When Marnie Was There

by Joan G. Robinson

  Priscilla said quietly to Anna, under cover of the general hubbub, “I hoped you’d come back. I’ve been wanting you to for ages.”

  “Have you?” Anna was pleased. “Why didn’t you ask me?”

  “I couldn’t with the others there.” Scilla glanced quickly round the table. “I saw you first, before any of them did. I saw you from my room.” She lowered her voice and said softly and deliberately, “You know where my room is, don’t you?”

  Anna looked at her quickly. “Oh! Is it at the top, looking out over the creek?”

  “Yes, the one at the end.” Priscilla smiled a satisfied, secret smile, and buried her teeth in a slice of bread and jam. In a minute she said, still in the same low voice, “Did you mind when we caught you the other day? You looked a bit frightened at first and I thought perhaps we shouldn’t have. I wanted to catch you by myself, without all the others. I thought it would be more fun, but of course Andrew got there first, as usual.”

  “What did Andrew do first as usual?” called Andrew from the other side of the table. “Stop whispering, you two. Do you know, Anna, Scilla thinks you’re her own property, just because she made up a story about you before she ever saw you!”

  “Did you?” Anna turned to her. “What sort of story?”

  Priscilla smiled and said nothing.

  “Has she told you her secret name for you yet?” asked Andrew.

  “Yes, tell us!” said Jane. “What is it?”

  Anna shook her head. “I don’t know.” She looked at Scilla hopefully, but Scilla was not saying any more. She sat quietly smiling to herself, looking as if she was in a contented daydream, but eating steadily all the while. Bun after bun disappeared into her mouth, apparently almost unnoticed. Anna was quite surprised. Priscilla was the least fat of all the Lindsays.

  Anna herself was eating more than she usually did in other people’s houses. This was the first time she could ever remember going out to tea and enjoying it. Mrs Lindsay not being there made it easier, but even when she came in once or twice, she accepted Anna so much as a matter of course that Anna could not help feeling at home.

  After tea they all went into the kitchen to wash up. Anna was hanging around hopefully, trying to look helpful – although she had not the least idea where anything was kept – when Scilla came running to her and under pretence of offering her a drying-up cloth, whispered something quickly in her ear.

  Anna looked puzzled and bent her head lower.

  Scilla whispered again. “I left it on the beach.”

  “What?”Anna was mystified.

  “You – something I was doing for you. I thought you’d be staying on down there as usual, and would find it. It was pretty.”

  “I’ll look for it tomorrow,” said Anna.

  “It won’t be there, the tide will have washed it away.” Scilla was looking at her expectantly. Anna thought quickly. The tide would still be out. If she ran down there soon she might still see whatever it was before she had to go back to the cottage. But she did not want to leave yet. Not so soon!

  “Shall I go when I leave here?” she asked. Scilla nodded eagerly. “What is it?” Anna asked, smiling.

  Scilla looked up at her from under her eyelashes, then said in a whisper, “Your secret name!”

  She skipped away before there was a chance to ask her any more, and though several times during the next hour Anna caught Scilla looking at her with the same expression of quiet excitement – as if she were hugging some secret to herself but quite happy to wait until Anna was ready to share it – nothing more was said between them.

  Anna stayed on until Matthew, and then Scilla had been sent up for their baths, and Mrs Lindsay had come in and was beginning to tidy up. Jane was upstairs singing to Roly, who was now as wide awake as he had been sleepy an hour earlier. Anna helped Mrs Lindsay stack away the games on the shelves, while Andrew, yawning, sprawled on the window seat and gazed out over the water.

  “There, that’s fine!” Mrs Lindsay turned and smiled at Anna. “Time to go now,” she said gently. “Look at poor old Andy nearly dropping off his perch! But do come again. Come whenever you feel like it, and thank you for helping to tidy up.” She smiled again and went out of the room without waiting for a reply.

