The Secret Passage - Chapter Three
The Secret Passage
by Nina Bawden

The house next door belonged to a man called Mr Reynolds. He was an art collector, Aunt Mabel told John, and the house was full of paintings and other tresures he had brought from all over the world.

"He's got a big house in London as well," Aunt Mabel said, "and a castle somewhere in France. It's my belief that he bought my house chiefly to have somewhere else to hang all his pictures - though what pleasure he gets out of them, I can't think. He hasn't been down here for at least two years."

It seemed queer to John that someone should buy a lot of pictures and hang them up in a house he never visited. It made the house next door seem more mysterious than ever. John wished he could get inside it to find out what it was like but he didn't say so to Mary. He was afraid she would laugh at him, as she had laughed when he told her he had seen the face at the window. He had only seen it for a moment, a dim, pale blur at one of the top floor windows, and after a little while he began to think he must have imagined it. No one could possibly get inside the house; it seemed so very empty and shut up and the garden walls were so high. John thought it was sad that a house should be so silent and unwanted and wondered if it would feel different from other houses that were used and lived in.

It was partly because he was an imaginative boy that he thought so much about the house, and partly because he had very little else to do. Mary was busy helping Aunt Mabel - she made the beds and went shopping and washed up the dishes - and Ben spent as much time as he could with Miss Pin. Neither Mary nor John knew what they talked about, shut up in that dark, stuffy room, but they could hear their voices droning on and on behind the clsoed door, like bees on a summer day.

"What do you talk about all the time?" John asked Ben.

"Oh - just things," Ben said mysteriously. "About olden times when she was a girl. It's like a story. She tells lovely stories."

Aunt Mabel seemed to be glad tha Ben like Miss Pin. She let him carry in her trays at meal-times and fill up her kettles and answer the little brass cow bell that she rang whenever she wanted anything. "It saves my legs," Aunt Mabel said.

One Saturday morning, when the children had been in Henstable for two months, Aunt Mabel was busier than ever. A man had telephoned from London the night before to ask for a room for the weekend; he had said that if he like The Haven, he might stay longer. Aunt Mabel said it was a stroke of luck to get someone at this time of the year; she asked Mary to help her clean out one of the guest rooms and make the bed and she sent John to buy a chicken from the fishmonger.

The visitor arrived just before lunchtime. Peeping over the banisters, the children saw a small, pale man with a high, bald forehead and two pointed, yellow teeth that stuck out in front of his mouth. He didn't come upstairs to see the room that Mary had helped Aunt Mabel get ready for him, but went straight into the dining room, leaving his suitcase standing in the hall. Aunt Mabel showed him to a table, then came out again and whispered up to the children, "You'll have to wait for your lunch."

The children waited, crouching together on the stairs. They saw Aunt Mabel come up from the basement carrying the visitor's lunch on a tray. There was a chicken, brown and still spitting from the oven and separate little dishes of peas, carrots and potatoes, all glistening with butter. Ben's mouth watered. "Do you think he'll eat it all? Every bit??" he said wistfully.

Aunt Mabel came out of dining room with an empty tray and disappeared down to the kitchen. When she reappeared, ten minutes later, she was carrying the pudding - crusty apple pie with a jug of wrinkled, yellow cream. She smiled cheerfully at the children before she went into the dining room but when she came out again she didn't look cheerful at all. Her face was stiff and anxious. On the tray was the lovely, crisp chicken. It was barely touched.

Ben whispered, "Golly - did you see? There'll be lots left for us!" He smacked his lips with a juicy noise and rubbed his stomach.

"Don't be silly," Mary said sharply. "If he hasn't eaten the chicken - it means he doesn't like it. And if he doesn't like the food, he won't stay."

John said, "Perhaps he doesn't like first courses. Perhaps he only likes pudding. And it's a lovely apple pie."

