by Sally Bayley
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Mr Robinson had murdered Mrs Robinson. We knew this because we never ever saw her. Not once, not ever, not after all these years.
Maisie said she had seen her, just the once, early one morning when she was coming in with the milk. But we never had. We’d never seen Mrs Robinson and we were sure that Mr Robinson had killed Mrs Robinson. Mr Robinson was a big fat liar!
Mr Robinson, we decided, needed watching. So we climbed to the top of the house to listen for the sound of his breathing. We wanted to see if we could hear anyone breathing behind that dark door.
We pressed our ears to the door. But the door was thick. We strained and strained to hear something. My brother stuck a piece of string through the keyhole and wiggled it. He tugged and tugged at the key to try to make it fall. Then he stuck his fingers under the bottom of the door until he felt the silver key. The key was hard and cold. He squeezed and squeezed his fingers into the narrow crack until they were red and torn. Then he shone his torch on his fingers, and that’s when we saw the blood. Blood all over his fingers. We screamed and ran downstairs and Mum came out and said, Shhhhh! For Pete’s sake, I’m trying to sleep!
But after a while we went back up. We went back again and again. We peered through the keyhole until our eyes hurt because we were absolutely sure of this: Mrs Robinson had been lying on the kitchen floor with blood caked to her face for years. Mr Robinson was a big fat liar!
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I have at several times in my life recognized that there was evil in the neighbourhood, the surroundings, that the environment of someone who was evil was near me, connected with what was happening.
Miss Marple (Nemesis)
Where were you when it all happened, that’s what you need to know. Where were you, and where was everyone else? If Miss Marple wanted to find out what had happened she would start by asking some questions, some very particular questions.
‘What happened, dear? Can you remember where you were when it happened? Who were you standing next to? What were you wearing? Were you holding anything in your hands? What happened the moment, the very moment, when the man with the dazzling light and the gun said “Stick ’em up”?’
And I would say: ‘I remember the back door standing open and Mummy with a pale face and her hair lit up like a lamp. Mummy’s face wasn’t moving; she looked like a ghost. Mummy was a ghost come back from the dead and the man next to her was saying something in a language I couldn’t understand. He had a red face and no hair and Mummy wasn’t moving at all. Mummy was as still as a statue. The man with the red face was the only one talking, and all the time the light kept shining through Mummy’s hair, shining and shining and shining. And that is all I could look at, Mummy’s hair, which was as neat as a haystack.’
The only word I remember from that day is ‘hospital’. Mummy and the man with no hair said they were going to the hospital. And I thought, hospitals are for sick people or for children who have bashed their heads.
That day Mummy went into her bedroom and shut the door. She went into her room and closed the curtains. She got into bed with her clothes on. Mummy stayed in bed for years, until the day the lady in brown came round with her notepad and began to ask questions.
7
Poor Sue
They were whispering together for half-an-hour before they fell asleep. I caught scraps of their conversation, from which I was able only too distinctly to infer the main subject discussed.
(Jane Eyre)
If you listen carefully, you can work out things that adults don’t tell you. You can hear small scraps, words floating through windows on a hazy summer day. If you sit outside the kitchen window downstairs you can hear Mum and Maze whispering. You can hear bits and pieces of Poor Sue coming your way on the breeze.
Poor Sue was married to a man. His name was David, like my brother. Sue and David were married for a while and then something interrupted it, the being married I mean. I strain my ears but I can’t tell you any more than that because the wind keeps scooping up the words. The words never get any further than the washing line before the line strangles the words.
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Mum speaks Greek but she doesn’t like me listening because she says it’s personal and private. Greek is a special gift from God. But I don’t see how that can be in our house. Nothing is private here.
Private is for someone with a big house with a wooden gate and crunchy gravel stones. Private is for the people who live on Maltravers Drive. Private is for the girls who go to Rose Mead School in the middle of town. Private is a place with pretty flintstone walls around it to keep out the tramps and alcoholics. We could never ever live anywhere private.
