The Making of May
Page 11
Alex immediately brightened up. ‘Great!’
‘But first I want to go and knock on the tower-room door while Mrs Daniels is out of the way,’ I added quickly.
‘Are you sure that’s a good idea?’ Alex pulled a face. ‘We’re in the house on our own with her, remember. It’s not like Dad’s here if anything happens.’
I thought about how scary Mrs Daniels could look when she was angry. And I thought about what she’d said the other day, about how nosy children could easily get locked in the cellars here if they weren’t careful. But I really wanted to know what was inside that tower room.
‘We’ll just have to be extra careful she doesn’t catch us,’ I said. ‘Come on.’
We left his room and tiptoed along to Mrs Daniels’ part of the house, where we found the hoover standing in her corridor. It had a yellow duster draped over the handle and, although there was no sign of the housekeeper, it was clear that she wasn’t very far away.
‘Maybe you’re right,’ I whispered nervously. ‘Maybe it would be safer to do this when your dad’s in the house.’
Alex readily nodded his agreement and turned to go. From the way he bounced down the stairs at top speed, I could tell that all he was really interested in right now, in any case, was being reunited with a television set.
‘Have you got a TV guide as well?’ he asked as I caught up with him in the hall. ‘Just in case we get bored with your video.’
‘We won’t get bored!’ I protested. ‘It’s The Secret Garden!’ I felt as outraged as if he’d just accused my best friend of not being exciting enough to hang out with. (Funnily enough, even though I’d always had plenty of mates to hang around with at school, I’d never had a real best friend – the sort of friend you tell everything to and who tells you everything in return. I’d always felt like I didn’t need one – not while I had Lou, who understood me perfectly.)
‘OK, OK,’ Alex said impatiently, seeing my face. ‘But after we’ve watched it, maybe we can watch something else too.’
‘After we’ve watched it, we need to start work in our garden,’ I told him firmly.
‘I suppose,’ Alex replied, letting out a sigh. He never seemed as enthusiastic about the garden as I was, I thought. But then, he hadn’t been introduced to the real secret garden yet – the one in my video. And I was sure that once he had, he would feel just as excited about it as I did. Because then he’d see that just by waking up a secret garden, you can wake up lots of things you didn’t know you had inside yourself as well.
I shut the curtains before I put the video on so there wouldn’t be any light shining on the television screen and spoiling it. Alex had picked up the video box and was turning it over curiously.
‘This looks like a girl’s video,’ he complained, pointing to the picture on the front of Mary Lennox in her big straw hat.
‘It’s got boys in it too,’ I told him. ‘Two boys. Don’t worry. You’re going to love it!’ It never occurred to me that anyone wouldn’t love my video of The Secret Garden as much as I did. As I leaned back on our sofa and pressed the PLAY button there was a brief pause, then the oboe music started. I was listening, as enchanted as ever, as I watched the opening pictures of the garden coming up on the screen, when Alex started to speak.
‘Have you got anything to eat?’ he grunted. ‘I’m starving.’
‘Shh!’ I told him, pressing the PAUSE button on the remote. ‘Why didn’t you say that before it started?’
‘It hasn’t started. It’s just the opening bit.’
I went into the kitchen and fetched our half-finished packet of biscuits for him, deciding it was pointless trying to explain why I loved the opening bit so much. ‘Here,’ I said, handing him the biscuits and picking up the remote again.
I restarted the tape, but just as I was slipping back into a dreamy sort of mood again with the music, Alex started rustling the biscuit packet noisily.
‘Want one?’ he asked, shoving the packet under my nose as the big manor house where most of the story takes place flashed into view for the first time.
‘No,’ I snapped, keeping my eyes fixed on the TV.
The scene moved to India, where Mary was lying in a bed with a mosquito net round it, and you could hear lots of wailing coming from all the people outside who were dying of cholera. That’s when Alex started to giggle. The more wailing there was, the more he giggled.
‘Shh!’ I said, glaring at him.
Mary’s ayah came in and Mary shouted at her to go away. And the next thing, she was all alone until two British army officers came and found her and told her that there was nobody left alive except her.
