A Kind of Vanishing

by Lesley Thomson

  Eleanor had said the doll’s house was a friend, tucked away at the top of the White House, far from her family. She had hated to leave it behind when she went back to London. Chris frowned as a gust of anger swept up her lost chances, the hours she might have spent here, the games she might have played in this room as a little girl herself. She despaired of ever losing the stomach-fizzing fury at Alice’s deception (she could not consistently think of her as Eleanor).

  She didn’t notice swelling and fading of the noise as a door opened and closed two flights below and she jumped as a shadowy figure appeared in the doorway.

  ‘Kathleen was wondering where you were. She said to come and find you.’

  Chris got up from the window seat and brushed herself down. ‘You found me.’

  Her mother strode over to the other window and, cupping her hands to cut out the electric light, peered down into the night. She thumped on the bars:

  ‘These were put in by the Judge’s father in the nineteenth century, well over a hundred years ago.’ She gave the bars a sharp tug as if she might loosen them. ‘His eldest son fell out of this window and crashed down on to those flags when he was only seven.’

  ‘Did he die?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ She spoke with the satisfaction of someone who can’t be faulted on their facts, and added: ‘Not immediately.’

  Chris went across to her. ‘Listen.’ She shook her arm. ‘I know you didn’t kill her.’

  ‘The swimming pool wasn’t there then, of course. That’s new.’

  ‘Did you hear me?’

  ‘You’re hurting me!’ Eleanor shrugged her off. ‘Just leave it, Chris.’

  ‘Why? Is that what you’d prefer?’

  ‘It’s too long ago.’

  ‘You don’t think you killed her and then forgot. There’s no way you’d be normal, well, quite normal. You’d be mad with guilt and unable to live with yourself or to face Kathleen. Or me.’

  ‘And you think I’m not.’

  The fog thinned for a moment and Chris could just see the flagstones on the broad path along the edge of the lawn. It was a dizzying drop. She thought of the little boy pitching out and somersaulting to his death. ‘So you wanted to kill her. You’ve got imagination and reality mixed up.’

  ‘I hated her.’

  ‘Kathleen said there was a tramp. They found him drowned up the road from here…’

  ‘Stop it.’ Eleanor unscrewed the latch on the window and with all her strength pushed it up about six inches. They were shocked by freezing air and coughed as ribbons of fog drifted into the room, catching their throats. Eleanor squatted down and stuck her nose through the gap, holding on to the bars. The ground floor rooms cast a pale light over the grass. She could just make out Uncle Jack’s willow in the middle of the lawn where they used to have tea. It had grown to the size of a giant umbrella. She had never been clear as a child whether Uncle Jack was actually buried under it. She had not wanted to ask, because she would have been upset if he wasn’t. It had been fantastic to have tea on top of a real live corpse. Gina had remarked that they never sat under Uncle Jack’s tree after Eleanor stopped coming. She had said this to Eleanor like an acquaintance, polite and friendly, not as an admission of affection, it was just how it was once they built the pool.

  ‘There are no bars on the windows of the playroom in the doll’s house.’

  ‘What?’ Her mother was like a kid going off in all directions; this happened all the time now she was Eleanor and not Alice.

  ‘The Judge was anal about making an exact copy of the house. He got hold of the architect’s plans to get dimensions right, and took loads of photos. He drew quite good sketches. He made one mistake. He forgot the bars.’

  ‘Maybe they weren’t there then.’

  ‘I told you, they were put in after the Judge’s brother was killed, when he – the Judge – would have been about six. They were close in age. The bars were there.’

  Knowing her mother was changing the subject, yet unable to resist verifying the accuracy of what she had said, Chris trooped obediently over to the doll’s house. There were no bars on any of the windows.

  ‘Dad pointed it out to the Judge; he thought it was the test. There was always a test to pass; everything had to be earned. Instead his father was furious and nearly hit him, Mum told us.’

  ‘He got cross over some stupid bars?’

