The Book of Magical Wet Animals #2
I pictured the cold and empty flat I’d left for the final time that morning, phantom memories sealed within the collection of brown cardboard boxes my life had become, then crammed into Herbert’s attic.
“It’s fine,” I said. “The flat’s fine, the tap’s fine.
Tell him he really doesn’t need to worry anymore. ”
“I don’t suppose there’s anything else that needs attention?” A faint pleading note had crept into her voice. “I thought I might send him around on Saturday to do some general maintenance.”
“I told you. Everything’s fine.”
She looked surprised and hurt and I knew I’d spoken brusquely, only these dreadful conversations in which I pretended all was going swimmingly were wearing me down.
Despite my willingness to disappear inside storybooks, I’m not a liar and I don’t cope well with subterfuge.
Under ordinary circumstances this might have been the perfect time for me to break the news about Jamie—but I couldn’t, not when I wanted to steer us back to Milderhurst and Juniper Blythe.
In any case, the man at the next table chose that very instant to turn around and ask whether he could borrow our salt shaker.
As I handed it to him, Mum said, “I have something for you.” She pulled out an old M that’s how I came to find it.
No point leaving it for the silverfish, is there?
You never know, you may even have your own daughter to show it to one day.
” She straightened in her seat and the rabbit hole to the past closed behind her.
“Tell me,” she said. “How was your weekend? Did you do anything special?”
And there it was. The perfect window, curtains drawn wide.
I couldn’t have constructed a better opening for myself if I’d tried.
And as I looked down at The Book of Magical Wet Animals in my hand, the time-dusted paper, the imprints from felt pens, the childish shading and coloring; as I realized that my mum had kept it all this time, that she’d wanted to save it despite her misgivings about my wasteful occupation, that she’d chosen today, of all days, to remind me of a part of myself I’d quite forgotten; I was overcome by a sudden swelling desire to share with her everything that had happened to me at Milderhurst Castle.
A sweet sense that it would all work out for the best.
“Actually,” I said. “I did.”
“Oh?” She smiled brightly.
“Something very special.” My heart had begun to gallop ahead; I was watching myself from the outside, wondering, even as I teetered on the cliff edge, whether I was really going to jump. “I went for a tour,” said a faint voice rather like my own, “inside Milderhurst Castle.”
“You … You what?” Mum’s eyes widened. “You went to Milderhurst?” Her gaze held mine as I nodded, then it dropped.
She shifted her cup on the saucer, swiveled it by its dainty handle, this way and that, and I watched with cautious curiosity, unsure what was about to happen, eager and loath, in equal measure, to find out.
I ought to have had more faith. Like a brilliant sunrise clarifying the clouded horizon, dignity reasserted itself. She lifted her head and smiled across the table as she set her saucer straight. “Well now,” she said. “Milderhurst Castle. And how was it?”
“It was … big.” I work with words and that was the best I could come up with. It was the surprise, of course, the utter transformation I’d just witnessed. “Like something out of a fairy tale.”
“A tour, did you say? I didn’t realize one could do such a thing. That’s our modern times, I suppose.” She waved a hand. “Everything for a price.”
“It was informal,” I said. “One of the owners took me. A very old lady called Persephone Blythe.”
“Percy?” A tiny tremble in her voice, the only prick in her composure. “Percy Blythe? She’s still there?”
“They all are, Mum. All three. Even Juniper, who sent you the letter.”
Mum opened her mouth as if to speak; when no words came out she closed it again, tightly. She laced her fingers in her lap, sat as still and as pale as a marble statue. I sat too, but the silence took on weight and it became more than I could bear.
“It was eerie,” I said, picking up my teapot. I noticed that my hands were shaking. “Everything was dusty and dim and to see them all sitting in the parlor together, the three of them in that big, old house—it felt a little like I’d stumbled inside a doll’s—”
“Juniper, Edie”—Mum’s voice was strange and thin and she cleared her throat—“how was she? How did she seem?”
I wondered where to start: the girlish joy, the disheveled appearance, the final scene of desperate accusations.
“She was confused,” I said. “She was wearing an old-fashioned dress and she told me she was waiting for someone, a man. The lady at the farmhouse where I stayed said that she isn’t well, that her sisters look after her. ”
“She’s ill?”
“Dementia. Sort of.” I continued carefully: “Her boyfriend left her years ago and she never fully recovered.”
“Boyfriend?”
“Fiancé to be precise. He stood her up and people say it drove her mad. Literally mad.”
“Oh, Edie,” said Mum. The slightly ill look on her face resolved into the sort of smile you might give a clumsy kitten. “Always so full of fancy. Real life isn’t like that.”
I bristled; it gets tiresome being treated like an ingénue.
“I’m just telling you what they said in the village. A lady there said Juniper was always fragile, even when she was young.”
“I knew her, Edie; I don’t need you telling me what she was like when she was young.”
She’d snapped and it had caught me unawares. “I’m sorry,” I said, “I—”
“No.” She lifted a palm then pressed it lightly against her forehead and stole a surreptitious glance over her shoulder.
“No, I’m sorry. I can’t think what came over me.
” She sighed, smiled a little shakily. “It’s the surprise, I expect.
To think that they’re all still alive, all of them at the castle.
Why—they must be so old.” She frowned, affecting great interest in the mathematical puzzle.
“The other two were old when I knew them—at least they seemed that way.”
I was still startled by her outburst and said guardedly, “You mean they looked old? Gray hair and all?”
“No. No, not that. It’s hard to say what it was. I suppose they were only in their midthirties at the time, but of course that meant something different back then. And I was young. Children do tend to see things differently, don’t they?”
I didn’t answer; she didn’t intend me to.
Her eyes were on mine, but they had a faraway look about them, like an old-fashioned silver screen on which pictures were projected.
“They behaved more like parents than sisters,” she said, “to Juniper, I mean. They were a lot older than she was, and her mother had died when she was only a child. Their father was still alive, but he wasn’t much involved. ”
“He was a writer, Raymond Blythe.” I said it cautiously, wary that I might be overstepping again, offering information that was hers firsthand.
This time, though, she didn’t seem to mind, and I waited for some indication that she knew all that the name meant, that she remembered bringing the book home from the library when I was a girl.
I’d kept an eye out when I was packing up the flat, hoping I might be able to bring it to show her, but I hadn’t found it.
“He wrote a story called The True History of the Mud Man.”
“Yes,” was all she said, very softly.
“Did you ever meet him?”