Aunt Maria (4 page)

I think he meant me to laugh, but Aunt Maria was getting me down, too, so I didn't. I stopped talking to Chris for a while. What with that, and being numbed with boredom, I didn't manage to speak sensibly to Chris until two whole days later. It was silly. I kept wanting to ask him about his ghost, and I didn't.

In the afternoons, Aunt Maria's friends all come. They are the ones she talks about all morning. I had expected them all to be old hags, but they are quite ordinary ladies, mostly in smart clothes and smart hairdos. Some of them are even nearly young, like Elaine. Corinne West and Adele Taylor, who came first, are Elaine-aged and stylish. Benita Wallins, who came with them, was more the sort I'd expected, stumping along with bandages under her stockings, in a hat and a shiny quilted coat. From the greedy interested looks she gave us, you could see she knew we'd be there and couldn't wait to inspect us. They are all Mrs. Something and we are supposed to call them that. Chris calls them all Mrs. Ur and mixes their names up on purpose.

Anyway, they came and Mum made them all mugs of coffee. Aunt Maria gave a merry laugh. “We're camping out at the moment, Corinne, dear. Now this is Betty and Chris, and I want you all to meet my niece, my dear little Naomi.” She always says that, and it makes me want to be rude like Chris, only I can never think of things to say until after they've gone. I am a failure and a hypocrite, because I feel just as rude as Chris. But it just doesn't come out.

They must have gone straight next door when they left. Elaine marched in ten minutes later, using her two-line smile and uttering steely laughs. When Elaine laughs, it is like the biggest of Aunt Maria's clocks striking—a running-down whir, followed by clanging. We think this means that Elaine is being social and diplomatic. She flings her hair back across the shoulders of her black mac and corners Mum. “You'll have a lot of hurt feelings,” she said, “if you give any of the others coffee in mugs.”

“Oh? What should I do then?” Mum asked, making an effort to stand up to Elaine.

“I advise you to find the silver teapot and her best china,” Elaine said. “And some cake if you've got it. You know how polite she is. She'd sit there dying of shame rather than tell you herself.” She shot out the two-line smile again. “Just a hint. I'll let myself out,” she said, and went.

“Doesn't she ever wear anything but that black mac?” Chris asked loudly as the back door clicked shut. “Perhaps she grows it, like skin.”

We all hoped Elaine had heard. But as usual she had conquered. Mum got out best tea things when Hester Bailey and three Mrs. Urs turned up soon after that. Aunt Maria would not let me help because she wanted to introduce her “dear little Naomi,” and when Chris tried to help, Aunt Maria said it was woman's work. “I don't trust him with my best china,” she added in a loud whisper to Phyllis Forbes and the other Mrs. Urs. Mum ran about frantically, and Chris seethed. I had to sit and listen to Hester Bailey, who was actually quite sensible and nice-seeming. We talked about pictures and painting and how horribly impossible it is to paint water.

“Particularly the sea,” Hester Bailey said. “That bit when the tide is coming up over the sand, all transparent, with lacy edges.”

I was saying how right she was, when Aunt Maria's voice cut across everything. How can Elaine think Aunt Maria would rather die of shame than say anything?

“Oh, dear! I do apologize,” Aunt Maria shouted. “This is
bought cake
.”

“Oh, horrors!” Chris promptly said from the other side of the room. “Mum paid for it herself, too, so we're all eating pound notes.”

Poor Mum. She glared at Chris and then tried to apologize, but Selma Tidmarsh and the other Mrs. Urs all began shouting that it tasted very wholesome, it was very
good
for a bought cake, while Aunt Maria pushed her plate aside and turned her head away from it. And Hester Bailey said to me, “Or a wave, with green shadows and foam on it,” just as if nothing had happened at all. She gave me a book when she got up to go. “I brought it for you,” she said. “It's the kind of pictures a little girl like you will love.”

“I'm sorry,” Mum said to Aunt Maria after they'd all left.

I think she was meaning she was sorry about Chris, but Aunt Maria said, “It's all right, dear. I expect Lavinia has put the baking tins in an unexpected place. You'll have found them by tomorrow.”

For a moment I thought Mum was going to explode. But she took a deep breath and went out into the rain and the wind to garden. I could see her savagely pruning roses,
snip-chop
, as if each twig was one of Aunt Maria's fingers, while I put Hester Bailey's book on the table and started to look at it.

Oh, dear. I think Hester Bailey may be as dotty as Zoe Green underneath. Or she doesn't know better. Mostly the pictures were of fairies, little flittery ones, or sweet-faced maidens in bonnets, but there were some that were so queer and peculiar that they did things to my stomach. There was a street of people who looked as if their faces had melted, and two at least of woodlands, where the trees seemed to have leering faces and nightmare twiggy hands. And there was one called “A naughty little girl is punished” that was worst of all. It was all dark except for the girl, so you couldn't quite see
what
was doing it to her, but her bright clear figure was being pushed underground by something on top of her, and something else had her long hair and was pulling her under, and there were these black whippy things, too. She looked terrified, and no wonder.

“Charming!” Chris said, dropping crumbs over my shoulder as he ate the last of the pound-note cake. “Mum's being told off again, look.”

I looked out of the window into the dusk. Sure enough, Elaine was standing over Mum with her hands on the hips of her flapping black mac, and Mum was looking humble and flustered again. “Honestly—,” I began.

But Aunt Maria was calling out, “What are you saying, dears? It's rude to whisper. Is it that cat again? One of you call Betty in. It's time she was cooking supper.”

