Again she paused, for much longer, so Daisy said, “Your mother looked sweet as a bride.”
“I never knew her,” said Grandmother. “She died when I was very young.”
Daisy said, “But Dad knew her! He talks about his granny.”
“That was my stepmother, his stepgrandmother.”
Now something seemed plain to Daisy. “A stepmother—poor Grandmother!”
“No,” said Grandmother. “It wasn’t like that at all. My stepmother—only I never really think of her as my stepmother, just as my mother—she was a darling.”
“Then?”
“They’re both in the group,” said Grandmother. “My mother as the bride. My stepmother, as she later became, as one of the bridesmaids. The bridesmaids were my two aunts: one my mother’s sister, whom my father married after my mother’s death; the other, my father’s sister.”
Daisy studied the photograph. Now that she knew that one of the bridesmaids was the bride’s sister, it was easy to see which; there was the same plumpness with prettiness.
The other bridesmaid was tall, thin, and rather glum-looking. There was a resemblance between her and the bridegroom, but not such a striking one.
“When my mother died,” said Grandmother, “I was a very little girl, still babyish in my ways, no doubt. My father had to get someone to look after me and to run the house. He was in business and away at his office all day.
“He asked his sister to come—the other bridesmaid.”
Daisy looked at the thin bridesmaid and wondered.
“She’d always been very fond of my father, I believe, and jealous of his having married. Perhaps she was glad that my mother had died; perhaps she would have been glad if I had never been born. She would have had my father all to herself then.
“She hated me.”
“Grandmother!”
“Oh, yes, she hated me. I didn’t fully understand it then. I just thought I had suddenly become stupid and disobedient and dirty and everything that—as it seemed to me—anyone would hate. I daresay I was rather a nasty little girl; I became so. One of the worst things was—”
Grandmother stopped speaking, shaded her face with her hand.
“Go on.”
“It won’t seem terrible to you. You may just laugh. Aunt used to sneer. When she sneered, that made it worse.”
“But what was it?”
“I ate.”
“Well, but…”
“I ate whenever I could. I ate enormously at meals, and I ate between meals. Aunt used to point it out to my father and put a tape measure round where she said my waist should be, as I sat at table. I’ve always been plump, like my mother’s side of the family; I grew fat-terribly fat.
“Our surname was Hill. There were two Miss Hills in the house, my aunt and myself. But Aunt said there need be no confusion: she was Miss Hill; I was Miss Mountain. She called me Miss Mountain, unless my father was present. She would leave notes to me, addressed to Miss Mountain. Once my father found one and asked her about it, and she pretended it was just a little joke between us. But it wasn’t a joke—or if it were, it was a cruel, cruel one.”
“Couldn’t you just have eaten less and grown thinner and spoiled her game?” asked Daisy.
“You don’t understand. Her teasing of me made me eat even more. I took to stealing food. I’d slip out to the larder after Sunday dinner and tear the crisp bits of fat off the joint while it was still warm. Or I’d take sultanas out of the jar in the store cupboard. Or I’d pare off bits of cheese. Even a slice of dry bread, if there were nothing else. Once I ate dog biscuits from the shelf above the kennel.
“Of course, sooner or later, Aunt realized what was happening. She began to expect it and took a delight in catching me out. If she couldn’t catch me at it, she would prevent me. She took to locking the kitchen door at night, because she knew I went down then to the store cupboard and larder.
“Then I found the biscuit barrel.”
“This very biscuit barrel?”
“Yes. It always stood on the sideboard with cream crackers in it-just the plainest of biscuits, to be eaten with cheese. Well, I didn’t mind that. I used to creep down for a cream cracker or two in the middle of the night.”
“In this house?”
“Goodness, no! We lived a hundred miles from here, and the house has been pulled down now, I believe.
