Compulsory Games

by Robert Aickman

  By that hour, the police officers were long departed: “We’ll have to go now, sir. You’ll be perfectly all right.” Happily, many of the lights still worked, and even some of the other gadgets. Everything could have been far worse.

  Furthermore, Hesper explained herself at once.

  “Sorry to be so late, darling. The Assistant Borough Treasurer’s daughter threw a birthday party.” Hesper then shrank away from Delbert’s arms. She stared around. “Why, whatever’s happened?”

  She seemed terribly shaken; even more, Delbert thought for a moment, than the admittedly grim situation quite warranted.

  But in the end she pulled herself together wonderfully and was effective and efficient in every relevant direction. Whatever could be done at that rather late hour, she immediately did; and that which had to be left till the morrow, she faultlessly planned. Delbert was a cipher by comparison, but not for one moment did she allow him to feel this.

  Tomorrow is always another day, take it or leave it.

  RAISING THE WIND

  A MAN I know named Fillbrick makes his living by navigating boats from one place to another on behalf of their owners. Fillbrick and I were at school together. I went on to Oxford and since then I am supposed not to have done too badly on Lloyd’s. All the same, I often envy Fillbrick: his life’s his own; he sees a lot of the world; he’s much of his time in the open, being burnt up by the sun or torn apart by the wind. Furthermore, I am sure he does surprisingly well financially. The people who own fair-sized boats nowadays have no time to be aboard them, and, on the other hand, always want the boat to be somewhere else where they have to be. That’s when Fillbrick comes on the scene. I’ve put quite a few jobs in his way myself, and one job of that kind, punctually carried through, soon leads to others. Of course it’s different if the boat goes to the bottom. As in the case I’m about to tell you.

  Fillbrick prefers to have a chum or two aboard the strange vessel, at least when she sets out; and from time to time he naturally invites me, though usually it’s impossible for me to go. It so happens that I’m quite handy with sails, though, on the other hand, I’ve never seen much fun in mucking about with a defective engine while you’re being sick all the time. I’m quite content to leave that to the many who ask for nothing better.

  This time Fillbrick had to bring a Thames barge from a small port in East Anglia to a lonely spot on the Thames estuary, where the new owner had acquired a tidal mooring, at which he was proposing to convert the barge into a residence with his own hands at weekends.

  •

  Once again it was a case of sooner him than me, but I understand that the man was quite young and hoping to get married.

  It was a matter of bringing the barge round the coast under sail. She had been laid up for a long time, like many Thames barges at that period (now they’ve mostly just disappeared, of course), and there was no question of fitting an engine. The new owner was simply going to use her as a residence, tide or no tide; and had no idea of her ever going to sea again. So I daresay I was among the first that Fillbrick thought of to lend a hand with the job. One trouble was that the impatient young bridegroom-to-be had put in the letter of agreement which Fillbrick always insisted upon, a precise date of delivery; and there wasn’t much time. None the less, it should only have taken a single weekend, and I offered Fillbrick the choice of two consecutive ones, when my own wife would be staying in Scotland for ten days with her former husband and their little boy, Gregor, and the former husband’s latest wife. Fillbrick prudently said that he would book both weekends, and I was entirely willing. I acknowledge that I find these interludes depressing unless I have occupation of my own. Of course, there is no question of money passing, at least where I am concerned. I help Fillbrick out as a friend, or just for the hell of it. One gets terribly used to one’s own boat after the first year or two, as well as to the same old mooring, which always has to be within reach of one’s office.

  “Oughtn’t there to be a third man?” I asked Fillbrick on the telephone.

  In reply he laid down the law.

  “Thames barges, Norfolk wherries, Yorkshire keels, Severn trows are all derived from the Scandinavian long-boat, which was particularly designed to be worked by two men only,” said Fillbrick.

  “A man and a boy, actually,” I replied.