Alex made a noise like he was stifling another laugh as soon as the first officer opened his mouth to speak.
‘What?’ I hissed at him.
‘Nobody speaks like that!’ Alex said. ‘And the location doesn’t even look real!’ He picked up the video box and turned it over to look on the back again. After a minute or two, he said, ‘This is ancient! It says it was made for TV thirty years ago!’
‘It’s not ancient!’ I snapped. ‘Just shut up and stop spoiling it!’
He stayed quiet for a while and I thought he was finally getting as absorbed in the story as I was, until it got to the bit where Mary first goes outside to explore the gardens. I love that bit in the video because the oboe music starts up again and that’s when Mary meets the cranky old gardener and the robin who lives in the secret garden. But as soon as the gardener and Mary began to speak to the robin, Alex let out another laugh. ‘They’ve just shoved in a clip from a nature programme or something and they expect us to believe the robin’s actually there in the same shot as those actors!’
I scowled at him. Until now I’d never even thought of Mary and the gardener as only being actors. True, a lot of the time they were in what looked more like a studio set than a real garden, but I was always too caught up in the story to think about that – at least I always had been until now.
When, a few minutes later, Mary asked the gardener what he was called, Alex just about fell off his chair giggling. ‘Did you hear that? He’s called Ben!’
‘He’s called Ben Weatherstaff!’ I shouted, stopping the tape before Alex could ridicule my precious story any further.
Alex just carried on laughing. ‘Do you think your brother will be like him when he gets old? You know – grumpy and white-haired and wrinkly and all hunched-up over his wheelbarrow?’
‘Don’t be stupid!’ I snapped.
Alex couldn’t stop laughing. ‘What’s wrong! Can’t you see it’s funny?’
‘It’s not funny!’ I yelled, feeling tears of rage spring up in my eyes. ‘It’s . . . it’s . . .’ But I wasn’t going to tell him how beautiful and comforting and familiar this video was to me. Or how, when I was watching it, I felt like I was in the company of my best friend. Or how that music made me feel. And I certainly wasn’t going to tell him how Mary Lennox was the only person I had ever met who understood how I felt about my mother. (She talks about her own dead mother as ‘the Memsahib’ because she’s never really known her well enough to love her either.)
‘Get out!’ I yelled at him. ‘I’m never letting you watch TV with me ever again!’
Alex stopped laughing, staring at me as if I was a three-year-old having a tantrum. ‘But, Mary—’
‘GO!’ I bawled at him, stamping my foot as hard as I could.
When he had left, pulling a face like he thought I’d gone crazy, I ran into my bedroom and slammed the door. I wished I’d never shown him my video. I felt like I’d betrayed Mary Lennox and her garden by letting him make fun of them like that. And the worst thing was, I felt differently about them myself now. It was as if Alex had taken half of the magic away.
I badly wanted to tell Louise what had happened. I knew she’d understand, because she was the one who had given me my Secret Garden tape and she knew how much I loved it. But Louise was in India and my only way of contacting her was by email, which I did
n’t have access to right now.
When Ben came back to the cottage at lunchtime he immediately asked me what was wrong. I guess he could tell that something was, just by looking at my face.
‘I had a fight with Alex,’ I grunted. ‘I brought him here to watch The Secret Garden with me and all he did was make fun of it!’
‘How do you mean?’
‘He laughed at everything. He said it was ancient and that none of it looked real. He laughed at the robin and he laughed just because the gardener’s got the same name as you.’ I knew I wasn’t explaining this very well but it was the best I could do, since this was Ben and not Louise. Ben wasn’t going to fully understand in any case, because he just doesn’t get completely caught up in things on TV the way Louise and I do. ‘I mean, how can anyone not like The Secret Garden?’ I finished huffily.
‘There’s a more modern film version of The Secret Garden, isn’t there?’ Ben said. ‘Maybe he’d like that better. I’m sure it would be easy enough to get it on DVD.’
