Behind the Scenes at the Museum

by Kate Atkinson

  I think she’s coping very well actually, especially with the stocking.

  One of her thick, wrinkled sixty deniers lies across the bottom of George and Bunty’s eiderdown, looking faintly obscene in the dim winter dawn-light and certainly untouched by the hand of any North Pole elf. I know Father Christmas hasn’t put it there because he doesn’t exist. Gillian disabused me of this possibility last year, debunking the Tooth Fairy at the same time for good measure. What an iconoclast she was.

  The bed gives off an unsettling odour composed of both Bunty’s sickly-sweet face powder smell and George’s tobacco-and-fish smell and I tentatively nudge Patricia and say, ‘There’s a Christmas stocking.’

  ‘I know,’ she says flatly and I realize that it is she, rather than Nell, who has been playing Santa Claus. Good old Patricia. It must have been doubly difficult for her to undertake this role, for although she’s thirteen years old and arguably the most grown-up member of the family, it is Patricia more than anyone who mourns the way magic has drained from our world. No Father Christmas, no Tooth Fairy, no Fairy Godmother – no fairies at all. Our childhood is over, yet we’re still waiting for it to begin. I was lying next to Patricia’s stiff little body last night and know how desperately she was listening for the clatter of unshod hooves on the roof and the jingle of approaching sleigh-bells.

  My stocking for Christmas 1959 contains (in reverse order from the toe upwards) – a sixpence, a walnut, an orange, a pack of Happy Family playing cards, a bar of Fry’s Peppermint Cream and a cheap, rather pink, doll wearing a knitted vest and knickers. I’ve had better.

  We lie back on the parental pillows and share the chocolate while we play a rather desultory game of Happy Families. The irony is not lost on us as we survey the families of Mr Bun the Baker and Mr Haddock the Fishmonger, all considerably more complete than that of Mr Lennox the Pet Shopkeeper.

  Eventually we go up to Nell’s room and kiss her on her leathery cheek. A faint whiff of urine rises up from her sheets. She’s wearing an enormous pale-pink bedjacket that dwarfs her. The hands poking out from the ends of the sleeves have purple veins that stand out like wires. She looks at us both warily through rheumy eyes.

  ‘Merry Christmas, Grandma.’

  ‘Merry Christmas, Patricia.’

  ‘Merry Christmas, Grandma.’

  ‘Merry Christmas, Ruby.’

  ‘Merry Christmas one and all!’ The tinkling cry goes around the house, like glass bells, as the household ghosts feebly carol and wassail and raise a glass to Christmas.

  We make an effort. I switch on the Christmas tree lights and Nell puts an apron on. Patricia makes a brave attempt to clean out the grate and lay a new fire. But when she tries to set a match to it the fire peters out as soon as it’s burnt up all the kindling. She hauls through the electric fire from Nell’s bedroom and we huddle round the one element that gives off the unpleasant acrid smell of burnt hair. We light the candles of the Angel Chimes so that at least we have some kind of flame to light the festivities.

  All three of us look doubtfully at the pile of presents under the tree. ‘May as well open them,’ Patricia says at last, shrugging her shoulders in that way she has of suggesting she couldn’t care less about anything, although of course, she cares terribly. About everything.

  I have several presents. George and Bunty have given me a Girl annual, a white fur muff (new, not ex-Gillian), a pair of roller skates, a Terry’s Chocolate Orange and some pretend jewellery. I think these are surprisingly good presents. Nell has given me a tin of Yardley’s Freesia talcum powder and Patricia has given me a brand-new copy of The Railway Children, bought from her pocket-money. Meanwhile, from beyond the grave, Gillian has sent me a brown Bri-nylon dog, with a purple ribbon round its fat neck, holding a green and purple bottle of April Violets cologne between its paws. ‘That’s disgusting,’ Patricia says, with no reverence for Gillian’s newly-dead condition – but then, although we believed she was dead last night, it’s almost impossible to believe that she’s still dead this morning. ‘Disgusting,’ I agree and stuff a whole segment of Chocolate Orange into my mouth.

  Patricia and Nell open their presents but the remainder are left undisturbed under the tree, like offerings to the dead. I think Patricia and I should share Gillian’s presents but don’t say so because I know this isn’t the right attitude.

