Behind the Scenes at the Museum

by Kate Atkinson

  Perhaps it is all part of growing up, a tormented rite of passage, a dark valley of adolescent shadows, a wretched hormonal cataclysm, a teenager of sorrows, a—

  ‘Ruby!’ Mr Belling’s face is a cartoon of amazement as he comes round the back of the house and catches sight of me trying to smash the glass. He wrenches open the patio door. ‘What on earth are you doing, Ruby?’ he asks, trying his best to sound stern and paternal. ‘Trying to escape,’ I reply grimly.

  ‘Just ignore her, Bernard!’ Bunty says, sweeping through the open patio doors. ‘She’s too clever for her own good – she takes after her sister.’

  ‘Which one of the many children that you’ve lost would that be?’ I ask sarcastically and am rewarded with a stinging slap on the cheek from Bernard which makes me bite deeply into my bottom lip. ‘Thank you, Bernard,’ Bunty says to Bernard, and then to me, ‘Long past time somebody put you in your place, milady!’ and then she turns back to Bernard with a smile, ‘Shall I open a tin of salmon?’ and off they go into the kitchen leaving me too white and shocked to speak. I curl up into a little ball of misery on the carpet and watch as, instead of a tear, a single drop of blood falls from my lip onto the beige Wilton and darkens to a colour which is not to be found on the normal spectrum. The only sympathy I get is from Rags, who pushes a cold, wet nose into my hand.

  What would I put in my bottom drawer? – I would put only sharp objects, the clean lines of broken glass, the honed steel of paring knives, the tiny saw-teeth of bread knives and the soothing edges of razor blades. I weigh knives in my hands like strange comforters. Soon, Bunty will probably discover me on one of my nocturnal wanderings with a huge knife dripping blood onto my nightdress. (What would she say? ‘Get back into bed,’ probably.)

  At the top of the Minster Tower you are almost in the realm of angels, so high that the town laid out below is like a street map that fades away at the edges into the Vale of York and beyond, to the north, the hazy rise of the Howardian Hills and to the east the Wolds like a mirage. On a day like this, when the sky is a limpid blue and the only cloud is a wisp of chiffon in the distance, it’s easy to be in love with the world. What would I put in my bottom drawer? I would put the horizon, and some snatches of birdsong, the blossom-like snow in the garden of the Treasurer’s House and the white ruined arches of St Mary’s Abbey below, like petrified lace.

  What would it be like to fall? To go down, down, down, to plummet like a stone down into the little landlocked sea of the Dean’s Park below, to splash into the green grass like a stricken bird? If you lean over the parapet far enough, as far as a gargoyle water-spout, you can feel the force of gravity tugging at you, inviting you to taste the air—

  ‘Ruby!’ Kathleen’s anxious little face appears sand-wiched between the crenellations – ‘Come on. We’re going to miss the afternoon bell!’ We scamper back down the spiral stone stairs at a dizzying pace and run all the way along Bootham back to school and fling ourselves into our allotted desks in time to ‘Turn over and begin’ our Latin Unseen—

  Theoxena counsels her children to commit suicide rather than suffer death at the hands of the King – ‘Mors,’ inquit, ‘nobis saluti erit. Viae ad mortem hae sunt . . .’ Somewhere in the distance is the noise of a cricket match on St Peter’s playing fields and the smell of freshly-mown grass comes in on a faint breeze through the open windows. Cum iam hostes adessent, liberi alii alia morte ceciderunt. How can life be so sweet and so sad all at the same time? How? A ragged little cheer goes up from the cricket field. Judith Cooper whacks a wasp with her examination paper. Just out of my reach, there is understanding. Somewhere just out of reach – hidden on a high shelf, under a floorboard – there is the key. And what will the key open? Why the lost property cupboard, of course.

