Aunt Maria (27 page)

“Only that I'm
surprised
,” Aunt Maria said, “at someone of your education getting led into something like this. I thought you too old to make an exhibition of yourself on the seafront.”

Ow! I thought. It must have been a signal. I think all the Mrs. Urs set to work then. Pitying disapproval rolled out from them in waves. Mum went bright red instantly. They followed this up with such remorse, guilt, shame, embarrassment—the feeling you have when it's your voice that rings out saying a dirty word—that everyone was writhing in seconds. One of the orphans near me quietly burst into tears.

Elaine said, “Larry, what
are
you doing?” and Larry looked as if he wanted to crawl into the sea.

Aunt Maria called gently, “Naomi, come over here, dear, away from all those people.”

“No!” I said. I was still feeling the way I did at the orphanage. I knew the guilt was just another plastic bag. “You're wicked,” I said.

There was a shocked gasp, and it came from Mum and some of the orphans as well as from the Mrs. Urs.

Antony Green sighed and opened the green box. “If that's the way you want it,” he said. I think everybody looked at him. He stood out so, with his odd face and his strange green coat. I remember looking up at his sideface as the stuff from the box swirled around him, and I thought the one bright eye I could see looked more like a hawk's than a parrot's. The guilt still surged out from the Mrs. Urs, and I think we were all ashamed to look at that strong, invisible stuff winding up and round, into the sky, wrapping itself into the fog, collecting more strength from the smooth, dark sea. But we did look. And we saw it all pile back at Aunt Maria and the Mrs. Urs.

It was gray then, and thick and heavy and full of visions. There were hundreds of them, separate ones for each lady. I saw a great gray wolf crawl through the air toward Aunt Maria. It was slavering and snarling at first, but it suddenly jerked, leaped into the air, and fell on its side, dead. Then another wolf took its place, a smaller, brindled one, crouching miserably in the rain and obviously starving. I saw Elaine backing away from a gray, swirling image of Larry. The image was hurt, astonished, and nearly in tears. Elaine looked really upset.

Chris pushed up to Antony Green. “Elaine let me go when they were hunting me,” he said.

“I know,” Antony Green answered. The image of Larry got even more upset, if anything. Antony Green was staring gravely. Antony Green must have been talking to other people besides Chris and Mum, or maybe he saw some of the things while he was projecting himself from the mound. There were so many of them. People unhappy, desperate, guilty, bewildered, dozens for each lady. There were orphans crying. I saw Dad grayly several times, standing swaying up to his knees in sea, looking at death's door. I think he really did go over the cliff in some way. I even saw myself, rather to my surprise. I suppose Antony Green was trying to show me being got at by Aunt Maria, but he had done me like that picture in the book that Hester Bailey gave me, as a girl being pushed and pulled underground by horrible shadows.

I knew what he was trying to do. He was trying to force the truth of what they had done on them. But I don't think it worked, any more than when he had tried to force Naomi to be trustworthy. Some of the Mrs. Urs were as upset as Elaine. But most of them just stood there letting the visions roll around them and trying to make
us
feel guilty instead. Benita Wallins sat with her legs dangling over the edge of the promenade, crying and yelling. But I think that was really a defense. And Aunt Maria sat turned sideways in her wheelchair, looking sad and stern and teddy-bearish.

Antony Green made a last effort with her. Images poured about her. Chris, me, the orphans, Dad, a terrified gray old lady dwindling into a terrified gray cat, hundreds of things, even a crushed, suffocating image of Antony Green himself. And as a final aftermath, there was the great gray, slavering wolf again, only this time when it was shot it dissolved into a lady with her black hair spread around her and became an almost solid image of Naomi as Antony Green must have known her.

Aunt Maria just went on looking sternly out to sea. “No,” she said, as the image of Naomi dissolved away, too. “Upon reflection, I have nothing in my life to reproach myself with, young man.”

I think the images upset Antony Green far more than the people they were aimed at. He was pale and scare-crowlike. “Very well,” he said quietly, and shut the green box with a snap. The Mrs. Urs gasped.

