Behind the Scenes at the Museum

by Kate Atkinson

  ‘Little pitchers,’ Walter says, fingering one of his ears.

  ‘What’s a pitcher?’ I ask Patricia, who, back in the kitchen, is burning slice after slice of toast. ‘How the hell should I know,’ she says viciously and pushes her hair back from her head before screaming in frustration at the toaster. Gillian fetches a box of cornflakes from the cupboard and pours herself a bowl. ‘Bambi,’ she says, sprinkling two huge spoonfuls of sugar on her flakes, ‘Snow White, Cinderella – they’re pictures.’

  The Shop bell announces Walter’s departure and George storms back into the kitchen, ‘Where the bloody hell is she?’ he asks, looking wildly round at each one of us. ‘Perhaps she’s left a note,’ Patricia says, carefully aiming one of the blacker slices of toast at the waste bin. ‘A note?’ George repeats. He looks stunned. The idea of Bunty having left us, as opposed to having mislaid herself somewhere about the house, hasn’t occurred to him. ‘Yes, a note,’ Patricia says as she accurately lobs the toast into the bin (she’s a relentless goal attack in Queen Anne Grammar School’s Junior Netball team). ‘You know, a note.’

  ‘I know what a bloody note is,’ George says angrily and stomps out again. I sigh and reach for the cornflakes box. They spill everywhere but at least some go in the bowl. Patricia butters a piece of smouldering toast and bites into it with a certain grim enjoyment. We are eating standing up, leaning against whatever kitchen counter is available. This liberation from the dining-room tastes of furtive pleasures and we make quite a good breakfast of it in the end, enjoying not only the burnt toast and oversugared cornflakes but also some daring eggy-toast-fingers that we make in a joint effort around the frying-pan. This spirit of co-operation doesn’t extend to getting to school. Once we’ve eaten our leisurely breakfast Patricia packs her satchel and says, ‘Right, I’m off then.’

  ‘What about me?’ Gillian wails, quickly shoving the last piece of eggy-toast into her mouth. (Bunty usually accompanies Gillian and me on our long walk to primary school.)

  ‘What about you?’ Patricia asks in just the kind of belittling tone that’s guaranteed to drive Gillian mad. ‘How am I getting to school?’ Gillian shouts at her, jumping up and down (there’s no ‘us’ in this, I notice).

  Patricia shrugs, ‘I don’t know,’ she says scathingly. ‘It’s nothing to do with me – anyway you’re nearly ten years old, surely you can get yourself to school?’ and with that slight on Gillian’s maturity she slings her satchel over her back and disappears. Gillian begins to boil over with indignation but returns to a seething simmer when Patricia suddenly reappears. ‘I’ll get my satchel,’ Gillian says hurriedly.

  ‘Don’t bother, I haven’t come back for you,’ Patricia says dismissively. ‘I forgot to write a note, that’s all.’ Patricia is writing a note too? ‘Are you running away as well, Patricia?’ I ask, horrified. ‘No, stupid,’ she snaps, ‘a note because I’m late.’ She tears a page from her French jotter and writes, in a perfect counterfeit of Bunty’s handwriting – Dear Miss Everard, I’m sorry Patricia is late coming into school this morning, I’m afraid our dog was run over. Yours sincerely, Mrs G Lennox.

  ‘What dog?’ Gillian asks – we are both hanging over Patricia’s shoulder watching her write. ‘We don’t have a dog.’

  ‘Yes we do, we’ve got loads of dogs,’ Patricia says, folding the note neatly into a square.

  ‘Yes, but they’re Pets,’ Gillian says, confused. ‘And one hasn’t been run over. Has it?’

  ‘Gillian,’ Patricia says, looking at Gillian in disbelief. ‘You lie all the time, so I don’t know why you’re getting so worked up.’ Gillian is getting worked up, her cheeks have gone that funny mottled-pink way – a bit like a trout – that they do when she’s about to have a tantrum. ‘I’m definitely off this time,’ Patricia says, ignoring her and then turning to me she says nicely, ‘I’ll see you tonight, Ruby,’ so I repay this favouritism by going to the Back Yard gate to wave goodbye to her, something Bunty never does. In the background I can hear a wail like an air-raid siren starting, ‘I want Mummy!’

