Black Maria

  While I did, Zoë Green banged the dining-room door open and shouted out, “Oh poor dhear! Ndow you know how I feel!”

  Aunt Maria screamed back, “Curse you, Zoë Green! I curse you, you uncharitable woman!”

  “Now, now, now, dear!” everyone else said. Mum and I went into the living-room to get away.

  “Was it very awful, love?” Mum asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “I thought it was Chris at first. But I think Zoë Green was right. I heard Larry shout, ‘I got her!’ when he was much too far away to see.”

  Mum gave me a soothing bewildered smile and picked up her pea-green knitting. “I shall be glad to leave this place,” she said. That made me feel almost hopeful.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Chris didn’t turn up that night. I’m sure he was scared to. And I didn’t wake up and Lavinia never moved from Mum’s neck the whole night. In the morning, the food I had put out was still there. I gave a lot of it to Lavinia, and I felt very lonely.

  Aunt Maria was still in a terrible state. Her face was white and baggy. She kept grabbing me with her shaky old hand and saying, “Dear little Naomi. You make it up to me, don’t you, dear!”

  I didn’t know what she was on about, so I just said, “I suppose so,” and got free as soon as I could each time.

  Then she wanted me to come to church with her. Luckily by then I really hadn’t any clothes that weren’t muddy. Mum said I was to stay behind. I was glad. It wasn’t just that Aunt Maria going to church is a sham – and it isn’t quite a sham, or at least it’s a muddled sham, because I can see Aunt Maria really believes she is good and charitable and religious. The important thing was that I had to see Miss Phelps. Secretly, if possible. I knew I had to talk to someone neutral who understood.

  Larry came alone with the wheelchair. “Elaine’s got a headache,” he said. He still looked twice as jolly as I’ve ever seen him before, almost jaunty. He and Mum loaded Aunt Maria and her dead fox into the chair, and they set off.

  I was halfway across the kitchen on my way out when the back door opened. Elaine stood there. “Oh, no you don’t,” she said. “I’ll let you feed him but that’s all. Go back inside and sit down.”

  She marched me into the living-room and made me sit in Aunt Maria’s roped sofa. She sat opposite in my usual chair, where she fetched a little white piece of embroidery out of her pocket and a thimble and scissors, and sat with her legs neatly together sewing. It looked very unsuitable. She kept snipping tiny holes and embroidering round them.

  “What are you doing that for?” I said.

  “I haven’t come to talk,” Elaine said. “Get on with something of your own.”

  I couldn’t get on with writing. Aunt Maria doesn’t bother to look at what I’m doing, but I knew Elaine would. I knew I was trapped for the morning with nothing to do, so I didn’t care what I said. “Who was that she-wolf?” I said. “Aunt Maria’s daughter?”

  Elaine didn’t answer, but I knew I was right.

  “Why do you like Chris so much?” I said.

  “I like all men,” Elaine said. I could see a big grin on her face, even though she bent over her sewing to hide it. “I like making them like me. Chris likes me.”

  “Even Mr Phelps?” I said.

  Elaine did her clock-strike laugh. “Nat Phelps is scared of me, because he knows I’ll get him in the end,” she said.

  “That’s greedy,” I said. “You’ve got Larry.”

  “Yes,” said Elaine, and stopped smiling. “I’ve got Larry.”

  “It’s your fault he’s so boring. You’ve made him that way,” I said.

  She put her head up and positively glared at me for that. “Shut up,” she said.

  I didn’t care. I knew she hated me anyway. “Did you get Antony Green too?” I said.

  Elaine’s head was still back and the way her fanatical eyes gazed at me made me wish I hadn’t asked. But she bent back over her sewing and said calmly, “Before my time, that one. But I’ve heard he wasn’t easy to deal with.”

  “Why?” I said.

  “Why-y-y?” Elaine whined, imitating me. “Lord, aren’t children boring! Because, they tell me, the silly innocent refused to believe other people were different from himself.”

  “What’s wrong with that?” I cried.

  “Nothing, provided you’re the same as other people to start with,” said Elaine. “I’ve no wish to be treated in the same way as Larry, thank you.”

