by Jane Bailey
‘Hold on with both hands, my love,’ said Gracie.
At the same time the conductress shouted, ‘Hold on tight!’ from somewhere deep inside the bus.
The vehicle swung us all to the right, and then back to the left. I was forced into Gracie, and then into the nun. I felt her yielding flesh and saw, unmistakably, the eyes screw themselves up at the jerking of the bus. The smile disappeared and the mouth grew rigid and thin; the brows frowned ferociously and the nostrils flared. I was certain that this angry gargoyle of a face was meant for me, and just as it began to calm itself, a fresh jerk pushed me into her again and the face reappeared, teeth clenched and stony.
I began to sweat. I could see the road ahead was anything but straight, hear the ‘Hold on tight!’ again and I clutched at Gracie in panic.
‘Hold on!’ she said. ‘Don’t hold me – we’ll both be over!’ And we swayed from side to side again. Each time I lurched into the nun with my shoulder, and soon I was pushing her harder than I needed to. That soft, spongy nun-look hardened again. Her nostrils grew and her lips shrunk; her eyes squeezed tight with the concentration of staying upright, looked so full of spite I could feel my palms grow sticky as I clasped the pole next to hers. Her nails, so neat and clean on their snowy fingertips, seemed to grow and curve and twist into talons. I could feel my breath failing me: great gasps of air barely lasted a moment and were no sooner exhaled than drawn in again, desperately.
When the bus took the next corner I rammed her. She toppled sideways and nearly fell down the step out of the bus. ‘Joy! Steady on!’ I heard Gracie say, but I wasn’t listening. The towering face of the nun seemed pitted against me: red, panting and full of frown.
The idea came to me before I could register it. It came so naturally it was more of a reflex than a decision. With the next stagger into Gracie and the corresponding swing the other way, I pitched into the nun with the whole weight of my body, shouldering her down the steps and out of the bus. She toppled like a baby bird, spreading wings of raven black as she flew into the wind, and everyone on the left side of the bus saw her knickers before she flopped into a heap somewhere back up the road.
It’s all a bit foggy after that. I think the bus stopped, but I can’t remember if the nun was badly hurt or not, whether she continued her journey or was helped into a nearby house or what. I don’t know to this day whether she told anyone I’d pushed her, whether any of the passengers saw me push her, or if Gracie saw. Gracie didn’t say anything to me. I often caught her studying me after that. I would look up and she’d have a face filled with curiosity. But if she had seen me do it, she didn’t say. She never said a thing. Just kept on loving me.
10
Miss Wallock was the one who first made me realize that Gracie had a secret too.
If Swallockelder was as batty as a fruitcake, the younger Miss Wallock was perfectly sane. When I was a little older, Gracie started sending me a few doors down to Miss Wallock’s for piano lessons on Tuesdays. I went straight from school, which meant Gracie had a bit more time at the dress agency where she worked, or else could catch the bus back a bit later from shopping in town.
Miss Wallock was something of a rival to Gracie, it always seemed. They had known each other from girlhood and took pains to compare every detail of their lives.
‘You’ve got a linen tablecloth, I suppose,’ Miss Wallock might say.
‘Yes, I think we have one – for best, though.’
‘Ah! For best. Of course. Now is that embroidered?’
‘I think so – maybe lace-edged.’
‘By Gracie, is it?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘Probably not. She knows her sewing, doesn’t she? She never was much at lace-making, though. Tried, of course. Always did work hard.’
And whenever I got back home, rather than questions about my lesson, there would always be a little inquest.
‘Were those new lace curtains I thought I saw in Ivy’s front window?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘Hmm. Ask her next time.’
Or ‘Sherbet lemon, is it, for doing well? Where would she’ve got them from, I wonder. Thomson’s, is it?’
I was well aware of my position between the two of them, and over time I learnt to play the situation better than the piano. If I wanted more attention off Gracie, I would give her a little tweak, and if I was fed up with Miss Wallock for over-working me on the scales I would feed her a little nugget of jealousy to last the rest of the lesson.
I realized now, of course, that she would be a prime source of information, and fed her compliments to get her in the mood.
‘What an exquisite vase,’ I said, admiring a dull-looking clod of ceramic on the sideboard. ‘We’ve got nothing like that at home.’
‘Really? No vases?’
I sighed, ruefully. ‘Oh, we just put flowers in jars. I wish we had beautiful vases like you.’
Miss Wallock simpered in an over-modest fashion.
‘I’m surprised Gracie isn’t more like you. You must’ve known each other since you were young, back in olden days.’
Miss Wallock smiled. ‘We’ve known each other since I can remember. We went to school together.’
‘I bet you both had a string of boys after you. And men.’
Miss Wallock gave a high-pitched giggle, and sounded just like a girl.
‘Heavens above! We had no such thing. Mind you, I had my fair share – I was quite a beauty, some say, when I was young.’ She sighed, got up from the piano stool, and wandered over to the sideboard.
‘And what about Gracie? I don’t suppose she had any young men, did she?’
I knew she would respond to this provocation. She took something out of the sideboard drawer and turned bright eyes on me. ‘Gracie? Lord, no! She never had any luck … look …’
She stood next to me and showed me a dog-eared photograph. A row of girls were standing dressed in white and in the centre was a girl wearing a crown.