  The Lost Property Cupboard theory of life is a relatively recent development in my philosophical quest for understanding. It has come about, no doubt, because all this year Kathleen and I have held the onerous office of lost property cupboard monitors and every Thursday afternoon at four o’clock we open up the lost property cupboard which is situated in the corridor of the New Block, which also houses Domestic Science, as well as the less domesticated sciences of physics, chemistry and biology. The school rules dictate that four o’clock on Thursday is the only time we are allowed to open the cupboard and requests outwith that hour are met with professional indifference from myself and my fellow monitor. At that hour, people (that is schoolchildren, for no member of staff has ever lost anything to our knowledge – an eloquent comment on the carelessness of youth) can examine the cupboard’s innards for their errant belongings. If they find what they’re looking for – the most commonly lost articles are pens, partnerless gloves and hockey boots – they must sign their name on a list which we give them and then they are given their wandering things back, so that they can become found property.

  There are fearsome consequences for children who do not reclaim their property – ownership is easy to trace as it is compulsory to have Cash’s woven name tapes sewn into everything we possess, including our bras, and the insides of our shoes, boots and plimsolls must be marked with indelible marker pen. Constant random checks are done to make sure we are tagged properly. (Did anyone ever dare to look down the back of Patricia’s blouse, I wonder?) At least if I ever suffer amnesia they will know what name to call me. The owners of unclaimed property have their names written down on another list which is read out in assembly on the last Friday of every month by Miss Whittaker, the headmistress, and the penalty for offending criminals is that they must stand throughout assembly while the rest of us sit. This public humiliation does little to deter people and the lost property cupboard remains full to overflowing with abandoned things. Sometimes it is so full that when we unlock it everything falls out on our heads and we are driven to restoring property to people secretly just to get rid of the damn stuff. Perhaps soon we shall have to arrange clandestine midnight openings of the cupboard and hope that hitherto reluctant children will be attracted by the cloak-and-dagger nature of the operation.

  This is my Lost Property Cupboard theory of the afterlife – when we die we are taken to a great Lost Property Cupboard where all the things we have ever lost have been kept for us – every hairgrip, every button and pencil, every tooth, every earring and key, every pin (think how many there must be!). All the library books, all the cats that never came back, all the coins, all the watches (which will still be keeping time for us). And perhaps, too, the other less tangible things – tempers and patience (perhaps Patricia’s virginity will be there), religion (Kathleen has lost hers), meaning, innocence (mine) and oceans of time – Mr Belling and Bunty will find a lot of time in their cupboard. Mr Belling is always sitting at the wheel of the Rover, parked in the driveway, looking at his watch and fuming, ‘Do you know how much time we’ve lost waiting for you, Ruby?’ On the lower shelves will be the dreams we forgot on waking, nestling against the days lost to melancholy thoughts (if they paid dividends Patricia would be rich). And right down at the bottom of the cupboard, amongst the silt and fluff and feathers, the pencil shavings and hair swept up from hairdressers’ floors – that’s where you find the lost memories. Deinde ipsa, virum suum complexa, in mare se deiecit. And perhaps we can sign our names and take them home with us.

  I have had a terrible scene with Mr Belling. He came round on Tuesday evening to take Bunty to see a touring production of Showboat at the Theatre Royal, but Bunty was still upstairs fussing over what dress she should wear, so I showed him into the lounge and he sat down and said, ‘Why don’t you offer me a little drink, Ruby?’ and I said, ‘Why don’t you get it yourself?’ and he said, ‘What a rude little madam you are,’ and I said, ‘And I don’t like you either,’ and he said, ‘You’re going to get what’s coming to you, one of these days, Ruby Lennox,’ and I said, ‘Oh, yeah, what’s that – love and affection?’ and he said, ‘Your poor mother’s given you everything but you’re just an ungrateful little bitch!’ and I screamed at
him, ‘You don’t know anything!’ and then he put his face just two inches from mine and shouted at me—

  ‘Ruby! Ruby Lennox! Where are you going?’ Miss Raven’s voice screeches from the invigilating desk. There’s a spatter of applause from the cricket match. ‘Ruby,’ Kathleen whispers as I stride past her, ‘Ruby, what’s wrong?’

