Black Maria
     Diana Wynne Jones
                 US title Aunt Maria




            A 3S digital back-up edition v1.0
       click for scan notes and proofing history


                    Contents
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Also by Diana Wynne Jones
Archer’s Goon
Castle in the Air
Dogsbody
Eight Days of Luke
Fire and Hemlock
Hidden Turnings
The Homeward Bounders
Howl’s Moving Castle
The Lives of Christopher Chant
The Magicians of Caprona
A Tale of Time City
Who Got Rid of Angus Flint?
Wild Robert
Witch Week

the ‘Dalemark’ quartet
Cart and Cwidder
  Drowned Ammet
  The Spellcoats
  The Crown of Dalemark


  Mig loves happy endings but can there be one in
Cranbury-on-Sea? Mig finds that her Aunt Maria, who
seems so gentle and civilised, with her sweet little chats
and daily tea parties, rules with a rod that is tougher
than iron and deadlier than poison.

   The men of the area are grey-suited zombies and the
children behave like clones – but things go from bad to
worse when Aunt Maria turns Mig’s brother Chris into a
wolf. Mig is on her own – but then there is the ghost and
the green box and Mig is catapulted into the oldest
struggle our world has ever known…


  “Diana Wynne Jones’s inventiveness knows no
bounds.”
  Times Literary Supplement

  “Diana Wynne Jones has that rare ability to create a
compelling fantasy in the mundane everyday world…”
  Books for Your Children

  “Once more Diana Wynne Jones amazes and
delights… a superbly crafted novel…”
  Junior Bookshelf


  First published in Great Britain 1991
  by Methuen Children’s Books Ltd
  Published 1992 by Mammoth an imprint of Reed
Consumer Books Ltd
  Michelin House, 81 Fulham Road, London SW3 6RB
  and Auckland, Melbourne, Singapore and Toronto
  Reprinted 1992 (twice), 1993
  Copyright © 1991 Diana Wynne Jones
      ISBN 0 7497 1043 8
      A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from
    the British Library
      Printed in Great Britain by Cox & Wyman Ltd,
    Reading, Berkshire
      This paperback is sold subject to the condition that it
    shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold,
    hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s
    prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than
    that in which it is published and without a similar
    condition including this condition being imposed on the
    subsequent purchaser.



                  This book is for Elly


                        Chapter One
                                                                 ^»
We have had Aunt Maria ever since Dad died. If that sounds as if
we have the plague, that is what I mean. Chris says it is more like
that card game, where the one who wins the Queen of Spades loses
the game. Black Maria, it is called. Maybe he is right.’
  That is the first thing I wrote in the locked journal Dad gave me
that awful Christmas, but I think it needs more explanation, so I
will squeeze some in. Dad left early in December and took the car.
He rang up suddenly from France, saying he had gone away with a
lady called Verena Bland and wouldn’t be coming back.
  ‘Verena Bland!’ Mum said. ‘What an awful name!’ But she said it
in a way which meant that wasn’t the only awful thing. Chris
doesn’t get on with Dad. He said, ‘Good riddance!’ and then got very
annoyed with me because all I seemed to be able to think of was
that Dad had gone off with the story I was writing hidden in our
car in the space on top of the radio. I mean I was upset about Dad,
but that was the way it took me. At that time I thought the story
was going to be a masterpiece and I wanted it back.
   Of course Dad had to come back. That was rather typical. He had
left a whole lot of stuff he needed. He came and fetched it at
Christmas. I think Verena Bland had disappeared by then, because
he came with a necklace for Mum and a new calculator for Chris.
And he gave me this lovely fat notebook that locks with a little key.
I was so pleased about it that I forgot to ask for my story from the
car, and then I forgot it completely because Mum and Dad had a
whole series of hard, snarling rows and Mum ended up saying she
wanted a divorce. I still can’t get over it being Mum who did! Nor
could Dad, I think. He got very angry and stormed out of the house
and into our car and drove away without all the stuff he had come
to fetch. But my story went with him.
   He must have driven off to see Aunt Maria in Cranbury-on-Sea.
He was always very dutiful about Aunt Maria, even though she is
only his aunt by marriage. But he never got there, because the car
skidded on some ice going over Cranbury Head and went over the
cliff into the sea. The tide was up, so he could have been all right
even so. But there was something wrong with the door on the
driver’s side. It had been like that for six months and you had to
crawl in through the other door. The police think the passenger
door burst open and the sea came in and swept him away while he
was stunned. The seatbelt was undone, but he may have forgotten
to fasten it. He often did forget. Anyway, they still haven’t found
him.
  Inquest adjourned. That is the next thing I wrote. Mum doesn’t
know if she’s a widow or a divorcee or a married lady. Chris says
‘Widow’. He feels bad about saying ‘Good riddance!’ the way he did
before, and he got very annoyed with me when I said Dad could
have been picked up by a submarine that didn’t speak English or
swum to France or something. ‘There goes Mig with her happy
endings again,’ Chris said. But I don’t care. I like happy endings.
And I asked Chris why something should be truer just because it’s
unhappy. He couldn’t answer.
  Mum had gone all guilty and agonising. She sent Neil Holstrom
packing, and I thought Neil was going to be her boyfriend. Actually,
even when I wrote that I wasn’t sure Mum liked Neil Holstrom, but
I wanted to be fair. Neil reminded me of an earwig. All Mum did
was buy Neil’s nasty little car off him, which was hard on Neil,
even though I was glad to see the back of him. But it was true
about Mum going all guilty. Chris and I went rather strange too –
sort of nervy and soggy at the same time – and couldn’t settle down
to do anything. There are huge gaps in the notebook when I
couldn’t be bothered to write things in it.
   Mum’s worst guilt was about Aunt Maria. She said it was her
fault Dad had gone driving off on icy roads to see Aunt Maria. Aunt
Maria took to making Lavinia, the lady who looks after her, ring up
twice a day to make sure we were all right. Mum said Aunt Maria
had had quite as much of a shock as we had, and we were to be nice
to her. So we were all far too nice to Aunt Maria. And suddenly we
had gone too far to start being nasty. Aunt Maria kept ringing up.
If we weren’t in, or if it was only Chris at home and he didn’t
answer the phone, Aunt Maria telephoned all our friends, even Neil
Holstrom, and anyone else she could get hold of, and told them
that we’d disappeared now and she was ill with worry. She rang our
doctor and our dentist and found out how to ring Mum’s boss when
he was at home. It got so embarrassing that we had to make sure
one of us was always in the house from four o’clock onwards to
answer the phone.
  It was usually me who answered. Mum worked late a lot around
then, so that she could get off work and spend Easter with us. The
next thing in my notebook is about Aunt Maria phoning.
   Chris has a real instinct for when it’s going to be Aunt Maria. He
says the phone rings in a special, gently persistent way, with a
clang of steel under the gentleness. He gathers up his books the
moment it starts and makes for the door, shouting, ‘You answer it,
Mig. I’m working.’
  Even if Chris isn’t there to warn me, I know it’s going to be Aunt
Maria because the first person I hear is the Operator, sounding
annoyed and harassed. Aunt Maria always grandly forgets that you
can look up numbers and then dial them. She makes Lavinia go
through the Operator every time. Lavinia never speaks. You just
hear Aunt Maria’s voice distantly shouting, ‘Have you got through,
Lavinia?’ and then a clatter as Aunt Maria seizes the phone. ‘Is that
you, Naomi dear?’ she says urgently. ‘Where’s Chris?’
   I never learn. I always hold the phone too near my ear. She
knows London is a long way away from Cranbury, so she shouts.
And you have to shout back or she yells that you are muttering.
‘This is Mig, Auntie,’ I shout back. ‘I prefer to be called Mig.’ I say
that every time, but Aunt Maria never will call me anything but
Naomi, because I was called Naomi Margaret after her daughter
that died. Then I transfer the receiver to my other ear and rub the
first one. I know that she’s shouting to know where Chris is again.
‘Chris is working!’ I shriek. ‘Maths!’
   She respects that. Chris has somehow managed to fix it in her
mind that he is a mathematical genius and His Work Is Sacred. I
wish I knew how he did. I would like to fix it in her mind that I am
going to be a Great Writer and my time is precious, but she seems
to think only boys have the right to have ambitions.
  Aunt Maria’s voice takes on a boomingly reproachful note. ‘I’m
very worried about Chris,’ she says, as if that is my fault. ‘I don’t
think he gets enough fresh air.’
  That starts the tricky bit. I have to convince her that Chris gets
plenty of fresh air without telling her how he gets it. If I say he
goes to see his friends, then either she says Chris is neglecting his
work or she rings his friends to check. I nearly died the time she
rang Andy. I want Andy to think well of me. But if I leave it too
vague, Aunt Maria becomes convinced that Chris is in Bad
Company. She will ring Chris’s form master then. I nearly died
when she did that too. Mr Norris asked me about Aunt Maria every
time he passed me in the corridor. She obviously scarred his soul.
  But I’ve learnt how to do it now. Chris will be surprised to know
that he plays tennis every day with a friend who isn’t on the phone.
Then I have to do the same for Mum. Mum plays tennis, too, with
the phoneless friend’s mum – who is a widow, in case Aunt Maria
gets worried about that. Then we get on to me. For some reason, I
am not supposed to do anything, even get fresh air. Aunt Maria
says, ‘And what a good little girl you are, Naomi, working away,
keeping house for your mother!’
  I agree with this, for the sake of peace, though it always makes
me want to say, ‘Well, really, I’m just off to burn the church down
on my way to the nudist colony.’
   After that she goes on to her latest theories about what really
happened to Dad, and then to how upset she is. All I can do there is
shout a soothing ‘Ye-es!’ every so often. That part makes me feel
awful. But I have to keep listening, because that part always leads
to us being the only family she’s got now, and then, ‘So when are
you all coming to Cranbury to visit me?’
   This is where I get truly artful. Aunt Maria gets enticing. She
says, ‘Chris can have the sofa, and if Lavinia moves down to the
little room, you and Betty can share Lavinia’s room.’
  ‘How kind !’ I say. ‘But I’m afraid Chris has this exam.’ You
wouldn’t believe how often Chris has exams. Chris doesn’t mind. He
gives me suggestions. One thing Chris and I were really determined
on was that we were not ever going to visit Aunt Maria in
Cranbury-on-Sea. We both have dreadful memories of going there
as small children.
  Now of course we had other reasons. Would you want to go and
stay in the place your father didn’t quite get to before he died? No.
So I put Aunt Maria off. I did it beautifully. I kept it all politely
vague for months, and we were looking forward to the Easter
holidays, when Mum answered the phone one evening I was out
and undid all my good work in seconds. I got back to find she had
agreed for us to spend Easter with Aunt Maria.
  Chris and I were furious. I said I thought it was very unfeeling of
Aunt Maria to make us go. Chris said, ‘There’s no reason to have
anything to do with her, Mum. She was only Dad’s aunt by
marriage. She’s got no claim.’
  But Mum’s guilt was working overtime. She said, ‘It would be
horrible not to go if she wants us. She’s a poor lonely old lady. Dad
meant a lot to her. It will make her terribly happy to have us there.
We’re going. It would be really selfish not to.’


   So here we all are at Aunt Maria’s house in Cranbury-on-Sea. We
only got here this evening and I’m so depressed already that I
decided to write it all down. Mum said that if I am going to write
rude things about Aunt Maria, I’ll have to make sure she can’t read
it. So I sighed heavily and decided to use my hardback notebook
with the lock on it. I was going to use most of it for my league table
of King Arthur’s knights and pop groups, because I didn’t want
Chris to find those and jeer, but I’d rather have Chris on to me than
Aunt Maria any day. This will be under lock and key when I’ve
written it down.
   Unfortunately, Mum drove us down in Neil’s car. It’s small and
slow, with so little space for people that Chris’s guitar was digging
into me all the way; and there are horrible crunching noises from
the suspension when you drive with luggage in. Chris and I wanted
to go by train. That way we wouldn’t have to go on the road over
Cranbury Head. But Mum ignored our feelings and put on her
brave and merry manner which annoys Chris so much, and off we
drove. Chris and I tried not to look at the pale new section of fence
on the clifftop, and I think Mum tried too, but we could sort of see it
even when we weren’t looking. There’s a big gap in the trees and
bushes there, because it’s not quite spring yet and no leaves have
hidden the place. Dad must have swooped right across the road
from left to right. I wondered how he felt, in that last second or so,
when he knew he was going over, but I didn’t say so. We were all
pretending we hadn’t noticed the place.
   Aunt Maria’s house failed to cheer us up. It’s quite old, in a street
of other old houses, which look very picturesque, all in
shades-of-cream-colour, and it’s not very big. It looks bigger inside –
almost grand and imposing. It must be the big dark furniture. All
the rooms seem dark, somehow, and it smells of the way your
mouth tastes when you wake up to find you’ve got a cold. Mum
hasn’t admitted to the smell, but she keeps saying she can’t
understand why the house is so dark. ‘Perhaps if she put up
cheerful curtains,’ she says, ‘or moved the furniture round. The
house must get quite a lot of sun through the garden at the back.’
   Aunt Maria greeted us with the news that Lavinia’s mother was
ill and Lavinia had gone to look after her. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she
said, stumping towards us with two sticks. ‘Chris can have the little
room now. I can manage quite well if somebody helps me wash and
dress, and I’m sure you won’t mind doing the cooking, will you,
Betty dear?’
  Mum of course said she’d help in any way she could.
 ‘Well, so you should,’ Aunt Maria said. ‘You’re not at work at the
moment, are you?’
  I think even Mum privately found this a bit much, but she smiled
and put it down to Aunt Maria being old. Mum keeps doing that.
She points out that Aunt Maria was brought up in the days of
servants and does not realise quite what she’s asking sometimes.
Chris and I suspect that Aunt Maria no sooner knew we were
coming than she gave Lavinia a holiday. Chris says Lavinia was
probably going to give notice. He says anyone who has to live with
Aunt Maria is bound to want to leave after an hour.
  ‘We don’t need to have supper,’ Aunt Maria said. ‘I just have a
glass of milk and a piece of cheese.’
  Mum saw our faces. ‘We can go out and find some fish and chips,’
she said.
  ‘What ?! In Cranbury!’ said Aunt Maria, as if Mum had offered to
go and carve up a missionary or the postman. Then she hummed
and hawed and said if poor Betty was tired after the journey and
didn’t want to cook, she thought there was a fish stall of some kind
down on the sea front. ‘Though I expect it’ll be closed at this
season,’ she said.
  Chris went off into the dusk to look, muttering things. He came
back in half an hour looking windblown and told us that everything
by the pier was shut. ‘And doesn’t look as if it had ever been open in
the last hundred years,’ he said. ‘Now what?’
  ‘What a good boy you are to look after us all like this,’ said Aunt
Maria. ‘I think there were some nut cutlets Lavinia put
somewhere.’
  ‘I’m not a good boy, I’m hungry,’ said Chris. ‘Where are the
beastly nut cutlets?’
  ‘Christian!’ said Mum.
  We went and searched the kitchen. There were two nut cutlets
and some eggs and things, but there was only one saucepan and a
very small frying pan and almost nothing else. Mum wondered how
Lavinia managed. I thought she may have taken all the cooking
things with her when she went. Anyway, we invented a sort of nut
scrambled eggs on toast. When I set the table, Aunt Maria said,
‘We’re just camping out tonight. Don’t bother to put napkins, dear.
It’s fun using kitchen cutlery.’
  I thought she meant it, so I didn’t look for napkins until Mum
whispered, ‘Don’t be silly , Mig! It’s just her polite way of saying
she’s used to napkins and her best silver. Go and look.’
  Mum is very good at understanding Aunt Maria’s polite way of
saying things. It has already caused her a lot of work. If she doesn’t
watch out, she’s not going to get any kind of holiday at all. It has
caused her to clean the cutlery with silver polish and to roll up the
hall carpet in case someone slips on it in the night, and put the
potted plants in the bath, and force Chris to wind all seven clocks,
and help Aunt Maria upstairs, where Mum and I undressed her and
put her hair in pigtails, and plumped her pillows in the way Aunt
Maria said she wouldn’t bother with as Lavinia was not there, and
then to lay out her things for morning. Aunt Maria said we were
not to, of course.
  ‘And I won’t bother with breakfast, now Lavinia’s not here to
bring it me in bed, dear,’ was Aunt Maria’s final demand. Mum
promised to bring her breakfast on a tray at eight-thirty sharp. It’s
a very useful way of bullying people. I went downstairs and tried it
on Chris.
  ‘You don’t need to bother to bring the cases in from the car,’ I told
him. ‘We’re camping on the floor in our clothes.’
   ‘Oh!’ said Chris. ‘I forgot the damn cases…’ And he had jumped
up to fetch them before he realised I was laughing. He was just
deciding whether to laugh or to snarl, when there was a hullabaloo
from Aunt Maria upstairs. Mum, who was halfway down, went
charging up in a panic, thinking she had fallen out of bed.
  ‘When Lavinia’s here, I always get her to turn the gas and
electricity off at ten o’clock sharp,’ Aunt Maria shouted. ‘But you
can leave it on since you’re my visitors.’
  As a result of this, I am writing this by candlelight. Mum is on
the other side of the candle, making a huge list of all the things we
are going to buy for Aunt Maria tomorrow. Reading upside down I
can see ‘saucepans’ and ‘potatoes’ and ‘fish slice’ and ‘pruning
shears’. Mum’s obviously been not-asked to do some gardening too.
   We kept the electricity on until 10.15 in fact, so that we could see
to get settled into our rooms. Chris’s little room is halfway up the
stairs and full of books. I feel envious. I don’t mind sharing with
Mum, of course, but the bed is not very big and the room is still full
of Lavinia’s things. As Mum said, rather wryly, Lavinia obviously
couldn’t wait to get away. Her cupboard and drawers are full of
clothes. She has left silver-backed brushes on the dressing-table
and slippers under the bed, and Mum has got all worried about not
making a mess of her things. She has moved the silver brushes and
the silver-framed photograph of Lavinia and her mother to a high
shelf. Lavinia is one of those people who always look old. I
remember thinking she was about ninety when I last came here
when I was little. In the photo, Lavinia and her mother might be
twins, two old ladies smiling away. One is labelled ‘Mother’ and one
‘Me’ so they can’t be twins.
   Then at ten-fifteen, when Mum was taking the potted plants out
of the bath in order to make Chris get into it for what Chris calls
washing and I call wallowing in his own mud, someone hammered
at the back door. Chris opened it as Mum and I came running. A
lady stood there beaming a great torch at us. She was Mum’s age –
or maybe younger: you know how hard it is to tell – and she had a
crisp, clean, nun-like look.
  ‘You must be Betty Laker,’ she said to Mum. ‘I’m Elaine. From
next door,’ she added, when she saw that meant nothing. And she
marched past Chris and me without noticing us. ‘I brought this
torch,’ she explained, ‘because I thought you would have turned the
electricity off by now. She insists on it. She worries about fires in
the night.’
  ‘Chris,’ said Mum. ‘Find out where the switch is.’
   ‘It’s behind the door here,’ said Elaine. ‘Turn it off when I’ve gone.
I’ll only a stay a moment to make sure you know what needs doing.
We’re all so glad you could come and look after her. Any problems
up to now?’
  ‘No,’ said Mum, looking a bit dazed.
  Elaine strolled past us into the dining-room where she sauntered
here and there, swinging the big torch and looking at Mum’s
knitting and my notebooks and Chris’s homework piled on various
chairs. She was wearing a crisply belted black mac and she was
very thin. I wondered if she was a policewoman. ‘She likes the place
tidier than this,’ Elaine said.
  ‘We’re in the middle of unpacking,’ Mum said humbly. Chris
looked daggers. He hates Mum crawling to people.
  Elaine gave Mum a smile. It put two matching creases on either
side of her mouth, but it was not what I would call a real smile.
Funny, because she was quite pretty really. ‘You’ve gathered that
she needs dressing, undressing, washing and her cooking done,’ she
said. ‘The three of you can probably bath her, can’t you? Good. And
when you want to take her for some air, I’ll bring the wheelchair
round. It lives at my house because there’s more room. And do be
careful she doesn’t fall over. I expect you’ll manage. We’ll all be
dropping in to see how you’re getting on, anyway. So…’ She looked
round again. ‘I’ll love you and leave you,’ she said. She shot Chris,
for some reason, another of her strange smiles and marched off
again, calling over her shoulder,‘Don’t forget the electricity.’
  ‘She gives her orders!’ Chris said. ‘Mum, did you know what we
were in for? If you didn’t we’ve been got on false pretences.’
  ‘I know, but Aunt Maria does need help,’ Mum said helplessly.
‘Where’s that electricity switch? And are there any candles?’
   There were two candles. Mum added ‘candles’ to her list before
she got into bed just now. Now she’s sitting there saying, ‘These
sheets aren’t very clean. I must wash them tomorrow. She’s not got
a washing-machine but there must be a launderette somewhere in
the place.’ Then she went on to, ‘Mig, you’ve written reams . Stop
and come to bed now or there won’t be any of that notebook left.’
She was beginning on, ‘There won’t be any of that candle left
either – ’ when Chris came storming in wearing just his pants.
  He said, ‘I don’t know what this is. It was under my pillow.’ He
threw something stormily on the floor and went away again.
  It is pink and frilly and called St Margaret. We think it is
probably Lavinia’s nightdress. Mum has spent the last quarter of an
hour marvelling about it. ‘She must have been called away in a
hurry after all,’ she said, preparing to have more agonies of guilt.
‘She’d already moved down to the little room to make room for us.
Oh, I feel awful!’
  ‘Mum,’ I said, ‘if you can feel awful looking at someone’s old
nightie, what are you going to feel if you happen to see Chris’s
socks?’ That made her laugh. She’s forgotten to feel guilty now and
she’s threatening to blow out the candle.



