by Jean Ure
“Too young. Far too young! A mere child.” Auntie May didn’t actually look at me as she spoke, but I knew her words were for my benefit. I felt a sort of desperation boiling up inside me.
“I think maybe the girls have built up rather a romantic picture,” said Auntie Mo. She smiled fondly. “We were going through some photographs the other day and we came across one of Patty when she was—” She suddenly stopped and cast a frightened glance at Auntie May. “I had no idea it was there…I thought they had all been—”
“Removed,” said Auntie May. “Quite.”
Maggie said, “You removed all my gran’s photos?”
“It was Father, you see.” Auntie Mo sounded apologetic. “It broke his heart. He simply couldn’t bear it!”
“She defied him,” said Auntie May. “He was not accustomed to it. Elinor! Go and find the photo and bring it over. I daresay—” she nodded majestically in Maggie’s direction—“that you would like to see it.”
Ellie came back with the Tesco bag and emptied it out on to a low table. Next minute and they were all shuffling through photographs, exclaiming, explaining, look at this, look at that! That’s Father, that’s Mother, that’s your Great Aunt Pam. After a bit, I couldn’t restrain myself.
“Why did they split up?” I said.
Auntie May froze. “Really, Tamsin, I scarcely think that is a proper question. What possible business can it be of yours?”
“We want to know,” said Ellie. “We’re interested! Did they stop loving each other?”
Slowly Maggie put down the photo she was studying. It was the one of the four girls, together. “I guess they must have done. There wasn’t any bad feeling between them. I think they just…grew out of each other. Or Gran grew out of Gramps. She once told me—well, hinted—that she’d made a big mistake early on in life.”
“How?” squeaked Ellie. I was glad it was Ellie who had asked the question and not me. I’m not sure I’d have been brave enough. Also, I wasn’t altogether sure that I wanted to know the answer.
“She seemed to reckon she should have gone to uni and had some kind of career. I don’t know if that was true, or just wishful thinking on her part?”
“Oh, it was true,” said Auntie May. “It was what Father had planned. She was very gifted, academically. A real high-flyer.”
“And poor old Gramps was such a sweet man! One of the sweetest men that ever lived. I loved my gran, but she wasn’t the easiest. She was quite bitter towards the end.”
“She knew she could have done better for herself,” said Auntie May.
I squirmed crossly. Maggie frowned. “So could Gramps! He didn’t deserve to be treated the way she sometimes treated him. I remember at Christmas we’d have family get-togethers and he’d come along and she’d snap at him all the time. “We’d play these games, you know?” We’re a great family for games! Gran used to get so impatient. I’m not having him on my team! I don’t want him partnering me! And he was such a dear man. Wouldn’t hurt a fly!”
“Patty was always sharp-tongued,” said Auntie Mo. “Of course, she was the cleverest. Though May was clever, too! She was a head teacher, you know.”
The conversation swirled on, leaving me behind, stranded, like I was shipwrecked on some lonely bit of rock in the middle of nowhere. Just me on my own, with my thoughts. I’d been so sure Patty and I were soul mates! I’d felt she’d been trying to encourage me. But maybe she hadn’t? I can’t reach her, I can’t get through to her…Maybe she’d been trying to warn me? Look what happened to me, don’t let it happen to you. But it wouldn’t! It couldn’t! I didn’t need warning. Alex and I weren’t like Frank and Patty. We were in love for now and always. I would never treat Alex the way she’d treated Frank! What was the matter with people, for ever breaking up, for ever getting divorced? If you truly love someone, you don’t grow out of them!
“Are you going to tell her?” said Ellie, as we did the washing-up together after lunch.
“No.” I shook my head, vigorously. “And you’re not to, either!”
“Well, I won’t if you don’t want me to.”
“I don’t.”
“All right, then, I won’t.” But she still couldn’t drop the subject. After a pause of about a quarter of a second, she started up again. “What d’you think she was trying to say? Patty? When she said she couldn’t reach you…what d’you think she wanted to say to you?”
“Dunno that she wanted to say anything to me.”
