What Happened After: Malory Towers

(Part of a series of posts I'm doing on children's books characters growing up and living in the 21st century. See the last one (and the uproar! how DARE I touch Enid Blyton!) over here.)

My name is Gwendoline Mary Lacey. I am about to die.  I am not afraid of death, all right, that's my first lie, I am terribly afraid of death. This whole place, this nursing home, smells like death.

Picture courtesy Enid Blyton Society

This is my deathbed, I have been put here to die, and now, in my dying, I must tell the truth.

My whole life's path can be traced back to when I was twelve years old and sent to boarding school. It was a lovely building, a bit cold even in the warmest summer, but it is not that I think of, as I lie here.  I was an only child, born late in life to my weak mother, who had been told she could never have children, and my father, who never wanted to be married in the first place.  My mother who was always ill, wanted me close to her for as long as she lived, and can you blame her? Can you? I cannot. They hired a lady to tutor me and make sure I was well behaved, and she--a childless spinster--came to us at thirty, and stayed with my family until she was in her 70s.

For a brief shining moment in my life, I was loved. I was well and truly, thoroughly, absolutely loved. My governess, Miss Winter, was never very good at mathematics herself, so we meandered through whatever she had to teach me. History or science, English or French. Because I loved her as she loved me, I didn't tell my parents that she didn't know the subjects she was meant to be teaching me. Because she loved me and she was scared for her job, she told them I was a genius. My poor ill mother gazed at me with pride over her breakfast tray, just after Miss Winter would give her my weekly report. My father--if he was there at all--would rustle his newspaper, and attempt to make me say my multiplication tables. At which demand, I would cry and hide behind Miss Winter's skirts. My mother, listening, always listening, would tell him to leave me alone. I never saw my father much, he was a vague mythical creature, but I grew up cossetted by the love of two women. Women were safe, women were my refuge, how was I to know they would also be my bitterest critics?

Ironically (now that I am older, I have begun seeing irony in more things. It makes my life bearable), my mother outlived my father by twenty years, but she was spoilt by his loss, a melancholy, sad woman to the rest of her days. She loved him, she had been the heiress to a vast fortune left to her by a rich bachelor uncle, and she gave it all to my father when first he promised to marry her. And then he lost it all. He tried to kill himself in my final year in school, a year marred by his fights with me. I was hoping to run away, to escape, my mother had promised me a finishing school in Switzerland since I was eight, and this was the escape I was running towards. Being at home with him, his cruel voice, his even crueler silences, were suffocating. Besides, I had seen the way Miss Winter and he looked at each other, and I wanted to cry, "Fool! You know more than anyone what he really is!"

At Malory Towers, that final year, they called me bitter and heartless to speak that way about my father.  "He's fine," said that Darrell Rivers, that perfect Darrell Rivers with her perfect life. I had nobody to tell, and how could I hint at what was really happening: my father's hand on Miss Winter's knee, my father's even voice--oh, he never lost his temper loudly--as he demanded more money from my mother.  Her pleading, she saved it for me, for Switzerland, but he forged her signature on her private trust and got into her account. I don't even know if he had to forge it. They were easier in those days treating women like chattel.

Every now and then, in the mail, I used to get a plain cardboard square inviting me to a Malory Towers reunion. They were all sent by the president of the Mallory Towers Alumna Society, Mary Lou.

We were all three new girls at the same time. Darrell Rivers, Mary Lou, and I.

One day, watching how the other girls played, I pushed Mary Lou into the pool. If I could go back in time, and take back any moment--any moment at all, including my father's attempted suicide--this is the one I would undo. It was that push that set our lives on three different courses. Mary Lou The Weak, Darrell Rivers The Defender, and I, Gwendoline Mary The Enemy.

Every year, I tried to make new friends, tried in the currency I knew: secrets. That's what girls did with friends, they exchanged secrets. Every year, I watched as my new friends were taken away from me.

