He decided that Rose would be the easiest one to question. She was the youngest, and because he’d heard her name before, at least he’d know how to address her. He waited until all four had collected their various clothes and belongings, and begun to stroll along flower-bordered paths towards a low brick building, which was presumably the club house. Stephen was wondering how on earth he could detach Rose from the others, but luck was on his side. When they reached the building, and the oldest woman said, ‘What about tea?’ Two of the others agreed that tea would be just what they needed, but Rose said, ‘I won’t, thanks all the same. If I’m not home when Chris gets back, he’ll never get down to his homework.’
She turned to leave the others, sitting at a table on the veranda, and Stephen found it natural to fall into step beside her, having also refused tea on the grounds that he wasn’t thirsty.
‘You coming with me? That’s nice,’ she said.
‘I’ll see you home,’ Stephen said, hoping that her home wasn’t too far away.
‘I’ve got the car here,’ she said, and Stephen saw that they were entering the car park. She opened the door of a small red car and motioned to him to get into the passenger seat.
‘Sure it’s all right, my coming with you?’ Stephen asked.
‘Chris’ll be pleased. He thinks you’re the tiger’s whiskers,’ she said. Stephen was sure that she was Chris’s mum. So where did his own mum fit into this family? He had no idea who the other three tennis players might be.
She drove competently through heavy traffic. Stephen waited until they had turned into a complex of smaller roads. Then he said, ‘Rose!’
He saw that she did not like this. She said, ‘You cheeky digger! It’s Aunt Rose to you, and don’t you forget it.’
He said, ‘How come you’re my aunt?’
‘What do you mean, “How come?” I’ve always been your aunt, haven’t I?’
‘Because you’re my mum’s sister?’ It was a guess, and he felt brave.
Again he could see that she was disturbed. She said, ‘Let’s just say I’m your proper aunt and leave it at that.’
‘But were you my mum’s sister?’
‘What about it, if I was?’
‘I wanted to ask you. About my mum.’
She looked at him quickly. Then she said, in a very quiet voice, ‘We don’t talk about her.’
‘Why not?’
She said, ‘Wait till we get indoors, will you? I can’t park the car while I’m thinking what to tell you.’
She drove into the parking space in front of a small house. They both got out of the car. Rose locked it, then she opened the front door and called, ‘Chris! Chris! I’m back!’ A voice from somewhere inside called, ‘All right! In the kitchen.’
It was a large, well fitted kitchen. It seemed to have all the kitchen machinery Stephen had ever heard of. Chris, the boy he had last seen in the Martello tower—or should he say in Mrs Robinson’s cellar?—was sitting at the table, eating. His mother said, ‘Look who I’ve brought home with me!’ and the boy said, ‘Good-o,’ and went on eating.
‘Sit down. I’ll get you some Coke,’ Rose said. From an enormous refrigerator, she took two cans of Coke, pushed one across to Stephen and opened the other for herself. She looked at Stephen, and then at Chris. It was clear that she was telling him that she wouldn’t talk in front of the boy.
‘What sort of a day at school?’ she asked and Chris said, ‘Lousy. I couldn’t do the maths and Peter made me stay in and go over them again with him when the others were outside.’
‘Bad luck,’ Rose said. Her voice was absent. She wasn’t really thinking about Chris and his maths.
‘Are you any good at maths?’ Chris asked Stephen and Stephen said, ‘No. Not very. I’m always being kept in to do things again.’
‘You see? It’s in the genes!’ Chris said to his mother.
‘Don’t you start talking about genes. You don’t pay attention in class, that’s why you can’t do your sums,’ his mother said.
Stephen felt that this could go on for longer than he could bear. He said to Rose, ‘Aunt Rose, I wanted to ask you a question.’
She said quickly, ‘Not now.’ Then, to Chris, ‘Chris, be a love and go into the living room, and get started on your homework, will you? Deedie and I have got to have a talk.’
‘What about?’ Chris asked, but he stood up and pushed back his chair.