Aunt Maria froze into place. Then suddenly she did not seem to be there anymore. Antony Green turned round to me and held out the green box with something balanced on top of it.

“Will you hold this steady a second while I take my coat off?” he said.

I took it carefully. Everyone, including me, made a long groaning “O—Oh” as we realized what was balanced on top of the box. It was a little tiny old lady in a fox fur and a tall hat, sitting in a little tiny wheelchair. She didn't move. I couldn't resist prodding at her with one finger, and she was hard, like a toy, but freezing cold.

Antony Green slung his green coat over his shoulder, hooked by one finger, and held out the other hand for the box. As I passed it carefully back, Mr. Phelps arrived. He was pushing Miss Phelps, who was all tiny and hunched up, in another wheelchair. This one must have come out of the ark, I think. It was made of basketwork and it had peculiar wheels. Mr. Phelps was trying to pretend he had nothing to do with it and was not really pushing it.

“Populace all gathered in the square as directed,” he said in his most soldierly manner. Then he and Miss Phelps saw Aunt Maria balanced in miniature on top of the green box. They both stared. Mr. Phelps's throat slid up and down. “I didn't know that was possible,” he said.

Miss Phelps said, “I wish you'd thought to give me back my wheelchair first.”

“Oh, was it yours? I'm sorry,” Antony Green said. He gave his longest smile. “Let's go to the square now,” he said.

We went there, us and the Mrs. Urs, in a crowded, muddled procession. Antony Green walked at the head of it, smiling slightly, with his coat hung on his shoulder and the green box balanced very carefully so that the little wheels of the wheelchair did not roll the miniature Aunt Maria off the edge of the box.

The whole of Cranbury was in the square. People were sitting on the roofs of cars and crowded into the middle space, standing on benches, and rammed into doorways. I hadn't realized so many people lived in the place. None of the men had gone to work that day. I could see zombies in suits everywhere, in among women I had never seen before. Quite a lot of these pointed and made surprised noises when they saw the orphans pushing through the square behind Antony Green. I saw the clothes shop lady, the booted porter, Dr. Bailey, and Mr. Taylor the druggist, while Antony Green was pushing his way through to the war memorial in the middle, carefully holding the green box up high. Mr. Phelps and Larry followed him, shepherding the orphans. And Elaine, who obviously just has to have someone to look after, trundled Miss Phelps through in her extraordinary wheelchair and made sure she had a good place near the steps of the memorial.

Chris and I got left at the edge of the square, though, because Dad was there, too. Mum spotted him in a doorway in the distance and set off diving and fighting through the crowd to get to him. I saw her get there. But all my secret hopes of a happy ending went when I saw how horribly embarrassed Dad was to see her. He almost went backward in through the door he was leaning on to get away. He recovered a bit when Mum started speaking to him. But then Zenobia Bailey pushed up from the other side and grabbed his arm possessively. Mum spoke to her as well as Dad. Then she came pushing back to us, looking surprisingly pink and happy.

“Well,” she said, “I don't know
what
went on, except that he does seem to have had some kind of accident. He says he remembers crawling out of the sea now. I suppose he lost his memory. But he's agreed to sign all the lawful documents, so that's all right.”

No, it's not, I thought. But Antony Green had started to speak then, from the steps of the memorial. He speaks rather quietly, so everyone had to stop making noises to hear.

“Thank you all for coming,” he said. He dropped the coat on the memorial steps so that he could hold Aunt Maria steady on the green box with both hands. “That's better,” he said. “I have three things to say to you. First, the question of what to do with this lady.” He held the green box up with Aunt Maria on it. “The last of the Queens,” he said.

There were roars and yells all over the square: “Lock her up! Bury her! Kill her!” and some voices shouting, “No, no. She's such a character. Let her go!” Beside me, Chris was screaming, “Jump on her! Let me jump on her! I'll do it!” and Mum, in typical saintly fashion, shouted, “Don't be too hard on her, Antony!”