  Some time later Patricia and I go looking for Nell and find her in the kitchen trying to do some very odd things to the uncooked turkey. Patricia takes the apron from her and ties it authoritatively round her own waist, telling me to take Nell away and play with her. Sensibly, Patricia does not attempt to cook the turkey, but instead makes a commendable attempt at mashed potatoes, baked beans and corned beef although only after all three of us have lacerated ourselves opening the corned-beef tin. Afterwards we have mince pies and Ambrosia Creamed Rice Pudding. We eat with our plates on our knees in front of the television and enjoy our Christmas dinner more than seems appropriate after the demise of a close relative. Nell recklessly drinks two glasses of rum and then Patricia and I pull the entire box of crackers between us while our grandmother sleeps in the armchair and I take the opportunity to relay to Patricia some facts about the Spirit World, as gleaned during my Dewsbury exile. Patricia is uncommonly taken with the idea of animal afterlife, but less so with the idea of Gillian wandering out there for ever and learning how to get rid of scratches on coffee-tables.

  By Boxing Day we have settled into a kind of routine based loosely on television, sleep and mince pies. Patricia has even learnt how to make a pretty good fire. We’re grateful to Bunty for keeping her cupboards so well stocked with tinned food. Things look up a lot when we discover the Boxing Day trifle lurking at the back of the fridge, although Patricia is a little queasy about it as she says she distinctly remembers that Bunty hadn’t even begun to make it when we left for the pantomime. Who made the trifle? Ghostly cooks schooled in syllabub, flummery, and frumenty? Handy elves? Who knows. We put aside our qualms and devour it at a single sitting and feel sick all night.

  We rapidly shed our former lives of orderly routine and good habits and I expect all three of us would have soon reverted to a pretty savage state if Bunty and George hadn’t suddenly appeared on New Year’s Eve in a flurry of snowflakes. They had the decency to ring the front door bell and look a little shamefaced, aware that they had somewhat abrogated parental responsibility. Gillian wasn’t with them, of course.

  Where had they been? Patricia and I talked about this quite a lot. Quite a lot by our standards anyway. From what we could gather they had decamped to Uncle Clifford and Auntie Gladys (thus, no doubt ruining Christmas for Adrian). Heaven knows why, perhaps they wanted to be looked after or perhaps (less likely) they wanted to protect us from the aftermath of the tragedy. They had the funeral and everything without us and although neither Patricia nor myself were sorry to have missed this particular social occasion, it did leave us for a long time afterwards – perhaps for ever – with the feeling that Gillian was, if not exactly alive then not exactly dead either.

  They probably had to open a whole new zone in the Spirit World, just for Gillian. For several weeks afterwards, Patricia and I planned a trip to the Church of the Spirit in Dewsbury in the hope of receiving a comforting message from Gillian. Your sister says not to worry about her, that sort of thing. Knowing Gillian, she would have kept silent just to spite us (she would be furious at having missed Christmas). These plans faded abruptly after The Great Pet Shop Fire when the Spirit World received such a large new intake that it was easier to forget about the world of the Spirit altogether than to dwell on all those Spirit Pets wandering the astral plane, mewing and whimpering.

  Bunty wasn’t the full shilling for a while. It was surprising just how much Gillian’s death had affected her. I used to see her through her open bedroom door, lying on her back on the bed emitting little yelps, her hands clawing the eiderdown. Sometimes she’d moan, ‘My baby, my baby’s gone,’ as if she’d only ha
d one baby, which wasn’t very nice for me and Patricia. At other times, she’d set up a banshee wail of ‘Gilliaaaaaan,’ which should have been enough to recall Gillian from the region of the undead, yet it didn’t. Sometimes you could hear Bunty crying to the night, ‘My Gillian, my pearl,’ which I thought was very odd, because I’d never heard her call her that when she was alive. And anyway, surely it’s me that’s the jewel of the family?

  She got better after a while. So did the Pets. Patricia and I had forgotten about them for a couple of days and it was only when the dogs started howling in the middle of the night that we realized they hadn’t been fed. Thankfully, none of them had starved to death although the knowledge of our neglect hung heavily on our consciences, particularly Patricia’s, needless to say. It is hard to look into the eyes of starving puppies and kittens, knowing it’s your fault, and not feel that you have been marked down for ever. The Parrot, in the short time left to him, never forgave us. The Great Pet Shop Fire expunged many things (although mostly Pets) but not the guilt.

  It is the eve of a new and different decade, the last day of 1959. Our newly-returned parents are now fast asleep in their room downstairs and it is three o’clock in the morning on my Snow White alarm clock. I creep down to the living-room, awake, not sleep-walking. I would rather not be in my bedroom – the sight of Gillian’s empty bed makes me nervous. Dead or not, she’s still there – if I stare hard enough at her bed I can see the peach candlewick bedspread rising and falling with her invisible breath.

