Black Maria. Diana Wynne Jones

if she put up cheerful curtains,” she says, “or moved the furniture round. The house must get quite a lot of sun through the garden at the back.”

      Aunt Maria greeted us with the news that Lavinia’s mother was ill and Lavinia had gone to look after her. “It doesn’t matter,” she said, stumping towards us with two sticks. “Chris can have the little room now. I can manage quite well if somebody helps me wash and dress, and I’m sure you won’t mind doing the cooking, will you, Betty dear?”

      Mum of course said she’d help in any way she could.

      “Well, so you should,” Aunt Maria said. “You’re not at work at the moment, are you?”

      I think even Mum privately found this a bit much, but she smiled and put it down to Aunt Maria being old. Mum keeps doing that. She points out that Aunt Maria was brought up in the days of servants and does not realise quite what she’s asking sometimes. Chris and I suspect that Aunt Maria no sooner knew we were coming than she gave Lavinia a holiday. Chris says Lavinia was probably going to give notice. He says anyone who has to live with Aunt Maria is bound to want to leave after an hour.

      “We don’t need to have supper,” Aunt Maria said. “I just have a glass of milk and a piece of cheese.”

      Mum saw our faces. “We can go out and find some fish and chips,” she said.

      “What?! In Cranbury! ”said Aunt Maria, as if Mum had offered to go and carve up a missionary or the postman. Then she hummed and hawed and said if poor Betty was tired after the journey and didn’t want to cook, she thought there was a fish stall of some kind down on the sea front. “Though I expect it’ll be closed at this season,” she said.

      Chris went off into the dusk to look, muttering things. He came back in half an hour looking windblown and told us that everything by the pier was shut. “And doesn’t look as if it had ever been open in the last hundred years,” he said. “Now what?”

      “What a good boy you are to look after us all like this,” said Aunt Maria. “I think there were some nut cutlets Lavinia put somewhere.”

      “I’m not a good boy, I’m hungry,” said Chris. “Where are the beastly nut cutlets?”

      “Christian!” said Mum.

      We went and searched the kitchen. There were two nut cutlets and some eggs and things, but there was only one saucepan and a very small frying pan and almost nothing else. Mum wondered how Lavinia managed. I thought she may have taken all the cooking things with her when she went. Anyway, we invented a sort of nut scrambled eggs on toast. When I set the table, Aunt Maria said, “We’re just camping out tonight. Don’t bother to put napkins, dear. It’s fun using kitchen cutlery.”

      I thought she meant it, so I didn’t look for napkins until Mum whispered, “Don’t be silly, Mig! It’s just her polite way of saying she’s used to napkins and her best silver. Go and look.”

      Mum was very good at understanding Aunt Maria’s polite way of saying things. It has already caused her a lot of work. If she doesn’t watch out, she’s not going to get any kind of holiday at all. It has caused her to clean the cutlery with silver polish and to roll up the hall carpet in case someone slips on it in the night, and put the potted plants in the bath, and force Chris to wind all seven clocks, and help Aunt Maria upstairs, where Mum and I undressed her and put her hair in pigtails, and plumped her pillows in the way Aunt Maria said she wouldn’t bother with as Lavinia was not there, and then to lay out her things for morning. Aunt Maria said we were not to, of course.

      “And I won’t bother with breakfast, now Lavinia’s not here to bring it me in bed, dear,” was Aunt Maria’s final demand. Mum promised to bring her breakfast on a tray at eight-thirty sharp. It’s a very useful way of bullying people. I went downstairs and tried it on Chris.

      “You don’t need to bother to bring the cases in from the car,” I told him. “We’re camping on the floor in our clothes.”

      “Oh!” said Chris. “I forgot the damn cases …” And he had jumped up to fetch them before he realised I was laughing. He was just deciding whether to laugh or to snarl, when there was a hullabaloo from Aunt Maria upstairs. Mum, who was halfway down, went charging up in a panic, thinking she had fallen out of bed.

      “When Lavinia’s here, I always get her to turn the gas and electricity off at ten o’clock sharp,” Aunt Maria shouted. “But you can leave it on since you’re my visitors.”

      As a result of this, I am writing this by candlelight. Mum is on the other side of the candle, making a huge list of all the things we are going to buy for Aunt Maria tomorrow. Reading upside down I can see “saucepans” and “potatoes” and “fish slice” and “pruning shears”. Mum’s obviously been not-asked to do some gardening too.

      We kept the electricity on until 10.15 in fact, so that we could see to get settled into our rooms. Chris’s little room is halfway up the stairs and full of books. I feel envious. I don’t mind sharing with Mum, of course, but the bed is not very big and the room is still full of Lavinia’s things. As Mum said, rather wryly, Lavinia obviously couldn’t wait to get away. Her cupboard and drawers are full of clothes. She has left silver-backed brushes on the dressing-table and slippers under the bed, and Mum has got all worried about not making a mess of her things. She has moved the silver brushes and the silver-framed photograph of Lavinia and her mother to a high shelf. Lavinia is one of those people who always look old. I remember thinking she was about ninety when I last came here when I was little. In the photo, Lavinia and her mother might be twins, two old ladies smiling away. One is labelled “Mother” and one “Me” so they can’t be twins.

      Then at 10.15, when Mum was taking the potted plants out of the bath in order to make Chris get into it for what Chris calls washing and I call wallowing in his own mud, someone hammered at the back door. Chris opened it as Mum and I came running. A lady stood there beaming a great torch at us. She was Mum’s age – or maybe younger: you know how hard it is to tell – and she had a crisp, clean, nun-like look.

      “You must be Betty Laker,” she said to Mum. “I’m Elaine. From next door,” she added, when she saw that meant nothing. And she marched past Chris and me without noticing us. “I brought this torch,” she explained, “because I thought you would have turned the electricity off by now. She insists on it. She worries about fires in the night.”

      “Chris,” said Mum. “Find out where the switch is.”

      “It’s behind the door here,” said Elaine. “Turn it off when I’ve gone. I’ll only stay a moment to make sure you know what needs doing. We’re all so glad you could come and look after her. Any problems up to now?”

      “No,” said Mum, looking a bit dazed.

      Elaine strolled past us into the dining-room where she sauntered here and there, swinging the big torch and looking at Mum’s knitting and my notebooks and Chris’s homework piled on various chairs. She was wearing a crisply belted black mac and she was very thin. I wondered if she was a policewoman. “She likes the place tidier than this,” Elaine said.

      “We’re in the middle of unpacking,” Mum said humbly. Chris looked daggers. He hates Mum crawling to people.

      Elaine gave Mum a smile. It put two matching creases on either side of her mouth, but it was not what I would call a real smile. Funny, because she was quite pretty really. “You’ve gathered that she needs dressing, undressing, washing and her cooking done,” she said. “The three of you can probably bath her, can’t you? Good. And when you want to take her for some air, I’ll bring the wheelchair round. It lives at my house because there’s more room. And do be careful she doesn’t fall over. I expect you’ll manage. We’ll all be dropping in to see how you’re getting on, anyway. So …” She looked round again. “I’ll love you and leave you,” she said. She shot Chris, for some reason, another of her strange smiles and marched off again, calling over her shoulder, “Don’t forget the electricity.”