by Emma Carroll
I shook my head. ‘Not me, no. A friend.’
‘So you thought you’d sort it out with your fists?’ Dad asked.
‘They were saying things about her colour!’ I cried. ‘It was horrible!’
‘And your friend, what did she make of you wading in? Wouldn’t she rather fight her own battles?’
I didn’t know what he was getting at. ‘She wasn’t there.’
Dad took a deep breath, but if he was trying to calm down it didn’t work. ‘Do you know how hard we pushed for this place at St Kilda’s? An opportunity like this – to better yourself by going to a good school – and what do you do? Throw it away!’
I flinched.
‘Don’t you know how important a good education will be? You’re a girl, Lil, and a poor one at that. Life out there in the big wide world is going to be tough. All this talk of votes for women, equal rights. There’s still a heck of a long way to go, you know.’ He leaned in, hands flat on the table to stop them shaking.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Sorry?’ Dad fumed. ‘You’ll be sorry when you leave school with nothing, and watch all the jobs going to the local boys who’ve not an ounce of your brains!’
I was taken back. The last thing I’d expected was Dad to argue for girls’ rights.
‘One day, Lil, I want you not to have to live in a tiny flat and do a job that’s god-awfully dull. I’d like you to go to university. I don’t want you to be held back because you come from a working-class family or because you’re a girl.’
I frowned. ‘Me, go to university?’
‘Maybe. Your grandad’s not the only one who knows there’s a world beyond London.’ Looking suddenly tired, he straightened up, moving back from the table and reaching for his coat. ‘You’ve had your punishment, and let that be a lesson to you. Your mother’ll be home soon. You can tell her yourself what’s happened. I’m going to the pub.’
I listened to him stomp all the way down the stairs and out into the street. In the quiet of our kitchen, my ears were ringing. I didn’t know what to think of what Dad had just said, but I’d a strong feeling it wasn’t a telling-off.
*
Only ten minutes or so later, Mum came hurtling through the door. She was red-faced, out of breath and holding her side like she’d been running.
‘What’s happened?’ I asked warily.
‘You’ve had … an invitation …’ she gasped.
I stared at her. ‘A what?’
‘A lady … came into work … Mrs Mendoza,’ Mum puffed. ‘Says you’re friends with her daughter from school.’
‘Mrs Mendoza came into Woolworths?’ I sat forwards in my seat, sore hand forgotten. Now I was worried. Had something gone wrong at the last minute? Had Tulip’s mum rumbled our plan?
‘Don’t look so horrified!’ Mum smiled. ‘She’s asked to take you to Egypt, all expenses paid. It’s a very important work trip, apparently, but her daughter’s refusing to go without you.’
I was bewildered. What was Tulip playing at? I couldn’t go to Egypt: I’d already told her so and explained why. It felt doubly cruel now that I was having to turn the offer down all over again.
‘It’s a shock to me too, Lil,’ Mum admitted. ‘I mean, we haven’t even heard of this new friend of yours.’
‘Sorry,’ I muttered. ‘Tulip’s very kind to invite me, but I know I can’t go. Dad won’t want me to miss school.’
Mum wasn’t listening. ‘Wait there,’ she said.
Moments later, she came back with her cardboard suitcase. ‘They’re catching the seven o’clock train from St Pancras. Mrs Mendoza said to meet them there if you were coming.’
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. ‘But Dad said—’
‘And I’m saying,’ Mum interrupted, ‘that you’d better get packing if we’re going to make the train. Come on, I’ll help.’
I jumped to my feet before she could change her mind.
‘Thank you!’ I gasped, kissing her cheek. ‘Oh, thank you!’
Rushing to my bedroom, I grabbed what clothes I could find. Not that I’d much to take – underwear, a couple of faded summer dresses, a sweater, my best blouse, a nightdress and a comb. I shook with excitement. It hadn’t even begun to sink in that I was actually going to Egypt.
Yet when Mum laid the suitcase on the bed, and the lid sprang open, suddenly we were both staring at the slip of paper, and the word BOY in bold letters.
Everything went still.
I didn’t know what to do, whether to close the lid or keep packing.
