The Travelling Bag

by Susan Hill

  The horror may last an hour or a night, two minutes or two hours. I have no sense of time. It is out of time. I pray to be like Webb, taken by sudden death.

  But Silas Webb has his revenge. Mine was so quick, so soon over, but I am his plaything, until he lets me go, on a whim – tomorrow? In a year? In twenty years? Or is this for eternity? I do not know. I only know that the end will not come now, not tonight, not yet. The ice is moving up my body and already I cannot move my legs. Dusk is swallowing up the sky, the rooftops, the trees, the gardens, and very soon I shall become aware of soft wings and bodies, closing in upon me, seething silently among themselves.

  BOY NUMBER TWENTY-ONE

  CLOTEN HOUSE BLAZE

  A seventeenth-century stately home has been left a shell after devastating fire yesterday. The blaze, believed to have been caused by an electrical fault, started in the basement and ripped quickly through the building, which was empty at the time, spreading through the roof voids.

  Cloten Hall, which is owned by National Heritage, is closed during the winter months but was due to reopen at Easter. It was acquired for the charity in 1990, after having been in the Dyker-Venn family for nearly 430 years. The family shrank in size to one pair of elderly brothers, Albert and Montague Dyker-Venn, who lived in the house alone until both men died, within a month of one another, in 1990. They had become impoverished, and the house and grounds were in a state of decay and disrepair.

  It was in a time-warp,’ a spokesperson said, ‘and in some ways, it was a magical place, where nothing had been modernised, changed, removed or renovated for generations. The gardens were overgrown – it was like somewhere out of a fairy tale.’

  When National Heritage acquired the property they took the decision to restore both house and contents, but ‘with the lightest possible hand’. Teams of conservation experts took six years to repair and renovate both the building and ninety-five per cent of its contents, bringing the past back to life and light, without damaging or destroying its most valuable attribute: the atmosphere.

  ‘We tried to retain the sense of period, and bring out the sense of Cloten as having always been a family home, never any sort of museum and certainly not a rich man’s palace. We had to be more ruthless with the gardens and grounds, which were hopelessly overgrown, with dangerous trees, hidden, overgrown ponds, and crumbling statuary and outbuildings. Quite a lot had to be sacrificed, but garden experts of the period advised on re-design and planting. With the aid of plans and later photographs, all found in the house, it was brought slowly back to life, as it might once have been – though gardens take much longer to develop and mature than buildings. Cloten Hall was unique. None of our properties resemble it at all. It is very sad indeed to see it gutted by fire like this.’

  No decision has yet been taken about the future of the building.

  There was a photograph on the front page of the newspaper and another inside. Smoke. Flames. Water from the cannons arching up into the night sky, and cascading into the heart of the inferno.

  Then, Cloten Hall in the early morning light, an aerial picture looking down into the gutted shell of the interior, like a half-built doll’s house, with walls and floors and half-burned staircases, no roof, cinders for furniture.

  I was on the bus going home. I have quite a long journey to work, on two buses with a mile walk at either end. Sometimes I complain, but others have it so much worse and at least I don’t have to travel on the tube. I would find that unbearable. Indeed, I do not think I could do my job at the present place if I had to travel on anything that went underground.

  Normally, at this point in my journey, I would turn to the Mind Games page. I am a keen crossword solver, though my record is not one hundred per cent. If quotations or celebrities or classical mythology are involved, I do badly. But I am pleased to say that I have not yet failed to complete a Sudoku successfully. I find it the most satisfying of challenges. The completed grid gives me almost physical pleasure.

  Tonight, though, I was preoccupied with the photographs of Cloten Hall, and the account of its burning. I thought about it for the rest of my journey home, and when I arrived, I did nothing but think about it again, not even turning on the lights but simply sitting in my armchair, going over things from so many years ago, letting my unconscious send individual details and snippets of memory, like bubbles, to the surface.

  I had no newspaper here but when I turned on my television for the news, there it was, Cloten Hall, charred black and still smoking a little. I turned down the sound. I did not want some reporter giving me the story of the fire, or worse, a potted history of the place. I did not want their mock-solemn face in front of me. What did they know of what it meant to me? How could they possibly care?

  Cloten Hall.

  I did not eat that night. I went to bed and knew that I would not sleep for hours. I lay on my back, with the light out and the amber street lamp washing over the wardrobe, the bed quilt, the wall behind the bed. My face and hands. It was something like the glow from a dying fire itself.

  I asked myself a host of questions. But the only question that mattered was the one to which I knew I could never find the answer.

  Had he been there? Was he consumed in the flames, along with the oak and elm, the elaborate mouldings, the magnificent vaulted Long Gallery, the hidden staircase? Or had he left long before, perhaps because he could find no one else, as he once found me?

  I dozed, and in my dreams, I saw and heard the crackling of flames. I smelled the smoke and the acrid burning. I saw him, standing in the Long Gallery. And sitting on my own bed, and then lying on the floor beside it, white-faced and frail, tears running down his face.

  I saw him and held out my hand to him, and in my dreams, he smiled and stepped out of the fire and reached for the hand, smiling at me. Smiling.

