by Nina Bawden
April – and Carrie met Mrs Gotobed. On the first day of the Easter holidays, Mister Johnny took Nick up the mountain to where the gulls nested, on an island in a small lake. They often went on excursions, always talking away nineteen to the dozen. Sometimes Nick understood what Mister Johnny said and sometimes he only pretended he did, to annoy Carrie, but they were always happy together. Happier alone, Carrie knew, than when she was with them, and although she didn’t really mind this, it made her feel lonely this particular day. Albert was reading in the library because Mr Morgan was coming to give him an extra Greek lesson and Hepzibah was busy, bustling in and out of the kitchen with no time for Carrie. She sat by the fire and pretended she was quite happy alone, just sitting quietly and thinking, but Hepzibah knew better. She looked up from the tray she was laying – silver teapot and best china and thin bread and butter – and said, ‘What’s up with you, Miss Down-In-The-Mouth? Nothing to do, is that it? Well, you can go and keep Mrs Gotobed company. I’ll put another cup on the tray and you can have tea with her.’ She smiled at Carrie’s horrified face. ‘It’s all right, she won’t bite you.’
Mrs Gotobed was downstairs in a room Carrie had not been into before; a light, pretty drawing-room, all gilt chairs and mirrors. A wing-chair was drawn up to a crackling wood fire and Mrs Gotobed sat in it. At first Carrie hardly dared look at her but when she did she saw nothing alarming or sinister, just an old lady with silvery hair piled up high and a pale, invalid’s face. She held out a thin hand covered with huge, glittering rings that were loose on her fingers and said, ‘Come and sit here, pretty child. On this stool. Let me look at your eyes. Albert says they’re like emeralds.’
‘Oh,’ Carrie said. She blushed and sat, very straight-backed, on the stool.
‘Handsome is as handsome does,’ Hepzibah said. She put the tray on a low table and left them together.
Mrs Gotobed smiled and her face crinkled up like pale paper. ‘Hepzibah thinks looks don’t matter much but they do, you know. Do you like my dress?’
She was wearing what seemed to be a red silk ball gown, embroidered with silver flowers on the bodice and very long and full in the skirt. ‘It’s lovely,’ Carrie said, though she thought it a strange dress for someone to wear in the daytime.
Mrs Gotobed’s hands, stroking her silken skirt, made a faint, rasping sound. ‘My husband gave it to me just after we married,’ she said. ‘We bought it in Paris and I had to stand for hours while they fitted me. My waist was so small, they said they had never seen anyone with such a small waist. Mr Gotobed could hold it in his two hands. He loved buying me clothes, he bought me twenty-nine ball gowns, one for each year of our marriage and I have them all still, hanging up in my closet. I put on a different one each time I get up. I want to wear each one of them once more before I die.’
All the time she was talking her thin hands stroked the silk of her dress. She’s mad, Carrie thought, raving mad …
‘Pour the tea, child,’ Mrs Gotobed said. ‘And I’ll tell you about my dresses. I’ve got a green chiffon with pearls sewn round the neck and a blue brocade and a grey silk with pink ostrich feathers. That was my husband’s favourite so I’m keeping that one till the last. I looked like a Queen in it, he always said … Just a little milk in my tea, and two slices of bread, folded over.’
Her eyes were pale grey and bulging a little. Like Mr Evans’s eyes, Carrie thought, but apart from her eyes she didn’t look in the least like a shopkeeper’s sister. Sitting in that grand dress, in this beautiful room …
‘Would you like jam?’ Carrie asked. ‘It’s Hepzibah’s blackberry’
‘No, child. No jam.’ Mrs Gotobed looked at Carrie with Mr Evans’s pale eyes and said, ‘So you’re my brother’s evacuee, God help you!’
Carrie stiffened. ‘I like Mr Evans,’ she found herself saying.
‘Then you’re the only one does. Cold, hard, mean man, my brother. How d’you get on with my baby sister, Louisa?’
‘Oh, Auntie Lou’s nice,’ Carrie said. She looked at Mrs Gotobed’s claw-like, ringed fingers holding her delicate cup, and thought of Auntie Lou’s little red hands that were always in water, washing dishes or scrubbing floors or peeling potatoes.
‘Nice, but a fool,’ Mrs Gotobed said. ‘No spunk, or she’d have left him long ago. She’ll lie down and let him walk over her till the end of her days. Does he walk over you?’
