by Nina Bawden
I thought—I would be like the Pied Piper! Play the musical box and dance away with it, and they would follow me. I would lead them somewhere safe and quiet, somewhere no one could find us, and I would play with them and tell them stories.
Chapter Ten
I quarrelled with Plato. What we quarrelled about was less important than why. And why was my fault.
*
We went to the cinema to see Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Although this was an ancient film, neither of us had seen it before. Plato held my hand through the frightening parts, and as the film ended, before the lights went up, he put his arm round me and kissed me. It was a soft tickly kiss, and a bit sticky, too, since we had shared a bag of sweet popcorn. I would have kissed him back, to be friendly, if I had not heard a familiar piggy snort from behind me. I twisted round—and there she sat, Slug Maureen, entwined with a bearded male wearing a fringed leather jacket and a safety pin in one ear. He wasn’t much to look at, fat and white, with red scaly patches where his beard straggled thin on his cheeks, but he was years older than Maureen.
And there was I, with the infant Plato!
I did my best. I stood up and beamed as if I was delighted to see her. I said, “I didn’t see you come in. I’d have thought this was pretty tame entertainment for you.” I threw back my head and clutched at my throat and made a disgusting gurgling sound. “The Vampire’s Victim,” I explained sweetly. “That would be more in your line, I’d have thought.”
“She thinks she’s ever so comic,” Maureen said, to the beard.
She smirked at us. “We didn’t come for the movie,” she said, snuggling up to lover boy and rubbing her face against his scabrous cheek. She fluttered her eyelids. “Run along, children.”
I could have killed her. I stomped out of the cinema, hot with shame. And, naturally, took it out on Plato.
He said, “Sorry.” He looked more than usually foolish, eyes goggling mournfully behind his thick glasses, and the braces on his yellow teeth glinting.
I said, “Sorry? What for? Nothing to be sorry about that I can see.”
“Oh, well,” he said. “Never mind.”
We walked down the High Street, past Marks and Spencer, past Boots. I could see our transparent reflections in the glass windows; a tall girl with a skinny spider-boy capering alongside her.
I thought, if he starts talking Backspeak, I’ll throttle him.
He said, “Stel og rof a eeffoc.”
He spoke in a high-pitched, silly voice, playing babyish, like a puppy rolling over and showing its belly when a big old dog comes near.
I didn’t throttle him. I just ground my teeth.
He said, speaking normally, “I enjoyed that film. I know it’s just rubbish, all that science fiction stuff, but that was good rubbish. I liked the way the people from space were made so gentle and fragile-looking, and clever. It was different from all those metal monsters. Do you want to come back for supper? We might get something to eat if we can coax my mother away from the idiot box and the gin. Do her good, too. Though it may be too late to stop her mind going mushy. She gets that glazed look sometimes, as if she’s already turned into some kind of robot. Or a zombie, taken over by an evil creature.”
He was only trying to make me laugh. But I turned on him. “Why are you so absolutely horrible about your mother? It’s loathsome to talk about her like that, as if you despised her.”
“I don’t,” he said. “I don’t despise her. It’s just that she makes herself stupid. I mean, I know she’s not clever, she can’t help that, but she can help not taking any interest in anything.”
“She’s bored,” I said. “And it’s no wonder she gets bored and fed up, living with someone who sighs and pulls his mouth about whatever she says. I expect she’d rather have kept Aliki with her and let you go and live with your father, but I expect she had to put up with you because he didn’t want to! And why do you go on all the time about being clever? Everyone knows how clever you are, because you keep on about it and don’t let them ever forget it. What’s clever about making other people feel stupid?”
We were both standing still on the pavement. He stared at me. “Do I really do that? I don’t mean to.”
“Well, you do. You go on as if everyone except you was a moron.”
He shook his head and tried to smile. He said, “I’m sorry. If that’s what I do. But I wasn’t really being nasty about my mother. I mean, I wouldn’t say it to anyone except you. I thought you’d understand. I mean, I worry about her. And you say things about your aunts sometimes. You complain about them.”
“I’ve had cause lately,” I said. I thought of something that would really hurt him. “And I wouldn’t bother to stick up for my aunts, if I were you. Aunt Sophie says you’re a bad influence on me!”
He blinked. He had gone dreadfully pale. He said, “I didn’t think I was important enough to influence anyone.”
I felt ashamed then. I was winding down fast and was ready to apologise and make friends. But I was too late.
The colour that had drained from his face was rushing back into it. The slanting afternoon sun shone through his sticking out ears, turning them an even richer crimson. He said, “I’m sorry. That is, I’m sorry I’m not eighteen years old and six feet tall and more brawn than brains, but just at the moment there’s really nothing I can do about it.”
He turned and marched off, shoulders straight, quite perky and dignified.
*
And, of course, I felt terrible. “Take your temper out for a walk if you must, but keep a strong leash on it,” was what Aunt Bill used to say to me when I was younger and flew into rages. Most of the time, nowadays, I could manage it. I thought of my temper as a snappy dog on a leash that had to be jerked back in case it bit people, and usually I was able to stop before I had said the worst things.
The worst thing in this case was not what I’d said, but that Plato knew why I’d said it.
