The Other Mrs Walker

by Mary Paulson-Ellis

  As he spoke the button was pressed and with a small shudder the coffin began its slow descent. The throb of the choir swelled up to fill the tall, high space and all around, hankies appeared from pockets, from handbags, from little packets stashed in readiness up sleeves. Out at the front three large women and three neat men began to sway, a deep, sombre movement as they sang Clementine Amelia Walker to the grave.

  As though by magic, the indigent rota began to sway too, urging Mrs Walker on, not quite in a churchyard, not quite on a hillside, but to somewhere that would eventually be marked with a stone.

  O sisters, let’s go down

  Let’s go down, come on down,

  O sisters, let’s go down

  Down in the river to pray.

  ‘I always wanted a sister,’ Margaret said then as she and her mother swayed with the rest in a very non-Edinburgh way.

  ‘So did I,’ said Barbara. ‘But life’s like that, sometimes. It gives with one hand and takes away with the next.’

  The coffin continued its slow descent, watched by every one of the indigent funeral rota, eyes to the front, and Margaret was uncertain whether this was the end of something or the beginning of something else. It was then that it happened. A door opening at the far end of the chapel. A voice rising above the lament.

  ‘Wait!’

  1944

  The light was almost gone from the sky when eight-year-old Barbara left the house in Elm Row. She closed the front door with a soft click and walked quickly away – from Mrs Penny in the scullery, from Tony by the stove. And from Ruby in their bedroom on the highest, furthest floor. Nobody saw her leave.

  Down each shadowy street Barbara stumbled and scurried on her way towards the Underground, outdoor coat buttoned up to her chin. The blackout was already on, heavy curtains drawn across each of the neighbours’ windows, grown-ups hurrying past too, heads held low against the possibility of a raid. They ignored the little girl as she made her way towards the trains, hugging railings and dodging from porch to porch, disappearing into a station entrance as everyone else was trying to get out. They were determined to get home before any rockets started to fly. But the Warning hadn’t sounded yet. Barbara knew there was still time.

  Back at 14 Elm Row a chicken roasted slowly in the oven, skin turning a gentle shade of gold. Mrs Penny had bartered six packets of Clementine’s cigarettes and a quart of Tony’s rum, amongst other things, to get it there on time. All ready for the rich American Clementine had promised to bring home that night. The chicken was nearly done, fat bubbling around it in the pan, smell rising up through the house. Past the scullery where Mrs Penny was hanging the weekly wash. Past the parlour with its green chaise longue. Past Tony’s den with its box of treasure hidden under the bed. Past Mrs Penny’s bedroom where a Brazil nut sat in the middle of the mantelpiece. Past the cupboard on the landing where a photograph of two dead children languished on a shelf. Up, up until it reached the highest, furthest floor, where eight-year-old Ruby was waiting and waiting for Clementine’s sign to appear.

  Except . . .

  Ruby had already missed her chance. For it was little pig Barbara who had spied first what their sister Clementine had left.

  Only that morning, while Tony scraped out the black insides of his pipe and Mrs Penny beat the weekly wash to a frothy pulp, Barbara had stood at the kitchen sink, cardigan sleeves rolled up, and slid the first clue from its cup. She had been doing the chore that Ruby was meant to complete: side plates and saucers, knives, teaspoons and cups. It had been Ruby’s turn to do the dishes that morning, but as usual it was Barbara who’d had to fill in when her sister had been bad.

  Clementine had gone before anyone else was even awake, nothing but a leftover cup of tea to show that she had been there first.

  ‘Better be back in time for dinner.’ Mrs Penny put down her butter knife and glanced over at the sideboard where a chicken lay, naked and dimpled, in its dish.

  Tony sucked breakfast tea up between his lips. ‘She’ll be here.’

  ‘You can never be certain of that.’ Mrs Penny was still wearing her dressing gown. She felt tired. A whole day’s washing awaited her in the scullery. Then a dinner to prepare for six people, including a guest. She reached across to slap at eight-year-old Ruby who was trying to stick a finger into a small pool of jam spilled on the table top. ‘Get off, disgusting child. I’ve had about enough of you already this morning. Go and sweep the shelter. Barbara, you do the dishes instead.’

