The Runaway Summer (3 page)

Mary thought they were really rather sweet, with their funny, round faces, and blobby noses, and gruff little voices.

‘Watch out, Poll, you’re getting chocolate on your jersey,’ she said.

Poll looked down, her chin disappearing into several other chins as she did so. ‘Oh Polly-wobble, you mucky pup,’ she said, sounding so comic that Mary laughed.

Or began to laugh, rather. What stopped her—stopped her dead, so that she stood there with her mouth hanging foolishly open—was someone calling above her.

‘Pollyanna, Pollyanna …’ As if the twins were one person.

She whispered to them, ‘Look, I’ve got to go …’ but before she could move a boy had appeared at the top of the steps.

‘Pollyanna!’ He was down the steps and lurching along the beach, a heavy shopping bag dragging him down one side and banging against his leg. ‘I
told
you not to go on the beach.
And
what are you eating?’ He sounded less like a boy than a scolding grown-up, though he wasn’t, Mary thought, much
older than she was. A bit taller, perhaps, and thinner, with a worried, freckled face and gingery hair. ‘
Sweets!
’ he said in an ominous voice.

‘She give us them,’ Poll said.

He put down the shopping bag and rubbed his hand against his trousers. ‘You’re not supposed to take sweets from people, Mum’s always telling you …’ He looked at Mary and said, his voice still grown up, but apologetic now, ‘I’m awfully sorry, have they been bothering you?’

‘Oh, they weren’t
her
sweets, she stole them,’ one of the twins said. Which one, Mary didn’t know, because their voices were so alike and she wasn’t looking at them but at the boy, who began to blush. The blush rose from the collar of his open-necked blue shirt and covered his face, until it was almost the same colour as his hair.

‘That’s a lie.’ Mary was trembling. She stood with her back against the sea wall and pressed her hands against it, to steady herself.

The boy said, ‘Pollyanna!’ and both little girls looked at him, innocent and wide-eyed.

‘We
sawd
her, Simon,’ Annabel said. ‘She bought some floss, and we watched her do that, then she took the other sweeties while the man wasn’t looking.’

‘I paid for them though. Lying little kids.’

Though Mary spoke contemptuously, she wished a hole would open in the sea wall and she could vanish into it. Or that she knew some special word to make her invisible. In the fairy stories she had read when she was little, something like that always happened, when things became too hard to bear, and although Mary didn’t read that sort of story now, and thought that fairies and magic were just a lot of rubbish, she couldn’t help scratching with her fingers in the slime of the
sea wall and hoping, with half her mind, that she would find some sort of knob or button …

But nothing happened. She just went on standing there, with the grey sky overhead and the sliding shingle under her feet, and the twins and this embarrassed boy, watching her.

He was still blushing. He said, ‘You shouldn’t say that. They don’t tell lies. They may be little, but they don’t tell lies.’

‘Lying’s worse’n stealing,’ Poll said smugly, finishing her Crunchie and wiping her hands all over her front.

‘Look what you’re doing!’ Mary said, hoping to divert the boy’s attention. He was supposed, wasn’t he, to be looking after Poll and Annabel, and stop them getting dirty? But it was no use. He just glanced briefly at Poll and said it couldn’t be helped now. And anyway, chocolate washed out easily, not like tar.

Then he turned back to Mary. He had blue-green eyes with brown flecks in them, like pebbles. Mary noticed people’s eyes. She had found that she could often tell from them what they were thinking—which was sometimes quite different from what they said.

But this boy’s eyes baffled her. They were puzzled and, in a funny way, sorry. Mary couldn’t think why he should be sorry for her.

He said, ‘Were you hungry?’

This was so unexpected that Mary didn’t reply.

His face had gone red again. ‘I just thought you might have been.’

Annabel was clutching at his sleeve. ‘Please Simon, let’s have a Trial. We oughter have a Trial.’

Poll jumped up and down. ‘Please Simon.
I
c’n be a Witness and
she
can be the Prisoner in the Dock.’

‘
I
want to be a Witness,’ Annabel said. ‘I never been a Witness, not in my whole life. It’s not fair.’