Mum moved first, smoothing her eyebrows with her fingertips, like she did when something was complicated.
‘I should have left it somewhere less obvious, shouldn’t I?’ she said wearily.
‘Is it yours – the label, I mean?’ I asked.
She sighed. Nodded. ‘You’ve seen it now. It’s as good a time as any to tell you.’
Taking my arm gently, she made me sit on the edge of the bed, before perching beside me.
‘Years ago, I had another child …’ She cleared her throat. ‘I was only sixteen, and your dad and I couldn’t afford to get married, so a nice family who couldn’t have their own kiddies adopted him.’
But my mind was on Egypt and the journey I was about to make. I had that distant confused feeling Mum was talking to someone else.
A brother?
I looked at her in amazement. ‘You had a baby?’
‘That’s about the size of it, love.’ Mum got out a hankie to blow her nose.
I didn’t know if I felt sorry for Mum or was fuming angry. Something had certainly stirred deep in my chest.
‘But you gave him to someone else? Couldn’t you keep him?’
Tears rolled down her face. ‘That was the hardest part. We weren’t married. It wasn’t the done thing to have a baby like that – your grandmother was terrified I’d bring shame on the family.’
‘And Grandad?’ I wanted to know, because surely he wouldn’t have cared what other people thought.
‘He was in Egypt at the time. He didn’t know about it until he came home, months afterwards. But we never forgot our baby, your dad and me.’
I didn’t know what to say, or how to comfort Mum. But thinking of it now, I’d never seen my parents laugh much, or even look especially happy. Like most people did, I blamed the war, but maybe this baby they’d given up was part of it too. Maybe it was him Mum was thinking of in the evenings when she sat by the fire.
‘What was he called?’ I asked.
Mum sniffed, then smiled. ‘Ezra, after his grandad. Every year on his birthday we go back to the convent where he was born. Just, you know, to say a little hello.’
‘Which was why you went to St Mary’s yesterday,’ I said, because it was starting to make sense – or bits of it were.
Mum looked surprised. ‘How d’you know that?’
‘I thought you were taking Dad to see Grandad.’
‘Fat chance of that happening!’ Mum almost laughed, then looked teary again. ‘Your dad thought it best not to tell you, but secrets have a sneaky way of coming out, don’t they, eh?’
I felt too stunned to speak.
‘We’d better hurry or we’ll miss that train,’ Mum said, smoothing down her skirt and getting up from the bed.
I didn’t move.
‘Come on, then!’ Mum nudged me.
‘I can’t go. I can’t leave you, not after what you’ve just told me,’ I cried.
Mum took my face firmly in her hands. ‘Now look here, Lil, this is too good an opportunity to miss. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime trip. Think how incredible it’s going to be! Your grandad would be so proud.’
‘Would?’ I looked at her. ‘Don’t you mean will?’
‘Would … will …’ She hesitated. ‘I’ll be truthful, he’s not getting any better.’
Which gave me the last push I needed. I couldn’t deny either the little anxious voice in my head telling me it was no coincidence that something so
heart-wrenching had happened to Mum and Dad at the very time Grandad was in Egypt discovering ancient jars. ‘Are you sure you don’t mind me going?’ I asked.
She nodded. She had tears in her eyes, and so did I.
‘Just come home again, that’s all I ask,’ she said. ‘I can’t lose both of my babies, can I?’
I almost told her there and then about the jar, about Grandad and the curse, but it was a long old story and we really didn’t have time.
11
For a wet Monday night, the traffic across London was heavy. We had to change buses twice, pulling up outside the station with only minutes to spare. I still couldn’t quite believe this was happening, that I wasn’t dreaming.
‘Which train is it?’ Mum was getting in a tizz. ‘Which platform?’ There didn’t seem to be any guards to ask.
The station had the look of a place closing for the night. The tea stall was packing up, the flower seller sweeping the floor. At the ticket hatch the blinds were down. The only passengers seemed to be the ones making their way to the exit.
Then, the terrible truth.
On the far wall the huge station clock showed a couple of minutes past seven. We were too late. We stood, not speaking. I was dazed with disappointment. To have missed the train just by minutes was all too much.
