The Secret Passage (3 page)

The next seven days seemed much longer than an ordinary week. Mr and Mrs Epsom were very kind to them—at least, they tried hard to be kind. The trouble was that they were not at all the same sort of people as Mr and Mrs Mallory who were not only very happy-go-lucky, but loved living in Africa and wanted their children to love it too. Mrs Epsom hated Africa. She thought it was big and dirty and dangerous and full of diseases. She was frightened whenever her children played in the garden: they might be attacked by a wild animal
or bitten by a snake. She was frightened of germs too and
distrusted
every speck of dirt and every drop of water.

So John and Mary and Ben were always getting into trouble for doing things no one had ever told them they were not supposed to do, like playing where they liked, getting as dirty as they liked and talking to anyone they liked.

They were astonished to discover that they were not allowed to go into the kitchen to talk to the cook.

“Mummy doesn't like us to talk to the servants,” Giles said.

“Why not?” John said.

“Because you never know.”

“You never know what?”

“You just never
know
,” Sara said, tossing back her limp, long hair and looking like a rather smug little doll.

“I think you're silly,” John said.

“I'm
not
silly.” Her eyes went round and scared. “Mummy says they're not to be trusted.”

“They might chop us all up with a panga,” said Giles, who, in spite of his pale, girlish prettiness, was very bloodthirsty.

John went very red. “That's a silly thing to say.”

Mary said, “It's not just silly, it's wicked and stupid.” She was so angry that she felt as if she might burst. “Why—it was Jason who saved all our lives. If it wasn't for Jason, we might have been drowned. I think you're just
stupid
.”

She ran out of the bungalow and went down to the bottom of the garden. She felt that she never wanted to speak to Sara and Giles again, so she pretended to be very busy making a garden by sticking flowers and stones into a mound of red earth. She became quite absorbed in what she was doing and was beginning to feel almost happy again when Sara, who was
watching her, said, “You'll catch it. You're making an awful mess of your clean dress.”

Mary looked down at her skirt and sighed. She
did
try to keep herself clean most of the time. After all, the clothes she was wearing were not her clothes, and she supposed it was reasonable that she should be expected to take care of them. All the same, having to keep clean was very difficult when you have never had to bother about it before. And if it was hard for her, it was harder still for John and almost impossible for Ben. He thought he would never get used to the grim expression on Mrs Epsom's face as she took him to his bath every evening.

“She looks at me as if I'd got leprosy,” he complained, one evening just before bedtime. Mrs Epsom was giving Sara and Giles a music lesson and the Mallorys were on their own for once, sitting on the veranda. The sun was just about to
disappear
behind the blue hills; in a moment it would be dark.

“Perhaps you have,” Mary said, and Ben giggled.

“I wouldn't mind having leprosy,” John said in a thoughtful voice. “Lepers don't pay taxes. You know Dad is always saying how awful it is having to pay income tax.”

“What an extraordinary idea,” Mr Epsom said. He had heard what John said as he came out on to the veranda to smoke his pipe—Mrs Epsom hated the smell of tobacco in the house. He stood looking down at the children with a puzzled expression on his fat, round face in which two small eyes seemed sunk, like two raisins in a piece of dough.

“It was only a joke,” John muttered. Mary knew that this wasn't altogether true: John, who was rather lazy, was always thinking of ways in which he could avoid earning his living and paying income tax.

“Not a very good joke, if you don't mind my saying so,” Mr Epsom said. “How do you know lepers don't pay taxes anyway?”

“Dad told me,” John said.

“Hmmm. For an uneducated boy, you seem to have
collected
a lot of curiously useless information. Your mind must be like a rag bag—full of odds and ends.”

He laughed, but Mary and John stared at him stonily. The word ‘uneducated', was one they had heard a great deal during the last week. Sara and Giles only lived with their parents during the holidays; during term-time, they went to a boarding school where they did English History and French and Latin. Mrs Epsom, who liked to think that her children were cleverer than anyone else's, was always testing John and Mary to find out if they knew as much as Sara and Giles. When she found out that they didn't know any French or Latin and hardly any History at all, she pretended to be surprised but she was secretly rather pleased. On the other hand, she wasn't pleased, only fearfully shocked, to find that Ben couldn't read at all.