“She must have wanted to say something.”
“She was dying,” I said. “When people are dying, their lives flash before them.” And then it suddenly came to me. I suddenly understood! “I wasn’t the one she was trying to get through to…she was trying to get through to herself! Her old self…when she was sixteen. Before she ran away.” Trying to warn herself, sixty years too late…it wasn’t me at all!
Ellie considered the idea, frowning, as she swished knives and forks in the sink. “I s’pose that makes sense.”
“Makes perfect sense,” I said.
“But you could see her. You must be psychic!”
“I s’pose I might be…just a little bit.” I wondered how I felt about it. “Maybe I’m just extra-specially sensitive,” I said.
Ellie wasn’t too sure about that; she’s supposed to be the sensitive one. Being artistic, and everything. “You probably only saw her cos of being in love with someone Mum and Dad don’t approve of, same as what she was. So long as you weren’t thinking of doing what she did…which you weren’t,” said Ellie. “Were you?”
“For goodness’ sake!” I snatched up a handful of knives and forks and began to dry them very rapidly and toss them into the drawer one by one, with a resounding clatter. “You’re worse than the Aunties!”
The minute we had finished washing and putting away I raced upstairs to text Alex. I LUV U I LUV U I LUV U. CU TOMORROW. XXX TAMSIN.
On my back down, galloping as usual, for fear of what I might see, I thought I caught a glimpse of Patty, hovering silently on the landing, but I didn’t turn back for a second glance. I wasn’t the one she was trying to communicate with: I wasn’t the one who needed warning. I’d thought we were soul mates, but we weren’t. I wished she would just go away and leave me alone! Didn’t she realise she was haunting the wrong person? Maybe she was trying to use me. The ghost of the old Patty reaching out to the ghost of her younger self with me as go-between. Well, no way! No way! I stopped, as I reached the hall, and spun round. She was there all right. Grey and ghostly, but unmistakable.
“Just leave me alone!” I mouthed it, silently and furiously, up the stairs. “I don’t want anything to do with you!”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
A great tidal wave of excitement broke over me next morning. In just a few hours I would be with Alex! He was working until one o’clock, then going straight to Liverpool Street to catch the 1.30 train, arriving at Clacton an hour and a half later. I was going to meet him at the station. I wished so much that we could have spent the whole day together, but I knew I’d never be able to get away with it. It would be, Where are you going, who are you going to meet? They’d guess at once that it was Alex.
After breakfast, Maggie came round. She was staying up the road in a hotel and the Aunties had planned to take her out for the day. It was all working in my favour! They wouldn’t get back till at least six o’clock. Alex and I could have the whole afternoon together. Yay! I was really hacked off when Auntie May took one look at the weather and announced, in her usual bossy fashion, that, “We shall wait until later. Let the rain clear.”
Rather querulously, I said, “What does a bit of rain matter, if you’re sitting in a car?”
“We do not intend,” said Auntie May, “to spend the day just driving mindlessly about the countryside. A car is merely a means of transport from one place to another. In this case—” she turned graciously to Maggie—“we thought perhaps a visit to Flatford Mill?”
“I’ve heard of that,�
�� said Maggie.
“It was painted,” said Ellie. “By some old artist guy.”
“Constable, actually,” I said. I wanted Maggie to know that one of us, at least, had a bit of culture.
Maggie said, “I love Constable! That would be great.”
“Not in this weather.” Auntie May was very firm about it. “We can just as easily go after lunch, so long as the rain gives over.”
“It won’t,” said Ellie. “It never gives over. It’s been doing it for days. I’m so bored!”
“She’s always bored,” I said.
“No inner resources,” said Auntie May. “They’re all dependent on technology, these days.”
“Well, I’m not,” said Maggie. “Who needs technology when they’ve got a brain?”
Auntie May sniffed. “Brain? They’ve forgotten how to use them!”
I resented that. I happen to use my brain quite a lot. When I’m researching on the computer, for instance, like for homework or something, I never just blindly copy what’s there, I take the bits I need and I put them into my own words. Also I read books. Also I think. Also I play computer games (though not as much as Ellie), but what’s wrong with that? Just because Auntie May has never played them, and probably couldn’t if she tried.