                        Chapter Two
                                                              «^»
There is a ghost in Chris’s room.
  I wrote that two days ago. Since then events have moved so fast
that snails are whizzing by, blurred with speed. I am paralysed
with boredom, Mum has knitted three sleeves for one sweater for
the same reason, and Chris is behaving worse and worse. So is
Aunt Maria. We all hate Elaine and the other Mrs Urs.
  How can Aunt Maria bear living in Cranbury with no television?
The days have all gone the same way, starting with Mum leaping
out of bed and waking me up in her hurry to get breakfast as soon
as Aunt Maria begins thumping her stick on the floor. While I’m
getting up, Aunt Maria is sounding off next door. ‘No, no, dear. It’s
quite fun to eat runny egg for a change – I usually tell Lavinia to do
them for five and a half minutes, but it doesn’t matter a bit.’ That
was the last two days. Today Mum must have got the egg right,
because Aunt Maria was on about ‘how interesting to eat flabby
toast, dear.’ The noise wakes Chris up and he comes forth like the
skeleton in the cupboard. Snarl, snarl!
  Chris is not usually like this. The first morning, I asked him
what was the matter and he said, ‘Oh, nothing. There’s a ghost in
my room.’ The second morning he wouldn’t speak. Today I didn’t
speak either.
  Mum has just time to drink a cup of coffee before Aunt Maria is
thumping her stick again, for us to get her up. We have to hook her
into a corset-thing which is like shiny pink armour, and you should
just see her knickers. Chris did. He said they would make good
trousers for an Arabian dancing girl, provided the girl was six feet
tall and highly respectable. I thought of Aunt Maria with a jewel in
her tummy button and was nearly sick laughing. Aunt Maria made
me worse by saying, ‘I have a great sense of humour, dears. Tell me
the joke.’ That was while Chris and I were helping her downstairs.
She was in full regalia by then, in a tweed suit and two necklaces,
and Mum was trying to make Aunt Maria’s bed the way Lavinia is
supposed-to-do-it-but-it-doesn’t-matter-dear.
   She comes and sits in state in the living-room then. It is
somehow the darkest room in the house, though sun streams in
from the brown garden. One of us has to sit there with her. We
found that out the first day when we were all getting ready to go
shopping for the things on Mum’s huge list. Chris was saying
sarcastically that he couldn’t wait to see some of the hot spots in
town, when Aunt Maria caught up with what we were talking
about.
  She said, in her special urgent scandalized way, ‘You’re not going
out!’
  ‘Yes,’ said Chris. ‘We are on holiday, you know.’
  Mum shut him up by saying, ‘ Christian !’ and explained about the
shopping.
 ‘But suppose I fall!’ said Aunt Maria. ‘Suppose someone calls.
How shall I answer the door?’
  ‘You opened the door to us when we came,’ I said.
   Aunt Maria promptly went all gentle and martyred and said none
of us knew what it was like to be old, and did we realise she
sometimes never saw a soul for a whole month on end? ‘You go,
dears. Get your fresh air,’ she said.
   Naturally Mum got guilty at that, and, just as naturally, it was
me that had to stay behind. I spent the next three hundred hours
sitting in a little brown chair facing Aunt Maria. She sits on a
yellow brocade sofa with knobs on and silk ropes hooked around the
knobs to stop the sofa’s arms falling down. Her feet are plonked on
the wine-coloured carpet and her hands are plonked on her sticks.
Aunt Maria is a heavy sort of lady. I keep thinking of her as huge
and I keep being surprised to find that she is nothing like as tall as
Chris, and not even as tall as Mum. I think she may only be as tall
as me. But her character is enormous – right up to the ceiling.
  She talks. It is all about her friends in Cranbury. ‘Corinne West
and Adele Taylor told Zoe Green – Zoe Green has a brilliant mind,
dear: she’s read every book in the library – and Zoe Green told
Hester Bayley – Hester paints charming water colours, all real
scenes, everyone says she’s as good as Van Gogh – and Hester said I
was quite right to be hurt at what Miss Phelps had been saying.
After all I’d done for Miss Phelps! I used to send Lavinia over to
her, but I wonder if I should any more. We told Benita Wallins, and
she said on no account. Selma Tidmarsh had told her all Miss
Phelps had said. Selma and Phyllis – Phyllis Forbes, that is, not
Phyllis West – wanted to go round and speak to Miss Phelps, but I
said No, I shall turn the other cheek. So Phyllis West went to Ann
Haversham and said…’
   On and on. You end up feeling you are in a sort of bubble filled
with that getting-a-cold smell, and inside that bubble is Cranbury
and Aunt Maria, and that is the entire world. It is hard to
remember there is any land outside Cranbury. I got into a kind of
daze of boredom. It was humming in my ears. When you get that
way, the most ordinary things get violently exciting. I know when I
looked round and saw a cat on the living-room windowsill it was
like Christmas or my birthday, or when Chris’s friend Andy notices
me. Wonderful! And it was one of those grey fluffy cats with a flat
silly face that are normally utterly boring. It was staring intensely
in at us through the glass, opening its mouth and dribbling down its
grey ruff, and I stared back into its flat yellow eyes – they were
slightly crossed – as if that cat was my favourite friend in all the
world.
  ‘You’re not attending, dear,’ said Aunt Maria, and she turned to
see what I was staring at. Her face went red. She levered herself
up on one stick and stumped towards the window, slashing the air
with her other stick. ‘Get off! How dare you sit on my windowsill!’
The cat glared in stupid horror and fled for its life. Aunt Maria sat
back down, puffing. ‘He comes in my garden all the time,’ she said.
‘After birds. As I was saying, Ann Haversham and Rosa Brisling
were great friends until Miss Phelps said that. Now you mustn’t
think I’m annoyed with Amaryllis Phelps, but I was hurt –’
  I thought she was horrid to that cat. I couldn’t listen to her after
that. I sat and wondered about Chris’s ghost. It could have been a
joke. But if it wasn’t – I didn’t know whether I wanted it to be
Dad’s ghost trying to tell Chris where his body was, or not. The idea
made my teeth want to chatter, and I had a sort of ache of fear and
excitement.
  ‘Do attend, dear,’ said Aunt Maria. ‘This is interesting.’
  ‘I am,’ I said. She had been talking about Elaine-next-door. I had
sort of heard. ‘We met Elaine,’ I said. ‘She came in last night with a
torch.’
  ‘You mustn’t call her Elaine, dear,’ Aunt Maria said. ‘She’s Mrs
Blackwell.’
  ‘Why not?’ I said. ‘She said Elaine.’
  ‘That’s because I always call her that,’ Aunt Maria said. ‘But if
you do, it’s rude.’
  So I’m calling her Elaine. Elaine came marching in again, in her
black mac but without her torch, at the same time as Chris and
Mum. I’d heard Chris’s voice and then Mum’s and I jumped up,
feeling I was being let out of prison. Something was actually
happening! Then the living-room door opened and it was Elaine.
‘Don’t go, dear,’ Aunt Maria said to me. ‘I want you here to be
introduced.’
  I had to stand there, while Elaine took no notice of me as before.
She went to Aunt Maria and kissed her cheek. ‘They’ve done your
shopping,’ she said, ‘and I told them where to put things. Is there
anything else you want me to tell them?’
  ‘They’re being very good,’ Aunt Maria said. She had gone all
merry. “They’re trying quite hard. I don’t expect them to get
anything right straight away.’
   ‘I see,’ said Elaine. ‘I’ll go and tell them to make an effort then.’
She was not joking. She was like a Police Chief taking her orders
from the Great Dictator.
  ‘Before you do,’ Aunt Maria said merrily, ‘I want you to meet my
new little Naomi. Such a dear little great-niece!’
  Elaine turned her face towards me. ‘Mig,’ I said. ‘I prefer being
called Mig.’
  ‘Hello, Naomi,’ said Elaine, and she strode out of the room again.
When I went after her, I found her standing over Mum and Chris
and scads of carrier bags, saying, ‘And you really must make sure
she is never left alone.’
  Mum, looking very flustered, said, ‘We left Mig here.’
  ‘I know,’ Elaine said grimly, meaning that was what she was
complaining of. Then she turned to Chris. Her mouth made the
stretch with two creases at the ends. ‘You,’ she said. ‘You have the
look of a gallant young man. I’m sure you’ll keep your aunt
company in future, won’t you?’
  We think it was meant to be flirtatious. We stared at one another
as the back door shut crisply behind Elaine. ‘Well!’ Mum said. ‘You
seem to have made a hit, Chris! And talking of hits, hit her I shall if
she gives me one more order. Who does she think she is?’
  ‘Aunt Maria’s Chief of Police,’ I said.
  ‘Right!’ said Mum.
  Then we unpacked all the loads of provisions and, guess what?
We found a deep-freeze in the cupboard beside the sink, absolutely
stuffed with food. There was ice cream and bread and hot dog
sausages and raspberries in it. Half the stuff Mum had bought was
things that were there already. Chris sorted through it with great
zeal. Mum is always amazed at how much he eats and keeps
saying, ‘You can’t still be hungry!’ I have tried to explain, from my
own experience. It’s a sort of nagging need you have, even when
you feel full. It’s not starving, just that you keep wanting more to
eat.
  ‘Yes,’ says Mum. “That’s what I mean. How can you find room?
Oh dear. We wronged poor Lavinia again. She left Aunt Maria very
well supplied after all.’
   Chris taxed Aunt Maria with this over lunch. Aunt Maria said
loftily, ‘I never pry into the kitchen, dear. But frozen food is very
bad for you.’ And before Chris could point out that Aunt Maria was
at that moment eating frozen peas, Aunt Maria rounded on Mum. ‘I
was so ashamed, dear, when Elaine came in. The thought of her
seeing you and Naomi in that state. And you went out like that,
dear.’
  ‘What state? Out like what?’ we all said.
   Aunt Maria lowered her eyes. ‘In trousers!’ she whispered,
hushed and horrified. Mum and I stared from Mum’s jeans to mine
and then at one another. ‘And Naomi’s hair so untidy,’ Aunt Maria
continued. ‘She must have forgotten to plait it today. But of course
you’ll both change this afternoon, won’t you? In case any of my
friends call.’
  ‘And what about me?’ Chris asked sweetly. ‘Shall I wear a skirt
too?’ Aunt Maria pretended not to hear, so he added, ‘In case any of
your friends call?’
   ‘These peas are really delicious,’ Aunt Maria said loudly to Mum.
‘I wouldn’t have thought peas were in season yet. Where did you
find them?’
  ‘They’re frozen,’ Chris said, even louder, but she pretended not to
hear that either.
   It is very hard to know how deaf Aunt Maria is. Sometimes she
seems like a post, like then, and sometimes she can sit in the
living-room and hear what you whisper in the kitchen with both
doors shut in between. Chris says the rule is she hears if you don’t
want her to. Chris is thoroughly exasperated by that. He keeps
trying to practise his guitar. In the little room halfway upstairs,
with his door shut, Mum and I can hardly hear the guitar, but
whenever Chris starts to play, Aunt Maria springs up, shrieking,
‘What’s that noise? There’s a burglar trying to break into the
house!’ I know how Chris feels, because Aunt Maria does that when
I have my walkman on too. Even if I turn it so low hardly a whisper
comes into the earphones, Aunt Maria shrieks, ‘What’s that noise?
Is the tank in the loft leaking?’
 Mum has made us both stop. ‘It is her house, loves,’ she said
when we argued. ‘We’re only her guests.’
  ‘On a working holiday!’ Chris snarled. Mum was cleaning Aunt
Maria’s brass, because Aunt Maria said that this was Lavinia’s day
for doing it, but she didn’t-expect-Mum-to-do-it.
  On the same grounds, Mum changed into her good dress and
made me wear a skirt. I pointed out I’ve only got one skirt with me
– my pleated one – and Mum said, ‘Mig, I’ll buy you another. We
are her guests.’
   ‘Oh good,’ said Chris. ‘Is that a rule – visitors have to do what the
owner of the house wants? Next time Andy comes round in London
I’ll make him kiss Mig.’
  That made me hit Chris and Aunt Maria shrieked that slates
were falling off the roof. ‘See what I mean?’ said Chris. ‘It is her
house. Pieces fall off if you hit me. Wicked, destructive Mig,
knocking nice Auntie’s house down.’
  I think he meant me to laugh, but Aunt Maria was getting me
down too, so I didn’t. I stopped talking to Chris for a while. What
with that, and being numbed with boredom, I didn’t manage to
speak sensibly to Chris until two whole days later. It was silly. I
kept wanting to ask him about his ghost, and I didn’t.
   In the afternoons, Aunt Maria’s friends all come. They are the
ones she talks about all morning. I had expected them all to be old
hags, but they are quite ordinary ladies mostly in smart clothes and
smart hairdos. Some of them are even nearly young, like Elaine.
Corinne West and Adele Taylor, who came first, are Elaine-aged
and smart. Benita Wallins, who came with them, was more the sort
I’d expected, stumping along with bandages under her stockings, in
a hat and a shiny quilted coat. From the greedy interested looks she
gave us, you could see she knew we’d be there and couldn’t wait to
inspect us. They are all Mrs Something and we are supposed to call
them that. Chris calls them all Missis Ur and mixes their names up
on purpose.
  Anyway they came and Mum made them all mugs of coffee. Aunt
Maria gave a merry laugh. ‘We’re camping out at the moment,
Corinne dear. Now this is Betty and Chris, and I want you all to
meet my niece, my dear little Naomi.’ She always says that, and it
makes me want to be rude like Chris, only I can never think of
things to say until after they’ve gone. I am a failure and a
hypocrite, because I feel just as rude as Chris. But it just doesn’t
come out.
   They must have gone straight next door when they left. Elaine
marched in ten minutes later, using her two-line smile and uttering
steely laughs. When Elaine laughs it is like the biggest of Aunt
Maria’s clocks striking – a running-down whirr, followed by
clanging. We think this means that Elaine is being social and
diplomatic. She flings her hair back across the shoulders of her
black mac and corners Mum. ‘You’ll have a lot of hurt feelings,’ she
said, ‘if you give any of the others coffee in mugs.’
  ‘Oh? What should I do then?’ Mum asked, making an effort to
stand up to Elaine.
  ‘I advise you to find the silver teapot and her best china,’ Elaine
said. ‘And some cake if you’ve got it. You know how polite she is.
She’d sit there dying of shame rather than tell you herself.’ She
shot out the two-line smile again. ‘Just a hint. I’ll let myself out,’
she said, and went.
  ‘Doesn’t she ever wear anything but that black mac?’ Chris asked
loudly as the back door clicked shut. ‘Perhaps she grows it, like
skin.’
  We all hoped Elaine had heard. But as usual she had conquered.
Mum got out best tea things when Hester Bayley and three Mrs
Urs turned up soon after that. Aunt Maria would not let me help
because she wanted to introduce her ‘dear little Naomi’ and when
Chris tried to help, Aunt Maria said it was woman’s work. ‘I don’t
trust him with my best china,’ she added in a loud whisper to
Phyllis Forbes and the other Mrs Urs. Mum ran about frantically
and Chris seethed. I had to sit and listen to Hester Bayley, who was
actually quite sensible and nice-seeming. We talked about pictures
and painting and how horribly impossible it is to paint water.
   ‘Particularly the sea,’ Hester Bayley said. ‘That bit when the tide
is coming up over the sand, all transparent, with lacy edges.’
  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 Zoe 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 laundromat. 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 Zoe 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 Zoe 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
Zoe 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 Zoe 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 she 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 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 Zoe 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 Zoe 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,
Zoe 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
                                                               «^»
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?’
  ‘Yes, apart from a squeezed shoulder,’ Chris retorted.
  Elaine let go of Chris and pretended to hit him with her torch.
‘Don’t let him do that again,’ she said to Mum. ‘You know how she
worries.’
  ‘Stay with me, Elaine,’ Aunt Maria bawled. ‘I’ve had such a
shock!’
  ‘Sorry!’ Elaine bawled back. ‘I have to get Larry his supper.’ And
she went.
  It was ages before I could ask Chris what Elaine had said to him.
Aunt Maria made him sit down next to her and told him over and
over again how worried she had been. She kept asking him where
he had been and not giving him time to answer. Chris took it all in
a humorous sort of way, so different from the way he had been
before, that I thought Elaine must have hit him on the head with
her torch or something.
  ‘No, she just grabbed me,’ Chris said. ‘And I said, “Do you arrest
me in the name of the law?” And she said, “You can be as rude as
you like to me, my lad. I don’t mind. But I’m not having your aunt
worried.” ’
  ‘What’s that?’ said Aunt Maria. ‘Who’s worried?’
  ‘Me,’ said Chris. ‘Elaine worried me like a rabbit.’
  ‘I expect Larry’s been out shooting,’ said Aunt Maria. ‘He often
brings home a rabbit. I wonder if he’s got one for us? I’m fond of
rabbit stew.’
   Chris looked at the ceiling and gave up. He’s playing his guitar at
the moment and Aunt Maria is pretending not to hear that either.
It looks as if All Is Forgiven. And that’s what makes me feel guilty.
Mum and I have put Aunt Maria to bed and she’s sitting up on her
pillows, all clean and rosy in her lacy white nightgown, with her
hair in frizzy pigtails, listening to ‘A Book at Bedtime’ on Mum’s
radio. She looks like a teddy bear. Quite lovable. Mum asked her to
say when she wants the electricity off, and she gave the sweetest
smile and said, ‘Oh, when you’re ready. Let Naomi finish that story
she’s writing so busily first.’
  And I feel horrible. I’ve read through my notebook and it’s full of
just beastly things about Aunt Maria and she thinks I’m writing a
story. It’s worse than Chris, because I’m being secret in my
nastiness. I wish I was charitable, like Mum. I admire Mum. She’s
so pretty, as well as so cheerful. She has a neat little nose and a
pretty forehead that comes out in a little bulge. Her eyes always
look bright, even when she’s tired. Chris takes after Mum. They
both have those eyes, with long curly eyelashes. I wish I did. What
eyelashes I have are butterscotch-colour, like my hair, and they do
nothing for plain brown eyes. My forehead is straight. I am not
sweet at all and I wish Aunt Maria would not keep calling me her
‘sweet little Naomi’. I feel a real worm.
   I felt so bad after that, that I just had to talk to Mum before we
blew out the candle. We both sat up in bed. Mum smoked a
cigarette and I cried, and we both expected Aunt Maria to wake up
and shout that the house was on fire. But she didn’t. We could hear
her snoring, while downstairs Chris defiantly twanged away at his
guitar.
  ‘My poor Mig!’ said Mum. ‘I know just how you feel!’
  ‘No, you don’t!’ I snuffled. ‘You’re charitable. I’m worse than
Chris even!’
  ‘Charitable be damned!’ said Mum. ‘I want to slay Auntie half the
time, and I could strangle Elaine all the time! At first, I was as
muddled as you are, because Auntie is very old and she can be very
sweet, and I only got by because I do rather like nursing people.
Then Chris did me a favour, behaving like that. He was admitting
something I was pretending wasn’t there. People do have savage
feelings, Mig.’
  ‘But it’s not right to have savage feelings,’ I gulped.
  ‘No, but everyone does,’ said Mum, lighting a second cigarette off
the end of the first. ‘Auntie does. That’s what’s upsetting us all.
She’s utterly selfish and a complete expert in making other people
do what she wants. She uses people’s guilt about their savage
feelings. Does that make you feel better?’
  ‘Not really,’ I said. ‘She has to make people do things for her,
because she can’t do things for herself, can she?’
  ‘As to that,’ Mum said, puffing away, ‘I’m not convinced, Mig. I’ve
been looking at her carefully and I don’t think there’s too much
wrong with her. I think she could do a lot more for herself if she
wanted to. I think she’s just convinced herself she can’t. Tomorrow
I’m going to have a go at making her do some things for herself.’
   That made me feel better. I think it made Mum feel better too,
but she hasn’t made much headway getting Aunt Maria to do
things. She’s been trying half the morning. Aunt Maria will say, ‘I
left my spectacles on the sideboard, but it doesn’t matter, dear.’
  ‘Off you go and get them,’ Mum says, in a cheerful loud voice.
  There is a pause, then Aunt Maria utters in a reproachful gentle
groan, ‘I’m getting old, dear.’
  ‘You can try at least,’ Mum says encouragingly.
  ‘Suppose I fall,’ suggests Aunt Maria.
  ‘Yes, do,’ says Chris. ‘Fall on your face and give us all a good
laugh.’ Mum glares at him and I go and find the spectacles. That’s
the way it was until the grey cat suddenly put in an appearance,
mewing through the window at us with its ugly flat face almost
pressed against the glass. Aunt Maria jumped up with no trouble
and practically ran to the window, slashing the air with both sticks
and shouting at the cat to go away. It fled.
  ‘What did you do that for?’ Chris said.
  ‘I’m not having him in my garden,’ Aunt Maria said. ‘He eats
birds.’
  ‘Who does he belong to?’ Mum asked. She likes cats as much as I
do.
   ‘How should I know?’ said Aunt Maria. She was so annoyed with
the cat that she took herself back to the sofa without remembering
to use her sticks once. Mum raised her eyebrows and looked at me.
See? Then we unwisely left Chris indoors and went out to look for
the cat in the garden. We didn’t find it, but when we got back Chris
was simmering. Aunt Maria was giving him a gentle talking-to.
  ‘It doesn’t matter about me , dear, but my friends were so
distressed. Promise me you’ll never speak like that again.’
  Chris no doubt deserved it, but Mum said hastily, ‘Chris and Mig,
I’m going to make you a packed lunch and you’re going to go out for
some fresh air. You’re to stay out all afternoon.’
 ‘All afternoon!’ cried Aunt Maria. ‘But I have my Circle of
Healing here this afternoon. It will do the children such a lot of
good to come to the meeting.’
  ‘Fresh air will do them more good,’ said Mum. ‘Chris looks pale.’
Which was true. Chris looked as if he hadn’t slept much. He was
white and getting one or two spots again. Mum took no notice of
Aunt Maria’s protests – it was windy, it was going to rain, we
would get wet – and bullied us out of the house with warm clothes
and a carrier bag of food. ‘Do me a favour and try and enjoy
yourselves for a change,’she said.
  ‘But what about you?’ I said.
 ‘I’ll be fine. I shall do some gardening while she has her meeting,’
Mum said.
  We went out into the street. ‘She’s martyring herself,’ I said. ‘I
wish she wouldn’t.’
  Chris said, ‘She needs to work off her guilt about Dad. Let her be,
Mig.’ He smiled in his normal understanding way. He seemed to go
back to his old self as soon as we were in the street. ‘Shall I tell you
something I noticed about this street yesterday? See that house
opposite?’
  He pointed and I said, ‘Yes,’ and looked. And the lace curtains in
the front window of the house twitched as somebody hastily got
back from them. Otherwise it was a little cream-coloured house as
gloomy as the rest of the street, with a large 12 on its front door.
  ‘Number Twelve,’ said Chris as we walked on up. the street. ‘The
only house in this street with a number, Mig, apart from
Twenty-two down the other end on the same side. That means odd
numbers on Aunt Maria’s side, doesn’t it? And that makes Aunt
Maria’s house Number Thirteen whichever way you count the
houses.’
  Chris is always thinking about numbers normally. This proved he
was back to normal. I said it would be number thirteen, and we
laughed as we walked down to the sea front. It was very windy and
quite deserted there, but very respectable somehow. Chris shouted
that even the concrete sheds were tasteful. They were. We went
past the kiddies’ bathing pool and the tame little place with swings,
and along the front. The tide was in. Waves came spouting up
against the sea wall, grey and violent, sending water bashing across
the path. Our feet got wet and the noise was so huge that we talked
in shouts and licked salt off our mouths afterwards. There was only
one other person out that we saw, the whole length of the bay, and
he was right at the beginning – an elderly gent huddled in a tweed
coat, who tried to raise his tweed hat politely to us; but he only put
a hand to it, in case it got blown away.
  ‘Morning!’ we shouted. He shouted, ‘Afternoon!’ Very correct. It
was after midday. Only I always think afternoon begins when
you’ve had lunch, and we hadn’t yet.
  When we were near the pier, I shouted to Chris, ‘The ghost in
your room – is it a he or a she?’ It was a bad place to ask important
things. The sea was crashing and sucking round the iron girders,
and the buildings on the pier kept cutting the wind off, so that we
were in a nest of quiet one moment, all warm with our ears ringing,
and then out again into icy noise.
  ‘A man!’ yelled Chris. ‘And it’s not Dad,’ he said, as we went into
a nest of quiet. ‘I saw you thinking it might be and it’s not. It’s ever
such a strange-looking fellow, like a cross between a court jester
and a parrot.’
  The wind howled and I didn’t hear straight. ‘A pirate ?’ I shouted.
  ‘Parrot !’ Chris screamed. And I think what he shouted after that
was ‘Pretty Polly! Long John Silver! I am the ghost of Able Mabel!
Parrot cage on table!’
  Shouting in the wind makes you shout silly things anyway, and I
think Chris was shouting in order not to be scared. Anyway I got in
a real muddle and I thought he was trying to tell me the ghost’s
name. ‘Neighbour?’ I yelled. ‘John?’
  ‘What do you mean, Neighbour John?’ howled Chris.
  ‘The ghost’s name. Is it Neighbour John?’ I screeched.
  By the time we got into a pocket of quiet again and sorted out
what we both thought we were saying, we were in fits of laughter
and Neighbour John seemed a good name for the ghost. So we call
him that now. I keep thinking of Chris seeing a large red pirate
parrot, and then I remember he said ‘court jester’ too, so I correct
the red parrot into one of those white ones with a yellow crest that
are really cockatoos. I think their crests look like jester’s caps, and
ghosts should be white. But I just can’t imagine a man looking like
that. Chris told me more about the ghost at intervals all through
the day. I think he was glad to have someone to tell. But I know
there were things he didn’t tell, and I keep wondering why, and
what they were.
  He said he woke up suddenly the first night, thinking he’d
forgotten to blow out the candle. But then he realised it was light
coming in from a street light somewhere. He could see a man
outlined against the window, bent over with his back to Chris. The
man seemed to be hunting for something in one of the bookcases.
  ‘So I called out to him,’ said Chris.
  ‘Weren’t you scared?’ I said. My heart seemed to be beating in my
throat at just the idea. ‘Yes, but I thought he was a burglar then,’
Chris said. ‘I sat up and thought about people getting killed for
surprising burglars and decided I’d pretend I was sleeping with a
gun under my pillow. So I said, “Put your hands up and turn
round.” And he whirled round and stared at me. He looked
absolutely astonished – as if he hadn’t realised there was anyone
else there – and we sort of stared at one another for a while. By
that time I knew he wasn’t a burglar, somehow. He had the wrong
look on his face. I mean, I know he was odd-looking, but it wasn’t a
burglar-look. I even almost knew he had lost something that
belonged to him and he was looking for it because it was in that
room. So I said, “What have you lost?” and he didn’t answer. There
was a look on his face as if he was going to speak, but he didn’t.’
   Chris said he still didn’t realise the man was a ghost, even then.
At first he said he only realised next morning when he snapped at
me there was a ghost in his room. Then he said, no, he must have
known the moment the man turned round. The room was full of an
odd feeling, he said. Then he corrected himself again. I think ghosts
must be muddling things to meet. He said he began to be puzzled
when he noticed the man was wearing a peculiar dark green robe,
all torn and covered with mud.
  By the time Chris had told me that far, we had got right along
the sea front, past all the little boats pulled up on a concrete slope,
almost to Cranbury Head. We looked up the great tall pinkish cliff.
It looked almost like a house, because creepers grow up it. We could
just see the gap in the creepers and a glimpse of the new fence. And
we both went very matter-of-fact, somehow.
  Chris said, ‘You can see some of the rocks at the bottom, even
with the tide in.’
 ‘Yes, but it was at night,’ I said. ‘They didn’t see the car till
morning.’
  Then Chris wondered how they got the car cleared away. He
thought they winched it up the cliffs. I said it was easier to put it
on a raft and float it to the concrete slope. ‘Or drag it round the
sands at low tide,’ Chris agreed. ‘Poor old car.’
   We turned and went back through the town then. I kept thinking
of the car. I know it so well. It was our family car until six months
ago, when Dad took a lady called Verena Bland to France in it and
phoned to say he wasn’t coming back. I wondered if the car still had
the messy place on the back seat where I knelt on an egg while I
was fighting with Chris. Does sea water wash out egg? And I
remembered again that I’d left the story I was writing in that
hiding-hole under the dashboard. All washed out with sea water. I
hated to think of that car smelling of sea and rust. It used to have a
smell of its own. Dad once got into the wrong car by accident and
knew it was wrong by the smell. Chris didn’t get on with Dad. I did,
a lot of the time, unless Dad was in a really foul mood.
  ‘When did you know it was a ghost then?’ I said.
  ‘Right at the end, I suppose,’ Chris said. ‘He didn’t speak, but he
gave a great mischievous sort of smile. And while I was wondering
what was so funny, I realised I could see books on the shelf through
him and he was sort of fading out.’
   That makes four different versions, I thought. ‘Weren’t you
frightened?’
  ‘Not so much as I expected,’ Chris said. ‘I quite liked him.’
  ‘And has he come every night?’ I asked.
  ‘Yes,’ said Chris. ‘I keep asking him what he wants, and he
always seems to be just going to tell me, but he never does.’
   It was windy among the houses too, cream houses, pink houses,
tall grey houses with boards saying Bed and Breakfast, creaking in
the wind, and sand racing across the roads like running water. The
place had been deserted up to then, but after that we kept meeting
Mrs Urs. We saw Benita Wallins first, puffily shaking a rug out of
the front door of a Bed and Breakfast house. She shouted, ‘Hello,
dears.’ Then there was Corinne West, coming round a corner with a
shopping basket, Selma Tidmarsh in the next street with a scarf
over her head, and Ann Haversham walking a dog round the corner
from that. It was ‘Hello, how are you? Is your aunt well?’ each time.
  ‘Aunt Maria will be able to plot our course exactly at this rate,’ I
said. ‘Or Elaine will. How many more of them?’
  ‘Nine,’ said Chris. ‘She talks about thirteen Mrs Urs. I read a
book and counted while she was talking yesterday.’
 ‘Only if you count Miss Phelps and Lavinia too,’ I said. ‘What did
Miss Phelps say to upset her? Did she tell you?’
  ‘No. Unless it was “Stop that boring yakking,” ’ Chris said. ‘Let’s
get on a bus and get out of this place.’
   But the buses don’t start until next month. We went to the
railway station and asked. A porter in big rubber boots told us it
was out of season, but we could get a train to Aytham Junction, and
it turned out that we hadn’t got enough money for that. So we
walked out along the path that started by the station car park,
through brown ploughed fields to the woods.
   ‘I think it was the day after that I noticed mud on his robes,’
Chris said, looking at the ploughed earth. He kept talking about the
ghost like that, in snatches. ‘And the light seems to come with him.
I experimented. I went to bed without a candle last night and I
could hardly see to find the bed.’
  ‘Do you wake up each time?’ I said.
   ‘The first two nights. Last night I stayed awake to see if I could
catch him appearing.’ Chris yawned. ‘I heard the clock strike three
and then I must have dropped off. He was just there suddenly, and
I heard four strike around the time he faded out.’
   We had lunch in the woods. They were good, lots of little trees all
bent the same way by the sea wind. Their trunks grow in twists
from all the bending they get. It gives the wood a goblin sort of
look, but as soon as you are among the goblin trees you can’t see
any open land outside. We nearly got lost later because of that.
   ‘But what’s the ghost looking for?’ I said. I know that was during
lunch because I could hear the twisted trees creaking while I said
it, and I remember dead leaves under my knees, clean and cold as
an animal’s nose.
  ‘I’d love to know,’ Chris said. ‘I’ve looked all along the books in
that wall. I took them out and looked behind them, in case the
ghost hadn’t the strength to move them, but it’s just wall behind
them.’
  ‘Perhaps it’s a book?’ I suggested. ‘Are any of them A History of
Hauntings , or maybe Dead Men of Cranbury , to give you a clue who
he is?’
  ‘No way!’ said Chris. ‘ The Works of Balzac, The Works of Scott,
Ruskin’s Writings and Collected Works of Joseph Conrad. ’ He
thought a bit and the trees creaked a bit, and then he said, ‘I think
the ghost brings rather awful dreams, but I can’t remember what
they are.’
  ‘How can you like him then?’ I cried out, shuddering.
  ‘Because the dreams are not his fault,’ Chris said. ‘You’d know if
you saw him. You’d be sorry for him. You’re the soft-hearted one,
not me.’
  I do feel quite sorry for the ghost anyway, not being able to lie
quiet because he’d lost something, and having to get up out of his
grave every night to hunt for it. I wondered how long he’d been
doing it. I asked Chris if he could tell from the ghost’s clothes how
long ago he died, but Chris said he never saw them clearly enough.
   The creaking of the trees was making me shudder by then. I
couldn’t finish my lunch – Mum always gives you far too much
anyway. Chris said he was blowed if he was going to cart a bag full
of half-eaten pork pie about and I hate carrying carrier bags. So
Chris put some of the cake in his pocket for later and we pushed the
bag under the twisted roots of the nearest tree. Litter fiends, we
are. The wood was wonderfully clear and airy, with a fresh mossy
smell to it. It made it seem cleaner still that there were no leaves
on the bent branches – barely even buds. We both felt ashamed of
leaving the bag and made jokes about it. Chris said a passing
badger would be grateful for the pork pie.
   It was after that that we got lost. The wood went steeply up and
steeply down. We never saw the fields, or even the sea, and we
didn’t know where we were until I realised that the wind always
came in from the sea. So in order to find Cranbury again we had to
face into the wind. We might have been wandering all night if we
hadn’t done that. I said it was a witch-wood trying to keep us for
ever. Chris said, ‘Don’t be silly!’ But I think he was quite scared too:
it was all so empty and twisted. Anyway, I think what we must
have done was to go right up the valley behind Cranbury and then
along the hill on the other side. When we finally came steeply down
and saw Cranbury below us, we were right on the opposite hill from
Cranbury Head, and Cranbury was looking like half-circles of doll’s
houses arranged round a grey misty nothing that was the sea.
  I thought it looked quite pretty from there. Chris said, ‘How on
earth did we cross the railway? It comes right through the valley.’
   I don’t know how we did, but we had. We could see the railway
below us too. The last big house in Cranbury was half-hidden by the
hill we were on, quite near the railway. We took it as a landmark
and went down straight towards it. By this time it was just
beginning to be evening, not dark yet, but sort of quietly dimming
so that everything was pale and chilly. I kept telling myself this
was why everything felt so strange. There was a steep field first of
very wet grass. The wind had dropped. The big house was all
among trees, but we thought there must be a road beyond it, so we
climbed a sort of mound-thing at the bottom of the field to see
where the road was. The mound was all grown over with whippy
little bushes that were budding big pale buds and there were little
trampled paths leading in and out all over. I remember thinking
that it looked a good place to play in. Children obviously played
here. Then we got to the top of the hill and we could see the
children.
   They were in the garden of the big house. It was a boring
red-brick house that looked as if it might be a school. The garden,
which we could look down into across a wall, was a boring
school-type garden, too, just grass and round beds with evergreens
in them. The children were all playing in it, very quietly and
sedately. It was unnatural. I mean, how can forty kids make almost
no noise at all? The ones who were playing never shouted once.
Most of them were just walking about, in rows of four or five. If
they were girls, they walked arm in arm. The boys just strolled in a
line. And they all looked alike. They weren’t alike. All the girls had
different little plaid dresses on, and all the boys had different
coloured sweaters. Some had fair hair, some brown hair, and four
or five of the kids were black. Their faces weren’t the same. But
they were , if you see what I mean. They all moved the same way
and had the same expressions on their different faces. We stared.
We were both amazed.
  ‘They’re clones,’ said Chris. ‘They have to be.’
  ‘But wouldn’t clones be like twins?’ I said.
  ‘They’re part of a secret experiment to make clones look
different,’ Chris said. ‘They’ve managed to make their bodies not
look alike, but their minds are still the same. You can see they are.’
  It was one of those jokes you almost mean. I wished Chris hadn’t
said it. I didn’t think the children could hear me from where we
were, but a man came up beside me from the bushes while Chris
was talking, and I knew the man could hear. Luckily at that
moment, a lady, dressed a bit like a nurse, came out into the
garden.
  ‘Come along, children,’ she called. ‘It’s getting cold and dark.
Inside, all of you.’
   The lady was one of the Mrs Urs. As the children all obediently
walked towards her, I remembered she was Phyllis Forbes. I was
going to tell Chris, but I looked at the man first because it was
embarrassing with him standing there. He seemed to have gone. So
I looked at Chris to tell him and Chris’s face was a white staring
blur, gazing at me.
  ‘You look as if you’ve seen a ghost!’ I said.
  ‘I have,’ he said. ‘The ghost from my room. He was standing right
beside you a second ago.’
   I ran then. I couldn’t seem to stop myself. I went tearing my way
through the bushes all across and down the little hill and then out
into a field of some kind and then into another field after that. I
remember a wire fence twanging and a hedge which scraped me all
over, and a huge black and white beast suddenly looming at me out
of the twilight. It was a cow, I think. I did a mad sideways swerve
round it and ran on. I wanted to scream, but I was so frightened
that all I could make was a little whimpering sound. After a while I
could hear Chris pelting after me, calling out, ‘Cool it, Mig! Wait!
He’s not frightening at all really!’ I wanted to shout back, ‘Then
why did you look so scared?’ but I could still only make that stupid
mewing noise. ‘Hm-hm-hm!’ I said to Chris and rushed on. I don’t
know where I went at all, with Chris rushing after me telling me to
stop. It was getting darker all the time. But I think some of where I
ran must have been allotments along the back of Cranbury, because
it was all cold and cloggy and I kept treading on big clammy plants
that went crunch and gave out a fierce smell of cabbage. My feet
got heavier and heavier like they do in nightmares. I could see town
lights twinkling to one side and orange street light shining steadily
ahead, and I raced for the orange light with my huge heavy feet,
and my chest hurt and I kept going ‘hm-hm-hm!’ until Chris caught
me up and I suddenly ran out of breath.
  ‘Honestly!’ he said. He was disgusted.
   We were beside an iron fence just outside the station car park,
with dew hanging off it and glittering on all the cars in the orange
light. A train was just coming rattling into the station. I had a
stitch and I could hardly breathe. I lifted first one foot then the
other into the light. They were both giant-sized with earth and
smelt of cabbage. We looked at them and we laughed. Chris leant
on the fence and squealed with laughter. I hiccuped and panted and
my eyes watered.
  ‘It wasn’t really the ghost,’ I said when I could speak, ‘was it?’
  ‘I just said it to frighten you,’ said Chris. ‘The result was
spectacular. Get some of that mud off. Aunt Maria will be telling
everyone we’re drowned and Elaine will be giving Mum hell for
letting Auntie get so worried.’
  Now I’m writing it down, I can see Chris was lying to make me
feel better. I didn’t realise 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 realise,’ 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 mesmerised 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.’
  By the time all the cars had driven away, the porter in sea boots
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,’1 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 spoilt 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 step
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.



                       Chapter Four
                                                             «^»
We are feeding the grey 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 the cat turned up at the window again. It came
and put its silly flat grey 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. After that we got Aunt
Maria dressed – and that 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 marvellous 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 navvies 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 grey 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 lorry. 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 dock-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 favours.
  ‘Be sure to 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 on to 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 it 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 grey Persians were rather valuable.’ She also sits it
on the draining-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 pyjama case.
But Chris and I look after it almost as eagerly as Mum does. We all
know we’re defying Elaine and Aunt Maria.
  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-grey 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, Aunt Maria’s sister, 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 any more.’
   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 sea front, 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 chemist. 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 colour 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 colour
from the rest of the body. Its window was wound down and there
was a blonde 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
smelt of sea water or the same old smell as always, but all I got
was an absolute blast of the blonde 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 chemist’s 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 Bayley,’ 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 goodbye 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 scrapyard 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 realised 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 sake. 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 neighbours’ 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.
  ‘Wherever it is, I think you’ll find she’s gone for good,’ Miss
Phelps said. ‘Now what do you both think of Cranbury?’ She made
us talk about Cranbury for quite a while. We didn’t say what we
really felt, exactly, and Chris was surprisingly polite, but she knew
what we meant.
   ‘In other words, it’s a hole,’ she said. ‘It’s a very healthy hole, you
know. People live to a surprising age here, but there isn’t much to
offer children out of season, I do agree.’
  Chris seemed to have been waiting for her to say something like
this. He said, ‘What happened to Zoe Green’s son?’
  Miss Phelps turned in her high chair and looked at me. Then she
turned herself to look at Chris. ‘You won’t find that anybody speaks
about him,’ she said. ‘Now I think I shall make you talk about
London.’
   Chris said, ‘But I want to know. How long ago was it – whatever
it was?’
  ‘That I can’t tell you,’ said Miss Phelps. ‘And I do like to hear
about London, you know. As I said, few people talk about Antony
Green. In fact, almost the only person who does is my brother.
You’ll want to speak to my brother, I suppose?’
  ‘Yes please,’ said Chris. ‘Where – ?’
  ‘Come this way then.’ Miss Phelps climbed down from her chair
and snuffled to the door. She opened it and shuffled across the hall,
where she opened another door, while we both stood towering over
her wondering what was inside. She turned round. ‘Do go in,’ she
said, and she stretched her arm out to usher us in. At least, I think
that was what she meant to do. But her arm seemed to take the
rest of her with it. As we went into the room and found it almost
bare, except for a man in a dressing-gown standing like a statue
and holding a sword pointing towards us across the top of his own
head, Miss Phelps’s gnome-like body swooped through the air in a
graceful curve. Then she fell with a crash on the bare floor. It
looked almost as if she had forgotten how to fly.
  Chris and I both said, ‘Oh dear!’ and ‘Are you all right, Miss
Phelps?’
  The man with the sword never moved. He said irritably, ‘Not
again, Amaryllis!’
  ‘Yes. It’s The Plunge today,’ Miss Phelps said, a bit breathlessly.
She didn’t try to get up. She just lay on the floor and said politely,
‘My brother Nathaniel. Christian and Margaret Laker, Nathaniel.’
   We stared from Miss Phelps on the floor to Mr Phelps with his
sword. He was the man who had said, ‘Good afternoon,’ on the sea
front the day Chris told me about the ghost. He has white hair and
a white moustache and a thin, angry face. He said, ‘The art of
swordsmanship, properly practised, entails my standing here for
another minute.’
  ‘By which time any self-respecting enemy will have stabbed you
in the stomach,’ Miss Phelps observed, still lying on the floor.
  ‘Oh, pick her up, can’t you!’ Mr Phelps said angrily.
  We got down and sort of crawled round Miss Phelps. But she
said, very politely, ‘No, thank you. I think I shall lie here until I
notice what I’ve broken this time.’
  So we got up again, feeling very silly. I stared at Mr Phelps’s long
mauve ankles under his dressing-gown and then at his sword. Chris
sort of cleared his throat.
   Mr Phelps said, ‘What in the world do you mean, bringing me two
of the enemy?’
  ‘They aren’t the enemy,’ Miss Phelps said, lying there. ‘I checked.’
  ‘They’re from Number Thirteen,’ said Mr Phelps. He bared his
teeth and stared up at his sword.
  ‘We hate Aunt Maria as much as you do,’ I said.
  ‘I doubt it,’ said Miss Phelps from beside my feet.
  ‘I want to know about Antony Green,’ Chris said.
  ‘What about him?’ said Mr Phelps. He lowered the sword at last,
very slowly, and stood looking along it as if he thought it might
have got bent.
  ‘How long ago?’ Chris said. ‘And – what happened?’
  ‘How long?’ asked Mr Phelps, frowning at his sword. ‘Twenty
years, I think. That’s all I’m prepared to say until I know your
motives, young man.’ He began making lunges with the sword,
stamping with his slippers on the floorboards and going ‘Aah-ah’
when he stamped. That was the noise I thought was the telly. It
must have been very uncomfortable for Miss Phelps on the floor.
  Chris edged round past Miss Phelps’s little goblin body until he
was dangerously in the way of the sword, where he tried to catch
Mr Phelps’s frowning eyes. ‘There’s a ghost in my room, sir,’ he
said.
  Mr Phelps stopped with one foot about to stamp. He lowered his
sword and his slipper and stared at Chris. ‘Why didn’t you say so
before, boy?’ he said. Then he suddenly rounded on me. ‘Get her up,
get her out of it,’ he said, pointing at Miss Phelps with his sword.
‘All women out of here.’
   Miss Phelps said, ‘I think I’m ready to stand up now.’ I bent down
and heaved at her. She was so light. She came up as if she was
floating, and she was so dignified that I had to let go of her as soon
as her feet were on the floor. ‘Thank you,’ she said, shuffling into
the hall. Then when we got to the other room, she said, ‘Do you
know that was a good fall! Nothing broke this time.’ Then she sat in
her chair and made me tell her all about London for nearly half an
hour, until Chris had finished talking to Mr Phelps.
  Elaine was right. Chris came out looking pretty thoughtful and
he wouldn’t tell me what Mr Phelps said. ‘Not your business, Mig,’
he said.
  ‘Not in front of women and children, you mean!’ I said crossly.
  ‘That’s roughly it,’ Chris said.
  Sometimes I think everyone in Cranbury is mad, even me.
                        Chapter Five
                                                               «^»
It got madder yet. Perhaps Aunt Maria is the Hatted Queen of
Cranbury because she’s Queen of Mad Hatters. She knew at once
that we had been to see Miss Phelps. ‘Such a quaint little thing,
isn’t she?’ she said. ‘I always try to be kind to her, but she makes it
so difficult. I expect you found her very hard to talk to.’ Aunt Maria
looked down at her lap, the way she always does when she thinks
she is forced to say something terrible, and added, ‘So uncharitable!’
  Chris gave me an expressive look. I said Miss Phelps had fallen
over.
  ‘Poor thing!’ Aunt Maria said. That was her special sincere voice.
‘That will teach her to make rude remarks. Well, you won’t be
going there again, so that’s all right.’
  Elaine came marching in to tell us the same thing after lunch,
when Chris and I were washing up. ‘You two,’ she said. ‘Cut the
Phelps connection – understand? We don’t have anything to do with
Number Twelve.’ And before Chris could think of a rude remark,
Elaine went off up the garden, where Mum was petting the cat and
pretending to garden. The cat hid, and Elaine strode around
forbidding Mum to let us go near Miss Phelps. Then telling Mum
she had done a good job on the roses but she ought to tackle some
more of the weeds before they started growing – on and on, until I
wondered why Mum didn’t hit her. Chris says he wouldn’t dare hit
Elaine, either. She’s so tall and wiry. But I saw Mum go for Dad
several times when Dad was trying to hit Chris or me. Mum’s brave
enough. But she’s just too civilized to hit Elaine.
   This is what puts Mum at a disadvantage. Aunt Maria and Elaine
– and some of the Mrs Urs – can rely on Mum being too civilized to
fight back. What’s the good of being civilized, that’s what I want to
know? It just means other people can break the rules and you can’t.
  Anyway, I tried to break the rules when all the Mrs Urs came to
tea. It’s not as easy as you’d think. There were seven of them, so
there was a crowd in the dining-room and not enough cake for me.
Chris had taken a huge slice in his pocket when Mum booted him
out. I was squashed between Hester Bayley and Phyllis Forbes, but
that didn’t stop the other five leaning over and telling me:


  1. ‘Naomi, dear, we don’t like to think of you under bad
influence.’
  2. ‘Naomi, dear, I heard something about you I hope isn’t true.’
  3. ‘Naomi, dear, don’t worry your aunt this way.’
  4. ‘Naomi, dear, I was so sad to hear you saw Miss Phelps.’
  5. ‘Naomi, dear, Miss Phelps isn’t a nice person to know.’
  6. This was Phyllis Forbes. ‘She’s all right, but her brother !’


