The Outside Child

by Nina Bawden

  George must have broken it when he dropped it. But it had played well enough before that to remind Amy of me. I had had the musical box all my life.

  I tried to remember. It was like catching water. Slipping away the second you grasped it.

  I was very small. A bed in a strange room. In the half-dark. There was a cupboard in the corner, the door slightly open. There was something in the cupboard, a witch, or a monster. I was lonely for Aunt Bill and Aunt Sophie. I opened the lid of the musical box and the pretty tune started playing.

  And SHE had been angry. “Go to sleep.”

  That was all. The rest was just guessing. I had done something wrong. SHE had screamed. Just as Amy had screamed when I picked up the baby.

  I pulled an ugly face at the ghost in the window and it grimaced back, as if it were mocking me.

  *

  At Waterloo, I ran to the Ladies. I chucked the musical box in the rubbish bin. I used the Disabled lavatory because it was free. I only had one ten pence piece for the telephone.

  I thought, perhaps they know where I live! The old woman who was my grandmother might telephone Aunt Bill and Aunt Sophie!

  My heart came into my mouth. At least, that’s what it felt like; a lump rising up in my throat that throbbed like a heart beating. I prayed, Oh please God, let me get to them first. Aunt Bill said you shouldn’t ask God for small things, using Divine Intervention as a convenience, but this didn’t seem a small thing to me.

  I hoped that Aunt Bill would answer. Aunt Sophie would ask too many questions.

  But the phone rang and rang. There was no one at home. I thought that was strange at first. Then I realised that it was only four o’clock in the afternoon. Aunt Sophie was rehearsing. Aunt Bill had gone to London, to the exhibition. Although she had left early this morning, she might have gone to the Tate or the National after she had been to the Hayward Gallery. Or perhaps Rattlebones had broken down on the way home.

  I was feeling more and more frightened. I had to tell someone.

  I rang Plato. His mother said, “Hallo, Jane. Do you want Plato? Hang on a minute, I’ll get him.”

  I said, “I’m at Waterloo. And I’ve only got ten pence.” My voice had gone high and wobbly.

  She said, “I’ll tell him to hurry. But if you run out, you can reverse the charges.” She sounded crisp and practical, not at all waily.

  While I waited, I felt in my jacket. Something round that I had thought was a button was actually a pound that had slipped through a hole in my pocket into the lining. The telephone box was a new one that took all the coins except pennies.

  “It’s all right,” I said, when Plato picked up the phone. “I’ve found some more money.”

  “Is that what you wanted? My mother said you were at Waterloo and quite destitute. Didn’t you buy a return ticket?”

  I had forgotten that he had a good reason for sounding so chilly and dignified. And he couldn’t have had my letter yet. It had only been posted this morning.

  I said, “No, it wasn’t why I rang. And if that’s how you feel about me, I’d rather walk home than ask you.”

  He said, “Don’t be silly.”

  Water came into my eyes and ran down my nose. I snuffled, “Oh, Plato, it’s awful, I went to the house and they guessed who I was. And I rang Aunt Bill and there’s nobody home.”

  He said, “If you hurry, you can get the four twenty-seven. I’ll be at the station.”

  *

  He was standing by the barrier. I had never been so glad to see anyone in my life.

  He said, “My mother’s brought the car. She’ll drive you home or back to our flat, whichever you like.”

  “What have you told her?”

  “Most of it.”

  “Oh, Plato!”

  “She heard what you sounded like. I couldn’t pretend it wasn’t important. And it’s all right. She’s being sensible. She usually is sensible when something real happens.”

  “Is she angry?”

  “Why should she be? What happened? Were they horrible to you?”

  I nodded. I couldn’t bear to remember. I said, “Oh, Plato, I left my backpack behind. I took all these things for the children.”

  He said, “Don’t cry. I mean, don’t cry for that.”

  “They’ll telephone Aunt Bill and Aunt Sophie. Oh, Plato, I want to die.”

  “They’ve got to know somehow.”

  “It’s the worst thing that’s happened in my whole life.”

  “If that’s the worst thing, you’ve been lucky.”

  “They’ll think I don’t love them. I told all those lies.”