Overhead, up in the rafters, a pigeon flapped awake. A hiss of steam came from a far corner of the station, and then the sharp, shrill unexpected blow of a whistle.
Mum and I locked eyes. ‘Is that—?’
‘Go!’ Mum thrust the suitcase at me. ‘You might just make it!’
The last I saw of her she was blowing me a kiss.
I ran full pelt across the station towards the noise. Behind a pillar, down a slipway and there was the sign: ‘The Continental Express’, though the platform was roped off in the way expensive paintings sometimes were in galleries. I slowed to a walk, excitement quickly turning to nerves.
What if Tulip had changed her mind? What if I couldn’t find her amongst the passengers? What if I looked too poor to be allowed on board?
The train itself was lavender and cream-coloured, shining like water and fashionably curved. If Mrs Mendoza was catching a train it was definitely going to be this one. On the platform, whistle still in his mouth, was a guard in a uniform the same colours as the train. Despite giving my hair a quick smooth and rubbing my shoes on the backs of my socks, I felt myself growing shabbier by the second.
The whistle went again. The train was making ready to leave. There were shouts, doors banging, steam swirling out from under the wheels. It was a job to see anything as I hovered at the barrier.
The guard came over but didn’t unfasten the rope.
‘You can’t come through without a ticket,’ he said, looking me up and down.
‘I’m meeting some friends,’ I protested. ‘They’re already on board. They’ve got my ticket.’
‘Have they, indeed?’ He might as well have told me to ‘pull the other one’. It was clear he didn’t believe a word.
Behind him another guard called out, ‘Are we ready, Smith? All set?’
And then the clunk of a window sliding open as someone’s head poked out. ‘What’s the hold-up?’
I knew that voice.
‘Tulip!’ I cried, waving wildly, then to the guard, ‘There, look! That’s my friend!’ I’d never been so glad to see anyone.
Another dark curly head appeared beside hers. ‘Bravo, Lil! You made it!’ Oz yelled.
Even then I don’t think the guard completely believed his eyes. But he unclipped the rope and seconds later I was running down the platform and boarding the train.
‘Better late than never.’ Tulip grinned, squeezing me into a hug.
On the platform, the guard’s whistle blew again. This time, with all the doors shut, the train began to move. There was no going back. We were on our way to Egypt.
*
For the first few miles, we watched spellbound from the windows as the lights of London slipped away. I turned to Tulip. ‘Your mother really hasn’t guessed what we’ve done?’
‘Not even a whiff of suspicion,’ Tulip said proudly. ‘She’s holding court in the cocktail lounge as we speak. Already half the passengers are in love with her.’
This I could well imagine.
‘You have got the jar, haven’t you? And the translations?’ I asked.
‘It’s all safely wrapped up in our room,’ Tulip assured me.
‘I’ll tell Mama you’re here,’ Oz said and disappeared.
‘Wait till you see where we’re sleeping, Lil,’ Tulip said, taking my hand. ‘It’s like a dolls’ house bedroom – it’s tiny.’
I felt a funny mix of nerves and excitement as she led me through carriage after train carriage. I’d thought the Mendozas’ house grand, but this was swishness on another scale entirely. We went through a carriage done out with pale leather seats where people were smoking cigars, playing backgammon and cards. The dining car was quieter, full of rows of empty tables covered in white cloths as stiffly folded as envelopes. I couldn’t help gawping at the curved wooden walls, the patterned ceiling, the thick salmon-pink carpets.
Narrow corridors linked the carriages together. With so many passengers milling about, we had to say countless ‘excuse me’s to squeeze past.
Finally we reached Carriage A. Oz’s bedroom was next door, Tulip explained, and beyond that was the last compartment in the carriage, which was spacious, with its own bathroom, and had been nabbed by her mother. Ignoring the little ladder for reaching the top bunk, Tulip sprang up on to her bed. She sat there, looking down at me, swinging her legs. ‘I’ve taken this bed. You don’t mind, do you?’
‘Course not.’ I didn’t mind a bit. The beds looked narrow but comfy with crisp turned-down sheets, and bars you could pull up to stop yourself falling out in the night. There wasn’t room for much else – you could stand and stretch your arms out and touch both walls.