*
All through supper I wondered how I could put it right.
“You’re quiet, my duck,” Aunt Bill said. “Feeling all right?”
“I’m okay,” I said. “I was just thinking about the film. It was really interesting. Science fiction is often rubbish but this was good rubbish. The people from outer space were nicer than human beings, much kinder and gentler.”
“That wouldn’t be difficult,” Aunt Sophie said. “Did Plato enjoy it?”
“Oh, yes,” I said, smiling enthusiastically. “He thought it was brilliant.”
I was scared she was going to ask me what Plato was doing this evening. But after one keen glance she said, “Good,” and smiled back at me kindly. I must have convinced her that all was well with my love life. Or perhaps she was too pre-occupied with her plans for the Edinburgh Festival to pay much attention. She was driving up with the band at the end of the week for a three-day gig, and was busy worrying whether Aunt Bill and I would have enough to eat during the five days she would be away, and if she had laid in enough household things. She mentioned soap and lavatory paper and candles.
“We couldn’t run out of all the food you’ve put in the freezer if we stuffed ourselves night and day,” Aunt Bill said. “Even if we did, I daresay one of us can boil an egg. And what do we want candles for? Some strange religious rite? Midnight mass on the lawn?”
That would be fun for Maureen, I thought.
“There might be a power cut,” Aunt Sophie said. “And you must promise me to eat properly. It’s all right for you, Bill, you’ve got plenty of subcutaneous fat in reserve. But Jane’s a growing girl.”
“And you’re an old one,” Aunt Bill said. She hooted with laughter. “Too old to go charging about the country playing percussion. You must be the world’s oldest drummer as well as the smallest. You ought to stick to the triangle! You’ll give yourself a heart attack one day.”
“Musicians live longer than most people,” Aunt Sophie said. “Particularly conductors and drummers. It’s the regular exer
cise. It keeps the arteries open.”
*
I left them cheerfully squabbling, and went to ring Plato. His mother answered. “Jane, I’m so sorry, but he’s fast asleep and I don’t want to wake him. He’s had a very bad asthma attack. The doctor had to come and inject him. There must be a very high pollen count.”
She sounded friendly and bright; not at all waily.
I knew it wasn’t the pollen count. I said I was sorry.
“You could always come over tomorrow,” she said. “Why not ring in the morning? I am sure he will be anxious to see you.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” I said, and then, afraid she might guess we had quarrelled, “I mean, if he’s not feeling well. Tell him—tell him I’ll write him a letter.”
GUSHOWI NI, MUWI (VSAMZ), KEPI.
I put it in an envelope, stamped it first class, and wrote URGENT in red letters all over it. The last post had gone, but I put it in the pillar box at the end of our road so that it would go first thing in the morning.
Chapter Eleven
Plato didn’t ring back as I had hoped he would. I wanted to ring him again, but I didn’t dare. I kept thinking how I would feel if he had quarrelled with me because I was so hideous to look at that he was embarrassed to be seen in my company. I would want to die. I would never want to see him again.
*
Aunt Bill said, “What are you doing today, my lovely?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“There’s an exhibition at the Hayward Gallery. I thought of going this morning. Might take Rattlebones, it’s not too far for the old lady, and it might amuse her to see a bit of the city. Want to come, cherry pie?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “Thank you all the same.”
“I’m sure the car will be hugely diverted by the traffic jams on the Embankment,” Aunt Sophie said. “I’m not so sure about Jane. She may have plans that she doesn’t want to share with us.”
*
I got out the backpack I had taken to France last year and put in the presents: the transformer and the marbles and the solitaire board and the pencil box and the coral beads and the books and the ivory rattle. I wrapped the musical box in my school scarf so that it wouldn’t get joggled. I waited until Rattlebones had gone farting and belching up the road. Then I stood on the landing and listened. I heard the dishwasher start hissing with water, and the bang and thump as Aunt Sophie rushed around with the Hoover. When it stopped, I heard her quick steps across the hall to the music room and the click of the closing doors. And, in another minute, the sound of the drums.
I went downstairs and into the kitchen. I added provisions to my backpack; the end of the loaf we had had for breakfast, two apples, and a big piece of runny Brie in some Cling Film. I checked my purse to see if I had enough money for fares. I waited a while in case the telephone rang, but it didn’t.
And then I set off on what was probably the most important journey of my life, quite alone.
*
I wasn’t sure what I would do when I got there. I had packed the presents more to give myself a reason for going, than because I actually believed I would have a chance to give them to George and Annabel. It was still a sort of story I was telling myself, a game like a Fighting Fantasy in which nothing bad could really happen because nothing that happened was real.
It had been fine when I started out, a clear, blue, summer day, but by the time I got to Bow the sky had grown heavy-bellied with rain. People looked at the sky and held out their hands, and shrugged, and said to each other that with any luck the rain would hold off until evening.
