Long Lankin (16 page)

I’d never been in the pantry before. It was a dark little room with shelves all the way up to the ceiling, stacked with tins (some of them rusty), bags (mostly torn), and packets of this and that (half of them on their sides and leaking). Searching for the McVitie’s, I noticed that a doorway on the end wall had been bricked up. Even though the newer bricks were painted the same dirty white colour as the rest of the room, there was no mistaking the outline. The mortar was rough and poorly finished, as though it had been done in a hurry, and the bricks were a different size.

I reached for the red roll of biscuits and disturbed a few cream-coloured flour moths. As they fluttered up towards the huge rusty meat hooks hanging from the ceiling, I gazed at the wall and wondered what secret place lay behind it.

Auntie Ida and I drank our tea without speaking. Mimi chattered away in dolls’ voices, the hot water bubbled in the copper, and the rain beat against the windows. Finn lay under the table and occasionally shifted his feet. I sucked on a digestive with my sore mouth and longed for the wireless.

Suddenly there was a loud banging on the front door. Auntie went white. Finn shot out, barking.

“’S all right. I’ll go,” I said.

“No, you won’t! Ignore it! I’m not expecting anyone!”

“It might be Mr. Aylott with the shopping.”

“He comes round the back — and never on a Monday. . . .”

“It might be Roger and Pete, or the postman or something. You might have got a parcel. It might — Auntie Ida, it might be Dad. . . .”

When I said that, she got up and went out of the room towards the front door. The banging started up again.

“Is anybody in there?” a man’s voice boomed. “Are you there, Mrs. Eastfield? It’s the Electricity Board!”

It was a blessed relief to have the wireless going again.

It’s awful when Mum does the washing and it’s raining. The whole house is damp and steamy and stinks of washing powder. She boils up Dad’s handkerchiefs in the big nappy pan, and the smell of the grey soapy water is revolting. I never look in, as I dread to think what I might see floating among the bubbles.

It isn’t so bad when the sun’s shining. Then the laundry can go on the line outside or on the veranda, but when it’s raining, it feels as if the whole world’s wet.

Pamela’s nappies hang in neat rows from the kitchen airer most days, but on Mondays, if it’s wet out, there are clothes everywhere, draped over the small wooden clotheshorse in front of the paraffin stove in the hall, trailing from the big one standing by the fire in the sitting room, and drooping over any chair with a spare back. Everybody walks around slowly with their arms held in so they don’t knock the horses over and set fire to Terry’s horrible yellow underpants, although that might be a blessing.

The worst thing is, Mum’s got me and Pete trapped in the house and she makes us do the worst job of all — the wringer. The wet sheets weigh a flipping ton, and if you don’t fold them properly before they go in, they won’t go through the rollers. Then you have to wind them all the way back again, and sometimes the handle gets stuck. When Mum does it, the water goes straight back in the tub, but when we do it, it goes all over the blinking floor and our slippers get soaked.

Pete and me were fed up we couldn’t go down to Mrs. Eastfield’s.

Auntie Ida got up and went to the window.

“What a cloudburst! It doesn’t seem to be easing at all,” she said. “I’m going to have to feed the chickens and get the eggs. There’s no point in waiting any longer. Cora, watch Mimi doesn’t go near the copper while I’m gone. It’s getting hot now.”

“Everything’s steaming up, Auntie. Can’t we open the window for a bit?”

“No!” she snapped. “You know you’re never to open a window in this house! Never! Do you hear?”

She got her headscarf and coat off the hook on the back of the door and went down the stone passage to the back. I knew she’d be a while putting on her boots.

“Mimi, you all right for a minute?” I whispered, turning up the wireless.

“Yeah,” she said, drinking her orange squash out of a teacup. “What you doing that for? It hurts me ears.”

“Don’t go near the copper, all right, Sis?”

“Where y’ goin’?”

“Toilet upstairs, all right? There’s rain coming in the other one. Won’t be long.”

I went quickly out into the hall and rushed up the stairs as fast as I safely could without making too much noise. At the top, instead of going to the bathroom, I turned left and went down the passage. I looked out of the small window at the end. My breath steamed up the small panes of glass. I rubbed one with my finger and saw Auntie Ida, her head bent against the rain, going down the path to the henhouse.

Quickly I went up the three wooden steps, turned right at the top, and went down the stairs I’d stumbled on the other night. A little light reached the passage from a small window almost hidden by netted cobwebs. I could see enough to avoid the chunks of plaster fallen off the walls and the dark rotting holes in the floorboards. Passing the locked rooms on either side, I reached the end of the passage and took a deep breath before raising my hand to the latch and pushing open the last door on the right.

The muffled sound of the Home Service came up through the floor. I heard the pips for the hour and then the man reading the news.

