Our Mother's House

by Julian Gloag

  “No.” The little boy shook his head.

  After a moment, Hubert shrugged and turned back to Gerty. Suddenly he didn’t care if Willy sneaked on him to Dunstan.

  “Gerty,” he moved his hand softly over her hunched body, “how’s the pain now?”

  The little girl pushed her head deeper into the pillow. Her lips moved. “It hurts,” she whispered. And when he touched her stomach, she winced.

  They ought to get a doctor. This time they really ought. Elsa would agree and then he’d run down the road and get Dr. Meadows and everything would be all right. He frowned—if Elsa would agree. She didn’t … she wasn’t … like the old Elsa anymore—not quite. He folded the two slices of cake back into the paper. “Nothing’s changed”—that’s what Elsa had said. Well, it had. She had. And Dunstan and Diana. And now Gerty. Just me, thought Hubert, just me and Jiminee are the only ones that have stayed the same.

  He stood up, looking down at Gerty and smoothing the paper over the cake. He glanced at Willy. “Do you want a piece?”

  Willy nodded and came forward. He held out his hand. “I want two pieces,” he said as Hubert started to unwrap the parcel. “One for my black wife.”

  Hubert frowned. The other piece was Dunstan’s really, but he wouldn’t want it. He gave Willy the cake.

  Willy smiled. “Now I won’t tell Dun I saw you talking to Gerty,” he said.

  “You little …” He could think of nothing to say in his fury. And then it was too late, for Willy had run back to his own room and slammed the door.

  Gerty had completely covered her head with the sheet now. She’d be all right when Doctor Meadows came. “Cheer up, Gert,” he said brightly to the sheeted form on the bed, “you’ll feel better soon.”

  At the door, he suddenly remembered. He turned, smiling. “I nearly forgot,” he said. “I nearly forgot to tell you. Old Halby took us for a drive in his Daimler.”

  There was no response.

  “Old Halby,” he tried again, “took us for a drive all round the park.” Suddenly he felt the tears in his eyes. “And he gave us ices and—and things.”

  The small figure on the bed made no movement.

  “It was wizard,” he said.

  16

  The house was quiet. Down in the kitchen, with two doors separating it from the upstairs, it always was quiet—and cool.

  Hubert dozed in the only comfortable chair—a large wooden frame with an adjustable back and two brown corduroy cushions. His leg was cocked over the arm of the chair, and the bite of the edge into the flesh below his knee was comforting.

  Sitting in “Mrs. Stork’s corner,” he didn’t think about upstairs. Or outside. Even with the door open, the kitchen coolness kept the hot outside at bay.

  The red second hand moved round and round. Hubert shut his eyes. When he opened them again, the minute hand had hardly advanced at all. There was still almost half an hour till tea.

  He shifted, and the bag of sweets on his stomach rustled.

  “Want a sweet, Jiminee?”

  Jiminee looked up from his drawing. He put down his pencil and slid off the chair. “What kind have you got?”

  “Liquorice all-sorts.” Hubert opened the bag and displayed them. “Take two.”

  Jiminee hesitated. “C-can I really?” He’d been caught this way too often—the generous offer, the sweets under his nose and then suddenly the bag whisked away with shouts of laughter. Or perhaps there wouldn’t be sweets in the bag at all—just stones.

  “Go on,” said Hubert.

  Jiminee dipped his hand in. He took two of the thick white wheels with only an axle of liquorice. They were the best in the bag. But he frowned, holding the sweets in the palm of his hand. “May I really? There aren’t m-many left.”

  Hubert said, “I don’t want any more.” He’d eaten seventeen since dinnertime.

  Still unsure, Jiminee said, “I know you always save the best ones till last.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” He hadn’t saved them this time anyway. He’d just put his hand blind into the bag and taken out the first one he touched. He hadn’t even tried to guess what kind it was from the way it felt in his mouth. It was funny—he’d never done that before. And he’d never eaten seventeen at one go before—it was almost the whole week’s ration. He didn’t care one bit.

  Jiminee still hadn’t eaten the sweets. He held them as carefully as if they were half-crowns. “What do you want me to d-do?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You sure? You sure you d-don’t want me to run upstairs?”

  “No.” Hubert shook his head emphatically.