Mary stared at them.

Simon said, ‘It’s a thing we do at home sometimes, when someone’s been naughty and won’t own up …’ He looked embarrassed, as anyone might, having to explain a private family custom to a stranger, but there was something else in his expression as well; a kind of shyness, or shame. He turned on the twins and muttered, ‘It isn’t a
game.
Can’t you see, she’s a poor, hungry girl? I don’t suppose she had any breakfast this morning.’

Poll said, ‘I ate up
my
breakfast. I had cornflakes and eggy toast and milk and an apple.’

‘Shut up,’ Simon said, very fiercely, and she blinked and put her thumb in her mouth.

Mary, who had been holding her breath, let it out in a long, rushing sigh.
Of
course.
Before she had come down to the sea she had rolled in the dirt in the shrubbery and rubbed it all over her face and into her hair. Some of the leaves and earth would have blown out in the wind, but she must still look like some kind of tramp or gipsy. Someone terribly poor …

That was why Simon was sorry for her.

For a moment, this seemed a terrible insult and she wanted to shout that it wasn’t true; even if she wasn’t rich herself, her father and mother were. Rich enough, anyway, to buy her as many old Crunchie Bars as she wanted.

But she didn’t say anything. She opened her mouth, looked at Simon, and shut it again. She was afraid, she suddenly realised, not of anything he could
do
—
she could run away from him quite easily, since he was lumbered with Polly-Anna and the shopping basket—but of what he might
think.

That she should mind about this, rather surprised her.
Usually she didn’t care a fig what people thought about her, except for a few special people like her grandfather, and a teacher she had once had called Miss Phipps, who had been extra kind when she first went to school. And there was nothing obviously special about Simon.

She hung her head and watched him through her lashes. He was just a thin, sandy boy, with eyes like speckly pebbles. Very ordinary to look at, and yet she knew—or felt, rather, because since she had just met him it couldn’t be a matter of knowing—that he was a person to be reckoned with. All she really knew was that she would rather he was sorry for her, than he should despise her.

Poll said, ‘Didn’t you really have any breakfast? Not even cornflakes?’

Mary shook her head. Her long hair flew across her face and hid it.

‘Why didn’t your Mummy give you some?’ Annabel said.

‘Or your Dad?’ Poll added. ‘Our Dad gets breakfast Sundays and when our Mum’s in bed having a baby. She had one last week so he got breakfast this morning and we done the shopping.’

‘I don’t live with my mother. I live with my Aunt,’ Mary said.

‘Why didn’t your Auntie give you some then?’

‘Why don’t you live with your Mummy?’

The twins spoke together, solemn eyes fixed on Mary; two solid, determined little girls who liked to get to the bottom of things. They were like steam-rollers,
nothing
would stop them, Mary thought, and glanced at Simon for help, but he had his back to her, bending over the shopping basket.

‘My Aunt don’t care if I have breakfast or not!’ Mary knew that this was a bit hard on Aunt Alice who cared desperately,
convinced that Mary would die of starvation if she left so much as a half slice of toast or a spoonful of egg, but it was the only explanation she could think of at the moment. As for the other question, it was too embarrassing to answer truthfully, and she couldn’t think how else to answer it, so she pretended it hadn’t been asked. She walked down the beach, picked up a handful of stones, and began to throw them at an old tin can, half buried in the shingle.

‘Perhaps her Mummy’s dead,’ Poll whispered behind her.

‘
Is
your Mummy dead?’ Annabel asked, coming up and peering into her face.

‘Mind your own business.’ Mary threw another stone at the can. It missed and she said ‘Damn,’ very loudly.

‘You shouldn’t say that word, it’s rude,’ Annabel said in a reproachful voice. ‘And you shouldn’t be rude. I was only asking. And I was asking
nicely
.’

Mary felt trapped and frantic. ‘All right then,
yes.
Yes, yes,
yes.
She’s dead.’ She felt, suddenly, quite hollow inside. She glared at the little girl. ‘In fact, my father is, too. I’m an orphan. Anything else you want to know?’

