The Secret Passage (2 page)

Then Mary saw Mrs Mallory. Jason was half-carrying her, half-dragging her away from the house. Her hair was all over her face and her dress was streaked with mud. Mary stared at her. She had never seen her mother look like this before. She was crying and shuddering and saying something over and over. As Jason brought her nearer, Mary could hear what it was. Her mother was saying, “Where's Ben. Where is he? Oh—where is Ben?”

B
EN WASN'T IN
the house. While the others were having breakfast he had woken up, dressed, and slipped quietly out of the back door. He had taken Balthazar with him. He hadn't meant to frighten anyone. He had just decided that he didn't like being indoors with the terrible, hard rain beating down on the roof and that he wanted to find Thomas.

It had taken him a long time to get to Thomas's hut. The rain was so heavy that he had to crawl some of the way, through the mud and the little plots of coffee and maize round the village. The storm started just before he got there, but he wasn't particularly frightened, just uncomfortable.

When he reached the hut, his legs were scratched and he was covered with mud. It was dark inside the hut and very crowded with all Thomas's family, some of their hens and two goats. There was a fire in the hut, but no chimney, and the smoke made everyone cough. Ben coughed too and his eyes watered but he didn't mind because the hut was so warm and cosy. In some ways he was more like an African boy than an English one: he had spent so much time with Thomas that he was really happier in a hut than in his own house.

He sat beside Thomas on the hard earth floor. His soaking clothes steamed in the warmth and made him feel shivery, but Thomas's mother gave him some roast maize to eat and a
blanket to put over him and after a little while he curled up beside Thomas and went to sleep.

He slept most of the morning, while the storm blew itself out. He was still asleep when Thomas's big brother, Lawrence, who was home from school in Nairobi, went to find Mrs Mallory and tell her Ben was safe.

When Mrs Mallory came to fetch him in the District Officer's Land Rover, she hugged him very tight.

“Oh—you did frighten us, Ben,” she said. The sun had come out and dried her wet clothes but she was still very pale and her hands felt very cold.

“Balthazar was frightened, too,” Ben said. He had Balthazar in a little box, tucked away inside his jersey.

“Perhaps you'd better leave Balthazar with Thomas,” Mrs Mallory said. “We're going to stay with some friends—they may not like him as much as we do.”

Ben's eyes widened. “Why? Why can't we stay in our own house?” he said.

When they went outside, he understood. Where their bungalow had been, there was nothing except a great, wide sweep of pale, brown water. It was running very fast; tree trunks, huts, lumps of earth were being carried along in it. Ben saw a whole thorn tree whirling along in the current with something crouching in the branches.”

“It's a leopard,” he shouted, full of excitement. “A baby leopard.”

“Poor little thing,” Mrs Mallory said gently.

Ben watched the leopard until it disappeared in the distance. He wished he could have it, to tame. Perhaps it would come ashore further down and his father would catch it for him and
bring it home. If it was young enough, he could keep it in the house and it would grow up friendly and gentle, like an ordinary càt. It would be marvellous to have a leopard for a pet. He thought about this all the time he was bouncing about in the back of the Land Rover as it skidded on the slippery mud road, and quite forgot to ask his mother about John and Mary.

They were waiting in the bungalow that belonged to the District Officer. The District Officer and his wife, Mr and Mrs Epsom, were not particular friends of the Mallorys but they were the only people who lived fairly near and had enough room in their house to take in a family of five. They had two children of their own, a thin, pale girl called Sara and a thin, pale boy called Giles. Mrs Epsom was a very fussy woman. Her bungalow was so clean that you would have been frightened to walk on the floor in case you left marks on it, and Sara and Giles were always washed and brushed and dressed in beautiful clothes as if they were going to a party.

Mary and John had no clothes of their own except the ones they had been wearing when they escaped from the house, and they had had to take those off so that they could be washed and dried. When Ben and Mrs Mallory arrived, they were wearing things that Sara and Giles had lent them. Mary was dressed in a white frock with pink flowers on the bodice and John was wearing a smart grey suit which he found very tight and uncomfortable, because although he was the same age as Giles, he was much bigger and healthier.