You would call them bullies now, but then they were the most popular girls in school. Sally Hope, dependable, Darrell Rivers, head girl, Alicia, so smart, so whip smart that her words flayed along the back of my legs leaving welts only I could see.


I went to one of the school reunions, you know. I went, and stood in a corner, trying not to pull at the hemline of my new dress, bought, penny pinching, from a sale at an expensive boutique. Everyone I loved once, was dead. I lived alone, in a small bedsit, with my dog Morris, and I spent all my money on him. I loved that dog. But it was still important to me to wear a nice dress to a school reunion, perhaps I was going soppy in my old age, but I wanted to see my old friends, listen to their stories again. I stood in a corner and no one spoke to me except Mary Lou, in kind, pitying tones. I turned to go home and overheard Mavis speaking to Bill. "Is that Gwen? Goodness, she's grown fat." And Bill's voice, "You know, I heard that Miss Grayling said that she was one of Malory Towers biggest failures. Darrell told me."

I am about to die, and I was considered the biggest failure of one of the finest schools in Britain. Those with their sharp tongues and sharp brains were successes, those who were good at sports, those who were good at their classes. I, uncoordinated I, with no special talents, had to sink or swim. And I sank. Once, I tried out for the pantomime the fifth form were doing, but "how dare you aspire to be a star?" asked Alicia, and I was made to be a servant. I saw Mary Lou playing the part of Cinderella, with her large brown eyes and her long brown hair, oh, she was very clever, Mary Lou, she pretended to be scared of me the rest of her time at school, and won the sympathy points.

My name is Gwendoline Mary Lacey. Once, people who loved me called me Gwen. Then, people who despised me called me Gwen.  Once, I was loved by women, then I was hated by women.

Remember me, remember me.






 

What Happened After: Julian, Dick, Anne, George & Timmy the Dog

Image courtesy Google/NiceIrishLady

(A little speculative fiction on the Famous Five grown up and living in the 21st century.)

"Blast," said Julian, looking up from his phone and at his wife, Fiona. She was young, pale and nervous, and a  "jolly good wife" as he called her to his colleagues at the bank. She kept his home immaculate, and kept his two children--Julian II and Anne--well fed and well mannered.  

Fiona trembled a bit at the tone of his voice -- not that he would ever hit her, "Julian doesn't hit girls," she told her sister -- but if he was annoyed she would feel it in the cut of meat he gave her at the dining table, in the set of his shoulders the next few days. "What is it, dear?" she ventured.

"It's my idiot cousin, Georgina. She wants us to come and help on the sale of that island she inherited."

It took Fiona a second to realise he was talking about George. George, who had transitioned into a man more than ten years ago, George who wore his cap pulled over his buzzcut curls, who had a wife, a "wife" Julian would say, contemptously, making the air quotes, and a dog breeding farm. George, the son of the famous scientist, Quentin Kirrin, who made it possible for them all to travel without worrying about bombs. Fiona had always liked George.

Once, she had ventured to her husband, "I think he prefers to be called George, dear," and Julian had risen to his full height and sneered at her across the dinner table. "Georgina is a grown woman! It was all very well when we were children, but she is a woman, and has womens work!" He settled down and chomped on his roast, reflectively, "It's evil, is what it is, Fiona. Evil. Now look at Anne. They're almost the same age, but Anne has always been a real woman."

Anne. Anne. Anne. It was always Anne. Anne who came over for weeks on end, and turned Fiona's home inside out, "nesting" she called it. "Isn't it fun to keep house?" she'd say, continuously, and cook things like boiled eggs and slap together a ham sandwich, which Julian would eat with more gusto than he ever did any of Fiona's Jamie Oliver meals.

Anne was married to a Frenchman, who was "rather queer", she'd say, tying an apron around her waist and pottering around. "You're not allowed to say queer, Aunty Anne," little Julian II had ventured, "You're supposed to say homosexual." At that, the shocked Aunty Anne had squealed, and had to be put to bed, and Julian was Very Angry Indeed.