Annabel shook her head. She ran away, up the beach to Simon and Poll. Mary knew they were all whispering about her. She went on, throwing stones and missing the can, because her eyes had blurred over. Perhaps if she took no notice of them, they would go away.

But Simon said, beside her, ‘I’ve got something. I mean, if you’re hungry …’

He was holding a chunky sandwich.

‘Sardines. I bought some for our tea, so I opened a tin and made a sandwich.’

Mary had never felt less hungry in her life. And she hated sardines.

Simon was looking wretchedly shy. ‘I’m sorry there isn’t any butter.’

Mary took the sandwich. She hadn’t meant to: her hand seemed to move of its own accord. She bit at it apprehensively and was not comforted: it tasted quite as nasty as she had feared.

The twins had come up behind Simon and were standing on either side of him, gazing at her. Suddenly Annabel said, ‘Manners!’ She spoke in a loud, stern voice.

‘
Ssh
…’ Simon said, at once. He turned on his sisters. ‘Clear off now. Quick sharp. Up the steps.’

They protested, ‘She oughter say
something
,’ and, ‘You’re always telling us about Manners, it’s not
fair
, ‘but they went obediently enough.

Simon apologised. ‘I’m sorry, they’re only little.’

‘No. It’s my fault.’ Mary swallowed a lump of bread and sardine and said, quite humbly, ‘I should have said thank you.’

‘I expect you were just too hungry. It must be awful …’

He looked, and sounded, so troubled, that Mary couldn’t laugh. Besides, she had the horrible feeling that he intended to stand there watching her eat, as if it were feeding time at the Zoo.

She said, ‘I can’t eat it all at once. When you’re really hungry, it’s best to eat slowly. If you don’t, it can be quite dangerous. It’s the shock to the stomach.’

He looked doubtful for a moment, then his face cleared and he grinned at her. ‘It’s all right. I’m not staying.’

But he didn’t go, either. His grin faded and he shifted from one foot to the other, looking uncomfortable. Finally he said, in a rush, ‘I say, it’s none of my business, but I suppose you will get some dinner? I mean, is your Aunt dreadfully poor?’

‘Of course she’s not poor,’ Mary said, without thinking.
She saw the surprise on his face and added, hastily, ‘And she doesn’t starve me,
actually.
It’s just that she—she doesn’t like me, so she gives me scraps and left-overs, and they’re not always nice.’

‘Why doesn’t she like you?’

Inwardly, Mary sighed a little. She enjoyed making up stories about herself, but she liked to have time to get them properly worked out before she told them to other people. And Simon hadn’t given her time, she thought indignantly. He was as bad as his sisters, poking and prying …

She tossed her head. ‘Curiosity killed the cat!’

Simon went red—he blushed very easily, just like a silly girl, Mary thought—but he spoke quite calmly. ‘Oh, all right. I’m sure I don’t want to know.’

He started up the beach. Mary watched him—and felt lonely. He was a horrid, inquisitive boy, but he was the first person of her own age she had spoken to for over a month. Neither Grandfather nor Aunt Alice knew any children. Grandfather’s friends were all old, and Aunt Alice was too shy to have any. She talked to her neighbours but only when she had to: most of the time she pretended not to see them, when she passed them in the street.

Mary struggled with herself. Then she called after Simon. ‘I’m sorry.’

He stopped and looked back. His face was blank.

She said, ‘I didn’t mean to be foul. It’s just that …’ Just what? Her mind seemed empty; then words came into it and she used them. ‘Just that I don’t really want to talk about it.’

‘All right.’ He sounded off-hand, as if he were still rather hurt, but he did smile at her. ‘It’s a bit silly. I don’t even know your name.’

‘Mary.’

‘Well. I’m Simon Trumpet.’ He paused. ‘Look—I mean—well—if you …’ His voice tailed away; he bent over the shopping basket and heaved it up, leaning sideways to take its weight, and then said, as if he had picked up his courage with it, ‘I mean, if you get hungry again, you could come to tea, or something. We live at Harbour View, just beyond the pier.’

He didn’t wait for an answer. He ran up the steps and Poll and Annabel closed on him, one taking his free hand, the other holding the basket.