  Well, ‘I want doesn’t mean I get,’ as ‘Mummy’ never ceases from telling us. We never do get to school that day but spend our time well away from George, mostly in Gillian’s bedroom where she takes it upon herself to run an alternative school – all her pupils sitting on the floor while she sits on her bed. I am forced to cram myself into a desk with Denise. Gillian’s main duties seem to be handing out punishments and when I venture to complain that when Patricia used to play schools we had lessons, I am put in the corner for over an hour, only let out to go and forage for something to eat. Even then, I fail to make myself teacher’s pet as all I can find are a few cream crackers and half a Soreen malt loaf. Occasionally, George shouts up the stairs and asks us if we’re all right to which we shout down a resounding, ‘Yes!’ because we can’t imagine what he would do with us if we weren’t.

  ‘Have you been here all day?’ Patricia asks in amaze-ment, when she comes in from school.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And no sign of Mummy?’ (The maternal noun is on the verge of extinction in Patricia’s vocabulary – but is rescued for this crisis.)

  ‘No.’

  She’s disappeared without a trace, not a hair nor a fingernail left. Perhaps she’s dead. Perhaps she’s joined the household ghosts, passing through walls and gliding down the stairs. If we had Mr Wedgewood or Myra from Auntie Babs’ church they might be able to ask our ghosts if they would be so kind as to have a look around and see if she’s there. It could certainly give the Ninth Legion something to occupy their time.

  George goes out and brings fish and chips back for tea. He looks very worried. ‘The bloody Parrot’s gone AWOL as well, you know,’ he says, shaking his head in mystification. ‘Do you think we should call the police?’ he asks, and all three of us stare blankly at him as he has never asked our opinion before about anything. ‘Well,’ Patricia says cautiously. ‘Did you actually look for a note?’

  ‘Have I had the time to look for a note?’ he asks, very aggrieved, and the search party’s dispatched once more. Gillian suggests to Patricia that she forges a note. ‘What good would that do?’ Patricia frowns. ‘It would keep him happy,’ Gillian urges and Patricia narrows her eyes speculatively. ‘So he wouldn’t get mad at us you mean?’ I concur enthusiastically with this plan, even though I feel slightly ashamed that we’re all more concerned with our own fate than our mother’s. The plan collapses anyway because none of us can think of anything that Bunty could write that would make George happy.

  We search the drawer in Bunty’s bedside table which is very neat and tidy but contains no message for George. It does contain, however, a little silver locket. ‘What’s this?’ I ask Patricia and she shrugs. ‘Oh, it’s me!’ I say delighted, because when I open up the locket I find two tiny photographs of me, one in each wing of the locket, that look as if they’ve been cut from the Polyphotos Bunty used to have hanging on the living-room wall. Gillian sits on the bed and looks at the locket over my shoulder. ‘Mummy’s got a picture of me by her bed,’ I say pointedly to pictureless Gillian. ‘Oh yeah,’ she says sarcastically. ‘She’s got that there because it’s a photograph of P—and Patricia digs her hard in the ribs so that she squeals.

  Our attention is diverted by Patricia discovering what we presume to be a genuine note in the drawer of George’s bedside table, along with a poppy-red packet of Craven A and some loose change and a pink-and-purple packet of Durex. We mull over George’s treasure-drawer for a while, trying to get up the nerve to open the envelope with the word ‘George’ scrawled cruelly across it.

  Gillian suggests we steam it open but going down to the kitchen seems a bit risky until Patricia has the bright idea of using the Teasmade at Bunty’s side of the bed and filling the kettle in the bathroom. The Teasmade has not been made up – no water in the kettle, no tea in the pot, which, Patricia says, is evidence that Bunty intended to leave and wasn’t spirited away by some unnatural force in the middl
e of the night. This is possibly true – since she’s had the Teasmade Bunty has become as ritualistically devoted to her morning tea-ceremony as any geisha girl, but I still can’t bring myself to believe that she would wilfully abandon her own children.

  I’m wrong, it appears. We manage to open the envelope but not before Patricia has scalded herself and the envelope itself has become wrinkled and soaked – in the end we just tear it open. ‘Read it out, Patricia!’ Gillian pleads desperately because Patricia’s reading the note to herself, very stony-faced. ‘What does it say?’

  Patricia reads out loud, giving an uncanny impression of Bunty as she does so, although the words themselves are oddly stilted as if Bunty had copied them from a book – or, more likely, some film. Dear George, I have come to the end of my patience and feel I cannot go on in this vein much longer and I think it is better if I spend some time apart from you all. Although you know how much I love the children. You say you are not running around with someone else and I must believe you because you’re my husband but as you know life has not really been the same for me since P – Patricia chokes on the next word and gives Gillian a funny look and there is a short, uncomfortable pause before Patricia resumes – Well, anyway I am going away for a bit because really I’ve had enough (that sounds more like Bunty). Don’t worry about me. As if you would, Bunty.