“Anyway, I used to creep down, as I’ve said. I daren’t put on any light, although I was terribly afraid of the dark—I had become afraid of so many things by then. I felt my way into the room and across to the sideboard and along the sideboard. All kinds of rather grand utensils were kept on the sideboard: the silver cream jug, a pair of silver candlesticks, the silver-rimmed bread board with the silver-handled bread knife. I felt among them until I found the biscuit barrel. Then I took off the lid and put my hand in.”
She paused.
“Go on, Grandmother.”
“I did that trip once, twice, perhaps three times. The third or fourth time seemed just as usual. As usual, I was shaking with fright, both at the crime I was committing and at the blackness in which I had to commit it. I had felt my way to the biscuit barrel. I lifted the lid with my left hand, as usual. Very carefully, as usual, I slipped my right hand into the barrel. I had thought there would be crackers to the top, but there were not. I had to reach toward the bottom—down, down, down—and then my fingers touched something, and at once there was something—oh, it seemed like an explosion!—something snapped at me, caught my fingers, held them in a bitter grip, causing me pain, but far more than pain: terror. I screamed and screamed and sobbed and cried.
“Footsteps came hurrying down the stairs; lights appeared; people were rushing into the dining room, where I was. My father, my aunt, the maidservant—they all stood looking at me, a fat little girl in her nightdress, screaming, with her right hand extended and a mousetrap dangling from the fingers.
“My father and the servant were bewildered, but I could see that my aunt was not taken by surprise. She had been expecting this, waiting for it. Now she burst into loud laughter. I couldn’t bear it. With my left hand I caught up the silver-handled bread knife from the sideboard and I went for her.”
“You killed her?”
“No, of course not. I was in such a muddle with screaming and crying, and the knife was in my left hand, and my aunt sidestepped, and my father rushed in and took hold of me and took the knife from me. Then he pried the mousetrap off my other hand.
“All this time I never stopped crying. I think I was deliberately crying myself ill. Through my crying I heard my father and my aunt talking, and I heard my father asking my aunt how there came to be a mousetrap inside the biscuit barrel.
“The next day either I was ill or I pretended to be; there wasn’t much difference, anyway. I stayed all day in bed with the curtains drawn. The maid brought me bread and milk to eat. My aunt did not come to see me. My father came, in the morning before he went to his office and in the evening when he got home. On both occasions I pretended to be asleep.
“The day after that I got up. The fingers of my right hand were still red where the trap had snapped across them, and I rubbed them to make them even redder. I didn’t want to be well. I showed them to the maidservant. Not only were the fingers red, but two of the fingernails had gone quite black. The maid called my father in; he was just on his way to work. He said that the doctor should see them, and the maid could take me there that afternoon on foot. Exercise would do me good, and change. He looked at me as if he were about to say more, but he did not. He did not mention my aunt, who would have been the person to take me to see the doctor, ordinarily, and there was still no sign of her.
“The maid took me. The doctor said my fingers had been badly bruised by the blow of the mousetrap, but nothing worse. The fingernails would grow right. I was disappointed. I had hoped that my finger bones were broken, that my fingertips would drop off. I wanted to be sent into hospital. I didn’t want to go
home and be well and go on as before: little Miss Mountain as before.
“I walked home with the maid.
“As we neared our house, I saw a woman turn in at our gateway. When we reached the gate, she was walking up the long path to the front door. Now I’ve said I never knew my own mother, to remember, but when I saw the back view of that young woman—she stumped along a little, as stoutish people often do—I knew that that was exactly what my mother had looked like. I didn’t think beyond that; that was enough for me. I ran after her, as fast as I could, and as she reached the front door, I ran into her. She lost her balance, she gave a cry between alarm and laughter and sat down suddenly on the front doorstep, and I tumbled on top of her, and felt her arms round me, and burrowed into her, among the folds of all the clothing that women wore in those days. I always remember the plump softness and warmth of her body, and how sweet it was. I cried and cried for joy, and she hugged me.
