Compulsory Games

by Robert Aickman

  Munn proved to have several rooms, quite a suite, reached by his own stair from the street; and, in general, seemed to be better accommodated than I had supposed, even though the trappings plainly appertained to a “furnished apartment.” All that looked personal was a mill for making the straw figures. As usual with Munn, the device looked as if he had made it himself; out of rough old planks, long thick nails, and bright steel edges—very sharp, by the look of them. The contraption stood in a corner of the living room, with a bale of straw stuck away behind it, and straw ends all over the carpet beneath and around it. Of course, all was dry, or no doubt there would have been complaints from the sub-postmistress, Mrs. Hextable, below. There were also two or three of the figures lying about in various stages of completion.

  “My eker-out of income,” said Munn, entering the room behind me and watching my gaze. He crossed to the machine and gave it a hard kick in the midriff, so that the bright cutting wheel spun round like a flying saucer. “And I wish His Majesty’s bloody Commissioners were beneath it,” added Munn.

  “But sit yourself down,” he went on, and, without consulting me, mixed a whisky that was far stronger than I normally liked or like, or than he had observed me drink at the inn, supposing that he ever took in such things. “I propose to ask you a favour.”

  He had provided himself with an even stronger whisky than mine. He gave me the impression of a man who so feared to find himself weak that he had both hands on the bull’s horns almost before the animal had entered the field, so to speak.

  “I’m getting married and I want you to be my best man.”

  I must admit I had feared that it was going to be something to do with money.

  “I expect I can manage that,” I replied, “though it’s something I’ve never done.”

  “At our age, one feels such a fool at having to ask,” said Munn. I saw that his hands were shaking.

  I have always felt that the plural possessive is a case that should be used with caution, but all I said was “Where will it be? And who is she? And congratulations too, of course.”

  “It’s only in the next county. In fact, just over the border.” Munn expressed it a trifle histrionically, but of course there is an enormous difference between Suffolk and Norfolk, and between both and North Essex.

  “I shall be hiring a motor,” Munn continued, staring at me, as if the availability of private transport might make all the difference.

  “I shall be delighted to do everything I can,” I said, taking a goodish pull on Munn’s whisky. “In fact, I shall be honoured.”

  Munn looked a shade doubtful about that, as well he might; but he was wonderfully relieved, and almost gulped as he said, “Thank you very much. I shall never forget it. I may be able to do the same for you one day.”

  “Who knows?” I responded, as the whisky began to rise within me.

  “Would Saturday of the week after next suit you?” Munn really seemed to imply that if it would not, the day could be changed.

  “Perfectly,” I replied; though almost completely at random.

  “I was afraid it might not. Unfortunately it has to be on a Saturday or a Sunday, or my future wife’s people couldn’t get to it.”

  “I quite understand.”

  “He’s a very busy man, and his wife is closely involved in what they do.”

  It seemed that I was meant to take that up, even though, as will be noticed, I had not yet even learned the bride’s name. “And what is that?” I enquired politely.

  “It’s something I think you ought to know. That’s why I raised the matter,” said Munn.

  I nodded.

  “It’s a little hard to talk about,” said Munn, looking at the floor. “It’s the kind of thing that makes people giggle a bit.” Munn drew on himself again and gazed at me. “I don’t really mind if you do giggle. I couldn’t possibly blame you.”

  “I shall do nothing of the kind,” I rejoined.

  But Munn still beat about the bush. “You know that story of Maurice Baring’s? Or is it a play?”

  “I am not sure that I do.” Maurice Baring had, after all, written an enormous amount even by the date we had then reached.

  “A young man tells a girl he has a secret that he simply must confide in her before she marries him. She swears black and blue that no matter what it may be, she will love him as much as ever. In the end, he discloses that he’s the hangman, and she sheers off.”

  “No,” I said. “I can’t recall having come upon that.”

  “My future father-in-law is an undertaker,” said Munn. “Not the hangman. Just the undertaker.”

  “I shouldn’t let that worry you. Indeed, I’ve always understood it’s a most lucrative trade. Whatever happens in the world, the demand’s still there. Indeed, as things get worse, it often increases.”

  “What a good chap you are!” exclaimed Munn, refilling my glass. “When I told my brother, he laughed at first, and then began to be very wary. Of course he’s been a married man for more than twenty years. Really settled, is Rodney. But it was just the same with three other men I spoke to about it.”

  “It doesn’t worry me,” I asserted. It was hardly possible to say anything else, though what I had said was not the exact truth.

  “It’s just the two of them do the whole thing,” Munn continued. “He was a merchant navy carpenter or something like that to begin with, and then began to specialise. She does the laying-out, as I believe it’s still called. I’m told she can do the other things too; as well as any professional. Embalming, for example; though of course there’s no great demand for that in rural England. All the same, she has an embalmer’s full certificate. It’s rather comic really. It hangs on their wall. It’s one of the first things you see.”

  “Someone has to do these things,” I said.

  “Yes,” said Munn. “And it’s quite surprising how clean and calm it all is when you get close to it. ‘Clean’ and ‘calm’ are the words that have stayed in my mind all the way through.”