This is the sort of reason I never got to speak to Chris, and never got to write in my notebook, either. When I went to camp, it was more private than it is in Aunt Maria's house. But I have made a Deep Religious Vow to write something every day now. I need to, to relieve my feelings.

The next day was the same, only that morning I went out with Mum, and Chris obeyed Elaine's orders and stayed with Aunt Maria. Would you believe this: I have still not seen the sea, except the day we came, when it was nearly dark and I was trying not to look at the piece of new fence on Cranbury Head. That morning we went round and round looking for cake tins, then up and down and out into the country behind, where it is farms and fields and woods, looking for the Laundromat. In the end Mum said she felt like a thief with loot and we had to bring the bundle of dirty sheets home again.

“Give them to me,” Elaine said sternly, meeting us on the pavement outside the house. She held out a black mackintosh arm. Mum clutched the laundry defensively to her, determined not to give Elaine anything. It was ridiculous. It was only dirty sheets, after all. Elaine made her two-line smile and even laughed, a whir without the chimes! “I have a washing machine,” she said.

Mum handed over the bundle and smiled, and it was almost normal.

That afternoon Zoe Green turned up for best china and cake, and so did Phyllis Whatsis and another Mrs. Ur—Rosa, I think. Mum had made a cake. Aunt Maria had spent all lunchtime telling Mum it didn't matter, to make sure Mum did, but she called out all the same while Zoe Green was kissing her, “Have you made a cake, dear?”

Chris said loudly from his corner, “She. Has. Made. A. Cake. Or do you want me to spell it?”

Everyone pretended not to hear, which was quite easy, because Zoe Green is quite cuckoo. She runs about and gushes in a poopling sort of voice—I can imitate it by holding my tongue between my teeth while I talk. “Stho dthis iths dhear dithul Ndaombil” she pooples. “Ndow don'd dtell mbe I dlovbe guessthing. You dwere bordn in lade DNovember. DYou're Sthagittharius.”

“No, she's not, she's Libra,” said Chris. “I'm Leo.”

But no one was listening to Chris, because Zoe Green was going on and on about horoscopes and Sagittarius, loud and long—and spitting, rather. She wears her hair in two buns, one on each ear, and long traily clothes with a patchwork jacket on top, all rather dirty. She's the only one who looks mad. I tried several times to tell her I
wasn't
born in November, but she was in an ecstasy of cusps and ruling planets, and she didn't hear.

“
Such
a dear friend,” Aunt Maria said to me.

And Phyllis Ur leaned over and whispered, “We love her
so
much, dear. She's never been the same since her son—well, we won't talk about that. But she's a very valued member of Cranbury society.”

They meant I was to shut up and let Z.G. go on. I looked at Chris and he looked back and then up at the ceiling. Bonkers, he meant. Then I sat there listening and wondering how it was I never seemed to talk to Chris at the moment, when I did so want to know if he really meant that about the ghost.

Then Mum brought in the cake. Chris looked Aunt Maria in the eye and got up to pass the cake round.

Aunt Maria said, in a sad low voice, “He'll drop it.”

If that wasn't the last straw to Chris, it was when Zoe Green dived forward and peered at the slice of cake he was trying to pass her. “What's in this? Ndothing I'mb adlerdjig to, I hobe?”

“I wouldn't know,” Chris said. “Those things in it that look like currants are really rabbits' doo's, so if you're allergic to rabbits' doo's, don't eat it.” Everyone, including Zoe Green, stared, and then began to try to pretend he hadn't said it. But Chris seized a cup of tea and held that out, too. “How about some horse piss?” he said.

There was a gabble of people talking about something else, in the midst of which Mum said, “Christian, I'll—” Unfortunately, I'd just taken a mouthful of tea. I choked, and had to go out into the kitchen to cough over the sink. Through my coughings, I heard Chris's voice again. Very loud.

“That's right. Pretend I didn't say it! Or why not say, ‘He's only an adolescent, and he's upset because his father fell off Cranbury Head'? He did, you know. Squish.” Then I heard the door slam behind him.

Outcry. It was awful. Aunt Maria was having a screaming fit, Zoe Green was hooting like an owl. I could hear Mum crying. It was so awful I stayed in the kitchen. And it went on being so awful, I was coughing my way to the back door to get right away like Chris had, when it shot open and Elaine strode in, black mac and all.

“I'll have to have a word with that brother of yours,” she said. “Where is he?”

All I can think of is that she has a radio link between her house and this one. How could she have known? I mean, she may have heard the noise, but how could she have known it was Chris? I stared at her clean, stern face. She has awfully fanatical eyes, I couldn't help noticing. “I don't know,” I said. “Outside somewhere, probably.”

“Then I'll go and look for him,” Elaine said. She went out through the door and said over her shoulder, “If I can't find him, tell him from me he's riding for a fall. Really. It's serious.”

I wish she hadn't said, “riding for a fall.” Not those words.

When the noise quieted down, I went back to the dining room. Both the Mrs. Urs patted my arm and said, “There, there, dear.” They seem to think it was Chris who upset me.

N
ow I feel as guilty as Mum. It got dark, and Chris still hadn't come back. Aunt Maria was really worried about him. “Suppose he's gone down on the beach and slipped on a rock!” she kept saying. “If he's broken his leg or twisted his ankle, nobody will know. I think you ought to ring the police, dear, and not bother about getting supper.”

Who needs the police, I thought, with Elaine after him? And Mum said, in the special high, cheerful voice she always uses to Aunt Maria, “Oh, he'll be all right, Auntie. Boys will be boys.”

Aunt Maria refused to be comforted. She went on, low and direful, “And the pier is dangerous in the dark. Suppose the current took him. Thank goodness little Naomi is safe!”