Amber’s Secret

1

‘Did you know,’ said Amber one day to her friend Sally, ‘that if you pick up the phone and ring Appleford 616 you can talk to God?’

Sally stared. Amber was a gypsy child, she knew secrets. She knew the place on Furze Hill where rabbits came to graze in the afternoon. She knew where the kingfisher lived at Tolly Reach. She could ride her pony bareback across the fields. If anyone knew about talking to God it would be Amber.

But there was something uncertain about her, something vanishing. She only came to school when the Fair was in town, at Christmas time, and in the summer. Sally would have liked Amber to be her very best friend but she was always going away.

They were sitting by the stream at the end of the allotments. It was by this stream that they had their most important talks. Sally stared at the water. Then she said, ‘Have you tried it?’ She needed to talk to someone like God very much, or to an angel, or to some helpful human being who might know what to do. Something terrible had happened at home.

‘Oh no,’ said Amber. ‘It’s only for emergencies.’

Sally was disappointed. She thought for a little while then she said, ‘You mean like 999? You mean like Police, Fire, Ambulance?’

‘Sort of. But it’s a lot more special.’

‘Will you write that number down for me?’ said Sally.

But Amber scrunched her lips again. She looked as if she was going to say ‘no’ and the trouble was that Sally forgot things. ‘Scatterbrain Sally’ was what her mother called her.

‘Please,’ she whispered. As she waited, the terrible thing at home became ten times more terrible.

‘What will you give me if I do?’ said Amber.

This was the one bit of Amber that Sally didn’t like, the bit that made bargains. She felt in her pockets while Amber watched very carefully, her glossy black head moving now this way, now that, like a bird.

On to the bank Sally put two sweets, a piece of blue string and a rubber shaped like a frog. Then she found a stub of pencil and laid it beside the rest. Amber inspected everything.

‘Is that all?’ she demanded.

‘That’s all. . . today,’ Sally said slowly, as if, on normal days, her pockets were stuffed with treasures.

Amber swept everything except the pencil into the brilliant patchwork bag she brought to school with her things in. Then she picked up the pencil stub and wrote down the number on Sally’s hand.

‘Ouch!’ squeaked Sally. Amber was pressing much too hard.

‘Pencil’s not much good on skin,’ said Amber. ‘I’ve got to press.’

When she had finished, Sally inspected her hand. ‘I can’t really see it,’ she told Amber nervously. ‘Could you write it on some paper?’

‘Haven’t got any paper,’ Amber said. She sounded grumpy now. She wrapped her long sunburnt arms round her knees and stared moodily into the slow brown water. Her little gold earrings glinted in the sun and her rainbow-coloured dress was like bright feathers. Sally, who had thick blonde plaits and short stubby legs, felt boring and plain next to Amber, plain as bread.

She said, ‘I’ll get some paper. Wait here.’ And she ran off up the path that went through the middle of the allotments. When she reached the place where they made bonfires she rummaged about among the rusty oil drums. Very soon she soon found a brown paper bag, the kind one of the old men might have brought, with his sandwiches in. A lot of quite old people came to grow things on the allotments, and stayed the whole day.

‘Will this do?’ asked Sally, holding it out to Amber.

Amber inspected the greasy bag, tore a piece off the corner and scribbled down the number. But she still seemed cross. It was as if giving Sally the important number was like telling somebody your name for the very first time, as if it gave that somebody a kind of power over you.

‘There you are, Sally Bell,’ she said, slapping the scrap of brown paper into Sally’s hand, and the next minute she was gone, running very fast along the path towards Tolly Reach where the kingfisher was and where, across the fields, in a lay-by on the main road, the gypsies had their caravans.

‘Sally Bell’. That didn’t feel very friendly. Sally called Amber ‘Amber’. If the gypsy girl had another name then nobody knew it; it was one of the magic things about her.

Sally walked home looking at the faint writing on the palm of her hand. From time to time she felt inside her pocket for the tiny scrap of brown paper. She must put it in a very safe place. It was a good thing she had that paper because she couldn’t memorise the number. In the place where other people had a memory, Sally had a ‘forgettery’, that’s what her mum said.

As she lay in bed that night she discovered that the bath water had washed the faint pencil marks quite off her hand. But hanging over a chair was her blue cotton frock with the deep pockets and in the left-hand pocket was Amber’s special number. The thought of it comforted her as she drifted off to sleep. It was like a warm hot water bottle held against her tummy. It promised help, help to sort out the terrible thing.

2

The terrible thing hadn’t happened in the house in which Sally had gone to bed. She was sleeping at ‘Next Door’s’, where Mrs Spinks lived. Mrs Spinks was looking after her because her mother was in hospital.

This was awful for Sally but it wasn’t the terrible thing. The doctor had told Mrs Spinks and Mrs Spinks had told her that Mum would get better soon. So Sally tried not to worry and it was all right until the day she went to the hospital and wasn’t allowed to see her mother because they had put her in a special room for very ill people.

After that, Sally worried very much indeed and she asked Mrs Spinks to write to her father straight away, or even to send him a telegram, to Abroad where he was working. But Mrs Spinks said no, not yet anyway. It was Abroad where Mum had caught the illness, when she last visited Dad.

