Aunt Maria (22 page)

Antony Green said, “By the power that is with me, I give you the right to call me from the earth, by my name and your name.”

“And to put you in,” Naomi prompted him.

“I'll do that for myself,” he said. “I want to know if I can.” Then he took the green coat off again—it was obviously a robe of office like Mr. Phelps's dressing gown—and dropped it on top of the box. “Here goes,” he said. He made Naomi a nervous, friendly little face, the way I do to Chris on the diving board, and walked to the mound. “I
think
,” he said, “like this.”

I didn't see what “like this” meant, because Mum dashed off and I followed her, in a last futile effort to stop him. We ran more or less under his feet—he had suede shoes on—and we tripped him up. Or else he stumbled in order not to tread on us. The last sight I had of Antony Green was of him falling, rather like Miss Phelps did the first time, with one arm out in a sideways curve. There was no crashing of bushes or even the thump you might expect. He just fell through the budding branches and the grass and some of a muddy path and straight on into the side of the mound as if none of it was there. When I turned round in the bush we had fled through, there was no sign of Antony Green and no sign of any difference to the mound.

We crouched there watching Naomi walk to the place where he had vanished. She was smiling a little curve of a smile. She looked at the place carefully and nodded. Then she stretched both arms out and said equally carefully, “By the power vested in me, I hereby seal this mound and you into it. I lay it upon you to be there until I, Naomi Laker, call you out.”

Then she practically ran back to the green coat to pick it up. “Ho, ho! Whoopee!” I heard her say.

Aunt Maria came running round the mound. She looked much the same, except she moved a good deal quicker, and she obviously shouted just as much then as she does these days. “You did it, dear! Oh, my dear child! Devoted artistic darling! I thought for a while you were never going to get him in. No one else in Cranbury could have induced him to!”

“The power of love, Mother,” Naomi said.

“You're not
regretting
it, dear, are you?” Aunt Maria said, plunging forward to look in Naomi's face.

“Not in the least,” Naomi said. “But it wasn't nice, and it was hard work. I'm going to take the green box for my pains, at least.”

“Why, dear?” said Aunt Maria. “You know you can't handle it.”

“Neither can you,” Naomi said. “Mother, dear, I think you should retire and let me take over. I've got twice your power now.”

Aunt Maria started back with her hands to her chest and stared. Naomi smiled. The ribs of her face stood out. Her eyes were fanatical like Elaine's, blazing to find a weakness in Aunt Maria. Aunt Maria did her more-in-sorrow-than-anger voice. She's obviously practiced it for years. “I'm very hurt, dear. Very. I vested a great deal of power in you and named you to follow me. Isn't that
enough
?”

“Nope,” said Naomi. “You're far too old-fashioned, Mother, and I want to start doing new things. And I noticed in your usual cunning way you pretended not to hear when I said I had the power. I have. The green box, for a start. That gives me the men. And I've got
him
.” She pointed to the mound. “That means I've got you, too, because I've got the key to get him out. If you don't do what I say from now on, I shall simply open the mound. And he'll make you feel
very
bad, won't he, Mother, dear?”

“Viper,” Aunt Maria said, using her failing-health voice. “Vicious girl. After all I've done for you!”

“Oh, shut up!” shouted Naomi. “Can't you stop pretending for an instant?”

Aunt Maria shouted, too. “Vicious, vulgar, loudmouthed
monster
!”

They had a flaming row then, screaming at one another in the bright green field. Naomi screeched such things at Aunt Maria that I almost liked her. She yelled most of the things I've always wanted to say: “hypocritical hag” and “lazy old bag—I do
all
your chores for you!” But Aunt Maria yelled things about Naomi like “scarlet woman!” which were just as bad, probably. I bet they were true, too.

And right at last, Naomi screamed, “All right!
All
right! I'll say the word, and I'll fetch Green out this instant!
He'll
show you!”

Aunt Maria held up a quivering fist. “You
rotten
creature! Never another word, and not that word—ever! By the power vested in me, may you never use human speech again!”

And Naomi dropped down and seethed, just like Chris, and her old-fashioned clothes came off her, until she became a tall, gaunt wolf, snarling at Aunt Maria. She wasn't finished even then. She dropped low and came creeping as she snarled, ready to spring on her mother. Dribble was trailing from her open jaws.

“Back!” Aunt Maria said. “Back, you bitch! Go to Loup Woods, and may it mean your death if you ever set foot outside them.”

So Aunt Maria brought it on herself, in a way. Mum and I both squashed ourselves to the ground, as the wolf Naomi raced across the mound, right past us, on the nearest way to the woods. I know how Lavinia felt when Chris was near now. It's rather like a human would feel if he or she went in the living room and found an escaped tiger in it.

Aunt Maria, meanwhile, didn't seem particularly sorry. Maybe she realized later. She picked up Antony Green's green coat and looked down at the box in the grass underneath. Then grunting, rather, she bent down and scooped the box up with the coat, into a bundle, so that she need not touch the box.

I
felt huge and heavy and rather sad at being myself again. Mum was climbing into her jeans, Mum-shaped again.

“That poor, silly boy!” she was saying. “The stupid kid! Couldn't he see—?”

“Please get dressed, Margaret,” Miss Phelps interrupted from her chair. “Nathaniel is waiting outside until you are decent. We have a lot to discuss.”

I got dressed, and Mum continued to moan. “It was our fault, too, Mig. If we hadn't come down from the mound, he would have refused. I see
that
now.”

