A Night in the Manx Museum

by Michele McGrath

  The old lady laughed and dusted off her hands. “You’d better get down now, chicken, there’s not room for three of you at the sink and there are no more aprons.” She unwrapped the apron from the little girl’s waist and lifted her down. “Go and play, but be sure you’re home for tea and don’t get into any of your mischief!”

  “We won’t!” The three girls said together.

  “I like your Nana,” Sophie said.

  “I like her too,” laughed Margaret.

  They ran up the stairs and turned into what was obviously a dining room, because it was full of tables set for dinner.

  “I hoped you’d come today,” Margaret said to Sophie, but she was looking at Ellen.

  “This is Ellen, she got lost in the Museum and she can’t get out, so she’s visiting with us today. This is Margaret.”

  “Hello.”

  The two girls looked at each other. Margaret had long brown ringlets, almost down to her waist, tied back with a metal clip. She was wearing a blue dress that was too short for her and was getting tight round the middle. She had white ankle socks and brown sandals of the type that Ellen’s mother called ‘practical’. She had blue eyes with a gleam in them that promised fun.

  “What shall we do?”

  “Can we have a ride on the dumb waiter?”

  “No. There’s no one in to pull us up but Nana and she isn’t strong enough.”

  “What’s a dumb waiter?”

  Margaret opened a small hatch on the wall and Ellen looked into a small dark space with a rope hanging down, holding a wooden box.

  “It’s used for getting the food up from the kitchen to the dining room but two of us can fit inside it with a squash. You can feel the walls as you go up. They’re very rough. If I’ve been good, I can ride up and down, like a pile of dishes,” she giggled. “I haven’t been very good lately. Once, when I opened the door, a mouse flew out. You should have heard my mother scream!”

  “Who is in today?” Sophie asked.

  “Only Nana and one of the visitors in the Lounge. Mum’s shopping, so we can do what we want for a bit.”

  “Let’s slide down the banisters, then,” suggested Sophie.

  They scampered up the stairs to the top of the house. It seemed a very long way to Ellen. The banisters twisted round and round and they went higher and higher. She had to stop half way because she was puffing and so was Sophie. Margaret was used to it and kept right on leaning over the rails to urge them on. As they climbed, the rails seemed to become more rickety and narrower. The carpet ceased and their feet echoed on the bare steps. At last they came to the top landing, with a corridor leading to the right and a door at the end. Margaret pulled it open.

  “Come and have a look while there’s no one in,” she said.

  The room was long and narrow, with two turret-like windows letting in the light. Beds lined both sides, heaped with clothes and suitcases. Tangled piles of shoes were littered under the single iron bedsteads. The room smelled strange, rather musty and there were damp patches under the windows.

  “This room is usually empty and I play here, but we’re full just now,” Margaret explained to Ellen. She pushed back the green, dotted curtains and shoved the window open. An old chest stood underneath. The three girls climbed up and hung out of the window.

  “You can see for miles!” Ellen exclaimed.

  “When I’m up here, I pretend that I’m in the crow’s nest on a pirate ship or on the ramparts of a castle. Mum says that it is a pity there are no windows on the other side because we could see what’s happening in the town and see the mountains.”

  She latched the window and the girls jumped down from the chest. Margaret led the way out, leaned over the banister rail and turned to Ellen with a wicked grin.

  “See if you can spit right down to the bottom. We’ll check as we go down.”

  “Do you remember the last time we did that?” Sophie giggled, “An old lady looked over the banisters just as you spat, and you hit her hat!”

  “We had to hide until all the fuss died down. Mum would have given me such a spanking if she knew, but no one found out. Lucky the lady was wearing a hat and that it was raining outside. She thought the skylight was leaking.”

  “You go first.”

  Checking to be sure that no other unwary heads were peering over, the three girls took turns spitting and watching the glittering drops falling into the blackness below. Ellen could see hers splashing off the rail a couple of floors below, but the others were much more practised and she could not see where theirs landed.

