MARJORIE DORE.

She kept telling me that she had another friend – A little girl just like her that she could play with but I didn’t believe her. Then I saw them together and my heart ached.

“Look mummy! There she is! Over there by the window. We’ve been talking about dolls and things. She said she had lots of them when she was here”. “Yes dear. Now eat your tea. Each time you talk instead of eat you’re missing a mouthful”. “No I’m not! I’m just postponing it that’s all”. “Smart Alec! Just eat will you”. As if in a dream Natalie continued eating. Her eyes were on the garden as she did so. First she stared at her swing and then at the old apple tree as if she saw something I did not. “Stop dreaming or you’ll not have finished your meal by the time daddy comes home. He promised to take you to the park to make the most of the light summer night have you forgotten”? “No”, she said. I was amazed. For the first time my daughter had answered me in just one word. She was still staring out of the window when she started humming the nursery rhyme again about Marjorie Dore and Johny only earning a penny a day. She said that was when it first started. She was absent-mindedly humming the rhyme on her swing when the little girl first appeared. Dressed in old fashioned clothes, she had long hair which was done up in a bun. Natalie said she talked to her, laughed with and played games with her. The only trouble is I have never seen her. At first I just dismissed her tale as the product of an over-active imagination. I knew that in many ways Natalie was a lonely little girl. She wanted a little brother or sister but I could have no more children due to the complications I suffered at her birth. Bill said that I wasn’t to worry, that she’d grow out of it, but it’s three years now since she first started to see Marjorie. I don’t know what to do. I told Bill that she ought to see a child psychologist since it’s interfering with her education. The other children make fun of her because they’ve never seen this child either and think she’s odd. She hardly plays with them now, preferring the company of a non-existent child that nobody but she can see. She doesn’t accept that Marjorie isn’t real and I don’t accept that she could be a ghost. I’m becoming irritated by the whole thing. I can even hear Natalie laughing with this non-existent child in bed at night – Laughing and talking with her and my friends are beginning to label me as: “The mother of that funny kid”. It’s becoming embarrassing. “I know mummy doesn’t believe in you. If you’d only come to her, be real to her and talk to her. She’d have to believe in you then and she would know at last that I’m not making you up. Then we could play together openly. Why won’t you come to her, Marjorie? Why?” “I will, Natalie. When you come through the narrow gate I will. Then they’ll see us together but not now – Not yet.” “Where is the narrow gate and where does it lead to”? Asked Natalie. “Never mind that now. You just be happy while you can”. “I can’t be truly, truly happy because people don’t believe that you’re my friend and that you are real”. Suddenly, as Natalie looked up she noticed that Marjorie was gone. Whenever she was lonely, sad or in trouble, all she had to do was sing the rhyme about Marjorie Dore and she would appear to her again and comfort her. It always worked and never failed.

Bill took Natalie to the park where she happily played on the swings and the slide. She did not dare sing the rhyme in case her little friend would come and begin a conversation with her. Her father would then ask why she was smiling and she would tell him about Marjorie’s presence and this would invoke his anger. Like her mother he was now becoming irritated by the presence of her invisible friend.

For several weeks she neither saw nor heard the other child. She neither sang or thought of the rhyme and was beginning to think her little companion had forsaken her. Then one night she had a dream. Marjorie came and led her by the hand up a long dark ladder which was narrow and steep. At the top was a tiny door through which only the children pass. Beyond was a huge expanse of green with thousands and thousands of flowers. Then she woke with a start. She thought she heard Marjorie saying that this was heaven but woke with a jolt before she could be sure. In her fright she screamed and was soon soothed by her mother. At breakfast she explained that she’d seen heaven in a dream and was scolded for being wicked and talking of such things so never mentioned her dream again.

“Hullo Natalie, it’s been ages hasn’t it”? “Oh Marjorie! Where have you been? I’ve been worried about you”. “I have been making a place for you. I have been preparing the way so you can come and we can be sisters forever”. “But we’re sisters now”, cried Natalie in alarm. “No. Now we are only friends and it is draining my strength keep coming through to your side of the gate. For us to be real sisters you have to come to me through my side of the gate. You have to live here with me forever”. Natalie looked puzzled. “You mean never, never, never to return? You mean I must come and live in heaven?” “Yes that’s right”. “But that means I will die”. Natalie almost became hysterical as the realisation that she would never grow up to be a woman dawned on her. “No you won’t. I’m not dead am I? Only the body which is a casing which holds the soul dies and the soul lives forever and ever and ever”. “Is it frightening”? Natalie enquired timidly. “No not really. Anyway when you’ve been here for a bit you will have forgotten what it felt like. I can’t remember what it was like now”. The child then told her not to worry and that she must celebrate her tenth birthday before coming through the gate, just as Marjorie had done. For some months they never talked and once more Natalie almost forgot about her again, thinking that she’d abandoned her.

It was after Natalie died of meningitis that I was first to see them playing on the swing in the garden. At first the sight distressed me until I met someone who knew the history of the house in which we lived. Apparently a couple with one little girl had lived there and Just like us, the mother could have no more children but the child always longed, as Natalie had, for a brother or sister. The child was killed at a tragically young age after having prayed hard for the brother or sister that she was never to have. The story goes that once every so often she appears to another child in the village – Usually another little girl – The sightings last for about three years, after which time the child who has seen her dies.

I cannot say whether Natalie was the only child to have seen Marjorie, whether the story has been exaggerated over time or even whether any of it is true. What I can say is that I get enormous comfort from seeing them together, that I have longed for more than one daughter all my life and now in a funny sort of way I feel as if I have two and that now all I have to do is to hum the nursery rhyme about Marjorie Dore and there they are, as real as any living person is, standing at my side. I know one more thing too and that is as a result of these occurrences I have completely lost my fear of death.