  We digest this in silence for a while – particularly the bit about how much she loves her children – until Patricia snorts and says, ‘What a load of rubbish,’ which surprises me because I thought it was rather moving. ‘Maybe we don’t need to give it to him?’ Gillian asks hopefully but Patricia, ethical to the last, says we do, and forges another envelope.

  ‘You haven’t opened this have you?’ George asks, looking up suspiciously from the note.

  ‘Of course we haven’t,’ Patricia says, sounding very offended. ‘The envelope’s sealed, isn’t it?’

  ‘Hmmph,’ George says, playing for time by staring intently at the note long after it’s obvious that he’s finished reading it. ‘Well,’ he says eventually. ‘Anyway. Your mother’s had to go away suddenly to look after Auntie Babs because she’s feeling poorly. Auntie Babs that is. Auntie Babs’s feeling poorly, not your mother.’

  We all murmur in sympathy for Auntie Babs while looking at each other bug-eyed, hardly able to contain our knowledge of the truth. A little while later, when our hysteria has subsided, Patricia reminds George about our imminent holiday – we had all quite forgotten that we are due to go to Whitby for the Whit holiday. George bangs his head on the door. ‘No,’ he says. ‘No, I don’t believe it. How could I forget?’ he asks, turning to us all with a pantomime face of amazement. We all three give accentuated Gallic shrugs of incredulity – eyes open wide, palms turned upwards. How can these things be? How is it that without Bunty around to remind us we can’t do the simplest things like waking up, eating, remembering we’re going on holiday?

  ‘I’ll close the Shop,’ he says finally, after ringing round everyone he can think of who might take over for a week and finding noone willing or able. Previously, and only in cases of dire need, Granny Nell has been drafted in for Shop-minding, but Uncle Ted’s taken her to the Lakes (see Footnote (v)) for the week. Of course, George was supposed to have arranged all this a long time ago – Bunty has told us several times that George is ‘getting someone in’ so we can have a ‘proper family holiday’. We all still have lingering memories of last year’s holiday when George managed to wriggle out of a rain-sodden week in Bridlington with us (and yet, curiously, could never be found at home when Bunty phoned – she spent most of the holiday in the call-box. He certainly paid for those calls when she got back). ‘What would happen to the Pets if you closed the Shop for a week?’ sensible Patricia asks. More banging of head on door. Gillian begins to blubber in a very unattractive way. ‘We can’t miss our holiday!’

  ‘I don’t know,’ George says, sounding increasingly harassed. He waves his hand around in the air. ‘Maybe you could all go to Babs’ or something.’

  ‘No,’ Patricia reminds him gently – ‘Auntie Babs’s ill, remember?’ He gives her a madman’s stare. ‘And what about Lucy-Vida?’ Gillian says, her sobs reaching a descant.

  ‘Lucy-Vida? Lucy-Vida? What about Lucy-Vida?’ George snaps at her.

  ‘She’s supposed to be coming with us,’ Patricia says. (Auntie Eliza is going into hospital to have the Stilton cheese veins in her legs stripped.) ‘She’ll be here in the morning.’

  George drops to his knees on the floor and bangs his head on the carpet. It’s too much for him, he’s ‘had enough’ – wife and Parrot missing, four little girls to look after, a Shop to see to, a holiday to enjoy – he looks up suddenly. An idea spreads like sunshine across his face. ‘Ha!’ he says but does not elaborate.

  Patricia sits in the front and Lucy-Vida, Gillian and myself sit in the back of our battered ’48 Ford Anglia. We are still going to Whitby, to spend the half-term holiday in a self-catering flat, as previously arranged, but instead of heading off to Pickering we execute a curious detour. We pass a sign that says ‘Leeds, Mirfield, Dewsbury’ and I curl up in horror like a hedgehog. Patricia gives him a sharp, sideways look. ‘I thought we weren’t going to Auntie Babs’.’

  ‘We’re not,’ George says smugly.

  ‘Whit in Whitby, Whit in Whitby – that’s a funny thing, isn’t it?’ I say conversationally. ‘What could you spend in Filey? File?’