“He didn't want to learn yet,” Mary explained. “And Mother says it's always better to wait until you really do want to learn something—she says it's more fun that way.”

“So you think lessons should be fun, do you?” Mrs Epsom looked at Mary critically and gave a tired little sigh. “I'm afraid you've all been rather spoiled, dear. Learning isn't fun—it's very hard work. You'll never get anywhere in this world unless you realise that.”

The idea that she and John and Ben were spoiled and uneducated was quite new to Mary—and very strange. The
Mallory children had lived rather a lonely, shut-off life with no one to criticise them and no other children to compare themselves with. Mary didn't feel either spoiled or uneducated but she thought that perhaps the way you feel to yourself and the way you look to other people, were two quite different things. She decided that she didn't really know what she was like at all. Probably Mrs Epsom didn't know either, but Mary was very curious to know what she thought, all the same.

That evening when she got out of bed to go to the bathroom, she heard Mr and Mrs Epsom talking on the veranda. The door into the dark living room was open and Mary stood just behind it, a pale little ghost in her white nightgown, and listened.

“John can't even do long division,” Mrs Epsom was saying. “And as for Ben—why the boy's just like a little savage. I think he speaks Swahili better than he speaks English. What will happen to them when they get back to England, I can't imagine. I can't believe any of them will be able to pass an exam—or even settle down in a proper school. They've never been taught how to work hard—they've been allowed to grow up thinking that life is always going to be nice and easy and a lot of fun. What
were
their parents thinking of?”

Mary thought Mrs Epsom sounded cross and a little jealous because she had never been allowed to think that life could be a lot of fun.

Mr Epsom said slowly, “I don't think they thought about it much. I gather they didn't want to part with the children—that's why John and Mary were never sent to school.”

“I must say, it seems rather selfish,” Mrs Epsom said with a sniff. “After all, it's the children who are going to suffer. If
the worst happens and they have to be sent back to England, they'll be completely out of their depth. Have any
arrangements
been made, do you know?

Mary gritted her teeth silently. She didn't know what Mrs Epsom meant by ‘if the worst happens', and she didn't much care. She felt too hot and angry. It was horrible of Mrs Epsom to say her father and mother were selfish people. She wanted to rush out onto the veranda and shout, “It's not true, it's not true,” but she knew she must not do that. She shouldn't really have been listening to their private conversation.

Then Mr Epsom said something that surprised her so much that she stopped being angry.

He said, “They have an aunt in England. I imagine they'll be sent to her.”

Mrs Epsom sighed. “That's something to be thankful for. Though I suppose we shall have to see to it all. Their father isn't exactly an efficient person, at the best of times.”

“I suppose not.” Mr Epsom sounded rather uncomfortable. “Still—we must do what we can. It's going to be hard enough for them—poor little beggars.”

Mary had no time to wonder what he meant because the telephone suddenly started ringing. Mr Epsom heaved himself up out of his creaking chair and trod heavily across the veranda. For a moment Mary was rooted to the spot with horror Suppose he caught her? Why—she had been
spying
on them.

But Mr Epsom passed by without seeing her. He went into his little study and closed the door.

*

Mary climbed into her bed and lay still for a minute, her heart thumping. Then she said, “John, are you awake?”

“No,” John said sleepily.

“Don't be silly. Listen. It's something important. We're going to be sent to England. To stay with Aunt Mabel.”

“Why?”

“I suppose …” Mary frowned, trying to think. “I suppose it's because we haven't anywhere to live now. I mean—Dad couldn't afford for us all to live in an hotel.”

John said, “Will Mother come too? Dad said she was getting better, didn't he? So she won't have to stay in the hospital much longer.”

“Dad will want her to stay with him for a bit. But I expect she'll come to England to be with us as soon as she's quite well.”

Mary felt much better now she had worked all this out in her mind. She even began to feel a little excited at the thought of flying to England and having to look after John and Ben. Although John was a year older than she was he was a bit absent-minded, like Dad, and would be bound to lose his passport and ticket and things.

John was silent for a little while. Then he said, in a queer, shaky voice, “I don't think I want to go.”

He sounded very miserable. Mary wriggled her hand out under her mosquito net and held it out to him. They held hands across the gap between their beds.

