A Stitch in Time. Penelope Lively
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much superior to her broken fragments. Taking them out of the drawers to examine more carefully, one by one, she heard the squeak of that swing again, and went to the window to see if she could see it in the next-door garden. Trees, though, blocked the view.
Her father came along the passage and stopped at the open door of the room.
“Well, then … All settled in?”
“Yes,” said Maria. Her father was older than most people’s fathers; he was beginning to go bald, his hair forming a neat horse-shoe around his scalp. He had changed from his holiday shirt into a special holiday sweater, she noticed. They looked at each other, as they often did, both wondering what to say next.
“Explored everything by now, I expect,” said Mr Foster.
“I haven’t seen all of the garden yet.”
Mr Foster looked out into the garden with faint alarm, as though it might make demands of him. In London they had no garden.
“Yes,” he said.“Well, I daresay it could come in useful.”
There was silence. “Well,” said Mr Foster, “I suppose it’s about time for supper.” He went downstairs.
They spent a quiet evening, going early to bed. Maria, feeling drugged by wind and sea, slept soundly, woken only once by some small dog that barked shrilly from somewhere outside.
The garden, she discovered the next day, had possibilities. Without flower-beds, and furnished entirely with trees and shrubs that were clearly more or less indestructible, it was not at all the kind of garden in which you are being forever told not to step on the flowers or climb the trees. The huge, dank shrubbery that separated it from the next-door garden was a rabbit-warren of leafy tunnels and tents, inviting games of one kind or another. The trouble was that there was no one to play them with. Maria crawled aimlessly through and around. Then she turned to tree-climbing. One tree in particular attracted attention. It was the big dark tree she had noticed from the window, thickly leaved with shiny dark green leaves, and with massive trunk and branches that led on enticingly one from another, and met the trunk in ample curves that made natural sitting places. One, she found, was a perfect armchair vantage-point, not too alarmingly far above the ground, but commanding a view through the leaves into the next-door garden.
She sat there, watching unobserved the comings and goings from within the next-door house – a sprawling and ornate building that was now a private hotel. Ironwork chairs and tables, with sun-umbrellas, adorned the neatly mown lawn. There did not seem to be a swing there either, though there was a small bowling green and a badminton net.
The cat appeared, and sharpened its claws against the trunk of the tree with a rasping noise.
“What did you say your name was?” it said.
“Maria.”
“Mary, you mean.”
“No. Maria.”
“That’s a bit fancy, isn’t it?” said the cat scornfully.
“My mother thinks old-fashioned names are nice.”
“Pretentious, I call it,” said the cat. It watched a clump of grass intently, its tail twitching.
“Does the dog live next door?” said Maria. “The one that barks in the night?”
The cat shuddered. “Do you mind? One has some feelings.”
“I just wondered.”
Some children had come out into the hotel garden and were playing an energetic game of badminton, with much shrieking and shouting.
“Jolly lot,” said the cat. “Why don’t you ask if you can play with them?”
“I might.”
“Go on then.”
“In a minute.”
“You’re scared they wouldn’t want you,” said the cat.
Maria slid down the tree and walked slowly towards the ragged hedge that separated the two gardens at this point. The cat watched her through half-closed eyes. She stood looking at the children for a minute or so and then said, “Actually, I’ve got to go in and help my mother.”
“Sez you,” said the cat.
In the kitchen, her mother was energetically filling shelves and cupboards with their kind of food, and sorting out the crockery.
“Why were you chasing that cat away?”
“It’s an unfriendly cat,” said Maria.
“Nonsense. It’s been purring round my legs all morning.”
Hasn’t she ever noticed, Maria wondered to herself, that people can be quite different depending on whom they’re with? Animals too, presumably. Like Mrs Hayward at school smiles and smiles when there are parents there so you see her teeth all the way round and then when there’s only children again, her face goes all long and thin and you don’t see her teeth any more and her voice goes different too, kind of quicker and crosser …
The front doorbell rang.
“A caller!” said Mrs Foster.“But we don’t know anyone.”
She went through to the hall. Beyond the open door Maria could hear the mixture of voices – a strange one and her mother’s (that’s her talking-to-people-she-doesn’t-know voice, she thought). The voices ebbed and flowed; the kitchen clock ticked; the sun came out and made a neat golden square across half the table, down its legs and on to the floor. Maria became aware that she was being called, and went reluctantly into the hall.
“This is Maria,” said her mother. “Mrs Shand is our landlady. She lives over the road.”
Mrs Shand was very old. Her clothes were old-fashioned but lady-like, Maria recognised; silk dress and brooches and necklaces, and stockings that ended oddly in a pair of white plimsolls. She stared at Maria and said,“The last tenants had four. Just the one will be quite a change. Not that I mind children.”
I have never met a landlady before, thought Maria, so I don’t know if I mind them or not. I expect I shall find out.
“Well,” said Mrs Shand,“there’s plenty of space for the three of you, that’s for sure.”
“Plenty,” said Mrs Foster.“We hadn’t realised quite how large the house was.”
“Tenants are often surprised. The furnishings arouse comment also, from time to time.”
“We like Victorian things,” said Mrs Foster. “Aren’t you afraid of damage, though? With children about, and people being careless …”
“The house has been subjected to children all its life,” said Mrs Shand, a little tartly.“I grew up in it myself, with six brothers and sisters. And my mother before me. It is too old to change, like me. I had the kitchen modernised, as they call it. People seemed to object to the old arrangements.”
Maria, who had been studying the face on a cameo brooch pinned to the neck of Mrs Shand’s dress, and only half listening to the conversation, began suddenly to pay attention. How very strange to be staying in a house in which a great many children had grown up. In her own home, there had only been her: it was built eight years ago, and was younger, in fact, than she was. She thought of Mrs Shand, standing in this same doorway years ago as a girl her own age. She stared at the landlady’s face – hatched over with tiny, thread-like lines – for the shadow of this other person she must once have been, and could not find it. Had she, and others, leapt