  ‘I wonder if Daisy and Rose are going on the Whit Walk this year,’ Lucy-Vida says to noone in particular. ‘I doubt it,’ Patricia says gloomily. ‘Auntie Babs’s poorly, remember.’ This last fact has been stated so many times over the last twenty-four hours that we’re beginning to believe it’s the truth. Lucy-Vida, to whom we have, naturally, told everything, including the colour of Durex packets (although nobody has explained to me what they’re for), keeps forgetting where Bunty is supposed to be and has to be prompted. ‘Oh yes, of course,’ she says theatrically so that George looks uneasily at her in the rear-view mirror.

  Eventually, after what seems like an age, we pull up in front of a small, rather drab, terraced house in Chapeltown. ‘I won’t be a minute,’ George says, leaping from the car and leaning his full body weight against the electric doorbell of the house. The door is opened by an invisible hand and George disappears inside. George has informed us that he’s ‘got someone to look after us’ and speculation is rife as to what kind of person this ‘someone’ might be. We all have our preferences – Lucy-Vida would like Margot Fonteyn, I want Nana, the dog from Peter Pan, and Patricia wants Mary Poppins (a woman whom we long for, to take over our neglected upbringing). Gillian, typically, wants a Fairy Godmother to come and look after her and put the rest of us into an orphanage. We get none of these. We get Auntie Doreen.

  ‘Into the back seat, Patricia!’ George commands, as if he was talking to a dog. Patricia slinks unwillingly into the overcrowded back and we stare churlishly at the front-seat interloper. ‘Girls,’ George says. ‘This is Mrs Collier, you can call her Auntie Doreen.’

  ‘Auntie Doreen’ twists round in the seat and smiles at us. She’s a soft, round, brown sort of woman, older than our mother but with less make-up and hair-dye. She puts out a small, plump hand towards a startled Patricia. ‘Now I know you must be Patricia,’ she says in the most extraordinary accent we’ve ever heard, ‘because you’re the tallest.’ Tentatively, Patricia shakes the proffered hand. ‘So would you be so good, dear, as to introduce me to the other little girls?’ Auntie Doreen shakes each of our hands in turn with a grave formality, saying ‘How do you do?’ to each of us. George watches his brood like a hawk in the rear-view mirror for any sign of bad manners. When the introductions are over, George says, ‘Your Auntie Doreen’s very kindly agreed to look after you for the week so that you can have your holiday. What do you say to that?’

  ‘Thank you, Auntie Doreen,’ we all chorus dutifully. All that is, except for Patricia, who raises her eyebrows at me and mutt
ers ‘What is this? Little House on the Prairie?’ which is a book she particularly loathes. Patricia’s rebellious stance goes unnoticed by George who is already attacking the gear-box to find the always shy and bashful reverse gear of the Anglia. The blasphemy with which he usually addresses the reluctant reverse is noticeably muted in Auntie Doreen’s presence.

  ‘This is nice,’ she says, as George finally manages to turn the car round and grinds into first. She folds her hands in her lap, ready to enjoy herself. (How extraordinary.)

  Once we’re on the open road Auntie Doreen takes out a packet of cigarettes and asks George if he’d like one. ‘Don’t mind if I do,’ he says expansively as if she were offering a best Havana cigar and she lights two and passes one to George. The compelling intimacy of this act does not go unnoticed in the back seat and we watch them both with new interest. Is Auntie Doreen perhaps a relative of George’s?

  The journey to Whitby is incident-free – a rarity for any outing in the Anglia when something is usually run over even if it’s only the grass verge. Auntie Doreen and George seem to know Whitby quite well and, on the steep run down into the town, point out various landmarks to each other and with a giggle Auntie Doreen says, ‘Do you remember those kippers?’ and George throws his head back and laughs and sheds at least twenty years from his back.

  Whitby certainly looks like a magical place – from the gaunt, mysterious ruins on the cliff-top to the higgledy-piggledy fishermen’s cottages – and Patricia is particularly delighted because, she says, this is where the Demeter, sailing out of Varna, ended its voyage.

  ‘The Demeter?’ Auntie Doreen queries. ‘Yes,’ Patricia says, ‘Dracula’s ship, landed in a wild, unnatural storm with all the crew dead – and those cliffs,’ she points, knowledgeably, ‘must be where he ran up, disguised as a black dog. A hound of hell,’ she adds with relish and I shiver, remembering Auntie Babs’ stairs. ‘Perhaps,’ she says, scrutinizing Lucy-Vida who is squeezed between her and Gillian (I am at the end, crushed against the unreliable car door and will probably fall out if we take a particularly challenging bend), ‘perhaps Auntie Eliza named you after Lucy Harker? She became a vampire, you know,’ she adds with relish.