Marjorie set down her case and, tired out from the journey, looked around her with dismay. Her new bedroom, although neat as a pin, was little more than a boxroom, with only a small window and a truckle bed that had to be let down from a rickety old cupboard. Standing properly upright was only possible in the middle of the tiny space, all other areas requiring whoever was in the room to stoop to avoid banging their heads on the rafters.
‘I understand you do at least know how to wash up – and cook, up to a point, at least so Mrs Reid told me,’ Aunt Hester said, when Marjorie reappeared downstairs on her first evening.
Marjorie nodded, her large, dark-circled eyes fixing themselves on her relative’s face. It was so odd hearing Pet called ‘Mrs Reid’, for a moment she hadn’t know whom Aunt Hester might be talking about.
‘Yes, Aunt Hester. I can wash up, and I can cook.’
‘Well, cooking is as cooking does. We’ll soon see if you’re as good as your boast. Now what you need to know is the geography. Where the aunts are, and so on. There’s one in the first floor bathroom, and one out in the yard at the back. Baths are twice a week, Tuesday and Friday nights only. The geyser won’t run to more than half a bath without causing a problem, so we’ll soon know whether you’re being obedient, because if you aren’t you’ll be blown clean out of the bathroom. Now follow me through to the kitchen and I’ll show you what is what, and how I want everything kept.’
Mrs Hendry wanted everything kept perfectly. Nothing was allowed out of place. The tea towels must be hung up just so, the lines on them touching exactly, so that when you stood back and looked at them they looked as if they were for sale in a shop. The soap for washing up was cut into cubes and kept in a tin. Toilet paper was handed out in rationed amounts, as was toothpaste, which was kept locked in the bathroom cabinet. Also supplied in measured doses was the soap for Monday washday, the supply of digestive biscuits for teatime, and the Sunday cake that was put away in a Coronation tin after a slice measuring no more than a few inches had been cut. By the end of her first full week at Number 32 Castle Gardens, Marjorie found she was missing not just Billy and Maisie, but Mrs Reid’s school, and more than she could ever have imagined.
Monday was the worst day, because it was the start of another week that was bound to end in another ghastly Sunday, a day when there was nothing to do, once church was over for the day. Indeed Aunt Hester was so religious that even after attending church on a Sunday she would sit and read the Bible after lunch.
The rest of the day was spent in silence, the radio being forbidden, as were board games of any sort. There wasn’t even a good lunch to look forward to, Aunt Hester’s idea of a weekend treat being to put custard on the apple pie. Faced with such unending boredom, Marjorie soon learned to use her imagination, and would spend most of Sunday inventing a totally secret life for herself, finding out on the way that the better she got at doing this, the more quickly Sunday would pass by and turn into Monday.
At least on Monday there was something to do. First she had to heat the water up for the enormous zinc bucket which held the wash, boiling it up in kettle load after kettle load, all of which was poured into the bucket which was left simmering on the stove. Once there was enough water, the soap was added and stirred in with a long wooden spoon until completely melted, after which the first batch of sheets, towels and other whites was added, prodded well into the foaming suds until completely submerged. The wash was then agitated with a long thick stick with a brass end used to pummel the laundry. As it was summertime, the laundry was pegged out on lines slung across the narrow back yard where it soon dried in the sunshine. At Mrs Reid’s school, where in fine weather Pet was only too relieved to chase her charges out of doors and leave them to their own devices, laundry had been done by a service. Now all Marjorie wanted was an escape from the heat that followed her everywhere, from her tiny little boxroom in the roof of the house to the sweltering kitchen with its boiling laundry, to the Turkish bath that was the scullery where Marjorie laboured to get as much of the ironing done as she could while it was still damp. At the end of a Monday Marjorie was exhausted, ready only for her truckle bed.
‘When should I be going to school, Aunt Hester?’ Marjorie dared to venture, as the long, hot summer was finally drawing to a close.
‘If your mother sent me money perhaps you could go to school,’ Aunt Hester replied, giving her a skein of wool to hold, ‘but I can’t be expected to keep you as well as educate you.’