  Barbara tried not to drip suds all over Mrs Penny’s clean floor as she washed the dishes. One plate at a time, one cup, dipped into soapy water then placed with care on the rack. Barbara completed her chore in a diligent routine. Hers and Ruby’s. Tony’s and Mrs Penny’s. Before reaching for the cup that Clementine had left behind.

  Inside, on the dregs of Clementine’s tea, a tiny orange pip circled like a miniature boat. Barbara stared down at it with a frown. No one had eaten oranges for breakfast. No one had eaten oranges since the secret oranges Clementine had given them that night in her room. Barbara tipped the cup up and the pip sailed over the china lip and into her palm. She touched it with one of her soapy fingers, remembering an exchange of secrets on a black-and-white marble floor, miles below. Clementine and her lover Stanley, swapping oranges as though they were kisses. Then some of those too. It wasn’t only Ruby who saw things she ought not.

  ‘Barbara! Barbara! Come and help me with this sheet.’

  Out in the scullery, cold and damp, Mrs Penny was already manhandling the laundry in and out of the tub. Helping with the washing was Ruby’s duty too that week, but Barbara knew there was not going to be any chance of that. She swilled out Clementine’s cup and placed it on the rack along with the others, pulling the plug from the sink and watching the dirty water swirl away. Then she slipped the orange pip into the pocket of her skirt and went to the scullery to help.

  ‘I hope that girl comes home in good time tonight.’ Mrs Penny poked at the sheets in the copper with a set of big wooden tongs. ‘Took me an age to get that chicken. Don’t want it ruined because she’s running late.’

  Barbara stood by the mangle waiting for the first sheet to be fed her way. ‘If Clementine marries the American,’ she said, ‘will we have chicken every week?’

  Mrs Penny snorted. ‘Don’t hold your breath. Always likes to do things her own way, does your older sister.’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘None of your business. Husband and children probably the last thing on her mind.’

  ‘Did you ever have any children, Mrs Penny?’

  Mrs Penny stopped stirring for a moment and gazed at Barbara’s small round face. ‘I’ve got you, haven’t I.’

  It wasn’t a question. It also wasn’t what Barbara meant.

  The sheets turned lazy circles inside the tub as Mrs Penny looked down into the grey, steaming suds. ‘There was one once,’ she said. ‘But it wasn’t to be.’ She poked at a sheet as it ballooned towards the surface like the throat of a frog. ‘Life’s like that, sometimes. It gives with one hand and takes away with the next.’

  Half an hour later, in the airing cupboard off the hall, Barbara discovered two more little orange pips waiting to be found. She was collecting fresh sheets ready to go upstairs into each of the rooms – Tony’s bedroom, Mrs Penny’s, the room under the gable that she shared with Ruby, then Clementine’s last. The pips were nestled on top of the pile of sheets that fitted Clementine’s bed.

  ‘What are you doing, Barbara?’ Ruby stood in the passageway, a smear of mud from the shelter across the front of her skirt.

  Barbara turned towards her sister, back against the airing cupboard door. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Nothing is as nothing does.’ Ruby giggled. Rule number 103.

  Barbara frowned. ‘Mrs Penny said not to do that, Ruby.’ Ruby often tried to sound like Mrs Penny, especially if Mrs Penny might be near enough to hear.

  There was mud on Ruby’s knee, too. Barbara watched as her sister
licked a finger and rubbed at it. Then licked her finger again and wiped it on the bottom of her skirt. ‘You’ll turn into Mrs Penny if you don’t watch out,’ Ruby said and headed up the stairs.

  Another half an hour, all the sheets delivered but two, and Barbara knelt on the first-floor landing, one eye to the keyhole in the old nursery door that was Tony’s den now. The door had never been locked before, not as far as Barbara could tell. But as she laid Tony’s sheet on the floor beside her, she could tell it was locked tight now.

  Inside, Barbara could see Tony sitting on the bed. And Ruby sitting on Tony’s knee. Tony, with his black pipe, with his jokes and the way he let Barbara wet her lips with his rum. The only person in the household who’d ever winked at Barbara, even though she had never learned how to wink back. Barbara knew that she and Ruby were much too old to sit on Tony’s knee. But still, as she watched, she wished that it could be her.

