The Secret Passage

by Nina Bawden

  They were waiting in the bungalow that belonged to the District Officer. The District Officer and his wife, Mr and Mrs Epsom, were not particular friends of the Mallorys but they were the only people who lived fairly near and had enough room in their house to take in a family of five. They had two children of their own, a thin, pale girl called Sara and a thin, pale boy called Giles. Mrs Epsom was a very fussy woman. Her bungalow was so clean that you would have been frightened to walk on the floor in case you left marks on it, and Sara and Giles were always washed and brushed and dressed in beautiful clothes as if they were going to a party.

  Mary and John had no clothes of their own except the ones they had been wearing when they escaped from the house, and they had had to take those off so that they could be washed and dried. When Ben and Mrs Mallory arrived, they were wearing things that Sara and Giles had lent them. Mary was dressed in a white frock with pink flowers on the bodice and John was wearing a smart grey suit which he found very tight and uncomfortable, because although he was the same age as Giles, he was much bigger and healthier.

  Mrs Mallory thought that they both looked unusually quiet and tidy, sitting on a sofa and playing a game of Ludo with Sara and Giles. The Epsom children were not allowed to play games in which they might get dirty and tear their clothes. Mrs Epsom had bathed Mary and John—much to their indignation because they were used to bathing themselves—and although she had managed to make them look quite presentable, she thought that they could never look as beautifully neat as Sara and Giles always did. Already, Mary had a smudge of dirt down the front of her pretty white dress and John’s hair, that she had tugged with a comb until he squeaked with pain, was tangled again and falling into his eyes.

  As for Ben—when Mrs Epsom saw Ben, her eyes almost jumped out of her head. He looked like a sweep, or a small hippopotomas that had been rolling in the mud. His face was grimy with smoke and red earth and he had rubbed great rings round his dark eyes. No one so dirty had ever come into her beautiful, clean bungalow before. She gave a little scream of horror and rushed into the bathroom at once, to turn on the hot water.

  Mrs Mallory followed her, carrying Ben to stop his muddy footmarks leaving a trail along the floor. Mrs Epsom put a piece of newspaper beside the bath for him to stand on while he took his clothes off.

  “My—you are dirty,” Mrs Mallory said, smiling at Mrs Epsom and trying to sound as if she was surprised.

  “I’m not very dirty. I’m often dirtier than this,” Ben said proudly. Mrs Epsom gave a little gasp and he looked at her sternly and said, “It’s just because my skin isn’t black. If my skin was lovely and black like Thomas’s, the dirt wouldn’t show.”

  “Who’s Thomas?” Mrs Epsom said, quite kindly, though her eyes were fixed on the dreadful marks Ben’s hands were making on the side of the white bath.

  “He’s my friend,” Ben said proudly. “My best friend. I help him mind his cows.”

  “He’s a very nice little boy,” Mrs Mallory said quickly, almost as if she were apologising for something. “I found Ben in his hut. They’d been so kind to him.”

  “In an African hut?” Mrs Epsom’s voice sounded queer—almost frightened. Ben looked at her in surprise. She said, “How dreadful. Why—he might have caught something. I’ll put some disinfectant in the bath and we’d better burn his clothes, don’t you think?”

  She poured something out of a bottle into the hot water. It smelt very nasty. Then she picked up Ben’s trousers, holding them nervously at arm’s length, rather as if they were something alive that might bite.

  When she had gone, Mrs Mallory was very quiet. She scrubbed Ben hard with a loofah and washed his thick, black hair over and over again. The soap got in his eyes and stung, but when he grumbled about it his mother didn’t stop rubbing as she usually did and say, “Well, I daresay that’ll do. A spot of dirt never did anyone any harm.” Instead, she went on rubbing his head, not saying anything, and when he was out of the bath and getting dressed in a pair of shorts and a shirt that Giles had grown out of, she said something she had never said to him before.

  “Now Ben, you must try very hard and keep yourself clean.”

  Ben could hardly believe his ears.

