Aunt Maria (7 page)

Now I'm writing it down, I can see Chris was lying to make me feel better. I didn't realize then, and I did feel better. I stood on one leg and took my shoes off in turn and scraped them on the iron fence. Chris scraped his a bit, but he wasn't anything like as muddy. He had looked where he was going.

While we were doing it, the train had stopped and all the people from it began to come out of the station. They came one after another along past the fence under the light. They didn't look at us. They were all staring straight ahead and walking in the same brisk way, looking kind of dull and tired. “Rush-hour crowd,” Chris said. “Funny to have it out here, too. I wonder where they all commute to.”

“They look like zombies,” I said. Most of them were men and they mostly wore city suits. About half the line marched out through the gate at the end of the car park. We could hear their feet marching
twunka twunka twunka
down the road into Cranbury. The other half, in the same unseeing way, walked to cars in the car park. The space was suddenly full of headlights coming on and starters whining. “Zombies tired after work,” I said.

“All the husbands of the Mrs. Urs,” said Chris. “The Mrs. Urs take their souls away and then send them out as zombies to earn money.”

“But the Mr. Urs don't realize,” I said. “They've all been zombies for years without anyone knowing.” The cars were all zooming out of the car park by then,
crunchle crunchle
as they came past us on the gravel, flaring headlights over us. The zombies in each car looked straight ahead and didn't notice us staring over the fence. Car after car. It was giving me a mesmerized feeling, until one crunched by that was blue, with one headlight dimmer than the other and dents in well-known places. “Hey!” I cried out. I hung on to the fence so that my hands hurt. “Chris, that was—!”

“No, it wasn't,” Chris said. He was hanging on the fence, too. “It had the wrong number. I thought it was our car, too, for a moment, but it wasn't, Mig. Truly.”

You can rely on Chris where numbers are concerned. He's
always
right. “It was awfully like ours,” I said.

“Creepily like,” Chris agreed. “I really did wonder if they'd dried it out and mended the door and sold it to someone—for a second, till I looked at the number plate. The number plate always goes with the car. It's a crime to change it—so it has to be a different car.”

By the time all the cars had driven away, the porter in seaboots was padding about in front of the station, closing it for the night by the look of it. We climbed over the fence and trotted out through the car park gates.

“We'd better not tell Mum,” I said.

“No,” said Chris. “We can tell her we've seen clones and zombies, but not about the car.”

In the end, we didn't tell Mum anything much. We were in trouble—both of us for being so late and me about the state my clothes were in. Aunt Maria was really put out about my clothes. “So thoughtless, dear. I can't take you to the meeting looking like that.”

“I thought your meeting was this afternoon,” Chris said.

Mum shushed him. She was in a frenzy. The Mrs. Urs had been there all afternoon having their Circle of Healing and wolfing cake, and now Aunt Maria had announced that there was a meeting at Cranbury Town Hall she had to go to at seven-thirty. That is the reason I have been able to write so much of this autobiography. I have been left behind in disgrace because I have got my only skirt torn and covered in mud. I like being in disgrace. There is still some cake left. Aunt Maria used her low sorrowing voice on me and then told Chris he had to go instead. Mum took one look at Chris's face and martyred herself again by saying she would go with Aunt Maria.

I can't think why Aunt Maria needs Mum. When zero hour approached, Elaine and her husband came round with the famous wheelchair. Mr. Elaine—who is called Larry—is smaller than Elaine and I think he was one of the line of zombies who got off the train. Anyway he has a pale, drained, zombie-ish look and does everything Elaine says. The two of them unfolded the vast, shiny wheelchair in the kitchen and heaved Aunt Maria into it. Chris had to go away and laugh. He says Aunt Maria looked like the Female Pope. At zero hour minus one, Aunt Maria had made Mum array her in a large purple coat, with most of a dead fox round her neck. The fox's head is very real, with red glass eyes, and it spoiled my supper, because Aunt Maria
had
supper in it in case they were late. And her hat, which is tall and thin with purple feathers. The wheelchair looked like a throne when she was in it. She kept snapping commands.

“Betty, my umbrella, don't forget my gloves. Larry, mind the rug in the hall. Be careful down the steps.”

And Elaine always answered for Larry. “Don't worry. Larry's got it in hand. Larry can do your steps blindfold.” Larry never said a thing. He looked at me and Chris as if he didn't like us. Then he and Mum and Elaine took Aunt Maria bumping down the front steps and wheeled her off down the street like a small royal procession.

The meeting was about Cranbury Orphanage. It turns out that the house where we saw Mrs. Ur and the clones—and the ghost—is Cranbury Orphanage. How dull. It makes the whole day seem dull now, if they were only orphans, not experimental clones after all.

Mum thought the meeting was pretty dull, too. When I asked her about it just now, she said, “I don't know, cherub. I was asleep for most of it—but I
think
they were voting on whether or not to build an extension to the orphanage. I remember a dreary old buffer called Nathaniel Phelps was dead against it. He talked for ages, until Aunt Maria suddenly banged her umbrella on the floor and said of course they were going to build the poor orphans a new playroom. That seemed to settle it.”

I think Aunt Maria is secretly Queen of Cranbury—not exactly Uncrowned Queen, more like Hatted Queen. I am glad I am not an orphan in that orphanage.

W
e are feeding the gray cat now. Something very odd has turned up because of that, and we have met Miss Phelps who said things. Chris says the ghost comes every night. But I'll tell it in order.