‘There’s that school down the road. The one everyone goes to round here.’
‘Out of the question. I’m not sending you to a school like that, free or not. The pupils when not setting fire to each other’s uniforms are only too happy to be fighting each other behind the bicycle sheds. No, you can put that out of your mind, young lady. There’s only two things that girls from that school become, and neither of them would be what we want for you.’
‘Can I ask you about my parents—’
‘I’ve told you everything you need to know, Marjorie,’ her aunt interrupted, beginning quickly and skilfully to wind the thick red wool into a ball. ‘Your father was gassed in the war and died when you were a year old. And your mother went to Australia with a gentleman who is now her husband.’
‘Do you have a picture of them anywhere?’
Aunt Hester glanced up at her for a moment, before continuing to wind her wool.
‘I’ll see what I can find. I can’t promise anything, mind. But I’ll see what I can find. Hold the wool up higher, dear, please.’
‘I’d quite like to go to school.’
‘You’re fifteen. There’s no real need for you to go to school any more. There are enough books in the house that aren’t getting read. And what you think you can’t find, I can always get from the library.’
‘At Mrs Reid’s we used to play out of doors—’
‘Much more of your complaining and you’ll find yourself back at Mrs Reid’s, my girl. Girls like you should learn the domestic arts – cooking and sewing and so on – practical things, but in the meantime, you can read. And after all, if you can read, you can learn. Reading is learning.’
Later, Marjorie took down some of the books from the shelves in the sitting room and examined them. They were books by old-fashioned authors she knew nothing about, with handwritten dedications on the flyleaves to people whom she imagined must have been long dead, but since she never knew when to expect Aunt Hester she would quickly return the book to its place, fearing that her aunt would take exception to seeing her reading instead of doing something more practical. The truth was that she had little time to herself either to read or to sew, or any other thing, except on the days, and sometimes evenings, when Aunt Hester went out.
‘Business’ was what Aunt Hester called it.
‘I’m out on business tonight, Marjorie,’ she would say, before she left the house. ‘Don’t expect me back for a few hours, will you?’
Sometimes she went out at night, sometimes in the morning, sometimes, quite suddenly, at late teatime. As a consequence Marjorie never really knew when it was safe to do whatever she wished, without a mind to her aunt’s possible disapproval.
Once or twice, thankfully, Aunt Hester announced that she wouldn’t be back until after half past ten at night, so Marjorie was able not just to listen to a comedy show on the radio, but to sit in the living room wearing her best clothes, a floral dress and the pink cardigan her aunt had purchased for her birthday, along with a pair of new sandals and knee socks, her hair washed and dried in front of the electric fire, with a book on her lap and the radio playing in the background.
Sometimes she would imagine she was having a visitor, and would conduct a make-believe tea party with her invisible guest seated opposite her at the dining table under the front window. On one occasion so well did the party go that Marjorie and her invisible guest ended up dancing to Jack Payne and his orchestra, remembering only just in time Aunt Hester’s imminent return.
Occa
sionally Aunt Hester would have visitors of her own, sometimes to play whist, more usually for a cup of tea. The most frequent was Mavis Arnold, a small, rounded woman who wore a permanently cheerful expression, despite the fact that she was a piano teacher.
‘It would be nice if she had some young company, don’t you think, Hester dear?’ Mavis would wonder on each successive visit, with an increasingly wistful look at Marjorie. ‘Company of her own age, you know what I mean?’
‘I hardly think it’s necessary, Mavis.’ Mrs Hendry’s eyes would narrow in return as she stared at her friend over the top of her teacup. ‘And I don’t hear her grumbling.’
‘Every child needs company their age, Hester. It’s only right.’
‘She’s fifteen years of age, she has no need of school.’
‘It’s not the education, dear, it’s the company, girls of her own age. Least you should do, dear, is send the girl to school.’
‘There isn’t the money, Mavis dear, really there isn’t. We’ve been into this over and over. If I can’t afford a fee-paying school, then school is out of the question, and there’s an end to it. I’m not having her dragged downhill at St Mark’s. Not a girl her age. Those girls at that school. I think we know how they’re all going to end up, without a doubt, don’t we?’