  Margaret tucked her skirt into the elastic of her knickers and threw her leg over the banister rail. “I’ll slide down first. Sophie next because she’s done this before and she’s soft to land on if you go too fast and can’t stop! Mind the turns on the first and second floors, there’s an iron bar you have to lift your leg over. If you hit it, it really hurts.”

  She let go her hold and whizzed off, the rail shaking with the speed of her passing. Sophie waited until she had turned the first corner then she climbed up too.

  “Wait till I’ve passed the first bend,” she said. “These top rails shake like mad and I don’t know what would happen if two of us were on them at the same time. See you at the bottom.”

  She waved and was gone. Ellen watched her until she turned round the bend then she gingerly threw her leg over and gripped hard. Below her dangling shoe she could see dimly the end of the stairs in the front hall but it was ever so far down. Her heart started to pound but she knew she could not stop. Margaret and Sophie would think she was such a coward and she couldn’t have that! She loosed her hold and went down fast, the wind whistling past her ears. She forgot to slow for the bend and hit it hard with the back of her right leg. It hurt! Tears filled her eyes but she was going too fast to stop and her trousers were just right for sliding. She whizzed down the next stretch but she looked over her shoulder this time and gripped tight as she swung into the bend. Made it!

  “Remember the bar at the next bend!” Margaret called up to her. She remembered all right. The turn had hurt enough, what would it be like to hit a bar? She didn’t want to find out. So she went very slowly, gripping all the time and was able to stop and lift her leg before the bar. The palms of her hands were getting slippery with heat and effort but she was almost down. She shook the tears from her eyes and swung into the next stretch with much more confidence but a great thankfulness that it was almost over. Then she saw the newel post and stopped with a flourish.

  “What took you so long?” Margaret asked.

  “My trousers wouldn’t slide properly,” she lied.

  Margaret looked at them. “Did you know you’ve got wax on your bottom? Mum must have polished. I didn’t know that. It should have made you go faster though.”

  Ellen peered round trying to see her bottom. “Will it come off?” she asked anxiously, her mum was always going on at her about the state of her clothes.

  “Yes, if you scrub hard enough and use hot enough water in the copper.”

  “What’s a copper?”

  Margaret stared at her. “Where you wash your clothes, silly, don’t you know anything?”

  “We use a washing machine.”

  “What’s one of them?”

  “You put the dirty clothes in with some soap powder, switch it on and leave it. When you come back, the clothes are clean.” She could see the disbelief in their eyes. “It true! I’m not lying.”

  “If it is true, my mum would love one, better than struggling to the laundry with all the sheets. Where do you get one?”

  “You buy them in the shops.”

  Sophie suddenly gave Margaret a nudge. “Her shops are different, remember, she’s from NOW.”

  “Oh yes, of course, I forgot. Pity. Mum would be so pleased. Never mind. Come and see the doll that one of the visitors bought for me.”

  It was a small fair-haired doll, dressed as a bride with a lovely white net veil and a bunch of flowers. The gi
rls played at weddings for a little while, with a battered teddy for the groom. When they got tired of this they watched the feet passing the dusty basement windows, trying to guess who would be next and seeing if they could look up the women’s skirts.

  Then Margaret asked her grandmother if she would see them over the road so they could play in the paddling pool. Margaret had a small sailing boat that one of her uncles had given her and a cane with a hook on the end of it, to push it about. The girls took off their shoes and socks and Ellen rolled her trousers up to the knee. They sailed the boat, trying to get it from one end to the other. They looked enviously at some of the other children, who were playing with a clockwork steamer that chugged happily the full length of the pool. The girls were running after their boat, jumping the corners, when Margaret slipped and sat down in the water with a loud splash. She sat up dripping and laughing at the same time. Sophie and Ellen grabbed her hands and hauled her out.

  “Mum will kill me if she sees me like this. She always thinks I’m going to get a cold or flu. I’d better go home and get dried off before she gets home.”

  “We’d better go back too,” Sophie said, “see you tomorrow!”

  “Can you come too?” Margaret asked Ellen. “I like you, you didn’t scream when you hit yourself on the banisters. Some of the girls I know would have wailed.”

