Behind the Scenes at the Museum

by Kate Atkinson

  ‘’Appen she did,’ Lucy-Vida says phlegmatically. She’s known Patricia far too long to be scared by her.

  ‘My, my,’ Auntie Doreen says, without a trace of sarcasm. She turns her head round so she can see Patricia. ‘What a glorious imagination you have, Patricia,’ and Patricia tries hard to look as if she isn’t pleased, but I can tell she is because, sitting next to her, I can feel her glowing pink with heat.

  Unerringly, we make our way to the Royal Crescent and, once George has carried the bags up the three flights of stairs to our apartment, he stays only long enough for a cup of tea (all the makings of which we have brought with us in a cardboard box) before saying, ‘Right, I’d better get back to the Shop then,’ and leaving us all abruptly in the company of a total stranger.

  ‘Well,’ says Auntie Doreen, the one word containing more vowel sounds than we knew existed, ‘we’d better get unpacked, girls, so we had.’ Patricia’s curiosity overcomes her usual social reticence. ‘Where do you come from, Auntie Doreen?’ and Auntie Doreen gives us the benefit of her big swooping, choky laugh and says, ‘Why Belfast, Patricia, Belfast.’ Patricia disappears with the tea things so Lucy-Vida and I have to look to Gillian for geographical enlightenment. ‘It’s the capital of Wales,’ she says authoritatively.

  We are all very taken with the flat; it is completely free of the usual domestic clutter and has just enough of everything – sheets, blankets, pots, cutlery – with the addition of a token ornament or two. The wallpaper is clean and flowery and has not been impregnated with the reek of family dramas and the autumn-leaves carpet and orange curtains of the lounge speak only of holiday good-humour. There is a slight drawback in that there are only two bedrooms and Auntie Doreen gets one of them, leaving we four girls with two double beds in one room. It’s least bothersome to let Patricia have one of the beds to herself and for the three of us to squash into the other. To compensate for this crush (which also includes Panda, Teddy, Denise and Lucy-Vida’s unclassifiable ‘Mandy-Sue’ which looks like a black-and-white cat that has suffered at the hands of an incompetent taxidermist) our bedroom has a staggeringly good view, over the Crescent Gardens below, across the Prom, over the Pavilion, and then on, for ever and ever, over a rolling, unbounded North Sea – the edge of the world as we know it.

  It takes a couple of days for Auntie Doreen to win Patricia over. Indeed, to begin with, Patricia is downright hostile and even runs away for several hours and is eventually found down on the beach helping the donkey-man lead the donkeys up and down. The donkey-man is quite pleased with himself for acquiring an unpaid assistant, unaware that she is lulling him into a false sense of security in order to carry out her grand plan of liberating all the donkeys. She is brought home in tears (unusually) and cannot be mollified even though Auntie Doreen does not resort to the physical abuse with which Bunty normally placates us. The following day, when we’re taking a stroll along the Prom, Patricia falls off it and although it’s cleverly disguised as an accident, I think, in retrospect, that this was actually a spontaneous suicide attempt.

  She does no more than sprain a wrist and is taken home to be expertly bandaged and slinged by Auntie Doreen. ‘I was a nurse during the war,’ she smiles, when complimented on her bandaging. This puts her up several notches in our estimation – we all think a nurse is an excellent thing to be, although none of us is planning to be one ourselves when we grow up. Patricia still has an overwhelming desire to be a vet and save every animal in the world from death; Lucy-Vida is going to be a chorus-girl – she can do breathtaking high kicks and splits with her long legs, actions which reveal grubby underwear that strikes horror in the breasts of Bunty and Auntie Babs. I am going to be an actress when I grow up (‘You already are one, Ruby,’ Bunty says), and Gillian is simply going to be famous and doesn’t care how she achieves it. Unlike Bunty, Auntie Doreen listens to these girlish aspirations with real interest.

  Patricia capitulates, impressed by the quality of tender care afforded to her injury by Auntie Doreen – Does it hurt when I do that, Patricia? Oh, I am sorry . . . You’re a brave girl, Patricia, so you are . . . The contrast with Bunty is unavoidable. There are many other areas where a comparison with Bunty can only work in Auntie Doreen’s favour. Her cooking for example – with no fuss whatsoever, she produces big, hearty meals of the stew-and-dumpling variety, ‘Heavy food to weigh you down, Patricia, so you won’t run away,’ she laughs – and, astonishingly, Patricia laughs along with her! Nor does she have any qualms on the pudding front and dishes up apple and rhubarb pies from Botham’s or sticky custard slices – in fact anything we care to choose on our daily visits to the shops. (Auntie Babs, Auntie Gladys and Bunty – the invisible Greek chorus in our heads – throw their hands up in horror, exclaiming, ‘Shop-bought!’ but do we care? No, we don’t.) What’s more we have fish and chips for dinner nearly every single day as well as frequent trips to the Rock Shop and the candy-floss stalls and many, many ice-cream cornets, because, as Auntie Doreen says, adjusting her large, bouncing bosom, ‘We are on holiday, after all, so we are.’