  I enquired no further, though I daresay it was obvious enough that Munn wanted to go on talking around the discouraging topic. For my part, I have always been a conventional enough person, and, drink or no drink, I was beginning very clearly to understand why the topic is half tabu. I said I was sorry but that it was time I went, and Munn said he would call for me in the hired motor at 8 a.m. on the following Saturday week. Did I mind it being so early? Munn was once more drawing himself together. But I was past minding almost anything, as long as this absurd ceremony could be decently put into the past, and, as far as I was concerned, buried there. I said I would look for a booklet upon the duties of a best man, but Munn said quite earnestly that it wouldn’t be necessary.

  •

  In all the circumstances, I never expected to receive one of those smooth cards that announce future weddings; and this was as well, because none came. Before the day dawned, I saw Munn, two or three times, stumbling about the village. After all it was not a large village, and an imminent bridegroom could hardly live as a recluse. I thought it best to make no approach, and this was clearly right, because Munn made no approach to me, except that once when we were far enough apart and unmistakably going in different directions, he winked at me. It seemed plain that Munn did not want his future plans to be generally discussed, so I said nothing about the matter to anyone. After a day or two, however, I recollected that a best man is expected to make a presentation of some kind to the bride. The answer to that was simpler than might be expected: I have a rule that when a gift is required, I give a year’s membership (or, occasionally, longer) of a society which admits one free of charge to a number of buildings of diverse architectural interest. The general public has to pay for admission in every case; and the list of structures includes several important ones to which the general public is not admitted at all. I did reflect that it might not be an absolutely ideal gift for a young girl, but there was no evidence that Munn’s intended was a young girl. I knew nothing abo
ut her. I had not enquired, because I had little doubt that if Munn had wanted me to know at that stage, he would have told me. There was also the question of gifts to the bridesmaids. I dealt with it by assuming that there would be no bridesmaids.

  •

  I was right about that, but, for some reason (no doubt, the infrequency of weddings in my life), it had never occurred to me that there might not even be a church.

  “I simply couldn’t face all that white stuff and slobbering about,” said Munn to me in the car. “I’m sure you’ll agree it’s not the thing for chaps of our age.”

  So we were making towards a small country town with a convenient registry office. I shall not give a name to the town, because marriage is an institution so delicate that all in any way concerned are very touchy on the subject, and prone to seek legal redress for any possible dubiety or even comment. At the time, I wondered whether Munn was not perhaps a divorced man; or even a potential bigamist. It was the kind of thing that the course of events tended to bring to one’s mind; but I have absolutely no reason to think there was any truth in either hypothesis.

  In the car, however, Munn did let fall his bride’s family name. It was Pell: in East Anglia, a gypsy name, though less eminent in that way than Mace. I did not remark upon these facts to Munn. He was now referring to the bride herself as “Vi.” Munn struck me as being less uneasy than I had expected. I observed that he had not bought new clothes for the occasion, but was in his usual shapeless tweeds. I myself was at least wearing a “dark suit.” I touched my pocket containing the membership card of the society I have mentioned, which I had sealed in an envelope: sealed, I mean, with scarlet sealing wax. I was far from sure what would be the best moment to hand it over. I should have to wait upon events.

  The distance was not all that great and we managed to arrive before the registry office was even open. There were, in fact, six or seven minutes to go. I felt that this was the sort of thing that could be counted upon, and concentrated upon the idea that my duties must soon be all over. At least we had the car to wait in; which was fortunate, as it had begun to rain. The car was of moderate size only, and I wondered how many there would be for the return trip. The young driver began to nod to passers-by he knew. Munn had fallen silent. By way of conversation, I enquired how he and his bride had met.

  “She came into the post office and liked my straw daffies. She told Mrs. Hextable that she would like to meet me. She thought we had interests in common. Mrs. Hextable came up and brought me down. And so it proved to be.”

  “You mean that you did find you had a lot in common?”

  “So it seemed. I must admit that I’d been keeping half an eye open for a wife for some time. You may not believe that. I was feeling more and more that I couldn’t let my whole life be ruined by the swinish way I was treated.”

  “Of course I believe you, and I’m quite sure you’re right,” I said firmly; “and I very sincerely hope you’ll be very happy.” I felt quite warm about it.

  “Old Pell says he’s going to build us a house,” remarked Munn.

  I managed to avoid any facetious reference to an abode which would last till Doomsday. Even so, Munn was blushing slightly.

  “My God!” I cried. “What about the ring?” It was the first I had thought of it. I was behaving like the best man in a pantomime, but then, of course, one so often does behave like a character in a pantomime.

  “It’s all right,” said Munn. “Here it is.” He handed over a tiny grey box from his jacket pocket.

  “Isn’t it rather small?”

  “She’s a small girl.”

  At that point, one of the big office doors opened and a clerk emerged.

  “Is either of you Mr. Munn?”

  “I am,” said Munn.

  “The Registrar’s waiting for you. The bride is inside already with her family.” I cannot recall that I ever learned how they had managed to achieve this: professional influence, no doubt.

