The Secret Page 15

  ‘Well what is it?’ said Mrs Morris, implying it had better be.

  ‘About that Mrs Mitchell.’

  ‘Oh her!’

  ‘You know you said you never see her for a long time—’

  ‘Well that’s how it goes, innit? Sometimes you don’t.’

  ‘Do you think she’s really living there though, in the house?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do you think she’s really there?’

  ‘That’s going a bit far, isn’t it? She must be there! The kids are there, and don’t I know it! And they can’t be living on their own.’

  ‘I suppose not.’ Mrs Williams was beginning to wonder if she was making herself look like a silly old fool. She had made herself look a silly old fool quite a few times, lately, jumping to conclusions, and spreading rumours that turned out not to be true. But you had to do something to liven up the dull days. ‘There’s something funny going on, though. There’s something funny going on! You mark my words, there’s something funny going on in that house!’

  ‘Well whatever it is, that woman’s had all the help she’s getting from me,’ said Mrs Morris.

  ‘What about them kids though? Nasty little things they are, especially the girl, but somebody got to look out for them.’

  ‘The mother was there on Sunday, I do know,’ said Mrs Morris after thinking a bit. ‘She was cooking roast dinner, you could smell it. And there were some of her things on the line, Saturday. That tarty blouse, for one! No no, she’s there all right. Worse luck.’

  Mrs Williams was quite disappointed, as well as sorry she had made herself look like a silly old fool. She went into her house to get some lunch, and thought about her disappointment, and started to think she had let her suspicions be quietened a bit too easily.

  Roy also was feeling hungry. He went to the kitchen to see if there was anything to eat, but the cornflakes packet was empty, and all he could find were two cold potatoes and the cut-off bread which had gone mouldy again. He drank the milk which the milkman had left that morning, looked at the mouldy bread and the cold potatoes once more, and his stomach heaved.

  Dinnerless, he went to sit on the sofa again, wishing the time away till Nicky should come home.

  The doorbell, ringing suddenly, made him jump. At first he thought he would just ignore it, but then there was a lot of knocking as well, and finally the letter box rattled, and someone was shouting through. ‘Come on, Roy, I know you’re there!’

  It was Mrs Williams, and of course she did know he was there, so he couldn’t pretend he wasn’t. Trembling again, he went to the door to answer it.

  ‘I’ve come to ask you a question, Roy.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You may think it’s a funny question.’

  ‘What is it?’ His heart was hammering madly.

  ‘Us nosy old bags got our uses.’

  ‘What uses? What do you mean?’

  ‘I got to make sure nothing bad is happening to you, Roy.’

  ‘Nothing bad is happening to me.’

  ‘I got to make sure you’re being properly looked after.’

  ‘I am being properly looked after. Nicky looks after me.’

  It was the wrong thing to say, of course. His terrified face showed he had realized his mistake.

  ‘I should have thought you’d say your mum looks after you.’

  ‘Well she does. As well.’

  ‘Is your mum really in the house? Tell the truth now!’

  That was the question, then. He thought it was going to be that, and it was.

  ‘Yes,’ said Roy, nearly shouting.

  ‘Now, this minute, is she in the house?’

  ‘YES!’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure. Go away! Go away!’

  He banged the door shut, and ran to sit on the sofa, sick with fear. She knew the secret, she knew the secret! Polly Pry knew the secret, and now she would tell it to everyone! And it was his fault she knew the secret! He got muddled, and said the wrong answers, so she guessed it. He dared not tell Nicky what he did. Nicky would kill him!

  He tried to block the whole thing out of his mind, and pretend it hadn’t happened; but it lay like a stone, like a dark heaviness, within the wall he tried to build around it.

  Nicky came home, jubilant. ‘We’re going, we’re going, we’re both going! Go and find your swimming things, and your coat for tomorrow, because Mr Nelson says it might be cold.’

  ‘I’m hungry,’ said Roy.

  ‘You’re always thinking about yourself.’

  ‘It’s all very well for you; I suppose you had your school dinner.’

  ‘Isn’t there anything to eat at all?’ said Nicky.

  ‘Only mouldy bread. Can’t we get some chips again, with the leftover money?’

  Nicky shook her head. ‘We have to have a packed lunch for tomorrow. Everybody has a packed lunch for the outing. I shall have to buy some bread, and we can have some of that for our tea.’

