Aunt Maria (23 page)

“They're bulldozing the mound,” I said.

“And we've got to act fast,” Mum said, and whirled into the hallway. Miss Phelps fell over ushering me in, and Mum whirled back and caught her just in time. She kept hold of Miss Phelps and supported her back into the living room. I don't think Miss Phelps was pleased. She likes to do things for herself, including falling over. Mum is too used to Aunt Maria to realize. I shut the front door while Mum was saying, “Is your brother very busy? We need a very urgent council of war with both of you.”

“Call him, Margaret,” said Miss Phelps. “No, I can get into my chair unaided, thank you.”

“Mr. Phelps!” I shouted.

Mr. Phelps was upstairs. He came stiffly hurrying down, looking as if he had just got out from under a shower. “What was the snag?” he said. And he hardly waited for me to answer before he stalked into the room. “I can't go this time,” he said. “What time was it when you saw his projection last night? Don't stare, woman. Answer. It's important.”

Mum said, “I didn't mean to seem stupid, but I don't understand.”

Miss Phelps said, “My brother is somewhat ahead of himself. It is clear that if our friend is not to be destroyed by excavators, he will have to be removed some time between when you last saw him and the moment the workmen started to dig.”

“Time travel, Mum,” I said.

“Just a short way,” said Miss Phelps. “My feeling is—just after dawn this morning. Do you all agree?”

This kind of thing is not Mum's strong suit. Her forehead wrinkled. “I… see,” she said. “Then could we go as quickly as possible, please?”

“You could go this evening or tomorrow and still get there in time. Next year,” said Mr. Phelps. “Women's brains alarm me. Totally obtuse. But if you would be happy going now, do so. I'm rather busy.”

We had a last sight of him marching out of the room again as we went. I felt sick. Mum lurched against me, and we both shivered. Mum was still thinking of back in the future. She said, “Oh, dear, I'm afraid we interrupted him in something. I think his sister is
much
nicer. Good heavens! It really
is
dawn!”

It was. The sky was all pink. Mist hung across the field in bands, and the woods uphill were gray with it. The mound in front of us was black, wet, and dripping, except for the sparse white-green buds on the bushes.

“You want to wait a moment and adjust?” I asked. I did.

“When will the workmen be here? What time is it?” Mum said. She looked at her watch. Of course it said eleven-thirty. “Let's try now,” she said.

We walked up to the mound. My feet got soaked in dew. It was getting lighter all the time, and I took a long look round, remembering this was the last time I'd see the mound and its bushes in the green field. I looked up at the woods, clearing out of the mist, and wondered where Chris was.

“Get on, Mig. You have to do it,” Mum said, and looked at her watch again.

“I know,” I said. “I'd better do it in the words she used, hadn't I?” Mum nodded. So I stretched out both hands and said, “By the power vested in me, I unseal this mound and … er … you from it, Antony Green.”

“Say your
name
,” Mum hissed.

So I said, “This is Naomi Laker. I call you out, Antony Green.”

There was a moment when Mum slumped, thinking it hadn't worked. Then we saw that the bushes were different nowadays. The right place was up and to the right a bit. The earth and bushes seemed to be milling into hundreds of transparent dots there. But they weren't moving, the dots. They were just going sort of unsolid to let a long pale figure rise out of them. He came to the surface just the way someone would come up from water, lying sideways, and lay for a moment along the mound, in the exact position he would have fallen in when we tripped him up. Then very slowly and shakily, he stood up.

“Oh, my God!” Mum whispered in dismay.

He was thin as a skeleton, and that made him seem about nine feet high. His hair had grown into a great mane. It was white now. So was the long scraggly beard on his chin. And in all those years, most of his clothes had rotted away, and the skin underneath was a horrible clayey white, too, and wrinkled and dirty. He stared at us and at the dawn breaking, and I noticed his eyebrows were still dark, in Vs upside down, like the ghost's.

“Who—who are you?” he asked in a voice that would hardly work. It sounded like wind blowing in a jug.

“We are Betty and Margaret Laker,” Mum said.

That of course puzzled him dreadfully. He bent his face to think, and then of course he could see his beard and all the rest of his skeleton body. He looked up at us unbelievingly. “I'm old,” said his creaky, windy voice. “What has happened?” He was horrified. He was too horrified to listen when Mum said, “Would you like to come with us?” He said, across her, “No! I'm old! What
happened
?”

And then he ran away. There was nothing we could do to stop him. He charged down the mound and ran like a stag across the field, in and out of the mist, waving his arms. It was like a scarecrow running. The tatters of his clothes streamed every time he waved his arms. They looked white when he disappeared into the first bank of mist. They seemed to be green when he came out.

“We'd better go after him,” I said.

“Yes, in case he hurts himself. He's in shock, I think,” Mum said.

We spent the rest of that morning trying to keep up with Antony Green. He was up in the woods about half the time, and we were climbing and slipping and panting, trying to keep sight of the crazy running, leaping scarecrow figure who always seemed to be going uphill from us. When I had breath, I shouted to Chris to come and help us with him. But no wolf appeared, and Antony Green bounded crazily on. Every so often he stopped, or we'd never have kept near him. Then he shouted things and the woods rang, bringing birds up in clouds. Or he did a mad leaping dance. Part of the dance seemed to be that his clothes changed color, though they were always in tatters. You never knew if you'd be chasing a green or a white or a red scarecrow next.

“Perhaps it's a ritual?” I panted. “Suppose we go down to the fields and wait until he comes down from the woods?”

Mum wouldn't hear of it. “He could break a leg any moment. Or he may not come out at all. I feel so responsible,” she said.

“You
would
!” I snapped.

