The Secret Passage

by Nina Bawden

  “Are you cold?” Ben said.

  “Yes, I am, Mr Mallory. How very intelligent of you to observe—people seldom do. Mrs Haggard, now, thinks I am simply eccentric.” Her voice sank to a thread of a whisper. “I believe she thinks I am a little mad. Mad Muriel, she calls me behind my back—she thinks I don’t know it. Servants have no respect nowadays.”

  “I’m cold too,” Ben said. He thought the hot bath and the kettles were a very sensible way of keeping warm. “I’ve been cold ever since I came to England.”

  Miss Pin placed her ungloved hand against the side of the kettle on her lap. “Getting cool,” she said. She exchanged it for the kettle on the oil stove, poured more hot water into the bath and then held the empty kettle towards Ben. “Would you mind filling this up for me, Mr Mallory. Over in the corner—there.” She pointed with a scrawny finger.

  In the corner there was a brown velvet curtain that rattled back on brass rings and revealed a washbasin. Ben filled the kettle carefully—it was rather a tricky business—and took it back.

  “Put it down here,” the old lady commanded. “No, no, stupid boy … can’t you see?” She bent sideways and picked up something from the floor. “This is Sir Lancelot,” she said. She showed him a small tortoise with a green ribbon tied round his shell. She spoke to it in the thin, squeaky voice Ben had heard through the door. “Sir Lancelot—meet Mr Benjamin Mallory.” The tortoise slid out his scaly old head and blinked black eyes at Ben. “He suffers with the cold, as I do. Sometimes I give him baths in warm olive oil. You may stroke his chin, if you care to.”

  Gently, Ben stroked the dry old chin. He said, “Do tortoises like that? I wish I had a pet. In Africa, I had a chameleon.” He thought perhaps Miss Pin would like to hear about Balthazar, so he sat down on a red leather stool beside the enamel bath, and told her about him. She seemed very interested.

  “Tell me about Africa,” she said, her boot-button eyes glistening. “It must be a very wild, strange place. I have always wished to travel but my Dear Papa never allowed it, though he, of course, spent much of his life in India. Until his Enemies hounded him out, of course. When that happened, we fled to Henstable.” She gave a little sigh. “We came here when I was a child often and I have never left it since.”

  “How old are you?” Ben asked.

  “Eighty-two.”

  Ben drew a deep breath. He looked at her face and her shawl and her feathered hat and thought he had never seen anyone so odd-looking, or so old. “Who are the Enemies?” he said.

  “Hush.” Miss Pin leaned forward in her chair, hunching herself up until she looked like a crooked old witch. “Don’t speak so loud. They are all around us—watching and listening. You need not be afraid, though. We are quite safe, here in this house. That is why Dear Papa named it The Haven. Even should They force their way in, there are places to hide. Places where They would never find us. You’re not afraid, are you?”

  “Of course not,” Ben said boldly, though her secretive, whispering voice sent delicious shivers running up and down his spine. “If They came in, though—the Enemies, I mean, where would you hide?”

  She said slowly, “I don’t know that I should tell you. Can you keep a secret?” She looked at him thoughtfully. “I believe you can. You’re a sensible boy, aren’t you?”

  Ben nodded, hugging his knees. He thought she was the most interesting grown-up he had met for a long time.

  She took the kettle off the oil stove, tested the temperature, and placed it on her lap. “When we came here,” she said, “I thought this a very odd house. So pokey—so different from our grand house in London. I was a very lonely child—Dear Papa would not allow me to mix with other children in case I should meet an Enemy, you see. I had everything a child could want, we were very rich, you see, because of all the treasure Papa had brought home from India, but for most of the time I was very dull. Then, one afternoon when Cook was out, I discovered the secret passage. I was exploring the cellar …”

  “What is a cellar?” Ben said.

  In his excitement, he spoke much too loudly. Aunt Mabel who was outside in the passage, heard him and thrust open the door. “Ben, you naughty boy,” she said in an exasperated voice. “I thought I told you to stay in your room?” She seized Ben’s arm and jerked him crossly up from his stool. “Do as I tell you another time. I’m sorry he’s bothered you, Miss Pin.”

