A Kind of Vanishing

by Lesley Thomson

  ‘So, what are you up to?’ The doctor jerked the gear stick forwards and backwards and pulled up the handbrake with a clicking sound. Three clicks were enough, her father said, or you ruined the brake. The doctor did loads of clicks and didn’t care. The car’s noise went deeper. He looked around him, which made Alice look too. If he spotted Eleanor, she wouldn’t have to pretend to search for her. Alice was surprised he wasn’t in a hurry.

  ‘Where is my daughter, anyway? You two are inseparable. Left you on your own, has she?’ He nodded. So it happened to him too. Then he looked Alice full in the face and made a sucking noise on his teeth with his tongue like her Dad did at the end of meals, which her Mum said was a bad example.

  There were too many questions at once, Alice didn’t know which to answer first. It was so easy to be impolite. She had rehearsed the words: Please, take me home, but now she had said she was playing with Eleanor he wouldn’t take her anywhere. He was a doctor and must know she ought to be at home playing in the square of sunlight in the lounge. Sunlight was good for you. The figures grew clearer in the hedge behind the doctor’s head. Her Mum making rock cakes and singing ‘Please Release Me’ through the hatch; her Dad fixing something in the garage, whistling bits of her Mum’s tunes out of order till she stopped him:

  ‘The cat sounds better!’

  Alice liked the way her Mum and Dad said the same things to each other.

  ‘We’re playing hide and seek, it’s my turn to look. I don’t know where Eleanor is.’ She raised her voice. ‘She’s very good at hiding.’

  ‘I see.’ He glanced around again. ‘Have you tried all her hidey holes? There’s the tree house and the barn. Failing that, you could come back with me and leave her! It’s nearly four, isn’t that meant to be teatime?’ He rolled his eyes like Gina. Alice brightened.

  She was about to accept, and then it dawned on her that all along he had been joking. He wouldn’t want to give her a lift; indeed he was already preparing to drive away. Five minutes ago she would have been relieved to see him go, but now playing with Eleanor was worse than talking to the doctor, which wasn’t so bad after all. As he released the handbrake Alice tried to stop him.

  ‘How is Mrs Ramsay?’

  She was horrified to see it was the wrong question. Lines appeared above his eyes as he banged the steering wheel. He turned his head, looking out for Eleanor, or perhaps for Mrs Ramsay. ‘As good as ever!’ Then he smiled right at her and Alice saw it was all right. After that the conversation went much better and Alice found she had lots of things to tell him and forgot that he was a doctor because he said she should call him Mark. She tried it in bed that night, but it felt like the name of a stranger so she went back to ‘Doctor’. She told him about her flower collection and that was when he kindly offered to help her with it, although at the time she hadn’t believed he meant it. It seemed there were lots of flowers her parents hadn’t told her about. She had forgotten all about Eleanor until Doctor Ramsay exclaimed:

  ‘Good luck finding Elly!’ Alice pulled a face to show that she didn’t expect to. Really she meant she didn’t want to and she was sure now that Doctor Ramsay understood this. He turned on his radio and mimed along to Tom Jones singing ‘It’s Not Unusual’, her Mum’s favourite. This time it was fine to laugh. Alice could still hear the music as Doctor Ramsay’s car whizzed out of sight round the corner of the lane to the White House. After that she forgot about Lucian. He was childish in comparison to Doctor Ramsay.

  Alice shivered. The sun had gone in as dark clouds crept across the sky from the coast. Soon it would rain, like her Dad’s barometer had forecast. Doctor Ramsay hadn’t mentioned the cheese. She dared to hope Eleanor hadn’t told him what she had said, although it was worse not to be told off. Alice would definitely have told her Dad if Eleanor had been mean to her. She heard a rumble of thunder. She should get inside. She decided that next time it was her turn to hide she would slip away. Eleanor would be watching from the hedge so she made a feeble play of looking elsewhere, even checking the ditch in case Eleanor was lying there. Then thinking of Doctor Ramsay and dropping all pretence, Alice trotted up the lane to where she had last seen Eleanor. It was time to end the game.

  The branches were knotted together with bindweed and brambles so she couldn’t find the hole. She was sure she was being spied on. Alice didn’t understand why Eleanor had to spy all the time. She hid behind cupboards, under tables, behind sofas, and wrote down what people said in a notebook. Apart from Gina no one said anything worth recording.