Mrs Spinks said that she had her instructions from Mum. These were that Dad mustn’t be told about the illness because it would only worry him, and besides, she really was going to be all right. The doctor had said so. Sally tried and tried to believe Mrs Spinks but she didn’t succeed. Why had they put Mum into that special room if she was going to be ‘all right’? When she’d said this to Mrs Spinks, she’d just turned her thin old-lady lips into a single line. That meant ‘No more questions, Sally Bell’.

Her big brother, Alan, suddenly going away with the army, to do his National Service, wasn’t the terrible thing either, though if he hadn’t gone, they could have stayed together in their own house, till Mum came back. Alan was good at looking after Sally. But he’d said, ‘When a soldier gets his orders, Sally Bell, he has to obey. It’s like school.’ It was funny how Alan called her ‘Sally Bell’, like Amber and Mrs Spinks; but he didn’t do it in a grumpy way.

No, the terrible thing had happened the day before Sally had slept her first night Next Door at Mrs Spinks’s. It had happened when she was all alone in their own house. It had happened in the hall.

She’d borrowed the key from where Mrs Spinks kept it, under a red plant pot on her kitchen windowsill, and gone home to feed William her pet mouse. Mrs Spinks didn’t like mice, not even clean white ones who lived in clean cages. So William had to stay behind.

Sally had made him a promise. While she was at Mrs Spinks’s she would come and see him every day, and give him a run around. What nobody knew was that Sally often gave him quite big runs around, when no-one was looking. He knew Sally’s voice and he always came back to his cage. He was a brilliant mouse.

But that day, William seemed to be in a mood. He wouldn’t even come out when Sally opened his cage, he just sulked in a corner. When she put her finger inside and made wheedling noises he disappeared into a cocoon of straw. She knew what was wrong. William was sensitive. Sally was sad so he was being sad too.

She sat in the middle of the carpet and looked round the big square hall. Its walls were covered with the carved wooden masks of animal-people and bird-people which Dad had brought home from Abroad. The house itself felt sad, as if it knew they had all gone away and left it. Even the grandfather clock had stopped ticking.

Mum loved the old clock. It had belonged to her mum’s mum’s dad. Nobody touched it but Mum because she said she knew its little ways. ‘Look after Grandfather for me, Sally,’ Mum had said, when she went off to the hospital. But now even Grandfather had fallen silent. Something felt very bad indeed.

Sally decided to wind the clock up. She knew exactly how to do it and where Mum kept the key. She had a feeling that if Grandfather started ticking again, Mum might start getting better. Sally sometimes got these funny feelings but she didn’t tell anybody about them. She just did what they advised.

To Sally, the old clock felt more like a person than a piece of furniture, and she knew a lot about Grandfather because, once, a man had come to clean him. The week he came their class had been doing a school project on ‘Time’, so she’d asked him a lot of questions and written down all the answers. Her project had ended up being all about their very own grandfather clock and she had been given a gold star for it.

She had discovered, for example, that when the clock was made, in the olden days, it had been made in three different parts which all fitted nicely together. There was a bottom part, which stood firmly on the floor and held everything else up, and into this slid ‘the trunk’, which had a door in it. You could open the door and see the huge weights and the pendulum swinging to and fro. On top of the trunk was a carved case which held the painted face and the shining brass hands and, hidden behind all this, the actual works of the clock, the most important part. This wooden case also slid on and off and it was called the ‘hood’.

When Mum and Dad read Sally’s project, and admired the gold star, they said that she knew more about the old clock than anybody.

Sally fetched the key and the stool Mum stood on, when she wound Grandfather. But she was much shorter than her mother and she couldn’t reach the keyholes in the face of the clock. So she put the key into her pocket and went into the study where Dad kept all his books.

She found four enormous ones on the bottom shelf. They were so huge and heavy that she had to carry them into the hall one by one. With the books, she made a neat platform and on to this she put the stool. Then, very carefully, she climbed up. The stool wobbled a bit so Sally did everything slowly, to keep her balance.

She still couldn’t reach the holes so she went back to Dad’s bookshelves and fetched four more books. It was quite a tall platform now and the stool felt more wobbly. But Sally was determined to get Grandfather ticking again.

Very carefully, and holding on to the clock very tight with her left hand, Sally opened the glass door that protected the face. She had never been so close to Grandfather before. Now she could see that the little girls painted in each corner had pretty, rosy faces. From down below they had looked like little blobs.

One had a fur coat on, she was Winter. One was picking daffodils, she was Spring. One stood in the middle of a field of golden corn, and was Summer. One held a basket of apples, and was Autumn. In between Winter and Spring there was a moon with a big, kindly face, a moon that moved slowly out of sight as the days ticked by, and changed into the sun. Underneath were some numbers that also changed and, under them, the months of the year. And she could see now that the clock had stopped on the second day of July, the day that Mum had been taken into hospital. Sally stared at the face of the clock and felt like crying.