  “They’re a p-present?”

  Hubert swung his leg off the arm of the chair. “Yes, they’re a present.”

  Jiminee went slowly back to the kitchen table and climbed onto his chair. He put the first sweet into his mouth; it made a great lump in his cheek. He looked at Hubert, without going back to his drawing. “I think,” he said at last, “I think you ought t-to save them.”

  “Why?” He was sitting up now and wasn’t sleepy anymore.

  Jiminee didn’t answer. He switched the sweet to the other cheek.

  “Why?” Hubert repeated.

  “F-fair shares.”

  Hubert stood up. He put the bag on the table and looked at it. You could tell there were only three or four sweets left now. “It’s too late,” he said, “there aren’t enough.” He’d tried to give one to Gerty—offered her the pick of the bag. But she’d just turned her head away as she’d done to all food ever since he’d given her Mrs. Halbert’s cake. She went on asking for water, but she didn’t cry now.

  “Anyway,” Hubert said suddenly, “fair shares doesn’t count anymore.”

  “B-but …” Jiminee blinked with effort. Then he gave up and began to chew the sweet in his mouth.

  It seemed to Hubert as if they were both waiting for something. The foreverness of the afternoon had gone. Long ago, this had been the time when Mother would come bustling into the kitchen to start the tea. At school it was the moment when expectation of release would conquer boredom. Now …

  Now it was the knocker—thunder at the front of the house.

  “Wh-who c-could—”

  But Hubert had already crossed to the door. He wasn’t going to wait for the next knocks this time. He climbed the stairs and pushed open the door into the hall. He knew what to do now. He knew what to say this time.

  He stopped at the front door and took a deep breath and held it in his lungs. He reached up slowly and clicked back the latch.

  The door opened with a sticky sound from the rubber lining the jamb.

  “Why hello, Hubert.” A smile and white gloves. “You remember me, I’m sure.”

  He just stared at her. It couldn’t really be her. It … and then he remembered Miss Deke’s summer visits. She always came in the middle of the summer holidays and …

  “Aren’t you going to ask me in? You were always quite the little gentleman, Hubert—weren’t you? I’ve come to call on your mother.”

  Miss Deke’s smile succeeded merely in straightening the naturally down-turned corners of her mouth into an edge that had menaced far more children than it had ever comforted. She began to loosen the fingers of the glove on her right hand. “Well?” she enquired.

  “Come in,” Hubert said. His throat was thick.

  “Thank you.” Miss Deke stripped off her glove and stepped across the threshold. Involuntarily Hubert looked down at the floor where that other imprint was still clearly outlined.

  Miss Deke caught his glance and raised one eyebrow. “You needn’t worry—my feet are quite clean.”

  He closed the door and, still with his eyes down, led her along the hall. In his head the blood banged out the warnings: I’ve got to tell Elsa—I’ve got to warn the others—I must … He pushed open the door of the front room, and let Miss Deke go ahead of him.

  “How lucky you are to live in one of these houses. So good and solid.”

&nb
sp; She turned on him so abruptly that he blushed. “Aren’t you pleased to see an old friend, Hubert?”

  “I—” Then he knew he couldn’t manage it. Nobody could lie to Miss Deke, not even one of her favourites.

  She had removed her left glove, and now she began to massage the middle joint of her ring finger, while she watched him thoughtfully.

  He said, “Excuse me, Miss Deke, I’ll go and get Elsa.” Then he fled.

  He ran up the stairs, stretching his thigh muscles to take two at a time. She’d be with Gerty, he was sure of that. He ran past Mother’s empty room and up the second flight and all he could think was that it was like a dream—a horrible dream of chase and terror that never ended except by waking up into the real world. And this was the real world.

  “Elsa! Elsa!” He burst into the room.

  Elsa looked up from the book she was reading to Gerty. She was just turning a page and Hubert could see the illustration of the wicked fox with the big bag over his shoulder. It was The Little Red Hen she was reading from.

  “Shshsh, Hu—she’s nearly asleep.” Elsa frowned at him.

  “But it’s Miss Deke!”

  Her frown deepened. “Miss Deke?”

  “Yes—she’s downstairs, in the front room.”