  ‘They were evidence that the Judge wasn’t perfect. Strangely the Judge had made the same mistake as his parents when they turned this room into a playroom. He forgot the bars. Mum always said the missing bars in the doll’s house windows revealed that the Judge wanted his brother dead. He inherited everything including the house. When she wanted to wind Dad up, Mum only had to bring up the playroom bars. She’d say the Judge left them out as his confession of murder.’

  ‘That’s far fetched.’

  ‘Most murders are.’

  Neither of them spoke.

  ‘I know who you’re protecting.’

  Eleanor gave a hoarse laugh. ‘I don’t give a toss about the Judge.’

  ‘I’m going to find Alice.’

  ‘If Scotland Yard couldn’t, how can you?’

  ‘They didn’t know what to look for.’

  Chris snatched a random paperback from one of the shelves and tapped it. ‘The clues are in here, or here, or here.’ She waved at the shelves. ‘Messages and answers are staring us in the face. We know about obvious clues like using plants, chemicals and insects to determine time of death and all that. But what about the other stuff that’s going on in people’s lives, that policemen with rigid ideas and closed minds would never think of? The questions they never asked and the places they never looked in because of their assumptions. Your Mum was right, the bars tell us a story all right. They are absent in the doll’s house for a reason.’

  Eleanor took the book from Chris, handling it delicately. She turned it over. She knew what it was: The Young Detectives by R.J. McGregor. She didn’t remember the author although she had read and re-read the book many times. The story was a memory more vivid than life, as for Eleanor most stories had always been.

  ‘This was brilliant,’ she breathed. ‘Mrs Skoda read it to our class when I was seven, but the summer term finished before she got to the end. I bought it in the holidays with my birthday money and read it tucked up in that chair one rainy afternoon.’ She went over and, as if in illustration of her eight-year-old self, settled down in a dirty brown armchair by the fireplace that Chris hadn’t noticed before.

  As she flicked through the dusty yellowed pages it all became clear.

  ‘There was a secret passage in a window seat, just like those ones under the windows. You had to open and shut the window in a certain way to release the catch on the seat.’ Chris was staring at the doll’s house and didn’t appear to be listening. Eleanor continued to herself:

  ‘I tried it with these seats, but the lids are stuck fast.’

  Eleanor dropped the book on to the floor. The story had got mixed up in her mind with real life.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘I’m tired, that’s all.’ Someone was standing close to Eleanor’s chair but Chris would only repeat that she’d gone mad if she told her. ‘Let’s go, or they’ll be coming to get us. It’s eleven-fifteen already.’

  ‘Why did he leave me this?’ Chris waved a hand at the doll’s house.

  ‘I imagine he wanted a child to have it. Even a grownup one.’

  ‘But Gina might have children.’

  Eleanor shook her head. ‘She won’t. He knew that.’

  ‘Why, is she sterile?’ Chris thought of Gina, who only seemed to cheer up in front of a horse.

  ‘No.’

  Eleanor dragged open the front of the doll’s house. It was coated in thick dust. A bird had got into the playroom, there were splashes of dried droppings along the roof of the house and down its front. She marched her fingers down the top passageway lined with minute oak panels and stopped at
the top of the stairs. She could get no further. She had once tried and got her arm stuck. Gina had grazed it as she pulled it out. Eleanor’s face loomed into the bedroom where she and Gina had slept until she had to move because Gina grew older and too grumpy to share.

  ‘Warmer…’

  ‘Do you know where Alice is?’ Chris’s voice was harsh behind her.

  Eleanor pushed her hand in as far as she could go and tapped the wood panelling on the landing. It made a hollow sound.

  ‘Hot!’

  But then so did all the walls in the doll’s house. Eleanor shut the frontage sharply and got to her feet.

  ‘You know who killed her, don’t you.’

  ‘I think so.’

  Eleanor was aware of a different kind of silence. There was no bird song, no scratching at the windows or creaking floorboards, only an uncanny quiet, final as death enveloping the dimly lit room. The sense of a presence other than themselves had quietly evaporated. Through the open window came the smell of wood smoke. Cedarwood. Eleanor’s favourite…once upon a time.

