Behind the Scenes at the Museum (21 page)

The absurdity of this statement is not lost on Gillian who can see the whole theatre is in uproar as the witch, an elf, a panda, a cow and a plucky village youth rush about the stage while Hansel and Gretel hide under a pile of leaves. (Why is there a panda? Perhaps to make Patricia happy – she nudges me and says, ‘Look! A panda!’ a note of rare happiness in her voice.) Undeterred, Gillian continues to shout at the top of her voice. Make the most of it, Gillian, I say.

When they ask for volunteers from the audience to come on stage I sink into my seat as far out of sight as possible, and Patricia has rendered herself completely invisible, but there’s no holding Gillian back and before you can say, ‘Oh yes she is,’ she’s kicking up her white kid heels and layers of petticoats and is on stage, charming the panda and singing her heart out.

‘Well, really,’ says Bunty self-consciously to the woman in the seat next to her (I am in the middle of the Lennox sandwich – George on one end, then Gillian, me, Patricia and, on the other end, Bunty. Nell has been left at home). ‘Really, she
is
a one, our Gillian.’ Not for much longer.

When Gillian returns to her seat you can see that she’s flushed and irritable (her mother’s daughter) at having to step out of the spotlight. ‘All good things come to an end,’ Bunty says, smiling stiffly, keeping her eyes on the stage.

If Hansel and Gretel had stayed lost in the forest for ever, we could have remained trapped with them and forgotten about The Floozy and sour cream and un-iced Christmas cakes. And Gillian wouldn’t have died either. But the plot’s unstoppable – the witch is burnt to a heap of charred rags and ashes, the wicked stepmother’s pardoned, children reclaimed. Hansel and Gretel discover the witch’s treasure chest, overflowing with emeralds, diamonds, opals, rubies (!), sapphires, glowing like the bag of boiled sweets Gillian and I are sharing. The Good Fairy sends a shower of glitter from her wand so thick that when I put out my hand I can touch it.

‘Well, that’s over for another year.’ George is out of his seat before the house lights are even up and while we are still applauding he’s already standing in the foyer, lighting up a cigarette. Bunty is behaving like a frantic rodent, jumping up and down at the end of the row, urging us to hurry up, while we fumble desperately with hats, scarves, gloves, programmes. Why does she do this? Why does she induce a sense of panic commensurate with an earthquake when it’s obvious that we are going to have to queue for ages before the exits clear. Gillian, who is transfixed by the sight of the empty stage, suddenly bursts into tears. Bunty moves along the row, mouthing simpering things to the people crushed in around us, ‘very tired’, ‘too much excitement’, ‘children, you know’, while she secretly pulls viciously on Gillian’s hand, hissing under her breath, ‘Why don’t you just bloody
grow up
, Gillian!’

I feel it’s unfortunate for Bunty that these are her last words to Gillian. Not only is it a futile admonishment – the one thing that Gillian is clearly
not
going to do is ‘grow up’ – but it’s not a very nice note to finish on. However, this is Bunty’s problem, not mine. My last words to Gillian are – as I hand her a jewel-like sweet – ‘Do you want the last red one, or can I have it?’ Fairly neutral in the circumstances, and luckily she takes the last red one (this is Gillian, remember) so I won’t have to feel guilty about it afterwards.

I’m struggling to get away from Bunty but I can’t pry her fingers off my hand, she went into a kind of rigor mortis when she saw Gillian flying through the air. People are milling around making a lot of noise but after a while a space clears and we can see George sitting on the edge of the pavement, one of his trouser legs inexplicably rolled up, exposing a beige woollen sock. He’s being sick. Then Bunty starts screaming, loud at first, and then the noise seems to get thinner and higher until it rises up, bat-like and starts bouncing off the sodium street lights, the gargoyles on the theatre, the blue light flashing nearer and nearer.

One of her thick, wrinkled sixty deniers lies across the bottom of George and Bunty’s eiderdown, looking faintly obscene in the dim winter dawn-light and certainly untouched by the hand of any North Pole elf. I know Father Christmas hasn’t put it there because he doesn’t exist. Gillian disabused me of this possibility last year, debunking the Tooth Fairy at the same time for good measure. What an iconoclast she was.

The bed gives off an unsettling odour composed of both Bunty’s sickly-sweet face powder smell and George’s tobacco-and-fish smell and I tentatively nudge Patricia and say, ‘There’s a Christmas stocking.’

‘I know,’ she says flatly and I realize that it is she, rather than Nell, who has been playing Santa Claus. Good old Patricia. It must have been doubly difficult for her to undertake this role, for although she’s thirteen years old and arguably the most grown-up member of the family, it is Patricia more than anyone who mourns the way magic has drained from our world. No Father Christmas, no Tooth Fairy, no Fairy Godmother – no fairies at all. Our childhood is over, yet we’re still waiting for it to begin. I was lying next to Patricia’s stiff little body last night and know how desperately she was listening for the clatter of unshod hooves on the roof and the jingle of approaching sleigh-bells.

My stocking for Christmas 1959 contains (in reverse order from the toe upwards) – a sixpence, a walnut, an orange, a pack of Happy Family playing cards, a bar of Fry’s Peppermint Cream and a cheap, rather pink, doll wearing a knitted vest and knickers. I’ve had better.

We lie back on the parental pillows and share the chocolate while we play a rather desultory game of Happy Families. The irony is not lost on us as we survey the families of Mr Bun the Baker and Mr Haddock the Fishmonger, all considerably more complete than that of Mr Lennox the Pet Shopkeeper.