  Elsa turned the page and smoothed it down carefully. “Well, why don’t you tell her Mother’s too ill to see her?”

  “But Elsa …” He didn’t understand. “She won’t believe me.

  Elsa’s eyes went back to The Little Red Hen. “I don’t expect she’d believe me either.”

  He was frightened. The dream wasn’t ending at all. “Of course she’d believe you, Else. You’ve got to come!”

  The older girl drew in her breath. “I’m reading to Gerty. She’s ill. She needs me. So I can’t come.”

  “You’ve got to come, you’ve got to!” He wiped the stickiness of his hand down his trouser leg. “I said you’d come!”

  She didn’t answer and he saw the stubbornness of her mouth.

  “Elsa—please, Elsa. Only for a minute. You can come back to Gerty as soon as Dekey Bird’s gone. Please. Otherwise we’ll all be found out.”

  Elsa shook her head and he knew that she wasn’t really listening to what he said. She didn’t care anymore. It seemed to him then that she hadn’t cared for a long time. If Elsa gave up—then there wasn’t anyone else at all.

  “You’re a coward, Else. That’s all. You’re just afraid. You’re just afraid to talk to old Dekey Bird.” He forced the tears back into his eyes. “You’re a cowardy cowardy custard.”

  No one could ever have said that to Elsa before. A week ago even he wouldn’t have dared himself. He didn’t know how he dared now.

  Elsa raised her head. She gazed away from him, out of the window. All at once Hubert saw how like Mother she looked—like Mother had been just before … He waited. No one could tell what she was thinking.

  “Gerty is very ill,” she said.

  Hubert nodded. He knew that. He knew Gerty needed a doctor, but up to now Elsa had just shaken her head when he mentioned it. “She’ll be better soon,” she’d said. But Gerty wasn’t getting any better—she was hardly recognizable as the fat, smiling Gert. There were dark patches under her eyes and her face was thin and very red—not a proper red though. And she moaned almost the whole time.

  “All right, I’ll come.” She stood up, hesitating a moment as to what to do with the book. Then she laid it face down on the blanket.

  Gerty started to cry.

  “It’s all right, Gerty, I’ll be back in a minute.” She bent down and kissed the little girl on the forehead.

  Gerty’s whine started up again as Elsa left the room. Hubert followed close behind her down the stairs.

  Elsa paused on the landing and turned to him. “We’ve got to get Gerty a doctor.”

  Hubert sighed with relief. “All right, I’ll run round to Dr. Meadows as soon as Dekey Bird goes.”

  Elsa said, “He’ll never let you.”

  “Who?”

  “Dunstan. Dunstan’ll never let us get a doctor. He doesn’t care what happens to Gert.”

  “It doesn’t matter what Dun thinks. We won’t tell him.”

  It was hard to see Elsa’s expression in the gloom of the landing. She said, “He’ll say Mother wouldn’t want it. That’s what he’ll say. Mother doesn’t like doctors.”

  “But Mother …”

  “It’s true. You know it’s true. Mother would never have a doctor in the house. Look what Mrs. Stork said.”

  “But you just said we’d got to get a doctor.”

  She started down the stairs. She’d taken two steps when she stopped and looked up at her bewildered brother. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I did.”

  Miss Deke was sitting in the same chair when they entered the front room.

  Miss Deke nodded. “Hello, Elsa. How are you?”

  “Very well thank you, Miss Deke. I’m sorry Mother can’t see you today. She’s not very well, you know.”

  “Yes, I knew she wasn’t well. I rather hoped she’d be better now.”

  “I’m afraid she isn’t. She’s asleep.”

  “Oh, well, we mustn’t wake her up, must we?” Miss Deke gently rubbed at her finger joint, but didn’t stir from her seat. Nor did she shift her gaze from Elsa. She just stared and stared with her Dekey-Bird eyes that made everything go out of your mind so you couldn’t think what you were going to say next. Elsa’s hands were clenched so that her knuckles were white.

  Miss Deke laid one glove on top of the other and smoothed them out together. “I was rather looking forward to meeting your little brother—William I think his name is, isn’t it? He’ll be coming to school next term, I hear.”

  “Miss Deke.”

  “Yes, Elsa dear?”

  “Miss Deke.”

