Behind the Scenes at the Museum

by Kate Atkinson

  But no, for the train whistled loudly, sending a flurry of pigeons from the rafters, and passed beyond the canopy and out into the blue morning. Bunty sobbed noisily as the train grew smaller and then curved away into nothing and a strange silence descended on the station, a silence full of wretched disappointment and yet at the same time oddly peaceful. It was broken by the heavy, clanging noise of something metallic being dropped and the ticket collector came out from his box and took Bunty’s hand, saying gruffly, ‘Shall we try and get you sorted out, young lady?’ because Bunty was standing not only in a pool of tears but in a puddle of something more embarrassing.

  It was quite some time before the station master could even get a name out of Bunty, who was gasping for breath in between convulsions of sobbing.

  Bunty was put in the dubious care of a young porter who took her home on a tram, leaving her on Huntington Road to walk the rest of the way home. Bunty felt as if she had been in the company of strangers for hours and was looking forward to sobbing out her misery into a familiar pair of arms. But when she walked into the kitchen it was to meet a disturbing sight – her mother appeared to be in the middle of making a rice pudding (grains of white rice had scattered like little pearls all over the table) but was clearly not quite herself for the big two-pint enamel dish she used for milk puddings and egg custards was full to overflowing – yet Nell kept on pouring from the big blue jug she was holding so that the milk poured over the edge of the dish and splashed onto the table before flowing over the edge, like a white milky waterfall.

  All the time this was happening, not only was Ted providing a wailing counterpoint upstairs but Nell was also talking to herself, sneering, biting kind of words that made her sound like a madwoman putting a curse on someone – although when Bunty listened she found that it was nothing more than an alphabetical recitation of the cake recipes in Nell’s Dyson’s Self-Help book – Afternoon Tea Scones, Almond Paste Cakes, Bachelor’s Buttons, Chocolate Sandwich, Coconut Rock Buns, Cream Cake, Feather Cake, Fluffy Cake, Genoa Cake. Bunty crept out of the kitchen and sat on the bench in the yard. She’d been quite wrung out of tears by now and she sat quietly in the sun trying not to think about what the Sunday School would be doing in Scarborough. All the while Betty’s sick cough hacked at her ears. When she looked over her shoulder, through the kitchen window, she could get a glimpse of Nell, grating nutmeg on top of the milk, not just the usual sprinkle, but the whole nutmeg – up and down, up and down on the grater and she only stopped when there was a dreadful bumping noise followed by screaming and Bunty supposed Ted had fallen downstairs again.

  The following Sunday, Mrs Reeves gathered her exuberant brood around her skirts and allowed them to chatter on for a full five minutes about their wonderful outing and when they had finished she looked at Bunty and said, ‘What a shame you missed our outing, Berenice. I hope it’s taught you a lesson about punctuality, you missed such a lot of fun and games,’ and then Mrs Reeves nodded at Adina Terry, who opened her big Children’s Illustrated Bible and, with a small sigh, said, ‘Today, children, we’re going to read the story of the Good Samaritan.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  1960

  Fire! Fire!

  WE HAVE VISITED GILLIAN. SHE IS TUCKED UP, NICE AS ninepence, under a neat blanket of green turf that’s like a card table. We do not play cards on it, not even a simple game of Snap. Bunty stuffs a bunch of jewel-bright anemones into a stone that has holes in it. It reminds me of the stone on Burton Stone Lane – a big, black boulder at what was once the city boundary where country folk left their wares when York was in the throes of the plague. Now our Gillian is as untouchable as a plague victim. We couldn’t touch her even if we wanted to, unless we clawed away the turf and dug deep down into the cold, sour soil of the cemetery. Which we’re not about to do, especially as we’re both dressed in our favourite outfits for the visit, me in my tartan taffeta and Patricia in a plaid woollen skirt that’s stretched over a stiff tulle-net petticoat in all the pastel shades that flying saucer sweets come in. Her flying saucer skirt creaks and rasps around her thin legs which are strapped into stockings and suspenders and a pantie girdle while her ‘Junior Miss’ bra, and the junior breasts lurking inside it, make wrinkled patterns under her pink Courtelle sweater. Her mousy hair is scraped back into a pony-tail that is tied with a pink satin ribbon. Sometimes it’s hard to be a woman.

