The Secret Passage

by Nina Bawden

  “I don’t think they pay anything,” John said surprisingly. “You remember Uncle Abe said she was an angel? Well, it couldn’t be because she’s so sweet and kind, could it? So I think he said it because she lets him stay free”

  “Did he tell you that?” Mary said.

  “No. I guessed because he never sells any of his statues and all his clothes are so awful. But he did tell me about Miss Pin. He was showing me how to model a head in his workshop yesterday and he said, where was Ben, and I said he was helping Aunt Mabel clean Miss Pin’s room—you know she lets him dust her little animals and things—and Uncle Abe said it was a blessing Ben got on so well with the old lady because it took some of the weight off Aunt Mabel’s shoulders. I asked him if Miss Pin had always lived here and he said yes, she’s been a lodger at The Haven for as long as anyone could remember. Long before Aunt Mabel bought it. Uncle Abe said Miss Pin had a niece who used to pay her bills, but when Aunt Mabel took over the boarding house, the niece came down to see her and said she couldn’t afford to pay any longer and Miss Pin would have to go into a Home. But Aunt Mabel wouldn’t hear of it; she said as long as she had her health and strength the poor old soul could stay with her, and welcome.”

  “I think that was very nice of Aunt Mabel,” Mary said slowly.

  “Uncle Abe said she has a heart of gold. But as soon as he’d said it, he gave one of his funny laughs and said he must admit it didn’t show. Then he stopped laughing and said I’d learn when I got older that people weren’t always what they seemed to be. He said Aunt Mabel was really a very loving sort of person but she hadn’t had anyone to love for so long that she’d got out of the habit.”

  Mary said, “I suppose she must have been awfully sad when her husband was drowned. I remember Dad said he was quite young and they hadn’t been married long.” Mary felt tears prickling behind her eyes. She turned her head away so that John shouldn’t see and said, “There’s one thing I don’t understand, though. Ben says Miss Pin is rich.”

  “She’s batty,” John said scornfully.

  Ben heard him say that. He had just come up with his pail full of cockles. “She’s not,” he said angrily. “She’s nice. And she knows a lot of things you don’t know. She’s told me some of them. She knows something you don’t know about the house.”

  “What?”

  “Shan’t tell you.” Ben glared at John. He had got thinner since they had come to Henstable and his eyes looked bigger and darker than they used to look. He stamped his foot and said, “She wouldn’t tell you either. You’re too mean and horrible.”

  “You tell me, then,” John said. He got up and advanced on Ben who jumped over the breakwater and stuck out his tongue. John scrambled after him and grabbed hold of his arm. “Come on,” he said, giving Ben a little shake, “tell me.”

  “I won’t. It’s a secret.” Ben said. He shook himself free and faced his brother, his dark eyes blazing.

  “Stop it, both of you,” Mary said. She felt suddenly that she couldn’t bear it if they quarrelled. She said coaxingly “Let’s go home—we’ve got to cook the cockles and it must be nearly time for tea.”

  *

  But tea wasn’t ready. As they walked towards The Haven, they saw that a taxi had stopped outside and that the rabbity man was getting into it. Aunt Mabel was standing on the step, watching him go.

  “Is he leaving?” Mary asked as they came up to her.

  Aunt Mabel didn’t seem to hear, she just turned on her heel and went indoors. It wasn’t until they were all downstairs in the kitchen that she said, “Yes, he’s gone. Mary, lay the table, will you?”

  She put the kettle on and lit the grill to make toast for tea. Her expression was so stiff and forbidding that none of the children dared say anything. When tea was ready, they sat down at the table with downcast eyes. None of them felt in the least hungry.

  After about five minutes, Mary said nervously, “Aunt Mabel—did the man go away because of what I said?”

  Aunt Mabel glanced at her briefly. “No—no, of course not. He left because his bedroom was too cold.” She gave a short laugh. “As if a grown man would bother about what a little girl said!”

  Mary felt a little better, but not much. It was kind of Aunt Mabel to say it wasn’t her fault, but she had spoken in such a cold, angry way that she still felt very miserable. She sat, staring at her plate and so did John and Ben.