  The mantelpiece clock, always running slow, chimes One, two, three. The curtains in the living-room have been left open and outside I can see the snow falling silently. There are great flakes, like goose feathers, and small, curled ones like swansdown and great flurries as if a flock of stormy petrels had shaken their feathers out. As I watch, the sky fills with clouds of snow feathers from every kind of bird there ever was and even some that only exist in the imagination, like the bluebirds that fly over the rainbow. Most of the Christmas tree needles are on the floor by now but I switch on the tree lights anyway. Then I start spinning the glass balls on the tree. If I work very hard at it I can get them all spinning at the same time. Sometimes they bang together and dislodge glitter which falls in a shower of fairy dust all over me.

  Footnote (vi) – The Sunday School Outing

  THE SUNDAY SCHOOL OUTING TO SCARBOROUGH WAS going to be a splendid affair. Mrs Mildred Reeves, who was in charge of St Denys’ Sunday School and its annual outings, was marshalling her helpers at the railway station, well ahead of time. Her assistant teacher, Miss Adina Terry, was already waiting at the ticket barrier with Lolly Paton, the friend she had brought along with her for the day. The eager new curate Mr Dobbs was accompanied by his fiancée, Miss Fanshawe, and together they were standing guard over the large wicker hamper which contained the children’s lunch. Nearly all the parents had contributed to the picnic, although unfortunately they had nearly all furnished sweetmeats so that Mrs Reeves and Miss Fanshawe had been making sandwiches (fishpaste and egg) since the early hours.

  ‘What a glorious day!’ Miss Terry’s friend, Lolly Paton, exclaimed, throwing her arms wide and laughing so that the curate flushed slightly and Mrs Reeves pressed her lips together in disapproval. But Lolly Paton was right, it was a glorious day, the last hot Saturday of July, and even now at half-past nine in the morning there was no doubt that the great arc of blue beyond the girders and glass of the station canopy was in place for the rest of the day. Not only would the weather remain ‘glorious’ in contrast to the previous three years of washed-out seaside expeditions, but the tide would, for once, be in exactly the right place – that is, as far out as possible, and the children would be able to eat their picnic, paddle their feet and play their games, without fear of being swept away by the sea.

  Mrs Reeves had a piece of paper in her handbag on which she had written down a list of songs to sing on the train and a list of games to play on the beach – three-legged races, team rounders, human croquet and beach cricket. Mrs Reeves was glad of the male presence of Mr Dobbs, not only to help with the rules of cricket which were only hazily sketched in Mrs Reeves’ mind, but also as an influence on the boisterous little boys in the party, some of whom in Mrs Reeves’ opinion did not come from well-disciplined homes. But then, Mrs Reeves reminded herself, was it not part of her Christian duty to foster such qualities in these poor, and rather common, children? ‘Suffer the little children,’ she murmured to herself but her words were smothered by the arrival of the King’s Cross to Aberdeen Express train and Miss Fanshawe had to lay a detaining hand on Mr Dobbs’ arm because he looked as if he was about to jump aboard.

  Miss Terry was not quite as well-organized as Mrs Reeves; she had not made any lists at all, but she had brought some stories to read to the children, not the usual improving Bible tales she recounted rather wearily Sunday after Sunday, but a copy of a brand-new book, Swallows and Amazons, which her younger brother assured her was a ‘jolly good adventure’. Although, as it turned out, the book would never be opened because instead Lolly Paton gave an animated, impromptu rendering of Peter Pan in which she cast all the children as Lost Boys and even managed to persuade the rather stiff Mr Dobbs to enact a lively Captain Hook, although Mrs Reeves flatly refused to play the crocodile and Miss Fanshawe sulked over the bottles of lemonade.

  ‘I shall go and buy the tickets,’ Mrs Reeves announced. ‘There’s no point in waiting until all the children are here, for there are bound to be latecomers and it will hardly do to miss the train.’

  ‘Especially when we have had to arrive so very early,’ Miss Terry said gravely and Lolly Paton pinched her in the waist so that they both had to stare hard at the huge florid station clock to stop themselves from laughing. An over-punctual child was already approaching the rendezvous, spotless in white from head to toe and her hair tied up in a baroque confection of ribbons.