  “I expect they’ll live through it. But it’s not what you’re crying for, is it?”

  “Oh, Plato,” I said. “You don’t know!”

  “Then you’d better tell me,” he said. “And my mother.”

  *

  “Pandora’s box,” Plato’s mother said. “You know what happened to Pandora, don’t you?”

  “She had a box that she was told not to open?”

  “That’s right. A Titan called Prometheus stole fire from Heaven. And to punish him, the gods sent Pandora to Prometheus with this precious box that she was warned not to open. Prometheus distrusted any gift that came from the gods, so he gave Pandora to his brother. And some people think that the brother opened the box, but I think it was more likely Pandora who was curious to know what was inside. So she lifted the lid, and all the miseries of the world flew out!”

  “You mean, all this is Jane’s fault?” Plato said indignantly. “That’s not fair!”

  “No, not her fault. Just that some girls are inquisitive, like Pandora. Jane’s aunts, and her father, must have known what Amy was like, so they tried to keep Jane away from her. To protect her. But once Jane found there was a secret, she was determined to find out what it was. So she opened the box, and this crazy woman …”

  I said, “She wasn’t crazy to start with. At first she was lovely. It was afterwards, when she knew I was me, that she changed.”

  It was easier talking to Plato’s mother than I would have expected. She had asked a question occasionally, but until she thought of Pandora she had listened in silence, sitting on the end of the couch she had made me lie down on to ‘rest’ as if I were an invalid. Plato was sitting on the floor, back against the wall, hugging his knees, and listening with a broody expression. I had told them what had actually happened. What I hadn’t told them was how I had felt when Amy had started to scream. That once ages ago I must have done something dreadfully wicked. It seemed too shameful to mention.

  I said, “It was as if she had turned into a quite different person. As if she was under a spell. Like an enchanted princess.”

  I thought Plato’s mother might laugh at this, but she considered it carefully, as if it was a perfectly natural, grown-up thing to say. She lit another cigarette and coughed, fanning the smoke away from my face. She said, “I can see that she might have been angry. But to turn on a child—excuse me, Jane. I mean, to turn on a girl in that way for no reason …”

  “Perhaps I once did something awful to her,” I said. I spoke in a deliberately small and sorrowful voice, and then shook my head sadly.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Plato sit up and look interested.

  “What could you have done?” his mother said, as I had known she would. “She sounds hysterical, at the least. And your aunts must have known it.”

  Plato said, “They ought to have guessed that once Jane knew she had a brother and sister, she’d want to find out more about them. Brothers and sisters are pretty important. Particularly when they are younger than you are. You need to know how they are, or you can’t look out for them properly. And you get lonely for them.”

  His voice shook. I said, feeling embarrassed suddenly, “I did want to find out, but it was only wanting, not needing. It was partly a game. I didn’t know them so I couldn’t really miss them, could I? I mean, not like Plato misses Aliki.”

  “M
mm,” Plato’s mother said. “No, I suppose not.” She was looking at me, but her eyes had gone vague and unfocused. She stubbed out her cigarette and said, “I’d better ring your house again, Jane. Someone ought to be there by now, and they’ll be worried. You look so tired, dear. Close your eyes and try to rest a little.”

  When she had left the room, Plato said, “You shouldn’t have said that about Aliki. She’ll only sulk over it.”

  “It’s true, isn’t it?”

  “It’s not always sensible to say things that are true,” he said sternly. “I know you think that I’m horrible to her, but what you just said about me and Aliki will make her more miserable than I’ve ever done.”

  I didn’t know if this was true or not and didn’t care very much either way. He had only said it to get his own back. He had every right to be angry with me, but because I had sent him that loving letter I was hurt, even though I knew he hadn’t received it. I said, “You are being mean to me. I know I was mean to you, but I’ve had this awful time …”

  “Poor little you,” he said coldly. And then, with a sudden nasty gleam in his eyes, “I wonder what you really did to upset your stepmother.”

  “I wouldn’t tell you even if I knew,” I said. “Oh, I could kill you. I could boil you in oil! Though I’m not sure that’s horrible enough! Wrap you in breadcrumbs and roast you very slowly over the barbecue. Roast Plato! It sounds like a fish.”

