‘But it does,’ I said. ‘It does.’ I knew what it meant. ‘It means I have to find the secret about Alice.’
‘Sometimes, Peter, secrets are secrets for a reason,’ said Miss Pevensie. And then, with a sigh, she folded the card and tucked it into her jeans pocket. ‘I think you were right, Peter. It’s like you said: it’s just a joke.’ And then, ‘Knock-knock,’ she said.
‘Who’s there?’
‘Oh,’ she seemed startled but then she said, ‘Well, it’s like I said, Peter: sometimes it’s best not to know.’
I burst out of the tent, dizzy with confusion, and ran straight into the middle of Miss Drew and the Amberley Ballet Group. Parents tut-tutted as I fought my way free of pink taffeta. All around me stalls were being folded away and their contents packed into boxes.
I chased after Tommie as fast as I could.
25
‘How’s my favourite boy?’ asked Kat, hugging me from behind whilst I sat at the kitchen table, making me jump about a mile and a half. She planted a loud, wet kiss under my ear.
It was a hot afternoon and she’d been locked in her workshop all morning, suddenly appearing with a grin like she’d won the pools and humming along to the radio.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked.
Well, she could tell what I was doing just by looking, couldn’t she? With Tommie at his dad’s and Anna-Marie spending her last day in solitary confinement, I’d settled down to stick Tommie’s latest list into my scrapbook and to write about some of the things that had happened. I’d even written down all those things Miss Pevensie had said—as much as I could remember: it’d taken ages. So, anyway, I had my book spread open on the table and bits of paper and a tub of glue with a gunky glue-stick poking out the top and Kat made a joke of peering over my shoulder. I had to keep skidding my book around the table and covering it over like that man at The Copper Kettle. It was sort of funny at first but I was glad when she gave up.
‘What do you keep in there, Peter?’ she asked tapping me on the head with her knuckle. I wanted to say it was a secret but even that was a kind of secret. She wasn’t the only one with secrets, you know. ‘I wish you’d let me see,’ she said, and then grabbed the top piece of paper waving away my hand as I tried to take it back. She squinted at what I’d written, her face all puzzled. ‘I can’t even read your writing,’ she said. That was because I kind of wrote everything backwards like in a mirror (but that was a secret too).
She handed me back the paper but pretending like she was going to tug it away again. She looked a little sad as she said, ‘I wish I knew what went on in that head of yours,’ before clapping twice and, ‘Anyway,’ smiling again, ‘where’s the Dynamic Duo? I haven’t seen Anna-Marie in ages.’ I told her I was on my own. I hadn’t told her anything about Anna-Marie’s punishment obviously.
‘Marvellous,’ she cried. ‘I’ll put the kettle on and we can have a catch-up. You can tell me everything you’ve been up to.’ She went to the sink to fill the kettle, spoon tea-leaves into the pot and arrange cup, saucer and spoon. ‘Or maybe you want to ask me something.’
Well, I wanted to ask about Alice. Of course I did. But how could I? Everything I knew I knew because of, well, you know, subterfuge, just like Norman said. What would Kat say if she found out? Well, that much I didn’t want to find out. If Alice was my sister, then why had no one ever said anything about her? It was this big secret and I wasn’t supposed to know and I certainly wasn’t supposed to be going around trying to find out.
So, instead I said, ‘Will you tell me about Dad?’
She turned around to look at me. ‘I might,’ she said, slipping a hand into her front pocket. ‘That would depend on what you wanted to know.’ Standing with the kitchen window behind her, her hair shone like copper.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Just talk about him.’
‘Well, okay. Let’s see.’ She folded her arms, the tip of her tongue touching her top lip. ‘He was an amazing man your father,’ she said. ‘Have you heard the expression: still waters run deep? Well, it means that he was calm on the surface but, well, underneath … He never talked about the war. He would never say what he’d seen or what he’d done.’
‘Did you ask him?’