In the gloom, I made out the scuffed trail of footprints leading to the doorway in the corner and felt my heart beating hard as I walked over them once more. Slowly I peeped into the other room before daring to go in.

The cot had been taken to pieces and was leaning up against the wall, the bedding all removed. The baby clothes on the chest of drawers were gone, but Old Peter was still there, just as I’d left him, the blanket that had covered him in an untidy heap on the floor.

I sat down in front of the picture and gazed at the words
CAVE BESTIAM
, wondering if Roger had found out what they meant.

Then I noticed other words on the painting, written in tiny golden letters on the dark paint in the top corner next to Old Peter’s head — words and numbers in curly writing. I would never have seen them in the night, or when he was up on the shadowy wall over the bathroom door where he had hung for so long.

I leaned in close to read the words:
PETRUS HILLIARDUS 1584
. I couldn’t understand them.

I puzzled over them for a while — then I heard something, something I’d heard before. Little by little, the back of my neck began to tingle.

It was the same voice I had heard in the sitting room: the woman — singing. I froze as soft footsteps moved across the floor in the other room.

Now the voice came from the doorway.

I felt the woman at my back, heard the gentle rustle of her skirt as it touched the floor behind me.

Suddenly the back door slammed downstairs.

“Cora? Where are you? Cora!”

I shot up at once and stood there, trembling. Slowly I turned my head — and saw nothing.

“Who — who are you?’ I faltered, my mouth so drained of moisture I was barely able to utter the words.

The name touched my ear like a whisper on the air.

Kittie. I am Kittie.

Auntie Ida’s angry voice called up again.

I moved swiftly back to the door to the passage and fumbled with shaking hands to lift the latch.

The passage was empty.

I hurried along the creaking boards, up and down the short flights of steps, and turned towards the head of the staircase.

“Cora! Answer me!”

Rushing along the landing to the toilet, I pulled the chain noisily, waited for a moment to catch my breath, then headed quietly and slowly for the staircase and took my time walking down.

Auntie Ida was in the kitchen. Drops of water flew around her as she shook out her headscarf. While she unbuttoned her coat, she looked across at me with cold, suspicious eyes.

“I told you not to leave Mimi alone!” she snapped.

“I had to go to the toilet. The rain’s pouring in the one out the back.”

I waited for another angry outburst, but it didn’t come. The rain was heavy, the wireless painfully loud. She hadn’t heard me running upstairs.

“You should have waited till I got back. You mustn’t leave her.”

“She was all right. Anyway, Finn was here.”

She turned her back and hung up her scarf and coat on the hook.

“Who is Kittie?” I said.

“What?”

“Oh, nothing.”

I saw her back go stiff as a poker, then her shoulders loosened and she leaned forward, pressing her forehead against the back of the door.

“Don’t leave Mimi alone — ever!” she said, still without facing me. Then she went over to the wireless and turned it down.

“Roger, I’m running out of washing powder,” Mum said after dinner. “Can you nip down to Mrs. Aylott’s and get another packet of Fairy Snow for me?”

“Oh,
Mum,
it’s
pelting
.”

“You can go to Mrs. Wickerby’s after, for some sweets,” she said. “Take tuppence from the change, and make sure you put the washing powder under your coat or it’ll go soggy.”

I pulled on my boots and mac.

“Get us a chew, mate,” said Pete as I left.

It was rotten out.

I passed the two small houses at the end of Fieldpath Road where Mrs. Campbell and old Gussie live.

Mrs. Campbell’s house — number 2 Bull Cottages — was always neat. Mr. Holloway had painted the window frames only the other week. He’d left his blow lamp on the path, and I picked it up and made a noise like flames shooting out. He spotted me and started swearing like a sailor from the top of his ladder. I was so shocked that I dropped the lamp. I didn’t hang around to find out if it had broken, but Mr. Holloway never came round to talk to Dad, so it must have been all right.

Number 1 Bull Cottages, where Gussie lives, was a mess, the garden just a heap of weeds. I saw her holding her torn, grey net curtain to one side, watching me as I hurried past. It made me run all the faster.

After Mrs. Aylott’s, I went over to Mrs. Wickerby’s and got two great big banana chews. I ripped the paper off one of them and shoved it in straight away. It was so huge I could hardly get my mouth around it.

My hair was dripping when I turned back into Fieldpath Road. I was making sure the Fairy Snow was well tucked in under my mac when, to my absolute horror, I saw that Gussie had come out of her front door. I couldn’t make up my mind what to do — run past really quickly before she started shouting, or nod politely, then put my head down and scarper back home.

By the time I got there, she was right up at her wonky front gate, getting terribly wet.

She said, “You, boy.”

I nearly jumped in the air. I couldn’t answer because my teeth were stuck together with banana chew.