  I had almost made him laugh. He was fighting it, but he would have given up in another few seconds, if his mother had not hurried in with the news that Aunt Sophie was on her way to pick me up in a minicab. Rattlebones had had an accident on the Embankment, and Aunt Sophie had just fetched Aunt Bill from the hospital.

  *

  “Poor Rattlebones is more wounded than I am,” Aunt Bill said. “Intensive care ward for the old girl, I’m afraid. It’ll teach her to argue with a Post Office van.”

  She lay on the sofa, one leg in plaster, one arm bandaged close to her chest, and one eye “coming up nicely”, as Aunt Sophie put it.

  “All colours of the rainbow tomorrow,” Aunt Bill said. “Now, what have you been up to, my poor chickadee?”

  I groaned. “Aunt Sophie said Plato’s mother had told her. She didn’t ask me to tell her all over again!”

  “I didn’t hear what Plato’s mother said, did I? And Sophie was off like a bullet to fetch you the moment she’d put the phone down.”

  Somehow it didn’t seem so awful this time. It was partly because Aunt Sophie was out of the way in the kitchen and it was just Aunt Bill listening, but it was also because telling the story a second time seemed to make it less painful. I even found myself giggling when I told her how mad Amy had looked when she ran across the lawn, thumping her chest with her fists and yelling blue murder.

  Aunt Bill didn’t laugh. She said, “That terrible woman.”

  Her grim expression sobered me up. I said, “What did I do, to make her so angry?”

  Aunt Bill went on as if I hadn’t spoken. “Of course, Sophie would stick up for her, I daresay. Not Amy’s fault that she’s extra sensitive. Some people are born a skin short, that’s all. Phooey is my answer to that! Though you can understand Sophie. She thought she and Edward might make a match of it, everyone thought so, until this girl came along, twenty years younger and pretty as paint.”

  I could hardly believe I had heard this. “Aunt Sophie?” I said. “Do you mean Aunt Sophie was going to marry my father?”

  “It wasn’t out in the open. Your mother had only been dead a year, and Sophie has a delicate nature. But he came to see us, see you, of course, too, and I’d go off and dig in the garden and leave the three of you together. And I’d think, face up to it, Bill, you’re going to end up on your own, without human company, only plants to talk to!” She cackled with laughter. “One thing you can say for vegetables. They don’t lose patience with each other or moan and make themselves miserable. Not that Sophie made much of a to-do about losing Edward. That’s not her way. She clamped down her feelings and suffered. But I knew she was terrified that Edward would realise how she felt. It was a kind of discipline to her to stand up for Amy. Or pride. You can put a lot of things down to pride.”

  I said, “Why did you let me go and stay with them if you didn’t like Amy?”

  Aunt Bill grunted as she tried to shift her plastered leg on the sofa. I fetched a cushion and propped her foot on it and she nodded to say that was better. She said, “Well, I was on my own, you might say. Your father over the moon with his lovely young wife, and Sophie determined to see only good in her. For her own sake, and Edward’s. And there was nothing to put your finger on. Amy was sweet as sugar to us. Just longing to be a good mother to darling Teddy’s motherless baby! Very touching. All I had against her was this funny feeling. And that could have been because I was so unwilling to lose you.”

  I said, “Did they—my father and Amy—just take me off with them? Didn’t I make a fuss?”

  “Didn’t seem to. You loved your Daddy. You trotted off happily with him and his pretty lady. Edward was back to sea shortly, but his mother had promised to stay for a while to help Amy in case she got tired looking after you, with the new little one coming.” Aunt Bill threw back her head in her horsy way and said, “Ha! That’s typical Amy. Too fragile a creature to manage alone.”

  I said, “She’s there now. My grandmother. You’d think she’d have known me.”

  “Did you mind about that? Oh, of course you did. Don’t let it bother you. Your Granny is nice enough, but she’s like her son. No real grit. No backbone. She rang up just before you and Sophie got back to check that you were home safely. I knew there’d been trouble, or she wouldn’t have rung, but you’d never have guessed how bad it was, the way she was twittering on. Poor thing did her best, I suppose. She’s scared stiff of Amy.”