Carrie shook her head firmly.
‘Not afraid of him? Well, if you’re not, then you can tell him something from me.’ She sipped her tea and looked so long and thoughtfully into the fire that Carrie began to think she had forgotten her. She had finished all the bread and butter and scraped the dish of blackberry jam before Mrs Gotobed turned from the fire and spoke again, very slowly and clearly. ‘When I die,’ she said, ‘you can tell him from me that I hadn’t forgotten him. That I hadn’t forgotten he was my own flesh and blood, but that sometimes you owe more to strangers. That I’ve done what I’ve done because it seemed to me right, not because I wanted to spite him.’ She put her cup down and laughed softly and her eyes shone like pale stones under water. ‘Only wait till I’m safely dead first! Or he’ll be round here, stamping and yelling and I haven’t the strength for it.’ She waited a minute, then said, ‘Do you understand what I’ve told you?’
Carrie nodded but the nod was a lie. She didn’t understand but she felt too embarrassed to say so. Mrs Gotobed was embarrassing, talking in that dreadful, calm way about dying, as if she were saying, ‘When I go on holiday.’
Carrie couldn’t even look at her. She stared at her hands, her ears burning. But Mrs Gotobed said nothing more and when Carrie did look, she was lying back in her chair with her head fallen sideways. She was lying so still Carrie thought she was dead, but when she got up to run and call Hepzibah she saw that her chest was still moving and knew she was only asleep. She ran all the same, out of the room, across the hall, into the kitchen. She said, ‘Hepzibah!’ and Hepzibah came to her. Held her close for a minute, then lifted her chin and looked into her face. ‘It’s all right,’ Carrie stammered, ‘she’s just gone to sleep,’ and Hepzibah nodded and touched her chin lightly and lovingly and said, ‘I’d best go to her then, you stay here with Albert.’
When she had gone, Albert said, from the fire, ‘Did she frighten you?’
‘No,’ Carrie said. But she had been frightened and it made her angry with Albert. ‘I thought she was dead and that’s your fault! You told me she was dying when we first came. Months ago!’
‘She is dying,’ Albert said. ‘D’you mean I shouldn’t have told you?’
Carrie wasn’t sure what she did mean. She said, ‘She shouldn’t talk about it.’
Albert looked surprised. ‘I don’t see why not. It’s fairly important to her.’
‘It’s horrible,’ Carrie said. ‘She’s horrible. Spooky! Dressing up in all those grand clothes when she’s dying!’
‘It cheers her up to put them on,’ Albert said. ‘It was her life, you see, parties and pretty clothes, and putting them on makes her remember how happy she used to be. It was my idea, as a matter of fact. When I came here, she was so miserable. Crying all the time! One evening she told Hepzibah to show me her dresses and cried because she’d never wear them again. I said, why not, and she said because there was no point, no one to see, and I said I’d like to see them. So she puts a dress on, when she feels well enough, and I go and look and she talks to me about the times she wore it before. It’s quite interesting really’
He spoke as if this were a perfectly natural thing to do. Carrie thought of it, of the sick old woman dressing up in her jewels and her beautiful clothes, and of this skinny, solemn, bespectacled boy watching her, and it didn’t seem natural at all. She said, ‘You are funny, Albert. Funny peculiar, I mean. Not ordinary.’
‘I would hate to be ordinary,’ Albert said. ‘Wouldn’t you?’
‘I don’t know,’ Carrie said. Albert seemed so grown up suddenly, it made her feel silly and young
. She wanted to tell him the rest of it; tell him what Mrs Gotobed had told her to tell Mr Evans and ask Albert what he thought she had meant, but she couldn’t think how to put it without making herself sound fearfully stupid. And then, a few minutes later, Nick came bursting in with Mister Johnny behind him and there was no time to say anything.
Nick was excited. ‘Oh, it was marvellous, Carrie! The lake, and the white gulls, and the brown island. I couldn’t see anything at first and Mister Johnny said, sit still and wait, and I sat still, and then the island sort of moved. And the brown part wasn’t the earth, but thousands and thousands of baby gulls, packed so tight you couldn’t see the grass under them! Oh, Carrie, it’s my best thing. The best thing in my whole life!’
‘Like the calf being born. And your tenth birthday gloves. You’re always having best things,’ Carrie said, rather sourly.