  I didn’t understand. I began to ask, but she snapped, “I told you I didn’t come to talk. One more word and I’ll make you shut up. Do you think I can’t?”

  I didn’t think she couldn’t, so I stopped talking. The morning dragged on for several years, until Larry and Mum hoisted Aunt Maria back into the hall. Elaine gave me a grim look and left when she heard them opening the front door.

  So I had to wait until the afternoon, when I knew everyone would be sitting behind lace curtains spying on me. But it wasn’t as bad as that, because Aunt Maria gave Mum the afternoon off.

  “Go and get some air, dears,” she said to us both. “I shall be quite all right.”

  I think she wanted to talk about the dead wolf without us hearing.

  It was another nice warm spring day, but I was careful to take my anorak. Mum and I walked past the twitching lace curtains and then down on to the sand at the near end of the promenade. I took us over to a huddle of round rocks and got Mum arranged sitting on one. Then I took my anorak off and shaped it over one of the small round rocks, so that if anyone looked from the promenade it might just seem like a smaller person, sitting humped-up beside Mum. Then I sat on the sand out of sight of the houses and said, “Mum, can you humour me for a while? Can you sit here and pretend to be talking to this rock disguised as me?”

  “I suppose so,” Mum said. “People do watch and gossip, don’t they? How long is it supposed to be for?”

  “I may be away two hours,” I said. “Do you think you’ll be all right?”

  “I wish you’d warned me, Miggie. I’d have brought my knitting,” Mum said. Then she laughed and stretched her arms up and out. “I’ll be fine! Don’t look so worried. There’s nothing I want more than just to sit in peace for a couple of hours. Aunt Maria’s worn me to a frazzle. If I get bored, I’ll collect shells.”

  I got up into a crouch ready to dash to cover under the rocks at the end of the promenade. Before I went, I tried to remind Mum of Chris again. “Don’t you think it’s funny without Chris?” I said.

  “Yes, I do,” Mum said. “I keep wishing we hadn’t left him in London.”

  So it’s worked round to that now, I thought, as I ran for the rocks, and then started up the steep little stairs I had seen Mr Phelps using. She thinks she left Chris behind. That probably gave me courage to go on. It was such a lovely calm day, with the light all sideways and golden, and the sea in flat sparkles, that I’d been very tempted to sit beside Mum and hope things would turn out all right. But it’s no good thinking happy endings just happen.

  This end of the bay was rocks, not proper cliffs, and people’s garden walls backed on to the sea. I was fairly sure one of the gardens was the Phelpses’, but not quite sure. I walked along, counting the gardens carefully and looking for Phelpsish signs, until Mum was out of sight somewhere below and I was sure I’d gone too far. I thought I’d better go on to the end of the walls and come carefully back. And I’d gone on some way more, when I noticed that the path ahead stopped being so well-trodden. I looked at the garden door beside the last trodden piece. It was painted plain dark blue. It didn’t look particularly Phelpsish, but I tried the latch anyway and it opened.

  The garden inside was marvellous. It was all little paths made of shells and white stones, and there was a model windmill in the middle. In between the paths were flowerbeds full of daffodils and blue hyacinths. Silver bells and cockleshells, I thought, tiptoeing up the straightest path to the house. It took me some time to dare to ring the little silver bell hanging by the blu
e back door, in case it was somebody else’s garden entirely.

  Or suppose it’s a Mrs Ur! I thought, and nearly ran away when I heard someone shooting a bolt back inside the door.

  The door slammed open and Mr Phelps stood there in his dressing-gown. He glared at me and then turned to glare back over his shoulder. “You’ve won that fifty p, blast you!” he shouted. “It’s the girl.”

  “Tell her to come in, Nathaniel, please,” Miss Phelps’s clear little voice called out.

  Mr Phelps jerked his head at me and stood aside to let me in. When I went in, there was the tiny shape of Miss Phelps, working her way down the passage towards me.

  “Good afternoon,” she said. Then she fell over again. This time she just went over straight forwards, the way you do when you’re playing at falling down on your bed. Only she went smack on the floor.