  I said, “I didn’t like her much. I suppose I ought to like her because she’s my grandmother, but I didn’t. She was feeble. My father’s not feeble.” I remembered what Plato’s mother had said. “He meant to protect me.”

  She looked at me and held out her hand. “Come here, my chuck. Sit beside me.”

  I perched on the edge of the sofa and she put her uninjured arm round my shoulders. She said, in a gruff voice as if this was something she found hard to talk about, “You’re a lucky child. You’ve got the best of both parents. You’ve got your Dad’s kindness, and his sweet, easy nature, and you’ve got your mother’s strength. Margaret was a fine, spunky woman. She was pregnant with you when they found she had cancer. The doctor told her there was one way she could live a bit longer. But she was determined to have you. She said, what was a few extra months of life when she could leave behind a beautiful daughter.”

  I thought that I ought to feel sad. But it was a long time ago.

  I said, “It must have been awful for my father.”

  “He loved your mother very much. And went on loving her long after he was married again. You could feel it in him, part of him set aside that no one could touch. Not even Amy. Especially Amy. And that riled her. She got rid of all Margaret’s things, all her clothes, all her photographs. Margaret didn’t have family, she was an only child with both parents dead, so Amy packed most of the stuff off to us to be rid of it.”

  I thought of my torn birth certificate. I said, “Is that why she got rid of me?”

  Aunt Bill didn’t answer for a minute. I could hear Aunt Sophie open the kitchen door. A lovely rich, soupy smell wafted out. Supper was almost ready.

  Aunt Bill said, “Not only that. Annabel was just born, no more than a fortnight old, anyway. Your father brought you back to us and said Amy was afraid you would harm her. Seemed nonsense to us, you were a loving little thing, always peering at babies in prams and asking to hold them. But you were too small to tell us what happened, and we didn’t ask.” Aunt Bill gave me a squeeze and said huskily, “We were too glad to have you back, chicken.”

  I knew what had happened. My ears started sin
ging. I said, “I dropped her, Aunt Bill, that’s what happened. I tried to pick Annabel up, and I dropped her.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Rubbish, Aunt Bill and Aunt Sophie said. Nonsense. And, Even if you did drop her, you were such a little thing, she wouldn’t have fallen far, you couldn’t have harmed her. If you had we’d have heard all about it.

  *

  I let them think I believed them. But I knew I had hurt her. What I had done was there, plain to see, in her damaged hand. I thought, of course Aunt Bill and Aunt Sophie would want to keep such a dreadful thing from me. Perhaps that was the real reason why they had never told me about my brother and sister. They loved me. If someone you loved had done something like that when she was too young to understand—thrown a stone that had killed another child, or set fire to a house—you would hope that she never found out about it, because if she did, she wouldn’t be able to bear it.

  I thought—I can’t bear it.

  I helped Aunt Sophie put Aunt Bill to bed, resting her broken arm and her broken leg up on pillows and making a cage for her by putting chairs on both sides of her bed and stretching the duvet across them. We gave her a bell to ring in the night and a thermos of hot milk, and put the radio where she could reach it so that she could listen to the World Service if she couldn’t sleep. “I’ll be fine,” Aunt Bill said. “I only wish I believed poor Rattlebones had such good nurses. Off to bed now, the pair of you, and sweet dreams until morning.”

  I heard the grandmother clock in the hall strike the hours. I heard all the night noises. A police siren, far away to begin with, coming closer, then fading; cats yowling in the back gardens; the tinkle of Aunt Bill’s bell and the soft shush of Aunt Sophie’s slippers as she padded across the landing.

  My tooth began hurting again, and until it got really bad, I was almost glad of it. I thought, this is a punishment for what I did to my sister. If I put up with the pain and don’t call Aunt Sophie or go to the bathroom to get an aspirin, then I will have paid back a bit of it. I wasn’t sure what I meant, but it seemed to make sense at the time. I thought of the worst tortures I’d heard of: being buried in sand in a hot country and having ants eat your eyes out, being tied to a stake in the sea with the tide rising, being locked in a pitch dark dungeon and hearing a slimy monster oozing towards you. I thought, I could bear to suffer those things, I could bear anything, if only I hadn’t hurt Annabel.