  Looking at their faces, Aunt Mabel thought they were sulking. It didn’t occur to her that they were unhappy because they thought she was dreadfully cross with them. She didn’t even know she had sounded cross. She had had such a lonely, worrying life—it was even more worrying now she had three children to look after—that she had grown rather prickly and sharp-voiced without realising it. She was a stiff, rather shy sort of person and although she would have liked to be kinder and more loving to the children, she did not really know how to begin. As a result, her brisk, unaffectionate ways froze up even Mary’s kind heart and, as she sat, eating her toast, she began to think that it was all very well for Uncle Abe to say Aunt Mabel was nice and loving underneath. But it didn’t make her any easier to live with.

  After tea, Aunt Mabel went down to the shops to get fresh fish for Miss Pin’s supper. The only kind of fish Miss Pin liked was plaice, boned and steamed in butter. As soon as she was gone, Ben said in an excited voice, “I’ve got an idea.” He was very pink and his eyes shone. “It’s an idea how to make money.”

  Mary and John looked at each other. They remembered that it had been Ben who had asked Aunt Mabel if she was really poor, when they were in the train coming to Henstable. He had never mentioned it since, but that was like Ben. If he had a problem he didn’t talk about it, but turned it over and over in his mind until he had an answer to it. He said now, “we can collect cockles. I saw some men on the beach collecting cockles and they said they sold them to the fish shop. We could do that, then Aunt Mabel would have enough money to buy lots of bread-and-butter.”

  John said, “But you can’t collect enough cockles in a pail. Not enough to sell.”

  “You want a sack, like the men had. There are lots of sacks in the cellar.”

  Ben ran to a door at the far end of the kitchen, opened it, and disappeared. Mary and John followed. They had never been in the cellar and they peered cautiously down the flight of wooden stairs that led down into darkness. Ben’s voice floated up to them. “Put the light on. The switch is just inside the door.”

  John switched on the light and went down the stairs. The cellar was a low, rambling, pleasant place that smelt of dry wood and dust. There was a pile of coke for the Beast in one corner, a stack of wood in another and a bench against one wall with a saw and some nails on it. Under the bench, John found a pile of sacks; he and Mary began shaking them out and choosing the two best ones.

  Meanwhile, Ben roamed round the cellar. Set in the brick wall at one end, were two arched little doors—very low, as if they had been made for dwarves or children. Ben opened one of the doors and found a cubby hole with an earth floor and a wooden ceiling; a tiny room that would have made a splendid hide-away if it had not been full of packing cases and empty lemonade bottles. He wondered if there was another room behind the other door but when he tried to open it, it seemed to be locked or stuck.

  He called out to John and Mary, “Come and help. I think it’s locked,”

  “There are some keys here,” Mary said. There was a big bunch of keys hanging on a nail above the bench. She took them down and went over to the little door. John tried several keys before he found a small one that exactly fitted the lock. It was rusty and stiff; it took two hands and all his strength to turn the key, but it did turn and the door swung creakily open.

  There was a small room behind this door, just as there was behind the other one. At first, the only difference seemed to be that this room was empty and when the children peered in, the air inside felt colder than the air in the cellar. Then they saw that high up in the wall at the back
was a small, square, dark hole. A chill little wind blew out of it and a queer smell—a mixture of earth and mice and shut-upness.

  “What is it?” Mary whispered.

  No one answered for a minute. Then Ben said in a low, awestruck voice, “It’s the Secret Passage.” There was a bright, mysterious look in his eyes. He said, very fast, “I couldn’t tell you about it because Miss Pin asked me not to. But now you’ve found it for yourselves, it’s all right, isn’t it?”

  He looked anxiously at Mary who took his hard little hand and said, “Of course it’s all right. But a passage must go somewhere. Does Miss Pin know where it goes?”

  Ben shook his head. “She just said it was a place to hide. But we could go and see, couldn’t we?”

  Mary said, “I’ve got a torch. It was hanging up with the keys.” She looked at John. “You go first …”

  John drew a deep breath. It was stupid to be scared, he told himself. He was eleven, nearly twelve—nearly grown-up.