‘Why, when it caused him so much pain? But it made him the man he was. I suppose I thought I had a whole lifetime to find out but, well …
‘He was a good looking man your dad—dashing—everybody said so. He had a bearing. Do you know what I mean by that? It means like he had a presence.’ She poured me an orange squash, filling the glass with shiny water from the tap. It tasted sweet and syrupy. ‘It’s hard to explain,’ she went on. ‘It was the war, I suppose, all that marching up and down and parades and whatever. He never lost it. Even when he was …
‘Are you sure you want to hear this?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, he wasn’t just good looking either; he was clever too. It’s not always easy to tell the people who are genuinely clever from people who just surround themselves with cleverness. But I always knew with your dad: you could see it in his eyes.’
Kat’s own eyes grew smoky as she remembered my father, memories billowing and merging with the steam erupting from the kettle. She turned her back to me and unplugged the kettle before pouring the hot silver water. ‘After the things he’d seen in the war it,’ she said, gently shaking the tea-pot and gazing out of the window to the garden, ‘it made him a better man, I think. He was a brave man. He wouldn’t talk about the war. He wouldn’t even talk about his dreams and I know he dreamt about it. How could he not? Maybe you have to see the worse things, the worse things people can do before you can forgive. When you’ve seen real cruelty maybe, maybe it puts, I don’t know, foolishness into perspective. But I was never like that, I’m afraid. I couldn’t forgive,’ she looked at me over her shoulder, her eyes suddenly sharp, ‘indifference,’ before returning to pouring her tea.
Kat took a tissue from the box on the windowsill and blew her nose. She brought her tea to the table, and biscuits, those mint ones with their own tin-foil wrappers, and the tissues scrunched under her arm. I noticed that her eyes were red, but not in an angry way. She sat down and studied her hands.
‘Sometimes I have such wonderful dreams,’ she said, ‘you, your dad … All of us together. Sometimes the shock of waking up is … But then, I guess, if I didn’t wake up I’d never’ve known I was dreaming. I dream he’s still alive, just sitting in an empty chair and we talk … I forget he’s supposed to be dead, you see, and it’s the most natural thing in the world,’ and as she spoke it really was like he was there, ‘and we talk about things and we talk about you,’ listening to what Kat was saying, nodding like he used to and pinching my ear when I wasn’t looking, ‘the family, the future. We were so happy here.’ And then she smiled like it was all a bit silly. ‘But then you can do anything in dreams, can’t you?’ she said. ‘Be anything. It’s like there’s never any—’
‘Consequences,’ I said taking her by surprise. ‘Maybe that’s how you tell the difference. I mean between dreams and when you’re awake. In dreams there aren’t any consequences.’
‘Well, I suppose so,’ murmured Kat, ‘but it’s all very well talking about consequences—I mean consequences in real life—as if you can always tell what they’re going to be. Yes, sometimes it’s like, I don’t know, sure, you push a button and a bell rings but other times you can push a button and a bomb goes off, you know, kaboom!,’ her hands opened like an explosion, ‘blowing everything to kingdom come. It’s not like you ever even know which button is which.’
She blew away the steam before taking a sip of her dark brown tea.
‘But if we were so happy … I mean, do you know why we left Amberley?’
She didn’t say anything for such a long time that I thought she can’t’ve heard me, but then she said: ‘Phew, what a question. Are you sure you wouldn’t rather know where babies come from or something like that?’ but she was only jokin
g. ‘Are you sorry we left?’
I shrugged.
‘You’re just like your dad, Peter. Did you know that? Still waters. You just sit there and listen, digging elephant traps for people, and they rabbit on, ten to the dozen, all the things they should probably keep to themselves.’ She reached out and patted me gently on the arm and then left her hand there a moment longer like she was just touching me to make sure I was real. Then she took her hand away and wrapped it back around her tea-cup.
‘You had everything here, Peter,’ she said. ‘Who couldn’t love living here? You had a lovely home and parents who adored you. You even had a mad grandmother who thought the sun shone out of your tiny—’
‘So, why did we leave?’
Kat hesitated just a moment before, ‘Sometimes,’ she said, handing me a biscuit and unwrapping one for herself, ‘things happen.’
‘Like consequences,’ I said.
