Behind the Scenes at the Museum

by Kate Atkinson

  But then a miracle occurs – a little black dog runs into the Yard, yapping itself silly, a limp, burnt ribbon dangling from its neck, and Patricia frees herself from the arms of the blanket and runs towards the dog. ‘Rags,’ she sobs deliriously. ‘Oh Rags,’ and hugs his singed, smoke-blackened body to her grimy broderie-anglaise. The household ghosts regard their own charred debris – the melted stained-glass panels, the blackened centurions’ helmets, the frizzled periwigs, and raise a collective sigh of endurance. York has been scoured and destroyed by fire many times and they are not in the least surprised at going through another one.

  Just as the Great Fire of London helped to purge the Great Plague, so the Great Pet Shop Fire helped to purge the death of Gillian. The fire was a purification, an ordeal that we survived and which allowed some change and renewal. For some reason, Gillian no longer hung quite so heavily on our consciences (‘If she’d been alive,’ Patricia reasoned with tortuous logic, ‘she might have died in the fire, so she’d be dead anyway. Right?’).

  Our days of Above the Shop living are over, even though it’s only the ground-floor that’s really suffered and the rest of our home is merely greasy with soot. Nonetheless George is under an ultimatum and is down at the Leeds and Holbeck Building Society the next day securing a mortgage on the nice little semi. In a matter of only weeks we will be inspecting the newly-plastered, freshly-painted insides of the Shop, watching counters and display-stands being delivered while Walter questions George about the new line of business. ‘Medical and Surgical Supplies?’ he quizzes.

  George is alive with entrepreneurial enthusiasm. ‘Trusses, wheelchairs, hearing-aids, elastic stockings, walking-sticks – there’s no end to it, Walter. There’ll be stuff on prescription from doctors, folk sent here from the hospital, people off the street for stuff like Elastoplasts and Durex.’

  ‘Durex?’ Walter says speculatively. ‘There’ll be some brass in that. Trade price to friends, eh?’ and they both double up with manly laughter.

  ‘What is Durex?’ I whispered to Patricia.

  ‘I’ll tell you later,’ she whispered back, but she never did.

  But that’s all in the future. Now, a spring dawn creeps through the curtains as Patricia and I lie top-to-toe in Auntie Gladys’ funny, lumpy, spare bed. (It seems that after every tragedy we must sleep together.) Somewhere, crammed in between us, lie the sleeping, happy bodies of a dog, a panda and a bear. Unbelievably – or perhaps believably – George and Bunty agree that we can keep Rags for our very own, no longer an endangered Pet, but a proper family pet.

  The sky is streaked with red as Pets’ blood streams in the firmament. Flocks of budgies turn into angels with Technicolor wings and wheel across the sky. Perhaps in the Spirit World or Heaven, or wherever it is they have all gone, perhaps there, the Parrot will be given the gift of tongues and will be loved. I pray to the bloodstained, smoke-damaged Lamb to make everyone in Heaven very happy. Many things are uncertain but there is one thing we can feel sure about – this morning, the arms of Jesus are very full indeed.

  Footnote (vii) – Zeppelin!

  NELL AND LILLIAN STOOD AT THE FRONT DOOR AND waved goodbye to Tom. Rachel wouldn’t stir herself from a chair to say goodbye to Jesus Christ himself. Tom was glad he didn’t live with her any more, glad he had a wife now and a home of his own. He was lucky to have Mabel, she was the quiet devoted sort, a bit like Nelly. Lillian didn’t have much time for Mabel, that’s why he usually came to see his sisters on his own. He turned at the end of Lowther Street and could see them still standing there; they were great ones for saying goodbye that pair, and he waved his arms in a big semi-circle, like someone signalling with a flag, so they could see him.

  They were worried about Zeppelin raids but Tom didn’t think anyone would attack York. He reassured them with a lot of bravado, cocky talk about the Hun not having the stomach for fighting, how the war would soon be over and so on. He’d helped them fix their blackout blinds because they were worried about the chinks of light coming through, poor little Minnie Havis had been up in court for showing a light and was so ashamed she could hardly show her face. It seemed such a shame, especially when her young husband was at the Front.

