by Sylvia Waugh
“She can ride it,” said Soobie. “That’s all I’m saying.”
He felt irritated, as if they were forcing him to break a vow of silence.
“Now go,” he said.
But Poopie had already gone. Before Vinetta or Pilbeam could work out the implications, Poopie realised that Appleby had not been seen all day and that the scooter and Appleby had probably disappeared together.
Her room was empty. Her bed was made. The place was in an unusual state of tidiness. Propped up against the dressing-table mirror was a large piece of cardboard with a message written in bright red lipstick:
DON’T BOTHER TO LOOK FOR ME. I NEVER WANT TO SEE COMUS HOUSE AGAIN.
“Mum!” yelled Poopie from the top of the stairs. “Appleby’s run away again. She’s left a message.”
Vinetta dashed up the stairs and into her daughter’s room. She read the note and she fainted.
29
On the Road
APPLEBY DID KNOW all about scooters, but not even the cleverest rider knows how to get from A to B along winding country roads without frequent stops and checks. She found the map in the saddlebag, just as Soobie had done. It was old, but adequate.
Her first stop, naturally, was at the petrol station to fill up the scooter’s tank. No problem. As for appearing in public, the helmet and goggles were a perfect cover-up. And on such a cold day it was no wonder she paid the bill without removing her gloves.
“Mind how you go, love,” said the motherly woman in the kiosk. “It’s a bit misty. It’d pay you to have your lights on.”
A gentle reminder. It was only three o’clock in the afternoon, but the visibility was not good.
“Thanks,” said Appleby, and she wheeled the scooter out onto the road before pausing to look at her map again. The scooter was leaning against the garage’s low boundary wall. Appleby sat on the wall and studied the map.
Suddenly a heavy hand gripped her shoulder. She jumped.
“Easy, easy, sweetheart,” said a man’s voice. “Nobody’s going to hurt you. Lost, are you?”
She looked up at him. He had a strange, threatening face. The skin on his cheekbones was stretched and smooth, unhealthily sallow. His eyes were narrow and so light a brown that they were almost colourless. His lank, pale hair was shoulder-length. He was dressed head to foot in black leather. Appleby shivered. It was a very dangerous situation – a quiet time of day, in a quiet place. The nearest living being was the plump woman in the kiosk and she was far enough away to be no deterrent to an assailant.
“You’re not afraid of me, are you?” the man said, squeezing her shoulder more tightly. Appleby looked round her wildly. Then she made up her mind. With a swift movement she thrust the map into the scooter’s saddlebag. With her right hand she got a tight grip on the handlebar. Then putting her left hand up to her face she pushed up the goggles and stared into the face of the intruder.
The man looked at the glittering green glass beads in the strange cloth face. He let go his grip and staggered backwards. In that moment, Appleby leapt onto the scooter, gave it full throttle and sped away down the road. The man was later to tell the story over and over again to anyone who would listen. Very few believed him, but it gave rise to legends in which Appleby became a zombie, a corpse, a ghost, or a woman without a face.
Eventually, more by luck than anything, she managed to get herself onto the main road. The road was not very busy and visibility was poor. Which was just as well, thought Appleby, because she was not at all sure whether her vehicle was really allowed on this major road. The alternative of staying on minor roads was in some ways inviting, but it would have been slower and was more open to the possibility of getting lost. Road signs on the dual carriageway made it less necessary to stop and check the map. Appleby made her way south.
She reached the recognisable outskirts of Castledean by five-thirty in the evening. Then she dawdled. It was important to arrive at Brocklehurst Grove no sooner than seven-thirty. She wanted to give her father time to be well on his way to work.
It was dark and it was damp, with a thick fog hanging in the air. Appleby wheeled the scooter silently up the garden path and round the back of the house where she left it outside the garden shed. Into the house she went, straight to the kitchen where she took the shed key out of the tea jar. Once the scooter was safely locked away, she sat herself beside the gas fire in the lounge and switched on the television for company. She turned on the standard lamp.