  Eleanor was afraid. Her daughter had an expression on her face that Eleanor couldn’t fathom, that she had only ever seen once before on a human being. That time she had managed to get away. She wouldn’t get a second chance.

  She had no more lives left.

  ‘So, who was it?’ She would make her Mum say the name.

  ‘It’s a long story. Some of it may not be true.’

  ‘Let me be the judge of that.’

  ‘It starts that Tuesday afternoon in the main street of the Tide Mills. I took you there. It’s where the Sainsbury’s…’

  ‘Yes, yes, go on.’ Chris leaned against the space hopper and shut her eyes, the way she had always done when her Mum told one of her stories. It made them more real.

  Thirty

  It seemed to Alice that her voice was fading away. When she spoke, each number came out soft and flutey, and she imagined herself as a distant pigeon and not a girl at all. The heat was making her feel queasy and as she squinted in the direction in which Eleanor had rushed off, she seemed to float above the chalky path for it heaved and swelled at her feet.

  ‘One… two… three… four… five…’

  Everything went black.

  Enormous hands clamped over her eyes, and soft firm fingers pressed into her eye sockets making the darkness fleck with bright red arrows. As Alice tried to scream, one hand moved down her face to her mouth shutting it. This meant she could see again.

  ‘It’s okay, Alice. It’s me.’ Hot words whispered in her ear and the hands turned her to face him. Even with her eyes open, Alice still saw dancing darts, like sparklers. He had his back to the sun so she couldn’t see his face. But by now she was relaxed. She knew who he was.

  Doctor Ramsay crouched down to Alice’s level, one knee on the stony path that had once been the Tide Mill’s busy main street, resting his elbow on his other knee. For a moment Alice imagined he was going to propose like the prince in Cinderella. She flinched as he stretched out and brushed a strand of hair from her cheek, whipped out his handkerchief, and went through the motions of dusting her down. She tried to stand stock still throughout; it annoyed her Mum when she wriggled during hair brushing.

  ‘Did I frighten you?’

  ‘Not really. Perhaps at first, until I saw it was you.’ She grinned. She was pleased to see him. He spidered around on his haunches so that the sun shone properly on his face. Now Alice could see fine drops of water on his forehead and she wanted to reach and wipe them away in return. The sun was beating down on their heads, no wonder he was sweating. But just as this idea was forming, Doctor Ramsay did it himself, mopping his hankie across his face as if in a hurry.

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. I wanted to catch you before you finished counting and dashed off. I suppose you’ve been roped into playing hide and seek again, have you?’ The doctor looked quickly back up the path towards the outhouses and the last remaining cottage. There was no movement from the remains of the Mill Owner’s house, the ruins were choked by ivy and nettles. Tall straggling blackberry bushes had obliterated the once flourishing pear orchard. Alice knew Eleanor wasn’t hiding there. She nearly told Doctor Ramsay this, but she was grateful for his help. She had guessed he understood how horrible it was playing games with Eleanor.

  ‘It’s my turn to look. I don’t know where to start, Eleanor has so many secret places. And really we’re not supposed to be here anyway.’

  Instantly Alice knew she shouldn’t have pointed this out, she was assuming too much too soon. Doctor Ramsay might not really be her friend. Eleanor might have sent him as a spy to test whether Alice was a traitor. Eleanor had made it clear that treachery was a terrible crime.

  ‘You’re quite right, it is dangerous here. What if one of you fell and hurt yourself? Who would be there to help? People tend not to come here, the locals think it’s haunted.’ He guffawed, his head going back, so that Alice could see down his throat.

  Doctor Ramsay thought ghosts were stupid. This changed everything. Alice’s Mum insisted that their old cottage was haunted and had kept on at her Dad to ask the Post Office to find them another place to live. He had stayed up one night in the living room with all the lights off to prove to her it wasn’t. No ghost had appeared, but she had said ghosts didn’t show themselves to everyone. Now Alice laughed loudly too. Of course ghosts were stupid.

  Only stupid people believed in ghosts.