  It would be pointless to dig anyway, for Gillian is not really here at all, but ‘Safe in the Arms of Jesus’. That’s what it says on her headstone –

  Gillian Berenice Lennox

  14th January 1948–24th December 1959

  Beloved Daughter of George and Bunty

  Safe in the Arms of Jesus

  ‘It doesn’t say anything about us,’ I whisper to Patricia as Bunty produces a duster from her handbag and starts rubbing the gravestone. More housework.

  ‘Us?’

  ‘Beloved Sister.’

  ‘Well, she wasn’t, was she?’ Patricia says reasonably and we are both immediately consumed by guilt for having thought such a thing. Come back, Gillian, all is forgiven. Come back and we’ll make you our Beloved Sister. Bunty takes out the kitchen scissors and starts snipping away at the turf. What will she do next, hoover? Gillian’s headstone is very plain and rather unexciting. I have been here before with my friend Kathleen and her mother to visit Kathleen’s grandfather’s grave and Kathleen and I played hide-and-seek amongst the gravestones. We particularly liked the ones with angels carved on them, either solitary and rather wan, or in pairs – one on either side, their wings hoisted protectively over the invisible inhabitant beneath. Kathleen and I spent some time pretending to be grave-guardian angels, using our blazers for wings.

  Do you have to be dead to be safe in Jesus’ arms? Apparently not. Kathleen, who has already introduced me to the exotic, blood-soaked interior decoration of St Wilfred’s Catholic church, explains that we are all safe in His arms, especially the little children. Especially suffering ones, she adds. I think Patricia and I are suffering a good deal so this is good news. Furthermore, she tells me, He is a Lamb and we are washed in His blood (I swear you can hear the capital letters when Kathleen talks). I must admit I have some reservations about being washed in lamb’s blood but if it’s going to save me from the everlasting flames of hell – or Hell, as it sounds like a capital letter kind of place to me – then I suppose I can put up with it.

  Mrs Gorman, Kathleen’s mother, is always popping into church in the same way that Bunty might pop into the Ladies in St Sampson’s Square when she’s out shopping. We’ve just spent a Saturday morning – Kathleen, her mother and me – helping out at a Mile of Pennies in King’s Square for the Junior NSPCC. I’m more than happy to help out – banking up good will and good deeds with the Lamb, for although He is meek and mild He is also (inexplicably) part of the trio that can consign you to the Inferno.

  So, one minute we’re meandering along Duncombe Place discussing whether or not to go somewhere for a hot chocolate and the next we’re ducking into church. Kathleen’s mother dips her finger into the font at the entrance, crosses herself and bends one knee to the altar. Kathleen does likewise. What is the correct etiquette here? Do I follow suit and if I do will I be struck dead by God because I’m not a Catholic? Or by Bunty for the same reason? Neither Kathleen nor Mrs Gorman are looking, they’re lighting candles, so I give the holy water a miss and drop a polite little curtsey in the general direction of the altar. ‘Come and light a candle for your sister,’ Mrs Gorman says, smiling encouragingly at me. The candles are lovely, creamy and waxy and as thin as pencils, all pointing upwards like holy signposts to some unknowable, mystical place where the Angel Gabriel and the Lamb and a host of white doves live on clouds. How will Gillian survive in such company? (She’s probably bossing cherubs about already.) She’s going to need all the help she can get so, with a slightly shaky hand, I light a candle and Kathleen’s mother drops a sixpence in a box to pay for it while I try and look as if I
’m saying a prayer.

  I don’t know about Gillian, but I certainly feel much better for lighting the candle; I can see that there is something to be said for all this ritual. Later, at home, I remove the Angel Chimes from the sideboard where they have been sitting anachronistically since Christmas – there is even some tinsel still lurking along the curtain rails – all evidence of the domestic carelessness that ensued in the After Gillian era – 1960 AG. I place the Angel Chimes reverently on my pink Lloyd Loom bedside table and each evening I light the red candles and begin to devise prayers that will rise Lambwards like holy smoke.