  ‘Only bread, for our tea?’

  ‘Oh don’t make such a fuss! It’s only for one day.’

  ‘But I’m hungry.’

  ‘Well, bread will fill you up. . . . I know, I know, I’ll fry the bread! In the frying pan! And these old potatoes, I’ll fry them as well! M-m-m! Tasty! Plenty starving children in the world would be glad to have such tasty things to eat, so stop moaning!’

  In the end, Roy found he was not as hungry as he thought he was, after all. There was this nasty lump of guilt that was making him feel quite full. And he dared not tell Nicky, he dared not – but he kept having this horrid thought about Polly Pry, running up and down Gilbert Road, telling everybody the secret. He kept trying to push the thought away, and it kept coming back.

  In fact, Mrs Williams was not running up and down Gilbert Road telling everyone the secret. Up to now, she hadn’t told one person the secret – unless you could count Mrs Morris. She hadn’t told, because she wasn’t sure. There was something funny going on, Mrs Williams was sure of that, but what she was thinking was more than funny, it was downright scandalous. So scandalous it could hardly be true. She thought it was true this morning, and now she thought it couldn’t be – could it? Well the boy hadn’t admitted anything. He was scared, but he hadn’t admitted anything. Perhaps she’d got the wrong end of the stick after all. Perhaps she really was a silly old fool, and she would just make herself look sillier, telling people about it.

  On the other hand . . . Mrs Williams went over the evidence for ‘on the other hand’. First, Mrs Mitchell had not been seen by the neighbours for over a week. Second, there had been a lot of racket going on in that house. Screaming and crying from that boy, much more than usual though he seemed to have gone quiet lately; as well as noisy play no adult could have put up with after a hard day’s work. True – Mrs Mitchell often took herself out in the evenings, but she hadn’t been seen doing that either, as far as Mrs Williams knew. Third, there was the funny business of the window, and Mrs Williams couldn’t see how that fitted in anyway, but it was very, very funny. Fourth, there was that boy so scared of questioning, you’d think someone was trying to kill him!

  It seemed to add up, whatever Mrs Morris said. So did she ought to tell them? The Authorities? Did she ought to go to the Authorities, and tell them what she suspected, and just let them get on with it?

  Who were the Authorities, exactly? Mrs Williams tried to think who it was she ought to go to, and found she didn’t really know. If the dustbins hadn’t been emptied, you rang up the council. If a dog was barking all night, you told the RSPCA. But what if two children were living alone in a house? The police, she supposed. But Mrs Williams was a bit uncomfortable about going to the police. She had been to the police quite a few times lately, about things that turned out to be mistakes. She had the idea the police were getting to be rather impatient with her.

  She must be a bit more certain, before she said anything to them.

  Should she waylay that girl, comi
ng home from school, and see what she had to say for herself? No – only get a load of cheek!

  What she would do, she would go all up the road, and down the road, and ask everybody in their front gardens if they saw that Mrs Mitchell lately. She wouldn’t say why she wanted to know, she would just ask. After she had done that, she would make up her mind about going to them.

  The twins had come indoors for bedtime. ‘What have you got on your face, Pamela?’ said Mummy, suspiciously.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Pamela, rubbing hard at her mouth.

  ‘Strawberry jam,’ said Pandora, rubbing at hers.

  ‘You’ve got it as well!’ said Mummy. ‘You little monsters! You’ve been at my lipstick!’

  ‘Not your lipstick,’ said Pamela. ‘We found this.’

  ‘Yon found it?’ said Mummy, horrified. ‘And you put it on your mouths? Somebody’s lipstick you found in the road?’

  ‘Not in the road,’ said Pandora. ‘We wouldn’t do a disgusting thing like that, would we, Pamela! In the road? Ugh! . . . It was in an old handbag.’

  ‘What handbag? What are you talking about?’

  ‘It was only an old one. They didn’t want it – they threw it away.’

  ‘Where was this handbag?’

  ‘In the garden. Behind the playhouse.’

  ‘Show me,’ said Mummy.

  ‘Now look what you’ve done!’ said Pandora to Pamela. ‘You silly stupid pea-head!’

  ‘Pea-head yourself! Turnip-head! Cauliflower-head!’

  ‘Brussels sprouts-head!’ said Pandora, following Mummy and Pamela out to the garden.

