Aunt Maria (9 page)

“Wherever it is, I think you'll find she's gone for good,” Miss Phelps said. “Now what do you both think of Cranbury?” She made us talk about Cranbury for quite a while. We didn't say what we really felt, exactly, and Chris was surprisingly polite, but she knew what we meant.

“In other words, it's a hole,” she said. “It's a very healthy hole, you know. People live to a surprising age here, but there isn't much to offer children out of season, I do agree.”

Chris seemed to have been waiting for her to say something like this. He said, “What happened to Zoe Green's son?”

Miss Phelps turned in her high chair and looked at me. Then she turned herself to look at Chris. “You won't find that anybody speaks about him,” she said. “Now I think I shall make you talk about London.”

Chris said, “But I want to know. How long ago was it—whatever it was?”

“That I can't tell you,” said Miss Phelps. “And I do like to hear about London, you know. As I said, few people talk about Antony Green. In fact, almost the only person who does is my brother. You'll want to speak to my brother, I suppose?”

“Yes, please,” said Chris. “Where…?”

“Come this way then.” Miss Phelps climbed down from her chair and shuffled to the door. She opened it and shuffled across the hall, where she opened another door, while we both stood towering over her wondering what was inside. She turned round. “Do go in,” she said, and she stretched her arm out to usher us in. At least, I think that was what she meant to do. But her arm seemed to take the rest of her with it. As we went into the room and found it almost bare, except for a man in a dressing gown standing like a statue and holding a sword pointing toward us across the top of his own head, Miss Phelps's gnomelike body swooped through the air in a graceful curve. Then she fell with a crash on the bare floor. It looked almost as if she had forgotten how to fly.

Chris and I both said, “Oh, dear!” and “Are you all right, Miss Phelps?”

The man with the sword never moved. He said irritably, “Not again, Amaryllis!”

“Yes. It's The Plunge today,” Miss Phelps said, a bit breathlessly. She didn't try to get up. She just lay on the floor and said politely, “My brother Nathaniel. Christian and Margaret Laker, Nathaniel.”

We stared from Miss Phelps on the floor to Mr. Phelps with his sword. He was the man who said, “Good afternoon,” on the seafront the day Chris told me about the ghost. He has white hair and a white mustache and a thin, angry face. He said, “The art of swordsmanship, properly practiced, entails my standing here for another minute.”

“By which time any self-respecting enemy will have stabbed you in the stomach,” Miss Phelps observed, still lying on the floor.

“Oh, pick her up, can't you!” Mr. Phelps said angrily.

We got down and sort of crawled round Miss Phelps. But she said, very politely, “No, thank you. I think I shall lie here until I notice what I've broken this time.”

So we got up again, feeling very silly. I stared at Mr. Phelps's long mauve ankles under his dressing gown and then at his sword. Chris sort of cleared his throat. Mr. Phelps said, “What in the world do you mean, bringing me two of the enemy?”

“They aren't the enemy,” Miss Phelps said, lying there. “I checked.”

“They're from number thirteen,” said Mr. Phelps. He bared his teeth and stared up at his sword.

“We hate Aunt Maria as much as you do,” I said.

“I doubt it,” said Miss Phelps from beside my feet.

“I want to know about Antony Green,” Chris said.

“What about him?” said Mr. Phelps. He lowered the sword at last, very slowly, and stood looking along it as if he thought it might have got bent.

“How long ago?” Chris said. “And—what happened?”

“How long?” asked Mr. Phelps, frowning at his sword. “Twenty years, I think. That's all I'm prepared to say until I know your motives, young man.” He began making lunges with the sword, stamping with his slippers on the floorboards and going, “Aa-aah,” when he stamped. That was the noise I thought was the telly. It must have been very uncomfortable for Miss Phelps on the floor.

Chris edged round past Miss Phelps's little goblin body until he was dangerously in the way of the sword, where he tried to catch Mr. Phelps's frowning eye. “There's a ghost in my room, sir,” he said.

Mr. Phelps stopped with one foot about to stamp. He lowered his sword and his slipper and stared at Chris. “Why didn't you say so before, boy?” he said. Then he suddenly rounded on me. “Get her up, get her out of it,” he said, pointing at Miss Phelps with his sword. “All women out of here.”

Miss Phelps said, “I think I'm ready to stand up now.” I bent down and heaved at her. She was so light. She came up as if she was floating, and she was so dignified that I had to let go of her as soon as her feet were on the floor. “Thank you,” she said, shuffling into the hall. Then when we got to the other room, she said, “Do you know, that was a good fall! Nothing broke this time.” Then she sat in her chair and made me tell her all about London for nearly half an hour, until Chris had finished talking to Mr. Phelps.

Elaine was right. Chris came out looking pretty thoughtful, and he wouldn't tell me what Mr. Phelps said. “Not your business, Mig,” he said.

“Not in front of women and children, you mean!” I said crossly.

“That's roughly it,” Chris said.

Sometimes I think everyone in Cranbury is mad, even me.

I
t got madder yet. Perhaps Aunt Maria is the Hatted Queen of Cranbury because she's Queen of Mad Hatters. She knew at once that we had been to see Miss Phelps. “Such a quaint little thing, isn't she?” she said. “I always try to be kind to her, but she makes it so difficult. I expect you found her very hard to talk to.” Aunt Maria looked down at her lap, the way she always does when she thinks she is forced to say something terrible, and added, “So uncharitable!”

Chris gave me an explosive look. I said Miss Phelps had fallen over.

