The Secret Passage (6 page)

She put the kettle on and lit the grill to make toast for tea. Her expression was so stiff and forbidding that none of the children dared say anything. When tea was ready, they sat down at the table with downcast eyes. None of them felt in the least hungry.

After about five minutes, Mary said nervously, “Aunt Mabel—did the man go away because of what I said?”

Aunt Mabel glanced at her briefly. “No—no, of course not. He left because his bedroom was too cold.” She gave a short laugh. “As if a grown man would bother about what a little girl said!”

Mary felt a little better, but not much. It was kind of Aunt Mabel to say it wasn’t her fault, but she had spoken in such a cold, angry way that she still felt very miserable. She sat, staring at her plate and so did John and Ben.

Looking at their faces, Aunt Mabel thought they were sulking. It didn’t occur to her that they were unhappy because they thought she was dreadfully cross with them. She didn’t even know she had sounded cross. She had had such a lonely, worrying life—it was even more worrying now she had three children to look after—that she had grown rather prickly and sharp-voiced without realising it. She was a stiff, rather shy sort of person and although she would have liked to be kinder and more loving to the children, she did not really know how to begin. As a result, her brisk, unaffectionate ways froze up even Mary’s kind heart and, as she sat, eating her toast, she began to think that it was all very well for Uncle Abe to say Aunt Mabel was nice and loving
underneath
. But it didn’t make her any easier to live with.

After tea, Aunt Mabel went down to the shops to get fresh fish for Miss Pin’s supper. The only kind of fish Miss Pin liked was plaice, boned and steamed in butter. As soon as she was gone, Ben said in an excited voice, “I’ve got an idea.” He was very pink and his eyes shone. “It’s an idea how to make money.”

Mary and John looked at each other. They remembered that it had been Ben who had asked Aunt Mabel if she was really poor, when they were in the train coming to Henstable. He had never mentioned it since, but that was like Ben. If he had a problem he didn’t talk about it, but turned it over and over in his mind until he had an answer to it. He said now, “we can collect cockles. I saw some men on the beach
collecting
cockles and they said they sold them to the fish shop.
We
could do that, then Aunt Mabel would have enough money to buy lots of bread-and-butter.”

John said, “But you can’t collect enough cockles in a pail. Not enough to
sell
.”

“You want a sack, like the men had. There are lots of sacks in the cellar.”

Ben ran to a door at the far end of the kitchen, opened it, and disappeared. Mary and John followed. They had never been in the cellar and they peered cautiously down the flight of wooden stairs that led down into darkness. Ben’s voice floated up to them. “Put the light on. The switch is just inside the door.”

John switched on the light and went down the stairs. The cellar was a low, rambling, pleasant place that smelt of dry wood and dust. There was a pile of coke for the Beast in one corner, a stack of wood in another and a bench against one
wall with a saw and some nails on it. Under the bench, John found a pile of sacks; he and Mary began shaking them out and choosing the two best ones.

Meanwhile, Ben roamed round the cellar. Set in the brick wall at one end, were two arched little doors—very low, as if they had been made for dwarves or children. Ben opened one of the doors and found a cubby hole with an earth floor and a wooden ceiling; a tiny room that would have made a splendid hide-away if it had not been full of packing cases and empty lemonade bottles. He wondered if there was another room behind the other door but when he tried to open it, it seemed to be locked or stuck.

He called out to John and Mary, “Come and help. I think it’s locked,”

“There are some keys here,” Mary said. There was a big bunch of keys hanging on a nail above the bench. She took them down and went over to the little door. John tried several keys before he found a small one that exactly fitted the lock. It was rusty and stiff; it took two hands and all his strength to turn the key, but it
did
turn and the door swung creakily open.

There was a small room behind this door, just as there was behind the other one. At first, the only difference seemed to be that this room was empty and when the children peered in, the air inside felt colder than the air in the cellar. Then they saw that high up in the wall at the back was a small, square, dark hole. A chill little wind blew out of it and a queer smell—a mixture of earth and mice and shut-upness.

“What
is
it?” Mary whispered.