  Anna followed uncertainly, suddenly tongue-tied, but saw, as she came out into the hall, that Mrs Lindsay was now busy in the kitchen. Through the half-open door she could see her, back view, as she stood arranging things on the larder shelves. She was singing to herself under her breath. Anna hesitated, wondering if she would come out again, then slipped thankfully out of the side door, closed it quietly behind her, and ran.

  Never, never had she liked being in anyone else’s house so much! Mrs Lindsay might almost have known that Anna’s voice always failed her when it came to saying “thank you for having me”. She had not even given her a chance to say a proper goodbye! It was almost as if, in leaving the formal goodbyes unsaid, she had left the door open behind Anna so that she really could come back whenever she felt like it.

  She ran back to the cottage, cheeks flushed and eyes shining, told a startled Mrs Pegg that she would not be long, and set off again down towards the sea.

  The tide had already turned when she reached the beach. The sky had clouded over, and it looked grey and solitary, very different from the sunny place where they had played cricket that afternoon. It had been silly to come all this way just to see something written in the sand by a little girl, she thought. But she had wanted to come. She liked Scilla and was pleased at her wanting to share a secret with her, even if it was only a childish one.

  She walked down to the water’s edge, and saw it. Shells and strips of seaweed had been used to make a careful pattern of each letter, and the name MARNIE lay spelled out on the sand.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  HOW SCILLA KNEW

  “BUT HOW DID you know?” Anna asked, still amazed. “What made you think of that name?”

  It was the next morning, and she and Scilla were sitting on the wall at the top of the stone steps outside The Marsh House. Anna had hardly been able to wait to see Scilla again and ask her.

  “Did you like it?” Scilla asked eagerly. “Did you think it was pretty?”

  “Yes – yes, it was lovely. But how did you know?” Anna asked again.

  “Well, I’ll tell you. I wasn’t sure at first – I kept wondering – and then when I asked you if you knew my room I was sure. I was almost sure before – but there are some things I just can’t understand. I mean, well, look at this –” she leaned forward and pointed to a rusted iron ring that hung from the outside of the wall. “You see? It’s broken – rusted away – how could you have tied the boat to that? And yet there isn’t another anywhere. There isn’t anything else you could have used. I’ve looked everywhere.”

  “I – I don’t understand –” Anna was looking at her in bewilderment.

  “I mean – if it was after dark – you know about going out in the boat in a nightie? – Well, what was the boat tied up to if that ring—”

  Anna interrupted. “Scilla, tell me – how did you know?”

  “It’s in the book,” she whispered.

  “What book?”

  Priscilla glanced round to make sure they were alone. “I found it in my room. The carpenter’d been taking down a cupboard in the wall – because I’m going to have a proper little built-in wardrobe – and this book was stuck in the back of the shelf. We came down here the very day he was doing it, and I was in my room when he pulled it out. So I kept it. It’s my room, so it’s my secret.”

  “What sort of a book is it?” Anna asked wonderingly.

  “Just an old exercise book. It’s got ‘Marnie’ written on the cover and inside it’s a sort of diary. Lots of pages are torn out, there isn’t an awful lot in it, but it was enough to give me an idea. That’s how I knew who you were. Why do you call yourself Anna?”

  “It’s my name. Why – did you – did you think I was someone else?”


  Scilla’s face clouded. “Aren’t you Marnie?” she whispered.

  Anna shook her head confusedly. “No. No, but—”

  Scilla stared at her blankly. “Then why did you come back? What are you doing here?” Her eyes filled suddenly with tears of angry disappointment. “I thought you were Marnie. I was sure you were.” She looked so dejected now that Anna longed to comfort her, but her own thoughts were in a muddle and she found it difficult to think clearly.

  “Anyway,” Scilla said, “if it wasn’t your own name why did you recognise it? You asked me how I knew!”

  “Listen,” Anna said slowly, “I don’t think there is any such person as Marnie. I think she was a – a sort of imaginary girl that I—”

  “That you what?”

