Black Maria

I was saying how right she was, when Aunt Maria’s voice cut across everything. How can Elaine think Aunt Maria would rather die of shame than say anything?

“Oh dear! I do apologise,” Aunt Maria shouted. “This is bought cake.”

“Oh horrors!” Chris promptly said from the other side of the room. “Mum paid for it herself too, so we’re all eating pound notes.”

Poor Mum. She glared at Chris and then tried to apologise, but Selma Tidmarsh and the other Mrs Urs all began shouting that it tasted very wholesome, it was very good for a bought cake, while Aunt Maria pushed her plate aside and turned her head away from it. And Hester Bayley said to me, “Or a wave, with green shadows and foam on it,” just as if nothing had happened at all.

She gave me a book when she got up to go. “I brought it for you,” she said. “It’s the kind of pictures a little girl like you will love.”

“I’m sorry,” Mum said to Aunt Maria after they’d all left.

I think she was meaning she was sorry about Chris, but Aunt Maria said, “It’s all right, dear. I expect Lavinia has put the baking tins in an unexpected place. You’ll have found them by tomorrow.”

For a moment I thought Mum was going to explode. But she took a deep breath and went out into the rain and the wind to garden. I could see her savagely pruning roses, snip-chop, as if each twig was one of Aunt Maria’s fingers, while I put Hester Bayley’s book on the table and started to look at it.

Oh dear. I think Hester Bayley may be as dotty as Zoë Green underneath. Or she doesn’t know better. Mostly the pictures were of fairies, little flittery ones, or sweet-faced maidens in bonnets, but there were some that were so queer and peculiar that they did things to my stomach. There was a street of people who looked as if their faces had melted, and two at least of woodlands, where the trees seemed to have leering faces and nightmare, twiggy hands. And there was one called ‘A naughty little girl is punished’ that was worst of all. It was all dark except for the girl, so you couldn’t quite see what was doing it to her, but her bright clear figure was being pushed underground by something on top of her, and something else had her long hair and was pulling her under, and there were these black whippy things too. She looked terrified, and no wonder.

“Charming!” Chris said, dropping crumbs over my shoulder as he ate the last of the pound-note cake. “Mum’s being told off again, look.”

I looked out of the window into the dusk. Sure enough, Elaine was standing over Mum with her hands on the hips of her flapping black mac, and Mum was looking humble and flustered again. “Honestly—” I began.

But Aunt Maria was calling out, “What are you saying, dears? It’s rude to whisper. Is it that cat again? One of you call Betty in. It’s time she was cooking supper.”

This is the sort of reason I never got to speak to Chris, and never got to write in my notebook either. When I went to guide camp, it was more private than it is in Aunt Maria’s house. But I have made a Deep Religious Vow to write something every day now. I need to, to relieve my feelings.

The next day was the same, only that morning I went out with Mum and Chris obeyed Elaine’s orders and stayed with Aunt Maria. Would you believe this? I have still not seen the sea, except the day we came, when it was nearly dark and I was trying not to look at the piece of new fence on Cranbury Head. That morning we went round and round looking for cake tins, then up and down and out into the country behind, where it is farms and fields and woods, looking for the launderette. In the end Mum said she felt like a thief with loot and we had to bring the bundle of dirty sheets home again.

“Give them to me,” Elaine said sternly, meeting us on the pavement outside the house. She held out a black mackintosh arm. Mum clutched the laundry defensively to her, determined not to give Elaine anything. It was ridiculous. It was only dirty sheets after all.

Elaine made her two-line smile and even laughed, a whirr without the chimes! “I have a washing machine,” she said.

Mum handed over the bundle and smiled, and it was almost normal.

That afternoon Zoë Green turned up for best china and cake, and so did Phyllis Watsis and another Mrs Ur – Rosa, I think. Mum had made a cake. Aunt Maria had spent all lunch-time telling Mum it didn’t matter, to make sure Mum did, but she called out all the same while Zoë Green was kissing her, “Have you made a cake, dear?”

Chris said loudly from his corner, “She. Has. Made. A. Cake. Or do you want me to spell it?”

Everyone pretended not to hear, which was quite easy, because Zoë Green is quite cuckoo. She runs about and gushes in a poopling sort of voice – I can imitate it by holding my tongue between my teeth while I talk. “Stho dthis iths dhear dithul Ndaombi!” she pooples. “Ndow don’d dtell mbe. I dlovbe guessthing. You dwere bordn in lade DNovember. DYou’re Sthagitharius.”

“No, she’s not, she’s Libra,” said Chris. “I’m Leo.”

