Behind the Scenes at the Museum

by Kate Atkinson

  On a hot, listless day in the middle of August, I wander into the garage looking for something – the dog’s ball, the baby-David – who knows what? Instead I find Bunty and Mr Roper together again. I certainly look and learn something in the garage that day – the extraordinary medley of underwear Bunty hides from normal view, for example. In the hot, summer gloom of the garage I catch a glimpse of something nasty poking out from Mr Roper’s cavalry-twill. Perhaps Bunty has finally found her instrument of martyrdom? You could certainly think so from the expression on her face. Mr Roper – now at full throttle – suddenly spies me out of the corner of his eye and the lunatic expression on his face changes to one of disbelief. ‘Well, hel-lo,’ he gasps, breathlessly. I say not a dicky bird and remove myself from the scene of the crime.

  Perhaps George is vaguely aware that he is losing his wife to another man and that is why he decides to tempt her back with an exotic outing to a faraway place – the Chinese restaurant in Goodramgate. This is his first mistake, for Bunty does not like foreign food. She has not actually tasted any foreign food but nonetheless she knows she doesn’t like it. His second mistake was to invite me and Patricia.

  ‘Well,’ Bunty says, sitting down at the table and staring at the red tablecloth, ‘this is different.’ Glowing red paper lanterns with golden tassels hang from the roof where you would expect normal lights to be. I point out the lanterns to Patricia and she smiles indulgently at me. High-pitched string music twangs plangently in the background. ‘This place is decorated like a you-know-what,’ Bunty says, nibbling suspiciously on a prawn cracker. She fishes a flower out of her little porcelain cup of jasmine tea and examines it critically in the dim crimson light. George orders for us – the Three-Course Meal for Four – prawn cocktail, beef chop-suey, sweet-and-sour-pork, chicken chow-mein, followed by tinned lychees and coffee. ‘You’ve been here before!’ Bunty says accusingly, and George laughs and says, ‘Don’t be daft.’ But he obviously has because the waiter gives him an inscrutable wink.

  George draws on his Shopkeeper’s stock of small-talk to keep Bunty amused (‘Well, how does this weather suit you, then? We’ll pay for this sunshine, eh?’) but Bunty is not seduced. ‘How long are they going to take?’ she demands impatiently after ten seconds. The prawn cocktail arrives, more lettuce than prawn; in fact it’s hard to find any prawns at all in the jungle of leaves. ‘I found one!’ I say triumphantly, ‘I’ve found a prawn!’ and George says, ‘Don’t be clever, Ruby.’ Patricia counts her prawns, putting them on the side of her plate where they lie like fat, pink commas. ‘They’re shrimp, not prawn,’ she says, prodding them with a toothpick like an earnest marine biologist. ‘Oh for heaven’s sakes!’ George says, ‘Shrimp, prawn – does it matter?’

  ‘It does if you’re a shrimp wanting to reproduce,’ Patricia says mildly, and Bunty says swiftly, ‘We won’t have any of that kind of talk, thank you, Patricia – it’s to be expected from you, isn’t it?’

  The next course arrives. ‘Chopsticks!’ I say excitedly, twirling them in Patricia’s face and she fends me off with a napkin. ‘You don’t expect me to eat with those, do you?’ Bunty says, looking in amazement at George.

  ‘Why not? Millions of Chinese do,’ he says, scissoring his own ineptly in the direction of a strip of beef. Who would have known he was so cosmopolitan? Bunty lifts a limp and lanky beansprout from her plate. ‘What is this?’

  ‘Why don’t we just eat?’ Patricia says. She looks uncomfortable, even more pale than usual and rather edgy as if she can’t sit still in her seat. The pallor of her skin begins to change dramatically, turning to a flushed prawn-pink and – just as Bunty holds up a bit of pork and says, ‘What does dog taste like, do you think? Like this?’ – Patricia begins to shake and return from rosy-red to snow-white before falling awkwardly off her chair.

  ‘Well, at least now you know you’re allergic to prawns,’ I comfort her, as she lies stranded on her high, white hospital bed.

  ‘Shrimp,’ she reminds me and offers me a fruit gum.