  “That I made up once – because I was lonely. I don’t really remember now. It all seems a long while ago…” She sat staring down at the water which was beginning to lap at the foot of the stone steps. “I wish I could remember…” She turned to Scilla suddenly. “But you knew about her! That’s exciting – that means we both shared the same imagination!”

  Scilla leapt to her feet. “Wait! Wait here a minute and I’ll show you.” She ran back into the house.

  In a moment she was back, apparently empty-handed, but holding something pressed tightly against her, inside her jersey. Her eyes were bright with excitement now.

  “I don’t want the others to see. Let’s get down here.” They moved down to a lower step and sat close together, almost out of sight of the house. For a moment Anna had the curious feeling that once, long ago, she had sat on the same step with someone else. Then she glanced sideways at Scilla, and the feeling disappeared.

  “Here you are.” Scilla drew the book out from under her jersey and laid it on Anna’s lap. It was a limp, thin exercise book, creased and torn, with a faded grey-green cover. The name “Marnie” was written across the front. “Go on, read it,” said Scilla.

  Anna turned the pages and saw that it was half-filled with round, childish writing. She read a few lines.

  I wish I had a friend here. The village children come on the staithe sometimes under my window and eat lickerice bootlaces and tell secrets. I wish I could go down and play with them.

  “Now do you remember?” Scilla demanded, laughing up into her face. “You couldn’t have written all that and really forgotten every word, could you? But it is fun sharing the same imagination! You invented her. And now, if you’ve forgotten her, I know more about her than you do! She was a funny sort of girl.”

  Anna stared at the book, turning it over in her hands. “But I didn’t write it. Truly I never saw it before!”

  “You didn’t write it? But you must have. I expect you wrote it a long while ago, when you were much younger, and put it away in that cupboard and forgot all about it.”

  “But how would I get up there to put it in the cupboard?”

  Scilla said, her mouth dropping open, “But didn’t you live here?”

  “No. Never.” They stared at each other in amazement. “Why should you think I did?”

  Scilla buried her head in her hands, running her fingers through her hair, then turned to Anna with an expression of puzzled astonishment. “But I always thought you did! Right from the beginning. Let me think now – the day we came down, that was the first time I saw you. We were getting out of the car and I saw you running out of the gate. I said to the others, “Look at that girl!” but they none of them saw you. Then we went in – and I told you – the carpenter was up in my room and he’d just pulled this book out from the back of the shelf. I didn’t have time to read it but I just looked at it quickly, and I could see it belonged to someone who’d lived here before, so I hid it away. I read it after.

  “Then I saw you again. You were always on the marsh or the beach by yourself and I thought, that girl looks like the girl in the book. She’s always alone, playing tracking games on her own in the sandhills. But when I told the others they said I was inventing you—” she paused, running her hands through her hair in the same bewildered way.

  “But I knew. I could tell by the way you kept looking up at the windows – mine especially. And yet the others never saw you! Well, then I noticed you hadn’t got a boat of your own – and the girl in the book had – and I noticed about that ring being rusty, and things like that, and I began to wonder if you were a sort of ghost, and I thought perhaps that was why the others didn’t see you.

  “So I asked the carpenter one day. I said, ‘Do you know a girl with dark hair who’s very brown, and always goes about alone?’ And he said yes, you’d been up here the day we came. I tried to find out why, but he didn’t know. He just said you’d been asking about the people who used to live here. So then I was sure you were Marnie. I even thought you might have come back to try and find your book. But the man said your name was Anna. I couldn’t make that out for ages, and then I thought it must be that you wanted to keep it a secret that you used to live here. So I didn’t tell anyone about that. But—” she hesitated, “I still didn’t know for sure whether you were real or a sort of phantom!”

  Anna stared at her. “But this book is real! And I didn’t write it. That means Marnie isn’t a made-up person. She wrote it!”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  THE BOOK

  THEY SAT AND pored over the book together. Priscilla knew most of it by heart but to Anna it was all new. And yet, as she read, it became familiar, like a story she had once heard and forgotten. Certain things came back into her mind quite clearly – things she had once known, or heard about, she could not be sure which…

  May 30th

  Decided to keep a diary – the word “dairy” had been crossed out and “diary” written alongside – as it’s only for me it doesn’t matter if it’s untidy. Nothing happened today.