  This is not to say she is generally lax or slovenly. Quite the contrary, there is order and harmony in everything she does and she is as calm and unflappable as the harbour-wall when confronted by the high-tides of Gillian’s emotions. She has a strange gift for persuading us into thinking that the mundane tasks of self-catering life – the washing of pots, the making of beds – is yet another occasion for orderly fun and games so that Gillian actually fights to get her hands on the carpet-sweeper before anyone else. ‘Ee our Gillian,’ Lucy-Vida marvels, ‘I didn’t know you ’ad it in you, kid.’ We have many things in us that we didn’t know about and under Auntie Doreen’s guidance they struggle to see the light of day. Even my sleepwalking seems to be in abeyance under Auntie Doreen’s watchful night-time care. (‘It’s because she doesn’t wake you up that you don’t know about it,’ Gillian says scornfully. Thank you, Gillian.)

  Auntie Doreen orchestrates games on the beach from which noone marches off in a huff; she organizes little pedestrian expeditions – up the 199 Steps to the Abbey, along the beach to the café at Sandsend – on which we sing things like ‘Ten Green Bottles’ and ‘One Man Went to Mow’. We make sandcastle after sandcastle, their little turrets proudly stuck with paper Union Jacks and rampant-red Scottish lions, and when we’ve had enough of the sand and sea we dawdle around the quaint streets of Whitby, admiring the funny street names, almost as funny as York street names – ‘Dark Entry Yard’, ‘Saltpanwell Steps’ and ‘Arguments Yard’ (George and Bunty should have lived there).

  Auntie Doreen knows more card games than I knew existed in the world (Patricia is overjoyed to learn there are so many different varieties of Patience) and on the rainy afternoons, of which there are several, she actually enjoys playing games with us, sitting on the carpet amongst us and passing round chocolate digestives and orange squash. She even manages to persuade Gillian not to cheat, something noone else has ever been able to do – although Gillian draws the line at not screaming when she loses. Patricia usually just hits her when she does this, but Auntie Doreen leads Gillian away to the bedroom and shuts the door on her and says ‘Now then, let the poor child get it out of her system.’

  Schooled by the week in Bridlington we have brought a lot of games with us and as well as the ubiquitous rounds of Snap we also play draughts, Ludo, Snakes and Ladders and endlessly exciting games of Buccaneer, on whose azure board, figured with compass-points and treasure-maps, our little wooden pirate ships plough the main, laden with little barrels of rum, small gold bars, tiny rubies (!), and pearls like bird-seed. We are much better at Buccaneer than we are at ‘Hunt the Mother’. But our favourite game of all is Astron, a thrilling game in which our little spaceships move on a celluloid grid that is scrolled across outer space. Our spaceships have to dodge hazards – showers of meteorites, asteroid belts, rogue comets and so on – and, before we can achieve our goal (the Heart of the Sun) we must negotiate one last, awful
menace – the huge, gaseous Rings of Saturn. The Rings of Saturn are Deadly, we know that because it says so on the Astron board and they’re always catching Auntie Doreen’s spaceship out. ‘Oh, there I go again!’ she says with a little scream as she explodes in a cloud of space dust. I think Patricia sometimes plays Astron in her sleep because I’ve heard her calling out, ‘Watch out for the Rings of Saturn, Ruby! – they’re Deadly!’

  For the first time in our lives we say our prayers before we go to bed. ‘Just a short one,’ Auntie Doreen says, ‘just so God knows you’re here,’ and, at the end, she makes us add a PS asking God to look after Mummy and Daddy. Auntie Doreen, perhaps because George has never described his family in very great detail to her (he can be very vague himself), is of the belief that Lucy-Vida is our sister. Nobody bothers to tell her that she’s actually our cousin as it would hardly make any difference and anyway we rather like having a fourth sister. ‘Four of us again,’ Patricia murmurs – rather mournfully – when setting the table for breakfast one morning. She has brought Little Women on holiday with her (as well as What Katy Did and Black Beauty – from which she reads aloud the more barbaric paragraphs so that we all cry, except for Gillian) and sometimes we play at being the March family – Patricia, naturally is Jo, Gillian is Amy (who else), Lucy-Vida is Meg (not very good casting) and I – much against my will – am forced to be meek and mild Beth. Auntie Doreen, however, makes a splendid ‘Marmee’.