Whenever she visited, Mavis rarely let the subject alone, returning to it with a persistence that alarmed Marjorie, making her suppose that there must be some reason for their neighbour to want her out of the house. Her suspicions were alerted even further when one day, after Aunt Hester had disappeared into the kitchen to make a fresh pot of tea, Mavis moved over to sit at the table where Marjorie was reading. For a few seconds she said nothing, staring out of the window beyond them, and then she spoke.
‘Been into the spare room yet, dear? The room next to your aunt’s, that is?’
Marjorie stopped reading and stared at the round face staring into hers.
‘It’s kept locked. It’s always locked.’
‘You’ve tried to go in then, have you, dear?’ Mavis smiled, one eye now on the door. ‘But of course it always is locked. Always has been. Ever since—’ She looked round fully at the door now, hearing Hester returning. ‘The key’s in the old cocoa tin. If you ever feel so inclined,’ she quickly finished, before sliding her ample frame off the chair and back into her own by the fireside.
It was wrong to go prying into a room that was kept locked, which of course made it somehow irresistible. Now, her aunt out on business, Marjorie found herself standing on a chair in the kitchen, inevitably reaching up to the cocoa tin. She stared at the key and, replacing the top on the tin, made her way out of the kitchen before beginning to climb slowly and quietly up the narrow staircase to the locked room. A few seconds later, having taken one deep breath, she put the key in the door, and opened it.
The room was curtained and dark, so dark that at first Marjorie was unable to make out anything at all, except where thin slits of light filtered from a shuttered window that looked out on to the narrow, suburban front garden. Making her way across the room she banged her shin on something hard and wooden before reaching the heavy metal clasp that held the shutters together. Pulling them back seemed to suddenly create a cloud of fine dust, as the autumn sunlight flooded the room, and she slowly turned to see what she had uncovered.
It was evident straight away that it was a boy’s room, and to judge from the school photographs of cricket and football teams he had been a sporting youngster, and one of whom his school thought a great deal. Besides the usual mementoes of scarves and caps, there was also a notice announcing that Richard Hendry had been elected to the captaincy of the Cricket XI. It was all strangely, quietly sad, with some objects so carefully placed that they made you stare. A cricket bat that had been left resting against a bed whose pillow was embellished with a much worn teddy bear. A small wardrobe in the corner containing clothes that were few in number but immaculately laundered and pressed, as well as three pairs of shoes, one pair of whitened cricket boots and a pair of football boots.
But what took Marjorie’s eye most of all was the photograph hanging directly above the bedhead. It was of a happy teenage boy with his mother, and it was to the image of her aunt that Marjorie’s attention was drawn. Instead of the gaunt, unsmiling, drably dressed person with whom Marjorie now spent most of her days, there, with her son standing beside her in his best suit, was a woman who was beautiful in her happiness, her hair thick and glossy, her eyes calm as she gazed out at the photographer, her hands not knitting frantically, or winding wool as if her life depended on it, but resting calmly in her lap.
After a few seconds Marjorie hastened to the shutters, fastening them quickly, blacking out the room once more, unable to contain her sense of shock at the changed person that she knew as ‘Aunt Hester’. More than that, to her shame, she realised she felt jealous of the boy who stood in his grey flannel suit and white shirt behind his seated mother, a loving protective hand resting on her shoulder. He had loved his mother, and Aunt Hester had loved him. It was something that Marjorie realised with an aching heart she had never known, and probably never would.
That afternoon Marjorie had tea ready for her aunt’s return, the kettle simmering, waiting to be poured on the leaves in the already warmed pot, the two slices of bread lying on the rack of the grill waiting to be toasted.
Aunt Hester nodded at her niece through the open kitchen door as she hung her coat up on the stand in the hall. Seeing her, Marjorie quickly set about her teatime duties, hurrying, eager to please, in a way she had not been before entering the locked room.
‘There’s no need to do that for me, Marjorie,’ Mrs Hendry remarked as Marjorie spread her hot toast for her. ‘You always use far too much butter.’