Just as she took the key out of her pocket, something unexpected happened. William must have crept out of his cocoon of straw and come to see what she was doing. Suddenly, without any warning, he ran straight up the clock, his tiny pink feet scurrying along her bare arm and up her fingers. When he reached the very top he sat on one of the carved wooden roses that decorated the case, staring down at her cheekily, his beautiful whiskers all of a quiver.

The feel of his cold little feet on her skin was such a shock that Sally jumped violently, started to sway, and then to wobble. She knew she mustn’t panic so she stayed exactly where she was until she got her balance again. She was cross with William, so she ignored him.

Carefully, Sally inserted the big old key in to the left-hand winding hole and began to turn it. The clock made gentle creaking noises and there was a dull thudding from inside. She knew that it was the sound of the huge weight banging against the door as it travelled up to the top on its thin, strong thread. When she stopped winding, the clock struck three times. Sally was excited. That meant the striking part of Grandfather was properly wound up again.

But now she had to wind up the part which moved the hands round, and told you the time, so she put the key into the right-hand winding hole.

From on top of the clock, William gave a pitiful little squeak. He wanted to come down again. He liked playing in Sally’s hair, he liked making nests in it. Sally looked up. ‘You’ll just have to wait,’ she said firmly. ‘I’m concentrating on this.’

But William took no notice. He had discovered that it was much easier to run up things than to slither down them and Sally’s nice thick hair spelt safety. To William it was like the safety blanket held out by firemen for someone stuck on the top of a burning building. He bunched himself up into a tight white ball and took an almighty leap.

‘What the— oh no— help. . .!’ The shock of William landing on her head sent Sally grabbing at the clock. She dropped the key and the stool tipped over and crashed on to the floor and she was left hanging on to the clock by her fingertips, clutching at the polished wooden columns that held up the beautifully carved face. She could hear both the weights bumping about very heavily and now Grandfather seemed to have come to life. He had started to move forwards with a terrifying, lurching motion.

There was a strange scraping noise, like a big, obstinate rusty nail being pulled out of something, and the clock was coming away from the wall – it was falling over! It had been screwed to the wall by Dad, but now—

Sally screamed, threw herself to one side, and landed in a heap on the far side of the hall as the clock toppled right over and hit the floor with the most enormous crash, followed by all kinds of weird noises. As she lay on the carpet, quite unable to move for shock and terror, there was a chinking noise, then a lot of funny bonging sounds, then the steady tinkle of glass.

Then, after all the noises, an awful silence fell. Sally shut her eyes tight, she didn’t want to look. But as she lay on the carpet she could hear wheezy, creaky sounds coming from the direction of the clock. It was like a very old person settling down to sleep.

She listened, thinking about Grandfather Bell, who had lived until he was one hundred and one years old. Grandfather Clock was even older, and the thing Mum loved best after Dad, Alan and Sally.

At last, she made herself get up from the carpet. She made herself walk across the hall. She made herself look at the clock. And when Sally saw what had happened, she really did burst into tears and once she had started to cry she felt she would never stop.

Grandfather’s ‘trunk’, the case that held the pendulum and the weights, had split into two pieces. The wooden columns which had risen up on each side of the glass door, holding up the roof of the clock with its two wooden roses, and its pointy carvings, were broken into tiny little bits, and all the other carvings seemed to have vanished completely. It was as if some evil magician had waved a magic wand and turned them into a heap of rubble.

All round the wreckage were pieces of fine glass. The pendulum must have flown out of Grandfather’s insides as he crashed down because the springy piece of metal, stuck on to the shiny round thing that ticked steadily to and fro, was all twisted and bent. Both the weights lay on the carpet and all round them were tiny pieces of wood, pieces smaller than matchsticks.

Only when Sally’s eyes had taken all this in did she pluck up the courage to pull the face of the clock out of the wreckage so that she could look at Grandfather’s face. And when she looked she turned away almost at once. What had happened to it was too awful to see.

The fingers of the clock, once so beautiful, were bent double like hairpins and one had snapped right in two. The moon face still looked out at her, in its kindly way, but the four little girls were all scratched and spoiled. Sharp pieces of glass and metal must have been hurled against them in the fall. They were almost unrecognisable now; in fact they were more or less blobs again.

Sally turned her back on it all and sat down on the carpet, staring dumbly at the front door. She sat and stared for a very long time. The awful thing was that it felt such an ordinary day. Out in the street she could hear a little child talking to its mother. Then someone rode past on a bicycle, ringing a bell, and the church clock down the road chimed five. At the same moment Mrs Spinks Next Door banged three times on the wall. This meant ‘Tea Time, Sally Bell’, – it was a signal. It meant ‘Lock up carefully and come back’. And it meant immediately. Mrs Spinks was strict about meal times.

Slowly, Sally went over to the little side window where people on the front door step could see into the hall. She pulled the curtains across, making everything dark. Nobody could look into their house now, nobody could see the remains of Grandfather, scattered all over the carpet. She went outside, pulled the front door shut and pushed her way through the dusty privet hedge to Mrs Spinks’s house.

Only when she looked down at her plate and saw that it was cheese on toast for tea, did Sally remember William, who liked cheese very much, at any meal.