“Poor thing!” Aunt Maria said. That was her special sincere voice. “That will teach her to make rude remarks. Well, you won't be going
there
again, so that's all right.”

Elaine came marching in to tell us the same thing after lunch, when Chris and I were washing up. “You two,” she said. “Cut the Phelps connection—understand? We don't have anything to do with number twelve.” And before Chris could think of a rude remark, Elaine went off up the garden, where Mum was petting the cat and pretending to garden. The cat hid, and Elaine strode around forbidding Mum to let us go near Miss Phelps. Then telling Mum she had done a good job on the roses but she ought to tackle some more of the weeds before they started growing—on and on, until I wondered why Mum didn't hit her. Chris says he wouldn't dare hit Elaine, either. She's so tall and wiry. But I saw Mum go for Dad several times when Dad was trying to hit Chris or me. Mum's brave enough. But she's just too civilized to hit Elaine.

This is what puts Mum at a disadvantage. Aunt Maria and Elaine—and some of the Mrs. Urs—can
rely
on Mum being too civilized to fight back. What's the good of being civilized, that's what I want to know? It just means other people can break the rules and you can't.

Anyway,
I
tried to break the rules when all the Mrs. Urs came to tea. It's not as easy as you'd think. There were seven of them, so there was a crowd in the dining room and not enough cake for me. Chris had taken a huge slice in his pocket when Mum booted him out. I was squashed between Hester Bailey and Phyllis Forbes, but that didn't stop the other five leaning over and telling me:

1. “Naomi, dear, we don't like to think of you under bad influence.”

2. “Naomi, dear, I heard something about you I hope isn't true.”

3. “Naomi, dear, don't worry your aunt this way.”

4. “Naomi, dear, I was so sad to hear you saw Miss Phelps.”

5. “Naomi, dear, Miss Phelps isn't a
nice
person to know.”

6. This was Phyllis Forbes: “She's all right, but her
brother
!”

First I tried saying in a loud voice, like Chris had, “What's
wrong
with Miss Phelps?” And only Aunt Maria seemed to hear at all.

“What's wrong with home helps?” says Aunt Maria. “
Dear
Lavinia! I hadn't a word to say against Lavinia. Devoted.”

So then I pulled Phyllis Forbes's sleeve and asked how the orphans were getting on. I said, “Those dear little children you look after…”

She just turned away. She never talks about the clones. That's why I asked.

So that left Hester Bailey. Sensible, ordinary-looking Hester Bailey who gave me those pictures. I said, “Do you have a daughter called Zenobia, Mrs. Bailey?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact I do,” she said in her sensible way. Then, just as I began to feel interested, Hester Bailey held her hand out to show someone about two feet high. “About this tall,” she said. “A sweet child, vibrant with imagination. What a pity,” she said, giving me one of her most sensible smiles, “that such a daughter only exists in my imagination.”

“Well,” I said. “I suppose an imaginary daughter's better than none.”

“I do agree,” she said. I think she's even madder than Zoe Green.

And Mum seems to have caught it now. She smuggled the gray cat up to our bedroom. It wasn't hard to do. For one thing, the cat seemed to be expecting it. When I opened the front door to put the milk bottles out, the cat was sitting on the doorstep like a hassock escaped from church. It simply strolled indoors, tail up, cool as if it owned the place. Mum called to Chris to put the electricity off, snatched the cat up, and raced upstairs so fast that her candle went out.

She was feverishly fumbling about trying to light the candle again when I came in with my candle. “Oh, good! Light!” she said. She snatched my candle and nearly put that out, too, lighting hers with it. Then she rushed to the shelf and took down Lavinia's silver-framed photo of Lavinia and her mother. “That's it!” Mum cried, and shoved candle and photo toward me. “Don't you think she's the spitting image of Lavinia?” she cried.

“Lavinia's mum?” I said. “Yes, I told you. Twins.”

“No, no!” cried Mum. “The
cat
, Mig!”

Naturally, Aunt Maria woke up and shouted, “Is there a bat? Has a bat got in the house?”

I looked at the cat. It was lying on my pillow looking even more than usually like a floppy cushion. It looked calmly back at me.

“It's all right, Auntie!” Mum called. “I just said I was getting
fat
!” And in a whisper to me, “
Isn't
it like her?”

“Yes, you'll need a hat for church tomorrow, dear!” called Aunt Maria.

“And a sprat on a mat where I spat,” says Chris on the stairs, listening in.

“What's
that
?” yells Aunt Maria.

By this time I'd got the giggles, and Mum was looking tragic and misused. I said hurriedly that the cat was probably exactly like Lavinia. Mum relaxed. Chris went to bed and Aunt Maria went back to sleep. “Why are you so worked up about what the cat looks like?” I said.

Mum was in bed and so was the cat by then. We shall have to buy some flea powder. “Because I think it may be Lavinia's cat,” Mum said. “I think she may have left it behind expecting Aunt Maria would feed it … or she may have owned it secretly … or, oh, all sorts of things.”

“How do you work
that
out?” I said.

“Because animals do grow to look like their owners,” Mum said seriously. “Everyone knows that.”

I would have hooted with laughter, only I knew it would wake Aunt Maria again. So I just got on with writing this. And while I did, it dawned on me that I am just as crazy as Mum. I am being quite as unreasonable over that blue Ford which is so like our old car.

Since then, the cat gets called Lavinia. The name seems to suit her. She answers to it quite well, and she seems to have got more interesting with a name, somehow.