  I dived to help her. Mr Phelps said, “I wish you wouldn’t keep doing that,” and shut the back door. Then he stepped over me and Miss Phelps and stalked away down the passage into one of the rooms there. Just like Dad when Mum fell downstairs, I thought, kneeling in the nearly dark hallway.

  “I prefer to lie here a while,” Miss Phelps said. “I heard a crack this time and I’d like to wait and see what it was. Open that door behind you so that we can have a little light. We can talk here as well as anywhere.” When I had opened the door, revealing Miss Phelps lying on her front with her chin on her arms and her gnome-like glasses on her nose, and looking very polite somehow, she said, “Don’t be too hard on my brother. He does all the cooking and most of the housework these days, you know. And we both hold the view that help is not needed unless it’s asked for. Now what did you want?”

  “I want help,” I said. “Please. I know you’re neutral. But I’m not. You know Chris is a wolf now, don’t you? Is Lavinia a cat?”

  “Very probably,” said Miss Phelps. “She was always good at animals. But she’s good at a fair number of other things too. I hope you were careful coming here.”

  “I was,” I said. “Is Antony Green’s ghost the only one who can turn Chris back? Or will the green box do it?”

  “Um,” said Miss Phelps. “When I told you nobody talks about that person, I meant it. She makes sure of that. I think it’s a painful subject to her, because her Naomi somehow met the same fate as your Chris over it. We’ll have to ask my brother about that and the green box. Talk about something else until I’m ready to get up.”

  “The clones – I mean the orphans then,” I said. “Why are they the only children in the place?”

  “Because they are the children in the place, of course,” said Miss Phelps. “She wanted the next generation of adults properly trained. But don’t imagine that’s the only time that’s been tried. Some of the men holding the green box went even further in the past and tried to breed a whole race of obedient folk.”

  “Some of the orphans are black though,” I said.

  “They still divide into male and female whatever their colour,” said Miss Phelps. “They imported a few. She had to get the Council to pay somehow. But, as I told her, the experiment has always failed in the past and it’s bound to fail now, since she hasn’t got the proper person to take over when she goes. Elaine won’t do. The power goes with the person.”

  “Is that what you said?” I asked. “To annoy her so?”

  “No. I also told her her ways were quite out of date,” Miss Phelps said briskly. “Is there anything else before I start getting up?”

  “About Dad,” I said. “Why are they pretending he is dead?”

  “You have found out a great deal,” Miss Phelps said. She began to struggle slowly to her hands and knees, panting out, “Stupid melodrama, if you ask me. Clean break with the outside, I suppose. They must think he can use the green box. Not many people can touch it, you know. But these are men’s affairs. Just wait till I get up—”

  I hauled her up to her large swollen feet. She looked very surprised. “Is something broken?” I said.

  “Time will tell,” she said. “Nathaniel is in the front room, I believe.”

  I took hold of her arm and made sure we got there. Mr Phelps was stretched out on the sofa where Chris and I had sat, fast asleep, snoring gobbling snores that quivered his thin purple throat. I suppose he was tired after the hunt, and after cooking their Sunday lunch. I could smell the lunch in the passage. It seemed a shame to wake him up.

  But Miss Phelps was quite ruthless. She shuffled over to him, still hanging on to me, and gave him a straight-fingered jab in the middle of his dressing-gown. It made him toss his legs in the air with a howl.

  “Nathaniel, you are not to take refuge in sleep,” she said. “You know she was bound to want to ask you things. Come, sit up and be civil.”

  Mr Phelps sat up and smoothed his thin grey hair. He looked angry and dignified.

  Miss Phelps said, “You are not to be afraid of him, Margaret. He needs you as much as you need him. If you will help me to my chair while he adjusts to this, we shall begin our conference.” So I helped her to her special chair, where she climbed up like a small monkey, and then said, “Well, Nathaniel? Speak to her of your green man. You know I can’t.”

  “Antony Green,” said Mr Phelps. “But you know as well as I do that we don’t know what happened to him. Except that now we got the she-wolf there is a chance things will get better.” He smiled, very satisfied. “She very seldom makes a mistake in an order like that.”

  “She’s getting old,” said Miss Phelps from her chair.

