Black Maria

“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 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.