They watched anxiously while Aunt Mabel took in the coffee and brought outthe remains of the pudding.He had hardly eaten anything - just the smallest hole had been made in the side of the sugar-dusted crust. Aunt Mabel didn't look up at the children. She stumped straight down to the kitchen.

"Perhaps he wasn't hungry. Or perhaps he's a vegetarian," John suggested hopefully.

"Vegetarians eat apple pie," Mary said.

They were silent for a minute. Then Ben said, "He'll have to pay for it anyway, won't he?"

"I don't know." There was a little frown on Mary's forehead. She was thinking of how hard Aunt Mabel had worked to make the house look nice and cook a good lunch. And of how much the chicken and the cream had cost. Everything cose a lot - even gas, for cooking. The Gas Bill had arrived at breakfast time and Aunt Mabel had sighed when she saw it.

Then the visitor came out into the hall. He was wiping his mouth with his handkerchief and looking round him in a lost sort of way.

John whispered, "Perhaps he wants to go to the bathroom."

Mary stood up. She wasn't quite sure what she was going to say but she knew she was going to say something and it made her feel shaky and queer. She went a little way down the stairs and said in a loud voice, "Do you want anything?" The man looked up, startled, and she went on quickly, "I'm afraid you didn't eat much of your nice lunch. I hope it was because you just weren't hungry, not because you didn't like it."

The man didn't answer. He simply stared at Mary with his pale eyes. Although he had eaten so little, he hadn't been very tidy about it: there were food stains on his waistcoat and on his tie. Mary felt dreadfully nervous but she took a deep breath and went on, "We hope you'll like our boarding house and stay here for a long time because Aunt Mabel needs lots of money to pay the Gas Bill and things like that."

"Good heavens," the visitor said. "Good heavens." He looked quite atonished and rather angry. He glared at Aunt Mabel who had come into the hall while Mary had been talking. She gave him a stiff, apologetic smile, marched to the foot of the stairs and said in an icy voice, "Mary - all of you - go down to the kitchen this minute."

They went, in silence. Aunt Mabel followed them. When she had closed the kitchen door she said, "Mary, you are a naughty, impertinent girl. Please remember in future that you are not to speak to my guests or bother them in any way. This gentleman is an important man in the City - he has come down here to have a rest, not to be badgered by rude children." She was very white and shaking.

Ben said, "He doesn't look like an important man. He looks just like a rabbit." And he giggled suddenly, his hand across his mouth.

"He looks like your bread and butter," Aunt Mabel said. "Don't you forget it." And she went out and shut the door.

No one spoke for a minute. Mary was staring hard at the floor, the blood burning in her cheeks.

Then Ben said, "What did she mean? Why does he looke like our bread and butter?"

John looked at Mary and said slowly, "I think she means what she said in the train - that she gets all her money from visitors who come and stay here. And unless people come and stay and pay her for it, she can't buy food for us."

Ben shrugged his shoulders. "I don't like bread and butter," he said. "I like bread and butter and jam."

In the afternoon, Aunt Mabel sent them down to the sea and told them to stay out of the visitor's way until tea time.

It was very cold. Although it was March, none of the daffodils in the gardens had opened and even the buds looked pinched and cold as if the sharp winds had frozen them. As for the sea - the children thought they had never seen anything so grey and wild, not at all like the sea at Mombasa in Kenya where you could swim all day and see marvellous fish and rocks if you dived under the clear, blue water.

Since they came to England, they had spent a great deal of time by this chilly sea because Aunt Mabel had decided they were not to go to school until the Summer Term. They had all caught coughs and colds and when she took them to the doctor, he said, "No school for a bit. They're perfectly healthy, but they've live in Africa for so long that they haven't any resistance to English germs. Let them run about and get used to the climate."

