Granny Page 10

  Somebody touched him lightly on the shoulder. Mr. Warden screamed and jumped three feet into the air. The cigar slipped and disappeared into his left ear. Then he saw who it was. It was his secretary. She was looking at him in dismay.

  “Lock the doors,” Mr. Warden whimpered. “Lock the filing cabinets. Lock everything! I want to be alone…”

  I’ll come back…

  Mrs. Warden was at the Brent Cross shopping center. There wasn’t anything she particularly needed, but she often found that buying things cheered her up. Once, when she was particularly depressed, she had bought three lampshades, a deck chair, an umbrella, and two pairs of gloves without actually wanting any of them. She was in that sort of mood. She was thinking of buying a Swiss Army knife. It might come in useful if she ever decided to join the Swiss Army.

  She was standing on the escalator, traveling up past the central fountain, when she saw the figure standing at the top, waiting for her. She blinked. The yellow cheeks, the crooked smile, the gleaming eyes . . . it couldn’t be! Mrs. Warden stared. The escalator carried her ever nearer. It was!

  “No!” she screamed. “Go away, Mummy!” Turning around, Mrs. Warden clambered down the up escalator, pushing the other shoppers out of the way. People were shouting at her, trying to stop her, but she ignored them. She just had to get back down. She could feel the metal beneath her feet carrying her the other way. It was like her worst nightmare come true. “No!” she wailed again, shouldering her way past a pair of newlyweds and scattering bags and packages everywhere. Then somehow her foot got tangled in the escalator, she dived forward, turned a somersault, and landed spread-eagled on the marble floor.

  “Is she all right?”

  “I think she’s had a fit.”

  “She went nuts!”

  Security men were running toward her from every direction. With a soft moan, Mrs. Warden looked back up the escalator. And there it was. What had frightened her wasn’t Granny at all. It was a full-size cardboard cutout of a dinosaur. It stood outside a video store with a sign reading FANTASIA—BUY IT HERE. How could she possibly have made that mistake? Was she losing her mind?

  The first security guard had reached her. Everyone was looking at her. Mrs. Warden slowly began to laugh.

  I’ll come back…

  Joe saw Granny everywhere. During the course of the day, she had popped out of the fridge, out of the toaster, out of the trash can, and out of the fireplace. She had risen, dripping water, out of the pond and clawed her way up through the lawn. The clouds had twisted themselves into Granny’s shape. The birds in the trees had winked at him with her eyes. Twice, Irma had become Granny and even Wolfgang had momentarily borrowed her shadow.

  It was all imagination, of course. The real horror was still to come.

  That afternoon at four o’clock, Mr. and Mrs. Warden sat in the living room with Joe and the tea that Irma had prepared. The Hungarian cook had decided that it was such an important occasion that she had gone quite crazy. There were huge piles of sandwiches, homemade scones, sausage rolls, tea cakes, crumpets, cakes, cookies, and even some Jell-O. But no one was eating. Mrs. Warden was a nervous wreck. Her hair was all over the place…and not only on her head. Mr. Warden had bitten all his nails and was now starting on his wife’s. Even Joe was trembling.

  “I have called this meeting,” Mr. Warden began, “because I have something important to say.”

  “Yes, that’s right,” Mrs. Warden agreed.

  Then the telephone rang.

  Mrs. Warden sighed. “I’ll get it,” she said.

  She stood up and walked across the room. The telephone was standing on a little antique table. She picked up the receiver. “Hello? Maud N. Warden…” she said.

  There was a moment’s silence.

  Then Mrs. Warden let out a great scream and dropped the receiver as if it were a scorpion she had accidentally grasped. Everyone stared at her. Joe had never seen his mother like this. Her hair, already in disarray, was actually standing up on end, like in a cartoon. Her eyes were bulging. All the color had drained out of her lips—including even the color of her lipstick.

  “It’s her!” she screamed—but the sound came out as a hoarse, strangled whisper.

  “That’s nonsense!” Mr. Warden muttered. “I mean. Really, Maud. It’s not possible.”

  But Mrs. Warden could only point at the telephone with a wobbling finger. “It’s her!” she groaned again.

  “What did she say?” Mr. Warden burbled.

  “She said . . . she was coming back!”

  “It’s not possible.” Mr. Warden strode forward and snatched up the receiver. “Who is this?” he demanded.

  Another pause. Joe waited silently. He hadn’t breathed since the telephone rang.

  Mr. Warden’s mouth fell open. Now he was holding the receiver away from him, as if it could suck him in. “No!” he shouted at it. “Go away! We don’t want you!” And with that, he hung up—so hard that he actually broke the telephone into several pieces.

  “It was her!” Mrs. Warden whispered.

  “It was her,” Mr. Warden agreed. “I’d know that voice anywhere.”

  “What did she say?” Joe asked.

  “She said she was much better now and she’d be here in half an hour.”

  “Much better?” Joe shuddered. “How can you be much better when you’re dead?” Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew that the whole thing was ridiculous. Ghosts didn’t announce their arrival by telephone. But seeing his parents as terrified as they were, he decided to go along with them. It was better than being left alone.

