A Kind of Vanishing (10 page)

‘It’s for Mum.’ Gina spoke like their mother, low and certain.

Eleanor was reassured. Gina knew what was happening. They kept out of sight as two men carried a stretcher through the front door beneath them. When the men came back there was a bundle on the stretcher like the Guy earlier that evening. The men loaded it into the back of the ambulance. Then just for a moment Eleanor glimpsed her Mum’s face, the eyes looked right at her, before her Dad jumped in and the doors were slammed shut.

‘She’s not dead.’ Lucian stated in his doctor’s voice.

‘Luke!’ Gina pointed at Eleanor, and hugging her tighter, clamped a hand over her ear, which made no difference to what she could hear.

‘If she were dead, they would have covered her face. That’s all.’ Lucian detached himself from his sisters with a shrug.

The children watched impassively as the ambulance followed the circular drive in front of the house and glided out through the gateway. It gathered speed on the lane, and they saw the light flashing, a fallen star moving at speed at ground level, outlining the winding road across the downs to Brighton. Then it plunged into the woods and vanished.

For the first time in their lives the three children had to spend a night alone in the White House because Lizzie was in London until the next day. They had slept in a tangle on top of Gina’s bed, their dreams punctuated by the dull booms and stuttering cracks from firework parties echoing over the dark downs. The three children were woken by their father charging into the room the next morning, demanding help with breakfast. It was past ten o’clock, the longest they had ever been allowed to sleep in.

After that everything returned to normal. Their mother came home a week later in new clothes implying she had been shopping. It was dealing with such incidents that taught the Ramsays to treat big things as small things. Her week away became food poisoning. It was not a secret because no one was keeping it.

Eleanor knew that Alice was wrong. No one died from cheese. But it made her admit to herself that she hated Alice. She did not miss her one bit, although at the end of his visit she decided to tell the detective that it was no fun without her.

Her mother smiled as he gave her a sweet so it had been the right thing to say.

On Thursday lunchtime, after the police had left for the day to continue their investigations, Lucian sauntered past Eleanor as she sat cross-legged on the patio at the back of the house ruminatively weeding out blades of grass from between the cracks in the flags, and laying them out in a neat and tidy row. He called out to his father, who was reading
The Lancet
on a camp bed under Uncle Jack’s tree:

‘Robert Kennedy’s dead.’

Eleanor’s hand went to her mouth. Her father lowered the magazine just briefly before continuing to read. Eleanor shuddered as Lucian let the side gate bang on his way to the river, whistling a tune on one note. She got to her feet and wandered aimlessly around the side of the house to the meadow.

She walked to the centre and stood in the long grass looking up at the blue cloudless sky, her cheeks warmed by the sun. The handsome Senator in the suit, with brushed hair and squeaky shoes, did not exist any more. Two wasps crawled busily over a rotten apple by her foot. Now the man with the crack in his chin would never save her from drowning.

Eleanor understood with a profundity beyond her nearly nine years that she was truly alone. After that afternoon on the 6th June 1968, this recognition never left her.  

O
n the following Saturday morning, when Alice had been missing for three days, Eleanor had finished a clandestine bowl of cornflakes and was creeping back upstairs when she heard voices coming from the dining room.

She ran nimbly down again. The door was slightly open. This was unusual; another change since Alice went was that doors were mostly shut. Since they had been coming to the White House, Isabel had railed at the creaking doors and windows, left to swing to and fro despite her constant requests to keep them closed, for draughts, she insisted, were definitely responsible for her headaches. After Alice, the White House was quiet.

Eleanor peered in. Her father sat in his chair at the head of the table ready waiting for food. Her mother craned over him from behind perhaps straightening his napkin. Although this in itself was odd, what astonished Eleanor was the way her mother was talking. She was half speaking, half singing like she did with Crawford and her favourite men friends.