  ‘Mangle-wurzle-head!’ said Pamela to Pandora, over her shoulder.

  ‘Where’s this handbag?’ said Mummy.

  ‘Here it is. It’s a very old one, you see. They just didn’t want it any more, so they threw it over our wall.’

  ‘What else was in it, besides the lipstick? Was there any money?’ said Mummy. ‘You had better tell me the truth,’ she added, grimly.

  ‘Of course there wasn’t any money. People don’t throw away money!’

  ‘Keys?’ said Mummy. ‘Letters?’

  ‘There were some keys.’

  ‘Do you think people throw away keys, then?’ said Mummy.

  ‘They were old keys, I expect,’ said Pandora. ‘That didn’t fit any more.’

  ‘This is not a handbag somebody just threw away,’ said Mummy. ‘This handbag was stolen!’

  The twins’ faces radiated delight. ‘It was stolen,’ Pamela told Pandora.

  ‘Tell me something I don’t know,’ said Pandora.

  ‘I think the police may be interested in this,’ said Mummy. ‘How long have you had it?’

  ‘Oh the police, the police!’ squealed Pandora. Her rapture knew no bounds.

  ‘How long?’ said Mummy.

  ‘Oh a long time,’ said Pamela. ‘Weeks and weeks!’

  ‘She’s barmy,’ said Pandora. ‘Weeks and weeks indeed, when it’s only days and days!’

  ‘Hours and hours,’ said Pamela.

  ‘Minutes and minutes.’

  ‘Seconds and seconds.’

  ‘Split-seconds and split-seconds!’

  ‘How long?’ said Mummy.

  ‘It was before last Saturday,’ said Pamela.

  ‘But after the Saturday before that.’

  ‘And letters?’ said Mummy. ‘Were there any letters in the bag? Anything at all, besides the keys?’

  ‘No,’ said Pamela, uncomfortably.

  ‘Are you sure?’ said Mummy, looking at her hard.

  ‘Of course she’s sure,’ said Pandora. ‘There was only the keys and the lipstick and the eye stuff and some tissues, and some old bits of paper.’

  ‘What did you do with the bits of paper?’

  ‘Put them in the bin, of course. We didn’t want them.’

  ‘That’s a pity,’ said Mummy. ‘They might have been clues.’

  ‘What are clues?’ said Pamela.

  ‘Dunce!’ said Pandora, scornfully. ‘Everybody knows that clues are what the police have. Everybody except you!’

  ‘What do they have them for, though?’ said Pamela.

  ‘You never know,’ said Mummy. ‘You never know what might be useful. . . . Now are you sure there was nothing else inside the bag? Besides the things you’ve told me?’

  ‘Absolutely certain sure, cross my heart a thousand million times!’ said Pandora, firmly suppressing any pricks of conscience she might have about the mutilated ‘cheque book’, at present buried under the heap of dressing-up clothes, soon to join the handful of Safeway’s receipts, and advertising leaflets, already consigned to the garden dustbin.

  Mrs Williams turned her old bones over, and lay on her back with her eyes open, thinking out her suspicions once again. She had asked at least ten people and no one, not one person, remembered seeing Mrs Mitchell since more than a week ago. Some of them didn’t even know her, of course, at least not by name. People didn’t know their neighbours these days, the way they used to. Mrs Williams couldn’t be certain, even now, but it was surely time to do something about it.

  The police, then, in the morning.

  No, not the police! Mrs Williams had a better idea. She wouldn’t go to the police, who were getting fed up with her; she would go to the school. She would go and see the headmaster, and tell it all to him. He would know what to do. She would go to the school in the morning.

  Mrs Williams had no way of knowing, of course, that she would arrive at the school to find it almost empty. That she would tell her story to Miss Powell, the deputy head, who would be quite uninterested; who would dismiss Mrs Williams’s story, in her mind, as probably the ramblings of a poor old thing gone a bit ga-ga. Who would promise to tell Mr Nelson as soon as the outing returned – and promptly forget all about it!

  13

  The outing

  THE COACHES ROLLED through open country. In the front one, Nicky was singing ‘Jesus wants me for a sunbeam’, while everyone else was singing ‘Ten green bottles’.