  First I tried saying in a loud voice, like Chris had, ‘What’s wrong
with Miss Phelps?’ And only Aunt Maria seemed to hear at all.
   ‘What’s wrong with home helps?’ says Aunt Maria. ‘ Dear Lavinia!
I hadn’t a word to say against Lavinia. Devoted.’
  So then I pulled Phyllis Forbes’s sleeve and asked how the
orphans were getting on. I said, ‘Those dear little children you look
after –’
 She just turned away. She never talks about the clones. That’s
why I asked.
  So that left Hester Bayley. Sensible, ordinary-looking Hester
Bayley who gave me those pictures. I said, ‘Do you have a daughter
called Zenobia, Mrs Bayley?’
   ‘Yes, as a matter of fact I do,’ she said in her sensible way. Then,
just as I began to feel interested, Hester Bayley held her hand out
to show someone about two feet high. ‘About this tall,’ she said. ‘A
sweet child, vibrant with imagination. What a pity,’ she said, giving
me one of her most sensible smiles, ‘that such a daughter only
exists in my imagination.’
  ‘Well,’ I said. ‘I suppose an imaginary daughter’s better than
none.’
  ‘I do agree,’ she said. I think she’s even madder than Zoe Green.
  And Mum seems to have caught it now. She smuggled the grey
cat up to our bedroom. It wasn’t hard to do. For one thing, the cat
seemed to be expecting it. When I opened the front door to put the
milk bottles out, the cat was sitting on the doorstep like a hassock
escaped from church. It simply strolled indoors, tail up, cool as if it
owned the place. Mum called to Chris to turn the electricity off,
snatched the cat up and raced upstairs so fast that her candle went
out.
   She was feverishly fumbling about trying to light the candle
again when I came in with my candle. ‘Oh good! Light!’ she said.
She snatched my candle and nearly put that out, too, lighting hers
with it. Then she rushed to the shelf and took down Lavinia’s
silver-framed photo of Lavinia and her mother. ‘That’s it!’ Mum
cried, and shoved candle and photo towards me. ‘Don’t you think
she’s the spitting image of Lavinia?’ she cried.
  ‘Lavinia’s mum?’ I said. ‘Yes, I told you. Twins.’
  ‘No, no!’ cried Mum. ‘The cat, Mig!’
  Naturally Aunt Maria woke up and shouted, ‘Is there a bat? Has
a bat got in the house?’
  I looked at the cat. It was lying on my pillow looking even more
than usually like a pyjama case. It looked calmly back at me.
  ‘It’s all right, Auntie!’ Mum called. ‘I just said I was getting fat !’
And in a whisper to me, ‘ Isn’t it like her?’
 ‘Yes, you’ll need a hat for church tomorrow, dear!’ called Aunt
Maria.
   ‘And a sprat on a mat where I spat,’ says Chris on the stairs
listening in.
  ‘What’s that?’ yells Aunt Maria.
   By this time I’d got the giggles and Mum was looking tragic and
misused. I said hurriedly that the cat was probably exactly like
Lavinia. Mum relaxed. Chris went to bed and Aunt Maria went
back to sleep. ‘Why are you so worked up about what the cat looks
like?’ I said.
  Mum was in bed and so was the cat by then. We shall have to
buy some flea powder. ‘Because I think it may be Lavinia’s cat,’
Mum said. ‘I think she may have left it behind expecting Aunt
Maria would feed it – or she may have owned it secretly – or, oh, all
sorts of things.’
  ‘How do you work that out?’ I said.
  ‘Because animals do grow to look like their owners,’ Mum said
seriously. ‘Everyone knows that.’
  I would have hooted with laughter, only I knew it would wake
Aunt Maria again. So I just got on with writing this. And while I
did, it dawned on me that I am just as crazy as Mum. I am being
quite as unreasonable over that blue Ford which is so like our old
car.
  Since then, the cat gets called Lavinia. The name seems to suit
her. She answers to it quite well, and she seems to have got more
interesting with a name, somehow.
   But something really extraordinary has just happened. Can a cat
be that intelligent? It’s hard to believe. Anyway, I wrote quite a lot
of this the next morning. It is Sunday. Aunt Maria has gone to
church in her dead fox and her high hat and her wheelchair, in one
procession of Elaine, Mum and voiceless Larry as before. She
wanted us too, but Mum said we hadn’t got proper clothes. Talking
of clothes, Elaine has a black coat on today, which is quite a clever
imitation of the usual mac, and a black beret. All she needs is
jackboots and a rifle, though Chris says a stocking-mask over her
face would improve it. Chris has gone to the beach.
  I had to stop writing and let Lavinia out. She was urgent. And I
am scared of them coming back and finding a cat in the house. But
Lavinia wouldn’t go out unless I came into the garden too. I kept
opening the door, and she kept backing away from it, and looking at
me and then mewing to go out when I shut the door – cats can be
maddening. So I stomped out, holding my pen and rather cross. And
Lavinia ran away from me. It must have been because I was cross.
  ‘Oh God!’ I said. ‘She thinks I’m like Elaine.’ I felt a beast. So I
called and called, and she came out from the gooseberry bushes,
just a little way. When I went to get her, she ran away again, into
the garden shed. I went in there and looked. She was crouched up
on a sloping high shelf full of flowerpots and cobwebs. ‘Do come
down,’ I said. ‘I’m not like Elaine – really. I’m sorry.’ But she
wouldn’t come. She just crouched away backwards when I tried to
reach her. I had to get an old bucket and stand on it upside down
before I was tall enough to grab her. ‘I don’t know why I’m doing
this,’ I told her as I grabbed, ‘unless it will prove I like you or
something.’
  She tried to get away when I thought I had her, and I unbalanced
and tried to save myself on the shelf. And the whole shelf came
down in a rain of flowerpots, dust, Lavinia and garden catalogues
covered with cobwebs. I stood in the ruins staring at a fat, faded
exercise book that had been in the pile of catalogues. It was two
shades paler and covered in those brown dots that grow on paper in
garden sheds, but I knew what it was even before I’d got enough
dust out of my eyes to read my own writing on the front.
   The Story of the Twin Princesses by Naomi Margaret Laker. That
was my story that had still been hidden in our car when Dad drove
off to France in it with Verena Bland. It had still been in the car
when Dad stormed off after seeing us at Christmas, because I kept
forgetting to ask for it what with all the quarrelling there had been.
  ‘So Dad did get here!’ I said.
  I looked for Lavinia then. She was sitting outside the door of the
shed, giving herself a good, proper wash. It’s the first time I’ve seen
her wash. She looked very pleased with herself. She wouldn’t come
indoors when I went in with the exercise book. She seemed to know
they’d be back from church soon.
   I’ve looked at the book a hundred times since then. I’ve thought
round and round. The book is very dusty and rather damp but I
know it has never been wet – not wet the way a book would have
been which had been in a car that had fallen into the sea. The story
I dropped in my bath dried all wavy, with brown marks, and the
printed lines were washed out on some pages, as well as a lot of the
writing. This book is flat and none of the ink has run. It doesn’t
even smell of sea, but it does, behind the dust, smell just faintly of
the inside of our car. So what is it doing hidden in Aunt Maria’s
garden shed? Someone hid it, someone tall enough to reach that
shelf, and I’d never have found it but for Lavinia.
   That someone has to be Dad. I think he did get to Aunt Maria’s
house after all and he was coming away when he went off the cliff.
But why didn’t Aunt Maria say he came here? I know Mum would
say the shock was too much for Aunt Maria and she forgot, or
something. Or could Dad have sneaked into the house? I don’t
know. But my first thought was that Dad had left a message in the
exercise book. I shook it in case there was a loose paper, but there
wasn’t. Then I went carefully through every page. Because it was
such a nice fat book, I’d left every other page blank when I wrote
that story, so that I could write notes and corrections on the empty
page. It was a new experimental method of writing that didn’t seem
to suit my genius. I got stuck in that story worse than I’ve ever
been before. But it had left a lot of places where Dad could have
written something if he’d wanted. And he hadn’t. I even held each
page up at eye-level and looked across it, in case there were dents,
like in detective stories, where something had been written in
invisible ink. The trouble is, I had made dents writing deeply,
thoughtfully and stuckly, but I quite honestly can’t find any dents
that aren’t obviously mine. So I am as puzzled as ever. I am hiding
the book to show Chris.
   I did show Chris, but not till the middle of the night. Elaine was
here all evening, with Larry Mr Elaine. Larry actually spoke once
or twice. He handed Aunt Maria official-looking letters and said,
“This is from the tax office. This is from the broker,” in a low,
respectful voice. I think he is a lawyer. Elaine took her black coat
off and hung it on a chair, but it didn’t make much difference. She
had a black dress underneath. She talked to Chris mostly in a loud
jolly voice, saying things like, ‘And what were you up to all day, my
lad? I had news of you up on the Head and then over by the
Orphanage and off in Loup Wood, until I thought you must be in
several places at once!’
  This made Chris wriggle rather and grin, but he didn’t seem
annoyed. Mum started another sweater sleeve. I think she is
knitting clothes for an octopus. I tried to draw a picture of Aunt
Maria, but I couldn’t show anyone because it went wrong and made
her look like an insect. Mum saw it when we were getting ready for
bed and Lavinia was sitting purring on my pillow again. We must
get some flea powder.
   ‘Oh Mig !’ Mum said reproachfully, holding my drawing under the
candlelight. I felt bad. Aunt Maria had been like a teddy bear again
when we put her to bed. ‘I know what you mean, though,’ Mum
said. She smiled her bright and indulging smile. ‘She’s a large
golden furry insect. A Queen Bee. That’s how all the Mrs Urs think
of her, I’m sure. It amuses me the way they all run round her and
make sure she’s happy, just as if they were Workers and she were
their Queen. It’s funny.’
  ‘If it makes you laugh,’ I said, and I pushed Lavinia out of the
way and pretended to go to sleep. I waited until Aunt Maria was
snoring and Mum was almost snoring. Then I got up in the dark. I
heard Lavinia thump down off the bed and come after me, but that
didn’t help. I was terrified. My hands were curled up and cold, but
wet on the palms, and my heart was banging in my throat till it
ached. Suppose I meet the ghost! I kept thinking. It was worse on
the landing, where there was Aunt Maria’s nightlight shining round
her bedroom door. There was just enough light to show me how
pitch dark it was. I nearly ran away from the big clock where I’d
hidden the book. It looked like a person. Clunk ! it went as I took
the book out from behind it. I was so scared, I dived for the stairs.
  ‘Is that you, Naomi?’ called Aunt Maria. ‘What are you doing,
dear?’
  As I was halfway downstairs, I couldn’t say I was going to the
loo. I said, ‘I’m hungry, Auntie. I’m going to look for a biscuit.’
  ‘Be careful you don’t fall, dear,’ called Aunt Maria.
   I stood on the stairs waiting for her to start snoring again for
about a year. Only Lavinia fluffily rubbing round my legs kept me
sane – and even so I kept thinking, what if a light comes on and I
find Lavinia’s only a bundle of bones and cobwebs! But six months
after I thought that, there came the well-known rasping snore from
Aunt Maria. Zzz zzz, the Queen Bee buzzing, I thought, as I fled
downstairs.
  Chris’s door was half-open. There was a scrape and flare inside
the room as Chris lit his candle. ‘Come in and shut the door,’ he
whispered. ‘What’s up?’ And when I’d shut the door, he said, ‘You
sat there all evening looking like a rabbit in someone’s headlights. I
knew you’d come down. You should learn to hide your feelings a
bit.’
   Ghost or not, the room Chris has is a nice room. It’s cosy. The
gold print on all the books glints by candlelight and the room smells
of book. Chris has added improvements: a hanging flower-basket
over his bed that holds the matches, the biscuits and a book; an oil
lamp; a fishing line hooked to the ceiling that is supposed to draw
the curtains; and a thermometer propped on the bookshelf by the
window.
  ‘That’s for the ghost,’ Chris explained. “They’re supposed to make
a cold spot where they appear, but I don’t think this one does. Why
did you bring that cat?’
 ‘I didn’t. She just came,’ I said. I showed him the book. ‘Know
what this is?’
  ‘The Collected Works of N. M. Laker ,’ Chris said. ‘You wrote it
last year and got sick in the car – Oh!’ And he was impressed
enough to light his oil lamp. ‘So Dad did get as far as this house,’ he
said. ‘Give it here. Is there a message in it?’
   But Chris couldn’t find any message in the book either. I told him
all about how I had found it, trying to get Lavinia down, and how it
had to be a tall person like Dad who put it on the shelf.
  ‘Elaine could have reached,’ said Chris.
  ‘Yes, but why ?’ I said. ‘Why didn’t Aunt Maria say Dad came
here, if he did?’
  ‘Guilt, I should think,’ said Chris.
  ‘Guilt? Oh you can’t mean that!’ I said. ‘Should we go to the
police?’
   Chris was looking through and through the book with my story
on every other page. He said in a casual sort of way, ‘I haven’t seen
a single policeman in Cranbury, but I’m willing to bet he’ll be a
zombie like Larry when we do see him. Try if you like, Mig. But I’d
rather you waited. This book means something , if I could just work
it out. For one thing, how did the cat know it was there?’
  ‘She couldn’t have,’ I said. ‘She must have been living in the shed
and I frightened her and she went back there.’
   Chris turned and looked at Lavinia. She looked back – she was
sitting neat and upright in the exact middle of Chris’s pillow,
staring out of flat yellow eyes from her stupid flat grey face. Her
tail was wrapped neatly in front of her stumpy front paws, which
turn outwards rather. ‘Like an old woman’s feet,’ I said. ‘She’s an
old maid cat.’
  ‘I wonder!’ said Chris. He made an incredulous laugh. ‘I wonder,
Mig! Mum could be right! Hadn’t Lavinia got a wide, flat sort of
face and grey hair? I remember her turned-out feet. Her toes were
humpy.’
  I was beginning to say that a joke was a joke but no one can
really turn a person into a cat, when I had a most peculiar feeling.
Let’s see if I can describe it. First, it was as if at the back of my
mind somewhere I was out of doors. There was that open feeling
you get. It was as chilly, wherever it was at the back of my mind,
as those leaves I knelt on in the wood. With it I could sort of sense
grass rustling, wind blowing and the smell of earth, mixed with
that almost gluey smell some new buds have. I had just noticed
that, when the wind bringing the feeling seemed to be blowing on
my back. I came up in goose pimples and smelt earth stronger than
ever. The lamp and the candle both sort of faded like when the
moon goes behind a cloud. The cat jumped to all four feet and stood
in an arch, glaring, twice the size with wildly standing hair.
  ‘Is it the ghost?’ I said.
  ‘Yes – he’s coming,’ said Chris. ‘Don’t stay in here! Out, out, out!’
   I don’t remember getting up off Chris’s bed. I was at the door and
I dragged it open, and Lavinia nearly tripped me up in her hurry to
get through it first. She fled upstairs into the dark, and I fled after
her, and I wasn’t scared of the dark a bit. I remember thinking how
brave Chris was as I got myself into bed beside warm, warm Mum,
and then I nearly jumped out again with a yell until I realised that
Lavinia had got down into the bed too. She stayed there, crouching
by my feet, and no amount of shoving would make her budge. She
was still there this morning.
  ‘We must get some flea powder,’ Mum said. Chris came down to
breakfast scratching too. But he didn’t look as tired as I did.
  ‘Mig and I will go and get some flea powder,’ Chris said. He had
thought of something he needed to tell me, I could see by his face.
Mum saw too, and told me to go.
  ‘What’s that, dear? I don’t need knee powder,’ said Aunt Maria.
‘My knee only comes on in the winter.’
  ‘Sea chowder,’ said Chris.
  Mum said very loudly and clearly, ‘Mig and Chris are going to
buy some seafood for lunch, Auntie.’
   ‘Chris can go,’ said Aunt Maria. ‘I want my little Naomi by my
side.’
  ‘Auntie,’ said Mum, ‘isn’t it enough to have me tied to the house
waiting on you hand and foot, without making a prisoner of Mig,
too?’ Now, the way she looked at Aunt Maria made us sure the
worm had turned at last.
  ‘I stand rebuked,’ said Aunt Maria, with a merry little laugh.
‘What a strict little nurse you are, Betty! Let them go and buy your
face powder, dear. But you won’t get whelks on a Monday.’
  Arguing with Aunt Maria is like that. You end up wondering
what you were talking about. Chris and I laughed about it all the
way to the sea front. We went to the sea because Chris said it was
the most private place. It wasn’t. Hester Bayley passed us, all
wrapped up, with a little dog on a lead; then Benita Wallins
stumping along with a plastic bag of shopping; then Phyllis and
Selma Ur and it was ‘Goooood morning! Auntie well?’ from each.
  ‘There seems to be an alert out,’ Chris said. ‘I wonder if Aunt
Maria knows what you found. Oh Lord! Here comes Mr Phelps now.
Let’s go down on the sand and wait for some peace.’
  Mad Mr Phelps strode past us swinging his walking stick.
‘Morning, Christian,’ he said, taking no notice of me.
  ‘Morning,’ Chris said, rather grudgingly over his shoulder, as he
scrambled down on to the beach. The tide was out a long way. Chris
ran towards the sea, floundering and crunching in the banks of
pebbles, and then sprinting on the flat brown sand beyond, setting
spurts of water flying. When I caught him up, he was sitting on a
rock watching the waves roll seaweed about, panting. He was
awfully pleased with himself. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Phelps knows I found
something at last.’
  ‘How does he?’ I said. ‘Why should he? Besides, I found my story,
not you.’
  ‘Throw stones,’ said Chris. ‘Look casual. We mustn’t look as if
we’re talking about anything important.’
  I threw stones. It was too cold in the wind not to keep moving
about. But I was annoyed at Chris for being so pleased and
mysterious. ‘Tell me,’ I said, ‘or I may throw stones at you.’
   ‘He says Good morning,’ Chris said. ‘I say Morning if I’ve got
something. If I say Good morning it means I’ve got It. We arranged
it the day Miss Phelps fell down.’
  ‘What’s It?’ I said. ‘What’s it all about?’
  ‘The thing the ghost is looking for, of course,’ said Chris. ‘He
needs it. It contains most of Antony Green’s power and Mr Phelps is
the last one left now. He’s got a right to it. He was Antony Green’s
second-in-command before they did for Antony Green.’
  ‘Who did for Antony Green?’ I said.
  ‘The same people who did for Dad. Obviously,’ Chris said. He
began to ramble along the sand, throwing stones into the sea. The
wind was nothing like as strong as it had been that first day, but it
was still hard to hear him. I thought he said, ‘Mrs Urs,’ as he went.
  I ran after him. ‘Mr Phelps is awfully mad,’ I said.
  ‘I knew you wouldn’t understand,’ Chris said. ‘Being female puts
you automatically on the other side.’
  That really annoyed me. ‘No, it doesn’t. I’m neutral, like Miss
Phelps,’ I said. ‘And I want to know. Or are you being mysterious
about nothing?’
  We went rambling and wrangling along beside the waves until
our feet were crusty with wet sand. Chris kept squirting out bits of
explanation, the way he had talked about the ghost, in jerks. I
think he was scared and ashamed of thinking some of the things he
was thinking too. He rather thought Mr Phelps was mad. ‘He’s a
fitness freak,’ he said. ‘He does judo as well as that sword stuff.
When he comes along the front, he’s coming back from swimming.
In all weathers. He says it’s the way he stays above the common
herd.’ Worse than Dad.
  ‘Yes, but,’ I said, ‘what has my story in the garden shed to do
with Mr Phelps and Antony Green and the ghost?’
  ‘It proves Dad did see Aunt Maria probably. Right?’ said Chris.
‘Now Dad is a native of Cranbury, remember. He’d know the whole
story of Antony Green and he’d know what the ghost was looking
for. Suppose he came and stayed with Aunt Maria. Lavinia would
be in the room you and Mum have, so Dad would have the room I’m
in, wouldn’t he?’
  ‘So it is Dad’s ghost!’ I cried out.
   ‘No, it isn’t, you fool!’ said Chris. And he went running away on
top of his own reflection shining down in the wet sand. I couldn’t
make him stop for ages. But at last he stood still and said unfairly,
‘Have you calmed down? Right. Then suppose Dad saw the ghost
and looked for what it was looking for and found it. What would he
do then? It’s valuable, remember, and he wouldn’t want Aunt Maria
to know he’d found it.’
   We stood facing one another on top of our reflections, with the
wind clapping our anoraks. Chris looked deadly serious. It was the
way Mr Phelps looked holding his sword. He’s mad now! I thought.
I said, ‘He’d hide it in that place in the car where I put my story.
But he had to take my story out to make room for it and hide that.
Chris, what happened then?’
  ‘Somebody found out,’ Chris said. He went running off again,
calling over his shoulder, ‘Did our car fall off the cliff? Did it?
Whee!’
  I stood there. I thought, I’m mad too. That blue car. I ran after
Chris. ‘Chris! I met the car again outside the chemist. Let’s go and
buy flea powder.’
  ‘Let’s,’ said Chris. ‘I can pick the back lock. I got good at it.’
  But we didn’t find the car, not outside the chemist or anywhere
else we looked. It’s just dawned on me where we should have
looked. In the station car park where we saw it first. We’d better
look there tomorrow – though I still think everyone’s mad.



                         Chapter Six
                                                              «^»
We found the car. I don’t know how to write about all this. It’s so
strange. I had to go upstairs and write it while Aunt Maria waits
for the Mrs Urs to come calling. Mum has gone out. She said it was
only fair, after she let me and Chris go off two mornings running.
So I have left Chris being talked to by Aunt Maria. It’s quite a risk.
I know he’ll Say Something again. I’ll go down and pretend to get
out the cake when I hear the row start. But I just have to get this
down.
  The flea powder makes me sneeze, but it seems to have worked.
Today Chris insisted he needed me to go out with him again. He
had thought of the station car park too.
  Aunt Maria made her low reproachful noise. ‘I see so few people
these days. Are you sure Naomi isn’t avoiding me, Betty dear?’
  ‘Of course not,’ said Mum inventively. ‘I’ve asked Mig to choose
me some new wool at the handicraft shop. I can’t trust Chris with
colours.’
 ‘Yes, that is woman’s work,’ Aunt Maria agreed. ‘Dear little
Naomi. A little woman.’
  So I had to tote a bag of pea-green fluffy wool all round Chris’s
devious route to the station. First we went along the sea front.
There was only Hester Bayley and dog today.
  ‘Her small obnoxious cur,’ Chris called it. Because there was only
Hester Bayley, he would have it that the Mrs Urs had decided we
didn’t realise what finding my story meant. I still think that is
imagination, about the Mrs Urs, but I humoured Chris. And then
Mr Phelps came striding towards us, tweaking his walking stick
smartly and bending into the wind. Chris said, ‘ Good morning.’
  Mr Phelps almost missed his step. For a moment I thought he
was going to fall over his stick. It faltered in mid-tweak. But he
made it into a nod at me somehow, though he was staring into
distance over my head. He has fanatical eyes, as bad as Elaine, the
same grey as the sky is today, like two fanatical holes in his head.
Then he strode on without a word.
  ‘Chris!’ I whispered. ‘We haven’t found the car yet!’
   ‘Yes, but I know it’s there, ‘ Chris said. My private feeling
suddenly was that the car was bound to be hidden in a locked
garage somewhere, but I humoured Chris again and we went round
and round Cranbury until we got to the allotments I had run
through that day we saw the clones and the zombies. We got in by
a stile and went up beside the hedge until we could see the roofs of
the cars in the car park. Chris made us both sit down, out of sight
from the station, to spy out the land. Of course we couldn’t see
anything from there. We had to get over the fence again and dodge
about among the cars, bent over so that the porter in boots wouldn’t
see us. I felt very silly. I kept wondering why I was so nervous
when we weren’t doing anything wrong. I jumped when a pebble
clanged on a car off my foot and expected the porter to come
charging out shouting,’Hey you!’
  We never saw him. But we saw the car in the middle of the
second row along, between two much shinier newer ones. We sat
down on the gravel beside it, out of sight, in a sort of canyon of car
smelling of petrol and tyre.
   ‘It is ours, surely,’ whispered Chris. ‘That rusty place like a map
of Australia.’
  ‘It’s got a new door the other side,’ I whispered.
  ‘Makes sense,’ Chris whispered. ‘It wouldn’t unlock and Dad
kicked it half to blazes. Come on. I’m going to get it open.’ He went
crawling off to the back of it. I lugged the knitting wool after him
and squatted watching while he dug away at the hatchback lock
with his penknife. I think it was the tensest few minutes either of
us had known. Chris was a strange patchy white colour by the time
the lock gave a tinny sprung ! and he pulled up the hatch door. That
whining sound, with a small boing from one side was so familiar. I
knew it was our car just from that noise. I think Chris did too. He
certainly knew the moment he looked inside. He was holding the
door down so that it didn’t bob up above the car roof and his face
suddenly flooded dark red. He said, ‘Oh God. It is our car. That
toffee’s still stuck to the carpet.’ His voice was all on one note.
  I looked in. My heart began hitting my throat when I saw the
toffee. It had my teethmarks in it and it was all blue hairs from the
boot carpet. But it was the smell most of all. There was no sea
smell and no rust smell. Just our dirty old car smell. I could tell
Chris had come over queer because of that smell.
  ‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘I’ll get it.’
   I dumped the knitting wool beside the toffee and crawled in, over
the back seat where Chris and I had fought since we were tiny,
over the egg stain, across the hump in the floor, to squeeze between
the two gravestone-like front seats. There was Zenobia Bayley’s
perfume there on top of the car smell. I took deep breaths like
somebody suffocating and reached in under the dashboard to the
hiding place. The thing in there felt like a cigar box. By that time I
felt as if I was running out of air. I just grabbed it and backed out
in a rush.
  ‘Put it in with the wool and let’s go!’ Chris hissed at me.
   So I jammed the box or whatever in the bag among the pea-green
wool and backed away. Chris put down the door with the firm
thump that usually locked it again. Then we ran. Bent over and
gasping, we ran and ran. It was like my mad rush after we saw the
clones, only in the opposite direction and trying to hide all the time.
I ran out of breath completely when we got to the cow field.
  ‘Where are we going?’ I said with what felt like my last gasp. We
were behind a hawthorn bush covered with enough bright green
buds to hide us.
  ‘That – mound by the – Orphanage,’ panted Chris. ‘Mr Phelps is
going to meet us there at twelve. He said – the time was
important.’
  ‘Why there ?’ I said.
  ‘Because of Antony Green,’ said Chris and he set off running
again.
  It was only quarter to twelve when we got to the mound. We
went up one of its little muddy paths and sat down to wait at the
top. We were in the middle of a lot of these whippy bushes with big
pale buds, hidden from the Orphanage, where it was all quiet and
windless, in a sort of chilly hush.
  ‘Let’s have a look at it,’ said Chris.
  I took the thing out. It was a flattish box, but it wasn’t a cigar
box. Whatever it was made of wasn’t wood, or metal, and it was too
warm to be plastic, though it sounded like plastic when I tapped it
with my fingernail. Maybe it was bone. It was carved all over in
patterns, swirly interlacing pictures that were coloured in every
shade of green you could ever imagine – grey-green, faded
yellow-green, bright dragon-green, all greens, right through to sad
dark green that was nearly black. It was wonderful. We sat staring
at it. It almost made sense, as if the green pictures were meant to
tell you something. I almost knew what, too.
  That was when the clones turned up. We looked up to find
Orphanage kids standing silently all around us, staring at the box
as well.
  ‘Pretty,’ said the one nearest, when she saw I had seen her.
  They gave me quite a shock. They had come so quietly, and they
looked so much alike, even near to, in spite of all being different
colours and shapes of children, and they didn’t move or jig about the
way ordinary kids do. Chris muttered things angrily. I don’t blame
him. They were irritating, standing gooping like that.
  ‘What are you going to do with it?’ said another one.
  ‘Give it to someone. Go away,’ said Chris.
  They went on standing there.
  ‘It’s not interesting,’ said Chris.
  That was a silly thing to say. That box was the most interesting
thing I’d ever seen. It was like something alive. It seemed to get
more interesting the longer you looked. I was kind of bent over it,
and the clones were all craned in different directions so that they
could see it round me.
  ‘Aren’t you going to open it?’ one of them asked.
   As soon as he – or she – asked that, it was obvious we ought to
open the box. I could see the catch on one side of the lid, a little
clawed green clasp, and I pushed it up with my thumb. It moved
easily. Chris said, ‘Mig, you’re not to! Don’t touch it!’ But by that
time my fingers were under the lid and the lid seemed to come up of
its own accord.
   I think the lid was even more beautifully green and complicated
on the inside. But I didn’t really notice because whatever was inside
the box started to come out at once. It wasn’t quite invisible. You
could tell it was bulging and billowing out of the box in clouds,
fierce and determined and impatient. The clones all stepped back a
solemn pace to give it room. It was all round me. The air felt thick,
so that I had to press against it to move, even just to breathe, and
it fizzed in a funny way in my hair and on my face. I didn’t know
what it was, but I could tell it was very forbidden.
  Chris shouted out, ‘Oh you stupid girl !’ I had one hand under the
box and the other against the lid, squeezing with all my might to
try and shut it by then. But the stuff coming out held it open
against me as hard as if the hinges were never made to bend. I
knew it was horribly dangerous stuff – or perhaps, now I think, I
knew it was a terrible waste to let it all out – and I pressed and
pressed to get the box shut again. Chris scrambled over and put his
hands over mine and we both pushed frantically. The lid didn’t even
start to give until the box was at least half empty. Then it went
down, slowly, slowly, with more powerful stuff escaping the whole
time. It must have taken us a good five minutes to get it shut
again.
   Meanwhile, the stuff that was out was doing all sorts of strange
things. You could tell it was there because it rippled everything it
touched – not like hot air ripples things, but in a way that showed
it was changing the substance of the bush or the person or the
earth it passed through. Chris and I got rippled furiously. Some of
the stuff spiralled hugely into the sky. I could see more eddying
slowly down into the ground. But a lot of it lingered about writhing
the bushes, forming swirls and shapes as strange as the pictures on
the box, and curlicues of nothing. Some of them were horrifying,
and one clone, who got in the midst of those, covered her head in
her arms and whimpered. A lot were splendid and solemn. The
clones waved their arms at them in a stiff sort of way and looked
wondering, and the curlicues of nothing climbed and twisted and
wove around them until the stuff must have got thinned away by
the air. Anyway, it went. One clone suddenly burst out laughing. A
twist of nothing was hovering between his hands like a cross
between a dust devil and an invisible bird. He was still holding it
and laughing, and the rest of the stuff was fading into the earth in
dying twirls, when Mr Phelps came storming through the bushes
slashing his stick.
   He was furious. The orphans stared and then ran, just like the
cat runs away from Aunt Maria. But it was me Mr Phelps went for,
stick up ready to hit me. ‘You stupid little female!’ he said. It was a
low snapping snarl that was far more frightening than a shout. I
dropped the box and put one arm up. ‘Half of it gone !’ he said. ‘My
last hope against this monstrous regiment of women, and it has to
be a female who lets it out! You deserve to be whipped, girl. And
you, boy, for letting her!’
  I heard his stick swish. I think Chris got in the way. There was a
thump and Chris said, ‘Don’t do that! We were only trying to help!’
  ‘Steal it, you mean, just like your father did!’ snarled Mr Phelps.
‘Get out. Get out of my sight. And don’t let your sister near me
again or I won’t be responsible for what I do!’
  Chris and I pulled one another up and we ran. Chris remembered
the knitting wool, not me. I remember him humping it along,
panting, ‘Oh Lord, Mig, this is a mess! I thought he was the goodie
and Aunt Maria was the baddie, but I’m not sure now. I wish you
hadn’t opened that box!’
  I wished I hadn’t too, so I didn’t answer.
  And I wish it even more now. I don’t know what to do. Cranbury
isn’t just mad. It’s a nightmare.
  I finished my writing. I went downstairs. I think I must have
gone rather quietly because I was still thinking about that amazing
box. Chris and Aunt Maria didn’t hear me. As I came down she was
saying, ‘Snoring, dear? I wasn’t snoring. I’m awake. I’ve been
talking to you.’
  ‘Boring,’ Chris said. ‘B-O-R-I-N-G, that’s what I said you were.’
  I thought, oh dear! and hurried. Aunt Maria said, more in sorrow
than anger, ‘You poor boy, I shall pray for you, Christopher.’
 ‘And get my name right!’ Chris snarled. ‘It’s Christian , you
murderess!’
  Aunt Maria said, ‘ What !’ in a little faint voice. I felt weak and
sort of sinking and had to prop myself up in the doorway. I said,
‘Shut up, Chris.’ I think I did, but neither of them heard me.
   ‘Murderess,’ said Chris. ‘Shall I spell that too?’ He was standing
facing Aunt Maria. She was in her afternoon chair with her hands
on both her sticks, staring. She looked hurt and helpless, as anyone
would, when Chris went on, ‘You killed Dad, because he found out
about the green box and tried to get it back, didn’t you? I don’t
know what you did to him, except I know he didn’t go off the cliff
like everyone was supposed to think – ’
 ‘How dare you!’ said Aunt Maria. ‘I’ve never killed anything in all
my life, you poor misguided – ’
  ‘You did for him somehow. Same difference,’ Chris interrupted. ‘I
know you did. And you did for Lavinia, because she knew too much.
And – ’
  ‘Stop,’ said Aunt Maria, in a feeble, warning way. ‘Stop there!’
  ‘No, I shan’t,’ said Chris. ‘You cover it up with deafness and
politeness all the time, but it’s true. It’s the green box, isn’t it? Long
before Dad and Lavinia, you got rid of Antony Green in order to get
hold of that box and the power in – ’
  Aunt Maria stood up then, with no difficulty at all. ‘I’ve heard
enough,’ she said. She pointed the rubber end of one of her sticks at
Chris. The other she held ready to thump on the floor. ‘By the
power vested in me,’ she said, ‘go on four feet in the shape your
nature makes you, young man.’ Truly she said that, and she
thumped the second stick on the carpet.
  And Chris – Chris gave a sort of wail and folded up as if the
pointing stick had hit him in the middle. I remember the way the
palms of his hands hit the floor and then sort of shrank and bent, so
that he was holding himself mostly on his eight fingers. His thumbs
went travelling up his arms, shrinking and growing a curved
pinkish nail each. The rest of him was a quick seething, too quick to
watch.
   He didn’t grow much smaller. That surprises me still. He just
seethed into a different thing, with pink flesh boiling into grey and
brown and yellowish hair, and his own hair getting swallowed
under big growing ears. His clothes fell off about then. The thing he
was growing into snarled and fought and backed wildly away from
the jeans and the sweater, and bent a head with long white teeth in
it to tear at the pants clinging to its back legs. There was a thickish
grey tail under the pants.
   The kitchen door slammed open. Elaine stood there. ‘You haven’t
done it again!’ she said. The thing which was Chris backed away
from her with the lips of its muzzle up to show its teeth. He looked
like a smallish Alsatian dog by then. I saw Elaine’s face as she first
saw him and I swear she was almost crying. ‘Is it a wolf?’ she said,
sort of hoarse and loud.
   Aunt Maria leant on her sticks and inspected Chris. ‘I think so,’
she said. He was cowering back against the table to keep away
from her. ‘He richly deserves it,’ she said.
   Chris panicked then and raced round the room, long and low,
trying to get away. He made one dart at the doorway, saw me, and
headed the other way. I dodged back from the door into the hall.
Partly, it was the sight of his face, with its panic-staring
light-coloured wolf eyes. He was an animal, but he still looked like
Chris. Partly, I wanted to get the front door open and let him get
away, but my knees were weak and I had to lean against the wall.
There were crashings and rushings from the dining-room and I
heard Aunt Maria say, ‘Open the window. Chase it out.’
   Elaine said, ‘I’m damned if I want to get bitten, if you do! It’s
wild.’ Then there was a bang and she swore and the kitchen door
crashed. I think she’d left the back door open and Chris got out that
way. I heard her say, ‘It’s gone. Good riddance. Now what do you
tell its mother, for goodness sake?’
  That was when I realised that none of them had seen me, except
Chris, for that split second. They were too occupied, too violent
somehow. I crept to the stairs and sat there, holding the banister. I
was shaking. I couldn’t believe what I’d seen. I still can’t.
   Aunt Maria said, ‘Dear Betty. So understanding. No trouble at
all, dear.’
 ‘If you say so,’ Elaine sort of grunted. ‘What of little sister?
Where’s she?’
  ‘Upstairs, dear,’ said Aunt Maria. ‘I think she knows about the
box, but that’s all. No harm done. Do try to stop crying, dear. These
things happen. He was getting far too dangerous, you know.’
  ‘I’d gathered that,’ Elaine said. ‘Do you take me for a fool?’ She
sniffed and coughed and asked, ‘Are you going to want me here?’
  ‘Sit with me,’ said Aunt Maria. ‘I feel tired. You can help with
dear Betty.’
   I crawled upstairs very softly on hands and knees and sat in
Chris’s room on the floor, trying to imagine the same low-down
view that Chris would get of it now. All Chris’s arrangements were
there. The fishing-line had torn the curtain and the thermometer
had fallen on the floor, but they were a person’s arrangements,
clever things to do. I wondered what it would feel like to be Chris
now. Then I thought, no! I must have imagined it. Or maybe she’ll
turn him back before Mum realises. And I still found it almost
impossible to believe.
  The Mrs Urs made it even harder to believe. I wasn’t going to go
downstairs at first, when the doorbell rang.
  ‘Naomi, dear!’ Aunt Maria shouted. ‘Answer the door, dear!’
  And Elaine yelled, ‘Don’t bother. I’m here. I’ll do it.’
  Then I realised I didn’t dare stay upstairs or they’d realise I knew
about Chris. I didn’t want to turn into a wolf, too. So I went down.
Elaine, who didn’t even look as if she’d been crying, let alone
chasing a wolf round someone’s dining-room, was cheerfully
showing in a happy group of Zoe Green, Hester Bayley and Phyllis
Forbes. Every one of them made me want to cringe for a different
reason, but I went through into the kitchen and turned out the cake
Mum had baked. While I did, I thought carefully about the way I
usually behaved. When I brought the cake in, I said, ‘Where’s Chris,
Auntie?’
  ‘He went out, dear,’ said Elaine. The literal truth after all, but
the ‘dear’ was unusual. I thought: I must be very careful!
 ‘Remember the silver teapot,’ said Aunt Maria. ‘Will you be little
mother this afternoon, Naomi dear?’
  So I did the tea and tried to behave as if nothing had happened.
The others behaved as if nothing had happened, too. It was creepy.
All polite, jolly chatter and everyone saying Aunt Maria looked so
well today. I thought they all knew about Chris. Look at the way
Elaine knew the moment it happened. But no one gave a sign and
Aunt Maria was just the same as usual. I felt a real traitor to
Chris, pretending too, but the more I think about it, the more I
think the best way I can help is by pretending and staying human.
   I thought a lot, though. You do when something awful happens. I
thought a lot about Dad when the news came that he’d gone over
the cliff. Now I thought about Chris and the things he’d hinted at. I
thought: it’s between women and men in Cranbury and the women
are winning. The green box does it. I looked at Zoe Green’s mad
gushing face. She was talking about ectoplasmic manifestations.
And I thought: Aunt Maria did for your son. Why are you such
friends with her? I looked at Hester Bayley and wondered if she
knew all about our old car and Zenobia Bayley. She looked too
sensible to have a relation like Zenobia, all brown tweeds and
sensible thick stockings – but Aunt Maria is sort of related to us,
after all. Then I looked at Phyllis Forbes. She has a pink shiny face
with a pointing nose and short fairish hair like an old-fashioned
schoolgirl. I wondered if she knew that half her orphans had just
been irradiated with stuff from that green box. I don’t think so. I
think only Mr Phelps knows that and I hope none of them ever find
out.
  Mum came in as they were leaving. She looked all pink and fresh
and cheerful. ‘Where’s Chris got to?’ she said.
  ‘I think he went out, dear,’ Aunt Maria said vaguely.
  ‘Saw him going down the street.’ Elaine backed her up.
  ‘I expect he’ll be in when he’s hungry,’ Mum said.
  She was a bit surprised when supper was ready and Chris still
wasn’t in, but I backed Aunt Maria up then and I said Chris must
have taken the rest of yesterday’s cake with him. ‘He’ll be back for
bedtime,’ I said. It went against the grain to back Aunt Maria up,
but I’d thought a lot about it and I know it’s easier to make Mum
understand when she’s not all worked up first. I’m going to tell her
at bedtime.
  Mum said, ‘Bother. I wanted to measure him for this new
sweater.’ And she began to cast on stitches in the pea-green wool. ‘I
dare say I can do the back by guess,’ she said.
  I wish she wasn’t doing that.