  Miss Pin was sitting very upright in her chair. In spite of her funny hat and her bare feet and the kettle in her lap, Ben thought she looked grand and imperious, rather like a queen. She spoke like a queen, too.

  “You are exceeding your duties, Mrs Haggard. Mr Mallory is a friend of mine. I am pleased to have him visit me.”

  “Oh. Oh well, if you say so …” Aunt Mabel sounded rather flustered. “But you’ll tire yourself—you know the doctor said you weren’t to tire yourself.” In spite of her grumpy voice, Ben saw that she was very gentle as she plumped up the cushions behind the old lady’s back and settled her more comfortably against them.

  “It tires me far more to be lonely all day,” Muriel Pin said. She looked at Ben. “You’ll come again, won’t you?” She sounded quavery and humble, suddenly, not queenly at all.

  “Yes, I’ll come back,” Ben said.

  “I’d like to give you a present,” the old lady said. “Come here.”

  Ben stood beside her, while she selected a tiny horse from the little table beside her. “Look after him,” she said. “Papa brought him back from India.”

  The horse felt cool in his hand. “Thank you,” Ben said, “He’s lovely. I’ll take care of him for ever.”

  “Come along Ben, do,” Aunt Mabel said, from the door.

  When they were outside in the passage, she marched him along it until they were safely out of earshot. Then she took his shoulder and turned him to face her. She said sternly, “Listen to me, Ben. You’re not to bother Miss Pin, whatever she says. She’s old and sick. Let me see what she gave you.”

  Rather reluctantly, Ben showed her the little, pale green horse.

  Aunt Mabel sighed. “Well, I suppose she can spare that, she’s got enough old junk. It’ll be one thing less for me to dust. But you’re not to take anything, else. Or ask for anything. Do you understand that? She’s a poor old woman and she can’t afford to give greedy little boys presents.”

  Ben was furiously angry. “I wouldn’t ask for presents. And anyway, she’s not poor. She’s rich. She told me.” He was so cross that he went red, right to the tips of his ears.

  Aunt Mabel looked at him. Then she shrugged her shoulders. She said, half to herself, “I suppose it’s harmless enough.” She glanced at her watch. “Your cold sounds better to me. It won’t hurt you to run along into the garden with the others.”

  *

  When Ben ran into the garden, he was bursting to tell Mary and John about Miss Pin and to show them his little horse. But they were far too pre-occupied to listen to him. They were standing halfway down the garden, staring up at the big, neglected old house on the other side of the high brick wall. The sun had moved round in the sky and the windows were all in shadow. They looked very blank and empty.

  “But I did see it,” John was saying in an excited voice. “I did, I did.”

  “What did you see?” Ben panted up to them, the little horse clasped tightly in his hand.

  Mary laughed. “John thinks he saw someone in the house next door but he couldn’t have, because the house is empty. Aunt Mabel said so. So he’s just being silly.”

  “I’m not.” John went red. He hated it when Mary laughed at him. He was breathing rather fast and his hands were clenched in front of him. “I’m sure I saw a face—a face at the window.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE SECRET PASSAGE

  THE HOUSE NEXT door belonged to a man called Mr Reynolds. He was an art collector, Aunt Mabel told John, and the house was full of paintings and other treasures he had brought from all over the world.

  “He’s got a big
house in London as well,” Aunt Mabel said, “and a castle somewhere in France. It’s my belief that he bought my house chiefly to have somewhere else to hang all his pictures—though what pleasure he gets out of them, I can’t think. He hasn’t been down here for at least two years.”

  It seemed queer to John that someone should buy a lot of pictures and hang them up in a house he never visited. It made the house next door seem more mysterious than ever. John wished he could get inside it to find out what it was like but he didn’t say so to Mary. He was afraid she would laugh at him, as she had laughed when he told her he had seen the face at the window. He had only seen it for a moment, a dim, pale blur at one of the top floor windows, and after a little while he began to think he must have imagined it. No one could possibly get inside the house; it seemed so very empty and shut up and the garden walls were so high. John thought it was sad that a house should be so silent and unwanted and wondered if it would feel different from other houses that were used and lived in.