  The Angel Chimes have to be rationed as there are no more candles but not so my prayers and I pray so much – desperate, attention-seeking prayers to the Lamb – that I develop sore knees. My knees are so sore, in fact, that even Bunty notices it when we’re out shopping for new shoes one Saturday. She became so annoyed at my shuffling cripple’s gait that she stopped nagging me to keep up and asked me what the matter was (she’s more mindful of her children now that she’s lost one), with the result that now we’re sitting in the doctor’s waiting-room.

  You could live in Dr Haddow’s waiting-room, it’s so warm and cosy, unlike Mr Jeffrey’s the dentist whose waiting-room is cold and smells of dental antiseptic and toilet cleaner. Dr Haddow has a coal fire and leather chairs you can get lost in and on the walls are framed watercolours painted by Dr Haddow’s wife. An old grandfather clock that has roses painted on its face ticks time away with a solid clopping noise, like horses’ hooves – much nicer than the tinny noises our mantelpiece clock makes. A big polished table is loaded with an exciting assortment of reading matter from Country Life to old Dandys. I prefer the Reader’s Digests. Bunty flicks through a Woman’s Realm while I set about increasing my word power. I like going to the doctor, I think we don’t go nearly often enough.

  Dr Haddow is nice too and talks to you as if you’re a real person even if Bunty answers all the questions on my behalf so that I’m left sitting there like a dumbstruck ventriloquist’s dummy.

  ‘So how are you, Ruby?’

  ‘Her knees hurt.’

  ‘And where exactly does it hurt, Ruby?’

  ‘Right there,’ Bunty says prodding a knee hard so that I squeal. ‘What have you been up to, Ruby?’ he asks, smiling genially at me. ‘Saying too many prayers?’ He laughs. ‘I think it’s just a bursitis,’ he says finally, after a good many ‘U-huhs’ and ‘Hmms’. ‘A bursitis?’ Bunty repeats in worried tones. ‘Is that a parasite?’

  ‘Nothing to worry about.’

  ‘Nothing to worry about?’

  ‘Housemaid’s knee,’ Dr Haddow explains. ‘Housemaid’s knee?’ Bunty repeats, stuck in a fit of echolalia. She gives me a wary look as if I might be living a secret life, doing housework during the night when I’m sleepwalking. Sleephouseworking.

  We come away with no medicine and no treatment advised other than to ‘take it easy’. Bunty sniffs disparagingly at this idea but says nothing. Kindly Dr Haddow offers her another prescription for tranquillizers. ‘You should take it easy too,’ he says as he scrawls his pen across the prescription pad, leaving a trail of indecipherable, pale-blue ink that looks like Arabian Nights’ handwriting. ‘Time will heal everything,’ he says, nodding and smiling (he’s talking about Gillian’s death, not my knee). ‘I know God’s been cruel to you, my dear, but there is a purpose to everything.’ He takes his glasses off and rubs his pale-blue ink-coloured eyes, like a little boy, then he sits beaming at Bunty. Bunty is so soaked in grief and tranquillizers these days that there is a time-delay on most of her responses. Although she’s looking blankly at the doctor, I know that any minute she’ll turn nasty because she can’t stand talk like this – God, taking it easy, et cetera – so I get up quickly and say, ‘Thank you,’ and tug at Bunty’s hand. She follows like a little lamb.

  We trudge home, past Clifton Green and along Bootham. The world is still locked in winter, the trees on Clifton Green are without any sign of leaf or bud, and form inky scrawls of black against a pale sky that is like grey sugar paper. A thin sleet begins to fall and I put up the hood on my duffle coat and, head down, hobble along Bootham behind Bunty like a little limping Eskimo child. It’s a strange rule of life that no matter how quickly I walk I can never catch up with Bunty – slow or fast, she’s always at least three feet in front of me as if there’s an invisible umbilical cord between us that can stretch but never contract. No such piece of umbilical elastic binds Bunty and Patricia. My sister is free to stride fiercely ahead, linger sullenly behind or even occasionally shoot off in an alarming way up some side street.

  My knees feel hot and sore despite the piercing coldness of the sleet. I pray to Jesus to provide a magic carpet to transport me home, but no such luck, and, as usual, my prayers seem to evaporate into the still air above the Vale of York. By the time we get back to the Shop there are frozen roses in our cheeks and little shards of ice in our hearts. Bunty thrusts her way in through the Shop door, setting the bell to clang frantically as if the Shop was about to be invaded, but she has no word of greeting so I call ‘Shop!’ on her behalf and George casts a look in my direction that speaks volumes of ambiguity. He raises a ginger eyebrow in Bunty’s direction. ‘So?’