                       Chapter Seven
                                                              «^»
Mum doesn’t believe me.
  Last night I waited until Aunt Maria began snoring, then I said,
‘Mum, you know Chris still hasn’t come in.’
  Mum was sitting up in bed brushing Lavinia. She had the cat on
a sheet of newspaper and she said, ‘You have to make sure there
are no flea’s eggs left – yes he has, Mig. Don’t be silly.’
  ‘When did he come in then?’ I said.
  ‘Just now, while we were putting Auntie to bed,’ Mum said. ‘You
heard him. He called up to say he was taking his supper up to his
room.’
   I snatched up my candle in a flood of relief and went racing down
to Chris’s room. For a moment I thought Chris was there. His bed
was in the tumble he always leaves it in and looked as if there was
a person there. But I banged my hand down on the biggest lump
and it went flat. Then I put the candle down and pulled the covers
off and the sheet was cold and wrinkled.
  ‘What are you doing, dear?’ Aunt Maria called as usual.
 ‘Looking for C – for a book,’ I said. Then I went into our room.
Mum looked up with a smile and a puff of grey cat hairs in one
hand.
  ‘What did I tell you?’ she said.
  ‘No, he isn’t!’ I whispered. Aunt Maria hadn’t begun snoring
again and I didn’t dare say any more.
  ‘He’s downstairs feeding his face,’ Mum said, laughing. ‘I heard
him go down. I hope he’ll leave some bread for breakfast.’
   I was getting into bed when Aunt Maria finally began snoring. I
said, ‘ Mum , Chris isn’t there. I know you’re going to find that hard
to believe – he isn’t there because Aunt Maria turned him into a
wolf.’
   Mum shoved Lavinia aside and turned over to go to sleep.
‘Miggie, love,’ she said, in her deepest and drowsiest voice, ‘I’m a bit
tired to join in one of your romances at the moment. Just go to
sleep.’
  ‘It’s true !’ I said. I shook her to make her stay awake. ‘Mum,
Chris is a wolf . And I don’t know what to do!’
  ‘End the story some other way,’ Mum said. ‘And Mig – shake me
once again and I’ll hit you. I’m tired.’ And she went to sleep.
   Well, I thought, she’ll have to notice in the morning. I lay down
and tried to go to sleep, but I couldn’t for ages. I kept wondering
where Chris was and how he was managing. To make things worse,
it started to rain. I could hear it hammering on the roof. Lavinia
came and curled up by my neck, purring. I suppose she was pleased
not to be out, but I thought, you selfish beast! You’re all right!
Which was not fair, because I was as selfish as Lavinia and neither
of us could help it. I wondered whether to get up and go to the
goblin wood and look for Chris. He’d have had to go to the wood. I
thought I ought to go and make sure he could get at the pork pie we
left under the tree. But I was too scared to try. I told myself that
wild animals had coats to protect them from the weather, but wild
animals are used to being out in the rain and Chris wasn’t. I
wondered whether he thought like a wolf, or knew he was Chris
really. And I wondered and wondered how I could make Aunt Maria
turn him back. I still can’t think how. She never did like Chris
anyway.
  Today has been awful.
  I had forgotten how much of Mum’s time Aunt Maria takes up
and how she shouts to know what’s going on if you talk privately.
All I seemed to be able to do was to say, ‘Look, Mum. Chris hasn’t
had breakfast.’
 ‘Go and dig the lazy creature out,’ Mum said, flying past with
more marmalade.
  When she came back, I said, ‘Chris isn’t in his room and his bed
hasn’t been slept in.’
   ‘I wish he’d remember to make his bed,’ Mum said. ‘He’s in the
living-room.’ Then Aunt Maria called out and she jumped up. ‘Tell
him to eat something before he goes out,’ she said and ran off
upstairs again.
 When she came down again, I said, ‘He’s not in the living-room,
Mum. He’s a wolf.’
  ‘Yes, he does eat a lot,’ Mum said. ‘He went out. I heard the front
door. I wish he hadn’t gone out in the fog.’
  The fog was down all day, as thick and bluish as Lavinia’s fur. I
kept thinking of how damp and cold Chris would be. I could see how
Lavinia felt. She crouched in the garden shed all day with little
drops of water all over her, looking wretched. I kept trying to tell
Mum about Chris, and if she didn’t think I was talking about
something else or writing a story, she seemed to think Chris was in
the other room or that he had just gone out.
  When she was getting lunch, I shut the kitchen door so Aunt
Maria wouldn’t hear and said, ‘Mum, listen to me. Chris-is-a-wolf .
Understand? That’s why he’s not here. He hasn’t been here since
yesterday afternoon.’
  ‘Don’t be silly, Mig,’ Mum said. ‘He took a packed lunch and went
out. You know he did.’
  She hadn’t mentioned packed lunch before. I said, ‘When did he
take the packed lunch?’
  ‘It must have been while we were getting Auntie dressed,’ Mum
said. ‘He used all the white bread up.’
  ‘No. We finished the white loaf at breakfast,’ I said.
  ‘Then he must have taken brown bread,’ Mum said. ‘Mig, if you’re
going to hang around in here, peel the potatoes while I do the
sprouts.’
   I think it was then that it dawned on me that Mum wasn’t going
to notice Chris was missing. She has been made so that she thinks
Chris is just round the corner all the time. She doesn’t realise that
she never sees him. I don’t know why I didn’t understand earlier. If
Aunt Maria can turn Chris into a wolf, she’s surely strong enough
to do this to Mum – except that it seems a different kind of thing,
much more natural and ordinary, and I didn’t really think she could
do both kinds.
   And that made me understand too that Aunt Maria was quite
capable of turning a person into a cat as well. I didn’t do the
potatoes. I went outside into the grey-white garden and walked up
to the shed, getting soaked with fog drops from the bushes. Lavinia
was crouching in a corner of the shed. She mewed miserably at me.
  ‘Are you Lavinia really?’ I said. ‘Mew three times if you are.’ And
I waited. The cat stared at me with flat yellow eyes, and went on
staring. It was just a cat, and a rather stupid one at that. But it
could be Lavinia. In which case, Chris probably doesn’t know he’s
Chris either. He’ll be a wild wolf even to himself and I’ll have to
capture him somehow and get him turned back. He’ll bite. It will be
terrible. Oh, heavens, how I wish this really was a story I was
writing! I’d write in a happy ending this moment. But it isn’t, it’s
real, and it goes on and on.
   Over lunch I realised Aunt Maria was talking as if Mum and I
were staying with her for good. She kept saying things like, ‘Don’t
leave the spring cleaning any later than May, will you, dear? I
usually have all the curtains washed then, but you needn’t bother.
They can wait till you’ve some time in summer.’ Then she said, ‘I’d
like little Naomi to be confirmed this autumn. I’ll telephone the
vicar.’
   ‘Mum!’ I whispered when we were washing up. ‘We aren’t going
to stay here with Aunt Maria, are we?’
  ‘I’m beginning to think it’s the only thing we can do,’ Mum said.
‘Lavinia’s obviously gone for good, and Auntie is quite helpless on
her own.’
  ‘But what about your job? And Chris and I have to go to school in
two weeks,’ I said. I keep reminding her about Chris. She takes no
notice.
   ‘We can settle schools here,’ Mum said. ‘I’ll have to give up my job
of course.’ You wouldn’t believe how cheerfully she said it.
  My back crept – it was like a cold hand on the back of my neck –
as I realised how deeply Aunt Maria has been at work on Mum.
‘Mum,’ I said. ‘She’s not helpless. You said so yourself. Put her in a
home.’
  ‘Mig! What an unkind thought! She’d be miserable away from the
things she’s always known,’ Mum said.
  ‘So am I miserable away from the things I’ve always known!’ I
said. ‘Mum, I want to go home.’
  ‘You’re only a little girl,’ Mum said, laughing. ‘You’ll adapt.’
   It’s like trying to fight the fog outside. The fog had one blessing,
though. No Mrs Urs turned out in it except Benita Wallins. She sat
with her fat bandaged legs stretched out across the carpet and said
to me, ‘I hear you’re always writing away. Going to be a journalist,
are you, dear?’
  ‘I’m going to write famous books,’ I said.
 B. Wallins laughed. She is the jolliest of all the Mrs Urs, but
when she laughs you feel she has just called you a bad name.
  ‘I learn the art from other famous writers,’ I said, like replying to
an insult. ‘I know hundreds of poems and things.’
  ‘Let’s hear one then,’ said Benita W. unbelievingly.
   ‘In my young days we were all taught to recite,’ Aunt Maria said.
‘Stand up properly, dear, and hold your head up as you speak.’
  I don’t think they thought I could. So I stood up and recited my
very favourite poem, called The Battle of Lepanto .
  It is ever so long. I know it all. It is full of splendid things like
‘The cold Queen of England is looking in the glass’ and ‘Risen from a
doubtful seat and half-attainted stall, The last knight of Europe
takes weapons from the wall.’ I got quite carried away by that bit,
where Don John of Austria goes to war where none of the other
kings will. I wish there was a Last Knight of Europe here in
Cranbury to come to our aid. But the only one I can think of is Mr
Phelps.
  There was a chilly silence when I had finished. Aunt Maria said,
‘What a clever little memoriser you are, dear. Don’t you know
anything more suitable?’
  I shan’t recite another word for her. No, on second thoughts, I
shall. Tam O’Shanter . That is all about witches, but my Scottish
accent isn’t very good.
  In the middle of the night, Chris came and howled in the garden.
  I didn’t hear him straight away. What woke me up was Lavinia,
digging all her claws into me with terror. She had gone like bent
steel knitting-needles inside a ball of wool, she was so frightened. I
rolled over wondering, what’s scared her now ? Then I heard it. It is
the most unearthly, eerie noise, a wolf howling. It turned my
stomach, and stood my hair up in prickles. I thought The Ghost !
and dived under the covers like Lavinia.
  Then I heard the thin yodelling wail again and realised what it
was. I think there is something built into the genes of the human
race that tells them a wolf is howling, even though the last wolf in
Britain was shot two hundred years ago.
   I jumped out of bed. Shut up, you fool! I thought. You’ll wake
Elaine and she’ll make Larry shoot you with his rabbit gun! I was
so terrified of Elaine that I forgot to think of ghosts or be scared in
the dark. The howl came again as I got to the stairs and I felt as if
I’d taken wings. I pelted into Chris’s room in the dark, and dodged
his table with the lamp on it almost without noticing and got to the
window.
  Chris’s room is over the kitchen, so it sticks out into the garden.
The fog had gone, leaving a clear dark-blue night and a moon riding
furiously through the clouds. I could see Chris quite clearly
standing in the middle of the lawn. He was a pale spindly
dog-shape, higher on the legs than an Alsatian, with a small
pointed head. He was raising his head to give another howl. I
wrestled frantically to get the window open and stop him.
   He heard me. I saw his head tilt as his ears caught the noise. You
forget how sharp an animal’s ears are. And I think he was waiting,
hoping I’d hear. I had no sooner pushed the window up than he
started to gallop towards the house, faster and faster. First I was
frightened. Then I realised in time what he meant to do and I got
out of the way of the window just in time. There is a sloping coal
bunker on the end of the kitchen, to which Chris has staggered
back and forth with coal for nearly two weeks now. I heard the
strong thump of paws on its wooden lid, then Chris was
half-through the window. He nearly missed with his back legs and
had to scrabble for a bit, and I was just going to pull him. But he
made it and bounded down to the floor, pushing himself against me
and making little whining noises.
  ‘Oh, Chris!’ I said. ‘I am glad to see you!’
   He is miserable. I could tell that at once. His coat was still damp
from the rain and the fog and I know he was freezing for a day and
a night. But it is more than that. It is a kind of shame. He knows
he is a wolf and he hates it. He hates the strong way he smells
when he is wet. I could tell that, because he kept breaking off
whining all the time I was lighting the lamp, to give himself
disgusted little licks. He hates having a tail. He turned round and
bit his tail when I’d got the lamp going, to show me.
  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘But I can’t think of any way to make her turn
you back.’ He knew that. He looked at me as if he’d expected it,
resigned to misery. Even though he has grey wolf eyes and a black
nose, he still looks like Chris, with Chris’s expressions in his face.
He is a very young, skinny forlorn wolf. ‘Are you hungry?’ I said.
His ears pricked. He was starving. I’m not sure he could bring
himself to kill things and eat them raw.
  There were no more biscuits in the flower basket, so we had to
creep downstairs. I was terrified Aunt Maria would wake up, but
she never did. I think she sleeps much more soundly towards the
middle of the night. She never woke up the night I ran away from
the ghost either.
   In the kitchen, Chris drank a bowl of milk – he did it very noisily
and badly: I could see he was not used to lapping yet – while I
fetched out all the loose food I could find. He nosed aside the
lettuce, but he ate everything else, even a tomato. He ate raw
sausages, raw bacon, a frozen hamburger, cold yorkshire pudding
and a lump of cheese.
  ‘Are you sure this won’t make you ill?’ I whispered.
   He shook his head and looked up hopefully. He was still hungry. I
tried him with cornflakes then, but he sneezed them all over the
floor. Wolves don’t seem to get on with cornflakes. So I found the
sardines Mum had got for Lavinia and a lot of cake. Chris gobbled it
all, while I crawled about sweeping up cornflakes and making sure
no pawprints showed on the linoleum. I’m used to that with
Lavinia.
   Chris did a wonderful stretch then, rocking back with his
forepaws straight out and then standing up slowly, so that the
stretch travelled the whole way down his body and out at each back
leg in turn. Then he shook, to show me he felt better. His coat
fluffed up, quite thick and almost glossy. He is not really grey,
more brindled, with darker hair on top and yellower hair
underneath, and the colours mostly mixed together on the rest of
him. He jerked his head to say, come with me, and went trotting
swift and busy through the dining-room. I heard him softly loping
upstairs as I switched out the kitchen light and groped after.
 It’s all right for you, you can see in the dark! I thought. Wait for
me.
  I was sure he was going to jump through the window of his room
again. But when I got to the room he was on the bed, lying on his
side with all four long thin legs sticking over the edge, looking at
me pleadingly. He was terribly tired and sick of being alone.
  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’ll stay with you.’ Actually, I hadn’t realised
how much I’d missed Chris until I thought he was leaving again. I
was going to ask him to stay. So I left the window open so that he
could get away when he wanted and hauled the covers off the floor
and wrapped them round both of us. Chris put his narrow muzzle
on my knee, heaved a great sigh and went to sleep. Animals are
good at doing that. And Chris has always been good at sleeping.
   I stayed awake for a long time, guarding him. If you look at
wolves in a zoo, you will see that they always leave one of the pack
awake on guard. That made it a bit like when we were small and I
was afraid of the dark. Chris used to guard me. I stroked him
sometimes, as if he was a dog. He is awfully thin. I could feel all his
ribs through his coat and his hip bones were like knives. Perhaps
wolves are always that thin. His fur is soft inside by the skin but
much harsher on the outside. Anyway, he didn’t like me poking at
him and shrugged crossly till I stopped. He got beautifully warm
and I suppose that made me go to sleep. I don’t remember turning
the lamp out, but I must have done. It was out when I woke up.
  All this time I had clean forgotten the ghost. I sort of
remembered in the middle of a dream I had, but then the dream
became too horrible to remember anything else. It started with a
smell of earth and growing things. I could hear grass and leaves
rustling and I thought, I’m somewhere out of doors! But that wasn’t
quite right, because the rustling was overhead somewhere, as if
there was a tree growing on the roof. I was terribly cold, so I
thought I must be outside. Then somebody’s feet ran over the top,
where the tree was growing, with a kind of solid booming. And I
realised I was buried in the earth.
   It went on for years too. Sometimes I struggled and shouted.
Nobody heard me, and I could hardly move. Sometimes I lay with
chill cloggy earth all round me and despaired. This went on so long
that I panicked. I shouted and raged and struggled and cried. When
that happened, I could tell that great storms came in from the sea.
I could hear the wind shouting and hail threshing the trees
overhead, and sometimes one cracked and broke. I could tell that
long lines of storm clouds went out from me, far inland, and made
havoc in places I had never seen. And after years and years, I
thought, if I know this and can do all that, then I ought to have
strength to get out of here. So I began working, working, slowly
and patiently to get free. I had almost found out how, when I woke
up and found a dim streetlight sort of light in the room.
   I was so glad to be out of the earth that it didn’t strike me as at
all frightening when I saw a man in the room beside the open
window. He didn’t seem a frightening sort of man anyway. I had
fallen asleep leaning one shoulder against the wall, so I was sitting
up, with a good view of him. He was odd-looking. He had a small
peaky face with a lot of swept-back hair and very thick, dark
eyebrows that bent in two upside-down V’s like a clown’s eyebrows.
His whole face was kind of quirked and crooked and
surprised-looking. When I first saw him, he was drumming all his
fingers on the edge of a bookshelf and rubbing his pointed chin,
puzzled, as if he’d forgotten what he’d come for. Then he nodded.
He’d remembered. He turned and came towards the bed. He leant
down, quite near me, and I saw he wanted to speak to Chris.
  Oh, it’s the ghost! I thought. From side-view he had a little
hooked nose, like an owl’s beak. Or a parrot’s. A cross between a
court jester and a parrot, I thought. It was a good description, but
he was nicer than that.
   Chris was curled up in a skinny doughnut-shape against my
knees. But he came awake the instant the man bent over him. He
raised his head, with the pointed ears pricked, and gave a miserable
little whine.
   The man stopped, with one hand stretched out that had been
going to shake Chris. He hadn’t realised until that minute that
Chris was a wolf. He stood like that staring at Chris, and his face
twisted even more with a sort of horrified sympathy. Then his hand
flopped in a helpless way and he started to turn away.
  ‘No, wait!’ I said. ‘You can say it to me. And Chris understands.’
  The man whirled round and stared at me. He seemed not to have
known I was there till then. One of his clown eyebrows went up and
he put his hand up again in a sort of fending-off way.
  ‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘I know I’m a girl, but I’m not on their side.
I’m not even neutral now she did this to Chris. Who are you? Do
you know what we can do?’
  For a moment I thought he was going to speak. His face sort of
gathered to make a word. Then he shook his peculiar maned head
and smiled. He meant, sorry, not to you. It was a huge wide smile,
as odd as the rest of him, one long line of smile wrapped most of the
way round his face. I know that kind of smile from Chris. Chris
used it to get out of trouble with.
  ‘I’m not trouble, honestly,’ I said.
  But he was fading by then. I could see books through him, all
except his smiling face. That sort of winked out and the light went
with it. All I could see was the outline of Chris standing up on all
four legs, whining a little, against the window.
   ‘Chris,’ I said, ‘would he know how to get you changed back?’
Chris turned and pushed his nose at me and pushed again. ‘All
right,’ I said. ‘I’ll come here tomorrow night and try to make him
speak. Hadn’t you better go now?’
  Chris pushed his nose at me and bounded to the window. For a
moment he teetered in the opening. I think his wolf’s muscles knew
they could jump to the coalshed easily, but Chris’s mind didn’t.
Then he jumped, scrape, thump, and he was gone too. I went
drearily back to my own cold side of Mum’s bed, sniffing a little. I
feel quite helpless. I suppose that’s what the dream was about.



                        Chapter Eight
                                                              «^»
This morning I made Chris’s bed, so that I could show Mum it
hadn’t been slept in. The room smelt of wolf slightly, which is a bit
like dog, but hot quite.
  When I showed her, Mum smiled her fond smile. ‘So he made his
bed for once, did he? Or did someone else I know make it for him?
You shouldn’t spoil him, Mig.’ Then she sent me out shopping.
‘Chris has eaten all the food again,’ she said. She didn’t seem to
realise he must have eaten it raw.
   I walked down the neat, empty windswept sea front. There was
Mr Phelps striding back from his swimming in all weathers. I tried
to stop him. ‘Please, Mr Phelps – ’
  He just walked straight past, staring into distance with his
fanatical eyes.
 I went sadly down on to the sand and walked along, watching the
waves crashing. The sea looked thick, bare, strong and real. It
seemed far more reasonable than anything else in Cranbury. But it
isn’t really reasonable, I suppose, if you think of the moon pulling
all that water up and down like a yoyo every tide. Perhaps life is all
like that, full of terrible hidden unreasonableness.
  It was good to have peace to think. Aunt Maria talks and shouts
so in the house that your mind is never quiet. I thought of
everything that had happened, and it seemed to me that I might be
beginning to see a way of doing something. But not quite. A wave
bashed down across my shoes. The tide was coming in and I felt
helpless again and went shopping.
  Chris must have felt even more helpless and frustrated. I suppose
he thought he had nothing to lose.
  Anyway, Mum had spent the morning washing. She washed
Chris’s things, including the clothes that dropped off him when he
became wolf, and didn’t notice that left him with nothing he could
have been wearing. She also washed a row of Aunt Maria’s
petticoats and mighty blue Baghdads. She got the lot pegged out,
merrily flapping in the wind.
  ‘But, dear, you can see them from the dining-room window,’ said
Aunt Maria. ‘I can’t have my friends sitting and watching such
things.’
   Mum protested it was a lovely drying day. In vain. As soon as the
doorbell rang for the first Mrs Urs I was sent out into the garden to
take all the washing in. I did it very slowly. It was such a silly
thing to worry about. But then if I wore blue Baghdads I wouldn’t
want my friends to know either. I said so to Lavinia. She was
sitting in the ornamental ferns, watching. I got about half the
clothes down and folded them in a basket.
   I said to Lavinia, ‘I suppose I’m not doing this the way you used
to, am I?’
  But she stared past me and bolted, a long low streak of grey. I
looked round, expecting to see Elaine looming over the wall, telling
me to get those Baghdads down at once. And it was Chris. He was
standing on the back wall, the way he must have come in the night,
sort of laughing down at me with his tongue flopping.
  ‘Oh no, go away,’ I said. ‘Don’t be a fool. All the Mrs Urs are
here.’
   I suppose that was what he wanted to know. He jumped down
into the garden at once, in a lovely limber, flowing leap. He’s
getting better at being a wolf. He can move like lightning. Before I
could move at all, he had jumped past me up at the clothesline and
landed with a pair of blue Baghdads between his teeth. Then he
made for the back door. I had left it open of course. And the kitchen
door opens into the dining-room if you shove it. Chris knew that. So
I didn’t follow him. I went to the dining-room window and looked in.
   It was wonderful. Chris was galloping round and round the
crowded room trailing the blue Baghdads. The silver teapot had
fallen over on its side and was raining hot tea on the carpet. At
least one cup was smashed. Everyone was yelling and screaming,
and Aunt Maria was waving both sticks in the air. Zoe Green was
standing on a chair with her hands together and her eyes shut. I
think she was praying. The rest of them were making feeble efforts
to stop Chris by grabbing the Baghdads. Just as I looked, Benita
Wallins did grab them. Chris simply jerked his head
contemptuously sideways and tore them out of her hands. Benita
Wallins tipped over backwards, with her fat legs in the air. She
wears Baghdads too, pink ones.
   Chris galloped over to the table then. He put out a paw and
swept the cake off on to the floor. Then he stood with one forefoot
on the cake and the Baghdads trailing from his mouth, daring them
all to get it. Only Mum was brave enough to try. She edged
forward, both hands out, and I could see her mouth saying, ‘Nice
doggie. Good dog then.’ Chris stared at her intently. I could see he
was hoping she would recognise him, but she didn’t.
   All the while, Aunt Maria was screaming, ‘Get it out of here! Get
it out of my sight! Oh – Oh – OH!’
  This seemed to brace the younger Mrs Urs. They really do defend
Aunt Maria. Corinne West and Phyllis West and Adele Taylor
between them pulled the tea-soaked tablecloth off the table from
under the teacups. They held it by a corner each and came tiptoeing
towards Chris, like bullfighters, all in their neat pleated skirts and
shiny court shoes. They tried to drop it over Chris.
   There was absolute chaos for a moment. The tablecloth surged
and neatly dressed ladies plunged in all directions. I saw Adele
Taylor step on the cake and go skating into Zoe Green’s chair. The
two of them ended up madly clinging to one another. In the midst of
it, Chris must have trodden in the pool of hot tea. I heard an
agonized howl, even above Aunt Maria’s screaming. But Mum’s
instincts are all right underneath. She went sideways, sliding her
back round the wall, and opened the door to the hall so that Chris
could get away.
   The side door into the garden crashed. I whizzed away from the
window and looked round the corner of the kitchen by the coal
bunker. Elaine came marching up the side passage and stormed in
through the back door. Whoops! I thought. As soon as she was
inside, I raced out through the garden door into the street. I had to
get the front door open somehow and let Chris get out. I thought if
I rang the bell someone would have to come and see who I was.
  But Mum got the front door open as I arrived there. Chris shot
out past her into the street. Somehow, in the middle of the
bullfight, his head had gone into one of the great baggy legs of the
blue Baghdads. There were holes torn in it, but he was almost
completely blinded. I saw half one wild staring wolf-eye as he
dashed past. Mum leaned round the door and saw me.
  ‘Help it, Mig!’ she shrieked above the screams coming from the
house. ‘Take those off it!’
  Mrs Urs came running out past her into the street. Adele Taylor
was waving an umbrella, Corinne West had a golf club, and Benita
Wallins came puffing after, flapping an empty plastic bag! I saw
Miss Phelps’s lace curtain fluttering as I pelted down the street
after Chris.
   He was running on three legs, pawing at the Baghdads with one
front foot. His other three legs kept treading on the rest of the
Baghdad. Every so often, he stopped and backed round in an angry
circle, trying to back out of it all. His tail and back were all bushed
out with fury. Even so, he ran twice as fast as I could.
  ‘Stop! Wait! I’ll get it off you!’ I yelled.
  Maybe he was too upset to hear. Near the end of the street, his
other front leg trod hard on the trailing blue cloth and he nearly
pitched on his nose. But that tugged the elastic back across his
head. I saw his ears come popping out. He went galloping down the
sea front with the Baghdads flapping round his neck like a mad
blue collar.
   I ran along the front after him. People kept coming out of the
houses to shout and wave and look. I saw more people in Cranbury
in that half hour than I have seen all the rest of the time we’ve
been here. Most of them were women, but there were quite a few
old men and one or two men in sea boots, who were not so old.
Chris veered away from them and leaped down on the sand, where
the tide was going out again. I saw him, more and more distant, in
a crazy outline against the breakers, galloping, stumbling, turning
in circles, and stopping to rub himself against rocks. Halfway along
the bay, he managed to tear the Baghdads off. They fell into the sea
and surged back and forth there. After that Chris sprinted for his
life, running like greyhounds do, doubled up, then spread, then
doubled up again. He vanished up the sand long before I got to the
Baghdads, and the few people who were running after him in front
of me gave up and went back to their houses.
   I looked at the torn blue bloomers washing to and fro and decided
to take them home as a trophy of Chris’s protest. I suppose he did it
because he had nothing to lose. And he must have hoped Mum
would know him. I don’t like to think how he feels now he knows
she didn’t. He’d have had to cross the road and the railway, too, to
get back to the woods. I hope he went carefully.
   But if he knew the trouble he’d caused! Aunt Maria has had some
kind of seizure and been put lovingly to bed by a crowd of Mrs Urs.
All the other ones have come here to make sure she is all right, and
Hester Bayley has taken Zoe Green home. Zoe Green has been
sitting staring at the wall saying, ‘A jahudgement, thad’s whad it
is!’ over and over. The other Mrs Urs keep going on about, ‘The
terrible great dog. What a shock to your auntie!’ I wanted to say
Aunt Maria got what she deserved, but I didn’t dare.
  Elaine is marching up and down the house, booming orders. We
have had the doctor. He is a zombie like the men on the train, a
soft grey one in a striped suit. The vicar has just arrived. He is
Phyllis West’s bachelor brother. I don’t think he is a zombie, but I
think he doesn’t understand.
  Mum and I have been flying about looking after Aunt Maria,
obeying Elaine’s orders, clearing up, and making half a hundred
more cups of tea for everyone. While I was kneeling in the
dining-room with a bucket and cloth, washing the tea Chris spilt
out of the carpet, the zombie doctor came and spoke to me. He
crouched down beside me. He is a soft and considerate zombie. ‘Tell
me,’ he said. ‘You were here. Was there really a dog?’
  I looked at my hands all brown and shiny with tea. ‘She didn’t
just imagine it, if that’s what you think,’ I said. ‘It was – a sort of
Alsatian.’
  ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I know you’re very busy, but would you
mind going to the chemist with this prescription? Now, before he
shuts.’
   So I wiped off the tea and took the prescription. I looked at it
first. He is Dr Bayley. That part was printed but the rest of it was
in doctor-writing and I couldn’t read a word. The chemist is A. C.
Taylor. It said on the bottle. I think he is Adele Taylor’s zombie. He
is skin and bone with three streaks of hair. He knew all about it.
‘Terrible business,’ he said. ‘Needs a sedative, does she? I won’t keep
you two minutes.’ He went off into his cubbyhole that said
Prescriptions , smiling and humming a dull little tune. I wondered if
he knew his wife had stepped on a cake. But I got bored waiting.
Mr zombie Taylor seemed to be telephoning while he counted pills.
So I went to the door and tried to think.
   It was dark outside by then, but I saw our old car as it shot past.
It was just a glimpse, but I know now I’d know it anywhere. I
stared after it and thought, what a fool I am! There is something I
can do! Then Mr Taylor called out that the pills were ready. I
walked home feeling cross with myself. I pride myself on having
ideas, but all the time we’ve been in Cranbury, I’ve been letting
Chris do all the real active thinking. Perhaps it’s because Chris is a
year older than me. But I am not usually like this. I think it is the
way everyone here takes for granted that having ideas is not
women’s work and not nice somehow. In future, I swear to do
better.
  Chris didn’t come back last night. He must have had enough in
the afternoon. He’ll be very hungry when he does come.
  I left the window of his room open when I went to bed. Mum
went to sleep quickly with Lavinia round her neck, the way Aunt
Maria wears her dead fox. I got up stealthily and went to Chris’s
room. I am not afraid of ghosts any more. I got into Chris’s bed and
went to sleep there. If Mum asked, I was going to say that Chris’s
bed was empty so why should I share? But she didn’t even ask in
the morning. She seems to be slowly forgetting Chris exists.
  I had the dream again. I remember now that Chris said the ghost
brought dreams. I looked up where I wrote it down. It was as bad
as last time, only realler somehow. I could feel the clammy clods of
earth round me when I tried to move. This time I tried to believe I
was Chris sleeping in the cold woods among the goblin trees. But I
could tell somehow that they were a different kind of tree growing
on top of me, lighter and bushier. And I fought to get out harder
than ever.
  Then I sort of burst through and sat up to find the room full of
pale light. Sweat was pouring down me. The ghost was standing
looking at me, thoughtfully, with a hand holding his chin. He
looked like a scarecrow. He was wearing a long green coat that
looked as if it had been left out in a field for a year. I could see
grass and mud and cowpats sticking to it. His face is a bit like a
carved turnip anyway. When he saw I was awake, one of the
V-shaped eyebrows slid up. He doesn’t take me seriously the way he
does Chris.
  ‘That’s not fair!’ I said. ‘I need your help. Please! You know what’s
happened to Chris – ’
  He smiled his long, long grin and just faded away.
  I was so angry I threw Chris’s pillow at where he had been. It
nearly went out of the window – lucky it didn’t. It was raining
again. Poor Chris.
   It is raining this morning too and Lavinia is crouched in the shed.
I don’t blame Mum truly for not being able to think of Chris. The
telephone never stops ringing. The whole of Cranbury is asking
after Aunt Maria. And Aunt Maria is not dead. I rather hoped she
would be and Chris would turn back into Chris the moment the last
breath left her body. No way. Aunt Maria is sitting on her roped
morning sofa, shouting, ‘Betty! Telephone, dear!’ every time the
phone rings, just as if Mum couldn’t hear it too. I hate her. I really
do.
 And it is rather frightening. Everyone talked about Chris as if he
was a dog yesterday. Today they are talking about ‘the wolf’.
   ‘Tell them it must have escaped from a zoo somewhere, dear!’
Aunt Maria calls to Mum. And she knows where the wolf came
from even better than I do. I must warn Chris not to do anything in
daytime again. I hope he comes tonight.