‘It’s boring, darling but it’ll soon be over. Like Richard said, it’s routine. I think myself that she could simply be trapped in a cupboard here in the house, those children were getting everywhere, I even poked about in the chest freezer.’ She gave a strange laugh.

‘What would he do?’

Eleanor squinted at her father through the space made by the hinges, as he indicated Judge Henry behind him.

‘Oh, Mark!’ (Eleanor wished her Dad hadn’t mentioned the Judge. It wasn’t the way to get her Mum’s sympathy.) ‘He’d get rid of these damned police, for a start. He was their boss, wasn’t he?’ Eleanor shut her eyes, but her father only made a mewing noise and put his head in his hands.

Her parents had been closeted in the living room most of the morning, watching Robert Kennedy’s funeral on the television. This must have upset her Dad who had lost his twin.

There was a scraping step at the front door and a massive silhouette filled the frosted glass panels. Now accomplished at deception, Eleanor bolted back to the kitchen, then marched out again with stamping steps, before running full tilt up the stairs as someone gave three loud knocks which caused the loft door on the top landing to swing open and smash against the wall. The bangs got quieter and quieter like the ball bearings in a cat’s cradle. She knew that now her Dad would never fix the catch and her Mum would be even more cross.

Then Eleanor realised what had really upset her Dad. Chief Inspector Richard Hall had told her mother at the end of their talk yesterday that the police wanted to search the house in case Alice had hidden in a childish prank as he called it. He told her that they had already searched Alice’s house and found nothing. Although he kept saying ‘Mrs Ramsay’, he looked at Eleanor, so that when her mother said she supposed it must be done, Eleanor nodded heartily in agreement. She was Mrs Ramsay. She wished Gina had been there to see.

If things weren’t bad enough, for the last few days Eleanor had not been able to find Mrs Jackson’s glass amulet. Its disappearance worried her more than what had happened to Alice. She was certain it had last been in her Box of Secrets. This loss was the culmination of a land shift that had altered her perceptions. Wardrobes and wallpaper were different. They were angular and unfriendly, stripped of memory or association. Trees cast menacing shadows across the overgrown lawn and the milk on her cereal that morning had been slightly sour. Nothing was the same.

She had overheard Lizzie telling her mother that the police had opened an Incident Room in the church hall on the high street so today there would be no Bring and Buy sale. Instead most of the village helped in a search across the fields and along the riverbank. Gina and Lucian had been allowed to join in. Gina found a crisp bag that she was told might have a bearing on the case. Lucian hadn’t found anything so said the whole thing was a waste of time. At night Eleanor lay watching the creeping shapes on the ceiling made by sweeping headlights and dazzling film lamps. Intermittent rifle-fire of numerous car doors failed to penetrate the cotton wool quiet hanging over the Green. It reminded Eleanor of the muffled stillness inside her father’s car as outside he chatted on the busy pavement inches from the closed windows.

All day policemen and journalists consulted in hushed murmurs, perhaps because they knew they were getting in the way of everyday life. A life now deemed precious and lost to an age already passing. Then a reporter would aim a camera lens at the White House windows and, diving to the floor out of sight, Eleanor was her old self.

The house search did not produce Alice, but it did yield a packet of Gauloises in Gina’s knicker drawer and a welcome if momentary return to family responsibilities for Mark and Isabel. After administering a telling-off for which neither of them could muster up much remonstrative stamina, Gina was released to make only her second trip to the stables since Alice had hidden. That evening she stormed home in tears and standing in the hall, hurled her riding hat to the floor, where it bounced and rolled on the tiles, as she sliced the air with her crop. Seeing Eleanor strolling out of the kitchen munching on a ham sandwich, Gina had levelled the crop at her and screamed:

‘I ab-so-lute-ly hate you!’

