in an airmail envelope and addressed it in her best handwriting to ‘Sir Magnus Mennym’.
It was Vinetta who picked up the envelope as she was on her way to Granpa’s room in the early evening, just after the family hour.
Sir Magnus took his silver paperknife and opened it with a flourish. When he read the contents he nearly bounced out of his bed with rage.
“There’ll have to be a conference,” he shouted. “Tell everybody to come here now, this minute. Even Miss Quigley.”
Vinetta glimpsed the words on the paper as it fluttered to the floor. Then she steeled herself to say what she had to say.
“There will be no conferences. There have been too many already. Leave it be. I’ll write to her. She’s obviously willing to read letters and to answer them, however objectionable the answers may be.”
Sir Magnus still looked furious. “A conference . . .” he spluttered, black beady eyes popping.
“Stop that,” said Vinetta sharply. “If you don’t you might just be the first rag doll ever to die of a stroke. Leave it to me. I know what I am doing.”
The next letter Appleby received was from her mother.
“Dear
Appleby,” she read, “I won’t dwell on anything wrong you may have done. I can’t be your judge. I can’t even be so condescending as to forgive you. How do I know what there is to forgive?
All I can offer you is my unconditional love. And if you come out, there will be nothing said to you about the past, not by me, not by anyone. No doubt Granpa made you a similar promise. There is a difference. I will make sure, absolutely sure, that the promise is kept. I have never realised till now just how much power I have in this family. I can restrain them and I will.
If some day you wanted to talk to me about what happened, I would be happy to listen. But you would have to speak first. I will never broach the subject with you again. The truth is a gift in your possession. You can decide to keep it, or to bestow it on whomever you choose. No one will ever ask you any questions. We can pretend it never happened, if that is what you want.
Please join us. We love you. Do not make yourself a stranger.
Mother”
Appleby sobbed when she read the letter. She read it two or three times and then put it away safely in a drawer.
Taking paper again, she wrote on it just two words:
I CAN’T
Pilbeam it was who found the airmail envelope addressed to Vinetta. She dashed down with it to the kitchen where Vinetta was busy ironing.
“She still won’t come out,” sighed Vinetta.
Pilbeam, looking over her mother’s shoulder, corrected her.
“She doesn’t say ‘won’t’. She says ‘can’t’.”
“It amounts to the same thing.”
“No it doesn’t. She says ‘can’t’ and I think she really means it. I almost understand her. She is my sister, after all, and nearer my age than any of yours.”
“You don’t even know her,” said Vinetta bitterly.
“Yes, I do,” declared Pilbeam with sudden clarity of vision. “I was born knowing her.”
At those words, with that thought, the next move became obvious.
“I am going up to see her,” she said.
“Don’t,” said Vinetta anxiously, but Pilbeam was already out of the kitchen door and half way up the first flight of stairs. Vinetta hurried after her. They paused outside Appleby’s door. Pilbeam knocked once, quite firmly. There was no reply. So she pushed open the door.
“Who are you?” screamed Appleby. “Get out of here. This is my room.”
“I’m Pilbeam,” answered Pilbeam sharply. “I’m your sister and Soobie’s twin. You know perfectly well who I am. So stop being stupid.”
Pilbeam went into the room. Vinetta, standing in the hall, had the good sense not to follow. She closed the door and, a little reluctantly, left them to sort it out between themselves.
The next day, Appleby rejoined the family. She became her old, perky, abrasive self again. There were no apologies, not even an explanation. Nobody mentioned Albert Pond. For good or ill, that was what Vinetta decreed and everyone was made to agree to it. It was her side of the bargain. Like the old lease on the house, it was very much in favour of the owner. In this case, the owner was Appleby; the property, her mother’s unconditional love.
37
* * *
Miss Quigley’s Champions
“MISS QUIGLEY NEVER comes to visit now,” said Pilbeam, who was still adjusting to knowing things she had been told and to recognising things that, being part of her fictional sixteen years’ experience of life, she was born knowing.
She and Appleby were sitting in the lounge on a coldish day in May. They had established their own cosy corner, well away from Soobie’s bay window, well away from the fireplace where the grown-ups had their own special seats. In the corner where they sat they had placed the round table with the claw feet, brought down from the attic, and two comfortable, cushioned basket armchairs with very high, wide-curved backs, bought for them by Vinetta from a catalogue. A long, narrow side window gave them a view of the front path.
“You’re right, you know,” agreed Appleby. “I haven’t seen her since – well, for ages. She used to come at least once a fortnight.”
In fact, Miss Quigley had not come out of her cupboard since Granpa Mennym’s last conference. She had said she never came if she wasn’t invited and the perverse woman, always a stickler for what she thought of as protocol, was determined to wait for an invitation, however long it might be in coming. “I could be dead for all they know,” she said to herself as the weeks went by, “– or care, for that matter.”