‘I can’t help it, can I?’ Nick looked puzzled and hurt. Then smiled suddenly. ‘It’ll be your turn next, won’t it? It’s your birthday next month!’
Carrie’s birthday was at the beginning of May. Mr Evans and Auntie Lou gave her handkerchiefs and her mother sent her a green dress that was too tight in the chest and too short. Auntie Lou said she could sew a piece of material on the bottom to lengthen the skirt but there was nothing she could do about the top and Carrie cried a little, privately, not because the dress was no use but because her mother should have guessed how much she had grown. She felt miserable about this all the morning, but better in the afternoon when they went to Druid’s Bottom after school. Hepzibah had cooked a cake with white icing and twelve candles and Mister Johnny made her a crown of wild flowers to put on her head.
‘Now you’re the Queen of the May,’ Hepzibah said.
She wore the crown while they sat in the sunshine, eating the cake, but by the time they went home it was already wilting a little.
Albert walked them up through the Grove. ‘You should soak it in the Sacred Spring,’ he said. ‘Then maybe it’ll last for ever.’
He didn’t seem to be teasing. Carrie said, ‘You don’t believe that?’
Albert shrugged his shoulders. ‘Hepzibah half does. She fills bottles from the spring sometimes, to make medicines. She says it’s because the water is pure from the mountain but she doesn’t really believe it’s just that. And perhaps it isn’t. She put some spring water on my wart one evening and it was gone when I woke the next day.’
‘Beans will do that,’ Carrie said. ‘Or fasting spit. Nick had a wart and he spat on it first thing every morning and by the end of the week it was gone.’
‘That’s magic,’ Albert said. ‘The spring is Religion. That’s different.’
‘D’you mean the old religion?’ Carrie laughed, to show she thought this was nonsense. ‘That’s what Auntie Lou calls it, but then she’s a bit silly.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Albert said. ‘No one knows, really. Only that this was a Sacred Place once. Not just the Grove, the whole mountain. They found an old temple, just a few stones and some old bones – that’s where I think the skull came from, d’you remember I told you? But they’ve found similar temples in other parts of the world, the same sort of arrangement of stones, so they think this religion must have been everywhere once.’
Carrie felt cold, though it was a warm day and above their heads, above the dark yews, the sun was still shining. She whispered – she didn’t mean to whisper but she couldn’t help it – ‘The first time we came, when we were so scared, it wasn’t just Mister Johnny. I thought I heard something before I heard him. A sort of big sigh. As if something were breathing. Don’t laugh!’
‘I’m not,’ Albert said. ‘It’s as silly to laugh as it is to be scared. There’s nothing to be scared of, any more than in an old church. I think it’s just that places where people have believed things have an odd feel to them …’ He was quiet for a little, then whispered, as Carrie had done, ‘Unless there is something else. Some secret Power, sleeping …’
‘You’re scared yourself!’ Carrie said, and he did laugh at her then. It was easy to laugh because they were at the top of the path now, coming out of the Grove into sunlight.
A train was coming out of the tunnel. It rattled past them, blowing their clothes and their hair. Nick was some way along the line, at the bend where the track curved round the mountain and Carrie saw him put his hands over his ears as the train blew its whistle. ‘Poor Nick,’ she said, ‘he does hate it.’
Albert said, ‘Carrie …’ and she turned and saw his face close to hers. He kissed her, bumping her nose with his glasses, and said, ‘Happy Birthday.’
Carrie couldn’t think what to say. She said, ‘Thank you,’ very politely.
‘Girls don’t say thank you when they get kissed.’ Though Albert spoke in a calm, schoolmastery tone, his colour had risen. He turned away, to hide this, perhaps; waved once, without looking, and ran down the path. As soon as he was out of sight he began to sing, very loudly.
Carrie sang too, as she skipped down the railway track; sang under her breath and laughed to herself. When she caught up with Nick, he said, ‘What are you laughing for?’
‘I can laugh, can’t I?’ Carrie said. ‘There’s no law against it? Have you heard of a law against laughing, Mr Clever-Dick-Nick?’
But there was one, it seemed. Not a real law of course, but a rule Carrie had made up for herself and had stuck to, until she forgot it today. Forgot that it was a mistake to let Mr Evans see she was happy …
She went hop, skip, and jump down the hilly street and through the shop door. Laughter was bubbling up inside her and when Mr Evans looked up and said, ‘Oh, it’s you then,’ it seemed to spill over.