  One

  ‘Mrs Mills?’

  The boy Toby Garrett had emerged silently from the shadows of Bell Corridor, thin as a blade and with anxious eyes.

  ‘Odd boy,’ the headmaster had said more than once.

  ‘Unhappy boy.’

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  But she had not wanted to go into it, afraid of sounding vague and sentimental, which Royce disliked.

  Unhappy boy. Yes.

  ‘Hello, Toby.’

  ‘Mrs Mills …’, he scraped his toe backwards and forwards, tracing the curve of a floor tile, head down.

  ‘Is something wrong?’

  ‘I like it here.’

  She waited.

  ‘Can I stay?’

  She wondered. As far as she knew there had been no talk of Toby’s leaving Hesterly.

  ‘Can I be a boarding boy? Please. I mean now, today.’

  His face puckered.

  ‘Toby, I have to go to take a class. Will you come and see me at the end of the afternoon, in the Quiet Room?’

  ‘Can’t you say yes now, please. I want to stay now.’

  ‘No. Four o’clock, all right?’

  She had to turn away from such desperation, such pleading.

  He was already waiting for her at the door of the Quiet Room, moving from one foot to the other, his body tuned tight.

  ‘Can I stay? Have you asked?’

  ‘It isn’t for me to say, Toby, or not just me. It has to come from your parents, it …’

  ‘They will say yes. They will … please?’

  ‘Why is it so urgent?’

  And then the story, of vicious rows and rage at home, of screaming and fists beaten against walls and heavy things thrown, of storms of crying and his mother’s bleeding face. The terrifying boom of his father’s fury.

  ‘I’d be safe here,’ the boy had said.

  ‘Listen to me, Toby, look at me and please tell me the truth. Does your father – does anyone – hit you?’

  He shook his head. ‘They don’t see me,’ he said.

  Divorce was nothing out of the ordinary, here as everywhere else, but probably domestic violence was un
common among the parents – infidelity, boredom, alcohol, even, but not mothers being beaten in front of their thirteen-year-old sons.

  ‘They will say yes.’

  Yes.

  A place was found within the week; his things were brought. No one seemed interested in when the boy would be returning home.

  What would happen at Christmas?

  ‘He will go to my brother,’ the father had said. ‘Cousins his age. Or an aunt.’

  ‘Can’t I stay here at Christmas?’ The boy had been folding his pyjamas carefully, the trousers exactly edge to edge, then lining the edge exactly with that of the pillow.

  *

  Campion. Houseparents Graham and Mel Taylor. Easy-going. Comfortable. No long dormitories now, bedrooms with four or six boys. Their own duvet covers. Two small posters each. Lockers. Photographs. Parents. Siblings. Dogs. Teddy bears. Lego models.

  Toby Garrett had no photographs.

  ‘Would you like me to find you a poster, Toby? Until you can have your own sent from home maybe?’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  But he had a book of maps and a notebook in which he drew his own, invented countries. He had a second notebook, in which he made lists. Lists of anything. He knew two of the others in the room. They were casually welcoming. The bed next to his was empty.

  He slept deeply and silently. Luke Beecham mumbled, David O’Hare turned over and back, over and back. Toby lay still as a log. Safe. It was quite new to him, this feeling of safety, and he trusted it.

  ‘Who used to be in the other bed?’

  ‘Jack Murdoch. He left. They moved to somewhere like Africa.’

  ‘Someone else will come though,’ O’Hare said. ‘The school needs the money.’

  The ‘someone’ came three days later. His name was Andreas.

  ‘Where do you come from?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  The other two hooted. ‘He doesn’t know where he came from?’, and pushed each other about, laughing false laughter.

  ‘Leave him alone. He just forgot.’

  David O’Hare widened his eyes. Luke rolled his.

  ‘Toby can tell you where you came from. He’s got maps. He loves maps. He adores maps. Maps are his babies.’

  They fell on the floor and rolled about, knees up, shrieking.

  Toby turned and looked at the new boy in the next bed.

  ‘It doesn’t matter if you don’t know.’

  Andreas fidgeted with his bedcover, his fingers plucking at the seam.

  ‘Were they kind where you came from?’

  ‘Quite kind.’

  ‘How long were you there?’

  ‘I don’t know. It felt like a long time. Quite a while?’

  His face went strangely blank, as if he had taken his real self off somewhere, his mind and his soul, Toby thought, and just left the body.

  After that first night, they were inseparable, somehow even when they were in different classes, playing different games. They separated themselves politely from the rest, did not share time with any of them, only with each other. They were silent together when they worked, chairs next to one another, and they ate in the dining room in the same way. If Toby did not like the meat he passed his to Andreas. Andreas did not drink milk or eat any pudding made with milk. He passed his dish and Toby ate it, as well as his own. They walked outside together, sat against the library wall in the sun and read or pulled up grass stalks and chewed them. Andreas swam like a fish. Toby was afraid of water. Within a month, he had conquered his fear and followed the patient Andreas, doing as he did, learning to float, copying the strokes. Then Andreas arrowed out across the pool, swift and graceful, turned underwater, swam back ahead of everyone, and Toby watched, unsmiling but with his face showing his admiration, his pride, without shame.