Reaching under her pillow, Tulip handed me something wrapped up in a sweater. ‘You’d better have this back now you’re here.’
It was the jar, in its box.
‘I wasn’t looking forward to sleeping with it later,’ she admitted.
I wasn’t entirely sure I was, either.
*
We found Mrs Mendoza in the dining car. She looked resplendent in a bright red frock and matching elbow-length gloves.
‘Mama gathers new friends like flies,’ Tulip whispered as we approached.
Mrs Mendoza, bright-eyed and smiling, was definitely a light-up-the-room type of person. I saw it, the other passengers saw it, and so – begrudgingly – did Tulip. I think secretly she adored her mum.
Once I’d said hello to Mrs Mendoza and, remembering my manners, said the ‘thank-you-for-having-me’ stuff, Oz, Tulip and me found ourselves a table near the window. Outside it was pitch dark, the rain streaking diagonally down the glass as we sped along. I still couldn’t quite believe I was here, and wondered if back at home Dad had come back from the pub yet, if Mum had told him where I was. And like a wallop in the gut, it hit me all over again: I had a brother. He’d be a grown-up by now. He might’ve fought in the war. There was a chance he wasn’t even alive, which was a crushingly awful thought.
‘What’s wrong with your hand, Lil?’ Oz asked, getting my attention.
‘What? Oh!’ I flexed my fingers gingerly. The marks had gone from white to red, and felt tight like sunburn. ‘It flipping hurt when she did it,’ I confessed. ‘But it’s nothing a cold flannel won’t put right.’
Tulip twigged what’d happened. ‘You went to school today, and that old dragon hit you?’
‘She hit me three times.’
Oz’s eyes were on stalks. ‘You got caned?’
‘What on earth did you do wrong?’ Tulip asked.
Quickly, I hid my hand under the table.
‘Not much,’ I said. ‘Anyway, we’re on an adventure. From this point on, all school talk is strictly banned.’
Tulip grinned. ‘Sounds like my kind of rule.’
We shook on it.
Oz got to his feet. ‘We should have a game of something. I’ll find a chess set.’
As we waited for him to return, Tulip said she was hungry. Having missed supper completely, she ordered grilled cheese sandwiches, hot chocolate and a selection of fancy cakes.
‘The Washington Post are paying, remember?’ Tulip reminded me. ‘They deserve it, overlooking Mama like that. Go on, order anything you want.’
I’d never ordered from a menu before. There was so much to choose from. I honestly wanted all of it, but settled on bacon and eggs, buttered muffins, and ice cream with fruit that came in a really tall glass.
‘What’s it like having a brother?’ I asked as we waited for our food.
Tulip wrinkled her nose. ‘They’re loud, they’re big, they’re smelly. Everyone thinks they’re more important than girls.’
‘Not in your family,’ I pointed out. ‘Your mum treats you the same.’
‘Maybe, but she still thinks I’m the giddy one, and Oz has got all the brains. It was the same with Alex.’ She looked suddenly sad.
‘We don’t have to talk about brothers if you don’t want to,’ I said gently.
‘Half-brother,’ she corrected me. ‘Mama’s been married twice.’
I gasped. ‘Crikey, like a movie star!’
‘Her first husband was white, hence Alex not being dark like us. Our dad is black. He’s a jazz pianist. Plays concerts all around the world.’
It sounded so very glamorous and intriguing.
‘Everyone loved Alex.’ Tulip sighed, fiddling with her napkin. ‘The Golden Boy, we used to call him – and not just because of his hair. He was brilliant at everything.’
I remembered all the silver cups on the shelves in the Mendozas’ library.
‘He was going to university, to Oxford, to study Ancient History. When he came home from school in the holidays, he used to teach Oz. He said it helped him remember all he’d learned, going over it again like that.’
‘But Oz must’ve been so young. How did he understand it?’
Tulip shrugged. ‘He only picked up bits of it. The rest he’s done since Alex disappeared – in his memory, I suppose. He’s probably going to be as clever as Alex one day. It’s the big wide world Oz doesn’t understand so well. That’s why he doesn’t go to school any more.’