“She could be dead,” said Pilbeam, not quite knowing what being dead meant. It happened in books. Aunt Kate had died, but no one really remembered that.
“Let’s ask Mother about her,” suggested Appleby. “After all, she’s her friend.”
Vinetta was in the kitchen, pretending to bake a cake.
“What is it?” she asked, pausing in mid-stir with the wooden spoon in her hand and the earthenware bowl cradled under her arm.
“We were wondering about Miss Quigley,” began Pilbeam.
“Goodness!” cried Vinetta, as startled as if she had left something burning in the oven. “I’d forgotten all about her. She hasn’t been round for ages. I’ll write her a proper invitation to tea. She’ll like that.”
“No,” said Pilbeam, who could be as forthright as her twin on occasions. “You know perfectly well that she’s sitting in the hall cupboard and is probably as miserable as can be. What right have we to forget her? It’s disgraceful. She should have a room in the house. She was made here, same as we were.”
“There isn’t a room,” said Vinetta wildly. She put the basin down on the kitchen table and let the wooden spoon clatter into it.
“There is,” said Appleby, ready to back up her sister. “There’s the guest room under Pilbeam’s.”
“That’s the guest room,” protested Vinetta. “It is meant for occasional visitors.”
“We never have occasional visitors. I’ve never heard such rubbish.” Pilbeam raised her voice and looked really angry.
Vinetta faced the two united teenagers whose gaze was one of determined accusation. Sometimes nothing but the truth will do. Vinetta wrung her hands and spoke.
“They don’t like her. Granpa Mennym can’t stand her. He feels guilty about it and always insists upon her being told things, but she gets on his nerves. Tulip says she can only take her in small doses. The twins are terrified to make a noise when she’s here. And your father never speaks two words to her.”
“Dad never speaks two words to anybody,” said Pilbeam scornfully, remembering how he had looked at her when they had first met.
“All right then?” he had asked awkwardly.
“Yes,” said Pilbeam, for what else could she say?
“All right then,” Joshua had concluded before sitting in the armchair to read the newspaper and suck his unlit pipe. Pilbeam had not minded his gruffness. It was a comfortable, tacit acceptance of her being there. But she still felt free to poke fun at it.
“And as for the others,” chipped in Appleby, “they’re no better than she is. We are no better. We all get on each other’s nerves from time to time.”
It was a very mature thought coming from Appleby, but Vinetta chose to ignore it.
“She cannot live in the house,” she insisted. “She is not, and has never been, one of the family.”
“That’s terrible,” Pilbeam exploded. “You’re horrible. And I don’t care if you are my mother. You would see that poor woman cooped up forever in a cupboard and just be nice to her when you choose to. I can’t believe it.”
It was extremely difficult for Vinetta to re-adjust. This was how it had been for forty years. Miss Quigley had never objected. Once she had stayed the weekend in the guest room they now proposed should be her permanent home. It had been a pleasant pretend at first, but then the visitor had irritated everyone by saying too much and getting in the way, then apologising profusely before getting in the way again.
“When is she going back to Trevicky Street?” Wimpe
y had asked in a stage whisper.
Miss Quigley had heard, as she was meant to, but she had said nothing. Within the hour she had appeared in the hall, carrying her tartan weekend bag.
“I’ll have to be getting home now,” she had said to Vinetta. “I have so many things to do. But it has been a lovely weekend. I’ve enjoyed every minute of it. Still, one mustn’t overstay one’s welcome.”
“Nonsense,” said Vinetta as she held open the front door. “You know we love to have you, Hortensia. You must come again when you have the time.”
“I’ll see,” Miss Quigley had said a bit bleakly. “It’s hard to get away, you know. I can’t always be asking the neighbours to look after the plants and the cat.”
That was all of fifteen years ago. She had never stayed again.
“Miss Quigley wouldn’t agree to stay here anyway,” said Vinetta, on firmer ground. “She’s too proud to take charity.”
“She would come if she felt she was useful,” said Pilbeam astutely.
“And you tell me how she could be useful,” said Vinetta grimly.
“She could look after Googles for you. She could be a sort of nanny,” suggested Pilbeam.
“I don’t need a nanny. I look after Googles myself.”
“When you remember,” said Appleby sarcastically. “You’re always too busy being a housewife or sitting at your sewing machine. You’re never any fun. Googles just lies there all day and you don’t even talk to her. You just go through the ritual of giving her a bottle and changing her nappy and then you plonk her down again like a bag of carrots.”
Vinetta was furious.
“She’s a very good baby anyway. She doesn’t take a lot of looking after. And I must say I’ve never noticed you paying any attention to her.”
“Why should I pay any attention to her? She’s not mine. I’ve got more to do with my time. I’m telling you – you should offer the job to Miss Quigley.”