No one answered for a minute. Then Ben said in a low, awestruck voice, “It’s the Secret Passage.” There was a bright,
mysterious look in his eyes. He said, very fast, “I couldn’t tell you about it because Miss Pin asked me not to. But now you’ve found it for yourselves, it’s all right, isn’t it?”

He looked anxiously at Mary who took his hard little hand and said, “Of course it’s all right. But a passage must go
somewhere
. Does Miss Pin know where it goes?”

Ben shook his head. “She just said it was a place to hide. But we could go and
see
, couldn’t we?”

Mary said, “I’ve got a torch. It was hanging up with the keys.” She looked at John. “You go first …”

John drew a deep breath. It was stupid to be scared, he told himself. He was eleven, nearly twelve—nearly grown-up.

Ben said eagerly, “I’ll go. I’d like to go.” The menacing, dark hole didn’t worry him at all. What could be there, after all, except a mouse or two?

John said quickly, “No. It may be dangerous. I’m the eldest. I’ll go.”

As he pulled himself up to the hole, the torch in his hand, he grinned to himself in spite of feeling so sick and clammy. If he wasn’t so frightened he would be quite ready to let Ben go ahead—it would be more sensible, really. Ben was smaller and less likely to get stuck.

The hole led to a tunnel which was just high enough for John to crawl through, knees scraping on rubble. It was very short; after about two yards it opened into a much bigger place, high enough for John to kneel up. He swept the torch round and saw brick walls and rafters above his head.

“We’re under the house,” Mary said, wriggling beside him. “Oh blow—I’ve torn my dress. It must be the
foundations
of the house.”

“What a swizz,” John said in a cheerful, grumbling tone, secretly rather relieved that this was all there was—just this dry, clean place with the floors of the house above.

But it wasn’t all. “Look,” Ben squeaked. “Give me the torch …”

At one side there was another hole, just above the level of the ground. This time there was no doubt about who was to go first. Ben snatched the torch from John and crawled in. His muffled voice came back to them. “Come on—it goes on an awfully long way.”

This tunnel was very low and it was more difficult for Mary and John to get through it than for Ben. They had to squirm along on their stomachs, using their elbows and knees, and it was rather alarming because Ben was so far ahead that they couldn’t see the light from the torch. Mary was so close behind John that his feet kicked dust and earth back into her face. At one place the tunnel seemed to be almost blocked by a mess of brick and rubble as if someone had tried to wall it up at some time. John called, “Ben …” and Ben’s voice sounded hollow and strange. “Come on … come on, it’s not far now.”

Quite suddenly, the tunnel ended. It just stopped, high up in a wall. Ben was shining the torch and John and Mary crawled out, head first, and pitched onto a pile of wood shavings. “Just as well
that
was there,” John said, sitting up. “Or we’d have banged our heads horribly hard. Give me the torch, Ben.”

They were in quite a big room, very dry, with a brick floor. It opened into another room with a series of cubby holes along one side, stacked with wine bottles lying on their sides. At
the far end was a flight of wooden steps and a closed door at the top. John shone the torch up the steps. He caught his breath.

“Mary,” he shouted, “Mary—do you know where we are? We’re in the cellar of the house next door. We’re in the House of Secrets.”

He ran up the stairs and tugged at the handle of the door, quite forgetting to be frightened in the excitement of being in the very place he had so longed to see.

But the cellar door was locked.

“P
ERHAPS ONE OF
those old keys will fit,” John panted as they wriggled back through the tunnel. He was not at all frightened now, he was much too excited. He had been in the cellar of the House of Secrets. He only had to find a key—just one key—and he would be in the house itself!

Mary had left the bunch of keys on the bench in their own cellar, but when she scrambled out of the cubby hole and went to fetch them, the keys were gone. “I’m sure I left them here,” she said in a loud, surprised voice.

“Be quiet—oh be
quiet
,” John hissed behind her. He was looking up at the cellar door, his eyes wide with alarm. It stood ajar and a familiar, rattling noise came from the kitchen. “It’s Aunt Mabel, stoking the Beast,” he said.