Once, Fiona had come downstairs for a late night cup of tea, and seen, through the glass, Anne wrapped up in a rug asleep by the fire, and Julian, sitting next to her, stroking her hair.  She never mentioned it.

Dick was all right. They called him Richard now, "who's called Dick, am I right?" he'd say laughing. Sometimes, when they went out to dinner, he'd tell stories about them as children, renting caravans, solving mysteries. Richard was a ladies man, Fiona couldn't keep track of his women, but sometimes, in her darkest hours, she longed to be one of them. Julian used to look a little bit like Richard when she had married him, tall and dashing, with blonde hair and blue eyes, but now what little hair he had was combed back, and he was what her mother called "portly." He was fond of his meat and two veg, and he was fond of her and his children, but beyond that, not much else.

"Which Timmy is it now?" she said, to get him in a better mood. George bred a mixed breed race of terrier-sheepdogs, all called Timmy after his childhood pet. The Timmys, as their children called the dogs, were a set, a pack, Julian said, of large black and white creatures, all whip smart and devoted to George.

"I think her favourite is Timmy the Seventeenth," said Julian, snorting, "Though how she can have a favourite, much less distinguish between all of them is beyond me. Poor Aunt Fanny. She would have been so upset to see her lovely house overrun with those creatures."

"You used to like Timmy, though, darling, didn't you?" said Fiona, remembering stories Julian had told her about brave Timmy, smart Timmy, Timmy getting him out of trouble. Julian snorted again, and waved his empty glass at her. He wasn't a drinker, that was a blessing, but he liked two "snifters" of Scotch on particularly trying days. This was clearly going to be a Two Snifter Evening.

"We wouldn't have needed that dog if only the adults didn't keep leaving us alone," he said, "My god, Fiona, we wouldn't leave Little Anne and Young Ju alone for two hours let alone two days. By themselves! On a caravan! At the mercy of criminals and kidnappers!"

"You solved crimes, dear," said Fiona, remembering a story Richard had told her about George getting bundled up into a car and taken away, and how Richard and Julian had rushed to her rescue. "Did you go too, Anne?" asked Fiona, politely, only because Anne was there too, that evening, and Anne had said, "Oh no, it was no place for a girl" and Julian had smiled at her approvingly.

"For the benefit of Georgina and Richard. They did like the idea of solving crimes, so I indulged them." Julian was quiet for so long, that Fiona thought he had fallen asleep, and went about the room putting out lights and clearing away glasses. Finally, he spoke out of the gloom, and gave her a start.

"So, Kirrin Island is for sale. Well, well."

***

George stood with his five Timmys at the edge of Kirrin town, gazing out at the island. It used to belong to his mother, and her mother before her. When George had transitioned at first, his mother had built him a cottage on the island to live on, and rowed over every day with sandwiches and root beer, until George reminded her that he was now 25, and could handle something a bit stronger. The next time, his mother brought over a bottle of wine, and George had cooked, and they had watched the sun set over the ocean. After George's father died, everything had been peaceful for him and his mother, no more fights, no more arguments, and his mother celebrated his new identity. "You've always been unhappy as you were, darling."

George missed his mother every day.

Over from the island, the sound of construction increased. Someone was using a power drill, and George could just make out the shapes of the holiday rentals come up.

"I can't believe Julian would do that!" Emily had exclaimed when they first heard of Julian's plans to redevelop Kirrin Island into a "family friendly" resort, complete with golf course and water activities. "He's going to ruin everything, the prat. I know he's disgusting now, but he used to share a childhood with you, George."

"Ju's all right," George said, gruffly. No one was allowed to insult his family, not even his wife. Even if Julian did insist on saying "Georgina" each time they met, even if Julian's wife trembled each time he spoke, like he was going to smack her or something, even if George had seen Julian and Anne in the moonlight, with Anne's face tipped up to his, and Julian's mouth in her hair.

"It'll be okay, won't it, Timmy?" George asked his dogs, and as one, they turned to him, tails wagging, tongues hanging out. "That's what I thought," he said, laughing, "Best dogs in the world, aren't you?"

