by Jo Verity
‘Listen.’ Tessa held her finger up. ‘I think Gordon’s crying, Mum.’
‘My goodness, you’ve got sharp ears.’
They rescued the paper bag from its hiding place, removing the contents cautiously in case the magic had started without them, then, seeing everything was as it should be, they brushed the soil off a flat stone and laid the collection out.
‘First we’ve got to make a baby.’ Tessa rolled the plasticine between her palms, softening it. She subdivided it into six blobs and, after more rolling, pushed the blobs together to make a rudimentary human form.
‘Is it supposed to be Gordon?’ Lewis asked, critically.
‘I haven’t finished yet. Here, hold this.’ Tessa handed the model to Lewis. Opening the envelope, she took out the snipping of hair and pushed it firmly into the clay skull. The next step was the one she had been dreading but, not wanting to lose Lewis’s respect, she unwrapped the toilet paper.
‘Aren’t you going to put a nappy on him?’ Lewis asked and in so doing provided her with the solution.
‘Yes. With his poo in it.’ She tore a rectangle from the corner of the toilet paper and folded it around the clay crotch, including the soiled cotton wool. Finally, she laid the effigy on the bib and rolled it up, securing it with the ties. ‘There.’ The parcel looked no more sinister than a folded face flannel.
‘What do we do next?’
Tessa had worked out a broad plan but the details needed refining. ‘We’ve got to send this,’ she raised the parcel, ‘away. We’ve got to get it as far away from the house as possible.’
Lewis looked doubtful.
‘C’mon, Lew. We agreed, didn’t we, that everything was much nicer before he came.’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘We’re not going to hurt him or anything. Just send him…’ She had no idea where unwanted brothers went.
‘We could leave the … thing … somewhere. For someone to find.’ Lewis thought for a moment. ‘Like in a phone box.’
Tessa kissed him and he flushed with pride. ‘That’s it. We’ll leave it in the phone box. C’mon.’ She was already walking towards the gate.
‘What, we’re going to do it now?’
‘Why not? It won’t take long and then it’ll be done.’
The only phone box they could think of was on the far side – the out-of-bounds side – of the main road that marked the limit of their territory. Tessa took charge of the towelling bundle, safely concealed in the paper bag, and they walked briskly to the end of Medway Avenue then turned right, continuing along Buckingham Road until they reached the pedestrian crossing, almost opposite their target. The road was on several bus routes and local traffic used it to avoid going through the centre of the town. The noise and the rush of filthy air from the passing vehicles deterred even Tessa from breaking the rules laid down by their parents and they settled themselves on a garden wall. At last a young woman paused at the crossing and Tessa, having satisfied herself that the woman was a stranger – it was essential that word of this didn’t get back to their mother – grabbed Lewis’s hand and approached her. ‘Could you cross us over, please?’
Safely on the other side, they raced to the empty phone box and pulled open the heavy door. Tessa placed the package on the black metal shelf, next to the handset, turning it this way and that, as if it were vital to have it in exactly the right position.
‘What happens now?’ Lewis asked.
Tessa stared at the bag then shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Nothing much if we stay here. Let’s get back.’
They hurried home, on the way concocting an alibi for their absence. ‘We were playing outside the front gate when an old woman came past and asked us how to get to the library. She couldn’t see very well so we took her as far as the main road. But we didn’t go across.’ And, when it became clear that Peggy Swinburne hadn’t missed them, they were disappointed not to have to make use of it.
After dinner they debated whether to go back to the phone box, to check on the package, but Diane Stoddy turned up, holding her ground on the doorstep until their mother invited her in.
‘Tessa, why don’t you show Diane your new theatre?’ she suggested.
‘Gordon brought it for us when he came home from the hospital,’ Lewis explained.
‘Mum and Dad bought it, stupid,’ Tessa corrected her brother. ‘Anyway, we had to do the hard part – glueing the thing together. Colouring the scenery. Cutting out the figures.’
‘When Mum had our baby, I got a dolly,’ Diane boasted. ‘She opens and closes her eyes and says “Maa-Maa” when you sit her up.’ She gave a mewling impersonation of the doll.
