The Mystery of the Cupboard

And now — A Wonder Unacceptable to the Rational Mind…

Omri gave a little shiver, half fear, half excitement, and slept. He dreamed of riding with Little Bull through the hills and forests of his homeland. Awake and asleep, he often dreamed of him, but this was particularly vivid and the ride was magical and wonderful. It seemed as if Little Bull were teaching him to ride, and at the same time, as if they were searching for something. Some treasure.

He meant to wake up early — at dawn — and read the notebook, but of course he slept in. There was no time, none at all. He hid the notebook behind some books and went down to breakfast.

At the table he asked, as casually as he could, “Mum, what relative of ours exactly was the old man who owned this house?”

“Ah. Now you’re asking…” She paused with the cereal package poised, her brow wrinkling. “Let me see. Well, his name was Frederick, which is a bit of a family name on my side. He was a bachelor. And very old indeed — about eighty-five. I think he was — wait for it — my grandmother’s younger sister’s son. Yes, that’s it, I remember now. I never knew him or had any connection with him.”

“What was his last name?” asked Omri, frowning.

“An Irish name — it’s slipped my mind for the moment.”

“How come you didn’t know him if he was your cousin?”

“Well, that’s a story. My grandmother, who brought me up after Mummy died, didn’t see her sister for some reason, though when I was little she talked about her sometimes, in a - a sort of head-shaking way, as if she loved her a lot but felt she shouldn’t. Of course I found that intriguing and asked lots of questions about her, but my granny just said, ‘Well, we were sisters, but I have to say it: she was no better than she should be’.”

“What does that mean?”

“She had a Past. You weren’t supposed to have a Past in those days. Something scandalous to do with men…”

Omri digested this. Then he asked slowly, “Could she have been living here — your granny’s sister?”

His mother looked at him. “She was supposed to have gone abroad… But what an intriguing idea, Omri! I never thought of that. Maybe old Frederick inherited this house from his mother, who was my wicked great-aunt Jessica Charlotte!”

Omri put down his spoon. There was some saying he’d always thought very silly, about a goose walking over your grave. But suddenly he understood it because the bumpy flesh all over his arms had the chill feeling of death.

“Was she really wicked?” he asked after a moment.

“I’ve no idea. She was some kind of actress back around the time of the First World War. Going on the stage in those days was considered fairly wicked by some people. But I’m sure there was more to it than that. Now darling, enough questions, it’s ten to nine. Go.”

Omri didn’t think about Kitsa more than half a dozen times that day. Nor did he give too much attention to lessons, and the Butcher had occasion to send him to the Tea Cosy, who gave him what-for without too much care for his feelings and added injury to insult with a detention. Murphy’s law in action, he thought furiously. If anything can go wrong, it will, and at the worst possible time. He was absolutely dying to get home.

By the time the Butcher let him go and he had raced home through the lanes on his bike (narrowly avoiding being run down by a tractor — well, better than a London bus!) he couldn’t possibly be bothered to clear the last of the thatch from the path properly. He just kicked it aside as he forged up the path and raced to his room.

He shut both doors and put some spare bricks against them so they wouldn’t open easily. Then he extracted the thick notebook from behind his books and opened it with hands that were not quite steady.

He read the words on the flyleaf again.

Account of My Life, and of a Wonder Unacceptable to the Rational Mind. To be hidden until a time when Minds in my Family may be more Open.

Jessica Charlotte Driscoll.

August 21st, 1950.

He turned the page and began to read the fine, beautifully formed handwriting.

4

Jessica Charlotte’s Notebook

I write this on my deathbed.

Since I have not seen or heard anything from Maria for nearly half a lifetime I cannot be sure she has not gone before me — though I have my own reason for believing she will outlive me by many years… Still, sooner or later we must come face to face on the Other Side. Much as I have missed and longed for her, I am in no great hurry to meet her there. Strange but true: I fear God in His Almighty Power less than I fear facing my sister Maria.

I am still at heart an artiste. So I write this account as a kind of rehearsal of what I shall say to her - and Him. I shall excuse nothing, omit nothing, extenuate nothing. When I look now into the glass on the front of the wondrous Cabinet Frederick made with such anger in his heart (which sits on the table by my bedside), I see, not my face, but Death’s. It tells me sternly that ‘naught now availeth’ but scrupulous Truth.

My Little People would speak for me, if they could. They’ve seen the best in me. With them, at least, I’ve dealt honestly and kindly. I have not shown them my accursed jealousy and spite.

But they must Go Back, pursue their own lives and make their own accounting at last. Though I still bring them sometimes, when I’m lonely and afraid, to comfort and distract me, they can’t help me now. Even though Jenny weeps (tears that are as small as points of starlight) when I tell her I’m dying. She weeps for herself, also… What will become of her? I can’t send her back now.

I don’t deserve the Wonder that has been my consolation at the end of my misspent life.

When Omri reached this point in the notebook, he found his heart was beating so hard and his breath had been caught in his lungs without breathing out for so long that he had to stop.

He swallowed, shut his eyes so he couldn’t read the delicate brown writing, and breathed in and out several times until his heartbeats slowed. He felt dizzy, confused. There was a faint sheen of sweat on his face. The ‘wondrous Cabinet’ in which she could see her face in a ‘glass’! The Little People from another time! Was this real? Was he really reading about IT — his own cupboard? Was it conceivable that this great-great-aunt of his had had it in this very house, over thirty years ago?

