Walking Through Albert Read online

  A little red car pulls up out the front. A lady gets out, opens the hatchback and brings a large china vase down the front path. ‘Good morning!’ she trills.

  ‘She won’t be as heavy as Mrs Sanchez,’ I mutter. ‘You take the vase, Emma, and Lee and I’ll catch her. Come on, Lee.’ I nudge him to the other side of Albert and dive through beside him. ‘Action stations.’

  16

  A heavy day

  What a morning. I haven’t had so much exercise since we did abseiling and kayaking on the same day at school camp back in March.

  We work out a way not to get crushed by falling grown-ups. If you stand to one side of the door and tap them on the back of their legs as they step in, they topple just to their knees and you can sort of prop them there, not taking their whole weight until someone comes to help you. Mostly they fall quite slowly, but when you get a lot coming in at once, of course, you just have to stand back and let them fall how they fall.

  On top of people arriving and having to be met by the ‘catching committee’ and dragged out of sight before the next lot come, there’s the telephone—it hasn’t been put to sleep, worse luck. Emma takes control of that because she’s the best liar; around ten-thirty when people are falling in the door every two seconds, Lee and I are working away with Em in the background saying over and over, ‘No, he can’t come to the phone, I’m sorry—may I take a message? No, she doesn’t want to be disturbed right now—can I help you? No, no, please don’t come around and help—we’re a bit over-run already. See you at two?’ Two o’clock is when the guests are due to start arriving.

  And I don’t know where we’re going to stack them. The study’s full, and the dining-room’s filling fast.

  ‘Hey, I know!’ says Emma, when we’ve got a moment to talk. ‘We’ll set up the chairs in the front room, where the ceremony’s going to be, and then we can just drag them in there and sit them, ready.’

  All of me’s aching from hours of dragging people, and I’m hot, hot, hot! ‘But they don’t stay still—they flop around and change position in their sleep.’

  ‘How about we put the chairs close together, like this—’ Emma unstacks three chairs against the wall. ‘Then we put the first person in the corner, leaning against the wall, and the second leaning against the first—’

  ‘They’ll fall forward—’

  ‘Then we put the next row of chairs right in front, up against their knees. They won’t take up nearly as much floor space. And when they wake up they’ll be all ready for the ceremony.’

  ‘And when Chris gets here, we can plonk him up the front, ready.’

  ‘And the celebrant, yeah. They can all be in place!’

  ‘Except your family, who’ll all be in their pyjamas in bed upstairs,’ says Lee.

  ‘Yeah. Well. We can’t do much about that,’ admits Emma. ‘But, hey, you know, we can do all the other stuff, if we get time. The flowers, the vacuuming—’

  ‘The food? Like, we can organise the buffet?’

  ‘Oh well, we’ll have to leave that. We’ll just put all the food that might go off in the fridge.’

  Another delivery van rumbles into the drive. ‘What is it this time, Lee?’

  ‘Trent’s Mo-bile Dis-co. What do we do with them, Emma?’

  ‘Keep them outside.’

  Luckily the disco guy doesn’t need to come inside—he just gets me to run a long lead out one of the windows from a power point.

  ‘Your DJ, Rickie, he’ll be around to test it at seven o’clock,’ he says when the big black console and speakers have been set up around the dance floor in the marquee. ‘Meanwhile, don’t you kids touch anything—got that? Where is everyone, by the way?’

  ‘Oh, they’re busy inside,’ I say as casually as I can.

  ‘Okay, well, I’m finished here. Seven o’clock, you tell the boss.’

  ‘Rightio.’

  As he climbs back into his van, Lee adds, ‘Yeah, we’ll be here to catch Rickie the DJ, don’t worry.’

  ‘Maybe we won’t need to by then,’ I say, although I can’t imagine an end to this craziness.

  It just gets worse. It just gets hotter. A pile of food turns up, and I’m kept busy packing it all away in the caterers’ fridges in the stables, while Emma deals with the phone and Lee stays on watch at the front door. Emma wants to take the phone off the hook, but we decide we’d better keep in touch with all the arrangements. Every now and again Emma calls Andy’s number, but he never answers.

  ‘Probably asleep, the rat,’ says Emma. ‘Zonked, after a heavy night’s work. Or hiding out with one of his fellow witches. What a coward—imagine just walking out on us! “You’ll have to find someone else”—well, thanks a lot! At least he could’ve hung around and helped carry all the people he enchanted.’