  There follows a frantic week of uniform-buying when Bunty realizes that I have to be kitted out from top-to-toe before the start of the new term. We have a uniform list from Queen Anne’s which is quite frightening, not only for the bewildering number of articles of clothing I seem to need in order to attend grammar school, but also for the strictness of the uniform list’s tone. Capital letters and underlining abound to warn the lax parent. For example – Navy blue skirt, pleated or gored, NOT STRAIGHT, with pockets or navy blue tunic with pocket although it does not explain why it is so morally imperative to avoid straight skirts. The configurations of shoes are also highly specific – indoor shoes, for example, should be preferably with rubber sole and low heel. (Sling-back or toeless sandals may NOT be worn.) Clark’s type sandal is strongly advised. Curiously enough, the uniform list bears little relation to anything that Patricia wears – she frequently trips out of the house in a forbidden straight skirt and sling-back shoes, thereby confirming her moral delinquency, no doubt. This road is not for me, however, and Bunty and I trail from Isaac Walton’s to Mrs Matterson to Southcott’s on an endless quest for navy blue pleated gymnastic shorts of approved pattern for games.

  I don’t know why – probably because of her newfound skittishness in love – but these are some of the most pleasant times that Bunty and I have ever spent together. In between acquiring bits of uniform we rest up in cafés with our big paper bags. Bunty kicks off her shoes under the table in Betty’s and devours a huge strawberry and meringue basket and looks almost happy.

  I take to grammar school like a duck to water – the rigour of fifty-minute lessons, the discipline of the dinner queue, the petty alignments and re-alignments of new friendships – these are all a great release after the continual melodrama of home life. The only unnerving thing is how after every time any teacher reads out my name from a register they look up, slightly fazed, and say, ‘Patricia’s sister?’ as if they’ve never imagined Patricia having a family. Luckily, noone seems to remember Gillian.

  Patricia, despite her poor exam results, is now an habituée of the Lower-Sixth Common Room and I rarely encounter her in the mellow oak of the corridors. When we do, she completely ignores me, which is rather galling, especially as other senior girls with new sisters in the school make a great fuss of them and show them off like pets to their friends.

  Time trots, canters and gallops towards the end of term and I work hard at producing contour maps and diagrams of Roman central-heating systems and writing sentences in French – another language! The French teacher says I am a natural linguist and I practise the lovely new language of French at every opportunity. Je m’appelle Ruby. Je suis une pierre precieuse. Sometimes Patricia can be persuaded to converse with me but this makes Bunty paranoid because she thinks we’re talking about her. ‘Notre mère,’ Patricia remarks sweetly, ‘est une vache, n’est-ce pas?’

  When I hear the news that Kennedy has been shot, I am the only person remaining seated at the dining-room table, listening to the news on the radio to distract myself from the fact that (in order of disappearance) Patricia, Bunty and then George have all abruptly left the table in the course of an argument which has escalated to proportions which made anything that has happened in the Lone Star State seem small by comparison. The incident has been sparked off by the packet of Featherlight that has turned up in Patricia’s blazer pocket, unprotected – as it were – by the Sphinx emblazoned on her Queen Anne’s badge and its encouraging motto, Quod potui perfeci.

  Thereafter I spend a lot of time perfecting my Twist for the end-of-term party that the Sixth Form traditionally throw for First Formers. Patricia, never much of a party-goer, does not turn up but I am honoured by the Head Girl choosing me to lead off with her in a spirited Gay Gordons. After the sandwiches and jelly we play several games, including musical knees (the kind of game I imagine Mr Roper and my mother would be good at), and then dance to pop records, but alas, no Twist; instead people do shapeless, for
mless dances, their feet shuffling chaotically, their hands grasping at invisible ropes.

  It doesn’t really matter – I get a splendid end-of-term report, Ruby works hard and is a pleasure to have in class, which I wave first at Bunty, then George and finally Patricia, none of whom show any interest, even when I sellotape it to the outside of my bedroom door.

  The end of the year is turned into the Twilight Zone by the arrival of the freshly-bereaved Daisy and Rose on New Year’s Eve. They sleep in Nell’s now empty bed and are never seen to cry. Auntie Babs – hopefully reunited with her missing parts – has surely sent them a message from the world of Spirit, but if she has, they never divulge it. Bunty never stops going on about how well behaved the twins are but I think what she means by that is that they never speak.