They were out of Mary’s sight almost at once, but she waited five minutes by her watch before burying the remains of the sardine sandwich in the shingle. Then she began to work things out in her mind. She might not see Simon again, but if she did, she intended to have a good story ready.

‘M
Y AUNT DOESN’T
like me. She’s only looking after me because of the money. My father was a rich man, you see, almost a millionaire …’

Mary was sitting on the beach and talking to herself; no sound, just her lips moving. Now she stopped and frowned. Her father was a business man; he made quite a lot of money, but Mary wasn’t sure how. All she really knew was that he travelled a lot and this was one of the things her mother was always complaining about. Mary stared at the sea which was slowly creeping in now, across the shiny mud, and wondered what her father could have been that would sound
convincingly
rich …

‘He was a Bank Manager,’ she said, at last. ‘And when he died, he left all his money to me, though I don’t get it until I’m twenty one. If I die before that, the money goes to my Aunt, so she hopes I
will
die, of course. She doesn’t dare starve me, and she’s not really cruel—if she beat me, the bruises would show and the neighbours might notice! But it’s pretty scarey sometimes, especially if I get ill, because I know what she’s thinking. I had a cold last week and she sent me to bed and took my temperature. She said it was normal but I knew it wasn’t because she looked so pleased! And all that day and the next, she made me stay in bed and she kept coming in, and whenever I woke up, she was there in the room, watching me …’

Mary felt excited and shivery. She could almost believe this was true, as to some extent it was, of course: she
had
had a cold last week and Aunt Alice
had
made her stay in bed. She had said that colds often flew to the chest at this time of year.

The clock at the end of the pier struck a quarter to one, and Mary left the beach and made for home. She talked to herself all the way, enlarging on Aunt Alice’s wickedness and adding a few details to make it sound more true. She decided that Aunt Alice must be her father’s sister and not her mother’s, so that she would be more likely to inherit the money if Mary died …

By the time she had washed her hands and was sitting at the table, Mary was so pleased with the way the story was going that she ate an enormous lunch, quite without thinking. Aunt Alice, who had been worrying about her all morning, was greatly relieved. When Mary passed up her plate for a second helping of rice pudding, Aunt Alice looked as happy as if someone had given her an unexpected present. Mary tried not to look at her: she was busy describing Aunt Alice as a horrible creature with a long nose and black, beady eyes, and the sight of her Aunt’s mild face, beaming with pleasure, was a little confusing. ‘Of course she
looks
kind,’ she said silently, ‘but it’s all put on so that no one will guess …’

Grandfather said, ‘Were you trying to say something, Mary?’

‘No, Grampy.’ Mary looked at him innocently. It was hard to talk to herself without moving her lips just a little, but she did her best. ‘Of course, my grandfather’s not unkind, but he’s dreadfully old and doesn’t notice much. He’s going blind, too, so he doesn’t see when she takes all the nice meat out of the stew and only gives me a spoonful of fat and gristle …’

‘Are you sure, Mary?’ Grandfather’s sharp eyes were fixed on her. They looked puzzled.

‘Perhaps she’s been taught that little girls should be seen and not heard,’ Aunt Alice said brightly.

Mary gave her a scornful look. ‘Of course it’s not
that.
I was just telling myself a story!’

‘Was it a good one?’

‘Oh,
very
,’ Mary said, trying not to giggle. ‘Can I get down now?’

Grandfather and Aunt Alice smiled at each other. Then they both smiled at Mary. The room was full of sunlight.

‘Of course you can, dear.’ Aunt Alice was so happy because Mary had eaten her lunch that she looked almost pretty. ‘What do you want to do this afternoon? We could go for a walk in the park …’

‘That would be nice,’ Mary said, speaking extra politely because this was the last thing she wanted to do. The park was full of old ladies and their dogs. ‘The trouble is, I promised to meet some friends on the beach. I played with them this morning, and they said they’d be there this afternoon.’

Aunt Alice looked anxious. ‘I hope they’re nice children, dear. Not rough.’

‘I don’t suppose she’s taken up with a gang of desperadoes,’ Grandfather said.

