Aunt Maria (8 page)

But of course we obeyed Elaine by going shopping for a new skirt for me. I wish Mum had defied Aunt Maria and let Chris come, too. But Aunt Maria did her soulful low booming voice and said, “My friends love to see young people,” so Chris had to stay and help Elaine cut sandwiches. His face looked as if he was imagining cutting bread as sawing slowly through one of Aunt Maria's legs.

It was still beautifully sunny, with almost no wind. The sea was blue-gray and the tide was out. You'd have thought there would be somebody down on the sand at least, but Cranbury was like a ghost town. Not a soul was about.

“Perhaps it's early-closing day,” Mum said.

But it wasn't. The shops were open. Mum went sailing down the street with her load of cat food, talking in her merriest, most ringing way. “What an odd place this is,” she said. “There don't seem to be any children.” The lace curtains all along the street jerked. I thought, except the clones, and walked a long way behind trying to look as if I didn't belong to Mum. When she's in that kind of mood she can be worse than Chris. It was Elaine's fault she was.

Sure enough, Mum fell into a long conversation in the clothes shop with the lady there, all about how quiet Cranbury was. I could see the lady was embarrassed from the awkward way she said, “Well, there's a lot of retired people live here, you know.”

“And no children at all?” Mum said. “There
must
be. You sell children's clothes.”

“We don't get much call for them,” the lady admitted, “except from tourists like yourself.”

Then Mum explained at great embarrassing length that we were staying with Aunt Maria. I wish she wouldn't. I do think people ought to be more mysterious about themselves. And the lady got eager and sympathetic and kept saying, “Difficult to live with, is she?” in a way that was obviously fishing. So then Mum told her about the time when Aunt Marion was alive, and not on speaking terms with Aunt Maria. They both insisted we should see them, but they would not admit the other one existed. So that whenever we visited Cranbury we had to have tea twice, once with Aunt Marion and once with Aunt Maria. I remember it hideously. I was always sick on the way home.

The lady laughed and said, “Yes, she's always been like that. Miss Phelps is the latest. I feel sorry for Miss Phelps. Your auntie's friend Elaine used to do a lot for Miss Phelps—take her out in a wheelchair and so on—but since Miss Phelps and your auntie had words, I heard Mrs. Blackwell's been under orders not to do anything for her anymore.”

Then Mum got an attack of crusading zeal and asked the lady ringingly if Miss Phelps would appreciate a visit from
us
. And the lady said, “Yes. Number twelve, she is, just across the road from you.” Really, it is difficult having a martyred crusading saint for a mother sometimes. She forgot my skirt and had to go back for it. She only remembered when we'd walked right to the other end of town. Mum said it was such a fine day that she would let Elaine get on with the Mrs. Urs and get a bit of fresh air for a change. So we humped the cat food along the seafront, until we came to the concrete slope with the little boats pulled up on it. That was the first time we saw anyone. There were four or five men in big boots pottering about the boats.

“Ah! A rare sighting of the endangered human species,” Mum said, and called out, “Good afternoon!” very loudly. Only two of the men looked up and only one nodded. “What a hole this is!” Mum said. I saw her notice the cliff under Cranbury Head and look away quickly. “I never did find out what caused the row between Aunt Marion and Aunt Maria,” she said, with dreadful merriness. “I wonder what Miss Phelps said to her.” Then she remembered my skirt. First she said I could run and get it. Then she saw my face and relented. “I left it,” she said. “I'll go back for it. You take the cat food and wait in the main square. I seem to remember this picturesque little dump has a café there. I'll buy you an ice cream before we go back to the workhouse.”