Mary whispered, “She must have moved the keys. Yes—there they are, back on the nail.”

She and John looked at each other in horror. They were filthy; their clothes were black and their hair and eyebrows were whitish-grey with dust.

“We’re awfully dirty. She’ll be hopping mad,” Ben said cheerfully.

“She’ll find out about the passage,” John said. This thought made his heart thump very fast. If Aunt Mabel knew where they had been she would almost certainly stop them going
through the tunnel again and he would never see the house next door—never,
never
. He clenched his fists and muttered, “I couldn’t bear it, I couldn’t.” He looked frantically at Mary. “What can we say? She must have been down here to get the coke for the Beast—she’ll know we weren’t just playing in the cellar.”

Mary drew a deep breath. “Just don’t say anything,” she said. “Or you either, Ben. Just leave it to me.”

Her back was very straight and her head held very high as she marched up the cellar steps and into the kitchen. John and Ben followed her; John felt very scared, but Ben hummed a jaunty little tune under his breath. Aunt Mabel looked at them, her mouth open. “Whatever …” she began.

Mary gabbled very fast, “I’m sorry we got so dirty, Aunt Mabel. But we’ve been hiding in the cellar—in the cubby hole.” It was almost true, she thought, they
had
been hiding in the cubby hole, but all the same the colour came and went in her cheeks and she stared guiltily at the floor.

“So that’s where you were,” Aunt Mabel said. “I wondered what you’d been doing with those old keys.”

John said quickly, “Do you mind us playing with them, Aunt Mabel?”

Aunt Mabel shrugged her shoulders. “They’re no use to me. Just a bunch of old keys I’ve had for years. As a matter of fact, I think I brought most of them from the house next door—they won’t fit many of the locks here.”

John gave a little gasp, then a slow smile appeared on his face. It really was possible, then, that one of the keys would fit that cellar door. This made him feel so excited and happy that he stood, grinning to himself and looking rather foolish.
Aunt Mabel gave him a curious look. Then she glanced at Mary and Ben and her lips twitched very slightly. “You look as if you’d been climbing chimneys,” she said. “It’s a good thing you had some old clothes on.”

Her tone was quite uncomplaining and Mary suddenly realised that Aunt Mabel was not in the least like Mrs Epsom; she never made a fuss when they got dirty or tore their clothes. Then she saw a flimsy blue envelope on the table and
everything
else went out of her mind. “Is that from Daddy?” she cried.

“No,” Aunt Mabel said. “It’s from Mrs Epsom. Your father has gone off on leave—Mrs Epsom says he’s on safari in the Northern Frontier District.” She picked the letter up and put it in her apron pocket. “I expect he’ll send you a postcard.”

Ben laughed. “He won’t be able to buy postcards
there
,” he said scornfully.

“Won’t he? I don’t know much about Africa.” Aunt Mabel looked at the children, frowning a little as if something was worrying her. Then she said sharply, “Run along and have a good, hot bath. Use plenty of soap. You look as if you could do with it.”

When they had gone, she sat down, took the letter out of her pocket and read it. When Uncle Abe came in for his supper a little later, she was still sitting there, staring
thoughtfully
and somehow sadly in front of her, the letter still in her hand.

“Anything wrong?” he asked, surprised. Aunt Mabel didn’t often sit like this, doing nothing.

Aunt Mabel glanced at him. “You’d better read this,” she said shortly.

Uncle Abe took the letter and read it. Then he folded it carefully and handed it back to her. “Poor little beggars,” he said softly. “Do they miss their father very much?”

“I think so,” Aunt Mabel said. “They don’t talk about him—but Mary runs to the letter box every morning. I hear her feet scampering down the passage and then coming back, very slowly. He hasn’t written to them, not once. It looks as if he has quite forgotten about them. You saw what Mrs Epsom said? He seemed half out of his mind with grief …”

Uncle Abe blew his nose very loudly. He said, “He must have loved their mother very much.”

“He’d have fetched her the moon out of the sky, if he could,” Aunt Mabel said in a dry voice. She drummed her fingers on the arm of her chair in the way she often did when she was thinking very hard about something. “He wasn’t in a fit state to go off into the wilds on his own. Suppose
something
happens to him? What will happen to the children then?”