‘That Mary isn’t anything like the real one!’ I snapped. ‘Lou and I already saw it in the library and we didn’t want to get it out!’ I turned away from him crossly.
‘How do you know what the real one’s like?’ he answered. ‘You’ve never even read the book! All you’ve ever done is watch that video over and over again.’
‘I knew you wouldn’t understand!’ I hissed. ‘I’m going to write to Lou. Is Mr Rutherford back yet?’
‘No, and I don’t want you pestering him all the time to use his computer. Lou won’t have had a chance to answer our last emails yet, in any case.’ He started towards the kitchen. ‘Now, tell me what you want in your sandwiches. There’s cheese or ham and I think we’ve got some tomatoes.’
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘You’ve got to eat something.’
‘I’ve just eaten all of these,’ I lied, showing him the empty biscuit packet that Alex had left on the arm of the sofa. ‘I’m too full up to eat lunch right now.’ And before he could stop me, I dashed out through the front door.
‘Where are you going?’ he called after me.
‘To the garden!’ I yelled back.
I was impatient to see it again now that it had its own lock and key. And maybe, inside the garden, I would feel better.
When I got there, the wooden door was closed and there was a shiny new keyhole situated above the old one. I tugged at the handle but it wouldn’t budge. ‘Hello!’ I called out, just in case anyone was inside. But nobody answered me.
The locksmith had obviously left the door locked when he’d finished. There was nothing for it but to go to the house and get the key from Mrs Daniels – or from Alex if she’d given it to him. I didn’t see how Alex and I could ever work together in the garden after this though.
The side door of the main house was open so I went in. ‘Mrs Daniels?’ I called out tentatively.
She wasn’t in the laundry room or in the kitchen or anywhere else downstairs. I didn’t look in all the rooms, but I called out her name in each of the corridors and there was no reply. Alex didn’t seem to be anywhere downstairs either.
I started to walk up the back staircase – the one that I knew came out at the end of Mrs Daniels’ corridor. When I got to the top, I stopped and called out her name again, but nobody answered. I couldn’t resist creeping along her corridor to try the handle of the door to the tower room again, but just before I got there I heard footsteps descending from above. I darted back and watched from round the corner as the tower-room door opened and Mrs Daniels emerged, balancing a tray with dishes on it. She looked different. Her eyes seemed puffed up and a bit pink, as if she had been crying.
I was shocked. Mrs Daniels always seemed like she was made of stone. Who would make her cry like that?
I immediately changed my mind about asking her for the key. Instead I tiptoed away from her along the landing towards the opposite end of the house. Just as I reached the other staircase, I heard a toilet flush and, moments later, Alex came out of one of the bathrooms.
‘What are you doing here?’ he asked in astonishment.
I gave him an icy look. Normally I’d have told him straight away about seeing Mrs Daniels coming out of the tower room just now, but I didn’t feel like sharing anything with him any more – especially not things that were meant to be secret. ‘I need the key to the garden,’ I said sharply. ‘There wasn’t anybody downstairs.’
‘Mrs Daniels gave the key to me. Come on, I’ll get it for you.’ He started towards his bedroom and I followed warily. ‘So are we friends again then?’ he wanted to know, turning to face me quite cheerfully when we got there.
‘Not unless you’re sorry,’ I replied in a haughty voice. ‘And you don’t look like you are.’
‘Sorry for what?’
‘Sorry for spoiling my video.’
‘Did I spoil it?’ He sounded genuinely surprised.
‘You know you did!’
‘What, just by laughing a bit?’ He looked perplexed. ‘You take things way too seriously, Mary.’
We were inside his room now and I noticed that his sketch pad was lying open on his bed. I went over and had a look at his latest drawing while he went to fetch the key from the table. The sketch was of a sunflower. It was good really, but instead of saying that, I just pointed at it and laughed out loud.
‘What are you doing?’ He darted across the room and snatched the pad away from me.
‘I’m just laughing at something you really care about!’ I answered, grabbing the key of the garden and flouncing out of the room before he could reply.