  At night, they talked quietly, beds pushed closer together so that the other two were not disturbed. Could not overhear.

  Their stories were very different, their feelings identical.

  Toby lay in bed one night, on his side so that he faced Andreas. Moonlight washed over his face. His hair was thick, wavy and black; his skin was dark olive. His arm was outstretched in the direction of Toby’s bed.

  He had been sitting with his mother when she had started to breathe in a strange way and her eyes had looked at him in panic, then they had clouded and he had thought she was not seeing him any more. He had touched her arm and then her face, and spoken to her, told her to listen to him. He had begun to shake her gently.

  The maid had come in, looked at the woman in the bed, and started to pull Andreas away from her, gripping his arm so hard that her fingers left marks, and at the same time she had been calling out to his uncle, to anyone in the house.

  It had been his uncle who came, taking hold of Andreas, lifting him up and carrying him out of the room. As he was carried away, he thought he saw a bloom of blood spreading across the front of his mother’s nightdress, staining the white cloth red.

  ‘I kicked,’ he said to Toby, ‘I kicked him hard. I tried to push my fingers into his eyes.’

  ‘What happened to your mother?’

  ‘She was dead. They didn’t let me see her again. They wouldn’t let me go back and kiss her.’

  ‘What about your father?’

  ‘He died in the war. They said my mother never got over it.’

  ‘What war?’

  But Andreas seemed confused, unsure. Toby was silent, holding deep inside himself a confused ball of bewilderment and pain he did not know how to express. His own mother might die. His father might kill his own mother. He would be alone with his father. Andreas had been sent away but he might be sent back home, and made to stay there.

  ‘Say a word,’ Andreas said. ‘Only not “sorry”.’

  But there was no other word that could be said.

  He did not speak about himself, simply because Andreas did not ask him. They shared time, space, silence, and odd games with complicated rules they created, and which had fluid structures, ebbing and flowing.

  Toby drew maps and labelled them intricately, and from the maps emerged imaginary countries, kingdoms, islands, cities. Tribes. Communities. Languages.

  They read the same books, each beginning one and exchanging when they had finished.

  They were quite friendly to other boys but kept a small space between themselves and anyone else, and the other boys stopped noticing and got on with their own lives, sometimes looking, whispering, mostly ignoring, shrugging their shoulders.

  But the adults noticed and kept a wary eye, and spoke about it among themselves, and proposed solutions.

  ‘Solutions to what? It’s a friendship. Two lonely and vulnerable boys.’

  ‘Such an intense one, and they shut everyone else out. It’s unhealthy.’

  ‘They’re thirteen years old, for God’s sake!’

  ‘I might suggest moving them into different rooms in Campion.’

  ‘Which would be cruel and, in my view, counter-productive.’

  ‘Move sets?’

  ‘Don’t do anything at all. Let it work itself out.’

  There seemed to be no solution and so the matter was shelved and the boys continued as they were, always together, often silent. They knew, without being able to articulate what they knew, that they had found a solace and a healing and did not question it or look beyond the day, although once, when the summer holidays were mentioned, Andreas simply said, ‘You’ll come with me.’

  Toby did not doubt it.

  Two weeks before the end of term, Andreas disappeared. He was not in his place next to Toby at lunch. Toby was silent, eyes watching the door, waiting.

  The others kept a little apart from him, puzzled, even afraid. No one knew anything.

  At eight, they went up to bed. The other two had undressed quickly, turned away, David O’Hare with his head in a book, Luke deep under the duvet.

  Andreas’s bed was empty and unmade. It had been pushed into the corner, beneath the window.


  ‘Goodnight boys, sleep well.’

  Lights out.

  He wanted to ask but feared the answer. He lay on his back, eyes open, looking at the line of soft light from the corridor, below the door, and the empty space next to him was so deep he might drown in it.

  ‘Toby?’

  He waited.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Yes, thank you.’

  ‘I could come and sit on your bed if you wanted. If you can’t go to sleep.’

  ‘It’s OK, thank you.’

  He heard David shift his bedclothes about, then settle down. After that, there was only the light and the space next to him and his own wakefulness.

  The term ended.

  Toby waited in the entrance hall watching cars arrive, parents emerge, cars load up, people waving, and waving, watched the crowd of boys thin out, shrink to a small pool in the middle of the hall.

  He prayed not to be the last and, by two boys, he wasn’t. A blue car with a man he thought he recognised turned in front of the steps.

  ‘Toby Garrett? Oh, there you are. Your uncle couldn’t come, he’s tied up in meetings, so I’m here. You remember me don’t you?’

  There was a hurried conference with two teachers, and the man disappeared and the last other boy left. It was hot.

  ‘Sorry, had to see your head man, make sure I was all right … you know. You remember me now?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Martin Preece … work with your uncle. Live across the other side?’

  Toby thought he must know the man, everyone had agreed that he did and that it was all right.