  Nell and Lillian had given him his tea, liver and mashed potatoes, and shown him a card from Albert – a grainy postcard of Ypres before the war. ‘He says,’ Lillian said, reading aloud, ‘that they’re having grand weather,’ and Tom laughed because it was just like his younger brother to say something like that. Sometimes he caught Nelly looking at him as if to say she thought him a coward compared with Albert, but then both of them had always liked Albert best. Albert was everyone’s favourite (except Rachel’s, of course), and sometimes Tom felt jealous, but it never lasted, you couldn’t have bad feelings about Albert, even when you tried. He wasn’t so sure about Jack Keech though – the lad was a bit too clever for his own good, he wasn’t right for Nell, too cocky – more Lillian’s type really.

  He was a coward himself though, that much he knew for certain. A woman had come up to Tom in the street yesterday and called him a ‘slacker’ and he’d gone bright red with embarrassment. Then another woman had come up, quite drunk, and said, ‘That’s right, lad, you keep out of t’bloody uniform,’ and he’d gone even redder. Tom knew that the first woman was right, he was a slacker. He was a slacker because he was terrified out of his wits at the idea of going to the Front. When he thought about the war he had this funny feeling, as if his insides were liquefying. And he didn’t want to leave poor little Mabel, he didn’t know what she’d do without him. Tom’s employer was a member of the Society of Friends and had gone up in front of the Board and managed to get Tom an exemption, saying that all his other clerks had gone off to the Front and he couldn’t manage if his remaining one went as well. The Board gave Tom a six-month exemption but Tom knew there wasn’t much chance of them renewing it. Maybe he could stand up before them and say he was a conchie, but he didn’t have the guts for that either; everyone in the Groves knew what had happened to Andrew Brittan, the schoolteacher from Park Grove who was a conchie.

  Tom walked home the long way because it was such a lovely evening. May was his favourite month, it made him think of all the hawthorn in blossom in the country. Tom and Mabel often cycled out to the countryside and Tom told his new young wife about being a boy in the Dales, and about his mother; he even told Mabel how awful he felt when his mother had died – something he never talked about with anyone else. Tom had a picture of his mother – it had been taken by a travelling photographer, a Frenchman, just before his mother died. He’d found the photograph, with all the others, on the morning their father told them their mother had died. The photographs were just lying on the kitchen table; his father was in such a state that he hadn’t even noticed them. The one of Alice was in a beautiful frame, all chased silver and red padded velvet, and Tom took it and hid it under his mattress, because he wanted this parting gift just for himself. But later, when they were joined in a united front of grief against their frightening stepmother, Tom showed Lawrence and Ada the photograph, although no matter how they begged, pleaded and wept he would not hand it over. Now it stood proudly as the centrepiece on the oak-dresser in his front parlour and Mabel dusted it every day and often said, ‘Poor woman,’ which, if Tom happened to overhear, gave him a funny, tight feeling in his throat.

  The sky above St Saviourgate was a dark indigo and he was walking with his head up, looking at it, when it seemed as if a bit of the sky – a darker bit – had detached itself and was moving overhead. He watched it, puzzled, and then he heard the noise of other people and saw them looking up, the same as him, and someone said in a hushed, awed voice, ‘It’s a Zeppelin!’ and someone else said, ‘Bloody hell!’ A couple of women screamed and ran indoors but several people stood watching the Zeppelin in fascination. It hung there so mysteriously that noone seemed to think it would drop any bombs – but then there was a deep THUD and Tom felt something vibrate right through his body as a gr
eat crack of light lit up the street and it made Tom think of Nell and Lillian and their blackout blinds. Then for a second it was completely quiet and nothing moved except for the smoke, billowing like a cloud. Then people started to scream and moan and Tom saw a man with half of his head gone and a foot lying in the road that matched the one on the end of the man’s leg. A girl was cowering on the steps of the Methodist chapel, whimpering like an injured animal, and Tom went up to her and tried to say something comforting. When he bent down and said, ‘Are you all right, miss?’ she looked at his hand and screamed and pulled away from him and when Tom looked at his hand he understood why – there was no hand, just a stump of blue-grey shiny bone and some ragged bits of gristle. A soldier in uniform ran up to him and said, ‘It’s all right, lad, come on,’ and got him to the hospital on the back of someone’s cart.

  The soldier gave him a drink of something from his hip-flask, and kept looking at him in a worried way. He’d seen plenty of men wounded but he’d never met one that laughed his head off about it.