“I daresay he’ll turn up safe and sound,” Uncle Abe said slowly.

Aunt Mabel sighed. “I hope so. They’re my sister’s children and I shall do my best to do my duty by them. But it won’t be easy. They expect such a lot—their parents adored them, spoiled them, to my mind.”

“They don’t seem spoiled to me. What do you mean?” Uncle Abe said.

Aunt Mabel shrugged her shoulders impatiently. “Oh—they just seem to expect everyone to love them. I haven’t got time to fuss over children. I can just about afford to feed them as long as they’re not particular but I can’t afford to give them
a lot of clothes and toys. I can’t afford to give them
anything
…”

Uncle Abe was looking at her with an odd expression on his face. He said suddenly, “You can give them a home. That’s the most important thing.
I
know that—after all, you’ve given me one. Oh—I know I’m supposed to be a lodger, but when did I last pay my rent? Tell me that?” He threw out his chest and thumped it with his big fist.

“Oh—don’t ask silly questions,” Aunt Mabel said. She got up from her chair and started to lay the table for supper, putting down the knives and forks with a lot of unnecessary noise.

Uncle Abe said, “It’s not a silly question. I owe you a lot of money—money that you need now, for the children.”

Aunt Mabel took no notice. Her cheeks were rather red and her eyes very bright.

Uncle Abe cleared his throat and said loudly, “As a matter of fact, I may be able to pay you back sooner than you expect. I’ve got an interview tomorrow, with a man who runs a big Art Gallery in London. He wrote and said he’d like to see some of my stuff.”

Aunt Mabel smiled. She didn’t often smile, but when she did it was usually at Uncle Abe who reminded her of her young husband who had been drowned at sea. Mr Haggard had been younger than Uncle Abe when he died, but he had been a big, brawny man too, with flaming red hair.

She said, “In that case, you’d better remember to put on a clean shirt when you get up in the morning. And wash your neck thoroughly and clean your nails. They look as if they could do with it.”

She spoke to Uncle Abe in the same sharp, almost angry way that she spoke to the children but Uncle Abe didn’t mind because he was used to it.

*

John had the bunch of keys fastened to his belt. They were all wearing the dirty old clothes they had worn the day before but they couldn’t get into the passage until Aunt Mabel was out of the house.

They thought she would never go. Usually she went
shopping
as soon as breakfast was cleared away but today she had taken it into her head to turn out one of the kitchen cupboards and put clean paper on all the shelves. John and Mary hung around, trying to hurry her up by helping her, but she seemed maddeningly slow, taking down each piece of china from the top shelf and wiping it carefully before she put it back again.

Mary said, “Aunt Mabel, you really ought to get out in the open air. It’s good for you.”

From her perch at the top of the step ladder, Aunt Mabel looked down at Mary’s pink face.

“Well,” she said. “Since when have you been interested in my health, may I ask?”

John said innocently, “We’ve been thinking you looked a bit peaky, Aunt Mabel.”

Aunt Mabel gave a funny little snort. I’ll go out when I’m good and ready. Not before. I’ve got a lot to do because it’s Lifeboat Day tomorrow and I shall be busy selling flags.”

“To pay for the new Lifeboat? The one that’s down on the front, near the pier?”

Aunt Mabel nodded. “It isn’t fitted out yet, though. We shall need to collect a lot of money.”

“Will you be out selling flags
all day
tomorrow?” John asked eagerly. He grinned at Mary, whose eyes shone. They could only get into the passage when Aunt Mabel wasn’t there and even if she went shopping she might easily get back before they did and find out what they were doing. If she was going to be out all day, tomorrow would be a wonderful opportunity.

“Most of the time, I expect,” Aunt Mabel said. She gave them a small smile. “As a matter of fact, I thought you might like to help …”

“
Oh
,” said John and Mary together. Their response was hardly enthusiastic and Aunt Mabel looked at their crestfallen faces in surprise. Although she believed they were spoiled, she had almost without realising it, come to think of Mary and John as very helpful children who were usually willing to do things for people. She said, rather crossly, “Well—we’ll talk about it tomorrow. I’m sure
I
don’t want to make you do anything you don’t want to do.”