Which shows that Mum is a fairly human saint. But cat food weighs a ton. When I got to the main square I put it on the steps of the war memorial and wandered about. The café was shut. Of course. So I went down the street Mum was most likely to come to the square by so that I could wave and save her the journey when I saw her. And instead I saw a car parked by the drugstore. It was a blue car with well-known dents—the one we saw at the station the other night. It looked so like our old car that my heart began to bump and hammer in my throat, even though I could see its number plate. Ours had been a Y-registration. This was an H, and its number plate was all old and rusty. But it was the same kind of Ford, the same color exactly. I found myself thinking, I'll just go round on to the pavement and see if the dents in the driver's door are there. Dad had kicked it furiously the first time it stopped unlocking. And before I'd finished thinking that, I was round on the pavement, staring.

That door was quite smooth. It looked a slightly different color from the rest of the body. Its window was wound down and there was a blond lady sitting in the driver's seat busy doing her face in one of those little handbag mirrors. I hadn't seen her from behind because the car had high backs to the seats, like gravestones—just like ours again. She had a pouting mouth and cared-for dyed hair. In fact, she looked so exactly like I always imagined Verena Bland that Dad went away with, that the most awful suspicions went through my mind. My heart hammered even harder, and I went nearer—or I tried to. But I found I was sort of bending down, with a hand on each knee, in a most peculiar way. If you walk like that it's even more peculiar. And I thought of spies using handbag mirrors and car mirrors to watch people in. I thought, She's watching me in that mirror!

After that I was so terrified that she'd suspect my suspicions that I was forced to straighten up. I walked right up to the car window and I said, “Excuse me, miss.”

I tried to get a sniff of the inside of the car as I said it, to see if it smelled of seawater or the same old smell as always, but all I got was an absolute blast of the blond lady's perfume. She turned her head with a jump. “Yes?” she said, surprised and unfriendly.

I hadn't a clue what I was going to say but somehow I found myself asking, ever so shy and pretty, “Excuse me, did you get your beautiful perfume at this drugstore here, miss?” I didn't know I had that much presence of mind.

She gave a sunny smile and shook her head. “No. It came from Bond Street in London. It's ever so expensive. You couldn't afford it, dear.”

“I come from London,” I said. “Do you live here, miss?” I was practically lisping. She must have thought I had no brain at all. “You're ever so pretty. What's your name?”

She liked me thinking she was pretty. She gave a pleased wriggle and quite a sweet smile. “My name's Zenobia Bailey,” she said. “I live here and I have to go home now.” And she started the car and drove it away down the street.

I started to give her a sickly little good-bye wave, then gave it up. It had gone boring again, like the orphanage. It wasn't our car. She wasn't Verena Bland. And Mum was pounding up from the other direction with the cat food and the new skirt, saying, “Mig, for goodness'
sake
! Don't just go away and leave things like that! What were you doing?”

“Being a moron,” I said. And I
still
think it
was
our car. I can't seem to shake myself out of it. Chris says that if it was—and he thinks it isn't—there are perfectly reasonable explanations. The insurance wrote it off and sold it, and the scrap yard found it worked and mended it and then sold it to Zenobia. Then why did they change the number plates? Because it isn't our car? Oh, I give up.

Chris is in a bad mood, anyway. It was a mistake to leave him with Aunt Maria and the Mrs. Urs. He said Something Awful again. Nobody would say what, though. Aunt Maria would only keep saying, “I'm so hurt and ashamed. But I forgive him of course.” Then she says gently, “I shall pray for you, Christopher.” It's a wonderful way to annoy Chris. He hates being given the wrong name, but he hates even more having to say his name is really Christian. If he tries, he has to shout, “CHRISTIAN!” at the top of his voice because Aunt Maria goes deaf on the spot.

Mum said Chris had been punished enough and, late at night, she got it out of Chris what he had done. It seems that mad Zoe Green had been one of the people who came for tea. All the other people there whispered warningly to Chris that he was to be nice to Zoe Green because of her son. “All I did,” Chris said innocently, “was ask what was wrong with her son.”

“Oh, did you?” said Mum. “I know you, Chris. I can just hear you doing it. ‘But what's
wrong
with her son? Is he dead? Is he in prison for murder? Is he a sex maniac?' Louder and louder, until they could probably hear you at the town hall. I can see the look on your face while you did it, too. Don't do it again.”