Still, I know there are private things going on all around me, but I don’t know what they are. They aren’t the things people usually mean when they say something is private. ‘Private’ in my house means secrets. ‘Private’ means Poor Sue.
Of all the ghosts, Sue is the one who has survived. After she went missing, people still mentioned her name. Sue’s name never went away, not even after all these years.
‘Gone off the rails,’ said my aunt wearily. ‘She has only herself to blame for the way she went … Sue was a poor little thing … No real guidance, that was her trouble … Married the first man she met. She had nobody to show her a way through.’
Through what, I wondered? Back through the white door upstairs, back to that front room in 1969, the one I see in my dream.
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And the dream is always the same.
It is 1969 and a striking, dark-haired woman sits in the front room of a terraced house marrying herself off to Jesus. Her altarpiece is a brocade-covered television. Her nave is an orange and brown carpet. Across her face a white mantilla veil rises and falls. White lace touches the edge of her tongue. She kisses it softly. She is a young bride marrying her lover. Tonight she will dance with her Lord. Tonight her kingdom will come.
‘Lift your eyes unto the Lord, unto the Lord!’ And the cross-legged people look up towards the ceiling; the cross-legged people lift their hands in prayer.
‘Christ is near, oh Christ is near, Christ, He is near. Oh Christ we hear you, oh Christ you are near. Draw near!’
Her head rocks and her eyes close into tight black buds. Her mouth falls open. What comes out is neither English nor human. It is the sound of women in long-forgotten temples, women with their tongues cut out. It is the sound of madness, of the moon caught between the trees, howling.
The lights go out. A woman screams. Someone tears a nail.
The dark-haired woman begins to rise and fall. Her tongue flicks in and out; her head falls backwards.
Suddenly, hot rocks fly across the room. A window smashes.
‘Gooolagoooolagoooolagah. Gooolagooooolagooooolaha.’ Glass begins to fly.
My aunt has caught the sound of God in the back of her throat and is wailing with all her might.
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But I had started to tell you about Poor Sue. Sue wasn’t exactly real any more because she had disappeared, but once upon a time Sue really was there. She was there in the garden, by the back door; there in the blue and white kitchen drinking tea with the people wearing coloured clothes; the people who sang songs about Zion and Babylon; the people who came in and out through the back door with long hair; the people who lifted their faces up to the Lord. Sue was there too, lifting her hands to the Lord, and it is Sue who reminds me of Jane Eyre, or Jane Eyre who reminds me of Sue, who Charlotte Brontë says is a small brown bird.
Years later, someone told me that Sue had been an orphan too, like Jane. I think it was Someone’s Mother. Sue had no mother, she said, no people of her own, so the people of Babylon, the people I see in my dreams, scooped her up and took her to a tower where they gave her a room overlooking the sea.
Where the Northern Ocean, in vast whirls,
Boils r
ound the naked, melancholy isles
Of farthest Thule; and the Atlantic surge
Pours in among the stormy Hebrides.
(Jane Eyre)
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The first thing I remember about Sue is that she was small and plain. If you say someone is small and plain it probably means you’re not very fond of them. If you say, instead, that someone is slight and shy then you are probably trying to redeem them. Maze says you should always focus on the redeeming features. I wouldn’t say that Sue was small and plain, but someone else might, someone who didn’t like her very much.
Sue wore brown, and brown is hard to hold on to. Brown blurs in with everything else: with the horse chestnut at the bottom of our garden; with the conkers on the ground we gathered up and baked in the oven; with the grass that very hot summer when the water ran out; with the shade of my brother’s skin; with the colour of the picnic blanket my grandmother put down to protect us from the heat; with the back of my grandmother’s hand after she’d been peeling potatoes and digging up the beans. Brown is the colour of small creatures that lie close to the ground. Brown is the colour of worms and small birds.
To say that Sue was small and brown is to say nothing at all. It is to say that she resembled a sparrow, and sparrows are very common.