  “Half an hour…” Mrs. Warden whispered. And that was when the full horror of it hit her. “Half an hour!” she screamed.

  “Pack!” Mr. Warden yelled.

  Exactly twenty-nine minutes later, the front door of Thattlebee Hall burst open and the Wardens tumbled out grasping two hastily packed suitcases. Mrs. Warden had thrown on her favorite fur coat. Mr. Warden was clutching his wallet, the family passports, and his eighteen favorite credit cards. His car—a green Mercedes —was waiting for them at the front.

  “In!” Mr. Warden yelled, wrenching open the door and catching his wife with it on the head.

  “Aaagh!” Mrs. Warden cried.

  “And me!” Joe shouted, piling into the back. He was actually enjoying all this.

  “Quickly!” Mr. Warden stabbed forward with the ignition key, missed, and tried again. This time it went in. He twisted and the Mercedes coughed into life.

  At the same time, a taxi appeared, rumbling up the drive.

  “There!”

  “No!”

  “Aaagh!”

  “Mummy!”

  “Help!”

  Granny—the ghost of Granny—was in the backseat. There could be no mistaking her, sitting there, gazing out of the window—back from the dead! And this wasn’t a dream. The entire family was seeing her at the same time.

  Mr. Warden wrenched the gearshift and slammed his foot down on the accelerator. The car leaped forward.

  Granny, sitting in the back of the taxi, frowned and pursed her lips. She had been released, fully recovered, from the hospital just half an hour before. She had, of course, telephoned to say she was coming and had been quite unable to understand the hysterical reactions of her daughter and son-in-law. And where were they going now? One moment the Mercedes was tearing down the drive, heading straight for the taxi. Then it had swerved to one side, plowed across the lawn, and then burst through a hedge onto the main road.

  The taxi stopped and she got out.

  “That’ll be eighteen dollars, love,” the taxi driver said.

  With a snarl Granny slammed the car door behind her, breaking both the window and the taxi driver’s nose. She strode across the lawn, her hands on her hips, and gazed at the hole in the hedge. They had gone. Left her. How could they?

  Granny fell to her knees, lifted her hands to the sky, and howled.

  The storm broke a few minutes later.


  Epilogue

  ANTHONY LAGOON

  Anthony Lagoon was a cattle station in the middle of the Northern Territory of Australia. It consisted of a long, low wooden house with glass windows and a verandah that was the manager’s house and four shacks for the workers. There was a water tower, a flaking metal cattle run, and an airstrip. The nearest town, Mount Isa, was a two-hour flight away. Nobody knew who Anthony was. But then the outback is full of people who prefer not to be remembered.

  Mr. Warden had bought Anthony Lagoon as soon as he had landed in Perth. He had seen it advertised for sale in the Perth Exchange and had made an instant decision.

  “We’ll be safe there,” he said. “No roads. No telephones. No letters. She’ll never find us.”

  And six days later, after driving all the way across Australia to Townsville, around the one-way system, and then west again, they arrived.

  There were four jackeroos working on Anthony Lagoon—all of them men on the run. Rolf had poisoned his wife. Barry and Bruce were wanted for armed robbery. And Les had been hiding for so long that he’d forgotten what it was he’d actually done, although, as he frequently told the others, it must have been something brutal. These were tough, brutal men. Rolf had only one leg. He’d lost the other in a car accident and hadn’t even noticed for a month. Bruce chewed live bullets and Barry scoured saucepans with his beard. Les could rip a cow in half with his bare hands. They were four of the ugliest, most violent men you could hope to meet. They only had one string mesh undershirt between them and played poker to decide who would wear it.

  You’d think Rolf, Barry, Bruce, and Les would have made mincemeat out of the new owners of Anthony Lagoon, but the surprising fact is that they quickly warmed to them. But then the Wardens had changed beyond all recognition.

  Mr. Warden had taken off his business suit and put on a pair of jeans, a brightly colored shirt, and a ten-gallon hat that came down to his nose. After only a week he had acquired an Australian accent. Having been stuck in an office all his life, he now found he loved the fresh air. Although there were over one hundred thousand head of cattle on the station, he had decided to get to know each and every one of them by name.

  After all her riding lessons, Mrs. Warden quickly impressed the jackeroos with her excellent horseback riding. They decided they liked her as soon as she had galloped twice around the paddock blindfold and backward. Then she set to work rebuilding the compound, repairing the fences, planting a garden, putting pretty lace curtains into Bruce and Barry’s bedrooms, and generally making the place more like home.

  Mrs. Warden also taught Joe how to ride (she never called him Jordan now). Following her example, the four jackeroos decided to lend a hand with Joe’s education and soon Joe knew everything there was to know about managing cattle and, for that matter, robbing banks.

  Joe loved his life on the cattle station. He had so often dreamed of running away—to a circus, to the Foreign Legion, to wherever—that it took him a long time to realize that this was what he had actually done . . . even if his parents had really surprised him by coming along. But now every day was an adventure as he galloped across the paddocks under the hot Australian sun, dodging down to avoid the tree spiders and surging, waist-deep, through the lagoons.