‘Is that you?’ I pointed at the May Queen.
‘No, that’s me.’ She pointed to a passably fine-looking girl, and I responded ecstatically.
‘How beautiful!’
Miss Wallock inhaled a deep lungful of satisfaction.
‘Which one is Gracie?’
‘Have a guess.’
I scanned the photograph. They were a motley crew, it had to be said, with every kind of physical defect known to man, and mostly they looked completely surprised to be wearing pretty white dresses. I was sure I would find Gracie, because I’d seen pictures of her at home. And there, the eyes had it – there she was but … what a face! What a startled, smiling, youthful face! And the eyes, the old sad eyes I was so familiar with, now they sparkled prettily out of the picture from under a gloriously wide-brimmed hat. The same eyes. The very same, but transformed.
‘There – there she is.’
‘That’s right. And here’s
Miss Wallock wittered on about every single girl in the line-up: who they married, where they were living now. I let her get on with it, then I said, ‘Wasn’t Gracie ever even in love? Not once?’
Miss Wallock giggled again. ‘Heavens above, Joy Burrows! You do ask some questions!’ But it was clear I’d hit upon a topic she was interested in, and a wicked, conspiratorial look came to her face. ‘Well … there was someone … once.’
‘Who?’
‘Well … I couldn’t possibly say …’ She folded her lips together tightly and replaced the photograph in the sideboard drawer.
‘Was it a gentleman?’
Her eyes widened. Yes, I definitely saw them widen. ‘Whoever told you that? My goodness, wherever did you hear that?’
‘It’s true, then?’
‘Did Gracie say that?’
‘No. It is true, then?’
She parked her wide behind next to mine on the piano stool, and looked at me full of secrets. ‘You’ll have to ask Gracie. I can’t go telling you things like that.’
‘Oh please, Miss Wallock.’
‘Certainly not. She’d never forgive me. No. If she got one sniff of it … one sniff … Some things are best left unsaid. Now find all the policeman Cs for me.’
I gave her one last forlorn look, and played all the Cs on the keyboard.
‘And all the doggie Ds.’ She licked her finger to turn a page in the music book. What with the smell of her metallic breath, her soapy cardigan, and the overenthusiastic layer of polish on the piano, Miss Wallock’s was always a very odoriferous experience.
At least I knew now that there was something Gracie hadn’t told me. I had caught the scent of mystery, and I was determined to track it down.
11
It was in the summer of 1931 that I first began my own affair with the mysterious Buckleigh household, because that was the summer I first met Celia. It was one warm June evening after school – I was about eleven at the time – and a crowd of us were playing up by the gates: me, Mo, Tilly and Spit Palmer. Mo was still small and skinny, her younger sister was taller and more robust, and Spit was as sweet and quiet as ever. Spit stood with her back to the high dry stone wall and we lined up facing her:
‘Queenie, Queenie, who’s got the ball?
Is she fat or is she tall?
Or is she thin like a rolling pin?’
Spit stood on one leg and chewed a plait, considering us.
‘Joy – handth.’
I brought my hands round from behind my back, palms up.
More chewing.
‘Mo – legth.’
Mo parted her ankles, but no ball fell out of her knees or her thighs.
‘Wider.’
Nothing.
‘Tilly—’
‘She’s thin like a rolling pin!’
We all looked up to the voice and Spit turned to look up too, but we could see nothing.
‘Thin like a rolling pin!’ came the voice again. It was coming from behind the wall.
We looked at each other, thrilled and wary. Spit backed away from the wall and came to stand with the rest of us.
‘Who’s there?’ asked Mo.
After a short silence, as if the voice were considering what to do next, came the answer, ‘Me.’
As we stood bewildered, a head appeared slowly above the upright stones at the top of the wall. It was a girl our age with the fine features of a porcelain doll and one long toffee-coloured plait.
‘I’m Celia! Tell me your names!’
She seemed so pleased to meet us that we all did as we were told, and chimed our names out in unison.
‘Golly! Steady on! Let me see … Rose—’
‘We call her Spit.’
‘How dreadful! Poor Rose. I shall call you Rose … Tilly … Mo – I suppose that’s short for Maureen and …’
She put her head on one side and considered me. I felt a mixture of disappointment that she hadn’t heard my name and gratitude that she should gaze at my face for so long.
‘Joy,’ I supplied.
‘Mad Joy, we call ’er.’
‘Joy …’ The girl repeated it wistfully, as though it pleased her. ‘Why mad?’
The others looked confused, as if they had been asked a tricky question in class.
‘Just is,’ shrugged Mo.
Celia took a satisfied deep breath in. ‘Oh well, I shall soon find out. I’m coming over!’
‘Watch out! There’s glass!’ I was foolish enough to imagine she didn’t know that her own walls were covered in broken glass to deter intruders. But Celia had disappeared, and reappeared a few yards further down the road outside the wall.
‘It’s okay, thanks. I have my own secret way out!’