‘Since when did you start worrying about consequences, Peter?’ she said. ‘Oh, Lord, it’s Pinky and Perky all over again.’ She bit into the biscuit leaving the shape of her teeth in the soft chocolate coating. ‘But, yes, I suppose you’re right. But then you shouldn’t cry about the past. That’s what everyone says. Well, maybe you can cry just a little bit but it’s spilt milk, they say. And all you can really do is mop it up and start again.’ As she spoke she squeezed the tin-foil into a tiny ball and popped it on the table. ‘And, I don’t know, buy more milk and not make the same mistakes next time.’ She took a tissue from the box and sniffed.
I didn’t think that she’d really answered my question.
‘But why did I come back here?’ I asked.
‘Don’t you like it here?’
I nodded although really I wasn’t sure how much I did like Amberley. It seemed such a strange place. I don’t know what my face looked like but suddenly Kat leant forward, her eyes glowing like light-bulbs.
‘Go on,’ she said, excited, just like a kid. ‘What have you been up to? What have you found? What have you seen?’
It was almost like she wanted me to tell her. I pushed my whole biscuit into my mouth and made a face that said: ‘Like what?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘When I was your age we used to go up and down all day long, looking in every hedge for things we shouldn’t know about. What about you? You can tell me anything, you know.’
Except I couldn’t, could I? ‘No,’ I said. ‘Nothing.’
She seemed disappointed. ‘Perhaps you’re not looking hard enough,’ she said. ‘There’s secrets under every bush round here. Some of them are right under your nose. Sometimes you just have to lift the stones,’ I couldn’t help thinking about Mr Merridew’s stones, ‘stones that are staring you right in the face to find something … really interesting.’
Like I said, it was almost like she wanted me to tell her.
‘Well, anyway,’ went on Kat, ‘I’ll tell you why I brought you back to Amberley, shall I?’ I nodded. ‘There are three things you can do in life, Peter, when you’re faced with … problems.’
‘What?’
‘You can stand your ground and look them in the eye,’ and she stared fiercely at her imaginary problem, poking it in the face with her sharp nail. I nodded again. ‘You can walk away.’ I nodded a third time. ‘Or you can run,’ she said, ‘as fast as you can.’
‘What did you do?’ I asked.
‘Oh, I ran,’ she laughed. ‘I ran away from here,’ and she glanced around at the yellow walls and the brown cupboards, ‘and then I ran straight back. That’s why we ended up back here. Listen, do you remember when you used to run to your room and hide? At the old house? Well, Amberley is my room and Everlasting Lane is my sheets. This cottage is my blanket. Do you understand?’
And I nodded again. I really did understand. And then I said, ‘Why is it called Everlasting Lane?’ I’d asked her once before but she’d never really answered that either.
She looked surprised. ‘Haven’t you worked it out yet? Why do you think? Remember what I told you before: a name is important …’ She meant it like a clue.
I screwed up my forehead like a tin-foil wrapper but it was like long multiplication; a sum I couldn’t answer.
‘Can I tell you a story?’ she said, and settled back in her chair like one of those people off Jackanory. She cleared her throat. ‘Are you sitting comfortably etc.? Well, once, when I was a little girl, my mother, your grandmother, took me on a trip to see some aunt or uncle or something. We went on a train. I remember it was really boring shunting through all these little stations and everything. But then we came to one station and I was just staring out of the window, minding my own business, and there was this pole or post, you know, quite wide, supporting the roof over the station and behind it was this brick wall and there was this man walking along the platform and as he was walking along he passed behind the post but, and this was the thing that caught my attention, he didn’t come out the other side.’ I gasped. ‘Just like that,’ she said. ‘And it was like he’d disappeared. And then another man, coming from the other direction, did the same thing: he just passed behind the post and poof he was gone.’
‘Where were they going?’
‘Well, I didn’t know. And then another man, a completely different man, just appeared from behind the pole and walked off down the platform. It was the strangest thing. It was as if he’d come out of nowhere. Well, you can imagine. I started pulling at my mother’s coat and saying what I’d seen but she was reading one of those trashy books she always read and she was all: “Kat, stop it! Stop it! Karen Angela Goodwin, I’m talking to you!” ’ And Kat flapped her hands about just like my mum used to do.
