Our Mother's House

by Julian Gloag

  “Very well.” Halby turned and walked towards the house. “I shan’t be a moment,” he called over his shoulder.

  Mrs. Halbert smiled. “Won’t you have another sandwich, Willy?”

  Willy shook his head. “Full up to dolly’s wax,” he said.

  She burst into laughter, “Oh, it’s such ages since I’ve heard anyone say that. Why, that’s what we used to say when I was a little girl. What a sweet little boy you are.” She sighed. “I remember a very proper little girl we had to tea once when I was small. Oh, very proper she was. When my mother asked her if she wanted anything more to eat, she said, ‘No, thank you very much, I am replete—when I’m at home I stay stuffed!’” The children smiled politely.

  Elsa said, “That’s what our youngest sister, Gerty, always says—‘stuffed.’”

  “Does she? How charming—does she?” Mrs. Halbert’s smile gleamed on and off like a faulty torch. Just like Jimi nee’s, thought Hubert. “Well, if you’ve all had enough, I expect you’d like to get down and run about in the garden.”

  They stood about on the smooth peninsulas of lawn, waiting for Mr. Halbert to return. Joan was clearing away—every so often snatching a quick glance at the children. Mrs. Halbert talked.

  Suddenly Willy lay down on the lawn and closed his eyes. “Willy,” whispered Hubert, “get up at once.” But Mrs. Halbert had already noticed.

  “Oh, dear, oh, dear. You’re not feeling sick, Willy? Is he ill—oh, I do hope not. Perhaps that cake. Willy?” She bent down.

  “I’m a tiger and I’m asleep,” Willy announced.

  “Oh, what a funny little boy,” Mrs. Halbert beamed.

  “Willy, get up!” said Elsa.

  “I’m a tiger, and I’m asleep,” Willy said sternly.

  “Oh, what an idea!” said Mrs. Halbert.

  Hubert said, “He thinks he’s playing the jungle game.”

  “I’m the tiger, the tiger, the tiger,” chanted Willy.

  “Get up, Willy,” Elsa repeated.

  “The ‘jungle game’!” Mrs. Halbert pealed with giggles. “But there’s no jungle here!”

  “Yes there is.” Willy opened his eyes briefly. “It’s all jungle.”

  Hubert decided that Mrs. Halbert was an ass.

  “Willy, if you don’t get up at once, you’ll go straight to bed when we get home.”

  “Tigers don’t go to bed.” Willy growled softly.

  “Tigers don’t go for drives in cars,” said Mr. Halbert from behind their back. He was smiling. “Come along, children, the car’s outside.”

  Willy bounced to his feet at once.

  They followed Mr. Halbert through the house. Hubert kept anxiously close to him.

  “Children!” Elsa said warningly as Halby opened the front door. Hubert turned as Elsa stepped towards Mrs. Halbert. “Thank you very much for a lovely tea,” she said. “We enjoyed it very much.”

  Mrs. Halbert fluttered a hand up to her mouth. “Oh, but you’re coming back, aren’t you? You must come back after your drive!”

  “Thank you very much, but I think it will be Willy’s bedtime by then.”

  “Oh—oh,” Mrs. Halbert sucked in the air. For a moment Hubert thought she was going to cry. “But—but you will come just to collect some cake for your little brother and sister who didn’t come, won’t you? We mustn’t forget them, must we?”

  Elsa considered. “All right,” she said, “but we really can’t stay long.”

  “How charming—how sweet—what delightful children you are.” She came to the front door to see them off, still chanting their praises.

  Hubert stood back on the pavement to admire the black magnificence of the Daimler. It made Mr. Halbert seem small by comparison—it even made the huge figure of George, the garage hand, seem small.

  “Thank you, George,” Mr. Halbert said, “I’ll put it in myself—no need for you to wait.”

  George nodded and blinked. “Thank you, Mr. Halbert,” he said as he opened the door.

  Mr. Halbert turned to the children. “I think we better pack you in first. Now who’d like to go in front?”

  “Me,” said Willy.

  “Willy’s never been in a car before,” Hubert said.

  “Well, then, it’ll be Willy and—let’s see—you better come in the front too, Hubert. After all, the trip was your idea.” Mr. Halbert smiled. “Elsa and Jiminee and—Diana, isn’t it?—you climb in the back.”

