Deep Secret

by Diana Wynne Jones

  I kept out of the way of all of them as much as I could. So this Monday evening I was quite shattered to find I was being punished along with Nick. We are both being made to go to this thing of Uncle Ted’s over Easter. The Injustice! The Inequity. The Pettiness. It’s Janine. Janine sticks to her line of me not being cut out to look after Nick. She won’t even trust me with the empty house while they’re away. I ask you! It’s not as if I’d invited my friends in! And Uncle Ted says “Nick’s proved he’s not responsible enough to be left with anyone. He’s going to stay in Wantchester under my eye. And you, Maree, are to come to keep Nick off drink, drugs and smashing the furniture while I’m busy doing my act.”

  I protested.

  Janine said, “Well, dear, you have got a certain amount to prove, you know.”

  Uncle Ted said autocratically, “There’s no argument. She’s rung up and booked you in, both of you. You come and keep Nick in order, Maree, or you can find somewhere else to live. It’s a simple choice.”

  Damn! And I’d hoped to earn some money over Easter – enough to afford to go and see my dad in hospital at least. I’m divided between thinking that Uncle Ted so hates being a guest artiste that he’s determined we shall be miserable with him, and thinking that Janine is the one who wants me there, bored and penniless and running round after Nick. She looked so smug while Uncle Ted delivered his ultimatum. I suppose she wants to queen it and not have to spend time making sure Nick survives in the mornings.

  And damn again! I had the Thornlady dream again on Monday night. The woman in the bush told me to search my mind and work out why I couldn’t cope with normal life. Cheek, I call it. Sitting in a bush and making other folk feel one-down.

  [4]

  END OF TERM!!! Perhaps I shall be a philosopher when we start again, Robbie…

  …Sometimes Uncle Ted can be quite reasonable. These last few days he’s been really woebegone, sitting in his study composing what he calls his State of the Art to the Masses speech, which he has to give at the convention next Sunday. Every so often he trudges out, grabs whichever of us happens to be passing, and demands to be told a word that’s on the tip of his mind, only he’s forgotten it; or a joke – any joke.

  Janine just shrugs. Nick supplies jokes. I seem to be so good at coming up with the word or thing that Uncle Ted wants that he’s started to call me his peripatetic encyclopedia. Not the snappiest of job descriptions. The last time he did it – “Maree, for God’s sake that constellation with the belt and the sword – fellow who rode on the dolphin’s back – you know” – and I told him, “Orion,” he stopped as he was going back into his study and wrote Orion on the back of his hand so as not to forget it again. Then he said, “Maree, do you have any money at all?”

  “No,” I said. The hundred quid is gone now and not for worlds am I going to go and beg Robbie for what I paid for our flat. “Not until next term,” I added hastily, remembering I am supposed to pay Uncle Ted rent. It wasn’t quite a lie. After all, some other prat might make me a present of another £100. Who knows?

  “Then you’ll need some for the convention,” he said. “They can be quite expensive.” And he gave me this wad of money. When I counted it, it was £75. All he had in his back pocket. Then he went on – I nearly fainted – “And I’ll pay your petrol if you’re driving there.” Then he rushed back into his study before I could even start to thank him, muttering, “Orion. Orion.”

  Well, well. Poor Uncle Ted. He’s so dreading making this speech that he seems to have forgiven me for Nick’s little caper. He’s forgiven Nick too. Nick has his usual lavish pocket money. I shall go and buy a spare pair of jeans. Then I can wash these I have on.

  [5]

  Poor Uncle Ted. On the Thursday – I started writing this when it was still Thursday, but it’s turned into Friday now – he was pale and trembling and kept having to dash to the loo. He couldn’t pack – at least, he did pack, but he left all the clothes out except for a sweater and half his pyjamas – and Janine had to do it again for him. He left his speech all neatly piled up on his desk and got into the car without it. Janine had her hands so full of him that she seemed quite relieved when I said I was driving myself to Wantchester in Dad’s car (I didn’t mention Uncle Ted had paid for the petrol). Nick promptly said that he’d come with me. I think Master Nick hoped, or thought, that this meant we’d be skiving off and staying at home, but apart from the fact that I’d promised Uncle Ted that I’d FAITHFULLY listen to his speech and applaud it at the end, I was intrigued. I wanted to know what kind of event could make him so terrified.