  The morning had started cloudy, but the sun was doing its best, and little patches of blue sky were beginning to appear. Suddenly, in a burst of glory, the sunshine streamed through, lighting up fields and woods and hedges with the promise of a lovely day. Nicky’s caterwauling stopped abruptly, and she turned sideways in her seat to give enraptured attention to the panorama of green and gold outside.

  The children tumbled off the coaches for a break. ‘No, this is not the sea; this is not the sea! It’s just for everyone to stretch their legs and go to the toilet,’ said Mr Hunt.

  ‘All right, Nicky?’ said Mr Nelson, limping up behind her.

  ‘Sir,’ said Nicky, ‘what do you think Heaven is like?’

  ‘I can’t say I’ve ever given it much thought.’

  ‘I used to think it was like the park. Where the swings are. But now I think it’s like this place.’

  Mr Nelson thought Nicky Mitchell was going to get more out of this outing than all the rest of them put together. Pity about Roy, though. The ‘’flu you get in July’, of course! Certainly the boy did not look well. There were dark shadows under his eyes, and round his mouth – and hadn’t he lost some weight? ‘All right, Roy?’ said Mr Nelson, to encourage him.

  ‘What?’ said Roy.

  ‘Don’t say “what” to Mr Nelson,’ Nicky scolded him. ‘Say “pardon, Sir”. Where are your manners?’

  Everyone piled back on the coaches. Some of the children were getting restless now. ‘It’s a long way,’ they complained.

  ‘Not far now,’ the grown-ups lied.

  Nicky started up ‘Jesus wants me for a sunbeam’ again, and the coach protested. Obligingly, Nicky changed to ‘All things bright and beautiful’, which she considered far more appropriate to the occasion than ‘Ten green bottles’.

  ‘Shut up!’ said Marcus.

  ‘Yeah, shut up!’ said Eric Morris.

  ‘Your voice make us all feel ill,’ said someone else.
r />   Nicky turned, and grinned; turned back, and carolled on.

  ‘Tell her, Sir,’ Marcus complained.

  ‘I can sing if I want to, can’t I, Mr Nelson!’

  ‘I think that’s enough now, Nicky,’ said Mr Nelson.

  ‘See?’ Marcus taunted her.

  ‘See, Nicky?’ said Eric. ‘Mr Nelson says you got to stop.’

  ‘Shut your mouth, creep!’ said Nicky.

  ‘It’s your mouth is supposed to be shut,’ said Eric.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Marcus, ‘it’s your mouth that’s supposed to be shut!’

  ‘You can shut yours as well,’ said Nicky. ‘Or I’ll shut it for you.’

  ‘Witch!’ said Marcus.

  ‘Take that back,’ said Nicky, getting out of her seat.

  ‘Sit down, Nicky,’ said Mr Nelson.

  ‘When that thickhead takes back calling me names!’

  ‘Sit down!’ said Mr Nelson.

  She sat, but with a bad grace.

  ‘Witch!’ hissed Marcus, going on with it.

  ‘That will do, Marcus!’ said Mr Nelson, sharply, at the same time as Nicky’s head whipped round in her seat.

  ‘Thickhead!’

  ‘Witch!’

  Nicky lunged out of her seat and hit Marcus, hard on the nose so the blood came; and Mr Hunt had to get out of his seat, at the back of the coach, to stop the punch-up which followed. Mr Hunt did not like having to leave his seat just to stop a fight. He had been sitting next to Miss Greenwood, who had arrived for the outing dressed in a green and purple sundress, with her hair done a different way; and Mr Hunt had suddenly noticed that she was really rather attractive. He had been chatting her up at the back of the coach all morning, and was not best pleased at having to stop.

  ‘Take Nicky back with you, will you, Mr Hunt?’ said Mr Nelson. He felt tired, all of a sudden, and very old.

  ‘He started it!’ said Nicky, still furious. ‘That thickhead started it! That sack of potatoes with the turnip on top!’

  ‘That will do,’ said Mr Nelson.

  Now Miss Greenwood had to change places with Nicky, which did not suit her at all. She sat next to Roy, but couldn’t be bothered to talk to him. Mr Nelson dragged himself on to his arthritic legs and limped forward, swaying as the coach turned a corner. ‘Miss Greenwood, that little one of yours by me is feeling sick, I think,’ Mr Nelson invented. ‘Needs your motherly touch!’