‘Never you mind what about. Nothing for you to worry about. You could get in a quarter of an hour’s work before tea.’
His look at her said plainly, ‘I know when I’m not wanted.’ But he left the room. As soon as the door was shut, Stephen said, ‘I want to know about my mum.’
‘We don’t talk about her,’ Rose said, uncomfortably.
‘Why not?’
‘Because of the disgrace.’
‘What disgrace? What did she do?’
‘You shouldn’t be asking me. I’m not going to say. I don’t know why you’ve suddenly started asking questions now, after all this time,’ Rose said.
‘After all what time? I’ve always wanted to know what happened to her.’
‘I’m not going to talk,’ Rose said, and she shut her mouth in a firm thin line.
‘You could tell me about her when she was little,’ Stephen said.
‘Why do you want to know about her when she was little?’
He didn’t know how to answer this. He said, ‘I don’t know. I just wondered what she was like when she was a little girl.’
In spite of herself, Rose was smiling. ‘She was naughty,’ she said.
‘Did you get on with her? Or did you and she fight?’
‘Fought like devils. About everything.’
‘What did she do that was naughty?’
‘What didn’t she do? Never did as she was told. Ran away more than once.’
‘Did you run with her?’
‘Me? No. I was the good one, see? It was all I had. Being good, I mean. And pretty. I was prettier than her, and she was jealous.’
Stephen looked at Rose and wondered how she’d managed to be pretty, with that lank pale hair and soft pale face. The face was flabby now, with puffy cheeks and not enough chin, but perhaps when she’d been young she hadn’t been pale and puffy.
‘Why did she run away?’
Rose was confused. She said, ‘She was always difficult to please.’
‘What sort of things did you fight about?’
‘I said, everything. Clothes. Our mum liked to have us dressed alike, and Margaret wouldn’t. If we had things that matched, she’d change them. I remember once she cut a great hole in her new frock and put on a patch out of some red material she’d got from somewhere. I can tell you, our mum was furious. She beat her.’
‘Beat her! You mean, with a stick?’ Stephen was horrified. He was not surprised his mum had run away.
‘With a belt. She was bruised for a week after that.’
‘What else did she do?’
‘Once she painted her face green. And her arms and her neck. Then she went in next door to old Mrs Armitage and told her she was an alien from the stars come to get her.’
‘Why did she do that?’
‘Mrs Armitage had told on her for climbing over the fence to fetch a ball that had gone in her garden.’
Stephen felt that his mum had certainly not been lacking in spirit. Or in invention. And he had gained something he hadn’t known before. His mum had been called Margaret. How ridiculous that her own son hadn’t till now known her name!
‘Go on.’
‘That’s all.’
‘There must have been a lot more. Who was older, you or her?’
‘She was older than me. There was your Aunt Dorothy was the oldest of us girls.’
‘Was she naughty too?’
‘No. She was the clever one. Got a scholarship to the big school and went into the Civil Service.’
‘Is she out here too?’ Stephen asked.
&n
bsp; ‘Didn’t you see her playing tennis not half an hour ago? Of course she’s out here. We all came together. With you.’
‘Why did you go to Australia?’ He should have asked, ‘Why did you come?’ but Rose did not notice the mistake.
She stared at him. ‘Why? Because of the disgrace, of course. Now, that’s enough,’ she said, getting up from the table. She called out, ‘Chris! You can come back now if you want.’ She was bustling about, fetching mugs and plates, preparing for a meal.
Stephen said, ‘I wish you’d tell me some more.’ But the boy Chris was in the room with them now, and Rose shook her head.
‘You’ll stay and have some tea?’ she asked, but Stephen said, ‘No, thanks. I ought to be getting back.’ He hoped she wouldn’t ask where he was going, as he couldn’t have told her anything she would believe. To his relief she allowed him to leave. Probably she was as pleased as he was to end the conversation.
