Unexpected Magic (18 page)

This was a little before Easter. Ruth was to go to her academy in the autumn. Meanwhile, Aunt Anne had to go abroad and Stephen came to live with them. He was to have gone to Granny, but Granny telephoned Father to say she could not cope, and Father said they would have Stephen instead. He could have Elizabeth's room, and Elizabeth could move in with Ruth and Stephanie, as Ruth was going away before long.

Much as Elizabeth disliked this arrangement, Ruth liked it even less. Ruth and Stephanie had shared a room since they were both small. Ruth had developed a series of masterly arrangements with Stephanie. They were all very complicated and they all amounted to the same thing: Ruth lay on her bed and gave orders while Stephanie ran and did things. When Elizabeth moved in, Ruth rightly feared that this golden time was over. Sure enough, Elizabeth saw through the arrangements at once.

“Don't be such a lazybones, Ruth,” she kept saying. “Why should Stephanie do it?”

Ruth began to lose her temper. Stephanie was uncomfortable too. It was not what she was used to.

“Honestly, Ruth, you are lazy!” Elizabeth said for the tenth time.

Ruth pressed her lips together. Her way of losing her temper was to go icy calm and say the nastiest thing she possibly could. She took a long breath. For a moment, calm as she was, she wondered if she dared say it. “I—I don't believe in Carruthers,” she said.

“You what?” said Elizabeth.

“I don't,” said Ruth, “believe in Carruthers.”

“He's only a stick,” Stephanie added loyally.

Elizabeth felt extremely anxious. Ever since their quarrel, Carruthers had indeed seemed almost like an ordinary stick. Elizabeth was afraid he was dead, until she remembered the way he kept turning up at ballet. That so relieved her that she said, “Have it your own ways,” and hurried downstairs to fetch Carruthers from the hall.

Her sisters stared at each other. “Do you think she's all right?” Stephanie asked anxiously.

“She's grown out of Carruthers, that's all,” Ruth said. She did not really believe it, but she knew she had to keep Stephanie's respect, or Stephanie would never run errands for her again.

“Carruthers,” Elizabeth said to the unresponsive, sticklike Carruthers as she carried him upstairs. “Carruthers, would you like some chocolate?” Even that did not move Carruthers. Elizabeth came back into the room looking so miserable that Ruth relented. Ruth was going away to learn to be a ballerina, after all. She could afford to be kind. Besides, she thought she had hit on a way to make peace with Elizabeth and still keep Stephanie's respect.

“Never mind, Elizabeth,” Ruth said. “You're growing up fearfully pretty, so it doesn't matter.”

This did not comfort Elizabeth. Nor did it keep Stephanie respectful. “Ahah!” Stephanie cried out, curled up like a gnome on her pillow. “When Ruth says that, you can believe it. Ruth's a real girl. She really works at it.”

“You're both horrible,” said Ruth. “Worse than Stephen.”

Stephen turned out to have grown into a very boyish boy. He played with cars, guns, and electric trains. He made friends with all the boys who swarmed through the bushes in the wood. They came to call on him, so, for the first time, the house filled with boys.

“Rude, rough lot!” Ruth said disgustedly.

But Elizabeth discovered that the games boys played were fun. She liked guns, Cops and Robbers, and pelting about shouting. It was much more interesting to climb trees in the wood than to sit decorously on a log watching Carruthers. She admired Stephen. Whenever he let her, she followed him about and tried to join in the games.

“Elizabeth, I forbid you to get dirty,” said Father.

“Darling, you mustn't act so rough,” said Mother.

At first, Stephen was not at all pleased to have a girl tagging about after him. “We don't want you,” he said to Elizabeth in the hall one morning. His friend Dave had called for him, and they were going to play parachutes in the wood.

“Why not?” asked Elizabeth.

“Because you're forbidden to get dirty,” Stephen said as he went out through the front door.

“I don't want to come anyway,” Elizabeth shouted after him. “I've got Carruthers.”

“That stupid old stick!” Stephen called back. The front door slammed.

Carruthers was propped lifelessly in the umbrella stand. “
He
gets dirty,” Elizabeth said to him indignantly.

