The Mystery of the Cupboard (13 page)

To be turned out without a character was the worst thing that could happen to a servant in those days. It meant she had no reference, and without one, no one would employ her. Jenny left the house in which she had worked herself to the bone, with nothing but her few possessions in a little cardboard suitcase.

Sleeping rough that night in a field, cold, friendless, and frightened, she was ‘summoned' and that was when she told Miss Jessie very firmly through her tears of relief that she wanted to stay with her for ever and not go back, ever, to the cruelty of her life in nineteenth century Dorchester.

“And she were happy,” said Tom in the end. He still wiped his eyes from time to time, but it was obvious to Omri that talking about Jenny had done him good. “She were happy with the lady, and she were happy with me. It was hard to keep her safe and secret. Any number of times we were nearly caught out. But I worked out ways.”

“Didn't your wife—?”

“Left me. Early on. Took Peggy and left me for another man. Dead now these twenty years… Peggy come to take care of me after — well. After Jen went, I had a bit of a breakdown. Can't manage like I used to — forget things. So she come. Good girl is Peggy.”

“So you lived alone, all those years.”

“Like Missus Driscoll predicted. Alone yet not alone! I had Jen. I fixed her up a little place of her own and all manner o' things for her to use, and she lived her little life alongside my big un and we was happy. She loved to read… She used to read to me from them little books she'd brought… the Brontës, and Walter Scott, and the poets, Wordsworth and them… She loved poetry. Voice like silver bells, she had.” He blew his nose for the tenth time. “She was a wonder all right. I been lucky.”

“But how did she - you know - die?” asked Omri.

A dark look came over Tom's face.

“She didn't die. She were killed,” he said.

“Killed!”

“That's my belief. Or let to die. Same thing.”

“What happened?”

“Listen. She were sittin' on my hand, the way she always did when we was havin' a chat. Just sittin' in her long dress, doin' her embroidery. Talkin' to me of an evenin' as usual. And on a sudden she just - lifted her head — looked at me, surprised-like, and — stopped.”

“Stopped? You mean—”

“I mean she stopped. She stopped bein' Jenny.
She stopped bein' human.”

Omri looked at him incredulously.
“Stopped being human?”

He nodded fiercely. “I still can't believe it, not properly, but it happened. One second it was her, the next second it — she — went light.”

“What?”

“Light. In my hand. She didn't weigh hardly anything. And then she - it - it fell over sideways. No proper colour. Nothing. I touched it. You won't laugh? It was just a — a brown — a woman shape — only it was—” He buried his face abruptly in his hands.

“Plastic,” breathed Omri.

Tom lifted his face. “You know,” he said. “You know all about it.”

“Yes,” said Omri. “I know.”

They sat for a while. Tom recovered a little and lit another cigarette.

“What did you mean — killed?” Omri asked at last.

“Them where she come from. At — at the other end, as she called it. Where she'd left — the rest of her. The way I figured it, all them years, she was in that paupers' hospital ward. Just layin' there like asleep, while the real Jenny were here with me. And then one day, after about thirty years of it, well, if you work it out, it was around 1899, time o' the second Boer War, and they must've been desperate for beds and didn't have enough staff, and
maybe they just decided — it weren't worth keepin' her alive because like, she was never going to wake up. And that was true. They wasn't to know she was alive and kickin' and makin' me happy three-quarters of a century in the future.”

Omri said, “Have you still got her? The plastic figure of her?”

Tom shook his head. “You ent laughed so far, so I'll tell you what I done. I give her Christian burial in the churchyard. Made her a little coffin, read the burial service over her, put her a cross with her name on it, this big.” He held up his finger and thumb. “Course, it'll all get overgrown in time, when I'm gone, but I done what I thought was right.”

Omri, remembering other funerals, nodded.

“Course,” said Tom after a while, “I worried about her. When she were with me. Worried she'd be lonely an' that, for people her own size. But she said not to. She were content with me. She said them others weren't much company. Not her sort, she said.”

“What others?” asked Omri sharply.

“The others the lady 'ad.”

Of course! Jessica Charlotte had brought a number of little people to life — she'd hinted as much in the Account! All gone back safely, Tom had said, before she died.

“Do you know anything about — the others?”

He shook his head.

“Jenny said they weren't her sort so I didn't bother my head about 'em. The cupboard and the key that brought 'em, they was gone, I'd posted 'em off like Missus Driscoll told me to. But there was a number of 'em, I know that — three or four.”

“They must be in the cashbox,” Omri suddenly said. “Their plastic figures!”

“Oh, arh,” said Tom. “That's where they are, I reckon.”

Peggy appeared at the back door.

“Run along now, young man,” she said. “Dad's tired now. It's time he was comin' in for his tea.”

“It's time I got to work mendin' that roof tile,” said Tom, levering himself to his feet.

“You ent mendin' no roofs at your age, Dad. Don't you be so foolish. Come along in now, it's gettin' chilly.”

Omri gave Tom a secret smile, and left them still arguing.

When he got back to the Red Lion it was closed, and the garden was empty. He wasn't surprised. It was well after four o'clock. No wonder they hadn't waited.

He walked home between the hedges. His mind was full to bursting.

Nobody was annoyed with him for going off by himself, except Tony's dad.
He
seemed quite annoyed, for some reason.

“Patrick told us you found this old thatcher,” he said aggrievedly. “Said you were having a long talk with him.”

“Yes,” said Omri.