Outside the door he was lost. He hadn’t taken notice of the roads along which she had driven him. He walked in what he hoped was the right direction, and finally, despairing, asked a passer-by to direct him to the tennis courts in the park, hoping that there was only one anywhere near. It was a long hot walk, and he was immensely relieved when he saw trees and grass and heard the sound of tennis players hitting balls and calling to each other. Beyond the courts he saw the door he had come through. Gratefully, he turned the key in the lock and escaped. Back to his own world. As he stepped through the door into the little street in his own town, he wondered what would happen if on one of these occasions his key wouldn’t open the door and he found himself stuck in that other strange world.
16
The next key that Stephen used was not one from his collection. It did not lead him into another life, it did not provide him with an adventure.
He had been considering how to find out more about his mum. Should he confront his dad by saying, ‘I know that my mum’s name was Margaret, and I know her family are all living in Australia. Now I want you to tell me why they went out there and what the disgrace was.’? He didn’t think his dad would tell him anything. He would simply put on that closed up look and say, ‘Stephen, I’ve told you, I don’t want to talk about her.’ And that would be that.
If he was ever to find out what had really happened, he would have to find another way. He didn’t expect there would be any chance of doing this, but a week or two after his last adventure, Fortune played into his hands. It was a Saturday, so he was at home when his dad rang from the garage to say he hadn’t got his keys. Would Stephen look around for them, and would he be there to let him in when he got back that evening?
Stephen found the keys at once. Dad had left them in his room. Something he never usually did, but this morning he wasn’t going to work at the garage but was being taken off by George, his friend, to look at another garage which was for sale outside the town. The two of them were going to work out whether they could afford to buy it if they decided it would be a good investment. Stephen hadn’t understood whether they wanted to run it instead of the one they already had in town or if it would be an extra. So his dad hadn’t needed his car keys and he’d forgotten the lot.
Stephen rang the garage to leave a message for Dad that the keys were safe and that he’d be there to let him in. After which he’d sat down again to go on reading, when it occurred to him to have a look at Dad’s keys. There were several in the bunch. The Yale front door key, of course. The two car keys, doors and ignition. Four or five keys to all the garage gates and doors and cupboards and drawers that had to be kept locked when the place was empty. There was the key of the padlock which fastened Dad’s one solid piece of luggage, an old brown suitcase, which he never used. There was the key of his desk in the flat. But he never locked it. And there was another key which Stephen didn’t recognize. An ordinary key with a rounded top, a long neck and quite a simple pattern of wards.
Like the key of a cupboard or a box or a chest. Or a drawer.
He’d been looking at it for half a minute before he suddenly realized what it was. It was the key to the locked drawer of Dad’s little chest.
He looked at it for a much longer time after he’d identified it before he decided to use it. Then, feeling guilty and excited and defiant, he went into Dad’s bedroom. Why shouldn’t he look inside the drawer? It probably contained nothing he hadn’t seen dozens of times before. Dad had never told him not to. If Dad had any guilty secrets, he shouldn’t have left his keys lying around where anyone could take them.
He inserted the ordinary key in the lock and opened the drawer. It didn’t look promising. There was a bundle of letters, there was an out-of-date diary. Besides these were some yellowing clippings from newspapers, held together by an elastic band. There was a photograph album, much the worse for wear, a tin box labelled ‘Capstan Tobacco’ and several biros which probably didn’t work, judging by their age.
He picked up the tin box, which rattled in a promising way, but when opened showed him only some old coins, dating before decimalization. Large dark pennies, worn thin with use, two sixpences, what he recognized as a half crown, and a folded brown note, which disappointingly turned out to be worth not ten pounds, but ten shillings. Fifty pence. Not exactly treasure trove.
Next he investigated the newspaper clippings. They all dealt with the same subject. A murder. He didn’t bother to read the text, just glanced at the headlines and the pictures. WOMAN KILLS ABUSING STEPFATHER, the big type screamed, and MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER? Stephen wasn’t much interested. He wondered why his dad had wanted to keep these cuttings, he had never seemed to want to read this sort of story as long as Stephen could remember. He looked briefly at the pictures. The stepfather was an ordinary sort of bloke, rather good looking in a foxy sort of way. The girl had curly dark hair and, without being beautiful or even pretty, had a face that made you want to look at it again. She looked lively, as if she could have been fun to be with. The pictures, Stephen supposed, had been taken before she was accused of murder, because in most of them she was smiling, or looking serious but as if she might smile at any minute. Someone had blacked out her name all through the article.