‘No.’ But Aunt Alice still sounded doubtful. ‘You know the tide’s in, this afternoon, and the beach can really be quite dangerous, in places …’

Mary fidgeted. Her head was bursting with ideas about her wicked Aunt and her blind and feeble grandfather and she longed to be alone to get on with them. She said, ‘It’s all right. We built a sandcastle this morning, and we thought we’d collect shells this afternoon.’

She thought that not even Aunt Alice could think these were dangerous occupations, and she was right: her Aunt smiled and said, well then, as long as she was
careful
But Mary must remember not to go near the jetty when the sea was fully up because a boy had been drowned there, last year. And she must look both ways crossing the road and
never
speak to strange men …

Mary had heard these warnings so often that she could have repeated them word for word, but she said, ‘Yes, I’ll be very careful, Aunt Alice.’ in a tone of such unnatural pleasantness that her grandfather glanced at her in some surprise.

*

In fact, Mary was a little surprised herself. As she ran down to the sea, she thought that perhaps she had only been nice to Aunt Alice, to make up for being so nasty about her, in her mind.

She said to herself, ‘She’s got a bottle marked poison in the cupboard. It’s a blue bottle and it’s hard to see how much there is in it, unless you hold it up to the light. It’s about half full now, and every time I go past and she’s not there, I try to look. If it gets emptier, then I’ll have to be careful because I’ll know there might be some in my food. I’m careful about that, anyway. If we all have something out of the same dish, like potatoes or stew, then I know it’s all right. But if we have something she brings in on separate plates, then I mess it about and leave it, just in case …’

She wondered if Simon would believe this. She thought he might be rather a difficult person to convince. Not that it mattered, because she probably wouldn’t see him again, and didn’t, indeed, particularly want to.

He was such a bossy boy. Besides, he knew she had pinched those Crunchie Bars.

The thought made Mary uncomfortable. She began to whistle loudly, to take her mind off it.

The weather had changed again: it was much warmer now and the sky was blue. The tide was right in but the wind had dropped and there were no waves on the water which moved against the sea wall as gently and soundlessly as water tipping in a cup.

Mary walked to the pier and beyond, where there was a line of tall, terrace houses. They had names like Sea Vista and Water’s Edge. Mary sauntered past them, whistling softly, and trying to look as if she wasn’t looking.

Harbour View was the last but one. It was shabbier than the others, badly needing a coat of paint; and instead of a neat front garden with flower beds and paving, it had only a worn, trodden patch of grass. A playpen stood in the middle with a happy, fat baby in it, hanging on to the sides and gurgling. It had thrown all its toys out of the playpen, adding to the litter already on the lawn: a tricycle on its side, a tennis racket with half the strings missing, two dustbins and a punctured beach ball. Beside the step that led up to the front door, there was an old pram with the hood up. As Mary watched, the baby inside began to cry and the front door opened. A little woman with grizzly hair came hurrying down the steps, and Mary turned and ran.

She ran until she was puffed, suddenly horrified by the thought that Simon might have been looking out of a window and seen her. She would hate him to think she had come to look for him!

She made for her grandfather’s bathing hut. The weather had been bad since she came, and this was the first time since last summer that she had been there. But the key was where she remembered, on its piece of wire, and after fiddling with
the rusty padlock for a little, she pulled the creaky door open. Inside, the hut smelt cold and shut-up: she crinkled her nose and pushed the door wide, to let in the clean, salty air.
Everything
was neat and in its place: there was sugar in the tin marked sugar, and tea in the tin marked tea. There was even a hook on the wall for Mary’s bucket and spade, and two boxes on the table, one for the shells and one for the stones that Mary had collected last year. There were sparkly stones and dull, blue ones, and others with strange, knobby shapes that the sea had made. Mary turned the stones out,
remembering
the feel of some and the look of others. It struck her that while most grown-ups would have kept the shells, they would almost certainly have thrown away the stones when they cleared up the hut for the winter, and she wondered if Aunt Alice liked keeping things, as she did herself: her old toys, even the shoes and the clothes she had grown out of. It was a habit that annoyed her mother.
Oh,
for
heaven’s
sake,
Mary,
this
isn’t
a
junk
shop.
What
on
earth
do
you
want
to
keep
all
that
rubbish
for?