  The pain in Tom’s hand was unbelievable, as if it was dipped in molten metal, but he didn’t care. He’d never get sent to the Front now, he’d be able to stay with his sweet little wife, he’d be able to wave his stump in the face of anyone who dared call him a slacker.

  Lillian and Nell sat on his hospital bed, one either side, and Nell pushed back a lock of hair from his face. He’d been brought to the hospital on Haxby Road – Rowntree’s dining-block that had been turned into a hospital for men being brought back from the Front – and his sisters behaved as if he really was a wounded soldier. They both smiled at him and Lillian leant over and kissed him. ‘Poor Tom,’ she said softly, and Nell smiled and said, ‘Our brave brother – wait until I write and tell Albert.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  1963

  The Rings of Saturn

  THE REMAINING FEMALE LENNOXES ARE TEETERING between the two worlds of innocence and experience. For me, this is symbolized by the Eleven Plus exam which I am about to sit and which will decide my fate for ever. For Nell it is the passage from life to death, and Bunty may, or may not, succumb to the charms of infidelity, and Patricia . . . Patricia comes into my bedroom one January teatime to proudly declare that she’s about to ‘lose her virginity’.

  ‘Do you want me to help you find it?’ I ask absently, because I hadn’t quite caught what she said.

  ‘Don’t be so clever,’ she snarls and slams the door behind her. As I have, this very day, just failed the arithmetic paper in the mock Eleven Plus, this remark hits home cruelly and I stare at the abused bedroom door for a long time considering the possible paths my life is going to take. Will I follow my sisters – dead or otherwise – to Queen Anne Grammar School for Girls or will I be consigned to the scrapheap of Beckfield Lane Secondary Modern? As well as my future, the bedroom door is also host to my new ‘Ye Olde England’ calendar, given to me at Christmas by Auntie Gladys. This ye olde England is not a country we’re very well acquainted with in our family – page after page, month after month, of thatched cottages, distant spires, haywains and milkmaids. It is also a fund of useful titbits of information – how else would I know when ‘Dominion Day’ was? Or the anniversary of the Battle of Hastings? If only these things were a help with the Eleven Plus.

  I rifle listlessly through Monday’s Look and Learn without finding anything I want to either look at or learn. Despite having central heating in the light-and-airy pebble-dashed semi that has replaced the dark shadows of Above the Shop, Bunty refuses to turn on the radiators in the bedrooms because she thinks warm bedrooms are unhealthy. Patricia points out that hypothermia is unhealthy too, but once Bunty has her teeth in a belief then she’s an absolute terrier with it. It’s so cold in my bedroom that I can see my fingertips turning first pink and then blue and if I watch them much longer I suppose they’ll turn purple and fall off. I don’t get the chance to observe this interesting phenomenon because Patricia comes back in the room and says, ‘Can I talk to you, or are you just going to be stupid?’ Poor Patricia – she’s so desperate for a confidante that she has to make do with me. For some weeks now she has been courted by Howard – an earnest, bespectacled twig of a boy from St Peter’s, the expensive public school whose playing-fields back onto Queen Anne’s hockey-pitch. He has been spying voyeuristically on Patricia on the hockey-pitch – she’s a psychopathically deranged Right Wing – when he should have been boiling things in retorts, and he finally persuaded her, just before Christmas, to go out with him.

  ‘I’ve decided to do it with him,’ she says, making ‘It’ sound like a tooth extraction and, having missed the subject of the original conversation, I’m still not sure what ‘it’ might be. From the bottom of the ghostless stairs, Bunty starts shouting at Patricia but Patricia ignores her. Bunty keeps on shouting and Patricia keeps on ignoring. Who will wear out first?

  Bunty.

  ‘Howard’s parents are going away next week-end,’ Patricia says, ‘so we’ll do it then.’ She sits on the end of my bed looking uncommonly light-hearted and I venture to enquire if she is in love with Howard.

  Patricia snorts loudly. ‘Come off it, Ruby! Romantic love’s an outmoded bourgeois convention!’ (They don’t tell us that in Look and Learn.) ‘But,’ she adds reluctantly, ‘it is nice to have someone who wants you, you know?’