  So she had known, after all. Ellen felt suddenly proud and happy to have made another friend. “I don’t know if I will be able to but if I possibly can, I will!”

  “Try then. Bye!”

  A kind lady saw Margaret across the road and Sophie and Ellen caught the tram. In next to no time, they found themselves back in the museum.

  “I really enjoyed that!” Ellen said, “Where to next?”

  “Somewhere where we can sit down and get something to eat! Mrs. Kinnish makes the best bonnag. I usually stay for tea at Margaret’s and she always has Jacobs Cream Crackers with butter and Rushen Abbey jam but bonnag is even better.”

  Ellen’s mouth began to water and she suddenly felt very hungry indeed. “I’m starving. Let’s go,” she said.

  Chapter Seven: A blind dog called Rory.

  Voices were murmuring as the girls turned the corner.

  “Who is that?” Ellen asked.

  “The old people. Come and meet them,” Sophie said as she led the way into a white walled room with a large hearth and a flickering fire. With a shock, Ellen recognized the place but there was usually a television screen in the fireplace and a row of telephones on the walls. A group of elderly men and women were sitting on long benches beside the fire, chatting together. One of the women was pouring tea into large cups and handing them to the others. They all turned round as the girls entered.

  “Fastyr mie,” Sophie greeted them.

  “Fastyr mie, Sophie.”

  Ellen grasped at her manners and the little bit of Manx she remembered and murmured “Fastyr mie” too.

  The group obviously knew from her accent that she only really spoke English and swapped immediately into that tongue, except for one old man who looked bewildered, until one of the others translated for him.

  “Who is this?” asked the lady with the teapot.

  “This is my friend, Ellen; she’s visiting for the evening.”

  “Hello, Ellen, welcome. Would you like some tea?”

  “Yes please.”

  “I’ve been telling Ellen about your wonderful bonnag, Mrs. Kinnish,” Sophie said with a cheeky smile.

  “So I suppose you want her to try some then?” Mrs. Kinnish grinned and all the others laughed.

  In a very short time, the girls were sitting on the floor in front of the fire, sipping hot sweet tea and nibbling large chunks of fruity bonnag. The people were all talking together, swapping easily between Manx and English. The smoke from the old men’s pipes swirled over their heads. The talk seemed to be about farming and the price of cattle, as far as Ellen could tell. Some words seemed to have no English equivalent so she was guessing. It was the first time she had every really heard her native language in a proper conversation, rather than in a class at school. Although some of the words were harsh, they had a rhythm of their own and she found that she liked it. She decided that she would listen to Mrs. Clucas more carefully when she went back to class.

  There was a lull in the conversation and Sophie jumped into the pause. “Would you tell us one of your stories, please, Mr. Shimmin?”

  Everyone laughed. “She wasn’t long in asking, was she Bob?” Mrs. Kinnish said and ruffled Sophie’s hair.

  “We know you come for Bob’s stories and my cake!”

  Sophie had the grace to blush and they all laughed again.

  “Which story would you like then?” asked the old man with the grey waistcoat, putting down his long pipe.

  “Ellen’s never heard any of them, but I love the one about Juan and his dog.”

  “Well then, there is remembrance at me,” he started. “Rory was a black and white sheepdog who was born on the farm. He was the eldest of seven born to his mother Minty, who was a great girl with the sheep. She was my favourite of all the dogs. Rory inherited his mother’s skill and we thought at first he would be as good as her. So it was a terrible shock when one day, as he walked out of the byre, he walked straight into the wall. In the night, he’d hurt something in his neck and he’d gone blind. He did not know what had happened to him so he just sat there looking bewildered.

  When I whistled, he ran towards me as usual, but he did not stop in time and he ran right into my legs. My wife came out of the house and we both had a look at him. There were very few vets in those days and we were short of money, so people treated their animals with a lot of home made remedies.

  ‘Leave him be for a while,’ said my wife, ‘maybe whatever it is will go away since it came on so sudden. We’ll see what he’s like this evening.’