  Well, now I know. To some extent.

  Nick and I set off about an hour after his parents. This was because I filled Dad’s car with all my worldly possessions. Nick wanted to know why.

  “Other people have security blankets,” I told him. “I have a car filled with everything I own.” I didn’t like to confess to him that I keep having this strong feeling that I am going to be homeless after Easter. No – worse than that: it feels as if the world is going to end then, and I have to carry everything around with me and make sure that, when I’m crouching in a cave after Armageddon, I at least have my computer and my vet-case to hand (both of which will be very useful, of course). I don’t know what’s making me feel this way. It could be the Thornlady dreams. It’s not my dad. I’ve rung him and he swears he’s improving (except I know he’s saying that to make me feel better). It’s just that I have this gloomy conviction that’s settled on me like a rainy week. I even phoned Mum about it. She was her usual cheery self.

  “Ah, Maree,” she says, “you want to take notice of a premonition like that. I know, because it runs in my family too. My mother foretold the very day and hour she was going to die, and she wasn’t even ill when she told me.”

  Thanks a bunch, Mum.

  Anyway, I loaded in my stuff and Nick got into the car saying, “I won’t say anything. My father made me promise not to keep winding you up.”

  “What do you mean, winding me up?” I said, starting the car with a roar and a swoop. It always seems to do that when I’m a trifle irritated.

  “He means the way we usually go on – he calls it sparring for dominance,” Nick said placidly. “He doesn’t understand that I have to do that or you’d walk all over me.”

  “Oh, spare me!” I said. It took me half the drive to simmer down after that one. Uncle Ted no doubt meant well and I knew he’d had a private talk with Nick yesterday, but Nick had no business to spill the beans to me. It annoyed me even more that I knew Nick had said it on purpose, to make me angry instead of gloomy. News for you, Master Nick. A person can be angry and gloomy. That seems to be my permanent state at the moment. And I detest being managed.

  Arriving in Wantchester didn’t exactly improve my state of mind. Nick fetched out the map the convention had sent Uncle Ted, that Janine had photocopied for us after breakfast, and said, “Here it is. Hotel Babylon, right in the middle of town. Easy. Why do you think it’s called Babylon? TV show? Burning fiery furnace? Hanging gardens? Go straight ahead here.”

  “What are hanging gardens?” I said, taking the road he pointed at. “It always makes me think of rows of gibbets in a park.”

  “Trees in the air, I think of – go first right,” said Nick.

  “We’d notice those,” I agreed, going where he said, “or a furnace. Or a dirty great tower broadcasting in a hundred languages. Tower of Babel. That was in Babylon too, wasn’t it?”

  Ten minutes later, we both noticed it – a large sign above the houses that said HOTEL BABYLON – but the town has a one-way system to beat any other town I know and it took us on past at a distance. I drove on, grinding gears about, and after a while we saw the sign again, going past on the other side. But there was no way to get to it. We saw the Cathedral, a shopping precinct, the Town Hall and the river. We crossed the river, because there seemed no way not to, and next thing I knew we were entangled in an open space full of long glass arcades like tunnels to nowhere, tha
t Nick identified belatedly as Whinmore bus Station. Much too late. By that time I was having to back out of the place, bonnet to bonnet with a double-decker bush, whose driver was not pleased to see us there.

  I drew into a bus stop to recover from that. From there we saw the Hotel Babylon sign quite clearly, about a hundred metres away, behind the glass arcades. The only way I could see to get there was to drive through the bus station and risk another double-decker bus.

  “The place is trying to stop us getting to it,” I said. “It’s like an evil spell. Perhaps I should try driving to it widdershins, the wrong way round the one-way system.”

  “You’ll get arrested,” Nick said. He was perfectly happy. By this time he had a map of Wantchester set up on his laptop and was filling in all the places that we passed. The bus station, I saw, had just gone in as “Glass Maze with Monsters”.