“What did you find to talk to him about for so long?” he asked, in a tone that implied that nobody but himself had any rights to Tom at all.

“He was interesting,” said Omri vaguely.

“I'll bet! You might have taken me along. You knew I wanted to interview him, and now we've got to get home.”

“Sorry,” said Omri. But he wasn't, not specially.

Tom wasn't crazy, but you never knew. If a real journalist got to work on him, he might have let something slip.

That night, when they were in bed, Omri told Patrick everything — including his great decision.

Apart altogether from the earrings, if they ever wanted to hear the end of the story - to know who the rest of Jessica Charlotte's companions had been, the very first little people ever to travel through time in the magic cupboard - they were going to have to recover the key from the bank.

To open the cashbox.

“D
ad, can we go to the bank today?”

His father continued painting for a moment or two. Omri was standing in the doorway of his dad's big new studio. It was the next day, Monday.

He and Patrick had stayed awake talking for hours last night, and Patrick in fact was still sound asleep. But Omri's brain was seething and he couldn't wait, now he'd decided, and had pursued his father out to his studio first thing after breakfast.

His dad turned slightly, his eyes and his mind still on his painting, which was of a large, colourful,
impressionistic rooster. Omri thought his paintings had changed a lot from the sombre roofscapes and still lifes of gardening tools he had usually painted before they'd moved out of London.

“What bank?” he asked, as if he were somewhere else.

“
The
bank, Dad. Your bank. The bank where my package is.”

“Ah.
That
bank. I thought you meant, the one whereon the wild thyme grows.”

“Sorry?”

“Never mind. I thought that package was supposed to be kept until your death or something, wasn't that the idea?”

“It was the idea, but I've changed my mind.”

“What's in there, Omri? I'm burning with curiosity.”

“It's a secret, Dad.”

“Oh, okay. Well. There's no problem about it. We'll go in a bit later, eh? I can't leave this now.”

Frustrated, Omri drifted away. The studio was in the yard, which was dotted with hens. The five chicks that had been new when they arrived were now half-grown. They seemed to be running around squeaking rather frantically. There was no sign of their mother.

He wandered idly into the barn to look for her. She was there, pecking away, perfectly silent now although until yesterday she had kept up a constant gentle clucking to call the chicks to her. Now she was lying low, not doing anything to let them know where she was.
Nature, thought Omri. Hens knew the right time to leave their children to get on with it on their own… Did human mothers do that? Would his mother run off and ‘hide in the barn' one day when the three of them got big and she'd had enough of looking after them?

He was just wandering out again when he heard something. It was a squeaking noise not unlike the one the chicks made. Were there more chicks that he didn't know about?

If so, they were high up, over his head somewhere. He climbed a wooden ladder fixed to the back wall, to a kind of hayloft that was no more than a few boards laid across the rafters. His father had forbidden them to go up there because he said the boards weren't safe. But there was a hole like a trapdoor where the ladder went, and Omri put his head through that, looking for the source of the squeaking.

His eyes roved the dusty space between the boards and the roof. There was no hay here now except a few scraps in a dark corner where the sloping roof and the boards met. The squeaking was coming from there.

If it was chicks, if some daft hen had made her nest up here, they might be killed falling off. There was no sign of a bird anyway. Maybe it was rats? Did rats squeak? Of course they did, but something told Omri it wasn't rats. Now he was nearer, the squeaking sounded more like — well, mewing.

A dead hope revived itself as Omri crawled cautiously
along the boards and reached into the little heap of old hay. His fingers touched fur, warm moving balls of it. He heaved himself closer on his elbows. The boards sagged ominously, but he wasn't aware of it.

There were five kittens, by no means newborn, two black and three black-and-white. One half of their parentage, at least, was quite obvious.

Some deep knot that had been half forgotten in the pit of Omri's stomach came gently untied. He drew a deep breath and let it out on a silent, joyous laugh.

“You fiend, Kits,” he said aloud. “Where are you?”

He lay in ambush for twenty minutes. Then she appeared, cautiously, through the ladder opening. She had always loved climbing ladders. She stopped dead when she saw him. He didn't move. Just stared at her. If she'd really gone feral, she might pretend not to know him, might run, abandon her kittens even. Or perhaps she'd fly at him to protect them…

But no. She walked daintily towards him along one board in the semi-darkness, head up, ignoring him, straight past and into the nest, where the squeaking reached a crescendo until she lay down in a languid crescent shape and the kittens fastened themselves to her.

She lay there staring at Omri through sleepy eyes, as if mocking him. If cats could look smug, she would have.

“You little beast,” said Omri. “You're not feral! You just ran off to punish us, and then you crept up here to
be private for having your kittens.” She came back for her milk every night, she'd learnt to hunt rabbits and keep out of sight, and now she was independent. She didn't need him any more.

But that didn't make him love her less. He longed to stroke her, but she had a certain look that told him he'd better not. He felt wildly happy. He backed along the boards and down the ladder. Then he raced across the yard and the lane to the house.

“Kitsa's okay, I've found her!” he shouted as he burst into the house.

Everyone in the family was pleased. Tony and Patrick were quite excited.

“Good old Kitsa. Can we see the kittens?”

“Well - I don't want to disturb her. We can't all go up there at once. Just one at a time, okay?”

Tony and Gillon went up one after the other, had a peep, and came down again. Then Patrick went up, with Omri behind him.

“When are you going to the you-know-where?” Patrick whispered as he went through the opening.