  ‘Where are you going, Ruby?’ Miss Whittaker shouts at me as I stalk underneath the oak plaques hung around the Old Hall inscribed with the names of head girls and scholarship winners in gilded lettering – ‘Ruby! You’re supposed to be in Latin!’ and she tries to do a rugby tackle on me but I dodge and weave and finally fling myself out into the warm, breezy air and march along to Clifton Green. And perhaps also in the Lost Property Cupboard, I think to myself, to pass time as I walk home, there I will find my real home, the one where a fire always twinkles in the hearth and a brass toasting-fork hangs ready and a kettle sings on the hob and the battered old armchairs are pulled up into a cosy circle and my real mother’s needle flashes in the firelight as she plies it, in and out, in and out, and begins her story, the story of how her real child, the blood-red jewel, was replaced in the cradle by a changeling—

  ‘You stupid fucking girl! Why don’t you look where you’re going!’ A furious, red-faced, ugly man rests his hand on the horn of his car, his face disintegrating in hatred while a queue of traffic builds up behind him, horns honking. I put two fingers up at him and gain the safety of the pavement and stride on, past the Homestead and over the new bridge that spans the flat and unromantic Ouse.

  The house is cool and quiet. Bunty redecorated everything and bought new furniture with George’s insurance money so that now there’s hardly anything left that is evidence of the past, of other lives. There’s nothing of Patricia. Bunty has finally decided she isn’t coming back and has given all her things away, the only thing I managed to salvage was her panda, and sometimes I daydream about how pleased she will be when I hand it back to her, just when she thought that everything had gone for ever. It was surprising how easy it was for Bunty to eradicate George, not a sock nor a cigarette end remains. I imagine that when I am gone she’ll have a good cry and then hoover up every last skinflake and make a cup of tea.

  Three o’clock chimes unevenly on the clock, my great-grandmother’s clock. It’s never been the same since the fire and I’m surprised that Bunty hasn’t got rid of it for jumble, but then the workings of Bunty’s mind are as mysterious to me as the workings of the clock, or time itself.

  I go upstairs and make a little nest at the bottom of the airing cupboard, out of clean towels that smell of fresh air and soap powder, and like a small mammal turn round and round in my little burrow until I have made it comfortable and then with only an occasional gurgle from the immersion heater for company unscrew the top of the bottle of tablets, cramming them into my mouth like a greedy duck, in case I should fall asleep before I’ve taken enough.

  Down, down, down. I hurtle down through space and time and darkness. Sometimes I accelerate and I can feel the centrifugal force strapping the organs to the inside walls of my body. Down and down towards the stars that are twinkling at the end of the world and I pass a voice that’s saying ‘Aye, bottomless,’ but the words are drowned by a great rushing and roaring noise in my head that’s like all the oceans of the world coming into confluence. Then, thankfully, I slow up and start to float as if attached to an invisible parachute. Now that I’ve slowed down I can make out strange objects in the darkness, things petrified in stone and dolls and spoons, and when I see something that looks like a Mobo horse carved in marble I gasp in delight because I had quite forgotten him. A disembodied stag’s head leaps out from the darkness and it opens its mouth to speak, like the horse’s head in The Goose Girl, and says, ‘Well, hel-lo there,’ before disappearing again.

  Down and down, floating like thistledown, passing Patricia’s panda and Gillian’s Sooty and Granny Nell’s old Ekco radio and I realize with a little thrill of delight that I must be in the Lost Property Cupboard – not the school one, but the great metaphysical one. Soon I’ll reach the bottom and find my lost memories and then everything will be all right.

  Someone thrusts a companionable paw into my hand and I turn my head and see Teddy smiling sadly at me. ‘It’s the end of the world, you know,’ he says, and, overjoyed, I say, ‘Oh, Teddy – you can speak!’ and he says, ‘In the Lost Property Cupboard all animals can speak,’ and I’m so happy for him but then his face darkens and he says, ‘Watch out for the Rings of Saturn, Ruby! Don’t forget they’re—’ but then his paw slips out of mine before he can say anything else and suddenly I begin to accelerate again – horribly – so that my brain feels as if it’s being stretched and pulled from my skull on a thread of elastic and dreadful pains shoot along all the nerves in my arms. Great multicoloured sunbursts explode on either side of me and the faster I move towards the stars at the end of the world, the more they recede and I grow afraid that this is a journey that will go on for ever and I search my mind for the terrible thing I must have done to deserve such a punishment.