  “But I can’t,” he said. “How can I? Dirt’s all around, it just flies on to me and sticks.”

  Mrs Mallory looked at him and sighed. She had done her best. He really did look quite clean, even his nails and his knees and behind his ears. All the same, she had the feeling that she had only reached the point at which Mrs Epsom would probably have begun.

  She said, “I know, darling. But you must just try. It’s very kind of Mrs Epsom to let us stay with her. And when you’re a visitor in someone’s house, it’s only polite to try and be as little trouble to them as possible.”

  “This isn’t a proper visit” Ben said. “Not like a holiday. We only came here because our house got drowned. So I’m not really a visitor. I’m more of a Homeless Person.”

  He expected his mother to laugh. She always said that he could argue the hind leg off a donkey. But she didn’t laugh. She just looked at him with bright, dark eyes, and then, quite suddenly she snatched him into her arms and held him so tightly that he could hardly breathe. Then she let him go and began to cough. She coughed as if it hurt her, holding her side.

  When she could speak, she said in a gasping voice, “Oh darling, darling Ben. Yes, I’m afraid you are.”

  *

  Mrs Mallory coughed a lot all night. Ben was sleeping in the same room and it kept him awake. In the middle of the night, he got up and padded over to his mother’s bed.

  “Would you like some cough mixture?” he said. “If you like, I can go and look to see if there is some in the bathroom.”

  Ben thought cough mixture was a very special treat. He had only once been ill, when he had had measles, and the doctor had prescribed an extremely pleasant mixture for him, tasting of honey and lemons. He had enjoyed it so much that he had been almost sorry when he got better and he would often pretend to cough, producing an affected little bark and going quite red in the face, in order that he should be given another dose out of that delicious bottle.

  But Mrs Mallory shook her head. “No thank you, Ben darling. But I would like another blanket. See if there is one on the end of your bed. I’m so cold.”

  She didn’t feel cold, though. When he fetched the blanket, she caught hold of Ben’s wrist for a minute and her fingers were dry and burning hot. “Try to go to sleep, Ben,” she said. “I’ll do my best not to keep you awake.”

  “I don’t mind,” he said grandly. “I can stay awake all night if you like, so I can fetch you things.”

  But of course he fell fast asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow.

  In the morning Mrs Mallory was really ill. She stayed in bed all day; when the children tiptoed in to see her she smiled at them but her eyes looked bright and queer—almost as if she was not quite sure who they were. It made them feel very odd and subdued so that when Mrs Epsom said that they must be quiet and not worry their mother, they didn’t find it particularly difficult. John played what he privately thought was a rather babyish game of croquet with Sara and Giles and Mary read to Ben, moving a chair to a place on the veranda from which she could see the door of her mother’s room. Mrs Epsom went in and out carrying trays and basins with white cloths over them. Her forehead was puckered up in a continual frown and her eyes looked worried.

  The telephone line had been mended and she was able to speak to Mr Mallory, who was still stuck on the other side of the flooded river.

  “If only the river would go down,” Mary heard her say. “She ought to have proper attention—we haven’t even got any drugs here.”

  Fortunately, the sun blazed all that day and by the afternoon of the next, the floods had gone down enough for Mr Mallory to come back in the Land Rover. He brought a doctor with him and they both hurried straight into Mrs Mallory’s room. When they came out, about half-an-hour later, Mr Mall
ory looked very tired. He kissed the children and waited patiently while Ben told him all the things he was bursting to tell—about the house being swept away and about the baby leopard—but though he watched Ben closely and nodded from time to time, he didn’t really seem to be listening with much attention. When Ben had finished, Mr Mallory cleared his throat and told the children that he and the doctor were going to take their mother to a hospital in Nairobi.

  “We’re going to make her a nice bed in the back of the Land Rover,” he said. “She’ll be quite comfortable there.”

  “Oh Dad” Mary said. There was a lump, like a little hard golf ball in her throat. Her father put his arm round her and held her against him.

  “She’ll be all right,” he said. “Don’t worry. I’ll stay in an hotel quite near the hospital and I’ll telephone you every evening.”