Mark had come up behind Gina, car keys jangling, and grabbing her shoulders, he propelled her into the dining room, kicking the door shut behind him. The sandwich turned to sticky dough clogging Eleanor’s mouth. What was the matter? There was plenty of ham left, and loads of bread; in fact recently, along with cheese, Gina had stopped eating meat, so what did she care? She swallowed hard and trotted swiftly across to the forbidding dining room door. Squinting into the keyhole through which she could see nothing because of the key, Eleanor listened. Gina was shouting:

‘It’s not fair. I hate her. She’s ruined everything!’

Her father cajoled in a continuous rumble so that Eleanor could not make out separate words. She pulled a face as Gina carried on: ‘… and she gets away with it!’

The hatred in her voice made Eleanor hiccup on her sandwich.

She backed away from the door and told herself it didn’t matter about Gina, because her Dad had proved he was on her side. Whatever happened, Eleanor knew for certain that he loved her. This might make everything bearable. When she had got up the nerve to hear more they were talking calmly, although her Dad sounded like he was putting Gina to sleep as she made baby sounds, which should have been funny, but wasn’t.

A chair leg screeched and Eleanor dropped her sandwich. She moved fast, scooping up the scraps of bread, scooting to the kitchen, where she threw them in the bin, scuffling them under a damp wad of rubbish in case she was told off for wasting food with people starving. This made her realise that since Alice went she hadn’t been told off at all. As Eleanor retreated to the playroom – now the extent of her world – she wished they would be cross with her. Gina’s outburst had been a relief. Since Alice had gone, Eleanor had vanished too.

She settled on the floor and went on with her picture. Despite her gloomy mood, Eleanor was pleased with it. Two small spies creeping through thorny bushes followed by a tall murderer in sunglasses and a denim cap. She drew him, in thick black mixed with streaks of burnt umber and gashes of grey and brown, crawling over leaves and branches like a beetle. The spies were meant to capture the Mill Owner and hand him over to Richard Hall. She put in tumbles of gorse and brambles to rip his clothes and scratch him. Along the top of the paper she added the Tide Mills in the distance, and looming at the forefront, the Mill Owner’s house. Then she changed her mind about the thorns and coloured over them. She livened up as she filled the orchard with juicy, ripe pears that she decided the murderer should be allowed to eat because one of them was poisoned by the Chief Spy.

No mention of Gina’s explosion was made at supper. Usually Eleanor would have said something, but instead she chewed diligently, her elbows tucked in. Gina did not shout again, Lucian didn’t talk about logic and reasoning with cutlery acting the parts. Everyone stared at their plates and munched. As the meal wore on Eleanor propped herself on her elbow, her forehead leaning heavily on her hand, and loudly slurped reluctant spoonfuls of custard. No one told her off.

Isabel had set up camp in the dining room, smoking and talking to visitors, emerging only to take a phone call or get another coffee. The dining room was where Eleanor was asked to go and talk to Richard Hall. Isabel sat beside her, as Richard the Chief Inspector explained how she would be helping them with their enquiries. He was trying to make her feel special. Eleanor was suspicious.

The first time they talked, which was the afternoon after Alice went missing, Richard had asked her to think about playing hide and seek with Alice. He was sure that a clever girl like Eleanor could guess where Alice might be hidden. Eleanor had already informed him it was Alice’s turn to look, but he had forgotten. She decided Richard really was bonkers when he asked: ‘Elly, do you remember where you hid Alice?’

His mistake made her snigger: as if she could hide Alice! Eleanor imagined her, smooth and white and clean and hard to lift. It was easy to hide from Alice, because she wouldn’t look in dirty places. Alice, sharp as a pencil, sat bolt upright, asking impossible questions, always demanding the right answers. Alice was very difficult to hide.

She stopped counting before getting to ten.

Richard the Policeman had rubbed his chin, making Eleanor think of Robert Kennedy, at that point still alive and presumably lying on a hospital bed in America with his head in a bandage. This distracted her so that she jumped when her mother smacked her hand down on the table. Everyone stared at it. Eleanor was sure Richard liked the nails, polished and long, and she hoped he liked the rings, the sparkling diamond, and the gold signet on her mother’s little finger that made her father cross because it was from a ‘former life’.