  ‘I can see you,’ Alice told the hedge. ‘I said, I can see you.’ She smiled to cover her discomfort: she had promised herself to be nice to Eleanor after yesterday. She nodded firmly to a twig with three leaves that hid Eleanor’s eyes.

  The twig didn’t move.

  ‘About what I said about your Mum and the cheese.’ She spoke to a small bluish beetle that scurried from one leaf to the next on the twig. ‘I’m sorry.’ The beetle stopped.

  Silence.

  Alice felt better. It wasn’t polite to ignore an apology. Now it was evens. Now Eleanor had upset her in return.

  Then Alice saw the hole and made a snap decision. She picked her way down the clumps of grass into the ditch and dragged the branches aside. She ignored the nettles that stung her ankles to come out on all fours in a space between the bushes, completely hidden from the road. By her nose was a wooden crate with French writing on the sides. It was draped with a faded red velvet curtain on which was placed a blotchy canvas cushion. The surprisingly homely feel was emphasised by a mess of comics and two empty bottles of Coke. The ground was carpeted with dried leaves and dry twigs. It was soft and spongy. Alice tentatively turned the cushion over, checking for insects and spiders, rather comforted by its fusty smell. She perched on the homemade seat. Now she had the perfect look out, through a natural window in the hedge. She would see anyone coming down the lane, but no one would see her. Eleanor must have sat here spying while she talked to Doctor Ramsay then got out when she saw Alice coming. Alice reflected that if she had been Eleanor, she would have waited until Alice had left the den and hidden there again. Eleanor would assume that Alice wouldn’t come back there.

  She would be wrong.

  Alice smiled to herself and hugged her knees tightly. She liked her own company and seldom felt lonely. In fact she resented having to play with other children, a resentment that had reached a conscious pitch with Eleanor. But as the minutes wore on, she began to feel lonely. She couldn’t dismiss this comfy little hole with its nice things to read. She wished Eleanor would stop hiding, and then they could sit together and spy on people going by. Alice would do the notes because her writing and her spelling were better. She bent down and rearranged the leaves and crushed branches to hide patches of soil and rubbed away at a mark on the box until it went. As she shuffled the comics into a straight pile, Alice made up a story for Eleanor.

  There was once a magic cave heaped to the ceiling with treasure where for hundreds of years there had lived a wizard who cast spells on the people of the kingdom. He cured the sick and made miserable people happy. All the children loved him because he treated them like real grownups and cared what they thought. If they were upset then with a whoosh of his wand everything was made better.

  Alice was sure Eleanor would like the story and became so absorbed in her narrative that it was a shock to remember that she was an intruder and that Eleanor would be angry to find Alice in her den without permission. She saw that her hands were dirty, and there was a tear in her dress.

  Alice scrambled out of the ditch back to the road and ran towards the White House.

  Eleanor was by the gates, singing Young Girl loudly with the wrong words and out of tune while slashing the hedge with a stick. Leaves ripped off and flew up in a shower. She was making no attempt to hide and seeing Alice waved the stick above her head like the Red Indian with a tomahawk she had been all yesterday morning. Alice thought Eleanor must be in a bad mood, but as she got
nearer she saw that Eleanor was smiling. So she smiled too. They would sit in the garden and have tea. Alice would whisper to her about the wizard and offer to get some pretty material from her Mum to make curtains for the den. They could hang them from the branches, she would show Eleanor how. On another day they might even go back to the Tide Mills. Alice was dizzy with a torrent of bright ideas as she hastened up the lane towards the scruffy little girl dawdling along the hedgerow.

  ‘I gave up hiding as you took so long coming.’ Eleanor tossed her stick up in the air.

  ‘Careful, it might hit me.’ Alice jumped back as Eleanor failed to catch it and the stick clattered at Alice’s feet, just missing her head. Alice’s good feelings evaporated.

  ‘Doctor Ramsay said to wash your hands and come in for tea, I just saw him.’ Alice was safe because she knew for certain that Eleanor would never talk to Doctor Ramsay about her. If she did, Doctor Ramsay would never believe her because now he was Alice’s friend. Alice folded her arms over her chest and stalked past Eleanor up the circular drive to the big front door. Outside the gates Eleanor continued to hurl the stick and after the fourth time to catch it with easy precision.