‘“Dolly”?’ Lewis half-laughed, half-snorted, wondering why his sister bothered with this silly girl who spoke like a three year-old and never had anything interesting to say.
They set up the little stage, wings and proscenium arch but when it came to breathing life into the tiny cardboard characters, Diane’s presence somehow clogged their creative channels, like fluff on a gramophone needle, and the performance never came to anything.
‘You can come to my house if you like,’ Diane suggested, slipping her arm through Tessa’s. ‘Mum might let us take Linda out in the pushchair.’
Lewis was still tingling with excitement from the morning’s exploit and he wanted to be alone with Tessa so that they could talk about it properly. He couldn’t believe that she would abandon him for the company of silly Diane and her stupid baby sister. But he needn’t have worried.
‘No thanks. Anyway, I can’t. We’ve got to go and visit … a mad old lady in the loony bin. Haven’t we, Lewis? She went mad because … because she was haunted by the ghost of … her brother … who she locked in the cellar. And who starved to death.’
Lewis nodded and grinned.
Chapter 4
The placid August skies boiled into navy and indigo as the heat wave broke in a succession of spectacular thunderstorms. The first raindrops dried almost before they had chance to seep into the warm ground, giving off a musty smell, like curing concrete. Then, as the thunder cracked, the rain started in earnest, bouncing off the brick-hard soil and forming puddles on the parched lawn. It cascaded down the roof, overflowing the gutters and splashing on the back yard. Within minutes of a storm’s passing, the sun reappeared and the heat built again, drawing curtains of steam from slate roofs and lapped garden fences, creating the illusion the rain had doused a fire but left it smouldering.
At first, the children found the storms thrilling, chasing upstairs to get a clearer view of the lightning and to count the seconds until the thunder cracked, sometimes shaking the house and causing them to shriek with terrified delight. But they soon tired of it. They were trapped in the house for hours on end. The temperature never dropped. Milk curdled and chocolate melted. At night it was impossible to find a cool inch of sheet and the air seemed low on oxygen. The whole family became tetchy through shortage of sleep. The baby failed to settle, day or night, and he developed an angry-looking rash.
‘D’you think it’s got anything to do with … you know?’ Lewis whispered to Tessa after watching their mother dab Gordon’s tiny torso with calamine lotion.
‘Mum says it’s a heat rash. We didn’t ask for a heat rash, did we?’ she dismissed his query.
At every opportunity, the children grumbled. ‘We’ve had a horrid summer.’ Or ‘It’s been so boring.’ Or ‘You haven’t taken us anywhere.’
‘Never mind,’ Peggy Swinburne consoled, ‘You’ll be back in school next week. And then you’ll have plenty to do.’
Tessa wasn’t sure if her mother was making a joke and, although she felt obliged to protest, ‘I don’t want to go back. I hate school,’ she was looking forward to the following Monday and the start of the new school year. She liked going to school and found the work easy, usually coming near the top of the class in weekly maths and spelling tests.
‘I can’t wait for next September, when I go to the grammar school,’ Tessa
sighed.
Lewis hesitated. ‘I don’t want you to go to another school, Tess. It’ll be horrid without you.’
‘Well, I’ve got to go. And that’s that.’
Lewis blinked a couple of times and fiddled with a tyre on his Dinky car. Tessa suddenly lassoed him with her arms, squeezing him against her, planting a rough kiss on his cheek. ‘I love you, Lewis.’
‘Oh.’ Lewis smiled. ‘I love you, too.’
‘I don’t ever want you to die. Or love anyone more than me.’
‘I never will, Tess. I promise.’
The new term began. Breakfast times were more hectic than they’d been before Gordon was born and, whilst their mother fussed with the baby, Tessa and Lewis were left to sort out their own clothes and remember whatever they needed to take to school that day.
Their father made it clear that he had no time to spend running around after them. ‘I’ve got a job to go to. Goodness me. You’re perfectly capable of getting your own breakfasts.’
Lewis held out the lopsided round of bread which he’d hacked off the loaf. ‘I can’t cut it straight, Dad.’