It was bliss. It was comfort. It was warmth. It was home.
The hours of the night sped by. Appleby dozed in the chair by the fire. The first she knew of time was when she heard the clock on the mantelpiece chime six. Six in the morning . . . Father would be home in a couple of hours. She did not want him to find her there.
Like a criminal, she checked the whole room for any clues to her presence. She turned off the lamp and the gas fire. Then she went to hide herself in the attic.
30
Waiting
POOPIE THREW A tantrum. His yellow hair stood on end, his blue eyes glared. It was late on Monday night, well past his bedtime. Tulip had tucked Wimpey up long ago, but in the commotion of Appleby’s disappearance Poopie had been forgotten.
“I hate everybody,” he said. “Soobie’s horrible. Appleby’s horrible. Mum’s horrible. And my rabbit’s gone for good.”
“Go to bed,” said Granny Tulip. “You’re tired out. You should be asleep by now.”
“I’m not tired,” he said. “I’m never tired. And I hate you as well.”
Pilbeam looked down at him severely.
“Stop that at once,” she said, “or I’ll shake you.”
“Try it on,” said Poopie, looking belligerent. “Just try it on.”
He sat down on the hall floor and drummed with his heels.
The nursery door opened.
Miss Quigley came out and carefully shut the door behind her.
“Stand up, young man,” she said to Poopie in a very crisp voice.
Poopie, startled, stopped drumming and stood up, almost standing to attention like a little soldier.
“Now,” said Miss Quigley, “we have had quite enough of this silliness. You will go to your room and go straight to bed.”
And he went!
“Thank you, Hortensia,” said Tulip as sweetly as she could. “You do have a way with children!”
“Professional,” said the nanny, “purely professional.”
With that, she returned to the nursery and the child she was paid to look after.
Pilbeam gave her grandmother an amused smile.
“So now we know,” she said.
But there were more serious considerations. In the drawing-room on the sofa, Vinetta was lying full length with her head on her arms. She looked ungainly. Her hair was not neat anymore. Her dress was crumpled.
Pilbeam tried to think of something to say and couldn’t. She sat on an armchair beside the sofa and waited.
Tulip came in.
“Come on, Vinetta,” she said. “This is doing no good. Pull yourself together.”
“I can’t,” said her daughter-in-law. “I’ve had all I can take. I give up.”
“I’m going to phone Joshua. I might just catch him before he goes to work,” said Tulip.
“You’ll do no such thing,” said Vinetta. “He’s too far away to do anything. There’s no point in worrying him.”
“The phone’s off anyway,” said Pilbeam. “I tried to ring Albert. It’s been off all day.”
They lapsed into silence. Tulip sat in an armchair at the other side of the sofa. She went on with her knitting. The clock on the wall ticked away two long hours.
Suddenly into the silent room came Wimpey, dressed in her nightgown, carrying her beloved American doll. She sidled up to Vinetta.
“I can’t sleep,” she said.
“Come beside me,” said her mother holding out one arm. “We’ll wait together.”
“What are we waiting for?�
� asked Wimpey as she made herself comfortable by her mother’s side.
“I’m not sure,” said Vinetta. “We’re just waiting.”
Tulip gave Vinetta a stern look.
“It’s not like the last time,” she said. “That young madam knows what she’s up to. She set off deliberately. It’s my guess she’s gone back to Brocklehurst Grove.”
“And if she doesn’t get there?” said Vinetta. “Anything could happen. Anything.” She thought rapidly of all the disasters that could befall a rag doll on a motor scooter. It filled her with horror.
“Appleby can take care of herself,” said Granny Tulip grimly, “probably better than you can, Vinetta. She’ll come to no harm.”
There was a thudding on the floor above, a vigorous, irritable thudding. Tulip sighed and went up to see Magnus. As she walked up the staircase she wondered if it might be possible to say nothing about Appleby’s disappearance, to keep it a secret from the old man in the four-poster bed.