  I nod in sympathetic understanding, it must be very nice. We celebrate this rare moment of intimacy between us by putting on my latest EP, bought with a Christmas record token, ‘Chubby Checker’s Dancin’ Party’, and solemnly practise the Twist for a while, a dance at which we are no good at all – Patricia is too stiff and self-conscious and I just fall over – until we collapse from exhaustion, side by side, on the bed and contemplate the pristine woodchip of my ceiling, so sophisticatedly different from the cracked plaster and whitewash of Above the Shop. Patricia turns her head and says, ‘I suppose you want me to take you to the pictures tomorrow?’ Patricia asks this as if she’s doing me a huge favour, whereas I know she’s as keen as me to go and see Kid Galahad because one of the few things we have in common is our devotion to Elvis Presley. And, what’s more, tomorrow, 8th January, is Elvis’s birthday, an anniversary marked on the Ye Olde England calendar by a constellation of little red, hand-drawn hearts. It is me that Patricia invites to the Odeon, rather than Howard, because she knows that Howard would scoff throughout at our tender-hearted, blue-suede-shod hero.

  She meets me from school, where I have just failed yet another mock arithmetic exam, and consoles me with meat patties from Richardson’s and the information that some of the world’s great heroes – Gandhi, Schweitzer, Keats, Buddha, Elvis – never passed the Eleven Plus, but then, as I glumly point out to her, they never sat it either. Patricia herself is sitting her O Levels this year but you wouldn’t know it from the amount of time she spends on school work (none).

  Kid Galahad cheers me up somewhat and the meat patties and the giant box of Poppets which we share in the dark go some way to compensate for the lack of anything to eat when we get home. Bunty is wilting these days, taking to her bed with alarming frequency, for no apparent reason, except that she is ‘not feeling well’. She has begun to make strange, unwomanly pronouncements that would have given Auntie Babs the shivers. I have, for example, stumbled upon her in the bathroom, on her hands and knees, scrubbing out the toilet bowl with Vim and vigour, and witnessed her breaking off from this meditation to snap her rubber gloves off and snarl, ‘I don’t see why a house needs a wife – it’s me that needs the wife!’ Whatever next? Demanding the vote?

  As I am due to sit the first part of my Eleven Plus the following Tuesday she pulls herself together to make Sunday dinner (lunch hasn’t arrived in the north yet), a last supper of roast lamb, butter beans, roast potatoes, mint sauce and frozen peas. What a shame noone thought to cook the peas! That’s a joke – Patricia’s, when she asks Bunty what we’re having for dinner, and Bunty recites the above menu. I laugh uproariously at this because,
as you can imagine, Patricia doesn’t make jokes very often. Not at all, in fact, and I laugh even more, in a Laughing Policeman kind of way, because it would be an awful shame if the first time Patricia made a joke nobody laughed.

  Both Patricia and Bunty glare at me. It is an ill-timed burst of humour on Patricia’s part because she is not in the parental good books, having come in with the milk this morning. Presumably she was doing ‘it’ with Howard last night. Bunty is cross-examining her closely for evidence of recent debauchery but, to my eyes anyway, Patricia looks just the same today as she did yesterday. ‘If I thought for one minute,’ Bunty says, stirring the gravy furiously round the roasting-pan, ‘that you had been—’

  ‘Enjoying myself?’ Patricia says, a supercilious expression on her face that’s just asking to be erased with a slap. But no blow falls. Instead, to our alarm, Bunty starts to quiver like a half-set jelly; even the stiff curls on her head tremble like a tinsel halo on a coathanger-wire. She keeps on stirring the gravy, pretending that this attack of emotion isn’t happening. A very surprised Patricia lets her guard fall and hesitantly asks, ‘Is something wrong, Mummy?’ This unexpected manifestation of compassion (‘Mummy’!) drives Bunty over the edge and she snaps, ‘Wrong? Only you – that’s the only thing that’s wrong with me,’ and a furiously white-lipped Patricia shouts in her face, ‘What a bloody cow you are!’ and flees the kitchen. Bunty continues her tremulous gravy-stirring as if nothing had happened and without looking at me says, ‘Shift yourself, Ruby, do something useful and get the plates.’ It’s only when she’s dishing up the butter beans that look like pale little foetuses curled up on the ‘Harvest’ dinner plates that she finally dissolves, great tears falling down her cheeks like crystal pear-drops which I try to mop up ineffectively with a Kleenex. By the time we eat our Sunday dinner the gravy is congealed and the peas almost frozen up again. How on earth am I supposed to pass my ‘Verbal Reasoning’ paper on Tuesday when I see so little of it in the course of my everyday life?