  “Nick, are you doing this to me on purpose?” I demanded, with menace.

  “No way. Try turning left at the next lot of traffic lights,” he said.

  Since a bus was trying to get into the bus stop where we were, I drove on. And after that I really did feel as if something was trying to stop us getting to the hotel. I said so to Nick after we had accidentally visited a small factory and were doing a brisk tour of the suburbs. I could see we were almost out of town by then. There were fields and bare trees on one side of the road.

  Nick grinned. “Then we say the spell to stop the spell.”

  Naturally we both began chanting:

  “How many miles to Babylon?

  Three score miles and ten.

  Can I get there by candle-light?

  Yes, and back again.

  And then I felt much better and turned in someone’s driveway and we drove back into Wantchester from the other side. I can hardly describe the hilarious mixture of laughter and misery and anger that I was feeling by then. I said, “And on top of it all, I keep having the Thornlady dreams again!”

  “Why didn’t you say?” Nick said. “We should have done the Witchy Dance for Luck in the garden at home. Now we’ll have to do it the moment we find a place to stop.”

  “Are you sure?” I said.

  “Positive. Urgently,” he said. In a hilarious, not-quite-sane way, we both knew it was true.

  And seconds after Nick spoke, we turned a corner and saw Hotel Babylon standing across the distant end of a great wide street in front of us.

  “The spell worked,” Nick said.

  “Just as well,” I said. “It’s going to be dark soon and I’m not sure how the lights work. Now conjure me up the car park and we’ll get dancing.”

  “Hey presto,” Nick said, calming shutting down his laptop.

  Sure enough, there was an archway in the wall beside the hotel, labelled HOTEL CAR PARK GUESTS ONLY. I turned into it, saying, “Why the hell are you always so lucky, Nick? It’s bad for your personality. It’s not fair. I’ve had bad luck ever since I can remember.”

  “Witchy Dance,” Nick said, throwing open the door on his side.

  So I stopped the car just inside the archway and jumped out too, and we began the Dance at once: step-shuffle-step-hop-hop-step – stop. At every stop we did the flick, flick, flick, and chanted, “Luck, luck, luck!” My fingernails have now grown into great long yellow spikes, so the flicking was really satisfying.

  And it was odd. The car park was pretty well full. I saw Janine’s car parked nearest the hotel as I hopped and turned. There was no sign of her and Uncle Ted. But there were people at at least half of the other cars and the vans, unloading things – suitcases, guitars and video equipment – and most of them barely glanced at us. There was an old man almost beside us where three people with waist-length hair and a baby went on unloading bags, bundles and the baby’s cot without even looking at us. You got the feeling they saw much odder things than the Witchy Dance every day of their lives.

  This was rather encouraging. “Luck, luck, LUCK!” Nick and I roared, and danced and twisted like dervishes. I did hear a car hooting, but I honestly thought it was out in the road – well, it almost was, because it was halfway through the archway I had blocked by stopping Dad’s car – but I didn’t notice a thing until its driver came and screamed at us.

  “Get this load of scrap-iron out of my way, you stupid bitch!”

  “Screamed” is the right word. He had a thin tenor voice. He had a little pointed beard. His face was mauve and his nose was pointed too, and pinched with fury, so that white marks came and went on the sides of it.

  Nobody calls me a bitch and gets away with it. Even Robbie only tried it once. I calmly pointed a flick! at his mauve face and turned to look at his car. It was a horrible old banger, covered with rust, and it was blocking the archway. I could see at least one car angrily backing away from behind it. I looked at Dad’s car. True, it was in the way, and it’s a bit weather-beaten these days, but nothing to the heap that his was.

  “Same to you,” I said. “In spades. Bitch and scrapiron.”

  “MOVE it!” howled curly beard. “I am a guest at this convention.”

  “Me too,” I said. “For my sins.”

  “I am Mervin Thurless!” he screamed.

  “Then you need a deed poll,” says I. “Can’t help you there.”

