The worry of it is making everything worse at the moment—especially this thing I’ve started about feeling sick. I’ve no idea why that’s happening; all I know is that it’s certainly getting worse and worse. Morning Assembly’s the hardest time. I try to get there before most of the others so that I’m never in the middle of a row. If I’m at all held up—like I have been this week because I’ve been Basement-floor Cleaning Monitor in the House—I don’t have a choice as to where I sit. Yesterday, one of the plugholes in the shower room was totally bunged up with hair and stuff, and I couldn’t just leave it, so I was really late getting into the hall and ended up right bang in the middle of a row. It’s not a small Assembly like the one we used to have at Courtlands. Here at Whitchurch it’s in the main hall and goes on for ages—with the whole school there of course, all five hundred of us. It’s a huge room. But even so we’re jam-packed in like sardines, and it’s always hot and stuffy.
I’ve started to do this completely mad thing now where I hear my own voice out of the blue saying bonkers things like, ‘Oh shit, you’re going to be sick,’ and then it all starts happening. Suddenly I’m sweating and woozy and thinking I’m going to throw up. When it first started I thought I had flu or something, but the sick feeling went away nearly as soon as we got out of Assembly to go into class. When it happened again the next week and just a few days after that yet again, I knew it wasn’t really because I was properly ill. I haven’t told a single soul about it, not even Taff, my best friend here. Now it sometimes happens in other places too, like Mr. Sander’s ghastly maths class. Once or twice in the middle of lunch I’ve been on the edge of it. I nearly had to leave the refectory yesterday, but did my best to stay sitting there until I started to feel a bit better, because I really don’t want people to catch on to it. It’s just the most important thing that no one finds out.
The first time I properly felt it was in the middle of last term during our fourth form outing. That was 4b and 4c’s trip to the theatre in Bristol—to the very same theatre where we used to go from Courtlands for the Vienna Boys’ Choir. We went to see The Seagull by Chekhov, which was great at first but about halfway through, just at the bit when a chap called Konstantin is having his play performed in the garden of his mum’s house, I suddenly felt horribly sick. I think that perhaps it was because I felt sorry for him or something—his Mum was being so awful about his play, not listening properly, and sending him up and making jokes about it to her boyfriend. Anyway, I felt so bad that I just had no choice but to get out and had to disturb the whole of the row in the dark, with everyone tutting and moving their knees to the side to let me through. Cooper at the end of the row whispered loudly at me, ‘Oh for heaven’s sake, Travels!’ I went into the foyer and sat on the steps till the interval doing deep breathing the same as my old asthma exercises. It was horrible, that first one. But if anything, it’s worse now. In fact, it’s got to the point where I worry about being anywhere with too many people jam-packed in.
I’m not sure what to do about it. I’ve been determined not to tell anyone, though I suppose I might eventually have to talk to Senior Matron about it. But I’m going to see if it might just go away by itself, first. Perhaps it will just get better if I try not to think about it and concentrate on other things.
The thing is it feels a bit like my old bed wetting secret at Courtlands. I feel dead ashamed of it. Taff would probably understand, though. I might dare to tell him—as long as I can keep a straight face when I next see him. He looks so funny at the moment. He was being teased, as usual, about being ugly and fat with lanky hair last week. So, hey presto, he goes and gets a short back and sides done this morning. Now he looks like a member of the Gestapo! But in fact he’s the kindest person in the whole school, though nobody realises it apart from me. The best time to talk to him would be next Sunday before tea down at the pavilion after we’ve finished listening to Pick of the Pops on the radio. He’ll be there for sure because we never miss that. I can have a good old think about what to say before I see him.
Q
This whole thing about the letters really started last Easter hols when Pa said out of the blue that he was thinking of selling the house. Even though he’d changed his mind about it by the time I left for the beginning of term, it somehow just got me thinking about everything.
Mummy chose it for us; that’s why. In a sort of way it’s her house. It feels as though it still is, even now after all this time of her being gone.
I remember her leaving us in Beirut because she was coming back to England to search for it. She came to my room to say goodbye. I was in bed in the dark, and she bent over to kiss me, all smelling of perfume and leaving a big smear of lipstick on my cheek that I didn’t see till the morning. She told me she was flying back to England to do some house-hunting, and that she’d see me in a week, after she’d found a lovely place with high ceilings, lots of fireplaces and roses in the garden.
She did find the perfect house, and was incredibly clever at making it nice for us, with all the big sofas with shiny colourful cushions and Persian things—carpets, and brass lamps, and coffee pots everywhere. She covered the walls with lovely pictures and rugs from all the places she’d been to in the Middle East, and some of those things are still at home now. It didn’t look like anybody else’s house that we knew. She loved old things, even if they were quite tatty, like the curtains that were in the sitting room when we first moved in. They’d been left behind by the old lady who lived there before us, and Mummy wanted to keep them. They were yellow and shiny, hanging right down to the ground, but they had big rips in because they’d been rotted by the sunlight. Pa absolutely put his foot down and insisted that they had to be thrown away. ‘Pam, no! It’s ludicrous,’ he said to her. ‘They’re falling apart in front of our eyes!’ It was a terrible pity, because I thought they were lovely too. There were already lots of roses in the garden, but she bought more and planted hundreds of daffodil bulbs under the lawn that still come up every spring. She kept hostas in huge pots and, until she was ill, always remembered to search for the slugs that would come out to eat their leaves after it rained.