To rehearse my story, I must tell it all, from the beginning. And then I must do what I must do, and Maria will know my guilty secret.

Maria, my beautiful elder sister… Everything came to her, without her even trying. Our parents’ favour. The admiration of friends and relations. The chances in life that make all the difference. And the love of a man. In that, too, she was ahead of me. Her love was honest and true.

I hated her at times.

There, it’s out. My jealous spirit infected me like a virus. I wanted to be her, and I was not, so I hated her for her beauty, and for the way she attracted love. And for being good.

Everyone praised her goodness. Was it all true? Was she really, deeply, better than I? Had she been me - little, plump, plain, mocked, ignored, where she was tall and graceful and clever - would she have been so moral then?

Who can tell?

When she was barely sixteen her suitors were already crowding our house. I remember them, callow young men, bringing her presents, fawning on her, while I silently watched… But I didn’t stay silent! Oh, no!

After they’d gone, I would mimic them. Mercilessly! I would force Maria to laugh at their antics even when she had thought she admired them.

“Oh, stop, Jessie, stop!” she’d cry, weeping with laughter. “You are a demon, you’ve caught him exactly with his funny walk and his lisp. Oh, stop it, I will never be able to look at him again!”

She was my first audience. Those were my moments of fulfilment when I forgot my plainness and began to be an actress.

But there was something else about me, and this I kept to myself. I knew things. I knew she was not going to marry any of these. I knew what would be. Oh, not everything! But certain flashes of future knowledge came to me, even as a child.

I had a dream, I had it over and over again, of myself standing in a building that was half lit and half dark. I stood high, and many people faced me from below, and I could do as I pleased with them — make them laugh or cry or sing or cheer, at my will. It was a theatre of course, but I didn’t know it then — how could I? I had never seen one. My father thought a theatre was the devil’s own den.

But as I grew up, I learnt about the world. Actors were not ‘respectable’ but they were much talked of… and I found out the meaning of my dream, and I knew my destiny.

When I told our father I was going on the stage for a living, he told me - and meant it - that he would rather see me dead in my coffin. He refused to consider it. I was punished for dreaming of it.

To actually do it meant leaving home, enduring disgrace, being cast out, abandoning all that was familiar and safe… It meant being poor, living alone, begging for jobs, mixing with every sort of person. Yet I did it. I am still proud of that. It took a lot of courage. Somehow I achieved my ambition, and my father — though he never forgave me — at least noticed me and came to know that I was not the little nobody-and-nothing he had always thought me.

And Maria stood by me. Not openly, of course, but secretly.

It was the first time she had ever deceived our parents or gone against her ‘good’ character. But she loved me and she visited me. No one knew. But it counted.

When my chance came and I did my first ‘turn’ on the stage of the Hackney Empire music hall, she was there in the stalls. What courage! We both had to be brave that night. I remember her, sitting alone — well, unescorted, at a time when women didn’t go anywhere without a man — in her big hat and her pretty furs, laughing aloud as she used to laugh in our bedroom when I mocked her suitors, and she gave me confidence, more than the rest of the laughter.

Because I knew that if I were not truly funny, she would not have laughed. She was my sister, but she wouldn’t pretend — she wanted me to give up and come home and be her poor little second-rate sister again. She wanted my talent to be for her alone.

A debt was owed for those acts of loyalty and courage. How did you repay her, Jessica Charlotte?

And that wasn’t all. When my Frederick was going to be born I had to go away to hide my shame, and I couldn’t work, and was destitute.

It was then I came to this house for the first time. It was still a farmhouse then and the farmer’s wife was a relative of my young man. I will not name him… I have forgotten him! He wasn’t worthy to be remembered! But he made her take me in (it was the last thing he ever did for me) and Frederick was born here, here in this very room in this old house in the Hidden Valley — how rightly named! I was hiding at last, ashamed at last, I who had stood brazenly on a stage for men to look at, and sworn that I would never be ashamed. I was ashamed of my child, of my own son.

Perhaps Fred felt it, even then, and that was why he never loved or forgave me.

Maria, though she couldn’t come so far from home without arousing our parent’s suspicion, wrote to me secretly and sent me money. She understood by now about love, for she was in love with Matthew Darren. I was to meet him in time, and she would say, her face all a blaze of love: “Well? Can you mock him, can you turn me off him?” and I had to say “No”. He was above my mockery and my mimicry…

I never saw a woman so fond as she was of him. But there was a long delay before they could be married because he was working in India, and our father would not allow her to go out there to that tropical climate that he said would kill her. The Old Queen was dead, and her son fat Edward too, before they were wed at last, and a year later Lottie was born.

Little Lottie. My sweet, adorable niece. My little girl whom I wronged. There can be no forgiveness!

I am crying… Let me rest. I can write no more for the present.

5

Family Stuff

“Gilly.”

“Oh, what?”

“Sorry to interrupt. What are you doing anyway?”

“Homework,” said Gillon virtuously.

“You’re not - are you really?”

“If I don’t I’m seriously stitched up. It’s last week’s. Pit Bull’ll tear me to pieces.”

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