He looked at the last cutting to see what had happened to her. She had been found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to prison for twelve years. He wondered what she looked like now.
He looked at the bundle of letters. But although he was already looking at what his dad hadn’t meant him to see, he baulked at reading his dad’s private correspondence. He’d hate it if anyone read what he wrote privately, though that wasn’t much. He had once tried to keep a diary, but either it was dead boring or embarrassing, and he’d quickly given it up. The thought of anyone reading what he had written had made him sweat with shame. He pulled the photograph album towards him and looked at the first pages. There was a picture of a house, and underneath it was written ‘14 Acanthus Grove’ and a date seventeen years back. He had an idea that this was where his dad had lived with Gran when he was a young man. There was a figure standing at the open door of the house, but it was too small and indistinct for him to see who it was. Then there were photographs of groups, all of young men. Some of them wore sports gear, so he supposed this was a team his dad had belonged to. Indeed, by looking very closely, he thought he could see Dad in the middle row, looking seriously at the camera. He had had more hair in those days and was larger all round, not fat, but quite well covered. Another group was of school children. Stephen couldn’t be sure that he had recognized his dad among those rows of boys, with the meaningless grins children display when the photographer says, ‘Smile, please!’
He turned two pages, from which looked people he’d never seen, with his dad’s neat writing below the faces of young men with cowlicks, young men with surprisingly long hair, young men and boys looking embarrassed, pleased with themselves, but one or two looked as if they’d been caught unawares and were at ease, natural, not putting on any sort of act.
He came to the next page wh
ich was entirely taken up with one large picture of a girl. A girl with dark curling hair, looking at the camera as if she was just about to ask a question. Not a beautiful girl, not even a very pretty girl, but a girl who was immensely alive. In her hand she was holding a flower. A white flower, a very neatly arranged flower, with all its petals in order round the centre, so perfect that it almost might not have been real.
Underneath the portrait his dad had written ‘Margaret’ and a date.
He put out his hand for the newspaper cuttings. He compared the picture of the murderess with the Margaret in the album. There could be no doubt that they were the same.
He couldn’t believe it. He did not want to believe it.
He turned the next page of the album. There was the girl again, with her hair done differently and wearing another outfit, but recognizably the same. She wasn’t looking at the camera, this time, but down at the baby in her arms. Underneath this picture his dad’s writing read, ‘Margaret and Stephen’.
Stephen?
It couldn’t be him. He couldn’t have a murderess as a mother.
He looked at the date. It was a little after his own birthday. The same year. It was not a stranger that the Margaret was holding.
It was him.
He felt cold. He felt sick.
He put the album back in the drawer together with the bits of old newspaper. He couldn’t remember how everything had been placed when he’d first opened the drawer. He just had to hope that his dad wouldn’t remember either. He shut and locked the drawer, feeling all the time as if none of this was real. He hadn’t opened the drawer, he hadn’t read those paragraphs in the newspaper, he hadn’t looked in the photograph album. He went to his room and lay on the bed.
He couldn’t think straight. What he had seen must add up to some story, but it was a story he didn’t want to know. He found that he was saying to himself, ‘No! No! It can’t be that!’ The pictures of the not quite pretty girl kept on coming before his eyes. The posed photographs with his dad’s neat writing below. That unforgiving date. The headlines from the newspapers. He tried to push them away, but they always came back. Presently he stood up and walked about his room. It wasn’t large enough. He went out into the passage and walked to the kitchen, back to his room, along the passage again, the kitchen again, the passage, his room. He picked up the keys and opened the drawer. Perhaps the whole thing had been a nightmare, none of it was true. But there were the yellowed cuttings, there was the album. He didn’t need to examine them again to know what they told him.
The If Game Page 9