  My son, Juan came out then, ready for school. He was about ten. Rory was his pal. They were always together whenever they could. ‘What’s the matter with Rory?’ he asked.

  ‘He can’t see,’ said my wife.

  Juan dropped to his knees and looked into Rory’s sad brown eyes. ‘What happened, boy?’ he asked and Rory, hearing his voice, turned his head and licked his hand.

  ‘Come on, son,’ I said, ‘time for you to be off to school or you’ll be late.’ He had a long walk each day over the fields to the little schoolhouse in the village.

  ‘What will happen to Rory?’

  ‘Nothing,’ my wife said, ‘he’ll stay with me and I’ll look after him. Maybe he’ll be all right by the time you are home.’

  She kept her hand on Rory’s collar as I whistled the other dogs and went off to work. Juan went reluctantly, I saw him looking over his shoulder at Rory until the bend in the road hid him from sight. Rory stayed with my wife in the warm kitchen, but, when we came home, he was no better. My wife said that he had bumped into the kitchen furniture and had started to walk very slowly with his nose stretched out to sniff what was in front of him. Before he had always run everywhere fast and bounced around.

  Juan stayed in after tea, instead of going out to meet his pals and sat in a corner with Rory’s head on his knee. When he had gone up to his bed in the loft, my wife asked, ‘What are we going to do?’

  ‘I don’t like seeing the dog in misery and if he’s like this, he’s no help on the farm.’

  ‘Do you think he’ll get better if we leave him?’

  ‘I doubt it. He seems worse, not better.’ She stroked the dog that was lying beside the fire and looking into the flames with unseeing eyes. ‘Best do it quickly then, while the lad’s asleep.’

  I nodded and took down my gun.

  ‘No, Dadda, no!’ Juan tumbled down the stairs from the loft. He had obviously been listening to every word we said. He grabbed hold of the dog and held him in his arms. ‘You can’t do that to him, not to Rory!’ For all he thought he had grown up, tears were running down his cheeks.

  ‘I don
’t want to do it, son, you know that. Rory’s a young dog but look at him. He’s miserable. It isn’t fair to keep a creature in misery.’

  ‘He’s only blind. He’s not in pain or sick. He just isn’t used to it yet. Look at Mr. Kermode. He’s blind but no one has shot him and he gets about all right.’

  For all the seriousness of the moment, my wife and I could not help smiling. Mr. Kermode was a feisty old man in spite of his blindness.

  ‘Please, Dadda, let him live, I’ll look after him. I will really!’

  I looked at my wife and saw the same thought spring to her eyes. Juan was a good boy but he was lazy. He was always off playing with his pals, rather than doing his homework or helping his mother as he was supposed to do.

  ‘The dog is useless as he is,’ I said slowly. ‘He will have to be fed and cared for. I cannot afford to feed an animal who is no help to me.’

  ‘I’ll earn his keep!’ Juan cried, patting the dark head on his knee.

  ‘How will you do that?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ll work. I’ll get a job. I’ll do anything!’

  ‘You’ll do your homework and all your chores after school. No running off before you’re finished?’

  ‘Yes. And I’ll go and help Mr. Craine. He’ll give me money to work for him, I know he will.’

  I put my gun back on the shelf. ‘I’ll settle for the homework and the chores. But you have to look after the dog, yourself. No getting your mother to do it for you. Is it a bargain then?’

  I put out my hand and he shook it. Later I found out that it was the best bargain that I have ever made. Juan kept his side faithfully. When his friends came round to find out what had happened to him, he sent them away. For months, he did his schoolwork and his farm work without an argument. In fact the teacher was very pleased with him and he told my wife that he was doing well and if he kept it up, he would be able to get a good job when he left. Juan used to take Rory for walks on the end of a long rope, so he was able to stop him if he was heading for a wall or a tree. Gradually the dog got used to his blindness, because he learned to run up to something and then stop short before he got there, as if he could smell it was there. We got used to having him around and we looked for him before we walked round the house. He was one of the family. He’d sit next to Juan with his paws on the lad’s shoulder and gaze longingly into his eyes as if he was willing himself to be able to see the beloved face.