That didn’t stop us playing ‘Dead man in O’Leary’s swamp’with it, for part of the summer. There was very little to it. One of us would pretend to hit the other on the head with the poker, then the one who’d been hit had to lie down for ages, then someone else had to be Mr Bourke and come along and pretend to puke. Once, Claire did the puking bit so well, she really did throw up.
That was great.
When Mum found out about our game, she took the poker away and we had to use a wooden spoon instead which wasn’t half as authentic.
As it happened, the removal of the poker coincided with the Shaws getting a paddling pool and Hilda Shaw suddenly being inundated with invitations from wannabe new best friends.
Claire, Margaret and I all tendered bids. As usual, I wasn’t even shortlisted. Claire and Margaret got as far as the second interview, then received the manila envelope telling them they’d been among the successful applicants.
So while they swanned off in their pink togs that had three rows of little frills around the bum bit, I had to stay at home in the back garden, odd-man-out as always, and play Annoy-The-Mother.
(‘Mummy, why is the sky?’
‘Why is the sky what, Rachel?’
‘No, just why is the sky?’
‘You can’t just ask why is the sky, it doesn’t make sense.’
‘Why?’
‘It just doesn’t.’
‘Why?’
‘Stop saying why, Rachel, you’re annoying me.’
‘Why?’
‘Go and play with Claire and Margaret.’
‘Can’t, they’re in Hilda Shaw’s paddling pool.’
Pause.
‘Mummy, why is the grass?’
‘Why is the grass what, Rach…’)
Anyway, Margaret’s rearranged Easter egg looked fine on the wardrobe, so I thought. Reassured, I went to check on my mother. She was still out in the garden, talking to Mrs Nagle, on the other side. What do they talk about? I wondered. And how can they do it for so long? Grown-up people were funny. Especially the way they never wanted to break things. Or pinch people.
I loitered, hanging onto my mother’s skirt, leaning against her. I thought she’d never leave, so to speed things up and get some attention I complained ‘Mummy, I need to do a poo,’ even though I didn’t.
‘Oh, blast!’ she exclaimed to Mrs Nagle. ‘I can’t call my soul my own round here. Come on!’ But as soon as we got inside she busied herself with Anna. I still didn’t have her attention.
Who or what would I play with? And unbidden, the thought shimmered to me of the remaining half of Margaret’s Easter egg. Just up the stairs. A few minutes’ walk away. So near. It would be so easy to just…
No! I mustn’t, I reminded myself.
But why not? Another voice wheedled. Go on, she won’t mind.
So back I went to the scene of the crime. Over to the wardrobe, up on the chair and down with the Easter egg.
This time I ate it all and there was none left to put in the box as a façade. The terror and shame returned, but worse, far, far worse than the last time.
Too late, I realized I was done for.
Heart thumping with fear, I knew I couldn’t just leave the empty box sitting on the wardrobe. I looked around for places to dispose of the evidence while I wished I’d never been born. Under the bed? No way, most of our games took place under there. Behind the couch in the good room? No, when I’d hid Claire’s Sindy doll there after I cut all its hair off, they’d found it alarmingly quickly. I finally decided on the coal-hole because it was no longer used. (I was still too young to make the connection between warm weather and no fires.)
And then I agonized about what I’d say when Margaret noticed the absence of her prize piece of confectionery.
Naturally, I had no intention of owning up. On the contrary. If I could have blamed anyone else I would have. But that didn’t usually work either. When I’d tried to frame Jennifer Nagle for pulling the head off Margaret’s crolly doll, it had all gone horribly wrong.
I’d suggest it had been stolen by a man, I decided. A scary man in a black cape who went round stealing Easter Eggs.
‘What are you doing out there?’ Mum’s voice made me jump and the pitter-pattering of my heart went into overdrive. ‘Come on, Anna’s in her go-car, if you don’t get in here right now we’ll be late collecting them from school.’
I prayed – although not with any great faith – that when we got to the school, Margaret might have broken her leg or died or something handy like that.
No chance.
So on the way back I prayed that I might break my leg or die. I often prayed to break my leg, actually. You got loads of sweets and everyone had to be nice to you.
But I reached home, alive, with full bodily integrity, and almost gibbering with terror.
There was a brief moment when I thought I was saved – my mother couldn’t open the back door. She jiggled and fiddled the key and still nothing happened. She pulled the handle towards her and tried again, but the door remained closed.
And a trickle of ominous fear began in me.
The grim muttering that Mum had been doing under her breath grew louder and less muttery and more shouty.
‘What’s wrong, Mummy?’ I asked, anxiously.
‘The lock seems to be fecking well broken,’ she said.
Then I was really afraid! My mother never said ‘fecking’. She gave out to Daddy when he did and told him to say ‘flipping’ instead. Things must be bad.
With a deep, abiding certainty, I knew that this was all my fault. It had something to do with me eating Margaret’s Easter egg. I’d done a bad sin, it might even be a mortal one, although I wasn’t really sure what that was, and now I was being punished. Me and my family.
I waited for the sky to darken the way it did in the pictures of Good Friday I’d seen, after Baby Jesus died.
‘Isn’t this desperate, Rachel?’ Claire asked slyly. ‘We’ll never see the inside of our lovely house again.’
At that I burst into noisy, terrified, guilty tears.
‘Stop it,’ Mum hissed at Claire. ‘She’s bad enough as it is.’
‘We’ll get a man to fix the lock,’ Mum told me impatiently. ‘Stay here, mind Anna, while I run over to Mrs Evans to ring someone.’
As soon as she was gone, Margaret and Claire regaled me with horror stories of girls in their class in school who’d had the lock on their house broken and never got back into their homes.