Antony Green looked round until everyone was quiet again. “Most of you seem to favor punishment,” he said. “But you realize it won't
be
punishment, do you?” Everyone was puzzled at this. The way we all looked made Antony Green grin. “As far as this lady herself is concerned,” he explained, “she was in the right all along—all her life. Nothing is going to make her see she was wrong. And the only point of punishment is to make someone see the error of their ways. If they don't see it, then what you are doing to them is vengeance, not punishment. Right? I daresay a lot of you do want vengeance. But if you do take revenge, that makes you as bad as this Mrs. Laker herself. I want to stop the wrong in Cranbury. So I am not going to take revenge. I'm simply going to put her away quietly. She probably won't even realize I have. Is that understood?”

There were grudging murmurs, and finally everyone growled that it was up to him. Antony Green grinned around at them and shoved the green box into one trouser pocket. While he was ramming Aunt Maria into his other pocket, he looked round absentmindedly. I think he had forgotten what he wanted to say. Mum says his time underground has made him forgetful, but Chris thinks he was always that way.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “Here's what comes next.” He pointed his thumb at the orphans. “Some of these children must belong to some of you. Who claims them?”

All the people who had pointed excitedly at the orphans earlier shouted, “Us! We do!” and came thrusting their way up to the orphans. Two-thirds of them were snatched away and hugged and hung on to. They looked pretty bewildered about it. The orphans who were left looked sad, until Mr. Phelps and Larry climbed up the steps beside Antony Green. They began holding a kind of auction. “This pretty little girl!” Mr. Phelps barked. “Any offers? How about this interesting little boy? Take that sling off your arm, boy. You're not injured. Now this fine upstanding girl.”

A surprising number of people offered. As fast as one orphan was taken off, beaming and bewildered, Larry fetched another up the steps. If more than one set of people offered for the same orphan, they turned to Antony Green to settle it. He looked at each of the offers, in a humorous sort of way, with one upside-down V-eyebrow raised, and pointed a vague thumb. He seemed to be concentrating more on how hot he was. He kept flapping at his shirt, and I could see his face was shiny with sweat. It wasn't that hot, but all the people made it hotter, and by now a silvery sort of sunlight was breaking through the fog. But I think he chose the adopting parents right, for all that. He let Mr. Taylor and his Mrs. Ur, Adele, have the boy with the sling. That seemed to fit, somehow. And he gave several to just one man or one woman, over the heads of married couples. And you could see it might work, in spite of that. And he didn't let Benita Wallins have a single orphan, though she kept offering.

Then the last was a little black girl with her hair in about two hundred plaits. Larry said, “No need to put her up, Nat, that's the one I want.” That was surprising. For one thing, all the orphans were so alike, you had to look at this one hard to notice she was black. For another, Larry was obviously defying Elaine.

Elaine sprang forward from beside Miss Phelps's wheelchair. “Larry! That's absolutely out of the question. I hate children.”

“But I love them,” said Larry. “Oh, come on, Elaine. Give it a try.”

Elaine hovered and spluttered and almost refused outright, until she suddenly glanced up at Antony Green sweating on the steps above. “Oh, all
right
,” she said, and even smiled. Although it was only a one-line smile, Larry let out a yell and hugged the little girl. She looked the most bewildered of the lot.

“Is that all, Antony?” asked Mr. Phelps.

“No,” said Antony Green. “There is the third thing.” And when all the orphan-hugging had died down, he said, “I'm giving up the green coat and leaving you today.”

Everyone groaned. Somebody yelled out, sounding horrified, “Not going back into the earth?”

“Oh, no,” Antony Green said, with a real shudder. “After twenty years underground like a turnip, I'm more likely to go on the road and sleep out-of-doors. And you'll agree I've got to catch up with the world. But the really important reason is this.” He stood up and pulled the glistening, shining green box from his pocket again. We could tell it really
was
important, what he wanted to say. “I never wanted to take the box,” he said. “I know I was right. It divides people a certain way. Maybe it didn't once, but nowadays the ones who don't have it seem to think they're not proper people without it, and then they have to go to hideous lengths to prove they
are
. So…” He seemed to lose the thread then and stood staring down at the meaningful shining shapes on the box, while we all waited. “So,” he said, “I'm going to give back what's left of it to all of you.”