The Mystery of the Cupboard

by Lynne Reid Banks

  The thatchers expected regular cups of tea, and when the weather turned really hot at the end of September, relays of beer. They got chatty. In breaks, they sat out on the thatch-littered lawn and discussed their craft with anyone in the family who would join them.

  One afternoon after school, Omri was drifting past and heard one of them say, “We ent found that oul’ bottle yet. Last chaps hid it thorough, seemingly.”

  He paused. “What old bottle?”

  The men grinned. “Don’ ee know about the thatchers’ bottle?”

  “No?”

  “We were tellin’ your dad. Right int’rested, he be. Wants to see un when we find un.”

  “But what is it?”

  “It’s like this here, see. Every time a roof gets thatched, which is about every thirty year, the thatchers all writes their names on a paper—”

  “On’y in the olden days they’m put a cross instead—”

  “And any details as is relevant to the job, and puts it in a bottle, along with the papers from the thatchers as done the last job, and the one afore that. And they hides it in the thatch, for the next ones to find, thirty year on.”

  “That way,” put in another, “there’s a link, see, from one generation of thatchers to the next, down the line, maybe ‘undreds a years. This ’ouse now, it’s been standin’ not far short o’ three ’undred year, wouldn’t ee say, John?”

  “Since 1704,” said Omri eagerly. “The plaque says.”

  “Arh, the plaque, well, there you are then. Musta bin - let’s see - between seven and nine thatchin’s in that time, maybe more, so it’ll be a ruddy big oul’ bottle, I reckon, when we do find un.” They all laughed and drank down their lager.

  Omri was intrigued about the bottle, and so was his father.

  “A real link with the past,” he kept saying. “If they find it I’m going to make photocopies of all the papers, to keep, before they add their one and hide the bottle again.”

  “Can we keep the old bottle, Dad?”

  “No. They use the same one till it gets broken. That’s the custom. I love old country customs. I respect them. A real link with the past!”

  “Yeah, Dad, you said that,” said Gillon, who found the whole thing a total turn-off.

  That night Omri lay awake in his new room, under the denuded roof and bare eaves, with the window open.

  The milk dish had been empty again this morning, and he’d wanted to keep watch all night, but of course his mother wouldn’t let him. It was hard to fall asleep anyway. He was so used to traffic going past all night, and London streetlamps lighting the room, he still wasn’t quite used to the darkness and quiet of the country.

  Not that it was dark tonight. There was a full moon. It bathed the surrounding hills, fields, and woods, and shone down through a little tear in the roofers’ tarpaulin over his head. It was a bit like his old room where he’d slept on a platform under a skylight. It had felt like sleeping out under the sky.

  Suddenly he sat up. He’d heard a cry. It sounded just like the cry of a cat in distress!

  Without thinking, he jumped up and rushed through Gillon’s room (which he had to pass through to get to the stairs), and fumbled his way down and out into the soft-scented, unfamiliar, mildly scary country night, full of rustlings and creature noises that you never heard in London.

  In bare feet and by the clear light of the moon, he kicked through the fallen thatch, crossed the sloping lawn, let himself out through a little picket gate, and started pushing through the overgrown grass in the paddock, calling softly, “Kitsa! Kitsa, come on, Kits!” and making shwsh-a-wisha noises that used to bring her running. His feet were stung with stinging nettles and pricked with thistles, but he kept going until he stepped in an old cowpat - that was too much!

  “Bloody country!” he exploded, and turned back, but not before he’d had a long listen. He couldn’t hear her now. It must have been a bird or something. He scraped his foot on the damp grass to clean it. Then he picked his way back towards the front door.

  It occurred to him, just as he was about to go in, to have a look to see if the milk had been drunk yet. Instead of walking in the front door and out again at the back, because of his mucky foot he decided to walk round the outside to the kitchen door, which he did, treading on layers of old thatch all the way. And while he was passing under the plaque on the gable end, he nearly twisted his ankle stepping on something lumpy and hard.