  Seven

  When Gina offered Alice a slice of Lizzie’s fruit cake she, without thinking, still imbued with courage after her talk with Doctor Ramsay and now excited by the flower-pressing expedition he had promised that they would go on after tea, asked for a fork to eat it with. This had made Lucian and Eleanor hysterical with laughter. They tried to hide it. Alice stopped being hungry as she pretended not to see them gasping for breath. When they finally exploded, they said it was about their cat. She had wished Doctor Ramsay would stop them for after their chat earlier that afternoon she knew he would agree with her about the fork. It would even be all right if Gina gave her a friendly smile, but, one by one, Mrs Ramsay, Gina and finally Doctor Ramsay had gone away. Lucian and Eleanor played hunt the fork, doing mad dances on the lawn, around the table and climbing into the branches of the tree above making crow-noises that sounded like ‘fork’. Gina had gone after her mother, striding away in her bright white plimsolls, her hair flying out like a mane. Alice silently pleaded with her to come back. Through brimming eyes, she stared at the fearsome lump of cake on her plate, unable to leave the table without permission even though there was no one to ask or to mind. Gina had actually spoken to Alice when she and her Mum had first met the Ramsays on Friday morning. She had asked her if she liked her new home. Alice wanted to tell Gina how she missed their house in Newhaven, but that she loved her new bedroom and hearing the village shop bell tinkle when a customer opened the door. Instead she had managed no more than a nod.

  Alice had sat tight in her chair, hands trapped under sticky bare legs, knees clamped together, holding a smile that made her cheeks ache, as Eleanor and Lucian hurled the stick Eleanor had been thrashing the hedge with earlier back and forth to each other. Everyone had forgotten they were having tea. Alice’s slice of cake sat implacably on her plate admonishing her for needing a fork. She wanted to squish it up and scatter the crumbs in the flowerbed. She waited. Cups of tea and half-drunk glasses of orange juice waited with her. Everyone else had been eating with fingers. Broken chunks of cake, a spattering of sultanas and cherry lay on the plates and were scattered on the tablecloth. The Ramsays were messy eaters. Alice’s mouth was dry, and she shivered despite the warm sunlight. Her shaking hand would not lift her glass without spilling the juice. She bitterly wished she had gone home earlier while Eleanor was hiding in the hedge. Now the thought of looking for wild flowers was further punishment.

  Alice dimly recognised it would be better if she could join in and crawl along the grass like a snake, or swing like a monkey from the tree, but she was a crumpled doll with sticks for arms and legs, and a torn dress clean on that morning.

  Doctor Ramsay was coming.

  He trod quietly across the grass, his white shirt ballooning out over his jeans, and sank back down into his cane armchair with a loud sigh saying something about Mrs Ramsay having sunstroke. Alice didn’t know whether to respond, he wasn’t looking at her. Then she reeled in a hot wave of alarm. He had forgotten the fork. She had been relying on it to save her. Now she didn’t know what to do about the cake. She should have gone home in his car while she had the chance. It was ruder to have asked than to have eaten with fingers. It had showed up the Ramsays and spoiled their tea party.

  Alice pulled her hands out from under her legs and furtively examined them under the table. White and red creases ran across her skin as if she was old. She pretended her thumbs were her friends, curling her fingers into a fist. Two thumbs: two friends. She wasn’t alone. Suddenly Gina was back. Something flashed in her hand. Alice breathed out and thanked her three times which made Doctor Ramsay glance at her with a look of concern. Although Alice had been happy that Gina had brought the fork, she was terribly frightened now of what it might do to Lucian and Eleanor, who were seeing who could throw the stick highest in the air. They could both catch it easily, which made the fork become heavy in her hand and she forgot momentarily how to hold it properly. Without turning round, Gina yelled at them to come back. Alice was impressed when they raced over and collapsed into their chairs. She had come to think of them as untameable animals.