“That was my other aunt, the other bridesmaid, my mother’s sister. My father had telegraphed for her to come, from the other side of England, and she had come. My father had already sent my thin aunt packing; I never saw her again. My plump aunt moved in as housekeeper, and our house was filled with laughter and happiness and love. Within the year my father had married her. She had no child of her own by him, so I was her only child. She loved me, and I her.”
“Did you—did you manage to become less stout?” Daisy asked delicately.
“I suppose I must have done. Anyway, I stopped stealing food. And the biscuit barrel disappeared off the sideboard; my new mother put it away, after she’d heard the story, I suppose. Out of sight, out of mind, I forgot it. Or at least I pretended to myself that I’d forgotten it. But whenever it turns up, I remember. I remember too well.”
“I’ve heard of haunted houses,” said Daisy thoughtfully. “But never of a haunted biscuit barrel. I don’t think it would be haunted if you weren’t there to remember, you know.”
“I daresay.”
“Will you get rid of it, Grandmother? Otherwise Jim will never come to stay again, and I—I—”
“You don’t think I haven’t wanted to get rid of it, child?” cried her grandmother. “Your grandfather wouldn’t let me; your father wouldn’t let me. But no, that was never the real explanation. Then I couldn’t bring myself to give them my reasons, to tell the whole story, and so the memory has held me, like a trap. Now I’ve told the story; now I’m free; now the biscuit barrel can go.”
“Will you sell it, Grandmother? It must be worth a lot of money.”
“No doubt.”
“I wonder how much money you’ll get and what you’ll spend it on, Grandmother. …”
Grandmother did not answer.
The next morning Daisy woke to sunshine and the sound of her Grandmother already up and about downstairs. Daisy dressed quickly and went down. The front door was wide open, and her grandmother stood outside on the doorstep, looking at something further up the street. There was the sound of a heavy vehicle droning its way slowly along the street, going away.
Daisy joined her grandmother on the doorstep and looked where she was looking. The weekly garbage truck was droning its way along; it had almost reached the end of the street. The men were slinging into it the last of the rubbish that the householders had put out for them overnight or early this morning. The two rows of great metal teeth at the back of the truck opened and closed slowly, mercilessly on whatever had been thrown into that huge maw.
Grandmother said, “There it goes,” and at once Daisy knew what “it” was. “Done up in a plastic bag with my empty bottles and tins and the old fish finger carton and broken eggshells and I don’t know what rubbish else. Bad company—serve it right.” The truck began to turn the corner. “I’ve hated it,” said Grandmother. “And now it’s being scrunched to pieces. Smashed to smithereens.” Fiercely she spoke, and Daisy remembered the little girl who had snatched up a bread knife in anger.
The truck had turned the corner.
Gone.
Grandmother put her arm round Daisy and laughed. She said, “Daisy, dear, always remember that one can keep custard creams and pink sugar wafers for friends in any old tin.”
Guess
That last day of October a freak storm hit the suburb of Woodley Park. Slates rattled off roofs, garbage cans chased garbage can lids along the streets, billboards were slammed down, and at midnight there was a huge sound like a giant breaking his kindling wood, and then an almighty crash, and then briefly the sound of the same giant crunching his toast.
Then only the wind, which died surprisingly soon.
In the morning everyone could see that the last forest tree of Grove Road—of the whole suburb—had fallen, crashing down onto Grove Road Primary School. No lives had been lost, since the caretaker did not live on the premises, but the school hamster had later to be treated for shock. The school buildings were wrecked.
Everyone went to stare, especially, of course, the children of the school. They included Netty and Sid Barr.
The fallen tree was an awesome sight, partly because of its size and partly because of its evident great age. Someone in the crowd said that the acorn that grew into that must have been planted centuries ago.
As well as the confusion of fallen timber on the road and on the school premises, there was an extraordinary spatter of school everywhere: slates off the roof, bricks from the broken walls, glass from the windows, and the contents of classrooms, cloakrooms, and storerooms—books and collages and clay and paints and nature tables and a queer mixture of clothing, both dingy and weird, which meant that the contents of the lost property cupboard and the dressing-up cupboard had been whirled together and tossed outside. Any passerby could have taken his pick, free of charge. Netty Barr, who had been meaning to claim her gym shoes from lost property, decided that they had gone for good now. This was like the end of the world—a school world.
