The Mystery of the Cupboard (6 page)

“No, thanks,” said Omri. “I'm busy.”

He piled the bricks against his doors again and went to the window. The sun was sinking behind the hills in front of the house. There was one special hill with a little crown of trees that grew in a cluster, in odd shapes — all spready and twisted. Omri wanted to go up there one day to see what they were like close to. With school and everything, and the thatching, there hadn't been much time to explore.

Now when he looked at the view he thought of Jessica Charlotte, looking at the same one. Which had been her bedroom? Not this one. Gillon's. He felt sure of it. He'd found the box and the notebook at the gable end of the house. She must have hidden it in the eaves outside her window — the last window of the longhouse.

He unearthed the cashbox from its hiding place and looked at it again. The coin slot was bunged up with some hard red stuff. Omri thought it might be sealing
wax, he'd seen it on documents in museums. Ordinary people used to seal their letters with it in the old days. Why would she seal it? To keep the damp out, of course.

He shook the box gently, trying to guess what was in it. There were a number of things in there, but they seemed to be wrapped because they slid about whisperingly; they didn't rattle. Of course he could break it open… But he didn't want to. She'd sealed and locked and hidden it, for him —
for someone in the family with a mind more open —
to find in years to come. When he had read the rest of the notebook, he would know whether she wanted him to open it and how it could be done.

He put the box away again, and with a strange, solemn feeling of destiny — yes, destiny, this was
meant
to happen - he pulled his desk chair close to the window and opened the notebook at the place where he had left off.

After Frederick was born, I
had
to work. It was not merely to fulfil my ambition and my talent then. I had a hungry baby with no father to feed him - so I had to do whatever came to hand.

I won't recount everything I did in those years to earn money. On the stage, off the stage… It was a strange life. One week I would be topping the bill at some provincial music hall, the crowd at my feet, the stage-door johnnies bringing me flowers and sweets and trinkets and making much of me. The next I might be behind a bar in some city pub, joking with the customers and pretending to
drink the drinks they bought me but secretly pocketing their money and wetting my lips with the cold tea I kept under the bar…

Once I scrubbed the steps… No matter. Let the past bury its dead. Frederick, who spent his babyhood in a Moses basket under many theatrical dressing tables, grew up to hate the business… but he grew straight and strong and with a will of iron. I thought I had cause to be satisfied with him, at least. Little did I know what a strange man my child would grow into.

And Maria?

My lucky, spoilt sister married her Matthew at last and had Lottie. Charlotte she was christened, not after me, of course — the family black sheep — but after our grandmother. But I was there! I crept into the church at Maria's secret bidding, in my sober Sunday clothes with a big-brimmed hat pulled well down so no one would know me. Father and Mother were both dead by then, and our other relatives hadn't seen me for ten hard, ageing years… I hid behind a pillar and pretended I was holding the baby, that she was my godchild… A godmother! Me! What nonsense. But all the best parts of my life have been make-believe.

And I looked at Matthew. Maria's Matthew.

Matthew stood by the font, tall as a soldier. Handsome, and generous, and good. I could have loved him myself — I did love him, not least because he didn't cast me out. Of course he never acknowledged me publicly, but he never
forbade me to come to their house to visit Maria and Lottie. When no one else was there.

Of course I never brought Frederick. That would never have done! Maria never knew Frederick. Never asked about him. She played the game called ‘It-Never-Happened'.

Those were happy days. I played with my little niece and came to love her then. Beautiful, sweetest Lottie, my namesake, my darling.

But my life was hard. I never told Maria how hard, and of course she never visited me in my sordid lodgings… She was so happy, she didn't want to know anything unpleasant about my life and I never told her. But as I watched her, growing more beautiful and more beloved in wifehood and motherhood, the old bitterness raised its head again. Once more, all I had were crumbs from her table. Crumbs of happiness spilled from her overflowing life.

And one day as I sat in her elegant parlour, playing with Lottie who was then about five, Maria said, very casually but as if she had been preparing it for a long time, “Of course, Jessie, when Lottie is a bit more grownup, it won't do for you to see so much of her. Matt's a good Christian but there is a limit to tolerance.”

I felt her words like a knife. I would be a bad influence! That's what she was saying! That I would contaminate Lottie's life!

I put Lottie, who had been on my knee, down very
carefully and stood up. My sister must have seen in my eyes how deeply wounded I was, for she said quickly, “Come along now, darling, don't take me up like that! I don't mean
now.
I just wanted to - to get you used to the idea that one day—”

I should have followed my impulse, and left then, and never come back. But I couldn't. Frederick was already showing signs of the hostility to me that would pain me so much when he was a man, and I needed this other home, I needed Maria and her crumbs of love. I needed Lottie. I needed the glimpses I got of Matthew… Crumbs indeed. But I was so hungry!

Yet the iron entered my soul. A deep bitterness about the differences between us. My idea — my terrible, wicked idea — came to me soon afterwards, when the shadow of her words about Lottie was still darkening my heart.

No excuses, I said. No excuses! Tell the tale.

We were in Maria's boudoir. (Yes! She had one — a room all to herself, for her to dress in and do her hair and entertain her friends, and be herself, a room of feminine fancies and personal things, where even Matthew did not come without a knock!) And she was showing me her jewellery.

It was kept in a special jewel case — a piece of barefaced luxury that Matthew had bought her on their wedding trip to Florence, in Italy. It was red leather tooled in gold, lined with red satin, with little trays that
lifted apart on delicate hinges. And at every level were the tokens of Matthew's love for her, and our mother's, for Mama had left all her pretty things to Maria. I in my disgrace had been left nothing.