“Come on!” Maggie clapped her hands. “I challenge you. Pencil and paper! Can we find pencil and paper?”
Ellie, immediately suspicious, said, “What do we want pencil and paper for?”
“Games! What else?” Maggie laughed. “I told you, I come from a great family of games players!”
We play games, too, but mainly the sort where you’re expected to get up and sing, or dance, or do some kind of comedy routine. The sort that Ellie loves and I just hate. The thought of pencil and paper quite cheered me up, though Ellie, naturally, was pulling faces.
“You don’t have to look so scared,” said Maggie. “They’re only games!”
I said, “Brain games.”
“Like taking exams,” grumbled Ellie.
Hah! I always come top of exams. It would make a change from sweet little sis showing off and everyone applauding, while the boring old swotty pants just lumped about making an idiot of herself. I began to warm to Patty’s granddaughter. Maybe we were the ones who were soul mates.
Auntie May came back with a supply of pens and writing pads and we all sat down at the kitchen table. Auntie Mo, rather nervously, wondered if perhaps she should just sit and watch. “I’m not very good at brain work.”
“You never were,” agreed Auntie May. “The only one of the family,” she explained, “who had no academic ability. It probably would be best if she sat out.”
“No, no, we can’t have that!” said Maggie. “Nobody is allowed to sit out. I’ll tell you what we’ll do, we’ll have teams. Me and Tamsin against the three of you. How about that?”
I was pleased—and flattered!—though I didn’t think Auntie May was too happy with the arrangement. I’m not sure Ellie was, either, and poor Auntie Mo was plainly petrified. I felt quite sorry for her, but as Maggie reminded us, “We’re just playing games. It’s only a bit of fun!”
We sat there all morning, at the kitchen table, while the rain dripped and dropped outside and showed no signs of letting up. In spite of them just being games, some of us grew quite fiercely competitive. That is, me and Ellie, and Auntie May. We had games where you had to make lists, and games where you had to form words out of other words, and games where you had to quote poetry or book titles or the lyrics of songs. Every time Ellie’s team scored a point Ellie went, “Yay!” and thumped on the table with her fist. Every time our team scored a point, or actually to be honest every time I scored one for us, I felt a rush of pride. I did so want Maggie to take notice and be impressed, so that when she went back to New Zealand and people asked her what we were like she would say, “Well, the younger one, Ellie, is very pretty and lively” (I knew she would say that; people always do) “but Tamsin, the older one, is incredibly bright.” Oh, dear! Pathetic, I know; but we all have to have something we’re proud of.
I was really glad that Maggie had chosen me as her partner. I would have hated to be with the Aunties! Auntie Mo was so flustered it was like her brain had shut down and she couldn’t remember the simplest thing. At one point we were making lists of all the capital cities we could think of, and she wrote that “Stockport” was the capital of Sweden. Auntie May got so cross with her! She kept making these impatient tutting noises with her tongue, and rolling her eyes.
Maggie said, “OK, OK! Grand finale…limericks!”
Ellie said, “What’s limericks?”
Auntie May tuttered. “Don’t they teach you anything at school these days?”
I said, “Yes, they do! She did them last term, cos she got me to write one for her. There was an old lady called Mary, whose chin was all horrid and hairy—”
“I remember, I remember!” Ellie clapped her hands. Then she giggled and said, “It was rude!”
“We are not having rude ones,” said Auntie May.
“Certainly not,” agreed Maggie. “This is good clean family entertainment!” She said that we each had to write a first line and pass it to the person sitting next to us. “Just a bit of fun! We’re not looking for masterpieces.”
Auntie Mo pushed her chair back. “I do believe the rain is giving over,” she said. “Maybe while you write your poems I should start preparing lunch?”
“Yes, you do that,” said Auntie May, her pen already poised for action. “A good idea!”
Ellie was busy scribbling, her face all bunched up, her tongue clenched between her teeth. “Here!” She slid a sheet of paper towards me, looking at me slyly to see my reaction.