“Where’s Appleby?” asked Magnus as soon as Tulip entered the room. “She’s not gone off again, has she?”
“How did you know?” It was all Tulip could say.
“What do you think I am? Deaf or daft? Something’s going on down there and it involves Appleby. That I do know.”
Tulip explained.
“So what do we do now?” she asked meekly.
Magnus patted her hand gently and gave her one of his wisest looks.
“We wait,” he said. “It’s all we can do. We should be used to it by now.”
But, and he knew it, there are some things one can never get used to.
Wimpey was asleep, cradled in Vinetta’s arms. Vinetta dozed. Pilbeam, still in the armchair, was tired but watchful. Minutes felt like hours. On the old sideboard, the clock ticked loudly.
When Tulip returned to the drawing-room which was lit now by only two table-lamps, the heavy curtains drawn against the night, she shook her head as she looked at her family.
“Bed,” she said firmly and clearly so that they all looked up with a start. “There’s no point in sitting here all night.”
“I’m-Polly. What-are-you-called?” said the American doll as Wimpey accidentally pulled the string.
“Bed,” said Tulip, holding out her hand to her sleepy little grandchild.
Pilbeam also stood up, stretching her arms above her head.
Vinetta sat upright on the sofa and looked stubborn.
“You must all go to bed,” she said. “That makes sense. But I am staying down here. Someone might come to the door. The phone might ring.”
“The phone’s off,” Tulip reminded her.
“No matter,” said Vinetta. “Here I am and here I stay.”
And she did. All the night long.
She did not know that Brocklehurst Grove had been saved. She did not know that Joshua was hugging his mug of cocoa and rejoicing. She did not know that Appleby had reached home safely. Fear was in possession of her soul and the waiting hours were full of imagined terrors.
31
Albert and Kate
AT THE END of Albert’s Tuesday morning tutorial on Anglo-Saxon archaeology, Lorna Gladstone hung back, deliberately. Lorna, at the beginning of her second year, was now much more confident and less given to burbling. Her black hair was cut in a neat, long bob. Her eyes were almost as dark as Pilbeam’s.
“Albert,” she said when they were alone, “I hope you don’t mind my asking you this, but does your family live in a place called Comus House?”
Albert stared wide-eyed at the girl and dropped the file with his notes on the Sutton Hoo ship burial so that papers scattered all over the floor.
Lorna stooped down, gathered up the papers into their folder and handed them back to her tutor with a kindly smile. Albert looked at her blankly. She reminded him of someone.
“I only asked,” Lorna went on, “because my great-great-grandmother was a Pond. She lived at Comus House, out in the country near Allenbridge. My mother wondered if we might be distantly related.”
“My great-grandfather was a Pond,” said Albert, trying to get over his confusion.
“He would be,” said Lorna, smiling.
Albert smiled back and felt more at ease. Lorna, he decided, looked and sounded a bit like Pilbeam. Quite a recommendation!
“Comus House belongs to me now,” he said. “I’m going to have to sell it, of course, but I’ll take you there some day when I get things organised a bit better. Perhaps your mother might like to come too.”
Lorna looked at the clutter in the room and the jumble on his table.
“I won’t hold my breath,” she said.
“I know! I know!” said Albert. “But it is complicated.”
More complicated than you could ever hope to guess, he thought, after Lorna had left. Their conversation had brought uncomfortably home to him how odd his life had become. He looked down at his desk and began to take his fountain pen to bits.
I should be leading a more normal life, he thought. I’m thirty-one years old. I could be married by now, raising a family. Yet all I think of is how soon can I get to Comus House, how much time can I spend there. I’m worried about Soobie and his depression. And that’s just the latest worry! It’s not natural. It cannot go on indefinitely.
“No, it can’t,” said a voice in the room, “and it won’t.”
Albert was startled. He looked up and there, sitting in the old fireside chair, was Aunt Kate.
“You can read my thoughts!” said Albert as shock gave way to surprise.
