Girl With Dove: A Life Built By Books. Sally Bayley

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      5

       Di

      I remember Di. She was the woman who arrived one night when I was five. Di was the woman who came from behind the dark curtains and sat in spirals of smoke. Di was the woman with a baby who cried in the night. Di was the woman with the long, snaky smile. Di was the woman who spoke gobbledygook. Di was the woman in my dreams.

      One day, Mum took me upstairs to say hello to Di, the woman with black bullet eyes.

      ‘She’s your aunt, darling, your Aunt Diane. She’s come to live with us. She’s had a baby. We’re going to look after her. Now say hello nicely.’

      What was an aunt, I wondered. I had never heard of an aunt before. What did aunts come from?

      ‘From Lancing on Sea,’ Mum said. ‘From Lancing on Sea.’

      ——————————

      A few days later, my brother Peter and I found a body in the front room. We came home from school and there was a man lying on the floor. He was thin with a black moustache and black hair and his mouth hung wide open. My brother opened the door and tripped over him.

      ‘He’s dead! He’s dead! Peter, Peter, it’s a dead body! We’ve found a dead body! Call the police!’

      The dead man looked like a large black ant. I felt sorry for him. We could easily squash him and no one would ever know. Here was a poor dead ant, stuck to our hard floor. A giant spider or fly must have come from behind the curtains and strangled him.

      Mummy came in and told us off for making such a fuss. The man on the floor was a friend of Aunt Di. Think of him as your uncle, she said. Uncle David. Uncle David is sleeping now, so shhhhh! Now close the door quietly behind you! There’s a baby upstairs!

      ——————————

      When you start a murder investigation you have to have clear plans of the place where the murder happened. Detectives call this the ‘crime scene’. If the crime scene is in a house they draw up careful room plans. Everything that might have happened has to be kept inside closed lines. Nothing must straggle over the edges. Detectives don’t like mess.

      But a detective would have found our house difficult to plan. In fact, Inspector Craddock would have hated our house. (Miss Marple thinks Inspector Craddock is hopeless, but she’s too polite to say so.) Still, the inspector has a point: you can’t be a good detective among muddle and mess.

      ‘Where is my nice pair of scissors?’ Mum yelled down the hallway. ‘Which of you little swines has got my sewing scissors? Can’t I leave anything out without you getting your filthy hands on it!’

      Fortunately, Miss Marple has an excellent memory so she doesn’t need to draw up plans. She can draw her own lines around things. Miss Marple can remember what lamp was on when the gun went off. She can recall which door was open and which was closed. She can remember exactly who was there and who wasn’t, precisely how the curtains sat on the carpet, who sneezed just before the light went out.

      ——————————

      Everything I know comes from reading. Everything I’ve found out comes because of Miss Marple and then Jane Eyre.

      After I found Jane Eyre nothing was the same again. She was always there, always looking and hearing the things no one else dared. Let me show you what I mean.

      One night, in her small room at Thornfield Hall, Jane Eyre hears a strange gurgling sound coming from the room above her. She stirs and opens her eyes, but she can’t see anything in front of her except smoke! Smoke is filling the hallway outside her room, smoke is pushing its way beneath her door, smoke is filling up her lungs.

      Jane leaps out of bed and races down the hall; she flies towards Mr Rochester’s room and shouts through the door. ‘Master, Master, wake up! Wake up! Your room is on fire!’

      Lucky for Mr Rochester, Jane is a quick thinker. Quick as a flash, says Maze, fast on her feet, that one. Doesn’t miss a trick. And Jane is practical, too. She drags Mr Rochester out of bed and takes him to safety, to the hallway (the gallery, the Victorians call it, where pictures of dead ancestors hang) outside her room. Mr Rochester knows that, without Jane, he would be dead.

      ‘Dead as a dormouse,’ Maze says about the brown furry thing the cat has brought in. Mr Rochester might not be dead as a dormouse exactly, but he’d be dead as something without Jane. That night he takes her into his confidence forever; that night Jane becomes his fairy-friend.

      The next morning Jane starts asking some serious questions on behalf of her new friend.

      ‘I am certain I heard a laugh, and a strange one,’ she announces to Mr Rochester’s servant Grace Poole the following morning. ‘It can’t have been Pilot, СКАЧАТЬ