  Ben said eagerly, “I’ll go. I’d like to go.” The menacing, dark hole didn’t worry him at all. What could be there, after all, except a mouse or two?

  John said quickly, “No. It may be dangerous. I’m the eldest. I’ll go.”

  As he pulled himself up to the hole, the torch in his hand, he grinned to himself in spite of feeling so sick and clammy. If he wasn’t so frightened he would be quite ready to let Ben go ahead—it would be more sensible, really. Ben was smaller and less likely to get stuck.

  The hole led to a tunnel which was just high enough for John to crawl through, knees scraping on rubble. It was very short; after about two yards it opened into a much bigger place, high enough for John to kneel up. He swept the torch round and saw brick walls and rafters above his head.

  “We’re under the house,” Mary said, wriggling beside him. “Oh blow—I’ve torn my dress. It must be the foundations of the house.”

  “What a swizz,” John said in a cheerful, grumbling tone, secretly rather relieved that this was all there was—just this dry, clean place with the floors of the house above.

  But it wasn’t all. “Look,” Ben squeaked. “Give me the torch …”

  At one side there was another hole, just above the level of the ground. This time there was no doubt about who was to go first. Ben snatched the torch from John and crawled in. His muffled voice came back to them. “Come on—it goes on an awfully long way.”

  This tunnel was very low and it was more difficult for Mary and John to get through it than for Ben. They had to squirm along on their stomachs, using their elbows and knees, and it was rather alarming because Ben was so far ahead that they couldn’t see the light from the torch. Mary was so close behind John that his feet kicked dust and earth back into her face. At one place the tunnel seemed to be almost blocked by a mess of brick and rubble as if someone had tried to wall it up at some time. John called, “Ben …” and Ben’s voice sounded hollow and strange. “Come on … come on, it’s not far now.”

  Quite suddenly, the tunnel ended. It just stopped, high up in a wall. Ben was shining the torch and John and Mary crawled out, head first, and pitched onto a pile of wood shavings. “Just as well that was there,” John said, sitting up. “Or we’d have banged our heads horribly hard. Give me the torch, Ben.”

  They were in quite a big room, very dry, with a brick floor. It opened into another room with a series of cubby holes along one side, stacked with wine bottles lying on their sides. At the far end was a flight of wooden steps and a closed door at the top. John shone the torch up the steps. He caught his breath.

  “Mary,” he shouted, “Mary—do you know where we are? We’re in the cellar of the house next door. We’re in the House of Secrets.”

  He ran up the stairs and tugged at the handle of the door, quite forgetting to be frightened in the excitement of being in the very place he had so longed to see.

  But the cellar door was locked.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE HOUSE OF SECRETS

  “PERHAPS ONE OF those old keys will fit,” John panted as they wriggled back through the tunnel. He was not at all frightened now, he was much too excited. He had been in the cellar of the House of Secrets. He only had to find a key—just one key—and he would be in the house itself!

  Mary had left the bunch of keys on the bench in their own cellar, but when she scrambled out of the cubby hole and went to fetch them, the keys were gone. “I’m sure I left them here,” she said in a loud, surprised voice.

  “Be quiet—oh be quiet,” John hissed behind her. He was looking up at the cellar door, his eyes wide with alarm. It stood ajar and a familiar, rattling noise came from the kitchen. “It’s Aunt Mabel, stoking the Beast,” he said.

  Mary whispered, “She must have moved the keys. Yes—there they are, back on the nail.”

  She and John looked at each other in horror. They were filthy; their clothes were black and their hair and eyebrows were whitish-grey with dust.

  “We’re awfully dirty. She’ll be hopping mad,” Ben said cheerfully.

  “She’ll find out about the passage,” John said. This thought made his heart thump very fast. If Aunt Mabel knew where they had been she would almost certainly stop them going through the tunnel again and he would never see the house next door—never, never. He clenched his fists and muttered, “I couldn’t bear it, I couldn’t.” He looked frantically at Mary. “What can we say? She must have been down here to get the coke for the Beast—she’ll know we weren’t just playing in the cellar.”

  Mary drew a deep breath. “Just don’t say anything,” she said. “Or you either, Ben. Just leave it to me.”