They had to run about most of the time, to keep warm. It was so cold that Mary and John and chilblains on theur fingers and toes that itched and burned whenever tey were indoors by the fire. Aunt Mabel put ointment on the chilblains and gave them cough mixture for their chests. She was kind to them in that sort of way - a brisk, rather impersonal way like a nurse or a schoolteacher. But she never once kissed them good night or asked if they were happy. Mary sometimes thought that if she hadn't got John and Ben, she might have felt very sad and lonely indeed.

"She's not cross, exactly," she said to John, "I think it's just that she doesn't like us much."

They were sitting on the beach in the shelter of a slimy green breakwater, throwing stones into an old tin can that John had stuck up on a pole. Ben was looking for cockles in a patch of shiny mud left by the outgoing tide. He was crouching on his haunches, watching for the tell-tale wriggle in the mud and then burrowing with his fingers to find the tiny, pink-shelled creatures that Uncle Abe liked to eat for tea.

"She's not used to liking people," John said. "I mean - she's never had a family to practise on, has she? And I think she's worried because it costs so much to feed us and mend our shoes and that sort of thing."

"Why doesn't Dad send her some money, then?"

John frowned. "Perhaps he hasn't got any. After all, the house was swept away and everything. Or perhaps he hasn't thought about it. You know how vague he is - Mother always paid the bills, didn't she?" He went rather pink, suddenly, and threw a stone very hard at the tin.

"Well, what about Uncle Abe and Miss Pin? I mean - if the rabbity man looked like our bread-and-butter why don't that?"

"I don't think they pay anything," John said surprisingly. "You remember Uncle Abe said she was an angel? Well, it couldn't be because she's so sweet and kind, could it? So I think he said it because she lets him stay free."

"Did he tell you that?" Mary said.

"No. I guessed because he never sells any of his statues and all his clothes are so awful. But he did tell me about Miss Pin. He was showing me how to model a head in his workshop yesterday and he said, where was Ben, and I said he was helping Aunt Mabel clean Miss Pin's room - you know she lets him dust her little animals and things - and Uncle Abe said it was a blessing Ben got on so well with the old lady because it took some of the weight off Aunt Mabel's shoulders. I asked him if Miss Pin had always lived here and he said yes, she's been a lodger at The Haven for as long as anyone could remember. Long before Aunt Mabel bought it. Uncle Abe said Miss Pin had a niece who used to pay her bills, but when Aunt Mabel took over the boarding house, the niece came down to see her and said she couldn't afford to pay any longer and Miss Pin would have to go into a Home. But Aunt Mabel wouldn't hear of it; she said as long as she had her health and strength the poor old soul could stay with her, and welcome."

"I think that was very nice of Aunt Mabel," Mary said slowly.

"Uncle Abe said she has a heart of gold. But as soon as he'd said it, he gave one of his funny laughs and said he must admit it didn't show. Then he stopped laughing and said I'd learn when I got older that people weren't always what they seemed to be. He said Aunt Mabel was really a very loving sort of person but she hadn't had anyone to love for so long that she'd got out of the habit."

Mary said, "I suppose she must have been awfully sad when her husband was drowned. I remember Dad said he was quite young and they hadn't been married long." Mary felt tears prickling behind her eyes. She turned her head away so that John should't see and said, "There's one thing I don't understand, though. Ben says Miss Pin is rich."

"She's batty," John said scornfully.

Ben heard him say that. He had just come up with his pail full of cockles. "She's not," he said angrily. "She's nice. And she knows a lot of things you don't know. She's told me some of them. She knows something you don't know about the house."

"What?"

"Shan't tell you." Ben glared at John. He had got thinner since they had come to Henstable and his eyes looked bigger and darker than they used to look. He stamped his foot and said, "She wouldn't tell you either. You're too mean and horrible."

"You tell me, then," John said. He got up and advanced on Ben who jumped over the breakwater and stuck out his tongue. John scrambled after him and grabbed hold of his arm. "Come on," he said, giving Ben a little shake, "tell me."

"I won't. It's a secret," Ben said. He shook himself free and faced his brother, his dark eyes blazing.