George and Annabel were not in the cemetery. It was nearly twelve o’clock, and as I ate the bread and the Brie and the apples, I told myself that they were having an early lunch, too. I decided it was unlikely that they had gone away for a holiday, a family with such a new baby, and that they might turn up in the early part of the afternoon, if only to walk the dog. We had once had a dog, a cocker spaniel called Blister, who had been old when I was born. All I remembered about him was his musty old-dog smell and that he had to go for a walk three times a day, because although Aunt Bill loved him, she didn’t want him making a mess in the garden.
There were more people in the cemetery than there had been before; pensioners on the benches, mothers with little children, but mostly big boys, out of school for the summer, playing football on the scuffed grass by the railway line or larking about in the bushes.
I wandered into the wilder part of the cemetery. I thought I might look for Stanley Arthur McAlpine and sit on his grave while I made up my mind what to do. I needed to gather my courage. I thought I might walk along Shipshape Street past the house, but I wasn’t sure that I was brave enough without Plato.
I soon found that I was going to miss him in another way, too. Plato’s sense of direction is better than mine. It was as if once he had been to a place he kept a clear map of it stamped on his mind. On my own, after I had left the railway line and the broad, open paths between the clearing and the main gate, I was lost. The smaller paths, mossy and soft underfoot and arched overhead with dark, tangled branches, were like the paths in a maze. Whichever way I turned I kept coming back to one particular tree, a dead, blackened stump, covered in ivy.
A maze is easy. There is always a rule—like keep turning right until you come to the centre. A wild place is different. You can die from thirst and exhaustion half a mile from a farm or a village. Aunt Bill told me this years ago, when we were staying in Cornwall, and she wanted to stop me going off on the moor without her or Aunt Sophie. I remembered it now, and although I could still hear the distant shouts from the football game in the clearing, and friendly bird sounds in the tall trees around me, I felt suddenly chilled.
I wasn’t afraid; what I felt was only a thin shadow of fear. But it was enough to give me a warning, so that when I came upon McAlpine’s grave, unexpectedly, round a twist in the path, I wasn’t quite unprepared.
I didn’t recognise it for a second. The boys had stuck a bucket upside down on the head of the marble angel and hung their jackets from the tops of its folded wings. A couple of the boys were leaning against it, plastic bags over their faces; two or three crouched on the flat tombstone and another lay spread-eagled on his back on the ground.
Real fear jolted me; a shock, as if I had touched a faulty electric plug. One of the crouching boys sprang to his feet with a loud, formless yell. He was swaying enough for me to hope that he was too dopey to stay upright long. As I turned and ran, another shouted, “Catch the silly tart.” The words were slurred, but this boy still had the use of his legs. His footsteps seemed to shake the ground as he thundered after me.
The straps of my backpack cut into my shoulders. I was running so hard my teeth jolted and a sting of pain shot up, into my cheek. I saw the dead tree again and doubled back, not along the same track, but along another one almost parallel to it that I had not noticed before. It took me uncomfortably close to the boys; I could hear them shouting and laughing just the other side of some kind of dense, thorny bush that scratched my face and neck and tore at my clothes.
A hare freezes when it first hears the hounds after it. This was another thing Aunt Bill had once told me. I froze like a hare, still and listening. There was no one behind me, no thudding feet. I had shaken off my pursuer.
I walked on slowly and quietly, watching for twigs that might snap under my feet and roots that might trip me. I wished Aunt Bill would come, and thinking about her, I started to cry very softly. When I thought I was out of earshot, I ran at full tilt. One of my back teeth was throbbing.
I burst out on one of the broad paths where people were walking, and slowed down. I couldn’t see properly. My eyes were so wet with tears that it was like trying to look through a window with the rain running down it. My throat and my chest had gone tight.
Someone said, “What’s the matter? It’s Aliki, isn’t it?”
I rubbed at my eyes. The grandmother was standing the
re, her wrinkled face anxious. George held her hand. Annabel had the little dog on a leash.
I said, “It’s boys sniffing glue. One of them chased me.” I was ashamed that she had seen me crying. I smiled apologetically. “I’m sorry, it’s silly.”
She said, “Sniffing glue?” As if she had never heard these two words before. She glanced nervously at Annabel and George who were round-eyed and fascinated. She said in an undertone, “Are you sure, dear?”
It was rather as if she thought I was boasting to make myself seem important. I said, “They had tubes of glue and plastic bags and handkerchiefs. They were wild with it.”
Annabel had gone very pink in the face. She said, “Our teacher told us at school. There was a boy in the top form expelled. Our teacher said if anyone tries to make you do it, you have to tell a grown-up.”
The grandmother was frowning. She said, “What a terrible world you children are growing up in.”
I said, “It’s all right as long as you know. It’s like getting drunk, people don’t know what they’re doing. So you have to be careful and keep away.”
I tried to sound bright and sensible. Although you had to warn people, even when they were as young as George and Annabel, there was no point in frightening them. But I was feeling very peculiar. My tooth was so sore. And I felt shivery.
“Are you all right, dear?” the grandmother said.
“She looks as if she’s going to be sick,” George said. He made a horrible retching sound.
“Stop that, George,” the grandmother said. Then, to me, “I think you should sit down and be quiet for a bit. Have you far to go home?”
“Miles,” I said. I pulled a face to stop myself howling.
She said, “Then you had better come with us. I suppose your brother’s not with you?”