Aunt Maria (15 page)

Chris galloped over to the table then. He put out a paw and swept the cake off onto 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 recognize him, but she didn't.

All the while, Aunt Maria was screaming, “Get it out of here! Get it out of 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 toward Chris, like bullfighters, all in their neat pleated skirts and shiny 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 each other. 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 shed. 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 to see who I was.

But Mum got the front door open as I got 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 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 Baghdads. 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 seafront 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 seaboots 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 Bailey 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 through the house, booming orders. We have had the doctor. He is a zombie like the men on the train, a soft gray 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 spilled 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 drugstore 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. Bailey. That part was printed but the rest of it was in doctor writing and I couldn't read a word. The druggist 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 says 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 anymore. 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 trees 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—luckily 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 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.

T
he 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 on 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 realized that, I wanted to go away.

“You loog dired, dear!” Zoe Green said to me. “You shouldn't. Your ztar is in the azzendand 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 realizes.

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 organize 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 pale. 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 than 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.