  ‘Housemaid’s knee,’ she says, rolling her eyes and making a little moue as if to say, ‘Don’t ask me.’

  He asks anyway. ‘Housemaid’s knee?’

  ‘A bursitis,’ I supplement helpfully but they both ignore me. It’s freezing cold in the Shop; the caged birds have their feathers all ruffled up and a hypothermic gleam in their eye as if they’re collectively fantasizing about tropical climes. Why is it so cold? Why aren’t the paraffin heaters lit? ‘Why haven’t you got the heaters on?’ Bunty asks, casting a baleful glance at the nearest paraffin heater. ‘It’s freezing in here.’

  ‘We’ve run out of paraffin, that’s why,’ George snaps, already struggling into his overcoat and big leather gloves. ‘I was waiting for you to come back.’ They’re always waiting for each other to come back, it’s like the Relief of Mafeking in the Shop sometimes. It’s as if they can’t both exist in the same space at the same time, X = not Y (or, to put it another way, Y = not X), or like the little men and women who live in weather-houses who never appear together at the same time, rain or shine.

  George takes money from the till. ‘I won’t be long,’ he says, heading for the door.

  ‘Very likely,’ Bunty mutters, suddenly finding herself stranded behind the counter yet again. ‘I have Piles of Ironing to do!’ she shouts as the door clangs shut behind George. ‘Piles’ is the collective noun for ironing – it doesn’t come any other way for our mother.

  I lean a hand on top of the cold speckled enamel of a heater, trying to wish it into life. I love the smell of the paraffin heaters, so warm and dangerous. ‘Be careful,’ Bunty warns automatically. In another life Bunty was related to Joan of Arc, constantly alert to the possibilities of fire. Perhaps she was Joan of Arc. I can just imagine her in control of a battalion of peasant soldiers, her cheeks pink with exasperation as she shouts orders at them while they shuffle and stare at their feet. And I can hear her at the end, as they put a burning brand to the faggots piled around her, Be careful where you’re putting that burning brand!

  Paraffin heaters are even more hazardous than stakes to witches, and they never occur in a sentence without a cautionary warning attached. None of us, neither Patricia, nor me, nor Gillian in her heyday, could be within five feet of one of the Shop heaters without being in danger of conflagration. The coal fire in the living-room is treated similarly and kept guarded day and night (lit or unlit); matches are lethal, of course; the burners on the gas cooker are alive and trying to grab you as you pass by; cigarettes are struggling to drop and smoulder – and as for spontaneous combustion! Well, it’s just waiting to happen.

  ‘Can I go upstairs?’ I ask.

  ‘No, not on your own,’ she says, staring in an abstracted way at the Bob Martin displ
ay. This is so illogical it’s not even worth combating – I am nine years old, I have been going upstairs on my own since I could walk. Since Gillian’s death Bunty has been extra-sensitive to the dangers surrounding us – it’s not only fire that we’re under threat from, we are continually reassured of her maternal care for us by the stream of warnings that issue from her mouth – Be careful with that knife! You’ll poke your eye out with that pencil! Hold onto the banister! Watch that umbrella! so that the world appears to be populated by objects intent on attacking us. I can’t even have a bath in peace because Bunty flits in and out to check that I haven’t slipped and drowned (Mind the soap!). Not so with Patricia, who locks, bolts and barricades the bathroom against Bunty. Our poor mother – can’t bear us out of her sight, can’t bear us in it.

  Patricia suddenly clangs into the Shop, yelling ‘Shop!’ very aggressively, causing the Parrot to squawk with alarm. Patricia advances on it, making strangling movements in the air so that the Parrot tries to back off its perch. Over the years the Parrot has proved unsaleable so it has slowly evolved into the Shop Parrot – part of the fixtures and fittings – it resolutely refuses to talk and attacks anyone who goes near it. It has never even been graced with a name. Not even Polly. noone treats it as one of God’s little creatures, not even Patricia. Like me, it’s become a kind of scapegoat. Scapeparrot.