Amber’s Secret

From on top of the clock, William gave a pitiful little squeak. He wanted to come down again. He liked playing in Sally’s hair, he liked making nests in it. Sally looked up. ‘You’ll just have to wait,’ she said firmly. ‘I’m concentrating on this.’

But William took no notice. He had discovered that it was much easier to run up things than to slither down them and Sally’s nice thick hair spelt safety. To William it was like the safety blanket held out by firemen for someone stuck on the top of a burning building. He bunched himself up into a tight white ball and took an almighty leap.

‘What the— oh no— help. . .!’ The shock of William landing on her head sent Sally grabbing at the clock. She dropped the key and the stool tipped over and crashed on to the floor and she was left hanging on to the clock by her fingertips, clutching at the polished wooden columns that held up the beautifully carved face. She could hear both the weights bumping about very heavily and now Grandfather seemed to have come to life. He had started to move forwards with a terrifying, lurching motion.

There was a strange scraping noise, like a big, obstinate rusty nail being pulled out of something, and the clock was coming away from the wall – it was falling over! It had been screwed to the wall by Dad, but now—

Sally screamed, threw herself to one side, and landed in a heap on the far side of the hall as the clock toppled right over and hit the floor with the most enormous crash, followed by all kinds of weird noises. As she lay on the carpet, quite unable to move for shock and terror, there was a chinking noise, then a lot of funny bonging sounds, then the steady tinkle of glass.

Then, after all the noises, an awful silence fell. Sally shut her eyes tight, she didn’t want to look. But as she lay on the carpet she could hear wheezy, creaky sounds coming from the direction of the clock. It was like a very old person settling down to sleep.

She listened, thinking about Grandfather Bell, who had lived until he was one hundred and one years old. Grandfather Clock was even older, and the thing Mum loved best after Dad, Alan and Sally.

At last, she made herself get up from the carpet. She made herself walk across the hall. She made herself look at the clock. And when Sally saw what had happened, she really did burst into tears and once she had started to cry she felt she would never stop.

Grandfather’s ‘trunk’, the case that held the pendulum and the weights, had split into two pieces. The wooden columns which had risen up on each side of the glass door, holding up the roof of the clock with its two wooden roses, and its pointy carvings, were broken into tiny little bits, and all the other carvings seemed to have vanished completely. It was as if some evil magician had waved a magic wand and turned them into a heap of rubble.

All round the wreckage were pieces of fine glass. The pendulum must have flown out of Grandfather’s insides as he crashed down because the springy piece of metal, stuck on to the shiny round thing that ticked steadily to and fro, was all twisted and bent. Both the weights lay on the carpet and all round them were tiny pieces of wood, pieces smaller than matchsticks.

Only when Sally’s eyes had taken all this in did she pluck up the courage to pull the face of the clock out of the wreckage so that she could look at Grandfather’s face. And when she looked she turned away almost at once. What had happened to it was too awful to see.

The fingers of the clock, once so beautiful, were bent double like hairpins and one had snapped right in two. The moon face still looked out at her, in its kindly way, but the four little girls were all scratched and spoiled. Sharp pieces of glass and metal must have been hurled against them in the fall. They were almost unrecognisable now; in fact they were more or less blobs again.

Sally turned her back on it all and sat down on the carpet, staring dumbly at the front door. She sat and stared for a very long time. The awful thing was that it felt such an ordinary day. Out in the street she could hear a little child talking to its mother. Then someone rode past on a bicycle, ringing a bell, and the church clock down the road chimed five. At the same moment Mrs Spinks Next Door banged three times on the wall. This meant ‘Tea Time, Sally Bell’, – it was a signal. It meant ‘Lock up carefully and come back’. And it meant immediately. Mrs Spinks was strict about meal times.

Slowly, Sally went over to the little side window where people on the front door step could see into the hall. She pulled the curtains across, making everything dark. Nobody could look into their house now, nobody could see the remains of Grandfather, scattered all over the carpet. She went outside, pulled the front door shut and pushed her way through the dusty privet hedge to Mrs Spinks’s house.

Only when she looked down at her plate and saw that it was cheese on toast for tea, did Sally remember William, who liked cheese very much, at any meal.

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The day after the terrible thing happened was the day Amber had given Sally the phone number. It was also the day when Sally had to be very clever indeed. She had to make sure Mrs Spinks didn’t go into their house and see the clock.

But what could Sally do? Mrs Spinks could let herself in at any time, she had the key. And she was the kind of lady who worried very much about burglars.

‘I think I’d better pop in to your mum’s, Sally,’ she said at breakfast time. ‘Just to check round.’

Sally must have gone very pale because Mrs Spinks said, peering at her, ‘Bit off colour today are you, dear? Been to the toilet, have you?’ (As well as worrying about burglars Mrs Spinks worried if you didn’t go to the toilet regularly.)

Please, Sally said silently to herself, don’t let Mrs Spinks go next door.

She really thought she was going to have to tell a lie. Perhaps she would tell Mrs Spinks that she’d dropped Mum’s front door key down a drain. But then she had a brainwave.

She said, ‘Mrs Spinks, I’m very sorry but my mouse has escaped from his cage. He’ll be in our house somewhere but I really don’t know where.’ Then she added, ‘He likes running up people’s legs.’