  It was partly because he was an imaginative boy that he thought so much about the house, and partly because he had very little else to do. Mary was busy helping Aunt Mabel—she made the beds and went shopping and washed up the dishes—and Ben spent as much time as he could with Miss Pin. Neither Mary nor John knew what they talked about, shut up in that dark, stuffy room, but they could hear their voices droning on and on behind the closed door, like bees on a summer day.

  “What do you talk about all the time?” John asked Ben.

  “Oh—just things,” Ben said mysteriously. “About olden times when she was a girl. It’s like a story. She tells lovely stories.”

  Aunt Mabel seemed to be glad that Ben liked Miss Pin. She let him carry in her trays at meal-times and fill up her kettles and answer the little brass cow bell that she rang whenever she wanted anything. “It saves my legs,” Aunt Mabel said.

  One Saturday morning, when the children had been in Henstable for two months, Aunt Mabel was busier than ever. A man had telephoned from London the night before to ask for a room for the weekend; he had said that if he liked The Haven, he might stay longer. Aunt Mabel said it was a stroke of luck to get someone at this time of the year; she asked Mary to help her clean out one of the guest rooms and make the bed and she sent John to buy a chicken from the fishmonger.

  The visitor arrived just before lunchtime. Peeping over the banisters, the children saw a small, pale man with a high, bald forehead and two pointed, yellow teeth that stuck out in front of his mouth. He didn’t come upstairs to see the room that Mary had helped Aunt Mabel get ready for him, but went straight into the dining room, leaving his suitcase standing in the hall. Aunt Mabel showed him to a table, then came out again and whispered up to the children, “You’ll have to wait for your lunch.”

  The children waited, crouching together on the stairs. They saw Aunt Mabel come up from the basement carrying the visitor’s lunch on a tray. There was a chicken, brown and still spitting from the oven and separate little dishes of peas, carrots and potatoes, all glistening with butter. Ben’s mouth watered. “Do you think he’ll eat it all? Every bit?” he said wistfully.

  Aunt Mabel came out of the dining room with an empty tray and disappeared down to the kitchen. When she reappeared, ten minutes later, she was carrying the pudding—crusty apple pie with a jug of wrinkled, yellow cream. She smiled cheerfully at the children before she went into the dining room but when she came out again she didn’t look cheerful at all. Her face was stiff and anxious. On the tray was the lovely, crisp chicken. It was barely touched.

  Ben whispered, “Golly—did you see? There’ll be lots left for us!” He smacked his lips with a juicy noise and rubbed his stomach.

  “Don’t be silly,” Mary said sharply. “If he hasn’t eaten the chicken—it means he doesn’t like it. And if he doesn’t like the food, he won’t stay.”

  John said, “Perhaps he doesn’t like first courses. Perhaps he only likes pudding. And it’s a lovely apple pie.”

  They watched anxiously while Aunt Mabel took in the coffee and brought out the remains of the pudding. He had hardly eaten anything—just the smallest hole had been made in the side of the sugar-dusted crust. Aunt Mabel didn’t look up at the children. She stumped straight down to the kitchen.

  “Perhaps he wasn’t hungry. Or perhaps he’s a vegetarian,” John suggested hopefully.

  “Vegetarians eat apple pie,” Mary said.

  They were silent for a minute. Then Ben said, “He’ll have to pay for it anyway, won’t he?”

  “I don’t know.” There was a little frown on Mary’s forehead. She was thinking of how hard Aunt Mabel had worked to make the house look nice and cook a good lunch. And of how much the chicken and the cream had cost. Everything cost a lot—even gas, for cooking. The Gas Bill had arrived at breakfast time and Aunt Mabel had sighed when she saw it.

  Then the visitor came out into the hall. He was wiping his mouth with his handkerchief and looking round him in a lost sort of way.

  John whispered, “Perhaps he wants to go to the bathroom.”

  Mary stood up. She wasn’t quite sure what she was going to say but she knew she was going to say something and it made her feel shaky and queer. She went a little way down the stairs and said in a loud voice, “Do you want anything?” The man looked up, startled, and she went on quickly, “I’m afraid you didn’t eat much of your nice lunch. I hope it was because you just weren’t hungry, not because you didn’t like it.”