  “I don’t want to go, thank you very much.”

  “What?” Halby was already lifting Willy into the front seat and he looked back with surprise.

  Diana was straight and white. She repeated what she’d said. “I don’t want to go, thank you very much.” The dreamy look was gone from her eyes.

  Mr. Halbert set Willy firmly in the front seat and turned to Diana with a puzzled look. “Why don’t you want to go?”

  “I would prefer to go home, please.”

  She was always like that, thought Hubert. People never noticed Diana at first much, even though they all said she was so pretty. But she just wouldn’t open her mouth. And then suddenly she’d say something that surprised everyone—and then they didn’t forget her anymore. They just looked puzzled, like old Halby.

  “I’d prefer to go home, please, if you don’t mind.”

  “Don’t be so rude, Dinah,” Elsa whispered fiercely at her.

  Mr. Halbert frowned. “Perhaps you want to wash your hands?”

  “No. I would just like to go home, if you don’t mind.”

  “Very well,” Mr. Halbert nodded curtly. His face was red and his voice was full of inexplicable grownup anger. Hubert felt the disappointment in his chest—somehow he’d thought that Halby was going to be different.

  “Thank you for a lovely time.” Diana paused. She turned her eyes and looked at the garage man, still standing with his hand on the door of the car. He looked back at her, and then he began to blink rapidly. She kept staring at him even after he looked away. He wiped the palm of his left hand slowly against the thigh of his khaki dungarees.

  “Goodbye,” Diana said.

  They watched her walk stiffly back to number 38.

  “Well, let’s get going,” said Mr. Halbert, not sounding very pleased.

  Hubert tried his best to talk during the drive, but Mr. Halbert was not in a talking mood. But it didn’t matter really. The car was better than anything Hubert had ever dreamed. They turned on to the main road at the bottom of Ipswich Terrace and in a few minutes were in the park. It seemed as if they were going very very slowly, yet the big Daimler did all the passing and was never passed itself.

  “Can it really do ninety?” asked Hubert, looking at the speedometer.

  “Not in the park,” said Mr. Halbert.

  “But if you really wanted to, I expect you could, couldn’t you?”

  “I expect so.”

  The grass was greener than usual for August. With only a few days of shade-killing brightness, the summer had been one of almost tropical heat—rain, steaming suffocation, and more rain, but very little sun. But today the park was happy with sunlight. Every green chair was occupied and the bell of the ice-cream man tinkled. Already the car had carried the children far beyond the limits of their walks with Mother. Hubert tried to turn his mind away from those days before Mother was sick and before her edict that they “must never go in the park without a grownup” had become an iron law that only permitted them the trip to school or to do the weekly shopping.

  Mr. Halbert slowed the car and turned into one of the smaller car parks. “What about an ice?” he asked. “There’s a Walls’ man over there.”

  “Oh, but we had such a big tea,” Elsa said doubtfully.

  “Well, I don’t suppose an ice would do you any harm.” Mr. Halbert seemed preoccupied.

  They ate them sitting on the running board of the car. The smell of the ice and the hot rubbery smell of the running board and the dust and the grass and the petrol filled Hubert with delight, so he wanted t
o skip and dance and yell. But somehow, he didn’t—perhaps it was the presence of Mr. Halbert that stopped him. But that wasn’t really the reason; instinctively he knew that if he showed his joy, something bad would happen. You have to pretend, he thought, that you’re not really enjoying yourself too much, or perhaps you won’t. And suddenly he didn’t want to go home anymore. He wanted to stay in the park forever, sitting on the running board, eating ice cream, and with Mr. Halbert standing there jingling the change in his pocket.

  Maybe Mr. Halbert didn’t want to go home either, for he drove back more slowly and didn’t seem to mind if other cars overtook them. Hubert half closed his eyes so that the trees flowed past like a green river. He opened them as they turned into Ipswich Terrace, just in time to see the ladies standing at the end of the road.

  “Mr. Halbert?”

  “Yes?”

  “What are those ladies standing there for?”

  Mr. Halbert hesitated. “Women of ill repute,” he said in a tone that stopped Hubert asking any further.