Mrs Mallory thought that they both looked unusually quiet and tidy, sitting on a sofa and playing a game of Ludo with Sara and Giles. The Epsom children were not allowed to play games in which they might get dirty and tear their clothes.
Mrs Epsom had bathed Mary and John—much to their
indignation
because they were used to bathing themselves—and although she had managed to make them look quite
presentable
, she thought that they could never look as beautifully neat as Sara and Giles always did. Already, Mary had a smudge of dirt down the front of her pretty white dress and John's hair, that she had tugged with a comb until he squeaked with pain, was tangled again and falling into his eyes.

As for Ben—when Mrs Epsom saw Ben, her eyes almost jumped out of her head. He looked like a sweep, or a small hippopotomas that had been rolling in the mud. His face was grimy with smoke and red earth and he had rubbed great rings round his dark eyes. No one so dirty had ever come into her beautiful, clean bungalow before. She gave a little scream of horror and rushed into the bathroom at once, to turn on the hot water.

Mrs Mallory followed her, carrying Ben to stop his muddy footmarks leaving a trail along the floor. Mrs Epsom put a piece of newspaper beside the bath for him to stand on while he took his clothes off.

“My—you are dirty,” Mrs Mallory said, smiling at Mrs Epsom and trying to sound as if she was surprised.

“I'm not very dirty. I'm often dirtier than this,” Ben said proudly. Mrs Epsom gave a little gasp and he looked at her sternly and said, “It's just because my skin isn't black. If my skin was lovely and black like Thomas's, the dirt wouldn't show.”

“Who's Thomas?” Mrs Epsom said, quite kindly, though her eyes were fixed on the dreadful marks Ben's hands were making on the side of the white bath.

“He's my friend,” Ben said proudly. “My best friend. I help him mind his cows.”

“He's a very nice little boy,” Mrs Mallory said quickly, almost as if she were apologising for something. “I found Ben in his hut. They'd been so kind to him.”

“In an African hut?” Mrs Epsom's voice sounded queer—almost frightened. Ben looked at her in surprise. She said, “How dreadful. Why—he might have caught something. I'll put some disinfectant in the bath and we'd better burn his clothes, don't you think?”

She poured something out of a bottle into the hot water. It smelt very nasty. Then she picked up Ben's trousers, holding them nervously at arm's length, rather as if they were
something
alive that might bite.

When she had gone, Mrs Mallory was very quiet. She scrubbed Ben hard with a loofah and washed his thick, black hair over and over again. The soap got in his eyes and stung, but when he grumbled about it his mother didn't stop rubbing as she usually did and say, “Well, I daresay that'll do. A spot of dirt never did anyone any harm.” Instead, she went on rubbing his head, not saying anything, and when he was out of the bath and getting dressed in a pair of shorts and a shirt that Giles had grown out of, she said something she had never said to him before.

“Now Ben, you must try very hard and keep yourself clean.”

Ben could hardly believe his ears.

“But I can't,” he said. “How can I? Dirt's all around, it just flies on to me and
sticks
.”

Mrs Mallory looked at him and sighed. She had done her
best. He really did look quite clean, even his nails and his knees and behind his ears. All the same, she had the feeling that she had only reached the point at which Mrs Epsom would
probably
have begun.

She said, “I know, darling. But you must just try. It's very kind of Mrs Epsom to let us stay with her. And when you're a visitor in someone's house, it's only polite to try and be as little trouble to them as possible.”

“This isn't a proper
visit
” Ben said. “Not like a holiday. We only came here because our house got drowned. So I'm not really a visitor. I'm more of a Homeless Person.”

He expected his mother to laugh. She always said that he could argue the hind leg off a donkey. But she didn't laugh. She just looked at him with bright, dark eyes, and then, quite suddenly she snatched him into her arms and held him so tightly that he could hardly breathe. Then she let him go and began to cough. She coughed as if it hurt her, holding her side.

When she could speak, she said in a gasping voice, “Oh darling, darling Ben. Yes, I'm afraid you are.”