“It would have happened, anyway,” I said from inside my sweater. “It already had.”

When Mr. Phelps came in, he was holding a clean white handkerchief to his face, and he backed me up. “There is never any way you can change the past,” he said.

“I
was
hoping to do something,” Mum confessed. “I thought—”

“But don't you see, ma'am?” said Mr. Phelps. He took the handkerchief away from his face and gestured with it. We all pretended that we couldn't see four long red claw marks down his left cheek. “Two cats came down the mound twenty years ago, which means that is what happened twenty years ago. You were always going to come down the mound because you already
had
.”

“Please describe what happened,” Miss Phelps said. “I wasn't there, you know.”

So we told her. It took awhile. Mum interrupted to moan, or say things like, “They never considered poor Antony Green for a moment, did you notice, Mig? They never even seemed to think
he
was feeling anything.” And Mr. Phelps annoyed us both by keeping saying, “I make it an absolute rule never to interfere with the past. That's much the safest way.” During this, some people ran up the street. It was so unusual for Cranbury that I couldn't help noticing. One of them shouted, somewhere at the end of the street. Tut, tut, I thought. Then, with a nasty jolt, I thought, I do hope it wasn't Chris!

Mum said, “Well, I can't see what to do. Naomi put him in and she's dead now, I gather. And I do think he's suffered enough for his stupidity.”

“Think a little,” Miss Phelps directed us.

“Blessed if I can see—,” Mr. Phelps said. The doorbell rang then. He said, “Curses!” and strode off to answer it. Miss Phelps tweaked the net curtain aside and looked out. It was obviously no one interesting.

She turned back to us and said, “I don't like to see hope abandoned. It seems to me that both of you had a hand—or should I say paw?—in putting the unfortunate young man where he is. Would that fit the terms?”

“No,” said Mum, despairing. I wish she wasn't so emotional.

“Yes!” I said. “Mum, I'm called Naomi Laker, too.”

Mum saw the point and jumped up. “Come on, Mig.” She rushed to Miss Phelps and shook her little monkey hand. “Say good-bye to your brother for us. Thank you. We'll go to the mound now. We should be back in half an hour.”

“It may not be so—,” Miss Phelps said.

Mum had dragged me out into the hall by then. As she was opening the front door, someone said, “
Is
that so important then?” Mum turned and stared at me. “Of course it is!”

“I didn't say anything,” I said. “It was one of the people Mr. Phelps let in just now.”

“Oh, sorry,” Mum said. She slammed the Phelpses' front door and we set off up the street.

Then we got lost—which is silly in a place as small as Cranbury—because I had never been to the orphanage by road and Mum had never been there at all. There is never anyone around to ask the way from. We found the sea twice, and we were coming up a small road from it the second time when we saw Zoe Green hurrying toward us, clutching her knitted blanket around her. Mad as she is, Mum rushed up to her in her eager social way and asked how we got to the orphanage.

There were tears pouring down Zoe Green's crushed turnip face. I found I was searching for something that was like Antony Green, but I couldn't see anything. But then I am not like Mum—though Chris is.

“Orphanage?” Zoe Green said. She waved blanket and arm the way we had come from. “
Carthago delenda est
,” she said. “Oh, my dearest Augustine, all is gone by.”

She was even madder than usual. “Come on,” I said to Mum, and we both hurried on. Mum made pop-eyed faces at me as we went. I don't think she had realized before how mad Zoe Green is.

The orphanage was just uphill from there. Before we got there, we could hear heavy engines and the sound of trees cracking. We looked at one another, wondering. When we turned the corner, we found the hedge missing from the side of the road and what looked to be most of the women in Cranbury standing with their backs to us gazing into the field where the mound was. We ran. We pushed in behind them.

“Extension for the orphanage, dear,” said the lady from the clothes shop.

We looked over a flat space of mud and old tree roots, and saw two yellow excavators working on the mound. Half of it was gone already. The lilac bushes were lying this way and that on top, and their roots were sticking out of the reddish earth of the sliced side like twisted black wires. Everyone standing round leaned forward, staring intensely as the excavators moved in to cut another slice from it. I could see Aunt Maria in her wheelchair right in front of everyone, leaning forward as eagerly as anyone. One digger scooped another great chunk of mound away. The second chomped a slice from the exact place where Antony Green had fallen into the earth. We knew what everyone was looking for. We stared as eagerly as the rest, while that digger backed away, at the raw red piece of mound left. It was just earth and roots. Our eyes went to the load of earth the digger was carrying aloft then and watched urgently as it tipped with a slither and a crash on the earth piled at one side. But that seemed to be just earth, too.

“Nothing,” the clothes shop lady murmured.

Mum backed into the road, pulling me. “I can't watch any more!” she said. “Let's go back to Miss Phelps. Quickly.” We hurried down into the town again.

I said, “At least we didn't see a chopped arm or leg.”

“But I think I saw a bit of cloth fluttering. I'm not sure,” said Mum.

“Wouldn't this let him out?” I asked. But I knew from the way everyone had been eagerly looking that it was not like that.

“Nonsense,” said Mum. “They were out to destroy him completely. Why not use spades if they weren't? Did you see Aunt Maria's
face
?”

We hammered at the door of number twelve and had to wait ages until Miss Phelps slowly, slowly opened it. “Ah, I thought you'd be back,” she said.