  I am in bed and asleep long before the bells but am woken by Patricia just before midnight, drunk, but eager to reminisce on the passing year. She has an almost empty bottle of Bristol Cream Sherry with her, from which she takes an occasional slug. I decline. She had planned to see the New Year in on the Knavesmire, in the back of Howard’s old Zephyr, but they have had a falling out. ‘He’s decided he’s going to be an accountant,’ she says, the words an alcoholic slurry. She struggles to light a cigarette, an expression of disgust on her face.

  ‘And what are you going to be, Patricia?’ I ask cautiously. She blows out a stream of thoughtful smoke and knocks ash everywhere. ‘Dunno,’ she says finally, and then after a while, ‘I think I’d just like to be happy.’

  Of all Patricia’s ambitions that somehow seems the most outrageous. ‘Well,’ I say to her, as the nearest church bells begin to welcome 1964, ‘if I had Aladdin’s lamp for the day, Patricia, that’s exactly what you would be.’ But when I look closely I can see that she’s fallen asleep and so I remove the burning cigarette from her hand and carefully stub it out on the last picture of Ye Olde England calendar – a pretty thatched and timbered cottage with roses round the door and smoke curling from the chimney.

  Footnote (viii) – New Boots

  THE END OF THE BOER WAR! ALL DAY LONG THE STREETS had been full of people celebrating the news. By happy coincidence there was a great travelling fair visiting St George’s Field and Lillian and Nell were hoping to visit its gas-lit stalls and experience the thrill of being amongst the crowds on such a patriotic occasion. Albert had gone fishing with his pal Frank, and Tom was already away from home, living in lodgings in Monkgate. Lillian was fifteen now and Nelly fourteen and both were working. Lillian was at Rowntree’s in the packing department. When she’d first left school Rachel had made her go into service, but one morning Lillian had just stood there in the kitchen, her arms folded, her chin up, and said she wasn’t going to skivvy for anyone. Nell had prayed every night that her sister would get another job soon because they needed new boots so desperately and Rachel said they couldn’t have any until Lillian was bringing in a wage again. Their old boots were worn right through so that they could feel the pavement through their stocking-feet.

  Nell earned hardly anything; she was apprenticed to a milliner in Coney Street and both girls had to hand over every penny of their wages to Rachel every week when she grudgingly gave them a few coppers back. They got their new boots before Lillian got her job because Lillian was so disgusted by the state of their boots that she’d gone out one day in her bare feet, and Rachel, her face red with fury, was finally goaded by embarrassment into giving them the money for new boots.

  ‘Can we go to the fair after tea?’ It was Lillian that asked, of course. Nell was so timid that she got Lillian to do all her talking if she could. Rachel looked right through Lillian and completely ignored her. ‘Say “please”,’ Nell whispered in her sister’s ear. Lillian screwed up her face, ‘Please can we go to the fair after tea?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I said not,’ Rachel said, looking from one to the other of them as if they were both idiots. Then she picked up a pile of clean laundry and walked out of the kitchen. Lillian picked up a wooden spoon from the kitchen table and threw it after Rachel’s retreating back and to pay them back Rachel waited until they were both up in their room and then she turned the key in the door and locked them in.

  They sat on their bedroom floor and laced up their new boots. They were made of soft, black leather and were the most expensive boots they’d ever had. ‘She’ll find out,’ Nell said, staring at the still unscuffed toes of her boots. ‘I don’t care,’ Lillian said, jumping up and lifting the sash. They were still living in the house in Walmgate, a poky upstairs apartment in a slum courtyard. The yard beneath their bedroom window was dank and smelt of sewage and slimy green moss covered the paving-slabs. But in the middle, through a big, cracked hole in the stones, a lilac tree had taken root many years ago, its seed blown in from some pleasant town garden along the length of dark Walmgate. Its bark was rough and torn as if someone had taken the tines of a giant fork and scratched them down the trunk, but its blossom was as rich and heavy as any tree in a grander place. Last year, Lillian had reached out from their bedroom window and torn off a great branch of it and stuck it in an old jug in their room and the heady scent of lilac had cheered them for weeks.

  Nell brushed Lillian’s hair for her and tied her ribbons, then Lillian did the same for Nell. ‘I’m sure the branches will break with our weight,’ Nelly hissed as Lillian put one leg over the sill.