There was plenty there that I would have liked: a pearl necklace, two gold lockets, an emerald bracelet, even a fine diamond pin — Mama's wedding present from Papa that she had once said should come to me. But then, in the bottom, I saw them. A pair of earrings.

Beautiful! Oh, yes, they were. But more than that. They held my eyes like buttons in button-holes.

They were aquamarines, like two tear-shaped drops of sea-water. Not our grey sea, no, but like the seas of the south that I had seen paintings of, blue-green, clear, without a flaw. They hung from two gold hooks.

And I wanted them. I wanted them! To me they suddenly stood for all Maria had, and that I had not, all she wanted to shut me out from when my Lottie would be older. Not least her purity — my sister was pure as a perfect jewel.

I made up my mind in that single instant that those earrings would be mine. And I knew clearly that there was only one way that could happen. I would steal them.

That night when his mother came to kiss him in bed, as she always did, Omri pulled her to sit down beside him.

“Mum, why was your grandmother so poor?”

“As I told you - my grandfather's pension—”

“Yeah, but - you told me ages ago that your
grandmother had a jewel case. You know the key - you said it belonged to a jewel case she'd got from Italy.”

“Yes, that's right. A red leather one.”

“Well, I mean - a jewel case usually has some jewels in it.”

“Oh, I see what you mean! Well, it was stolen.”

“Stolen!”

“Yes. There was a burglary. Oh, long before I was born - sometime after Matt died. They used to have a lot of lovely things. She told me about her silver tea service and her things they'd had, wedding presents, things her parents left her… It was all stolen. And there was no insurance. She'd stopped paying the premiums after Matthew died. So she lost all her valuables. She had to sell the Clapham Common house and rent a little slummy one. And get a job. Which was no joke for a woman who'd never worked.”

“What job?”

“Secretarial. Secretaries were actually called ‘typewriters' in those days. My darling old gran was among the legion of post-World-War-One type-writers. She went on doing it till my mother and father were able to help her. Then after they died, she went out cleaning to keep me. She was old by then.”

“Cleaning!” Omri exclaimed. “Do you mean she, like, scrubbed steps?”

His mother closed her eyes for a moment. “I don't know. She might have done. She never talked about it. I hope not. It would have been — such an awful comedown
for someone who'd been brought up as she had.” She opened her eyes again and looked at him curiously. “You are a funny one,” she said. “You've never shown an interest in family history before.”

As soon as his mother left, Omri, with new pictures in his head, went back to the Account.

I
did not commit my crime at once.

If I had, perhaps I could be forgiven for it, but for two years it remained undone — long enough to have come to my senses, for my better self to take command. But those beautiful sea-green drops dangled in my future, two demons in disguise — beckoning. I knew I would do it.

At that time Frederick was away at school. Then, as now, that cost money, but I was set heart and soul on his having an education. I had to work harder than ever.

The First World War was a curse to mankind, but a
blessing to me. There was war work to be done, and troops to be entertained, and between the one and the other - I spent my days in a sweatshop sewing uniforms, my nights singing, dancing, and acting on stages up and down the land - I scraped by. Even so, I could not have managed, had it not been for my Gift.

I learnt the skill of telling fortunes.

Telling fortunes is, in the main, a game of deceit. For 99 out of 100 in the profession, there is no reading the past or foreseeing the future. They go through an act that is as much make-believe as anything I did on the stage. They give customers what they want: “You will meet a dark stranger… You will have children… You will pass through difficult times to happiness at last…” Falsehood and fakery! And I did my share of that - tea leaves, Tarot cards, crystal ball, all the rest of it.

But when I tried pouring lead, a common enough method of fortune-telling at that time, I found that through the lead I could raise my craft to the level of true Art.

Lead-pouring worked like this.

In an old iron saucepan I heated up small pieces of lead, bought cheap from a scrap-metal man. Lead melts at a low temperature, and when all the lumps had dissolved into a liquid silver mass, I would ask my customer to pour small amounts into a metal bowl of cold water.

With a hiss and a cloud of steam, the lead would
solidify again into a random form in the bottom of the bowl. I would get this out and examine it, and in the shape (which was often very strange, resembling, just as clouds can, all manner of animals and objects) I would perceive Portents of the future. True ones.

Once a young woman poured the lead, and instead of fusing together, it all scattered into little bits. In this I read a dangerous carelessness in her nature, and I warned her, and we tried again, and this time there was a death's head. I saw death and nothing else, and though I invented something to please her, I knew as she walked from my dark little basement room up into the sunlit street, that she had no time left. Three days later a neighbour told me she had died in an accident in the factory where she worked.

Thus, and through many other proofs, I knew that I had the Gift, and must use it carefully. I became well-known in the profession and many people consulted me, and paid me well. I was able to pay Fred's school fees and put money by, money I later used to buy this old house where Fred had been born.

I never, never tried to read the fortunes of those few I loved. Maria, who knew that I earned extra money this way, begged me to tell her fortune, but I never would, let alone Matthew's or Lottie's, or Frederick's, or mine.

But sometimes flashes of insight would come to me, unbidden. I once saw a dark shadow pass over the face of Matthew as he sat in his garden, laughing with Lottie. I fell
into a fainting fit, something unheard of for me who (until my recent illness) never had a sick day in my life… Once I saw a diminishing line of Marias going off into the far distance, like the reflection in double mirrors, which might indicate a long life or many descendants.