  It didn’t feel like a stone, so he fumbled about in the thatch to see what it was — maybe it was ‘the oul’ bottle’! It would be fun if he could be the one to find it, not the thatchers at all!

  The rotted reeds had all matted together and must have fallen off the roof in a clump, instead of in thousands of loose bits like most of it. It felt disgusting to his groping fingers, and the smell of mustiness and rot — which pervaded the whole house — was very strong. Yet in the middle of it was undoubtedly something solid.

  He fished it out. It wasn’t a bottle, old or otherwise. It was an oblong package wrapped in blackened, disintegrating cloth and tied with thick string that came apart at his first tentative tug.

  He dropped the string on the path and moved back to the front of the house, into full moonlight. The bit of cloth was thick and heavy, like canvas. Omri carefully unwrapped it. His heart was beating very hard for some reason. He was suddenly terribly excited. What could this possibly be, that someone had hidden in the thatch perhaps as much as thirty years ago?

  Inside the wrapping was a small black metal cashbox with a curved brass handle. It had a slot in the top to put coins in, but this was sealed with some lumpy hard stuff. It was very firmly locked. Separate from it was another, flat package that had lain under the box inside the cloth.

  When Omri unfolded this second piece of canvas, he found a thick notebook inside. It had a leather cover with metal corners, and it was full of writing.

  Unluckily, Gillon woke up as Omri was creeping through his room to get back to his own, and got a fright.

  “Who’s there! Who’s there!” he yelled right out loud. Next minute their father had come crashing through Omri’s room from the parents’ room beyond that.

  He switched on the light and Omri stood revealed. He thrust his find up his pyjama jacket and in the sudden blaze of light on everyone’s sleepy eyes, nobody saw him do it.

  “Omri! What do you think you’re doing at this hour?”

  “I — I thought I heard Kitsa crying.”

  “Blasted cat! She’s all right! Go to bed.”

  “I’m just going. Sorry. Sorry, Gilly.”

  Gillon, still half asleep, mumbled something and rolled over. The light went out and Omri followed his father into his own room. His father then went through the other side into his bedroom. Omri shut both doors. Privacy — there wasn’t any. He was going to have to do something about this.

  Trembling with excitement, he lay down on the bed and waited till everything was quiet. The pattern of moonlight had altered as the moon began to set. He got up and sat in its beam and set the cashbox on the floor. He opened the notebook.

  On the first page were a few words in the most beautiful delicate handwriting. He could just about read them, although the ink had faded to a pale brown.

  Account of My Life, and of a Wonder Unacceptable to the Rational Mind. To be hidden until a time when Minds in my Family may be more Open.

  There was a name. A three-word name. In the wan light of the setting moon Omri could hardly read it till he carried the notebook to the window.

  The name was Jessica Charlotte Driscoll. And there was a date. August 21st, 1950.

  August the twenty-first! Another sign — another coincidence, like the LB on the plaque! August 21st was Omri’s birthday.

  Jessica Charlotte Driscoll.

  The name Driscoll meant nothing to Omri. Nor did Jessica. But Charlotte! Charlotte was the name that Lottie was short for. And Lottie had been Omri’s mother’s mother’s name.

  But the
moment the thought crossed his mind that this could be that Charlotte - his grandmother - he banished it instantly. That was impossible. His grandmother had died in the bombing of London in World War Two, when his own mother was only a few months old. By 1950 she would have been dead for eight years.

  Anyway, even though this house had been owned by some distant cousin, any connection between it and his grandmother was impossible. She had lived in south London all her short life. His mother had told Omri that the only place his grandmother’d ever visited out of London was Frinton, a seaside place where her sailor husband had taken her on their honeymoon.

  No, all right. So this Charlotte wasn’t a relative.

  Or was she? She must have been living here before the elderly cousin who had recently died. If she’d been a relative of his, she might also be a relative of Omri’s.