"Stop it, both of you," Mary said. She felt suddenly that she couldn't bear it if they quarrelled. She said coaxingly, "Let's go home - we've got to cook the cockles and it must be mearly time for tea."

But tea wasn't ready. As they walked towards The Haven, they saw that a taxi had stopped outside and that the rabbity man was getting into it. Aunt Mabel was standing on the step, watching him go.

"Is he leaving?" Mary asked as they came up to her.

Aunt Mabel didn't seem to hear, she just turned on her heel and went indoors. It wasn't until they were all downstairs in the kitchen that she said, "Yes, he's gone. Mary, lay the table, will you?"

She put the kettle on and lit the grill to make toast for tea. Her expression was so stiff and forbidding that none of the children dared say anything. When tea was ready, they sat down at the table with downcast eyes. None of them felt in the least hungry.

After about five minutes, Mary said nervously, "Aunt Mabel - did the man go away because of what I said?"

Aunt Mabel glanced at her briefly - "No - no, of course not. He left because his bedroom was too cold." She gave a short laugh. "As if a grown man would bother about what a little girl said!"

Mary felt a little better, but not much. It was kind of Aunt Mabel to say it wasn't her fault, but she had spoken in such a cold, angry way that she still felt very miserable. She sat, staring at her plate and so did John and Ben.

Looking at their faces, Aunt Mabel thought they were sulking. It didn't occur to her that they were unhappy because they thought she was dreadfully cross with them. She didn't even know she had sounded cross. She had had such a lonely, worrying life - it was even more worrying now she had three children to look after - that she had grown rather prickly and sharp-voiced without realising it. She was a stiff, rather shy sort of person and although she would have liked to be kinder and more loving to the children, she did not really know how to begin. As a result, her brisk, unaffectionate ways froze up even Mary's kind heart and, as she sat, eating her toast, she began to think that it was all very well for Uncle Abe to say Aunt Mabel was nice and loving underneath. But it didn't make her any easier to live with.

After tea, Aunt Mabel went down to the shops to get fresh fish for Miss Pin's supper. The only kind of fish Miss Pin liked was plaice, boned and steamed in butter. As soon as she was gone, Ben said in an excited voice, "I've got an idea." He was very pink and his eyes shone. "It's an idea how to make money."

Mary and John looked at each other. They remembered that it had been Ben who had asked Aunt Mabel if she was really poor, when they were in the train coming to Henstable. He had never mentioned it since, but that was like Ben. If he had a problem he didn't talk about it, but turned it over and over in his mind until he had an answer to it. He said now, "We can collect cockles. I saw some men on the beach collecting cockles and they said they sold them to the fish shop. We could do that, then Aunt Mabel would have enough money to buy lots of bread and butter."

John said, "But you can't collect enough cockles in a pail. Not enough to sell."

"We want a sack, like the men had. There are lots of sacks in the cellar."

Ben ran to the door at the far end of the kitchen, opened it, and disappeared. Mary and John followed. They had never been in the cellar and they peered cautiously down the flight of wooden stairs that led down into darkness. Ben's voice floated up to them. "Put the light on. The switch is just inside the door."

John switched on the light and went down the stairs. The cellar was a low, rambling, pleasant place that smelt of dry wood and dust. There was a pile of coke for the Beast in one corner, a stack of wood in another and a bench against one wall with a saw and some nails on it. Under the bench, John found a pile of sacks; he and Mary began shaking them out and choosing the two best ones.

Meanwhile, Ben roamed round the cellar. Set in the brick wall at one end, were two arched little doors - very low, as if they had been made for dwarfs or children. Ben opened one of the doors and found a cubby hole with an earth floor and a wooden ceiling; a tiny room that would have made a splendid hide-away if it had not been full of packing cases and empty lemonade bottles. He wondered if there was another room behind the door but when he tried to open it, it seemed to be locked or stuck.

He called out to John and Mary, "Come and help. I think it's locked."