  He parked the car outside number 40 and led the children into the house. “Well,” he said as Mrs. Halbert greeted them, “I hope you liked the drive.”

  “Oh, yes!”

  “It was super!”

  “Wizard!”

  “And thank you very much for the ices.”

  “Oh, Sammy, you didn’t give them ices too?”

  Halby nodded, as if in answer to quite a different question. Then he turned and went down the hall into the room that overlooked the garden. He closed the door and drew a deep-blue velvet curtain over it to shut out the noise. Then he went to the large desk by the window. He sat down and took a cigarette from the silver box. He lit it with a mono-grammed leather cigarette lighter. He replaced the lighter carefully so that it aligned with the cigarette box and the letter scales and the ink stand. He looked out into the garden. The tea things and the white cloth had been removed from the teak table. Joan had even remembered to shift the table itself a little, so that the grass under its feet would not wither and die.

  Slowly Mr. Halbert blew a long stream of cigarette smoke towards the window.

  15

  As the others went on into the house, he closed the gate of number 38. He took a last look at the Daimler and sighed.

  “Hu.” Jiminee had come back to stand beside him. “Hu, it was him—the g-garage man.”

  “Yes, I know.” The sun shone on the car and Hubert wondered whether Halby would ever take them for another drive in it.

  “It’s super, isn’t it.”

  He didn’t answer. Once, long ago, he remembered Mother telling them, “Never take lifts from strangers.” If he remembered it, Dunstan would too. But was Mr. Halbert really a stranger? He was sure Mother didn’t mean people like Halby—but, well, how could you explain that to … to the voices in the tabernacle?

  “Hu, it was very nice of him to take us out, wasn’t it?”

  Hubert nodded.

  “It would be wizard if he was our d-dad.”

  Hubert clutched the two pieces of cake wrapped in greaseproof paper closer to his chest. “Well,” he said, “he isn’t.” He clicked the gate finally shut, and walked up the path.

  Jiminee followed him. “But if he was—it would b-be super, wouldn’t it?”

  He gripped Gerty’s cake hard and his fingers dug through the paper to the moist crumbly surface. “Oh, shut up, Jiminee.”

  Elsa was arguing with Willy in the hall. “You just go straight to bed, Willy.”

  “I want my supper first.” Willy was in his stubborn mood.

  “You’ve just had an extra big tea and an ice too. Now you do as I say.”

  As Hubert watched, Dunstan and Diana came through the swing door that led down to the kitchen.

  Dunstan said, “You’re late for Mothertime.”

  “There’s no Mothertime for Willy tonight,” Elsa snapped.

  “There’s always Mothertime for everybody. No exceptions. Except anyone who has been very wicked.”

  “Don’t want Mothertime,” said Willy. “I want supper.”

  “Willy dear,” Diana murmured, “how do you know Mother doesn’t want to speak to you?”

  “I don’t care if she wants to speak to me. I want supper.”

  “Willy,” Dunstan warned, “remember what happened to Gerty.”

  “Come along, Willy,” Diana said.

  “I won’t.” He stood with his fists raised ready to punch anyone who came near. “I hate Mother—she’s cruel. I want supper.” The enormity of his words was beyond him.

  They were all silent, watching Willy. Even Elsa could find nothing to say. Hubert half expected the little boy to vanish, or fall down dead. But only the clock ticked in the hall.

  Dunstan pointed one finger at Willy—a finger that trembled. “Blasphemer,” he said.

  “Blasphemer!”

  Dunstan took a step forward, but Hubert knew he wouldn’t risk touching Willy. Willy went mad when he was in a rage like this—he’d bite and kick and hit, and he was strong. It would take three of them to handle him.

  Elsa said, “I think you’d better go to bed now, Willy—that’s enough for one day.” Hubert was surprised at her voice—it didn’t sound like Elsa; it sounded kind of … tired, more like Diana.

  “Yes,” said Dunstan. “Yes—you’re much too wicked to come to Mothertime now. But tomorrow you’ll come all right. Tomorrow, Willy.”

  Suddenly Willy darted towards Dunstan, but turned just before he reached him and rushed at the stairs. He stumbled once before he reached the corner, then he was out of sight. The children stood with their heads raised, listening to the dwindling scamper of Willy’s feet. At last, at the top of the house they heard the door of his room slam. He would bolt it and stay in there and cry alone, Hubert knew, as he always did.