‘I just thought I’d do it while the toast was still hot, Aunt Hester. Did you have a nice afternoon?’
‘Please don’t use the word “nice”. Use any word but that. I had a very uninteresting afternoon, thank you.’
Marjorie found herself at a loss for words without quite knowing why. Her aunt had said nothing accusatory, and yet there was already a distinct atmosphere as they settled down to their usual teatime ritual, her aunt watching her carefully, as she always did, making sure that she poured the tea correctly, that the lump sugar was offered, with the tongs, that the paper doily that was placed under the biscuits to set off their charms was clean and perfect, that the jam spoon was set beside the jam, that the hot water jug was polished to the point where she could see the reflection of her hand as she reached for it. And yet all the time Marjorie knew that today was different, although she could not for the life of her say why.
‘If you’re interested, Marjorie,’ Aunt Hester stated, finally, without a trace of emotion, putting her teacup carefully down on her saucer, ‘Richard was run down on his way back from the shops. It wasn’t his fault. He had just come out of the corner shop when a lorry lost control and mounted the pavement. It killed Richard outright, so they told me, and the poor boy he was with.’
There was a long silence as Marjorie realised that Aunt Hester knew she’d been into the spare room without permission.
‘I’m sorry, Aunt Hester,’ she said quietly, staring down at the embroidered flowers on the tablecloth. ‘I really am.’
‘That Richard was killed? Or that you couldn’t resist going to his room and prying? All you had to do was ask me, you know. I keep the room locked not to stop people going in, but to prevent anything getting out.’
Marjorie looked up in surprise. Her aunt’s tone was so changed. It was as if something had been released in her, as if by catching Marjorie out she was actually feeling some sort of relief, as if she had been waiting to tell her niece about the room, about the tragedy, but had not quite dared. Marjorie stared at her, feeling that her aunt was no longer aware of her, but staring instead back into the past, to unimaginable pain.
‘I really am sorry, Aunt Hester,’ she said eventually.
‘Of course
you’re sorry,’ her aunt agreed. ‘You’re sorry that I found out, but not so sorry that you went in.’ She leaned across the table, looking more calm than Marjorie. ‘More than that. You are curious as to how I found out that you went in without going upstairs.’
‘Well—’
‘Of course you are. Why shouldn’t you be? I would be.’ She paused, and smiled suddenly. ‘You see, I always leave the cocoa tin in the same position. I have done so, as a matter of habit, for years. That way I can tell if anyone’s moved it the moment I come in. I can tell from the position of the letters. As I said, it isn’t locked to keep people out, but to keep my Richard in, as he was, his memory always there. That’s why the door is kept locked.’
‘But it was wrong—’
‘Mavis told you where the key was.’ Aunt Hester looked at her, her mouth twisted into a sort of half smile. ‘I should have known. That would be old Mavis all over.’
‘I’m still sorry. I mean I’m sorry not because it’s wrong—’
‘What then?’
‘Because I wish you’d told me before, I suppose.’
For the first time she could remember Marjorie saw her aunt looking surprised.
‘You’d have preferred that, would you?’ she finally asked. ‘I see. In that case I’m the one who’s sorry.’
‘No. No, you don’t have to be sorry, Aunt Hester. I mean not on my account. Although I suppose—’
Marjorie petered out, realising in the nick of time that she might be heading for waters out of her depth.
‘I can’t be sorry, Marjorie. Not any more,’ Aunt Hester said, pouring herself more tea. ‘Rather I shouldn’t be. I was sorry all right. I was sorry right up to – well. All I can say is I’m not going to be sorry any more. Life’s too short, and besides, quite frankly, I’ve used up most of my ration of sorrow. What I must be, what I am, is proud. Yes, that’s the word – I’m proud. That’s what I am. I’m proud I had a boy like Richard, but I will not go on feeling sorry for myself because he’s not here with me. It is a waste of time. Of course I will always miss him, but I will not feel sorry for myself. I will know that I was lucky to have him with me when I did. Now, let us have some more tea.’
Daughters Of Eden: The Eden Series Book 1 Page 8