  We followed the clerk indoors, and, slightly to my surprise, the young driver of the car came after us. As Munn made no objection, it was not for me to speak.

  The windows of the room in which the ceremony was to take place were in need of cleaning. Perhaps they were unusually difficult to reach, as they were very high in the walls. The grime on the panes and the increasing rainfall made things very dim, and somewhat obscured my first view of the Pell family.

  My main feeling was that they were indeed small: small, smooth, and round was the impression they all left with me. Miss Pell, a little taller than her gnome-like parents, though only a trifle, was a pretty, round-faced, round-eyed girl, arrayed in bright colours, a selection of them. She had very blue eyes and very pink cheeks and very yellow hair, which stuck up sturdily all over her head, rather in the manner of Munn’s own white tangle. She was talking as we entered the room, in a noticeably sharp, even metallic voice; there was something stocky and assured in her whole demeanour, which, I must admit, did not attract me; and from pretty well the first instant I was in no doubt at all that it was she who had carried off Munn rather than he who had captured her. Why she should wish to do that was another matter; but no affair of mine, and rather glad I was to be unimplicated. Munn’s marriage, hitherto partly comic, partly pathetic, became for me, as I entered that registry office, partly disagreeable as . . . I should add that Mr. Pell was dressed in a well-fitted black suit, and little Mrs. Pell in a tight dress of deepest purple.

  “Happy to meet you,” said Mr. Pell. One simply could not exclude the sinister overtones of such a greeting from one’s mind, absurd though it is to say so.

  I simpered.

  “I often think the best man is the key to the whole wedding,” continued Mr. Pell. Even that implausible compliment added to my uneasiness, lacking as I was in all experience of the tasks required. Moreover, Mr. Pell had a grating voice; compulsive antecedent of his daughter’s.

  “How do you like the bride’s clothes?” enquired Mrs. Pell. “Doesn’t she look gay? Don’t you think Leonard’s lucky to get her?” I had forgotten that Munn’s name was Leonard (Christian names were not used among men in the present casual way), and had to grope in my mind for what she meant.

  “She looks lovely,” I said.

  “You’ll be able to kiss her in a few minutes, you know. It’s the best man’s privilege.”

  “I shan’t forget.”

  But the Registrar was awaiting us with some impatience, especially as he had a bad cold. The rubric was minimal, so that only a few minutes had seemingly passed before he was saying “And I hope you’ll be very happy,” and moving back to the fire that was smoking away in his private room. I had passed across the ring at the right moment and, at so spare a solemnisation, had little other commitment. We all signed the register, including the driver of the car. There had been no one else present, except the registrar’s clerk, who served unobtrusively.

  The Pells were cackling away (the verb is unavoidable: though of course voices do run in families, as do handwriting and faiths), and now had come the time for me to kiss Vi. Her cheek (to which I confined myself) struck me as hard and chilly, but the bride is in a palpably false position at such moments. All the same, I remembered by contrast other kisses that were coming my way just then. I also noticed that Munn had not kissed Vi at all. He had not touched her in any way except to put the small ring on her stick-like finger. The rain had eased off when we emerged, so I suppose it may all have taken rather longer than I supposed.

  To my relief, there was no further celebration. Even drinks all round at the hotel opposite were precluded by the licensing hours, as we all had to agree. Munn, the new Mrs. Munn, and I re-entered the car and the Pells waved us away. I saw their squat shapes shoulder to shoulder on the pavement: Mr. Pell with his right arm raised, Mrs. Pell with her left. The rain was now only a light drizzle, to which the Pells seemed impervious. After all, most funerals take place in the wet, I reflected. Could it have been really so difficult for Pell to get away thus b
riefly and thus early on another day than Saturday? Not that it mattered. I remembered that the Pells had had to travel from somewhere or other. I do not think I then knew where Pell plied his profession: visibly, and, as I had seen for myself, happier than any lark, as are all these men of timber and satin.

  Munn was taking his bride back to the rooms over the post office. I had found them, of course, to be more spacious than I had thought before I entered them. I noticed that the word “honeymoon” was never, in my hearing, mentioned. In the car, however, Vi, from the back seat, did assure me anxiously that, as Munn had said, her father was going to build them a house.

  “The first thing we’ll do,” she grated on, “is start looking for a plot. It’ll have to be the cheapest we can find, as Daddy doesn’t believe in buying things when he can make so much with his own hands.”

  There was no reference to Munn making any contribution, nor did he, installed in the back seat beside her, say a word.

  “It will only be a teeny house,” Vi explained in her rasping voice, “but Mummy says you’re often best off when you’re living small.”

  It was necessary to enter into it. “Have you a builder in mind?” I enquired.

  “Of course not, silly. Daddy’s going to build it for us.”

  I had sensed that this was in the background. “The whole thing?” I asked. “The plumbing included? And the electricity?” The latter had just entered our area, but was not yet truthfully in our immediate range.

  “We shan’t be having silly things like that. Only wood.”

  I was constrained to turn in my seat, difficult though it was to do, and look back at her.

  “Daddy can make everything needed in this world out of wood.”