  Dunstan brushed the lank hair from his eyes. “Mother will punish,” he murmured. He coughed. “Now,” he said, “we will have Mothertime.”

  Hubert hesitated. “Can I go upstairs first?” As he pressed the two pieces of cake tight to his chest, he realised that this was the first time he’d ever asked Dun permission for anything.

  There was a pause while Dunstan, his head set a little to one side, observed his brother. “Yes,” he said in a soft tone, “yes, you may, but hurry up. Mother is waiting.”

  Hubert moved towards the stairs.

  “Hubert—what’s that you have in your hand?”

  He turned back. “Oh, nothing,” he muttered.

  “Nothing?” said Dunstan. “Let’s see.”

  Hubert glanced up the stairs. If he ran, he could be in Gerty’s room with the door locked before they could catch him. He shook his head. Don’t be barmy, he thought. He looked at Dunstan and extended his hand with the greaseproof paper parcel.

  “Funny-looking sort of nothing,” said Dunstan.

  Hubert stared. There was something unfamiliar about the tone of Dunstan’s voice. “It’s cake,” he said.

  “But I thought you said it was nothing?”

  “Well, I—I made a mistake.” He felt a fool—and suddenly he knew that was what Dunstan intended. That was what Dunstan enjoyed. He drew breath. “I—I shan’t be long.”

  There was nothing to be afraid of. He wouldn’t talk to Gerty—just give her the cake and come straight down again. He wondered that Dunstan had not warned him against breaking Gerty’s Coventry. Dunstan loved to warn.

  He pushed open the door of Gerty’s room. She lay curled, knees up and face buried down into the pillow. The sheet she wrapped about her head had slipped to reveal the white scalp and the chopped tufts of hair. She had not struggled against the operation of the kitchen scissors. She’d sat with head bowed while Diana did her work. But now Gerty would start away in fright if anyone tried to touch her head.

  He sat down gently on the bed. All at once, it didn’t matter that he was going to break the vow of silence and speak to her, that he was going to bring her back from Coventry.

&nb
sp; “Gert?”

  Her head moved a little.

  “How do you feel, Gert?”

  Her nose was stuffed and she breathed through her mouth. She’d been crying again. She turned a little more and looked at him without interest.

  “I’ve brought you some cake.” He began to unwrap the greaseproof paper. The cake was all different colours—swirls of green and pink and yellow and chocolate. The slices were squashed where he had held them against his chest. “It’s called Russian cake,” he said.

  Slowly Gerty looked down at the cake and for a moment Hubert had a wild hope that her eager hand would reach out from under the sheet and seize a piece. But this wasn’t the old Gerty. She just stared at it for a long time, then turned her head away.

  “It’s lovely. Really it is, Gert. You’d love it.” He waited for her to look at him again, but she wouldn’t. “I wish you could have been there. There were seven different kinds of sandwiches. Chicken and sardine and cucumber and marmite. There was scones and jam too, and lovely thick cream to go on top. It’s a shame you couldn’t come. But you’ll be better soon.”

  Gerty didn’t move. Hubert broke off a corner of cake and held it out to her. Imperceptibly she shook her head. “It’s good,” he said. “It’s called Russian cake.” He put the piece in his mouth and chewed. It didn’t taste the same as it had at tea.

  He laid his hand on Gerty’s forehead. It was terribly hot. “You’ll feel better soon,” he murmured. He knew she was very ill.

  He turned abruptly to the doorway. Willy stood there looking at them. “What you want?” said Hubert.

  Willy raised his arm and pointed a solemn finger at Gerty. “She screamed in the night,” he said. “She screamed and screamed. Small screams so nobody could hear. But I heard,” he said impressively. He lowered his arm. “It must have hurt an awful lot.”

  “You should have woken Elsa,” said Hubert.

  Willy ignored him. “She wanted a drink of water. I heard her. She kept asking for it.”

  “Well, why didn’t you get her some?” asked Hubert irritably.

  Willy looked disdainful. “She’s on Coventry.”

  “You …” Hubert clenched his fist and counted ten rapidly. It was only Willy. Willy was too young. Willy didn’t understand. He took a deep breath. “Go away, Willy.”