  Around about one o’clock, in between luring bar staff and hairdressers inside to be snuffed out, we get a tiny rest break. ‘Hey, maybe Lee and I should duck home and get changed. Seeing’s the guests are going to start arriving soon.’

  ‘No, don’t leave me!’ Emma clutches Lee’s arm.

  ‘We could go back one by one,’ suggests Lee.

  ‘Or you could go back, Lee,’ I say. ‘Get changed, and then bring back my wedding togs—you know which ones: those superdag long pants and the nerdy shirt and the new shoes. And socks.’

  ‘Okay.’ Lee bounds away down the veranda.

  ‘You run upstairs, Emma, and get into your ringmaster’s costume. You can’t greet guests in your pyjamas.’

  ‘Ring-bearer, you mean. Okay. You can manage here?’ Another bloke in black pants and a white shirt is turning into the drive.

  ‘Well, you know, don’t take hours or anything. Round this way, mate,’ I call out to the man, running along the veranda.

  We’re storing all the caterers in the dining-room; we lead them in the back door so that we don’t have to drag them so far. Also, we’ve got a blanket there for them to fall on, to slide them into place across the polished floor. I’ve closed the curtains, but from the back door you can see a couple of pairs of unconscious feet. ‘What the heck’s going on?’ says this waiter, before tumbling gracefully onto the blanket.

  ‘Ren!’ Emma screams from upstairs. ‘It’s the cake! Don’t let them bring it into the house!’

  ‘I’ve got it!’ I swoosh the waiter into the dining-room and run out the front, through the buffeting ghosts. ‘Here, back her in!’ I can see the cake, three layers balanced on pillars, with white frills and trims and sugar flowers, in the back of the station wagon.

  ‘You’re not putting it in a marquee in this weather?’ exclaims the driver. She’s got a smudge of icing on her chin.

  ‘In the stables. There’s a fridge in there. I’ll—I’ll just move the lettuces. Back right up.’

  ‘I’ll need someone to help me in with it,’ she warns.

  I unpack the lettuces I very carefully squoze into the fridge an hour ago. I wouldn’t mind climbing into the fridge myself. ‘Okay. There’s enough room now.’

  She opens the back of the wagon and I reach inside. ‘Hey, don’t touch that!’

  ‘You said you needed someone to help.’

  ‘Isn’t there anyone bigger than you?’ She casts her eye over the silent house.

  ‘Nope, sorry.’

  ‘Well ... well, just be careful, and don’t rush it. I’ve been up all night getting it perfect, and if it’s damaged now, you are dead.’

  I hear the phone start ringing and Emma screams out something else. ‘I’ll be very careful,’ I promise.

  Extremely slowly we carry it in to the fridge. The phone rings all the time; Hang on, Andy, I’m thinking, don’t hang up. Someone’ll be with you in a minute.

  ‘Phew!’ she says as I close the door. ‘And there my responsibility ends.’

  Lucky you, I almost say. ‘I gotta go,’ I say instead, and run inside.

  Emma’s on the phone. ‘No, it’s fine—everything’s organised. Mum says we look forward to seeing you at t
wo o’clock. No, don’t come early, everything’s moving along very smoothly—’ She winces and turns away as a delivery man collapses in the doorway. ‘Yes, ‘bye! It’s the drinks,’ she says to me, putting down the phone. Her hair’s combed and tied back, and she’s wearing a nifty little tunic and leggings, like a page-boy out of a storybook.

  ‘I’ll get him.’ I haul the drinks man out the front door, steeling myself against the Albert-feelings—it helps if you hold your breath.

  He snaps awake. ‘Bleeding heck, what’s going on?’

  ‘If you’ll just bring your van into the drive, you can unload round the back. Someone else’ll take it to the bar.’

  ‘Oh. Oh. Okay.’ Slowly the man gets to his feet.

  I wave the cake-lady out of the drive and the drinks man in. As he’s unloading I hear the front gate again. I run to the back door. Emma calls down to me, ‘It’s a guest! An early guest!’

  ‘The chairs are ready. Remember, catch them on your back so you don’t have to lift them from the floor.’ The drinks man gives me a very strange look.