  I knew all that stuff about the Scandinavians, but on the only occasions when I had sailed Norfolk wherries, there had been whole mixed parties of us, and even then on still waters, or mainly so. Of course that had been before I was married. And in the modern world there are few around who have sailed a keel or a trow.

  When the time came, I could manage only the second weekend, and Fillbrick accepted it, even though I pointed out the obvious risk. One could, therefore, suppose that he was particularly keen to have me.

  On the Friday night, I drove down to the small East Anglian port I have mentioned. I noticed that, near Marks Tey, the rooks were making curious patterns in the sky, but thought little of it. It was the last light of a hot summer evening, because I was not nearly as early as I had hoped and had told Fillbrick. On and around Lloyd’s you never can tell.

  The barge was named Dorothea, like that woman in Goethe we all had to swot through. Fillbrick had been camping out in her for well over a week. Curiously enough, he was quite miffed by my very late arrival, and unhelpful with the rations, tired though I was. This was most unlike the man I knew. Fortunately, I had brought a dozen bottles of Scotch, and a bottle or two of Irish as well.

  Outside it was pitch black and stifling and very smelly.

  “Hadn’t we better pray for a wind?” I asked.

  “It’s gone on like this all the time I’ve been here,” said Fillbrick, pouring down about half a tumbler of whisky, as I could not but notice by the light in the binnacle.

  “It’s almost too hot to raise the sail,” I said. Of course the big sail on a barge is heavy to handle.

  “If we don’t get going tomorrow, I shall be liable for damages,” said Fillbrick.

  “I did warn you,” I said; not very helpfully, as I admit.

  Fillbrick merely said something obscene.

  “And surely not damages?” I persisted, as if he had not spoken.

  “Bloody little Raby-baby insisted on it,” said Fillbrick.

  I did know that the man’s name was supposed to be Raby. Not a good omen, I had thought: too like rabid.

  The business of the damages worried me all night. It somehow brought to mind the coffin-ships, which used to be sent to sea in order to sink with all below-decks personnel, so that the insurance might be collected fraudulently. Of course I am in insurance.

  In any case, I hardly slept at all. I have seldom passed a more objectionable night. In addition to everything else, there were rats and, other vermin; and Fillbrick appeared to be suffering virtual d.ts. His state went far beyond anything I had known of him before.

  In the morning, it was as bad as ever: a sky like copper, and not a leaf stirring before the zephyr. I believe such weather is a well-known consequence of sun spots: present or absent. I forget which.

  Fillbrick had not even bothered to shave. He was so pale that his heavy sunburn passed unnoticed. Also, I saw lots of grey hairs among the red. Fillbrick was wearing less well than I had thought.

  I regret to say that a perfectly absurd row began. Fillbrick started railing away as soon as I appeared, and I quickly realised that it was not merely the matter of the grotesque liability for damages, but something that was much nearer home. The odd thing was that though I could not quite name it, yet it had undoubtedly affected me too. The smelly little port was utterly dead, and the atmosphere was like an ill-run Turkish bath. Anyway, I have to admit that I began answering Fillbrick back, and with interest. What made it worse was that it was all in the midst of my breakfast; cup of tea in one hand, stale roll in the other: both of which I had been compelled to dig out for myself, as Fillbrick had a hangover.

  Suddenly the two of us s
topped shouting. We had both spotted an old woman, who stood on the bank watching us. Not laughing at us, not frightened of us, as well she might have been, particularly of Fillbrick: just watching us. She was thin as a poker, had very little hair on her bare head, was dressed in nothing I could name, apart from a little scarf round her neck, which was in bright red. Her eyes were very unpleasant, as the eyes of old people sometimes are.

  “Do you wish to raise the wind?” she asked. This question, as absurd as the liability to damages, came in a thin, upward-straining pipe, from her extremely narrow lungs.

  “Suppose we do?” rejoined Fillbrick.

  “Come with me to the church,” said the old thing, still standing narrow and motionless. “It will cost you almost nothing.”

  “All right,” I called across to her, upon impulse.