  Auntie Doreen mentions Bunty quite a lot. She says things like, ‘I’m sure your mummy wouldn’t want you to do that, Gillian,’ and ‘I expect your mummy’s missing you, Patricia,’ although when we ask if she actually knows Bunty she laughs and splutters on her cigarette and says, ‘Goodness me, no!’

  Lucy-Vida asks Auntie Doreen if she’s got any children of her own and Auntie Doreen’s face turns very sad and she says, ‘No dear, I had a little girl but I lost her,’ and when Patricia says softly, ‘What was she called, Auntie Doreen?’ Auntie Doreen regards her with bleak eyes and shakes her head. ‘I don’t know.’ How odd not to know the name of your own child! Or perhaps not, as Bunty has to run through all our names before she comes to the right one and I’m always at the end of the list – Patricia, Gillian, P— Ruby, what’s your name? Perhaps if Bunty doesn’t come back we can have a new mother, Auntie Doreen for preference, a mother that will remember my name.

  George arrives on the Friday night and says we’ll be going home first thing in the morning. We have fish and chips for supper – we have already had them at dinnertime, down on the pier, and when Auntie Doreen says, ‘Well, I don’t know about you, children, but I’ll be quite happy not to see a chip for a while, so I will,’ we all agree heartily with her. Afterwards, we all of us play a raucous game of Pontoon until it’s well past bedtime. ‘Where are you going to sleep, Daddy?’ Patricia asks as she puts the cards back in their box. ‘Oh,’ George says, borrowing Bunty’s smile for a second, ‘I’ll just sleep here on the settee, Patricia.’ So that’s all right.

  I’m woken early next morning by a posse of screeching gulls outside the window and I wander into the lounge and ensconce myself behind the orange curtains at one of the big windows to have a last look at the sea – as blue and as sparkling as a sapphire. It’s the most wonderful morning and I can’t believe that today we’re not going to go down again and play on the glinting, newly-washed strip of sand that the tide is peeling away from. I’ve completely forgotten that George is here – there’s no sign of him on the settee – not even a blanket or a pillow to remind me – and it’s only when I hear his phlegm-fuelled smoker’s cough approaching that I remember him. I peek out from within my curtain-hide and see him, in candy-striped pyjamas, scratching his neck as he comes into the room. Then Auntie Doreen comes in, dressed in a shell-pink nylon slip, her blowsy, unsupported bosom wobbling like a blancmange within, and she puts her solid fleshy arms round George’s waist from behind so that her hands meet somewhere underneath his vest and he lets out a funny kind of groan. Auntie Doreen laughs and says ‘Ssshh,’ and George says, ‘God, Doreen,’ and shakes his head in a baffled, rather sad way. But then Auntie Doreen says, ‘Come on Georgie-Porgie, let’s get these kiddies up and breakfasted,’ and George sighs again and lets her lead him out of the room by his pyjama-cord, like a condemned man on a tumbril.

  We drop Auntie Doreen back in Leeds, after lengthy goodbyes and farewell hugs; even Patricia has damp eyes as we pull away. Auntie Doreen’s spirit lingers on in the form of rousing choruses of ‘One Man Went to Mow’ and a round robin version of ‘Ten Green Bottles’ and in no time at all the familiar bulk of York Minster beckons us on a rapidly approaching horizon. ‘Who’s looking after the Shop?’ Patricia asks (George has missed nearly all of Saturday trading), and George says, ‘I closed up for the day,’ and we’re flattered that he has put his family before Mammon.

  We barge into the Shop with our suitcases. ‘Shop!’ Gillian shouts, not expecting any response, and so stands open-mouthed with shock when she sees Bunty emerging from the back.

  ‘Mummy!’ we all gasp in amazement because it seems years since we’ve even thought about her. ‘Bunty,’ George says, and adds, somewhat unnecessarily, ‘you’re back.’ There’s an awkward silence which should have been filled with us all running towards Bunty and kissing her – or perhaps (a better version), Bunty running towards us – but we remain rooted by the Shop door until finally George says, ‘Well, I’ll put the kettle on, shall I?’ but Bunty says, ‘It’s all right, I’ll do it,’ and walks quickly away in the direction of the kitchen as if she’d just come back from a trip to the hairdresser’s rather than having run away from us for over a week.