  “And the men’s time will come again,” Mr Phelps said, nodding. “But we need someone to handle the green box for us first.” He looked fanatically at me. “It’s as old as time, that. As old as this country. You know what you did, don’t you, girl? You drained it half-away. I still had hopes that your brother might be our next handler, and then he gets himself turned wolf.”

  “Tell me how to turn him back again,” I said. Mr Phelps did frighten me, in spite of what Miss Phelps said. “Can Antony Green’s ghost do it?”

  “Ghost?” said Mr Phelps. “The man’s not dead.”

  “Speak to him of the ghost,” Miss Phelps said, like a chairperson.

  So I told Mr Phelps of the three times I saw Antony Green. He planted his mauve hands on his thin knees and leaned forward, saying, “And what else? You were sure he could speak? Describe that light in the room. Accurately, mind.”

  And when I had done my best, he turned to Miss Phelps. They looked at one another questioningly.

  “A ghost,” Miss Phelps said, “to my certain knowledge performs the same, or almost the same actions, every time it manifests. This one did varied things.”

  “And seemed only aware of young Chris at first,” said Mr Phelps, hands on knees, stiffly thinking.

  “But transferred his attention to Margaret later,” Miss Phelps reminded him. “And the light, Nathaniel.”

  “Yes, the light is the clincher,” murmured Mr Phelps.

  “Your ghost,” Miss Phelps said to me, “is not a ghost in our opinion. It is a personal projection, a sending, if you like, in which a living person sends some part of himself from one place to another. The light will be caused by the force used by the sender changing the particles of air to form the image. Such images can speak.”

  “Yes, I always thought Antony had something of his own beside what the box gave him,” said Mr Phelps. “You must get him to speak, girl. Make him tell you where he is really. We can fetch him back then. Do that. It’s the only chance your brother has.”

  “But he won’t speak!” I wailed. I didn’t mean to cry, but I did. Great tears ran beside my nose and I sobbed out, “And the worst of it is, I can’t get Mum to notice Chris isn’t there! First she thought he was always just out of sight, and now she thinks we left him behind in London.”

  Mr Phelps was disgusted with me. “Women’s wiles!” he said. “Stop blubbering. Your mother’s not that important.”

  “Don’t be unfeeling, Nathaniel,
” Miss Phelps said across the room. “The child is upset. She can do with any help she can get. An injunction has clearly been laid on her mother. Can you think of any way she can break it?”

  “I don’t deal with women,” said Mr Phelps.

  “Then treat it as a purely intellectual problem,” said Miss Phelps.

  We all sat for a bit. Mr Phelps folded his arms and seemed angry. But after a while he began saying, “Let’s see. She called her mother’s attention to her brother’s absence. Didn’t you, girl? And that seems to have reinforced the injunction, so the mother now believes the boy is elsewhere entirely. Tell me the various ways you told her.”

  I wiped my nose on my only tattered Kleenex and told him.

  He said at each thing, “Hm, so that idea won’t work. I don’t know,” he said at last. “They usually can be broken, but this one seems uncommonly cunningly set up. I wonder why.”

  “Mrs Laker is extremely useful in the house,” Miss Phelps said drily. “She’s a far better factotum that Lavinia ever was.”

  Then we all sat about again while Mr Phelps shook his head. “You have to get her to see it in some way that doesn’t have direct bearing on Chris,” he said. “That’s all I can say.”

  Miss Phelps said, thinking too, “Suppose you try showing her the ghost, if he comes again. Or has she seen it already?”

  “No,” I said. “Come to think of it, I don’t think she’s ever been in Chris’s room! Oh thanks. I’ll try that.”

  “But don’t build too much on it,” said Miss Phelps. “Now I think you should be going before somebody notices you’re not where you should be.”

  Mr Phelps showed me out through the garden, acting very courtly now, though the wind blew his dressing-gown about. I said, “I do think this is a lovely garden.” He was ever so pleased. It turned out that he’d done all the paths with shells himself. I suppose I should have tried to flatter him before. But I really don’t like managing people by those rules. Still, Mr Phelps does go by those rules himself and perhaps he expected it.