  Her back was very straight and her head held very high as she marched up the cellar steps and into the kitchen. John and Ben followed her; John felt very scared, but Ben hummed a jaunty little tune under his breath. Aunt Mabel looked at them, her mouth open. “Whatever …” she began.

  Mary gabbled very fast, “I’m sorry we got so dirty, Aunt Mabel. But we’ve been hiding in the cellar—in the cubby hole.” It was almost true, she thought, they had been hiding in the cubby hole, but all the same the colour came and went in her cheeks and she stared guiltily at the floor.

  “So that’s where you were,” Aunt Mabel said. “I wondered what you’d been doing with those old keys.”

  John said quickly, “Do you mind us playing with them, Aunt Mabel?”

  Aunt Mabel shrugged her shoulders. “They’re no use to me. Just a bunch of old keys I’ve had for years. As a matter of fact, I think I brought most of them from the house next door—they won’t fit many of the locks here.”

  John gave a little gasp, then a slow smile appeared on his face. It really was possible, then, that one of the keys would fit that cellar door. This made him feel so excited and happy that he stood, grinning to himself and looking rather foolish. Aunt Mabel gave him a curious look. Then she glanced at Mary and Ben and her lips twitched very slightly. “You look as if you’d been climbing chimneys,” she said. “It’s a good thing you had some old clothes on.”

  Her tone was quite uncomplaining and Mary suddenly realised that Aunt Mabel was not in the least like Mrs Epsom; she never made a fuss when they got dirty or tore their clothes. Then she saw a flimsy blue envelope on the table and everything else went out of her mind. “Is that from Daddy?” she cried.

  “No,” Aunt Mabel said. “It’s from Mrs Epsom. Your father has gone off on leave—Mrs Epsom says he’s on safari in the Northern Frontier District.” She picked the letter up and put it in her apron pocket. “I expect he’ll send you a postcard.”

  Ben laughed. “He won’t be able to buy postcards there,” he said scornfully.

  “Won’t he? I don’t know much about Africa.” Aunt Mabel looked at the children, frowning a little as if something was worrying her. Then she said sharply, “Run along and have a good, hot bath. Use plenty of soap. You look as if you could do with it.”

  When they had gone, she sat down, took the letter out of her pocket and
read it. When Uncle Abe came in for his supper a little later, she was still sitting there, staring thoughtfully and somehow sadly in front of her, the letter still in her hand.

  “Anything wrong?” he asked, surprised. Aunt Mabel didn’t often sit like this, doing nothing.

  Aunt Mabel glanced at him. “You’d better read this,” she said shortly.

  Uncle Abe took the letter and read it. Then he folded it carefully and handed it back to her. “Poor little beggars,” he said softly. “Do they miss their father very much?”

  “I think so,” Aunt Mabel said. “They don’t talk about him—but Mary runs to the letter box every morning. I hear her feet scampering down the passage and then coming back, very slowly. He hasn’t written to them, not once. It looks as if he has quite forgotten about them. You saw what Mrs Epsom said? He seemed half out of his mind with grief …”

  Uncle Abe blew his nose very loudly. He said, “He must have loved their mother very much.”

  “He’d have fetched her the moon out of the sky, if he could,” Aunt Mabel said in a dry voice. She drummed her fingers on the arm of her chair in the way she often did when she was thinking very hard about something. “He wasn’t in a fit state to go off into the wilds on his own. Suppose something happens to him? What will happen to the children then?”

  “I daresay he’ll turn up safe and sound,” Uncle Abe said slowly.

  Aunt Mabel sighed. “I hope so. They’re my sister’s children and I shall do my best to do my duty by them. But it won’t be easy. They expect such a lot—their parents adored them, spoiled them, to my mind.”

  “They don’t seem spoiled to me. What do you mean?” Uncle Abe said.

  Aunt Mabel shrugged her shoulders impatiently. “Oh—they just seem to expect everyone to love them. I haven’t got time to fuss over children. I can just about afford to feed them as long as they’re not particular but I can’t afford to give them a lot of clothes and toys. I can’t afford to give them anything …”