  As Alice nibbled her cake in manageable forkfuls, dabbing her mouth with her handkerchief because they had forgotten serviettes, she was hemmed in by fingers. Fingers licked by smacking tongues, fingers picking noses and scratching rude bits, fingers wiped across shorts, flicking sultanas off the table with clicks and taps and dabbling in wet saucers. Eleanor and Lucian got the giggles again. This time Alice joined in until she breathed in crumbs and was nearly sick. Doctor Ramsay rubbed and patted her back and made her sip water from a glass that he held while talking, although she couldn’t catch the words. Alice was sorry for Doctor Ramsay and Gina for having to be in the Ramsay family. Afterwards, she told her parents about choking and the kind Doctor Ramsay coming to the rescue. But she didn’t mention about the fork. She knew they would have been pleased that she had asked, because it showed the Ramsays she was well brought up. This thought made her hot with shame for good manners shrank to nothing in comparison to playing jazz music on the piano, doing funny voices or curing people. Her mother was no more than a polite and tidy stranger as Alice assured her that yes, she had thanked Doctor Ramsay properly for looking after her and she did realise how lucky she was that he was there.

  Eight

  When he ruffled her hair, Alice felt a lurch of sickness and closed her eyes. The jelly teddy bear lay patiently: a sacrificial lamb that she must eat limb by limb, sucking slowly, eye by chocolate eye, crunching his sugar teeth and marshmallow ears without mercy. He was her long promised treat for being in the chorus of her school play. But after tea at the Ramsays’ followed by her Mum’s shepherd’s pie, Alice wasn’t hungry and she was angry that her mother hadn’t expected this and saved it for a better time. Besides Alice had only been in the chorus and it was all over now.

  ‘How’s my princess?’ He bent over and kissed the top of her head with a loud smacking sound and moved his hand over her scalp in crawly circles. She smiled weakly as he smoothed her hair in case by touching it he had messed it up. Leaning over he examined the bear.

  ‘Is that all for me?’ He smacked his lips. She studied the tick-shaped mark on his chin. It showed up more in the afternoons when his face was scratchy. ‘Mmmm. Yum, yum.’

  ‘It’s not yours.’

  She trotted out words. She didn’t want jokes today. She didn’t want the bear either.

  ‘’Course it is.’ His finger got ready to pluck out an eye. ‘Raspberry, my favourite.’

  ‘It’s strawberry.’ She was properly cross. ‘Have it if you want to.’

  ‘All right, keep your hair on.’ He scrabbled it roughly. She imagined him snatching it off like a wig and shied away.

  ‘Alice!’ Now her Dad was annoyed. He liked her to be nice. ‘What do you say?’<
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  Her mouth went upwards, her lips tightened and she made herself smile. ‘You can have some if you like.’

  ‘You know that’s not what I meant.’ But he was nicer again.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘That’s better. Don’t get spoiled with all these treats. Spending every day with that Doctor Ramsay and his family. Don’t get ideas.’ Her Dad’s voice reminded her of his new car, shiny metal with sharp edges. Only it wasn’t really new. Uncle John had owned it first.

  Alice couldn’t tell him she had already had ideas. She had lost the girl who would have loved a strawberry jelly bear and taken ages to eat it, making each mouthful last. The treat was for the wrong person. Her grandad was coming over from Newhaven later. He would be angry if she left any. He hated waste. Once she had refused to eat her supper when he was visiting because her head ached and her skin tingled. He had shouted so loud that his eyes bulged like gobstoppers. Her Dad had shouted back at him. Alice had sat and listened as her grandad scraped the food off her plate on to his own and ate it with a loud clicking.

  She made an investigatory split in the bear’s chest with her spoon. It did not cry as she scooped out its heart and slipped it between her lips. She squashed the mixture against the roof of her mouth with her tongue and closing her eyes, willed herself to swallow. She assessed her plate and decided that if she could do the same thing – maybe fifteen times – it would all be over and she could go to bed.

  Alice started to eat when she heard her Dad clonk his shoes down on the newspaper in the hall, ready for cleaning. She felt in the pocket of her dress for the jewel. It was still there. She felt better. It was the nicest present she had been given by anyone. Perhaps it was possible for them to be friends. Now she really was a princess. She would keep it secret as she had promised. Already she had planned to hide it in her ice-skating boots at the bottom of her toy cupboard. She was concentrating on ballet now so there was no chance that her Mum would touch her boots.