                        Chapter Nine
                                                                «^»
The Mrs Urs made me sick this afternoon. They sat in an anxious
circle round Aunt Maria asking how she was after her terrible
experience. They were all there, even Elaine. They all must know
about Chris – I’m sure they do – but none of them seemed to care at
all about his terrible experience. It was all Aunt Maria and had
their dear Queen Bee been harmed. Mum is right about her being
Queen Bee. The zombies are her drones. I suppose that makes the
clones into bee-grubs waiting to hatch. I wonder if they are.
  I sat thinking this with my chin in my chest, looking at all their
pairs of legs as they sat – fat legs, skinny legs, legs with purple
scaly patches, smart legs in nice tights and Mum’s legs in jeans.
And mine in blue tights with wrinkles at the knees. Twenty-six
legs, making thirteen of us, all female. As soon as I realised that, I
wanted to go away.
  ‘You loog dired, dear,’ Zoe Green said to me. ‘You shouldn’t. Your
star is in the assendand juzt dnow.’
  ‘I’m very well, thank you,’ I said. She looked at me in a puzzled
way, wondering why I was being so icy-polite. I don’t think she
realises.
  Then Corinne West said, ‘Poor Phyllis Forbes sends her apologies.
Something terrible seems to have happened at the Orphanage. That
wolf came out of the woods and savaged one of those poor little
children.’
  I thought, oh no! Everyone else exclaimed a bit, then Aunt Maria
said, ‘It was bound to happen, with a savage beast like that on the
loose. Isn’t anybody doing anything about it?’
  One of them said, ‘We should hold a Meeting about it.’
  ‘Yes,’ said Aunt Maria. ‘We should, dear. Elaine, see about it,
dear. Get Larry to organise the men.’
  ‘Will do,’ Elaine said cheerily.
  By that time I had had enough. I stood up and said, ‘I’m
suffocating in here, Mum. Is it all right if I go out for a bit?’
   Elaine looked at me suspiciously, but Aunt Maria said, ‘That’s
right, dear. You look peaky. Go out and get some fresh air.’
   The fresh air was full of little drops of rain, but I didn’t care. It
was one of those times when it seems suddenly warmer outside
then indoors. The rain gave the sea a gentler smell than usual.
There was the gluey bud-smell in the air and even a smell of
flowers. You couldn’t see the sea for the white mist of rain over it. I
wandered about sniffing, thinking maybe Chris hadn’t had such a
bad time in the woods if it was like this.
  They arranged the Meeting about him while I was out. The
reason I’m writing this now is that Aunt Maria has gone in her
dead-fox and wheelchair procession to the town hall. I keep hoping
Chris will have the sense to come here while they’re all discussing
him. I don’t know what they’ll decide, but I know I must warn him.
So I keep turning to the window in case he’s in the garden. Lavinia
digs her claws in every time I do, because I slope her then and she
starts to slide down my skirt. I’ll put her out of the window when I
hear them coming back.
  But I wasn’t just walking round Cranbury for my health all
afternoon. I walked, the way Chris did, so that people would see me
going in all directions. The Mrs Urs were all with Aunt Maria, but I
am sure they are just her main women. The way the lace curtains
quiver as you pass, she must have the whole town watching for her.
I walked past every house in the place before I pretended to go
back. Instead, I dodged into the allotments, the way we had done
before, and got very wet and prickled walking up beside the hedge
to the station car park.
   It was worth it. The old blue car, that used to be ours, was
waiting there again. It was in a much more convenient position,
too, backed right against the iron railing. I didn’t even need to
climb over before I took out the kitchen knife I’d picked up on my
way out and dug it under the back lock.
  It wasn’t locked. Either Chris had broken it last time or someone
hadn’t locked it. The door went up so quickly that I nearly didn’t
catch it before it reared up over the roof and showed the booted
porter someone was opening a car. The difficult bit was climbing in
while holding the door, and then shutting it from inside. I ought to
have been good at it. Dad was always going off with both sets of
keys. But I’d lost the knack and the door soared away twice before I
remembered how to hold it.
  I sat in the back for a bit beside the toffee. Then I changed my
plan and crawled forward over the back seat and sat in the front
passenger seat. Whoever got into the car might as well know at
once that I was there. I felt in the hiding place in case anything was
there, but there was nothing. Zenobia Bayley’s perfume was still in
the air, but not as strong as last time. I sat waiting and planned
what I’d say if it wasn’t Zenobia who got in.
   It was not quite dark when the train came. When I heard it
clattering and squealing, I deliberately lay back and slid down a bit
to stop myself going all strung-up and frightened. But it was hard
not to be frightened when the footsteps began to crunch on the
gravel and car doors banged all round as the zombies got in their
cars and drove away. I concentrated on counting how many cars
put headlights on and how many didn’t, and I got so taken up with
that that I almost didn’t notice a man was unlocking the car door
until he opened it and got in.
  He was so much a zombie that he didn’t notice me at all. He just
sat down and began clattering away at the starter. When I said,
‘Hello, Dad,’ his head almost hit the roof.
  He turned round. He stared. He looked quite bewildered. He said,
‘Who – What?’ Then, in his usual way, he got angry. ‘What the hell
do you think you’re doing here?’ he said.
  Dad uses anger to cover up all his other feelings. I took no notice
and grinned. ‘Waiting for you,’ I said. ‘I got in through the back as
usual. Why are you here when you’re supposed to be dead?’
  ‘Dead?’ he said angrily. ‘Dead?’
  He always pretends not to understand, but I think he really
didn’t when I explained, “The car was found at the bottom of
Cranbury Head, but you weren’t in it. Mum thinks you were killed.’
   ‘This car?’ he said in the same angry way. ‘ This car? But I’ve had
it all along!’
  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘I think the car crash was some kind of illusion.
You really ought to tell Mum you’re still alive. It’s awfully awkward
for her.’
   ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I suppose it would be.’ That sounds reasonable but
it wasn’t quite. He always talks about Mum in a half-laughing
sarcastic way. I was watching him carefully. He hadn’t changed
much. There was the zombie-look, but he still looked rather like me
if I were three sizes bigger. ‘And is that why you’re here?’ he said in
the same sarcastic way. ‘Soul-searching, happy-ending-seeking
Mig.’
  ‘No.’ I said. ‘I’ve had enough of people pretending and managing
one another and being dishonest. I might have used that as an
excuse if I wanted to manage you, but I don’t. I’ve come about the
green box.’
  ‘Green box!’ he said. He ran his hands through his hair and
looked at the car roof. ‘Is this another of your stories or something?’
  I gave him time to notice that I did know about this green box. I
said, ‘Do you live with Zenobia Bayley these days?’
  Dad stopped with both hands in his hair and looked at me.
“That’s enough, Mig. One way of managing people is to tell them
you’re being quite honest.’
  ‘I know !’ I said. ‘Why do people always have to manage one
another? Can’t they just be people?’
  ‘It doesn’t seem to be possible where men and women are
concerned,’ Dad said, more sarcastic than ever. ‘You’ll learn that,
Mig.’
  ‘No, I won’t,’ I said. ‘Tell me about the green box.’
  Dad just went on as if he hadn’t heard me. “That’s the real
trouble with your mother, Mig. She seemed to think it was possible
too. She was always assuming we thought the same way, and we
didn’t. You never knew where to have her, she was so reasonable!
None of the traditional facts seemed to mean anything to her – and
she went and taught the same outlook to you and Chris. I tell you,
Mig – !’
  ‘You’re just working yourself up,’ I said. ‘It’s all supposed to be
over now. Dad, are you under some sort of spell not to tell about the
green box?’
  I think he may have been. He gave a sort of jump and said, ‘What
the – ! What do you mean, green box?’
  ‘Covered all over with peculiar green patterns and full of
something strong,’ I said. ‘It used to belong to Antony Green. He’s
dead, isn’t he?’
  ‘Poor old Tony,’ Dad said. ‘Poor old Tony Green.’ He sat with his
chin down, rather the way I was, staring out at the empty car park.
‘He and I were at school together,’ he said. ‘We used to go off on
this same train to school in Minehurst every day, did you know
that? He was always the promising one, they all said. I did as well
at lessons, but Antony was supposed to be the good-all-round one.
Never could make up his mind between science and philosophy and
so on. I think he took up archaeology when they gave him the green
box and told him he was the one who had to stay in Cranbury. I
was the one who had to leave. I didn’t see the justice of that. I
always assumed I would be the one who got the box. Tony didn’t
value it the way I did.’
  ‘How did he die?’ I said.
  ‘No idea,’ Dad said, to my great disappointment. ‘In fact, I’d
always been led to believe he wasn’t dead – though you’d think he
was the way his mother – Zoe Green – took on. It was quite a shock
to me when I saw his ghost that night in Aunt Maria’s spare room.
The ghost spoke to me, said it was looking for the box. Poor old
Tony. The box was never there.’
  ‘Yes it was,’ I said. ‘You took it.’
  ‘Mig, I swear to you I did not,’ he said. He wasn’t angry, so I
think he thought he was telling the truth.
  ‘You did,’ I said, ‘but it doesn’t matter now. What does the box
do? What made you decide to stay here and not tell anyone?’
  I wish I hadn’t asked both those things together. Dad didn’t quite
answer either, just the way Chris didn’t when I asked him about
the ghost. He said, ‘When you meet an old friend you last saw as a
skinny teenager, Mig – What does it do? Well, you’d have one
answer and no doubt old Nat Phelps would have another. As I
said – ’
  A Land-rover came hurtling into the car park while he was
speaking, so fast that it sprayed mud and pebbles all over the
windscreen of Dad’s car. It skidded to a stop some yards away to
the right. Its headlights suddenly made everywhere go dark and
mud ran down the window, but I could see through it enough to see
Hester Bayley and Zenobia Bayley jump down from it. They came
marching towards Dad’s car in an Elaine sort of way.
  I got the door open on my side. ‘I think I’d better be off,’ I said.
  ‘Yes, you’d better,’ Dad said. He sounded so nervous I was sorry
for him. ‘Tell Betty I’m still in the land of the living,’ he said, almost
whispering.
 ‘Yes, and you tell them your stomach played up again,’ I
whispered back. ‘ Don’t say I was here. Please.’
  ‘O. K,’ he said. I think it was a real promise. I hope. He certainly
didn’t say anything while I was crawling on hands and knees
through the muddy gravel and hitching myself through the fence.
But then – it’s a strange thought – now Dad’s been zombied, I think
he’s as nervous of me as he is of Zenobia Bayley.
 I heard her open the driver’s door and say, ‘Greg! Whatever is the
matter? Mother and I got really worried when you didn’t come in.’
  Dad mumbled something with ‘stomach’ in it.
  Hester Bayley said, ‘If that’s all it is, your father can easily give
him something for it.’ She sounded very relieved.
  Zenobia said, ‘You poor old boy, then! Move over and I’ll drive.’
   I crawled and crawled away along the hedge, until my tights and
skirt were sopping. I was glad they’d believed Dad. I hadn’t meant
to get him in trouble, and I didn’t want to spoil it by letting them
see me. I didn’t dare stand up until both cars had driven away.
Then I ran back to Aunt Maria’s with my teeth chattering and went
in through the back door. She always moves back to the dark
living-room after the Mrs Urs had gone, so she didn’t see me. I had
to change all my clothes. Even my sweater was sopping.
  ‘How did you get so wet?’ said Mum.
  ‘Looking for a way to help Chris,’ I said. I haven’t stopped
reminding her. ‘And by the way, Dad’s alive. I just met him.’
  ‘You and your happy endings, Mig!’ she said, laughing. ‘You do
know that even if he walked in here this moment, nothing would
come of it, don’t you?’
  I thought about it. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I do know.’ When I was little I
thought of Mum and Dad as really one person – joined together as
Mum-and-Dad – or like the earth and the sky, part of the same
view. Now I know they are two separate people who don’t get on.
The difference between them is that I keep reminding Mum of
Chris, because I know it might do some good. But I didn’t even
mention Chris to Dad. I knew he’d just cut off, then get angry and
throw me out of the car.
   Mum was thinking of Dad too. She was peeling potatoes on the
draining board to let me rinse my muddy tights in the sink. She put
her head up with her cheerful, brave look and said, ‘Just before you
were born, Mig, I fell downstairs. All the way down. I was terrified
in case you’d been harmed. I screamed for Greg. He came and he
looked, and he said, “That was a stupid thing to do,” and he went
away again. I couldn’t believe it. But that’s what he’s like, Mig. It’s
all right if things are going the way he expects, but if they don’t he
doesn’t want to know.’
  ‘I know !’ I said. I didn’t want her to say any more.
  She did, though. I suppose she wanted to get him off her chest
too. She said, musingly, ‘I should have left him then really. But you
were going to be born, and I did hope he’d learn – learn that people
aren’t just a set of rules, or at least learn that he could learn. But
he never did, Mig.’
   Now I’m grateful that Mum said that. It explains the sort of hold
Zenobia Bayley must have on Dad. You can see, with every word
she says, that Zenobia is the sort of girl who plays by the rules. Dad
likes that. I bet she uses the rules just the way Aunt Maria does, to
make him feel guilty and do things for her. But he probably expects
that. I feel like saying, ‘Poor old Greg!’ the way Dad himself said,
‘Poor old Tony.’ But I’m very grateful to Dad too. Now I know who
the ghost is. I think that’s important.
 I can hear them bringing Aunt Maria back. Out, Lavinia. And I
must warn Chris.
  They didn’t say what they’d decided, but it sounds as if everyone
in Cranbury is going to join in. I did warn Chris, thank goodness.
  I slithered down to Chris’s room again as soon as Mum was
asleep. ‘Is that you, Naomi?’ called Aunt Maria.
  ‘I’m getting a drink of milk, Auntie,’ I called. ‘I’m thirsty.’
  ‘Is the rug rolled up? Mind you don’t slip, dear.’
  ‘It is rolled up and I’m not ninety!’ I shouted. I was cross, because
that meant I did really have to go downstairs to the kitchen in the
dark, or she would know. So I went down and groped about and fell
into things, until I found a spare candle. Then I hopefully got out all
the loose food again to save time later. And off I trudged upstairs.
  ‘Good night, dear!’ called Aunt Maria.
   That meant I had to go back to the right bed again and climb in
with Mum. I went fast asleep, like a log, and I know I would have
slept until morning if it hadn’t been for Lavinia. She knew Chris
was there and tried to get down inside the covers with me in such a
clawing hurry that she scratched my arm. I didn’t notice the
scratch till morning. I just jumped up, half asleep, and went down
to Chris’s room.
   He was standing in the middle of it, ears pricked, waiting for me.
I knelt down and hugged him. He wasn’t as wet as I expected. He
must have found a place to shelter. He put one paw awkwardly
across my shoulder to show he was glad to see me too.
  ‘Oh, Chris!’ I said. ‘That was so stupid with the Baghdads! But it
was wonderfully funny too. Did you see Adele Taylor tread in the
cake?’
  Chris sort of panted with his tongue lolling. He was laughing.
  ‘But I have to warn you,’ I said. “They’re saying there’s a wild
wolf escaped from a zoo and it savaged one of the clones. Did you
bite a clone?’ I put both hands on his furry shoulder blades and
looked him in the eyes. ‘Did you?’
   Chris shook his face and stared at me. He meant No, and I knew
it was the truth.
  ‘Yes. But they think you’re dangerous,’ I said. ‘They’re going to
look for you – try and trap you – tomorrow, I think, maybe both
days of the weekend. Promise me you won’t do anything like the
Baghdads then. Promise me you’ll hide. I can’t do anything to turn
you back if they put you in a zoo.’
  Chris’s ears pricked at that.
   ‘I’m trying to find out how,’ I said. ‘I’ve been stupid and only just
started to try, but I promise I’ll get you turned back. But you have
to be sensible.’
  Chris nodded. He put his nose near mine with a rather sad
snuffle.
  ‘I know you hate it,’ I said. ‘I hate her for doing it. Come
downstairs and get some food now.’
   We went to the kitchen and Chris ate everything I’d put out. He
was starving again. I’m not sure that things like bread and
mushroom pâté and jam are good for a wolf’s digestion, but he ate
them. And even though he was starving he ate neatly and sort of
politely. That wasn’t Chris. It was wolf. Wolves are very clean,
precise creatures, in spite of all the stories. I watched him as he ate
and I thought of all the books that say a person takes on the nature
of a beast if he’s turned into one for too long, and that worried me. I
must get him turned back soon.
  Then we went upstairs again and sat by candlelight on Chris’s
bed, talking. I mean, I talked. Chris looked and moved his ears and
his jaws to show he understood. It was almost just like talking
usually – except it wasn’t and I knew Chris was truly miserable.
  Next thing I knew, the candle was out and I was waking out of
the dream again, after years of horrible struggling underground. I
remember I thought as I woke, I wouldn’t like to be that ghost! I
didn’t know being dead was so awful! And there he was, standing in
the middle of the room, faintly lit up. I was sorry for him. The odd
thing was, he was looking at us as if he was sorry for us. We were
in a sort of heap, because we’d both been needing comforting.
  I looked up at the funny quirked face of the ghost. Chris looked
up with his ears up. Funny! I thought. He looks more old-fashioned
than twenty years ago! And he did. The pushed-back mane of hair
was like something hundreds of years ago, and the tattered green
robe was a bit like a highwayman’s coat or something. It was a
feeling of king as well as scarecrow and jester he gave you –
someone important dead hundreds of years and half-crumbled
away. I really did wonder if Dad had told me right.
  I said, in rather a wavering voice, ‘You – you’re Antony Green,
aren’t you? Won’t you please speak to us and tell us how to turn
Chris back?’
 His face turned to me quite seriously. I got the feeling that he
was wondering what he could say. But he didn’t speak.
  ‘You spoke to Chris and to Dad,’ I said. ‘Do you only speak to
men? No – ’ I said, because a sudden idea came to me, ‘I think you
spoke to Lavinia too. Didn’t you? She was downstairs here. She left
her nightdress.’
  He nodded, just a bit humorously, with a sort of comic sadness.
   ‘You mean everyone you speak to gets done for, don’t they?’ I
said. ‘Even after Chris rescued your green box, he got done for. Do
you know Mr Phelps has the green box now? He won’t speak to me
either.’
  He started to smile his wide smile at that. I think the idea of Mr
Phelps with the green box amused him, but I thought it meant he
was going away, and I hurried on.
  ‘Oh please !’ I said. ‘I – I think you’re in trouble too. I know you
feel awful being dead and buried. If you want your spirit laid to rest
or something, I’ll do that if you like, in exchange for getting Chris
back.’
  His smile became widely sad at that. He shook his head slightly
and seemed to shrug his shoulders, as if he meant ‘I give up!’ But
the smile went quite kind as he faded out.
  ‘Oh Chris!’ I said. ‘I got it wrong again! I wish you could tell me
what he really wants when he comes here. Do you think he’ll go
and haunt Mr Phelps now?’
   Poor Chris. He can only make gestures just like the ghost. He
flapped his tongue against my cheek and went down off the bed,
draggingly, ready to jump out of the window.
  ‘Remember!’ I cried. ‘You promised. Be careful when they all start
looking for you.’
  I saw his narrow dog-shaped head turn in a sort of nod to me as
he jumped. Thump, went the coal bunker. It was a much better
jump than last time. He’s getting too good at being a wolf.