‘Don’t they teach you anything at that school?’
‘They don’t teach us bread cutting,’ Tessa muttered.
‘Don’t be cheeky.’ Her father flicked her upper arm with the back of his hand and yet another day began in a drama of incorrect dinner money, un-brushed hair and misplaced games kit.
As the weeks went by, the baby cried less, content to lie gurgling in his pram. His cheeks filled out and dimples puckered his tiny knuckles. He began to look like a real person. He learned to smile and the children amused him and themselves with games of peek-a-boo, pushing their faces towards him, mimicking his chuckle as his legs pedalled the air in excitement.
It was more difficult to get to Cranwell Lodge once school started back. Visits had to be short and were limited to weekends, when their absence from home was unlikely to be spotted. Mrs Channing never failed to ask how they were coping with the baby and, keen to entertain the old couple and maintain the impression that they were still opposed to the intruder, Tessa had almost let on about the spell. But, at that very moment, Blanche had nipped Lewis on his index finger, whereupon Mr Zeal had applied a large sticking plaster, given Blanche a stiff talking to and prescribed a double helping of Moroccan sweets – humbugs on this occasion. By the time the fuss died down, she’d had second thoughts about disclosing their secret with its embarrassing details of poo collecting.
The Swinburne family’s routine flexed to accommodate its newest member and, by half-term, memories of life before Gordon were fading. He became less of a threatening presence and there were times when Tessa forgot to dislike him.
‘You need new winter coats,’ Peggy Swinburne announced one chilly November Saturday. ‘Dad says he’ll stay here with Gordon while we pop into town on the bus.’
As they were going out of the door, Dick Swinburne dug in his pocket and produced two shilling pieces, ‘You’re good kids. Extra pocket money this week. And Mum,’ he gave Peggy a theatrical wink, ‘why don’t you treat them to cream cakes?’
The bus to the town centre stopped not far from the phone box where the children had left the paper bag. Whenever they passed, Tessa felt uneasy, half hoping that it had reappeared so that they could retrieve it. Once, when they were near the phone box keeping an eye on the pram while their mother was in the butcher’s, she thought it had come back. But when she went to investigate, it turned out to be a bag from the bakery, a dab of jam and a sprinkle of sugar suggesting that it had contained a doughnut.
They didn’t have long to wait for the bus. ‘Let’s go upstairs,’ Tessa insisted. Following her, Lewis struggled up the twisting stairs and down the aisle to the front of the bus, hanging on to the backs of the seats whilst the bus swayed along.
Their mother joined them. ‘Uncle Frank thinks I ought to learn to drive. He says he’ll give me a few lessons. It’d make things a lot easier.’
Lewis had only recently realised – when a lady doctor driving a shiny black car had come to see his mother – that women were allowed to drive. He’d never seen any of his friends’ mothers, or any of their female neighbours, behind the wheel. It was difficult to imagine his mother in the driving seat of their car, turning the jangly ignition keys and fiddling with that choke thing. His father had explained what the choke was for but its operation hinged on too many ifs and buts for Lewis’s liking. Then there were those three pedals that needed pressing – surely out of the question for his mother’s dainty feet in her pretty shoes.
‘I like coming on the bus, Mum.’ He wanted to say something reassuring, to confirm that things were fine as they were.
She patted his shoulder. ‘You’re a good boy.’
‘Couldn’t Dad teach you?’ Tessa asked.
‘That might not be such a good idea.’
‘You mean he’d shout at you if you made a mistake?’
‘No, of course not. It’s just that…’
‘Uncle Frank’s more fun?’
‘No…’
‘We think he’s more fun, don’t we?’ Tessa looked to her brother for affirmation. ‘He’s always got time to play with us. Not like Dad.’
Peggy Swinburne frowned. ‘That’s not quite fair, Tessa. Of course Uncle Frank plays with you when he comes to the house. But that boils down to an hour or so every couple of weeks. Dad spends far more time with you than that. And before you tell me that Uncle Frank never tells you off, it’s because you’re not his responsibility. Your father and I want you to know how to behave properly. To be able to tell right from wrong.’ Her voice softened. ‘And he loves you both very much. Didn’t he give you extra pocket money this morning?’