  Downstairs Mrs Penny rattled her pans in the kitchen, while through the keyhole Barbara watched Tony put his hand on Ruby’s leg. He had his lips to Ruby’s ear too, a whisper passing between them just like the whispers that had passed between Ruby and Clementine beneath the huge dome of St Paul’s. A real secret. Something Barbara was not supposed to hear. Something Ruby had never divulged, not even to her twin.

  Barbara shifted then, small knees cramped and stiff, and the floorboards on the landing gave out the tiniest of creaks. Inside Tony’s room, two faces turned all of a sudden to the door, Barbara’s heart all pitter-patter in her chest until they turned back. It was then that Tony did it. Pressed his thick lips against Ruby’s little mouth.

  Two minutes later, upstairs on the highest, furthest floor, Barbara put her eye to another hole. Not in a door this time, but a mattress that she and her twin sister shared. Barbara knew this hole was one of Ruby’s secret places, one of several Barbara had discovered over the years. For biscuits stolen from the tin. Or coal from the grate. For powder puffs from Mrs Penny’s drawer. Or pennies taken from Tony’s pocket without even asking first. It was dark inside the mattress. But unlike the door to Tony’s den, this hole did not require a key for all its secrets to be revealed.

  Squeeze, wriggle, poke. Inside, in a space just big enough for a child’s finger and thumb, something was shoved in tight. Barbara prodded at it with the tip of one finger. ‘Ow!’ She pulled her finger out. Something inside the hole had pricked her. A trap, perhaps. A warning. Barbara wondered if Ruby had done it on purpose, just because she could.

  Carefully she wriggled her finger and thumb in once again and this time she caught something else – the edge of a small furl of cloth. She gave it a tug and out the secret slipped. A roll of dark serge falling into her hand, the same fabric that Mrs Penny used to patch their skirts. Barbara looked up for a moment to make sure nobody was near, then slowly, slowly she unravelled the dark cloth to see what she could see.

  A piece of orange peel, perhaps.

  One of Clementine’s cigarettes.

  But inside was something more precious than that. Barbara’s very own apostle spoon (or so she thought), taken from a hole she had dug beneath the stump of a dead tree.

  Barbara picked up the spoon and stared at her own reflection in the curve of the bowl. She looked funny, her features distorted. Trust Ruby to want everything, even when she hadn’t got there first.

  Except . . .

  The spoon wasn’t the only treasure rolled up inside Ruby’s dark patch of serge. There was something else. Small and star-shaped, a pulse of red at its heart. Barbara stared, eyes wide, as the glittery thing was revealed. A love token. A promise. The sealing of a pact. Clementine and Stanley’s secret treasure, fallen into Ruby’s thieving hands.

  ‘Barbara! Ruby!’

  From down in the depths of the kitchen Mrs Penny started up with a cry, voice drifting up the staircase as though she was summoning the sisters from across a great expanse.

  ‘Barbara! Ruby! Come down here at once.’

  Barbara froze, heart drumming like a snare against her ribs. Then she heard a scuffle on the floor below, the sound of feet running across uncarpeted boards. The turn of a lock in a door. She held on to her breath as best as she could, counting one elephant, two elephant, just as Clementine had taught, until she heard Ruby jumping down the stairs two at a time in response to Mrs Penny’s request.

  Quickly she rolled up the piece of cloth and pushed it back, deep into the mattress. Leave no trace. Wasn’t that what she had been taught? Then she touched the three orange pips in her pocket. There was another secret somewhere on this floor and Barbara was certain now that she knew where to look.

  The real secret was murder in the family. Down in the scullery, feeding sheet after sheet through the mangle, Mrs Penny had told Barbara everything important there was to know. ‘Like a cancer . . .’ she’d said. ‘The need to do wrong. Your whole family’s got it. You’d better watch out you don’t get it too.’

  Thou shalt not steal.

  Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s goods.

  Barbara held on tight to the sodden sheets and remembered a tin pig stolen from a child next door, not because she wanted to play with it, but just because she could.

  Honour thy father and thy mother.

  Love thy neighbour as thyself.

  Barbara wondered then whether her veins ran as clear as they should. Or if it was already too late.

  Mrs Penny turned the heavy handle. ‘And Clementine,’ she said. ‘Bad example to you both. Wrong from the moment I arrived.’

  Flattening out all the wrinkles from the linen.

  ‘And before that, of course.’

  Squeezing out all the life.

  ‘According to Mrs Jones, that is. Trouble of the worst sort.’ Mrs Penny heaved on the handle once more before turning to look straight into Barbara’s little pig-like face.