As they walked home, George saw Emily emerge from the cottage and come running down the lane towards him, waving her cellphone. "George!" she shouted, "You'll never believe what that dick has done now!"

The Timmys bounded away from George and towards Emily, and distractedly, she patted them, all the while brandishing her phone at George.

He took the phone from her and saw an ad in her email.

Now taking pre-bookings! Britain's only FAMILY resort with FAMILY values!

THE FAMOUS FIVE ISLAND!

YOU'VE READ THE STORIES!

NOW RUN BY AN ORIGINAL FAMOUS FIVE MEMBER!

George sat down quite heavily. "Oh god," he said. 

Outside, the lorries carrying bricks to the island rumbled past. 

The Shadow People

In keeping with my last post about scary stories, here's a piece of fiction I wrote for a Scholastic anthology. The inspiration for this came from a lonely evening on a London Tube. I like to think it's quite scary--but in a "what about me?" way. 

The Shadow People

When Yamini stepped out at Vilasgunj station, she was surprised to see that there was no one there. Even for a small town—well, perhaps because it was a small town—Vilasgunj had a surprisingly busy station. There was a magazine man and an oranges woman and usually Anant Ram, the old, wizened station master, who knew everybody. But   today it seemed abandoned and all Yamini could see where the twisting shadows from the trees. She was even more surprised that for the first time in her life, nobody had come to receive her. It was her first day back from boarding school, it was the holidays, and she had a trunk and couldn't be expected to carry it all the way home.

Well, at least she thought she had a trunk. Yamini watched in astonishment as the train pulled out of the station leaving absolutely nothing behind. “Hey!” she yelled, running after it, “hey! My trunk!” Nope. There was no indication of the train stopping or even anyone listening to her. This was a very bad day, and Yamini set her teeth, preparing to go home and complain to her mother. Then she would be fed mangoes, and she would play with the dogs and maybe in the evening, go swimming with her cousins. Nothing was so bad that it ruined the summer holidays. It was probably a mix up, she said to herself comfortingly. They probably expect me tomorrow, and how surprised they'll be to see me walk in and everyone will feel really bad for me. She smiled to herself at the thought of the adult’s aghast faces. She could milk this for a while.

The fact that ghosts come out at night is a myth, just like many other things in this world. They still retain some of their human traits and like to sleep like the rest of us. There are scary things that appear in the middle of the night—monsters and werewolves and things wanting revenge—but, God preserve us, not ghosts.

Maybe she could get a lift along the way, thought Yamini. Having lived her entire life in Vilasgunj at 'Chaudhury ka bungalow' people knew her and her family. She was confident that anyone seeing her trudging along in the heat would stop and offer to drop her home. The bungalow was about two kilometres away and her shoes hurt as the sun beat down on her hair. But the rest of the town was as empty as the station. Was it a festival day? Sometimes people retired to their houses on special occasions, spending time with their families till the evening when they made house calls and distributed sweets. Her family was quite involved with all town happenings, and if it was a festival day, then that would explain why they had forgotten to pick her up. Yamini tried not to get too frustrated with the heat and her shoes and her confusion. It would be better soon. She just wanted her mother.

Walking home, Yamini felt somehow like she was in a dream. Not a good dream, or even necessarily, a nightmare, just one of those dreams where you float around and everything seems sort of surreal. She put it down to the baking heat, and felt her forehead to see if she was getting a fever. That gesture once again reminded her of her mother, oh, how surprised they’d all be when she got home, maybe she’d be put to bed, with the AC roaring and someone to check in on her, feed her mangoes from a plate. She didn’t feel warm though, despite the sun, she felt cool, as though she had been indoors all day.

Most ghosts are pretty angry that there is no heaven. There is no hell either, but no one really thinks they’re going to hell. Instead they are locked to earth, as much as they were when they were alive and there’s nowhere else for them to go.