The front door opened again. Stephen and Dave appeared. “I've changed my mind,” Stephen said. Elizabeth beamed, in spite of having Carruthers.

“Er—hm,” said Dave.

Stephen said swiftly, “Dave here wants you to be his girlfriend, Elizabeth. Tell him I've already booked you.” Elizabeth stared rather, and then opened her mouth to say that she did not like either of them nearly enough. “Well, that's settled then,” Stephen said airily. “Come along, Elizabeth.”

Being Stephen's girlfriend was rather like being Stephanie under Ruth's arrangements, Elizabeth discovered. It seemed to mean that she was allowed to carry Stephen's sweater, to sit at the bottom of a tree to catch him in case he fell, to be an Indian woman—an almost lifeless role—when they played cowboys and Indians, and to sit for cramped hours switching electric trains when she was told. It also seemed to mean that Stephen was allowed to talk to her in the same bullying way Father used to Mother and Aunt Anne, and to frown whenever Elizabeth made any kind of suggestion. There did not seem to be any advantages to the post at all. After two days, Elizabeth was wishing she knew how to stop being Stephen's girlfriend. But the post seemed to be a permanent one.

She was almost glad when Father started his Easter holidays and took Stephen over—except that she was also immeasurably indignant. Father was scarcely strict with Stephen at all, and he positively encouraged him to get dirty. He took him to fly a kite and to the zoo and on a cycle ride. None of the girls were taken. Ruth seemed to think it was all right, because Stephen was a boy. Elizabeth thought it was unfair. And so, it seemed, did Stephanie.

“Mother,” Stephanie said, “why is Father nicer to Stephen than to us?”

“Your Father's always wanted a boy,” said Mother. “His own flesh and blood.” Elizabeth could hardly hear her for the sounds of hammering and sawing in the garage, where Father and Stephen were now making a table together.

“So am I his own flesh and blood,” Stephanie said loudly, above the banging. “And I can cycle and get dirty. And,” she added, as there came a softer thump and a screech from Stephen, “I can knock in nails without hitting my thumb. Why aren't I allowed to?”

“It's not suitable for girls—” Mother began.

“Good Lord!” said Stephanie.

“Stephanie! Don't swear!” said Mother.

“I wasn't. I only said ‘Good Lord.' You should hear some of the things the other girls say,” said Stephanie. “Give me one good reason why it's not suitable.”

Mother got out of that by being hurt. “Stephanie, how could you speak to me like that?” She left the room, still looking hurt.

“Did you ever know anyone so old-fashioned as our parents?” Stephanie asked Elizabeth. “There's a girl at school calls her father Fishface. Imagine what Father or Mother would say if I called Father that—or even if I called him Dad. What can we do about them?”

“I don't know,” said Elizabeth. Privately, she thought of Carruthers. She went out of the house and met Stephen as he came out of the garage sucking his finger. “Are you enjoying it with Father?” she asked.

Stephen rolled his eyes up. “Holy fishcake! But,” he added, “you wouldn't understand.”

Elizabeth knew she did not understand. All she knew was that, now Stephanie had pointed out the kind of people Mother and Father were, she felt shocked—and the fact that she felt shocked made her feel as if she were sitting in a very small cage, with no room to unbend her knees, which, in turn, made her feel angry. She tried to describe her feelings to the stiff, unresponsive Carruthers in the middle of the night. “It's like being squeezed into the wrong shape,” she said. “Stephanie feels the same. I'm not sure about Ruth, but I don't think Stephen enjoys it any more than we do. But I think it would all come right if you hit Father. Couldn't you forgive me now and start hitting him? Once a day, just for a start.”

To her pleasure, Carruthers stirred sleepily. “I'm hungry,” he said, in the old plaintive grunt. “Terribly hungry.”

“Thank goodness for that!” said Elizabeth. “I'll get some biscuits. What's been wrong with you?”

“I was sleepy,” said Carruthers.

Elizabeth slipped out of bed and started downstairs, into the queer orange gloom the streetlights cast in the hall. But Carruthers was evidently too hungry to wait. She saw him slither along the bannisters beside her and hop ahead of her into the kitchen. Elizabeth hurried after him. Carruthers was in the larder somewhere by the time she got there. She could hear him clattering on one of the higher shelves.