                         Chapter Ten
                                                                «^»
Saturday. It seems centuries since I wrote the last bit. It is only
three days. It’s going to take ages to write down.
  Saturday was the day of the hunt.
  All the time we were getting Aunt Maria dressed she was saying,
over and over, ‘Now, Betty, you’re to stay here with me, dear.’
  ‘I always do, don’t I?’ Mum said, a bit sourly. ‘What about the
kids?’
  ‘I’ll let little Naomi go with Elaine and Larry, if she promises to
be very good and careful,’ Aunt Maria said.
  Nobody mentioned Chris, I noticed.
  Shortly after that, Elaine came tramping in, wearing great green
boots below her black mac and a black scarf tied over her head.
‘We’re ready to go,’ she said. She gave me her two-line smile. ‘I
gather you’re coming too,’ she said. ‘You’ll need Wellingtons.’
 How’s that for a welcoming invitation! I thought as I ran and got
my things.
  Larry was waiting at the wheel of his car out in the street. It is
one of the glossy expensive cars I remember seeing at the station.
He didn’t say anything of course. And the only thing Elaine said, all
the way, was, ‘I’ve got a bag of food for you with ours in the back.
This may take all day.’
  Mind you, it wasn’t a long way, only to the station car park. I
could have walked it. The car park was full when we got there.
Someone had opened the gate into the field on the other side of the
road, and Larry drove gently, squelchily through it and stopped in a
row of cars at the end. There were cars of all shapes and colours,
vans, Land-rovers, motorbikes, cycles. All the cars had their backs
open and men were deedily bending over them. I’ve never seen so
many green Wellingtons together in my life. Larry had green
Wellingtons, too, and a little tweed hat on. He went and opened the
back of his glossy car. When he turned round from it, he was
carefully carrying two long guns.
  Grey and pink Dr Bayley came hurrying up to him, also carrying
a gun. ‘We’ve got a man every fifty feet, all along the fields beyond
the station,’ he said to Larry. ‘It can’t get through a cordon like
that. I hope you’re in good shooting form.’
  Larry’s mousy little face lit up in a merry grin. ‘Never better,’ he
said. ‘Women and children are acting as beaters. Right?’
 ‘Nat Phelps is seeing to that,’ said Dr Bayley. ‘I’ve kept you the
most likely post. Come and see.’
  The two of them went squelching out through the gate again,
leaving me standing with Elaine, feeling sick. Elaine didn’t look too
happy either. But she went striding away to give someone orders,
and I just stood there.
  It was a lovely spring day, that was the worst of it. The sun came
up and up, bright and mild and warm, as people kept arriving.
Everyone was there. I saw Mr A. C. Taylor the chemist, hurrying
across the field with a gun, and the men in boots from the boats,
the postman, the milkman, and the booted porter from the station.
They all had guns. Benita Wallins was handing out paper cups of
tea from the back of an old van. Adele Taylor and Corinne West
were strolling about in expensive trousers and pretty anoraks. I
saw most of the Mrs Urs sooner or later, including Phyllis Forbes,
who came marshalling a crowd of orphans through the gate. One of
the clone boys had his arm in a very white sling. There were crowds
of other people too, all trampling the dandelions in the grass of the
field. Almost the only people I didn’t see were Dad and Zenobia
Bayley.
  I wondered resentfully why they kept Dad away. I still do.
  Mr Phelps drove in through the gate in a little high black car
with an open top. He parpled the hooter noisily and began shouting
orders before he had stopped the car.
  ‘All women and children assemble by me. Come on. No slacking.’
   Nobody seemed to take much notice of the orders, but everybody
slowly did seem to get more businesslike. Men ran or walked into
the distance to make a long line that seemed to stretch right up to
Cranbury Head. A lot of them went out of the gate, like Larry and
Dr Bayley, and I suppose they were making a line the other way,
right up to the Orphanage and maybe beyond that.
  Mr Phelps was marching up and down shouting things like,
‘Everyone got their lunchpacks? The lunchpack of Notre Dame – ha,
ha! Come on, get organised. We want to catch this beastie napping!’
  I think it was Elaine who did the organising. With a white,
contemptuous look at Mr Phelps every so often, she got the orphans
into two Land-rovers and a van, and all the other females into a
procession of smaller cars. I ended up sitting beside Hester Bayley
in her Land-rover full of orphans. She kept turning to me and
smiling as she drove and saying sensible things like, ‘You mustn’t
be scared. Safety in numbers. We have to drive it down on the
guns, you know.’
  I thought resentfully of Dad and her two-feet-high daugher
Zenobia. I said, ‘Why do they have to shoot it?’
  ‘It’s dangerous, dear,’ Hester Bayley said briskly. ‘Possibly even
rabid.’
  We drove right up into the hills, into a high field above the goblin
woods. We all piled out with our lunchpacks and my heart was
banging my throat. I looked at the fields and hills and farms
stretching inland behind us, and I hoped Chris had had the sense to
get out into those and stay there.
   Mr Phelps made us a Jerry-is-here speech then. I couldn’t terribly
listen. It was all about the wings doubling back on the main body
and our cordon sanitaire and choosing the spot for the engagement
and avoiding crossfire. I think he meant that men with guns were
going to be on the hills on either side of Cranbury Bay. They were
going to close in, and we were all going to fill in the middle. Then
he began sharing out sticks, thick ones, from the back seat of his
car and telling us very carefully what we were to do.
  I thought, Chris can easily get past a line of orphans with sticks.
  But then a tractor came chugging up across the high field, towing
a cart full of more men with guns. ‘Ah, here comes the farm
contingent,’ said Mr Phelps. He was delighted. ‘My reinforcements.
One armed man to every ten beaters. That will make absolutely
sure the brute can’t double back.’
  The men with guns had caps and ferrety faces. You couldn’t tell
whether they were young or old. They all came leaping down from
the cart in a businesslike way, but there was a sort of swing to
their movements that showed they were as pleased as Larry had
been at the thought of shooting a real wild animal. ‘It’s in there,’
they said. ‘Seen it this morning.’
  Then we were ready to go at last. While we were milling about,
being shared out between farm men, someone took hold of my
shoulder in a policeman’s grip. I whirled round. It was Elaine. She
was grey-white.
  ‘I hope you warned him,’ she said in a growling whisper. ‘ He’s
not going to escape this in a hurry.’
  I stared up at her, twisted round. She knew. She must have
heard Chris howl in the garden that night. ‘Yes, I did,’ I said.
  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t have let you get away with it for
anyone else.’ She let go of me and strode off to go with Benita
Wallins.
  ‘Everybody enter the woods. Now !’ bellowed Mr Phelps.
   We all walked slowly downwards among the twisted trees. Most
people swished their sticks and shouted. I didn’t. I wanted to sneak
away, but there was always at least one man with a gun tramping
slowly down behind me, and I was never out of sight of Selma
Tidmarsh on my right or the orphan with the sling on my left.
Every so often Mr Phelps came bounding past behind us, calling,
‘Ten feet apart, now. Keep that line straight there!’ You could tell
he was loving every moment. I wanted to shout to him that he had
no business to be hunting Chris, who had only tried to help him, but
I could see it would do no good.
   We went on down, going sideways and back round twisted
tree-trunks, bending under twisty branches loaded with
yellow-green buds, stumbling on logs and cracking twigs. At first it
was hot. There were midges out circling in slants of misty sunshine.
I remember us tramping through a band of those bright yellow
shiny flowers and then across spindly white windflowers. We
stamped on toadstools and crunched down acres of crusty
grey-green moss-stuff. The orphan on my left took his arm out of
the white sling in order to hold on to branches in the steep bits.
   We disturbed all the birds and lots of animals. The first time the
first rabbit sprang up and pelted away downhill my insides gave a
sick surge, even though I could see it was small. Some of the farm
men took potshots at the things we disturbed. The first time the
first bang came echoing along the trees, the wood went kind of grey
round me and swung about. But I got used to it and just felt dull.
   ‘Only a rabbit. Keep on, keep on!’ Mr Phelps would shout, pelting
past. Sometimes messages to stop were passed down the line, when
people got behind or too far in front. Selma Tidmarsh and the
orphan fetched things out of their lunchbags and ate them when
this happened. I couldn’t. I fetched out a dry-looking sandwich the
first time and had to throw it away. During one stoppage, when
Selma Tidmarsh was talking to the person on the other side of her,
I went sideways over to the orphan.
  Is your arm very bad?’ I said.
   His sling was hanging round his neck. He looked at his right
arm, then his left, and finally, in a puzzled way, he rolled up his left
sleeve. There was nothing wrong with his arm at all. He looked
surprised.
  An illusion, like the car, I thought. ‘Don’t worry. Just checking,’ I
said and moved back to my place.
  On down we went. The sun slanted away to the twisted top of the
trees. Dampness came up round our legs, smelling of leaves and
earth and mushrooms. By this time I was kind of dulled to the
shouts and calls and occasional bangs. When there were three loud
bangs and lots of shouting over to my left, I took no notice at first.
 Then Mr Phelps sped past yelling, ‘Keep the line, keep the line.
We’ve got it, but we don’t want it doubling back!’
  Everything went suddenly tense. There was a briskness to the
way everyone walked down. Before long, I could tell there really
was quite a large animal down ahead of us. There was swishing and
twigs snapping. Once I caught sight of a heavy grey shadow as
something fled desperately along the hill, trying to find a way
round the line. Oh, Chris! I thought. Chris, I warned you!
  Down we went. Quite suddenly we were at the edge of the woods,
looking over a field of new corn where the sun was going down
misty pink, and birds we had disturbed were going round and round
in the sky, black birds from the woods and white birds from the sea,
cawing and crying. Mr Phelps was cawing and crying instructions,
but I don’t remember what they were. I only remember the line of
men facing us on the other side of the field. Some were kneeling,
some standing. I think some were even lying down, but they all had
guns aimed at the wood.
  And I remember the grey dog-shaped thing that ran out from the
trees way over to the left of me. It stopped when it saw the men,
turned back to the wood, realised it couldn’t, and began to run
sideways along the field in a terrified low snaking dash. The guns
began going off. Bang and bang. White smoke came in blots in the
blue air. And the wolf sprang into the air, twisted two ways at once.
Then it fell down with its legs threshing.
   There was a great shout from the other side of the field. ‘ Bullseye
. I got her!’ I could see Larry Mrs Elaine dancing about there,
waving his gun over his head as I began to run towards the wolf. It
had stopped moving before I got halfway. Mr Phelps was running
after me roaring to me to keep back. Out of the corner of my eye I
could see the tall black shape of Elaine running too. But I took no
notice and ran until I came to the wolf, spread out on its side with
its eyes staring.
  It was huge, much bigger than I expected, and much much
thinner. I stared stupidly at the stiff arch of its stomach and the
two rows of little nipples on it. I stared at its jaws, open in a snarl,
and the pink foam on its grey broken teeth. I thought, I don’t
believe it! It’s not Chris after all!
  ‘Ahah! Old she-wolf!’ Mr Phelps said, rubbing his hands together.
  The men with the guns were all shaking hands and shouting
congratulations to Larry and one another. Someone was coming
trotting along the hedge with mugs of beer for them.
  ‘Well, that’s a relief,’ Elaine said behind me. She had her two-line
smile. ‘Come on. I’ll drive you home.’
   We didn’t say anything to one another the whole way. I felt
unreal, as if the top of my head had come off and let my brains out.
I couldn’t stop smiling. Elaine stopped the car outside Aunt Maria’s
garden gate and marched me in through the kitchen. Aunt Maria
and Mum were in the dining-room. When she saw us, Aunt Maria
hoisted herself eagerly forward on her sticks.
  ‘Well, dear? Did they get him?’
  ‘They shot an old she-wolf,’ Elaine said.
  Aunt Maria fell back into her chair and stared. ‘Naomi,’ she said,
in a feeble gasping voice. ‘Not my Naomi!’
  ‘Well, you told them to shoot a wolf,’ Elaine said, and she turned
on the heel of her green gumboot and marched out of the house
again. I heard her slam the back door through the noise Aunt Maria
was making.
   She was screaming by then in a way that made Mum and me feel
sick. ‘Naomi! Oh, Naomi!’ she yelled.
  ‘But Mig’s here !’ Mum kept saying. ‘Do stop, Auntie!’
  We couldn’t get her to stop, whatever we said. For once in my life
I was glad when the doorbell rang and the Mrs Urs began trooping
in. ‘Oh, the poor dear!’ they said, when they heard the screaming,
and they ran up the hall in their muddy gumboots. ‘You can’t blame
the men,’ Adele Taylor said to me as she passed me. ‘They only did
as they were told.’
   There was such a crowd in the dining-room, and still such a noise
from Aunt Maria, that Mum and I were trying to back out, when
Zoe Green pushed the front door open and stood scraping the mud
off her boots on the doormat. She was wrapped in an old knitted
blanket. She was the only one who cleaned her boots. She stared at
us and arched her head to the noise. ‘Taking on, izs zshe?’ she said.
Mum nodded, even though it was obvious. Zoe Green nodded back
in her mad way and shuffled up the hall, sort of sidling towards us.
‘Good,’ she whispered. ‘The men meant to do it too!’ I had to wipe
spit off me.
  While I did, Zoe 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, Zoe 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 Zoe
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 blue 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 than 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.
  Mum was beginning to shiver in the evening wind, collecting
shells, but she was all right. ‘Mum, will you humour me again?’ I
asked.
  ‘I might. Unless it means sitting on the beach two hours more,’
she said. ‘What?’
  ‘I’ll tell you later tonight,’ I said. ‘Promise?’
  ‘Promise,’ she said.
                       Chapter Twelve
                                                                  «^»
                    The Story of the Twin Princesses
                             by N. M. Laker
Just look what Aunt Maria wrote on the title page of my old story!
Dear Naomi,
   I see from the last few pages of your other writing that Elaine is
right. I have been much too trusting. You should not have gone to see
the Phelpses, child. They are petty people who do not understand as
you and I do, but they can only sow poison – that is the extent of their
malice, and I know no real harm is done.
 I give you this story instead and suggest you finish it while you
meditate on how deeply you have hurt me.
                                 Your loving,
                                     Aunt Maria.
   In other words, disaster has struck. I am having to write the rest
of this on the blank pages I left in The Twin Princesses . How lucky
I did. The paper is furry and smells of mildew, and I am locked in.
But at least I am still in human shape. And Aunt Maria doesn’t
know all the other things that happened before Elaine stole my
autobiography. It is lucky I didn’t have time to write any more.
  I did hope Chris would come that night after I went to the
Phelpses, but he didn’t. He seems to have disappeared entirely. I
keep being afraid he’s been run over or shot by farmers inland.
 Anyway, as soon as Aunt Maria started snoring that night, I
whispered to Mum, ‘Mum, you promised you’d humour me.’
  Poor Mum. She was terribly tired. She said she’d hoped I’d
forgotten, but she got out of bed, sighing, and said what did I want.
  ‘Put your coat on and come down and sit with me in Chris’s
room,’ I said.
  She was so sleepy she must have forgotten she thought Chris was
in London. But she made a fuss because nothing would possess
Lavinia to come down with us. I think the injunction must have
been working that way. Lavinia scratched us both and bolted. ‘Oh,
leave her!’ I whispered angrily.
  ‘What kind of lever, dear?’ Aunt Maria called instantly.
   ‘I said Mig has a slight fever , Auntie,’ Mum called, coming to my
rescue. ‘We’re going downstairs to see what we can do for it. You go
to sleep.’
  ‘Call Dr Bayley!’ Aunt Maria said sleepily.
  ‘In the morning,’ Mum called soothingly.
  It worked. Aunt Maria was snoring again as we went into Chris’s
room. Mum held her candle up and looked round it in a bewildered
way. ‘Where’s Chris?’ she said. I had hopes for a moment, until she
said, ‘Oh, downstairs eating tomorrow’s lunch again obviously. Look
at the way he leaves his bed. What am I to humour you in, Mig?’
  ‘By sitting here and waiting for Chris,’ I said. ‘There’s something
I want to discuss with you both.’
  Mum sat on Chris’s bed. She yawned, then shivered. ‘Must the
window be open?’
  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That’s important.’ I was still hoping Chris would
jump through it then. It is fortunate Mum is so very saintly and
obliging. She looked resigned. She pulled Chris’s covers round both
our shoulders and we sat leaning our backs against the wall,
watching the little pointed candle flame quiver on the end of the
candle.
   ‘What are we waiting for?’ Mum asked, giving a bit of a jump. It
was much later. I could tell because the candle had burnt much
further down, spilling a long transparent waterfall of wax down one
side.
  ‘Don John of Austria,’ I said. ‘I hope.’
  Mum sort of laughed. ‘Am I still humouring you?’ she asked
hopefully.
  I said, ‘Yes,’ and we both went to sleep again.
  I had the dream again. It is worse each time you have it, because
as soon as it starts you know what you’re in for. Years and years of
being shut inside the ground, desperate useless rages and frantic
fighting to get out. It’s horrible the way feet run over the top of you
too. I burst out of it finally and looked up at the ghost in the
strange dim light. The candle was out. He had one eyebrow up and
was looking at me expectantly.
  ‘I’m working on it,’ I told him. ‘This time I brought – ’ I looked
round and realised that Mum was fast asleep. She looked terribly
peaceful and pretty with the light shining on her rounded forehead
and her little nose, and none of her wrinkles showing.
  I dug my elbow into her and she leapt up with her hands to her
head, crying out, ‘Oh Lord , I was having a horrible dream!’ She saw
the ghost and he saw her. They both looked thoroughly amazed.
‘Who – who?’ said Mum.
  ‘The ghost,’ I said. ‘At least, he’s not. He’s alive. This is his
projection – er – sending from wherever he is.’
  The ghost looked at me then. There was real hope in his face.
  ‘Who is he?’ said Mum.
  ‘He’s called Antony Green,’ I said.
   The ghost gave us both a little bow at that. His mane of hair
flopped. And he turned to me expectantly.
  ‘Mr Phelps says you must talk,’ I said. ‘He can let you out if he
knows where you are.’
  ‘Yes, do you talk?’ Mum said.
  He looked from one to the other of us and began smiling his long
smile.
  ‘Oh, what a smile!’ Mum said.
   ‘Yes, but be careful,’ I said. ‘He usually goes away after that. It’s
a twisting-you-round-his-finger smile like Chris does.’
   ‘Yes, I see ,’ Mum said. ‘Poor man, he’s not quite all here, is he?
No, wait a minute,’ she said. The ghost was starting to go. I could
see books through him. Mum jumped off Chris’s bed and stumbled
towards the ghost, all mixed up in Chris’s covers. He backed away
from her, until he really was in the bookshelf, among all the books
there. ‘Don’t go yet,’ Mum said. ‘Let me look at you. Stand still – er
– Antony Green.’
  He stayed where he was, staring at Mum with a hurt enquiring
sort of look on his crooked face. It really was strange. Mum stood,
bending a bit forward, peering at him embedded in the bookshelf.
   ‘I think you’ve got yourself wrong,’ was the first thing Mum said
after a while. ‘Nobody looks quite this odd. But you’re putting out
your own idea of yourself, aren’t you? I suppose it’s quite a privilege
to see it.’ Then she stared a while longer and said, ‘That dream –
you brought that dream, didn’t you? Is that where you are, how you
feel? It is , isn’t it?’ The ghost was nodding slowly. ‘And you’re alive?
Mig says you’re alive,’ Mum said. The ghost was still nodding. Mum
looked angrily over her shoulder at me. ‘Mig, why didn’t you explain
at once ? As soon as you met him. We could have got him out weeks
ago!’ And she rounded on the ghost again. ‘You have to tell me
where you are,’ she said, ‘and we’ll come and get you. Can you
please explain exactly where you are?’
  The ghost put up his shoulders and spread his hands out. I
thought he meant he couldn’t say, but Mum nodded and said, ‘I see.
And how do we find that out?’ The ghost raised a shadowy hand and
pointed, first away somewhere, then more or less at me. ‘I think I
see,’ Mum said. The ghost was fading all the time now. She said, ‘I
think that’s everything. You can let go now. We’ll be with you as
soon as we can.’
  The ghost was a mere blur by then. I could only see his strange
crooked face. ‘Mum!’ I said. ‘Make him wait!’ But he vanished while
I was saying it. ‘We never asked him about Chris!’ I wailed in the
dark.
   ‘He couldn’t stay, Mig. Couldn’t you see?’ Mum said. ‘It took him
a tremendous effort to be here at all.’ She stumbled about in the
dark. ‘Where’s the candle? What made it go out?’
  ‘He always puts it out,’ I said. I found the matches and her hand
and put the two together. “There was something urgent I needed
him to do, ‘ I said.
  ‘There can’t be anything more urgent than he is himself,’ Mum
said, lighting the candle. She had fierce wrinkles in her forehead.
‘You can’t find someone who’s buried alive and then ask them
things!’ she said. ‘Goodness, Mig, surely you can see that!’ Then she
sat down with her face in her hands. ‘Now let me think a minute.
My head’s in rather a whirl!’
   I let her think. Now she put it that way, I was very ashamed at
not seeing for myself the trouble Antony Green was in. And I
sighed. If I couldn’t ask him to help about Chris, there was no Don
John of Austria after all, and what was I to do?
   This time it was Mum’s elbow that dug into me . ‘Mig, wake up.
I’ve just realised I haven’t seen Chris for nearly a week. Where is
he?’
  Seeing the ghost had worked after all. I flung my arms round her
and babbled explanations. She wouldn’t believe me at first. I thrust
the blankets at her. ‘Smell!’ I said. ‘Wolf.’ I offered to get my
biography as proof, but that wouldn’t do. She seems to think I
always write fiction. So I said, ‘You believe Antony Green is a ghost
buried alive. Why not this about Chris too?’
  That did it. Mum said, ‘But that means that yesterday, when
they were hunting the wolf – Mig ! They didn’t shoot Chris?’
  ‘No. It was another wolf, a she-wolf,’ I said. ‘Aunt Maria meant
them to shoot Chris though.’
  Mum was angry. Oh, she was angry . The worm turned all right
in the middle of that night. ‘And to think I’ve been waiting hand
and foot on that – that evil old woman!’ she said. She raged. She
called everyone names I’d never heard before. ‘Well done, Chris,
with her evil bloomers!’ she said. ‘Mig, I thought he was a dog. I’m
glad I let him out of the house. Now I wonder what’s the soonest we
can go back and talk to your Miss Phelps? She’ll be asleep now.
We’d better go first thing in the morning.’
   ‘Before you do,’ I said. ‘There’s another thing. Dad’s alive. I talked
to him.’
  ‘He was always much too enmeshed in this horrid little dump,’
Mum said. ‘No wonder, really. Tell.’ So I did. She said, ‘He does pick
’em. Zenobia Bayley’s almost as bad a name as Verena Bland. Poor
Greg. Does he want out, Mig, or is he quite happy?’
  ‘Happy,’ I said. ‘Not quite happy.’
  ‘That’ll have to do,’ Mum said. We went back to bed then or, as
Mum said, Aunt Maria would be banging for breakfast before either
of us had got to sleep. Lavinia was awfully pleased to see us. She
must have thought the ghost had eaten us, silly thing.
  In the morning, I could hardly see for yawning, but Mum swiftly
buttoned and hooked Aunt Maria into her clothes. ‘You’re coming
down for breakfast today,’ she said.
  ‘I know, dear,’ said Aunt Maria. ‘Elaine’s coming to take me out
at ten. Are you coming with us?’
  That rather took the wind out of Mum’s sails, but she said, ‘No,
Mig and I are going out ourselves. I want that quite clear. This is
our Easter holiday, you know.’
  ‘Of course, dear. So good of you to spend it with me – quite
devoted,’ said Aunt Maria. Mum made exasperated faces at me over
Aunt Maria’s head. And I made faces back to leave it at that.
  Elaine gave me several forbidding looks while she was wheeling
Aunt Maria down the hall, but I didn’t think about it much. I just
wanted them to go. As soon as they had, I said to Mum, ‘We have to
go up that path behind the gardens.’
  ‘Why have we?’ she said. ‘I intend simply to walk across the
street and knock on the door. No one can stop us.’
  ‘They can turn us into things afterwards,’ I said.
  ‘Yes, that is frightening,’ Mum agreed. ‘But I feel like a
demonstration, Mig. Chris made his. You’ve been writing down
exactly what you think – ’
  ‘Yes, but that was sneaky,’ I said. ‘I didn’t dare say it.’
  ‘Well, I dare you to cross the road with me now,’ Mum said.
   And we did. I was terrified. The road seemed a mile wide, with
telescopes trained on it from behind every lacy window, but nobody
did anything to stop us. And Mr Phelps opened the door as we
reached it.
   ‘Good day to you, ma’am,’ he said. ‘We were expecting you. My
sister’s in here.’ He brought us into the room where Miss Phelps sat
like a gnome in her high chair. They were so much expecting us
that there were four cups of coffee waiting on the table and a plate
of ginger biscuits.
  Mum went and shook hands with Miss Phelps and we were all
awfully polite for quite a while. Then Mum said, ‘About Antony
Green – ’ and both Phelpses leaned forward until Miss Phelps
nearly fell out of her chair. Mum said, ‘I think one or other of you
might have told someone he’s buried alive! How long has he been
missing?’
  ‘Twenty years,’ said Miss Phelps. Mum began to steam at the
ears. Miss Phelps held up a little monkey paw to stop her. ‘I assure
you neither of us knew what had become of him,’ she said, ‘until
Margaret described him yesterday.’
  ‘Christian didn’t mention the dreams,’ Mr Phelps said.
‘Understandable.’
  ‘You mean how like a boy to cover up nasty emotions,’ Miss
Phelps said. ‘We have been trying to find out about the person
you’re concerned about for twenty years. Neither of us liked to see
the women ruling unchecked.’
  ‘Oh dear,’ said Mum. ‘I’d hoped – You see he told me last night
that he had to be let out by the same person who buried him.’
  ‘Did he?’ I said. ‘I didn’t hear him say a word.’
  ‘It was very faint,’ Mum said. ‘You could only hear if you
concentrated hard.’
   ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘It did sound rather like a telephone conversation. All
I heard was you. But what do we do? We don’t even know where he
is, let alone who put him there.’
   ‘I know where,’ said Mum. ‘It was in the dream. It’s a kind of
mound with bushes growing on it, and people keep running across it
all the time.’
  ‘Oh !’ all three of the rest of us cried out. ‘Just by the Greens’ old
house,’ said Miss Phelps. ‘It’s an orphanage now, but I used to play
on that mound as a child.’
  I found I was looking at Mr Phelps. We both felt stupid. ‘Chris
knew,’ I said. ‘Didn’t he even tell you?’
  ‘Er – Mm. He may not have known when I spoke to him,’ said Mr
Phelps. ‘The question now is who put him there.’ He looked across
at Miss Phelps.
  ‘Time travel, I think,’ she said briskly. ‘Or do either of you get
travel-sick? Nathaniel finds he can only travel as an animal, but
probably that is just as well. A cat or a dog is never much noticed
and never, of course, in the wrong clothes.’
  Mum and I sort of gooped at one another.
   ‘We do know almost the exact day and hour Antony disappeared,
ma’am,’ Mr Phelps said. ‘But we never narrowed down the place.
We thought it must be somewhere in Loup Woods. His coat was
found there, you know. In fact I was sure it was the woods, though
I’ve been over nearly every inch of them now in some form or
other.’
  Mum went on staring.
  ‘Or maybe they don’t trust us, Nathaniel,’ said Miss Phelps. ‘This
was why I suggested Nathaniel should go with you. I would offer
myself, only I fear I would make a very crippled cat and slow you
down dreadfully. You have offered to go, haven’t you, Nathaniel?’
  ‘Naturally,’ said Mr Phelps, though he didn’t look as if he liked
the idea. ‘As Antony Green’s chief lieutenant, this concerns me too.’
  ‘It’s just,’ I said, ‘that Mum and I aren’t used to – time travel and
so forth.’
  ‘It’s the way you both speak – so matter-of-factly,’ Mum said, and
added warily, ‘You did say cats, did you?’
   ‘A demonstration, ma’am,’ said Mr Phelps. He stood up and
slipped off his dressing gown. While it was still in the air as he
threw it to the sofa, he was not there. But there was a bundle of
clothes on the floor where he had been, and a tabby cat with
slightly fanatical eyes was sitting on them looking at us.
  ‘Quite painless, you see,’ said Miss Phelps. And she called out,
‘Nathaniel, I may as well send you off now. No time like the
present.’ She turned to Mum. ‘I believe that is a joke. Will you go
next?’
  I delayed things a bit. I did so love being a cat. It was a bit
puzzling at first, when I climbed out of my clothes, because my
muscles moved my light little body twice as easily as I expected. I
shot forward into the middle of the floor and landed with my legs
spread out in all directions. I could hear Miss Phelps laughing
somewhere very high up. The way I heard things was different. The
way I saw things was very different. I blinked and blinked until I
got used to my magnifying cat-eyes, that showed me all sorts of
interesting bits of fluff right in the distance in the dark places
under the sofa. I smelt the fluff. Seeing and smelling were mixed up
together really closely and I could tell things from smells you
wouldn’t believe – like Mr Phelps’s dressing-gown was more of a
robe of office and the green box was in its pocket.
   I meant to go over and sniff it, but I got waylaid by the sofa. You
know if you dig your fingernails – I mean claws – into a sofa you
can rush all over it, up and down and along the back, in seconds.
Your tail whips from side to side and balances you. Then I jumped
to the coffee-table. It’s so easy. You pick your place, just to the side
of the biscuit plate, and you sail halfway across the room and you’re
there. I got ambitious then. I saw the mantelpiece with a clock and
ornaments on it, high up and right on the other side of the room. I
aimed carefully. I waggled my back parts to get tuned up, and I
sprang. I zoomed upwards. And I did sort of get there with the front
part of me. I had just an instant’s glimpse in the mirror behind the
clock of a fluffy black kitten with startled blue eyes, and then
before I’d quite realised the kitten was me, I fell off. I turned over
in the air and landed on my feet in the hearth, feeling cross.
   ‘That will, do, I think,’ said Miss Phelps’s voice, high up, and
zizzing and booming in my ears. ‘You must be used to yourself now.’
  Then I fell over sideways – flip! – and found myself on the mound
outside the Orphanage.
   I understood almost at once why Mr Phelps found it easier to
time-travel as a cat. The first thing I did was to stick up a black
fluffy hindleg and wash it while I let my nose adjust me to
everything around. I was sitting in rushes – no, grass – among
forest trees covered with huge pale green heart-shaped buds which
I smelt out as the bushes on the mound. Lilac probably. In the same
instant, I knew it was a warm day in a different year, and that,
though spring was much further advanced than the year I had
come from, by the sun it was almost the same day of the year. The
quarrelling of the birds in the bushes made my mouth water. I
stood up and thought about hunting.
   An elegant grown-up black cat stood up too, about a foot away.
Mum makes a wonderful cat, like a small panther. As she stood up,
a stripy tomcat came swaggering round the nearest forest bush and
plainly decided that Mum was the next wife in his life. Tomcats are
like that. ‘How about it, sweetheart?’ he went in cat gestures.
  Mum simply swung one velvet forepaw loaded with claws. Scat! A
fast stabbing swipe which got the tabby hard over one ear. It was
wonderful. Then she sauntered over to me, leaving the tabby cat
crouched down with both ears flat. Poor Mr Phelps. He was only
behaving according to cat nature. So was Mum, I suppose. She gave
me a swift rasping lick, to show the tabby she was still in charge of
a kitten and not ready to be any cat’s wife. Mr Phelps backed to a
respectful distance and then sat up, looking aloof.
   Then we all realised that there were human voices coming from
the field side of the mound. We’d been too occupied with
cat-business to notice before then. We all raced in that direction –
using the low stealthy run, where you move each leg alternately
like wading – until one of the little open paths gave us a view down
into the field. Cats are perfect for hiding. Mum and I lay flat on our
haunches. Mr Phelps, like an old stager, settled into a tuffet and
doubled his front paws restfully under.
   There were two humans down there. When we got there, they
were doubled over in fits of laughter. One was a girl about Zenobia
Bayley’s age with long, long black hair, hanging loose and straight
so that it hid what she was like. The other was a man who looked
like a student to me – that sort of age anyway.
  ‘I don’t think it’s possible!’ he said, as he stood up and tried to
stop laughing. I nearly didn’t recognise him, even then, not until he
stopped laughing enough to be just smiling. Then I saw he had the
same long, long grin as the ghost. He had light mouse-coloured
hair, and he did wear it longish and swept back, and his nose did
have a slight bend to it, but it was not enough to make it like a
parrot’s beak. And his face only reminded you of a court jester if
you had seen the ghost. I think Mum was right. The ghost was
Antony Green’s idea of himself, not what he really looked like. He
looked almost normal, standing in the sun, in old-fashioned
trousers, laughing with the girl.
  ‘Can a person pass through death?’ he said. ‘You mean, can a
person pass through earth , don’t you?’
  The girl stood up and shoved her hair back. She had one of those
long gaunt faces fashion models used to have and her clothes made
me want to laugh, they were so out of date. I expect she was
good-looking, but I didn’t like her eyes. ‘You said it. Not me,’ she
said. ‘I just talked of the tradition. I want to know if you really can
increase your power by going into the earth. Don’t you want to try?’
  Antony Green shrugged. ‘Not really.’
  She laughed and patted his arm. ‘Well, I think you’re perfect as
you are. Let’s forget all about it.’
  I got rather embarrassed to look then, because he grabbed her by
her shoulders and said, ‘I’m not perfect. But I do love you, Naomi.’
   She kissed him and said, ‘Ah, but do you trust me? You go on a
lot about men and women all being the same this way, but I don’t
think you trust me as I trust you or you’d let me put you in that
mound and call you out again.’
  ‘Then I’d better do it just to show you,’ said Antony Green. He
smiled his long smile, the getting-out-of-things smile, and I didn’t
think he meant it.
  But Mum did. She took off in a sort of tiger spring and went
running down the mound. When she got to the grass of the
meadow, she slowed down to a trot and sort of picked her way
towards them.
  ‘Oh look, there’s a cat,’ said Antony Green. He was glad of the
distraction.
  Naomi glanced at Mum. ‘A black cat for luck,’ she said. Some of
what I didn’t like in her eyes was the way they calculated the use of
things as they looked at them. Mum was useful. ‘To show you
there’s no harm in my test,’ she said.
  Mum tried to show Antony Green that there was harm in it by
weaving in figure-eights round their legs. He looked down at her
and said, ‘In America a black cat means the opposite. Bad luck.’
  ‘So you don’t trust me,’ said Naomi. ‘After all your talk, you take
the first excuse to back out.’
  ‘No, I don’t,’ he said. ‘I’ll do it. I told you.’ He bent and picked up a
sort of green coat which had been lying in the grass till then. He
sort of shrugged himself into it. It was long and full and dark green.
He stood there grinning his long grin at Naomi. Suddenly he did
look much more like the ghost. ‘On condition you do the same after
me,’ he said.
  There was that thing in Naomi’s eyes again – a flash of
calculation. ‘Yes of course,’ she said. ‘The moment you come out.’
  She looked at him in a clear truthful way then, and Antony
Green tried to go on grinning, but it was the way you do when you
have butterflies in the stomach. I saw he really was going to believe
the beastly girl, and I dashed off down the mound to try and stop
him.
  ‘Oh look!’ he said. ‘There’s a kitten now. What a beauty.’ He knelt
down and put his hand out for me to smell, to take his mind off
what he was going to do. Smelling a human hand is a sort of an
acquired taste for cats. I liked the way his smelt but it made me
sneeze. Mum came and barged against him warningly. ‘I’m not
going to hurt your kitten,’ he said.
  ‘No, just my feelings!’ Naomi said. ‘You’d rather play with two
cats than do a little simple thing for me.’
  Antony Green took back his hand and stood up. ‘It’s not a simple
thing,’ he said.
  ‘Well, I know that really,’ Naomi said hastily. ‘Trust isn’t a little
thing.’
  ‘That’s why I’ll do it,’ he said.
  Mum and I sat side by side and stared at him. We both knew we
had been no help at all. I sneezed again. The breeze had veered and
there was a strong smell of Aunt Maria somewhere. The end of
Mum’s tail twitched and I saw one of her ears turn to try for a
sound to go with the scent.
  ‘Are you going to do it or not?’ Naomi said with real impatience.
  ‘Starting now,’ said Antony Green. He took the green box from
the pocket of his green coat, all shining and fascinating and bright.
Mum’s eyes followed it in amazement. He opened it just a fraction
so that just one strong wisp of stuff escaped and swirled around
him. ‘I wish you two wouldn’t stare so,’ he remarked to Mum and
me. ‘You put me off.’
  ‘A cat can look at a king,’ Naomi said, laughing.
  ‘True,’ said Antony Green and tried to give her the green box.
She stepped back from it in a hurry.
  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I forgot you don’t like touching it.’ And he
dropped it carelessly on the grass. Mum was so curious that she got
up and sniffed at it. Neither of the humans noticed, because they
were standing face to face. Antony Green said, ‘By the power that is
with me, I give you the right to call me from the earth, by my name
and your name.’
  ‘And to put you in,’ Naomi prompted him.
  ‘I’ll do that for myself,’ he said. ‘I want to know if I can.’ Then he
took the green coat off again – it was obviously a robe of office like
Mr Phelps’s dressing-gown – and dropped it on top of the box. ‘Here
goes,’ he said. He made Naomi a nervous friendly little face, the
way I do to Chris on the diving board, and walked to the mound. ‘I
think ,’ he said, ‘like this.’
   I didn’t see what ‘like this’ meant, because Mum dashed off and I
followed her, in a last futile effort to stop him. We ran more or less
under his feet – he had suede shoes on – and we tripped him up. Or
else he stumbled in order not to tread on us. The last sight I had of
Antony Green was of him falling, rather like Miss Phelps did the
first time, with one arm out in a sideways curve. There was no
crashing of bushes or even the thump you might expect. He just fell
through the budding branches and the grass and some of a muddy
path and straight on into the side of the mound as if none of it was
there. When I turned round in the bush we had fled through, there
was no sign of Antony Green, and no sign of any difference to the
mound.
  We crouched there watching Naomi walk to the place where he
had vanished. She was smiling a little curve of a smile. She looked
at the place carefully and nodded. Then she stretched both arms out
and said carefully, ‘By the power vested in me, I hereby seal this
mound and you into it. I lay it upon you to be there until I, Naomi
Laker, call you out.’
  Then she practically ran back to the green coat to pick it up. ‘Ho,
ho! Whoopee!’ I heard her say.
  Aunt Maria came running round the mound. She looked much
the same, except she moved a good deal quicker, and she obviously
shouted just as much then as she does these days. ‘You did it, dear!
Oh, my dear child! Devoted artistic darling! I thought for a while
you were never going to get him in. No one else in Cranbury could
have induced him to!’
  ‘The power of love, Mother,’ Naomi said.
  ‘You’re not regretting it, dear, are you?’ Aunt Maria said,
plunging forward to look in Naomi’s face.
  ‘Not in the least,’ Naomi said. ‘But it wasn’t nice and it was hard
work. I’m going to take the green box for my pains at least.’
  ‘Why, dear?’ said Aunt Maria. ‘You know you can’t handle it.’
  ‘Neither can you,’ Naomi said. ‘Mother, dear, I think you should
retire and let me take over. I’ve got twice your power now.’
  Aunt Maria started back with her hands to her chest and stared.
Naomi smiled. The ribs of her face stood out. Her eyes were
fanatical like Elaine’s, blazing to find a weakness in Aunt Maria.
Aunt Maria did her ‘more in sorrow than anger’ voice. She’s
obviously practised it for years. ‘I’m very hurt, dear. Very. I vested
a great deal of power in you and named you to follow me. Isn’t that
enough ?’
  ‘Nope,’ said Naomi. ‘You’re far too old-fashioned, Mother, and I
want to start doing new things. And I noticed, in your usual
cunning way, you pretended not to hear when I said I had the
power. I have. The green box for a start. That gives me the men.
And I’ve got him .’ She pointed to the mound. ‘That means I’ve got
you too, because I’ve got the key to get him out. If you don’t do
what I say from now on, I shall simply open the mound. And he’ll
make you feel very bad, won’t he, Mother dear?’
  ‘Viper,’ Aunt Maria said, using her failing-health voice. ‘Vicious
girl. After all I’ve done for you!’
  ‘Oh, shut up!’ shouted Naomi. ‘Can’t you stop pretending for an
instant?’
  Aunt Maria shouted too. ‘Vicious, vulgar, loud-mouthed monster !’
   They had a flaming row then, screaming at one another in the
bright green field. Naomi screeched such things at Aunt Maria that
I almost liked her. She yelled most of the things I’ve always wanted
to say: ‘hypocritical hag’ and ‘lazy old bag – I do all your chores for
you!’ But Aunt Maria yelled things about Naomi like ‘scarlet
woman!’, which were just as bad probably. I bet they were true, too.
  And right at last, Naomi screamed, ‘All right! All right! I’ll say
the word, and I’ll fetch Green out this instant! He’ll show you!’
  Aunt Maria held up a quivering fist. ‘You rotten creature! Never
another word, and not that word – ever! By the power vested in me,
may you never use human speech again!’
  And Naomi dropped down and seethed, just like Chris, and her
old-fashioned clothes came off her, until she became a tall gaunt
wolf, snarling at Aunt Maria. She wasn’t finished even then. She
dropped low and came creeping as she snarled, ready to spring on
her mother. Dribble was trailing from her open jaws.
 ‘Back!’ Aunt Maria said. ‘Back, you bitch! Go to Loup Woods, and
may it mean your death if you ever set foot outside them.’
   So Aunt Maria brought it on herself in a way. Mum and I both
squashed ourselves to the ground, as the wolf Naomi raced across
the mound, right past us, on the nearest way to the woods. I know
how Lavinia felt when Chris was near now. It’s rather like a human
would feel if he or she went in the living-room and found an escaped
tiger in it.
  Aunt Maria meanwhile didn’t seem particularly sorry. Maybe she
realised later. She picked up Antony Green’s green coat and looked
down at the box in the grass underneath. Then, grunting rather,
she bent down and scooped the box up with the coat, into a bundle,
so that she need not touch the box.