Eventually we go up to Nell’s room and kiss her on her leathery cheek. A faint whiff of urine rises up from her sheets. She’s wearing an enormous pale-pink bedjacket that dwarfs her. The hands poking out from the ends of the sleeves have purple veins that stand out like wires. She looks at us both warily through rheumy eyes.

‘Merry Christmas, Grandma.’

‘Merry Christmas, Patricia.’

‘Merry Christmas, Grandma.’

‘Merry Christmas, Ruby.’

‘Merry Christmas one and all!’ The tinkling cry goes around the house, like glass bells, as the household ghosts feebly carol and wassail and raise a glass to Christmas.

We make an effort. I switch on the Christmas tree lights and Nell puts an apron on. Patricia makes a brave attempt to clean out the grate and lay a new fire. But when she tries to set a match to it the fire peters out as soon as it’s burnt up all the kindling. She hauls through the electric fire from Nell’s bedroom and we huddle round the one element that gives off the unpleasant acrid smell of burnt hair. We light the candles of the Angel Chimes so that at least we have some kind of flame to light the festivities.

All three of us look doubtfully at the pile of presents under the tree. ‘May as well open them,’ Patricia says at last, shrugging her shoulders in that way she has of suggesting she couldn’t care less about anything, although of course, she cares terribly. About everything.

I have several presents. George and Bunty have given me a
Girl
annual, a white fur muff (new, not ex-Gillian), a pair of roller skates, a Terry’s Chocolate Orange and some pretend jewellery. I think these are surprisingly good presents. Nell has given me a tin of Yardley’s Freesia talcum powder and Patricia has given me a brand-new copy of
The Railway Children
, bought from her pocket-money. Meanwhile, from beyond the grave, Gillian has sent me a brown Bri-nylon dog, with a purple ribbon round its fat neck, holding a green and purple bottle of April Violets cologne between its paws. ‘That’s disgusting,’ Patricia says, with no reverence for Gillian’s newly-dead condition – but then, although we believed she was dead last night, it’s almost impossible to believe that she’s still dead this morning. ‘Disgusting,’ I agree and stuff a whole segment of Chocolate Orange into my mouth.

Patricia and Nell open their presents but the remainder are left undisturbed under the tree, like offerings to the dead. I think Patricia and I should share Gillian’s presents but don’t say so because I know this isn’t the right attitude.

Some time later Patricia and I go looking for Nell and find her in the kitchen trying to do some very odd things to the uncooked turkey. Patricia takes the apron from her and ties it authoritatively round her own waist, telling me to take Nell away and play with her. Sensibly, Patricia does not attempt to cook the turkey, but instead makes a commendable attempt at mashed potatoes, baked beans and corned beef although only after all three of us have lacerated ourselves opening the corned-beef tin. Afterwards we have mince pies and Ambrosia Creamed Rice Pudding. We eat with our plates on our knees in front of the television and enjoy our Christmas dinner more than seems appropriate after the demise of a close relative. Nell recklessly drinks two glasses of rum and then Patricia and I pull the entire box of crackers between us while our grandmother sleeps in the armchair and I take the opportunity to relay to Patricia some facts about the Spirit World, as gleaned during my Dewsbury exile. Patricia is uncommonly taken with the idea of animal afterlife, but less so with the idea of Gillian wandering out there for ever and learning how to get rid of scratches on coffee-tables.

By Boxing Day we have settled into a kind of routine based loosely on television, sleep and mince pies. Patricia has even learnt how to make a pretty good fire. We’re grateful to Bunty for keeping her cupboards so well stocked with tinned food. Things look up a lot when we discover the Boxing Day trifle lurking at the back of the fridge, although Patricia is a little queasy about it as she says she distinctly remembers that Bunty hadn’t even begun to make it when we left for the pantomime. Who made the trifle? Ghostly cooks schooled in syllabub, flummery, and frumenty? Handy elves? Who knows. We put aside our qualms and devour it at a single sitting and feel sick all night.

They probably had to open a whole new zone in the Spirit World, just for Gillian. For several weeks afterwards, Patricia and I planned a trip to the Church of the Spirit in Dewsbury in the hope of receiving a comforting message from Gillian.
Your sister says not to worry about her
, that sort of thing. Knowing Gillian, she would have kept silent just to spite us (she would be furious at having missed Christmas). These plans faded abruptly after The Great Pet Shop Fire when the Spirit World received such a large new intake that it was easier to forget about the world of the Spirit altogether than to dwell on all those Spirit Pets wandering the astral plane, mewing and whimpering.

Bunty wasn’t the full shilling for a while. It was surprising just how much Gillian’s death had affected her. I used to see her through her open bedroom door, lying on her back on the bed emitting little yelps, her hands clawing the eiderdown. Sometimes she’d moan, ‘My baby, my baby’s gone,’ as if she’d only had one baby, which wasn’t very nice for me and Patricia. At other times, she’d set up a banshee wail of ‘Gilliaaaaaan,’ which should have been enough to recall Gillian from the region of the undead, yet it didn’t. Sometimes you could hear Bunty crying to the night, ‘My Gillian, my pearl,’ which I thought was very odd, because I’d never heard her call her that when she was alive. And anyway, surely it’s me that’s the jewel of the family?

She got better after a while. So did the Pets. Patricia and I had forgotten about them for a couple of days and it was only when the dogs started howling in the middle of the night that we realized they hadn’t been fed. Thankfully, none of them had starved to death although the knowledge of our neglect hung heavily on our consciences, particularly Patricia’s, needless to say. It is hard to look into the eyes of starving puppies and kittens, knowing it’s your fault, and not feel that you have been marked down for ever. The Parrot, in the short time left to him, never forgave us. The Great Pet Shop Fire expunged many things (although mostly Pets) but not the guilt.