“There's nothing but tins up here,” said the plaintive, grunting voice.

“The biscuits are down here,” Elizabeth whispered. “Stop making such a noise.”

There was a scuffling, and a crunch of tinfoil. Carruthers said, “Oh! Chocolate eggs!”

“Those are for Easter!” Elizabeth whispered frantically. “Come
down.
”

“In a minute,” said Carruthers, munching and rustling.

The light in the larder snapped on. Rows of tins and jams leaped into sight. A very squeaky voice, which Elizabeth just recognized as Stephen's, said, “Oh. It's only you. What are you doing?”

“Carruthers was hungry,” Elizabeth explained. Carruthers was still rustling and munching up on the shelf.

“Pull the other leg,” said Stephen. “Sticks can't eat.” He came into the larder and stared up at the rustling.

A tin of plums promptly fell heavily on his bare foot. Stephen hopped about, yelling. Another tin fell on him, and another. Elizabeth could glimpse Carruthers's hooked face peering down from the shelf, taking aim. Stephen put his arms over his head and ran out of the larder. He ran straight into Father, coming the other way.

“What is going on?” Father roared.

Carruthers prudently pushed himself off the shelf with the last tin and clattered to the floor like an ordinary walking stick. Unfortunately, he brought a torn Easter egg wrapping down with him.

“I thought it was a burglar, Uncle Stephen,” Stephen said.

“So did I,” Elizabeth said unconvincingly.

Father naturally came to the conclusion that Elizabeth had been using Carruthers to hook down Easter eggs. The trouble was terrible. Elizabeth spent Easter in disgrace and without an Easter egg.

“Why did you hit Stephen and not Father?” she asked Carruthers.

“Stephen called me a stick,” Carruthers said sulkily.

After that, Elizabeth could not get another word out of him. Most of the time, there was no way of knowing he was anything other than a real stick. Yet night after night, for the whole of the next month, the larder was raided. Biscuits, cakes, and puddings went. Father blamed Elizabeth every time. Stephen found it very funny. “Carruthers hungry again?” he asked every morning.

Elizabeth wondered why she had ever liked Stephen. If she could have thought of a way of stopping being his girlfriend, she would have stopped it that moment. But it did no good to tell Stephen she did not want to be his girlfriend. He would say, “All right,” as if he agreed, and then, half an hour later, he would be saying, “Elizabeth, just come along and switch my points for me,” or, “Elizabeth, I need you to hold my coat in the wood.” It was as if she had never said anything at all.

What with this, and with getting up every morning to be blamed for what Carruthers ate in the night, Elizabeth began to feel as if the cage she had imagined was getting smaller and smaller, until she could hardly breathe. She was quite sure that, if only Carruthers could be made to hit Father, everything would be all right again. “It's like that story of the old woman and the pig,” she explained to Carruthers—who may or may not have been listening. “Fire fire, burn stick; stick stick, beat pig—and then they all went home. You just hit Father to show him who's master, and Father will turn on Stephen, and Mother will tell Father he's a tyrant, and we'll all be able to get dirty and climb trees and so on.”

Carruthers gave no sign of hearing, but his appetite was unabated. Elizabeth began training herself to wake in the night and catch Carruthers in the larder again. She was fairly sure that if she could only catch him red-handed, she would be able to bully him into hitting Father at last. But most nights she just slept. Some nights she woke up, only to find Carruthers hooked on to the end of her bed, apparently as good as gold—except that more food was gone in the morning.

Then, one night, she was suddenly wide awake. She heard Carruthers unhook himself from her bed and go softly thumping downstairs.

Here's where I catch you, my lad! Elizabeth thought. She flung back her bedclothes and crept after Carruthers, into the dim orange light from the streetlights. On the stairs, she listened hard. There was a faint chink and rattle from the living room, as if Carruthers had gone after the nuts and olives Mother kept to offer visitors. But, while Elizabeth was turning that way, she heard a furtive crunkling and rustling from the kitchen too. Surely Carruthers could not be in two places at once?