                     Chapter Thirteen
                                                               «^»
I felt huge and heavy and rather sad at being myself again. Mum
was climbing into her jeans, Mum-shaped again.
  ‘That poor silly boy!’ she was saying. ‘The stupid kid! Couldn’t he
see – ?’
   ‘Please get dressed, Margaret,’ Miss Phelps interrupted from her
chair. ‘Nathaniel is waiting outside until you are decent. We have a
lot to discuss.’
  I got dressed and Mum continued to bemoan. ‘It was our fault,
too, Mig. If we hadn’t come down from the mound, he would have
refused. I see that now.’
   ‘It would have happened anyway,’ I said from inside my sweater.
‘It already had.’
  When Mr Phelps came in, he was holding a clean white
handkerchief to his face, and he backed me up. ‘There is never any
way you can change the past,’ he said.
  ‘I was hoping to do something,’ Mum confessed. ‘I thought – ’
   ‘But don’t you see, ma’am,’ said Mr Phelps. He took the
handkerchief away from his face and gestured with it. We all
pretended that we couldn’t see four long red clawmarks down his
left cheek. ‘Two cats came down the mound twenty years ago,
which means that is what happened twenty years ago. You were
always going to come down the mound because you already had.’
  ‘Please describe what happened,’ Miss Phelps said. ‘I wasn’t
there, you know.’
  So we told her. It took a while. Mum interrupted to bemoan, or
say things like, ‘They never considered poor Antony Green for a
moment, did you notice, Mig? They never even seemed to think he
was feeling anything.’
  And Mr Phelps annoyed us both by keeping saying, ‘I make it an
absolute rule never to interfere with the past. That’s much the
safest way.’ During this, some people ran up the street. It was so
unusual for Cranbury that I couldn’t help noticing. One of them
shouted, somewhere at the end of the street. Tut, tut, I thought.
Then, with a nasty jolt, I thought, I do hope it wasn’t Chris!
  Mum said, ‘Well, I can’t see what to do. Naomi put him in and
she’s dead now, I gather. And I do think he’s suffered enough for his
stupidity.’
  ‘Think a little,’ Miss Phelps directed us.
  ‘Blessed if I can see – ’ Mr Phelps said. The doorbell rang then.
He said, ‘Curses!’ and strode off to answer it. Miss Phelps tweaked
the net curtain aside and looked out. It was obviously no one
interesting.
   She turned back to us and said, ‘I don’t like to see hope
abandoned. It seems to me that both of you had a hand – or should
I say paw? – in putting the unfortunate young man where he is.
Would that fit the terms?’
  ‘No,’ said Mum despairing. I wish she wasn’t so emotional.
  ‘Yes!’ I said. ‘Mum, I’m called Naomi Laker too.’
   Mum saw the point and jumped up. ‘Come on, Mig.’ She rushed
to Miss Phelps and shook her little monkey hand. ‘Say goodbye to
your brother for us. Thank you. We’ll go to the mound now. We
should be back in half an hour.’
  ‘It may not be so – ’ Miss Phelps said. Mum had dragged me out
into the hall by then. As she was opening the front door, someone
said, ‘ Is that so important then?’ Mum turned and stared at me. ‘Of
course it is!’
   ‘I didn’t say anything,’ I said. ‘It was one of the people Mr Phelps
let in just now.’
  ‘Oh sorry,’ Mum said. She slammed the Phelpses’ front door and
we set off up the street.
  Then we got lost – which is silly in a place as small as Cranbury –
because I had never been to the Orphanage by road and Mum had
never been there at all. There is never anyone around to ask the
way from. We found the sea twice, and we were coming up a small
road for the second time when we saw Zoe Green hurrying towards
us, clutching her knitted blanket around her. Mad as she is, Mum
rushed up to her in her eager social way, and asked how we got to
the Orphanage.
  There were tears pouring down Zoe Green’s crushed turnip face. I
found I was searching for something that was like Antony Green,
but I couldn’t see anything. But then I am not like Mum – though
Chris is.
  ‘Orphanage?’ Zoe Green said. She waved blanket and arm the
way she had come from. ‘ Carthago delenda est ,’ she said. ‘Oh, my
dearest Augustine, all is gone by.’
  She was even madder than usual. ‘Come on,’ I said to Mum, and
we both hurried on. Mum made popeyed faces at me as we went. I
don’t think she had realised before how mad Zoe Green is.
   The Orphanage was just uphill from there. Before we got there,
we could hear heavy engines and the sound of trees cracking. We
looked at one another, wondering. When we turned the corner, we
found the hedge missing from the side of the road and what looked
to be most of the women in Cranbury standing with their backs to
us gazing into the field where the mound was. We ran. We pushed
in behind them.
   ‘Extension for the Orphanage, dear,’ said the lady from the
clothes shop.
   We looked over a flat space of mud and old tree roots, and saw
two yellow excavators working on the mound. Half of it was gone
already. The lilac bushes were lying this way and that on top, and
their roots were sticking out of the reddish earth of the sliced side
like twisted black wires. Everyone standing round leaned forward,
staring intensely as the excavators moved in to cut another slice
from it. I could see Aunt Maria in her wheelchair right in front of
everyone, leaning forward as eagerly as anyone. One digger scooped
another great chunk of mound away. The second chomped a slice
from the exact place where Antony Green had fallen into the earth.
We knew what everyone was looking for. We stared as eagerly as
the rest, while that digger backed away, at the raw red piece of
mound left. It was just earth and roots. Our eyes went to the load
of earth the digger was carrying aloft then and watched urgently as
it tipped with a slither and a crash on the earth piled at one side.
But that seemed to be just earth too.
  ‘Nothing,’ the clothes-shop lady murmured.
  Mum backed into the road, pulling me. ‘I can’t watch any more!’
she said. ‘Let’s go back to Miss Phelps. Quickly.’ We hurried down
into the town again.
  I said, ‘At least we didn’t see a chopped arm or leg.’
 ‘But I think I saw a bit of cloth fluttering. I’m not sure,’ said
Mum.
  ‘Wouldn’t this let him out?’ I asked. But I knew from the way
everyone had been eagerly looking that it was not like that.
 ‘Nonsense,’ said Mum. ‘They were out to destroy him completely.
Why not use spades if they weren’t? Did you see Aunt Maria’s face ?’
  We hammered at the door of Number Twelve and had to wait
ages until Miss Phelps slowly, slowly opened it. ‘Ah, I thought you’d
be back,’ she said.
  ‘They’re bulldozing the mound,’ I said.
  ‘And we’ve got to act fast,’ Mum said, and whirled into the
hallway. Miss Phelps fell over ushering me in, and Mum whirled
back and caught her just in time. She kept hold of Miss Phelps and
supported her back into the living-room. I don’t think Miss Phelps
was pleased. She likes to do things for herself, including falling
over. Mum is too used to Aunt Maria to realise. I shut the front
door while Mum was saying, ‘Is your brother very busy? We need a
very urgent council of war with both of you.’
  ‘Call him, Margaret,’ said Miss Phelps. ‘No, I can get into my
chair unaided, thank y ou.’
  ‘Mr Phelps!’ I shouted.
  Mr Phelps was upstairs. He came stiffly hurrying down, looking
as if he had just got out from under a shower. ‘What was the snag?’
he said. And he hardly waited for me to answer before he stalked
into the room. ‘I can’t go this time,’ he said. ‘What time was it when
you saw his projection last night? Don’t stare, woman. Answer. It’s
important.’
  Mum said, ‘I didn’t mean to seem stupid, but I don’t understand.’
   Miss Phelps said, ‘My brother is somewhat ahead of himself. It is
clear that if our friend is not to be destroyed by excavators, he will
have to be removed some time between when you last saw him and
the moment the workmen started to dig.’
  ‘Time travel, Mum,’ I said.
  ‘Just a short way,’ said Miss Phelps. ‘My feeling is – just after
dawn this morning. Do you all agree?’
  This kind of thing is not Mum’s strong suit. Her forehead
wrinkled. ‘I – see,’ she said. “Then could we go as quickly as
possible, please?’
  ‘You could go this evening or tomorrow and still get there in time.
Next year,’ said Mr Phelps. ‘Women’s brains alarm me. Totally
obtuse. But if you would be happy going now, do so. I’m rather
busy.’
  We had a last sight of him marching out of the room again as we
went. I felt sick. Mum lurched against me and we both shivered.
Mum was still thinking of back in the future. She said, ‘Oh dear,
I’m afraid we interrupted him in something. I think his sister is
much nicer. Good heavens! It really is dawn!’
   It was. The sky was all pink. Mist hung across the fields in
bands, and the woods uphill were grey with it. The mound in front
of us was black, wet and dripping, except for the sparse white-green
buds on the bushes.
  ‘You want to wait a moment and adjust?’ I asked. I did.
  ‘When will the workmen be here? What time is it?’ Mum said.
She looked at her watch. Of course it said eleven-thirty. ‘Lets’s try
now,’ she said.
  We walked up to the mound. My feet got soaked in dew. It was
getting lighter all the time, and I took a long look round,
remembering this was the last time I’d see the mound and its
bushes in the green field. I looked up at the woods, clearing out of
the mist, and wondered where Chris was.
 ‘Get on, Mig. You have to do it,’ Mum said and looked at her
watch again.
  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘I’d better do it in the words she used, hadn’t I?’
Mum nodded. So I stretched out both hands and said, ‘By the power
vested in me, I unseal this mound and – er – you from it, Antony
Green.’
  ‘Say your name ,’ Mum hissed.
  So I said, ‘This is Naomi Laker. I call you out, Antony Green.’
   There was a moment when Mum slumped, thinking it hadn’t
worked. Then we saw that the bushes were different nowadays.
The right place was up and to the right a bit. The earth and bushes
seemed to be milling into hundreds of transparent dots there. But
they weren’t moving, the dots. They were just going sort of unsolid
to let a long pale figure rise up out of them. He came up to the
surface just like someone would come up from water, lying
sideways, and lay for a moment up along the mound, in the exact
position he would have fallen in when we tripped him up. Then very
slowly and shakily, he stood up.
  ‘Oh my God!’ Mum whispered in dismay.
  He was thin as a skeleton and that made him seem about nine
feet high. His hair had grown into a great mane. It was white now.
So was the long scraggly beard on his chin. And in all those years,
most of his clothes had rotted away, and the skin underneath was a
horrible clayey-white, too, and wrinkled and dirty. He stared at us
and at the dawn breaking, and I noticed his eyebrows were still
dark, in V’s upside down, like the ghost had.
   ‘Who – who are you?’ he asked in a voice that would hardly work.
It sounded like wind blowing in the plughole.
  ‘We are Betty and Margaret Laker,’ Mum said.
  That, of course, puzzled him dreadfully. He bent his face to think,
and then of course he could see his beard and all the rest of his
skeleton body. He looked up at us unbelievingly. ‘I’m old,’ said his
creaky windy voice. ‘What has happened?’ He was horrified. He was
too horrified to listen when Mum said, ‘Would you like to come with
us?’ He said, across her, ‘No! I’m old! What happened ?’
   And then he ran away. There was nothing we could do to stop
him. He charged down the mound and ran like a stag across the
field, in and out of the mist, waving his arms. It was like a
scarecrow running. The tatters of his clothes streamed every time
he waved his arms. They looked white when he disappeared into
the first bank of mist. They seemed to be green when he came out.
  ‘We’d better go after him,’ I said.
  ‘Yes, in case he hurts himself. He’s in shock, I think,’ Mum said.
   We spent the rest of that morning trying to keep up with Antony
Green. He was up in the woods about half the time, and we were
climbing and slipping and panting, trying to keep sight of the crazy
running leaping scarecrow figure who always seemed to be going
uphill from us. When I had breath, I shouted for Chris to come and
help us with him. But no wolf appeared, and Antony Green bounded
crazily on. Every so often he stopped, or we’d have never kept near
him. Then he shouted things and the woods rang, bringing birds up
in clouds. Or he did a mad leaping dance. Part of the dance seemed
to be that his clothes changed colour, though they were always in
tatters. You never knew if you’d be chasing a green or a white or a
red scarecrow next.
  ‘Perhaps it’s a ritual?’ I panted. ‘Suppose we go down to the fields
and wait until he comes down from the woods?’
  Mum wouldn’t hear of it. ‘He could break a leg any moment. Or
he may not come out at all. I feel so responsible,’ she said.
  ‘You would !’ I snapped.
  Antony Green came down from the woods of his own accord soon
after that, and for a while he seemed even more crazy. He bounded
across the field where the wolf had been shot and did his maddest
dance yet in clear space among the cars in the station car park.
This time his tatters turned several colours at once, like a jester’s
suit, and he waved long arms whirling white and black, red and
green.
  ‘He’s as mad as his mother,’ I said as we limped down the field
path.
   ‘Is Zoe Green his mother? Oh, now I understand why she was so
upset,’ Mum said, and she put on a limping spurt as if the thought
of Zoe Green really inspired her. We just might have caught up
with him there, if the booted porter hadn’t come rushing out into
the car park. We were too far away to tell if the porter was trying
to stop Antony Green or what, but the madly whirling figure
cavorted away from the porter’s grabbing arms and went rushing
off towards Cranbury Head.
  Off we hobbled after him. We could see him leaping about on the
road above the cliff while we were still at the edge of the houses.
  ‘Mum,’ I said, ‘I know what he’s doing. He’s going all round
Cranbury, sort of beating the bounds. Let him. We can stop him
after that.’
   It did seem as if I was right, more or less. He came down from
Cranbury Head, long before we got near it and ran along the sand
for a while, a bit more calmly, only skipping and waving every so
often. Then he went off among the houses. Mum insisted that we
kept him in sight, though, so we staggered on.
  ‘Why is the town so empty? You’d think somebody would see
him,’ Mum said.
  I explained that, by this time, everyone would be at the
excavation except the people who had gone to work. Mum looked at
her watch. She couldn’t cure herself of doing that. It now said
nearly three o’clock, which puzzled her horribly.
  ‘Now you have an idea how he must feel,’ I said.
  We spotted him then, running much more slowly, away from us
down the street where the chemist’s is. We toiled behind him in a
sort of dog trot.
  ‘He’s slowing down, I think,’ Mum said. ‘We’d better take him to
the Phelpses when we do catch him. He’s really not responsible.’
  ‘Yes but,’ I said, ‘I don’t know if you’re going to grasp this, Mum,
but do try – at this precise moment we are at the Phelpses, you and
me, discussing how to get him out. We can’t go there. Because we
didn’t when we were there, do you see?’
  ‘Yes, but we were away for hours being cats,’ Mum said. She
looked at her watch again, as if that helped.
  ‘No. We were probably only away for the time it took to be sent
and brought back,’ I said. ‘If your watch said eleven-thirty when we
were at the mound at dawn – ’
   ‘Oh don’t!’ said Mum. ‘It’s worse than when we have to put the
clocks on!’
  ‘All right. But if you look at your watch again, I shall scream,’ I
said.
   At that moment we came into Aunt Maria’s street. Antony Green
ahead of us began going faster. I groaned. He had a purposeful sort
of look I dreaded now.
 Mum said suddenly, ‘ Run, Mig! He’s on his way back to the
mound. Stop him!’
   I knew she was right. It was in the dream somehow. He used to
imagine himself out of his mound and dancing round Cranbury, just
like he had been doing, but he always came to himself to find he
was in the mound. So he thought that was where he should be now.
And that meant he would walk straight into Aunt Maria’s arms.
  By then I didn’t think I could run another step, but I did. Mum
and I pelted down the street. He glanced back and began to run
faster too. I thought I was going to burst. Mum almost did. At the
end of the street she gave up and leant on a house. Antony Green
was just turning up the street that led to the Orphanage.
  ‘Stop!’ I yelled. And Mum screamed at him, ‘Antony Green! Stop.
Come here, you fool!’
  He stood still facing away from us.
  ‘Come back here and I’ll explain!’ I called.
   He turned round and came towards us, very hesitatingly,
clutching his rags around him. He was limping too. He had changed
himself a little while he had been running. He still looked like a
mad Robinson Crusoe, but he didn’t look so old as he had. His beard
was shorter and streaked with darker hair, though his mane was
still white.
 ‘What is it you want of me?’ he said. He was panting but his voice
was like a real person’s now.
  ‘Just to see you safe,’ Mum panted. ‘What do you say to going to
see Nathaniel Phelps?’
  ‘I could do,’ he said, rather surprised. ‘He lives in this street,
doesn’t he? Is he still alive? What year is this?’
  ‘Nineteen ninety,’ I said.
  ‘You’ve only lost twenty years,’ Mum said. ‘Though I dare say it
seemed like centuries to you.’
   We both stared at Antony Green anxiously, wondering how
insane this would make him. ‘ Only !’ he said. ‘That’s one way of
looking at it – ’ Then he looked at us, really looked at us for the
first time. ‘I know you both,’ he said. ‘From a dream I had a short
while back.’
   ‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘ Please come to the Phelpses. I’ve lost track
of what the time really is and I don’t want Aunt Maria to find you.’
  He came with us quite obligingly then, and we rang the door of
Number 12. Mr Phelps opened it. He stared. He glanced over his
shoulder to the door of the living-room. ‘In,’ he said. ‘All of you. In
at once.’ We crowded into the hall, and the huge skeletal shape of
Antony Green towered over Mr Phelps as well as us. Mum moved
forward to open the living-room door, but Mr Phelps opened the
door on the other side of the hall. ‘In, in, in,’ he said and fairly
bundled us through it. ‘Not in there,’ he whispered. ‘You are already
in there at the moment, your former selves. You mustn’t meet.’
  At that moment, we heard the door of the living-room burst open
and hasty feet in the hall. It gave me a queer feeling.
  ‘Is that so important?’ Mum said. So that was who said it.
  The front door slammed. ‘It may be,’ Mr Phelps said. ‘I didn’t
want to take the risk.’ Then he looked at Antony Green who was
standing, hanging his head, and asked, ‘Is he – all right?’
   He didn’t look all right, but Mum said, ‘Yes, of course. He wants
food and a bath and clothes and – listen, if Mig and I just went out
of the front door, won’t there be two of each of us ever after?’ Mr
Phelps looked at the ceiling and clenched his jaw.
  ‘Oh God, Mum!’ I said. ‘And don’t forget to look at your watch
too.’
   Antony Green laughed. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Your earlier selves will just
move round to the point where you went into the past. They are you
, after all.’
  It sounded utterly sane. It looked as if Mum had accidentally said
the right thing. She went on being accidentally helpful too, because
she really was puzzled. Mr Phelps fetched food to the dining-room
we turned out to be in. All the time I was eating my share as
hungrily as Chris, Mum was asking about time travel and Antony
Green was telling her, quite clearly and sanely. But he couldn’t eat
much.
  ‘My stomach’s shrunk,’ he said. ‘It was bound to, I suppose.’
   Miss Phelps came shuffling in and shook hands shyly with him.
‘I’m pleased to see you back,’ she said. ‘But I can’t stay long.
Margaret and her mother will be back shortly.’
  ‘But we’re here!’ said Mum. She was hopeless.
  After that Mr Phelps took Antony Green upstairs to have a bath.
The bathroom was over the dining-room. We could hear tremendous
splashing, mixed with a lot of loud unhappy laughter and Mr Phelps
barking orders that weren’t listened to.
  ‘He’s gone dotty again,’ I said.
  The doorbell rang. We heard Miss Phelps shuffling to answer it.
Now I knew why Miss Phelps said, ‘Ah, I thought you’d be back.’ I
didn’t know I sounded so wimpish. Then our earlier footsteps went
into the living-room. Shortly mine came racing out again, and my
wimpish voice yowled, ‘Mr Phe – elps!’ All this while there were
such splashings and yellings from the bathroom that I couldn’t
understand how we hadn’t heard them the first time we were there.
   As soon as Mr Phelps came downstairs, Mum dived for the door.
‘I don’t think he should be left alone,’ she said. She raced upstairs
and I raced after her, whispering, ‘Mum! Mum, it’s not our house!’
and trying to make her stop.
  Actually, Antony Green was quite all right. He was sitting up to
his neck in bubble bath with his beard trailing in the foam, building
the bubbles into shapes. When we came in, he gave us his long grin,
put out a skinny arm and touched the nearest pile of bubbles. All
the piles of foam took on faint, misty colour. You could suddenly see
they were hills and fields, with castles on the hills and clusters of
little houses in the dips. It was like when you see landscapes in
your bedcovers.
  Mum said, ‘Good heavens! That’s beautiful.’ I said, ‘You ought to
come out now. You’ve gone all wrinkly.’
  Then Mr Phelps came back, and he was terribly shocked to find
us in the bathroom. He made us go out on to the landing and shut
the bathroom door. Then he began barking orders again.
  ‘I wish he’d stop. That’s not the way to manage him,’ Mum said,
leaning her ear to the door. ‘I wish he’d let me.’
  ‘I don’t think people should manage people at all ,’ I said.
  ‘Yes, but he’s treating him like a child !’ Mum said, not listening.
  I leant gloomily on the banisters, wondering how I would ever get
Chris turned back to a boy now Antony Green was mad, until Mr
Phelps threw open the bathroom door and said, ‘Do either of you cut
hair? He won’t let me touch it.’
  ‘We could try,’ Mum said.
  Antony Green was sitting on a cork-topped stool looking halfway
normal. His body was in neat fawn trousers and sweater, but his
head looked like a shipwrecked pirate’s.
  He was staring at himself in the bathroom mirror. ‘Ben Gunn,’ he
said.
  ‘Robinson Crusoe,’ I said.
  ‘Do you want to stay like that?’ Mum said.
  He gave us a long wondering grin, ‘I am like that,’ he said. ‘Can I
change?’
  ‘You changed yourself while you were dancing round Cranbury,’ I
said.
  ‘Hush, child,’ said Mr Phelps. He kept trying to stop me talking
about things like that. He said ‘Hush!’ every time I mentioned the
mound or any of the mad things Antony Green had done, but
Antony Green didn’t mind and Mum didn’t try to stop me.
  ‘I could cut the beard off,’ he said, looking in the mirror.
  ‘I wish you would,’ I said. ‘It looks awful.’
  ‘And my hair?’ he asked.
  ‘Yes,’ said Mum and I.
  ‘Then could you find some scissors, Nat?’ Antony Green asked. Mr
Phelps looked at the ceiling and took a pair of scissors out of his
dressing-gown pocket. He held them towards Mum, but Mum
waved to him to give them to Antony Green. Mr Phelps raised his
eyebrows, but he put the scissors into Antony Green’s pale withered
hand. Antony Green looked at the scissors uncertainly for a
moment, then he said, ‘I’d be grateful for a bit of help really.’
   So Mum cut his hair and his beard. He looked quite a bit better
like that. I think his hair was sort of bleached by the earth, because
it was much darker near the roots. Or maybe he turned it darker.
When it was done, he looked at himself again and said he ought to
shave the beard right off. So we all pothered around for Mr Phelps’s
shaving things. In the midst of the pother, I began to suspect we
had simply swapped looking after Aunt Maria for looking after
Antony Green.
  ‘Don’t be unfair, Mig!’ Mum said. ‘It’s not a bit the same. You
can’t expect someone who’s been buried alive to get over it in half a
day!’
  ‘I don’t suppose he ever will,’ I said. ‘And how are we ever going to
get Chris back now?’
  We were unwisely whispering this in the bathroom doorway.
While I was saying this, we both realised that Antony Green must
have heard. He was staring at us with the razor poised and half his
face covered with white cream. We stared back guiltily.
  ‘The two black cats!’ Antony Green said, ‘I knew I’d seen you
somewhere else before that dream! You were trying to warn me,
weren’t you?’
  I said, ‘Yes. And we sent you into the mound by tripping you up.’
Mr Phelps was bustling jerkily about, picking up every bit of
Antony Green’s hair in a ritualistic kind of way, and he of course
began shushing me. But I took no notice and said, ‘Would you have
stayed out and realised about Naomi, if we hadn’t done that?’
   ‘No, I don’t think so,’ Antony Green said. ‘There’s no need to feel
guilty about it.’ He turned back to the mirror and began shaving
himself again. He said the rest in jerks, while he was dipping the
razor in water or twisting his face sideways to see if he had got all
the beard off the sides. ‘I was besottedly set on it, I’m afraid. It
wasn’t only Naomi’s doing. I wanted to force her to be trustworthy
– I didn’t realise that if people really can trust one another, it
doesn’t need proving. I only saw that – ’ He paused scraping the
place under his funny bent nose to say this – ‘some rather long
months later.’
  ‘But you did love Naomi,’ I said. ‘And I’m afraid she’s – ’
  ‘Hush!’ said Mr Phelps.
  ‘Dead,’ said Antony Green quite calmly, turning his face up to do
under his chin. ‘I know she must be, or I wouldn’t be out. I saw
what she was like quite early on. When an hour had passed and I
was still underground. But her mother’s still alive, isn’t she?’
  ‘Yes!’ Mr Phelps said, in an angry explosion.
   ‘But something else happened,’ said Antony Green. He seemed to
turn saner and saner as he talked. Maybe it was the sight of his
own face coming out of the lather. It wasn’t a usual face, and it was
awfully thin, but it wasn’t the mad castaway’s face, or the court
jester’s face of the ghost either. It was sort of halfway between
those and the face of the young man who had bent down and held
out his hand to me as a kitten. ‘Something gave me an access of
strength a short while back,’ he said. ‘I was almost done for by
then. But I suddenly began to be able to project and dream and
time-travel again.’
  Mr Phelps gave me a meaning glare. ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Me. I opened
the green box and a lot of the stuff got out.’
  Antony Green caught my eye in the mirror. ‘Thank you,’ he said.
‘Your brother’s a wolf, isn’t he?’
  See what I mean about him getting saner? ‘How do you know?’ I
said.
   ‘I saw you with him in that room,’ he said. ‘I’d gone back to the
present by then. First of all, I homed on the green box and tried to
find it. It was in that room for years, and I went doggedly through
the years, trying to find someone there with it who might help me.
I’d worked back to about four months ago, before there was anyone
in the room at all, and then unfortunately there was Gregory
Laker – ’
  ‘Dad,’ I said. ‘What did he do?’
  ‘Took the box away,’ Antony Green said. ‘I managed to make him
understand – I thought. But perhaps he didn’t. He got very excited.’
  If Antony Green could accept hard facts, I thought I could. ‘He
wanted it himself,’ I said. ‘He envied you. He told me.’ Mum sat on
the edge of the bath and looked unhappy. I said, mostly to make her
feel better, ‘Aunt Maria got at him after that, and I think he forgot
he’d seen you.’
  ‘So I had to try again,’ Antony Green said. He finished shaving
and turned round to talk after that. ‘Something had happened,
because I still thought the green box was in that room. I found the
next person by daylight – an elderly woman I didn’t know – who
was making up the bed.’
  ‘Lavinia?’ Mum asked me.
  ‘I scared her silly,’ Antony Green said. ‘She began laughing
hysterically and ran out of the room shouting, “Mrs Laker! You did
some poor fellow in, didn’t you? I’m not staying with you one
moment longer!” And I never saw her again.’
  ‘She’s a cat now,’ I said.
   ‘So then I found your brother,’ said Antony Green. ‘I’d just begun
to make him understand, and I was almost at my last gasp, when I
realised he was a wolf, and you were there.’ The way he said this
made me see that the nights must have run together for Antony
Green. I suppose they would if you were lying underground. He
frowned a bit and said, ‘I must put that right at once.’
  ‘Oh, bless your heart!’ Mum said.
                    Chapter Fourteen
                                                               «^»
They went to find Chris, but I stayed behind. I was sitting on the
edge of the Phelpses’ bath nine-tenths asleep by then. Mum didn’t
seem to notice that two mornings in succession add up to a whole
day. There is that advantage to not understanding time travel. She
was fresh as a daisy. And I hadn’t done credit to how worried she
was about Chris. She said to Antony Green, ‘I could have screamed
all the time you were careering round the town! I kept thinking of
poor Chris.’
  He gave her his long mischievous getting-away-with-it grin. ‘I am
sorry.’
   ‘No, you’re not,’ said Mum. ‘You were enjoying yourself. Not that
I blame you.’
  Antony Green was fresh too, in a calm easy way. I supposed as I
nodded on the edge of the bath that he had had twenty years to rest
in, but now I think it was more than that. He had something within
him, now that he was sane. He turned to Mr Phelps and held out a
hand. ‘I’ll have the green box, Nat.’
   Mr Phelps took the wonderful flashing glowing box out of his
pocket and plonked it into Antony Green’s hand, very hastily, as if
it hurt him to touch it. Then he bustled to the bathroom cupboard
and came back with the big green highwayman’s coat kind of robe.
It smelt of mothballs. ‘I rescued this from the woods,’ he said.
   Antony Green looked up from running his fingers gently over the
patterns on the box, and his long grin was rather bemused. It often
is, actually. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘But I don’t think I’m quite ready to
reassume that yet. Can you keep it here and make people think I’m
here with it?’
  He opened and shut the box a tiny bit as he said it. Mr Phelps
gave a pained gasp at the waste, and said, ‘Certainly. But – ’
  ‘I’m going to disappoint you, Nat, I know,’ Antony Green said. ‘I
always did rather, didn’t I? I had time to think underground. And
I’m not sure I care for our way of doing things here. Men’s ways
with the power shut in the box. Women’s ways with the virtue
hoarded in the Queens – ’
  ‘Virtue !’ Mum said. She almost exploded at the idea. ‘How can
you sit there – ! After all you’ve been through, how can you sit
there and call Auntie virtuous?’
  ‘It means something different, Mum,’ I said.
   Antony Green turned to Mum, sort of kindly. ‘Yes, it does,’ he
said. ‘It’s an old use of the word, meaning a certain sort of power.
That’s been our word for it in Cranbury for centuries. It goes back
to the time when somebody here decided that men and women were
different and that the rules for the ways they used the power
should be different. That was early in the Middle Ages, I think.
They divided into men’s ways and women’s ways then, and they’ve
been thinking up more and more rules ever since to make the
difference seem even bigger. Women allowed men the strong,
out-of-doors things – provided the men put the virtue of their
thoughts and ambitions into this box, so that it couldn’t get loose
and run wild – while the men gave over all the secret, indoors
things to the women – on condition the main power was kept safe
by just a few strong women who would work by the rules. Those
are the ones we call the Queens.’
  ‘You make it all sound like an anthill,’ Mum said.
   ‘It is,’ he said, ‘particularly when it goes as wrong as it seems to
have done these last twenty years. And the whole arrangement is
nonsense anyway. I want everyone to be free to use the power as
they need to. The stuff in this box was once the birthright of every
living soul in the world, you know.’
  Mr Phelps stood to attention in a loyal way and said, ‘It’s my
place to follow you, Antony. I understand.’
  ‘You don’t, Nat,’ Antony Green said.
  It was about this point that I went to sleep and fell into the bath.
Mum realised how tired I was and I got bundled along to Miss
Phelps’s bed. ‘We’ll be back soon with Chris,’ Mum said. ‘You have a
rest, Miggie. You’ve done valiantly.’
   I went to sleep for a bit, I don’t know for how long. It was still
broad daylight when I woke up and I think it was early afternoon.
The house was quiet except for some gobbling snores from
somewhere. I woke up realising that we weren’t going back to Aunt
Maria’s and that all my things were in her house. What will Mum
do without her pea-green knitting? I thought. And there’s my
writing ! I knew it would be a real disaster if Aunt Maria found my
locked book and read all I had written about her. I knew I just had
to get it back.
   I was so worried that I got up and ran downstairs. I went into the
living-room to tell Miss Phelps about my writing. But she was
curled up on the sofa like a rather big gnomish baby, fast asleep.
She’d had a busy morning. It never occurred to me to wonder. I
tiptoed out and let myself softly out through the front door.
  I told myself I would just sneak in through the back door. Aunt
Maria was deaf after all. If I was quiet, I could go in and out
without her hearing a thing.
   Well, I sneaked in. There wasn’t a sound as I opened the kitchen
door. I tiptoed through the empty dining-room across empty
squares of sun lying on the dismal carpet. It never occurred to me
that this was odd. At that time of day, the room ought to have been
full of Mrs Urs, clustered round the silver teapot. But I didn’t think
of that. I tiptoed through the hall and raced quietly upstairs, feeling
very pleased with myself. My locked book, instead of being hidden
under the bedroom carpet, was lying out on the bedroom table.
Somehow that didn’t worry me at all. I got Mum’s pea-green
knitting out and put it carefully on the bed to remind me to take it
too. Then I sat down and unlocked my book. There is such a lot I
have to put down now! I thought.
  I sat there and I wrote and wrote. It was very odd. I remembered
exactly what had happened and what it meant to me at the time,
and I knew it was real and urgent, but I never seemed to notice it
was stupid to sit and write about it in Aunt Maria’s house. I put
down all about the wolf hunt, and I remember I got very impatient
at how long that took, because I had all about Antony Green to put
down too, but it never occurred to me to connect it with the way I
was behaving now.
  Then when the light was getting a bit dim, I looked up with a
jump to see a tall black figure standing in the doorway. It was
Elaine. ‘Come downstairs,’ she said. ‘Your aunt wants to speak to
you.’
   My heart kind of squeezed. I could hardly breathe for sheer
terror. When I stood up my knees would hardly hold me. Elaine
walked to the table and picked up my open book. ‘I’ll have that,’ she
said. I remember my pen softly thudding on the carpet, as she said,
‘If you are going to pour your thoughts out on paper, you ought to
hide your scribbles in a better place. I found this in two seconds
flat. You are a rude little beast, aren’t you? I hope she makes you
pay for some of the things you said.’ Then she marched me out of
the room and down the stairs, holding me in her policeman’s grip.
As we were going down, she asked, ‘Where’s your mother?’
  Terror was roaring in my ears, but I had just sense to say, ‘No
idea. She went off without me.’
  ‘I’ll go and round her up later,’ said Elaine. She shoved me into
the living-room and shut the door after me.
   ‘Come and sit down, dear,’ Aunt Maria said. She was sitting on
her roped-up state sofa with a low pink lamp cosily lighting up her
face. Her sticks were lying propped beside her, as if she didn’t
intend to use them. But they were there in case of emergencies.
She pointed to the little armchair drawn up facing the sofa. ‘Dear
little Naomi,’ she said. ‘I love talking to you, dear.’ She had her
most kindly teddy-bearish look. It really was hard to see her
without thinking of her as cuddly and lovable.
  Elaine was clanking about in the hall somewhere as I sat down.
There really was no chance of getting away. I stared at Aunt
Maria’s sweet rosy face and I had a sudden understanding of how
Zoe Green had gone mad. Here were all these peculiar and awful
things going on, and you knew all about them and wanted to
scream and yell and cry, and yet here was Aunt Maria, so gentle
and cuddly and civilised that you couldn’t quite believe the awful
things were happening. You felt guilty just thinking about them.
You felt guiltier believing the awful things were true. As Aunt
Maria began talking, I really began thinking something must be
wrong with me for imagining she was wicked in the least.
   She talked and talked. Mad and improbable though it seems,
most of what she said was exactly the same as the usual things:
what Adele Taylor had said to Hester Bayley – who paints such
gifted pictures, dear – and what both of them had said to Benita
Wallins. And on and on, about all the other Mrs Urs. I remember
having a little fleeting underneath thought that the main spell
Aunt Maria cast was boredom. I kept having little fleeting
thoughts. They were like little jabs of sanity in a vast numb desert
of boredom, as Aunt Maria’s voice went on and on. You have to
listen to her. She has this way of saying, ‘Listen, dear. This is
really interesting !’ And you do, and it’s always the most boring
thing yet.
  Elaine began hoovering the hall at some point, making another
droning in my ears. One of my little jabbing thoughts was, She’s a
fool to leave Larry alone now Antony Green is out. But it didn’t
make any difference to the way I sat having to listen. My ears and
my mind got blurred, so that I almost didn’t catch the important
things as Aunt Maria said them. They were sort of slipped in among
the droning.
   ‘Dear, you have really hurt me, but we shan’t talk of that. I love
my little new Naomi and I know she loves me…’ Then she went on
in a sighing way about how beautiful and gentle the old Naomi was,
and what a brilliant mind she had. ‘ You have a brilliant mind too,
dear,’ she said. And I had a jabbing thought that it was no wonder
Naomi tried to get the better of Aunt Maria. She must have been
sick of her.
  Then after desert miles of more talk, I realised Aunt Maria was
saying, ‘It hurt me to find you didn’t trust me, dear. Hurt me very
much indeed that you went and looked for your father by yourself. I
was saving him as a wonderful surprise for you, for when you
understood. I’m sure you understand now that he had to pass
through death so that he could use the funny little box properly. I
hope you and he and I will be working closely together in future…’
  So that’s it! I thought. But Antony Green has been through death
too.
  But I still didn’t understand that Aunt Maria meant me to be her
successor, not until ages more droning on about Mrs Urs, when
Elaine’s hoover went through into the dining-room. Aunt Maria
lowered her voice and leaned forward. ‘So Ann Haversham went to
Selma Tidmarsh and they agreed to look after Elaine for me. Poor
Elaine is very jealous, you know. She wanted to step into my
Naomi’s place. But I had already chosen you, dear, years ago, as
soon as your father first brought you here to see me. It’s a pity your
father and mother don’t get on. I brought you all here to re-unite
you. And of course I sent Lavinia away so that you could be one of
the thirteen just as soon as you were ready.’
   I sort of fizzed with horror as soon as she said that. Be one of the
Mrs Urs! Be like Elaine! I felt sick. I truly didn’t hear the next bit
of droning. When I next attended, Aunt Maria was chuckling at me
in a roguish, matey way.
   ‘So this is really your first lesson, dear. Do you understand how
it’s done? The main spell is just talk, and that’s quite easy, but of
course you are working away underneath the talk, putting all sorts
of things into people’s minds and tying their thoughts into the right
shape. This is something you’ll learn in time. It takes time. I wish
you could have been there when I had my long talk with poor Zoe
Green. That was me at my best.’
  I stared at her. I couldn’t believe it.
   ‘Ah, yes, dear. You do understand,’ Aunt Maria said. ‘The power
is vested in you. It tore loose from poor Naomi when the men made
that mistake over her. I felt you take it on yourself early this
morning. You do understand, dear.’
  Oh, no! I thought. In order to let Antony Green out I had to be
one of them ! Why didn’t I realise?
  ‘I think you’re tired now, dear,’ Aunt Maria said. And I was. I
went to sleep on the spot. I don’t know what happened after that,
except that I woke up next morning in the Orphanage.
  It was a little grey room with one little grey window looking out
on to the foggy woods. What woke me was the sound of the
excavators starting up to finish levelling the mound. That told me
at once where I was. Even if I hadn’t heard them, the smell would
have told me – like a school really, only thicker and chillier. I
jumped up. The first thing I saw was my old mildewy exercise book
lying on the grey locker by the bed and a pen beside it. The Story of
the Twin Princesses . I grabbed it up and opened it, and found Aunt
Maria’s note written under the title on the first page. She has
teddy-bearish writing. I knew the note was meant to make me feel
humble and contrite. But it didn’t. There were no spells on me now.
I suppose if I was going to be her new Naomi, I had to have my own
free will. I went and tried the door.
   It wasn’t locked. I stormed out into the grey corridor and came
face to face with Phyllis Forbes. Her pink schoolgirl face was rather
irritable.
  ‘Didn’t you hear the bell?’ she said. ‘Get up at once, you lazy girl.
Breakfast is half-finished.’
  ‘Why should I?’ I said. ‘I don’t belong here.’
  ‘You do now,’ she said. ‘Get dressed or starve.’
  I was hungry. My clothes were on a chair. I went back in the
room and dressed and Phyllis Forbes stood over me. I hated her.
But I hated her much more by the end of breakfast.
  The orphans were all downstairs in a long grey room quietly
eating muesli and drinking watery milk from plastic glasses. Phyllis
Forbes shoved me down at a bench by the nearest long table and
went stamping off. The orphans all looked at me with identical
solemn clone expressions. They were all younger than me. That
made me rather dejected.
   ‘Don’t just sit there. Do something!’ I called out at them. ‘You all
got filled with stuff from the green box. It must have made some
difference!’
  They just stared, and their eyes all shifted in unison to Zenobia
Bayley. She was dressed like a nurse, in the same way as Phyllis
Forbes. She hustled up, clacking her shoes, and clapped a bowl of
muesli down in front of me. ‘Milk’s in the jug,’ she said. ‘Spoons in
the box there.’
  ‘Do you work here?’ I said.
  ‘I give my time three mornings a week,’ she said. She sounded
very righteous.
  I wondered if she recognised me. ‘How generous,’ I said. ‘Do you
give people anything but muesli? I hate muesli. It’s like mouse’s
do’s.’
  ‘You’ll eat it,’ she said. ‘It’s nourishing.’
  ‘No, I won’t. I’ll throw up,’ I said. ‘How about a crust of dry bread
instead?’
  Zenobia Bayley sighed. ‘Phyllis!’ she called out in a weary voice.
‘There’s one being stroppy here.’
   Phyllis Forbes came zooming along the grey room and glared at
me. ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘This one will be. She has much too good an
opinion of herself. Are you going to eat up like a good girl?’ she said
to me.
  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I hate muesli.’
  ‘Then you’ll eat it all up,’ she said, with a little sort of smile.
   And I somehow had to. I spooned the spiky grey mush up, and
choked, and spooned again, and the raisins seemed even more like
dead bluebottles than usual, but I still had to eat them. Phyllis
Forbes hadn’t done anything to my feelings. She had just put a sort
of transparent bag around them, so that they bulged and struggled
inside where I couldn’t get at them. I had to sit dutifully there
eating muesli.
  When I’d finished, she clapped her hands. ‘Come along now,
children,’ she called. ‘Activity time.’ All the orphans got up
obediently and filed out of the grey room, while she stood against
the wall with her arms folded, watching. Elaine isn’t Aunt Maria’s
only policewoman, I thought. I got up and went over to her.
  ‘What is activity time?’ I said. Then I burped muesli and thought
I was going to be sick.
  She gave me a malicious smile. ‘The boys go for gymnastics,’ she
said. “The girls have dancing. It trains the muscles.’
  ‘I want to do gymnastics,’ I said.
  ‘But you’ll do dancing,’ she said. “That’s what young ladies do.
This way.’
  I knew she could make me, so I went where she pushed me,
looking as rebellious as I dared.
  ‘In there. Take that look off your face. It won’t do any good,’ she
said.
   It was a bare room with girl orphans standing around in it. The
Mrs Ur called Ann Haversham was sitting at a piano in one corner.
‘Is everyone here?’ she called out.
  I went over to her. ‘Do you give your time three times a week
too?’ I said.
  ‘Every day, dear,’ she said. ‘Stand with the others.’
  ‘Then you should ask to be paid,’ I said. This is a slave farm.’
   She took no notice and called out, ‘Now, I want you all to be
fairies!’ She played little skittish fairy notes on the piano. I went
and stood against the wall to watch the girl orphans running with
little steps and fluttering their arms. Then I realised that Phyllis
Forbes was standing against the wall too, on the other side of the
room.
  Phyllis Forbes gave me another of her nasty smiles.
   I found I had to dance, too. The plastic bag was over my feelings
again. I felt huge and silly as I ran and flittered and then skipped in
time to the fairy music. I was enormous compared with the other
girls. I got angrier and angrier, but the plastic bag held my feelings
in, and all I could do was bulge about inside. I knew how Chris had
felt when he said awful things to Aunt Maria. As we all started
waving our arms with sickening grace the muesli felt like a big
grey clod in my stomach and I felt worse still. Yet Antony Green
danced, I thought. That was to express his feelings. Then I thought,
I was filled with stuff from the green box – more than any of the
orphans were – and I took on the power Aunt Maria had vested in
Naomi, even if I didn’t know I had. So I must be strong enough to
do something. I made a great effort. And the plastic bag split, and I
began to dance like Antony Green, leaping and whirling, kicking up
my legs and holding my arms high. It was a lovely feeling. The
orphans stopped dancing and stared at me.
  The music stopped. Phyllis Forbes came diving across the room
and snatched hold of my arm. It hurt. ‘You wicked, graceless,
indecent girl!’ she said. ‘Now you shall be punished!’
  I tried to look at her in a way that showed I was as strong as she
was. But she was hurting my arm and I couldn’t. So I said, ‘It’s not
punishment, whatever you do, because you enjoy watching people’s
feelings bulge, don’t you?’
  She dragged me out of the room, hurting my arm even more. ‘I
shall break your spirit!’ she said.
  ‘You’ll enjoy that, won’t you?’ I gasped. But when someone is
stronger than you in their muscles it is very hard to do anything.
She dragged me all the way upstairs and threw me back into the
grey room. ‘You’ll stay there without food until you’re ready to
behave!’ she said. And she slammed the door and locked it. I
suppose it was lucky she made me eat the muesli.
  Actually I didn’t write very much between the lines of The Twin
Princesses . I didn’t dare. I wrote the first bit so as to defy everyone,
and then my arm hurt too much where Phyllis Forbes had
wrenched it. I sat on the bed, staring at the woods through the
window, rubbing my arm and holding my eyes very wide to make
the tears in them go away. I began to think my spirit probably was
broken.
  Then there was a soft little grating noise at the door of the room.
My eyes went that way. I saw a biscuit coming through the crack
under the door. A second biscuit was being pushed under a bit
further along. It was the orphans. I thought I would stay sitting on
the bed, but I didn’t. I went over to the door.
  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Why are you doing that?’
  ‘We always do that when one of us is being punished,’ one of
them whispered from the other side of the door. ‘Bye for now.’ Feet
softly scuffled away.
  I still felt far too full of muesli and rage to eat, but I picked the
biscuits up and hid them in the mattress in order not to get the
orphans punished too. More biscuits kept arriving all morning. The
bed crunched when I sat on it. I was just dismally thinking I had
better sit on the floor and eat the biscuits later on for supper, when
I saw something moving in the wood out of the window. I looked
and whoever it was slid out of sight behind some bushes.
  Funny, I thought. That looked like Larry Mr Elaine.
   I went to the window, and I was in time to catch sight of one of
the boatmen scampering sideways to another bush. Not Chris
again! I thought. Then I looked up at the woods and saw people
coming down among the trees, three of them. One was Mum,
sturdily marching with her hands in the pockets of her anorak. It
was cold and still a bit foggy out there. Antony Green was with her,
and he was wearing his green highwayman coat. The third person
was Chris. He was a boy again and his clothes must have come
from Larry, because they were just a bit big all over. They all came
down the field until they vanished behind the high wall of the
Orphanage, but Mum had started to run by then.
   I waited and I listened, and I never knew quite what happened. I
heard a huge bang, as if a heavy door had been slammed open and
hit the wall beside it hard. The floor trembled a bit. Then I heard
Mum. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but I could hear her.
When Mum really gets going it’s quite hard to hear anything else.
And she was really going. I stood in the middle of the room and
listened to doors slamming, things going flying, other voices trying
to interrupt Mum, and Mum’s voice coming closer and closer and
louder and louder. There was shouting too, from the orphans. I
could somehow hear they were cheering Mum on. Then there were
a host of footsteps and Mum’s voice, nearer and nearer, ‘I tell you
she’s my daughter and you have no business to shut her up here!’
  Then the key scraped and my door crashed open, and there was
Mum in a crowd of excited orphans, hauling Phyllis Forbes by the
collar of her nurse’s uniform.
  ‘She’s not harmed – ’ Phyllis Forbes started to say.
  ‘Not harmed!’ said Mum. ‘Just look at her!’ I was so glad to see
Mum that I had somehow started crying without knowing I had.
Chris says he did, too, when Antony Green turned him back to a
boy. ‘Not harmed !’ Mum bellowed. ‘Why you wicked, cruel woman!’
And to my utter joy she banged Phyllis Forbes’s head on the
doorpost. From the look of Phyllis Forbes, Mum had done that
several times before, but when I asked Mum she said, ‘I don’t know
what I did, cherub. It was all a red mist. I was only thinking of
getting you out of there.’
 I rushed up to Mum. Mum slung Phyllis Forbes aside and hugged
me. The orphans shouted, ‘Lock Mrs Forbes up now!’
   Mum was obviously tempted, but she said, ‘No, we’re getting out
of here. Come on, all of you. Thank you for showing me where Mig
was.’
   We left Phyllis Forbes sitting in the corridor and hurried
downstairs in a crowd of yelling orphans to the front hall. The big
front door was off its hinges, making a sort of frame for a knot of
men, Larry among them, and Chris standing with Antony Green. I
wondered why they hadn’t come in. But both of them, for different
reasons, were finding it hard to go indoors just then. When Chris
saw me, he did actually come about three steps into the hall. I
didn’t realise then what a sacrifice that was. He dragged me back
outside, both of us saying excitedly, ‘Tell me, tell me, tell me!’
   There Antony Green smiled his long sly friendly smile at me.
Beyond Larry and the men was another knot of men, the ones who
had been working the excavators. Someone told me later they came
from Minehurst way and didn’t have a clue. But they knew
something was going on. They stared like anything at me, all
tearstained, and again at Mum. Mum came sailing out, surrounded
by orphans. ‘You did mean bring these too?’ she called.
  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Antony Green. ‘Let’s go.’ And he led the way out
through the Orphanage grounds and everyone else followed, like
the Pied Piper’s procession. Antony Green looks a bit like I always
imagined the Pied Piper anyway, and he was more like him than
ever with Chris and me and all the orphans crowding after him.
  ‘Where did Larry and the others come from?’ I whispered to
Chris.
  ‘They were waiting in the woods when we came down this
morning,’ Chris said. ‘They had clothes for me and that green coat
for him, and they seemed to know all about everything. Larry went
up to Antony Green and – do you know! – he bowed. “You may not
remember me, ” he said. “I was only ten when you were put down,
but I’ve tried to keep things going the way you would have wanted.”
Then he handed over the green coat.’
  ‘He wants to be the next Mr Phelps,’ I said, ‘I bet. Tell me how
they found you.’
  Chris wasn’t sure. He thought maybe he found them. He said he
was miles inland, as far as he could get, because roaming by night
was one of the things he got to like about being a wolf. But he could
never get enough of it. He always got more and more scared and
uncertain the farther he ran from Cranbury. I think there was an
injunction on him. Anyway, near dawn, he suddenly got a feeling
that he had to go to Loup Woods at once. So he set off trotting.
Quite a lot of people saw him. A man in a tractor tried to run him
down in a field, and Chris was very scared and tired at being out by
daylight. He was glad when he ran into sea mist and found the
barn where he had taken to sheltering at the edge of Loup Woods.
He crawled in through a gap in the back, and there was Mum, lying
asleep on the straw where Chris usually slept.
  ‘I couldn’t believe it. I nosed at her,’ Chris said.
  Mum was walking with an arm round both of us. She laughed. ‘I
yelled,’ she said. ‘Poor Chris! He jumped back looking so scared.
And I said, “Chris! It’s all right. I do know you. It’s just your nose is
so cold!” Then Antony came in.’
  ‘He said, “Hello, Chris. I’m sorry this has happened to you,” and
turned me straight back,’ Chris said.
  ‘What? Just like that?’ I said.
  ‘Well, no mumbo-jumbo or anything,’ Mum said. ‘He put a hand
on Chris’s head. Things were shadowy for a moment, and then he
was standing with his hand on Chris’s real head and Chris was
shivering all over. Poor Antony. He was sweating by then. He can’t
bear even being under a roof. And Chris is as bad.’
  ‘Now you tell us about the Orphanage,’ Chris said.
  ‘But you haven’t told me about the hunt,’ I said. Our procession
was going along the Marine Promenade by then, with the sea
swelling all soft and grey and foggy to one side.
  ‘That’ll have to wait,’ Mum said.
  Aunt Maria was coming along the concrete towards us in her
dead fox and her tall hat in her wheelchair pushed by Elaine. All
the other Mrs Urs – or nine of them anyway – were behind her, and
there were quite a lot of other women too.
  ‘I think this is it,’ said Chris.