  The man didn’t answer. He simply stared at Mary with his pale eyes. Although he had eaten so little, he hadn’t been very tidy about it: there were food stains on his waistcoat and on his tie. Mary felt dreadfully nervous but she took a deep breath and went on, “We hope you’ll like our boarding house and stay here for a long time because Aunt Mabel needs lots of money to pay the Gas Bill and things like that.”

  “Good Heavens,” the visitor said. “Good Heavens.” He looked quite astonished and rather angry. He glared at Aunt Mabel who had come into the hall while Mary had been talking. She gave him a stiff, apologetic smile, marched to the foot of the stairs and said in an icy voice, “Mary—all of you—go down to the kitchen this minute.”

  They went, in silence. Aunt Mabel followed them. When she had closed the kitchen door she said, “Mary, you are a naughty, impertinent girl. Please remember in future that you are not to speak to my guests or bother them in any way. This gentleman is an important man in the City—he has come down here to have a rest, not to be badgered by rude children.” She was very white and shaking.

  Ben said, “He doesn’t look like an important man. He looks just like a rabbit.” And he giggled suddenly, his hand across his mouth.

  “He looks like your bread and butter,” Aunt Mabel said. “Don’t you forget it.” And she went out and shut the door.

  No one spoke for a minute. Mary was staring hard at the floor, the blood burning in her cheeks.

  Then Ben said, “What did she mean? Why does he look like our bread and butter?”

  John looked at Mary and said slowly, “I think she means what she said in the train—that she gets all her money from visitors who come and stay here. And unless people come and stay and pay her for it, she can’t buy food for us.”

  Ben shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t like bread and butter,” he said. “I like bread and butter and jam.”

  *

  In the afternoon, Aunt Mabel sent them down to the sea and told them to stay out of the visitor’s way until tea time.

  It was very cold. Although it was March, none of the daffodils in the gardens had opened and even the buds looked pinched and cold as if the sharp winds had frozen them. As for the sea—the children thought they had never seen anything so grey and wild, not at all like the sea at Mombasa in Kenya where you could swim all day and see marvellous fish and rocks if you dived under the clear, blue water.

  Since they came to England, they had spent a great deal of time by this chilly sea because Aunt Mabel had dec
ided they were not to go to school until the Summer Term. They had all caught coughs and colds and when she took them to the doctor, he said, “No school for a bit. They’re perfectly healthy, but they’ve lived in Africa for so long that they haven’t any resistance to English germs. Let them run about and get used to the climate.

  They had to run about most of the time, to keep warm. It was so cold that Mary and John had chilblains on their fingers and toes that itched and burned whenever they were indoors by the fire. Aunt Mabel put ointment on the chilblains and gave them cough mixture for their chests. She was kind to them in that sort of way—a brisk, rather impersonal way like a nurse or a schoolteacher. But she never once kissed them good-night or asked if they were happy. Mary sometimes thought that if she hadn’t got John and Ben, she might have felt very sad and lonely indeed.

  “She’s not cross, exactly,” she said to John, “I think it’s just that she doesn’t like us much.”

  They were sitting on the beach in the shelter of a slimy, green breakwater, throwing stones into an old tin can that John had stuck up on a pole. Ben was looking for cockles in a patch of shiny mud left by the outgoing tide. He was crouching on his haunches, watching for the tell-tale wriggle in the mud and then burrowing with his fingers to find the tiny, pink-shelled creatures that Uncle Abe liked to eat for tea.

  “She’s not used to liking people,” John said. “I mean—she’s never had a family to practise on, has she? And I think she’s worried because it costs so much to feed us and mend our shoes and that sort of thing.”

  “Why doesn’t Dad send her some money, then?”

  John frowned. “Perhaps he hasn’t got any. After all, the house was swept away and everything. Or perhaps he hasn’t thought about it. You know how vague he is—Mother always paid the bills, didn’t she?” He went rather pink, suddenly, and threw a stone very hard at the tin.

  “Well, what about Uncle Abe and Miss Pin? I mean—if the rabbity man looked like our bread-and-butter why don’t they?”