  Omri dared not switch the light on and start to read the notebook because there weren’t curtains yet, and his parents would be sure to see the light through their window. He had to compose his soul in patience till the morning. He slept uneasily with the notebook under his pillow and the cashbox - the cashbox! what could be in there? - hidden under the bed.

  A Wonder Unacceptable to the Rational Mind…

  Omri knew a bit about that. ‘There’s real magic in this world…’ Even Patrick knew it now. Patrick the practical, the doubter, the one who’d once tried to pretend none of it had happened. They’d had proof enough to convince anyone. A little bathroom cabinet that, when you locked it with a special key, became a magic box that brought plastic toy figures to life. And more than that — they were not just ‘living dolls’, but real people, magicked from their lives in the past.

  Little Bull had been the first, and, for Omri, would always be the most special - an Iroquois Indian from the late eighteenth century, coming from a village in what was now the state of New York. Then had come others: Tommy, the soldier-medic, who’d later been killed; Boone the cowboy (he was really Patrick’s special pal), and Twin Stars, Little Bull’s wife, and her baby who had been born while she was with them. Matron, the strict but staunch nurse from a London hospital of the 1940s. And Corporal - now Sergeant - Fickits, the Royal Marine who had helped them defeat the skinhead gang who had broken into Omri’s old house…

  They were so real! So much a part of Omri’s life… It was hard to keep his vow to do without them, to eschew the magic. But he must. Because it could be dangerous. The storm that had wrecked half of England had been brought by them, with the key. People had been killed… in the present, and in the past. It was frightening. It was too much to handle.

  And now — A Wonder Unacceptable to the Rational Mind…

  Omri gave a little shiver, half fear, half excitement, and slept. He dreamed of riding with Little Bull through the hills and forests of his homeland. Awake and asleep, he often dreamed of him, but this was particularly vivid and the ride was magical and wonderful. It seemed as if Little Bull were teaching him to ride, and at the same time, as if they were searching for something. Some treasure.

  He meant to wake up early — at dawn — and read the notebook, but of course he slept in. There was no time, none at all. He hid the notebook behind some books and went down to breakfast.

  At the table he asked, as casually as he could, “Mum, what relative of ours exactly was the old man who owned this house?”

  “Ah. Now you’re asking…” She paused with the cereal package poised, her brow wrinkling. “Let me see. Well, his name was Frederick, which is a bit of a family name on my side. He was a bachelor. And very old indeed — about eighty-five. I think he was — wait for it — my grandmother’s younger sister’s son. Yes, that’s it, I remember now. I never knew him or had any connection with him.”

  “What was his last name?” asked Omri, frowning.

  “An Irish name — it’s slipped my mind for the moment.”

  “How come you didn’t know him if he was your cousin?”

  “Well, that’s a story. My grandmother, who brought me up after Mummy died, didn’t see her sister for some reason, though when I was little she talked about her sometimes, in a - a sort of head-shaking way, as if she loved her a lot but felt she shouldn’t. Of course I found that intriguing and asked lots of questions about her, but my granny just said, ‘Well, we were sisters, but I have to say it: she was no better than she should be’.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “She had a Past. You weren’t supposed to have a Past in those days. Something scandalous to do with men…”

  Omri digested this. Then he asked slowly, “Could she have been living here — your granny’s sister?”

  His mother looked at him. “She was supposed to have gone abroad… But what an intriguing idea, Omri! I never thought of that. Maybe old Frederick inherited this house from his mother, who was my wicked great-aunt Jessica Charlotte!”

  Omri put down his spoon. There was some saying he’d always thought very silly, about a goose walking over your grave. But suddenly he understood it because the bumpy flesh all over his arms had the chill feeling of death.

  “Was she really wicked?” he asked after a moment.

  “I’ve no idea. She was some kind of actress back around the time of the First World War. Going on the stage in those days was considered fairly wicked by some people. But I’m sure there was more to it than that. Now darling, enough questions, it’s ten to nine. Go.”