I was working inside the garden with the door locked when Alex came to find me. He knocked loudly, calling to be let in. I stopped pulling weeds up from the cracks in the path and called back to ask him what he wanted.
‘We’re meant to be doing the garden together, remember?’ he shouted. When I didn’t reply, he continued, ‘Look, I’m sorry I laughed at your video, Mary, but I didn’t know it was so important to you. I mean, it’s not like my sketches. It’s not as if it’s your story, is it?’
‘It is my story,’ I said, but so quietly that he couldn’t hear. How could I explain that the story of Mary Lennox and her garden had started to belong to me? Or to feel like it did, anyway? And because of that, I was as protective of it as he was of his drawings? Couldn’t he see that I was an orphan called Mary who was rescuing a lost garden too? And that I wanted Mary Lennox’s happy ending for myself? Because by the time she finishes transforming her garden, Mary Lennox feels secure and wanted and she knows exactly who she is at last.
‘Can you please let me in now?’ Alex asked, beginning to sound a bit impatient, and that’s when I decided to accept his apology. After all, now that I had started work in the garden, I was beginning to realize what a big task lay ahead of me. I could use Alex’s help.
But when I opened the door to let him inside, he was carrying his sketch pad, a handful of pencils and his brother’s easel. I’d forgotten I’d suggested that while I worked in the garden, he could practise being an artist.
‘Dad’s back and I only just managed to get these out of the house without him seeing,’ Alex said. ‘Is the shed open?’
I nodded as I shut the garden door and locked it behind him.
‘I’ll have to fetch the canvases and the paints and all the other stuff later,’ he added. ‘Maybe after it gets dark.’
‘You can help me with the garden first,’ I told him, watching him put the things in the shed. ‘We’ve only got four weeks. Let’s make a list now of everything there is to do.’
‘OK,’ he agreed.
So we tore a page out of his sketch pad and drew up a list of tasks:
1. MOW LAWN
2. TRIM LAWN EDGES
3. WEED PATH
4. WEED AND TIDY FLOWER BEDS
5. POLISH SUNDIAL
6. PAINT WOODEN BENCHES ??YELLOW
‘But we’re not going to win the competition,’
Alex said. ‘Not if all we do is tidy it up. It won’t be special enough.’
‘You don’t know that,’ I said. ‘The garden will be all untangled and everything will be able to breathe again when we’ve finished. We’re going to free it to be itself – and who knows how special that will be.’
Alex smiled.
‘What?’ I asked.
‘Nothing. It’s just that you’re really good at saying things sometimes. I bet you’d be really good at making speeches.’
I scowled. ‘Stop making fun of me.’
‘I’m not. I really like the things you say.’ Alex started looking round the garden. ‘I wish our garden had sunflowers in it. Aunt Charlotte loves sunflowers. If there was enough time, we could grow some here for her birthday.’
‘Well, there isn’t time,’ I said firmly.
But as I said it I remembered the drawing of the sunflower that I had seen in Alex’s sketch pad – and suddenly I knew how we could make our garden really special after all.
That evening Alex asked his dad if I could stay the night and he said that I could. Ben seemed relieved that I’d made friends with Alex again and gave his permission readily enough too.
The reason for the sleepover was that after dark Alex and I were going to take the paints and brushes and blank canvases down to the garden, where we would lock them up in our shed until Alex was ready to use them.
We had to wait a while for it to get dark and we sat in Alex’s room, keeping our voices low, as we discussed the sorts of people Mrs Daniels might be keeping locked in the tower room. Of course, I was heavily influenced by all the films I had ever seen and I still reckoned that the most satisfactory (if not the most probable) explanation involved a mad relative of Mrs Daniels who she was hiding from the rest of the world.
‘But don’t mad people make a lot of noise?’ pointed out Alex, who I knew still didn’t really believe there was anyone in the tower room at all. ‘We haven’t heard any noises at all from up there, have we?’
‘She might gag them so they can’t shout out,’ I said. ‘Or she might use tranquillizers.’ But I had to admit that my ideas didn’t sound all that likely. Not outside the pages of a book – or the scenes of a scary movie – in any case.