  Thou shalt do no murder.

  ‘That’s what you Walker girls have always been. Trouble, right from the start.’

  Stockings hanging from the back of a chair. Kirby grips scattered on top of a chest of drawers. Cotton wool balls all stained with lipstick. And a small pile of orange peel discarded in the wastepaper bin along with a fourth little pip.

  Across the landing from the bed she shared with her twin, Barbara stood in the middle of Clementine’s room staring up at the top of a wardrobe where a suitcase lined with blue-and-white-checked paper was supposed to live. But the suitcase was gone now. Vanished. Nothing in its place.

  Except . . .

  A fifth little orange pip lying in the middle of Clementine’s bed, just waiting for Ruby to bring a new sheet. Next to the pip was a piece of paper folded in four. On the outside Ruby’s name was written in a bold and curving script. On the inside, cradled between the folds, was a sixth pip sucked dry. And a set of instructions ending with rule number 12 – the one that everybody in the Walker family knew.

  Tell no one.

  So that was what Barbara did.

  That evening, as dusk fell all around, Barbara travelled straight across the heart of the city; racing beneath its maze of streets into the gathering dark. When she came out of the Underground at the other side, she hurried as best she could towards where a great cathedral stood alone amongst a wasteland of rubble. All the way her feet kept up a pitter-patter on the pavements to match the pitter-patter of her heart.

  In her pocket five little orange pips danced and jigged. One from Clementine’s teacup. Two from the airing cupboard. One from the rubbish bin and another from inside Clementine’s bed. The sixth pip was clutched in Barbara’s hand, along with a set of instructions and a bundle she had made up for herself. A nightgown, two pairs of pants, a handkerchief folded and ironed and a tortoiseshell comb taken from Mrs Penny’s drawer, just because she could. Barbara knew exactly where she was heading. Reupholstered bras. Shining kitchen gadgets. Cars as huge as boats. The promised land, at last.

  Up, up in the sky searchlights criss-crossed the dark as the Warning began its wail. Barbara w
as mostly alone in the streets now; everyone else hurried home or huddled into the bowels of the earth. Away across the river Barbara could hear the rockets beginning, the whistles as they flew in, then the clap and crump as they fell. Ahead of her, out of the black, the old cathedral loomed large, its huge dome rising above her in the night sky.

  Barbara’s heart trilled as she arrived on the edge of the desolate landscape and stood waiting where she’d been instructed. It felt like a lifetime before she saw the little pool of light coming her way. Darting across the rubble, navigating its way towards her over the shadowy ground. Barbara held her breath and counted as Clementine had taught. One elephant, two elephant, all the way to a thousand. Then there she was. Clementine Walker. Come to take her sister Barbara away for good.

  ‘Where are you?’ The call came quiet at first, a single question in amongst the darkness.

  ‘I’m here!’ Barbara called back, her voice small in the great emptiness of the night. She heard the stumble of footsteps getting nearer. Then a torch beam shone straight into her eyes. Barbara lifted a small arm to protect herself against the glare. ‘It’s me,’ she said, heart racing like a train on a circular track. In the distance there was the WHEEEEEEE of a rocket, then a sudden silence before it fell towards the earth.

  ‘What are you doing here, Barbara?’ Clementine hissed. She did not sound pleased. ‘I was expecting Ruby.’

  What was it Barbara could say? Ruby was ill. Ruby was indisposed. Ruby was sitting on Tony’s knee right now, licking rum off Tony’s lips.

  ‘Ruby couldn’t come,’ Barbara lied, squinting into the brightness.

  ‘Why not?’ Clementine didn’t let the torch drop.

  ‘Because.’

  ‘Did she tell you to meet me here?’

  ‘No. Yes. I’m not sure.’

  Cancer. Running through the Walker family every which way.

  ‘God!’ Clementine swore under her breath. She turned away then and Barbara blinked, everything black all of a sudden, before the grey shapes around her returned. Clementine was crouching a little way in front, small brown suitcase on the ground with the lid flipped up. She was holding the torch in her mouth now, its beam pointing down at nylons and knickers, an underslip thin as a ghost, a bottle of toilet water scented with lavender and, underneath, an ID card with her name printed in red. Inside that: the one remaining ticket for a boat.