"There are some keys here," Mary said. There was a big bunch of keys hanging on a nail above the bench. She took them down and went over to the little door. John tried several keys before he found a small one that exactly fitted the lock. It was rusty and stiff; it took two hands and all his strength to turn the key, but it did turn and the door swung creakily open.

There was a small room behind this door, just as there was behind the other one. At first, the only difference seemed to be that this room was empty and when the children peered in, the air inside felt colder than the air in the cellar. Then they saw that high up in the wall at the back was a small, square, dark hole. A chill little wind blew out of it and a queer smell - a mixture of earth and mice and shut-upness.

"What is it?" Mary whispered.

No one answered for a minute. Then BEn said in a low, awestruck voice, "It's the Secret Passage." There was a bright, mysterious look in his eyes. He said, very fast, "I couldn't tell you because Miss Pin asked me not to. But now you've found it for yourselves, it's all right, isn't it?"

He looked anxiously at Mary who took his hard little hand and said, "Of course it's all right. But a passage must go somewhere. Does Miss Pin know where it goes?"

Ben shook his head. "She just said it was a place to hide. But we could go and see couldn't we?"

Mary said, "I've got a torch. It was hanging up with the keys." She looked at John. "You go first..."

John drew a deep breath. It was stupid to be scared, he told himself. He was eleven, nearly twelve - nearly grownup.

Ben said eagerly, "I'll go. I'd like to go." The menacing dark hole didn't worry him at all. What could be there, after all, except a mouse or two?

John said quickly, "No. It may be dangerous. I'm the eldest. I'll go."

As he pulled himself up to the hole, the torch in his hand, he grinned to himself in spite of feeling so sick and clammy. If he wasn't so frightened he would be quite ready to let Ben go ahead - it would be more sensible, really. Ben was smaller and less likely to get stuck.

The hole led to a tunnel which was just high enough for John to crawl through, knees scraping on rubble. It was very short; after about two yards it opened into a much bigger place, high enough for John to kneel up. He swept the torch round and saw brick walls and rafters above his head.

"We're under the house," Mary said, wriggling beside him. "Oh blow - I've torn my dress. It must be the foundations of the house."

"What a swizz," John said in a cheerful, grumbling tone, secretly rather relieved that this was all there was - just this dry, clean place with the floors of the house above.

But it wasn't all. "Look," Ben squeaked. "Give me the torch..."

At one side there was another hole, just above the level of the ground. This time there was no doubt about who was to go first. Ben snatched the torch from John and crawled in. His muffled voice came back to them. "Come on - it goes on an awfully long way."

This tunnel was very low and it was more difficult for Mary and John to get through it than for Ben. They had to squirm along on their stomachs, using their elbows and knees, and it was rather alarming because Ben was so far ahead that they couldn't see the light from the torch. Mary was so closed behind John that his feet kicked dust and earth back into her face. At one place the tunnel seemed to be almost blocked by a mess of brick and rubble as if someone had tried to wall it up at some time. John called, "Ben..." and Ben's voice sounded hollow and strange. "Come on... come on, it's not far now."

Quite suddenly, the tunnel ended. It just stopped, high up in a wall. Ben was shining the torch and John and Mary crawled out, head first, and pitched on to a pile of wood shavings. "Just as well that was there," John said, sitting up. "Or we'd banged our heads horribly hard. Give me the torch, Ben."

They were in quite a big room, very dry, with a brick floor. It opened into another room with a series of cubby holes along one side, stacked with wine bottles lying on their sides. At the far end was a flight of wooden steps and a closed door at the top. John shone the torch up the steps. He caught his breath.

"Mary," he shouted, "Mary - do you know where we are? We're in the cellar of the house next door. We're in the House of Secrets."

He ran up the stairs and tugged at the handle of the door, quite forgetting to be frightened in the excitement of being in the very place he had so longed to see. But the cellar door was locked.