A lot of those beautiful things disappeared from the house when she wasn’t well, round about the time of the roof business at Courtlands. She was probably selling them so that she had money for her sherry. There was a painting her dad had left her in his will that Granny brought to the house in her car soon after he died. It was a picture of a field of poppies, a bit like the famous ones that Monet did. I’m not sure that it was anything absolutely special, but it was gone one day when I came back for a holiday. I really adored that picture. I never asked about it, of course. Nothing like that was to be mentioned in front of Pa for a start, and that’s still absolutely the way it is now. We don’t talk at all about those things. We don’t talk about Mummy or anything the least to do with her—ever. In fact, I think it’s quite possible that we’ve never really mentioned her from the moment all the guests left the house after the funeral.
So that’s why I need to get the letters back in the case. It would just be the worst thing in the world if Pa knew I had them here with me. Worse than anything. Nearly as bad as if he opened the door of my bedroom without knocking and found me doing something.
Q
I’ve always known about the case in the attic full of Mummy’s things. There’s some sort of faded memory I have about it, even though I’m not meant to know. Pa must have packed it and put it up there during that horrible muddled time after she went away, and I wasn’t clear about anything.
I had to go up there once, ages ago. There was a damp patch on the ceiling of my bedroom, then a proper leak coming into the far corner, and Pa asked me to have a look in the attic. I was still quite small at that time and could squeeze into the space behind the water tank. I climbed up first while he stood on the ladder so his head was just popping up above the loft hatch. From there, he shone the torch where he wanted me to lo
ok. Just after I discovered where the problem was—I think there was a tile missing on the outside—his hand must have slipped. The light went all berserk and shot around the place so that just for a moment we could see all sorts of things that were stored up there, like the box of Christmas decorations, all the things we got from Granny when we had to move her to the nursing home after she went doo-lally—her old cracked everyday plates, all Granddad’s history books about Napoleon’s wars in Spain, his ancient encyclopedias stacked up against the telly we couldn’t get to work, and the upside down piano stool Granny said had belonged to the Empress Eugenie but definitely hadn’t, of course. Right at the end, when Pa stopped slipping or whatever he was doing, the torch was left lighting up the suitcase. He whisked it away again ever so quickly when he realised. I never said anything about it, naturally, and was quite clever in talking immediately in a concerned voice about the water coming in, as though I hadn’t noticed.
That was the last time I saw the case until five weeks ago.
I needed to have a look. I needed to from the moment that Pa said we might be moving, and even when he changed his mind, the thought just never went away all through last term. So I made up my mind that during the summer holidays, as soon as he went on one of his foreign trips, which he was bound to do sooner or later, and only Lena—who came back for the third time this summer because of her policeman boyfriend in Guildford—and I were in the house, I was going to take the case down from the attic. It felt like the wickedest plan ever, as though I was being a traitor to Pa, but I just absolutely had to do it. In the end, I had to wait right till the last week of the holiday before Pa was away for two days, and Lena was out of the house at her English class, then the pictures, and not back till late. She only agreed to stay out after I promised her that I’d never tell Pa that she wasn’t back to make my dinner, but in fact she knew very well that I wouldn’t say anything about it because I hate being mollycoddled anyway. I’m quite capable of getting my own blooming food. It’s ridiculous having an au pair in the first place. I’m fifteen for God’s sake.
I didn’t climb up into the attic as soon as Lena went out in the morning like I’d made up my mind to. I was going to do it before I ate the sandwiches she left me but got really nervous and just couldn’t get myself to start. But sitting in the kitchen after lunch thinking about it, I took three deep breaths and said, ‘Pull yourself together—one, two, three!’ and ran up the stairs.
It was terribly difficult yanking the pulley to get the loft ladder down by myself. It just wouldn’t slide down—I suppose because it’s hardly ever used—but once I’d managed it, I went straight up into the gloom and felt my way very carefully over to where I remembered the case was. I had to make absolute sure I was putting my feet down in the right place on the rafters because it’s incredibly easy to fall all the way through and land up in a bedroom or something. After I got used to the dark, enough light came through the hatch for me to be able to just make out the ghostly shape of the case, leaning up against the chimney breast.
It was a hell of a struggle getting it down because I’m not that strong, really, and a bit lanky and clumsy. I only just managed to squeeze it through the loft hole for a start, and then halfway down, while holding it with both hands and trying not to lose my balance, I wobbled and had to let go of one hand to grab the ladder to stop from falling, and then scraped my knee quite badly on the metal because I was coming down very much faster than I wanted to.
The next thing I know, coughing and spluttering, I’ve carried the case down to the hall and plonked it by the front door. I stare at it through a great cloud of dust, hardly able to believe what I’ve done. It feels as though it’s staring back at me too, squinting after years in the dark and every bit as shocked as I am. It’s a battered old thing, still covered with the labels from all the places it had been to and all the airlines that Mummy and Pa had travelled with in the old days—Sabena, KLM, BOAC, BEA, MEA, Lufthansa, Olympic Airways. I just love those old names; they bring back such exciting memories.