Ghost first. I ask Chris about him every morning. Chris laughs and says, “Poor old Abel Silver! I'm used to him by now.” I said yesterday why didn't Chris sleep on the sofa downstairs instead? He was looking tired. I know how
I'd
feel if I was woken by a ghost every night. But Chris says he likes the ghost. “He just searches the shelves. He's not doing
me
any harm.”

It was after that that the cat turned up at the window again. It came and put its silly flat gray face up against the glass and mewed desperately. Chris said it looked like a Pekinese. Aunt Maria was banging away upstairs, shouting that her toast was wrong, and Mum was flying through the room to see to it. But she stopped when she saw the cat.

“Poor thing!” she said. “Not a Pekinese, Chris. It reminds me of something … someone … that face…” There were more bangs and shouts from upstairs. Mum shouted, “Coming!” and she was just leaving when Chris put on an imitation of Aunt Maria.

“He's eating my birds!” Chris shouted. He jumped up and flailed his arms at the cat the way Aunt Maria does. The cat stared. It looked really hurt. Then it ran away.

Mum and I both said, “What did you do
that
for?” While I was making more toast for Aunt Maria, Chris said he was sorry, he couldn't resist, somehow. The cat sort of asked for it. I know what he means. But Mum got really indignant.

She went looking for the cat after we'd got Aunt Maria dressed—which takes ages now, because Mum keeps trying to make Aunt Maria do something for herself. She says, “
Your
hands aren't the
least
arthritic, Auntie. Try doing up these hooks.” Aunt Maria pretends to fumble for a bit and then says in a low sighing voice, “I'm old.” Mum says, “Yes, but marvelous for your age!” in a special cheerful voice. Aunt Maria beams, “Thank you, dear. How kind! What a
devoted
nurse you are!” And I end up doing the hooks, or whatever, or she wouldn't be dressed by evening.

That day was fine. The sun came sideways across the garden and seemed to bring green in among the brown of it for a change. Mum put her radio on the table beside Aunt Maria's roped-up sofa and firmly put the
Telegraph
on Aunt Maria's lap and told her we were all going to be busy in the garden.

Aunt Maria of course said, “I have so few people to talk to, dear!” and Chris of course muttered, “Yes, only thirteen Mrs. Urs,” but Mum tore them apart and bundled us into the garden. I really thought the worm had turned and Mum had had enough of being martyred. But Mum never lies. She had me and Chris hanging up washing like mad in no time—all the clothes we'd got muddy in the dark and a whole row of Aunt Maria's sky-blue, baggy knickers that Chris calls “Auntie's Baghdads.”

While we did that, Mum said, “Now I'm going to find that cat. It didn't go far.”

She did find it, too. She called to us gently from the shed at the back behind the gooseberry bushes. Chris and I were doing an Arabic dance at the time, with the washing bowl and a pair of Baghdads. Chris still had the Baghdads on his head when we went over. He saw the gooseberry bushes and said, “
That's
where the orphans are cloned from!” The ghost and Aunt Maria between them have a bad effect on Chris. He's never sane now unless he's out in the town.

“Hush!” Mum said, and stood up holding the gray fluffy cat. “Chris, you look an utter ass! This poor beast is starving. She's skin and bone under this fluff!”

“She?” I said.

“Yes, it's a female,” Mum said, and she tipped the cat upside down in her arms to show us. That cat is
soppy
. She lets you do anything with her. She lay on her back in Mum's arms, bending her front paws about and purring like a heavy motorbike. The only things she doesn't like are Aunt Maria and Elaine. Elaine put her head over the garden wall at that moment. That cat heaved out of Mum's arms and hid in the gooseberry bushes. Elaine didn't see it. She was staring at Chris with a pair of the Baghdads on his head, uttering her most clock-striking laugh.

“Good Lord, my lad!” she said. “You look like a ghostly court jester!” Chris went a little pale at that and stared, rather. But Elaine looked at Mum then. “You shouldn't do any washing,” she said. “I
told
you to give it to me.”

“Oh,
that's
all right,” Mum said. “Mig got herself so muddy it had to be done by hand.” Meaning, she is not going to let Elaine do her any favors.

“Be sure you give me the next lot then,” Elaine commanded. Two-line smile, meaning This Is an Order. “I'm coming in this afternoon to sit with her while you're out.”

“Oh? Am I going out?” Mum asked sweetly.

“You've got to buy Naomi more clothes,” Elaine said, and bobbed out of sight behind the wall.

“So I have!” murmured Mum. “Mig, how would you like a sack with holes in it?”

“She could manage with that hall rug,” Chris said, “that we have to roll up every night.”

“Yes, if I cut a hole in it for my head,” I said.

Mum bent down and held out her arms coaxingly to the cat. “Disobey Elaine!” she said. “Good heavens! She'd beat us insensible with her torch. Or if we
really
annoyed her, she might even set Larry onto us.” I've never heard Mum be so catty, not ever!

Talking of cats, the cat came leaping into Mum's arms, and it
was
starving. It ate two raw hamburgers and drank a bowl of milk in three minutes flat. The first thing Mum did when we were out that afternoon was to buy a whole cardboard box full of cat food. She's talking of taking the cat back to London with us. She says it's so affectionate. She keeps saying, “I can't
think
how it comes to be a stray! I thought gray Persians were rather valuable.” She also sits it on the drain board and spends long ages rubbing the sides of its flat whiskery face. “Kutchi-wutchi-wutchi,” she murmurs, staring deep into its glassy yellow eyes. “You
do
remind me of someone, but I can't think who!”

It's a terribly boring cat. About as interesting as a floppy cushion. But Chris and I look after it almost as eagerly as Mum does. We all know we're defying Elaine and Aunt Maria.