But no one was listening to Chris, because Zoë Green was going on and on about horoscopes and Sagittarius, loud and long – and spitting rather. She wears her hair in two buns, one on each ear, and long traily clothes with a patchwork jacket on top, all rather dirty. She’s the only one who looks mad. I tried several times to tell her I wasn’t born in November, but she was in an ecstasy of cusps and ruling planets and didn’t hear.

“Such a dear friend,” Aunt Maria said to me.

And Phyllis Ur leaned over and whispered, “We love her so much, dear. She’s never been the same since her son – well, we won’t talk about that. But she’s a very valued member of Cranbury society.”

They meant I was to shut up and let Z.G. go on. I looked at Chris and he looked back at me and then up at the ceiling. Bonkers, he meant. Then I sat there listening and wondering how it was I never seemed to talk to Chris at the moment, when I did so want to know if he really meant that about the ghost.

Then Mum brought in the cake. Chris looked Aunt Maria in the eye and got up to pass the cake round.

Aunt Maria said, in a sad low voice, “He’ll drop it.”

If that wasn’t the last straw to Chris, it was when Zoë Green dived forward and peered at the slice of cake he was trying to pass her. “What’s in this? Ndothing I’mb adlerdjig to, I hobe?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Chris said. “Those things in it that look like currants are really rabbit’s do’s, so if you’re allergic to rabbit’s do’s, don’t eat it.” Everyone, including Zoë Green, stared, and then began to try to pretend he hadn’t said it. But Chris seized a cup of tea and held that out too. “How about some horsepiss?” he said.

There was a gabble of people talking about something else, in the midst of which Mum said, “Christian, I’ll—” Unfortunately, I’d just taken a mouthful of tea. I choked, and had to go out into the kitchen to cough over the sink. Through my coughings, I heard Chris’s voice again. Very loud.

“That’s right. Pretend I didn’t say it! Or why not say, ‘He’s only an adolescent, and he’s upset because his father fell off Cranbury Head’? He did, you know. Squish.” Then I heard the door slam behind him.

Outcry. It was awful. Aunt Maria was having a screaming fit. Zoë Green was hooting like an owl. I could hear Mum crying. It was so awful I stayed in the kitchen. And it went on being so awful. I was coughing my way to the back door to get right away like Chris had, when it shot open and Elaine strode in, black mac and all.

“I’ll have to have a word with that brother of yours,” she said. “Where is he?”

All I can think of is that she has a radio link between her house and this one. How could she have known? I mean, she may have heard the noise, but how could she have known it was Chris?

I stared at her clean, stern face. She has awfully fanatical eyes, I couldn’t help noticing. “I don’t know,” I said. “Outside somewhere probably.”

“Then I’ll go and look for him,” Elaine said. She went out through the door and said over her shoulder, “If I can’t find him, tell him from me he’s riding for a fall. Really. It’s serious.”

I wish she hadn’t said ‘riding for a fall’. Not those words.

When the noise quietened down, I went back to the dining room. Both the Mrs Urs patted my arm and said, “There, there, dear.” They seemed to think it was Chris who upset me.

CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_24cfe186-bc57-538c-8a84-bbaa383ccc83)

Now I feel as guilty as Mum. It got dark and Chris still hadn’t come back. Aunt Maria was really worried about him. “Suppose he’s gone down on the beach and slipped on a rock!” she kept saying. “If he’s broken his leg or twisted his ankle, nobody will know. I think you ought to ring the police, dear, and not bother about getting supper.”

Who wants the police, I thought, with Elaine after him? And Mum said, in the special high, cheerful voice she always uses to Aunt Maria, “Oh, he’ll be all right, Auntie. Boys will be boys.”

Aunt Maria refused to be comforted. She went on, low and direful, “And the pier is dangerous in the dark. Suppose the current took him. Thank goodness little Naomi is safe!”

“That makes me want to say I’m going out for a swim,” I said to Mum.

“You dare!” said Mum. “Chris is bad enough without you starting too.”

“Then shut her up,” I said.

“What’s that, dear?” said Aunt Maria. “Who’s shut up?”

It went on like that until the back door crashed open and Elaine marched Chris in, swinging her torch. She had hold of Chris by his shoulder, just as if she had arrested him. “Here he is,” she said to Mum. “I’ve given him a talking-to.”

“Really? How very helpful you are!” Mum said and took a quick anxious look at Chris’s face. He looked almost as if he was trying not to laugh, and I could see Mum was relieved.

By then Aunt Maria cottoned on. “Oh, Elaine!” she shouted. “I’ve been ill with worry! Have you brought him? Where did you find him? Is he all right?”

“In the street,” said Elaine. “He was on his way back here. He’s fine. Aren’t you, my lad?”