Yamini finally reached the large bungalow where her family lived. She had described it to a school friend earlier that term as, “the biggest house in the town.” This was not technically true. Yamini’s house was not the biggest, but it had the largest spread. Most houses were built vertically, four or five stories, in a concession to modernity, but hers sprawled around a courtyard with a well, and each of the four walls surrounding the courtyard had rooms that served different purposes. Yamini’s family lived in the side that faced west and she could watch the sunset every evening from her room. When she had been younger, she asked her mother why sunsets had to happen. “I want the day to go on and on,” she had said, her face mutinous.  Her mother had laughed, a little sadly, and said, “The sun has to go spend time with other people now, baby.” Later, her father had pulled out his old globe and demonstrated to her how the earth moved and how the sun shifted locations, but she had liked her mother’s explanation better. Maybe they had gone to spend time with other people too. Maybe they had forgotten all about her.

The old gate creaked as she pushed through it and with one last burst of energy she ran inside the house. “Ma? Papa? I’m home!” she yelled as she ran from room to room. “Chutki?” she called for her little sister, “It’s me, Yamini!”  The house was empty, abandoned, but it didn’t feel abandoned. It felt as though they had just stepped out for a moment and would be back soon.  The cows mooed from the cow shed at her voice and she ran there to look for her father, her uncle, anyone. But there was no one there. The house waited quietly. In a burst of tears, Yamini ran into her room and wept.

Trouble maker ghosts are the origins of all ghost stories. Your grandmother wouldn’t come back to haunt you. Sure, she watches you every now and then, but then like a soap opera you’ve given up on, you lose track of characters and then you just stop caring.

Yamini had fallen asleep crying and when she woke up, the sun had already set and she heard some faint murmurs from the rest of the house.  Thinking it was her family back again, she got up, a little groggily and made her way outside. The house was dark, no lights on, but she could feel the closeness of people. She tried to switch on a light, but it didn’t work. Yamini was a brave girl, used to frequent power cuts and not afraid of very much, having grown up with very sensible parents who reasoned her out of any imaginary frights, and many boy cousins who had tried pranks on her and failed.  No electricity? Just light a candle, which she did, and began to move to the northward set of rooms. That was where the kitchen was and the dining room, and where the family gathered at the end of the day.  The murmurs grew as she approached the dining room, but when she threw open the door, once more it was empty.

Or was it?

In front of Yamini’s eyes, she watched her shadow leap in the candlelight and then she saw four or five other shadows joining it. There were people in this room. The wind murmured low in the trees outside, but perhaps it wasn’t the wind. It was whispering noises, noises that made no sense when you confronted them, but if you closed your eyes, noises that were conversations. She gripped tightly onto her candle holder, watching as the shadows moved independently. One of the shadows noticed her,  and before she could make a sound, grabbed on to her shadow and dragged it into the courtyard. And this time, Yamini was the shadow. She was forced to go along with her dark image, dragged as if they were sewn together at the feet, her hands shook and she dropped the candle, and she looked down and felt her body grow weirdly. It was as if she was looking into one of those “fun” mirrors, she morphed into a creature with long flapping arms, her shoulder and torso grew very tall and her legs fused together so she couldn’t walk.

But she didn’t need to walk anymore, she was being pulled by her shadow into the courtyard and there around the well, she finally saw people. Dev, a second cousin who had drowned in this very well, Ayah, who had nursed her and her mother, who died when Yamini was about ten, Dada, her grandfather she had never met, but whose picture hung in the kitchen. For the first time in her life, Yamini felt a little flicker of fear. These were.. go on, say it…but it was impossible…not impossible if you can see them..these were…dead people.

The dead people around the well, turned to her and smiled, and Ayah, who was the one who had grabbed Yamini’s shadow, let it go. Yamini watched as it bounced towards her and then gasped as it bounced into her. Her legs separated, then fused, then separated again. Her stomach clenched and she thought she was going to vomit, and then her body shrunk massively and she was thrown to the ground. When she stood up a little dazed, she looked down and noticed she could see the grass and the stones and the moonlight shine through her body. She was flat, uni-dimensional. She was, in short, her shadow.