Mary squatted on the step of the hut and let the stones dribble slowly through her fingers.

‘My Aunt’s thrown most of my toys away,’ she said. ‘She’s kept a few locked up, but she only lets me play with them when the solicitor who looks after my money comes to see her. Then she gives me the toys, and clean clothes, and calls me
Mary
dear,
in a sort of slimy voice … Of course, if I told the solicitor how she treats me most of the time, he’d take me away and probably send her to prison, but I don’t dare tell him because he’d never believe me, and then I’d catch it, after he’d gone …’

She began to feel sleepy in the sun and leaned back against the door post, watching the sea. It was so calm it looked thick and smooth, like syrup. Far out on the horizon, there was a
slow steamer with gulls blowing in its wake like pieces of paper, and, nearer the shore, a smaller boat with a drowsily chugging motor, that was making for the beach.

Mary yawned. She was getting bored. It was always easy to begin a story, but hard to go on with no one to tell it to.

‘I wish something really interesting would happen,’ she said aloud, and then thought that perhaps if she closed her eyes and counted a hundred, something would.

She closed her eyes and counted slowly, but when she got to a hundred and opened them, nothing had changed except that the steamer was further away and the small boat nearer. There were four people in it, three men and a boy. The motor had cut out and the boat was close enough for her to hear the men’s voices, though not what they said.

She watched them idly. One of her grandfather’s walking sticks was leaning against the wall of the hut; she reached for it and began to poke at the shingle, still watching the boat which was gliding in over the silky water with hardly a ripple. Two of the men were dark-skinned and the third was white: a boatman wearing a beret. He was saying something; when he stopped, the others began to talk excitedly and wave their arms about, as if they were quarrelling.

They landed some way along the beach from Mary, and she stood up to watch. The bottom of the boat ground on the shingle and the two dark men jumped out, their trousers rolled up. The boatman handed the boy to one of them and pushed the boat out again. As soon as he was in deep enough water, he started the engine and made for the open sea.

The men on the beach stood, watching him go. They were oddly dressed for a sea trip; in dark suits, each carrying a small suitcase. Mary thought they looked lost and strange, because of their clothes and the way they looked about them
once the boat had gone, as if they didn’t quite know where they were.

Like castaways, Mary thought.

The boy sat down. He looked as if he were putting his shoes on. One of the men jerked him roughly to his feet and the boy flinched away, holding his crooked arm in front of his face.

The men began to run along the beach in Mary’s direction. She shrank back, out of their sight, in the gap between her grandfather’s hut and the neighbouring one.

They passed so close she could hear them breathing. They were running barefoot, stumbling on the stones. Once they were past, Mary waited a minute; then she peeped out, and saw the boy. He was following the men, but slowly; he was crying a little in a damp, dreary way, and he looked so
silly,
running along the beach in the bright sunshine, dressed up as if he were going to a party in a dark, long-trousered suit and a white shirt and a red bow tie, that quite without thinking, she stuck out her head and said
Boo
…

He was almost level with her. When she said
Boo
he gasped and turned with a look of such absolute terror that she was frightened herself and cringed back. Then he fell, all waving arms and thin legs, like a spider, banging his head on the hut steps.

And lay still.

Mary held her breath. For a moment she stayed as still as the boy on the ground. Then she came out of her hiding place between the huts and looked along the beach. The men had vanished. The only living things in sight were the gulls, resting on the calm sea like toys.

She looked down at the boy. He was lying on his face and her grandfather’s walking stick stuck out from beneath him. She had left it leaning against the steps and he must have
tripped over it. Mary pulled at it gently but she couldn’t move it. She was afraid of hurting him.

She said softly, ‘Get up, you’re not hurt,’ but she knew, even as she spoke, that he couldn’t hear her.

She said, ‘Oh,
please
…’ with a sob in her voice but only a gull answered her, swooping over her head with a long, sad cry.