I had to open the front door because there was so much dust, and then I decided the best thing was to lug it all the way back up the stairs to open it in the privacy of my bedroom, just in case Mrs. Hamilton came from next door with a bit of pie or something, like she often does when Pa’s away. I took hold of the handle of the case and had just started to lift it when ‘whrrrrrrrrrr….’, the two leather straps are flying through the buckles, and the lid hits the floor with a smack with everything spilling out as though it’s an animal that’s been slaughtered, and all its innards are coming out. I nearly fell over because the heavy case was suddenly empty in my hand.
There was a great splash of colour spreading out and sliding around on the shiny tiles, then a tinkling sound, and a whole load of beads began to pour out of the corner of a knotted up red and blue scarf in the middle of the pile. They flew across the floor, bouncing off the skirting boards and rolling all over the place.
I didn’t know what to do. I froze to the spot for a bit, standing there with my mouth open, still holding the handle. All the things from inside were still moving around, and twitching, and unwrapping themselves on the floor just as though they might have been prisoners who’ve broken out and can’t believe their luck that they’re suddenly free.
I absolutely had to put everything back, and I was telling myself to scoop all the things up into my arms and push them into the case as quickly as I could. I’d have to hunt for the beads so that Pa would never find even a single one, then pack the case up right away, and pull the leather buckles tight again to stop this adventure and put the whole damn thing back in the attic exactly where I’d found it and never be stupid enough to disturb it again. I shut my eyes as tight as could be, bent down and grabbed a whole pile of the things from the floor.
But then suddenly my eyes were wide open again, and I was gasping for breath as though I might be going to have one of my old asthma attacks.
It was the smell. Mummy’s smell. The smell that was always with her wherever she went in the old days before she was ill. The smell of her in Beirut. The smell of her blouses, her nightdresses, her pillowcases, the smell from the drawers of her dressing table, and her bathroom—even from the glove compartment beside the driver’s seat in the car. That same perfume that was on her scarves I used to take back to Courtlands with me to breathe in during the middle of the night if I couldn’t sleep. After all this time, here it was again.
‘Mummy?’
I only thought she was there for a tiniest moment. Just for a split second, that’s all.
Then I let go of the things I was holding in my hands. They dropped back onto the floor, and I sank right down until I was kneeling in the middle of all her clothes.
I don’t really know how long I was there, but it must have been ages. I was just thinking about it all, I suppose, about everything that had happened.
A long time later, I heard one or two of the last of the beads coming out of the scarf and plink-plonking onto the floor, and I sort of came round. By that time the sun was getting quite low outside and shining through the glass around the front door, which was still open. There was a breeze coming in, and all the dust from the case had blown away and settled.
I put everything back. Very slowly, not pushing and shoving in a panic to get it done, but just as carefully and calmly as I wanted, looking at all the things and trying to see if I remembered any of them, not caring about the time passing by. There were white gloves for the evening which I wrapped up in the tissue paper that they’d fallen out of, skirts with pleats, silky under slips, a cardboard-stiff swimsuit covered with huge red roses, a white jacket with big square crimson buttons down the front like a military uniform, a small handbag made out of crocodile skin, and a pair of dainty light blue sandals. I found a very wide black belt with a red buckle the shape of a heart and an empty perfume bottle that said ‘Chanel No. 5’, with its head newly snapped off at it
s neck when it had fallen out of the case. It had gone all these years being an empty bottle from the past, hidden away, and now it was broken. There were white blouses with sleeves down to the elbows, a brown paper bag with hair grips inside, and rolled up ribbons, and a girl’s Alice band, which could easily have been from when Mummy was little. I didn’t remember any of the things, although everything did completely remind me of her. There was a blue satiny dressing gown right at the bottom of the pile, and when I picked it up to fold it away, a book without its cover fell out of the pocket and all the yellowy pages scattered when it hit the floor. It was The Ballad of Reading Gaol, which in fact I do remember her reading and quoting bits from. I wanted to keep it out, but I knew that everything had to go back, so I collected up the pages and tried to put them in some sort of order before I put it all back into the dressing gown pocket.
The very last thing was another scarf with knotted corners like the one the beads had come out of. When I untied it for a look inside, I found a whole treasure trove of sparkly jewels—earrings, brooches, chunky rings, necklaces, and bracelets that jangled together when I picked them up, and right in the middle of the bunch, all knotted up in another string of beads was a very large brooch of ruby red stones on swirly gold leaves with very delicate veins showing through. I turned it over and over in my hands, trying to see if it might be the sort of thing Mummy could have been wearing when she was going out to dinner and came to my bedroom to say goodnight to me.
It was all stuff from the old days in Beirut. Pa must have packed it away when he knew for sure that Mummy was never coming back, and he’d only put things in that were about good memories. Perhaps he thought he might like to go up to the attic and have a look now and again—just to be reminded of how things had been before everything went wrong. Just for his own memories, that’s all.
The House Martin Page 28