‘Anyway,’ Kat went on, ‘at last, and it probably wasn’t even more than a minute or two, the train started to pull out and I could see what was behind the post.’
‘What?’ I said. ‘What was it?’
‘It was the entrance to the gents’ toilets,’ and then she laughed. ‘What I mean, Peter, is that I knew it must be something like that; that there was some kind of explanation like a hidden door or … something. I wasn’t that little but,’ she said, ‘for just a minute it was nice to think that maybe the world was a little bit different to what it normally was; a little more magical. Because that’s what magic is, isn’t it? It’s a mystery. It’s just what we call something that we don’t know or understand like I didn’t know what was going on behind the post because I couldn’t see.’
‘Like a secret,’ I said.
Kat shrugged. ‘Yes, I suppose.’ But that didn’t make any sense. I must’ve looked awfully confused because she said, ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘you said magic was like a mystery. Well, a mystery is like a secret and a secret is just another word for the truth so then magic must be true.’
‘Well,’ she said, and her eyes twinkled like Melanie’s birthday candles, ‘I suppose it must be.’
‘I thought it was all pretend.’
Kat was startled. ‘Of course not. Aren’t you alive? How magical is that? Haven’t you ever seen a … a butterfly? Haven’t you seen a sunrise or a sunset? Peter, magic is all around you all the time, every day. Not just you but everybody. And, if you don’t think it’s magic, well, maybe you’re setting your sights too high.’
She shook her head. ‘No, magic’s real enough. Look, think about the name: Everlasting Lane. It’s just a lane, just a road and in some places it’s barely even that, but you make it so much more. You, Peter. That’s not boring or mundane or whatever the opposite of magic is. That’s real. Only children can do that. When you get to my age nothing seems possible any more. You’re stuck. The idea that you can just change your name and … That’s absurd. But you did it. You made me better than I was. Without you nothing would be possible.
‘People don’t just change their names, change their lives. I mean they can try but it’s not going to work unless someone else believes them. Adults never believe—well, hardly any—but you did. I mean
I envy you, Peter. I really do. You just close your eyes—and sometimes you don’t even do that—and you’re somewhere else entirely. You’re someone else entirely and all that stuff that worries the rest of us, keeps us awake at nights, well, it doesn’t matter to you at all. If that’s not magic, I don’t know what is.
‘Look,’ said Kat, ‘do you remember this?’ and she took two of the tin-foil wrappers that she’d rolled like thin sausages. She wrapped one around a finger on each hand like rings. ‘Daddy used to do it.’
‘I remember,’ I said.
She seemed surprised but said, ‘Okay, now watch carefully,’ and then she did that rhyme. ‘Two little butterflies sitting on a wall,’ and as she sang it she wriggled her butterfly fingers in time, ‘One named Peter, one named Paul. Fly away, Peter,’ and her right hand fluttered up into the air like it was flying before returning to its perch on the table’s edge. ‘Fly away, Paul,’ and her left hand too soared and swooped retaking its place alongside Peter. Both fingers were now naked, their rings gone.
‘It’s just a trick,’ I said. ‘You’ve swapped fingers.’
Slowly, slowly Kat revealed the rest of her hands, placing them out-stretched either side of her tea-cup. The rings were nowhere to be seen.
I felt my eyes grow big. ‘That’s … Is that magic?’
Kat smiled. ‘Maybe,’ she said, ‘or maybe it’s just a better trick.’
26
‘People don’t like it though,’ Kat said as she collected the little silver balls and sausages of foil and popped them into her empty tea-cup. ‘They have to give it a name or let somebody else give it a name for them. A name like ‘God’ maybe or ‘Allah’ or whatever but as soon as you give it a name you make it small. That’s what I think. You take away the wonder and the mystery. You’re saying, like, this isn’t so special because some old man with a beard made it. And once you think you’ve solved the mystery it turns to dust anyway. It all depends on where you’re standing.’
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