Mary said, “When we're grown up, we can come back to Africa and build our bungalow up again.”

John said, “It wouldn't be the same. Nothing will ever be the same again.”

*

In his study on the other side of the bungalow, Mr Epsom put down the telephone. He was standing quite still and staring
straight ahead of him, his small, dull eyes full of tears. In spite of everything his wife had said, he had always secretly admired Mrs Mallory who had seemed to him a pretty, charming woman who was too sensible to waste her time fussing about whether the furniture had been dusted or whether her
children
's
clothes were spotlessly clean.

After a moment or two, he wiped his eyes and blew his nose very loudly. Then he went back to the veranda to tell Mrs Epsom that what she had been half-expecting to happen, had happened. Mrs Mallory had died half-an-hour ago.

I
F
A
UNT
M
ABEL
thought the children were spoiled, they thought
she
looked very disagreeable, and not in the least like their pretty mother, who had been her younger sister.

In fact, Mabel Haggard was ten years older than their mother. Mr Mallory had told them she was a widow because her husband had been drowned at sea and John, who had heard Sara Epsom play a piece of music called
The Merry Widow
had somehow expected a plump, jolly woman with a cheerful smile. But she wasn't at all plump or jolly. She was tall and thin with a long, thin face and grey hair insecurely fastened in a straggly bun at the back of her neck. Whenever she turned her head, a little shower of hairpins fell out. She was wearing a shabby brown coat and stockings that wrinkled up on her skinny legs as if they had been intended for a much fatter person. When she met the children at London Airport, the very first thing she said to them was, “Here you are! I thought you were never coming. Your plane was two hours late.”

It did not occur to them that she had been worried. They thought she was simply angry.

“I'm sorry,” Mary said timidly. The journey had been very exciting but it had lasted for hours and now she had a funny feeling in her stomach—sick and hungry at the same time.

“Oh—it's not your fault,” Aunt Mabel said. She looked at Mary and then bent to kiss her cheek. It was a clumsy little peck as if she was not really used to kissing people. She shook hands with John and said, “I expect all grown-ups tell you that you've grown. As far as I'm concerned, you really have. You were fifteen months old when I saw you last.”

Then she glanced rather nervously at Ben who was glaring at her in the fierce way he had when he was wondering what people were like. She said, “You need a hair cut.”

It wasn't a very encouraging remark, but Ben didn't mind. He grinned at her and took her hand as they went out to the Airport bus.

John and Mary were quiet in the bus. They both had the feeling that their Aunt was not very pleased to see them. But Ben bounced and wriggled on the seat, looking out of the windows and squealing with excitement. He had never seen so many houses and roads and cars before.

“England must be a very small place,” he said suddenly.

“What a funny thing to say,” Aunt Mabel said. It didn't sound as if she thought it was funny, her voice was slightly annoyed, but after a minute she smiled at Ben just the same. It is difficult not to smile at someone who expects you to smile at them. She didn't understand what he meant but John and Mary did. The hundreds and hundreds of houses were all so small and cramped together that it looked as if there couldn't be enough space for people to live comfortably.

“Wherever do all the children play?” Ben said in an astonished voice.

Aunt Mabel glanced out of the window. “In the gardens,
if they're lucky enough to have them. If not, in the streets or the parks.”

“But there's no
room
,” Ben said. “Round our house, there was miles and miles and miles.”

“Well, there isn't here,” Aunt Mabel said shortly. “Certainly not in the towns, and in the country there are fields full of crops and you aren't allowed to play in those, let me tell you.”

Ben wrinkled his nose. “It sounds horrid,” he said.

John and Mary looked at each other. It did sound depressing and it looked depressing too. The sky was leaden grey and seemed to press down low over the little houses and the crowded streets and the hurrying people. It was all very flat, there were no hills and only a few dead looking trees—John thought they
were
dead until he remembered that in England the trees lost their green leaves in winter. They swept into London over the Hammersmith Flyover.

“Look,” shouted Ben, kneeling up on his seat, “the cars are going underneath. We're up in the air!”