‘In England, sparrows are the most common form of bird,’ says Maze, who knows everything about birds and beans. Jane Eyre is a sparrow. She is Jane who takes to the air, Jane with no perch, Jane with no family. But once upon a time, Jane Eyre did have family. Jane’s uncle was a nice man called Mr Reed, but unfortunately for Jane he is dead. Only his awful wife remains. Mrs Reed has adopted Jane, but Mrs Reed doesn’t really want her. Jane knows that her aunt hates her and her aunt knows that she knows this, and so it goes on: the hating and the concealing and then the seeing.
‘What would Uncle Reed say to you if he were alive?’ Jane screams at her aunt one morning. But once she’s begun, Jane can’t stop herself. Mrs Reed is furious and lashes out; she boxes Jane’s ears. She can’t believe her insolence!
‘They are not fit to associate with me!’ screams Jane Eyre.
Mrs Reed was rather a stout woman; but on hearing this strange and audacious declaration, she ran nimbly up the stairs, swept me like a whirlwind into the nursery, and crushing me on the edge of my crib, dared me in an emphatic voice to rise from that place, or utter one syllable during the remainder of the day … she boxed both my ears, and then left me without a word.
I’m not quite sure what ‘boxing ears’ means, but I think it means slapping someone very hard around the side of the head so that they are knocked unconscious. The white stars soon arrive. An ambulance has to be called.
Mrs Reed locks Jane in the Red Room and leaves her there for days. Her only wish now is to get her out of her sight; and so Jane is sent to Lowood School, where she is starved and beaten and frozen almost to death.
8
Rocks from the Sky
One day, not so long ago, someone called an ambulance to our house. That was the day God sent a plague of rocks down from the sky.
The day my brother Peter knocked his head hard on the paraffin heater; the heater that stands in the corner with sharp metal edges Mum is always telling us to stay away from. That day Peter banged his head and saw the stars. A few weeks later another ambulance came and carried Poor Sue away. We only saw her toes poking out from the back of the van. I caught a glimpse of a small pink hand and a tiny red beak, and I thought that Sue was done for. The black rocks had knocked her unconscious; the black rocks had boxed her ears. Sue had been crushed by the black rocks tumbling from the sky.
But I am mixing Poor Sue and Peter together. Was it Peter and then Sue, or Sue then Peter? There were two ambulances. When David went away we never heard the ambulance. We didn’t see the men in white rushing out. We never saw his body, only Mummy standing by the kitchen door looking like a ghost.
But once upon a time Sue was there and she was lying stretched out in an ambulance with her little toe poking through the gap in the door. Then there was my brother Peter; there was Peter with his broken head and Mummy speaking her Greek and me staring out the kitchen window waiting for the ambulance to come. I look up at the sky and I see dark clouds; I see Mrs Sturgess at the window next door looking down at me. I look up at Mrs Sturgess and I poke out my tongue. Then I feel bad.
So I turn back towards the kitchen table and there is Mummy with her mouth wide open and black rocks falling out.
‘Cummmmingleeeenghaawghulalghulaa, ghulala, ghulala, ghulala, cumingleeeehawghulaghulaghula, cummingleeeinghawwghulaghulaghula.’
Mummy is humming like a bee. Her mouth is writhing like a snake. I am six or seven and Mummy’s mouth is filling up with rocks and the rocks are tumbling onto the floor. I can hear the sharp bang.
‘Mummy, Mummy, are you hurt? Shut your mouth, Mummy, shut your mouth. Mummy, please shut your mouth.’
‘Ghuuullllllllllaaaparrrwarrrrrrbarralllungungungung.’
‘Mummy, Mummy, is he dead? Is he dead? Is Peter dead? Mummy, please bring him back. Bring him back, Mummy, please, please bring him back.’
It was Mrs Sturgess next door who heard the wailing through the walls and made the call. When the ambulance men came in through the back door Mummy was holding Peter tightly, rocking him back and forth and my brother was as still and quiet as a perfectly behaved baby Jesus.
‘Mummy, is Peter coming back to life now? Mummy, has God saved him? Mummy, can he breathe now? Can he breathe?’