“Why are you here?” she squeaked, “Where is my family? What has happened to me?”

“Dear Yamini,” said Dada, his own shadow self flickering by the well, “Your family is well. They’re inside.”

“No, they’re not!” she screamed, “They’re not, they’re not, they’re not! What have you done with them?”

“Yamini, beta,” Ayah stepped towards her, “You’re a shadow person now.”

“But I don’t want to be a shadow person! Let me go!”

“Go then,” said Dev, smiling, “Go run inside and find your mummy-daddy and they’ll tell you this is all a dream. Go on!”

“Dev!” said Dada, sternly.

“What? If she wants to go, send her. I have other things to do then sit around and listen to her scream.”

“Dev, it’s not easy for anyone,” said Ayah.

“Well,” said Dev, still looking annoyed, “I’ve been a Shadow Person longer than you have, and frankly, I’m a little bored at having to go over the explanations over and over again.”

Yamini didn’t stop to hear anymore. She raced through her house, going, “Ma! Mumma! Please come out!” until she had been everywhere and they were nowhere and once more she was facing the three ghosts.

“Not ghosts,” said Dada, “Shadow people.”

Yamini went over to a bench and sat down. If ghost was the same as a shadow person, if they had called her a shadow person, it meant that.. “Am I a ghost?” she asked.

“Shadow person!” said Dev, looking crosser.

“Ayah?” said Yamini, her lower lip beginning to quiver.

“Darling girl,” said Ayah, her wonderful comforting face making Yamini feel much better, “We are all shadow people. Even your parents.”

Wild hope leaped up in Yamini. “Can I see them?” she asked.

Dev laughed and Dada made his form stretch till in reached the top floor. “Dev! One more word out of you, and I will have you banished from the grounds for fifty years.”

“Not like I want to stay anyway,” muttered Dev, but he shut up.

“There are two kinds of shadow people,” said Dada, “The ones who breathe and the ones who don’t. We can only see each other. The breathers can only see each other also. Once in a great while, a non breather and breather will be able to meet, but these instances are rare.”

“But I breathe,” said Yamini.

Ayah’s eyes were kind as they rested on her face. “Try,” she said.

Yamini realized she had been holding her breath this entire time, and oddly, she didn’t feel the funny bursting feeling she normally did. She exhaled and inhaled and then began to cough. She only regained herself once she took in a mouthful of air and held her breath. It felt, weirdly, natural.

“What does this mean?” she asked and then she knew.

“Am I dead?”

“Finally!” said Dev, “I thought you were going to take forever, and we aren’t allowed to tell you, you have to figure it out for yourself. Yes, you’re dead, you died on your way to catch a train back home. Run over by a bus.” He made a flattening motion with his hand. “Shmush. Dead. Like roadkill.”

Dada’s eyes flashed and Dev shrunk, suddenly half his size. “She had to know!” he squeaked.

Yamini thought back. Funnily, she couldn’t remember getting on the train, or even the journey. She had assumed she had slept the whole way, but she would have surely had some memory of it.

“There is no heaven,” Ayah began and the other two joined in, speaking low, like they were chanting:

There is no heaven, there is no hell.

 The world is what it is.

Breathers hear us, we hear  breathers, but we can never meet.

Shadows live, under breather’s feet, until the breather is no more.

Shadows wait, dancing in the light, to take you where they were.

Then shadow and breather combine, and we are one.

We are Shadow People.

The hair on Yamini’s arms stood straight up. The courtyard was flooded with light and shadows. The whispers came back. We are Shadow People, said the trees and the wind. We are Shadow People, murmured the other figures, suddenly everywhere. I am dead, thought Yamini and her body began to glow in the moonlight, I am dead and I am a shadow person.

(All rights reserved. Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan)

Late Night Fiction: Annotations

He made notes in his margins, circling words and adding his own comments, like a dialogue in his head. He wasn't a book collector, only a consumer, and when he was done, he sold his books at a by-the-kilo price to a kabaddi-wala, who carted them away along with newspapers and old wine bottles.