  “I may as well see what happens,” I expounded to Fillbrick. “We’ve nothing else to do anyway. Not until there’s a breeze.”

  Fillbrick stared at me. Then he put his hand on my arm. “Don’t be an utter fool, old man,” he said.

  “I’m not suggesting that you bother,” I replied. “But I propose to see this through. It can hardly take long.”

  Fillbrick stared again. Then he rather ostentatiously turned his back on me, and stumbled below. I at once estimated that within seconds he would either be asleep once more, or drinking once more. This ridiculous little barge assignment was being the ruin of the man. Sudden cash crises often have a surprising impact upon people unaccustomed to them.

  “We’ll take my car,” I called across to the old woman. Of course the car would have to be put in some garage until it could be collected at the end of the voyage, but at the moment it merely stood under the last lamp post, where I had wearily left it the previous night.

  The old woman sat beside me in the front seat; still poker-straight, silent, but beginning to gobble a little.

  “Where to? St. Peter’s?”

  I knew that the parish church was St. Peter’s, as it often is in such places.

  The old woman nodded sharply, and I drove the short distance, slightly upwards from the creek. The big church dominated the whole place. You couldn’t miss it, as the saying goes.

  When we arrived, the churchyard proved to be filled with kids fooling about among the tombs and throwing favours into one another’s faces. When I was a boy, confetti was at least confetti. Now it is great lumps of stuff, which lie about far longer than the tiny things ever did.

  I glanced at the old woman. She shook her head as sharply as she had previously nodded. I was not at all surprised.

  “Where next, then?”

  She pointed to the skyline. I could see the steeple of another, and plainly more rural church. The old woman’s outstretched finger had looked about nine inches long.

  On the journey to the skyline, she spoke.

  “You don’t know about these things,” she said coyly, even cutely. “You’ve forgotten.”

  “I’ve forgotten all about them,” I confirmed. “But if we don’t raise a wind this very day, we shall have to pay damages.” All was as still as an hallucination, but I thought I had to humour the old thing.

  She nodded as before.

  The little church stood entirely alone amid the still meadows.

  The old woman settled to business at once. She went eagerly before me up the path to the porch, and opened the church door. Today, of course, it would have to be kept locked, especially in so remote a place, where thieves would have time without end to strip everything. Then she showed me what to do.

  I was to kneel outside the closed door, while she, having shut the door, was to kneel on the other side of it, within the church. When she blew through the big keyhole, I was to blow back. And so on: alternately; rhythmically; steadily. I was glad to see there was a mouldering doormat in the porch; another relic of more spacious times.

  I suppose I might not have done it, had I not, at this point, remembered a book of old customs that my nanny used to read aloud to me when my mother was out, and before I first went to school. I was beginning to remember, after all.

  I had feared that the breath of the old woman might be fairly unpleasant, like the stink of the foreshore; but the curious thing was that it came at me through the keyhole as sweetly as the breath of a young girl, even the breath of a young cherub. You will recall that cherubs are always blowing. Of course we were on consecrated ground.

  She blew and I blew.

  We continued in turns, until just as the ache in my knees was becoming beyond bearing, I became aware first of noises in the church, and then of a regular turmoil. In no time at all, there was a very steady noise indeed, so that my voice could hardly have been heard through the thick door, even had I proposed using it. The din was like six mad bulls charging about and bellowing like Bashan. You will remember Bashan.

  I tried to get up, but my knees were so stiff that I could only sit on the porch floor, in an extremely undignified posture. The tumult was such that I couldn’t even think properly; but, in a second, the word “pandemonium” came to me—and all that went with that word. I wondered what had happened to the old woman in the middle of it. Up to a point she was, after all, my responsibility. I struggled to my feet and tried to open the church door. The noise inside was of a kind to make this step call for a certain amount of resolution.

  I needn’t have worried. The door was locked.