  It was hard work. The day started at five when Joe rode alone to get the horses in. Joe had never seen the dawn before and he marveled at the thousand shades of red that shimmered over the horizon as the sun climbed up into the sky. He loved the smell of the air and the great silence of the plains and rapidly forgot Latin, Greek, algebra, geography, and just about everything else he had been learning at school. Joe worked all day until sunset. There was no television on the station, but he didn’t miss it. He actually went to bed tired, not because he had to. And every ache, every pain, every cut, and every blister was precious to him because it was part of the adventure.

  Naturally, Joe lost weight. He grew tall and muscular with broad, suntanned shoulders. Once a month, Rolf, Barry, Bruce, and Les took him with them to Mount Isa and he would stay up late into the night, drinking and gambling. That was the best thing. He was an equal. Nobody treated him like a child anymore.

  News has a strange way of traveling in Australia, crossing huge distances without the help of a stamp or a telephone line. And the happiness of the Wardens was completed one day by the arrival of someone who had heard they were there and had decided to join them. As soon as he saw who it was, Joe understood everything: the strange figure he had seen at Paddington Station, the last-minute rescue at the hotel, and the anonymous postcard.

  The new arrival was Mrs. Jinks.

  “I thought I was doomed when the police dogs came after me,” she explained, “and indeed I was bitten quite badly. But I was very lucky. Just as I burst through the bushes, a large rabbit appeared. The dogs decided they preferred the taste of rabbit to me and attacked that instead. I managed to climb a tree and waited there until everyone had gone.”

  “But you kept your eye on me after that, didn’t you, Mrs. Jinks,” Joe said.

  “Well, yes. I couldn’t reveal myself, unfortunately—I was still wanted for robbery, after all. But I was frightened to leave you on your own, and when your granny came to look after you, I knew something was going on. I followed you to Bideford in disguise and I was there at the Stilton International when they tied you to that horrible device.”

  “And it was you in the dark.” Joe shivered. “It was lucky the lights went out.”

  “That wasn’t luck at all. That was me. I turned the power off at the main fuse box and then crept onto the stage to untie you.”

  “I got your card,” Joe said.

  “Yes. I thought it was time your parents knew the truth. Of course I couldn’t tell them myself. So I hoped a little nudge would do the trick.”

  Mr. and Mrs. Warden were delighted to see Mrs. Jinks. They knew now that they had been deceived and couldn’t apologize enough. They immediately invited her to stay with them at the cattle station and Joe was delighted when she agreed.

  And so time passed at Anthony Lagoon, which was a very pretty place now, with a duck pond, a village green, two English sheepdogs, a willow tree, and a beautiful croquet lawn. Often, when the day’s work was done, Mrs. Jinks would stroll out with Joe and they would talk about what had happened.

  “Do you think she’ll ever find us?” Joe asked one evening.

  “Who, dearest?”

  “Granny. The ghost of Granny.”

  Mrs. Jinks looked past the verandah, where Mr. Warden was pushing Mrs. Warden on a swing, and beyond over the outback to the deep red glow where the setting sun marked the end of the world. “No,” she said. “I don’t think so.”

  “I hated her.” Joe shuddered. “Old people are horrible.”

  “No,” Mrs. Jinks corrected him. “There’s nothing wrong with being old. Don’t forget—you’ll be old one day. Nobody can avoid it.”

  “Well, I won’t be like Granny,” Joe said.

  “Of course you won’t,” Mrs. Jinks agreed. “If you’re kind and cheerful when you’re young, you’ll be kind and cheerful when you’re old… only more so. Old age is like a magnifying glass. It takes the best and the worst of you and magnifies them. Granny was selfish and cruel all her life. But you can’t blame her for being old.”

  “She could still find us here.” Joe’s eyes—older and more knowing—scanned the horizon. He shivered in the cool evening breeze.

  “It doesn’t matter anymore,” Mrs. Jinks replied. “Even if she did find you . . . you’re ready for her now.”

  In fact, Granny died two years later—this time for real. After the Wardens had left, she had found there was nobody to look after her and had rapidly gone into a decline. This was her tragedy. All the spitefulness of her life had caught up with her and suddenly she was alone.

  Her hair had never grown again after the accident, and although she had been given new false teeth, they didn’t fit, with the result that she couldn’t talk o
r eat solids. She was moved to an old people’s home next to a cement factory and spent the next two years alone, sipping oatmeal through a straw. In an attempt to cheer her up, the matron of the home gave her a parrot. The parrot bit her. The wound became infected. And that was what finally finished her off.

  That was a year ago.

  But Granny is not forgotten. Deep in the heart of the Australian outback, the Aborigines gather around a huge campfire. Then the music of the didgeridoo throbs and wails through the darkness, and if the magic is working, a figure appears, wrapped in a thick coat against the desert chill. The Aborigines see her scowling in the light of the fire, her eyes glowing, her mouth opening and closing as she chews on her invisible feast. They call her “old-woman-walk-by-night.”

  It is Granny. Looking for Joe.

  But she hasn’t found him yet.