Antony Green came down from the woods of his own accord soon after that, and for a while he seemed even more crazy. He bounded across the field where the wolf had been shot and did his maddest dance yet in clear space among the cars in the station car park. This time his tatters turned several colors at once, like a jester's suit, and he waved long arms whirling white and black, red and green.

“He's as mad as his mother,” I said as we limped down the field path.

“Is Zoe Green his mother? Oh, now I understand why she was so upset,” Mum said, and she put on a limping spurt as if the thought of Zoe Green really inspired her. We just might have caught up with him there, if the booted porter hadn't come rushing out into the car park. We were too far away to tell if the porter was trying to stop Antony Green or what, but the madly whirling figure cavorted away from the porter's grabbing arms and went rushing off toward Cranbury Head.

Off we hobbled after him. We could see him leaping about on the road above the cliff while we were still at the edge of the houses.

“Mum,” I said, “I know what he's doing. He's going all round Cranbury, sort of beating the bounds. Let him. We can stop him after that.”

It did seem as if I was right, more or less. He came down from Cranbury Head long before we got near it, and ran along the sand for a while, a bit more calmly, only skipping and waving every so often. Then he went off among the houses. Mum insisted that we keep him in sight, though, so we staggered on.

“Why is the town so empty? You'd think somebody would see him,” Mum said.

I explained that, by this time, everyone would be at the excavation except the people who had gone to work. Mum looked at her watch. She couldn't cure herself of doing that. It now said nearly three o'clock, which puzzled her horribly.

“Now you have an idea how he must feel,” I said.

We spotted him then, running much more slowly, away from us down the street where the drugstore is. We toiled behind him in a sort of dogtrot.

“He's slowing down, I think,” Mum said. “We'd better take him to the Phelpses when we do catch him. He's really not responsible.”

“Yes, but… ,” I said. “I don't know if you're going to grasp this, Mum, but do try—at this precise moment
we
are at the Phelpses, you and I, discussing how to get him out. We can't go there. Because we didn't when we
were
there, do you see?”

“Yes, but we were away for hours being cats,” Mum said. She looked at her watch again, as if that helped.

“No. We were probably only away for the time it took to be sent and brought back,” I said. “If your watch said eleven-thirty when we were at the mound at dawn—”

“Oh, don't!” said Mum. “It's worse than when we have to set the clocks forward!”

“All right. But if you look at your watch again, I shall scream,” I said.

At that moment we came into Aunt Maria's street. Antony Green, ahead of us, began going faster. I groaned. He had a purposeful sort of look I dreaded now.

Mum said suddenly, “
Run
, Mig! He's on his way back to the mound. Stop him!”

I knew she was right. It was in the dream, somehow. He used to imagine himself out of his mound and dancing round Cranbury, just like he had been doing, but he always came to himself to find he was in the mound. So he thought that was where he should be now. And that meant he would walk straight into Aunt Maria's arms.

By then I didn't think I could run another step, but I did. Mum and I pelted down the street. Antony Green heard us. He glanced back and began to run faster, too. I thought I was going to burst. Mum almost did. At the end of the street she gave up and leaned on a house. Antony Green was just turning up the street that led to the orphanage.

“Stop!” I yelled. And Mum screamed at him, “Antony Green! Stop. Come here, you fool!”

He stood still, facing away from us.

“Come back here, and I'll explain!” I called.

He turned round and came toward us, very hesitatingly, clutching his rags around him. He was limping, too. He had changed himself a little while he had been running. He still looked like a mad Robinson Crusoe, but he didn't look so old as he had. His beard was shorter and streaked with darker hair, though his mane was still white.

“What is it you want of me?” he said. He was panting, but his voice was like a real person's now.

“Just to see you safe,” Mum panted. “What do you say to going to see Nathaniel Phelps?”

“I could do,” he said, rather surprised. “He lives in this street, doesn't he? Is he still alive? How long have I been underground?”

“You've only lost twenty years,” Mum said. “Though I daresay it seemed like centuries to you.”

We both stared at Antony Green anxiously, wondering how insane this would make him. “
Only!
” he said. “That's one way of looking at… ” Then he looked at us, really looked at us for the first time. “I know you both,” he said. “From a dream I had a short while back.”

“That's right,” I said. “
Please
come to the Phelpses. I've lost track of what the time really is, and I don't want Aunt Maria to find you.”

He came with us quite obligingly then, and we rang at the door of number twelve. Mr. Phelps opened it. He stared. He glanced over his shoulder to the door of the living room. “In,” he said. “All of you. In at once.” We crowded into the hall, and the huge skeletal shape of Antony Green towered over Mr. Phelps as well as us. Mum moved forward to open the living-room door, but Mr. Phelps opened the door on the other side of the hall. “In, in, in,” he said, and fairly bundled us through it. “Not in there,” he whispered. “You are already in there at the moment, your former selves. You mustn't meet.”

At that moment we heard the door of the living room burst open and hasty feet in the hall. It gave me a queer feeling.

“
Is
that so important then?” Mum said. So that was who said it.

The front door slammed. “It may be,” Mr. Phelps said. “I didn't want to take the risk.” Then he looked at Antony Green, who was standing, hanging his head, and asked, “Is he … all right?”

He didn't look all right, but Mum said, “Yes, of course. He wants food and a bath and clothes and—listen, if Mig and I just went out the front door, won't there be two of each of us ever after?” Mr. Phelps looked at the ceiling and clenched his jaw.

“Oh, God, Mum!” I said. “And don't forget to look at your watch, too.”

Antony Green laughed. “No,” he said. “Your earlier selves will just move round to the point where you went into the past. They are
you
, after all.”