She said, ‘Who did you think it was, the cat’s mother?’ and this silly joke made her laugh till her eyes ran with water.
He stared at her, and when he spoke his voice was dangerously quiet. ‘Whatever’s got into you, girl?’
Even then she wasn’t warned. She was silly with happiness. She said, ‘Nothing, Mr Evans, just nice things, that’s all,’ and ran through the shop into the kitchen.
He followed her. She stood at the sink, running the tap to get a glass of cold water and he stood behind her. She filled the glass and drank. He said, ‘Taken your time, haven’t you? Other people in the world beside yourself, you know. Waiting for their tea.’
The water ran down inside Carrie like a lovely cold pipe, making her gasp. When she could speak, she said, ‘I told Auntie Lou we were going to see Hepzibah straight after school. We’re not late.’
She saw Auntie Lou had laid tea: a clean cloth, a plate of sandwiches, covered over, and a small cake with candles.
Mr Evans sucked his teeth and his pale eyes bulged coldly. ‘Oh no, not at all. Come and go as it suits you. Liberty Hall, that’s what you’ve made of my home! Your birthday tea ready but you were having a better time somewhere else! Oh, don’t trouble to answer. It’s written all over you!’
‘I said we’d be back by half past six and we are,’ Carrie said.
‘Oh, ordering your meals now, is it? Servants at your beck and call, that’s our place! And no gratitude – your Auntie can slave for you, work her fingers to the bone, but it’s Miss Green gets the thank yous! And what for, may I ask? Easy enough to keep open house when someone else pays, isn’t it? Miss Green can ask in what riff-raff she chooses! Everyone welcome and no bills presented!’
Carrie said, ‘It’s only me and Nick ever go there.’
‘Have you been invited, though? My sister’s house, isn’t it? She ever invite you? That doesn’t worry you, I suppose, since you’ve never seen her. And that suits Miss Green, doesn’t it? To keep the poor soul shut away out of sight, out of mind!’
‘She’s not shut away, she’s just ill,’ Nick shouted. He had been listening from the doorway; now he marched into the room and glared at Mr Evans, his eyes hot with anger. He said, ‘And Carrie has seen her, so there!’
Mr Evans looked at Carrie and his look made her tremble. She sai
d faintly, ‘Only just once.’
‘And why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I didn’t think …’
‘Didn’t think! Didn’t think what! I’m not supposed to be interested, is it? My own flesh and blood and I’m not interested to hear of her?’
‘There wasn’t anything to say.’
‘She said nothing, did she? Sat dumb? No message for me, for her brother?’
Carrie felt as if she were suffocating. Mr Evans’s face seemed to hang over her, pale and sweaty, like cheese. He said, ‘Come on, don’t lie to me, girl!’
Carrie shook her head. She couldn’t speak. This was like a bad dream coming true. Feeling so frightened without quite knowing why, and Mr Evans’s pale eyes boring into her, and no escape anywhere …
It was Auntie Lou saved her. Nick said in a shrill voice, ‘That’s a new blouse, Auntie Lou,’ and Mr Evans turned from Carrie to look at his sister.
She was standing in the doorway and smiling uncertainly. The new blouse was pink and frilly, quite unlike anything the children had seen her wear before, and she had combed her hair and put lipstick on. She looked quite different. She looked almost pretty.
Mr Evans said in an awful voice, ‘A frivolous woman is an abomination in the sight of the Lord.’
Auntie Lou’s smile vanished but she said, bravely, ‘Do you like my blouse, Nick? It’s the one my friend gave me when I went to stay with her. She gave me the lipstick, too.’
‘LIPSTICK!’ Mr Evans said.
Auntie Lou gave a tiny laugh. ‘Most girls wear lipstick, Samuel. I didn’t want to be different when we went to the dance.’
‘DANCE!’
‘At the Camp.’ Auntie Lou’s voice was a whisper, a thin thread of sound. ‘The American Base, down the valley.’
‘AMERICAN SOLDIERS!’ Mr Evans bellowed. Then he turned on the children. ‘Out of here, both of you. I have a few things to say to my sister.’
They fled from the kitchen, down the yard to the sunny patch at the side of the privy. Out of sight of the house though not out of earshot. Not that they needed to hear what Mr Evans had to say because they had heard it before. Girls who wore lipstick and silly clothes and went out with American soldiers were good as damned in his opinion. And Auntie Lou knew it.