  ‘Stop fussing, Nelly,’ Lillian whispered back, one arm already grasping a branch. Lillian swung herself out and grabbed the trunk. ‘Mind your boots, Lily!’ Nell hissed as Lillian clambered down the tree. She stood at the bottom and said, ‘It’s easy, Nelly, come on.’ Nell was already sitting on the window-sill, leaning out, but then she drew back; she’d never had a good head for heights and when she looked down she felt sick – although it wasn’t so much the height that stopped her as the fear of Rachel’s wrath if she found that they’d sneaked out like this after she’d expressly forbidden them. Nell shook her head miserably. ‘I’m not coming, Lily.’ Lillian cajoled and pleaded with Nell, but it did no good and in the end she said angrily, ‘What a coward you are, Nelly! Well, I’m going even if you’re not!’ and she marched out of the yard and out of Nell’s sight without a backward glance. Nell stood for a long time at the open window. The sound of people celebrating the end of the war drifted into the courtyard on the soft air of a May evening. Nell’s tears had dried and the sky had grown a very dark blue and the first star was out before Lillian came back, her ribbons askew, her new boots scuffed and a grin of triumph on her face.

  Nell opened the window for her and helped her climb back in over the sill. Lillian took a paper poke of toffee from her pocket and shared it with Nell. ‘It was really grand, Nell,’ she said, her eyes shining.

  A wind got up in the night and it began to rain. Nell was woken up by the tapping of a branch of the lilac tree against the bedroom window. Nell lay with her eyes wide open in the dark, listening to Lillian’s peaceful breathing next to her. Nell wished she was more like Lillian. The rain and the tapping grew louder and the wind wilder and Nell didn’t think she’d ever get back to sleep.

  CHAPTER NINE

  1964

  Holiday!

  WE’RE OFF! NOT TO SEE THE WIZARD, BUT ON HOLIDAY. ‘We’re off!’ I say enthusiastically to Patricia.

  ‘Shut up, Ruby!’

  Shutupruby, shutupruby. Honestly, you’d think that was my name in the World According to Patricia. She’s busy drawing obscene anatomical diagrams on the misted-up insides of the car windows. It’s cold and damp both inside and outside the car – a weather situation that doesn’t seem a good omen for our impending holiday. The self-catering years (Bridlington, Whitby) are over and the exotic destinations lie ahead of us (Sitges, North Wales) beginning with, possibly, the most foreign location of all – Scotland!

  What’s more, we are travelling in convoy – or at least, in tandem – and there, at the head of our two-camel caravan, is the blue
Ford Consul Classic of our friends and neighbours, the Ropers. Bunty could have been a real poker-fiend judging by her poker-face when George proposes this idea after a ‘chat’ with Mr Roper over the hedge-battlement between our suburban castles. Bunty and I are busy feeding the toaster with an assortment of bakery goods – crumpets, pikelets, tea-cakes and so on – when George tramps in from the garden, leaving mud everywhere, and says, ‘I’ve been having a chat with Clive – what do you think about going on holiday with the Ropers this summer?’ and quick as a wink, Bunty sticks her smile on and says, ‘The Ropers?’ as a tea-cake flings itself with dramatic timing out of the toaster.

  ‘The Ropers,’ I echo in horror, leaping to catch the tea-cake.

  ‘Well, why not?’ she says brightly, buttering the tea-cake and offering it to George. He declines and strides across to the kitchen sink and washes his hands. Bunty is obviously shaken because she doesn’t even point out to him that he has left a trail of muddy footprints across her red and white vinyl tiles, like something from an Arthur Murray handbook. Or footbook. A more alert man would have realized instantly that he was being cuckolded.

  Occasionally, Kenneth pops up in the rear-window of the Ropers’ car, like an unlucky mascot, and makes a variety of faces – cross-eyed, tongue out, fingers in his ears – but the female Lennoxes stoically ignore him. Bunty, who’s only too grateful that she’s never had any little boys of her own, is baffled by Kenneth’s behaviour, but George is not shy of pronouncing judgement, ‘Bloody stupid little bastard.’

  George hasn’t got time for Kenneth’s distractions – he needs every ounce of concentration to keep up with the Ropers. We’re terrified of losing sight of our squadron-leader because he’s the only one who knows how to get to Scotland and every so often Bunty has a fit of panic and screams at George, He’s overtaking someone! Quick, quick – put on your indicator! Woe betide any vehicle that gets between us and the Ropers, for it faces instant disintegration from Bunty’s brainwaves.