  Meanwhile, back in the Lowther Street household, the children hadn’t even left the house, detained both by their natural tardiness and their mother, who had only recently realized that she’d forgotten to provide anything for the picnic and that Mrs Reeves had especially asked for everything to be delivered to the church hall the previous evening. In haste, Nell had thrown a batch of scones in the oven before it even reached the right temperature and refused to let Babs, Clifford and Bunty leave the house before the scones were done. Betty was laid up in bed, the last one of the family to succumb to a bout of whooping-cough that had driven Nell almost out of her wits. Ted was still deemed too young for Sunday School outings.

  ‘We’ll just go without – there’ll be plenty of stuff there,’ Clifford said, scuffing his toe impatiently against the kitchen doorpost.

  ‘That’s not the point,’ Nell said, in a fit of irritation. ‘What would they think?’ and she pushed her hair back from her forehead as if she would have liked to erase her mind.

  ‘What would who think?’ Bunty asked, sitting on the kitchen linoleum, fumbling with the buttons on the straps of her shoes and biting her lip in concentration.

  ‘Mrs Reeves – the people at your Sunday School, whoever—’ Nell broke off to grab Ted who was stuffing something in his mouth and she had to wrestle with him to extricate a stone. Babs ran a hasty comb through her hair. ‘Can we please just go!’ she said anxiously. There were no ribbons for Babs and Bunty, their pudding-bowl haircuts hung lankly over their ears. Nor were there any white dresses. Babs was in an unbecoming sage-green smock and Bunty’s best frock was a drop-waisted slub brown. ‘The train goes at five past ten,’ Babs said, ‘and it takes a good half-hour to walk to the station—’

  ‘Specially with Bunty in tow,’ Clifford said glumly. Babs began to wail, ‘And Mrs Reeves asked us to be there by twenty to ten—’

  ‘It’s twenty-five to now,’ Clifford murmured, staring blankly into the back yard with the air of a condemned man who had begun to accept his fate.

  ‘Be quiet, the pair of you!’ Nell snapped. ‘The scon
es will be out in a minute, you – Clifford, Babs, what’s-your-name – get a cloth to put them in.’ Babs pulled a green-and-white check tea-towel from a drawer and tried not to cry.

  Nell took the baking tray out of the oven and tipped the pale scones onto the tea-towel. ‘They needed to be in longer,’ she said crossly.

  ‘No, no – we’ve got to go,’ Babs shouted, unable to squeeze her tears back any longer, and she picked up the cloth, knotting the corners together as she went and then ran out of the door after Clifford, who already had a head start on her. Bunty started to cry because she still hadn’t got one of her shoes done up. Nell bent down and gave her a sharp slap on her calf before fastening up the shoe and Bunty hurtled out of the house after the other two.

  ‘Come on!’ Babs screamed to her from the front gate, reaching out a hand that barely made contact with Bunty’s fingers before they were up and running, flying up Lowther Street and along Clarence Street. Bunty got a terrible stitch in her side as they clambered over the footbridge across the railway and moaned and hobbled down Grosvenor Terrace into Bootham, Babs screaming at her all the time to keep up. They shot over the Ouse on Scarborough Bridge, a train keeping them company up above. ‘That’s probably our train,’ Babs gasped, almost falling down the metal steps and onto Leeman Road. Babs ran on after Clifford, but Bunty had to stop to get her breath and then limped feebly onto Station Road and just glimpsed Babs’ green frock disappearing within the station portals.

  Bunty could feel her thick petticoat sticking to her skin underneath the dress and the hot tears that were pricking her eyes uncomfortably. She was terrified out of her wits at the idea of being left behind and trotted gamely across the station concourse up to the ticket barrier, where the ticket collector stopped her with an imperiously raised hand and eyebrow. The station master had already blown his whistle, and the train, clearly visible on the platform beyond the barrier, had started to move, very slowly, and Bunty stared at it with tragic eyes. Then she spied Clifford, running for his life, and Bunty put her hand over her mouth and said, ‘Oh,’ as she watched her brother sprinting along the platform and yanking open one of the carriage doors before leaping on board and hauling Babs after him – Babs who was screaming Bunty’s name, but whose foot was already on the step, and as she disappeared into the carriage she let go the bundle she was carrying and the green-and-white check tea-towel went fluttering like an escaped flag and its clutch of scones went rolling all over the platform and under the wheels of the train. An angry guard slammed the door shut as the train passed him, gathering speed all the while. Bunty glimpsed Mrs Reeves’ bemused face through one of the windows and wondered if she would pull the communication cord when she realized that Bunty had been left behind.