My face turned pink. I said, “What’s this s’posed to be?”
In her sprawling hand she had written, There was a boy who was called Alex.
“I thought it would inspire you,” said Ellie.
“Well, it doesn’t! It’s just stupid.” I screwed up the paper and hurled it across the room. “It’s not even poetry!”
“Up to you to make it.” “Nobody could make it! The rhythm’s all wrong.”
“’Tisn’t!”
“’Tis!”
“’Tisn’t!
“’T-”
“Be quiet! The pair of you.” Auntie May threw down her pen. “If you can’t be civilised, we had better call a halt. It’s time, anyway. We don’t want to leave it too late. Elinor, come with me, you can help get lunch. Tamsin, lay the table.”
Auntie May swept out, Ellie trailing in her wake. At the door Ellie turned, and pulled a face. I gestured angrily.
Maggie seemed amused. “What was that about?”
I was almost tempted to pour out the whole story…how Mum and Dad were being so unfair, and so unreasonable: how I couldn’t go on living if I wasn’t allowed to see Alex. But after what she’d told us about Patty, and poor Frank, I wasn’t too sure how she’d react. She might take the side of the grown-ups and agree with Mum and Dad that Alex was too old and it wasn’t appropriate. So I just hunched a shoulder and said, “It’s Ellie. She has absolutely no idea.”
“Well, cheer up! It’s not the end of the world.” Maggie put an arm round my shoulder. “I reckon you and I did pretty well together…we make a good team! You’ll have to come over on a visit some day. Maybe in your gap year. Do you have gap years?”
“Yes.” I nodded, eagerly. “Before going to uni.” And then I remembered: I wasn’t going to uni. I was running away with Alex. “That is,” I mumbled, “if I’m still here.”
“What?” She laughed. “Why shouldn’t you still be here?”
“I dunno.” I flapped the tablecloth across the table. “Things happen.”
Fortunately, before she could ask me what things, Ellie came bursting back in with a bunch of knives and forks. She tossed them down in a careless heap.
“You put those out properly,” I said, “the way you’re supposed to!”
“La
ying the table’s your job,” said Ellie, flouncing off again.
Impatiently, I snatched them up and began to set them out, the way the Aunties liked. “We don’t do this at home,” I said. “It’s only when we’re staying with the Aunties.”
“Yeah, well, I expect they have their little ways,” said Maggie. “People do, when they get old.”
I was about to ask her, “Did Patty have her little ways?” when Ellie came clattering through the door again, carrying plates. I gave up. It obviously wasn’t the right time for a conversation.
The rain had finally slowed to a drizzle, so after lunch Auntie May went to get the car out. Maggie seemed surprised, and even disappointed, that I wasn’t going with them. I told her what I had told the Aunties, that I had to visit the library to do some research for a school project.
“On a Saturday?” she said.
“Well, I had to, like…book time on the computer?” I did wish I could have told Maggie the truth. I don’t enjoy telling lies; it’s just that sometimes they give you no choice. Well, the aunties gave me no choice. Maggie would have been more sympathetic. She would have been on my side!
“It seems such a shame,” she said. “You’re going to miss out on all the fun.”
I said, “I know, and I’m really sorry…but I have been to Flatford lots of times before.”
“So have I,” said Ellie. “Maybe I should go to the library too.”
I looked at her sharply. Could she possibly suspect? It was a nasty moment, saved, fortunately, by Maggie. “Oh, now, you can’t both desert me!” she said. “One of you must keep me company…Ellie, you could tell me all about your acting. I want to know!”
Ellie brightened; she liked that idea. I immediately felt wildly jealous. For a moment I almost wished that I was the one that was going and she was the one staying behind. If I had been going I could have told Maggie all that I knew about Constable. Ellie knew next to nothing, but I had read all about him in the booklet we’d got last time we’d visited. I knew loads!
I tried to give her a few facts as they were on the way out to the car, but Auntie May said briskly that we didn’t have time for that. “We need to be going.”