Now she was standing before us and we could see her full perfection. She wore a dropped waist summer frock with glorious red poppies on it, and red shoes with a bar and button. None of us could think of anything to say. We just stood there gawping at her.
‘May I play?’
We nodded, but didn’t move.
‘What shall we play then?’
We looked at each other, terrified.
‘I’ve seen you playing on a see-saw you made, over there by the field. Can I have a go?’
We would have to make it again; it consisted of a split trunk the boys had lifted on to an old broken sheep trough. But we couldn’t run fast enough, and between us we rolled the log up on to the crumbled stone, but it swung in all directions, giving an unpredictable lateral ride as well as a vertical one.
‘What about your lovely dress?’ asked Tilly, when Celia straddled the filthy old log.
‘Oh, don’t worry! They’re only play clothes! Whoo …!’
She was flung about in all directions, and shouted lots of wonderful words like ‘Golly!’ and ‘Cripes!’ which we immediately adopted as our own.
When we were called home for bed she made us promise not to tell anyone about her playing with us. We shook our heads solemnly and skipped home on air.
‘You look pleased with yourself,’ said Gracie as she tucked me up.
‘Golly! Do I?’
She frowned at me, then shook her head and blew the candle out. ‘Whatever next!’
My thoughts exactly.
12
The summer had emerged with its usual trickery: canopies of green unfurling overnight, trees heavy with leaves you might not notice until a slight breeze shook them into a thrilling frenzy, or the late sun transformed them into translucent shimmering emeralds. The clod of blank sky that had sat over us all winter was now a screen of moving shapes. Summer was here and so was Celia. The two seemed to have arrived together, with a new moon, and that made her pretty magical stuff.
The four of us, Tilly, Mo, Spit and me, made the Buckleigh House entrance our regular playground now. George would sometimes tag along because they had a dog called Zeus that he wanted to befriend. Stinker didn’t play with us any more because he was about thirteen by now and into more manly pursuits. He and the other boys smoked fag ends collected from outside the pub and did a good deal of loitering. We completely forgot about Mrs Emery, and her husband must have slept peacefully for a while, until the other children. It wasn’t long before our new playground sparked interest in other children, who made their way up out of the village too. But Mrs Emery’s had the same magnetic pull it had had on us, and very soon she was fuming at her gate again, waving her arms and threatening to call the police. What she actually did was march down to the school, for soon all the parents were warning their children not to play ‘up past the church’.
This scuppered our new games for a while.
We mostly played families and adventure games. Celia liked to be in a poor family, and we all wanted to be in rich families. I didn’t mind being poor though, if it meant I could be Celia’s mother or sister and roam about penniless and ragged and forlorn with her, arm in arm or starving under bushes. Mo and Spit didn’t see the disadvantage in living in a castle and never getting to touch Celia at all. George didn’t count because he was never human. Tilly sometimes gave me a wistful glance, and asked if she could be poor too. Then Celia would invariably make her our starving cousin who was locked in a dungeon and we had to save her. If I noticed the unfairness of this I was too selfish to mention it, for I was too busy enjoying my death-defying feats of bravery with Celia, the proximity of her cotton lawn dress, the coolness of her palm, the touch of gentility.
One day up at the house, George said in a sudden spurt of undogginess: ‘Why don’t we ever play in your garden?’
We all stared at him, and then at Celia, and then at our feet. We would never have asked it ourselves, but it seemed a fair question. Celia pushed a strand of hair behind her ear and sighed. ‘Well! If you all come the gardener will see and tell you all to clear off. And he’d tell my mother and we don’t want that …’ We didn’t ask why that would be so unthinkable, but we all knew: the wall separated two different worlds, and whilst we had allowed her into ours, we were not allowed into hers. ‘There might be a way …’ S
he pulled her plait around to the front and slowly brushed her cheek with it. ‘I’ll take one at a time. I’ll start with Joy. The rest of you close your eyes. You mustn’t see where I take her.’
‘What about Joy? How come she can see?’ asked Mo.
Celia glanced at me. ‘I’ll put my hands over her eyes.’
‘When’s it our go, then?’
‘Later. Wait here.’
I closed my eyes and let her lead me down along the wall.
‘You can open them!’ she whispered, and we clambered behind a bush and up a piece of crumbled wall. On the top of the wall were lichen-covered stones broken to reveal the yellow yoke of their insides. We scrambled over them, free of glass, and jumped down under some yews. I stood and looked. The great house with its golden pillars, a long glass-covered building next to it full of greenery, a lawn before it so neatly cut it looked like felt.
‘This way!’ she hissed, and grabbed my hand.
There were three sheds: a ‘potting shed’, a ‘tool shed’ and a ‘den’. It was to her den she took me, a small musty-smelling hut full of girls’ comics and a variety of sports bats and sticks. We must have stayed there for half an hour, with her pushing me into a corner every so often and hiding me in an old rug so that the gardener wouldn’t see me.
He wouldn’t have done anything anyhow, for he was Mr Rollins, whose three boys were at school with me and used to play in the grounds when the Buckleighs were on holiday. I didn’t mention this in case Celia didn’t know. Also I was rather enjoying this game of subterfuge, which was still fraught with the danger of seeing Mr or Mrs Buckleigh.