“It’s not hard,” said Kate. “You’ve sat there and dismantled a perfectly good fountain pen. It is not the action of an untroubled man.”
Albert looked sheepish.
Strange the effect Kate had on things. The room felt isolated. The clock on the wall froze at ten past twelve, its sweeping red second pointer sticking just below the three.
“What do you mean when you say it won’t go on? Have you thought of a way out for them?” Albert asked.
“No need,” said Kate. “They’ve won. That’s what I’ve come to tell you. Go to Brocklehurst Grove and see for yourself. Soon, very soon, you’ll be able to bring my family home and once they’re settled in again, you can go off and get on with your own life.”
Albert took a while to grasp what she meant. Kate told him all about the banner and the broadcast and the descendant of Matthew James who belonged to the Establishment. Aunt Kate was a very knowledgeable ghost!
“So, you see, it will soon all be over,” she concluded, “and won’t they be pleased!”
She looked as if she were conferring a blessing when she told Albert that his services would no longer be needed.
Albert looked thoughtful, upset even.
“It’s not as simple as that,” he said. “I wish it were. I’d like everything to be nice and normal, but at the same time I don’t want to forget them. I don’t want to step out of their lives. They are my family now. All the family I have. I have learnt to love them. For as long as they want me, I’ll be there.”
Kate gave a deep sigh. Ghost though she was, the words chilled her. She gave Albert a look of pity.
“I am sorry. I am really, really sorry. I have been far too selfish. I have never given a thought to how this might affect you. There are things I know that I am not permitted to tell, but I know far less than you might think. Then there are powers I have that I am allowed to use, but, I tell you honestly, I am never quite sure what those powers are.”
He looked at her. Suddenly she was not a tweedy, self-possessed elderly lady any more. Her outer appearance did not change, but Albert was aware of many selves occupying that shell – a lonely young girl, a child who was a tomboy up to all sorts of mischief.
“You once climbed up onto the roof,” said Albert, seizing on a passing memory.
“Yes, I did,” said Kate, smiling wistfully but regaining some of her composure. “That was when I was four. My father nearly had a fit!”
; Albert felt muddled but aware of two odd facts. The ghost had her own history and she was all the people she had ever been. And, more important, the ghost might not have the power to solve the problems she had helped to create.
“I’ll go to Brocklehurst Grove later this afternoon,” he said firmly. “I’ll see whats really happening and we’ll take it from there.”
Aunt Kate looked humble. It was a complete role-reversal. Albert was strong and decisive. Kate was weak and almost fearful. She got up from the fireside chair, wavered for a moment, and then faded into the blue of the door.
32
Tuesday — Appleby at Home
APPLEBY WAS STIFF from sitting too long in the rocking-chair with her feet on the old footstool. A glance at her watch told her that it was one-thirty. The day was overcast and the attic was dreary. Appleby began to suffer the insufferable. She was totally bored.
The table had gone to the lounge downstairs, but the books were still there in a pile on the floor near the footstool. Appleby picked up The Three Musketeers, flicked through the pages and decided that the print was too small and the paper was too yellow. Bleak House she dismissed with a shudder, thinking of the bleak house she had just left. The other books she didn’t even bother to handle. Clever she might be, but she was no reader. Magazines and paper-backed crime were all she could tolerate. It always seemed strange to her that Pilbeam and Soobie were so interested in books.
She looked at herself in the wood-framed mirror, tilting her chin and pouting her lips like a covergirl. Then she got bored with that and twisted her face into the most hideous expression she could manage.
“I’ll go mad,” she said explosively. “I’ll die of boredom. And I won’t even be able to go downstairs tonight – he will be there.”
She felt doubly irritated when she remembered that it was Tuesday night, Father’s night off. So there would be no sneaking down after he’d gone to work.
She did not feel ready yet to explain her presence even to Joshua. There was always that pride about her that hated to be seen as being in the wrong. Had it been any other night but Tuesday she would have positively enjoyed snooping around the empty house.