Mary said quickly, “It’s not that we don’t want to, Aunt Mabel. We didn’t mean …”

“Never mind what you meant,” Aunt Mabel said. “I’m too busy to talk about it now. Run along and play—and take Ben with you. What’s Ben doing?”

“Sitting with Miss Pin,” John said, with a little sigh.

*

Ben had been with Miss Pin for the last hour. She was talking about Aunt Mabel. The oil stove threw a yellow, feathery pattern on the high, dim ceiling; Ben sat close to its lovely warmth, on the leather footstool, and listened. From time to time, he fed the tortoise, Sir Lancelot, with a piece of fresh lettuce.

Miss Pin was saying, “You should have seen your Aunt Mabel when she was young. She was the prettiest girl in Henstable. Tall and bonny, with long, graceful legs, like a deer. I used to sit here, in this room—it was just after my arthritis had laid hold of me properly—and listen to her, singing in the big garden next door. She sang all day, such sweet, pretty songs, to amuse her little sister. That was your Dear Mamma, Ben. I never saw any two sisters so loving. When your Aunt Mabel was married, your Mamma was her bridesmaid, in a pretty dress of white lace. They asked me to the wedding—such a pretty card, with gold bells all over it. Of course I couldn’t go. Even if it hadn’t been for my arthritis, it wouldn’t have been Safe. I daren’t leave Papa’s treasure, you see. I’d promised him I would guard it always. But your Aunt Mabel came in to see me afterwards and brought me a piece of wedding cake. I’ve still got it somewhere—in that old chest in the corner, I think. She was wearing such a pretty dress …”

“Get onto the sad bit,” Ben said. He was much more interested in hearing how Mr Haggard’s ship had gone down in a great storm in the Pacific Ocean, than he was in the dress Aunt Mabel was wearing when she got married.

Miss Pin frowned. “Don’t be impatient, boy. All in good time. Just fill my kettle first, will you, dear?” She waited while Ben put a kettle on the oilstove and gave her a new one for her lap. Then she put her hat straight on her head, tucked her bright shawl firmly about her, and went on. “For about a year, Ben dear, your Aunt and her nice young husband were happy as the day is long. My Dear Mamma used to say you can only have so much happiness in this life. Your Aunt Mabel had it all—in one short year.”

She sighed deeply, but Ben knew she was enjoying herself. Like Ben, Miss Pin thought sad things were more interesting than happy ones. She huddled up in her chair, looking like an aging parrot, and went on in a low, trembling voice. “It came to an end so suddenly. That terrible storm at sea—I can see it, Ben. The great, purple waves breaking over the ship, the fierce winds buffeting it, the poor sailors … The storm only lasted about an hour, but long before it was over, all was lost. They sent out S.O.S. messages, but there was no ship near enough to help them. The ship broke up completely, and went down with the brave Captain standing on the bridge, saluting. The crew took to the boats, but no lifeboat could last in that sea. No one was saved except the ship’s cat who came floating ashore at some island or other, riding on an old plank and miaowing like a banshee. Just think, Ben! Your poor Aunt had only been married a year.” Miss Pin raised a-corner of her shawl to her eyes as if to wipe away a tear. “Until fourteen years ago, she was the merriest creature you ever saw. Then, suddenly, everything changed. In one month—one short month, Ben, her poor husband died and she lost her little girl. Of course your Mamma was still with her, to
comfort
her, but she wasn’t there long.
She
married just after—out of the schoolroom …”

“Lost
what
?’ Ben interrupted her in an astonished voice. This was part of the story he hadn’t heard before.” I didn’t know Aunt Mabel had a girl.”

“Indeed she did. The prettiest little thing. Very delicate, of course—like a little doll. Your Aunt and your Mamma were living in the big house next door—their parents were dead long since, you know—and your Aunt put the dear baby out
in her pram while she got ready to go shopping. When she came out, the child was gone.”