                        Chapter Fifteen
                                                                  «^
The two lots of us stopped, facing one another. Antony Green took
the green box out of his pocket and drummed his fingers on it.
Everyone’s eyes went to it. It seemed twice as bright as anything in
the grey seaside air. Most of the Mrs Urs looked away rather
quickly. Aunt Maria covered her face with one glove.
 ‘Elaine,’ she said in her low grieving voice, ‘they’ve got my little
Naomi. How tragic!’
   Elaine was staring past Aunt Maria’s hat at Antony Green. When
she thought she had caught his eye, she smiled. She really gave
him the works. It was beyond all her other smiles, not two-line, but
three-line at least. I thought she was going to split her ears. You
couldn’t say Antony Green took no notice exactly. He smiled back,
and of course he had a smile at least to equal Elaine’s. But I saw
why Aunt Maria had tried to get rid of him. His smile was perfectly
friendly but it showed he wasn’t going to budge an inch.
  ‘Good morning,’ he said. ‘I’ve come back to right a wrong. There
have been two deaths caused by it, and a lot of unhappiness.’
  ‘What does he mean, Elaine?’ Aunt Maria asked. This time it was
her hurt voice. ‘Everyone’s quite happy, aren’t we, dear? And I’ve
never killed so much as a fly in my life!’
  ‘No, you use other people, like pincers, to kill them for you!’ Chris
shouted.
  ‘Hush, dear,’ Aunt Maria called. ‘Grown-ups are talking.’ If she
was surprised to see Chris as himself she never showed it. She
really had a nerve. Mum thought so too. I could hear her muttering
things like, ‘What cool cheek! I hope he grinds her to pulp!’ until
Antony Green said, ‘Is that all you want to say? Really?’ He said it
quite quietly, but it overrode all the mutterings from everyone.
   ‘Only that I’m surprised ,’ Aunt Maria said, ‘at someone of your
education getting led into something like this. I thought you too old
to make an exhibition of yourself on the sea front.’
  Ow! I thought. It must have been a signal. I think all the Mrs
Urs set to work then. Pitying disapproval rolled out from them in
waves. Mum went bright red instantly. They followed this up with
such remorse, guilt, shame, embarrassment – the feeling you have
when it’s your voice that rings out saying a dirty word – that
everyone was writhing in seconds. One of the orphans near me
quietly burst into tears.
 Elaine said, ‘Larry, what are you doing?’ and Larry looked as if he
wanted to crawl into the sea.
   Aunt Maria called gently, ‘Naomi, come over here, dear, away
from all those people.’
  ‘No!’ I said. I was still feeling like I did at the Orphanage. I knew
the guilt was just another plastic bag. ‘You’re wicked,’ I said.
  There was a shocked gasp, and it came from Mum and some of
the orphans as well as from the Mrs Urs.
  Antony Green sighed and opened the green box. ‘If that’s the way
you want it,’ he said. I think everybody looked at him. He stood out
so, with his odd face and his strange green coat. I remember
looking up at his sideface as the stuff from the box swirled around
him, and I thought the one bright eye I could see looked more like a
hawk’s than a parrot’s. The guilt still surged out from the Mrs Urs,
and I think we were all ashamed to look at that strong invisible
stuff winding up and round, into the sky, wrapping itself into the
fog, collecting more strength from the smooth grey sea. But we did
look. And we saw it all pile back at Aunt Maria and the Mrs Urs.
  It was grey then, and thick and heavy and full of visions. There
were hundreds of them, separate ones for each lady. I saw a great
grey wolf crawl through the air towards Aunt Maria. It was
slavering and snarling at first but it suddenly jerked, leapt into the
air and fell on its side, dead. Then another wolf took its place, a
smaller brindled one, crouching miserably in the rain and obviously
starving. I saw Elaine backing away from a great swirling image of
Larry. The image was hurt, astonished and nearly in tears. Elaine
looked really upset.
  Chris pushed up to Antony Green. ‘Elaine let me go when they
were hunting me,’ he said.
  ‘I know,’ Antony Green answered. The image of Larry got even
more upset, if anything. Antony Green was staring gravely. Antony
Green must have been talking to other people, besides Chris and
Mum, or maybe he saw some of the things while he was projecting
himself from the mound. There were so many of them. People
unhappy, desperate, guilty, bewildered, dozens for each lady. There
were orphans crying. I saw Dad greyly several times, standing
swaying up to his knees in sea, looking at death’s door. I think he
really did go over the cliff in some way. I even saw myself, rather to
my surprise. I suppose Antony Green was trying to show me being
got at by Aunt Maria, but he had done me like that picture in the
book that Hester Bayley gave me, as a girl being pushed and pulled
underground by horrible shadows.
  I knew what he was trying to do. He was trying to force the
truth of what they had done on them. But I don’t think it worked,
any more than when he had tried to force Naomi to be trustworthy.
Some of the Mrs Urs were as upset as Elaine. But most of them
just stood there letting the visions roll around them and trying to
make us feel guilty instead. Benita Wallins sat with her legs
dangling over the edge of the Parade, crying and yelling. But I
think that was really a defence. And Aunt Maria sat turned
sideways in her wheelchair, looking sad and stern and
teddy-bearish.
  Antony Green made a last effort with her. Images poured about
her. Chris, me, the orphans, Dad, a terrified, grey old lady
dwindling into a terrified, grey cat, hundreds of things, even a
crushed suffocating image of Antony Green himself. And as a final
aftermath, there was the great grey slavering wolf again, only this
time when it was shot, it dissolved into a lady with her black hair
spread around her and became an almost solid image of Naomi as
Antony Green must have known her.
  Aunt Maria just went on looking sternly out to sea. ‘No,’ she said,
as the image of Naomi dissolved away too. ‘Upon reflection, I have
nothing in my life to reproach myself with, young man.’
  I think the images upset Antony Green far more than the people
they were aimed at. He was pale and scarecrowlike. ‘Very well,’ he
said quietly and shut the green box with a snap. The Mrs Urs
gasped.
  Aunt Maria froze into place. Then suddenly she did not seem to
be there any more. Antony Green turned round to me and held out
the green box with something balanced on top of it.
  ‘Will you hold this steady a second, while I take my coat off?’ he
said.
   I took it carefully. Everyone, including me, made a long groaning
‘O-Oh’ as we realised what was balanced on top of the box. It was a
little tiny old lady in a fox fur and a tall hat, sitting in a little tiny
wheelchair. She didn’t move. I couldn’t resist prodding at her with
one finger, and she was hard, like a toy, but freezing cold.
  Antony Green slung his green coat over his shoulder, hooked by
one finger, and held out the other hand for the box. As I passed it
carefully back, Mr Phelps arrived. He was pushing Miss Phelps,
who was all tiny and hunched up, in another wheelchair. This one
must have come out of the ark, I think. It was made of basketwork
and it had peculiar wheels. Mr Phelps was trying to pretend he had
nothing to do with it and not really pushing it.
  ‘Populace all gathered in the square as directed,’ he said in his
most soldierly manner. Then he and Miss Phelps saw Aunt Maria
balanced in miniature on the top of the green box. They both
stared. Mr Phelps’s throat slid up and down. ‘I didn’t know that was
possible,’ he said.
 Miss Phelps said, ‘I wish you’d thought to give me back my
wheelchair first.’
  ‘Oh, was it yours? I’m sorry,’ Antony Green said. He gave his
longest smile. ‘Let’s go to the square now,’ he said.
  We went there, us and the Mrs Urs, in a crowded, muddled
procession. Antony Green walked at the head of it, smiling slightly,
with his coat hung on his shoulder and the green box balanced very
carefully so that the little wheels of the wheelchair did not roll the
miniature Aunt Maria off the edge of the box.
  The whole of Cranbury was in the square. People were sitting on
the roofs of cars, and crowded into the middle space, standing on
benches, and rammed into doorways. I hadn’t realised so many
people lived in the place. None of the men had gone to work that
day. I could see zombies in suits everywhere, in among women I
had never seen before. Quite a lot of these pointed and made
surprised noises when they saw the orphans pushing through the
square behind Antony Green. I saw the clothes-shop lady, the
booted porter, Dr Bayley and Mr Taylor the chemist, while Antony
Green was pushing his way through to the war memorial in the
middle, carefully holding the green box up high. Mr Phelps and
Larry followed him, pushing the orphans. And Elaine, who
obviously just has to have someone to look after, trundled Miss
Phelps through in her extraordinary wheelchair and made sure she
had a good place near the steps of the memorial.
  Chris and I got left at the edge of the square, though, because
Dad was there too. Mum spotted him in a doorway in the distance
and set off diving and fighting through the crowd to get to him. I
saw her get there. But all my secret hopes of a happy ending went
when I saw how horribly embarrassed Dad was to see her. He
almost went backwards in through the door he was leaning on to
get away. He recovered a bit when Mum started speaking to him.
But then Zenobia Bayley pushed up from the other side and
grabbed his arm possessively. Mum spoke to her as well as Dad.
Then she came pushing back to us, looking surprisingly pink and
happy.
  ‘Well,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what went on, except that he does
seem to have had some kind of accident. He says he remembers
crawling out of the sea now. I suppose he lost his memory. But he’s
agreed to sign all the lawful documents, so that’s all right.’
  No it’s not, I thought. But Antony Green had started to speak
then, from the steps of the memorial. He speaks rather quietly, so
everyone had to stop making noises to hear.
  ‘Thank you all for coming,’ he said. He dropped the coat on the
memorial steps so that he could hold Aunt Maria steady on the
green box with both hands. ‘That’s better,’ he said. ‘I have three
things to say to you. First, the question of what to do with this
lady.’ He held the green box up with Aunt Maria on it. ‘The last of
the Queens,’ he said.
  There were roars and yells all over the square. ‘Lock her up! Bury
her! Kill her!’ and some voices shouting, ‘No, no. She’s such a
character. Let her go!’ Beside me, Chris was screaming, ‘Jump on
her! Let me jump on her! I’ll do it!’ and Mum, in typical saintly
fashion, shouted, ‘Don’t be too hard on her, Antony!’
   Antony Green looked round until everyone was quiet again. ‘Most
of you seem to favour punishment,’ he said. ‘But you realise it
won’t be punishment, do you?’
  Everyone was puzzled at this. The way we all looked made
Antony Green grin. ‘As far as this lady herself is concerned,’ he
explained, ‘she was in the right all along – all her life. Nothing is
going to make her see she was wrong. And the only point of
punishment is to make someone see the error of their ways. If they
don’t see it, then what you are doing to them is vengeance, not
punishment. Right? I daresay a lot of you do want vengeance. But if
you do take revenge, that makes you as bad as this Mrs Laker
herself. I want to stop the wrong in Cranbury. So I am not going to
take revenge. I’m simply going to put her away quietly. She
probably won’t even realise I have. Is that understood?’
   There were grudging murmurs and finally everyone growled that
it was up to him. Antony Green grinned around at them and shoved
the green box into one trouser pocket. While he was ramming Aunt
Maria into his other pocket, he looked round absent-mindedly. I
think he had forgotten what he wanted to say. Mum says his time
underground has made him forgetful, but Chris thinks he was
always that way.
  ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘Here’s what comes next.’ He pointed his thumb
at the orphans. ‘Some of these children must belong to some of you.
Who claims them?’
  All the people who had pointed excitedly at the orphans earlier
shouted, ‘Us! We do!’ and came thrusting their way up to the
orphans. Two-thirds of them were snatched away and hugged and
hung on to. They looked pretty bewildered about it. The orphans
who were left looked sad, until Mr Phelps and Larry climbed up the
steps beside Antony Green. They began holding a kind of auction.
‘This pretty little girl!’ Mr Phelps barked. ‘Any offers? How about
this interesting little boy? Take that sling off your arm, boy. You’re
not injured. Now this fine upstanding girl – ’
   A surprising number of people offered. As fast as one orphan was
taken off, beaming and bewildered, Larry fetched another up the
steps. If more than one set of people offered for the same orphan,
they turned to Antony Green to settle it. He looked at each of the
offerers, in a humorous sort of way, with one upside-down V
eyebrow raised, and pointed a vague thumb. He seemed to be
concentrating more on how hot he was. He kept flapping at his
shirt and I could see his face was shiny with sweat. It wasn’t that
hot, but all the people made it hotter, and by now a silvery sort of
sunlight was breaking through the fog. But I think he chose the
adopting parents right, for all that. He let Mr Taylor and his Mrs
Ur, Adele, have the boy with the sling. That seemed to fit,
somehow. And he gave several to just one man or one woman, over
the heads of married couples. And you could see it might work, in
spite of that. And he didn’t let Benita Wallins have a single orphan,
though she kept offering.
  Then the last was a little black girl with her hair in about two
hundred plaits. Larry said, ‘No need to put her up, Nat, that’s the
one I want.’ That was surprising. For one thing, all the orphans
were so alike you had to look at this one hard to notice she was
black. For another, Larry was obviously defying Elaine.
  Elaine sprang forward from beside Miss Phelps’s wheelchair.
‘Larry! That’s absolutely out of the question. I hate children.’
  ‘But I love them,’ said Larry. ‘Oh, come on, Elaine. Give it a try.’
  Elaine hovered and spluttered and almost refused outright, until
she suddenly glanced up at Antony Green sweating on the steps
above. ‘Oh, all right ,’ she said, and even smiled. Although it was
only a one-line smile, Larry let out a yell and hugged the little girl.
She looked the most bewildered of the lot.
  ‘Is that all, Antony?’ asked Mr Phelps.
  ‘No,’ said Antony Green. ‘There is the third thing.’ And when all
the orphan-hugging had died down, he said, ‘I’m giving up the green
coat and leaving you today.’
  Everyone groaned. Somebody yelled out, sounding horrified, ‘Not
going back into the earth?’
   ‘Oh no,’ Antony Green said, with a real shudder. ‘After twenty
years underground like a turnip, I’m more likely to go on the road
and sleep out. And you’ll agree I’ve got to catch up with the world.
But the really important reason is this.’ He stood up and pulled the
glistening, shining green box from his pocket again. We could tell it
really was important, what he wanted to say. ‘I never wanted to
take the box,’ he said. ‘I know I was right. It divides people a
certain way. Maybe it didn’t once, but nowadays the ones who don’t
have it seem to think they’re not proper people without it, and then
they have to go to hideous lengths to prove they are. So – ’ He
seemed to lose the thread then and stood staring down at the
meaningful shining shapes on the box, while we all waited. ‘So,’ he
said, ‘I’m going to give back what’s left of it to all of you.’
   He opened the box wide, until it was flat across both his hands.
The stuff in it rolled out over the square in a huge trembling whirl.
A lot of people crouched down to get away from it. But I think it
rolled through and over anyone whatever they did. I felt it roll
through me, and I saw Mum surrounded in a tight coil of it, and
looking very surprised. The shimmering around Chris gave him
wolf’s ears for a moment. Everyone round us was gasping from it –
it does fizz – and I noticed the orphan, who got the bird-like bit of it
the first time, had another and was holding it in his open hands,
laughing like he did before.
 In the midst of it, Antony Green went down the steps and quietly
walked away.
  We only caught up with him because Chris happened to notice
him going down the road to the sea front with one of the boatmen.
Mum said, ‘Chris, he wants to be with his friend!’ but Chris took no
notice and pelted after him.
   Antony Green didn’t seem to mind us coming out in the boat with
him. It was the first time since we had been in Cranbury that we’d
had anything to do with the sea, really, and it was lovely. The sea
was salty swellings with silver sparkles and so gentle that even
Mum couldn’t be seasick, though she tried. She went pale and said
it was the smell of the engine chugging away in the middle of the
boat.
  But Antony Green did obviously want to talk to the boatman. He
was called George and he was a friend of former days. The two of
them did a lot of laughing and gossiping up at the steering end of
the boat, while Antony Green’s hair mysteriously blew out into a
mane again. George sternly kept his hair under a weathered cap
and rolled cigarettes for them both and steered with his elbow and
grinned.
   So I asked Chris about how Elaine had let him through the line of
beaters when he was a wolf. I thought it was just luck, but it
wasn’t quite. Chris said, ‘I’m not a fool, you know. You think
wolf-way, but you can still think.’ He had tried to go inland to get
away, early that morning, but someone in a farm had shot at him
and he had bolted back into the woods before he was aware. Then
he was even more scared to find people assembled in the fields up at
the top. ‘I was only in the edge of the woods,’ he said. ‘I crawled
along, keeping an eye on where you were all spreading out to. I was
looking for you, actually, Mig, because I knew if I hid in your path
you’d pretend I wasn’t there or something. But when you formed
up, there was a Mrs Ur on one side and a gunman behind you. So I
crawled on till I found Elaine and took a risk on her. I lay downhill
beside a log and hoped. And she stepped over the log and said,
“Keep there. Nat Phelps is hunting Germans again. Don’t go uphill
till he’s gone past.” Then she patted my head and said, “Good luck!”
and went on downhill. I waited until Mr Phelps had gone charging
past shouting, and crawled up to the meadow again and hid in a
bush there.’ I suppose Elaine is not so bad really – if you are a boy.
  Then Mum told us a bit about how she and Antony Green had
gone round and round the woods, calling Chris. ‘I know every tree
by now,’ she said. ‘I think I would have run about screaming, but
luckily Antony needed someone sane to talk to. So I hung on in and
just got more and more tired. So Antony said I could sleep in the
barn while he tried a stepped-up sending for Chris. I think that’s
what fetched you in the end, Chris.’
  ‘Maybe,’ said Chris.
  By then we had got right far out beyond the bay. We could see
Cranbury at the edge of the sea, like a white toy village, in
half-circles of little houses.
  ‘This will do, George,’ Antony Green said.
  George stopped the boat’s engine and we drifted. Then Antony
Green fetched the empty green box out of his pocket and floated it
on the gentle rising slapping waves, all opened out into two green
squares with sides. He took the tiny figure of Aunt Maria in her
wheelchair out of his pocket and balanced her on one half of the
box. Then he gave the lot a push to send it gently floating away.
  ‘Good riddance,’ said George, starting his motor again. We curved
round back to Cranbury.
   ‘Does she know? At all?’ Mum asked, looking after the small
floating box.
  Antony Green nodded and spread his wide mouth wryly. ‘She
thinks she’s in Cranbury, going on just as usual.’
  ‘But surely,’ I said, ‘couldn’t Cranbury start up again – sort of in
her mind? So we’d all be figments of her imagination there and
have to do what she wanted?’
  Mum looked defeated at this. It was as bad as time travel to her.
Antony Green nodded again. ‘I have to take that risk,’ he said.
  ‘And what was the stuff in the green box?’ I said.
  ‘You know,’ he said. ‘It’s not easy to describe.’ But I didn’t know,
so he said, ‘Well – everyone has some anyway. It was that which
made Chris understand my sending or your mother understand I
was buried alive.’
  ‘Oh,’ I said. And I broke down and howled. Everyone stared at
me, except George, who turned away looking Mr Phelpsish. ‘I’m not
a genius!’ I yowled. ‘I thought I was – I know it was the stuff of
genius in the box and I haven’t got it, or I would have understood
your ghost too! It’s the power of the mind , isn’t it?’
  Chris made derisive groans. It’s all right for him. He’s sure he is
a genius.
  Mum said, ‘Mig, do stop being silly!’
   ‘She’s not being silly,’ Antony Green said. ‘ You didn’t see my
projection’s mouth move?’ he asked me. I shook my head and
snorted sobs in all directions. ‘And you expect to see a mouth move
when someone talks.’ he said. ‘Sometimes what is really there gets
covered up by what you expect to see. That’s all.’ And he stopped my
effort to cry louder than ever by saying, ‘So now you know, you
won’t very often be deceived by your expectations. People who
understand instantly might be deceived a second time, but not you.’
  George changed the subject then by saying, ‘Got much of the
stuff left yourself, Tony? Always seemed to me you didn’t need a
green box.’
   ‘Let’s see.’ Antony Green ran his hands thoughtfully along the
sides of the boat. Where his hands had been, the white plastic sort
of boat broke out in multicoloured glitters. It seemed to have
coloured glass stuck into it. He looked at it carefully. ‘Diamonds
mostly,’ he said. ‘Emeralds, rubies, sapphires and so on.’ He looked
at George’s face. ‘I kid you not. It’s been building inside me for
twenty years, George.’
  ‘Take it off, darn you!’ George shouted. ‘What do I do with a
bloody tiara for a boat – pardon my language,’ he added to Mum.
  Antony Green scooped his hands along the edges of the boat and
rattled the glittering stones in two handfuls down into the green
mouldy bottom of the boat. ‘That better?’
  George bent his hatted head and stared, grudgingly. ‘Think you
could make it pearls instead?’ he said. ‘More natural and easier to
sell, those are.’
  So Antony Green ran the handfuls of jewels through his hands
again and they rattled down like peas, only pinkish and whitish and
nacreous. (Now there’s a good word! Only a genius would have
used nacreous) . We left George sorting them out into sizes after we
landed and walked back along the sea front to Aunt Maria’s house.
Antony Green, a bit to my surprise, came with us, and we met the
Phelpses on the way. Miss Phelps was very cheery, but Mr Phelps
was long-suffering. ‘Pity you can’t stay,’ he said stiffly.
  We all came up the street together. And it was lucky that Aunt
Maria’s house didn’t have a garage at one side the way the Phelpses
did across the road. Aunt Maria’s house was not there any more.
There was no gap. Elaine’s house was up against the house on the
other side of Aunt Maria’s. Mum’s rattlebang little car was parked
in the street between the two.
  ‘Oh dear!’ said Mum, thinking of all our clothes that seemed to
have gone for good.
  ‘I rescued one or two important things,’ said Miss Phelps.
   She had, sort of. Mum’s pea-green knitting was on the bonnet of
the car with Chris’s guitar and his sacred work books. My precious
locked book slithered off the bonnet and fell in the road as a
desperate grey cat jumped off the knitting and ran towards us,
mewing for help and comfort. ‘Lavinia!’ cried Mum. ‘I’d clean
forgotten about her.’ Lavinia instantly lay soppily on her back on
the pavement, waving paws in the air. Antony Green said, in a
tired way, ‘I’d better see to her too.’ He squatted down and put his
hand on Lavinia’s squirming chest. She most ungratefully dug all
her front claws into him and treadled his hand with her back ones.
She squalled and tried to bite him. Antony Green’s hand was in a
worse state than Mr Phelps’s cheek by the time he had forced the
grey cat to spread into woman shape. He had to keep forcing, too.
Every time he relaxed, Lavinia shrank back into a grey fluffy cat.
At last, he forced her head at least to appear as a flat-faced old
woman’s head with wild grey hair. ‘Don’t you want to be turned
back?’ he asked the face.
  ‘No,’ said Lavinia. ‘Let me be a cat. Please. So much more
restful.’
  He looked up at us. Mum said, ‘I bet Auntie led her a dreadful
dance.’
  Chris said, ‘Running in the night was fun.’
  ‘I loved being a cat,’ I said. ‘Let her, if she wants.’ So Antony
Green took his hand away and Lavinia shrank gladly into a cat
again.
  ‘She had next to no brain, poor woman,’ Miss Phelps said when I
kissed her goodbye for rescuing my book. Miss Phelps had saved all
the right things, whatever Mum says. Mum, naturally, took
Lavinia back to London with us in the car. Now she runs adoringly
after Mum whenever Mum is in. Chris and I treat Lavinia with the
contempt a pyjama-case cat deserves, but I suppose she cheers
Mum up during the times Antony Green disappears. Antony Green
begged a lift with us to London. Then he went away. He said he
couldn’t bear to be under a roof for a while.
  He has other troubles. He turns up every so often, sometimes
exhausted and shabby, sometimes ordinary, and once looking very
smart saying he had just flown from New York on Concorde. And
he talks and talks to all of us. One of his troubles is that poor Zoe
Green killed herself that morning they ploughed up the mound.
Antony is sort of resigned, because he thought he had been
underground for about a hundred years and had got used to the
idea of never seeing his mother again. But he keeps wondering, the
way things worked in Cranbury, whether she didn’t give her life
instead of him.
  I tell him it is just a stupid waste. If only we’d met her earlier, or
later – when we were time-travelling anyway – we could have
shown her he was alive. And I can’t think how she missed seeing
him when he was capering round the town. But I am glad Mum
didn’t go dotty that way when Chris and I were missing.
   Antony Green has trouble adjusting to losing twenty years too.
He says things have leapt onwards, and he goes to all sorts of
classes and lectures to catch up. When he comes to see us, he sits
leaning over our telly as if it was a teaching machine. But his worst
trouble is dreaming about being buried. We all know how that feels.
Mum says she doubts Antony will ever be quite normal again.
  I sometimes wonder if Chris will be either. He seems quite usual.
But sometimes he gets a wistful wolf-look in his eyes and talks
about how marvellous it is to run in the night. ‘Yes, but think of
when it rained,’ I say. And Chris says, yes, he knows, but he has
decided not to be a genius at maths any more. He’s going to make
films of wild life. Mum had to buy him a ciné-camera for his
birthday and she says it nearly broke her.


  P. S. That was all six months ago now. I have spent the time
rewriting this autobiography and doing to the end. Sometimes I
have added bits and sometimes I have cheated a bit so that it looks
as if I wrote more than I did. Chris says if I really wrote that screed
at Aunt Maria’s I wouldn’t have had time to do anything else. But I
want it to be good when I finish it. And I want to finish it soon
because when Antony Green comes to see us, when he’s in a good
mood and we all go out together, things always happen. I want to
put those in a book too.
 The divorce came through. Dad rang up yesterday to say he had
married Zenobia Bayley. The silly fool.
  Antony Green has just turned up again. Mum and he came in
while I was writing my P. S. and made their Special
Announcement. Chris looked up from his stack of animal
photographs and we both made faces. I said we must be the only
people in the world whose mother is going to marry an ex-ghost.
  Chris says that’s another thing to blame Aunt Maria for. But I
don’t think he meant it.
                          —«»—«»—«»—
        [scanned anonymously in a galaxy far far away]
        [A 3S Release— v1, html]
        [September 28, 2007]