*

Mrs Mallory coughed a lot all night. Ben was sleeping in the same room and it kept him awake. In the middle of the night, he got up and padded over to his mother's bed.

“Would you like some cough mixture?” he said. “If you like, I can go and look to see if there is some in the bathroom.”

Ben thought cough mixture was a very special treat. He had only once been ill, when he had had measles, and the doctor had prescribed an extremely pleasant mixture for him, tasting of honey and lemons. He had enjoyed it so much that he had been almost sorry when he got better and he would often
pretend to cough, producing an affected little bark and going quite red in the face, in order that he should be given another dose out of that delicious bottle.

But Mrs Mallory shook her head. “No thank you, Ben darling. But I
would
like another blanket. See if there is one on the end of your bed. I'm so cold.”

She didn't feel cold, though. When he fetched the blanket, she caught hold of Ben's wrist for a minute and her fingers were dry and burning hot. “Try to go to sleep, Ben,” she said. “I'll do my best not to keep you awake.”

“I don't mind,” he said grandly. “I can stay awake all night if you like, so I can fetch you things.”

But of course he fell fast asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow.

In the morning Mrs Mallory was really ill. She stayed in bed all day; when the children tiptoed in to see her she smiled at them but her eyes looked bright and queer—almost as if she was not quite sure who they were. It made them feel very odd and subdued so that when Mrs Epsom said that they must be quiet and not worry their mother, they didn't find it
particularly
difficult. John played what he privately thought was a rather babyish game of croquet with Sara and Giles and Mary read to Ben, moving a chair to a place on the veranda from which she could see the door of her mother's room. Mrs Epsom went in and out carrying trays and basins with white cloths over them. Her forehead was puckered up in a continual frown and her eyes looked worried.

The telephone line had been mended and she was able to speak to Mr Mallory, who was still stuck on the other side of the flooded river.

“If only the river would go down,” Mary heard her say. “She ought to have proper attention—we haven't even got any drugs here.”

Fortunately, the sun blazed all that day and by the afternoon of the next, the floods had gone down enough for Mr Mallory to come back in the Land Rover. He brought a doctor with him and they both hurried straight into Mrs Mallory's room. When they came out, about half-an-hour later, Mr Mallory looked very tired. He kissed the children and waited patiently while Ben told him all the things he was bursting to tell—about the house being swept away and about the baby leopard—but though he watched Ben closely and nodded from time to time, he didn't really seem to be listening with much attention. When Ben had finished, Mr Mallory cleared his throat and told the children that he and the doctor were going to take their mother to a hospital in Nairobi.

“We're going to make her a nice bed in the back of the Land Rover,” he said. “She'll be quite comfortable there.”

“Oh
Dad
” Mary said. There was a lump, like a little hard golf ball in her throat. Her father put his arm round her and held her against him.

“She'll be all right,” he said. “Don't worry. I'll stay in an hotel quite near the hospital and I'll telephone you every evening.”

“Aren't we coming too?” Ben said in an outraged voice.

“Not this time, old boy. If you want to help, the best thing you can do is to be good and not to be a trouble to Mr and Mrs Epsom and
try
not to squabble with Sara and Giles.”

He said this last bit with a twinkling glance at John who went pink and started to hum softly under his breath. He'd already
found it very difficult not to quarrel with Giles who was silly and babyish and inclined to cry easily.

The next hour was full of excitement. They made up the bed in the back of the Land Rover, putting a mattress on the floor and padding the hard sides with cushions. When Mrs Mallory was carried out, doing her best to smile and look cheerful, it was almost a jolly occasion. “I feel like a caterpillar in a cocoon,” she said, as they rolled her round and round with thick blankets and laid her gently on the mattress.

“You look more like an Egyptian Mummy,” said John and they all laughed at his joke—Mary laughed so loudly that her throat began to hurt and the tears came into her eyes. But when the canvas flaps were fastened down tight to keep out the draughts and the dust and the Land Rover disappeared,
bumping
and swaying down the hilly, red road, they didn't feel like laughing anymore.

They waved until their arms ached. Then they just stood, silently huddling together until the sound of the engine had completely died away and the last particle of dust had settled.

*