  Omri didn’t think about Kitsa more than half a dozen times that day. Nor did he give too much attention to lessons, and the Butcher had occasion to send him to the Tea Cosy, who gave him what-for without too much care for his feelings and added injury to insult with a detention. Murphy’s law in action, he thought furiously. If anything can go wrong, it will, and at the worst possible time. He was absolutely dying to get home.

  By the time the Butcher let him go and he had raced home through the lanes on his bike (narrowly avoiding being run down by a tractor — well, better than a London bus!) he couldn’t possibly be bothered to clear the last of the thatch from the path properly. He just kicked it aside as he forged up the path and raced to his room.

  He shut both doors and put some spare bricks against them so they wouldn’t open easily. Then he extracted the thick notebook from behind his books and opened it with hands that were not quite steady.

  He read the words on the flyleaf again.

  Account of My Life, and of a Wonder Unacceptable to the Rational Mind. To be hidden until a time when Minds in my Family may be more Open.

  Jessica Charlotte Driscoll.

  August 21st, 1950.

  He turned the page and began to read the fine, beautifully formed handwriting.

  4

  Jessica Charlotte’s Notebook

  I write this on my deathbed.

  Since I have not seen or heard anything from Maria for nearly half a lifetime I cannot be sure she has not gone before me — though I have my own reason for believing she will outlive me by many years… Still, sooner or later we must come face to face on the Other Side. Much as I have missed and longed for her, I am in no great hurry to meet her there. Strange but true: I fear God in His Almighty Power less than I fear facing my sister Maria.

  I am still at heart an artiste. So I write this account as a kind of rehearsal of what I shall say to her - and Him. I shall excuse nothing, omit nothing, extenuate nothing. When I look now into the glass on the front of the wondrous Cabinet Frederick made with such anger in his heart (which sits on the table by my bedside), I see, not my face, but Death’s. It tells me sternly that ‘naught now availeth’ but scrupulous Truth.

  My Little People would speak for me, if they could. They’ve seen the best in me. With them, at least, I’ve dealt honestly and kindly. I have not shown them my accursed jealousy and spite.

  But they must Go Back, pursue their own lives and make their own accounting at last. Though I still bring them sometimes, when I’m lonely and afraid, to comfort and distract me, they can’t help me now.
Even though Jenny weeps (tears that are as small as points of starlight) when I tell her I’m dying. She weeps for herself, also… What will become of her? I can’t send her back now.

  I don’t deserve the Wonder that has been my consolation at the end of my misspent life.

  When Omri reached this point in the notebook, he found his heart was beating so hard and his breath had been caught in his lungs without breathing out for so long that he had to stop.

  He swallowed, shut his eyes so he couldn’t read the delicate brown writing, and breathed in and out several times until his heartbeats slowed. He felt dizzy, confused. There was a faint sheen of sweat on his face. The ‘wondrous Cabinet’ in which she could see her face in a ‘glass’! The Little People from another time! Was this real? Was he really reading about IT — his own cupboard? Was it conceivable that this great-great-aunt of his had had it in this very house, over thirty years ago?

  To rehearse my story, I must tell it all, from the beginning. And then I must do what I must do, and Maria will know my guilty secret.

  Maria, my beautiful elder sister… Everything came to her, without her even trying. Our parents’ favour. The admiration of friends and relations. The chances in life that make all the difference. And the love of a man. In that, too, she was ahead of me. Her love was honest and true.

  I hated her at times.

  There, it’s out. My jealous spirit infected me like a virus. I wanted to be her, and I was not, so I hated her for her beauty, and for the way she attracted love. And for being good.

  Everyone praised her goodness. Was it all true? Was she really, deeply, better than I? Had she been me - little, plump, plain, mocked, ignored, where she was tall and graceful and clever - would she have been so moral then?