  He knew. She was going to tell Miss Deke about Gerty. He could almost hear the words being formed in her mind.

  “Elsa!” he cried.

  “Miss Deke—”

  “Hush, Hubert!”

  “Miss Deke, it’s Gerty.”

  Miss Deke’s hands were still for the first time that afternoon. “Yes, dear?”

  “Gerty’s—Gerty’s …” She couldn’t go on. She was weeping—the tears came straight down her nose and down the corners of her mouth. And she didn’t make a sound.

  Miss Deke stood up.

  “Gerty’s not very well, either,” said Hubert desperately as though his words would drive the schoolmistress back to her seat. “But she’s going to be all right.”

  Miss Deke stepped forward.

  “Oh, yes, Gerty’s going to be quite well again soon,” said Diana from the doorway.

  Miss Deke halted in surprise.

  “She’s only got a little tummy upset—hasn’t she, Hu?” Diana put her head to one side and smiled. “Hello, Miss Deke.”

  “Good afternoon, Diana.” But Miss Deke did not smile back. “Elsa doesn’t seem to agree with you about Gertrude—do you, my dear?”

  “Oh, yes, she does,” insisted Diana gently. “She’s just a bit upset herself, you see—aren’t you, Elsa? You see, Miss Deke, she had to sit up with Gerty all last night. So, of course, she’s tired today.”

  “I see,” said Miss Deke, her voice neutral.

  Still smiling, Diana went on, “Oh, yes, Gerty will be quite well in the morning. Mother thinks so, and the doctor does too.”

  Imperceptibly Miss Deke relaxed. “You have a doctor?”

  “Oh, yes, of course. He’s the doctor at the end of the road—what’s his name, Hu?”

  Hubert looked at Elsa—she held her head down and the tears were falling directly onto the floor. “Dr. Meadows,” said Hubert slowly. He didn’t understand. He’d never seen Diana like this before. She hated strangers—if Miss Deke could be called a stranger.

  “Dr. Meadows,” Diana echoed happily, “that’s right. So you see, there’s nothing to worry about really, Miss Deke.”

  “Yes, I s
ee.” Miss Deke drew on one glove. She glanced at each one of them. Then she turned directly to Elsa. “Are you quite sure there’s nothing else the matter, dear?”

  Elsa didn’t move, but she lifted her head as though it was very heavy. Her eyes were quite red. She didn’t really look at Miss Deke. “No,” she whispered.

  Automatically Miss Deke’s hand went out to the girl, but Elsa stepped back. “No,” she said, more strongly this time.

  For a while no other word was spoken. When Hubert turned his eyes away from Elsa to Miss Deke, he saw she had both gloves on again. But still she didn’t move. Hubert thought, she doesn’t know what to do.

  The silence was broken by a knock at the door. Even Miss Deke jerked in momentary alarm. Then she smiled the smile that wasn’t a smile. “Well,” she said, “that is my signal to leave. Perhaps it’s the doctor come to see Gertrude.”

  Hubert went ahead of her to the front door. He heard her say goodbye to Elsa and to Diana and then her footsteps were behind him. He opened the front door.

  Mrs. Stork didn’t see Miss Deke at first. She grinned at Hubert. “Hello, dearie—remember me?”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Well, that’s a nice welcome, I must say!” Mrs. Stork made a mock wry face. “I come to fetch my apron if you must know. You remember the flowered apron I used to wear—when I was workin’ here? I must of left it in the kitchen—why don’t you be a duck and run down and ’ave a look—”

  The emergence of Miss Deke from the shadowy hall quenched Mrs. Stork’s flow abruptly. “Oh—beg pardon. I didn’t know you had visitors.”

  Miss Deke nodded slightly and turned to Hubert. “Please tell your mother I was so sorry she wasn’t able to see me. I do hope she is better soon. Goodbye—I expect I shall see you at the beginning of next term, shan’t I?”

  “Yes. Goodbye, Miss Deke.”

  “Miss Deke!” Mrs. Stork’s meagre lips opened in a smile. “Oh, I’ve heard ever such a lot about you. You’re the teacher, aren’t you? I’m Mrs. Stork—I used to be Mrs. Hook’s daily help before …” She sighed suddenly.

  For a moment Miss Deke hesitated; then she held out her hand.