  The smile on George’s face fades Cheshire-cat like, as he watches Bunty’s retreating back, and the moment she’s finally out of view he spins round and faces us all, a desperate look on his face, as if he can hear the guillotine blade being sharpened. ‘Listen,’ he whispers urgently, ‘you weren’t on holiday with Doreen – do you understand?’ We nod our heads, although we don’t really understand at all. ‘Who were we on holiday with?’ Patricia asks, intrigued. George stares at her, an expression of fixed madness on his face – you can actually see the workings of his brain etched on his retina. ‘Who?’ Patricia prompts insistently, to an accompaniment of the unnerving sound of a guillotine being raised. ‘Who, Daddy? Who?’

  Bunty’s muffled voice drifts from the kitchen. ‘By the way, who looked after the Shop all week? It was closed when I got back.’

  ‘What time was that?’ George shouts with a forced kind of nonchalance.

  ‘About half an hour ago.’

  George breathes a sigh of relief and shouts, ‘Walter’s mother – I told her to knock off early, she gets a bit tired in the afternoons.’ ‘Walter’s mother?’ Not surprisingly, Bunty doesn’t sound convinced. Walter’s mother is almost as batty as Nell. No doubt, with a little prompting from Walter (Walter owes George a favour), his mother can be convinced that she actually did mind the Shop all week.

  George bobs down so that he’s at eye-level with all of us except Patricia. ‘I was with you, in Whitby. I was looking after you all week, right?’

  ‘Right,’ we murmur in another round robin. Bunty comes through and tells us that the tea’s mashed.

  ‘Remember,’ George says to us, ‘no Doreen.’ He taps the side of his nose with his finger. ‘Mum’s the word.’ A wholly inappropriate phrase, given the circumstances.

  ‘Let’s have a treat for tea,’ Bunty suggests as we sit upstairs, rather stiffly, drinking our cups of tea.

  ‘Oh good,’ Gillian says. ‘What?’

  ‘Fish and chips, of course,’ Bunty says, beaming at us.

  I’m woken in the pitch-black of night by something scrabbling at the window. I lie rigid in my bed, wide-awake with horror, imagining a particularly ravenous vampire trying to get in. How long until dawn? A very long time, I discover, and I lie listening to the noises that an old house makes at night – the settling of ancient timbe
rs, the cracking of plaster and the tramp and clank of thousands of hob-nailed legionary sandals marching up and down the staircases. These are harmless noises compared to the thing trying to get in my window. When it’s quite light and the birds have started singing, I pluck up enough courage to peek through the curtain. It’s not a vampire at all, but the Parrot, sitting on the window-sill and looking very thin and bedraggled. It has the same expression of defeat on its face as George, as if it had spent the week looking for, and failing to find, South America.

  Things quickly return to normal for all of us, including the Parrot. As soon as George and Bunty have their first falling-out, Lucy-Vida, as if by magic, remembers that she is not actually our sister and escapes back to Auntie Eliza and Uncle Bill. The holiday rapidly takes on the quality of myth – faded and tantalizingly beyond recall – as if it had happened to children in a story rather than us. We enjoyed ourselves too much to want to remember. For a while we talked about Auntie Doreen amongst ourselves, but, by and by, she grew as unreal as Mary Poppins herself. Some months later Gillian had even come to believe that we had seen her flying, skimming along the West Pier and circling the green and red lights of the harbour mouth. So sweet did this memory seem to our benighted sister, that we never had the heart to disenchant her.

  Footnote (v) – Rain

  1958: TED PUT HIS MOTHER’S SUITCASE DOWN ON THE FLOOR of her room in the boarding-house and then lingered, running his finger along the mantelpiece and humming tunelessly. Nell couldn’t wait for Ted to go away so she could take off her corset and stockings and lie down on the bed. ‘Well, I’m going to unpack, Mother, I’ll see you down at the tea table?’ Ted said, hovering in the doorway, and Nell looked at him vaguely. What did he want exactly? Nell’s youngest child was nearly thirty, yet whenever she looked at him she could only see a little boy. Ted used to be her favourite but now she found him distracting, disturbing, he gave her the impression that she had something he wanted but she hadn’t the faintest idea what it might be. She shooed him away with her hands. ‘Right then, at the tea table, Ted.’