  He screamed I was a bitch again. I told him, “Once more, my good man, gets you pins in a wax image, or worse. I’d do it now, and curse you into the bargain, only I’m crossed in love and haven’t the energy. Now you get out of my way.” I pushed past him, climbed into my car again, and drove with immense dignity to the free space where Nick was now standing beckoning. Typical Nick, that. Brisk vanishment at the first sign of trouble. Nick waved me into the space with great flourishes to disguise the fact that tears of laughter were pouring down his face.

  “How is it that this happens every time we do the Witchy Dance?” I said to him.

  “This one forgot to pay you,” he giggled.

  “Yes, but it was much more satisfactory,” I said. “I actually got a word in edgeways – several in fact – this time.”

  That space turned out to be the last one empty. Clever Nick. Mauve Mr Thurless was forced to back out through the archway and drive away. That gave me great joy. I watched him doing it from under one of my arms while I was unloading the bags with our clothes in from the boot.

  From Maree Mallory’s

  Thornlady Directory: file

  twenty-three

  We entered into a large space full of suitcases and confusion. People in jeans and T-shirts were rushing everywhere, shouting things like “Tell Rocker to go straight to the Ops Room!” or “Hasn’t Jedda got those bloody files copied yet?” or simply “Slime Monster!” and hugging one another, men and women alike.

  “Well, well,” I said to Nick. “They did build the Tower of Babel here after all!”

  We ploughed our way through it all to the Reception desk near the back. I jumped the last clump of suitcases to find Nick saying to the harassed hotel-lady at the desk, “We’re Nick and Maree Mallory. I think we’ve got rooms booked here.”

  Someone behind bellowed while Nick was speaking. “The badge machine’s broken again, I tell you!” Maybe this caused the girl to mishear Nick or something.

  The girl’s neat little brooch said she was Odile and she had a permanently worried look. She punched things on her computer. “I’m sorry,” she said in a foreign accent. “That room is already taken.”

  “It can’t be!” I shrieked across the noise. “Anyway, it wasn’t one room, it was two.”

  Odile, looking fractionally more worried, punched buttons some more. “Mr and Mrs Mallory,” she said. “One double room, already taken. That is all there is on the computer. No doubles left. Sorry.”

  “We aren’t Mr and Mrs Mallory,” Nick attempted to explain.

  And I probably made things worse by adding, “We’re cousins. Those Mallorys are his dad and his mum. We want a single room each.”

  “I’m sorry,” Odile intoned. “Al
l rooms have been taken by the convention.”

  She obviously hadn’t understood a word we said, but we still tried to behave as if she was rational. “We know,” we said in chorus. Nick said, quite slowly and loudly, “Two of those rooms are for us.”

  Odile looked blank. She punched more buttons. “One double room for Mr and Mrs Mallory is already taken by the convention. Sorry.”

  By this time, we were both leaning rather desperately over the desk, as if we could get through to Odile if we got close to her. Nick said, “Look. Look at us. Do we look as if we’re married?”

  Odile shot him a blank, worried look. Perhaps where she came from people do get married at Nick’s age. Anyway, she said, “It is in the computer.”

  So I had a go. I said, “Listen, Odile. Try single rooms in the name of Mallory. Please? As a favour.”

  Without altering her blank, worried look, Odile went back to pressing buttons. The suspense was too much for both of us. We sort of turned away, and Nick muttered, “I think she’s a robot.”

  “Android anyway,” I muttered back. Then I discovered that the ceiling of the hotel foyer was a mass of mirrors, large and small. The entire confusion of folk was reflected there, upside down, milling about, sort of hanging there mixed up with trees in urns and piles of suitcases. There were the three people with the baby again, passing the baby chair round from one to another so that they could hug someone they had just met. I could see Nick and me. We rippled from one mirror to another as I moved my head – one tall dark good-looking teenage boy and one short girl who looked surprisingly like a normal human being. It gave me a queer feeling, as if I was reading the future in the sky. It caused an anxious thought to strike me. “Nick,” I said. I could see from the ceiling that he was looking at the three with the baby, cautiously and sort of sideways, trying to see which of them was female and which male. It wasn’t easy to tell. Two of them could have been either. I jabbed his elbow with my longest fingernail. “Nick, who actually booked our rooms? Janine or Uncle Ted?”