‘Yes, darling. Peter has come back to us. We must thank God for his special words. We must remember this special occasion. AH-MEN.’ And then Mummy’s head fell forward and the dark rocks came spilling out.
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One morning, a few months after the boxing of her ears, Jane Eyre is hiding away in the nursery, making shapes from the frost on the window. She sees a small robin, a hungry little robin that came and chirruped on the twigs of the leafless cherry-tree nailed against the wall near the casement. Suddenly Bessie the maid bursts into the room and demands that Jane get herself ready to come downstairs. She is wanted by Aunt Reed, this minute!
So Jane is scooped up by Bessie and taken down to the front parlour, where she meets a black pillar of a man standing with his legs wide apart. His name is Mr Brocklehurst and he is a servant of God.
‘Well Jane Eyre, and are you a good child?’ asks Mr Brocklehurst.
But before Jane can answer, Aunt Reed butts in: ‘Mr. Brocklehurst, I believe … that this little girl has not quite the character and disposition I could wish. We must send her away, I want this child out of my sight! Out of my sight! Far away!’
9
David Copperfield
By the time I was ten I had read all of Agatha Christie and I practically knew Jane Eyre off by heart. I was ready for something new. ‘Proper Literature!’ Mum said. ‘Now go and find some Dickens! None of this murder mystery nonsense!’
So I went to the library with a list of names. Oliver Twist … Barnaby Rudge … David Copperfield. I thought I’d try a book about a David. This was difficult, because the lady at the desk was watching me like a hawk.
‘Young lady, can I help you?’
‘I’m looking for a book by Charles Dickens,’ I said.
‘Dickens! What does a child like you want with Dickens? You can’t be more than nine.’
‘Actually, I’m ten and a bit. I’m an August birthday.’
‘Don’t be so silly,’ said the brown jumper and hair. ‘You aren’t ready for Dickens.’
‘Mum says I am!’
‘Does she now? Humph.’
‘Well, I can’t keep reading Jane Eyre, can I? Mum says I need to start something new.’
The brown glasses lifted and a pair of dark narrow eyes and wispy eyebrows flew towards me. Worms, bookworms, I thought. Urgh!
‘Well, I don’t mind you going to have a quick browse. But be sure that you don’t
take any more than two books at a time. We have limited copies and I don’t want our adult readers left …’ The eyebrows were wriggling fast across the floor. Soon they would be on top of my toes and I would have to run. ‘… wanting.’
Wanting what, I wondered as I skittered into the large reading room. Wanting what exactly?
Charles Dickens was easy to find. He had rows and rows of old bound books with titles that were hard to read because they were written in gold lettering and the lettering had nearly come off. D—d Copp—f-eld. I picked up the book and opened the pages. The paper was so thin I thought it would tear. My hands were hot and sticky and stuck to the small print. I let go and the pages fell open. I peered at the words, which were small and narrow and pressed tight together. I started to read.
There comes out of the cloud, our house – not new to me, but quite familiar, in its earliest remembrance. On the ground-floor is Peggotty’s kitchen, opening into a back yard … Here is a long passage – what an enormous perspective I make of it! – leading from Peggotty’s kitchen to the front door.
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What comes first when you begin to remember – the person or the place, or is it their face? What do you see first when you close your eyes and press upon their lids? When do those purple circles start to come, along with the white dancing stars? If you want to remember, you have to travel back through those dark purple pools, back to the stars.
Lie under the trees in the back garden and press your fingers tight over your eyes. Start dreaming back past the dark spaces, past the blur and the whirr of other people’s voices and faces, back to the child lying beneath the tree in the summer sun, back to the green and the blue and the shapes you know how to draw because they are easy: dark-brown tree trunk, blue sky, green prickly grass, legs in shorts, feet in sandals, a bucket hanging from the tree that someone has thrown up there – your brother. His shout. Then your mother’s face looming over the top of you and around her white stars, your mother shooting white stars from the top of her head and the clouds scudding quickly away.