  ‘I can’t!’ panics Emma. ‘There are two of them, and they’re pushing a pram!’

  Pushing a pram. Pushing a pram. I know I should be worried about that, but the drinks man is shoving a receipt in my face and I don’t have time.

  ‘Don’t drink it all at once, cobber,’ he says and climbs back into his van.

  I run in the back door, up the hall. Emma has caught the man, and is piggybacking him, his legs dragging, into the front room. The woman, Fia’s age, has passed out on the carpet. But the baby’s sitting up in its pram, its mouth wide open and its eyes scrunched closed, tears spouting, scream after terrified scream echoing through the hall.

  17

  Babies and bad weather

  ‘Oh,’ I say, under the baby’s racket. ‘We didn’t think about that.’

  Emma grabs the pram. ‘Take its mother in!’ she yells, backing into the Albert-light. The baby screams in pure fear.

  I drag the mother into the ceremony room and prop her next to her husband, jamming two more chairs up against their knees. ‘Stay there,’ I tell them, and run out to Emma. She’s crouched in front of the baby, saying soothing things. It’s not taking any notice, just hollering on.

  ‘It’s totally freaked,’ she says.

  ‘How many kids are coming?’ I ask her.

  ‘I don’t know. I was just about to stick up the guest list so we could check people off as they got here—but then, I don’t know who these people are. I don’t know what half the guests look like.’

  I fetch the folder. ‘Here: “Guests”. Um—they could be Joe and Philippa Samuels, with Joey.’

  ‘Joey? Joey?’ The baby keeps on screaming.

  ‘Or Mark and Jenny Belicci and Romy.’

  ‘Oh no, Romy’s a girl. A big girl. Fourteen, I think.’

  ‘Here, look, down the bottom. Sixteen for the ceremony, another thirty for the reception, plus eight children. Eight rug-rats who won’t fall asleep.’

  ‘I hope they’re not all little like this. I don’t know what to do with little ones—especially when they make this much noise,’ she adds over the screaming.

  Lee comes running around the veranda, my good clothes clutched against his chest, his hair combed flat to his head. The baby stops crying and stares at him.

  ‘Okay, Lee,’ I say, taking the clothes from him. ‘You can be baby monitor.’

  ‘Perfect,’ says Emma.

  It’s weird changing in a room full of sleeping people—Mrs Sanchez, a couple of bridesmaids in their street clothes, Maggie, the string quartet hugging their instruments in their cases, Mr Welsh’s friend Neville who was going to put up the outside decorations. All that breathing, all that quiet life—it’s almost spookier than ghosts. I’m out of there as soon as I can be.

  It’s all really unreal. The heat just keeps building and building. My crisp new wedding clothes are getting pretty limp and soggy, and Lee and Emma have both got little borders of sweaty hair stuck around their faces and necks. And we’ve been working so hard, and Emma and I missed out on all that sleep—I keep kind of fading out, a few seconds at a time, not being able to tell whether I’m awake or dreaming. And people keep coming up the path, all dressed up and chatting and excited. ‘House is looking great! Look at the lovely garden! Where’s your cousin, Emma? I thought he was supposed to be ushering everyone in!’ And then they drop softly over the threshold, completely silent, onto Emma’s and my waiting shoulders.

  Chris arrives, looking wide-eyed and strange. He’s wearing a suit instead of his usual layers of black holes—I hardly recognise him. As he slumps inside the door, his mother shrieks and reaches for him. ‘He’s very nervous—’ Then down she goes, practically on top of him.

  The marriage celebrant turns up in a shiny blue dress, bustling up the path. ‘Isn’t this charming! A welcoming committee of children! Whose idea was this?’

  ‘Andy’s,’ says Emma, standing back from the door. Lee taps the celebrant behind her stockinged knees and Emma and I brace ourselves—there’s quite a lot of the celebrant.

  We park her up the front opposite Chris, fenced all around like him with chair-backs. The guests keep shifting and messing up their rows, so we straighten them up a bit. ‘They could be here for days, for all we know,’ murmurs Emma.

  ‘I suppose they could. We ought to be prepared for that.’

  ‘What, should I just lock up the house when I go to school on Monday?’

  We look at each other. ‘Oh, no. We’ll have to find another witch before then,’ I say.

  ‘Guest alert,’ calls Lee from the front door.