This time it was Mrs Spinks who turned pale and she gave a little scream. ‘Oh my goodness gracious. If I ever—’ Then she turned her old-lady lips into the thin line. ‘Sally Bell,’ she said severely, ‘until that mouse is back in its cage you must be a very grown-up girl. When you go to put his food out you must water your mother’s plants for me. You must bring the letters over here and you must make sure there have been no—’

‘Burglars. I know, Mrs Spinks,’ Sally said in her most grown-up voice. ‘And I’ll look under all the beds.’ Then she added, ‘I might find my mouse.’

‘Ugh,’ said Mrs Spinks, fanning herself with the morning paper. ‘I’m sorry, Sally, but if your mouse ran up my leg I think I should have a heart attack. When my Billie was a little boy we got him goldfish. There’s never any trouble with goldfish.’

So at least Sally had arranged things so that Mrs Spinks wouldn’t go next door, and without telling a lie. But that didn’t solve the problem of Grandfather. When people died you had to have funerals, she thought. So perhaps she could get a very big box, tip all the broken pieces in, and leave it out for the dustbin men.

But that didn’t feel right. Grandfather Clock was like a person and you wouldn’t leave a dead person out for the rubbish men. Also, there must be somebody in the world who could stick him together again. It now occurred to Sally that being able to get stuck together with glue was one way in which things were luckier than people.

It was because she was going to try with all her might to get Grandfather beautifully mended and ticking again, that she had needed Amber’s special phone number, the one that got you through to God. Nobody else would do.

Sally woke up very early the day after Amber had given her the number, yawned, rubbed her eyes and got out of bed. It was the first day of the holidays and the sun was shining. No more school. Normally, she would have felt happy and light. Normally, she would feel like singing and skipping about. But today she felt as if there was a big stone on her chest, a stone that was crushing her. She felt all heavy. It was because of Grandfather.

She must go home straight away and phone that number. She wouldn’t have a wash till she’d done it, she would just put her blue dress on and slip out. With any luck, Mrs Spinks might not be up yet. She had a little lie-in on Saturdays, had a cup of tea in bed, and did the crossword puzzle.

But when Sally started to put her clothes on she found that her blue dress had turned into a red check one. Mrs Spinks had a craze about doing the washing. She must have decided it was dirty.

Sally crept out on to the landing and listened hard. Mrs Spinks’s bedroom door was open and her bed was already made. She pulled on the red dress and went downstairs. But Mrs Spinks wasn’t in her kitchen, she was in her wash house, a little brick hut across the back yard which you had to cross to reach the garden. Mum had a wash house, too.

The kitchen door was open. Sally crossed the yard and peeped round the corner of the wash house door. It felt all soapy and steamy and Mrs Spinks was turning the handle of a wooden mangle that squeezed water out of the clothes before they were hung on the line to dry. She was very red in the face. Mum had a mangle, too, but it was electric and went on its own.

Mrs Spinks liked turning the mangle herself. ‘The old ways are the best,’ she had told Sally.

‘Hello, Sally Bell,’ she said. ‘You’re up early.’

‘So are you,’ answered Sally. This must have sounded a bit rude because Mrs Spinks gave her a funny look. But all Sally could think of was her blue dress. What had happened to it?

‘Did you take my blue dress to wash, Mrs Spinks?’ she said.

‘I certainly did. It’s soaking in that sink. I noticed you’d got all mud on it. Been down those allotments again, have you? Been sitting by that dirty old stream? My Jack used to come home filthy from those allotments. “Everything into the wash house, Jack”. That’s what I’d say to him.’

Sally said, ‘I don’t suppose you emptied the pockets, Mrs Spinks?’

Mrs Spinks blinked. ‘No, I can’t say I did.’ Then she seemed to panic. ‘You didn’t leave anything like a pen in them, did you, because pens run something shocking and I don’t want my washing all blue.’

‘No, it wasn’t a pen. It was. . . Oh, it doesn’t matter. It wasn’t important.’ Sally didn’t dare try and fish her dress out of the old brown sink. It would look too suspicious.

But it was quite easy to please Mrs Spinks. She beamed. ‘That’s all right then. Now, what about a bit of breakfast? Eggs on toast all right?’

Sally ate her soggy toast in misery. She liked scrambled eggs, but not when Mrs Spinks scrambled them because Mrs Spinks still used powdered eggs that you had to mix with water, the kind people had in the war, when you couldn’t get fresh ones. It hadn’t been the war for ages but Mrs Spinks said she’d got used to the taste.

It was watery eggs on soggy toast every Saturday morning. Lunch would be a plate of very sloppy stew with boiled potatoes, and tomorrow’s lunch would be slices of dried-up chicken, and on Monday it would be fish cakes and mashed-up carrots. Pudding was always stewed fruit. The endless, pale-coloured meals stretched on and on.

Sally ate her breakfast very quickly, so that she could escape.

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She would have to find Amber and get the telephone number again, unless, by trying really hard, she could actually remember it for herself. Appleford – it was definitely Appleford – 661, that was it! But then she wasn’t sure. Could it have been Appleford 116? Sally thought and thought. She was certain it was one or the other. Then she had an idea. She could try both numbers; she could go home and use their own phone.

Mrs Spinks had a long thin garden with vegetables right at the end, and she’d gone out to see how everything was growing. Sally left a note on the kitchen table.

Gone to feed my mouse and do plants.