  At first I thought that the Devil himself had probably locked it, but it then struck me as more likely that my aged friend had merely turned the key. It is quite common for the church key to be kept on the inside of the door during the day.

  I subsided on to one of the stone benches, and began to rub my knees more systematically, while trying to decide what to do next.

  But, after two or three minutes, the door somehow opened and the old woman’s bald head was stuck out round the edge of it, like Mr. Punch’s head round the curtain of the booth.

  “I forgot the bottle,” she squealed. “Have you an empty bottle?”

  “I’ve several in the car,” I said.

  “Bring the biggest.”

  She drew her head in and stuck her very long hand out instead.

  I tottered off as best I could, and selected a litre-sized Chianti flask. Well, the big size, anyway.

  Back in the porch, I handed it into the long hand, which still protruded, though still nothing else did. The hand snatched it, and the door shut on the instant. The uproar was just the same, or perhaps worse; and I could imagine that speed could well be of the essence.

  From that moment the noise steadily abated, and quite rapidly. In two or three minutes, if that, all was timeless peace again, as in the countryside publicity material. I could hear even the gnats, though again it struck me that the brood of them were making ominous patterns in the very still air. In fact, I couldn’t take my eyes off them.

  The old woman took her time before making her reappearance. Then she hustled out with my bottle in her hand, and never even troubled to shut the door behind her.

  “I had to keep you waiting while I sealed it,” she explained solemnly, and held out the top of the bottle for me to see. It appeared to me to have been sealed with some liturgical preparation, and it was this comparatively small detail that made me shrink back a little for the first time. Ideas came into my mind such as sacrilege and blasphemy and who-knows-what-else in that general direction.

  I looked in through the open door. The entire church was in the most utter chaos; everything upset, and a terrible amount torn and broken. It was a shocking sight. And there was also the most peculiar and offensive odour; infinitely worse even than the smell of the mud under the hot sun.

  “Lots of churches look like that inside nowadays,” said the old woman. I daresay she was being defensive, because of what the two of us had done. She was also being a bit cheeky.

  “What’s in that bottle?” I asked.

  “What d’you think?” she responded. This time there could be no
doubt of the cheekiness. Perhaps a better word might be impishness.

  She slammed the church door shut in an offhand manner and we returned to the car, to the creek, and to the barge.

  Much to my surprise, Fillbrick had pulled himself together somewhat, and was sitting on the deck in a clean shirt, surrounded by Pepsi-cola cans.

  “Tuppence ha’penny,” squeaked the old dear, holding out the bottle, but not letting go of it.

  “Alas, there’s no such sum any longer,” I said, and gave her a pound note.

  She released the bottle as if the neck of it had been red-hot whereupon I quickly found that red-hot was exactly what the neck of the bottle was. The old girl shoved my pound down her front, like the heroine in a nineteenth-century play. Not of course that she had any front to speak of.

  I twisted my handkerchief round the neck of the bottle and stepped aboard. I held the bottle up to the light. I could see nothing whatever in it, though of course the basketwork and all the coloured labelling got in the way. Certainly there was no liquid in it. I still did not care for the ecclesiastical-looking seal.

  “Here,” I called after the old woman. “What exactly do we do with it?”

  “Push yourselves off first, and then open it,” she piped back. “Bon voyage!”

  Yes, she actually said those words, as she stumbled away up the slope. I am certain of it.

  Curiously enough, Fillbrick attempted nothing in the way of argument. He helped me, both of us in dead silence, to get the sail up, ridiculous though it seemed in that dead-still air, and indeed looked. No doubt it was anything at all to avoid paying those damages. I myself quite forgot about my car.

  We stood for a moment looking at the dirty big brown sail, as if the two of us were in a dream.

  Then I knocked off the neck of the bottle with a spike.

  The barge shuddered all over in a way I had never before experienced with any craft.

  Then we were out in the centre of the creek and moving steadily and concentratedly towards the open sea. The following breeze was as soft and scented as May Day. No more than Light Airs, to use the proper term.