  “Aren’t we coming too?” Ben said in an outraged voice.

  “Not this time, old boy. If you want to help, the best thing you can do is to be good and not to be a trouble to Mr and Mrs Epsom and try not to squabble with Sara and Giles.”

  He said this last bit with a twinkling glance at John who went pink and started to hum softly under his breath. He’d already found it very difficult not to quarrel with Giles who was silly and babyish and inclined to cry easily.

  The next hour was full of excitement. They made up the bed in the back of the Land Rover, putting a mattress on the floor and padding the hard sides with cushions. When Mrs Mallory was carried out, doing her best to smile and look cheerful, it was almost a jolly occasion. “I feel like a caterpillar in a cocoon,” she said, as they rolled her round and round with thick blankets and laid her gently on the mattress.

  “You look more like an Egyptian Mummy,” said John and they all laughed at his joke—Mary laughed so loudly that her throat began to hurt and the tears came into her eyes. But when the canvas flaps were fastened down tight to keep out the draughts and the dust and the Land Rover disappeared, bumping and swaying down the hilly, red road, they didn’t feel like laughing anymore.

  They waved until their arms ached. Then they just stood, silently huddling together until the sound of the engine had completely died away and the last particle of dust had settled.

  *

  The next seven days seemed much longer than an ordinary week. Mr and Mrs Epsom were very kind to them—at least, they tried hard to be kind. The trouble was that they were not at all the same sort of people as Mr and Mrs Mallory who were not only very happy-go-lucky, but loved living in Africa and wanted their children to love it too. Mrs Epsom hated Africa. She thought it was big and dirty and dangerous and full of diseases. She was frightened whenever her children played in the garden: they might be attacked by a wild animal or bitten by a snake. She was frightened of germs too and distrusted every speck of dirt and every drop of water.

  So John and Mary and Ben were always getting into trouble for doing things no one had ever told them they were not supposed to do, like playing where they liked, getting as dirty as they liked and talking to anyone they liked.

  They were astonished to discover that they were not allowed to go into the kitchen to talk to the cook.

  “Mummy doesn’t like us to talk to the servants,” Giles said.

  “Why not?” John said.

  “Because you never know.”

  “You never know what?”

  “You just never know,” Sara said, tossing back her limp, long hair and looking like a rather smug little doll.

  “I think you’re silly,” John said.

  “I’m not silly.” Her eyes went round and scared. “Mummy says they’re not to be trusted.”

  “They might chop us all up with a panga,” said Giles, who, in spite of his pale, girlish prettiness, was very bloodthirsty.

  John went very red. “That’s a silly thing to say.”

  Mary said, “It’s not just silly, it’s wicked and stupid.” She was so angry that she felt as if she might burst. “Why—it was Jason who saved all our lives. If it wasn’t for Jason, we might have been drowned. I think you’re just stupid.”

  She ran out of the bungalow and went down to the bottom of the garden. She felt that she never wanted to speak to Sara and Giles again, so she pretended to be very busy making a garden by sticking flowers and stones into a mound of red earth. She became quite absorbed in what she was doing and was beginning to feel almost happy again when Sara, who was watching her, said, “You’ll catch it. You’re making an awful mess of your clean dress.”

  Mary looked down at her skirt and sighed. She did try to keep herself clean most of the time. After all, the clothes she was wearing were not her clothes, and she supposed it was reasonable that she should be expected to take care of them. All the same, having to keep clean was very difficult when you have never had to bother about it before. And if it was hard for her, it was harder still for John and almost impossible for Ben. He thought he would never get used to the grim expression on Mrs Epsom’s face as she took him to his bath every evening.

  “She looks at me as if I’d got leprosy,” he complained, one evening just before bedtime. Mrs Epsom was giving Sara and Giles a music lesson and the Mallorys were on their own for once, sitting on the veranda. The sun was just about to disappear behind the blue hills; in a moment it would be dark.

  “Perhaps you have,” Mary said, and Ben giggled.