John and Mary might have been excited too, if they had not been so cold. Even Aunt Mabel, who didn't seem inclined to notice things about people, saw that they were cold. When they got out of the bus and were waiting for a taxi to take them to the railway station, she turned Mary's collar up round her neck and said, “That coat isn't warm enough. Your blood must have got thin with being in Africa.”

“Mrs Epsom said you would have to get us some warm clothes,” John said.

“She said you would probably buy us some toys too,” Ben said with a happy grin. Mrs Epsom had said this to comfort
him when he realised he would have to leave Balthazar behind.

“Oh she did, did she?” Aunt Mabel said dryly. She didn't say anything else until they were sitting in the train and eating the ham sandwiches she produced out of a brown carrier bag. While they ate, she watched them thoughtfully and rather anxiously with her sharp, brown eyes. She was thinking of the letter Mrs Epsom had written to her.

… I imagine that their father will eventually make some financial arrangement for the children but at the moment he is in no state do do so. He is quite broken-up by his wife's death and of course everything he had was swept away in the flood. He seems to have no money in the Bank, either. We think he has always lived beyond his income. The children seem always to have had everything they want. My husband has advanced the money for their fares and for a few clothes. I have asked Mr Mallory over and over again if you can afford to support the children but all he says is: There is no one else …

Aunt Mabel said in a brusque voice, “You may as well know—I can't afford to buy you a lot of clothes and toys and things.”

They all looked at her in surprise and she went on in an odd, almost indignant way, “Mrs Epsom says you've been used to having everything you want. I think we'd better get it straight from the beginning. You'll not go without anything you really need, but there's no money for frills. I hope you'll understand that.”

“Yes, Aunt Mabel,” Mary said, though she didn't really understand at all. She supposed they always had had everything they wanted, but it had never seemed to cost much money.
After all, there were so few shops where they lived, in Africa, that it would have been difficult to spend a lot of money. She wondered if Aunt Mabel was really poor and if they would all have to live in a mud hut, but she didn't like to ask her.

Ben wasn't so tactful. He said, looking bright and interested, “Are you a beggar, then?”

Aunt Mabel's face went very red. “Certainly not.”

John said quickly, “He didn't mean to be rude. He just wanted to know if you were really poor like some of the Africans are. Some of their children have big swollen stomachs that stick right out because they're starving.”

“Oh,” said Aunt Mabel. “Oh—I see.” She said, to Ben, “I'm not poor, not in that way. But I keep a boarding house and if it's a bad season, I don't make very much money. When it rains a lot, no one wants to come to the sea, and they cancel their bookings.”

The children looked at her blankly.

“What is a boarding house?” Ben said.

“It's a place people go to for holidays. It's my house, you see, and they pay me to come and be guests in it. I've only got two guests now because it's winter. Mr Agnew and Miss Pin. Mr Agnew is a sculptor—he's very busy all the time, and you must be sure and not bother him. Miss Pin is—is a little peculiar.” She gave a little sigh. “Just now, there isn't anyone else.”

Mary said, “Is it the same house that you and mother lived in, when you were girls?”

“No. That's the house next door. It's a big place—when my husband died it was too big for me to keep up. So I sold it
to a man who took a fancy to it; he wanted it for summers, he said—he had more money than sense, if you ask me—and now he's old and ill and it's shut up mostly. It's a pity, it's a nice old place with a huge garden and lots of rambling rooms. And attics. We used to play up in the attics—you can see the sea from some of the windows, and there was an old brass bedstead that we used to play on. We used to tie string to the posts and pretend we were driving a horse and cart. I wonder if it's still there—I left a lot of stuff behind when I left and as far as I know he never turned anything out.”

Aunt Mabel smiled and her face was soft and much gentler, suddenly, as if she were remembering a very happy time.

Mary said, “What was our mother like, when she was a little girl?” Her eyes were very bright and she was breathing very fast. John and Ben looked at her and then down at their feet. It was the first time any of them had spoken about their mother since the dreadful morning Mrs Epsom had come into their room and told them that they would never see her again. Mary's question made them feel very lost and strange.

Aunt Mabel caught her breath. “She was very pretty. Very pretty and gay.” She looked at John and Ben, sitting still and silent as wax images and then she looked at Mary as if she were really seeing her for the first time. She said in a low voice, “She looked a little bit like you …”

*

The train stopped. A large notice on the platform said HENSTABLE, and outside the Waiting Room there was a coloured poster of a girl in a bathing costume, sitting by a bright, blue sea. The poster said, Sunny Hcnstable Welcomes You.