  Then out of the darkness, like something from the Ghost-Train ride in Scarborough, looms Mr Belling’s angry face and he starts to shout at me but I can’t hear any words until suddenly, very loudly right in my ear, his voice booms, ‘Your poor mother’s given you everything but you’re just an ungrateful little bitch!’ and I put out my hands to fend this vision off but he will keep on speaking, ‘You’re a wicked, wicked girl,’ and I try to shout, ‘No!’ because I know what he’s going to say next but I can’t speak and suddenly I can’t breathe either and dreadful noises start to issue from my mouth, the noise of a drowning person, drowning on air, and Mr Belling’s apparition hurtles down the well of time with me so that I have to put my hands over my ears to shut out what I know he’s going to say – but I can’t block out his voice which is repeating over and over again, ‘You killed your own sister, Ruby! You killed your own sister!’

  ‘I ask you – what kind of a little girl would do that?’ he shouted, a trickle of angry spittle appearing at the corner of his mouth, and from the top of the stairs Bunty’s voice sang out, ‘Are you ready, Bernard? It’s curtain up at half-past seven!’

  ‘I know all about you, Ruby,’ Mr Belling hissed. ‘Your mother told me everything!’

  ‘I did not kill my sister!’ I hissed back at him. ‘She was run over,’ but he just gave me this horrible kind of leer and said, ‘I don’t mean that one, you stupid little girl, I mean your twin sister!’ and with these extraordinary words he turned on his heel and left the room. Then I heard Bunty shouting from the hallway, ‘We’re off to the theatre now, Ruby, we’ll see you later!’ and the front door slammed and the Rover drove off.

  My own twin? My own twin? What on earth was he talking about? It was a curious thing because although part of me was totally baffled by this statement, another part could hear alarm bells going off and my skin felt as if centipedes were crawling over it. I ran upstairs to Bunty’s bedroom and poked about on the top shelf of her fitted wardrobe amongst the shoe-boxes in which she kept her large collection of unworn shoes, until finally I found what I was looking for, the shoe-box with no shoes inside, the one that she kept crammed with the bits of paper that made our lives official and random objects that couldn’t find a home anywhere else but somehow couldn’t be thrown away. I sifted my way down through medical cards, log books, insurance certificates, a broken earring, an old ration book, the silver locket (see Footnote (xi)), mortgage papers, a mouldy-looking paw, an old theatre programme, a plastic ring from a cracker. After a while I got down to George’s will and his death certificate, to Patricia’s O Level certificates from the JMB (now Bunty will have two daughters who are academic failures), to Bunty and George’s marriage certificate, Gillian’s death certificate, and then all the birth certificates, held together with a rubber band – Berenice Eileen, George Arthur, Patricia Vivien, Gillian Berenice, Ruby Eleanor. And Pearl’s.

  There
I had it – Pearl. Pearl Ada Lennox. Born in Fulford Maternity Hospital on – incredibly – the same day, of the same month, of the same year as – me. The 8th of February 1952. I read Pearl’s birth certificate over and over again and then compared it with mine, looking from one to the other endlessly as if eventually they would explain themselves. But there was only one explanation – ‘Pearl Ada Lennox’ really was my twin sister. I could feel a dreadful, threatening pulse beating in my stomach, yet I had no recollection of this sister, could bring no image to mind. I had a strange surge of memory – as if caught in a photographer’s flash – of alphabet cards in a horseshoe – a pig, an elephant, an apple, a rabbit, a lemon, but nothing more. Perhaps, like Elvis’s twin, Pearl died at birth – perhaps we were Siamese twins and she had to die for me to live and that was what Mr Belling meant. But somehow I didn’t think so. I raked down through the papers in the shoeless shoe-box until finally, right down at the bottom, I found what I was looking for – another death certificate, this one made out for 2 January 1956.