Pupils at the primary school did not have to wear a uniform, but it was expected that whatever they did wear was plain and sensible. Their mother enjoyed sewing and made most of their clothes but their coats and mackintoshes came from McKay’s in Bridge Street. It was an old-fashioned, gloomy shop with ornate wooden counters running down either side. Behind the counters, labelled drawers with cupped brass handles lined the walls, reaching almost to the ceiling. The shop assistants used a step ladder when they needed to get to the uppermost drawers. Every footstep sounded on the bare, polished floorboards and the whole shop smelled of woollen jumpers and paraffin.
A neat man, dressed in a dark grey suit, tape measure draped around his neck, came forward to serve them. He was courteous enough as he brought out a succession of overcoats, occasionally muttering, ‘This style’s very popular, madam,’ or ‘Excellent value for money,’ but his face remained deadpan. When Peggy Swinburne finally made up her mind – navy blue with a belt for Tessa, and an oversized grey duffle coat for Lewis – his mouth stretched in a mechanical smile and Lewis remembered the ventriloquist’s dummy from last year’s Christmas party that had haunted his dreams for so many nights.
Relieved to escape the creepiness of Mckay’s, they hurried to WH Smith’s where Tessa spent her pocket money on a set of coloured pencils. She already had plenty at home but seeing the twelve pencil rainbow in its flat box, sharpened and ready to go, she couldn’t resist, then became impatient when Lewis, unable to decide between an I-Spy Book of Cats and a magnifying glass, eventually decided to save his shilling until their next shopping trip.
Their last stop was the Kardomah Café in the High Street. The children loved the fug of warm, coffee-scented air; the intimacy of the panelled booths; the waitresses in their starched white pinafores and caps who brought them selections of fancy cakes and never minded how long they took to choose. They were the only children amongst the groups of smartly-dressed women but, sitting next to their mother, they felt comfortable in this well-mannered world of chit-chat and bone china tea cups, watching the heavy revolving door with its polished brass handles, swishing round, depositing and removing customers like a giant carpet sweeper.
Tessa inspected the other customers. Many of them were wearing hats. Not sens
ible hats like the ones Mum and Gran wore in the winter, but unnecessary hats that perched on their heads at frivolous angles and required hatpins to keep them there. Mrs Channing had shown them how a hatpin worked and had let them push the elegant pin through the crown of her feathered hat, making a satisfying pop as it punctured the tightly-woven straw. They wore sparkly brooches on the lapels of their coats, silk scarves around their necks and, when they removed their gloves, their nails were shiny with nail varnish. She wished her mother’s coat wasn’t so drab; her nails so short; her hair so windswept.
Lewis, too, was fascinated by these women. They reminded him of the mannequins that displayed clothes behind the huge plate glass windows of the larger stores. He imagined that, were he to get close enough to touch one of them, she would be cold, her skin as solid and inflexible as an eggshell. He was sure, too, that she would give off a strong smell, like the hyacinths that his grandmother grew in a green bowl every spring and that filled her living room with sickly perfume. He edged closer to his mother, enjoying having her to themselves for a while and content to remain sitting there long after he had eaten his chocolate éclair and drunk his lemonade.
It was getting on for twelve-thirty when, carrying the wrapped parcels containing their new coats, they got off the bus. There were lots of people out and about in Medway Avenue, tidying front gardens, carting bags of weekend provisions back from the shops or simply making the most of a day off work. They stopped several times for Peggy Swinburne to chat with acquaintances. This was one thing the children disliked about expeditions with their mother. How was it possible to spend so long discussing nothing in particular? They shifted from one foot to the other, sighing and gazing longingly towards home, hoping that she would take the hint.
When they were within sight of the house, the children ran ahead, eager to show their father the results of the morning’s shopping. They chased round to the back door but found it was locked. Then, returning to the front of the house, they pounded on the oak door with the heavy knocker. But no one came and they gave up, sitting on the doorstep until their mother arrived.