They didn't feel very welcomed, though. It was dark and cold and the wind sliced through their thin clothes like a sharp knife.

“It must be like the North Pole,” said Ben.

They climbed into a taxi and drove away from the twinkling lights of the station, into the dark town. The houses all seemed very tall and narrow and somehow
sloping
, as if the fierce, cold wind from the sea had blown them sideways. The taxi stopped outside a house with
The Haven
painted on the lighted fanlight above the door. It was a particularly tall, thin house that seemed to lean against the much bigger house next door to it—a large, looming building with a heavy, pillared porch and dark, empty windows. “That must be the house they used to live in,” John whispered, while Aunt Mabel paid the taxi driver. “It looks spooky …”

Inside
The Haven
, it was almost as cold as it was outside. The hall was narrow and high and smelt musty. There was a closed door on the left. “That's the dining room,” Aunt Mabel said. “Of course, we don't use it in the winter.”

They went to the end of the hall and down some narrow stairs to the basement. Here there was a big kitchen and at one end of it there was a black, menacing looking object from which came a steady whispering sound.

“Thank Heaven's the Beast is still alight,” Aunt Mabel said cheerfully. She smiled at their surprised faces. “I call it the Beast,” she said. “It won't hurt you, though.” She opened a little door in the front of the old, black boiler and a lovely shaft of warmth extended into the kitchen. They stood in front of it, thankfully warming their frozen hands. “You look like a lot of shivering monkeys,” Aunt Mabel said. “Come on now,
move about and get warm. Which one of you is going to lay the table for me?”

The children looked at her, then at each other. Rather slowly, Mary came away from the fire and looked at the things Aunt Mabel was taking out of the dresser cupboard and putting on the deal table; a pile of mats, a bundle of knives and forks and spoons, four glasses. She tried to remember how the table always looked at home, how the knives and forks went and which side of the mat you put the glasses but both her brain and her fingers seemed numbed with cold.

“Hurry up,” Aunt Mabel said. “Good heaven's child, haven't you laid a table before?”

Mary shook her head, feeling shy and ashamed. She said, “Jason always lays the table at home,” and her eyes filled with tears.

Aunt Mabel clicked her tongue against her teeth. “I forgot you'd been waited on hand and foot. Well,
I
haven't the time for that. Or the inclination, I may as well tell you. So you'd better start learning to do a few things for yourself.”

In spite of her sharp voice, she explained how to lay a table patiently and clearly and Mary quite enjoyed doing it. She decided that it would be fun to learn how to do things in a house—perhaps she could make beds and clean windows and so on. At the back of her mind was the idea that in this terrible, cold climate it might be just as well to make yourself useful
indoors
. Perhaps John had the same idea because after they had had supper, he offered to help wash up, but after looking at the three weary little faces, Aunt Mabel said that it would be more sensible to go to bed.

They were to sleep up in the attic, as all the other rooms were furnished for the paying guests. They trooped, one by one up the narrow stairs, past what seemed like endless closed doors.

“Are all the rooms really
empty
?” John whispered, half fearfully, glancing along a long, dark passage.

“Yes.” Aunt Mabel thrust open one of the doors. “You may as well look now,” she said. “Then there'll be no need for you to go poking about when my back's turned.”

They peered into a dim, high-ceilinged room which had a big bed in the middle of it, shrouded in a white sheet. The light from the street lamp outside came through the window and made dark, eerie shadows in the corners. John clutched at Mary's hand and she could feel him shiver.

He said in a small voice, “It'll be funny living in a house where the rooms are all shut up and empty, won't it?”

Mary squeezed his hand sympathetically. She didn't think the empty rooms were frightening, only rather dreary, but she knew that John was much more nervous in some ways than she was. He wasn't a coward, he was a normal, strong, healthy boy, but he often saw ghosts and other alarming, shadowy things in places where Mary very seldom saw them and Ben never saw them at all. Ben was a very practical person who was only afraid of good solid things that he knew were dangerous, like charging elephants and angry rhino.