  “I wouldn’t mind having leprosy,” John said in a thoughtful voice. “Lepers don’t pay taxes. You know Dad is always saying how awful it is having to pay income tax.”

  “What an extraordinary idea,” Mr Epsom said. He had heard what John said as he came out on to the veranda to smoke his pipe—Mrs Epsom hated the smell of tobacco in the house. He stood looking down at the children with a puzzled expression on his fat, round face in which two small eyes seemed sunk, like two raisins in a piece of dough.

  “It was only a joke,” John muttered. Mary knew that this wasn’t altogether true: John, who was rather lazy, was always thinking of ways in which he could avoid earning his living and paying income tax.

  “Not a very good joke, if you don’t mind my saying so,” Mr Epsom said. “How do you know lepers don’t pay taxes anyway?”

  “Dad told me,” John said.

  “Hmmm. For an uneducated boy, you seem to have collected a lot of curiously useless information. Your mind must be like a rag bag—full of odds and ends.”

  He laughed, but Mary and John stared at him stonily. The word ‘uneducated’, was one they had heard a great deal during the last week. Sara and Giles only lived with their parents during the holidays; during term-time, they went to a boarding school where they did English History and French and Latin. Mrs Epsom, who liked to think that her children were cleverer than anyone else’s, was always testing John and Mary to find out if they knew as much as Sara and Giles. When she found out that they didn’t know any French or Latin and hardly any History at all, she pretended to be surprised but she was secretly rather pleased. On the other hand, she wasn’t pleased, only fearfully shocked, to find that Ben couldn’t read at all.

  “He didn’t want to learn yet,” Mary explained. “And Mother says it’s always better to wait until you really do want to learn something—she says it’s more fun that way.”

  “So you think lessons should be fun, do you?” Mrs Epsom looked at Mary critically and gave a tired little sigh. “I’m afraid you’ve all been rather spoiled, dear. Learning isn’t fun—it’s very hard work. You’ll never get anywhere in this world unless you realise that.”

  The idea that she and John and Ben were spoiled and uneducated was quite new to Mary—and very strange. The Mallory children had lived rather a lonely, shut-off life with no one to criticise them and no other children to compare themselves with. Mary didn’t feel either spoiled or uneducated but she thought that perhaps the way you feel to yourself and the way you look to other people, were two quite different things. She decided that she didn’t really know what she was like at all. Pro
bably Mrs Epsom didn’t know either, but Mary was very curious to know what she thought, all the same.

  That evening when she got out of bed to go to the bathroom, she heard Mr and Mrs Epsom talking on the veranda. The door into the dark living room was open and Mary stood just behind it, a pale little ghost in her white nightgown, and listened.

  “John can’t even do long division,” Mrs Epsom was saying. “And as for Ben—why the boy’s just like a little savage. I think he speaks Swahili better than he speaks English. What will happen to them when they get back to England, I can’t imagine. I can’t believe any of them will be able to pass an exam—or even settle down in a proper school. They’ve never been taught how to work hard—they’ve been allowed to grow up thinking that life is always going to be nice and easy and a lot of fun. What were their parents thinking of?”

  Mary thought Mrs Epsom sounded cross and a little jealous because she had never been allowed to think that life could be a lot of fun.

  Mr Epsom said slowly, “I don’t think they thought about it much. I gather they didn’t want to part with the children—that’s why John and Mary were never sent to school.”

  “I must say, it seems rather selfish,” Mrs Epsom said with a sniff. “After all, it’s the children who are going to suffer. If the worst happens and they have to be sent back to England, they’ll be completely out of their depth. Have any arrangements been made, do you know?

  Mary gritted her teeth silently. She didn’t know what Mrs Epsom meant by ‘if the worst happens’, and she didn’t much care. She felt too hot and angry. It was horrible of Mrs Epsom to say her father and mother were selfish people. She wanted to rush out onto the veranda and shout, “It’s not true, it’s not true,” but she knew she must not do that. She shouldn’t really have been listening to their private conversation.