  May 31st

  I wish I had a friend here. The village children come on the staithe sometimes under my window and eat lickerice bootlaces and tell secrets. I wish I could go down and play with them.

  June 3rd

  Such fun! I went for a row in my nightie last night. The tide was high and it was quite dark. I shall do it again. They were in the kitchen and never knew.

  June 5th

  Father and Mother came today. I’m so lucky! But Mother is going back on Monday when Father goes. I wish they’d take me too but the air is better here. But I’m terribly lucky. Lots of children are starving, and in Belgium the children are woken up in the night by the sound of the guns and fighting. I’m silly to mind Pluto.

  Scilla looked up. “What a strange girl she is! What does she mean about Belgian children? And who’s Pluto? It sounds like a cartoon film.”

  “It was a dog,” said Anna slowly, “a big black dog. At least, that’s what suddenly came into my mind. Perhaps they had one and she was frightened of it.”

  Scilla looked round at her in surprise. “Oh, yes, I believe you’re right! How clever of you! There’s an old dog kennel, a huge one, out at the front. Matt found it under the trees.”

  They turned to the book again and read on.

  June 8th

  Nan brushed my hair a long while today because she found out I’d borrowed her shawl for the beggar girl. I forgot to put it back and Ettie found it in the boat. Silly old thing, why does she want a shawl anyway? Lily says it’s because she has toothache and won’t go to the dentist and she wrapps it round her face in the night.

  “You see what I mean, though?” said Scilla. “What’s lending a shawl to a beggar girl got to do with having your hair brushed? She must have been a funny girl.”

  June 10th

  Nan is as cross as two sticks. She locked me in my room because of last night. She caught me tying up the boat when I was in my nightie so there won’t be any more midnight rows for a bit.

  June 12th

  Miss Q isn’t coming any more. She says her mother’s ill but I think she’s tired of teaching me. Read Ettie’s comic. The Phantom in the Tower. It was
very eerie.

  July. Sunday

  Today I went all along the beach. There were some families in the sandhills and I hid and watched them. They didn’t see me. They had hard-boiled eggs and strawberry jam puffs. Lucky things!

  “I thought that was us,” said Scilla, pointing to the page. “We did have hard-boiled eggs one day, but not strawberry jam puffs. But I was sure you’d written it about us.” Anna shook her head silently, still reading.

  Monday

  I went to the beach again and played a tracking game. Nan can’t say I’m making a nuisance of myself and picking up with straingers because I’m not. I only watch them. Today I lay so still in the grass that a skylark came right down to its nest beside me. I shall keep a book of nature notes if I can get another book.

  “You see?” said Scilla. “She’s always doing that, going down there by herself, never with anybody, just watching other people. Well, that’s how you were – always by yourself. Are you surprised I thought it was you?”

  July 9th

  Today the village children were under my window and they were teasing a little boy with a funny name, Winterman or something. They made him cry then one of them gave him a sherbet bag so he stopped crying and eat it, but he ate the bag as well so then they started teasing him again. He looked so funny but I felt rather sorry for him.

  July 11th

  Edward came. He will stay ten days so now I have company. But he’s to old.

  Thursday.

  Went to the beach.

  Friday.

  We made a little house in the dunes with some planks that were washed up on the beach. I thatched it with marram grass. It was more fun than making sand houses and gardens on my own.

  Monday.

  Went riding with Edward.

  Tuesday.

  Edward tried to make me talk to P today. He says I ought to face up to what I’m frightened of. I did try but he was horred and kept barking and jumping up.

  “There,” said Scilla, “P for Pluto, you were right! I’d forgotten that bit.” Anna nodded silently, her eyes still fixed on the page. There was a gap, then the last entry, undated.