  ‘This is Eleanor’s best place.’ Now he would know she was a traitor. She flushed, already she had broken the morning’s resolution to be ’specially nice to Eleanor.

  ‘It would be. It’s full of insects, dead animals, hazardous places to climb and fall out of and secret hidey-holes. But what do you think, or didn’t you get a say?’

  ‘I think it’s a bit scary. My Mum says you get all sorts these days.’

  ‘Your Mum is right. You do indeed. Come on, I’ll take you away from here.’

  These were the words that Alice had been dreaming of hearing Doctor Ramsay say. She had relived their encounter in the lane two days before, picturing his long brown arm resting along the sill of the car door with his fingers only inches from her nose while his other hand tapped on the steering wheel. The fantasy always ended with his suggestion that she come for a ride in his gleaming new car. The narrative had developed at quite a pace over a short time, from being a simple offer to drive Alice the short distance to her parents’ cottage to a more ambitious journey. Doctor Ramsay would whisk her to London: they would visit the Zoo and then go on to Madame Tussaud’s, where they had waxworks of the Royal Family and the Beatles. After a short while she would be his wife and make him happier than Mrs Ramsay did, who she had heard her Mum describe as a trial.

  Her friend Jean at the Newhaven school had said the waxworks were like actual people. She had told Alice that she had asked a policeman in the entrance what time it closed and he hadn’t answered because he was made of wax. Alice had known that she would never be fooled as to whether a man was real or not.

  Or maybe Doctor Ramsay would show her the big house he had in London. Alice had never known anyone with two houses. Her Mum had said the Ramsays were very important in London and had parties full of famous people that got reported in the papers. Eleanor was dismissive when Alice quizzed her. She preferred to talk about crane flies, cats and marbles. So Alice had been none the wiser. Doctor Ramsay would take her on a tour of all the sights. There was nothing she wanted more than to run away with him and leave Eleanor behind. Alice had to face facts; he would only take her home. She dared not hope for more.

  For the first time since playing with Eleanor, Alice didn’t want to go home. The little cottage next to the post office was no longer a safe haven. Cracks and doubts had appeared on its perfect surface. Now the thought of her Mum and Dad and the way they lived made Alice uncomfortable.

  ‘I’m supposed to be with Eleanor. I’m not expected back until tea time.’

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nbsp; ‘Oh, I see.’ He stuck out his lower lip and shrugged his shoulders. It was all up to Alice. Only she could take away his disappointment.

  Alice was dumbfounded. She had never been in charge of a grownup before. The experience was terrifying and exhilarating. What should she do? She must not let this chance slip away. It was like Eleanor’s complicated rules. Alice had three lives and after saying ‘no’ to Doctor Ramsay a second time, she would have one life left. Perhaps she might not get a third go. He might not ask her again. His rules might be stricter than Eleanor’s and include fewer lives. She would never go with him to London, they would never see the glasshouses in Kew Gardens or the River Thames at the bottom of his road. Doctor Ramsay was going to leave her alone on this boiling hot path in the middle of nowhere searching for his daughter forever. Or worse he would dump her outside her boring house and never see her again. Alice made a snap decision:

  ‘Maybe it wouldn’t matter if we did go. Eleanor usually goes off by herself when she does hiding anyway. She has a lot of dens, and forgets we’re playing.’ She didn’t want to sound cross with Eleanor so quickly added: ‘I don’t mind. She has a lot to do.’ Alice didn’t pause to consider that Eleanor had never actually abandoned her during a game of hide and seek.

  ‘I’m afraid that’s the nature of the beast.’ Doctor Ramsay had cheered up. ‘Okay, let’s not give her another thought. She’ll make her own way home when she’s ready. Let’s give her a dose of her own medicine and hide too. I bet we can hide even better.’ Doctor Ramsay had become like Lucian, boyish and excitable. Alice watched in amazement…

  ‘I know a secret place that Eleanor has never seen. It’s ages until tea, shall I show you?’

  ‘But Eleanor knows all the secret holes.’

  ‘Not this one, she doesn’t. I promise you.’ Doctor Ramsay put out his hand to her. ‘Cross my heart?’