Mum was right. Chris went red and muttered, “Well, it had to be something like that, or she wouldn't have gone dotty, would she?”

Since then, Mum has kept announcing that Chris needs fresh air. She sends him out in the morning whenever she sees him alone in the room with Aunt Maria. She sends him out in the afternoon as soon as the Mrs. Urs start arriving. Chris doesn't mind. But I do. I have to be “dear little Naomi” and listen to the Mrs. Urs telling me how much Chris is upsetting Aunt Maria. “You know how sensitive she is,” they say. “The least thing makes her so ill.” Except for Elaine. Elaine just said bluntly, “I told you to stop that brother of yours. You'd better try.”

I tried to defend Chris by saying he didn't understand old ladies.

Elaine fixed me with her fanatical eyes and grimmest look. “Oh, yes, he does understand,” she said. “He knows just what he's doing. And it won't work. Not here. Not now.” Then she added, over the shoulder of her black mac as she marched out, “It's a pity. I like him, you know.”

The funny thing is that what Elaine said is true. I think she does like Chris, and I think Chris is up to something. I am the one who doesn't understand. I realized this when we went to see Miss Phelps this morning. I went with Chris because Mum had got sick of me complaining that Chris got all the fun.

“It won't be fun,” Mum said. “She's a poor old lady and I want you to find out if there's anything we can do for her. You can try and stop Chris being rude, too, if you can—though I know that's the same as asking you to keep the sea back with a broom.”

So we crossed the street to number twelve, Chris and me. Its lace curtains twitched like lace curtains in a panic when we knocked at the door. We stood there so long that we thought no one was going to open the door at first. When Miss Phelps did open it, we both stared.

“Oh, good morning. Chris and Mig, I believe,” she said. She looks just like a gnome. She is tiny, much smaller than me, and she has a hump. Her eyes sort of slant in her withered face—and the glasses she wears sort of slant with her eyes. You can see she can hardly walk. She holds on to things and shuffles. But there is nothing wrong with her mind. She is brisk and direct and—well, the best way to put it is that she is interested in things and people for their own sakes. She does not want to make anyone do anything. You can't imagine how restful that is after Aunt Maria.

Somehow all that came over just from the way she said, “Good morning.” Chris stopped looking long-suffering and gazed down at her with the same interest she was using on us. “Mum sent us over to see if there was anything you needed,” he said.

“How kind of her,” said Miss Phelps. “No. I can't say I have any crying need—except perhaps for better legs. But won't you come in? Word gets round in a place like Cranbury, you know, and I've heard a lot about you.”

We went in, feeling a bit shy, into a long hall. There was an extraordinary noise coming from somewhere. It went
thump, bump
and then a desperate voice cried out, “Aa-aah!” as if someone was being killed. It startled me a lot until I remembered there were such things as television sets. I've been such days without a telly now that I've forgotten the sort of noises they make. I thought, Oh, good! We've come into a normal home!

“Go down the passage, then through the door on the right,” Miss Phelps said. She shuffled after us, explaining, “I go rather slowly because I have a way of falling over. The doctor can't understand it. He calls it The Plunge.”

It was a very ordinary room, with a plain sofa and a special high chair near the window with a table across it. We sat down on the sofa, facing the telly. The telly was off. Funny, I thought. Miss Phelps shuffled to the high chair and nipped up into it like a monkey or a small child. She has a perfect view of the street from there. She must watch us go in and out all day, perched in her chair like a gnome.

“No, I read a lot, too,” she said, knowing what I was thinking. “I generally keep out of my neighbors' business, and out of quarrels, too, if I can. I like to stand aside.”

“But you said something to Aunt Maria,” Chris said.

Miss Phelps chuckled. “Yes, didn't I just!” she said. “But it was a perfectly objective general remark which I don't intend to repeat to you two. It was after she got rid of poor Lavinia.”

“Lavinia's gone to her mother … hasn't she?” I said.