Council workmen arrived with gear to cut, saw, and haul timber. Fat old Mr. Brown from the end of the Barrs’ road told the foreman that they ought to have taken the tree down long ago. Perhaps he was right. In spite of last season’s leaves and next year’s buds, the trunk of the tree was quite hollow; a cross section revealed a rim of wood the width of a man’s hand, encircling a space large enough for a child or a smallish adult. As soon as the workmen’s backs were turned, Sid Barr crept in. He then managed to get stuck and had to be pulled out by Netty. An untidy young woman nearby was convulsed with silent laughter at the incident.
“You didn’t stay inside for a hundred years,” she said to Sid.
“That smelled funny,” said Sid. “Rotty.” Netty banged his clothes for him; the smell clung.
“Remember that day last summer, Net? After the picnic? When I got stuck inside that great old tree in Epping Forest?” Sid liked to recall near disasters.
“Epping Forest?” said the young woman, sharply interested. But no one else was.
Meanwhile the headmaster had arrived, and that meant all fun was over. School would go on, after all, even if not in those school buildings for the time being. The pupils of Grove Road were marshaled and then sent off in groups to various other schools in the neighborhood. Netty and Sid Barr, with others, went to Stokeside School: Netty in the top class, Sid in a lower one.
There was a good deal of upheaval in Netty’s new classroom before everyone had somewhere to sit. Netty was the next to last to find a place; the last was a thin, pale girl who chose to sit next to Netty. Netty assumed that she was a Stokesider, yet there was something familiar about her, too. Perhaps she’d just seen her about. The girl had dark, lank hair gathered into a ponytail of sorts and a pale, pointed face with grayish green eyes. She wore a dingy green dress that looked ready for a rummage sale and gym shoes.
Netty studied her sideways. At last, “You been at Stokeside long?” Netty asked.
The other girl shook her head and glanced at the teacher, who was talking. She didn’t seem to want to talk, but Netty did.
“A tree fell on our school,” whispered Netty. The other girl laughed silently, although Netty could see nothing to laugh about. She did see something, however: this girl bore a striking resemblance to the young woman who had watched Sid being pulled from the hollow tree trunk. The silent laughter clinched the resemblance.
Of course, this girl was much younger. Of course.
“How old are you?” whispered Netty.
The girl said a monosyllable, still looking amused.
“What did you say?”
Clearly now: “Guess.”
Netty was furious. “I’m just eleven,” she said coldly.
“So am I,” said the other girl.
Netty felt tempted to say, “Liar,” but instead, she asked, “Have you an elder sister?”
“No.”
“What’s your name?”
Again that irritating monosyllable. Netty refused to acknowledge it. “Did you say Jess?” she asked.
“Yes. Jess.”
In spite of what she felt, Netty decided not to argue about that Jess but went on: “Jess what?”
The girl looked blank.
“I’m Netty Barr; you’re Jess something—Jess what?”
This time they were getting somewhere; after a tiny hesitation, the girl said, “Oakes.”
“Jess Oakes, Jessy Oakes.” But whichever way you said it, Netty decided, it didn’t sound quite right, and that was because Jess Oakes herself didn’t seem quite right. Netty wished now that she weren’t sitting next to her.
At playtime Netty went out into the playground; Jess Oakes followed her closely. Netty didn’t like that. Unmistakably, Jess Oakes wanted to stick with her. Why? She hadn’t wanted to answer Netty’s questions; she hadn’t been really friendly. But she clung to Netty. Netty didn’t like it-didn’t like her.
Netty managed to shake Jess Oakes off but then saw her talking with Sid on the other side of the playground. That made her uneasy. But Jess Oakes did not reappear in the classroom after playtime; Netty felt relieved, although she wondered. The teacher made no remark.
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