  Emma checks her watch. ‘These’ll be reception people.’

  We lay them all out in a spare bedroom at the back. Lee takes charge of the children on the front veranda. ‘Why don’t you leave him here just while you go in and say hello?’ I hear him say to a father, ‘and then you can pop back and get him.’ He tricks all the parents like this—he sounds so calm about it, I’m impressed.

  So we end up at four-thirty with a houseful of ghosts and sleepers, flowers and food, people’s perfumes and aftershaves, snores and sighs, and a garden full of babies and toddlers, plus one six-year-old boy called Kevin, who’s starting to get a bit restless.

  ‘Can’t we go inside?’ he whines. ‘I’m bored. Haven’t you got any toys? You said there were going to be games.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry, Kevin, but we haven’t had time to organise them yet.’ Emma’s lying on the grass. Baby Joey is crawling over the top of her, dribbling on her ring-bearer’s tunic. He’s cute, but we haven’t quite forgiven him for putting us through a really foul nappy-change.

  ‘Well, I’m going inside,’ says Kevin. He takes off towards the house.

  ‘He’s such a pain—maybe he’ll resist too, and conk out,’ says Emma hopefully.

  Kevin steps in the front doorway, freezes for a few seconds, and then with a shout of terror throws himself out onto the veranda again.

  ‘No such luck,’ I say. ‘I’d better go and see if he’s okay.’

  Kevin’s crawling away fast from the front door, checking over his shoulder that nothing’s following. When he sees me he whimpers, ‘I turned into a skeleton! The light was shining through my bones!’

  ‘I know, mate, I know. It’s okay. It’s not you. It’s just the ghost of a very skinny man.’

  ‘My mum says there’s no such thing as ghosts.’

  ‘Well, did you feel something or not?’ He looks petrified. ‘There are ghosts, don’t you worry—that house is chock-full of ‘em.’

  ‘Yeah? Is my mum in there?’

  ‘Yes, but she’s having a little sleep now.’

  ‘But there was supposed to be a par-ty! And food and games and fun!’ He looks set to start up a Force Ten tantrum.

  ‘Hey, Kevin, we’re going for a walk now—because it’s too boring here. Come on, let’s go!’

  ‘Oh, yeah?’ Emma sits up. ‘Where to
?’

  ‘Just round the block, maybe.’

  ‘Don’t be too long,’ says Emma nervously.

  Kevin gives the park swings a pretty good workout. I have time to get fairly bored myself, and to notice clouds building up overhead. By the time we get back, a cool breeze has whipped up, and all the kids are rolling and stumbling and stamping around on the dance-floor in the marquee.

  ‘This’s really depressing,’ says Emma. ‘How long’s it going to be? I mean, we can’t look after babies! We need to sleep, and they’re all bright as buttons. Look at them. It’s like they can’t stop moving.’

  ‘I want my mum,’ says Kevin experimentally. It’s a lot darker all of a sudden, as if night’s falling super-quickly. Rain starts to drum on the marquee roof.

  ‘Yeah.’ I sit on the floor, too tired to think, too tired to hope, too tired to do anything except feel how tired I am.

  Then from the house comes the faint ringing of the telephone. Emma gives a huge groan and flops onto the dance-floor. Lee’s got two littlies sitting on his legs and belly, bouncing. ‘Okay, I’ll get it.’ I haul myself to my feet.

  18

  The rip in time

  The phone’s on the hall floor, because the telephone table’s right in the Dulcie-channel. When I answer, there are long-distance beeps, and then a faint, faraway voice starts quacking at the other end of the line.

  ‘Hello? I can’t hear you very well.’

  Finally I make out some words—it’s a cracked, old-ladyish voice, which doesn’t help. ‘Is a thunderstorm occurring there, by any chance?’

  ‘Yes—I should go. Lightning can come through the phone, you know.’

  ‘Well, precisely. Are you Emma Welsh?’

  ‘I’m Rennie, from next door. I’d better go. I don’t want to get killed.’

  ‘Hold the line for at least five minutes, please,’ says the voice very clearly.

  ‘But I might get zapped! The lightning—Who is this?’

  ‘I have a young colleague of mine here with me,’ she shouts. ‘He has approached me about your problem Would you mind staying on the line while I organise to charge you?’