‘Eleanor, bloody well pay attention. I’m sorry Chief Inspector.’ Eleanor knew the man didn’t like her mother swearing. His eyes stopped blinking like Alice’s. She clutched the sides of her chair as the room bent like the Hall of Mirrors on the Palace Pier. She didn’t remember saying anything. She was sure she hadn’t. She must have.

In an interlude of truce during tea after the Cheese day, Alice had confessed to Eleanor that she had failed her Underwater Proficiency test and had to be rescued by the instructor from the shallow end. She didn’t care that Eleanor had got her life saving certificate and had once swum a mile in a freezing pool covered with dead flies. She said Eleanor shouldn’t have pretended to drown by staying under because, she had explained, drowning was not funny. She told her it was rude that Eleanor had waved around in the air the stripey pyjama trousers she had just escaped from, when she finally bobbed to the surface. Eleanor had assured Alice that drowning was like going to sleep.

You close your eyes and let the water go over you. It won’t hurt. It’s better that you can’t swim, you die quicker. Sailors don’t learn to swim in case their boat sinks, Luke said.

‘Let’s hurry this along, shall we, Eleanor?’ The chin came closer; unlike the ‘Stricken Senator’s Chin’ it was full of holes and a funny pink colour. ‘Where have you hidden Alice?’

‘It’s not amusing, darling.’ Isabel glared at Eleanor. ‘You’re not normally like this.’ Isabel smiled hopelessly at the Chief Inspector. It was obvious that Eleanor was normally like it.

‘He said where had I hidden…’

‘Be quiet!’ Isabel grabbed her by the shoulder, pinching her skin under her shirt, pushing her sharply away and then yanking her closer, so that Eleanor nearly toppled from her chair. ‘Just answer Chief Inspector Hall’s questions properly. For the last time: this is no time for fun and games.’

Eleanor felt tears well up, like an enemy stalking. She was frightened of the woman with the tin voice and jabbing fingers and now she was frightened of the policeman with the red sweets and the red chin. He had stopped smiling.

‘When did you last see Alice?’ He had no idea he had asked things before. Eleanor decided that if it was a game she could pretend. She relaxed.

She told the story of the last day. She made the snap decision to put Alice outside the blacksmith’s, which was now a garage, at the bend in the lane leading to the White House. Eleanor told only of the first game of hide and seek which they had played in the village on the Sunday afternoon before tea. She pretended they had played it on that last Tuesday afternoon. She could not say the second game had been at the Tide Mills as they shouldn’t have been there and although Alice had agreed to come, it had been Eleanor’s idea.

It was best not to mention the Tide Mills at all. Eleanor wasn’t going to allow Alice to spoil anything.

The detective’s face was a gritty mask, as Eleanor elaborately outlined how she had hidden in her den on the edge of the
ten-acre
field behind the old blacksmith’s. It was a secret place that Eleanor didn’t think Alice knew about. If Alice had been in the room she would have said Eleanor was lying and told him they were at the Tide Mills not in the village.

‘You know we have to tell, don’t you.’

She would say the game in the village had been on the Sunday and give them accurate times and dates. Alice would have confessed the truth even if it got Eleanor into trouble. She would simper and whimper about how their feet had slipped on the bridge over the millpond and they had nearly drowned. She would say how Eleanor forced her to walk along the crumbling arch over the gigantic wheel underneath. Alice would pop a strawberry sweet between her moist lips and, being allowed to smile, she would assure him that honestly, she had asked Eleanor not to walk there, but Eleanor had forced her to.

It was very good, concluded Eleanor, that Alice was not there.

She did tell the policeman about her special trick, but was annoyed when he wrote it down because it was a secret. It wasn’t cheating. She explained how she spied on the person looking, and once they had checked one hiding place and found no one there, she would choose her moment and rush over to hide in it. This way Eleanor could be hiding for days if she wanted to.