Black Maria

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,” I 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 7.30. 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 the 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 (#ulink_6360d509-ab80-5d8b-9bfe-986a037ce9ed)

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.